Last Call For Government

The brilliant minds of conservative punditry are convinced this weekend that the IRS scandal is so fundamentally huge that America is on the verge of rising up by the tens of millions and demanding an end to Obama, the Democrats, and liberalism itself, leading to a new permanent era of Republican rule and FREEDOM and LIBERTY and stuff.  As such, they are trying to endless top each other about their calls for revolution against the government.

Peggy Noonan calls for an independent counsel because the poor people at the IRS were clearly forced by the terribly evil Obama administration to do...well, terrible evil.

There will be more hearings next week, and fair enough. But down the road an independent counsel is going to be needed because the House does not have all the prosecutorial powers an independent counsel would—the powers to empanel a grand jury, grant immunity to potential witnesses, find evidence of criminal wrongdoing, indict.

Another reason to want an independent counsel: There are obviously many good, fair-minded workers in the IRS, people of sterling character. They deserve to be asked about what they were forced to put up with, what they felt they had to bite their tongues about. 

There may even be a few stories about people who stood up and said: "You know you're targeting Americans because they hold political views you don't like, right? You know that's wrong, right? And I'm not going to do it."

It would be worth an investigation that breaks open the IRS to find that person, and that moment. You have no idea how much better it would make us feel, how inspiring and comforting, too. 

Because witch hunts are feel-good exercises. Mark Steyn at the National Review sees Noonan and raises with his call for the abolition of the IRS, civil resistance to its actions and apparently taxation itself.

So let’s take Obama at his word that he had no idea all this was going on. In that case, he might like to take the lead in calling for the abolition of a corrupt agency and its grotesque tax code, and their replacement by a bureaucracy with more limited powers commensurate with a free society and a simplified tax regime with lower rates and thus fewer bewildering, mercurial “exemptions” that make the citizenry dependent on the caprices of Ms. Lerner and her colleagues. That’s a prize worth fighting for. In the meantime, the next time the IRS call you up with demands for this and demands for that, simply tell them, “I am filing the Lois Lerner defense,” and then say as she did to Congress “I have not done anything wrong. And I will not answer any questions.” Every man his own Lois Lerner!

So much for those poor IRS employees.  They, and the agency, have to go.   But Rich Lowry gets himself on WIN THE MORNING with his call to bring down the entire federal government.

Needless to say, this is not how American government is supposed to work. It reflects the mindset of the Progressives rather than the Founders. “The Constitution was designed,” DeMuth writes, “to make lawmaking cumbersome, representative, and consensual; the regulatory agency was a workaround, designed to make lawmaking efficient, specialized, and purposeful. It was a way to accommodate growing demands for government intervention in the face of the constitutional bias for limited government.”

And it has worked: “It has enabled the federal government of a vast, populous, diverse democracy to partake directly in the everyday affairs of scores of millions of citizens and businesses.” Some of them, like the conservative organizations that applied for 501(c)(4) status and got harassed by the IRS for their temerity, we hear about; most we don’t.

The administrative state is an open invitation to high-handedness. My colleague Ramesh Ponnuru wrote a piece for Bloomberg View on Obama’s lawlessness. Most of the examples have to do with the administration ignoring or distorting the laws via the bureaucracy. Obamacare says that states have to set up exchanges before the subsidies and penalties in the law apply? No matter. The IRS says it will pay out subsidies and impose penalties regardless of whether states set up exchanges.

All that of course has to go, along with the current executive branch's occupants.  We'll have to start over.  And of course that means "with Republicans in charge of everything forever."

This is where the leading lights of conservativsm have brought us:  scorched earth government, where if they can't be in charge, then it has to burn down and be rebuilt until they are.

The CEO Of America, Inc.

Time Magazine got their hands on Mitt Romney's executive branch transition report, detailing what would have happened to America's federal agencies if Romney had won.  The phrase "America should be run like a business" will never scare you more after reading what was in store for us:

In the months before the 2012 election, a group of high-powered consultants and political operatives prepared a secret report for candidate Mitt Romney, explaining how he should take over and restructure the federal government should he win the presidency.

