The Republican Media- No. 38

In May, 2008 correspondent Jessica Yellin had a conversation with AC 360 host AC about the runup to Persian Gulf II:

ANDERSON COOPER: Jessica, McClellan took press to task for not upholding their reputation. He writes: "The National Press Corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. The 'liberal media' - in quotes - didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."
Dan Bartlett, former Bush adviser, called the allegation "total crap."
What is your take? Did the press corps drop the ball?

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I wouldn't go that far.
I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives - and I was not at this network at the time - but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.

I think, over time...

COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?

YELLIN: Not in that exact - they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.

Yellin got a lot of e-mail responses to that extraordinary admission.  (Luckily, there was no twitter and no twits then.)   She explained that she was not working at CNN when she was pressured from network executives to spin the news about preparations for the war in Iraq in a positive way.  Surely, then, she was employed by GOP house organ Fox News or at least by one of the three major networks.   Mais, no, as she noted when she came on the next night and explained

I find myself in an interesting position. Today the blogs lit up with comments I made last night on AC360° and suddenly I’m being reported on.

It's not the most comfortable position for a reporter.

So let me clarify what I said and what I experienced.

First, this involved my time on MSNBC where I worked during the lead up to war. I worked as a segment producer, overnight anchor, field reporter, and briefly covered the White House, the Pentagon, and general Washington stories.

Also, let me say: No, senior corporate leadership never asked me to take out a line in a script or re-write an anchor intro. I did not mean to leave the impression that corporate executives were interfering in my daily work; my interaction was with senior producers. What was clear to me is that many people running the broadcasts wanted coverage that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the country at the time. It was clear to me they wanted their coverage to reflect the mood of the country.

And now I'm going back to work covering the Puerto Rico primary from San Juan.

Of course, MSNBC was different back then, though then as now, it subservient to the President of the United States. Currently it poses as a liberal station, delighted there is a black president, conservative though he may be; exhilarated at the thought that the Defense of Marriage Act may be overthrown and prohibition on same-sex marriage ruled unconstitutional while reproductive freedom and voting rights are eroded state-by-state; and on board with the idea that Social Security and Medicare be cut, as long as a few tax loopholes are (temporarily) eliminated.

It is, nonetheless, the most liberal,or least conservative, cable news network.   In a report, de-emphasized if not ignored by MSNBC and its competitors, The Guardian of the UK finds

Fresh evidence has been revealed about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein's foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction.

Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was "active", "growing" and "up and running".

A special BBC Panorama programme aired on Monday night details how British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries.

It describes how Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister, told the CIA's station chief in Paris at the time, Bill Murray, through an intermediary that Iraq had "virtually nothing" in terms of WMD.

Sabri said in a statement that the Panorama story was "totally fabricated".

However, Panorama confirms that three months before the war an MI6 officer met Iraq's head of intelligence, Tahir Habbush al-Tikriti, who also said that Saddam had no active WMD. The meeting in the Jordanian capital, Amman, took place days before the British government published its now widely discredited Iraqi weapons dossier in September 2002.

The "liberal media" went in the tank for the Bush administration when it spun its tales to justify an upcoming war again Iraq.  Since the folly of the war became evident, the excuse has been: at least everyone thought that the regime in Baghdad had "weapons of mass destruction."   But Scott Ritter and a few others- including, it now seems, British and U.S. intelligence- knew otherwise.  Meanwhile, the mainstream media maintains the fiction that American policymakers were, at worse, misguided.

(hat tip to Digby/Hullabaloo)



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Perspective, Please


Once Mayor Michael Nutter wrote a letter to the Human Relations Commission in Philadelphia suggesting a "rebuke" for the Philly Magazine article "Being White in Philly," a panel discussion was almost inevitable.  One was held Monday night at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Details of the event are fairly light, which is a pity, given that the piece by the magazine's Robert Huber exposed, or threatened to expose, urban problems which are particularly acute in Philadelphia.

