Last Call: North Carolina's Race To The Bottom

More austerity on the way for North Carolina's kids, because children are the future.  The dumb, uneducated, more easily-manipulated future, that is, as NC House Republicans slash free pre-K eligibility so they don't have to cut funding.

Under current law, a 4-year-old is considered at-risk and eligible for the program if his or her family makes less than 75 percent of the state's median wage, or about $39,000 a year for a family of three. Children are also eligible if they have an active-duty military parent, limited English proficiency, developmental problems or chronic illness.

More than 60,000 children a year in North Carolina are eligible for the program under the current guidelines.

The proposal would reduce the family income threshold to the federal poverty level, about $19,500 for a family of three. Children with limited English proficiency or chronic illness also would no longer be automatically eligible.

"We working on putting early childhood education back in track in this state," said sponsor Rep. Justin Burr, R-Stanly. "We need to focus on children who are most at risk."

To recap, $20,000 a year for a family of three is just too much income for pre-K education programs.  You clearly middle-class takers and moochers need to pull your weight, right?

Besides, government shouldn't be involved in education.  That's for churches and FOX News.

Some Men Just Want To Watch The World Burn

Republicans don't care about governing anymore. They just want the country to self-destruct. They want America so sick and tired of constant GOP obstruction, obstruction that at this point will cost lives, that they think you'll just throw up your hands and let them have what's left, so that they can finish sacking the treasury.

The top two Republicans in Congress informed President Obama on Thursday that they will refuse to fulfill their duty under the Affordable Care Act to recommend members of a new board with the power to contain Medicare spending.

It’s a dramatic power-play driven by the explosive partisan politics of Obamacare and with potentially important implications for federal health care policy.

In a letter to President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) noted their original opposition to Obamacare, reiterated their intent to repeal it entirely, and declared that they would not make any appointments to the Independent Payment Advisory Board.

So no, at this point they just don't care anymore and are confident you won't either.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee was scheduled to vote today at 9:15 on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to be the next EPA Administrator. Despite the fact that she has answered more than a thousand of the committee’s questions, Senate Republicans announced just before the hearing that they would be boycotting the vote, denying the committee quorum and postponing the confirmation hearing.

The committee rules require that at least two members of the minority party be present during a vote. Not a single Republican bothered to show up.

I keep hearing about how my generation simply doesn't believe government will ever work again.  We don't trust either party, we don't trust government, we don't trust the process of governing.  Chris Hayes's book, Twilight of the Elites, sums up this worldview, the endpoint of "Both sides do it!" politics.

Both sides do not do it.  One side, the GOP, does.  In this case, I'll let Alfred explain.

Alfred:  With respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man that you don't fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.

Bruce Wayne:  So why steal them?

Alfred: Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Indeed.  In this case, it's our elected leaders in the Republican Party. They want to watch the world burn.  If the Millennials (and the youngest Gen X folks like myself), those in our 20's and 30's, just give up on the political process and accept the structural screwing of America as standard operating procedure, they win.

And a lot of us have given up.  Some of us want to watch that world burn too, we think it'll cleanse the country of the tea party jagoffs.  It'll only make them kings.  It's happening at the state level right now, and as long as we continue to think voting is for suckers and there's no difference between the parties, Republicans will continue to take everything from us.  Yeah, some Democrats too.  But at some point you have to believe in the system, or you've got nothing.  Elections od Republicans versus Democrats will go on anyway, and one will win.

If you don't make the choice, it will be made for you.

Another Great Nate Debate: Sanford And Run

Nate Silver makes the argument that Mark Sanford's various scandals did cost him dearly in this week's special election, just not enough to actually cost him the race.

It would be wrong to conclude that voters did not punish Mr. Sanford at all for his extramarital affair. In fact, a reasonable number of voters did appear to hold it against him. Last November, Mitt Romney won South Carolina’s First District by 18 percentage points. Since Mr. Romney lost the election to Barack Obama by roughly four percentage points nationwide, that means the First District is about 22 percentage points more Republican than the country as a whole.

