The Commentariat -- April 9, 2014
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Obama on Tuesday signed two executive measures intended to help close longstanding pay disparities between men and women as Democrats seek to capitalize on their gender-gap advantage at the ballot box in a midterm election year":
The GOP Celebrates Equal Pay Day in Its Special Way
Greg Hilburn of the Monroe, Louisiana, News Star: "U.S. Rep. Vance McAllister’s top aide said the congressman will send a letter to House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday morning requesting an FBI investigation concerning the leak of a video from a security camera in McAllister's Monroe District Office. The video, which was publicly posted Monday, showed the married congressman sharing a passionate embrace and kiss with former staffer Melissa Anne Hixon Peacock, who also is married. Peacock has since resigned." CW: Gee, Vance, maybe the leaker isn't the person with the problem here. But, please, feel free to waste taxpayers' money finding out who caught you kissing Mrs. Santa Claus. It's the Christian thing to do, I guess. ...
... Resigned? See this follow-up piece by Hilburn: "Adam Terry, McAllister's chief of staff, said Peacock was taken off of the payroll during the past 24 hours." Oh. Fired. ...
... Chris Frates & Curt Devine of CNN: "The husband of the woman caught making out with Rep. Vance McAllister said the Louisiana Republican destroyed his life and marriage." ...
... Adam Weinstein of Gawker: "Melissa Anne Hixon Peacock, and her husband Heath were longtime family friends of McAllister's and had backed his campaign with sizable donations." ...
... ** Dana Milbank: "On the eve of ... [Equal Pay Day,] a small newspaper in Louisiana ... reported that its congressman, Republican Rep. Vance McAllister, had been videotaped making out with a low-paid staffer.... The woman, a part-timer paid less than $22,000 a year who also received $300 from McAllister to clean out his campaign office? She was terminated as the story broke.... It takes chutzpah to observe Equal Pay Day by sacking the low-wage employee you've been snogging." ...
Consider Paul Ryan's budget, which the House is debating this week. Among those functions of government the Republican congressman from Wisconsin would cut, many disproportionately benefit women, according to the National Women's Law Center.... By contrast, government payments that go disproportionately to men -- active-duty military and veterans -- are relatively untouched. The highest earners, who are disproportionately male, benefit most under Ryan's tax proposal, while those receiving low-income tax credits, often families headed by women, would fare poorly. -- Dana Milbank
... See also stories on Breitbart's depiction of Nancy Pelosi, linked below. ,,,
,,, Wait, Wait, There's More. Burgess Everett of Politico: "Most Senate Republicans are expected to unite on Wednesday to block the [Paycheck Fairness Act], which would allow workers to compare salaries without the threat of retaliation, force companies to explain pay disparities between men and women and allow those discriminated against to seek punitive damages.... The GOP seems perfectly comfortable killing the bill, risking legions of negative headlines and coordinated Democratic attacks on the GOP as a party out of touch with women."
Katie Thomas of the New York Times: "People who signed up early for insurance through the new marketplaces were more likely to be prescribed drugs to treat pain, depression and H.I.V. and were less likely to need contraceptives, according to a new study that provides a much-anticipated look at the population that signed up for coverage under the new health care law." ...
... Reed Abelson & Sarah Cohen of the New York Times: "A tiny fraction of the 880,000 doctors and other health care providers who take Medicare accounted for nearly a quarter of the roughly $77 billion paid out to them under the federal program, receiving millions of dollars each in some cases in a single year, according to the most detailed data ever released in Medicare's nearly 50-year history." ...
... Peter Whoriskey, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Medicare program is the source of a small fortune for many U.S. doctors, according to a trove of government records that reveal unprecedented details about physician billing practices nationwide. The government insurance program for older people paid nearly 4,000 physicians in excess of $1 million each in 2012, according to the new data. Those figures do not include what the doctors billed private insurance firms." ...
... The Post has some interesting charts here including a facility to "find your doctor" to see if s/he is a high Medicare biller. My primary care doctor got $362K from Medicare in 2012; $122K of it went into her pocket.
