Last Call

Meanwhile, let's not forget the European debt crisis is far from over, and German voters aren't going to pick up the tab for the euro any longer if today's election results are going to be typical of what's ahead.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party suffered its worst defeat since World War II in Germany’s richest state, losing control of Hamburg in the first of seven state elections this year that threaten to limit her scope to tackle Europe’s debt crisis.

The result in Hamburg, the city-state of Merkel’s birth, underscores the challenge she faces trying to balance public opposition to bailouts for debt-wracked states against pressure from investors and fellow euro countries to lead the way in stemming the debt contagion. She faces three more state ballots next month on either side of a March 24-25 European Union summit called to form a comprehensive plan for the crisis.

“It’s a warning to Merkel,” said Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Groep NV in Brussels. “If she has to draw any lesson, it probably will be to get tougher at the European level to show something to German voters,” he said. “There is no room for Merkel to come home from Brussels on March 25 with anything that could look or smell like a defeat.”

Portuguese government bonds declined for a second week before the vote, leading securities of high-deficit countries including Greece lower. Yields on Portuguese bonds rose to within five basis points of the most since the euro’s inception in 1999, while faster inflation risks unsettling German voters. Portugal’s 10-year yield has stayed above 7 percent the last 11 trading days. 

If German voters aren't going to play ball with the bailout plans for countries like Greece and Ireland, and as Portugal and Spain continue to teeter on the edge, it's going to get really bad, really fast.  Merkel's in bad shape here, and the German opposition is running on a platform to tell the rest of the European Union to stuff it where the sun don't shine.

Could we be seeing more demonstrations in Europe soon?  I think it's quite likely.

Re-Railing The Derailed Florida Rail Project

GOP Gov. Rick Scott has killed the high speed rail project in central Florida, but that doesn't mean it's dead.  House Republicans and Democrats from along the I-4 corridor are trying to do everything they can to get the money and create badly needed jobs in their districts.

Advocates for high-speed rail in Florida were hustling to keep it alive late Friday, cobbling plans to accept the federal money Gov. Rick Scott rejected this week.

U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, floated a proposal to dramatically shrink the project to an Orlando International Airport to Walt Disney World link, cutting Tampa and Lakeland out of the mix, for now.

Mica, who chairs the House transportation committee, said an initial 21-mile starter train, with a stop at the Orange County Convention Center, shows the best ridership potential and could even turn a profit. Some portion of the $2.4 billion in federal grant money would flow to Orange and Osceola counties and the city of Orlando. The three governments would forge a compact to solicit bids and oversee construction of the project and other partner governments could be added later, he said.

The shorter distance likely would take much of the high speed out of high-speed rail in Florida. The trains have to travel several miles to reach speeds of 160 mph or more and slow down well in advance of stops.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, shared a legal opinion from Tampa City Attorney Chip Fletcher. It contends that there are a variety of ways local governments could team up to create an umbrella government to accept grant money and oversee the rail project. And Fletcher’s opinion states that either the Florida Department of Transportation or the Legislature could assign the federal grant money over to the newly created agency.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gave state lawmakers a week to come up with a plan to keep the money from going to other states.

“And since Secretary LaHood gave us one week from today, everyone went to work today,” Castor said.

Needless to say, the jobs these Representatives want to save include their own.  GOP Rep. John Mica is especially vulnerable.  What's the point of being in charge of the House Transportation Committee if you can't deliver on infrastructure jobs?

Rick Scott might not give a damn about rail in Florida, but John Mica's been in Congress for almost 20 years and I'm betting he wants to still be in Congress after Scott has burned down Tallahassee.  Odds are pretty good that won't happen if they can't sell Ray LaHood on a new plan by Friday.

The bigger issue is that there's already bipartisan support for telling Rick Scott to go to hell.  Going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out.

What Wisconsin's Public Employees Are Fighting For

Josh Marshall parses Scott Walker's actions.

