The Week in Not Bad News

From the New York Times

"For the solar and wind industries in the United States, it has been a long-held dream: to produce energy at a cost equal to conventional sources like coal and natural gas.

That day appears to be dawning.

The cost of providing electricity from wind and solar power plants has plummeted over the last five years, so much so that in some markets renewable generation is now cheaper than coal or natural gas."

A different perspective to the 2014 elections by a Republican whose analysis is that because the wrong GOPers won, the Democrats are in a position to dominate beginning in 2016:

In a careful analysis, Ladd builds a case: The Midterms of 2014 demonstrate the continuation of a 20 year old trend. Republicans are disappearing from the competitive landscape at the national level where the population is the largest utilizing a declining electoral base of waging, white, and rural voters. As a result no GOP candidate on the horizon has a chance at the White House in 2016 and the chance of holding the Senate beyond 2016 is vanishingly small.

 And on ballot questions, the results were more sweeping than I knew:

Every major Democratic ballot initiative was successful, including every minimum wage increase, even in the red states. AND every personhood amendment failed.

His conclusion:

“It is almost too late for Republicans to participate in shaping the next wave of our economic and political transformation. The opportunities we inherited coming out of the Reagan Era are blinking out of existence one by one while we chase so-called “issues” so stupid, so blindingly disconnected from our emerging needs that our grandchildren will look back on our performance in much the same way that we see the failures of the generation that fought desegregation. Something, some force, some gathering of sane, rational, authentically concerned human beings generally at peace with reality must emerge in the next four to six years from the right, or our opportunity will be lost for a long generation. Needless to say, Greg Abbott and Jodi Ernst are not that force. ‘Winning’ this election did not help that force emerge.”

This is the Daily Kos diary that summarizes it, with a link to the original article in the Houston Chronicle and a followup.

And shhhh, don't tell anybody but the House of Crazy Reps admitted in its own report that everything GOPers have been screaming about Benghazi!  Benghazi! was utter fantasy.  The Associated Press:

A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.

Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, intelligence about who carried it out and why was contradictory, the report found. That led Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to inaccurately assert that the attack had evolved from a protest, when in fact there had been no protest. But it was intelligence analysts, not political appointees, who made the wrong call, the committee found. The report did not conclude that Rice or any other government official acted in bad faith or intentionally misled the American people.

So how did Faux News react to its hysteria being trashed by facts?  By telling a completely different story.

Mega$+MegaFear=GOP 2014

Another Monday, another Doonesbury instant classic from yesterday's papers, and here on the Internet.

Obama Traded To Canada

The Republican majority in Congress has wasted no time, not even waiting to be officially sworn in.  GOP congressional leaders have announced that they've made a deal with the country's chief trading partner, Canada.  They've traded President Barack Obama.

"It was their idea," Senate Majority Leader Ted "Tailgunner" Cruz claimed, pointing to a letter to the editor published in a Canadian newspaper.

"Many of us Canadians are confused by the U.S. midterm elections," wrote Richard Brunt of Victoria, British Columbia. "Consider, right now in America, corporate profits are at record highs, the country's adding 200,000 jobs per month, unemployment is below 6%, U.S. gross national product growth is the best of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The dollar is at its strongest levels in years, the stock market is near record highs, gasoline prices are falling, there's no inflation, interest rates are the lowest in 30 years, U.S. oil imports are declining, U.S. oil production is rapidly increasing, the deficit is rapidly declining, and the wealthy are still making astonishing amounts of money."

America is leading the world once again and respected internationally — in sharp contrast to the Bush years. Obama brought soldiers home from Iraq and killed Osama bin Laden. So, Americans vote for the party that got you into the mess that Obama just dug you out of? This defies reason."

"All that leftist socialist Kenyan uppity Nazi stuff was pretty disgusting," Cruz claimed.  "But he had one good idea that he ended his letter with."

Brunt's final sentence was this: "When you are done with Obama, could you send him our way?"

Cruz could hardly control himself when he saw that, he intimated loudly.  So he got his GOP colleagues together, they contacted Canadians they knew (mostly in the oil industry) and quickly made a deal.

In a post-midnight session they traded President Obama for Doug Ford, Jr. who they described as Canada's Prime Minister, and a bagman to be named later.

Douglas Ford is a Toronto city councillor, the brother of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford and part owner of Deco Labels and Tags. He was recently defeated in his electoral bid to become mayor of Toronto.

