Jindal, Reconfigured

Louisiana wingnut Gov. Bobby Jindal continues to try to pretend he's a "moderate" with this week's op-ed on birth control in the WSJ.

Let’s ask the question: Why do women have to go see a doctor before they buy birth control? There are two answers. First, because big government says they should, even though requiring a doctor visit to get a drug that research shows is safe helps drive up health-care costs. Second, because big pharmaceutical companies benefit from it. They know that prices would be driven down if the companies had to compete in the marketplace once their contraceptives were sold over the counter.

So at present we have an odd situation. Thanks to President Obama and the pro-choice lobby, women can buy the morning-after pill over the counter without a prescription, but women cannot buy oral contraceptives over the counter unless they have a prescription. Contraception is a personal matter—the government shouldn’t be in the business of banning it or requiring a woman’s employer to keep tabs on her use of it. If an insurance company or those purchasing insurance want to cover birth control, they should be free to do so. If a consumer wants to buy birth control on her own, she should be free to do so.

Now, this is where it sounds like Jindal makes no small amount of sense, making the fiscal conservative argument that making contraception as widely available as possible is one of the best preventative health care cost reduction measures you can take.  (Kids?  Expensive.) But as Irin Carmon explains, Jindal has no clue what he's talking about because his facts are all garbage.

At first glance, this seems like giving bipartisan credit where it’s due, until you realize that many on Jindal’s side erroneously equate with abortion the high dose of hormonal birth control pills taken up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. To those attuned to this particular dog-whistle, Jindal is implying President Obama and “the pro-choice lobby” are conspiring to make it easier for women to “abort” (by which they mean blocking an hours-old fertilized egg from implantation, which the morning after pill has never been shown to do) than to prevent. To most everyone else, it just seems like a twist of ridiculous government bureaucracy, and Jindal gets to have it both ways without conceding that the main opposition to emergency contraception access comes from his own camp.

And Jindal conveniently doesn’t mention the fact that young people under 17 are unable to access emergency contraception without a prescription, despite the fact that the sooner you take it, the more effective it is. This was first due to a politicized handling of medicine under Bush, and more recently a politicized handling of medicine under Obama, both of them acquiescing to the hysteria of social conservatives like Jindal. Which brings us to another pressing issue that Jindal addresses only indirectly: Minors’ access to contraception. He writes, “Parents who believe, as I do, that their teenage children shouldn’t be involved in sex at all do not deserve ridicule.” That’s true, but do they deserve the ability to deny their “teenage children” access to birth control if they’re going to have sex anyway? He says these over-the-counter rules should apply to women over 18, despite the fact that the ACOG recommendations didn’t say that at all.

My question is how long Jindal's "moderate position" lasts (and it's really just more wingnut code speak anyway).  My guess is "until the next time he gets dinged by the forced birth crowd" for not being misogynist enough.  Let's remember, that while Jindal isn't a complete Neanderthal on contraception, he is very much so on education, cutting libraries to the bone across the state and trying to funnel taxpayer money to religious zealots in school.

Don't be fooled by the guy.  Jindal is just Romney without the millions (of dollars, he still has the millions of policy positions).

Michigan's War On Women

While nearly all of the attention on the Great Lakes State involves the right-to-screw-unions legislation passed by the GOP last week, the Republican-controlled legislature this week is working on passing a couple of anti-choice, anti-woman bills that GOP Gov. Rick Snyder is expected to sign, making getting abortion in the state one of the toughest and most obnoxious roads in the country.

One bill passed the Senate, 27-10, and calls for more stringent licensing of abortion clinics; the other, passed out of the House insurance committee into the full House, would allow health care providers to refuse service based on moral objections, religious reasons or matters of conscience. 

That's awesome.  Docs can say "no, I refuse to treat you because you're a slut" for example.  There's your hypocritical Hippocratic Oath.

The bill that regulates clinic operations would:
• Require abortion clinics to be licensed and adhere to the same standards and regulations as free-standing surgical clinics. Most in Michigan are not licensed that way now.
• Prohibit a doctor from performing an abortion until determining that a woman hasn’t been coerced into the procedure.
• Dictate how to dispose of fetal remains. 

