Month: February 2012

Okay, bad headline for two reasons:  1) Three-term incumbent US Senator Olympia Snowe didn’t “fall”; she announced she’s not running for re-election this fall, a race she likely would have won easily (both the primary and the general election); and, 2) it’s a terrible pun.

What does this mean?  At least the following:

   
• The Maine Senate race shifts from the “strong Republican hold” column to the “open race-leaning Democratic” column this fall.

   

• Given how closely divided the Senate looks to be next year, there’s a chance this race could determine which party holds the majority.

   

• The “Gang of Three” (Snowe, Collins, Specter) Republicans who voted for the Recovery Act three years ago this month will be reduced to one by the end of this year.  (That’s also a pretty good measure of the strength of the “Rockefeller Republican” wing (actually, more of a feather) of the party.

(h/t: TPM)

O woe is me! Despite all attempts at avoiding a referendum in Ireland on the “fiscal compact”, the Attorney General has ruled that “on balance” one will be required to amend the Constitution to accomodate the pact…

Referendum to be held on European fiscal compact – The Irish Times – Tue, Feb 28, 2012

The Government is to put the revised European Union fiscal compact treaty which tightens controls on member states’ budgetary decisions to a referendum,  Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the Dáil this afternoon.

The compact, agreed at special EU summit last month, proposes tough new budgetary discipline on each euro zone state, including near-zero public deficits. Twenty-five of the European Union’s 27 countries have signed up to the new treaty, with only Britain and the Czech Republic opposed.

Mr Kenny told the House that the Attorney General’s advice at this morning’s Cabinet meeting was that “on balance”, a referendum was required to ratify it. Scheduled Dáil business was interrupted for the statement.

The Taoiseach said that he intended to sign the treaty at the weekend with all the heads of the EU in Brussels. In the coming weeks, he said the Government would finalise the arrangements and the process leading to the referendum, leading to the establishment of a referendum commission. No date was given for the poll.

Referendum to be held on European fiscal compact – The Irish Times – Tue, Feb 28, 2012

Mr Kenny has previously denied the compact will condemn the State to further years of austerity.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said the referendum would come down to a vote for economic growth and stability.  “We now have an opportunity to go beyond the casino capitalism,” he said.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin criticised the Government for notifying the Opposition eight minutes before the Taoiseach’s announcement. “I think it’s the right decision and one that shouldn’t have required legal advice in my view,” he said.

Sinn Féin and a number of left-wing TDs opposed to the treaty had indicated their intention of issuing a court challenge if a referendum was not held.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said it was another failure by the Government, which had tried to avoid the referendum. “The question is will the Government accept the outcome? Are we going to have the usual re-run replay?” he asked.

Irish voters rejected the Nice referendum in 2001. It was passed following a re-run in October 2002. The Lisbon referendum was rejected in 2008, before being passed a year later after Ireland secured a number of concessions.

The Green Party said it would seek support for a Yes vote on the referendum, with leader Eamon Ryan saying the measures provided for in the fiscal compact was in the national interest.

Support for the European Union has cooled in Ireland following the financial crisis, meaning there is no guarantee a vote will succeed. A rejection could damage Dublin’s long-term funding prospects and cast doubt on the country’s commitment to the single currency.

In December, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said a vote on the treaty would effectively be a vote on Ireland’s membership of the euro.

Rejecting the treaty would also bar Dublin from accessing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the permanent successor to the euro zone’s current rescue fund which Ireland is tapping as part of an EU-IMF bailout that runs until the end of 2013.

The Government has been studiously denying that it has been doing everything possible to avoid a referendum. However, once again a German politician stepped into the breach to totally undermine the Government’s position:

Referendum to be held on European fiscal compact – The Irish Times – Tue, Feb 28, 2012

Last week, Germany’s minister for European Affairs Michael Link confirmed that European Union negotiators sought to design the fiscal compact in such a way to avoid a referendum in Ireland.

The Government – and lead opposition party, Fianna Fail – now face the nightmare scenario of a referendum campaign in which they are pledged to support an increasingly unpopular EU and fiscal austerity pact – on pain of losing all EU/IMF/ECB funding and the whole basis of their economic recovery strategy. Sinn Fein, the only opposition party to consistently oppose the Troika strategy has been cleaning up in the opinion polls recently and eclipsing Fianna Fail (25 to 16%) as the major opposition party.  This referendum is tailor made for them drive a stake through the heart of Fianna Fail if not the Government.  Labour is also particularly vulnerable – down to 10% in the polls.  Fine Gael is the only party (other than Sinn Fein) to retain its support.  Its largely conservative bourgeois base is quite happy that Austerity policies are hitting the feckless working class most whilst underwriting their relative social position.