When a US reporter informed the GOP officials that Ford is not the Prime Minister of Canada,  GOP senator-elect Joni Ernst of Iowa said, "That's your opinion."

Cold Comfort in Nightmare Nation

High in the Department of Cold Comfort is Gary Younge's analysis in the Guardian that it really wasn't a wave election for the GOPers, the Dems didn't lose as badly as it seems, etc.

Or that (according to New York Magazine) liberal candidates lost while liberal policies won.  Or that a numbers analysis shows that GOPers did not disturb the Obama base very much.

Or that  "Denton, Texas became the first city in Texas to ban fracking with a locally led ballot initiative. Two counties in California did the same. Richmond, California defied massive spending from Chevron to elect a Mayor ready to take on Big Oil in their backyard," according to 350.org.

That's about all the analysis I'm going to read, frankly.  Yes, the demographic and historical deck was stacked against the Democrats.  Yes, the billionaires bought themselves a Congress and more states, bought themselves noise and turmoil to upset the confrontation with the climate crisis, as well as other matters.

Did it make any difference in the end that Democrats were timid, running on tested single issues and running away from their President?  Maybe not, but it's going to matter now.  Does anybody know what Democrats stand for?  I guess we'll find out.  But I am sure that today would feel better if Dems had gone down fighting FDR style, i.e. "I welcome their hate."

Maybe the numbers will show that President Obama pulling back from action on immigration didn't hurt Dems in the end, but I suspect it's going to hurt from now on.  Timid Democrats kept Obama quiet, which didn't work out too well.  He and we missed the chance to define what matters and what's really happening, with the ultra-rich fossil fuel magnates, the Koch Brothers and their ilk, buying turmoil and killing the future.  It doesn't look like that electoral chance is coming again soon, not with the likely candidates for 2016.

The best news was that "President Obama did not appear chastened" by the outcome. 2015 is going to be a very important year for the future, it's going to be a lot more difficult now, but it will be all but lost if President Obama loses courage and leadership.

So we woke up to a nightmare country, with Tailgunner Ted as Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate.  It turns out that Tailgunner Joe McCarthy was actually a vampire, and he's got a promotion.

But at least this guy

beat this guy

to become governor of Pennsylvania.  Or something like that.

Hold Your Nose and Vote

It's not much of a slogan.  But it's about how I feel this year: Hold Your Nose and Vote.

Monitoring headlines over the past couple of days, it's clear that the media has decided that the Republicans have won the election that--not to put too fine a point on it--isn't over until tonight.  The NY Times and Washington Post seem sure that even the White House has decided the election is lost.

An amount of money has been spent that likely will never be totally known, but is certainly well beyond obscene.  Unsurprisingly it's estimated that the Republicans have won the contest to spill the most billions in "dark money," courtesy of our Supreme Republican Court.  But then if money is speech, how can I be talking?

My email inbox has been stuffed every single day with pleas to donate $3, $5, $200 from every Democrat with a name, plus some that look made up.  I used to get a thrill when I saw President Obama's name as the sender, but this time around I just got embarrassed, and felt really tawdry sending him to junk mail.  The mailers sent in his name did him no favors--there wasn't even the pretense of a presidential message, just check boxes for cash.

Today I got around to sorting through the piles of campaign mail on behalf of candidates and propositions.  None of it made me feel good about anything.

  Nationally, the Democrats seem to have too many mediocre candidates.  But their Republican opponents are far, far worse.  If Iowa actually elects Joni Ernst to the US Senate (and media has decided it already has), the state and the US Capitol both deserve to fall into the sea.  And I'm well aware of Iowa's location when I say that.

Find me a candidate, incidentally, who even noticed the epic UN climate report on Sunday.  It didn't even last as a news story until Monday.  But then it's only about the fate of the planet, the future of the human race and how the lives of everybody on Earth who expects to live more than another twenty years is going to change significantly... but of course that can't be important in an election.

Conventional wisdom is that Republicans succeeded in making these elections about President Obama (even though they dropped their plan to sue him, and stopped insisting they would repeal Obamacare), and because the world not being perfect enough is his fault, they will win.  A few writers were a bit more cautious, noting for example the radio ads Obama made for black radio stations that could affect turnout and therefore outcomes in some highly contested states.  But basically, this is part of the post-election narrative that--like it does just about everything--the media has delivered in advance.

