Des Moines Register:
Unanimous ruling: Iowa marriage no longer limited to one man, one woman — REGISTER STAFF REPORTS — The Iowa Supreme Court this morning unanimously upheld gays' right to marry. — “The Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause …Discussion:
Obama's post-recession budgeting is not about stimulating recovery, people, and his administration trying to sell it that way is Rove-style disingenuous.The CBO baseline cumulative deficit for the Obama 2010-2019 budget is $9.3 trillion. How much additional deficit and debt does Mr. Obama add relative to a do-nothing budget with none of his programs? Mr. Obama's "debt difference" is $4.829 trillion -- i.e., his tax and spending proposals add $4.829 trillion to the CBO do-nothing baseline deficit. The Obama budget also adds $177 billion to the fiscal year 2009 budget. To this must be added the $195 billion of 2009 legislated add-ons (e.g., the stimulus bill) since Mr. Obama's election that were already incorporated in the CBO baseline and the corresponding $1.267 trillion in add-ons for 2010-2019. This brings Mr. Obama's total additional debt to $6.5 trillion, not his claimed $2 trillion reduction. That was mostly a phantom cut from an imagined 10-year continuation of peak Iraq war spending.
The claim to reduce the deficit by half compares this year's immense (mostly inherited) deficit to the projected fiscal year 2013 deficit, the last of his current term. While it is technically correct that the deficit would be less than half this year's engorged level, a do-nothing budget would reduce it by 84%. Compared to do-nothing, Mr. Obama's deficit is more than two and a half times larger in fiscal year 2013. Just his addition to the budget deficit, $459 billion, is bigger than any deficit in the nation's history. And the 2013 deficit is supposed to be after several years of economic recovery, funds are being returned from the financial bailouts, and we are out of Iraq.
Another short-sighted and counterproductive effort by a court to unconstitutionally change existing legislation and manufacture a right which did not and does not exist, rather than allowing gay marriage to be legalized through the political process. And I say this as someone who strongly supports gay marriage. The way to do it is shown by Vermont.But he now links to this post at The Victorious Opposition which does a nice job of boiling the ruling down to brass tacks and convinced him to change his mind about the constitutionality of the decision. So good on him.
Having the courts arbitrarily declare gay marriage a right, based on nothing other than their own opinion, helps cause a backlash, increases hostility toward gays, makes many people view gay marriage as an illegitimate institution, and even alienates some gay marriage supporters, such as myself.
“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”—Barack Hussein Obama
My employer’s response to a column titled “I smoke pot, and I like it,” is to send it out to a list of thousands as a “Cato Daily Commentary.”—Will Wilkinson
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department who works at the Iraqi Desk and spent a year in the war-torn country told EDGE that the story has no merit. "Homosexuality is not a crime in Iraq," said John Fleming, the public affairs officer for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.Phew!
"The individuals condemned to death in Iraq have been convicted of violent crimes, including murder, terrorism, insurgency and kidnapping."
There have been no executions of criminals since 2007, added Fleming, who also noted that any criminals now awaiting possible execution are there for crimes such as "terrorism, insurgency and kidnapping." Their sexual identity is irrelevant to the charges, he said.
[...] "Homosexuality is outlawed by more than 85 countries and is punishable by death in several Islamic states, including Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen," Fleming pointed out. "But Iraq is not one of them."
More than 100 prisoners in Iraq are facing execution – and some of them are believed to have been convicted of a ‘gay crime’, the UK-based Iraqi-LGBT group revealed this afternoon.Radley:
According to Ali Hili of Iraqi-LGBT, the Iraqi authorities plan to start executing them in batches of 20 from this week.
Good thing we sacrificed a trillion dollars and the lives 4,000+ U.S. troops to create such a shining beacon of Middle Eastern democracy, huh?Ed Brayton:
I'm sure glad we gave Iraqis the freedom to live in a brutal theocracy.Ed's quote of the original article says "many of them are believed to have been convicted of the 'crime' of being gay". But the UK Gay News site he links to says "some of".