Today we read in the Philadelphia Inquirer of an individual, allegedly robbed by a homeless man named Robert Bangura.   The apparent victim has accused Public Defender Frederick Lowenberg of calling him to urge him not to appear in Court.  Bangura

has been accused of doing that type of thing before. In 2006, he allegedly snatched $40 from a man near Fourth and Christian Street. In 2008, he was charged with taking $40 from a man at gunpoint on South Street.

Those cases, like many cases in Philadelphia, fell apart when witnesses failed to appear. Bangura was represented by public defenders, but not Lowenberg, in those cases.

Victims of crime, and witnesses to crime, have routinely been avoiding the courts in the city for quite a while.  In June 2012, the Inquirer reported

In a four-part series published in December 2009, The Inquirer reported that the Philadelphia criminal justice system was in crisis, plagued by rampant witness intimidation, a massive fugitive problem, some of the nation's lowest conviction rates for violent crimes, and the dismissal of thousands of cases each year without a ruling on the merits.

A special advisory committee convened in response has concluded that the paper's series had "galvanized a vigorous response from the stakeholders in Philadelphia's criminal justice system" in response to the report of "real defects," but "that the system would need to greatly improve its performance in order to regain the public's confidence."

But now that Robert Huber has written of race, crime, and fear in the neighborhoods of the city, Mayor Michael Nutter has asked the Human Relations Commission to investigate whether "Philly Magazine and Bob Huber are appropriate for rebuke by the Commission in light of the potentially inflammatory effect and the reckless endangerment to Philadelphia's racial relations possibly caused by the essay's unsubstantiated assertions."

Nutter's reprehensible response not only signaled an effort to disregard the terror which blocks crime victims and witnesses of all ethnic groups from assisting the city in prosecution of the violent crime more prevalent there than in most comparable cities.  It represents a lost opportunity for the Democratic Mayor.  Yesterday, the Inquirer published an article, based on a 2009-2011 estimate of the U.S. Census American Community Survey, which was deeply disturbing- not only for the adversity it found but also because the Mayor has chosen not to tie its findings to the concerns expressed by Huber's interviewees.  Alfred Lubrano wrote

Philadelphia has the highest rate of deep poverty - people with incomes below half of the poverty line - of any of the nation's 10 most populous cities.

The annual salary for a single person at half the poverty line is around $5,700; for a family of four, it's around $11,700.

Philadelphia's deep-poverty rate is 12.9 percent, or around 200,000 people.

But that "wasn't a complete surprise for antipoverty advocates," Lubrano notes, because "the city already has the highest poverty rate- 28.4 percent- of any of America's biggest cities."

There is a nexus between poverty and crime.  For those too young to know, or perhaps those too old to remember: there was a time in this nation that public officials acknowledged problems and pointed out the causes.

Not so Mayor Nutter.  It is hardly surprising that crime, and fear of it, are greater in the city than in surrounding areas, in which there is only 3.6% living in "deep poverty."  One would have hoped the Mayor, instead of attacking Huber, would have used the latter's article as a chance to explain that Philadelphia has far more serious problems than have suburban areas.

Those include (among others) poverty, substance abuse, homelessness, broken families, and a banking class which seized upon the poor and working class as an opportunity to make gobs of money, ultimately bringing the nation to its financial knees. Those factors were, unfortunately, missing from Nutter's letter to the Commission, in which he took a "hear no evil, see no evil" approach.

But give the Mayor credit: at least he hasn't accused the Survey, the bearer of bad news, of being "prejudiced, fact-challenged" and "ill-informed."



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A Mayor Unhinged

Earlier this month, Philly Magazine published an article entitled "Being White in Philly." Robert Huber roamed the neighborhoods of Philadelphia to explore the beliefs and attitudes of white citizens, some of them crime victims, about living in a dangerous city.  He found residents who are wary and even antagonistic toward blacks, as well as ones with open, tolerant views. Huber concluded by writing

What, I wonder, would that look like? Claire, the widow I talked to in Fairmount who was walking her terri-poos, doesn’t worry about saying the wrong thing in her neighborhood, about offending her black neighbors, because she’s confident of her own feelings when it comes to matters of race. But like many people, I yearn for much more: that I could feel the freedom to speak to my African-American neighbors about, say, not only my concerns for my son’s safety living around Temple, but how the inner city needs to get its act together. That I could take the leap of talking about something that might seem to be about race with black people.

