Declaring War On Christmas


It's not as stupid as it sounds, or reads.  After GOP TV's Neil Cavuto asks "You know, invariably, people ask after tragedies like this, "How could God let this happen?" Mike Huckabee responds:

Well, you know, it's an interesting thing. We ask why there is violence in our schools but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage? Because we've made it a place where we don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability -- that we're not just going to have be accountable to the police if they catch us, but one day we stand before, you know, a holy God in judgment. If we don't believe that, then we don't fear that. And so I sometimes, when people say, why did God let it happen. You know, God wasn't armed. He didn't go to the school. But God will be there in the form of a lot people with hugs and with therapy and a whole lot of ways in which I think he will be involved in the aftermath. Maybe we ought to let him in on the front end and we wouldn't have to call him to show up when it's all said and done at the back end.

Huckabee is not stupid, as could be assumed, perhaps, of a former governor of Arkansas.   But he is wrong.  It is hardly likely that schools have "become a place of carnage" when Engel v. Vitale, in which the Supreme Court ruled school-sponsored prayer unconstitutional, was decided in 1962.   It's fairly ridiculous to blame these horrific acts- invariably committed with firearms- on a removal of God from our schools 50 years ago, especially when their incidence is growing.   The degree to which subjecting a young student to a prayer written by a bureaucrat (aren't conservatives usually opposed to bureaucrats?) alters his behavior (and especially his psychological profile) is greatly debatable.

Huckabee isn't stupid.   He didn't, for instance, insist, as do some Christians, that God is always in control.  Rather, he noted "God wasn't armed. He didn't go to the school."

And he especially isn't stupid when he blames liberals and their public schools, who "have made it a place where we don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means."   As a conservative eager for his cultural views to be affirmed, he advocates discussion about eternity and life and responsibility, which presumably can take the place (in a limited school day) of science, math, and history.

But the problem with the culture which has veered so far from religious faith and a dependence on God does not lie with the public schools, Democrats, liberals, or even the public sector.

When Jesus Christ asserted "My house shall be a house of prayer’ but you have made it a den of robbers" (Luke 19:46, ESV), he didn't have the public school, or the civil authorities, or even the tax collectors in mind. Responsible, however, are not only the crass commercialization of big-box retailers (and the smaller retailers who must follow suit) with their admonishments, amid images of Santa and elves, to shop until we drop.

Sorry, Mike (and fellow conservatives):  it is the entire private sector.   Media Matters for America on Monday noted

Sean Hannity's radio show dabbled in the exact language that his Fox colleagues often criticize as central to the "war on Christmas" when an announcer wished his radio listeners: "Happy holidays from all of us at the Sean Hannity show." Fox News' annual trumped-up "war on Christmas" has largely depended on Fox figures taking offense when the word "holiday" replaces "Christmas" in seasonal greetings.

Nobody at GOP TV has so emphasized the "War on Christmas" as has Bill O'Reilly.   On Thursday, Media Matters found

Bill O'Reilly delivered an eight-minute monologue about the threat that "secular forces" pose to America -- using the nonexistent "war on Christmas" as an example - but Fox News punctuated the segment with an animation telling the audience "Happy Holidays" (image, below).  Fox News has repeatedly attacked people and organizations who use the word "holiday" instead of "Christmas," claiming that they are engaging in a "war on Christmas."

In November, Fox & Friends expressed outrage at the fact that Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee has used the term "holiday tree" rather than Christmas tree, only to air a segment minutes later about the show's "Holiday wish list."

Mike Huckabee isn't responsible for the hypocrisy at Fox News.   Surely he does know, however, that powerful economic forces are unashamedly profiting from the growing secularism in American society- a secularism the private sector itself has successfully fostered.

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And Now A Word From Dr. Rodgers


The Washington Post reports

The most senior Republican woman in Congress said that lawmakers can hold hearings and investigate the mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut and “try to better understand exactly what happened,” but she would not say whether Congress should review the nation’s gun laws.