But there's another layer of the story that's only gotten cursory attention in the national media. Walker's proposal doesn't apply to all public sector unions in the state. Broadly speaking it targets unions that consistently support Democrats (teachers and other public employees) and exempts those that are often more friendly to Republican candidates (police and firefighters). Walker has been quick to point out that the statewide police and firefighters unions, as opposed to those in Milwaukee, both supported his opponent last year. He claims he makes the exception because the state can't afford any walk-outs from these public safety related employees.

But that doesn't really hold up.

It strains credulity to see this as anything but a political effort to destroy organizations that are critical foot soldiers for Democratic candidates at election time. 

This is why Republicans have been targeting unions, particularly teachers and state employees' unions, for some time now.  If unions are eliminated, Democrats at the state level will be severely weakened.  That's always what the end game was here, to rid the country of unions.  At the private sector level, unions have all but been eliminated in many states and replaced with "right-to-work" laws.

If public employee unions are eliminated, then the backbone of labor in this country will be broken for good, with American workers at the tender mercies of international corporations who simply do not see investment in the US middle class as a smart move when there's billions of Chinese, Indian, Brazilian and Indonesian workers forming a market ten times the size of the United States.  And they will not have the best interests of American workers at heart.

The goal here is to remove the unions as the last obstacle for the corporate takeover of the US in a post-Citizens United world where they can simply buy the races they want to win and the candidates who will do what they say.

And then our Democracy really is over.

[UPDATE]  And now Walker is hinting that as many as 12,000 state employee jobs will be eliminated as part of his budget plan...putting them on state unemployment is a much better idea than actually employing them as far as taxpayers are concerned, right?

Preventing The Panda-Monium Of The Jasmine Rebellion

China has decided to get out well ahead of all this North Africa/Middle East freedom crap and is cracking down now before things get out of hand.  The first target:  the Chinese internet.

After Internet messages calling for demonstrations in 13 cities surfaced on Saturday, apparently from overseas sites used by Chinese living abroad, there were reports of activists being preemptively hauled away.

Very few Chinese responded, and in only a couple of cities, but Beijing’s authoritarian regime still mobilized large teams of police to ensure all remained quiet.

The heavy response by Chinese officials was a reminder of the government’s low tolerance for any hint of political discord. The country’s combination of surveillance, sophisticated management of information, and a willingness to deploy large numbers of security forces has so far allowed it to cut off even the most remote of challenges to the Chinese Communist Party.

After online messages spread on Saturday using the phrase “Jasmine Revolution,” a reference to the unrest in Tunisia that ousted the president there and inspired uprisings across the Arab world, Chinese police beefed up their presence. Users on Chinese messaging sites, and those able to access Twitter through special software, posted notes saying that university students were warned to stay away from trouble.

In the previous two days, state media had signaled that the government is looking to further exert its considerable capacity to maintain order.

On Friday, a key architect of the country’s Internet monitoring software told a state newspaper that the program, already regarded as among the most stringent in the world, should be strengthened.

The next day, President Hu Jintao urged a conference of officials in Beijing to improve “social management.” The state news service Xinhua said that “Hu stressed the importance of information network management, urging an improved management of the ‘virtual society’ and a better guidance of public opinions on Internet.”

When Sunday came, the protests fizzled into almost nothing. The overwhelming majority of Chinese residents probably had no idea they’d even been called for -- the websites used to advertise the protests are either blocked or heavily censored in China.

I'll give the Chinese this much, they're not stupid.  They see the unmanaged, raw internet as a direct threat to Communist Party rule and they damn well know it.  If there ever is a revolution in China, it's not going to be one that gets too much traction on Twitter.  The events of the last month have not been lost on Party officials there.

New Comments, Same Snark, Less Stupid

In the process of switching over to DisqUS comments system.  Hopefully it will process and import all the old comments and now I have a whole lot more control over the the whole process.

Let me know if you have trouble with the system.

Thanks, Kitteh.

I feel a whole lot better now.

What The Duck?

