Almost As Evil As Donald Trump

The nation's most prominent phony before Donald Trump climbed out of the sewer and down the escalator in Trump Tower  has a delusional fan:

"I'd rather die than withdraw. If they're going to kill me, they're going to kill me."

One of the most important and iconic moments of Justice Thomas's confirmation. It was a signal to the world that you should never let bullies win.

And he never has. #CTLive pic.twitter.com/FfISdoos4g

— Retired Orrin G. Hatch (@RetiredOrrin) May 28, 2021

 

This is as if Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of the USA in 2024 while supporters characterized him as a warrior against gender stereotypes. Suggesting that- of all people- Clarence Thomas was not a perpetrator of bullying but a target of bullying is akin to claiming that Trump is an innocent victim of sexual predators. sexual assault. Investigative journalist Jane Mayer, who (co-) wrote the book on Thomas' ascension to the US Supreme Court, in January, 2019 told PBS' Frontline

He absolutely played the race card to get on the Supreme Court of the United States, and played the victim card, which of course his ideology is that nobody should be able to ever see themselves as a victim. But he sure played it, and it worked.

That's precisely how, in 50 words or less (fewer), Judge Clarence Thomas became Justice Clarence Thomas. Challenging his fitness for the High Court was effectively shut down as he complained he was "lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree."  It was "a high tech lynching for uppity blacks." Mayer explains

He worked it out with Ken Duberstein, who was working with the White House, one of his handlers, a great sort of political operative, and others, who came up with this fantastic phrase with him, which was to basically say that he was being put through what he called a “high-tech lynching.” He raised the “lynching” word. It obviously is one of the most explosive words you can come up with in American history, the most explosive word in racial history in America, evoking images of just a horrible racist process without any justice that was meant to kill him in the worst way, in front of the whole public. And he said it was cooked up only because he was trying to think for himself and think differently from the rest of the sort of black establishment.

Black conservative lawyer plays the race card to get on the Supreme Court of the United States, right?

He absolutely played the race card to get on the Supreme Court of the United States, and played the victim card, which of course his ideology is that nobody should be able to ever see themselves as a victim. But he sure played it, and it worked.

Thomas was pressured to drop out but responded "I'd rather die than withdraw," either of which would have been a stunningly patriotic act.

He suspected he had an ace in the hole, though. Waiting to testify against him were Angela Wright, Moira Smith, and Sukari Hardnett. Nonetheless, the Democratic chairperson of the Senate Judiciary Committee was thoroughly cowed.  He put a quick end to the hearing, Thomas was approved by the Judiciary Committee, confirmed by the Senate, and remains on the US Supreme Court today.

That committee chairman was a guy from Delaware, Joseph R. Biden Jr.. He has since been elected President, a bizarre chapter in politics, given his history. It is not, however, as bizarre as worshiping a guy who demanded to be seen as a victim of lynching while he bullied himself onto the United States Supreme Court..

 

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Not On His Own

Most Republicans, especially in the mainstream, are eager to suggest that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford really was not the victim of an attempted rape by Brett Kavanaugh (and his friend).  But they won't argue that she's lying- that would be politically incorrect and the poor dears are very sensitive to criticism. Instead, she must have been mistaken.

And so we have Ed Whalen, who first laid out his theory in a series of tweets Thursday afternoon, including one naming a "Chris Garrett" and another posting the fellow's picture next to one of Kavanaugh suggesting they currently look alike.

In an "omigod, I can be sued" moment, Whalen then tweeted

“I made an appalling and inexcusable mistake of judgment in posting the tweet thread in a way that identified Kavanaugh's Georgetown Prep classmate. I take full responsibility for that mistake, and I deeply apologize for it. I realize that does not undo the mistake.”

Ellen Nakashima, no backbencher but the national security reporter for The Washington Post, then herself made a serious mistake by attaching to a copy of Whelan's remark "Ed Whelan apologizes."

Similarly, attached to a Daily Beast article arguing that Whalen can be charged with defamation was an "Editor's Note" including "Ed Whalen issued an apology on Twitter."

No and no. Ed Whalen did not apologize.  He stated "I made an appalling and inexcusable mistake of judgement in posting the tweet thread in a way that identified Kavanaugh's Georgetown Prep classmate." As the Daily Beast reporter (Jay Michaelson) understands, that leaves the accuser vulnerable to a successful libel suit.

Similarly understanding is Will Bunch, who a few minutes after Whalen's initial series of tweets, maintained (emphasis, significantly, his)

The right is so desperate to confirm Kavanaugh that they're out there smearing a completely different guy -- BY NAME -- and accusing him of sexual assault in order to clear K through "mistaken identity," I hope this guy sues his accusers

— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) September 20, 2018

The right is so desperate to confirm Kavanaugh that they're out there smearing a completely different guy -- BY NAME -- and accusing him of sexual assault in order to clear K through "mistaken identity," I hope this guy sues his accusers.