For the first time in my life I too, will be forced to consider voting NO in a EU referendum. The pact is economic nonsense, as every reputable economist knows. Worse, in enshrines the IMF/EU/ECB Troika’s insistence that we bail-out the bond-holders in Anglo-Irish Bank to the tune of €30 Billion – despite the fact that Anglo never was a strategic bank, and its bond holders were never covered by the truly stupid Government bank guarantee. The original bond-holders have long fled the scene to be replaced by speculative hedge funds who bought the bonds at a discount reflecting their un-guaranteed status. But what really sticks in the craw is that these “Promissory notes” have to be funded at market interest rates and not the preferential ESM funding available for other Government debts. As a result, the €30 Billion Anglo debt could well become €70 Billion by the time all capital and interest has been repaid, or almost 40% of current Irish GDP –  all for one worthless, defunct, non-strategic private property speculators bank that most people had barely heard of prior to the crisis!

Recent opinion polls have indicated that only 24% (down 20%) of Irish people trust the EU and only 34% think that Irish interests are taken into account by the EU. 78% still support the Euro, but few will accept Michael Noonan’s contention (above) that the referendum is effectively on membership of the Eurozone itself. The key issue is that a NO vote will prevent the Government from accessing ESM funding, without which a default will be all but unavoidable.  Many will welcome the prospect of a default – particularly on the Anglo-Irish promissory notes – given there was never a coherent case for the state to take over such ludicrous private debts.

Merkel and the ECB have been playing hardball on the Anglo promissory notes and refusing all (rather timid) attempts by the Irish Government to either negotiate a managed default or to fund the debt at ESM rates. Without some flexibility on this issue, I can’t see the referendum passing. However the Fiscal Pact will go into operation even if only 12 countries ratify it, so in theory Merkel could kiss Ireland – as well as the UK and Czech Republic – goodbye.  However without access to ESM funds Ireland will be forced to default which will wreck havoc in the Eurozone as a whole.

Once again perhaps only democracy and not a feckless government will stand in the way of a great EU/IMF/ECB clusterfuck that is their stance on the Anglo promissory notes. The Government sought to avoid a referendum because of the unpopularity of austerity policies as a whole. Expect either a defeat for the pact or some last minute deal on the default or funding of the Anglo promissory notes. The next few weeks and months are going to be interesting. Merkozy may have thought the Greek deal would give them some breathing space to allow a Eurozone recovery and improve their own electoral prospects.  They had better think again. Pandora’s box has just been re-opened. Would it be too much to hope that it might also reopen a Europe wide debate on the need for an employment and economic development strategy to complement the austerity pact?

Non-lethal force. Saving lives. Who can argue with that. Well, in the United States, Amnesty International now reports that 500 people have been killed by Tasers employed by law enforcement officials. I imagine if they had a voice they might have something to say about the rampant use of this weapon (and yes, it is a weapon) that took from them (to paraphrase the character William Munny in the film Unforgiven) everything they ever had on this earth and everything they were ever going to have.

According to data collected by Amnesty International, at least 500 people in the United States have died since 2001 after being shocked with Tasers either during their arrest or while in jail. Amnesty International recorded the largest number of deaths following the use of Tasers in California (92), followed by Florida (65), and Texas (37). The Oklahoma City Police Department led all law enforcement agencies in deaths (7) following by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, Harris County Sheriff’s (Tx), Phoenix, Az and San Jose, Ca., all with six deaths.

On Monday, Johnnie Kamahi Warren was the latest to die after a police officer in Dothan, Al. deployed a Taser on him at least twice. The 43-year-old, who was unarmed and allegedly intoxicated, reportedly stopped breathing shortly after being shocked and was pronounced dead in a hospital less than two hours later. […]

In a 2008 report, USA: Stun weapons in law enforcement, Amnesty International examined data on hundreds of deaths following Taser use, including autopsy reports in 98 cases and studies on the safety of such devices.

Among the cases reviewed, 90 percent of those who died were unarmed. Many of the victims were subjected to multiple shocks.

Well (I hear some say), they had it coming. They got what they deserved. To which I say, we all have it coming. But did an intoxicated Johnnie Kamahi Warren deserve to be tasered twice, and be declared dead on arrival at the hospital because he got in a bar fight?

(cont.)

A Houston County Sheriff’s deputy has been placed on paid administrative leave after a Georgia man died early Monday during a struggle with authorities outside a local bar.

Dothan Police Chief Greg Benton said the incident occurred when officers responded to a report of a drunk and disorderly person at Houligans bar. [..]

Hughes said a sheriff’s deputy was close by, and when he arrived he saw three men struggling with what appeared to be an intoxicated patron on the ground outside the business.

“When he got to the scene, he deployed a Taser in an attempt to get him under control,” Hughes said.