A fun article on Cracked.com shows five things that the Duck family (Scrooge or Donald especially) did well before our generation.  The plot to Inception and Indiana Jones are listed among others. 

No learning, nothing dark or mysterious here. Enjoy!

And Now Libya...

The BBC is reporting things are getting quite serious in the Libyan city of Benghazi, consisting of Libyan troops opening fire on protesters there amid massive armed crackdown by Qaddafi.

Benghazi, about 1,000 km (600 miles) from Tripoli, has been the main focus of the demonstrations against Col Gaddafi's 42-year rule.

Troops opened fire on people attending a funeral there on Saturday, killing 15, both the Associated Press news agency and al-Jazeera television said.

But an eyewitness told Reuters news agency that many more had actually died.

"Dozens were killed... not 15, dozens," the unnamed eyewitness said, adding that he had helped take victims to a local hospital.

A Benghazi resident told the BBC that security forces inside a government compound had fired on protesters with mortars and 14.5mm machine guns - a heavy machine gun typically produced in the former USSR.

They were, he said, machine-gunning cars and people indiscriminately. "A lot [of people] have fallen down today," he added.

Other witnesses spoke of snipers firing at protesters from rooftops and there were widespread reports of foreign mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa being brought in to attack protesters.

A doctor told the BBC that situation in the city was "like hell", saying he had been seeing people with gunshot wounds being carried into his hospital all day.

Conflicting reports are coming out of who controls the city, the military is said to be freely using violence and in full control, other reports say only the central military barracks are still in the military's hands.   Either way, in the last few weeks North Africa has fully spiraled out of control now.  If Qaddafi goes down like Mubarak and Ben Ali, all bets are off in the region.

Cutting Their Own Throats

Republicans went and passed some $60 billion in budget cuts from this year's budget, voting to gut dozens of programs and laying off hundreds of thousands of workers.  Not even the Blue Dogs went for this one, so the attack ads will write themselves.  Steve Benen:

Looking over the roll call, the drastic cuts received zero Democratic votes, and even Blue Dogs didn't break ranks. Three Republicans -- Walter Jones (N.C.), Reps. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), and John Campbell (Calif.) -- voted with the Dems in opposition, but two of three opposed the measure because they said it wasn't quite brutal enough. (Nine House members -- seven Democrats and two Republicans -- did not vote, but they obviously wouldn't have affected the outcome.)

The gavel came down around 4:30 a.m., making this one of those rare Friday-night/Saturday-morning votes.
The package, which is intended to finance the federal government though the end of the fiscal year, now heads to the Senate, where it stands absolutely no chance whatsoever of passing. Indeed, House Republicans knew this before the vote, and didn't care -- this isn't about governing; it's about right-wing lawmakers pounding their chests in order to impress their reactionary base. House leaders could have worked with Senate leaders on a spending compromise, but Republicans chose not to bother.

As we talked about yesterday, it's hard to overstate how brutal these cuts really are. Overnight, 235 House Republicans voted to slash education, job training, environmental protections, food safety, community health centers, nuclear security, energy efficiency programs, scientific research, FEMA, Planned Parenthood, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Social Security Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control, among other things.

The projected job losses from these cuts, we learned this week, could total 1 million American workers, all of whom would be forced into unemployment, on purpose, because Republicans think it'd be good for the economy.

As the House GOP sees it, we can't afford these expenditures because of the deficit they helped create. We can, however, afford massive tax breaks for people who don't need them, which cost a lot more, and which Republicans didn't even try to pay for.

The GOP proposal, in other words, is the sort of budget a caucus might put together if it was really angry with Americans, as if we'd done something to offend them. (Maybe, if we apologize, they'll stop trying to hurt so many people?)

Oddly enough, perhaps no one is happier with the vote than the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- this one measure will be exploited for hundreds of hours of campaign ads, questioning the misguided principles of vulnerable Republican incumbents who were misguided enough to vote for this monstrosity.

So yes, why do Republicans hate education, job training, environmental protections, food safety, community health centers, nuclear security, energy efficiency programs, scientific research, FEMA, Planned Parenthood, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Social Security Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control?

