Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) is The Anti-American Conservative Cancer of the Week

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) is The Anti-American Conservative Cancer of the Week

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) compared the civil rights of African Americans and other minorities to the rights of animals during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, sparking outrage from lawmakers.

Gohmert made the remarks as the panel considered a bill that could “prevent federal regulatory actions from being implemented.” Currently, the federal government relies on consent decrees to settle lawsuits from advocacy organizations challenging agencies for failing to take regulatory action or missing statutory deadlines. The GOP-backed bill would allow anyone whose rights are affected by the decree to intervene in the settlement, significantly delaying the action.

Democrats offered an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), that would have prohibited third parties from intervening in any regulatory action that prevents or is intended to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, or other protected characteristic. Consent decrees had been pivotal to enforcing civil rights laws, Cohen and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) argued, and noted that advocates used the consent decree process to protect minority communities from police misconduct and brutality.

But Gohmert objected to the amendment and insisted that the bill had nothing to do with the civil rights and would primary impact rules and regulations that pertain to fish, wildlife, and the environment. He then proceeded to mock Democrats’ concerns about minorities by joking that they were interested in protecting the liberties of snails and other animals:

    GOHMERT: There is nobody in this chamber who is more appreciative than I am for the gentleman from Tennessee and my friend from Michigan standing up for the rights of race, religion, national religion of the Delta Smelt, the snail darter, various lizards, the lesser prairie chicken, the greater sage grouts and so many other insects who would want someone standing for their religion, their race, their national origin and I think that’s wonderful.

The bill, however, is actually written in general terms and would therefore impact the consent decrees adopted by the Department of Justice and other offices responsible for civil rights, committee staff confirmed to ThinkProgress. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) blasted Gohmert’s comments, noting that “this is not a snail darter’s amendment, it is not an environmental amendment, it is a civil rights amendment, and we’re talking about the civil rights of people — the civil rights of people that have been violated egregiously for generations in this country.”

The amendment failed in a vote of 13 to 16, with Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) joining Democrats in voting for it. The underlining bill passed the Judiciary Committee along party lines. A similar measure passed the House last year and is not expected to advance in the Senate.

If Gohmert is not bright enough to handle legal language, does not subscribe to American ideals of fairness and the common good and has no respect for the American people - well, I guess he is entitled to that. On the other hand tax payers are paying him $179k a year and subsidizing his and his family's health care. So should someone who is lacking in any legislative expertise and obviously hates the people he is supposed to serve, entitled to be paid. perhaps it is time for freaky Lou to do the right thing for Americans who work for a living and resign. Unfortunately no congress critter has ever been impeached for being as stupid and hateful as Louie. It does take voters with very low standards to put someone as perverted as Louie is office.

Apparently Patriotism and Common Decency Are Dead in Norwood, Colorado

Apparently Patriotism and Common Decency Are Dead in Norwood, Colorado

A small Colorado town’s response to a 13-year-old’s violent hazing and sexual assault has driven the victim out of his school and his father out of his job, according to a startling Bloomberg News profile of what happened in Norwood, Colorado.

Three high school students held down the 13-year-old boy with duct tape on a school bus and sodomized him with a pencil. When the superintendent and school board did not report the incident for a month, the victim’s father, who was the school principal, reported it to the police himself. Yet another aspect complicated the situation: The attack happened outside a wrestling match, and two of the perpetrators are the wrestling coach’s sons.

The boys eventually received a one-day, in-school suspension and varying sentences of probation and community service. However, the victim’s peers would continue to bully him online, asking him “What’s been stuck up your butt today?” and wearing T-shirts that supported the attackers. And parents in the community were on board with the harassment, as well:

    A dozen students wore the T-shirts to school one Friday, and someone posted a sign with the same wording on the locker of the victim’s brother, according to the police report, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. Students who wore the t-shirts told police they wanted to support their friends. The victim told investigators he didn’t understand why his friends would support people who attacked him.

    When police visited parents of students involved in the T-shirt incident to warn them against intimidating the 13-year-old, who would be testifying against his schoolmates in a criminal case, they found the parents instead focused on attacking the principal.

Eventually, the father was put on paid leave from his position. Today, the family lives 200 miles away from Norwood in a new school district, while the wrestling coach (who was the school board president, too) stayed with the Norwood team after a reprimand for leaving the students alone.

States are responsible for establishing their own anti-bullying policies in public schools, but enforcement across the states is uneven. Colorado has one of the nation’s most comprehensive anti-bullying laws, with protections against anti-LGBT bullying, but only 37 percent of school districts actually follow it. Hazing and harassment has also been a particular problem in the world of sports. At the college level, Alfred University found 80 percent of college athletes experience some form of hazing.

This is the culture of conservatism at work; either they deny a sexual assault has taken place, or blame the victims for doing something that deserved to be punished with sexual assault, and/or finding ways to punish the victim for daring to name those cowardly criminals who perpetrated the attack. Why isn't the town of Norwood  demanding justice for the victim. Why are the parents of the criminals who perpetrated the crime being prosecuted for aiding and abetting criminals - the cowardly criminals they raised. Why aren't the kids doing the harassing being shunned by decent kids who know better. This is what happens when Americans worship at the altar of conservative morality. Standards of basic decency get all twisted around. The town is acting like George Bush and Dick Cheney, deny and deny their responsibility for the lies they told and the gross immorality they are guilty of, while simultaneously attacking those seeking simple justice.

Radical UnAmerican Conservatives on Supreme Court Protects Mega-Corporations From Responsibility For Their Actions

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Simple Truths message to Congress (April 29, 1938). "Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power.
The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing." Radical UnAmerican Conservatives on Supreme Court Protects Mega-Corporations From Responsibility For Their Actions

In case it wasn’t clear already, the U.S. Supreme Court hammered home Thursday morning that it will protect the rights of corporations to force arbitration over the individuals’ access to the court system at any expense.

In a 5-3 ruling with Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused, Justice Antonin Scalia eviscerated almost any opportunity small merchants have to challenge alleged monopolistic practices by American Express in their credit card agreements.

Sound familiar? Earlier this term, the court turned back on procedural grounds a lawsuit alleging monopolistic practices by Comcast. A week after that, they turned back the claims of workers to challenge employer practices as a class. And in 2011, they issued one of the worst blows to consumer rights in years when they held that consumers challenging $30 fees could not sue together as a class. In each of these cases, the court’s procedural rulings mean the parties may never get to argue about whether these corporations actually violated the law. And as a consequence, these corporations may never be held accountable.

With Thursday’s ruling, the court added small businesses to the list of aggrieved parties whose access to the courthouse has been foreclosed by boilerplate contracts that prohibit parties from filing their challenge as a class, or from otherwise alleviating the immense cost of filing their claims individually. This time, the litigants were small businesses taking on American Express, and their lawyer was none other than conservative powerhouse Paul Clement. Clement has argued many of the major conservative court wins of the past few years, and his argument on the side of the plaintiffs was probably the last best shot at curbing the Roberts Court’s total perversion of the Federal Arbitration Act.