“I’m just devastated by what happened. It’s awful, and it’s so sad,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the incoming chairman of the House Republican Conference, which will make her the fourth-ranking member of her party’s caucus.

“We need to find out what happened and what drove this individual to this place,” she said when asked about a potential review of gun laws. “I think we have to be careful about new, suggesting new gun laws. We need to look at what drives a crazy person to do these kind of actions and make sure that we’re enforcing the laws that are currently on the books. And yes, definitely, we need to do everything possible to make sure that something like this never happens again.”

McMorris Rodgers spoke in an interview taped Friday for C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program.

No, we wouldn't want to jump to conclusions.  We wouldn't want to assume anything about the assailant- including that he is "a crazy person."   Way to keep things in perspective, Ms. Rodgers, diagnosing an individual without meeting him, reading a case file, or perhaps without even knowing the individual's name.  Perhaps she can tell us about her vast experience as a psychiatrist or how the offender could as easily have used a knife to kill nearly 30 individuals.

When a politician says all that is needed is better enforcement, hold on to your wallets- it's a subtle way of abdicating responsibility, given that enforcement is not his or her responsibility.  In this case, it is the responsibility of law enforcement, and Rodgers is no more a police officer than she is a psychiatrist.

Reality can be so threatening when one of your Party's co-owners is the National Rifle Association.


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Again.  And Again. And Again. And..


And now, it has come to Connecticut.

Following the mass murder at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut today, which has left 27 persons dead, presidential press secretary Jay Carney was asked about the absence of an assault weapons ban:

Q: The President made a campaign promise to work to renew the assault weapons ban. Why won’t you stand up here today and say that that remains a commitment of his?

CARNEY: It does remain a commitment of his. What I said is, today is not the day, I believe as a father, a day to engage in the usual Washington policy debates. I think that that they will come, but today of not that day, especially as we are awaiting more information about the situation in Connecticut.

In his response, Carney actually answered the reporter's question, maintaining an assault weapons ban "does remain a commitment" of his boss.  He also suggested that consideration of the issue would "come," though he noted that today is not the appropriate time.  (Probably, he suggested he is reacting "as a father" when childless people also are upset about the deaths because, unfortunately, people like when officials personalize tragedies.)

Later, the President noted "As a country, we have been through this too many times.   We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this regardless of the politics."
 
Since Barack Obama took the oath of office, there now have been 14 shooting incidents in which at least five individuals (aside from the perpetrator) have been killed.   And thus far, the most hopeful action from the President has been to comment "We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this."   So while today is not the time for public officials to debate gun control, the temptation will bear on the President to put off that day till... forever.

Meanwhile, we can remember the other acts of murder- many of them fitting the definition of terrorism- beginning with Columbine, as listed (and described) by Think Progress:

December 11, 2012. On Tuesday, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts killed 2 people and himself with a stolen rifle in Clackamas Town Center, Oregon. His motive is unknown.

September 27, 2012. Five were shot to death by 36-year-old Andrew Engeldinger at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis, MN. Three others were wounded. Engeldinger went on a rampage after losing his job, ultimately killing himself.

August 5, 2012. Six Sikh temple members were killed when 40-year-old US Army veteran Wade Michael Page opened fire in a gurdara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Four others were injured, and Page killed himself.

July 20, 2012. During the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, CO, 24-year-old James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 58. Holmes was arrested outside the theater.

May 29, 2012. Ian Stawicki opened fire on Cafe Racer Espresso in Seattle, WA, killing 5 and himself after a citywide manhunt.

April 6, 2012. Jake England, 19, and Alvin Watts, 32, shot 5 black men in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in racially motivated shooting spree. Three died.

April 2, 2012. A former student, 43-year-old One L. Goh killed 7 people at Oikos University, a Korean Christian college in Oakland, CA. The shooting was the sixth-deadliest school massacre in the US and the deadliest attack on a school since the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

October 14, 2011. Eight people died in a shooting at Salon Meritage hair salon in Seal Beach, CA. The gunman, 41-year-old Scott Evans Dekraai, killed six women and two men dead, while just one woman survived. It was Orange County’s deadliest mass killing.