That's an interesting way of looking at how partisan a district is as a whole, but it is a reasonable benchmark with applicable data germane to the district in question.  Charlie Cook's PVI number for the district is R+11, so by that math, Sanford's indiscretions cost him next to nothing since Sanford won by 9, just a 2-point hit.  Nate has other evidence to back up that 13-point figure, as he always does.

Mr. Sanford defeated his Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, by nine percentage points instead – so one quick-and-dirty estimate is that Mr. Sanford’s personal history cost him a net of 13 percentage points. It just was not enough to flip the election result in such a conservative district.

As it happens, this 13-percentage-point penalty almost exactly matches an academic analysis on how much voters hold sex scandals against candidates. A 2011 paper by Nicholas Chad Long of St. Edward’s University, which examined United States senators running for re-election from 1974 to 2008, estimated that scandals involving immoral behavior lowered the share of the vote going to the incumbent by 6.5 percentage points.

Which results in a total 13-point swing if there are only 2 candidates in the race (and none of the 6.5 points are going to a third party.)   That makes the case that Nate is correct on the impact.

Either way, the reason Sanford won was because he ran in an overwhelmingly Republican district created by gerrymandering and Tuesday night proved there are plenty of Republican voters willing to overlook any scandal to avoid voting for a Democrat, a far worse crime in their eyes than a question of character.

I can't think of a better example of what pundits mean by a "safe" district for a party:  there's basically no way the seat will change hands.  Keep in mind that for the vast majority of House seats, 80-85% of them, are this way for a reason (and yes, both parties do gerrymander, but only the party in charge in each state after the Census gets the benefit, which is why 2010 will hurt us for the next 4 House elections in 30+ states.)

Until more than 10% of House races are competitive, nothing will change.  Even in a "wave" election like 2010, the GOP picked up 63 seats, only about 15%.  But that's enough to all but assure they'll keep the House for the foreseeable future.

Oh, and long overdue tag:  Keep Calm And Trust Nate Silver.

StupidiNews!

• More than two weeks after the deadly factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, officials confirm the death toll has reached 1,000 and is still rising.
• The US State Department has ordered gunmaker Defense Distributed to take down plans for its gun made from plastic 3-D printed parts.
• Advocates of America's herds of wild horses are up in arms over Interior Department plans to pay ranchers to corral the animals and keep them in pastures.
• Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis testified before Congress that his city needs more surveillance of public places for safety.
• Blizzard Entertainment's latest issue involves an in-game gold duplication exploit in Diablo III and the game's real-world currency auction house remains closed as a result.

Last Call: The Great Gun Giveaway

Rep. Steve Stockman is back in the news (yes, the same nutjob wanting to impeach Obama over gun control and the same guy who's not smart enough to understand Twitter) with yet another example of his amazing partisan stupidity:

Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, is giving away a fre Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, which he wants you to grab “before Obama does.”

Oh good.

“Enter the drawing to win a FREE Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, almost impossible to find in stores and the number one firearm on the gun banners’ wish list!” Stockman writes on his website. “Winner drawn July 4, 2013.”

Same guy who tweeted this:

Our campaign bumper sticker: If babies had guns, they wouldn't be aborted. stockman2014.com #gosnell #tcot twitter.com/ReElectStockma…
— Rep. Steve Stockman (@ReElectStockman) April 12, 2013

Yeah, what a mensch, huh?  Now he's giving away an AR-15 because eff Obama.  I'm betting the winner doesn't get a background check as part of his or her prize, which is of course what the gun bill Democrats were trying to pass would have done. 

Republicans do things just to piss off liberals, minorities, women and gays and really that's all that matters to them.

Dinosaur Steve Does The Right Thing

Here in Kentucky, Gov. Steve "I'd be a Republican in any other state!" Beshear announced this afternoon that he will be expanding Medicaid under Obamacare, giving more than 300,000 Kentuckians access to health insurance through Medicaid and another 300,000 plus through the state's insurance exchange.  He laid out the case on his website, including some sobering facts:

Kentucky Ranks at the Bottom in Health Outcomes. Kentucky continues to rank at the bottom in most national health rankings. This includes 50th in smoking, 40th in obesity, 43rd in sedentary lifestyles, 41st in diabetes, 48th in poor mental health days, 49th in poor physical health days, 50th in cancer deaths, 49th in cardiac heart disease, 43rd in high cholesterol, 44th in annual dental visits and 48th in heart attacks. Access to health insurance will improve health outcomes.