... Sahil Kapur of TPM: "For all the challenges still facing Obamacare and its supporters, conservative health wonks are increasingly cautioning Republicans that the politics of the issue have changed in the wake of the 7 million initial sign-ups. Simply repealing the law is no longer an option, they warn, even if Republicans gain the power to do so." ...
... Brian Beutler, now of the New Republic: The Wall Street Journal editors Tuesday attacked " GOP members who are furious about party leaders doing anything at all to facilitate implementation of the law.... The conservative position is slowly shifting from repeal and replace, to replace and repeal." ...
... Digby: "At some point [conservatives] are going to start taking some of the credit for [the ACA]. After all, it's a program that tracks closely with certain policies pushed by conservative health care wonks in the not too distant past and it was passed though an arduous negotiation between representatives of the health care industry and conservative members of congress. The conservative Supreme Court then came along and made it possible to partially gut the one major expansion of the government's commitment to serve the poor.... And, as with most heavy government lifts, the conservatives let the Democratic Party to do all their dirty work after which they came along and reaped the electoral rewards from the public's nervousness about big change. They do the same thing with 'deficit reduction.'"
Krissy Clark, in Slate, with another reminder of how you're subsidizing big business: "Walmart is likely the biggest single corporate beneficiary of SNAP, but it's not just Walmart. A growing number of stores have baked food stamp funding into their business models.... The tally of stores authorized to accept food stamps has more than doubled since the year 2000, from big-box stories like Target and Costco to 7-Elevens and dollar stores. It's a paradox that the more people are struggling to get by, the more valuable food stamps become for business." ...
... CW: Not a paradox maybe, but a disturbing irony. WalMart pays its employees so little they must rely on food stamps, which they use to buy food at WalMart. So, the Waltons double-dip; they make money by (a) underpaying their employees, and (b) collecting gummit money -- your money -- in food-stamp profits they "earn" directly from the underpaid employees. That's the rich robbing from the poor AND from the middle class. Neat. Thanks to Dave S. for the link.
Chief Justice Roberts continually shows a desire to downplay the significance of his rulings, and ostensible political naivete is now part of the path to get there. -- Political Scientist Richard Hasan ...
... Tom Edsall: "After the so called Sheldon primary, when four potential candidates for the Republican presidential nomination went to Las Vegas over the last weekend in March to court the casino owner Sheldon Adelson, it took a heavy dose of audacity on the part of Chief Justice John Roberts to claim on April 2 that 'ingratiation and access . . . are not corruption.' Read the whole post. Thanks to Ken W. for the link.
"You Don't Want to Go There, Buddy." Eric Holder blows up at Louie Gohmert. Via Igor Bobic of TPM:
Catherine Thompson of TPM: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, "the chair of the Democratic National Committee, on Monday called a Breitbart News ad portraying House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 'disgusting' and urged Republican leaders to condemn the conservative outlet. Breitbart News launched a new vertical focused on California politics with an ad campaign that included a Miley Cyrus-referencing image of Pelosi in a nude bikini with her tongue lolling out.... 'It is a disgusting new low and would be reprehensible against any woman -- regardless of party. It's no wonder the Republicans are having problems appealing to women,'" Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. ...
... Dylan Scott of TPM: "House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) sided on Monday with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) over Breitbart News, requesting that his column be pulled from the news outlet's new California website."
Nicole Perlroth of the New York Times: "A flaw has been discovered in one of the Internet's key security methods, potentially forcing a wide swath of websites to make changes to protect the security of consumers. The problem was first discovered by a team of Finnish security experts and researchers at Google last week and disclosed on Monday. By Tuesday afternoon, a number of large websites, including Yahoo, Facebook, Google, and Amazon Web Services, said they were fixing the problem or had already fixed it."
"I'm a Cat." James Barron of the New York Times on the "nine lives" of Al Sharpton.
Presidential Election
Maureen Dowd considers Jeb (not his real name) for President. "Jeb thinks Republicans have lost their way. He may soon learn that a lot of conservatives think they have found their way -- and it's not the joyful, loving, government-can-be-a-force-for-good way. It's the mean, cruel, gut-the-government way. When this crowd thinks of A Thousand Points of Light, they're thinking of torches as they march toward the Capitol."