As in the AT&T case, the plaintiffs here argued that the only way they could challenge the policy of mega-corporation American Express was by banding together as a class and pooling their resources. But consumers’ claims in AT&T were struck down on a different rationale, that their state law claims were preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act. This time, the plaintiffs argued that because their antitrust claims are federal , they are protected by the principle of “effective vindication,” meaning that where an arbitration clause effectively immunizes otherwise meritorious federal claims, plaintiffs are entitled to vindication of their actual rights. To show that that the arbitration clause would make any challenge prohibitively expensive, they deployed formal affidavits by economists attesting to the immense cost of these claims — “’at least several hundred thousand dollars, and might exceed $1 million’,” while the maximum recovery for an individual plaintiff would be $12,850, or $38,549 when trebled,” meaning they could not afford to launch their claims without the ability to file them together.

No matter, said the majority. In AT&T, “[w]e specifically rejected the argument that class arbitration was necessary to prosecute claims ‘that might otherwise slip through the legal system’.” This case is about federal law vindication and AT&T was about state law preemption, but as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, “to a hammer everything looks like a nail.” Joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, Kagan explains the case this way:

    Here is the nutshell version of this case, unfortunately obscured in the Court’s decision. The owner of a small restaurant (Italian Colors) thinks that American Express (Amex) has used its monopoly power to force merchants to accept a form contract violating the antitrust laws. The restaurateur wants to challenge the allegedly unlawful provision (imposing a tying arrangement), but the same contract’s arbitration clause prevents him from doing so.

    That term imposes a variety of procedural bars that would make pursuit of the antitrust claim a fool’s errand. So if the arbitration clause is enforceable, Amex has insulated itself from antitrust liability—even if it has in fact violated the law. The monopolist gets to use its monopoly power to insist on a contract effectively depriving its victims of all legal recourse.

    And here is the nutshell version of today’s opinion, admirably flaunted rather than camouflaged: Too darn bad.

    That answer is a betrayal of our precedents, and of federal statutes like the antitrust laws.

Today’s ruling was yet another point in the Chamber of Commerce’s remarkable tally of wins before the Roberts Court, and another chance for the most business-friendly justices in 65 years to side with their friends.

It is neither hyperbole or name calling to say that American Express and the Chamber of Commerce are simply proto-fascists. Their mission is not good old business - competing to see who can sell good and services for a fair price. No, their agenda is to take as much power away from the people, individual Americans as they can.

Why Does Florida’s Criminal Governor Rick Scott (R) Hate America and American Workers

Why Does Florida’s Criminal Governor Rick Scott (R) Hate America and American Workers

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a bill on Friday that blocks local governments from implementing paid sick leave legislation, the Orlando Sentinel reports. He made his decision quickly, only taking four of the 15 days he legally had to review the bill before he signed it.

In signing the bill, Scott sided with big business interests including Disney World, Darden Restaurants (owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster), and the Florida Chamber of Commerce. The bill is part of a national effort to pass so-called “preemption bills” that would block paid sick leave legislation that is backed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing group that coordinates conservative laws across states. The state’s House Majority Leader, Steve Precourt (R), who was instrumental in putting forward the preemption bill, is an active ALEC member.

The bill has made moot a 2014 referendum in Orange County that would have decided whether to require paid sick leave. More than 50,000 voters had tried to get the measure on the November 6 ballot but the County Commission voted it off. It made it on the ballot in 2014 thanks to a three-judge panel.

Florida follows a rash of preemption bills in the states, which cropped up in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Mississippi. These bills are part of ALEC’s efforts to weaken wage and labor standards: Since 2011, 67 such ALEC-affiliated bills have been introduced in state legislatures, 11 of which had been signed into law before Scott signed this bill.

Big business stood in opposition to the Orange County effort on paid sick leave because it claimed such a bill would drive up costs. Yet a study of San Francisco, which enacted a paid sick leave policy in 2007, showed that a majority of businesses saw either no impact or a positive one on profitability. Other research has shown such policies to be good for business and job growth.

Like the a majority of conservatives Rick Scott believes that evil is a positive value. He thinks it is a good to steal billions, yet wrong to have paid sick leave - a benefit that workers earn by making lazy millionaires like him very wealthy. Scott's policies are not new, they are the policies of feudal lords and fascists.

Beyond Rebates, How Much Are Consumers Saving from Obamacare Medical Loss Ratio Provision?

Beyond Rebates, How Much Are Consumers Saving from Obamacare Medical Loss Ratio Provision?

Most of the conversation around the Affordable Care Act’s Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) provision has centered on the requirement that insurers issue consumer rebates when they fall short of spending a certain portion of premium dollars on health care and quality improvement expenses.  This makes sense as rebates are one of the more tangible ways consumers have benefited from the law so far, and it likely contributes to the MLR provision being among the more popular aspects of the health reform law.

However, as we’ve written before, rebates represent only a portion, albeit the most concrete portion, of the MLR rule’s savings to consumers.  The primary role of an MLR threshold is to encourage insurers to spend a certain percentage of premium dollars on health care and quality improvement expenses (80 percent in the individual and small group market and 85 percent in the large group market).  The MLR rebate requirement operates as a backstop if insurers do not set premiums at a level where they would be paying out the minimally acceptable share of premiums back as benefits.  Only if those thresholds are not met are insurers required to provide rebates to consumers or businesses. (You can read more about the MLR rule here).

Consumers and businesses, therefore, can realize savings in two ways as a result of the MLR requirement: by paying lower premiums than they would have been charged otherwise (as a result of lower administrative costs and profits), or by receiving rebates after the fact. So while insurers paid out considerable amounts for rebates – last year’s rebates totaled $1.1 billion – this is not the whole story for consumers.

Of course, it is hard to know with certainty what premiums would have been if the MLR rules were not in place: we cannot know for sure how insurers would have priced their products or what rates regulators would have allowed (to the extent that they reviewed rates prior to the ACA). It is also difficult to separate out the direct effects of the MLR provision from other aspects of the health reform law, particularly rate review, which works to moderate unreasonable premium increases and thus increase loss ratios.  There are also data limitations. For example, prior to new reporting requirements put in place to enforce the MLR provision, there were not good data sources that break out premiums and claims on a consistent basis for major medical coverage by all types of carriers. In the initial years this data became available (2010 and 2011), there were some issues with the quality of the data, particularly regarding expenses for quality improvement and other new categories of administrative expenses that are reported on the exhibit.

Within these limitations, we constructed an analysis that looks at the basic proportion of premiums that health plans paid out as claims for medical care over the three years since the ACA was passed, both before and after the MLR requirement went into effect for coverage in 2011.  These proportions do not include adjustments for quality improvement expenses, taxes or other factors that are used when determining whether or not rebates need to be paid; they simply represent the total payments for medical care as a proportion of premiums.  This is the traditional way medical loss ratios have been calculated.  Generally, if the proportion is rising, that means insurers are paying out more of each dollar they receive on enrollee health care, which in most cases would mean that enrollees are getting better value for the premiums they pay. We then quantify what the change in the traditional MLR means to enrollees by estimating how much they would have paid in premium if the observed MLR for 2010 (before the MLR requirement went into effect) were held constant for 2011 and 2012.1 This approach addresses the following question: If insurers had targeted the same claims to premium ratio for 2011 and 2012 as they achieved in 2010, would premiums have been higher or lower, and by how much?  In other words, it addresses how much consumers may have saved in lower premiums as a result of the MLR threshold in addition to receiving rebates.

