Last Call For Water Water Everywhere

In the comments, our good friend Prup has called me out on not covering the potable water situation in Flint, Michigan.

I was surprised to find no coverage of the Flint, Michigan Water Crisis, as far as the index goes, at least. I have somewhat questioned what I see as an overestimate on racism in some of your posts. Where I see it as one on many factors, or as a major, but not the only, contributing factor, you sometimes see it as the only factor. But there's no question in this one that racism and poverty are the main factors, and it shows HOW they create a situation.

As usual, Jim's right.  I haven't given the situation in Flint more than cursory coverage.  Michigan GOP Gov. Rick Snyder has largely gotten a pass compared to his neighbor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and especially since it involves Michigan. Much of America has given up on the state because there's only so much Republican outrage one can keep track of, given the clown car in 2016 and the growing disaster of Bevinstan here locally.

But the Flint story is hands down one of the worst abuses of Republican government power in a long time, and is definitely a story where, as Jim says, racism and poverty are the main factors. Rick Snyder is guilty of criminal negligence, and it's time for more people to make noise who, can, starting with myself, so here goes with David Graham's primer in The Atlantic:

In Flint, Michigan, a scandal over lead-tainted water keeps getting darker.

On Tuesday, Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency due to lead in the water supply. The same day, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it is investigating what went wrong in the city. Several top officials have resigned, and Snyder apologized. But that’s only so comforting for residents. They’re drinking donated water supplies—though those donations are reportedly running dry—or using filters. Public schools have been ordered to shut off taps. Residents, and particularly children, are being poisoned by lead, which can cause irreversible brain damage and affect physical health. It could cost $1.5 billion to fix the problem, a staggering sum for any city, much less one already struggling as badly as Flint is.

The story is horrifying, on a visceral, “this isn’t supposed to happen here” level. While attention has been slow to focus on Flint, the more that emerges, the worse the story seems. The latest question is when Snyder knew about the problem. This week, an email from Snyder’s then-chief of staff to a health-department official was turned over as part of a freedom-of-information request. In July 2015, Dennis Muchmore wrote:

I'm frustrated by the water issue in Flint I really don't think people are getting the benefit of the doubt. Now they are concerned and rightfully so about the lead level studies they are receiving. These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we're just not sympathizing with their plight).

On Thursday, while declaring the state of emergency, Snyder wouldn’t say when he became aware of the lead problem in Flint. The governor—who likes to portray himself as a can-do manager—reportedly grew testy when asked repeatedly about his own awareness.*

How did Flint's water supply get poisoned?  Effectively, Snyder's orders.

The problem dates back to April 2014, when Flint was under the direction of an emergency manager appointed by the state to try to fix the broken city. (Michigan law provides for the governor to select managers, and the provision has been used in several places in recent years, most prominently Detroit.) To save money, the city began drawing its water from the Flint River, rather than from Detroit’s system, which was deemed too costly. But the river’s water was high in salt, which helped corrode Flint’s aging pipes, leaching lead into the water supply.

The move saved millions, but the problems started becoming apparent almost immediately. The water starting smelling like rotten eggs. Engineers responded to that problem by jacking up the chlorine level, leading to dangerous toxicity. GM discovered that city water was corroding engines at a Flint factory and switched sources. Then children and others started getting rashes and falling sick. Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech environmental-engineering professor, found that the water had nearly 900 times the recommend EPA limit for lead particles. As my colleague Alana Semuels noted in a deeply reported feature in July 2015, residents believe the city knew about problems as soon as May 2014. Yet as late as February 2015, even after tests showed dangerous lead levels, officials weretelling residents there was no threat.

The July 2015 date on Semuels’ story emphasizes the incredible slowness of authorities to respond. That was more than a year after the switch to water from the Flint River. This week’s state declaration of Emergency comes some 20 months after the switch. How did it take so long to get anything done?

