Last Call For The GOP Big Tent

Benjy Sarlin, over at his new MSNBC.com digs, discusses the GOP view on immigration, and the growing backlash against Latinos that goes something like "All we have to do is increase white voter turnout by being a bunch of nativist pricks."

This will probably sound a little odd if you were watching TV on election night 2012. Romney won 59% of the white vote in exit polls, better than President Bush’s 58% in 2004. Unfortunately for Romney, the white share of the electorate declined from 79.2% to 73.7 % over the same period. The result: Obama won by an even bigger margin than Bush did thanks to blowout margins with minorities.

But conservative commentators are convincing themselves they can find a few million more whites tucked between the couch cushions–at least enough for one more election. Two columnists have been particularly influential in this regard. Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics has argued that census data shows about 5 million mostly poor and rural white voters were “projected” to vote in 2012 based on population growth and past turnout but didn’t show up to the polls. Byron York, a columnist at the Washington Examiner, published a related piece noting that Romney would have lost even if he had racked up a majority of Latino voters.

“Recent reports suggest as many as 5 million white voters simply stayed home on Election Day,” York wrote in May. “If they had voted at the same rate they did in 2004, even with the demographic changes since then, Romney would have won.”

The problem is there’s no way Romney would have won all 5 million of those whites, so Obama’s lead would have held. But if Obama had failed to replicate his 2008 performance with minority voters and Romney had matched Bush’s 2004 performance with whites, the GOP could have narrowly prevailed. This was the exact scenario Romney was shooting for.

So yes, expect Republicans to be even more racists towards minorities over the next 41 months.

Cash In, Kerry

Jeffrey Goldberg, over at Bloomberg, makes the least courageous pundit call ever: that Secretary of State John Kerry is wasting his time trying to negotiate anything with Israel and the Palestinians (just like pretty much every other US Secretary of State.)

The delusion at hand is that Kerry will succeed where numerous secretaries of state have failed, and succeed in what might be the most inauspicious moment in years to start new negotiations: The Middle East is erupting all around Israel, which makes even centrist and some left-leaning Israelis fear the idea of tangible territorial concessions; the Palestinian Authority is weaker than ever; the two territories that would make up the future state of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza) are divided between the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Hamas and the more moderate Fatah; and the Israeli Cabinet is under the de facto control of the settlement movement, which continues to expand its holdings on the West Bank.

But maybe I’m just a cynic. I called Ari Shavit, Israel’s leading columnist and a man who very much wants to see a Palestinian state created on the West Bank, to ask him if my bleakness was unjustified. “I’m just this moment putting the Champagne bottles in the fridge,” he said. “I expect to open them shortly. We’re all going to have special permission from the Muslim Brotherhood to drink Champagne.”

Shavit’s withering sarcasm wasn’t matched by contempt for Kerry, though. Like many Israelis, Shavit has a strange kind of respect for Kerry’s quixotic efforts. “Kerry is a decent, noble American trying to bring peace to a tormented land and a troubled region, and I salute him for his benign intentions and commitment and energy,” Shavit said. “But that said, I think this good will and energy and political capital is being invested in a course of action that resembles too much the previous attempts that have failed. I think the right approach is to learn from the failures of the past and to do something practical that relates to the realities on the ground rather than reach for something that is totally unrealistic. There is no serious Israeli or Palestinian who thinks that the Kerry approach would work.” 

Even I've got to say that with Egypt's government collapsing into a possible military coup in real time, that John Kerry has much, much bigger problems on his hands than another useless attempt at shuttle diplomacy right now.

The good news is he's basically next door to Egypt right now as the deadline for Morsi's resignation quickly approaches, so perhaps the most obvious benefit is that American diplomacy is on the ground where it actually might be able to do some good.

We'll see.

The Reality In Ohio Now

Gov. Kasich's budget and abortion bill is now law, and here's what Ohio women now face from "small government conservatives".

The Republican Party continues to hack away at reproductive rights around the country--and Ohio is the latest place to be targeted by anti-abortion forces. Governor John Kasich signed the state budget Sunday night--and included in the budget are a number of measures that would restrict abortion rights in the state. It was signed over the objections of protesters who descended on the state legislature.

“Wait until the first women dies; wait until the first doctor leaves Ohio,”warned one protester.

But the anti-abortion group Ohio Right to Life praised the legislation. “It took great compassion and courage for our governor and pro-life legislature to stand up to the abortion industry that blatantly pressured them,” said Mike Gonidakis, the president of the group.