Our analysis uses insurer data filed to state regulators and compiled by Mark Farrah Associates. These data (filed on the Supplemental Health Care Exhibit) suggest that the main beneficiaries of the MLR rule’s upfront premium savings are people who purchase insurance on their own.  The majority of plans sold to small and large businesses were already in compliance with their respective MLR thresholds before the law went into effect, and our analysis shows that traditional MLRs (claims divided by premiums) for group plans have stayed relatively flat over the past three years.  In the individual market, by contrast, fewer than half of plans were in compliance with the ACA’s MLR thresholds in 2010, and the average traditional MLRs in this market have been steadily increasing since the requirement went into effect. This means that individual market insurers are devoting a greater portion of premium dollars to health care claims and less to administrative costs and profits compared to before the ACA’s MLR rule went into effect.

This pattern is consistent with the idea that some insurers needed to improve their MLRs to comply with the new rebate requirements.  We know that the individual market MLR requirements in the ACA are higher than those that were in effect in many states, and there have been numerous reports that insurers worked to reduce their commissions and other administrative expenses to become more efficient.

So how might these changes have affected premiums?  As noted above, one way to address this question is to compute what these consumers would have paid in premiums in 2011 and 2012 had traditional individual market MLRs stayed at 2010 levels (the year before the provision went into effect). Looked at this way, premiums would have been $856 million higher in 2011, and premiums would have been $1.9 billion higher in 2012.

Adding to the premium savings the amount individual market consumers received in rebates yields a total savings of $1.2 billion for 2011. This year, individual market insurers are expecting to issue $241 million in rebates (based on our analysis of early estimates from insurers filed with state insurance departments), bringing the total estimated savings for 2012 to $2.1 billion.

There are some potential limitations to this approach. While the pattern of increasing MLRs over the three years makes sense given the incentives under the ACA and reports of insurer behavior, we do not have comparable data from earlier years to tell us whether or not the 2010 MLR was typical for the pre-ACA period (though the available evidence suggests that it was).2 Also, MLRs in 2011 and 2012 might be overstated because insurers simply underestimated how much health care expenses would rise following the recession, though increasing MLRs still means that consumers have been getting better value for their premium dollars. Finally, rebate amounts for 2012 are based on preliminary estimates filed on the Supplemental Health Care Exhibit to state insurance departments, and actual rebate amounts will be based on insurer filings with the Department of Health and Human Services, which were due June 1.

If insurers’ preliminary estimates hold true, this year’s rebates (at a total of $571 million across all markets) are expected to be about half the amount of last year’s $1.1 billion in insurer rebates. Smaller rebates, however, are not an indication that consumers are now saving less money as a result of the MLR provision, but rather that insurers are coming closer to meeting the ACA’s MLR requirements and that this provision is having its intended effect of consumers getting more value for the money they spend on premiums. In fact, in the individual market, the $241 million consumers are expected to receive in rebates for 2012 represents roughly one tenth of our estimate of the overall savings from the provision in that year. Perhaps ironically, when the MLR provision is working as intended and insurers set premiums to meet the thresholds, consumers save money but are less likely to get a check in the mail as tangible demonstration of those savings.

A bit wonky, insurance lingo combined with statistics, but it clearly shows that ordinary working Americans are already saving money and getting better insurance for their dollar because of the ACA (Affordable care Act) or Obamacare. Perhaps 11% of self insured will probably see their premiums go up a little. Though those people will also be entitled to rebates and tax credits to offset the expense. Of course conservative lie about "rate shock". Conservatives cannot have an honest debate because they lack the common decency required to have such a debate.

Getting to Know Conservative-Libertarian Jeff Goldstein and Protein Wisdom

Getting to Know Conservative-Libertarian Jeff Goldstein

Jeff Goldstein is a real piece of work, a posterchild for the inferiority complex and resultant over-compensation issues delineated in Adlerian psychology. As is so often the case, the inferiorities he feels are both real and, simply, perceived. There’s nothing wrong with being a Mr. Mom or failed academic, yet Goldstein’s behavior indicates he feels differently — he’s so very touchy about it. On the other hand, there is something wrong with being a chickenhawk coward, a paste-eating cretin, and a talentless hack. Hence his overcompensation in the form of obnoxious aggression (often to the point of violent threats), pseudo-intellectual windbaggery, atrociously banal “short-fictions”.

To the casual observer, Goldstein might seem to be a garden-variety internet wingnut, a suburban douchebag whose sad and petty hatreds, frustrations over stagnated ambitions and innate cowardice lead him to adopt a sort of Walter-Mitty-As-Rambo-As-Whackjob-Blogger schtick, whereby all his fantasies of action and genocidal crusade and manly-man aggression are sated through internet jackassery. Of course if Goldstein really wanted some adventure, he could go to the recruiting office, but — hahahahaha — everyone knows that ain’t gonna happen. And yeah, all of this is common enough on the WingNet, although Goldstein has a curiously ambitious drive to be the biggest jerk of them all, and he very nearly succeeds. Added to this drive and his deep, abiding fear that he might be a weenie is his status as “Literature Wingnut” and the unique salad of sex and violence issues which reside in his otherwise empty brainpan; Goldstein’s a hell of a case study.

His sex and violence issues I’ll deal with first; if by the end you’re not also convinced that Goldstein is certifably crazy and that, therefore, he ought to be straitjacketed and shot-up with elephant tranquilizers, then you should be drubbed to death with a giant dildo.

A Little Penis Fixation

Jeff Goldstein has without a doubt the biggest macho complex at least since George Thorogood’s. Which is why the “chickenhawk” epithet is so injurious to him. (Goldstein is so discombobulated by the Chickenhawk label that he, like Jonah Goldberg, has to rely on Christopher Hitchens’s argument against it; both are too stupid or dishonest to acknowledge that Hitchens was revising himself; and of course none of this prevents Goldstein from turning right around and applying a derivative of the term to Rod Dreher.) Like all the rest of the 82nd Chairborne Brigade, his affected stance is broadly swaggering, hypermasculine, chock-full of bravado and chest-thumping — all of which is not only self-serving, but also a distended reaction inspired by how Goldstein sees the Left: as a collection of wimps. The irony of course is that if Goldstein were really so tough and so confident of his pro-war righteousness as all his rhetoric insists, he’d be in Iraq. But then he, like all chickenhawks, regards such moral logic as unreasonable and impossible. Actually, the very idea of 101st Keyboarders putting, so to speak, their money where their mouth is, is liable to make them terrified to the point of incontinence. And though I’m fairly sure that Goldstein’s barcalounger has more than its share of urine stains, the Left’s perception that Goldstein isn’t heroic material inspires in him a great deal more than that. Goldstein the Chickenhawk is reduced to violently asserting that he too is a macho man!Reduced to soiling himself not in fear but in anger! To asserting that he is more manly than any lefty, to be sure, (despite what his adenoidal, wimpy voice sounds like, which he is always quick to say is the fault of technology, not lack of testosterone!) and it is with monomaniacal fixation on his genitals and those of others that he means to demonstrate his ultimate masculinity. Thus Goldstein-Chickenhawk becomes Goldstein-Cockvulture and his garden-variety wingnut resentment becomes a thematic demonstration of his unique insanity.