Conventional wisdom is that the Senate is lost to Dems, and except for the dramatic and inflated headlines that the media will joyfully hype, that it doesn't make much difference anyway.  Jonathan Chait's argument is probably the most sophisticated, and maybe the most reasonable.  After noting that "the Republicans in the House are, by and large, barking mad" and oppose everything, including the concept of governing, and without the House, nothing gets passed, therefore the Senate is superfluous. "If the House could make a deal with Obama, the Senate would sign on to the deal if it were controlled by Republicans or if it were controlled by Democrats. Gridlock will continue through the next Congress regardless of the Senate race."

Of course, legislation isn't all that's at issue--there are judicial and executive appointments, treaty ratification etc. Plus the joy of seeing McConnell's face more often.  But basically Chiat is among those who are essentially saying this election means nothing.

My prime political consultant Andy Borowitz agrees that nothing will change, although he sees the impact a little differently, in his story headlined Midterms Prediction: Billionaires to Retain Control of Government.

And yet, on Tuesday afternoon I'll walk a quarter mile or so to my polling place (which is itself pretty dull--nowhere near as interesting as any of my Pennsylvania polling places, with their kibitzing pols and bake sales) and I will (figuratively) hold my nose and (actually) vote.

I will vote.  Why?  Because I'm a damn citizen that's why.

Unconventional Wisdom

I read Profiles in Courage in high school.  I wouldn't be surprised if Barack Obama read it in high school as well.  I wonder if he remembers, as I do, the signature quote of the chapter on Thomas Hart Benton: "I despise the bubble popularity."

As the 2014 elections approach, Democrats are supposedly in trouble because the Obama bubble has supposedly burst.  An unpopular President, the media drones, a failed presidency.  Reporters are quick to detect any secret sign that a candidate is "running away" from the President.  As First Read pointed out, Democrats who run away from the President are fools.  First, they are Democrats and they are going to be identified with a Democratic President anyway.  And second, they'll alienate the very Democrats who gave Barack Obama two big majorities.

But there are contrarians out there who beg to differ with the premise.  One of them is Paul Krugman writing in Rolling Stone.  First of all, he takes issue with the idea that Obama is all that unpopular:

"Yes, Obama has a low approval rating compared with earlier presidents. But there are a number of reasons to believe that presidential approval doesn't mean the same thing that it used to: There is much more party-sorting (in which Republicans never, ever have a good word for a Democratic president, and vice versa), the public is negative on politicians in general, and so on. Obviously the midterm election hasn't happened yet, but in a year when Republicans have a huge structural advantage – Democrats are defending a disproportionate number of Senate seats in deep-red states – most analyses suggest that control of the Senate is in doubt, with Democrats doing considerably better than they were supposed to. This isn't what you'd expect to see if a failing president were dragging his party down."

So much for the bubble popularity.  He continues:

"More important, however, polls – or even elections – are not the measure of a president. High office shouldn't be about putting points on the electoral scoreboard, it should be about changing the country for the better. Has Obama done that? Do his achievements look likely to endure? The answer to both questions is yes."

 Krugman wasn't an Obama enthusiast and has criticized some of his actions as President.  But after 6 years he's taken the long view:

"Despite bitter opposition, despite having come close to self-inflicted disaster, Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history. His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward – and it's working better than anyone expected. Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it's much more effective than you'd think. Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries. And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy."

Read the piece.  It may cheer you or change your mind.  There's a companion list for the text averse:55 figures that prove President Obama has accomplished more than you may realize.

President Obama hugs a nurse who survived Ebola

And there's a different article that takes an overview of Obama's accomplishments in rolling back the rabid right Republican takeover of the judiciary.  This one may surprise you even more--it's by one of the best in the business, Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker, and it includes an interview with the President.

Meanwhile, major Republican candidates are trying hard to hide how extreme they actually are.  And failing.  Look no farther than Colorado.  And the polls say she is ahead.  I don't pretend to understand what's going on in voters heads in these states.  But Democrats need to get their brains out of the bubble and their heads back up where they belong, and get to the polls.  We've got a President.  Don't let him down.