It's because they don't want government to work.  They want it to fail so they can privatize it as much as possible and reap the economic benefits for decades to come.

Seems to be working well so far, but I think when 2012 comes around, the backlash may surprise a lot of people.

Hallelujah, They Got One Right

The 2011 Cybersecurity Freedom Act -- proposed by senators Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent; Susan Collins of Maine; and Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat -- is almost identical to the legislation the senators introduced in June with two exceptions.

The bill adds language that forbids the president from shutting down the Internet during a national crisis. It also permits owners of major computer systems deemed as critical infrastructure, and therefore subject to Homeland Security Department regulations, to appeal their status in federal court.

I will give the benefit of the doubt and assume this was not ever intended to keep citizens from information.  I read about this today in several sources, some of which conflict, so keep that in mind if you read up on this.  It is my understanding that the power granted to "flip the switch" could have lasted from 30-90 days, which is way too long.  If we were under a major cyber attack, I could see an hour or two while our best and brightest did what they could, but a period of several days looks to me like an effort to keep us out of the loop for long enough to do something hideous and put a spin on it before we were allowed access to the information. 

This may have looked like a good idea to some, but with trust in government at an all-time low, this was not the time to introduce the power to restrict our access to a network that millions of Americans use daily.  If we had this policy in place, it would also be an invitation to black hatters everywhere.  I realize this doesn't mean that the risk of cyber attack is not there, it just means we need to address it in a different way.

No Need To Get Snippy About It

For a good part of our history, circumcision has been a process that we performed without  much thought.  It was a suggested process for cleanliness and health reasons, but without much scientific backing.  In the 1960s a trend began where parents did not circumcise their male children, and according to this article nearly half of male children born in the US are not circumcised.  The anti-circumcision group drew from the Center for Disease Control's neutrality on the subject.  Due to some recent findings, that neutrality has changed to leaning towards circumcision again, as a way to improve overall health and in particular sexually transmitted diseases. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics, currently neutral on whether to circumcise, are drafting new policies in light of recent studies suggesting circumcision helps prevent transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The studies driving the new recommendations, based on clinical trials in sub-Saharan Africa and published in recent years in the Lancet medical journal, found that circumcised men had a 60 percent lower incidence of contracting HIV from heterosexual sex than their uncircumcised peers.

Another study, published in January in the Lancet, found that women with circumcised partners were 28 percent less likely to contract the human papillomavirus (HPV), a common STD that can cause cervical cancer, than women with uncircumcised partners.

The article does a good job of explaining both sides of the argument.  Both sides agree on the most important thing: this shouldn't be done without research and consideration.  It's up to the parents to decide whether or not to circumcise their children, but to do it without any reason beyond "I want him to match his father" isn't making a solid choice.

 

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Less that 48 hours after armed Bahraini troops forced protesters out of Manama's Pearl Roundabout, thousands of demonstrators have retaken the square.
• After Palestinians refused to circulate a compromise draft, the US has vetoed a UN Security Council measure that would have declared Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine illegal.
• Relations between Mexico and France have gone sour in the wake of a 36-year old Frenchwoman facing a 60-year kidnapping sentence in Mexican prison.
• The S&P 500 hit its highest level in almost three years this week as 4th quarter earnings for 2010 continue to impress institutional investors.
• The saga of hacker group Anonymous versus security firm HBGary revealed how the federal government shops for backdoor access into web sites.

Last Call

Since we seem to have a few folks having some trouble understanding what's going on in Wisconsin, here's a primer.

In Wisconsin, budget season is two years long. The current budget window was opened on July 1, 2009, and will close on June 30 of this year. If for unexpected reason, the state finds itself faced with a severe deficit within a biennial window, the legislature must pass what's known a "budget repair bill" -- to close the gap with spending cuts or other emergency measures.

The state has not crossed that threshold.