I wouldn’t do that, though, because it feels too risky. In fact, I would no more go there than I would stand out on the sidewalk some Saturday and ask a neighbor how much money he has in the bank.

But this is how I see it: We need to bridge the conversational divide so that there are no longer two private dialogues in Philadelphia—white people talking to other whites, and black people to blacks—but a city in which it is okay to speak openly about race. That feels like a lot to ask, a leap of faith for everyone. It also seems like the only place to go, the necessary next step.

Meanwhile, when I drive through North Philly to visit my son, I continue to feel both profoundly sad and a blind desire to escape.

Though I wonder: Am I allowed to say even that?

Mayor Nutter was not pleased.   On the weekend of March 9/10, speaking to the annual Madam CJ Walker Luncheon sponsored by the National Coalition of 100 Black Women Incorporated, Nutter contended the essay "makes some pretty disgusting and disdainful comments about African-Americans and women in particular. I’ll have some more to say about that in the upcoming weeks — but maybe that person might want to come to this event and see some positive folks doing some positive things."

By Friday the 15th, Nutter was even less pleased and sent to the city's Human Rights Commission a four-page letter in which he "ask(s) that the Commission consider specifically whether Philadelphia Magazine and the writer, Bob Huber are appropriate for rebuke by the Commission in light of the potentially inflammatory effect and the reckless endangerment to Philadelphia's racial relations possibly caused by the essay's unsubstantiated assertions."

It's obviously reprehensible for a public official, the chief executive of a city, to suggest that an investigative piece be squelched in the hope that it has a chilling effect, as the cliche (accurate in this case) would have it.   The mayor is not, as whites would traditionally complain about blacks, over-sensitive.  He is, instead, contemptuous of the First Amendment.  

It is more difficult to criticize Nutter for his critique of the article itself- but only slightly more difficult.  Perspectives on race are complicated matters which vary widely from one individual to another.   It would be comforting if poverty, racial bigotry, crime, or urban deterioration disappeared simply because they're ignored.  Unfortunately, they do not, though Nutter evidently is convinced otherwise.  In addition to trying to bring official pressure upon the writer and the magazine, Nutter labeled the article  "uninformed, ill-advised, ill-considered, uninspired, and thoroughly imaginative."  Here is one of the "lament(s)" about which he presumably is exorcised:

Jen tells me a lovely story: 

She discovered a public pool at 26th and Master in Brewerytown two summers ago. A beautiful pool, with cool slides. There were maybe 60 kids there—black kids—on the day Jen took her young daughter; the kids ranged in age from about five to 12, and there was only one other pa-rent around. Jen stood in the pool holding her hands out, teaching her daughter to swim. Eight or 10 girls surrounded Jen—they all wanted to show her how good they were. One said, “I am the luckiest girl in the world.” And why was that? “Because I live across from the pool.” She pointed to her house. It was a beaten-down row.

“These kids were so happy and sweet,” Jen tells me.

She is warning me, with this story. I’d told her about driving up North Broad Street and how miserable I believed living there must be. There’s a certain arrogance in my judgment, Jen is telling me. I might not know what people are truly experiencing.

As she was leaving the pool that summer day, Jen saw three or four older girls modeling her, with their hands out, teaching the younger ones to swim.

Engage, Jen is saying-—engage people, connect with them, without assuming what their lives are like, or judging them. It’s good advice. Because she’s right—the gulf is so wide that there’s much we don’t know about each other.

Do yourself a favor and read the article; then respond to this post by explaining, as the Mayor asks in his letter, "whether the 'speech' employed in this essay is not the reckless equivalent of 'shouting 'fire!' in a crowded theater."   And extra points are granted if you can explain, additionally, how we've gotten to the point at which so many individuals apparently believe either of two irreconcilable fantasies:  that the election of a black president spelled the end of racism or that reporting negative attitudes of citizens toward black people is an offense meriting suppression by an arm of city government.