The Guardian has posted a grueling video of a young girl being flogged in public by the Taliban in Pakistan. I found it very hard to watch, and I have a strong stomach. The description is rough enough:
Two men hold her arms and feet while a third, a black-turbaned fighter with a flowing beard, whips her repeatedly. "Please stop it," she begs, alternately whimpering or screaming in pain with each blow to the backside. "Either kill me or stop it now." A crowd of men stands by, watching silently. Off camera a voice issues instructions.
"Hold her legs tightly," he says as she squirms and yelps. After 34 lashes the punishment stops and the wailing woman is led into a stone building, trailed by a Kalashnikov-carrying militant. Reached by phone, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan claimed responsibility for the flogging. "She came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband, so we must punish her. There are boundaries you cannot cross," he said.
"On our review, we hold the Iowa marriage statute violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution [...] A statute inconsistent with the Iowa Constitution must be declared void, even though it may be supported by strong and deep-seated traditional beliefs and popular opinion."News release (.pdf):
The decision strikes the language from Iowa Code section 595.2 limiting civil marriage to a man and a woman. It further directs that the remaining statutory language be interpreted and applied in a manner allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution of civil marriage.Marriage equality will take effect in three weeks, and the soonest it might be repealed by constitutional amendment is 2012. After the well-publicized Prop 8. backlash I very much doubt that will happen; time is not on bigotry's side.
“SOME OF THE CONTAGION DID START ON WALL STREET” – In a free-wheeling 50-minute news conference at the ExCel Center in London, President Obama shows he’s a master of the format, giving looooong, thoughtful answers that are impressive even to skeptics. A taste:Full transcript at WhiteHouse.gov
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I'm going to call one foreigner -- (laughter) -- actually, I'm the foreigner. That's why I smiled. One correspondent not from America. And then I will -- (loud commotion) -- we're not doing bidding here. (Laughter.) But I also want to make sure that I'm not showing gender bias. So this young lady right here -- not you, sir, I'm sorry.
Q Hi, Mr. President.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: How are you?
Q Thank you for choosing me. I'm very well. I'm from the Times of India.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Wonderful.
Q You met with our Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. What did you -- what is America doing to help India tackle terrorism emanating from Pakistan?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, first of all, your Prime Minister is a wonderful man.
Q Thank you. I agree. (Laughter.)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well --
Q I agree.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Did you have something to do with that, or -- (laughter.) You seem to kind of take -- take credit for it a little bit there. (Laughter.)
Q Really proud of him, sir.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Of course. You should be proud of him. I'm teasing you. I think he's a very wise and decent man, and has done a wonderful job in guiding India, even prior to being Prime Minister, along a path of extraordinary economic growth that is a marvel, I think, for all the world.
IN CALLING ON CBS NEWS’ CHIP REID, who lost his dad during the trip, the President said: “I'm going to call on my last American correspondent, Chip. And, Chip, my heart goes out to you.
Q Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I appreciate that.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I just heard about that.
CBS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF CHRIS ISHAM writes, in an internal e-mail: “Chip Reid's father passed away shortly after he arrived in London to cover the president. While Chip at first planned to return home, his mother and wife, Nina, insisted that his father would want him to continue on the president’s historic trip. In a note to us today he said ‘My father was my hero and I’m here to make him proud.’ A family memorial is planned once Chip returns home. In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to: Charles Henry Reid, Sr. Memorial Fund, Hanover Presbyterian Church, 1801 N. Jefferson St., Wilmington, DE 19802-4709.”
In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department.Cato: School Strips Student Of Clothes, Rights...
Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging.
The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment - which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation.
