This originally appeared at Hullabaloo
Just what in the hell does Rand Paul have against disabled people? First he said that he wouldn’t have voted for the Americans With Disabilities Act because it inconveniences business, then he said that old and sick people should be forced to be more responsible by paying a huge $2,000 deductible and now he wants to balance the budget on the backs of impoverished sick and disabled people on Medicaid.
I sure feel sorry for his patients. He has all the compassion of a rabid jackal.
On major changes in government, Paul said the country needs a balanced budget amendment and must better control spending on federal entitlement programs.
He focused on the high costs of Medicaid, a federal-state health-insurance program that now covers about 800,000 poor and disabled Kentuckians and costs nearly $6 billion.
“When we have a government program to help those who are in need or who have unfortunate problems, let’s help those truly in need,” Paul said.
He claimed that lenient eligibility standards have led to “intergenerational welfare.”
Conway’s campaign press secretary, John Collins, called Paul’s comments “troubling and show how far out-of-touch he is with life in Kentucky.”
Sheila Schuster, who works with organizations who advocate for disabled Kentuckians, said the state does not have the most liberal eligibility standards for Medicaid and disputed that it has become a welfare system.
“It’s a system of taking care of people with serious needs,” she said, noting that she is not endorsing any candidate in the U.S. Senate race.
And here I thought you couldn’t balance the budget by “cutting off the welfare queens.” But, Medicaid is “intergenerational welfare,” presumably because it creates a sense of dependency among the sick and disabled children who should be begging in the streets to pay for their medical care. (Or just dying — that would be the most responsible of all.)
The man should not just be beaten soundly in this Senate race, he should be stripped of his (so-called) medical license. Any doctor who holds his views is unfit for the profession.
And naturally, as it turns out there’s remarkably little fraud and abuse in Kentucky:
“Any system will have some degree of fraud, but I recall how the administration of former Gov. Ernie Fletcher said it would get rid of waste, fraud and abuse and didn’t turn up many who shouldn’t be on the Medicaid rolls,” she said.
Keep in mind that if Rand Paul wanted to live his libertarian principles, he’d stop taking Medicare and Medicaid patients. But he believes he “deserves to make a comfortable living” and takes in hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer-funded medical care each year. It’s “other people” who have to sacrifice.
This originally appeared on Digby’s blog
I wrote about this blame the victim mentality yesterday, and now it is turning into conventional wisdom. On “Hardball” today, Matthews and Fineman both made the (correct in my view) point that comparing the building of a mosque to Quran burning is morally absurd. Then they asked the Village jester, Mark Halperin, to weigh in:
I’m not sure which I would prefer. Whether they actually believe there’s a moral equivalency there or they don’t and are using it for political purposes. Either way, this is not just bad domestic politics for the president, and it is and they know it, for a variety of reasons including it takes him off the economy and divides him from Democrats which is an increasing problem, I think, for the president and the Democrats in the midterms on a range of issues.
But I almost hate talking about this as a political issue. This is a national security crisis. Both of these issues are. To get General Petraeus involved in a domestic matter first amendment issue, show the extraordinary extent to which people in the military are worried about the men and women overseas and think this is a big enough deal. And to have it be brought into domestic politics and inflamed by Republicans. Again, out of principle maybe, our of political purposes maybe. Whatever the reason it is really a national or international tragedy. And unfortunately the president, for a variety of reasons is too weak on his own to deal with it.
Howard Fineman and Matthews then commented on how Obama is an elegant egghead who lives in the clouds and tut-tutted that he needed to remind people that he was a Christian. Halperin then explained that Obama should capitulate:
Halperin: A few weeks ago I thought that moving the Islamic center was bad for America. Then I evolved to the view that said whatever the result it needed to be managed by the president and it needed to be managed with unity. Now I think it probably should move and has to move which is unfortunate.
Matthews : Explain that view because I am a little surprised by that
Halperin: I just think that’s there’s too much opposition to it and the feelings are too raw. And frankly I think most of all the people who are in charge of building it are not handling themselves well enough to build it the right way. To build it in a show of unity rather than a show of unity.
Matthews: You live in New York do you have a sense when you’re walking past — it’s going to be a big object of the news tomorrow on the Nightly News and other programs over the week-end — when you walk by and you look at that building does it seem like it’s facing the world trade center?
Halperin: I jog down there all the time. That’s where I end my runs. And it’s really close. When people say it’s two blocks, it’s steps away. And it’s just too raw. I’m fine if it’s built there if it’s built the right way. But I just have no confidence that the president and the mayor and the city and the country can build it the right way.