Compassion?  Here's your "compassion", courtesy of the anti-choice movement:

• Gag orders on rape clinics counseling abortion options.
• Forced trans-abdominal ultrasounds.
• Planned Parenthood loses all state funding, $1.4 million, and that's being given to religious "crisis pregnancy centers" instead, who often provide false medical information about abortions.
• Clinics cannot transfer patients post-abortion to public hospitals.
• Doctors are forced to reveal how much money they make from providing abortion services, and must counsel women on adoption and crisis pregnancy options.

The virtual (and in some cases, actual) criminalization of failure to birth a child after pregnancy continues in the US.  And let's not forget that the bill redefines the legal status of "pregnancy" and "fetus" to mean that IUDs are now technically abortions, meaning any woman who wants to get or keep an IUD now has to face all these restrictions, including the waiting period, counseling, and an ultrasound because they are "pregnant" under state law.   

It's entirely conceivable that the morning after pill (Plan B) and even birth control medication could qualify as "ending a pregnancy" under these legal definitions, meaning -- you guessed it -- you'd be required to go through all the ridiculous hoops for abortions just to get Plan B or the pill.

And Ohio Republicans tacked all this on to the budget without a single minute of debate.  And "moderate" Gov. John Kasich, who could have line-item vetoed any or all of these provisions, let the entire raft of them through without comment.

This is your modern GOP, folks.  They despise women to the point of criminalizing them.

This is the reality in Ohio right now.

StupidiNews!

• Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi faces a Wednesday deadline from the Egyptian military to meet protester's demands and step down or face "intervention".
• Kansas Republican Tim Huelskamp and 28 other House GOP members are introducing legislation to create a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
• Lawyers representing four Gitmo detainees want a federal court to end the practice of force-feeding those held at the facility and refusing to eat out of protest.
• Apple is moving to trademark the term "iWatch", leading to speculation the company has a smart wristwatch on the way.
• Former Facebook partners Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss are now leading a $20 million effort to sell shares in their Bitcoin holdings.

Last Call For Unopposed Turtles

Mitch The Turtle finally has a challenger:  Democrat and current Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes announced her candidacy this afternoon for the US Senate.

Lundergan Grimes, 34, said she's "no stranger" to being an underdog and took a shot at McConnell over recent ads mocking her for taking her time to decide on a campaign bid. She said the five-term Republican's ads are "based out of fear" of losing his power in Washington.

She also drew a generational and gender distinction between herself and McConnell, 71, who was first elected to the Senate in 1984.

Lundergan Grimes stressed that she was Kentucky's "only female constitutional officer" and "the youngest secretary of state across the nation that is a female."

"Kentucky is tired of a senior senator who has lost touch with Kentucky issues, voters and their values," she said. 

If you're wondering about the date, it's July 1:  the beginning of a new political campaign fundraising quarter.   Very pragmatic, our Alison.  Very much the daughter of former KY Dem party boss Jerry Lundergan:  it's all about the big checks with the zeroes at the end.

On the other hand, Grimes is right about Mitch the Turtle:  he's been in the Senate for going on 30 years now, and it's time for him to go home.

"I am no stranger to being an underdog. His ads are based out of fear of losing his 30-year grip on power," Lundergan said when asked about McConnell's skills as a candidate. "This Kentucky woman does not believe that the voters of Kentucky will be fooled that easily."

Democrats believe McConnell to be vulnerable, citing polling that shows him to be unpopular in his home state. Facing a difficult Senate map for 2014, with few opportunities for offense, Democrats are touting Kentucky as a possible pickup.

It's going to be a long, ugly battle, but we need this seat.  I said months ago if Lundergan Grimes ran, she'd have my support, and so that point has been reached.  She's going to need the help:  corrupt Mitch the Turtle has $13 million in the bank ready to smear her.

New tag: Alison Lundergan Grimes.

The Company Store Of The 21st Century

Welcome to life as a wage slave in America, folks:  the newest indignity of wringing every buck out of those making the federal minimum wage is companies passing payroll costs for their own paychecks to the employee, by forcing them to get paid through bank-issued debit cards with expensive transaction fees.

For these largely hourly workers, paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay. 

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards. 

These fees can take such a big bite out of paychecks that some employees end up making less than the minimum wage once the charges are taken into account, according to interviews with consumer lawyers, employees, and state and federal regulators. 

Devonte Yates, 21, who earns $7.25 an hour working a drive-through station at a McDonald’s in Milwaukee, says he spends $40 to $50 a month on fees associated with his JPMorgan Chase payroll card. 

“It’s pretty bad,” he said. “There’s a fee for literally everything you do.” 

Certain transactions with the Chase pay card are free, according to a fee schedule. 