School officials searched Savana’s backpack, finding no evidence of drug use, drug possession, or any other illegal or improper conduct. They then took the girl to the nurse’s office and ordered her to undress. Not finding any pills in Savana’s pants or shirt, the officials ordered the girl to pull out her bra and panties and move them to the side. The observation of Savana’s genital area and breasts also failed to reveal any contraband. [...] The Supreme Court granted the school district’s petition for review.TIME: The G-20's Hidden Issue: A Global Trade Imbalance...
world leaders have been blaming the crisis on the immediate villains: banks, investors and derivatives traders who took on more risk than they could handle. A regulatory structure that failed to notice the problems. A global consumer delusion that the bubble could expand forever.Ezra Klein: AMATEUR HOUR FOR THE HOUSE GOP...
Largely left out, however, is the vital role that trade balances played in igniting the crisis in the first place. Since the late 1990s, the U.S. has been spending far more than it has earned, sending huge sums of capital overseas, a dynamic measured as the current account deficit.
this budget demonstrates the difficulty of building a minority platform. Serious players who might introduce moderating pressures are not, after all, interested in expending resources to better a piece of off-year messaging. AARP would probably have a lot to say to John Boehner if he proposed voucherizing Medicare from the majority but will probably ignore the fact that it was in Paul Ryan's fake budget. The Chamber of Commerce would have a few concerns about the repeal of the stimulus package if they thought it might happen. But with all those groups ignoring it, the GOP's budget was influenced mainly by the party faithful even as it was delivered straight to the media.More Ezra Klein: CAN WE LIMIT THE THREAT FROM BIG BANKS RATHER THAN THEIR SIZE?...
Which gets to the real import of the budget: Something has really gone awry in the House GOP's political operation. They should not have released this document. They certainly shouldn't have released its inane predecessor. And they certainly shouldn't have scheduled their press conference for April Fool's Day.
Kevin Drum, who's been skeptical about reforms to limit bank size, is intrigued by William Buiter's proposal to accomplish much the same thing by enacting regulations that increase capital requirements as banks grow in size. "This accomplishes two things," says Kevin. "(1) it puts natural downward pressure on bank size since higher capital requirements reduce leverage and profitability, and (2) if a bank gets big anyway, the higher capital ratio makes it less likely to fail and cause systemic problems."Will Wilkinson smokes pot, and he likes it.
As President Barack Obama works to sell the American people on a sweeping agenda of domestic spending and policy changes, he’s relying on three men who have gone through neither Senate confirmation nor cable news spin cycles. Data from pollsters Joel Benenson and Paul Harstad has become increasingly important to shaping the White House’s message as the crucial battle over the president’s budget intensifies. … David Binder, a San Francisco-based focus group expert, also has been traveling the country taking the national temperature on issues like energy and health care, others close to the White House said.The highlighted bit is discouraging. I see quite a difference between the medium and long-term budget planning vs. deficit spending in the midst of a recession. Obama's balooning deficit after 2012 should not be sold as "recovery".
“A political aide, Larry Grisolano, confirmed the outlines of the White House polling operation, which is paid for through the Democratic National Committee. ‘Harstad and Benenson poll for the DNC, which shares data with some folks in the admin[istration], as has been the practice in past administrations,’ he said in an e-mail. Obama, early indications suggest, combines elements of the Clinton and Bush models. He is polling more than Bush – a bit less than once a week for most of his young term, two people involved said.
“Elements of Obama’s approach bear the hallmarks of message testing, like the introduction of the words ‘recovery’ and ‘reinvestment’ to rebrand the ‘stimulus’ package, and aides said the polling has focused almost entirely on selling policy, not on measuring the president’s personal appeal. A source familiar with the data said a central insight of more recent polling had been that Americans see no distinction between the budget and the popular spending measures that preceded it, and that the key to selling the budget has been to portray it as part of the ‘recovery’ measures. Axelrod convenes a Wednesday political meeting and is in regular contact with the pollsters, but the pollsters don’t brief Obama directly.