“The White House staff is similar to a holding company” read one PowerPoint slide, which would have been presented to President-elect Romney as part of an expansive briefing on the morning after Election Day. It went on to list three main divisions of the metaphorical firm: “Care & Feeding Offices,” like speechwriting, “Policy Offices,” like the National Security Council, and “Packaging & Selling Offices,” like the office of the press secretary. This was the view of the Presidency Romney would have brought with him to Washington, a glimpse of the White House that never was — and plan that never saw the light of day.

But now the secret is out. On May 29, the Romney Readiness Project, the Republican candidate’s transition organization known as R2P, published a 138-page report detailing how it prepared for a potential Romney victory. It is the product of a team of nearly 500, who labored in Washington and around the country to be ready to help Romney assume the reins of power on January 20th, 2013, in accordance with the Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010.

Romney was dead serious about turning the federal government into a corporation, and turning executive branch agencies into divisions that produced "deliverables" and reach "metrics".

Even before the election, hundreds of staffers held table-top practice drills to game out how they would parachute into federal agencies to learn the ropes and explore policies and procedures for the new administration to change. Another team would work in “the bunker,” a secure room in the federal office building housing the transition where potential Cabinet and senior staff nominees and appointees were vetted. By Election Day, nearly 20 researchers and lawyers had prepared Romney to select his entire Cabinet and more than 25 senior White House staffers, as well as deputies for key departments and agency heads.

They were ready to go with the goal of making Romney the "CEO in Chief" of America, Inc. at the expense of the rest of us.  Absolute madness, this stuff. 

His plans for the first 200 days in office: repeal Obamacare, give the student loan business back to Wall Street, turn schools into distance learning centers, get rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and give the mortgage industry to Wall Street, 5% across the board federal budget cuts by firing 10% of all federal workers, implement the Ryan budget cutting spending to 20% of GDP by 2016 (meaning most likely another 20-30% cuts across the board), turn Medicaid into a block grant program...and then take all of those savings and massively expand the military, add 100,000 active troops, come up with a plan to start wars in Iran and Syria and scrap nuclear missile treaties with Russia.
We would have been screwed beyond reason by a Romney Presidency...and remember, any 2016 plan for the GOP candidate will be far worse than this.

How To Train, You're Draggin'

Mediaite's Tommy Christopher has put together a thoughtful piece on fixing MSNBC's ratings woes over the last couple of months, and I'm inclined to agree with a good portion of it.

The good news is that much of this is fixable. The news cycle is cyclical (hence the name), and so without changing anything, some of this damage will repair itself. MSNBC has been heavily promoting its full coverage of the George Zimmerman trial for the killing of Trayvon Martin, which could easily make the Jodi Arias trial look like an episode of Judge Judy. MSNBC can also help itself by exercising editorial judgment that plays to its strengths, and serves the public.

But there are things that are more within Phil Griffin‘s control which can be changed. Ratings woes or not, All In is better suited to 10 pm, while O’Donnell is a known quantity who can plug the leak at 8.

I agree with Joe Concha that two hours of Hardball is too much, but I’d keep the 5 pm edition, and give 7 o’clock to a new, younger-skewing talent like Joy Reid, who has been getting a lot of guest-hosting under her belt. Joy has impressive new media chops, but with more reporting experience than a lot of bloggers, and a point of view that meshes well with the network’s fastest-growing demographic. She’d also be the perfect digestif to the more outspoken, and less journalism-focused, Rev. Al Sharpton.

I like Chris Hayes, but he can't handle the 8 PM slot.  Period.  He's a good weekend host, but the 8 PM slot is just too much for the guy.  Hayes is a pundit, not a host.  I mean he's better than Ezra Klein hosting, but he doesn't have the presence.  And yes, I understand what I'm saying when I spend a pretty good portion of my time around here bemoaning shallow, information-free news production on cable.  I also understand that if nobody's watching, there's no point.