September 6, 2011. Eduardo Sencion, 32, entered an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, NV and shot 12 people. Five died, including three National Guard members.

January 8, 2011. Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head when 22-year-old Jared Loughner opened fire on an event she was holding at a Safeway market in Tucson, AZ. Six people died, including Arizona District Court Chief Judge John Roll, one of Giffords’ staffers, and a 9-year-old girl. 19 total were shot. Loughner has been sentenced to seven life terms plus 140 years, without parole.

August 3, 2010. Omar S. Thornton, 34, gunned down Hartford Beer Distributor in Manchester, CT after getting caught stealing beer. Nine were killed, including Thornton, and two were injured.
November 5, 2009. Forty-three people were shot by Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan at the Fort Hood army base in Texas. Hasan reportedly yelled “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire, killing 13 and wounding 29 others.

April 3, 2009. Jiverly Wong, 41, opened fire at an immigration center in Binghamton, New York before committing suicide. He killed 13 people and wounded 4.

March 29, 2009. Eight people died in a shooting at the Pinelake Health and Rehab nursing home in Carthage, NC. The gunman, 45-year-old Robert Stewart, was targeting his estranged wife who worked at the home and survived. Stewart was sentenced to life in prison.

February 14, 2008. Steven Kazmierczak, 27, opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, killing 6 and wounding 21. The gunman shot and killed himself before police arrived. It was the fifth-deadliest university shooting in US history.

February 7, 2008. Six people died and two were injured in a shooting spree at the City Hall in Kirkwood, Missouri. The gunman, Charles Lee Thornton, opened fire during a public meeting after being denied construction contracts he believed he deserved. Thornton was killed by police.

December 5, 2007. A 19-year-old boy, Robert Hawkins, shot up a department store in the Westroads Mall in Omaha, NE. Hawkins killed 9 people and wounded 4 before killing himself. The semi-automatic rifle he used was stolen from his stepfather’s house.

April 16, 2007. Virginia Tech became the site of the deadliest school shooting in US history when a student, Seung-Hui Choi, gunned down 56 people. Thirty-two people died in the massacre.

October 2, 2006. An Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster, PA was gunned down by 32-year-old Charles Carl Roberts, Roberts separated the boys from the girls, binding and shooting the girls. 5 young girls died, while 6 were injured. Roberts committed suicide afterward.

March 25, 2006. Seven died and 2 were injured by 28-year-old Kyle Aaron Huff in a shooting spree through Capitol Hill in Seattle, WA. The massacre was the worst killing in Seattle since 1983.

March 21, 2005. Teenager Jeffrey Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend before opening fire on Red Lake Senior High School, killing 9 people on campus and injuring 5. Weise killed himself.

March 12, 2005. A Living Church of God meeting was gunned down by 44-year-old church member Terry Michael Ratzmann at a Sheraton hotel in Brookfield, WI. Ratzmann was thought to have had religious motivations, and killed himself after executing the pastor, the pastor’s 16-year-old son, and 7 others. Four were wounded.

July 8, 2003. Doug Williams, a Lockheed Martin employee, shot up his plant in Meridian, MI in a racially-motivated rampage. He shot 14 people, most of them African American, and killed 7.

September 15, 1999. Larry Gene Ashbrook opened fire on a Christian rock concert and teen prayer rally at Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, TX. He killed 7 people and wounded 7 others, almost all teenagers. Ashbrook committed suicide.

July 29, 1999. Mark Orrin Barton, 44, murdered his wife and two children with a hammer before shooting up two Atlanta day trading firms. Barton, a day trader, was believed to be motivated by huge monetary losses. He killed 12 including his family and injured 13 before killing himself.

April 20, 1999. In the deadliest high school shooting in US history, teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Kiebold shot up Columbine High School in Littleton, CO. They killed 13 people and wounded 21 others. They killed themselves after the massacre.