Jim's already answered this question for us:

Not even his worst enemies would accuse Rick Snyder of deliberately trying to poison a community of poor, mostly black, working class people, any more than the pharm executive that sends out of date medicine wants to kill Africans. What it is is trying to handle a situation, usually a minor one ("We have to get rid of these pills but the bottom line would be better if we actually got something for them rather than throwing them into the dumpster" or "we can save money by switching the water supply in Flint, but buying and figuring out how to add this chemical is cheap, but it's such a hassle. And it's just for that bunch of n's in Flint, they're mostly criminals anyway, so why go through it. Probably the scientists are over-reacting, the water can't be that bad, can it. It smells funny -- but then so do they *snigger* -- and so, if some of them get upset tummies, it won't be that bad." Only, as we've found, lead in water gives a lot worse than upset tummies, like life-time brain damage.)

The intersection of Republican indifference to those people, institutionalized racism and classism, slashing even basic government services into non-functionality and a crumbling infrastructure that nobody wants to spend money to fix has directly resulted in the situation in Flint.  More of this will follow, and probably already is happening, in places around the country where the people that don't matter aren't able to make their voices heard over fracking lobbyists, mining companies, chemical giants and conservative think-tanks.

The fact is if this had been a white community, the water problem would have been fixed in 20 days or 20 weeks, not 20 months.

The best part?  The failure in Flint will be used by conservatives to say "See?  You can't even trust government to provide you with clean water anymore.  We need to privatize this now!"

Meanwhile the most vulnerable will continue to suffer, because hey, we don't even believe in fixing the pipes around here anymore, and we keep electing people who assure that will never happen.

Keep On Truckin'

Detroit has been rescued by the American auto market for sure and 2015 was a record year for sales among the Big 3, but the industry was saved not by electrics, hybrids and gas-sipping compacts, but by the very same gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs the Obama administration is trying to avoid.

At General Motors Co, the focal point of Detroit’s bailout, pickups and SUVs accounted for nearly 70 percent of last year’s sales. In 2016 one of the SUVs GM sells in America - - the Buick Envision - will be, for the first time, imported from China, to the chagrin of the United Auto Workers union, a key Obama constituency.

With oil prices expected to stay low for some time, all the major automakers are looking for a bigger slice of U.S. truck market profits.

Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co.  are using auto show press previews on Monday to promote new versions of their full-size pickups, the Titan and the Ridgeline, respectively.

The big splash from bailout beneficiary Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is not a small car, but a sleeker, updated minivan, which comes in a plug-in hybrid version and a powerful gasoline model more people are likely to buy. There are also new luxury vehicles to be unveiled: a revamped Lincoln Continental is expected from Ford Motor Co  and Hyundai Motor Co's new flagship luxury sedan, the G90.

Obama has made boosting fuel efficiency a cornerstone of his energy and climate policy. Mandates from California and other states are prodding automakers to continue rolling out zero emission electric vehicles, such as GM's Chevrolet Bolt, even if sales remain slow.

In his 2011 State of the Union Address, Obama renewed a call he made as a candidate in 2008 to get 1 million plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) on the road by 2015. But sales have been far slower than expected - only about 490,000 vehicles, including 115,000 in 2015, down 6 percent from 2014. Automakers have been forced to cut EV prices and sales forecasts.

The next president will decide the fate of Obama's goal of boosting average fuel efficiency to 54.5 miles per gallon (23.2 km per liter) by 2025. A decision on whether the final 2021-2025 regulations are feasible is due by April 2018, under a new president.

The average fuel economy of new vehicles sold in the United States has improved over the past few years, standing at 24.9 mpg in December. It is down 0.9 mpg from the peak reached in August 2014, but still up 4.8 mpg since October 2007.

As long as oil stays low, Americans are going to go back to big SUVs and trucks.  It's who we are, and don't be surprised if they're doing it to stick it to Obama, either.  Hell, there's a whole culture of car and truck lovers "rolling coal" as a screw you to environmentalists nowadays, and gas under $2 a gallon is only going to keep that going as along as possible.  Hell, what happens when a Republican president reverses those EPA standards?