And right now, nobody's watching Chris Hayes.  It's sad.  It's also true.  Hayes "bends over backwards" as Christopher puts it to get conservatives on his show.  The problem is Hayes is far too nice to call bullshit on his guests.  He's non-confrontational to a fault and lets quite a bit of GOP gobbledegook slide by without challenging it.  There are plenty of network news shows that already provide that service, which is why I don't watch them.  Lawrence at least fights back.

However, I'm all for Joy Ann Reid over a second hour of Hardball.  Let's make that happen ASAP.

Last Call For The Unemployed In Wisconsin

Wisconsin Republicans are doing everything they can to brutally punish anyone who dares get unemployment benefits, because, well, just because.  We're doing this to protect workers, you see.

Among the changes included in the Republican-backed legislation would slightly increase the maximum allowable benefit by $7 to $370 per week, it would render anyone cut off from receiving benefits for not taking a job ineligible to ever receive benefits again until they find a job that pays at least six times his or her benefit rate at the time of termination of benefits. The current requirement is four times their benefit rate.

So if you get laid off (remember, you're ineligible for unemployment benefits in Wisconsin at all if you've been fired for "good cause" by the employer or quit yourself, it's up to the employee to prove they had a "good cause" to quit) and you get a measly $370 a week, you'll need to literally have a job earning more than $100,000 a year before you're eligible to get benefits again.  And you only get 13 weeks of benefits, max.  Good luck with that.

Oh, there's more:

It would force job applicants to apply for twice as many jobs to remain eligible for benefits. Currently employment seekers must apply for two jobs per week to keep unemployment benefits flowing. The new law raises that number to four.

Currently, people receiving educational or vocational training in order to qualify for a job can continue to receive unemployment benefits past their original expiration date. The new law would stop those payments.

Here's the best part:

The bill mandates that banks and financial institutions must hand over the private account information of any people suspected by the government of receiving overpayments.

In the event of overpayments, even those caused by government error or computer malfunctions, the government would be able to freeze and collect from the accounts of people receiving unemployment.

And remember, these are supposedly "small government Republicans" demanding these powers.

To recap, Republicans have zero problem with using the power of government to violate the freedoms of Americans if those Americans are those awful, parasitic unemployed.  They don't count as Americans anyway, the moochers.

They Can't Stop Lying About Obamacare

Professional conservative health care policy wonks are paid to lie about Obamacare, because getting enough people to hate it and demand that legislators scrap the plan before it's fully implemented is the only way to stop it now.  So, people like Forbes columnist Avik Roy have to lie.  They're paid to do so.

Last week, the state of California claimed that its version of Obamacare’s health insurance exchange would actually reduce premiums. “These rates are way below the worst-case gloom-and-doom scenarios we have heard,” boasted Peter Lee, executive director of the California exchange. But the data that Lee released tells a different story: Obamacare, in fact, will increase individual-market premiums in California by as much as 146 percent.

Ezra Klein calls out the lie:

Roy got his 146 percent by heading to eHealthInsurance.com, running a search for insurance plans in California and comparing the cost of the cheapest plans to the cost of the plans being offered in the exchanges. That’s not just comparing apples to oranges. It’s comparing apples to oranges that the fruit guy may not even let you buy.

Remember, right now there's two big caveats to health insurance that Obamacare fixes:  one, plans have to have minimum coverage standards, and two, insurance companies can no longer reject people based on prior illness.  So yes, Roy purposely tried to make Obamacare look as bad as possible by comparing a cheap plan with a huge deductible that wouldn't qualify under Obamacare rules as meeting minumum coverage, a cheap plan that depending on your history you can be rejected for, to plans that do meet the Obamacare standards.

And let's keep in mind the same people who, like Roy, are paid to make Obamacare look as awful as possible are the same people who warned these exchange plans would be $500 a month or more in California.