The previous governor, Democrat Jim Doyle, passed a budget that left the state poised for a surplus this year. When Walker took office in January he chipped away at that surplus with three conservative tax expenditure bills, but not severely enough to trigger a budget repair bill. The current, small shortfall was "manufactured by Governor Walker's own insistence on making the deficit worse with the bills he passed in January," Kreitlow said. But Walker cited that shortfall to introduce a "budget repair bill" anyhow -- a fully elective move that includes his plan to end collective bargaining rights for state employees.

"The trigger had not been reached prior to Governor Walker adding to the previous year's deficit by passing bills that didn't create a single job," Kreitlow said.

Walker will soon have to introduce an actual budget, which will outline spending and revenue policy for the two years between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2013. And the state's Legislative Fiscal Bureau -- the official scorekeeper -- does project that he'll face a $3 billion shortfall. But Democrats faced a shortfall twice as large ahead of the previous budget cycle and managed to close the gap.

"The $3 billion is a projection based on requests and forecasts, but it's the governor who has to do the hard work of putting together a plan," Kreitow explained. "it is just practically half of the projected deficit that we closed in the last budget bill, which we did by making serious cuts and some very deliberate choices. That's what we expect leaders to do." In 2009, Wisconsin Dems did get just over a billion in help from the stimulus bill, but they made up the rest by giving state agencies less money than they asked for, and through furloughs and other real austerity measures.

"We know it could be closed again by making tough choices," Kreitow said. "But not included in those tough choices would be stripping away labor rights that have allowed there to be labor peace in Wisconsin for over 50 years."

To recap:  Wisconsin had a $6 billion shortfall in 2009-2011.  It was closed when Democrats made painful cuts.  Democrats balanced the budget and even had a small surplus as a result.  Voters rewarded them by putting Republicans in charge, including Scott Walker, because voters don't like cuts, and they don't like tax increases.  Democrats in Wisconsin did both, but they solved the state's fiscal problems and they balanced the two-year budget.

Scott Walker's first act was to pass tax cuts that eliminated the surplus and caused a shortfall for the June 30, 2011 deadline.  He then used that shortfall as an excuse to go after state worker benefits and collective bargaining rights.  Yes, the 2011-2013 budget is going to be messy, mainly because states actually have to pay for tax cuts.  Walker's tax cuts are going to cost Wisconsin dearly, too.

So if tax cuts create jobs and revenue, how come Wisconsin is going broke?

That's it.

Deep In The Changing Heart Of Texas

The 2010 Census numbers bear out what many have estimated for years now:  Texas, like California, is now a majority minority state, and that's going to make things difficult for the GOP to keep their supermajority.

Texas is a majority-minority state for the first time in a redistricting period, according to just-released census data, a fact that could complicate Republicans’ hopes for a partisan gerrymander—and make the state competitive for Democrats in future years.

Whites now account for just 45 percent of the state's population, down from 52 percent a decade ago. The Hispanic population is now 38 percent of the total population—growing by 42 percent—while the African-American population grew slightly and is now 12 percent of the total population. The state gained four congressional seats in reapportionment, largely due to minority growth: Almost 90 percent of the state's growth was from minorities.

The census findings complicate Republicans' hopes for a partisan gerrymander during this redistricting process. The Democratic lean of Hispanic voters and Voting Rights Act requirements that protect the group's voting strength from being watered down means that despite Republican control of the redistricting process, the GOP will struggle to make the map much more favorable to their party.

"The numbers will dictate what is possible and what can be done," said state Sen. Kel Seliger, one of the Republicans tapped to run the redistricting process. Seliger predicted there would be at least one more Hispanic opportunity district in the Rio Grande Valley, but said it was too early to predict whether there should be a second, something Hispanic groups have called for, because the redistricting committee has yet to analyze the Citizen Voting Age Population data that they must use to draw the lines.