We're kinda terrible about that.

Getting Bad In Germany

The age of an inclusive Europe is likely coming to a bloody end, at least in Germany.

Attacks on women in Cologne and other German cities on New Year's Eve have prompted more than 600 criminal complaints, with police suspicion resting on asylum seekers, putting pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel and her open door migrant policy.

The attacks, mostly targeting women and ranging from theft to sexual molestation, have prompted a highly-charged debate in Germany about its welcoming stance for refugees and migrants, more than one million of whom arrived last year.

The sudden nature of the violent attacks and the fact that they stretched from Hamburg to Frankfurt prompted Germany's justice minister Heiko Maas to speculate in a newspaper that they had been planned or coordinated.

The debate on migration will be further fueled by the acknowledgement by the authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia that a man shot dead as he tried to enter a Paris police station last week was an asylum seeker with seven identities who lived in Germany.

In Cologne, police said on Sunday that 516 criminal complaints had been filed by individuals or groups in relation to assaults on New Year's Eve, while police in Hamburg said 133 similar charges had been lodged with the north German city.

Frankfurt also registered complaints, although far fewer.

The investigation in Cologne is focused largely on asylum seekers or illegal migrants from north Africa, police said. They arrested one 19-year-old Moroccan man on Saturday evening.

Six hundred criminal complaints is not a coincidence, nor is it an isolated incident.  How Germany reacts to these North African men will affect far more than just Berlin, Frankfurt, and Cologne. If Merkel is forced out of office, the government that follows will likely be very reactionary and will be under intense pressure to start rounding people up and deporting them. It won't take much to light a powder keg like that.

Hell, we're not too far away from such a government ourselves, if you recall, with Trump calling for mass deportations.

But it's getting rather scary out there.

StupidiNews!

• Legendary singer David Bowie has passed just days after his 69th birthday and the release of his new album "Blackstar" after an 18-month battle with cancer.
• Philadelphia police are investigating whether a man who opened fire on a police officer last Thursday may have had ties to a radical Islamic group.
• The US and South Korea are considering sending in more strategic weapons into the Korean theater after last week's North Korean nuclear test.
• Analysts at Morgan Stanley believe that crude oil could drop to $20 a barrel on a strong US dollar and continued oil production increases from Saudi Arabia.
• Experts confirm that malware was used to infiltrate and attack multiple power distribution centers in Ukraine in December.

Last Call For The Laughed-At Curve

Good thing Art Laffer is as good at political punditry as he is being an economist, huh.

Supply-side economist Arthur Laffer is predicting Republicans will win the White House in a landslide this year, regardless of the nominee.

“I would be surprised if the Republicans don’t take 45, 46, 47 states out of the 50,” Laffer told host John Catsimatidis on “The Cats Roundtable” on New York’s AM-970 on Sunday.

“I mean, I think we’re going to landslide this election.”

Laffer, who served in various positions in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, said he is bullish on the entire Republican primary field.

“When I look at these candidates, I don’t see one of them who wouldn’t do a great job as president,” he said.

“I think Donald Trump is phenomenal, I think Rand Paul has done a great job, I even like Jeb Bush — I think Jeb Bush is great, he did a wonderful job in Florida,” he added. “Chris Christie – phenomenal.”

He said Democratic primary front-runner Hillary Clinton’s “day is over.”

“She would be defeated handily. I don’t think Hillary’s going to win this election no matter whom she runs against,” he said. “I mean, Hillary’s day is over."

This is just funny. Every presidential election is Reagan-Mondale in 1984 to these clowns, and gosh, the last six election they haven't even been able to top 286.

It's not that they can't win in 2016, far from it.  We know they will show up, because they are motivated by revenge against Obama and everyone who voted for him. The only question is whether or not our side goes to the polls at all in the states that are in play and try to stop them.