Many employees say they have no choice but to use the cards: some companies no longer offer common payroll options like ordinary checks or direct deposit. 

So after taxes we're talking about people making $200 a week and then having to fork over about 5% to the bank for fees.   Even if you have a bank account, forcing employees to only be paid through these cards is an outright scam, and all it does is enrich the banks at the employee's expense.  Making these cards optional is one thing, but required?  That's awful.

Yet another way we rip off the Americans least able to afford it.  But let's cut taxes on the rich, i'm sure that will fix the problem, right?

The Kroog Versus The Dickensians

Paul Krugman reminds us that North Carolina dropping itself out of federal employment benefits because cuts to unemployment benefits were too steep to meet federal rules is just the latest example of the GOP theory that flogging the unemployed will magically create jobs.

So what’s going on here? Is it just cruelty? Well, the G.O.P., which believes that 47 percent of Americans are “takers” mooching off the job creators, which in many states is denying health care to the poor simply to spite President Obama, isn’t exactly overflowing with compassion. But the war on the unemployed isn’t motivated solely by cruelty; rather, it’s a case of meanspiritedness converging with bad economic analysis. 

In general, modern conservatives believe that our national character is being sapped by social programs that, in the memorable words of Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, “turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” More specifically, they believe that unemployment insurance encourages jobless workers to stay unemployed, rather than taking available jobs. 

Is there anything to this belief? The average unemployment benefit in North Carolina is $299 a week, pretax; some hammock. So anyone who imagines that unemployed workers are deliberately choosing to live a life of leisure has no idea what the experience of unemployment, and especially long-term unemployment, is really like. Still, there is some evidence that unemployment benefits make workers a bit more choosy in their job search. When the economy is booming, this extra choosiness may raise the “non-accelerating-inflation” unemployment rate — the unemployment rate at which inflation starts to rise, inducing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and choke off economic expansion. 

All of this is, however, irrelevant to our current situation, in which inflation is not a concern and the Fed’s problem is that it can’t get interest rates low enough. While cutting unemployment benefits will make the unemployed even more desperate, it will do nothing to create more jobs — which means that even if some of those currently unemployed do manage to find work, they will do so only by taking jobs away from those currently employed. 

Ding ding ding!   Without actual job creation to make additional jobs for the unemployed to fill, it becomes a zero-sum game.  Republicans are well aware of this, for example, North Carolina's new unemployment laws means that until you are employed making at least the same income you were making when you initially received benefits before you are eligible again.  If you find a lower-paying job and then get laid off (even years later) you're screwed.

Republicans are basically making being poor such an impossible burden that people leave the state and become somebody else's problem.  It's a race to the bottom in the Austerity 500 and nobody wins.

StupidiNews!

• In Arizona, 19 firefighters were killed on Sunday near Phoenix when a wind-driven blaze left them trapped in a canyon, it's the largest loss of firefighter lives since 9/11.
• Thousands of Texans are expected to protest the opening of the state's third special legislative session to try to stop Republicans from passing strict anti-abortion laws.
• Millions of Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo and other cities to demand the resignation of President Mohammed Morsi on the one-year anniversary of his inauguration.
• An EU crackdown on Swiss banking secrecy is resulting in private banks submitting to mergers or even leaving the country altogether.
• Yahoo is pulling the plug on it Axis browser app, and retiring the 20-year old Altavista search engine.

It's Good To Be A Corporate King

If American businesses really are being "crushed by regulatory burdens" and "driven into uncompetitiveness by massive government overreach" it sure as hell isn't being reflected in CEO pay at America's largest corporations.   While real wages for workers went down again in 2012 and have never exceeded their 1972 peak, CEO pay jumped by double digit percentages in 2012 and are now substantially above where they were even at pre-2007 financial crisis levels.

WHEN we made our annual foray into the executive pay gold mine in April, chief executives’ earnings for 2012 showed what appeared to be muted growth on the year. The $14 million in median overall compensation received by the top 100 C.E.O.’s was just a 2.8 percent increase over 2011, the figures showed. 

Well, what a difference a few months and a larger pool of C.E.O.’s make. According to an updated analysis, the top 200 chief executives at public companies with at least $1 billion in revenue actually got a big raise last year, over all. The research, conducted for Sunday Business by Equilar Inc., the executive compensation analysis firm, found that the median 2012 pay package came in at $15.1 million — a leap of 16 percent from 2011.  

And it's not just CEOs making hundreds of times the wages of average employees, other top chief-level executives are pulling in huge salaries too.

Because the data shows only chief executives’ pay, it does not reveal how good it still is to be a prince. Brian Foley, an independent compensation consultant in White Plains, pointed out that the 2012 compensation of the No. 2 executives at some of these companies would have vaulted them to the top ranks on the C.E.O. roster. 