Of course, Ed Whalen is not the issue.  Neither is the GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee, which has denied- very likely honestly- having any advance knowledge of the accusation. 

That leaves three other possibilities: a) Whelan acted on his own, without any consultation or advice; b) the Senate Judiciary Committee was in on it; or c) Brett Kavanaugh or a critical GOP ally was involved. That classic beachfront property in Arizona awaits you if you believe (a). Vox reports

On Tuesday, we learned that Kavanaugh had met privately with Hatch, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, and told him the accusations could be a case of mistaken identity. Whelan amplified this defense on his Twitter feed.

On Wednesday, Hatch’s spokesperson, Matt Whitlock, retweeted another Whelan tweet promoting a mistaken identity theory, telling people to “keep an eye on Ed’s tweets the next few days.” (After Whelan’s thread came out, Whitlock deleted the tweet and denied having any foreknowledge of what Whelan was planning.)

But don't write off the possibility of the involvement by the nominee himself, as WaPo reporter Seung Min Kim notes

Kavanaugh and his allies have been privately discussing a defense that would not question whether an incident happened to Ford, but instead would raise doubts that the attacker was Kavanaugh.

Of course they have. It's possible, albeit unlikely, that Ford is making this up. People, even women, have been known to be dishonest. But that would require a backbone, so Republicans prefer the "silly little woman" charge (which, conveniently, is what Kavanaugh buddy Hatch recently implied). Clearly, though

Kavanaugh should be asked at his hearing whether he was aware of—in generalities or specifics—or in anyway involved in Whelan’s decision to publicly “non-accuse” his former classmate. https://t.co/N4YNUZPPEH

— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) September 21, 2018

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Leave Bad Enough Alone.

Like any snowflake, Arizona senator Orrin Hatch will melt away, and he will retire after this year. Managing to do two stupid things in approximately 24 hours

Sen. Orrin Hatch apologized Tuesday for his comments criticizing Sen. John McCain's reported request that President Donald Trump not attend his eventual funeral.

"I felt badly. I had spoken out of turn," the Utah Republican told reporters in the Capitol. "I felt like I shouldn't have said what I said."

On Monday, Hatch said he thought it was "ridiculous" that his fellow Senate Republican, who is recovering from cancer treatment in his home state of Arizona, wanted to keep the President from his funeral.

"He's the President of the United States. He's a very good man. But it's up to John. I think John should have his wishes fulfilled with regard to who attends his funeral," Hatch told CNN.
Hatch also told reporters Tuesday that he sent a letter to McCain.

The Arizona senator's daughter, Meghan McCain, rebuked Hatch earlier in the day following comments the senator made about her father.

"I'd like everybody to take a collective breath and chill out on my dad for a second — especially Orrin Hatch," Meghan McCain said on ABC's "The View."

"Take many seats right now," Meghan McCain said in response to Hatch.





Hatch was wrong. Senator McCain's decision to suggest that Donald Trump not attend the Arizonan's funeral was the right one for several reasons.  Trump advocated often and fervently for building a wall to keep Mexican immigrants from the USA. John McCain was an early supporter of comprehensive immigration reform. Trump maintained that John McCain wasn't a hero simply because he was captured during the Vietnam War and as a prisoner of war refused release until and unless his fellow prisoners were released.

McCain was the victim of "enhanced interrogation" at the Hanoi Hilton and Donald Trump is an enthusiastic supporter of torture. The President attacked McCain for his vote against health care repeal and has expressed an isolationist approach toward foreign affairs in stark contrast to McCain's commitment to an interventionist policy to further American values.

Those are only a few of the differences which justify McCain's wish that Mr. Trump skip his funeral.

The President's supporters boast that Donald Trump is a "counter-puncher." A President offended at McCain's slap could retaliate by simply directing Vice President Pence also to bypass the funeral. 

But Orrin Hatch made the situation worse.  Though Hatch was wrong on the issue, he wasn't rude or offensive by stating his opinion, especially in the relatively respectful manner as he did.

It's not a crime to be wrong. Many people often are, and Senator Hatch has made a career out of it.  Rebuked by Senator McCain's daughter, he could have stated "I believe it's important for the sitting President of the United States, especially a Republican, to attend the funeral of a long-time senator who also was our party's nominee for President." It's a mere difference of opinion.

If Senator Hatch was persuaded that his judgement was wrong, he could have simply acknowledged that it was faulty. He had not "talked out of turn," had committed no capital offense, and did not have to apologize. He took his earlier remark too seriously, a stunning lack of perspective for someone who was partially responsible for a far more consequential and reprehensible act of injustice some 27 years ago.




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Sorry. The Money Is All Gone.