Ebola Hysteria in the Age of Distraction

photos in this post from New Yorker

I no longer have direct contact with cable news but I am aware of the dangers of infection.  The current hysteria over Ebola is being intentionally whipped up by Republicans for political gain but mostly by a couple of cable news networks for profit and politics (Fox) and profit, or at least fewer losses, by CNN.

Clearly many of our institutions as well as the public were not ready.  WHO, C.D.C., various African governments, individual hospitals in the US, etc. didn't have effective plans to deal with this particular infectious disease, and possibly any such outbreak.  There's blame to go around, including to Republicans in Congress who cut the CDC budget, reflecting in part a general complacency in the US regarding infectious disease epidemics.  It just hasn't happened in so long that to some it didn't seem likely or a priority or maybe even possible.

But we've also known for years that as hotter temperatures move north and into higher elevations, plus other effects of the climate crisis, that infectious diseases are likely to be a problem in places unaccustomed to them.  And the likelihood of mutations would increase, which coupled with the fast daily movement of people and products (including food and plants, and the insects and rodents that hitch rides) had the potential to spread infections faster and farther than at any other time in human history.  Stephen King for one has been making a living for decades writing vividly about this.

But there are other new wrinkles in the contemporary world that spread the viruses of hysteria even faster and farther.  Local gossip, hometown zealots and fulminators who see panic as an opportunity for fame, power and profit were always very good at whipping up hysteria without regard to factual information, but within limited areas and over time.

Newspapers at their height of influence saw profit as well as power for ownership in creating hysteria that led to wars, so feeding fears that sell papers even on public health issues was hardly out of bounds.  But the world is tighter and smaller now, not only with instant access to the electronically transmitted hysteria of radio and television voices with their own agendas, their own irresponsibility and direct impulses from troubled psyches to big mouths, but with the open to everybody channels of the Internet--all the comments, tweets, texts, etc.  Getting noticed, feeling part of a group, and a hundred other motivations all too easily trump responsible speech.

The rabid right is not the only infected group.  Political coverage in the age of distraction has become more frenzied, with a higher priority on speed and brevity than thought and accuracy.

Satirists are our trenchant guides to this.  I've already cited Andy Borowitz once: Man Infected with Ebola Misinformation Through Casual Contact With Cable News.  He followed up with CNN Defends New Slogan: "The president of CNN Worldwide, Jeff Zucker, attempted on Wednesday to defuse the brewing controversy over his decision to change the network’s official slogan from “The Most Trusted Name in News” to “Holy Crap, We’re All Gonna Die.”

Most recently he posted: Some Fear Ebola Outbreak Could Make Nation Turn to Science: "In interviews conducted across the nation, leading anti-science activists expressed their concern that the American people, wracked with anxiety over the possible spread of the virus, might desperately look to science to save the day.
“It’s a very human reaction,” said Harland Dorrinson, a prominent anti-science activist from Springfield, Missouri. “If you put them under enough stress, perfectly rational people will panic and start believing in science.”

The irony is more comforting than the current reality however.  We're still knee-deep in hysteria that's way out of proportion to the actual danger, at least here in North America.  One of its many products is hysterical cries for what seem like easy solutions, but are far more complex and perhaps even counterproductive (closing airports may be one.)

Though there are always other factors involved (Arthur Miller's play on the witch hysteria in Salem comes to mind as revealing some), hysteria and panic often depend on ignorance.  Yet we have a supposedly educated country, free from the kind of superstition that fed witch hunts etc. until a couple of centuries ago.  Even with the discomfiting revival in belief in the supernatural, or the ease with which fundamentalist creeds can be turned to hysteria, it seems somewhat counter-intuitive that such hysteria exists here and now.

But consider the speed of information, and how much time the average human appendage to a smart phone spends on dealing with the volume and speed of what is usually pretty mundane data,  relieved by "viral" excitements instantly shared by millions.  It is a culture of perpetual distraction, and it requires instant easy answers to any disturbances in the field.  A complex and deadly reality like infectious disease quickly become overwhelming.

 Used to--and let's be real, addicted to-- speedy and ephemeral bits and stimulations, can we slow down to deliberate and concentrate?  Or is it just easier to lash out hysterically in every direction?  Even when doing so, we become prey to much more than a disease that so far is much less threatening to Americans than a car crash or lightning strike--or maybe more to the point, than the growing threats of floods, tornadoes, hurricanes or other slower effects of global heating, none of which we are dealing with adequately.