And of course the goal here is to make it impossible for the clinics to ever be able to meet the requirements, thus putting them out of  business.

2010's backlash against Obama and the Democrats who "failed" continues to have long lasting effects.  Will any lessons be learned for 2014?

StupidiNews!

• Some 22 Chinese schoolchildren in Henan Province were injured in a knife attack by a 36-year old village man, according to China's official news agency.
• The EU's Human Rights Court has ruled that the CIA tortured a wrongfully detained German man in 2004 while Macedonian police did nothing to stop the violent interrogation.
• A North Carolina judge has commuted the sentenced of three black death row inmates to life in prison after finding racial bias resulted in a death penalty sentence.
• Swiss banking giant UBS is facing more than $1 billion in fines for its role in manipulating the Libor interest rate over several years.
• Google Maps is back on the iPhone with a new app finally giving iOS 6 users a choice over the much maligned Apple Maps utility.

Last Call

And Johnny Volcano and Team Volcano score a win, finally forcing Ambassador Susan Rice to withdraw her nomination.  President Obama's remarks:

Today, I spoke to Ambassador Susan Rice, and accepted her decision to remove her name from consideration for Secretary of State. For two decades, Susan has proven to be an extraordinarily capable, patriotic, and passionate public servant. As my Ambassador to the United Nations, she plays an indispensable role in advancing America’s interests. Already, she has secured international support for sanctions against Iran and North Korea, worked to protect the people of Libya, helped achieve an independent South Sudan, stood up for Israel’s security and legitimacy, and served as an advocate for UN reform and the human rights of all people. I am grateful that Susan will continue to serve as our Ambassador at the United Nations and a key member of my cabinet and national security team, carrying her work forward on all of these and other issues. I have every confidence that Susan has limitless capability to serve our country now and in the years to come, and know that I will continue to rely on her as an advisor and friend. While I deeply regret the unfair and misleading attacks on Susan Rice in recent weeks, her decision demonstrates the strength of her character, and an admirable commitment to rise above the politics of the moment to put our national interests first. The American people can be proud to have a public servant of her caliber and character representing our country.

Translation:  you win this round, McCain.  I'm still President.

The plan to force the President to nominate John Kerry in order to force a special election to get Scott Brown into office continues apace. I guarantee you only Kerry will be allowed through the gauntlet now.

So much fail.  And to be certain, putting "that one" in his place must feel really good to old, bitter, awful McCain.

Rice's explanation is here:

This was the right call, for four reasons.

First, my commitment to public service is rooted in the belief that our nation’s interests must be put ahead of individual ones. I’ve devoted my life to serving the United States and trying to mend our imperfect world. That’s where I want to focus my efforts, not on defending myself against baseless political attacks.

Second, I deeply respect Congress’s role in our system of government. After the despicable terrorist attacks that took the lives of four colleagues in Benghazi, our government must work through serious questions and bring the perpetrators to justice. We must strengthen security at our diplomatic posts and improve our intelligence in a volatile Middle East. Accomplishing these goals is far more important than political fights or personal attacks.

Third, the American people expect us to come together to keep our nation safe. U.S. leadership abroad is and always has been strengthened when we transcend partisan differences on matters of national security. America is seriously weakened when politics come first. If any good can come out of the experience of the past few months, I hope that it will be a renewed focus on the business of the American people — and a renewed insistence that the process of selecting potential candidates for high national security office be treated in the best bipartisan traditions of our country.

Finally, I have a great job. It’s been my highest honor to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. I’m proud that President Obama has restored our global stature, refocused on the greatest threats to our security and advanced our values around the world.

And so I fully support her decision. 

Meanwhile, John McCain's legacy now consists entirely of convincing the world that Sarah Palin was one of the most qualified women on Earth, and that Susan Rice wasn't.

Please proceed, GOP senators.

State Of Embarrassment

South Carolina continues to be the state that just quite hasn't figured out we're all laughing at you, not with you.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Thursday responded to Stephen Colbert's interest in filling outgoing Sen. Jim DeMint's seat. Haley's Facebook page posted: "Mr. Colbert, clearly a whole lot of people felt you needed a second look for U.S. Senate, and because I believe in doing my full due diligence ... this is what our vetting process came back with."