“The interesting thing is that there are people at these companies that make as much or more than other C.E.O.’s,” Mr. Foley said. “I’m sure it’s a case of ‘Look at what the C.E.O. has; I want more of that.’ “ 

Two things that shock me here.  One, there's at least 200 US companies with more than $1 billion in revenues each year.   At the top of the heap are companies like Apple, making hundreds of billions in revenue in a year.  That easily adds up to trillions in corporate revenues, and hundreds of billions in pure profit.

Second, the other officers at some of these massive corporations, the CFO, the COO, etc are making millions each year too, in some cases more than the CEOs of smaller corporations.  That's just nuts.

Republicans and Democrats aside, these guys are the real problem.  Did you get a 16% raise last year?

I didn't think so.

Zee Germans Are Pissed

While it's ridiculous to think that the NSA isn't listening in on our friends in Europe (and equally ridiculous to assume they're not doing the same) the recent NSA stories about checking up on our neighbors has provided the excuse for EU lawmakers to score some political points at the expense of the upcoming EU-US trade talks.

Senior European lawmakers say they are shocked at reports that U.S. intelligence agents bugged EU offices on both sides of the Atlantic.

The president of the European Parliament said he was "deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of U.S. authorities spying on EU offices" made in a report published Sunday by German news weekly Der Spiegel.

Martin Schulz said if the reports were confirmed "it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-U.S. relations."

Green Party leaders in the European Parliament, Rebecca Harms and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, called for an immediate investigation into reports published by Der Spiegel and suggested that further negotiations on a trans-Atlantic trade treaty be put on hold.

Given the domestic economic disaster brought on by continued EU austerity, having somebody else to slap around is a welcome relief for beleaguered European pols, and at the same time European opposition parties get to considerably raise the price tag of any trade deal with the US.  Politics is politics the world over at times.

We'll see what Germany wants in return for this, as they're still the big dog on the EU block, but I'm betting it's going to be substantial trade concessions from the US that are probably going to hurt jobs here.

Something to keep in mind when thinking about consequences.

Chris Hayes Couldn't Be More Naive On The GOP And Immigration

By now you're well aware of my feelings on immigration legislation as the Senate bill passed this week with 68 votes.  I absolutely want the Senate bill to pass the House, and that there's no way in hell it will as the House GOP will most likely fail to pass any legislation, leading to the bill's ignominious death (and the consequences of that for the GOP as they galvanize into the party of white privilege.)

One person who absolutely doesn't believe the GOP is this suicidal is MSNBC's Chris Hayes of All In.

Hayes believes that liberals like myself who think the House GOP will kill the bill are "supplying an excuse for the Republican caucus to do something inexcusable".  He believes Boehner's bluster is "staking out a negotiation position in which there's no wiggle room."  In fact, Hayes gets very close to saying that should the bill fail, liberals who bought into the narrative that it was doomed in the House to begin with are culpable for its failure.

To which I respond to Hayes's startling naivete with, of all things, Sarah Palin, who is now openly warning about a third party split if the GOP passes immigration reform.

The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican nominee for vice president responded to a Fox viewer’s Twitter question Saturday about the possibility of her and conservative commenter Mark Levin leaving the Republican Party and creating a new political group called the 'Freedom Party.'

Palin hinted that she is open to the thought of going independent and said that if the GOP continues to stray from its conservative roots, others in the party would do the same.

'I love the name of that party — the "Freedom Party,"' Palin replied. 'And if the GOP continues to back away from the planks in our platform, from the principles that built this party of Lincoln and Reagan, then yeah, more and more of us are going to start saying, "You know, what’s wrong with being independent," kind of with that libertarian streak that much of us have.

'In other words, we want government to back off and not infringe upon our rights. I think there will be a lot of us who start saying "GOP, if you abandon us, we have nowhere else to go except to become more independent and not enlisted in a one or the other private majority parties that rule in our nation, either a Democrat or a Republican."

So Chris, given John Boehner's  massive incompetence as House Speaker, which is more likely, a masterful compromise on the immigration bill, or a complete fold to the Sarah Palin Tea Party wing and killing the bill exactly like they did in 2006?  If this is the reaction to Boehner after he's staked out the position that the Senate bill is DOA, and that he'll be trying to only push piecemeal border security and E-Verify measures, what makes you think, given Boehner's complete inability to pass a Farm Bill that he can pull this off?

They will blow this.  It will be their fault.  They'll pay for it in 2014 and 2016.  The only question is what that eventual cost will be.