In floor debate in late November, Senate Finance Committee chairperson Orrin Hatch, who worked with the late Senator Edward Kennedy to create the Children's Health Insurance Program, assured Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown "We're going to get CHIP throught. There's no question about that. I'm going to see that it gets through."

Politico's Haberkorn reported Friday that the Utah Republican stated “We’re going to take good care of CHIP. I can’t tell you exactly when, but we’ll get it done.”

With Republicans in favor of the program and Democrats completely committeed to it, CHIP will sometime in the near future be reauthorized.

Still, Haberkorn added

House Republicans on Wednesday released a spending bill that would fund CHIP for five years but pay for it with cuts to Obamacare and other programs that Senate Democrats would not support. The bill would need Democrats' help to get through the Senate.

Nice little program you got there- it would be a shame if something happened to it.  The GOP is quite willing to fund children's health care- provided that it can chip away at the social safety net elsewhere.

The hostage may be released, but the GOP is bound and determined that a heavy price is paid. It is, after all, the secondary motive for a disastrous tax bill, the primary motive being to please the Party's donors.  Hatch himself gave it away when in the largely empty chamber with Brown, he contended

We're going to do CHIP. There's no question about it in my mind. And it's gotta be done the right way. But- the reason CHIP's having trouble is that we don't have any money anymore. We just add more and more spending and more and more spending and you can look at the  rest of the bill for more and more spending.





"It has to be done the right way... we don't have any money anymore," remarked the Senator who unreservedly voted for the GOP tax plan, targeted to increase the debt by something north of $1 trillion. Excited at the pospect of slashing Medicaid, Speaker Paul Ryan at a conservative event in March bragged to the editor of the National Review "Sending it back to the states, capping its growth rate. We have been dreaming of this since I have been around, since you and I were drinking at a keg.”

Shortly before triumphantly pushing through his chamber the Corporate Tax Cut Sham of 2017, Ryan maintained at a town hall meeting "You cannot get the national debt under control, you cannot get that deficit under control, if you don’t do both — grow the economy, cut spending."  Ryan had commented in a radio interview . "Frankly, it's the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements — because that's really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking."

Frankly, the Speaker dares not utter the words "Medicaid" or "Medicare," and while more detached than Hatch, he's a little more subtle, or at least wonkier. So carrying water for Ryan, Politico's Alberta and Bade characterize the Speaker's goal as "entitlement reform," in which he "tackles what he sees as the systemic problems with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid." Charlie Pierce recognizes “'what he sees as being systemic problems' with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are that those programs exist at all."

Senator Marco Rubio echoes Ryan's call that Congress "structurally reform" earned benefits. More candid than the Speaker or Hatch, the Florida Republican stated

The only way you are going to deal with the debt is you have to do two things. ... You have got to generate economic growth because growth generates revenue. But you also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn’t the driver of our debt... The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries.

The good news is that individuals currently elderly probably will be left somewhat, relatively, unharmed. Perhaps Hatch and his merry band of oligarchs with a daddy complex will "take care" of people now in retirement age or close to it because elderly people vote. Health care for children also- to whatever extent- will be provided. But all those people in between better hold onto their wallets. The Republican Senate and Republican Senate are coming for you- unless, of course, your parents leave their $11 million estate to you when they die.




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Republican Wet Dream

Marco Rubio, perhaps best known for publicly debating penis size with future President of the United States of America Donald J. Trump, last week:

"The only way you are going to deal with the debt is you have to do two things. ... You have got to generate economic growth because growth generates revenue. But you also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn’t the driver of our debt," Rubio said.

"The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries. We still have time, not just to save those programs, but to responsibly structure them in a way that doesn’t impact current retirees or people about to retire. But it would probably impact it for me and people younger than, in ways that quite frankly you wouldn’t really notice and you wouldn’t really object to because it’s reasonable."

Credit the Florida senator for speaking out-of-turn. Thus, Charlie Pierce observes 

Jesus, Marco, get with the program. You’re supposed to sell this Abomination of Desolation as a boon to “the middle class.” Then, when it blows up the deficit, you’re supposed to come sadly before the nation, blame the Democrats for not “compromising,” and mournfully tell millions of the elderly and disabled that it’s time for those lazy moochers to kick in.

Lacking patience, Senator Grassley has said "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” So, too, Orrin Hatch, who puts President Trump in the class of Saint Reagan, rationalizing why Congress can't afford $8 billion for the Children's Health Insurance Program over the next five years because "Unfortunately, the liberal philosophy has created millions of people that way, who believe everything they are or ever hope to be depend on the federal government rather than the opportunities that this great country grants them.”