There was some crosstalk and then Halperin weighed in again:
Halperin: Can I just say one thing about the politics? If this were a Cold War issue and a Democratic president who was vulnerable on the cultural and national security issues of the type that are implicated here and politicians were saying these things who were Republicans, we’d have no doubt that they were doing it on purpose. That they were doing it purely to discombobulate the president and undermine his image. And again, I’d like to give those three (Gingrich, Palin, Boehner) the benefit of the doubt but you saw what the president had to do today… he had to brandish his Christian faith. And that shows the extent to which he is discombobulated by this.
Matthews: That’s called a religious test, by the way…
Matthews: Newsmax, a conservative webs site put that up today. He took his strongest position on the mosque…
Fineman: Yes, if you can build a church there, build a synagogue there, build a hindu temple there .. the president doesn’t like to be pushed on these kinds of things on the one hand. One the one hand he does the Christian riff. On the other he says they should be able to build it there. And that’s the box he’s in.
Matthews then played Obama’s statement today in which he said that about the church, synagogue etc and Matthews asked, “Way too strong Mark?”
Halperin: Way too weak. If he were my professor at the University of Chicago, my law professor, I’d say man I love my teacher. He’s really eloquent. That’s not what’s required from the president of the United States. this is not a local issue, it’s not a national issue, it’s an international issue. And if that’s his strongest position, I still don’t know what he actually thinks should be done. What I do know is that it cannot be solved now whether it’s going to be move or whether it’s built there it cannot be solved without his leadership and leadership is not taking a theoretical lawyerly position which is what he’s still doing.
This was the most confused bunch of nonsensical crapola I’ve ever seen, from Halperin’s bizarre Cold War comments to Fineman apparently believing that being a Christian equates with being against the building of the Islamic Center. But essentially it comes down to the fact that the Republicans are making political hay and it’s Obama’s fault for not being omnipotent and able to stop them, so they should move the project.
I thought Obama’s case today was quite good. I suppose he could go up to New York and get a bullhorn and talk trash in front of the Park51 — Halperin gets all gooey at stuff like that — but I honestly don’t think there’s anything he can personally do about this. Obama isn’t the big Daddy Fix-It that Halperin thinks a president should be so we have no choice but to submit ourselves to our new wingnut overlords.
It might have been helpful if everyone had been a little bit more skeptical of the Know-Nothing neanderthals on the right for a long time now, but I see no reason to hold Obama completely responsible for reversing the damage. He’s one of the major victims and while I wish he’d been tougher on the Republicans, I don’t see how he could have personally fought back all this anti-black/Muslim commie nonsense that’s been thrown his way. The press could have made a difference, but that ship sailed some time back.
This originally appeared at Hullabaloo
Do you get the feeling that when the ruling elites talk about unemployment that they’ve never been unemployed? This illustrates it perfectly. Newt Gingrich says that anyone turning down any kind of work, regardless of the pay is being lazy and staying on “welfare” (otherwise known as unemployment insurance). This man explains why he did that:
HATCHELL: Keith, it’s really hard for someone like Mr. Gingrich to understand the fact that when you have a mortgage, you have a family to support, car payments, insurance everything else [...] if you’re going out to look for a job, jobs that were going to pay half of what I was making, when they were offering me these jobs and [...] this is going to be a situation where we’re going to start you out at the entry level wage, I’ve got 32 years of experience, in the automotive business, it’s kinda hard for me to do that. Even at 40 hours at 7.75 an hour [...] With a mortgage and everything else, yes I was drawing unemployment 475 dollars a week, I paid into since I was a young man, 35 years I actually paid into it. It’s unemployment insurance, not welfare that Mr. Gingrich has spoken about. Until such time I can get a gainful job that will let me keep my house, keep my family fed, not necessarily anything expensive, I wasn’t going to take any other job.
What Gingrich was telling him to do was take a full time job that would result in his losing his house and everything he’s worked for all his life. And that’s because when you take a full time job — it’s really hard to look for another one. Your new employer tends to resent it if you take time off for interviews when you are still in your probation period.
Most of the time our unemployment system system works out fairly well. The insurance allows people some time to find a new job that will let them to keep what they have instead of having to start over again. It’s one of the things that our society came up with to make it possible for employers to have a “dynamic workforce” (also known as the ability to lay off workers at a moments notice.) The problem this time is that a whole bunch of people were laid off at once and the jobs have not come back, so these folks are taking longer to find work. And the whole thing is bound to put a squeeze on wages regardless. Seller’s market and all that.