To get him under control? Johnnie was on the ground with three people on top of him and the officer needed to use a taser to get him under control?

Or lets talk about Baron Pikes. Does anyone here remember Baron Pikes? He was already under arrest in the small town of Winnfield, Louisiana. He was handcuffed. He was sitting on the ground. So why was he tased? Here’s what the arresting officer’s report and eyewitnesses said:

Moreover, Pikes did not resist arrest, and he was handcuffed while lying on the ground, according to Nugent’s police report of the incident. It was only after Pikes refused Nugent’s command to stand up that the officer applied the first Taser shock in the middle of his back, Nugent wrote.

Several more Taser shocks followed quickly, Nugent stated, because Pikes kept falling down and refusing to get back up. Grocery shoppers who witnessed the incident later told Pikes’ family that he had pleaded with Nugent: “Please, you all got me. Please don’t Tase me again.”

Baron Pikes was tased 9 times over a 14 minute period on the way to the police station. The last two occurred when he was unconscious. Why was he tased at all? Because, while handcuffed, he didn’t get up off the ground fast enough in the arresting officer’s opinion. Why did the officer keep tasing him? God only knows.

[Coroner] Williams said police records showed Nugent administered nine Taser shocks to Pikes over a 14-minute period. The last two jolts, delivered as police pulled Pikes from a patrol car at the police station, elicited no reaction because the suspect was unconscious …

Police have used tasers to “subdue” an 86 year old bed ridden invalid and people who are having diabetic seizures. Why? Not because they were an imminent threat of harm to anyone but because they didn’t obey the officer’s orders quickly enough. They have used tasers on a 66 year old man with dementia who had already been beaten to a pulp by a police officer and was on the ground (i.e., Albert Flowers).

Once Flowers was on the ground, another officer, identified as Howard Knauf, walked up and Tasered Flowers in the upper body as Middendorf worked to control him. Officers noted that Flowers was mumbling and speaking incoherently.

Go watch the video posted in my former diary to see for yourself whether Mr. Flowers required to be tasered. You you believe that further use of a taser was necessary after he had already been attacked by the police officer who intiated the assault against Mr. Flowers, well, perhaps you work for Taser International, or you are simply someone who thinks whatever the police do is correct no matter what the result to the individual they are “taking down.”

Here’s another recent example (January, 2012) of a man already in custody who was tased multiple times and then “inexplicably” suffered a medical emergency. It happened in Colton California and the man’s name was Hutalio Serrano and here is his story as told by witnesses to the event, including his daughter:

Serrano’s daughter Biviana said she witnessed her father on the ground yelling for police to stop as police officers continued to use a taser him. His stepson, Eddie Hernandez, also witnessed Serrano’s pleas for officers to stop using the stun gun on him. Another eyewitness, Kelly Martinez, stated he came upon the scene while walking home. According to Martinez, he saw police officers use a taser on Serrano at least four times while Serrano plead for help. He also said he did not believe Serrano posed any threat to police.

Despite that Serrano reportedly never threatened officers on the scene, the Colton Police Department claims Serrano died while resisting arrest. Police also stated Serrano was tasered three times, all of which were necessary to subdue and handcuff the man. According to the Colton Police Department, Serrano was hospitalized as soon as officers realized he was having a medical emergency. Serrano was pronounced dead approximately one hour after the incident with police.

There are so many stories of people dying after tasers have been used on them by police. Allen Kephart in May 2011 was tased after running a stoplight and becoming (according to the police) “combative and uncooperative.” Well, we all know what that means, even little old ladies and grandmothers, such as this one:

Did you hear that large police officer after he tased her? “Put your hands behind your back or you’ll be tased again!” Was she a threat to him? Of course not. And therein lies the problem.

Tasers are not merely used to subdue dangerous individuals who pose an imminent threat of harm to the police. More often than not they have been used by the police officers as a compliance tool or as a means to torture people, people who are already subdued, or who pose no threat to anyone. We’ve known this for a long time. For example, the case of Darrin Ring, who was beaten and tased while in jail in Tennessee while shackled, a case which led to an investigation by the Tennessee authorities and the FBI:

The FBI and TBI served federal grand jury subpoenas to the sheriff’s department. Those subpoenas could include jailers, deputies and Sheriff Chris Davis, as well as all records, files and computers.

Larry Barbee is one of two inmates who has told the TBI that Ring was beaten and Tasered in jail while shackled.

“We’re in a four-man cell and right across the hall is a single cell. We have a window that we can see outside in the hallway,” said Barbee in an exclusive interview with Channel 4 News. “We heard a big commotion going on. They bring Darrin in and it was like four or five deputies, the sheriff was one of them, and they’ve got Darrin wrapped in a blanket, dragging him down the hall.”

