Friday
Feb082013
The Commentariat -- Feb. 9, 2013
The President's Weekly Address:
... The transcript is here. The President begins his remarks with a huge lie: "Over the last few years, Democrats and Republicans have come together and cut our deficit by more than $2.5 trillion through a balanced mix of spending cuts and higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans." (AND he doesn't get much better as he goes along, promising "sensible changes to entitlement programs.") How fucking balance is this? --
... (From the February 7 Commentariat) Greg Sargent: "Even if the parties reach a deal in the third round of deficit reduction to avert the sequester with something approaching an equivalent sum of spending cuts and new revenues, the overall deficit reduction balance would still be heavily lopsided towards Republicans. Yet they continue to insist on resolving round three only through cuts, anyway." There are more related links in the February 7 Commentariat. ...
... Tom Raum of the AP: "Trying to ratchet up pressure on Congress, the White House on Friday detailed what it said would be the painful impact on the federal workforce and certain government assistance programs if 'large and arbitrary' scheduled government spending cuts are allowed to take place beginning March 1. They include layoffs or furloughs of 'hundreds of thousands' of federal workers, including FBI agents, U.S. prosecutors, food safety inspectors and air traffic controllers, said White House budget officials at a briefing and in a fact sheet...." ...
... Here's the White House fact sheet. ...
... Jonathan Chait: Speaker Boehner is (1) standing pat on (2) the "horrible sequester," which is all President Obama's fault. "I don't understand the strategy of publicly declaring you don't mind the sequester and blaming it all on Obama. Don't you have to, you know, pick one?" CW: no, Jon, you do not, if you live in Right Wing World, where self-contradiction is the norm. ...
... Jed Lewison of Daily Kos has the best idea on how to handle the sequester: repeal it. CW: If you think this would lead to a lot of wasteful defense spending, you might be right. But maybe not: a budget authorization is just that: an authorization. It doesn't mean the Pentagon has to spend the money, though obviously the Defense Department would be under a lot of pressure from military contractors to let authorized contracts.
... This Huff Post interview of Paul Krugman is well-worth hearing. Krugman's questioner Marc Hill asks all the right questions, allowing Krugman to cover all the basics of what's wrong with Washington's (mis)management of deficits & spending. The interview comes to me via Chris Spannos, my editor at NYTX, who found it because the accompanying Huff Post story by Jack Mirkinson links one of my NYTX columns:
Pat Garofalo of Think Progress: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a bill this week that would eliminate the corporate "'deferral,' which allows U.S. corporations to avoid paying taxes on overseas profits until they bring that money back to the U.S., giving them every incentive to leave it overseas permanently [and other corporate giveaways].... According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 'the provisions in this bill will raise more than $590 billion in revenue over the next decade.'" CW: good luck getting so much as a hearing on the bill, Bernie.
Kelsey Snell of Politico: "An investment Jack Lew made in the Cayman Islands has been flagged as an issue in the Treasury secretary nominee’s vetting by the Senate Finance Committee, according to multiple sources close to the confirmation process. The White House says the investment was previously disclosed and is already a public matter.... 'That Mr. Lew had an investment in the Caymans from 2007 through 2010 will likely draw questions during his nomination hearing,' said ... a spokeswoman for Finance Committee Republicans. Lew has been confirmed by the Senate three times in the past -- twice by unanimous consent." CW: so I guess it was okay that President Romney still had a slew of Caymen investments, but it's not okay if Treasury Secretary Lew had a Caymen investment in the past (he sold the investment, at a loss, i 2010). The real problem: "Republicans have been critical of Lew since his nomination was announced last month. Sens. Jeff Sessions and Orrin Hatch have questioned his role in Medicare policy decisions...." ...
... Sen. Carl Levin: "Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter today to Ranking Member Sen. James Inhofe, responding to a letter by Sen. Inhofe and other Republican senators insisting on additional financial disclosure information from secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel.... Sen. Levin outlines the Armed Services Committee's rules and practices for nominees and says the request by Inhofe and other Republican senators 'appears to insist upon financial disclosure requirements that far exceed the standard practices of the Armed Services Committee and go far beyond the financial disclosure required of previous Secretaries of Defense.' Levin intends to hold a committee vote on the Hagel nomination as soon as possible."