A check is different from a usurpation. This is a usurpation. Do you think the president should start deciding what type of prison sentences judges can hand out? Would that be a check on judicial power?Why, yes I do, and yes it would be. We tend to call them "pardons", "reprieves", or "commutations". That'd be from Article 2, Section 2. Great example of how our checks and balances work, buster. He continues:
If the military is fighting to give foreign prisoners they capture access to the U.S. Court system, you might want to tell them, they'll probably be surprised to learn that's part of their mission. I'm sure it will be good for morale.Damn. Do they need a constitutional primer as well? I just assumed maybe they'd read it before solemnly swearing to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.As pertains to Congress making such laws, Article 1 Section 8:
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;Now I'm no lawyer, but I have no reason to think the judge in the case we're discussing wasn't acting within the lawful authority prescribed by the Constitution and Congress. If Mr. UNRR or any of you know of one then I'd be interested to hear it.
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Wilkinson comments:Thanks to an obscure tax provision, the United States government stands to pay out as much as $8 billion this year to the ten largest paper companies. And get this: even though the money comes from a transportation bill whose manifest intent was to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, paper mills are adding diesel fuel to a process that requires none in order to qualify for the tax credit. In other words, we are paying the industry–handsomely–to use more fossil fuel. “Which is,” as a Goldman Sachs report archly noted, the “opposite of what lawmakers likely had in mind when the tax credit was established.”
What happened?! Read the whole thing. It’s a terrific example of unintended consequences. Chris says, “I’ve come to expect that even nobly conceived laws will be manipulated and distorted for private ends. But once in a while I hear a story that gives me the queasy feeling that I’m nowhere near cynical enough.”Love, your government.
(meme) NYT has a lengthy profile of the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson, noted global warming skeptic.
Glancing through the Wikipedia entry I think his views on the reality of climate change are quite reasonable and find myself agreeing with the bulk of what's presented.
If they make him a heretic, I guess I am one too.
[...] paranoia is key, and it really defines, not just anti-Semitism, but bigotry itself. The most laughable aspect of America's long war against racism, is the justification racist would always trot out--the specter of interracial union. I can remember being a kid and reading about black folks struggling for some small right, that, these days, we take for granted. So you'd have some black dude who'd been born a slave, in some one room shack, but had risen to become a lawyer, arguing for, say, school funding for black kids in rural Alabama. And then you'd see some bigot responding with, essentially, the following, "If we give the nigras school funding, they'll take our women! Do you want a nigra marrying yer daughter?!?!?"Cato: Terrible Example, Mr. Secretary...
Duncan [Obama's Secretary of Education] had the gall to frame as a protector of the status quo the same governor who for years has been crystal clear that schooling in his state is dismal and that school choice – real change that takes power away from politically ferocious special interests and gives it to parents – is the key to real change. It’s also the same desperately sought after reform, by the way, that President Obama and his education secretary are happy to let die a slow – but politically convenient – death in Washington, DC.Mother Jones: Pouring Biofuel on the Fire...
Food prices have risen 130% since 2002. The World Bank estimates that up to 75% of the increase is due to demand for biofuels.Wilkinson comments:
Clearing grasslands to plant biofuel crops releases 93 times as much greenhouse gas as will be saved by the fuels grown on the land each year. Destroying Indonesian peat bogs releases 420 times as much.
There were food riots in at least 30 countries in the past 2 years. More than 40 people were killed when Cameroonians protested rising prices.
The US government spent $9.2 billion on ethanol subsidies in 2008. It spent $1.5 billion on food aid.
[That's ] what the green government does when it picks winners. But now we’ve got better people and won’t destroy the environment and cause food riots this time! Right?TIME: The Queen and Mrs. Obama: A Breach in Protocol...
On Wednesday, Michelle Obama put her hand on the Queen only after the Queen had placed her own hand on the First Lady's back as part of their conversation. So there is room for theological argument as to whether the American reciprocity of touch was allowable given the social dynamics of the situation. (Less explicable was when President George W. Bush winked at the Queen.)Jeffrey Goldberg: Is This How The Israeli Media Works?...
A half-hour ago, my phone rang; it was a reporter from Israel Channel 10 News.TIME: Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense...