This is only about a quarter of a well done post about one of the more evil denizens of the internet and radical Right politics. There are more details, with some graphic language at the link. The language is graphic and unsettling because it is the kind of language that JG uses. Maybe he is a sociopath, a nut, a freak, weirdo, an assclown. The psychological analysis is up for debate. Judging purely by his words, there is no doubt he is evil. This fact based, rational column by the WaPo's Ezra Klein is the reason for one of of Goldstein's latest dives in the the unhinged depths of anger and depravity. I'm just posting part of it so that anyone can see, it is the kind of column that one can agree with, find some disagreement or depending on  one's politics, dismiss it because it does not advance your agenda. It is hardly something to read and turn into Joesph Goebbels over, The scandals are falling apart by Ezra Klein

Things go wrong in government. Sometimes it’s just bad luck. Sometimes it’s rank incompetence. Sometimes it’s criminal wrongdoing. Most of the time you never hear about it. Or, if you do hear about it, the media eventually gets bored talking about it (see warming, global).

But every so often an instance of government wrongdoing sprouts wings and becomes something quite exciting: A political scandal.

The crucial ingredient for a scandal is the prospect of high-level White House involvement and wide political repercussions. Government wrongdoing is boring. Scandals can bring down presidents, decide elections and revive down-and-out political parties. Scandals can dominate American politics for months at a time.

On Tuesday, it looked like we had three possible political scandals brewing. Two days later, with much more evidence available, it doesn’t look like any of them will pan out. There’ll be more hearings, and more bad press for the Obama administration, and more demands for documents. But — and this is a key qualification — absent more revelations, the scandals that could reach high don’t seem to include any real wrongdoing, whereas the ones that include real wrongdoing don’t reach high enough. Let’s go through them.

1) The Internal Revenue Service: The IRS mess was, well, a mess. But it’s not a mess that implicates the White House, or even senior IRS leadership. If we believe the agency inspector general’s report, a group of employees in a division called the “Determinations Unit” — sounds sinister, doesn’t it? — started giving tea party groups extra scrutiny, were told by agency leadership to knock it off, started doing it again, and then were reined in a second time and told that any further changes to the screening criteria needed to be approved at the highest levels of the agency.

The White House fired the acting director of the agency on the theory that somebody had to be fired and he was about the only guy they had the power to fire. They’re also instructing the IRS to implement each and every one of the IG’s recommendations to make sure this never happens again.

If new information emerges showing a connection between the Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the Obama administration, it would crack this White House wide open. That would be a genuine scandal. But the IG report says that there’s no evidence of that. And so it’s hard to see where this one goes from here.

2) Benghazi: We’re long past the point where it’s obvious what the Benghazi scandal is supposed to be about. The inquiry has moved on from the events in Benghazi proper, tragic as they were, to the talking points about the events in Benghazi. And the release Wednesday night of 100 pages of internal e-mails on those talking points seems to show what my colleague Glenn Kessler suspected: This was a bureaucratic knife fight between the State Department and the CIA.

As for the White House’s role, well, the e-mails suggest there wasn’t much of one. “The internal debate did not include political interference from the White House, according to the e-mails, which were provided to congressional intelligence committees several months ago,” report The Washington Post’s Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung. As for why the talking points seemed to blame protesters rather than terrorists for the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans? Well:

    According to the e-mails and initial CIA-drafted talking points, the agency believed the attack included a mix of Islamist extremists from Ansar al-Sharia, a group affiliated with al-Qaeda, and angry demonstrators.

    White House officials did not challenge that analysis, the e-mails show, nor did they object to its inclusion in the public talking points.

    

    But CIA deputy director Michael Morell later removed the reference to Ansar al-Sharia because the assessment was still classified and because FBI officials believed that making the information public could compromise their investigation, said senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal debate.

So far, it’s hard to see what, exactly, the scandal here is supposed to be.

One assumes that Goldstein belongs to the Benghazi conspiracy theory camp. As is the tradition of evil and it's practitioners, they would much rather rant and deflect the facts, than embrace rationalism and ethics. Goldstein seems to have some loyal followers - judging from his comment section. Throughout history, evil has always had it's appeal.

Why Does Conservative Fox News Hate America and Progress

Why Does Conservative Fox News Hate America and Progress

A Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report released Tuesday finds that green jobs grew four times faster in 2011* than jobs in other sectors, continuing a trend of rapid growth in the U.S. But Fox News is still pushing the narrative that investing in clean energy is a "boondoggle."

The U.S. added more than 150,000 green jobs in 2011, including more than 100,000 construction jobs and 14,000 manufacturing jobs. In total, the green sector now employs more than 3.4 million workers in the U.S. The following chart shows that green jobs in the private sector increased in nearly every category in 2011:

This is not a new trend: the Brookings Institution previously found that the clean economy added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010, and that clean tech jobs grew "more than twice as fast as the rest of the economy" during that period.

As the Los Angeles Times noted, the recent growth in green jobs "parallels a surge in public and private money" invested in clean energy in 2011.

Nevertheless, Fox News continues to distort the facts in an effort to portray government investments in clean energy as a waste of money. Fox News' Brit Hume claimed in 2011 that the Obama administration's green investments have "utterly failed to produce meaningful jobs." Last month, the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes claimed on Fox News that "we haven't seen many gains" from these investments. Just this week, Neil Cavuto said on his Fox Business show that Obama's green initiatives have "not had the big tangible jobs bang for the buck that you would think."

Faced with clear evidence that clean energy investments are paying off, will Fox change its tune?

Most of the talking heads at the conservative slanted Fox News make salaries in the 7 figure range ( serial liar and rabid America hater Bill O'Reilly is said to make around 3 million a year - scientists are said to be studying what he does that is worth more than  2 cents an hour). Raking in all this cash one would think Fox News would love America, not hate America, American workers, women, rape victims, the working poor or anyone that stands up for real American values.

Why Does Glenn Beck Hate American Values and Want To Force All Cable Subscribers To Pay For His Conspiracy Theory Channel

Why Does Glenn Beck Hate American Values and Want To Force All Cable Subscribers To Pay For His Conspiracy Theory Channel

Since Glenn Beck left Fox News in 2011 and founded his own web channel, TheBlaze, the former right-wing sensation has been less prevalent in the mainstream political conversation. Still, Beck has cultivated a substantial audience for his subscription-only programming, and is now using that following to pressure cable networks into carrying his channel.

Beck started promoting GetTheBlaze.com on Monday, asking fans to demonstrate to their television provider that there is wider demand for the libertarian channel. If his channel does get picked up by cable television providers, anyone who pays for cable will subsidize Beck’s channel, regardless of whether or not they watch it. As The New York Times explains, TV channels get small per-subscriber fees, whether or not the subscribers ever watch.

Beck argues that carrying TheBlaze would be no different from supposedly ideological cable channels like MSNBC and Al Jazeera America. But since leaving Fox, Beck’s radical libertarianism has gone even further fringe. In the past few months, Beck has promoted multiple conspiracy theories via the channel he is now trying to push on cable subscribers:

    1. Cop killer Chris Dorner was supported by liberals. As Los Angeles was turned upside down in the manhunt for Chris Dorner in February, the former police officer who killed 4 people, Beck claimed “the American left” was supporting Chris Dorner. His evidence was a Facebook page with “thousands of likes.”