Rubio- and maybe even Grassley and Hatch- realizes they can merely wait.  The Tax Policy Center explains that the congressional PAYGO rule requres "that (using current law as the baseline) tax cuts as well as increases in entitlement and other mandatory spending must be covered by tax increases or cuts in mandatory spending."  Probably worse yet: "It does not apply to discretionary spending (spending that is controlled through the appropriations process)."

Congress will not be able to reduce the Pentagon budget (commence laughing) to cover the roughly $1.3 trillion increase in the debt from the Corporate Tax Scam of 2017. So Medicare and Social Security will be automatically slashed, by $400 billion in the next ten years, according to Social Security Works.  Or as Bruce Bartlett calmly noted on "AM Joy"

And I believe that the minute the ink is dry on this tax cut, all of the fiscal responsibility groups and the Office of Management and Budget and the White House will all be saying "I'm shocked,shocked to discover that the national debt is rising very, very rapidly. We must do something about it" and it will all take the form of cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.





Or as he less calmly has tweeted, "every Republican senator is a whore. Some just took longer to get their price."




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Deficit Amnesia

Oh, but for the good old days when Republicans were in favor of nothing but cutting income taxes- and practically admitted it.

Think Progress takes us back to those times, before President Clinton on August 10, 1993 signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, nicknamed (not really) by Republicans as "The Path to Hell.Act."

In February of that year, Representative Bill Archer of Texas maintained he wished Clinton's program would "increase jobs and the standard of living (but) his massive tax increases will do just the opposite."   Representative Thomas Ewing of Illinois contended "the Clinton plan will hurt the economy and kill new job creation... by crippling small- and medium-sized businesses, the plan will kill jobs."

The following month, Rep. Phil Crane of Illinois argued "the budget proposal offered by the Democrats is a recipe for economic and fiscal disaster."  Representative Jim Ranstad of Minnesota claimed "Economists across the ideological spectrum are convinced that the Clinton tax increases will lead to widespread job loss."

May brought California's Christoper Cox labeling the tax increase a "Dr. Kevorkian plan for our economy" (which) "will kill jobs, kill businesses, and yes, kill even the higher tax revenues that these suicidal tax increasers hope to gain." Texas' Bill Archer argued the plan would cut jobs "and the standard of living for Americans."

In July, Representative Bob Goodlatte of Georgia contended small businesses "will be the hardest hit by the Clinton tax-and-spend budget because when you raise taxes, you kill jobs."  The following month, the budget plan was condemned by Representatives Kasich, Dornan, Armey, and Helflin, the latter notably claiming it "will raise your taxes, increase the deficit, and kill over 1 million jobs."

The pattern of criticism had been launched in February when the leader of those gentlemen, then-Minority Whip Gingrich, had complained

We have all too many people in the Democratic administration who are talking about bigger Government, bigger bureaucracy, more programs, and higher taxes. I believe that that will in fact kill the current recovery and put us back in a recession. It might take 1 1/2 or 2 years, but it will happen.

And those Republicans backed their words with action, for every Republican in the House of Representatives voted against the budget.  The GOP's solidarity held firm in the Senate, with the increase opposed by each of its members, including Oklahoma's Don Nickles, Utah's Orrin Hatch, Iowa's Chuck Grassley, and Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, who predicted the "package will not reduce the Federal debt, or even balance one annual budget for that matter."

In retrospect, the tax increase was the centerpiece of President Clinton's economic plan, which helped create the longest period of economic growth in United States history and balanced budgets, one of which was handed to President George W. Bush, who quickly (and intentionally) squandered it.

A party whose leaders have backbone would acknowledge their error.  It would embrace its position of 1993 and emphasize that the Republican Party is the party of lower taxes, or that the stock market boom and/or dot-com bubble was largely responsible.

But no, because dishonesty is the easy way out, and if Republicans cannot misinform their supporters, they really have no reason to exist.  Last December, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell asked Gingrich for an apology for predicting the Clinton budget would produce a recession, whereupon the former Speaker and future Crossfire host claimed "When we balanced the budget, we balanced the budget with a tax cut, not a tax increase. Four consecutive balanced budget with a tax cut, not a tax increase. "

Gingrich is not alone in rewriting history.  Interviewed by Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday, Senator Ted Cruz stated

I think you're exactly right about the history of 1995, that there was some short-term political pain. But, at the same time, because Republicans stood together, we saw year after year of balanced budgets which never would have happened if Republicans had folded like they're trying to fold right now.

You knew nothing could be accurate when it starts with "(Rush), I think you're exactly right."

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Welfare Queens, Updated

Ronald Reagan was the best, in 1980 extolling the virtues of states rights just outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney had been murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen doing the work of the Southern white aristocracy. As President, he brought to the fore the myth of the "welfare queen," a powerful symbol later debunked. And he didn't stop there.