The Bluegrass State is about as unhealthy as it gets, folks.  A big reason is that staggering poverty along the Appalachians makes health care impossible for a lot of people.  Beshear made the right call.  And hey, let's not forget that Obamacare will create good health care jobs, even here in Kentucky:

Expansion Will Have a $15.6 Billion Statewide Economic Impact Between FY14 and FY21, Creating Almost 17,000 New Jobs. According to an independent analysis conducted by the University of Louisville, expanding Medicaid will lead to a cumulative economic impact of $15.6 billion between FY14 and FY21. This impact will result from new health care spending that will occur, the nearly 17,000 jobs that will be created because of this expansion, and the local and state tax revenue that will be generated from those jobs. UofL projects these jobs will have an annual average salary of more than $43,000.

But here's the best argument I've seen so far to tell your uncle that watches FOX News all day:

Not Expanding Means Kentucky Taxpayers Subsidize the 20 States That Are Expanding. Currently, 20 states have announced their decision to expand Medicaid. If Kentucky does not expand its Medicaid program, Kentucky taxpayer dollars’ will still go to the federal government, which will use them to pay for Medicaid expansion in these 20 states.

And folks, that argument here in Kentucky?  That alone will guarantee that the state will remain signed on to Medicaid expansion for a good, long time.

Good job, DS.

Wasting Everybody's Time

Joe Kline wants to know why Republicans are wasting valuable time and resources on Benghazi...

Could it have been the Republicans who consistently voted against funds for increased embassy security? Hmmm…that makes their current carping seem awfully political, doesn’t it? Again, sins of politics are not mortal. But one does wonder why the Republicans tend to fix on issues like this, which are defined by their absence of substance. (I haven’t noticed the Republicans clamoring to spend more on embassy security–which would be a matter of substance, happily embraced by the Administration.But that would require a budget deal, which would give the President a win.)

...when everybody knows Republicans should really be spending time on the most important issue of the day:  purging the country of those undesirable Poors and Oldsters.

The sad thing here is that the Republicans are right, in part, about government spending. It is wasteful. There are far more efficient ways to do Medicare that would produce a better health care system for the elderly. Social Security disability is slouching toward scamdom. The Veterans Administration is a 19th century bureaucratic disaster. Unemployment benefits and food stamps should require some sort of return service from recipients. The list goes on…But rather than address the substance of those problems–problems that Democrats don’t seem very interested in solving–they obsess on the stupid: fixing on more-or-less budget debates, federal dictatorship fantasies and meaningless political ploys like Benghazi.

Joke Line doesn't say what those "more efficient" ways are, but I'm betting you'll find then in the annual Paul Ryan Austerity Budget.  Because after all, the most important thing imaginable right now is kicking anyone within two paychecks of homelessness square in the genitalia so that overpaid Village idiots can sleep better at night.

Awesome.

StupidiNews!

• An Arizona jury has found Jodi Arias guilty of first degree murder in the death of her ex-boyfriend, whose body was found stabbed, shot, and nearly decapitated.
• Rep. Michele Bachmann could be facing a lawsuit from a blogger over her characterization of a post in one of her speeches.
• While skeptics seriously doubt inventor Ronald Ace's claims that his "solar trap" panels could revolutionize energy the world over, the Department of Energy is still taking a look.
• US foreclosures are down to their pre-financial crisis levels as the number of new filings dropped to the lowest level in over six years.
• The FBI is claiming it has the right to search your e-mail without a warrant as possible Supreme Court rulings on the matter inch closer.

Last Call

If there's any wonky study on immigration reform that will ensure House Republicans will murder the legislation in its crib, this is it.

With the debate raging over whether immigration reform would gouge taxpayers, Senator Marco Rubio’s office has asked the Social Security Actuary to produce an analysis of the legislation. The findings will provide immigration reform advocates with a major boost.

You can see the findings in a letter from the Office of the Chief Actuary to Senator Rubio that is also accompanied by a table.