    2. Obama secretly tried to release the “blind sheikh” bomber. Relying on a single anonymous source “close to the Obama administration,” TheBlaze accused President Obama of plotting to secretly release a 1993 World Trade Center bomber. The conspiracy theory quickly took hold in Tea Party circles, even prompting top House Republicans to parrot the false theory.

    3. The Muslim Brotherhood infiltrated the US government. Beck hosted Rep. Michele Backmann (R-MN) to defend her widely denounced anti-Muslim witch hunt. On Beck’s show, Bachmann once again accused Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, of being a Muslim Brotherhood spy, a ludicrous charge vehemently condemned by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Scott Brown (R-MA).

    4. The Petraeus scandal was orchestrated by the White House. Like most of the right-wing blogosphere, Beck was obsessed with a purported cover-up of the Benghazi consulate attack. When CIA Director David Petraeus was caught in an affair with his biographer, Beck claimed the White House deliberately orchestrated the scandal in order to discredit the military and distract from the Benghazi attacks. In Beck’s mind, the White House was also behind last year’s Secret Service prostitution scandal, another supposed attempt to undermine trust in law enforcement.

Beck and his anti-American friends are so self obsessed they really think all cable subscribers should be forced to swallow their cancerous lunacy. If Beck has such a great product why not do the capitalistic thing and make it a premium channel that people can pay for by subscription, like HBO.

What is The Sequester

What is The Sequester

The United States is rapidly approaching March 1, the date on which the automatic spending cuts put in place by the summer 2011 debt ceiling deal will begin taking effect. There is little indication that Congress will avert the cuts as it did in January, as Republican leaders have thus far been unwilling to negotiate with President Obama and Senate Democrats.

Congress is currently on recess until next Monday, leaving just five legislative days until the automatic cuts — known as sequestration — will take effect. Here’s a breakdown of why the sequester was created and what it will mean for programs facing cuts and the nation’s overall economic recovery:

    Why the sequester was created. The sequester was a result of the GOP’s wrangling over the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011, when Republican leaders — who had previously passed clean debt increases 19 times under President Bush — demanded spending cuts as the price for averting a costly default. On the brink of default, Congress passed the Budget Control Act, which enacted immediate spending cuts and created a supercommittee tasked with striking a “grand bargain” to reduce the deficit. Republicans walked away from the committee after refusing to consider tax increases on the wealthy, setting sequestration into motion. The sequester, which cuts from both domestic and defense spending, was designed to be painful enough that both sides would negotiate to avert it.

    How to avoid it. The sequester was originally supposed to take effect on January 1, but it was avoided as part of the overall “fiscal cliff” deal that maintained most of the Bush-era tax cuts and enacted spending reductions to offset the first round of automatic cuts. In the past, Republicans offered plans to offset the sequester by cutting more spending, even though deficit reduction efforts have been heavily skewed toward spending cuts to domestic programs already. Democrats have offered multiple proposals that would bring more balance to efforts to reduce the deficit. A plan from the Congressional Progressive Caucus would replace the sequester largely with new revenue, evening the balance of spending cuts and revenue increases in overall deficit reduction efforts. Senate Democrats proposed a plan that reduced the deficit by $110 billion, enough to offset the sequester until next January. Half of the reduction comes from cuts, the other half from tax increases on the wealthy. Republicans, however, have again refused to negotiate over new revenues, even from tax reform that would close corporate loopholes.

    What it will mean. Because its cuts are across-the-board, the sequester will affect most domestic programs. Jobless workers will lose access to unemployment benefits, while safety net programs for women and children and early childhood education programs will face deep cuts. The sequester will cut funding for law enforcement and border security, food safety, airline travel security, Head Start, disaster relief, and health research. Defense programs will also see reductions. These cuts will have broad ramifications for the country’s recovering economy, pushing it down the austere path Europe has followed into second recessions. Independent reports predict that sequestration would reduce economic growth by 0.6 percent over the year while also leading to the loss of 700,000 jobs. The debt limit fight that created the sequester already pummeled the recovery, and allowing these spending cuts to take effect would cause even bigger problems.

Conservatives are hoping that either most Americas are idiots or have terrible short term memories, and are trying to blame Democrats for this childishness. They voted for the sequester, End of story. Now they want a new deal that punished the working poor and middle-class.

The Patriot Gospel: Guns Don't Kill People, Video Games Kill People

The Patriot Gospel: Gun Don't Kill People, Video Games Kill People

Republicans are more likely to place the blame for gun violence on video games, not guns, according to a recent poll from Public Policy Polling. Sixty seven percent of Republicans believe that such games are a “bigger safety threat” than firearms — only 14 percent think the reverse.

The only problem? There’s no data to support that position. There is evidence that limiting access to guns can help limit violence wrought by those machines. In particular, there’s evidence to show that the Assault Weapons Ban helped to limit gun violence on the Mexican-American border. And in states where gun ownership is high and gun laws are lax, violence rates are higher.

On the other hand, there’s absolutely no conclusive evidence showing that video games are the root cause of violence. There are countries with much lower rates of violence that have much higher consumption of video games.

It doesn't matter what reality says, conservative gun fetishists love believe stuff. Once they believe stuff, it is like trying to convince the member of a cult that the guy up there preaching is not a mini-god. Since conservatism has all the hallmarks of a cult, good luck with trying to get them to consume some reality.

Fox News and Torture Boy Sean /Hannity Uses Ex-LAPD Cop Killer To Dishonestly Smear Liberals

The Terrible Truth About the Republicans' Favorite Historian

While The North-East Waits For Sandy Relief, Wacky Freedom Hating Republicans Reintroduce Obamacare Repeal

While The North-East Waits For Sandy Relief, Wacky Freedom Hating Republicans Reintroduce Obamacare Repeal

The 112th Congress gaveled to a close on Thursday afternoon without passing a relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy or reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, but Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) isn’t too concerned about finishing what Republicans had left undone. Instead, at 12:00 PM she introduced the very first piece of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which states are now busily implementing.

House Republicans have unsuccessfully voted 33 times in the last two years to eliminate health care reform and wasted at least 88 hours and $50 million, while failing to pass a single piece of job creation legislation in the last session of Congress.

Dozens of Republicans, including 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, ran against Obamacare, yet the party suffered losses every step along the way. The Supreme Court upheld the law, House repeal efforts went nowhere in the Democratically-controlled Senate, and President Obama has pledged to veto any effort to rescind the measure. Even newly reelected Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was compelled to admit in November that Obamacare is now the law of the land (though he later backed away from his own comments and pledged to do everything in his power to undermine it).

But House Republicans are apparently not quite ready to give up the fight. At this rate, they could be on track to becoming even less productive than the least productive Congress in U.S. history.

Michele bachmann and her husband are welfare queens who have probably defrauded the public by failing for Medicare payments for practicing dubious medicare care. They and the family have also sucked down as much in subsidies as they can. Bachmann enjoys government health care benefits along with other House Republicans who make about $179,000 a year. This is the same Michele Bachmann who hoped that the unemployment rate would remain high and said that workers who do not pay federal income tax have no vested interests in the well being of the country. Why hasn't the deeply unAmerican Bachmann and her conman husband been deported to Russia? 