Ultimately, the nation and its people cannot properly bear witness to today's horror unless we  recognize that these victims are not alone but are in a long line of innocents falling victim to our gun culture.



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Reprise, Of A Sort



Appearing on C-Span's Washington Journal, powerful anti-income tax fanatic Grover Norquist was caught by Think Progress speculating of President Obama

We got lots of things Obama claims to be for, and we will make — we, the Republicans in the House and Senate — will make him actually make those spending restraints, in order to get the continuing resolution out [for] a week, two weeks, a month. Obama will be on a very short leash, fiscally speaking, over the next four years. He’s not gonna have any fun at all. He may decide to go blow up small countries he can’t pronounce because it won’t be any fun to be here, because he won’t be able to spend the kind of cash he was hoping to.

Where did we hear politicians and pundits previously impugn the motives of a Democratic President with the charge that he might order a military attack to divert attention- or just for funsies?  Oh, yeah:

Clinton came under intense criticism in 1998 by the GOP after he launched an attack on suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. Intelligence indicated bin Laden and his top associates were meeting at a training camp when U.S. missiles were fired at it, just weeks after al Qaeda terrorists bombed U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

The attack was launched on the same day Lewinsky, a former White House intern, wrapped up her testimony before a grand jury investigating whether Clinton lied under oath about their relationship or encouraged anyone else to do so.

"During that time when the attack was launched in Afghanistan and Sudan, there was a movie out called 'Wag the Dog,' " Cohen testified Tuesday. In the movie, an administration launched a fake war as a political ploy. "There were critics of the Clinton administration that attacked the president, saying this was an effort on his part to divert attention from his personal difficulties.

The former Secretary of Defense added "I would like to say for the record under no circumstances did President Clinton ever call upon the military and use that military in order to serve a political purpose."

The military attack ordered by Bill Clinton was denounced by many individuals who were obsessively hostile toward the 42nd President- or were blind to the danger presented to the U.S.A. by Islamic extremists.  The 9/11 commission's report noted

After launching cruise missile strikes against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the embassy bombings, the Clinton administration applied diplomatic pressure to try to persuade the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to expel Bin Ladin. The administration also devised covert operations to use CIA-paid foreign agents to capture or kill Bin Ladin and his chief lieutenants. These actions did not stop Bin Ladin or dislodge al Qaeda from its sanctuary.

Alas, the Clinton Administration applied insufficient pressure to destroy Al Qaeda's base camps in Afghanistan or Sudan, the incoming Bush Administration virtually ignored the problem, and disaster ensued on 9/11/01.   And now Grover Norquist, whose puppets in the G.O.P. deserve a great deal of the blame for the soaring national debt, says President Obama may "blow up small countries" because "he won’t be able to spend the kind of cash he was hoping to."  Pretty clever: Norquist demands low taxes; Republican members of Congress vote unanimously for the past 22 years against raising income taxes; the national debt climbs to unprecedented levels as Bush 43 cuts taxes again and again while we fight two wars; and Norquist claims the Democratic President may bomb countries to avoid dealing with the debt Grover arguably did more than anyone to create.

And no, other than CAP and a few other liberal bloggers, he won't get called out for it.




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Wouldn't Want To Question Anyone's Motive


In September, 2010, Chuck Todd & the guys at MSNBC's First Read were in full Village mode when they wrote

Here’s one other point we want to make about the middle striking back: Note these senators who are all up in 2012: Snowe, Dick Lugar, Jon Tester, Claire McCaskill, Bob Corker, Bob Casey, and Jim Webb. What do they all have in common? They’re all moderates, and all of them could face -- potentially -- tough primaries or general elections two years from now. Don’t be surprised if these folks try to work with each other to stay elected.

Two years later, Snowe and Webb declined to run for re-election and Lugar was defeated in the GOP primary in Indiana.      But Tester (D-MT), McCaskill (D-MO), Casey (D-PA), and Corker all were re-elected.