Hysteria is the other end of the same continuum anchored by complacency and denial.  The world has been slow to respond effectively to Ebola in Africa, where it really is a dangerous epidemic.  I happen to know someone on the front lines fighting Ebola in Africa.  She is a courageous young woman working with Doctors Without Borders.  We here who know her are very proud of her.  Supporting such efforts makes much more sense than feeding the beast of panic--for its rampages right now are more potentially dangerous than the disease itself.

Blue Light Special and The Week in Good News

The Supreme Court (yes, that Supreme Court) struck down voter ID laws in Wisconsin and Texas, effective immediately.  As this story notes and others go into more elaborately, the Texas decision that the Supremes upheld is the more sweeping, indicating that the Texas law was a form of poll tax, deliberately restricting minority voters rights.

Nobel Peace Prize supports children's rights,  Physics prize for blue light, a key to earth-saving technology in the climate crisis.

This is actually a month old but it's still good news: thanks to the success of regulated limits, nearly two dozen previously threatened and endangered fish species off the California coast have bounced back to sustainable populations.

The Seinfeld Election and Other Absurdities

According to the Wall Street Journal, the upcoming November voting is shaping up to be "an election about nothing."

"No single issue dominates, except unhappiness with the established order," they say.

 So here's where we are: The Republicans can't credibly talk about  unemployment because it is down (5.9%) below even what Romney claimed his policies would result in.  The Republicans can't credibly criticize the federal deficit because it is down, even below what the Congressional Budget Office predicted.  The Republicans can't credibly criticize Obamacare, because it is clearly meeting its goals.

Yes, I used "Republicans" and the concept of credibility in three consecutive sentences.  What's wrong with me?

The Republicans are said to be ahead.

In other news:

From the Borowitz Report: Man Infected with Ebola Misinformation Through Casual Contact With Cable News

From TPM Annoying Ads Central:

Man open carrying his new gun has his gun stolen at gun point.

T. Goddard's Not Quite As Annoying Ads Central But Getting There Quote of the Day:
"I don't need a semi-automatic rifle to shoot a duck. Maybe you do. Maybe you should spend more time on your shooting range."

-- Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN), quoted by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, to challenger Stewart Mills (R) in a debate.

Money Doesn't Talk, It Swears

Sometimes a cartoon can say what a thousand jargon-filled technical arguments cannot.  In the New Yorker, two members of Congress (it would seem), with one asking, "How much speech did you take in last month?"  And so the utter absurdity of equating campaign money with speech (the basis of the Supreme Court's striking down various campaign spending limits) is utterly exposed.

Today the Washington Post exposes another fact summarized this time in the line of a now old song: "Money doesn't talk, it swears."  Big money donors are getting unprecedented "access" to officeholders, which is a wink and a nod way of saying large-scale bribery.  Now in the stretch run of the 2014 elections, the latest SC permissions have led to even greater amounts that the very rich spend on buying their politicians and the government they want, as the Post writes:

Together, 310 donors gave a combined $11.6 million more by this summer than would have been allowed before the ruling. Their contributions favored Republican candidates and committees over Democratic ones by 2 to 1.

In a number of articles on his site (such as this one) Bill Moyers has been chronicling the spending and the effects of "access," or "influence."  Although outnumbered, Dems have their billionaires too, but as a contributor to Moyers site finds, the big money corrupts the liberal side too.

 As immense wealth is concentrated in fewer hands, these super-rich support their own interests at the expense of the many, especially those at the bottom.  So it's not terribly surprising that Mitch McConnell was "caught" on tape promising billionaires that he will keep voting against increases in the minimum wage.

The situation is so widespread that activists are turning to ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage, although ballot initiatives themselves are most often a plaything of the wealthy.

Washington politicians are increasingly millionaires themselves, and their billionaire connections insure lucrative "fees" and cushy positions after their "service."  Money in politics doesn't talk, it swears.  More specifically it says: fuck you.

Obama Admits His Failed Presidency

President Obama finally admitted the truth in Austin, Texas:

The crisis in 2008 hurt us all badly -- worse financial crisis since the Great Depression. But you think about the progress we’ve made. Today, our businesses have added nearly 10 million new jobs over the past 52 months. (Applause.) Our housing is rebounding. Our auto industry is booming. Manufacturing is adding more jobs than any time since the 1990s. The unemployment rate is the lowest point it’s been since September of 2008. (Applause.)..  So a lot of this was because of the resilience and hard work of the American people. That's what happens -- Americans bounce back.