The most important finding, for the purposes of the debate, is that the Gang of Eight immigration reform proposal would create 3.22 million jobs by 2024, and boost GDP by 1.63 percent. “We estimate a significant increase in both the population and the number of workers paying taxes in the United States as a result of these changes in legal immigration limits,” the analysis says.

Can't have that!  Bill's dead now, and that's even if it makes it to the House.  Odds are really good now that Republicans will finish the job early by destroying the bill with hundreds of amendments.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will be taking its first crack at the bill Thursday. Republicans opposed to reform have now turned to a time honored tradition of oppositional behavior in the Senate: Offering a whole bunch of amendments to slow down the process and. If they're lucky, they'll be able to slip in a poison pill amendment—a change so noxious that it makes the entire bill harder to pass.

How many amendments? Well, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is currently leading the pack with seventy-seven. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has proposed 49, and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is bringing up the rear with 24.

And every one will have to be voted on.  Awesome.  Good luck with that, guys...

The I-Word Is Coming

Those of us who lived through Clinton's second term know what's coming in Obama's second term, the only question is when House Republicans pull the impeachment lever and what excuse they'll use.  Perhaps it will be Dow 15,000, because that's impeachable, right?

[Monday] the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 15,056, an all-time record. For one conservative group, this can only mean one thing: it’s time to impeach President Obama.

That was the message Capitol Hill Daily, a conservative publication based out of Baltimore, sent to Citizen United’s listserv today. They accused President Obama of “wreck[ing] the stock market” and asked readers to take a poll about whether he should be impeached as a result.

It doesn't matter.  Obama Derangement is a full blown secotr of the economy now, if anything.  But at some point House Republicans will have to take a vote on impeachment, or the rabid tea party monster they've unleashed will turn on them instead.  That day of reckoning is coming soon...

 They'll find a reason.  If they can't find it, they'll manufacture it. 

Count on it.

Pick Your Poison, Name Your Price

We're to the point where we have articles about what the House GOP will try to extort from the President in exchange for not collapsing our government, our economy, and our country, and those articles are written as standard operating political procedure for congressional Republicans.

Conservatives in the GOP conference say they are evaluating debt-ceiling proposals against a deal they struck with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenants during the annual retreat in January. That deal says increases in the debt ceiling will only come about once debt-reducing laws are enacted, they said.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) has discussed developing a plan that would fast-track a rewrite of the tax code and tie it to raising the debt ceiling over multiple stages.

“That would be a real tough sell for me because that’s not the deal,” Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) said. “It was tax reform would be tied to the debt ceiling. That doesn’t mean the House passes tax reform. It means we get tax reform.”

Republicans expect 100% of what they want and the economy suffers trillions in damage from supply-side idiocy and austerity hysteria, or else they force a default and...the economy suffers trillions in damage.

This is where we are right now, and this is apparently completely acceptable as the new political normal.  It's also Obama's fault for not being nice enough to Republicans who fully expect to not have to compromise, ever.

Amazing and depressing at the same time.  No wonder everything is broken.

StupidiNews!

• Aurora, Colorado theater shooting suspect James Holmes will plead not guilty by reason of insanity according to his defense team.
• House GOP budget point man Rep. Paul Ryan is rejecting any notion of a larger "grand bargain", saying the two parties are just too far apart.
• While Russia and Syria are reportedly on board with US negotiations, Syrian rebel groups may not be part of talks aimed at ending the civil war there.
• Banks are apparently very afraid of Wal-Mart offering financial services like prepaid cards, and want regulators to step in.
• Human facial recognition software still has a number of drawbacks, as evidenced by the manhunt for the Boston bombers.

Last Call: A Plate Of Crow For Thee

Yep, Mark Sanford not only won by 9 points, he A) won with 25% turnout, very high for a special election (which should have favored his opponent), B) he won despite having craploads of baggage (which definitely should have favored Elizabeth Colbert Busch), and C) he won despite the NRCC pulling campaign backing and money from the race.

I've got a lot of crow to eat.

The only explanation I've got is that the trespassing charge that Jenny Sanford made public last month, which should have cost him the race, instead was a massive, massive backfire.

Also, let's remember that this district is R+11.  "Because screw the Democrats" is always a viable campaign slogan, and tonight, the voters of SC-1 proved that you can pretty much be the most awful Republican ever, but Republicans will still vote for you to piss off liberals.