New York Times Editors: "... Harry Reid needs to remove [Sen. Bob Menendez {D-N.J.} from his position as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee], at least pending credible resolution by the Senate Ethics Committee of the swirling accusations of misconduct."
Ari Berman of The Nation: "In 2006, Congress voted overwhelmingly to reauthorize key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for another twenty-five years. The legislation passed 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate. Every top Republican supported the bill.... Seven years later, the bipartisan consensus that supported the VRA for nearly fifty years has collapsed, and conservatives are challenging the law as never before.... The current campaign against the VRA is the result of ... a whiter, more Southern, more conservative GOP that has responded to demographic change by trying to suppress an increasingly diverse electorate; a twenty-five-year effort to gut the VRA by conservative intellectuals, who in recent years have received millions of dollars from top right-wing funders, including Charles Koch; and a reactionary Supreme Court that does not support remedies to racial discrimination."
"Fitness for Office." Gail Collins considers the corpulence of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. ...
... Jason Volentine of KTVK Phoenix: "Dr. Connie Mariano was the White House doctor for nine years, encompassing parts of both Bush administrations and the entire Clinton presidency. She was recently asked her opinion of Gov. Chris Christie’s weight problem..." The doctor said she worried about his health if he didn't get his weight down before he ran for office. [Elsewhere it was reported she said he might die in office.] Christie did not take the criticism well, firing back at the doctor from a news conference he held in New Jersey.... Mariano said Christie called her and yelled at her. 'It was essentially the tone of the press conference only louder,' she said. 'It was hard to get anything across.' ... Mariano ... [said] it's common for medical experts to weigh in on the health concerns of potential presidential candidates.... Ironically, Mariano has been a Christie supporter and identifies herself as a Republican."
Matthew O'Brien of The Atlantic explains that -- contrary to claims by know-it-alls -- liberal arts majors are not having a hard time finding jobs because their majors are useless; it's because, um, there aren't many jobs out there. With charts!
Andy Borowitz: "Citing budgetary concerns, the United States announced today that it would discontinue regular Saturday drone strikes on U.S. citizens, beginning in 2014."
Oh, boy! Remember Pretend President Rubio, the Republican savior who is going to deliver the Republican response to the SOTU? Now there's also going to be Pretend President Rand Paul who will deliver the Tea Party response to the SOTU. Paul should be great because, as Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon notes, "Paul will try to do a better job of looking at the camera than Michele Bachmann."
News Ledes
Reuters: "Chinese welcomed the arrival of the Year of the Snake with raucous celebrations on Saturday, setting off a cacophony of firecrackers in the streets and sending fireworks blazing into the sky to bring good fortune. Celebrations will carry on into the early hours of Sunday, officially the first day of the Lunar New Year."
AP: "A Cairo court on Saturday ordered the government to block access to the video-sharing website YouTube for 30 days for carrying an anti-Islam film that caused deadly riots across the world."
AP: "After weeks of anxiety plodding through the opaque Russian legal system, two U.S. women have custody of their adopted Russian children and are preparing to take them home to start a new life together. Jeana Bonner of South Jordan, Utah, and Rebecca Preece from Nampa, Idaho, told The Associated Press on Saturday about the expenses, the confusion and emotional swings they've gone through since arriving in Moscow in mid-January, expecting to quickly leave with their children, both of whom have Down syndrome."
Bloomberg News: "Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt is adopting a plan to sell as many as 3.2 million shares in the operator of the world's most popular search engine. The planned share sales, worth about $2.5 billion, are for Schmidt's individual asset diversification and liquidity, Mountain View, California-based Google said in a filing yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission."
New York Times: "A powerful nor'easter swept fast and furiously across the Northeast on Saturday, dumping mountains of snow, forcing hundreds of motorists to abandon their cars at the height of the blizzard and knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people." Latest updates are here. ...