They're not.  They're roughly half that cost.  Plus, subsidies assure that those who can't afford the plan can get help paying it, and in some cases they won't have to pay a dime.

That's the truth of Obamacare.  Those who need insurance the most will be able to get it, and get help paying for it.

Paul Krugman sums it up:

Right now, California has a basically unregulated individual market, in which insurers are free to reject whoever they choose, and charge whatever rates they choose. This means that a few young, healthy people with no record of prior medical problems can get cheap plans; these are, of course, precisely the people who need insurance least, and these plans are cheap not just because they’re only available to the very healthy but because they don’t provide much insurance. If you’re not healthy or wealthy enough to get by with this kind of insurance, too bad.

So looking at these rates tells you nothing at all about the success of a program that offers insurance to everyone, regardless of medical history, and sets fairly high minimum standards for the quality of that insurance.

But it makes for nice headlines, especially when "respected conservative policy wonks" like Avik Roy tell huge lies in order to try to convince people to scrap the program.  He has to:  otherwise, it proves government can work.

Haven't Learned A Thing, And Never Will

For anti-immigration reform conservatives, every immigration bill is "amnesty" and every day is 2007, where they can kill legislation and never pay a price.

“I think opposition is going to escalate dramatically once the bill hits the floor in a way that people do not expect. People are working tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure that happens,” said an aide to a conservative Republican senator.

“There’s no question that it’s going to be significantly more pushback. The question is if it’s enough to stop the bill in the Senate. I’d say the odds are better than even,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

He says conservatives have been distracted by the controversies swirling around the IRS, Benghazi and the Department of Justice’s seizure of journalists’ phone records.

“There are so many scandals going on with the Obama administration that it’s distracting a lot of people. The outrage can only be focused in so many directions,” he said.

The message is clear:  Obama brought up these scandals himself to take the heat off the Brown Horde Coming For Our Wal-Mart Jobs!

Sure he did.  The outrage is all that matters.  It rules our political discourse.  It's the reason why we can't have a nice country.

Of course, the "scramble" to stop the bill in the Senate is itself nothing but hot air:  any bill that will pass the Senate will never get a vote in the House.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Some five people dead, 71 injured, and 210,000 without power in Oklahoma, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois as 17 tornadoes ripped through the Midwest on Friday.
• Japan is blocking imports of US wheat after genetically altered crops from agriculture giant Monsanto were found growing wild.
• The little-known Federal Surface Transportation Board could put the brakes on California's high-speed rail line from Fresno to Merced.
• Evidence that the Fed could begin its exit from quantitative easing stung the bond market for its worst day in 3 years.
• E-book publishers may have settled up with the feds over price collusion, but not Apple, as the tech giant's trial begins next week.

Last Call For Illinois Equality

Same-sex marriage in the states has been on a real roll as of late, but it's run into a roadblock in the Land of Lincoln, and once again it's African-Americans unfairly taking the heat as homophobes.

Stubborn resistance within the House Black Caucus, a 20-member bloc of African-American lawmakers who have faced a withering lobbying blitz against the plan from black ministers, has helped keep Harris’ legislation in check, with several House members still undecided.

“For me, there’s really no net gain for me one way or another. I’m hearing equally. Do I philosophically disagree? No, I don’t. But I would like to see absolute protections for churches and religious organizations so they’re not pushed into something they don’t want,” said Rep. Will Davis (D-Homewood). “For me, [a decision] will literally be when the bill comes up and after I sit and listen.”

Several in the caucus have urged Harris to push the issue into the fall veto session — after which nominating petitions for the 2014 ballot have to be filed — to bring up same-sex marriage for a House vote.

“The sense I have is blacks are tired of being lobbied or targeted. They’ve kind of turned back on some of the advocates and lobbyists and are asking, ‘Why don’t you get some Republicans?’” one high-level Democratic insider said Friday.

And yes, black ministers are certainly in the wrong here...but so are Republicans.