Blatant appeals to white fears have not been so politically correct since the day after Barack Obama's election. On that occasion, Frank Rich could write "while there are still bigots in America, they are in unambiguous retreat" now that we have "another America- hardly a perfect or prejudice-free America, but a union that can change and does, aspiring to perfection even if it can never achieve it" (now 62 years old, Rich has since lost his youthful exuberance). A year before the election, Paul Krugman had observed "we have become a more diverse and less racist country over time." He believed "anti-immigrant rhetoric (could not) replace old-fashioned racial politics" because" it mobilizes the same shrinking pool of whites — and alienates the growing number of Latino voters."

We have, in fact, made progress of a sort. Now we don't have to demonize immigrants, blacks, welfare recipients, or any other class of citizens. It's now a larger, more diverse group of Americans vilified by the Republican Party.

Chris Hayes, substituting for Lawrence O'Donnell Friday evening, sets it up:

HAYES: In the Spotlight tonight, kicking the unemployed when they are down. In Ohio, a Republican state senator is introducing a bill that would require people seeking unemployment benefits and welfare to first take a drug test, and, of course, also pay for the test. Legislation 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.

Here`s Ohio State Senator Tim Schaeffer (ph) explaining his thought process.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How would we as taxpayers know that this isn`t kind of the boogie man out there? It`s an idea that it`s a problem. But we don`t have any concrete data to tell us that it really is a problem. How do you know?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we will have data once we implement the system, and once we implement the testing. You know, if 100 percent of the people who apply for public assistance come clean, come out clean, and don`t have any drugs in the system, then fine, great. But my suspicion is we will find some.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Yeah, that`s my suspicion, too, if you -- I don`t know -- drug tested the state senators of the state of Ohio. If this sounds startlingly familiar, it should, because just last night, we looked at the case of a Florida Governor Rick Scott, who pushed through a similar policy that required drug tests for welfare applicants. And the results?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: So was the rate of Floridians applying for welfare who also tested positive drug use at the national level of 8.7 percent? No. Was it eight percent? Was it 7.5? Was it seven percent? Was it 6.5 percent or six percent or 5.5 or five percent, like you might be thinking?

Was it 4.5 percent or four percent or even 3.5 percent? Was it three percent? Wrong again.

The rate of Floridians applying for welfare who tested positive for drug use is just -- drum roll -- two percent. Two percent, a full 6.7 percent lower than the probably actually too low government figure for the national average.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: The Florida and Ohio drug testing laws come at a time when Republicans are launching a new attack on the working poor. In his presidential announcement speech, Texas Governor Rick Perry expressed outrage at 46.4 percent of households paid no federal income tax in 2011.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RICK PERRY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We`re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don`t even pay any income tax.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: He is not -- just in case it wasn`t clear in that clip, he`s not outraged at the injustice that nearly half of American households work, but are paid so little that their take home pay barely covers basic necessities. He is outraged because they are not paying more taxes.

Fifteen years ago this week, President Bill Clinton signed a bill ending Welfare as we know it. Democrats hope that stroke of triangulation would end the demonization of welfare queens and take the issue off the table.

No, it didn't and Hayes concludes

What we`re seeing instead is that the category of welfare queen has simply expanded to now include the working poor, and those unlucky enough to lose their jobs during the Great Recession.

Consider Orrin Hatch, who believes "the place where you've got to get revenues has to come from the middle class" and complains "Now we don’t want the really poor people who are in poverty to pay income taxes. But 51 percent of all households?" And Rick Perry, who is "dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don't even pay any income tax." And Michele Bachmann (a former IRS attorney) pretending there is no tax but the income tax: "A system in which 47% of Americans don't pay any tax is ruinous for a democracy because there is no tie to the government beneifts that people demand. I think everyone should have to pay something."

No longer politically correct to dump on single out any one group- blacks, the poor, or illegal immigranst- it has become acceptable to discredit most Americans, including the working and middle classes. "We've come a long way," Frank Rich wrote on November 9, 2008. He was convinced Barack Obama knew "we are the ones we've been waiting for" because "millions of such Americans were here all along, waiting for a leader. This was the week that they reclaimed their country." Change We Can Believe In, indeed.

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Go Away, FAA, They Say

As if there needed to be another reason to vote down the debt extension bill crafted by Republicans Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama.

House Republicans have blocked extension of the Federal Aviation Administration authorization over a provision they have sponsored which would overturn a ruling by the National Mediation Board that nonvoting members not be counted when airline and railroad employees vote on whether to form a union. The House passed a funding bill with the anti-worker authorization but Senate Majority Leader Reid has not posted its own, with the House anti-worker provision deleted, in part because it's understood that the GOP-controlled chamber would reject it.

Stop-work orders have been issued on more than 150 airport construction projects as 4,000 FAA employees and 70,000 construction workers have been idled since operating authority ran out on July 23. The House, having played the lead role in this as well as the debt fiasco, has recessed, with the Senate soon to follow, and resolution of the FAA crisis has to await their return.