... AP Update: "New Englanders began the back-breaking job of digging out from as much as 3 feet of snow Saturday and emergency crews used snowmobiles to reach shivering motorists stranded overnight on New York's Long Island< after a howling storm swept through the Northeast. About 650,000 homes and businesses were left without electricity, and some could be cold and dark for days. Roads across the New York-to-Boston corridor of roughly 25 million people were impassable."
... Boston Globe: "Hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents have lost power because of the mammoth blizzard that lashed Massachusetts with hurricane-force winds and dumped more than two feet of snow in some areas overnight. The state is at a standstill, with residents hunkering down at home under a rare travel ban imposed by the governor on Friday, and the MBTA saying it will not be able to restore service today. Snowplows are out in force struggling to clear the roads, but the storm is expected to continue dumping snow into midday." ...
... Hartford Courant: "Roads across the state were impassable Saturday morning, with drivers, emergency responders and even highway crews stuck in 2 to 3 feet of snow. At 5 a.m., Gov. Dannel P. Malloy ordered all roads closed until further notice, according to spokesman Andrew Doba. Just before 7 a.m., more than 36,000 Connecticut Light & Power customers were without power, along with more than half a million households in Massachusetts and Rhode Island."
AP: "Secret Defense Department studies cast doubt on whether a multibillion-dollar missile defense system planned for Europe will ever be able to protect the U.S. from Iranian missiles as intended, congressional investigators say. Military officials say they believe the problems can be overcome and are moving forward with plans."
AP: "First lady Michelle Obama will join some of Illinois' most recognizable politicians and clergy Saturday to mourn a 15-year-old honor student whose death has drawn attention to staggering gun violence in the nation's third-largest city. But Hadiya Pendleton's family says her Saturday funeral service won't be about politics, but about remembering a girl who loved to dance, once appeared in an anti-gang video and died just days after performing at one of President Barack Obama's inauguration events." ...
... Update: "Hundreds of mourners and dignitaries including first lady Michelle Obama packed the funeral service Saturday for a Chicago teen whose killing catapulted her into the nation's debate over gun violence." The Chicago Tribune story is here.
New York Times: John "Karlin, who died on Jan. 28, at 94..., quietly yet emphatically defined the experience of using the telephone in the mid-20th century and afterward, from ushering in all-digit dialing to casting the shape of the keypad on touch-tone phones. And that keypad, in turn, would inform the design of a spate of other everyday objects.... Mr. Karlin, associated from 1945 until his retirement in 1977 with Bell Labs..., was widely considered the father of human-factors engineering in American industry."
New York Times: "India hanged a man on Saturday who had been convicted of involvement in the 2001 attack on Parliament that killed nine people. The hanging of Afzal Guru, a 43-year-old militant with the group Jaish-e-Mohammad, came more than a decade after the Dec. 13, 2001, suicide attack on India's Parliament in which five gunmen opened fire, killing nine people, including security officials and a journalist."
Washington Post: "Parking lot attendants at the Smithsonian Institution's air and space center in Chantilly" skimmed at least $1.4 million from the parking fees they collected. Two have been sentenced. A third attendant, charged with stealing $120,000, committed suicide before her case was resolved...."
Los Angeles Times: "An attorney representing two women who were delivering newspapers when they were shot by police during a massive manhunt for an ex-LAPD officer called the incident 'unacceptable,' saying his clients looked nothing like the suspect. Emma Hernandez, 71, was delivering the Los Angeles Times with her daughter, Margie Carranza, 47, in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue in Torrance on Thursday morning when Los Angeles police detectives apparently mistook their pickup for that of Christopher Dorner, the 33-year-old fugitive suspected of killing three people and injuring two others." CW: Hernandez & Carranza are odd names for "Asian" women, which was the initially-reported description of the women. I guess all non-white people look alike. Who wouldn't mistake a 71-year-old Latina for a 33-year-old black man?