Oh, this is a good use of taxpayer money should be fun, right?

Stephen Colbert

I thought the Official SC State Amphibian was Lindsey Graham in a wet suit.  Go figure.

If It's Thursday, It Must Be Time To Cut Taxes On The Rich

The Wall Street Journal is complaining that taxes are just too darn high, and if President Obama doesn't lower them on the super-rich and especially on corporations, why we'll just have to cut all your hours to part-time status, peons.

High tax rates—on both labor income and consumption—reduce the incentive to work by making consumption more expensive relative to leisure, for example. The incentive to produce goods for the market is particularly depressed when tax revenue is returned to households either as government transfers or transfers-in-kind—such as public schooling, police and fire protection, food stamps, and health care—that substitute for private consumption.

In the 1950s, when European tax rates were low, many Western Europeans, including the French and the Germans, worked more hours per capita than did Americans. Over time, tax rates that affect earnings and consumption rose substantially in much of Western Europe. Over the decades, these have accounted for much of the nearly 30% decline in work hours in several European countries—to 1,000 hours per adult per year today from around 1,400 in the 1950s.

Changes in tax rates are also important in accounting for the increase in the number of hours worked in the Netherlands in the late 1980s, following the enactment of lower marginal income-tax rates.
In Japan, the tax rate on earnings and consumption is about the same as it is in the U.S., and the average Japanese worker in 2007 (the last nonrecession year) worked 1,363 hours—or about the same as the 1,336 worked by the average American.

All this has major implications for the U.S. Consider California, which just enacted higher rates of income and sales tax. The top California income-tax rate will be 13.3%, and the top sales-tax rate in some areas may rise as high as 10%. Combine these state taxes with a top combined federal rate of 44%, plus federal excise taxes, and the combined marginal tax rate for the highest California earners is likely to be around 60%—as high as in France, Germany and Italy. 

Except it's not, because of loopholes and deductions (and the lie about the top rate being 44% when effectively loopholes make it half that) and we're not living in socialist anything.

It's the same tired dogma of the Norquist age:  we can never raise taxes ever on anyone for any reason, because if we did, we'd have revenue enough to actually make government work.  Under no circumstances can that be allowed to happen on the GOP's watch.

It's like the last two presidential elections and the financial crisis of 2008 never happened.

StupidiNews!

• Japan scrambled fighter jets to patrol a group of disputed islands as Chinese aircraft were spotted overhead, escalating the international disagreement between the two countries.
• The US Air Force's new robotic space vehicle, the X-37B, is apparently on a nine-month mission orbiting the Earth before it will land in September.
• Just hours after the US formally recognized a coalition of Syrian rebels as the rightful government in the war-torn country, the group criticized the US for naming part of the coalition as terrorists.
• Bank repossessions of foreclosed homes are on the rise as lenders are now working through the backlog of paperwork and new regulations.
• The FBI has arrested ten in connection with an $850 million computer virus scheme spread through Facebook links.

Last Call

Gentlemen!  Quickly!  To the Bernanke National Heliport!

The Federal Reserve took a genuinely unexpected step Wednesday afternoon when it announced it would significantly enhance its current monetary easing program. The Fed, for the first time, committed to keeping monetary policy loose until the economy crosses precise thresholds — specifically, an unemployment rate below 6.5 percent or a inflation above 2.5 percent.

It also upped its monthly asset purchases by spending an additional $45 billion a month on Treasuries.

Only one member of the Fed Open Market Committee dissented. The significantly more aggressive policy is designed to provide businesses greater incentive to invest, and comes, perhaps not coincidentally, as Congress nears a deadline past which taxes will increase and spending will be cut to the tune of about $50 billion a month.

That $45 billion in treasuries is on top of the $40 billion per month in mortgage-backed securities announced in September.

In other words, the Fed is moving to counteract the fiscal slope before it happens, which means we should probably stop panicking about it in general, and that Republicans have even less leverage now.

Things are looking up.