News Ledes
Washington Post: " The pro-Russian militants who have put [Ukraine] on the brink by seizing buildings and declaring independent republics in the east appeared to be ready to soften their tactics Wednesday, and politicians saw an opportunity to promote a deal. A new regional poll showed very limited support for the building occupations, and even pro-Russian party leaders began to suggest that the agitators should call it a day."
AP: "A doctor says some victims of a multiple stabbing at a high school near Pittsburgh have suffered injuries classified as life-threatening, though all are expected to survive. Dr. Chris Kaufman says two victims were in the operating room and one was awaiting surgery at Forbes Regional Medical Center, a few miles from Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville.... The suspect, a male student, was taken into custody and being questioned." ...
... Los Angeles Times Update: "A 16-year-old Pennsylvania student has been charged as an adult in the early morning knife attack on at least 21 people at Franklin Regional Senior High School near Pittsburgh on Wednesday. The suspect, Alex Hribal, was charged with four counts of attempted homicide, 21 counts of aggravated assault and one count of bringing a weapon on school property, said his attorney, Patrick Thomassey. Hribal was being held without bail at Westmoreland County Juvenile Detention Center."
Share Article
Reader Comments (20)
Corporate welfare poster boys
Edsall has a good summary of what the Supremes did the the rest of us last week. In Justice John's view money is speech and, apparently, it's also fungible moral coin.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/opinion/the-high-cost-of-free-speech.html?hp&rref=opinion
The best part of the exchange between Holder and looney Louie is that once again Louie mentioned the aspersions on his asparagus to which, at the very end of their contretemps, Holder said, "Good luck with your asparagus."
The other highlight of my evening was over on what O'Reilly calls "The Factor" on Fox where sitting pretty was Monica Crowley discussing the "awful pay equality for women bill" telling us that it is one step toward Communism because as you know that's where everyone makes the same amount of money no matter what they do. I can imagine some of those watching would say:
Fritz: did you hear that, Irene? Monica says Obama is heading us into Commie territory.
Irene: Oh, shut up, Fritz, what does she know, anyway.
F: What does she KNOW? Do you read what's under her name on the screen? It says Monica Crowley, PHd ––so she must...
I: Well, then, that makes all the difference, don't it? What fool puts those letters under their name on a talk show?
F: It's to inform us of how smart she is.
I: If she needs to put those little letters under her name to inform us of her expertise, then shit, Fritz, from now on I'll add a few myself–-OWWS––stands for Old Woman With Smarts.
F: Good night, Irene.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Re: Snatches of love stuff in one's office especially if one is doing the people's business is bad business if one does not want to get caught. Many a legislator burned their bridges by looking for love in all the wrong places. Once it was de rigueur for hanky panky but times have changed and nothing is private anymore. Don't these people realize that?
From the WP article, "The AMA is concerned that CMS’ broad approach to releasing physician payment data will mislead the public into making inappropriate and potentially harmful treatment decisions and will result in unwarranted bias against physicians that can destroy careers,” Ardis Dee Hoven, president of the AMA, said in a statement. “We have witnessed these inaccuracies in the past.”
Shut the fuck up, AMA. Just shut the fuck up.
@P.D. Pepe: I'm calling this two consenting adults, each married to others. The disgusting part is not a little Yuletide kissyface, but the fact that our hero fired his underpaid staffer at the same time he's asking for "forgiveness," boasting about the groundswell of public support for hus re-election, & trying to deflect attention to the leaker by asking taxpayers to shell out to find out who that might be.
All this on a hypocritical family/Christian values platform. It's one thing to be a prissy Christian; it's altogether another to pretend to be one.
Marie
The leaked draft of a UN report on climate change has got the loonies and the CCM's (cynical corporate manipulators) up in arms. Again.
And as surely as facepalms follow every asinine assertion by Louie Gohmert, the climate change denial machine kick starts it's coal fired engines and spits out its own report full of "expert" (read: for hire) testimony.
And guess who touts it as the only reasonable source of information on climate change? Yes! Fox!
So this morning Fox "News" breathlessly reports on the latest toxic sludge sluicing out of the roundly discredited Heartland Institute, a stink tank funded by oil and gas industries, tobacco manufacturers and a super triple secret Special Donor (the Kochs).