"There's a big controversy about your Netanyahu interview," the reporter says.
"What is it?" I ask.
"Netanyahu's people are denying that he threatened President Obama. Do you have proof that he threatened him?"
"What are you talking about?"
there are big issues here, issues of economy and simple justice, especially on the sentencing side. As Webb pointed out in a cover story in Parade magazine, the U.S. is, by far, the most "criminal" country in the world, with 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all arrests are marijuana-related. That is an awful lot of money, most of it nonfederal, that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure — or simply returned to the public.Economist: Mexico is going back to the IMF for the first time since 1995.
President and Mrs. Bush gave Her Majesty a bronze statuette “High Desert Princess” with a personal inscription on the bottom of the base. It is a replica of the original life size statue that is located in front of the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Ft. Worth, Texas.As for bowing to a Saudi, I'm not sure it's more perturbing...
President and Mrs. Bush gave The Prince Philip an exclusive sterling silver eagle box by Tiffany & Co. with personal inscription on the inside lid.
President and Mrs. Bush gave Their Majesties a leather presentation box filled with a collection of documents from the National Archives. One of the items was a copy of an original letter from President Roosevelt to her father, King George, written in 1938. There were also photos from previous royal visits and a DVD of the footage from the Queen’s visit to the United States when she was Princess Elizabeth in 1951.
Um, yeah. I think we traded up. And not just a little...President Obama — in a departure from President Bush — has made a point during his G20 visit to emphasize that the economic crisis demands a collective global response. Indeed, in a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last October about the financial collapse, Rudd told Bush that the best response should involve the broader G20, including China — while Bush wanted response to be handled within the G7. Bush, however, reportedly didn’t have a clue what the G20 was:
Informed sources have confirmed the discussion took place on a speaker telephone with a Rudd staffer taking notes.
After the President explained the pressure from Europe for a G7-brokered action on supporting the credit sector and reforming regulation, Rudd immediately insisted the G20 was the solution.Rudd was then stunned to hear Bush say: “What’s the G20?”
On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm.
In a new study, constitutional lawyer and Salon.com writer Glenn Greenwald examines the Portuguese model and the data concerning drug-related trends in Portugal, and argues that, “judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success.”
[this] makes it difficult to understand the inclination of some Democratic members of the congress to buck the president and join forces with congressional Republicans as an act of political cowardice. The path of least resistance is for Democrats, who are relatively popular, to stick with the President, who’s very popular, and to stay far away from the very unpopular Republicans. Whatever’s driving them, it’s not timidity.Perhaps the Democratic agenda isn't full of unalloyed good ideas? Just a thought.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
“The church is not simply the prolife movement, and to the extent that every interaction between the church and our political system is held hostage to the demands of the most confrontational elements of that movement, the church’s social message, including its message about abortion, will be marginalized and ineffectual. The respect and honor owed the office of the president does not depend on any particular president’s merits (as Buckley often reminded his liberal critics). That respect is, among other things, a powerful affirmation of the willingness of Americans to live together peacefully, despite profound disagreement. Notre Dame’s invitation to President Obama is perhaps best understood in that light.”E.D. Kain: Pop Christianity...
Christianity in America has been weaved into pop culture much to the detriment of that religion. The co-opting of pop culture to try to make Christianity seem more “hip” to the times has backfired. Simply countering every Nirvana or Green Day with a Christian version of the same will not make teenage boys prefer the latter to the former. When cool becomes more important than sacred then we’ve got a problem. The fact of the matter is that secular movie makers will always be able to make more edgy films, and secular musicians will always be able to make cooler music, and the reason for this is they’re just trying to make movies and music - they’re not trying to make explicitly Christian movies and music.Josh Wimmer:
“It’s not fair for me just to single out the lyrics, because I also know I’m listening to Christian radio immediately because of the shimmery keyboards and amped-up major-key guitar lines — there’s a sound there that Christian pop musicians have staked out as their own, and I get why it sounds “Christian” to them, but it rings about as true to me as a heaven actually full of harp-strumming cherubs. Mainstream pop may suck, but at least it sucks in so many different ways.”Cato: Democrats Agree on Health Plan Outline: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid...