Corker still is being touted as a moderate, as is South Carolina's Lindsey Graham.   Nevertheless, Corker (according to Think Progress) said on Fox News Sunday

The Republicans know they have the debt ceiling, that is coming up around the corner, and, the leverage is going to shift, as soon as we get beyond this issue. The leverage is going to shift, to our side where hopefully we’ll do the same thing we did last time and that is if the president wants to raise the debt limit by $2 trillion we get $2 trillion in spending reduction and, hopefully, this time, it is mostly oriented towards entitlement and with no process. [...]

[Obama] has the upper hand on taxes and you have to pass something to keep it from happening. We only have one body. If we were to pass, for instance, raising the top 2 rates, and that’s it, all of a sudden we do have the leverage of the debt ceiling and we haven’t given that up so the only way the debt ceiling.

His Republican colleague, Graham,  stated the following day on the same network

I’d put revenue on the table only if they do entitlement reform. Here’s what I don’t hear: I don’t hear any Democrat of note saying, ‘Here’s what I would do on the entitlement side. So if I were Republicans, I would be quiet for a while and see what the Democrats put on the table for entitlement reform...

Here is where the President is going to have a rude awakening: We’ll get to the end of the year, there will probably be a small deal to get to the end of the year... [But] I can tell you this: there is a hardening on the Republican side. We’re not going to raise the debt ceiling. We’re not going to let Obama borrow anymore money or any American Congress borrow anymore money until we fix this country from becoming How about manning up, Mr. President, and use your mandate to bring this country together to stop us from becoming Greece?...

There’ll come a day – and it’s called the debt ceiling debate – when Republicans will have leverage to save this country from becoming Greece. I hope we’re strong enough as a party to seize that moment.

If Senator Graham had any interest in the truth, he wouldn't trot out that tired, old Repub analogy to Greece.  The U.S.A., Graham probably realizes, has its own currency.  And while productivity in Greece is lower than in most European nations, American productivity has been soaring- it's compensation which has lagged.    Further, Mr. Graham might not want to tell Barack Obama (or anyone) to "man up"; any similarities between him and, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger are completely coincidental. (Two can play that sexist game.)

Graham and Corker do their best to drag the fiscal slope debate to the right.   His warning that "Republicans will have leverage" during what is "called the debt ceiling debate" mirrors Corker's "The leverage is going to shift, to our side where hopefully we’ll do the same thing we did last time."

Except to those not paying attention (most Republicans and members of the mainstream media), the two Senators are not only doing their best to drag the economy down, but also to telegraph their disinterest in debt and deficits.  When it lowered the the nation's credit rating from AAA to AA+ in August, 2011, Standard and Poor's explained

We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process.

Corker and Graham, and some of their colleagues, are pining for a "prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt limit" and "a contentious and fitful process." Corker actually wants "to do the same thing we did last time" because, apparently, it worked out so well for the country then.

Both these guys might heed the words of a Republican Senator the last time the GOP tried to turn the USA into a deadbeat nation.   On July 14 of last year he admitted "Maybe the debt ceiling was the wrong place to pick a fight as it relates to trying to get our country's house in order. Maybe that was the wrong place to deal."

That was Bob Corker himself, who understood what his Party was trying to do to the nation.  And probably, still does.

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Break Out The Champagne



He's kidding, isn't he?

USA Today's DeWayne Wickham remarks

But these people and the others who filled the small ballroom in New York City's Flatiron district this night were there as much to celebrate the resurrection of liberalism as to toast Jealous. The youngest person ever to lead the NAACP, this nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, Jealous was touted for his support of same-sex marriage,opposition to the death penalty and work to defeat voter suppression legislation.

As the recipient of the 2012 Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship, he was -- or this group, at least -- the most obvious manifestation of a liberal resurgence. While recent polls show that conservatives significantly outnumber liberals, liberal ideals and causes have not had a better year since Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law.