But 500+ EVs?  No.

Put that in the Future Stupidity files for sure.

El Chapo's Day Out

Needless to say, after Mexican marines recaptured drug cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman last week after his daring escape from a Mexican prison, the pressure to extradite him to the US is very, very strong.

Mexico aims to extradite drug lord Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman to the United States after security forces recaptured the fugitive cartel leader who blew his cover through a series of slip ups, including an attempt to make a movie about his life.

The Mexican Attorney General's office will be working as fast as possible to establish the path to extradition, and Chapo could be sent to the United States by mid-year, a source familiar with the situation said on Saturday. However the timing might depend on injunctions filed by Guzman's legal team.

Guzman, the world's top drug smuggler and boss of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, is wanted by U.S. authorities on a host of criminal charges. His organization has smuggled billions of dollars worth of drugs into the United States and is blamed for thousands of deaths in Mexico and the United States due to addiction and gang warfare.

"The objective is to fulfill the extradition request," another source said.

Whether or not Guzman will escape again is anyone's guess.  But he made enough mistakes that even corrupt Mexican officials had an easy time finding him, and I'm betting that had lots of help from very determined US law enforcement. His biggest mistake?  Talking to Sean Penn for a Rolling Stone interview.

No, really. He did.

We'll see if Guzman ever makes it to America in 2016, I put the odds at 50/50 at best.

Why We're Losing The Gun Control Battle

Because the default "landed gentry" mode for America is now guys like this writing letters to the Boston Globe.

So, to the angry liberal who sat next to me on the commuter rail: I don’t hate you. I don’t have any ill feelings toward you. I don’t wish to do you harm. And I don’t regret sitting next to you. On the contrary; I feel bad for you. It must hurt carrying that much hate inside of you.

You obviously have strong opinions about this hot topic. So, let me say this as plainly as I can: If a bad guy with a gun had decided to walk onto that train and start shooting people, I would have been prepared and able to use my gun to defend my own life and the lives of everyone else on that train, including yours. Although you may hate me, a gun owner, I would risk my life for you.

Opinions and ideologies make a pretty thin shield against the bullets of a madman. Your liberal self-righteousness and ignorance may have made you feel superior and comfortable, but during that 40-minute train ride to Boston, my gun kept you safe.

The "good guys with guns" always believe they are and that they will be ready, and that they have to be ready.  It gives them power to again be the guys "in charge" in a world where the rest of us have gained in the equality stakes.  It's a societal movement of goal-posts where the new "hero" is the person with the concealed carry handgun, and of course a modern update of "only nobles can carry swords".

Going through life honestly believing that you are so much better than everyone else because they are all losers compared to you is nothing new, of course.  But throwing a weapon capable of killing someone in seconds into the mix and the margin of error makes the consequences of overreaction a deadly mistake.

The asshole on the train packing can end your life in a moment, and they very much enjoy having that kind of power. It used to be that had some accountability as a police officer or member of the military to have that mindset, but we've made it easier and easier to give to Joe Blow in state after state.

Do you ever think we're going to take that power away from these armed maniacs?  The power to sneer at unwashed libtard masses and say "my gun kept you safe" with the unspoken threat behind that?

Not in our lifetimes.

Sunday Long Read: Taxing Belief

With tax season upon us once again, this week's Sunday Long Read is from NY Times writers Noam Scheiber and Patricia Cohen as they give us the story of how America's richest have bought our tax policy to protect their wealth at our expense.

The hedge fund magnates Daniel S. Loeb, Louis Moore Bacon and Steven A. Cohen have much in common. They have managed billions of dollars in capital, earning vast fortunes. They have invested large sums in art — and millions more in political candidates.

Moreover, each has exploited an esoteric tax loophole that saved them millions in taxes. The trick? Route the money to Bermuda and back.

With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the “income defense industry,” consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.