Given the problems facing our health care system-high costs, uneven quality, millions of Americans without health insurance–it seems that things couldn’t get any worse. But a bill based on these ideas, will almost certainly make things much, much worse.Atlantic:
Health care isn't a single good, nor, like food, is it easily defined in terms of a minimum to sustain life. Studying other countries' supposedly universal systems only demonstrates how fraught the concept of "health care" is: one bundle of services in British Columbia and a less-generous one in Nova Scotia, one in England and another in Scotland, one in New Zealand before the election and another afterwards. Arguably the U.S. already has universal care, in the sense that everyone can get some care-if only from an emergency room-for some things, and that citizens (a critical word in this context) without money are covered by Medicaid. The real issue is how you define "health care." What gets included is a matter not only of medicine and economics but of culture and politics.Politico: Budget cuts concern contractors...
Though the details of the $534 billion defense budget are still unknown, there are numerous signs that Gates could take the ax to a major defense weapons program as early as next week.Red State Update on legalization:
That has defense industry officials, whose fortunes will rise or fall on the outcome, madly trying to decode which programs are the most vulnerable and scrambling to defend them.
An Afghan security officer stands guard as flames rise during a drug burning event on the outskirts of the city in Herat province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, March 18, 2009. Over 2,000 kilograms of narcotics, composed of heroin, opium and hashish, were burnt along with some bottles of alcoholic drinksMore at TBP
Legal cannabis, even taxed, would presumably be way cheaper than the current illicit product. Other things equal, that would mean that the legal cannabis industry would have lower revenues than the current illicit industry. That wouldn't stimulate the economy: just the reverse.wtf? Cheaper legal cannabis means no resources being spent on the culture of illicit cannabis, which means less money in the hands of cartels and drug dealers, with some going to local governments via taxes and the rest staying in the pockets of cannabis users, all to be spent as they see fit.
[We never should have given money to GM; it wasted billions of dollars and months of restructuring]David Brooks: Car Dealer in Chief...
… if you are in the restructuring business, you can’t let these stray thoughts get in the way of your restructuring. After all, restructuring is your life. Restructuring is forever. Restructuring is like what dieting is for many of us: You think about it every day. You believe it’s about to work. Nothing really changes.POST SCRIPTS: Women's Right to Vote, the Beginning of the End for America?...
When the economy cratered last fall, the professionals at G.M. went into Super-Duper Restructuring Overdrive. In October, they warned the Bush administration of a possible bankruptcy filing and started restructuring. In December, they came back asking for a loan while they … (wait for it) … restructured.
The Bush advisers decided in December that bankruptcy without preparation would be a disaster. They decided what all administrations decide — that the best time for a bankruptcy filing is a few months from now, and it always will be. In the meantime, restructuring would continue, federally subsidized.
Today, G.M. and Chrysler have once again come up with restructuring plans. By an amazing coincidence, the plans are again insufficient. In an extremely precedented move, the Obama administration has decided that the best time for possible bankruptcy is — a few months from now. The restructuring will continue.
The result of the 19th amendment has been the ascension to power by the same kind of Marxists Ronald Reagen defeated from the Soviet Union. The weapon of destruction was not a nuclear warhead though, it was an emotional outburst that melted the brains of logic.Not enough irony in his wingnuttery diet? But for funnies, roll tape.
The head of the Pakistani Taliban, Beitullah Massoud, has threatened to strike Washington, DC with a terrorist attack. But while everyone takes Massoud’s threat to the stability of the Greater Hindu Kush area seriously, nobody seems to take his threat to do this very seriously. As Spencer Ackerman says “It’s difficult to see how Beitullah Massoud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, has the capability to launch attacks against the U.S.”TMV: Change In Cuba Policy Long Over Due...