But some of it had to do with decisions we made to build our economy on a new foundation. And those decisions are paying off. We’re more energy independent. For the first time in nearly 20 years, we produce more oil here at home than we buy from abroad. (Applause.) The world’s largest oil and gas producer isn’t Russia; it’s not Saudi Arabia -- it’s the United States of America. (Applause.)

At the same time, we’ve reduced our total carbon pollution over the past eight years more than any country on Earth. (Applause.) We’ve tripled the amount of electricity we generate from wind. We’ve increased the amount of solar energy we have by 10 times. We’re creating jobs across the country in clean energy. (Applause.)

In education, our high school graduation rate is at a record high; the Latino dropout rate has been cut in half since 2000. (Applause.) More young people are graduating from college than ever before....The Affordable Care Act has given millions more families peace of mind. They won’t go broke just because they get sick. (Applause.) Our deficits have been cut by more than half.

We have come farther and recovered faster, thanks to you, than just about any other nation on Earth...  For the first time in a decade, business leaders around the world have said the number-one place to invest is not China, it’s the United States of America. So we’re actually seeing companies bring jobs back. (Applause.) So there’s no doubt that we are making progress. By almost every measure, we are better off now than we were when I took office." (Applause.)

By the way, if you think President Obama doesn't have the fire and the eloquence of candidate Obama, and if you think the 2014 elections are a foregone conclusion, you need to see this speech from Austin, Texas.

"The truth is, even with all the actions I’ve taken this year, I’m issuing executive orders at the lowest rate in more than 100 years. So it’s not clear how it is that Republicans didn’t seem to mind when President Bush took more executive actions than I did. (Applause.) Maybe it’s just me they don’t like. I don’t know. Maybe there’s some principle out there that I haven’t discerned, that I haven’t figure out. (Laughter.) You hear some of them -- “sue him,” “impeach him.” Really? (Laughter.) Really? For what? (Applause.) You’re going to sue me for doing my job? Okay. (Applause.) I mean, think about that. You’re going to use taxpayer money to sue me for doing my job -- (laughter) -- while you don’t do your job. (Applause.)....

We could do so much more if Republicans in Congress would focus less on stacking the deck for those on the top and focus more on creating opportunity for everybody. And I want to work with them. I don’t expect them to agree with me on everything, but at least agree with me on the things that you used to say you were for before I was for them. (Applause.) You used to be for building roads and infrastructure. Nothing has changed. Let’s go ahead and do it. (Applause.) Ronald Reagan passed immigration reform, and you love Ronald Reagan. Let’s go ahead and do it. (Applause.)

Let’s embrace the patriotism that says it’s a good thing when our fellow citizens have health care. It’s not a bad thing. (Applause.) That’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing when women earn what men do for the same work. That’s an all-American principle. (Applause.) Everybody has got a mom out there or a wife out there or a daughter out there. They don’t want them to not get treated fairly. Why would you be against that?

It’s a good thing when parents can take a day off to care for a sick child without losing their job or losing pay and they can’t pay their bills at the end of the month. It’s a good thing when nobody who works full-time is living in poverty. That is not radical. It’s not un-American. It’s not socialist. That’s how we built this country. It’s what America is all about, us working together. (Applause.)

Election Night

No big surprises but some intriguing outcomes, especially in New York City which got its first Democratic mayor since the mid 90s and the first progressive in awhile.  At first glance the lesser of two assholes gets to be governor of Virginia, but the WPost looks at the numbers and sees something significant: the Obama coalition didn't stay home as they did in 2010.  Granted that the R candidate was so extreme he was extra motivating, but if the Rs keep going towards crazy Tea Party Land, it bodes well for 2014.

Politics Then and Now

I've been reading about the years 1936 to 1941 in the U.S., including the politics of those elections.  There really is disgustingly little difference between the politics of now and then.  1936 was a total preview of 2012, as FDR ran for a second term, was called a Communist by Republican opponents, and worse by right wing splinter groups (their Birthers insisted FDR was really Jewish.) Rs tried to scare people about the horrors of the fully implemented Social Security system (everyone in the country will be taxed for s.s.! And everybody will get a number! And be forced to wear it on a chain around their necks for the rest of their lives!)  Nothing at all like being terrified that Obamacare might actually do some good.