But simply saying climate change isn't happening isn't good enough anymore. Now, and this is a criminal action, they claim that the more CO2 the better. CO2 is not harmful in the least, they say. Look the grass is still green. Oh, well, why didn't you mention that you had actual proof?
Yup. Their "scientists" prove it. And rather than trying to rebut the real science, they simply claim that climate change is made up because all those hundreds of climate researchers around the world are being pressured into lying. Naturally, they don't say who is applying the pressure (but it might be a Kenyan Muslim), or why this pressure has been so shatteringly successful, because, you know, freedom.
But it's one thing if you want to support allowing automatic weapons and high capacity clips in schools and day care centers, bars, airports, supermarkets, summer camps, etc. The chances of more than fifty or sixty being murdered at any one time (because Freedom. Again) is slim.
It's a different form of violation--by orders of magnitude--to support, and if you're the Kochs, causing, further damage to the ecosystem through increasing change in our climate. This is violence on a global scale. Changes in weather patterns, floods, droughts, and the many problems that come in the wake of such disasters (not to mention the cost) places these people in a new category of brutality.
And it's nothing short of a crime that Fox, congressional scumbags, and industrial assholes work this hard to spread disinformation and try to muddy the waters they've already polluted.
A crime for which everyone else will pay.
Because that's the Republican Way.
(How is it that these two rat bastards seem to be behind every bad thing, every horribly wrong position, every evil plan to fuck over millions of human beings? Would it surprise you to discover that they were funding the anti-vaccination clowns? Attempting to create a monarchy in the US? And trying to make breathing a privilege reserved for the wealthy? I don't know if voodoo actually works, but I'm making a couple of Koch dolls and going out today to buy a couple hundred gigantic hat pins.)
By the way, "Good luck with your asparagus" goes into my pantheon of greatest taunts. It ain't "You're no Jack Kennedy" but it's pretty damned good.
AK,
All I can say is look at all the jobs these boys are creating in the disinformation industry! When we're told that properly taxing the very rich will hurt job creation, my response is, "I hope so!"
Jack
It's not corruption unless...
Little Johnny and the Dwarfs may have discovered a hitherto unrecognized cool new form of logic whereby no outcome is legally obtained, and therefore actionable, unless there is some form of immediately observed hyper direct agency. We can call this the Roberts Rule. And anyone can play! Hey kids, let's take this fun new logic out for a test cruise.
So we start with "It isn't corruption unless money and/or favors are exchanged for a specific and provable result" and depart from that rock solid logical quay on the good ship Roberts Rule.
Okay how 'bout these:
You can't hold a corporation liable for pollution unless its CEO is caught red-handed pouring buckets of carcinogenic materials into the local water supply. And you can prove that it wasn't an accident. Or something.
Hey this is easy!
It isn't voter suppression unless the candidate and his or her henchmen show up at a polling place and blackjack to the sidewalk anyone they think might not vote their way.
It isn't discrimination unless....oh, wait. Discrimination doesn't exist anymore.
It isn't torture unless Dick Cheney says it is.
Corporations are not responsible for death or disfigurement stemming from faulty products or design flaws unless the board of directors approved those flaws and meant for specific people to die. In writing. Signed by everyone and their mothers.
It isn't climate change until every last trace of biological life on the planet is extinguished.
It isn't a Roberts Rule Supreme Court decision unless it's the stupidest, most obtuse, most illogical and/or cynical piece of juridical folderol you've ever heard or imagined.
Game over.
Jack,
Yeah, look at all the imbeciles working for Breitbart. I guess they're showing their warm cuddly side by hiring the intellectually handicapped.
Well gang, as much as I rail against the dangers of warped wingnut ideology, ideological purity tests (I guess I don't really care about these so much, at least it helps label the real kooks), and the wash of right-wing intellectual dishonesty, it's a relief to find that not every bastion of boogeymen is all about overthrowing the country.
Sometimes these slimeballs even shiv each other. But not in the interest of movement purity. You would think that a troglodyte site like Breitbart would be orgasmic over a chance to support the Movement and purvey the winger goods. But nooooo......
For some, it's still all about shining up the shekels.