So that’s the good news. The bad news is that this points to what I think is a serious conceptual flaw in the administration’s thinking—this heavy emphasis on the idea that we need to deny al-Qaeda a “safe haven” in Afghanistan or Pakistan. As Andrew Exum observes, it’s not at all clear that a “safe haven” is necessary to carry out a terrorist attack: [....]
lawmakers, business and trade representatives held a press conference in Washington announcing bipartisan legislation ending the travel embargo. The travel embargo, said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., is a “failed policy that has failed for 50 years.”
[The bill] would prevent the president from stopping travel to Cuba except in cases of war, imminent danger to public health or threats to the physical safety of U.S. travelers. Reps. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., have an identical bill in the House with 120 co-sponsors.
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the son of Cuban immigrants, slowed confirmation of several administration officials and passage of a major spending bill because that bill contained the changes in rules on Cuban-American travel.
Cuban-born Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., said he would continue to oppose the legislation. “This is the time to support pro-democracy activists in Cuba, not provide the Castro regime with a resource windfall.”
- Spending. Our budget gives priority to national defense and veterans' health care. We freeze all other discretionary spending for five years, allowing it to grow modestly after that. We also place all spending under a statutory spending cap backed up by tough budget enforcement.Yglesias comments:
If, superficially, this seems like a warmed-over version of the McCain campaign economic agenda that the voters rejected just a few months ago, you need to pay more attention—McCain was just calling for a one-year freeze on discretionary spending after which reductions in government outlays would be achieved by magic. Ryan, by contrast, is proposing a five-year freeze.It's totally unserious. Cutting spending during a recession caused by a crisis of demand (not supply) is crazy anti-stimulus, and after the recession plenty of programs the public considers valuable will need more money. If we want to cut spending post-recession it basically needs to be done by ending unhelpful programs, not underfunding across the board. But that's not as pretty sounding as a "spending freeze" (which is really an increasingly large cut due to inflation). And when you propose cutting specific programs their interest groups lash out at you, so polticians are often unwilling to single them out unless they think the name sounds silly enough (recently mentioned in GOP speeches: mice control, bear DNA research, volcano monitoring)
Basically, you can imagine a school that today is serving a certain number of children and has a certain budget. Well, over the course of five years the population will grow and the number of kids in that school will also increase. But the school won’t get any additional money. Instead, because there’s inflation, the school will actually be getting less money even as it needs to teach more children. And so on across the board for federal programs. If you think that there’s literally nothing in the entire federal budget that’s useful, this may strike you as an appealing idea.
- Tax Reform. Our budget does not raise taxes, and makes permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax laws. In fact, we cut taxes and reform the tax system. Individuals can choose to pay their federal taxes under the existing code, or move to a highly simplified system that fits on a post card, with few deductions and two rates. Specifically, couples pay 10% on their first $100,000 in income (singles on $50,000) and 25% above that. Capital gains and dividends are taxed at 15%, and the death tax is repealed. The proposal includes generous standard and personal exemptions such that a family of four earning $39,000 would not pay tax on that amount. In an effort to revive peoples' lost savings, and to create an incentive for risk-taking and investment, the budget repeals the capital gains tax through 2010 for all taxpayers.The 10%-25%-15% figures are distributed well relative to each other -- flatter and better for the economy than anything Democrats will do for us -- but the total revenue is simply too low unless Republicans find a realistic way to cut spending that is not an across the board freeze. So you'd have to increase all those rates between 5-10% for this to work (15-30-20 or similar)
Meanwhile, the op-ed is a bit unclear on this point, but it appears to include a proposal to scrap Medicare in favor of a system of vouchers. The idea here is to “solve” the problem of health care cost inflation driving higher Medicare costs by replacing a guarantee of health care with a guarantee of a lump sum of money that would not grow as rapidly as the cost in health care. Basically, we would “solve” the problem of paying for senior citizens’ health care by just . . . not paying for senior citizens’ health care. Demonstrating a lack of commitment to the underlying principle, Ryan promises not to actually afflict anyone currently over the age of 55 with this policy. The hope is that everyone born since 1954 is too short-sighted to actually care about what fate awaits them upon retirement, while the guarantee of continued actual Medicare for those born before 1954 is supposed to immunize Ryan from their wrath.Hmm. Well speaking as someone born well after 1954, I would love to gradually phase out Medicare in a similar fashion. I don't think it demonstrates a lack of commitment to an underlying principle, I think it is the principle: get rid of Medicare, lower taxes, and let people manage their own health insurance. Medicare only appears to be cost effective because it underpays for proceedures, which in turn increases healthcare costs for everyone who's not on Medicare. That's part of why we have a healthcare problem in this country -- it's not because the government isn't covering enough people, it's because it's underpaying market rates for the coverage of some. But once you provide some people with "free" healthcare and conceal its real costs, that group loves and will never give it up. So this plan is a politically infeasible promise that I don't think they'll ever be able to deliver upon.