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Corkernomics

Josh Israel (emphasis his) at Think Progress quotes Senator Bob Corker contending on GOP News Sunday

I think there–by the way–is a chance on a deal. I know the president is saying the right things and we have an opportunity over the next four-to-five months. I think that we’ll know when the president is serious by virtue of a process is setup where he is actually at the table or he has a designee and whether he begins to say publicly to the American people, to all Americans, that he understands that Americans are only paying one-third of the cost of Medicare and that has to change for the program to be here down the road. But look, Chris, I think Republicans — if they saw true entitlement reform — would be glad to look at tax reform that generates additional revenues. And that doesn’t mean increasing rates, that means closing loopholes. That also means arranging our tax system so that we have economic growth. And I think we’ve been saying that from day one.

The Tennessee Republican has come up with an ingenious and pretty clever way of recommending that Medicare be slashed.  Don't recommend a cut to Medicare- urge that Americans pay a greater share of the program.  But Medicare is effective, providing health care for less than does private insurance and far less than when an individual privately pays, precisely because it is a government program. It's difficult to determine whether Corker wants simply to slice and dice the Medicare program or instead to push individuals out of Medicare and into Medicare Advantage or other private programs.  Either would jack up the cost of health care overall because consumers would not have the benefit of the federal government's ability to bargain with providers.   But it would please the health care industry, which in the 2010 election cycle gave Corker more than any but five U.S. Senate candidates.

The alternative, Corker claims, is "for the program (not) to be here down the road."  It's only with earned benefits- Medicare and Social Security- that it is argued the program can survive only if it is cut.  "We must reduce the cost of defense  to the American people if it is to survive" is a claim yet to be made.

Israel fails to emphasize Corker's last sentence "And I think we've been saying that from day one."  But that's a pity because it lays bare the Senator's meaning.   Republicans from day one have not been saying that additional revenues or fewer loopholes have been needed.  Instead, they have been peddling at least since a meeting in 1974 among Arthur Laffer, Jude Wanniski, and Dick Cheney.  They believe that reducing revenues through tax cuts magically increases revenues.  And they believe, contrary to most evidence, that reducing taxes substantially increases economic growth.   The New York Times' David Leonhardt explained in September

When the top marginal rate was 70 percent or higher, as it was from 1940 to 1980, tax cuts really could make a big difference, notes Donald Marron, director of the highly regarded Tax Policy Center and another former Bush administration official. When the top rate is 35 percent, as it is today, a tax cut packs much less economic punch.

“At the level of taxes we’ve been at the last couple decades and the magnitude of the changes we’ve had, it’s hard to make the argument that tax rates have a big effect on economic growth,” Mr. Marron said. Similarly, a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that, over the past 65 years, changes in the top tax rate “do not appear correlated with economic growth.”

The minimal correlation between low tax rates and economic growth has been a negative one.   The author, "an engineer turned math teacher" of conceptualmath.org, presents four graphs/tables (below).  The first two, he observes, demonstrate "low taxes correlate to slow growth. When marginal taxes on the rich were below 40% growth remained below 4.5%. When top taxes were above 65% growth tended to be higher, even going above 6%. Historically, higher taxes on the rich have correlated to higher growth."   The last two indicate, on average, that in the year following a tax cut, there has been a slight decline in employment or gross domestic product.

Making the comparison:

	Max Tax below 40%	Max Tax above 65%
Average Growth	3.0%	3.5%
25 percentile	2.5%	2.0%
75 percentile	4.0%	5.7%
Maximum Growth	4.5%	8.7%

Year of tax cut GDP growth Employment growth before after change before after change 1964 4.6% 5.7% +1.1 No Data 1971 2.9% 2.6% -0.3 0.6% 2.3% +1.7 1981 2.8% 3.5% +0.7 1.8% .1.4% -0.4 1987 3.7% 2.3% -1.4 2.6% 1.1% -1.5 2001 3.3% 2.7% -0.6 1.2% -0.4% -1.6 Typical change -0.25% -0.6% Year of tax increase before after before after 1993 1.9% 3.7% +1.7% 0.8% 2.5% +1.7% All that, of course, matters little in a deficit-crazed environment in which one party is unconcerned about the deficit or the debt and merely is determined to shrink the size of government so it can be drowned in a bathtub.