Breitbart (I'll refrain from any snarky descriptors here; none required), is pissing off poor Texas Tea Partiers (pardon while I get a hanky) by charging them big bucks just to cover their events. And then doing a quarter-assed (not even half-assed) job of it.
These dickweeds would pry the pennies off their dead grandmother's eyes.
Sorry, pal. Big Time jurnelizm type covarej costs money.
Marie,
Kudos on your expertly curated collection of GOP Equal Pay Day stories. Hypocrisy, lies, cynicism, adulterous behavior, misogyny, home-wrecking, phony-baloney Christian piety, and brass-balled chutzpah all rolled into an acrid hors d'oeuvres of conservative crap.
Nice job.
@AK: The New Yorker does a bang up job with an article called "Chemical Valley" in which this little nugget appears:
"The Kochs also helped fund research at the Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia, a think tank that, in 2007, published "Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia Border and How to Fix It," edited by a W.V. U. economics professor named Russell Sobel. The book argued against mine-safety regulations, on the ground that "improved safety conditions result in lower money for the workers," and asked, "Are workers really better off being safer but making less income?"
and there's more where that came from:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/04/07/140407fa_fact_osnos
PD,
Thanks for the tip. It's a classic false dichotomy from the right. You can make money or you can be safe. Which do you want? It's also an attempt to scare workers already strapped by management into accepting a less safe work environment, which, for mine workers or employees in other essentially dangerous jobs, is the height of unethical manipulation and amorality. But since when have the Kochs been either moral or ethical?
Sorry to monopolize the comments today but I thought you might want to know about this if you haven't already heard about it. This morning on NPR I heard a snippet of a piece that ended with someone saying "Change all your passwords. Do it TODAY." Sounded pretty ominous.
After looking it up, I found that there is indeed a pretty big problem with online security coming from a bug called "Heartbleed".
Marie's pal Jim Fallows has more. He writes that an internet security expert who is no alarmist considers this bug catastrophic and an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10.
I needed to change all 15 passwords anyway...
@Re: Changing passwords.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2141602/the-heartbleed-bug-and-you-a-users-guide.html
According to the above link, DO NOT change your passwords until a site advises that they have applied a fix. If you change before, you're just exposing more data to exploitation. Cxx
For those RCers who appreciate both sports and politics, this will provoke a good chuckle. Maybe it's already old news, but it appears that Fox "News" congratulated the University of Connecticut men's basketball team for being "NAACP Champs"!
I mean I can see how they could get confused with their acronyms what with all them colored folks runnin' and hollerin' and chasin' after the ball. There's white boys too so it mus' be one of dem progressive desegregated schools.
Fucking idiots. And apparently it wasn't even the first time they did it! They made the same "mistake" like a week ago live on the air. Whooops, silly us! teehee.
I particularly liked this comment from the DailyKos:
"So now we have to ask, once again, whether or not Fox News is just putting us on with this whole Fox & Friends show. Is it, in fact, an elaborate, carefully constructed satire of what news delivered by morons might look like?"
Those clever bastards had us going all along.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/08/1290558/-Fox-Friends-congratulates-UConn-the-2014-NAACP-champs?detail=hide
For those who had doubts (I among them) about Ezra Klein's bolt to Vox, here's Sara Kliff's newest on healthcare signups. As the son, a doctor who likes numbers, who sent it to me said. "Gosh, I haven't seen anything this clear in the New York Times or Wa Po or, frankly, anywhere else. Why not?" Another rhetorical question, I'd guess... it's worth a read I think, even without trolling through all the "cards."
http://www.vox.com/2014/4/9/5597600/the-best-evidence-we-have-that-obamacare-is-working
Confirming the obvious:
“Facing the prospect of racial minority groups becoming the overall majority in the United States leads White Americans to lean more toward the conservative end of the political spectrum, according to research. The findings suggest that increased diversity in the United States could actually lead to a wider partisan divide, with more White Americans expressing support for conservative policies.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140408112208.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28Latest+Science+News+--+ScienceDaily%29
I can't imagine what that asshole in the White House is thinking as he continues to export traffic violaters. Who the fuck does he think he's appeasing?