Wackos start trying to use their hate filled trigger happy minds to rationalize not having sensible gun laws, ,New NRA Talking Point: Banning Assault Weapons Is Just Like Racial Discrimination

Wacko Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte K & L Contractors Think Their Religious Freedom Means The Right To Tyrannize Their Employees

Wacko Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte K & L Contractors Think Their Religious Freedom Means The Right To Tyrannize Their Employees

On Friday, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in an order joined by two conservative Republican appointees, temporarily immunized a company from the Obama Administration’s rules guaranteeing that employer-provided health plans cover birth control. Judge Ilana Rovner, a George H.W. Bush appointee, dissented.

The order is brief, and it mostly deals with the most significant issue in this case in just a single paragraph — holding that a for-profit corporate employer can claim that its religious liberties were somehow violated:

    [T]he government’s primary argument is that because K & L Contractors is a secular, for-profit enterprise, no rights under RFRA are implicated at all. This ignores that Cyril and Jane Korte are also plaintiffs. Together they own nearly 88% of K & L Contractors. It is a family-run business, and they manage the company in accordance with their religious beliefs. This includes the health plan that the company sponsors and funds for the benefit of its nonunion workforce. That the Kortes operate their business in the corporate form is not dispositive of their claim. See generally Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 130 S. Ct. 876 (2010). The contraception mandate applies to K & L Contractors as an employer of more than 50 employees, and the Kortes would have to violate their religious beliefs to operate their company in compliance with it.

As a matter of current law, this decision is wrong. As the Supreme Court explained in United States v. Lee, “[w]hen followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.” Lee established — with no justice in dissent — that religious liberty does not allow an employer to “impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees,” such as by forcing employees to give up their own rights because of the employer’s objections to birth control.

Nevertheless, the Seventh Circuit’s citation to Citizens United is an ominous sign. Lee was decided at a time when the Court understood that corporations should not be allowed to buy and sell elections. That time has passed, and the precedents protecting against corporate election-buying were overruled in Citizens United. It is not difficult to imagine the same five justices who tossed out longstanding precedent in Citizens United doing the same in a case involving whether employers can impose their religious beliefs on their employees.

It is likely that we will know soon whether those five justices are prepared to do so. The Seventh Circuit’s decision is at odds with a decision out of the Tenth Circuit, and the Supreme Court typically agrees to hear cases where two federal appeals courts disagree.

What is Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte of K & L Contractors religious beliefs included thinking that pants were sinful, would the male employees have to wear skirts or go pant-less. Cyril and Jane Korte, and K & L Contractors have a lot in common with the Taliban and Iranian fundamentalists who think what they believe trumps basic human rights and dignity.

10 Dumbest Things Fox Said About Climate Change In 2012 

3. Fox "Expert": Carbon Dioxide "Literally Cannot Cause Global Warming." Joe Bastardi is a meteorologist that is often presented as a climate change expert on Fox News, even though he has no climate science training. Bill O'Reilly has cited Bastardi as the reason that he is "skeptical" about global warming, but scientists have called Bastardi's statements "completely wrong," "simply ignorant," and "utter nonsense." In March, Bastardi attempted to "throw out 150 years of physics" by dismissing the greenhouse effect -- the reason there is life on Earth -- as impossible. Bastardi stated on Fox Business that carbon dioxide (CO2) "literally" -- yes, literally -- "cannot cause global warming" because it doesn't "mix well in the atmosphere." But physicist Richard Muller told Media Matters that CO2 is actually "completely mixed."

 This is the way radical anti-American Rupert Murdoch's news organizations always act - they shout falsehoods with an attitude of absolute certainty - that creates some kind of voodoo magic that makes their crazy bogus claims true. What century are we living in?

The USA Voted For Real Values and Re-elected President Obama

The USA Voted For Real Values and Re-elected President Obama

President Obama's re-election was never much in doubt, except perhaps briefly when he took a plunge after the first debate and we didn't know where the bottom was. But by the end of the campaign, Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium was giving Obama a better-than-99% chance of winning. Nate Silver of the New York Times, more cautious, put the odds Tuesday at about 90-10 in favor of Obama.

Those who point to the popular vote as evidence of a very tight contest, as much of the media did before the election, should consider two things: first, that is not the way the game is played here (unfortunately). If the popular vote determined the presidency, the Obama team would have put more resources into big states like California and New York to ensure that Obama would win the popular vote by a wider margin. Instead, the resources went into swing states, in order to ensure a victory in the electoral college vote. ( this was written before some votes were counted: President Obama won the popular vote and the electoral college)

Second, the country is nowhere near as closely divided as the popular vote indicates. That's because non-voters, who were about 43% of the electorate in 2008, favor Obama by a margin of about 2.5 to one.

Indeed, the resources and political power that Republicans mobilized in an effort to deny millions of Americans their right to vote, and to suppress voter turnout, raise serious questions about their legitimacy as a political party. A legitimate political party does not rely on preventing citizens from voting, in order to prevail at the polls, any more than a legitimate government relies on repressing freedom of speech or assembly in order to remain in power.

How did Obama win?

In this election, as in almost every presidential election for decades, the biggest block of swing voters has been white working-class voters (however defined: for example, without college education). No Democratic candidate has won a majority of white voters for decades, since the Republicans adopted their "southern strategy" in the wake of historic civil rights legislation, and became the "white people's party". (In fact, Obama did better among white voters in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004 – his racial identity was not a handicap because most voters who wouldn't vote for an African American don't vote for Democrats.) But in this contest, Obama had to win enough of the white working-class voters in battleground states to win the election, while winning about 95% of African-American voters and a large majority of Latino voters.

This he did primarily by making a populist appeal to working-class voters, more populist than any major party presidential nominee in decades. In the last debate, which was supposedly about foreign policy, Obama repeatedly referred to Romney as someone who wants to make sure that rich people "don't play by the same set of rules" as everyone else. Throughout the campaign, his team attacked Romney for being a rich, unscrupulous politician who didn't care about working people.

Of course, it helped that Romney fit the stereotype – a rich corporate raider, a private equity fund CEO, who said he "like[s] being able to fire people", and paid less of his income in taxes than millions of working Americans. His infamous secretly-recorded remark dismissing 47% of Americans as moochers – "my job is not to worry about those people" – was a gift from God, and became one of the Obama campaign's most effective TV ads.

But for those who have followed Obama's political career, his re-election was always extremely likely – and indeed, it would hardly have been in jeopardy if he had actually debated in the first debate. We knew that he would be as populist as he needed to be in order to win. Even with 23 million people still unemployed or underemployed (as Romney repeated endlessly), it's not that hard to convince a lot of working-class voters that Romney and his party don't have their interests at heart – if you are willing to make the kind of economic populist appeal that Obama ultimately made.

The downside risk, for a candidate, is the potential loss of rich campaign contributors and media; but Obama was willing to take these risks in order to win. This was a historic difference from previous presidential campaigns: Democratic candidates such as Michael Dukakis and Al Gore flirted briefly with economic populist appeals, but backed off in the face of media pressure.