In recent years, this apparatus has become one of the most powerful avenues of influence for wealthy Americans of all political stripes, including Mr. Loeb and Mr. Cohen, who give heavily to Republicans, and the liberal billionaire George Soros, who has called for higher levies on the rich while at the same time using tax loopholes to bolster his own fortune.

All are among a small group providing much of the early cash for the 2016 presidential campaign.

Operating largely out of public view — in tax court, through arcane legislative provisions and in private negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service — the wealthy have used their influence to steadily whittle away at the government’s ability to tax them. The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans.

The impact on their own fortunes has been stark. Two decades ago, when Bill Clinton was elected president, the 400 highest-earning taxpayers in America paid nearly 27 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to I.R.S. data. By 2012, when President Obama was re-elected, that figure had fallen to less than 17 percent, which is just slightly more than the typical family making $100,000 annually, when payroll taxes are included for both groups.

The ultra-wealthy “literally pay millions of dollars for these services,” said Jeffrey A. Winters, a political scientist at Northwestern University who studies economic elites, “and save in the tens or hundreds of millions in taxes.”

So yes, despite President Obama and the GOP agreeing to raise the top marginal tax rate to 39.6%, virtually none of the richest Americans actually pay that amount, and they never will.  They've long bought the trap doors and loopholes out of it, and if a Republican president gets into the White House in 2017, they'll pay even less.

Last Call For Here We Go Again, Day 7

The Bundy seditionists' call for backup has been heeded by one of the more nasty armed insurrection/white supremacist groups out there, Idaho's "Three Percent" movement.

Members of a group from outside Oregon arrived on Friday at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to "secure a perimeter" around the compound and prevent "a Waco-style situation."

The arrival of the "3% of Idaho" was the latest development in the situation outside Burns, where an armed occupation of the refuge by an Ammon Bundy-led militant group entered its seventh day.

"They just keep an eye on everything that is going on" to make sure "nothing stupid happens," Bundy said Friday afternoon outside refuge headquarters.

"If they weren't here," Bundy said, referring to the Idaho group, "I'd worry" about a Waco-style siege by federal officials.

The group's website says it stands for "freedom, liberty and the Constitution. We will combat all those who are corrupt." The website displays the motto, "When Tyranny Becomes Law, Rebellion Becomes Duty!"

As Dave Neiwert reminds us, these assholes are pretty deep into Islamophobia and armed insurrection.  They marched against settling Syrian refugees in Twin Falls, Idaho in October and again in Boise in November and the real danger is of course these jagoffs are national.

The Idaho group is only the local affiliate of a broader (though hardly numerous) national movement that takes its name from the notion that only 3 percent of the people living in the colonies took part in the American Revolution – thus, the name is intended to invoke the would-be combatants in a “second American Revolution,” as its proponents like to proclaim.

The movement is largely the brainchild of Michael Vanderboegh, the onetime militiaman who in recent years has been specializing in incendiary rhetoric supporting the notion that any attempts at federal gun control will spark a new civil war, or better yet, a new revolution.

Indeed, just about any kind of federal action inspires such warnings from Vanderboegh. “The health care law carries … the hard steel fist of government violence at the center,” he declared after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. “If we refuse to obey, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will in time be jailed. If we refuse to report meekly to jail, we will be sent for by armed men. And if we refuse their violent invitation at the doorsteps of our own homes we will be killed — unless we kill them first.”

He also freely suggests imminent violence. A 2012 post at his blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, titled “Vote,” advised going to the polls but added: “At least later on you can say you tried everything else before you were forced to shoot people in righteous self-defense of life and liberty.”

Ammon Bundy may say he doesn't want a conflict, but these Three Percent guys definitely do.  I'm very fearful that the government will give them what they want, or that they'll come and seek "suicide by federal agent" by opening fire.

So yes, this situation just got a whole lot worse.