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Climate And Abortion: Perfect Together



You may not think climate change and abortion have much in common.  But you would be wrong- at least if Marco Rubio is to be believed.   Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (transcript here), the GOP's leading presidential candidate declared

Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in the traditional way does not make me — – This. Just because we believe that life all life on human. It’s worthy of protection at every stage of its development does not make.

– The people who are actually close minded American politics are the people that loved to preach about the certainty about science when regards to our climate but ignore the absolute fact that science has proven that life begins at conception.

Where to begin?  Although Rubio is convinced (or claims to be) that life begins at conception, we'll begin at what his complaint about "the people that loved to preach about the certainty about science when regards to our climate."

And there is good news about the climate:  across the globe, last month was not the warmest February since record-keeping began in 1880. It merely

tied with 2003 as the 9th warmest February of the past 133 years, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). They calculated last month's globally-averaged temperature at 54.93 degrees Fahrenheit (12.67 degrees Celsius), or 1.03 degrees F (0.57 degrees C), above the 20th century average of 53.9 degrees F (12.1 degrees C).

This means February 2013 was the 336th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last below-average February, in terms of temperature, was in 1985....

Of the top nine, eight have come since the year 2000, with 2005 and 2010 sharing the dubious title of hottest year on record.

Marco Rubio for some reason believes climate change is closely linked to abortion, which is an unacceptable choice because "science has proven that life begins at conception."

Science obviously has proven no such thing, although Senator Rubio is going to have to do better than that to keep up with his primary rival for 2016, Paul Ryan, in the lying department. But we'll play on the turf, Scripture, the right has claimed for itself.  For it is written in Genesis 2:6-8 in the English Standard Version

and a mist[a] was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

So a man, according to the Old Testament, becomes "a living creature" once God has "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life."  Helpfully, the Mayo Clinic, in describing pregnancy week-by-week, explains

Thirty-two weeks into your pregnancy, or 30 weeks after conception, your baby's toenails are visible.

Although your baby's lungs aren't fully formed, he or she practices breathing. Your baby's body begins absorbing vital minerals, such as iron and calcium from the intestinal tract. The layer of soft, downy hair that has covered your baby's skin for the past few months — known as lanugo — starts to fall off this week.

For those keeping score at home, that would be thirty-two weeks, or approximately 7 and one-half months, into pregnancy when the fetus begins to breath.  At that time, "the breath of life" has been "breathed into the nostrils" and the being has become "a living creature."

The ultra-right feels (or believes, but the right typically "feels" a lot more than it "thinks") put upon, and is defensive.   Witness the CPAC panel entitled “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You’re Not One?"  And immediately before declaring his fealty to the pro-life cause, Rubio remarked "Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot."

They believe they're labeled as bigoted and racist- and anti-science.  Conservatives who are media savvy do not directly attack science.  They contend science is on their side, as when Rubio falsely maintains "science has proven that life begins at conception."  It makes them less vulnerable to attack from Democrats, or from a mainstream media prone to the "he said, she said" meme.

In one sentence, Rubio effectively combines two causes dear to the American right:   the faith that human life begins at conception, important to the popular base of the Repub Party, and denial of climate change, which joins the popular base with the money base of the GOP. It is a winning message, and that the first is debatable, the second ridiculous, and neither applies to the other only adds to its appeal.




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Fairly Meaningless

Rob Portman has done a Dick Cheney, who in June 2009 declared "As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish."

For the right-wing extremist former vice-president, same-sex marriage is just fine because his daughter Mary is a lesbian.  Similarly, as the Ohio Republican told CNN

I'm announcing today a change of heart on an issue that a lot of people feel strongly about. And it has to do with gay couples' opportunity to marry. I've come to the conclusion that for me, personally, I think this is something that we should allow people to do, to get married, and to have the joy and the stability of marriage that I've had for over 26 years. I want all three of my kids to have it, including our son who is gay.