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Reader Comments (12)
I have lived in different places in Connecticut since the middle sixties and every winter, except for a few, after a snow storm I'd say how those storms couldn't compare with the ones in Wisconsin. I'd describe how you'd literally have to dig your way out since the snow drifts blocked all the entries; how everything would be at a standstill since vehicles were unable to be on the roads and people skied to work; how as kids we'd have lots of sleigh rides throughout the winter and so on and so forth until people roll their eyes and tell me yes, yes, you've told us that before. They will no longer hear my snowy recollections: THIS STORM IS A DOOZY! We are literally blocked from all entries––drifts as high as the top of the doors and it's still snowing! Our land looks lovely in its white blanket, but it's going to be a big job to dig our way out of this. At least we didn't lose power ––yet. Except for the sleigh rides I'm going to shut up about Wisconsin snow storms from now on. Smiles all around.
Before the "Nemo' storm came into existence, I had had it with the weather.com forecasts. Long suspicious that there's a dart board-like object in the meteorologist's office with various weather phenomena indicated....whereupon darts are tossed and whatever comes up, et voila: that's the forecast. Last Sunday, I started a project that I had vowed to do many times before and began taking screen shots of the 10-day forecast from the weather.com online page. Tried to do this at approximately the same time each day. Then, I set up a Photoshop page to accommodate ten days...and I carefully aligned one day's screen shot with the one prior and the one before that, etc!
My results illustrate a fluctuating weather EKG. Any similarity to last week's forecast are purely coincidental. For instance, last Friday's forecast for today was 36 degrees & partly cloudy—instead, today it indicates 19 and BLIZZARD.
With a nod to PD Pepe —yep, we've got a big heap of snow this morning heah in Maine as well. (...though, I still kinda think I remember heavier snows in Pennsylvania years ago!)
The Hill/Krugman exchange is really, really good. Hill does indeed ask the right questions and what a joy not to have other pundits intervening ––no more SNOW jobs to weigh through. The mention of those "death panels" was refreshing––yes, there needs to be a cut-off somewhere down the line because Medicare paying for a new hip for Auntie Bea who is 93 doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless Auntie can afford to pay out of pocket. Cruel? I don't think so.
As PD Pepe suggests, (these are my words now and not PD's) one of the oddities of our often upside-down morality is the social, political and economic deference we pay to the old. Not that I mind. I like the monthly social security pittance and the medicare coverage and all, but when I make my weekly trip to my home town rest home (a habit that began when my mother resided there the last three years of her life) to visit with the few lonely males who have made it that far, thoughts about resource distribution can't help but occur.
A year of so back I researched the costs of end of life care for a local radio show. Without the hip replacements, rest home care costs about a hundred grand a year. My mother's bill--medical costs aside--ran just under 300 grand for her last three years. Needless to say, this is far more than most wage earners have saved during their working lives, which is why between 60 and 70 percent of the residents are on Medicaid. In short, if we toss Medicare into the mix, the surgeries, the frequent hospital stays that often presage death, it might seem we are much more generous to the old than we are to the young.
I have two images in mind this morning. The folks in the care center, without a penny to their name, treated to three meals a day, sometimes literally spoon fed...and the lines of people outside the local food bank on Tuesday morning , standing in the rain, waiting their turn, heads down, like the patient beggars they are.
We (manifested in our institutions) seem much kinder to the old than to the young and I wonder why. Do we fear our own death that much? Do we see our own near future in these walking and rolling corpses? Are the resources we devote to elder care an expression of our cultural denial, our willingness to pay a enormous cost to keep the embarrassment of age out of sight and, for as long as possible, out of mind? Probably all of these things and each understandable.
But what I don't understand is the relative cruelty we show to the young, the helpless, hapless children who have too little to eat, no twenty four hour care and no equivalent access to medicine. We render the old invisible by tucking then away, out of our sight. But the children and their unemployed parents are among us, far more visible and yet ignored.
I'm still thinking about what that says about us because there's much here I don't understand. Today's NYTimes article on the landlords who are doing very well indeed sheltering the homeless may offer a hint: we do what we do when there's money in it.
But that still doesn't explain why there's money for Auntie Bea's hip but not enough to put the unemployed and the homeless to work. And the future is even less promising because the sequester path we're on will likely provide less, not more.