Good Ol' Texas Haterade

What happens when Republicans' blind, racist hatred of President Obama and bigotry against Muslims is so extreme it actually causes them to break Federal law while in office? Let's ask Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his sidekick Lt. Gov Dan Patrick, shall we?

Two Texas politicians made public details of an investigation into a terrorism suspect while it was still in progress, potentially jeopardizing the inquiry, three sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick released details from documents that were still under court seal, the sources said. A spokesman for Governor Abbott had no immediate comment. Patrick's office was not available for comment.

The suspect, Omar Faraj Saeed Al-Hardan, 24, appeared in court on Friday accused of providing material support to Islamic State overseas. He entered the United States as an Iraqi refugee in November 2009 and lived in Houston, according to a court document.

Abbott and Patrick are both Republicans and their party has been fiercely resisting Democratic President Barack Obama's plan to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country over the next year, arguing that they pose a security risk to the United States. The Obama administration has rejected that assertion.

One of the sources said investigators believe Abbott and Patrick may have learned confidential details of the investigation from the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Texas. The group's members include local and state law enforcement officers. There was no immediate comment from the task force.

The sources said the politicians' statements on Thursday night disclosing a terrorism suspect's arrest forced federal authorities to wrap up their inquiries and rush out public statements and court papers on the case earlier than planned.

Willful obstruction of a federal investigation, sounds like.   They found out about the investigation from state law enforcement, and while keeping in mind both men are, you know, lawyers, they knowingly leaked this information under a court seal.

Ought to be fun to see what happens next, huh?

Hey Greg, worry less about your Confederate re-enactment fantasies and more about federal charges.

Cincy's Trump Cards

The Cincinnati Enquirer profiled several Trump supporters in the area to see why they prefer The Donald, and found they all have two things in common: they're white, and they're pissed off. People like Pam Fitzgerald, a retired teacher.

“I try to be as conservative as I can,” she said. “Because I know they were right.” 

So while she believes diversity makes America better and has no interest in closing its borders, she says officials have been too generous in allowing people in. She believes President Barack Obama wants to let all Muslims, regardless of their background, into the country. This is not a good thing, Fitzgerald says. 

She believes the military has shrunk under Obama. So when Trump says he will "make America great again," the campaign slogan struck a chord with Fitzgerald. 

She remembers the respect she was taught growing up. That doesn't mean she agrees with everything Trump says, but she likes that he is not afraid to say it – respectfully or not. 

There’s a fire in Trump she hasn't felt from a president before. 

"He's opened the doors,” Fitzgerald said, “for people to open their mouths."

And guys like Ed Kirker, who has spent 26 of his 46 years in the military.

Kirker explains his Trump support with a saying he frequently used in the military: “I’m an (expletive). Get over it.” 

He acknowledges Trump is flamboyant. To Kirker, this is part of his appeal. 

When Trump made a campaign stop in Columbus, Kirker volunteered. That night, Trump made waves by saying he would bring back waterboarding. The way Trump explained his position was an example of the “common sense” approach Kirker has come to love. 

In 1994, Kirker saw a man’s head chopped off inches in front of his face at the public Saudi Arabia market that is familiar to many as Chop-Chop Square. The man had been caught stealing. 

When other countries do this, what is wrong with waterboarding? That’s a question Kirker can’t get past. There are questions about how Trump avoided the draft during the Vietnam War, but Kirker believes he is a natural leader. 

A leader unafraid to say what he thinks. 

A leader unafraid to offend. 

A leader who could be president.

Or Kentucky Democrats like Larry Saunders, switching parties to the GOP to vote for Trump.

He worries about his wife and his two children when he is not around, even though Fort Wright is not a crime-ridden city. He believes top U.S. officials don’t know who is in America. He says Trump shouldn’t have singled out Muslims in comments about immigration, but agrees with his sentiment. He even takes it a step further. 

“I would say stop all immigration for a time,” Saunders said. 

He explains his thinking like this: “I wouldn’t let anybody into my house I don’t know.”
The United States should do the same, he said. Trump, he believes, will make sure that happens. 