Portman, who had co-sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act and in 2004 voted for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, stated that two years ago his 21-year-old son Will came to the Senator and his wife and told them he is gay.  On Thursday, he broke the news to Ohio reporters in his office, telling them "It allowed me to think about this issue from a new perspective and that’s as a dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister have."  He reiterated this in a column appearing Friday in the Columbus Dispatch, in which he wrote "knowing that my son is gay prompted me to consider the issue from another perspective," in contrast to his "faith tradition."

Steve Benen comments

To be sure, I'm genuinely glad Portman has done the right thing, and can only hope it encourages other Republicans to do the same. What I find discouraging, though, is that the Republican senator was content to support discriminatory policies until they affected someone he personally cares about. What about everyone else's sons and daughters? Why must empathy among conservatives be tied so directly to their own personal interactions?

We've seen this a few too many times. A Republican will support Medicaid cuts right up until he sees the program up close, with his own eyes. Republicans will be skeptical about federal disaster relief right up until it's their community that sees devastation. Republicans are prepared to deny basic rights based on sexual orientation, right up until it's their loved one who's gay.

It seems the key to American social progress in the 21st century is simple: more conservatives having more life experiences.

Indeed, I'd be glad to introduce Republican lawmakers to more Americans who are poor, in the hopes they'll stop trying to cut health care programs; students, in the hopes they'll stop opposing education investments; women, in the hopes they'll stop opposing women's health care; and African Americans, in the hopes that they'll stop supporting voter-suppression tactics.

Or perhaps a woman in his life- Portman seems to respond only to what affects him directly- should introduce the Senator to a woman who has had an abortion, in hopes that would open to him "a new perspective."

Or perhaps not.   Iris Carmon at Salon explains

Abortion and access to contraception often get lumped with marriage equality as “social issues,” but there are reasons why they’ve played out differently. Take Portman’s own reasoning in his Op-Ed this morning: “We conservatives believe in personal liberty and minimal government interference in people’s lives. We also consider the family unit to be the fundamental building block of society. We should encourage people to make long-term commitments to each other and build families, so as to foster strong, stable communities and promote personal responsibility.” In other words, gay and lesbian people are joining what Portman considers to be, and has historically been, a conservative institution — much like the military, where they’d already been serving in secret.

Although family planning used to be considered a conservative issue, there is still something more radical and terrifying about a woman not wanting to be a mother, or wanting to be a mother on her own terms. There will always be people who consider it the same as murder of a fully developed person in the world. There is still far more empathy for an embryo or fetus than for the living woman.

The bankroller of Rick Santorum's presidential campaign reflects the shifting GOP perspective.  On Thursday, Foster Friess had urged his Party to "rally behind the gay community to make sure (world travel) is safe for them."  Though without reference to the interview with Buzzfeed in which he expressed that sentiment, Carmon continues

The issue is also profoundly economic. Friess famously told Andrea Mitchell that he didn’t understand what the fuss was about contraception, since girls could just hold aspirin between their knees. Not all Republicans share Santorum’s opposition to contraception in and of itself, but all of the ones who opposed making it more affordable through private insurance lacked the ability to imagine anyone finding it expensive. One in three women will have an abortion, but either these Republican politicians aren’t being told about the choices of the women in their lives or they compartmentalize them as somehow justified or different. And the women in their lives probably aren’t on Medicaid and are thus unaffected by the Hyde Amendment, and they can probably afford to pay out of pocket if their insurance refuses to cover abortion. Even before Roe, wealthy women had access to abortions, if with some difficulty. In the eyes of these men, it seems, not all women are created equal.

As Benen understands, Portman, Cheney, and other Repubs whom the mainstream media commends as "moderate" depart on same-sex marriage from their conservatism only when it affects them personally. Someone near to them may be gay. And someone near to them may have had an abortion but not disclosed it because of the social stigma attached to the choice.So iIt is unlikely to come to light, and does not force a conservative into a public reassessment- or as Portman puts it, "rethinking."