On the other hand, the first thing the newly elected Congressman Sanford has to do is go to court to deal with that trespassing charge as a sitting member of Congress.  Good luck with that, Mark.  I may have been wrong about this election -- staggeringly so, I admit -- but now things get interesting.

Chris Bag O' Insurance?

A lot of people see New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie's news today that he recently had lap band surgery for weight loss as proof he's running for President in 2016. 

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made a huge announcement to the The New York Post—but not the one everyone has been expecting. The paper reported on Tuesday that the famously rotund Christie underwent "lap-band" stomach surgery three months ago, in a desperate effort to lose weight. The procedure, which involves placing a restrictive tube around the top of the stomach to  limit the amount of food a person can take in at one sitting, is considered less risky than the more invasive gastric bypass surgery. Christie didn't reveal what his weight was before or after the surgery, but sources say he's already lost 40 pounds.

Naturally, the first instinct from political pundits is to assume that Christie's dramatic decision is about more than just getting fit. The obvious spin is that this is the first salvo of Christie's 2016 presidential campaign. (The second might be another announcement that he's co-hosting the Today show in a couple weeks.) It doesn't take a strategic genius like Karl Rove to tell you that being overweight would have been a huge liability in a national campaign, but if the summer of 2015 rolls around and he's suddenly looking fit and trim, he might look like a front runner.

Personally, I think that's less of the issue as it is his health.  He's got kids, and he wants to live to see them grow up, I'm sure.  Here's my real question, not why he did it, but did his insurance cover it?  Christie has signed on for Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, sure.  But does he think his surgery was medically necessary, and should insurance be required to help cover it when it is?

Given the obesity epidemic in the US -- and yes, I consider myself part of it -- I would like to hear Gov. Christie's thoughts on his procedure and if he thinks his New Jersey constituents should qualify for similar procedures.  That's the far more important question to me.

The BS Behind Benghazi

The right is predicting that the "Benghazi cover-up" scandal will be so bad that it will somehow force President Obama to resign and that it will be the end of Hillary Clinton's 2016 run before it starts.  There's only a couple of problems with this latest fantasy:  first of all, the new "facts" don't hold any water.  Jon Bernstein:

If you’re not inside the conservative information feedback loop, you might not be aware that within that loop the Benghazi “scandal” is still going at 100 percent strength. Months after the actual incident, which was back in September. Even though no one has ever made clear exactly what terrible secret was the subject of the supposed cover-up; even though a succession of “revelations” have all turned out to be nonsense (here’s one from just last week). Doesn’t matter; discredited accusations are just forgotten and new ones are substituted.

This week it’s a new round of claims that whistleblowers were suppressed. Over in the House, Darrell Issa’s committee is going to get a hearing out of it. No, there’s no particular reason that it makes any sense…there’s still no core story that this cover-up was (supposedly) covering up for. But there do appear to be plenty of Usual Suspect conservative movement lawyers and flacks involved.

And second, as Bernstein mentions, the lawyers that the whistleblowers have retained are direct from the GOP Dirty Tricks Department.  BooMan:

Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing run a law firm together. They are also married. They are also soldiers in the dirty wars we have between the two major parties. When Scooter Libby was indicted, diGenova and Toensing demanded a pardon. In fact, they had been brawling on Libby's side for years. Toensing even authored an amici curiae brief with the US Court of Appeals in Washington, seeking to overturn the ruling that forced Matthew Cooper and Judy Miller to testify in the Libby case.

Back in 1998, Howard Kurtz reported that diGenova and Toensing had made 300 television appearances in the month after news of the l'affaire Lewinsky broke on Drudge Report. That's an average of five appearances each, every day for a month. 

The fact that these two scuzzballs are involved is a dead giveaway that the Benghazi story is nothing more than maximum poutrage from the right, and the mission here is where there is no scandal, one must be created.  Darrel Issa has made it clear his target is Hillary Clinton, so prepare to hear the right shout BENGHAZI for the next several years, even as President Obama comes through this unscathed.

Not that it will do them any good, other than become the reason as to why they'll lose again and again.  But it will become the latest piece of Republican code-switching, just like ACORN was four years ago.