Proof of this can be found in the approval last month of same-sex marriage laws in Maryland, Maine and Washington, the first states to legalize gay unions by popular vote. And it was evident in the success Democrats had at the polls this year. Liberals revel in the re-election victory President Obama, a moderate Democrat, achieved over Mitt Romney, the GOP candidate whose campaign was a genuflection to the demands of this nation's most misguided conservatives.

Evidence of the banner year for liberals also can be seen in the gains Democrats made in the U.S. Senate, which pushed their majority to 55 seats (including two Independents who are expected to join their caucus). These victories came in a year in which political pundits widely believed Republicans would seize control of the Senate. Among the right-wing Republican Senate candidates who went down to defeat were Tea Party favorites Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock of Indiana. Both suffered fatal self-inflicted political wounds...

Liberals also chalked up victories in Washington and Colorado when voters in three states that considered measures to legalize the recreational use of marijuana gave their approval. Only in Oregon was this proposition defeated.

One can only hope that the legalization of marijuana, to be regulated, for personal use by adults in two of three states- each a relatively liberal state culturally- will lessen the power of the pharmaceutical and/or alcohol lobbies.  (It also should enable a greater effort by law enforcement to crack down on much more dangerous drugs.)  And legalization of same-sex marriage may lessen the institutional power of.... whom?  Perhaps of people who oppose same-sex marriage.  Or someone.

Wickham's glee may be lost on progressives in the Midwest.    Yesterday in Michigan, Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed legislation prohibiting union membership (or payment of dues) as a condition for employment in both the public and private sectors.   When a referendum proposing to codify the right to organize was defeated 58-42 last month, Republicans in the state legislature were emboldened.   Arguing "this isn’t Wisconsin. It’s worse. It’s Michigan and it’s the UWA," Rich Yeselson explains

The loss provided what is called in an organizing drive a convenient “headcount” for corporations and their conservative Republican allies. The headcount said simply that the UAW and allied unions did not have the unqualified support of most Michigan voters. The unions could, and are, making some noise, but they wouldn’t create sufficient civil strife to defeat a right-to-work flip. The unions could be rolled, the more quickly the better, even during a lame-duck session. The savvy president of the UAW, Bob King, one of the most progressive union leaders in the country, promises not to give up and threatens recall elections. But state right-to-work laws have only been repealed once, in Indiana in 1965. Indiana reinstated right-to-work laws earlier this year.

Slate's Matt Yglesias writes

It's only going to have a modest impact in the short-term, but far and away the biggest economic news of the week from a long-term perspective has got to be Michigan's rather sudden transformation into a right-to-work state. This is noteworthy in part because, as Alec Macgillis writes, Snyder had positioned himself as more moderate than Scott Walker and other GOP governors from the class of 2010. But the legislation he's just passed is really more far reaching than the legislation Walker signed in Wisconsin or anything that's been discussed in Ohio.

In political terms this really does seem like the tipping point. For a long time the United States has existed as a "house divided" in this regard. Democrats in states like Virginia and Nevada didn't seriously try to repeal right-to-work laws, while Republicans in the northeast and midwest didn't try to implement them. But if right-to-work can pass in Michigan, then why shouldn't Republicans press for it in Wisconsin or Ohio or Pennsylvania?

Yglesias is guilty only of understatement.  Michigan's overnight- literally, overnight- transformation from a state with one of the highest (such as it is) unionization rates in the nation to a right-to-work state is not the biggest economic news of the week.  This assault on middle-class rights is easily the biggest news of the week in the domestic sphere, economic or otherwise.

The editorial staff of the Detroit Free Press is disappointed that Rick Snyder (whose election it endorsed), who previously had opposed right-to-work legislation, has undergone a sudden conversion.   It believes

The answer may lie in another Koch-funded group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which promotes a radical right-wing agenda in states across the country, supplying "model legislation" to sympathetic lawmakers.