Additionally, however, abortion is "a profoundly economic issue."  Carol Tracy (as mentioned in an earlier post) has maintained abortion "is absolutely critical to women's participation in the workplace. Roe is the core. It's the basis for all other women's rights. If you can't control your reproductive health, you can't fully participate in society." Consequently, it's understandable that conservatives would be terrified at the thought of extending to women reproductive freedom, which presents a threat to the economic order missing in same-sex marriage.




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Curious Priorities

It's expected to reduce spending by $85.4 billion in 2013 and $109.3 billion a year from 2014 to 2021.    In late February, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke testified

The CBO estimates that deficit-reduction policies in current law will slow the pace of real GDP growth by about 1-1/2 percentage points this year, relative to what it would have been otherwise. A significant portion of this effect is related to the automatic spending sequestration that is scheduled to begin on March 1, which, according to the CBO's estimates, will contribute about 0.6 percentage point to the fiscal drag on economic growth this year. Given the still-moderate underlying pace of economic growth, this additional near-term burden on the recovery is significant. Moreover, besides having adverse effects on jobs and incomes, a slower recovery would lead to less actual deficit reduction in the short run for any given set of fiscal actions.

A few of the cuts engineered by the sequester, which Dylan Matthews compiled from CBO estimates of a few years ago, include

Aircraft purchases by the Air Force and Navy are cut by $3.5 billion.
Military operations across the services are cut by about $13.5 billion.
Military research is cut by $6.3 billion.
The National Institutes of Health get cut by $1.6 billion.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are cut by about $323 million.
Border security is cut by about $581 million.
Immigration enforcement is cut by about $323 million.
Airport security is cut by about $323 million.
Head Start gets cut by $406 million, kicking 70,000 kids out of the program.
FEMA’s disaster relief budget is cut by $375 million.
Public housing support is cut by about $1.94 billion.
The FDA is cut by $206 million.
NASA gets cut by $970 million.
Special education is cut by $840 million.
The Energy Department’s program for securing our nukes is cut by $650 million.
The National Science Foundation gets cut by about $388 million.
The FBI gets cut by $480 million.
The federal prison system gets cut by $355 million.
State Department diplomatic functions are cut by $650 million.
Global health programs are cut by $433 million; the Millenium Challenge Corp. sees a $46 million cut, and USAID a cut of about $291 million.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is cut by $55 million.
The SEC is cut by $75.6 million.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is cut by $2.6 million.
The Library of Congress is cut by $31 million.
The Patent and Trademark office is cut by $156 million.

Law enforcement, food safety inspection, veterans' benefits, airport security disaster relief, special education services, and other luxuries take a hit.  So what does the GOP complain about?  Republican National Committee chairperson Reince Priebus, echoing the statements of other Republicans, has tweeted "Don’t fall for @BarackObama’s spending gimmicks. Re-open the people’s house>"

But what may seem lack of compassion may instead be mere shilling for the political class. Ezra Klein explains

So, these kids come to town, they can’t get the tour they scheduled through their member of Congress, and now they’re not so happy with their member of Congress and the sequester. That means that member of Congress now has a problem with some of their constituents — and with the kinds of constituents who are likely to contact their member of Congress when their kid goes to Washington.

That’s what makes the outrage over White House tours a bit gross. White House tours don’t matter. They really don’t. But the people they upset are the people who are in touch with members of Congress, and so all of a sudden Republicans are running and rushing to do something about it.
But those folks are going to be fine without their White House tour. You know who may not be fine? The jobless, who are seeing their unemployment checks cut by almost 10 percent. The pregnant mothers and young children getting fed through the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates may serve as many as 775,000 fewer people due to the sequester. The 100,000 formerly homeless people that the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates are in emergency shelters or other temporary housing arrangements and might be turned back onto the street. 

This is classic politics-as-usual.  Republicans may shoot their mouths off about deficit reduction but when it comes to protecting incumbents, they're all-in.




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