As near as I can tell, Paul Ryan and his staff just took the CBO projections that ended in 2019 and drew a random line, extending upward at about a 45 degree angle, until 2080. There's no real attempt to make it look scientific.publius:
Sigh. Crazy stuff.There’s a lot more that must and will be said about the GOP’s April Fool’s Day budget. But there’s one hilarious tidbit that needs mentioning.
As we already knew (because it was the one specific detail in the last “budget”), the plan has a massive tax cut for the wealthy – lowering the highest marginal rate to 25%. Higher-earning taxpayers can, however, voluntarily opt to pay the old higher rate.
Here’s the kicker – the GOP’s deficit assumptions assume that everyone will opt for the older higher rates. Take it away Steve Benen:
The hilarious angle to this is that the House Republicans run enormous budget deficits while assuming the top earners would voluntarily pay the higher rate.
Ryan Grim adds:A Republican budget committee aid said that the revenues assumed in the GOP budget are based on the current tax structure that resulted from those cuts.
In other words, Republicans are assuming that given the choice between a higher rate and a lower rate, Americans will choose the higher rate.
What if state governments tax the sale of marijuana and used tax revenues to pay for state and local projects, then would you think the use of marijuana should be made legal or not?Then support for legalization increased by 7 points to 38.
Haha, so funny.Those who have read the recent posts from George Packer, Steve Walt, and Matt Duss on the latest doings of the "neo-con cabal" -- ahem, the Foreign Policy Initiative -- must be eagerly awaiting a report of what happened at today's conference on Afghanistan. Well, I won't leave you hanging.
All that you suspect is true. Bill Kristol, wearing a Viking helmet and a bone through his nose, exhorted the participants to invade Chad, just because. He may have listed other countries, but he was speaking in tongues and war whoops half the time, and my Neo-con-to-English translation kept dropping out. Bob Kagan followed, bare-chested (as usual), in full war paint, banging the Mayflower china with a combat boot, shouting that America needed to put 10 million men under arms to extend its hegemony (benevolent, of course) into the Arctic, shouting something about the road to Moscow leading through the North Pole.
I saw this with my own eyes, people.
[...] It's easy for critics of the neo-cons to cast them as marginal thinkers with out-sized influence, along with all the dark conspiracies that implies. Harder, though more honest, is to recognize that the neo-cons are really championing tendencies in U.S. foreign policy that run much deeper in American life than the pockets of their advocacy shops. Yes, the regular cast of characters signed those PNAC letters that get quoted all the time, but at one point or another, so did folks like Jim Webb, Bob Zoellick, Ivo Daalder, John Bolton, Jim Steinberg, Rich Armitage, Dennis Ross, Michael O'Hanlon, Philip Gordon, Richard Holbrooke, and many others who would sooner take your scalp than be called a neo-con.In other words neocons champion the worst tendencies of American foreign policy, which many non-neocons only partly share. Is that supposed to make anyone feel better?
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