The media are a huge factor in most elections in the US, and outside of Fox News and the rightwing press, most of the major news outlets were more sympathetic to Obama than to Romney. They still helped Romney quite a bit, however, especially with swing voters, with poor reporting on key economic issues. Most Americans didn't know that the federal stimulus had created an estimated 3m jobs; in fact, they didn't even distinguish the stimulus from the unpopular federal bank bailout. They didn't understand the benefits that people would derive from Obama's healthcare legislation. They didn't know that they'd had their taxes cut under Obama. And millions believed the hype that federal deficit spending and the US public debt were major problems. (For the record, the US currently pays less than 1% of GDP in net interest annually on the federal debt – less than it has paid during the past 60 years.)

The confusion on economic issues was probably the most important influence on swing voters, who supported Romney against their own economic interests, thinking that the economy might improve if he were elected. For this, and other misunderstandings, we can thank the major media, although we should also include the public relations blunders made by the Obama team. Perhaps the biggest strategic error was President Obama's refusal to go after Romney's proposal to cut social security, thereby losing the majority of senior citizens' votes (a big vote in swing states like Virginia and Florida), which he could potentially have won by defending America's most popular anti-poverty program.

Obama's silence on social security is a bad omen for the future of his second administration, when – facing almost immediately the "fiscal cliff" – political, media, and business leaders will be pressing for a "grand bargain" on budget issues that will screw the vast majority of Americans. It will take a lot of grassroots pressure to prevent the worst outcomes: likewise, to get us out of Afghanistan and to prevent another disastrous war, this time with Iran. Obama's foreign policy has been mostly atrocious and the never-ending "war on terror" continues to expand, while most Americans' living standards have been declining.

It's going to be an uphill fight for progress, but it could have been a lot worse.

Like an increasing number of Americans I'm not sure what conservatives like Romney stand for. They chant 'small government" like a mantra, but when you look at the details what they mean is gutting social safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security, doing away with food inspections, gutting safety standards for water so industry can dumb as much toxins as they like ( that is also how conservative Republicans define freedom - just let business give America the shaft in the name of increasing the wealth of people who are already wealthier than 90% of the population). Conservatives deserve to lose every office they were running for. They wave the flag a lot, but have seized to stand for patriotism, and instead stand for hateful unhinged nationalism.

A Letter to Conservatives

Conservative Republican Strategist Defends Romney’s Plan To Dismantle FEMA

Conservative Republican Strategist Defends Mitt Romney’s Plan To Dismantle FEMA

Mitt Romney’s past comments about dismantling FEMA and privatizing disaster relief have come back to haunt him as Hurricane Sandy begins to wreak havoc on the East Coast. Still, one Republican strategist, Ron Bonjean, agrees with him. On CNN Monday morning, Bonjean, a private consultant who advises GOP congressional leaders, defended Romney, suggesting that even talking about federal disaster relief is politically toxic:

    Most people don’t have a positive impression of FEMA and I think Mitt Romney was right on the button. But I don’t think anybody cares about that right now. I think people care about whether or not their power’s on, whether or not their basement’s going to be flooded. And I think that if the president gets too far in front of this and something goes wrong, people are going to remember, hey, my power’s not out, and the president’s talking about FEMA. I’m not a real big fan of FEMA. That could sway their vote.


Sandy has already caused severe flooding in the Northeast, hours before the worst of the storm is projected to hit. President Obama has declared a state of emergency in 7 states and DC after several governors’ urgent requests for federal aid to combat the storm. Though Bonjean fails to make the connection between FEMA’s services and people worrying about their power going out, the agency has already dispatched emergency power teams to try to reinforce vulnerable power grids before the storm hits and provided hundreds of generators and other back-up power sources. Americans are unfortunately well-acquainted with the agency, despite Bonjean’s insistence that they “don’t care” about it; a recent study of FEMA data found that, since 2006, 4 out of 5 Americans have been affected by weather-related disasters.

No one wants government that is too big, that is just common sense. Conservative Republicans have take that to the wacko extreme, they just plain do not want government to work. Like Exxon, BP, chemical, mining and insurance companies always do the right thing and are never unethical or inefficient. To be a conservative takes tremendous powers of denial about reality.

Morally Corrupt Romney campaign falsely training Wisc. poll watchers that IDs ‘must include photo’

Never let a tragedy go unexploited: Sleazebag Romney playing campaign videos at ‘storm relief events’

What is a Nightmare? The Day After Morally Bankrupt Mitt Romney is Elected

What is a Nightmare? The Day After Morally Bankrupt Mitt Romney is Elected

Despite the difficulty nailing down a chameleon-like candidate's positions, we've tried to discern some of the economic measures that Romney would likely champion if he wins. We'll follow up with a look at non-economic policies in the coming days.

1. The Romney-Ryan Budget

Let's assume, for the moment, that the Republicans take the Senate.

Mitt Romney has at times embraced Paul Ryan's “roadmap [3],” and he's also distanced himself from it. But there will be quite a bit of pressure from conservative activists and the Republican House to enact something along the lines of the roadmap.

There are two things to understand about Paul Ryan's budget. First, it has been carefully written so that most of its provisions can be passed under a process known as budget reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority of votes in the Senate. Second, it is a right-wing fantasy that, if enacted as written, would trigger a major drop in employment and send the economy into a tailspin. Its cuts are so deep, and would effect so many constituents – including traditionally Republican constituents – that it would have to be modified. It's one thing to campaign on such a plan and another to govern with it.

What does it do? According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities [4], “by 2050, most of the federal government aside from Social Security, healthcare and defense would cease to exist, according to figures in a Congressional Budget Office analysis.”

    The CBO report, prepared at Chairman Ryan’s request, shows that Ryan’s budget path would shrink federal expenditures for everything other than Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and interest payments to just 3¾ percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2050. Since, as CBO notes, “spending for defense alone has not been lower than 3 percent of GDP in any year [since World War II]” and Ryan seeks a high level of defense spending — he increases defense funding by $228 billion over the next ten years above the pre-sequestration baseline — the rest of government would largely have to disappear. That includes everything from veterans’ programs to medical and scientific research, highways, education, nearly all programs for low-income families and individuals other than Medicaid, national parks, border patrols, protection of food safety and the water supply, law enforcement, and the like.

Ryan has already modified his plan in response to the outcry over a CBO analysis that found future retirees would face $6,400 more in out-of-pocket healthcare costs. We can expect further modifications because no Republican administration is actually going to slash veterans' benefits to the bone, to name just one example. It's untenable, but that doesn't mean President Romney wouldn't push through something moderately less damaging.

2. Tax Cuts or rewarding rich people for being rich, not for work.

Romney promises to slash taxes by 20 percent across the board, maintain deductions enjoyed by the middle class and not decrease the share of taxes paid by the wealthy (or anyone else). We know Romney's math simply doesn't work [5] – it's impossible. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3708

But while the whole doesn't add up, Romney could get a number of those provisions passed, like eliminating the inheritance tax, the Alternative Minimum Tax (which hits high earners), and certainly keeping the “Bush tax cuts” on income investment in place.

When a candidate presents a plan that literally does not add up, it's not possible to predict what he'd do with any specificity once in office. Based on the recent history of GOP governance, the sharp right turn the party's taken in recent years and Mitt Romney's own background, one can be reasonably confident that Romney would cut taxes on high earners and corporations, but projecting by how much – and whether it would be financed through deficits, additional cuts or higher taxes on the middle class – is an exercise in reading the tea leaves.