 Meanwhile the Rs including the candidate were certain right up to election day that they would win, because the people would reject FDR.  When the votes were counted, only Vermont and Maine rejected FDR.

And then a chastened, much smarter Republican party in 1940, pretty much did the same damn thing.  In complete denial about Hitler and U.S. vulnerability.  Congressional Rs voted down FDR's defense requests and then castigated him in the campaign for not building up U.S. defenses.  The only difference is that a not insane Wendell Wilkie got nominated by a combination of fluke and actual popularity (but not with congressional Rs) and when they lost again, they still didn't change.

It seems that the Republican party was partly sane in the 50s, some of the 60s and 70s--although they did elect a mad president.  But sanity, that's just not them.  Venality and hypocrisy are merely symptoms.

And perhaps it's too much to ask let alone expect that politics itself be sane.  It sure isn't right now.  There are two themes currently coexisting in the gratefully little punditry I see: the Republican party is falling apart and dooming itself, and the Republican party is likely to regain a Senate majority and probably won't lose the House in the next election.  Huh?

As contradictory as this seems, it suggests a current phenomenon that is actually dooming our political system to inflated ineffectual twittering.  In 2008, those many who voted in the U.S. elected a Democratic president and Congress, to do what they said they'd do.  In 2010, those few who voted in the states elected reactionary Republican fanatics, throwing the U.S. House to the dogs, and doing worse in the states.

With the reelection of the Democratic president in 2012 that all was supposed to change, or change back.  Now there's every possibility that the non-presidential  2014 elections will make things worse.  One step forward, two steps back.  

Another reading of history suggest maybe it will take one more presidential election.  Okay, I'll check back in early 2017.

These Kochs Aren't For You

An interesting piece in the NY Times on the mysterious disease called Valley Fever the other day.  The news had to do with a court ordering thousands of inmates to be transferred from a couple of California prisons with epidemics of the disease.  The nasty, debilitating and sometimes fatal fungus disease, so far without a cure, is related to hot weather.

The Times story discusses the peculiar genetic factors, the medical mysteries, etc.  But two parts of the story stood out for me.  The first was this:  "Many scientists believe that the uptick in infections is related to changing climate patterns."  Other contributing causes being present, global heating is a factor.

The second has to do with impact. “It destroys lives,” said Dr. Johnson, whose daughter contracted a mild form. “Divorces, lost jobs and bankruptcy are incredibly common, not to mention psychological dislocation.”  Lost jobs and divorces might well result from a debilitating disease that requires a lot of attention.  But bankruptcy--that alone also leads to divorces and psychological problems, and destroys lives.  In combination with debilitating illness, it's a frightening, ugly death spiral.

What do these two observations suggest?  The United States is still one of the few countries in the world that  refuses to face up to the realities of the climate crisis, especially in the political system, and most especially in the federal legislature.  And the United States is possibly the only modern industrial supposedly civilized country where people are forced into poverty and despair because of the cost of medical care.

Which brings us to the Brothers Koch, who more than symbolize the reasons.  In large part, they are the reasons.  The Koch brothers and how they spend their money.

The New Yorker reports that a  two-year study by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University concludes the Kochs have spent some $75 million "tied to climate inaction:"

In its multi-part report, “The Koch Club,” written by Lewis, Eric Holmberg, Alexia Campbell, and Lydia Beyoud, the Workshop found that between 2007 and 2011 the Kochs donated $41.2 million to ninety tax-exempt organizations promoting the ultra-libertarian policies that the brothers favor—policies that are often highly advantageous to their corporate interests. In addition, during this same period they gave $30.5 million to two hundred and twenty-one colleges and universities, often to fund academic programs advocating their worldview. Among the positions embraced by the Kochs are fewer government regulations on business, lower taxes, and skepticism about the causes and impact of climate change.

Climate-change policy directly affects Koch Industries’s bottom line. Koch Industries, according to Environmental Protection Agency statistics cited in the study, is a major source of carbon-dioxide emissions, the kind of pollution that most scientists believe causes global warming."