@Ken: I agree with everything you have said. My mother lived to be one hundred and for her last eight years she existed in a nether world not recognizing any member of our family and was in a perpetual state of what I would call fury. She made us promise years before that we would do her in before she didn't know "how high was up," and we'd kid her and say we'd make a stew out of all those little foil wrapped leftovers she had in her freezer ––some at least four years old–-and if that didn't do her in, nothing would. At one point she'd had a feeding tube and I would have argued against it, but I was in a different state and my brother went ahead with it––she, unfortunately had not made out a medical living will.
You are correct, Ken, that we have a problem with death although as you are aware, I'm sure, a few states have something called "Death with Dignity" and I keep hoping more states will follow. I, for one, do not want to live once I reach a point where I don't know how high is up and I'm damned determined to make that happen––one way or another. And yes, funds for the old, infirm, tucked away, kept at bay individuals are sapping the funds for the ones who want to be productive members of a society, including children. It's a topsy turvy kind of system and simply makes no sense. (not to mention, by the way, those that favor zygotes rather than the female in whose body it is housed).
@P.D. Pepe: I'm delighted you still have power. Hope it stays on for the duration.
@Ken Winkes: the reason we're so "good" to seniors is that while they're still able -- and sometimes past when they're able -- they still vote. They vote at a rate much higher than do the poor & the young. Ergo, we have -- so far -- kept the government's hands off their Medicare. A hip replacement for 93-year-old Aunt Bea is exactly the kind of procedure that Krugman was suggesting was not, um, cost-effective. And if Aunt Bea had her say -- as so often the patient does not -- she would likely agree with you & Krugman.
Marie
I love the snow... from a distance. Spent my first 27 years in Michigan. We lived in a semi rural area on a dirt road with sporadically spaced houses. My father had a pick-up truck. In the winter, my sister and I had to drag out of bed every morning at 5:30 a.m to sit on the tailgate so he could get up the slippery incline to the main road. We learned to leap off at the proper time without taking a header. He would stop on the main road and shut the tailgate, head off to work. In the Spring, balanced behind him on a small harrow he pulled behind the gardening tractor for our 1 acre garden. I guess I was the "weighty" kid.....
My sister is older than I but I have no doubt she will outlive me. She is a firm believer it not overstaying your welcome in this world. I think of my sister if I were laying in a hospital bed hooked to various machines. She would pull the plug in a minute. I can see her, all 4'11" of her and her flaming red hair, running down the hospital hallway being chased by nurses. In my vision, she is waiving a plug as she goes. In my view, not a bad ending.
The snow storm is a new opportunity for repugs to prove that they don't like anyone very much.
Well, I believe I have something to contribut to this Medicare discussion. In 2007, I broke my left hip at the age of 68. In 2012, I broke my right hip at the age of 73. Both hips were repaired, not replaced. So far, my recovery is complete. Somhow, I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about having my hips repaired, along wih the follow up rehab.
On a scarier note, in 2010, I was diagnosed with ALS. At this juncture, it's not too bad, but I know that won't last forever. I've told everyone I don't want to be kept alive with machines. I've thought about moving to Oregon, where I grew up, with the option of assisted suicide. The scariest part is that normally, your mind stays sharp while your body deteriorates. So, I take it one day at a time. Sorry to burden all of you with this, but even though I've never met any of you, I feel as if I'm among friends.
@Barbarossa: you have burdened me. And you are among friends.
Marie
@ Barbarossa: A friend of ours was diagnosed with ALS two years ago. He and his wife added an addition on to their house with facilities to accommodate him once he needed it.It remains unused since he still has all his faculties except some stumbling as he walks and sometimes numbing of his limbs. You are brave to let us know your condition––telling us, I'm sure, is not a burden, but an affirmation of trust in us and if we can let us help you carry that load even if it's just to make you laugh.
Have you read Tony Judt's chronicle of his experience with ALS?
P.S. At 68 and 73 I'm all for hip repairment!
Barbarossa,
For the millionth time I wish for words that could comfort, and for the millionth time, I can find none. With tears in my eyes and sadness in my heart, I wish you and those dear to you strength and courage to face the trials and tribulations yet to come.