As to Trump’s sometimes abrasive tone, Saunders says he didn’t know what tone meant until it was discussed in the media. But it was part of the reason he remained leery about Trump as a presidential candidate. 

Then he saw the polls. Trump was leading. 

“Maybe that’s the tone we need,” Saunders said.

That theory that you've heard that Trump actually had far more support than he's showing in the polls?  I'm starting to think maybe that's true.  I'm starting to think a lot of pissed off white folks are going to be voting for him in 2016.

If the rest of us don't show up, this asshole just might win.

Last Call For Compassionate Conservatism

Not that Jeb Bush has any shot at even being the nominee right now, but as with Marco Rubio, it's very illuminating to see just how far to the right the "moderate" Republicans are going in order to try to win over the Tea Party disaster that Republican primary voters have become.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Friday proposed an overhaul of the U.S. welfare system that would eliminate what he called failing programs for the poor and send the federal dollars from them to the states to develop their own plans.

Bush, continuing an effort to position himself as the most serious, substantive candidate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, laid out his plan ahead of a poverty forum in South Carolina on Saturday.

Bush said decades of federal policy have not solved the vexing problem of how to help generations of Americans mired in poverty.

"We have spent trillions of dollars on the ‘war on poverty,’ but there are now still more than 46 million Americans living in poverty," he said in a statement laying out his plan.

Well, your father's cuts to programs and your brother's crashing the economy didn't help either, Jeb. America spent a total of 12 years under your family's policies as part of what you call a failure, let's not forget.

Bush, a former Florida governor, would take some controversial steps as part of his welfare plan.

He would eliminate the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps, housing assistance programs and a cash program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

He would use the money to give so-called "right to rise" grants to the states to let state governments fund programs they develop as the best way to address poverty.

To encourage more Americans on welfare to seek jobs, Bush would include in "Right to Rise" grants work requirements and time limits for able-bodied adults.

So Jeb would just eliminate federal welfare programs completely and let states deal with the problem, because states like Florida have such good ideas.  Block grants to states is the new universal fix for everything in GOP land, no doubt states wouldn't be required to use that money to help the poor, but it sure would be great if we could give it to rich people, right? They'll totally promise to creat jobs with it, Jeb pinky swears.

Compassionate Conservatism at its finest.

Marco And Greg Awesome Show, Great Job!

They keep telling me the smart money is on the GOP's great "moderate, establishment conservative hope" in Marco Rubio, but the reality is Rubio is far to the right of the entire country on issues like same-sex marriage and having abandoned his own immigration plan for political expediency, he's now publicly pushing the fringe notion of a convention of states to rewrite the Constitution.

America was built on the revolutionary idea that our rights come from God, not from government. To protect those rights, our founders created a government of the people, by the people and for the people. But today, that government has been hijacked by politicians and bureaucrats who disregard the will of the people, rack up trillions in debt and expand the federal bureaucracy into more and more aspects of our lives. As president, I will promote a convention of states to amend the Constitution and restore limited government. 

The framers of our Constitution allowed for a constitutional convention because they knew our citizens were the ultimate defense against an overbearing federal government. They gave the American people, through their state representatives, the power to call a convention made up of at least 34 states, where delegates could then propose amendments that would require the support of 38 states to become law. 

This method of amending our Constitution has become necessary today because of Washington’s refusal to place restrictions on itself. The amendment process must be approached with caution, which is why I believe the agenda should be limited to ideas that reduce the size and scope of the federal government, such as imposing term limits on Congress and the Supreme Court and forcing fiscal responsibility through a balanced budget requirement. Limiting the agenda will prevent the convention from being overtaken by special interests.

Let's keep in mind that this has never happened before.  The convention of states method of amending the Constitution has never been used, not even once.

Secondly, term limits for Congress has long been ruled unconstitutional and for good reason, where term limits are in place for state lawmakers, lobbyists control the agenda much more easily.