Moreover, these workers can’t move, one of the hallmarks of the “dynamic workforce.” Our “ownership society” mainly consists of home ownership and people have been unable to easily sell their homes now for two years. Some of them might have been willing to move to another state or town to find work but they’d have to lose their biggest investment to do it. You would think that such a scenario playing out all over the country would concern great conservative intellectuals such as Newtie.
But I suspect they actually think that it’s good idea if skilled workers are forced to throw in their keys and/or take minimum wage jobs. That’s the kind of “dynamic workforce” that leads to big savings in labor costs for the true producers in our economy — CEOs, traders, investors, celebrities and politicans.(Fuggedbout the middle class investor in this scenario, btw. This squeeze on wages will make it impossible for them to put money into 401ks and still be able to live.) That kind of downward pressure makes for happy aristocrats and desperate serfs. Win, win for Prince of Galt and the lovely Duchess of Dagny.
This piece originally appeared at Digby’s blog
There’s a lot of chatter this morning about this article in the WaPo about Paul Ryan and how much heartburn his economic plans are causing the Republicans. I was immediately reminded of a famous article about Newt Gingrich back in 1988 which featured this observation:
His recognition and his gathering power were not the result of the legislation he drafted or helped to pass, which, in fact, was negligible. And he was scorned by detractors for some of his wackier notions –which ranged from the off-the-wall (plans for statehood in outer space) to potential political dynamite (he once proposed abolishing Social Security and replacing it with mandatory I.R.A.’s).
The latter “wacky notion” was, of course, eventually adopted by the entire GOP establishment as “privatization,” which the last administration made a very serious attempt to implement. Paul Ryan still pushes it, even in the face of the recent Wall Street meltdown and as a member of President Obama’s deficit commission, will undoubtedly be proposing “reforms” which may include some elements of that plan once again. What was once a wacky notion is now a zombie article of faith on the right, just waiting for the opportune moment to rise again.
In other words, wacky GOP ideas have a way of becoming mainstream in a fairly short period of time, particularly when they are pushed by the so-called “intellectuals” of the conservative movement who are embraced by the establishment as Very Serious People. Why these people are taken so seriously by anyone other than the Grizzly Mama is anyone’s guess, but the phenomenon is fairly dangerous.
The bigger question is why the Democratic Party is so completely useless in dealing with this kind of nonsense.
As Howie points out in his post today:
Krugman tears apart the carefully crafted conventional wisdom that Ryan is “the most intellectually ambitious Republican in Congress.” Obama appointed Ryan to his Deficit Commission — another vote to dismantle Social Security in the name of making sure the wealthy permanent ruling elite never have to pay their fair share of taxes. (Bush couldn’t get it done, so they’ve tasked Obama with the dirty job.) Unlike Obama, though, Krugman– who knows more about how economics actually works than both of them squared, comes right out and says, “the truth is that he’s stone-cold ignorant” (Ryan, not the other one). Ignorant… Randian… what’s the difference? He’s clearly unfit for elective office. And yet… and yet… the DCCC seems stubbornly determined to never, never, never– don’t you dare– take him on. This year he’ll be the most glaring example of a high-profile Republican incumbent in a Democratic-leaning district won by Obama with no plausible opponent, the DCCC having chased Paulette Garin out of the race and replaced her with… well, another Alvin Greene.
Read on to see the whole bizarre story of the Democratic Party refusing to take on Paul Ryan despite the fact that he’s in a Democratic district that went for Obama in 2008. What in the world is going on? I literally can’t think of a good reason for the party to protect a crude Randian ideologue unless he is a designated untouchable by very powerful people who donate to both sides of the aisle.
Consider this amazing little factoid:
A little update: the infamous Finance/Insurance/Real Estate sector has now shoveled $1,908,465 in thinly veiled bribes directly into Ryan’s campaign coffers– yes, the same Ryan who’s never faced a serious electoral challenge. This is more money than they’ve given any Wisconsin political figure in history– including senators and powerful House members who were already in Congress when Ryan was still skipping rope in his elementary school playground and hadn’t even read Atlas Shrugged yet!
They aren’t giving this guy money for no reason. He furiously whipped the House for TARP when the first vote failed and is a consistent advocate for everything the wealthy could want. That he may believe his own Randian nonsense is a happy coincidence. That the Village takes him seriously as an intellectual is frosting on the cake with a cherry on top.