In the 2010 non-presidential elections alone:

 Koch Industries’s political action committee spent $1.3 million on congressional campaigns that year. When Republicans did take control of the House, a huge block of climate-change opponents was empowered. Fully one hundred and fifty-six members of the House of Representatives that year had signed the “No Climate Tax Pledge.” Of the eighty-five freshmen Republican congressmen elected to the House of Representatives in 2010, seventy-six had signed the No Climate Tax pledge. Fifty-seven of those received campaign contributions from Koch Industries’s political action committee. The study notes that more than half of the House members who signed the pledge in the 112th Congress made statements doubting climate-change science, despite the fact that there is overwhelming scientific consensus on the subject.

This is a heavily financed attempt to influence the political process for generations on the single most important issue to the future of human civilization.

But the Kochs don't stop there.  The United States has been debating ways to provide medical care coverage to its citizens for much of a century, and very specifically in the past decade.  But duly elected members of Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, and a duly elected President signed it, and a duly constituted Supreme Court said it is constitutional.

The Affordable Care Act, which goes some way towards the kind of medical care coverage that the governments of  most other industrial countries provide, so that fewer people will be ruined, impoverished and terrorized on top of serious illness or injury, is the law of the land.

Yet instead of allowing the implementation to proceed so the country can judge whether this is a better system or not, it seems to be the official position of one political party to subvert it.  This effort, which led to the unprecedented, mean-spirited and virtually treasonous threats by Republicans against major league sports who would dare to produce public service announcements explaining the new system, is being led by the Koch brothers, at least financially.

They are currently "pouring millions" into a disinformation campaign to subvert the ACA implementation.  Critics of the health law spent a whopping $400 million on television spots criticizing the law since 2010, over five times the $75 million that the law’s supporters have spent on ads promoting it. Analysts expect $1 billion in expenditures by 2015.

2014

What political speculation there is--and there's as usual too much--is about 2016.  Will Hillary run?  Should she? Can anyone defeat her? 

But by that time it may not matter in substantive ways.  What has become increasingly clear in the first weeks after the 2012 election is that we are still in the dark power of 2010.  The dreaded off-year election (as it's called, because it isn't a presidential year) when a comparative handful of voters even show up, and yet those who did in 2010 empowered those who are still busy destroying the future.

Yes, part of the devastating effect was due to it being a census and therefore reapportionment year, and so GOPer state houses could rig congressional elections according to party, which is why the GOP retained control of the House even though Democratic candidates got more votes, and under the redistricting of 2008, would have won it back.  So we may be living with those effects for a long time.

But it was the dramatic takeovers in governorships and state legislatures, largely fueled by big money unleashed for the first time by the Citizens United decision of the GOPer Court.  The mildest thing about the resulting stranglehold on state governments in many states was that it quickly became very extreme, and its extremism was coordinated from state to state.

The worst of it we see most dramatically right now in Michigan, where Governor Snyder and the lame duck legislature has suddenly rammed through a union-busting law (with a provision apparently preventing it from being overturned by voters) with blinding speed, without advance notice or the usual hearings or debate, really in a matter of hours on an otherwise ordinary Thursday.  Taking away union rights in Michigan is a breathtaking step, and this is being done without public support--the latest poll shows all of 6% of Michigan citizens support it.

Snyder could sign this into law on Tuesday, ignoring the warnings of political chaos that could result.  Demonstrations are ongoing and are likely to be massive Tuesday. These people are being silenced as a result of elections.  (Hitler too, it must not be forgotten, was elected, at first.)  There could be no more graphic lesson of the need to organize and vote in 2014. 

For this totalitarian blitzkrieg is only the latest iron fist of autocracy to take off the glove in Michigan.  There are entire cities now ruled by a state-appointed dictator, superseding all elected officials.  Funny how those folks afraid of nonexistent interference by the UN are silent on the very real dictatorships in Michigan.

The voter suppression laws, the anti-choice and anti-health laws, all of that, all coming from the states. They all are intrusive, autocratic (even if Theocratic) attempts that take away rights and freedoms.  In states like PA and Ohio, the fracking-happy state governments are helping to destroy communities and the environment.  Many of those governors and many of the legislatures must face the voters in 2014.  All it will take to ruin the last years of the Obama presidency plus the next one will be voters not paying attention again in 2014.

It's going to be hard enough even if they are.  Michigan couldn't pass a strong pro-union initiative, and Wisconsin returned their legislature to GOPer rule in the big Dem year of 2012.  But if voters don't return sanity to their state capitals in 2014, 2016 may be nothing much but show biz.