Two House Republicans have publicly endorsed the legislation, Rep. Ed Sullivan (R-Antioch) and Rep. Ron Sandack (R-Downers Grove). A likely third GOP supporter, Rep. Jim Durkin (R-Westchester), switched to a no as he contemplated a possible run for House Republican leader.

Quinn has spent weeks pitching rank-and-file members, and Attorney General Lisa Madigan joined the effort in making calls Thursday, when at least five black House members, including Davis, reported hearing from Madigan.

Only 3 Republicans out of  47 are even considering the vote.  Why are LGBT advocates in Illinois stupidly hanging the shame solely on African-American legislators?

Oh yes, that's been the plan all along, to fracture the Democrats when the real bad guys are the Republicans.

How Much For Just One Rib?

The answer to Chris Rock's eternal question in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka is apparently "three to five years, and fifty for the rack."

All Willie Smith Ward wanted was his baby-back ribs, but it cost him 50 years in prison.
His problems started when he tucked a large rack under his shirt and tried to leave the H-E-B store at 1102 Speight Ave. without paying in September 2011.


A jury in Waco’s 19th State District Court also didn’t like the 43-year-old Ward’s previous five felony and four misdemeanor convictions and recommended that Ward be sentenced to 50 years in prison as a habitual criminal.

Jurors took two minutes Wednesday to convict Ward on robbery charges and about an hour to decide his punishment.

Ward’s theft of the $35 rack of pork ribs turned into a robbery when he threatened a grocery store employee who saw the huge bulge under Ward’s shirt and tried to stop him in the parking lot.

“This verdict shows that the citizens of this county will not tolerate a continued disrespect and disregard for other people and their property,” said Assistant District Attorney J.R. Vicha, who prosecuted Ward with Chris Bullajian. “People who choose to do so will be dealt with seriously and appropriately.”

50 years for a rack of ribs is "serious and appropriate"?

 

Oh, NOW it is, right?

Captain Cavemaaaaaaaaaaan!

Unga-bunga, me Erick Erickson, me knuckle-dragger who think women should stay in kitchen.  Me go on FOX News to talk science:

“I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science. But liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology — when you look at the natural world — the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complementary role.”

Sure it is.  Just ask praying mantises, or lions, or seahorses, or...

..you know what, I'm not doing this guy's biology homework again.  Let him flunk.

StupidiNews!

• The FBI is focusing on Texas as the source of a recent batch of letters testing positive for ricin, sent to President Obama and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
• The Boy Scouts of America keeping a ban on LGBT adults as scout leaders may cost the organization its tax-exempt status in California.
• 13-year old Arvind Mahankali of Queens, NY is your Scripps National Spelling Bee champion, with the winning word of 'knaidel', a traditional Yiddish dumpling.
• Tokyo is shoring up its defenses against the future possibility of a major flood along the city's Arakawa River, a flood which could affect 35 million.
• High sodium content maybe bad for people, but good for young stars as it appears the element may be preventing them from entering the red giant phase.

Last Call For Second Amendment Remedies

Tell me again how the Tea Party is a non-violent movement of "concerned citizens" again and not a bunch of heavily armed bullies making threats.

A caller on a tea party-sponsored conference call Wednesday suggested that the way to change Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)’s mind on immigration reform would be to “shoot her.” According to Think Progress, the violent suggestion was not condemned, but met with hoots of laughter by others on the call.

Far-right conservative group The Eagle Forum held the call, which featured Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)’s communications director Stephen Miller and the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector. The suggestion that Collins should be shot came when the call moderator turned the discussion over to callers.

An individual identified as “Bob from Maine” said, “I’m from Maine and our tea party will be meeting up next week. What is the best way that we can get our senator to listen to us?”

“Shoot her,” said another caller, who did not identify himself.

The call to violence was met with laughter by the people on the conference call. No one on the line raised any audible objection.

Hmm.  There's a term for using violence or the threat of violence to affect a political outcome, but apparently we only reserve such a term for those of a darker-skinned or non-Christian persuasion.  I'm sure joking about assassinating members of Congress is all fun and games until one of them gets shot in the head or something.