Finally, a balanced budget amendment would destroy the economy overnight.

Ahh, but it seems Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott is taking Marco Rubio's advice and is running even further to the right with it..

Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday called for a constitutional convention to gather and adopt nine new amendments he proposed in what he’s billing as “the Texas plan.” 

“Departures from the Constitution are not the aberration. Now they have become the norm,” said Abbott, speaking at an event by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin. His proposed amendments — which include allowing a two-thirds vote of the states to repeal any federal law and preventing Congress from regulating economic activity that takes place all within the borders of one state — would “put teeth in the 10th Amendment” and guarantee states’ rights, he said.

It's all about states' rights when there's a black president, I guess.

Here are Abbott’s proposed amendments: 

“1. Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within one State.

“2. Require Congress to balance its budget.

“3. Prohibit administrative agencies—and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them—from creating federal law. 

“4. Prohibit administrative agencies—and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them—from preempting state law. 

“5. Allow a two-thirds majority of the States to override a U.S. Supreme Court decision. 

“6. Require a seven-justice super-majority vote for U.S. Supreme Court decisions that invalidate a democratically enacted law. 

“7. Restore the balance of power between the federal and state governments by limiting the former to the powers expressly delegated to it in the Constitution. 

“8. Give state officials the power to sue in federal court when federal officials overstep their bounds. 

“9. Allow a two-thirds majority of the States to override a federal law or regulation.”

If you're wondering what tyranny of the majority looks like, here's your road map.

Part-Time Employees, Full-Time Liars

Remember conservative economists warning that the dangerous scourge of Obamacare would mean millions of Americans working full-time jobs would be limited to 29 hours a week and lose all full-time benefits in order for struggling employers to even stay in business?

Turns out that was a massive lie by the right. Surprise!

A new study further undercuts a major claim by critics of the Affordable Care Act, who contended that the law would encourage companies to slash full-time workers' hours and shift them into part-time work in order to avoid having to offer them health insurance.

The research "found little evidence that the ACA had caused increases in part-time employment as of 2015," according to a summary of the findings published in the journal Health Affairs on Tuesday.

"We can say with a large degree of confidence that there is nothing we can see nationwide when we look at the whole workforce" that would support a claim that the so-called employer mandate or other Obamacare features have led to increases in part-time employment at the expense of full-time jobs, said Kosali Simon, a professor at Indiana University, and a co-author of the report.

Simon noted that even the slight shifts to part-time employment from full-time jobs — of just about 0.5 percent from 2013 to 2015 — in two subgroups could not be attributed to the Obamacare employer mandate. Those subgroups are people with no more than a high school degree, and workers between the age of 60 and 64.

Oh, and there's more:

A related analysis released Tuesday also found that the expansion of Medicaid benefits to more poor adults in the United States — a crucial component of Obamacare — did not lead to job reductions or other significant employment changes in 2014, when the Medicaid expansion's effects began being broadly felt.

You mean JOB-KILLING OBAMACARE didn't actually kill jobs?  Hoocuddanode?  By the way, this morning we found out that December saw 292,000 new jobs and 50K in upward revisions to October and November, meaning 2.8 million new jobs in 2015 to go with 3.1 million in 2014.

Yep, Obamaxare is killing jobs alright.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama participated in a town hall meeting broadcast on CNN that discussed his executive actions on gun safety, taking questions from supporters and fierce critics alike.
• Alabama is the latest state to sue the Obama administration over the placement of Syrian refugees, claiming the White House was negligent in screening and placed state citizens at risk.
• Global stock markets appear to have stabilized after two days of intense selloffs in China's markets as Beijing has raised its currency higher.
• The first lawsuits against GM for its faulty ignition switches begin on Monday as the automaker faces potentially billions in damage claims.
• The FCC says that broadband internet is still unavailable to about 34 million Americans, but that's a major improvement from the 67 million figure from 2012.