Terminated Mitt And The Valley Of The Jeep Bleats

PolitiFact lamely attempts to redeem itself by chucking their 2012 Lie of the Year millstone around the neck of the Country's Biggest Loser.  (Link to Balloon Juice, because PolitiFact can kiss my ass.)

It was a lie told in the critical state of Ohio in the final days of a close campaign—that Jeep was moving its U.S. production to China. It originated with a conservative blogger, who twisted an accurate news story into a falsehood. Then it picked up steam when the Drudge Report ran with it. Even though Jeep’s parent company gave a quick and clear denial, Mitt Romney repeated it and his campaign turned it into a TV ad.

And they stood by the claim, even as the media and the public expressed collective outrage against something so obviously false.

People often say that politicians don’t pay a price for deception, but this time was different: A flood of negative press coverage rained down on the Romney campaign, and he failed to turn the tide in Ohio, the most important state in the presidential election.

PolitiFact has selected Romney’s claim that Barack Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China” at the cost of American jobs as the 2012 Lie of the Year.

As John Cole remarks,

Virtually everything he said was a lie, so I am not sure how you choose one over the other.

Amen to that.  By the way, with Republicans now wanting steep cuts to Medicare on top of means testing it on top of voucherizing it, how's that 2011 Politifact Lie of the Year holding up, boys?

Jon Chait, High School High Reporter

Here's your daily dose of irony:  Jon Chait correctly calling out Politico's Village Cool Kids Club for its awfully insular chumminess...

The subject of the piece is Allen and VandeHei’s report that broad agreement exists on the correct policy agenda, as revealed to them through “conversations we have had over the past three months with top lawmakers, officials, their senior aides and the CEOs who advise and lobby all of them.” The story proceeds to describe the obviously sensible agenda agreed upon by these sources: It is vital to reduce the deficit through tax reform and stingier entitlements, along with more free trade, resource extraction, and liberalized immigration.

This is far from the Randian paranoia that has spread among so many millionaires in the Obama agenda. Indeed, I find most of it fairly sensible as policy. What makes the consensus so astonishing, and even nauseating, is the degree to which those who share it show no awareness of their own insularity. Their shared sense of a smart economic growth strategy excludes any monetary or fiscal plan to bring down unemployment through higher consumer demand, a position that commands strong support among economists. Their list of ailments also excludes skyrocketing income inequality and out-of-control carbon emissions. (Though, at the end of a passage extolling the glorious possibility that American oil production will exceed that of Saudi Arabia within a decade, VandeHei and Allen do note, “No doubt, there are environmental concerns, especially for drinking water.” Well, yes. Also for the future of the human race.)

...while Chait whistles past the graveyard of his own chummy, insular piece last March of how Obama failed liberalism so badly in 2011 by extending the unemployment benefits and payroll tax cut (and putting the House GOP in its current bind) that he got re-elected by liberals, the cad.  I pointed Chait's nonsense out back then:

Chait argues that President Obama wanting a deal -- any deal, mind you -- led him to treat the GOP as good faith partners when they were clearly not.  Republicans, he goes on to say, were going to screw POTUS and the country no matter what Obama did.  This is where Chait's argument turns into purist whining:  There was nothing President Obama could have done that would have changed the outcome of the GOP screwing us over (indeed, the GOP is now signaling that it will simply ignore the debt deal), and at the same time he didn't do enough to change the outcome.  It's just meaningless stupidity, brought about by the "liberal" Washington Post unloading this hit piece on the President, and Chait absolutely takes the bait, re-fighting the same arguments we had in 2010 and 2011 about "but if Obama had done THIS and LISTENED TO HOW SMART I AM..." five minutes after saying there was nothing he could have done.

Funny how that works, Jon.  There's really not too much difference between you and Politico on that issue.  Check a mirror next time you want to complain that the inside baseball game is turned up too loud.

StupidiNews!

• A masked gunman went on a rampage in a suburban mall in Clackamas, Oregon last night, killing 2 and critically wounding another before turning the gun on himself.
• Sitar composer, father of pop star Norah Jones, and Indian music legend, Ravi Shankar, is dead from upper respiratory and heart failure at the age of 92.
• The White House and House Republicans have traded new fiscal slope offers, slightly closer in agreement than last week, but still oceans apart.
• The success of the "50 Shades of Grey" book trilogy has spurred a boom in adult toys for couples this holiday season.
• The European Union has finally agreed to a common patent system for member nations, but there are still several barriers to implementation.