The organization boasts more than 2,000 legislative members. It also has corporate members, who weigh in on the model legislation before it's approved by the group's public-sector committee, the group's national chairman said in an interview he gave after dozens of pieces of ALEC-written model legislation were leaked last year in a joint project by The Nation and the Center for Media and Democracy.

Michigan's proposed right-to-work bills mirror the ALEC language practically word-for-word.

It's unclear how many Michigan lawmakers are members of ALEC; the group doesn't make its membership rolls public. But at least one of the lawmakers who introduced Michigan's right-to-work legislation has been associated with ALEC.

Certainly, there are a large number of Michigan legislators who are beholden to Americans for Prosperity, or the Koch brothers. Word is the groups threatened Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville's leadership post, and promised him a primary challenge in 2014, if he refused to move right-to-work forward.

While ALEC, which already dominates several Repub-controlled state legislatures (and at least one GOP governor), grows in influence, DeWayne Wickham is joyful that in a few states, individuals now may smoke marijuana and gays now may enshrine their relationship as marriage. How comforting.

To be fair, the veteran columnist also is very pleased- as he should be- that Democrats picked up seats in the U.S. Senate.   And he is elated that Barack Obama was re-elected.

Wickham and others still under the spell of Mr. Obama ought to remember that after the election of the first black President in 2008, The End of Conservatism As We Know It was declared.   And they should take heed of the reasoning of Yeselson, who recognizes "This isn't Wisconsin.  It's worse.  It's Michigan..."  As with the implementation of right-to-work laws, raising the Medicare eligibility age is (as described by Joe Conason) "a direct assault on the standard of living of working-class Americans."  The power elite thrives.

Eliminating the healthiest cohort from Medicare, thus increasing its premiums and eventually undermining public support for the program, is not being sought by a GOP president.  This isn't a Republican President.  It's worse.  It's a president with a "D" after his name.  It's terrible policy, it's terrible politics, and yet more evidence that the glee over the re-election of Barack Obama must be the beginning, and not the end.


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Prelude To Cuts


In the spirit of bipartisanship and comity, let us be generous:  the utterances of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) are incompatible with objective reality.

On Sunday's Meet The Press, Dr. Coburn claimed (as caught by Crooks and Liars)

It doesn't really matter what happens at the end of this year because ultimately the numbers and the bond holders throughout the world will determine what we'll spend and what we won't. So, we can play the political game that is being played out in Washington right now or we can be absolutely honest with the American people and say, 'Medicare is going bankrupt, Social Security disability will be bankrupt in two years, Social Security trust fund will be bankrupt in five years, Social Security total will be bankrupt in 16,17 years.

Medicare is divided into four parts, one of which (Part C) is administered through the private sector through any number of Medicare Advantage Plans.  Of the other three, the Medicare Trustees Report, according to a summary prepared by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services

projects that the Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Fund is financially balanced because beneficiary premiums and general revenue financing are set to cover expected program costs... SMI Part D, the Medicare prescription drug program, had an average growth rate of 7.2 percent over the last 5 years.  Cost projections for Part D are lower than in the 2011 Trustees report, due to lower spending in 2011 and greater expected use of generic drugs.

HI expenditures have exceeded income annually since 2008 and are projected to continue doing so under current law in all future years.  Trust Fund interest earnings and asset redemptions are required to cover the difference.  HI assets are projected to cover annual deficits through 2023, with asset depletion in 2024.  After asset depletion, if Congress were to take no further action, projected HI Trust Fund revenue would be adequate to cover 87 percent of estimated expenditures in 2024 and 67 percent of projected costs in 2050.  In practice, Congress has never allowed a Medicare trust fund to exhaust its assets.  