Keep it up, conservatives.

What Did News Corporation Know, Part 2

So the amnesia factory that is News Corp is still denying the Department of Justice ever told them about the James Rosen subpoenas three years ago, and the DoJ apparently has had quite enough of this nonsense and went to CNN to prove it.

Under fire for seeking records of journalists' communications, government officials pushed back Wednesday against statements from Fox News that it was not notified about government subpoenas to the organization.

On Wednesday a law enforcement official showed CNN paperwork to support Justice's claim that on August 27, 2010 three messages were sent out about the subpoenas and went to both a lawyer for Fox News' parent company, News Corporation, and reporter James Rosen.

The Justice Department subpoenas were for two days of phone records in 2009 during a national security leak investigation. The department said it notified Fox News about seeking toll records for five phone lines but did not tell them about seeking access to Rosen's personal email traffic. When news of the search warrant became public, Fox News released a statement acknowledging Rosen was the reporter described in the affidavit and expressing outrage.

The official said two notifications were sent to Lawrence Jacobs who was the senior counsel for News Corporation. The law enforcement official showed CNN a fax receipt with a time stamp to show something was faxed to Jacobs at precisely 4:09 pm on August 27. In addition, CNN was shown a U.S. Postal Service certified mail receipt indicating a registered letter was sent to Jacobs the same day. The official did not show the messages sent to Jacobs.

So yes News Corp, you were told in August 2010 about this.  Stop acting all surprised.  You knew, you said nothing then, but are screaming bloody murder now?  Have a damn seat.

Letters From A Boring Ham, Jailed

Remember the guy calling for a mass armed march on Washington DC as a gentle reminder we live in a country with millions of heavily armed assholes who equate their gun rights to manifest destiny?  He's back, and he's skipping the "civil disobedience demonstration" stage and going right to the "call for armed insurrection" stage.

About a month ago, a gun activist named Adam Kokesh called for thousands of people to join him in an armed march on Washington, D.C. to “put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny.” As of this writing, nearly 5,200 people have RSVPed for Kokesh’s armed march.

Late last week, however, Kokesh decided to abandon this march in favor of a much larger effort to bring down the entire federal government. In a statement written from a jail cell in Philadelphia (Kokesh faced charges for allegedly resisting arrest during a pro-marijuana rally. He now says he’s been released), the gun activist called for his supporters to form a secessionist “army”:

Roll the manifesto music, boys.

A new American revolution is long overdue. This revolution has been brewing in the hearts and minds of the people for many years, but this Independence Day, it shall take a new form as the American Revolutionary Army will march on each state capital to demand that the governors of these 50 states immediately initiate the process of an orderly dissolution of the federal government through secession and reclamation of federally held property. Should one whole year from this July 4th pass while the crimes of this government are allowed to continue, we may have passed the point at which non-violent revolution becomes impossible.

Good luck with your single brigade spread over 50 state capitals there, ace.  That's what, a largish platoon of douchebags at each statehouse versus local cops, who can call on state police and national guard if needed?  I'm sure that's going to be totally successful, and the Governors will just fold right then and there.  Also, I'm completely sure they totally won't gas you clowns and put you in prison for a good long time, either.

You get right on your second American Revolution there, skippy.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama is expected to nominate former Bush Deputy AG James Comey as FBI Director, but the rumored choice is already drawing criticism from the left and right.
• Two letters sent to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg have initially tested positive for ricin, both letter contained threats and referenced Bloomberg's gun control efforts.
• A new study finds the cost of four-year public universities are increasingly out of reach for low-income families due to decreasing student aid budgets.
• New Obamacare rules mean employers can charge higher premiums to employees for not meeting wellness program standards, but employee protections are being built in.
• Texas lawmakers are sending a drone spying ban to Gov. Rick Perry to sign, but critics say the legislation has massive loopholes for both private industries and law enforcement.