Last Call

Greg Sargent figures that labor activists and unions can still win in Michigan.

Republicans have tried to protect the law from going before the voters by attaching an appropriation to it; spending bills can’t be overturned by legislative referendum in Michigan. But union operatives think there is another mechanism by which the law can be challenged. According to one good government group’s analysis of the state constitution, there exists the option of the “statutory initiative,” which would be forced by the collecting of signatures equal to at least eight percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.

Will unions and Michigan Democrats avail themselves of this option? Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the labor-funded Workers’ Voice, which played a big role in the Ohio and Wisconsin labor wars, tells me it’s being seriously considered. “The Michigan Constitution allows two other ways to let the people decide this issue on the ballot, and whether it’s one of those options or the 2014 Governor’s election itself, Michiganders will be heard loud and clear,” Vale says. (There may also be another referendum option as well.)

The idea here is this: If such a tactic can force a vote on the “right to work” law, Governor Snyder will be heading into reelection in 2014 up against a heavily energized union base, a ton of money pumped into the state by national unions — even as there’s a major pro-collective bargaining initiative on the ballot. Of course, if this happens, major money from the right will flow into the state, too.

Now, to be clear, the major unions may decide against this route — or it may not work. But if they do opt for it, and if it does work, you could see another extended showdown similar to the ones in Wisconsin and Ohio — still another nationally funded clash over the broader fate of organized labor. Stay tuned.

Here's hoping he's right.  If labor throws in the towel in Michigan of all states, it's over.

Too Big To Prosecute

More on that nearly $2 billion HSBC bank settlement over money laundering from Andrew Ross Sorkin at the NY Times:

Behind the scenes, authorities debated for months the advantages and perils of a criminal indictment against HSBC.

Some prosecutors at the Justice Department’s criminal division and the Manhattan district attorney’s office wanted the bank to plead guilty to violations of the federal Bank Secrecy Act, according to the officials with direct knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The law requires financial institutions to report any cash transaction of $10,000 or more and to bring any dubious activity to the attention of regulators.

Given the extent of the evidence against HSBC, some prosecutors saw the charge as a healthy compromise between a settlement and a harsher money-laundering indictment. While the charge would most likely tarnish the bank’s reputation, some officials argued that it would not set off a series of devastating consequences.

A money-laundering indictment, or a guilty plea over such charges, would essentially be a death sentence for the bank. Such actions could cut off the bank from certain investors like pension funds and ultimately cost it its charter to operate in the United States, officials said.

Despite the Justice Department’s proposed compromise, Treasury Department officials and bank regulators at the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency pointed to potential issues with the aggressive stance, according to the officials briefed on the matter. When approached by the Justice Department for their thoughts, the regulators cautioned about the effect on the broader economy.

In other words,  even prosecuting HSBC could cause another financial collapse, so that's simply not an option when a bank of HSBC's size breaks the law.

Does anyone else think that might be a problem?

War On Christmas, War On Homelessness

Here's some sobering news on the commercialization of holiday season:




Ending homelessness in the US would be the same cost as 5 years of oil industry subsidies, or about 80% of one year's worth of what Americans spend on Christmas decorations.

Of course, that's a fraction of ending the Bush-era capital gains tax cuts, as you can see.  Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, as they say.

StupidiNews!

• A federal judge has ruled that North Carolina's new "Choose Life" license plates are unconstitutional without the state making a pro-choice alternative available.
• A reprogrammed HIV virus designed to seek and destroy cancer cells has researchers excited as a young girl has been given the treatment and eliminated her terminal leukemia.
• Polls show voters want a fiscal cliff slope deal, but that they reject both higher taxes on all Americans and cutting spending on social safety net programs.
• HSBC, Europe's largest bank, will pay nearly $2 billion to settle a money laundering probe with the US Department of Justice over transactions with sanctioned nations like Iran.
• Google avoided $2 billion in global taxes in 2011 by shifting international operations or a Bermuda tax haven.