This originally appeared at Hullabaloo
Jim VandeHei on Ratigan just now saying that the NAACP is getting off the hook on this. But not for the reason you may think — that they jumped the gun in condemning Sherrod. I think everyone agrees that those who relied on clearly doctored videos on Andrew Breitbart’s website are more than foolish — especially those who should be skeptical after the ACORN fraud. There’s really no excuse for that knee-jerk reaction and they are going to have a hard time regaining the trust of their members for doing it.
But that’s not what VandeHei is arguing. Jonathan Capehart brought up the uncomfortable subject of Andrew Breitbart, and VandeHei went into high gear:
VandeHei: Let’s not forget where this thing started. The NAACP came out and makes this charge against the Tea Party movement. And we’ve probably done more stories about the Tea Party movement than any other news organization. We’ve really tried to study this group, and they are a very diffuse group. You cannot say that they are racist any more than you can say the Democratic Party is racist or the Republican Party is racist. So it creates this culture, and it’s a dangerous topic and it’s a dangerous fire to light and so this is the outcome.
Ratigan: But, but …
VandeHei: I’m not defending Breitbart. But conservatives are outraged. They’re saying listen, because I’m part of the Tea Party movement, you’re saying I’m racist, and what Breitbart’s saying is, “Well, I want to push back.”
I’m not saying what Breitbart said was right because clearly it wasn’t right, and the outcome was awful for this woman, but both sides I think come off looking very, very bad.
And that’s why Joe Biden and Steny Hoyer said they didn’t agree with the NAACP’s charge.
Capehart pointed out that the NAACPs statement was much more nuanced than that and actually was asking that the Tea Party disavow the “racist element” in the group, not that the whole group was racist. VandeHei replied that they should have known that it was dangerous to even imply such a thing, and they should have known it would cause a firestorm. He said, “It’s a terrible issue to be talking about.”
So the message is, don’t make trouble by pointing out the truth. The wingnuts will get upset and then all hell will break loose.
He’s right about one thing, though. Both sides are equally wrong in this. After all, the NAACP pointed out that the Tea Party was racist, and the Tea Party Federation “fired” one of its leaders. Then Andrew Breitbart pointed out that the NAACP was racist, and the Obama administration fired one of its employees.
The only difference is that the Tea Party leader wrote a revolting racist screed in response to the NAACP charges, and the Obama employee was revealed to have been making a plea for racial healing. Other than that, though, it’s exactly the same. Both sides have been wrongly accused of racism, and the whole controversy just proves that the NAACP erred in ever bringing it up in the first place.
Oh, and for those of you who might have missed the “satire” that the nationally known Tea Party leader and frequent Fox News guest Mark Williams wrote, here it is. It’s a real shame that the NAACP provoked such outrage as this (and Andrew Breitbart’s justifiable desire to “push back.”)
I think we’ve all learned something from this, don’t you?
This originally appeared at Hullabaloo:
Over the week-end, gasbags were all atwitter about whether Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC fundraising means she is running for president. And gosh, what on earth was that Mama Grizzly ad all about? Why it didn’t talk about any issues at all and just featured Palin and her fans! (Marc Ambinder presents the whole array of possibilities here.)
I find it very telling that the Villagers don’t get what’s going on here. She is not a serious politician. She is a political celebrity/entrepreneur, collecting money from her fans to fund herself and sell her brand. To the extent that she is working for anyone but herself, she’s working for The Republican Party, bringing together some of the disparate strands of the conservative movement, striking the pose of the “outsider.” But that is the extent of her serious commitment to politics.
Palin is a “reality” entertainer. Look on the covers of the celebrity magazines and you’ll see lots of them. There’s a lot of money to be made by someone like her in merchandising alone, much less personal appearances, books etc. I’m guessing she’ll find herself on the personal growth/religious circuit too, along with her reality show on TV.
She is a creature of the new political media, maybe the first pure version of her kind. As soon as people grok that, her fund raising and touring will begin to make more sense. But I would be shocked if she would ever feel the need to subject herself to parochial elective politics again. It’s not where her talents and ambitions lie.
FILE - In this July 1, 2010, file photo, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul address a tea party rally in Shepherdsville, Ky. Republicans are outraising Democrats in nearly a dozen open Senate races, increasing their hopes of dramatically narrowing the Democrats' majority in November. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke)(Credit: AP) 
President Barack Obama gestures during a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Sept., 10, 2010. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)(Credit: AP) 
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speaks during the National Rifle Association's 139th annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina on May 15, 2010. REUTERS/Chris Keane (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS)(Credit: Reuters) 
Sarah Palin speaks at an event in Duluth, Ga., on Tuesday, June 29. 