Republicans under former Rep. Tom DeLay effectively re-redistricted the state in the middle of the decade, tearing apart districts Democrats had carefully drawn to protect their "WD-40s"—white Democrats over 40. The plan was a big success for Republicans: The delegation went from 17-15 Democrat earlier in the decade to 21-11 Republican in 2004. Republicans now hold 23 of the 32 House seats after picking up three districts in the 2010 wave election, and Democrats hold only one House seat where whites make up more than a quarter of the district's population. Forty-two of the 49 Democratic state representatives are minorities.

So, we'll see what this means down the road for the Lone Star State, but odds are pretty good that Texas may not be the blood red state that gave us Dubya for too much longer.

No Planned Parenthood Survives First Contact With The Enemy

Republicans sure are working to create jobs misery.

The House has approved a Republican proposal to block federal aid for Planned Parenthood.

The 240-185 vote on Friday is a victory for anti-abortion forces led by Indiana GOP Rep. Mike Pence. He says taxpayer money should not go to groups that provide or promote abortion.

"This afternoon's vote is a victory for taxpayers and a victory for life," Pence said Friday. "By banning funding to Planned Parenthood, Congress has taken a stand for millions of Americans who believe their tax dollars should not be used to subsidize the largest abortion provider in America."

Democrats say Planned Parenthood provides contraception and other valuable family planning services, and that cutting off the money will make it hard for women to get such basic help.

Planned Parenthood provides services in hundreds of clinics around the country. Pence aides say the group reported receiving $363 million in federal money in its latest report.

You know, about 2% of Planned Parenthood's services involve abortions.  Those abortions are not paid for with federal money except in cases of rape or incest, consistent with the Hyde Amendment.  So in order to punish Planned Parenthood, Pence and the GOP are willing to strip hundreds of millions from clinics across the country.  Nice guys.

And really, the goal here is to punish anyone who happens to have a uterus.  It's what Republicans do.

A Bunch Of Block Heads, Part 2

Republicans continue to try to do anything they can to make sure government doesn't try to regulate the multi-trillion dollar Wall Street tycoons.

Republicans aiming to unhinge the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation have turned to a new line of attack and have told the Treasury, Federal Reserve and other regulators to do more due diligence, according to a letter obtained on Thursday.

The letter raises questions about whether U.S. regulators are adequately following federal rule-making procedures such as reviewing public comments and conducting rigorous economic analyses of the rules' impact on the industry.

A failure to abide by these guidelines has in the past forced the Securities and Exchange Commission to backtrack on numerous rules. The issue could come up again under Dodd-Frank if industry groups decide to challenge regulators for weaknesses in their rule making.

"We are concerned that regulators are not allowing adequate time for meaningful public comment on their proposed rules," said the letter, which was addressed to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the heads of the Fed and market and banking regulators.

"We also believe that regulators are not conducting rigorous analyses of the costs and benefits of their rules and the effects those rules could have on the economy," said the letter, signed by the Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees the implementation of Dodd-Frank.

The letter was dated February 15 and sent the same week Republicans on the committee voiced concerns about short public comment periods and the quality of cost-benefit analyses.

In short, the Republicans are back to complaining that government is doing too much, just like they did during the PPACA debate.  Not enough public comment, not enough cost-benefit analysis, not enough time to implement the rules.  At the same time, Republicans are making sure these regulators don't have the staff or resources they need to get the job done:

The SEC has been without a chief economist for 10 months. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, meanwhile, only just filled the chief economist spot in December following an 11-month vacancy.

"The failure to promptly fill these key positions suggests that economic analyses is not a high priority for our regulators," Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the panel, told regulators.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro and CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler have assured lawmakers in a series of hearings this week that the agencies are following federal rule-making procedures and having in-house economists weigh in on the cost-benefit analyses that are required.

"We are absolutely trying to grow" the number of economists on staff, which currently totals 30, Schapiro said, adding that the agency is aggressively recruiting a chief economist.

Kind of hard to do when Republicans are proposing to cut financial regulators' budget this year by billions and to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau completely.  Republicans don't want anyone taking too close a look at Wall Street.  That's what Wall Street is paying the Republicans to make happen, and they have unlimited billions to see it through.