Last Call Before The Inevitability

The Prop 8 defendants shot down Wednesday are still trying to piss in the punchbowl, it seems.  They have filed an emergency petition with Justice Kennedy to stop same-sex marriages, just to piss everyone off.

The application argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Proposition 8 case is not yet “final,” so the stay must remain in place. The Supreme Court ordinarily does not issue its formally binding ruling – known as the “judgment” – in a case from a federal court of appeals until 25 days after it releases its “opinion.” Because the Court issued its opinion in the Proposition 8 case on June 26, it would by default not issue the judgment until Monday, July 22. (The 25th day is July 21, a Sunday.)
The principal point of that delay is to permit the losing party to prepare and submit a petition for rehearing to the Justices, though such petitions are as a practical matter never granted.

 The parties could ask the Supreme Court to expedite the release of the judgment. That is in fact what occurred last week in the “Baby Girl” Native American adoption case. After a request by the petitioner, the Court ordered the mandate issued in 7 days, rather than the usual 25.


Absent such a request, most observers expected that same-sex marriage in California (in the places in the State it did become available) would not begin again for roughly a month. Even if the court of appeals was not required as a matter of law to wait, that appeared to be the more measured and prudent course. But the Ninth Circuit acted more quickly, lifting the stay before the Supreme Court’s ruling became effective.

And this has apparently pissed off the God botherers.

Whether the emergency request to Justice Kennedy can succeed is unclear. But it is unlikely. As a formal matter, the Ninth Circuit did not put the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Proposition 8 case into effect prematurely. The Supreme Court held that the proponents of Proposition 8 could not file appeals in federal court. That ruling says nothing about imposing or lifting a stay on same-sex marriage. The court of appeals likely has the authority to act with respect to its own previously entered stay, which is a form of controlling its own docket. Although the court of appeals had previously stated that they stay would remain in effect until the Supreme Court’s ruling was final, it presumably can change its mind.

Put another way, before the Supreme Court issued its judgment the Ninth Circuit could not issue a new substantive ruling on Proposition 8′s constitutionality or the standing of the parties to appeal. The court of appeals lacked jurisdiction over those issues while the case was in the Supreme Court. But I am not aware of authority for the proposition that the court of appeals lacked the power to modify its own stay.

In other words, they're just being douchebags.  Here's hoping Justice Kennedy tells them to screw off.

Your Saturday Afternoon Nothing Can Possibly Beat This Ever

Ever.

EVER.

EV.  ER.

Down And Out In Carolina

Unemployed in the Tarheel State after Sunday?  Good luck getting any unemployment benefits at all:  Gov. Pat McCrory and the GOP have all but destroyed jobless benefits for 170,000 North Carolinians with the state's draconian unemployment law taking effect July 1.

A new law taking effect in North Carolina over the weekend will cut unemployment benefits for new claims and disqualify the state from receiving federal funds for the long-term jobless.

According the The Associated Press, lawmakers passed the bill in February to accelerate the repayment of $2.5 billion federal debt by cutting jobless benefits and increasing taxes on businesses. Because the bill cuts benefits to those who are newly unemployed, the state also disqualified itself from receiving federally funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC).

The U.S. Labor Department has estimated that about 170,000 out-of-work North Carolinians stand to lose $700 million in EUC payments.

Under the law passed by North Carolina Republicans, qualifying for state benefits will become more difficult and the payments will be cut from a maximum weekly benefit of $535 to $350. The benefit period will be shortened from six months to no more than five months, and in some cases only three months.

Hope you don't lose your job in NC where you were making more than $350 a week.  You know, more than $8.75 an hour.   Because that's all you're getting from Pat McCrory.  And because those cuts bring the state's maximum benefit down to below the poverty line, the federal government won't kick in a dime.

After all, if you really needed more than $8.75 an hour, you'd go get a job, you scumbag.  And I'm sure the money companies are saving on unemployment insurance will be used to create new jobs for the unemployed instead of being pocketed as profits.  Surely.

Right?

Enjoy your austerity regime, North Carolina.  You voted for it.  Now you're getting it.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• A record heat wave is scorching the California high desert as well as Arizona and Nevada, with temps in some area approaching 130 degrees.
• New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie has blocked Medicare expansion under the Affordable Care Act, leaving hundreds of thousands without affordable health care.
• At least four are dead, including one American, as protests over Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi continue in Cairo.
• Alabama's TRAP law designed to shut down abortion clinics where doctors didn't have admitting privileges to local hospitals has been blocked by a federal judge.
• The International Energy Agency's latest estimates find renewable green energy sources will take over as the world's second-largest source of energy by 2018.