3. ObamaCare

Mitt Romney has pledged to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with a plan that, while light on details, would be centered around health savings accounts and insurance deregulation. Employers would throw some cash into the accounts, people would get some tax breaks and then the miracle of the free market will supposedly swoop in and fix our broken healthcare system.

Repealing ObamaCare may not be as cut-and-dried as the Republican base has been led to believe, however. Contrary to the mythology surrounding the program, the Congressional Budget Office projects ObamaCare to reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decade and beyond. According to Senate rules now in effect, the reconciliation process cannot be used to pass anything that increases the budget deficit 10 years from now.

There are ways to get around procedural rules, and failing that, the executive branch has a lot of discretion in terms of implementation. A Romney adviser told Politico [6] that if the Dems hold the Senate, “we would just have to try to grind out changes by starving ObamaCare through regulations.”

If Romney is able to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with his plan, a study by the Commonwealth Fund [7] projects that it will leave 72 million uninsured by 2022 – 45 million more than is projected under ObamaCare.
A tragic irony is that Romney's healthcare plan would likely prove to be a fatal blow [8] to the best thing he's ever accomplished in public service – the “RomneyCare” scheme in Massachussetts.

4. Medicare

There is little doubt that Mitt Romney would pursue a variant of Paul Ryan's plan to voucherize Medicare for those who retire after a given date (in Ryan's plan it's 2023). Seniors would at first get a voucher sufficient to cover the cost of a private insurance plan comparable to Medicare. But the value of that voucher would only increase by the rate of overall economic growth plus 0.5 percent. The problem is that healthcare costs grow a lot faster. The difference would be borne by seniors themselves – it does nothing to contain healthcare costs, it just shifts them from the government to the backs of individuals.

When the CBO scored Ryan's first plan in 2011, it found that seniors would face an additional $6,400 in out-of-pocket expenses by 2022. After Democrats jumped on that figure, Ryan released a new plan, which called for Congress to come up with some unspecified remedy. CBO wasn't able to score it, but said [9] “beneficiaries might face higher costs.”

Ryan would also raise the retirement age to 67, a measure Romney has endorsed.

It's entirely possible that a President Romney would sweeten the deal a bit to make those numbers look better in the medium-term, but any voucher plan that doesn't keep up with the actual increase in healthcare costs achieves the same thing -- eventually shifting part of the burden onto seniors.

5. Medicaid

While Medicare has received the most attention, Ryan's plan for Medicaid, which Mitt Romney has endorsed, would be a more devastating hit to our threadbare social safety net.

Ryan's plan would turn Medicaid into a block-grant program, cap its funding – cutting $800 billion from the program over the next decade -- and then send it to the states to administer. The first problem is that states – presumably red states – would be free to make it harder to qualify, and the second is that the program wouldn't have the funding flexibility to enroll more people during economic downturns.

Medicaid serves 60 million Americans, about 10 million more than Medicare. Most people think Medicaid only serves the poor, but Medicaid is indespensible for the disabled, especially the severely diabled who require a lot of care. It also covers Medicare's out-of-pocket expenses for retirees with limited incomes.

6. Social Security

George W. Bush learned the hard way that privatizing Social Security is a great way to make voters hate you. That's why the Ryan plan is quite vague. It calls for "action on Social Security by requiring both the President and the Congress to put forward specific ideas and legislation to ensure the sustainable solvency of this critical program." The budget does tout "reforms that take into account increases in longevity, to arrest the demographic problems that are undermining Social Security's finances” – which sounds a lot like raising the retirement age.

7. State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP)

S-CHIP is likely to be hit hard under a Romney administration if he has a Republican Congress. Under the Ryan plan, S-CHIP could only increase by the rate of inflation, which again, is much slower than the projected rate of healthcare cost inflation. The CBO looked at Medicaid and S-CHIP together, and found that spending on the two programs would be about 70 percent less than currently projected by the year 2050 under Ryan's "roadmap."

8. The Rest

If the Republicans run the field in a big win, expect a lot of talk about a constitutional amendment capping federal spending at a given share of our gross domestic product. It will only be talk. It's a right-wing fantasy of a policy that can only be enacted with a constitutional amendment, which isn't going to happen.

That doesn't mean there won't be deep, deep cuts to non-defense discretionary spending under a Romney administration. Under the Ryan plan, non-defense discretionary spending would be on a downward trajectory leading to 39 percent less funding than currently projected by the year 2040. What is “non-defense discretionary spending”? Well, about 40 percent is education, training and research, and the rest is veterans' programs, various programs for low-income families, public safety and disaster response and the like. It's basically government, absent the Pentagon budget, Social Security and Medicare.

9. If Dems Have 40-50 Seats in Senate (With Ryan the Tie-Breaking Vote)

Although he has been vocal in his opposition in the past [10], there's a good chance that as Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, might embrace filibuster reform – dropping the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster from 60 -- if the Dems hold a minority in the upper chamber.

Either way, one thing not to expect in this scenario is Senate Democrats turning the tables on the GOP and blocking their legislative agenda at every turn. That's a strategy the Republicans can undertake because their overarching narrative is that governent doesn't do anything right – it ultimately works to their benefit when they can “prove” that theory by rendering Congress incapable of action. Democrats still adhere to the idea that good governance can improve our society, so they can't play the same game and get away with it.

10. If Dems Hold Senate

If the Dems hold the Senate they will act as a firewall against the radical restructuring of the public sector promised by the Ryan budget.

That means maintaining the status quo, more or less, at least through 2014, with one painful exception. Cheered on by the Beltway media, the Democrats, having embraced the non-existent recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles commission (the chairmen drafted recommendations but the gang of 18 didn't vote to approve them), would almost certainly be willing to strike a “grand bargain” with President Romney along those lines.

The only question is whether Speaker Boehner (or Cantor?) would have any trouble coming up with the votes for a “balanced” deficit reduction deal – for a deal that raises some new revenues. If history is any guide, even the most ideological House Republicans will support a Republican president in such an effort.

Currently, non-defense discretionary spending is expected to hit its lowest level since 1962, and Simpson-Bowles would cut deeper still – with a 3:1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases. That means programs that help the poor and middle class will be on the chopping block. Simpson-Bowles also called for a hike in the Social Security retirement age, despite the fact that life expectancies have only increased significantly for the well-to-do who don't rely on the program as heavily as working people and the poor.

The U.S. is still the richest nation in the world ( maybe 2nd, some economists think China passed us) yet Romney-Ryan would have half the population living in their own 3rd world like conditions. Conservatives talk about imgiinary death panels - the reality is that a conservative president and a conservative Congress will literary mean the deaths of millions of senior citizens and disabled. besides their wacky UnAmerican ideology, why are conservatives going to try and pass this kind of cruel legislation/ Because they do not want to rise taxes on billionaires who are complaining they're not making enough money. Seriously. These same billionaires and multimillionaires are also threatening to fire employees if they do not vote for immoral Mitt.

Paul Ryan Takes a Side in the War on Poverty: He's Against What Works

Condi Rice Pours Cold Water On ‘Benghazi-Gate’

The Republican propaganda channel and Anti-American Fox New's John Roberts Whitewashes Romney's Position On Auto Rescue