There is no concern that Medicare Part D, the notorious prescription drug program created by President George W. Bush as a sop to the pharmaceutical industry, will go bankrupt.Neither can Part B, the Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund, go bankrupt.   Coburn is doubtless speaking of Part A, which is expected to cover 67% of costs in 2050.   Or, as the good Doctor would put it, "going bankrupt."  In a fact check, CNN explained, more thoroughly and clearly than have I,

When officials talk of Medicare insolvency, they're talking specifically about the trust fund for Medicare's hospital insurance, or Medicare Part A, which covers inpatient hospital stays, care at a nursing facility, hospice care and some home health care. The other parts of Medicare, though costs are rising, are "adequately financed" for now, the program's trustees say.

The Part A fund's overseers -- the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds -- said back in 2009, before the Affordable Care Act passed, that the banked money used to make up the difference between income (such as taxes) and expenses for Part A would be depleted in 2017.

But then the Affordable Care Act passed. The trustees reported that the act's lower expenditures (cutting rates to providers) and increased revenues (a payroll tax hike for wealthier people in 2013) "improves the financial outlook for Medicare substantially."

The trustees reported in 2010 that health care reform would delay the Part A trust fund's insolvency until 2029. By 2011, the trustees moved that insolvency estimate back to 2024.
By that date, the trust fund would be depleted. But that doesn't mean the Medicare Part A program would collapse. Revenues would be able to pay for most of the costs. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers the program, said this year: "Projected (trust fund) revenue would be adequate to cover 87% of estimated expenditures in 2024 and 67% of projected costs in 2050."

Coburn makes three claims about Social Security: 1) disability will be "bankrupt" in 2014; the trust fund will be "bankrupt" in 2017; 3) in "total," it will be "bankrupt" in in 2038 in 2039.

Social Security is not going bankrupt in the manner the Senator would have people believe it.  With no infusion of additional revenue, it will be able to pay most of its obligations for decades.  Coburn, in faux panic mode, is anxious that people believe that without "reform," Social Security will be obsolete in a few years.

Disability is the most tenuous, with the fund needing replenishment by 2016.    The trust fund will be depleted- as "bankrupt" would seem to mean- in 2033, not in 2017.  After that point, 75-78% of Social Security benefits (given no change in policy) would be paid (through payroll taxes and taxation of Social Security benefits) until 2087.

But the public won't support the evisceration of two-thirds (Medicare and Social Security) of the social insurance the poor, the elderly, and much of the middle class depend upon unless alarmists such as Tom Coburn are allowed to shred the truth and create an alternate reality.  As pointed out by Bob Somerby, in April criticizing Kevin Drum for condoning use of term "bankrupt" to describe Social Security

It would indeed be a very bad thing if the Social Security trust fund ran dry and promised benefits had to be cut. (The trustees now project that this will happen in 2033.) But people have been led to believe, for the past three decades, that Social Security won’t be there at all by the time they reach retirement age. Almost surely, the terms “bankrupt” and "bankruptcy" have played a key role in this disinformation campaign.

Because we’re away from our sprawling campus, we won’t provide any links. But voters have been deeply misinformed about the future of Social Security dating to the 1980s.

This isn’t a hyper-legalistic matter; we're not talking about a minor "rhetorical stretch." This is one of the greatest disinformation campaigns of the past fifty years. This campaign should be studied in detail, although orgs like the AP never will, and you know all about our professors!

Of course, when people are led to believe that Social Security won’t survive at all on its present course, they can easily be persuaded to favor extreme “reforms.”

Medicare, whose financial problems lie not in the program itself but in health care costs generally, is now being similarly denigrated- and not only by Republicans.     At the Democratic National Convention, former President Clinton, recognizing that the insolvency date of Medicare would be moved up if Mitt Romney were elected and repealed the Affordable Care Act, maintained "So, if (Romney is) elected and if he does what he promised to do, Medicare will now go broke in 2016."   The following day, Vice President Biden declared "The plan (Romney is) proposing would cause Medicare to go bankrupt by 2016."

While Social Security probably will not be harmed until after resolution of the fiscal slope negotiations, Medicare is on the chopping block currently.  And with both, disinformation is enhanced by manipulation of the language by the major players.


and to the millions of Jewish readers of this blog....   HAPPY CHANUKAH




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