It's not just public sector unions anymore. As GOP governors throughout the nation attack public employee unions, national Republicans are doing their part by going after private sector unions. Federal employees and construction workers lose their jobs while the FAA cannot collect approximately $200 million per week in airplane taxes and other fees. (Several airlines have patriotically stepped up and raised their ticket prices to make up the difference, however.) It's the Republican version of a jobs bill, apparently.

Given that GOP members of Congress, including Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, argue that a non-vote should count as a vote against change and for the status quo, perhaps a Democrat should introduce a bill proposing that all registered voters who do not vote in a presidential election be counted as a vote for the incumbent. More realistically, Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon, one of 95 Democrats who voted against the debt ceiling legislation, argued

Minimally, they could have restored funding and taxation that funds the Federal Aviation Administration. That would put 94,000 people back to work. They didn't even do that. There's no investment, no jobs, coming out of this bill.

But as DeFazio knows, the debt negotiators never were concerned about jobs notwithstanding, as The New York Times' Joe Nocera explains

America’s real crisis is not a debt crisis. It’s an unemployment crisis. Yet this agreement not only doesn’t address unemployment, it’s guaranteed to make it worse. (Incredibly, the Democrats even abandoned their demand for extended unemployment benefits as part of the deal.) As Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of the bond investment firm Pimco, told me, fiscal policy includes both a numerator and a denominator. “The numerator is debt,” he said. “But the denominator is growth.” He added, “What we have done is accelerate forward, in a self-inflicted manner, the numerator. And, in the process, we have undermined the denominator.” Economic growth could have gone a long way toward shrinking the deficit, while helping put people to work. The spending cuts will shrink growth and raise the likelihood of pushing the country back into recession.

Barack Obama has his deal, his kind of deal, which is any kind of deal. The independents presidential adviser David Plouffe wants to pacify may even applaud the agreement and give the President a short-term boost in ratings. But whatever their interest in bipartisanship, those same independents (like the FAA employees crushed by the Repub Party) are not going to be doing much applauding when the economy, rattled by cuts in spending, goes south.

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Lock Up The Unemployed!

As we all are aware,

Republicans on Thursday defeated Democrats’ showcase election-year jobs bill, including an extension of weekly unemployment benefits for millions of people out of work more than six months.

The 57-41 vote fell three votes short of the 60 required to crack a GOP filibuster, delivering a major blow to President Barack Obama and Democrats facing big losses of House and Senate seats in the fall election.

The rejected bill would also have provided $16 billion in new aid to states, preserving the jobs of thousands of state and local government workers and providing what White House officials called an insurance policy against a double-dip recession. It also included dozens of tax breaks sought by business lobbyists, and tax increases on domestically produced oil and on investment fund managers.

The demise of the bill means that unemployment benefits will phase out for more than 200,000 people a week. Governors who had been counting on federal aid will now have to consider a fresh round of budget cuts, tax hikes and layoffs of state workers.

Thursday night, Rachel Maddow effectively summarized (transcript here; video below) the implications of the defeat of the legislation, as well as the nature of the GOP opposition. Included in comments by Republicans disdainful of the American worker was one in which Utah Senator Orrin Hatch sarcastically remarked

You know, we should be giving people cash who… who basically are just going to blow it on drugs.

Maddow added "Senator Hatch actually proposed an amendment to the jobs bill earlier this month, to force anyone getting unemployment benefits to submit to a drug test, because, you know, land of the free and all that. Now pee in this cup."

Aside from holding a contemptuous attitude toward unemployed workers, Hatch must have forgotten that he is supposed to be against big government. Back in March, he told CNN's Campbell Brown "Those on the other (conservative side of the health care debate, of whom he was one) feel deeply about the big spending, big government, big controls, and, of course, some of the provisions of this -- of these two bills."

Yet, Hatch apparently wants to jack up the size of the federal government, and increase its costs, by establishing a whole new function- testing applicants for unemployed benefits. Or perhaps he wants the state government to fund the entire procedure because, after all, what the 50 states need more than ever now is another unfunded mandate. Drug testing is, of course, more than drug testing. It is training employeees for the procedure, setting up an appointment for (presumably) urinalysis, administering the test (in-house or contracted out), evaluating the results, and taking the action prompted by the results.

The action prompted by the results gets into real money. When, as is inevitable, people start testing positive for illegal drugs, law enforcement will need to be notified and can hardly turn a blind eye to a violation of criminal law. And what this country needs more than anything is more citizens incarcerated for non-violent offenses, at least victimless crimes. (Yes, drug possession is victimless. Some people argue otherwise. They would be wrong.) Among steps taken by states to reduce expenditures on criminal justice and hold their budgets in check, according to USA Today in March, 2009, were:

• A California panel of federal judges recommended last month that the cash-strapped state release up to 57,000 non-violent inmates from the overcrowded system to help save $800 million.

• Kentucky officials last year allowed for the early release of non-violent offenders up to six months before their sentences end to serve the balance of their time at home.

The budget crunch in most states, and thus consideration of drastic measures to reduce costs, has only intensified in the last sixteen months. And Orrin Hatch wants to find men and women who have lost their jobs and use illegal drugs so that they can be denied benefits and, unavoidably, prosecuted.

Some Republicans will go to great lengths to bar the American people from helping Americans who are down-and-out.

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A Most Expedient Idea

Via Digby via Senatus, a blog offering "daily coverage of the United States Senate," via Seesmic, comes this tweet (or perhaps twit):"

Hatch offering amd to make "false statements regarding participation in U.S. combat operations a misdemeanor."

Assuming this is accurate, Hatch presumably is responding to a report that Democratic Senatorial candidate Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut has twice made false statements about his military record. There is little chance he is thinking of George W. Bush, Lindsey Graham, or the late Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Similarly, Hatch, a four-term, very conservative Senator from Utah who periodically works on exacting from Democrats concessions on legislation, no doubt is thinking of Bob Bennett, a three-term, very conservative Senator from Utah who periodically works on exacting from Democrats concessions on legislation and was recently denied renomination by the far right in his state.

Still, it is remarkable. Orrin Hatch was considered by GOP Presidents as Supreme Court Justice timber, though at 76 years of age, his time has passed. As far as is known, he never made a short list, but as a long-time member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and widely acceptable among his colleagues, was thought of as a reasonably sharp legal mind who would easily win confirmation.

The latter part is true, but the former? Probably, though it seems otherwise. Senator Hatch is recommending that making a false statement about oneself be made a criminal offense, if it pertains to service in combat. That would run up against the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, obviously, which probably occurred to Senator Hatch. Such are the ways of GOP politics these days, however, and the importance of the guarantee of free speech is eclipsed by the importance of political survival.

Candidates lie! It appears that would be a startling revelation to the Utah Senator. And Senator Hatch might want to consider a related issue in his proposal. We have elections in this country- elections in which voters sort out issues and claims and make an informed judgment. Sometimes the judgment is not informed, but that's almost incidental; elections are a constitutionally provided and reasonably fair way to determine the will of the people. Senator Hatch ought to have some faith in the electorate or more broadly, the American people, to make a determination about such matters.

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Cleaving To Wall Street

Let's give the Republican Party some credit. Let's assume its sincerity. By that standard, Senator Orrin Hatch is only partially paranoid. Daily Kos reported Tuesday that the Utah Republican

seemed to imply on Fox News today that the administration may have pushed for a civil suit against Goldman Sachs to be filed at a time that benefited Democrats' financial reform push, saying that "the timing is very suspect."

"This whole Goldman Sachs thing, isn't that a little odd that all of a sudden, right at the height of this legislative period, we suddenly have the SEC filing suit against Goldman Sachs?" Hatch asked.

"I think the timing is very suspect," he said.

He continued:

There's something terribly wrong here and I don't know what it is, but to do that right at this particular time, you know, the timing is very suspect in my eyes.

If that seems a little paranoid, though, it's nothing compared to the conspiracy Rush Limbaugh uncovered today:

The regime is denying any conspiracy between themselves and the SEC and Goldman Sachs over an effort to get this financial regulatory reform bill passed with Honest Obe heading to the Cooper Union Thursday in New York to make the first big pitch.

So now President Obama and the Securities and Exchange Commission and Goldman Sachs are in it together! Therefore, you might conclude, Rush is in favor of reform of the financial industry. You would be thinking logically, but would be wrong:

Folks, let's go back to the premise of this whole financial regulatory reform bill. The whole premise of this is that is based on the fact that Wall Street's to blame for the financial meltdown, and it's not. Government is to blame for the meltdown....

"Whoa, what happened there? Why, how did those people on Wall Street pull the wool over our eyes on this one? These thieves! We gotta go in there and regulate these people. Why, look! You can't trust the private sector at all. Private sector always screws you." That's why we're here. The whole thing, the whole Dodd bill for financial regulatory reform is bogus. The only reform that's need is a reformation of government, a reformation of the Congress, a reformation of what's going on at the White House. I mean, even without getting into any other specifics, the whole premise of this is wrong. A lot of us are, frankly, fed up. Every time the government makes a mistake, which is frequently, they sit back and turn it around and blame it on the private sector, which is the golden goose of this country, and they exonerate themselves!

This really is genius- no, really. The President, dictator that he is, controls the SEC; Obama decides to persecute Goldman Sachs, which is in on the conspiracy; Wall Street, however, is blameless because government, which is conspiring with Goldman Sachs, is completely to blame. This particular firm, which has a connection with Robert Rubin and other powerful Democrats, is thus demonized- and so is Barack Obama and the federal government. But no regulation of Wall Street, on which Goldman Sachs is a prime player, can ever be justified.

It may not make sense, but as a way of ginning up hostility to financial regulation and not appearing to be supportive of a mega-corporation under a criminal cloud, it is even more brilliant than Senator Hatch's more pedestrian fantasy.

Whining About Reconciliation

There is some bizarre reasoning going on with Republicans. In the roundtable portion of today's Meet the Press, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) argued

And let me tell you, the reconciliation rules have never been used for such sweeping social legislation like this. This is one-sixth of the American economy. It's sweeping in, in effect. There--and, and, and there have been three sweeping social bull--not sweeping, but social bills that have been approved through reconciliation. One was, of course, the, the welfare reform. That had 78 positive votes, but--huge bipartisan vote. Another one was the SCHIP bill, my bill with Senator Kennedy. That had 85 votes. The third one was college tuition, and that had, I think, something like 78 votes. The fact of the matter is, is that it has never been done before, it's never been used before. To do this is just very, very dangerous. It's going to cause an awful lot of problems.

It's not only that this is misleading. Sure, Republicans have used reconciliation far more than Democrats- in one accounting, in 14 of 19 times either a GOP President has signed the bill which went through this process or it was vetoed by a Democratic President. And yes, reconciliation has been used several times in the past to pass health care financing initiatives, including not only the aforementioned Childrens' Health Insurance Program but the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) of 1985 and others.

But it's really the utter illogic of GOP talking points. During the same exchange, Hatch contend "in every case except two they were--they, they had bipartisan votes."

And across the dial (old term- back when televisions had dials) on CBS' Face The Nation, Lindsay Graham was claiming "We’ve had reconciliation votes, but all of them had received bipartisan support. The least was 12 when we did reconciliation with tax cuts."

But as Think Progress points out, President Bush the Younger signed three budget bills which were passed by a Republican-controlled Congress with only two or three votes from the minority. (Those would be the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005, Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003.)

The idea, however, that the majority party should not employ reconciliation when it is legislation not supported by a substantial portion of the legislative minority defies common sense. After all, if a lot of Republicans supported the bill there would be no need for the reconciliation process. But more importantly: this argument allows the GOP to stand en masse against legislation- even when substantive parts reflect Republican complaints- and then claim "look, they're trying to do it alone! They're so mean!"

The health care bill now proposed by Democrats contains GOP amendments, GOP proposals, and hands to the private insurance industry 30+ million customers without a public option or any competition- and the Republicans cry: "Look what those radical liberals are imposing on us!"

Angling for partisan political advantage, the GOP is engaging in political theatre, gambling that its base will drive the November elections.

Hatch On Health Care

We know Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as a United States Senator and songwriter. But little did we know that he also is a stand-up (actually, sit-down) comedian.

Hatch appeared with the National Review's Rich Lowry, ideological cross-dresser and faux Democrat Harold Ford, and sydicated columnist E.J. Dionne on the roundtable segment of today's Meet The Press. Commenting on health care, Hatch said this and as a true professional comedian, without the hint of a smile:

I was a member of the gang of seven. He was so restricted by the Democratic process that he couldn't really do anything for Republicans. So I had to leave just out of honor because I couldn't--I'd walk out of there and, and trash everything they were doing, so I left out of honor. The other Republicans gradually left, too. There has been no real effort to try and get together on all the things we can get together on. It's just been "take it or leave it," and that's been their attitude.

Back in August, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, following an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Meeting, wrote

Chuck Todd asked Grassley whether he'd vote for the bill if it was a good piece of policy that he'd crafted but that couldn't attract more than a handful of Republican votes. "Certainly not," replied Grassley. Todd tried again, clarifying that this was legislation Grassley liked, and thought would move the ball forward, but was getting bogged down due to partisanship. Grassley held firm. If a good bill cannot attract Republican support, then it is not a good bill, he argued.

Grassley, in other words, is working backward from the votes. If the Gang of Six reaches a compromise that the Senate Republicans don't support, Grassley will abandon that compromise, regardless of the fact that he's the guy who built it.

Now, consider: if a Senator helps shape a bill and believes it benefits the nation, he would (and has) vote against it because other members of his party are doing so. And if the Senate bill (which passed 60-40) includes 161 GOP-sponsored amendments, that, apparently, would be the Democrats' "take it or leave it" attitude decried by Hatch. And if the new proposal from the Senate majority (still 50 of 100, at last count) includes four concepts advanced by Republicans at Obama's health care summit, that's not really trying.

Orrin Hatch, the Utah humorist and health care obstructionist.