Ring was still not dressed after deputies stripped off his clothes in the initial attack at his home.

“The sheriff was over here and had his hands on the cement bench and was going down with his knee over and over,” said Barbee, demonstrating the sheriff’s actions. “Deputy Tim Hedge was standing on top of Darrin’s head.”

Barbee said a young female jailer entered the area and told a Waverly police officer, Kinta Bell, that she had never seen anyone Tased. That officer then Tasered Ring.

“Officer [Joe] Parnell goes in there and grabs him by the head, tells him to stand up at first,” said Barbee. “He can’t stand up because his hands are handcuffed to his feet. He can’t stand up.”

“[Parnell] keeps telling him to [stand up] and he said he can’t. So he grabbed his head and rammed it into the wall, and then Officer Bell comes in from behind and Tases him.”

As the Arizona chapter of the ACLU pointed out in its 2011 report regarding the abuse of tasers by Arizona law enforcement:

[A]ll too often, Tasers are used “preemptively” against citizens that do not present an imminent safety threat, and even offensively as a pain compliance tool. What’s more, both TASER International training materials and agency policies anticipate that officers will use the weapon as a pain compliance tool.

That, in rather bland understated prose, defines the nature of the problem. Tasers are not treated as guns, i.e., as a potentially lethal weapon, that should be used sparingly. Police departments often train their officers to use tasers as if they pose no risk to the lives of citizens, and therefore can be used in situations in which a gun would never be used: when people are handcuffed, when they “mouth off” to police officers, when they are doing nothing more than writhing on the ground yelling “Please stop, you got me!” In short whenever a police officer wants to inflict pain on someone for any reason or for no reason at all.

Do police run risks everyday? Yes. It’s a tough job and I admire those police officers who carry out their duties professionally and truly protect and serve the public. However, police deaths has been decreasing over the last several decades, not rising.

Moreover, experts note and statistics indicate that police officers today appear appreciably less likely to be killed in the line of duty than they were decades ago.

“Police shootings are very, very rare events in this country,” said Peter Manning, a professor at Northeastern University’s College of Criminal Justice. […]

For instance, in the last three years of the 1980s, 74, 78 and 66 law enforcement officers were killed — compared to 58, 41 and 48 killed annually over the tail end of the 2000s, the most recent decade. Taking the average of those two three-year subsets equates to a roughly 48% decrease in the past 20 years.

Yet, during the last decade the use of tasers has risen rapidly. It’s a rare day that goes by when you cannot find a story regarding the use of a taser by law enforcement officials. In most cases the individual tased by the police is not armed. Instead, the taser has become the preferred method for causing pain to individuals, whether they are in the process of being arrested or after they have been arrested. All to often, police officers and police departments have a “tase first and tase often” mentality. Hey, it’s a non-lethal method of force, right?

Well that’s what proponents of frequent taser use will tell you. The 500 people who have died, and the countless others who have suffered serious injuries? Well the dead don’t talk, and the media doesn’t cover stories about taser abuse that extensively. Unless there is video of a particular egregious case, it’s usually a one day story at best. Rick Santorum vomits when he reads JFK’s speech or President Obama apologizes for the deliberate burning of the Qu’ran and its a 24/7 news coverage by the national news media. Somebody dies from being tasered by the police, its a story that may or may not be covered by your local TV news. Meanwhile use of tasers by police and the number of deaths related to the use of this lethal “non-lethal” weapon continues to grow.

This is the “new normal” folks. It could happen to you or to someone you care about. Any run in with the police, even one in which you have done nothing wrong, could result in a taser being used on you and possibly may result in your death. And you will have no idea if the police officer who approaches you is reasonable and professional, or one who is trigger happy when it comes to shooting your body with 30-50 thousand volts of electricity. No idea whatsoever.

It seems like everyone is trying to create drama. Here’s Matt Dowd, responding to a query from George Stephanopoulos: “What happens if Rick Santorum wins Michigan tonight?”

“If Rick Santorum wins tonight it’s the equivalent of a 9.0 on a Richter scale. I mean it is going to shake Washington, it’s going to shake Republican establishment it’s just going to shake things to their very core,” Dowd told me. “And I think what you’re going to see are the conversations that have been going on behind quiet doors saying we need another candidate in this race.”

I think this is a bit of hyperbole. At the same time, I don’t think it’s wrong exactly. Let me explain. As things look right now, Romney is going to win in Arizona tonight, probably quite comfortably. And he’s either going to win narrowly or lose narrowly in Michigan, which will mean very little either way in terms of delegates awarded. Whether Romney nets a dozen delegates or loses a dozen, it can’t possibly matter much in determining the outcome of the overall race. Except, perhaps, if the outcome of tonight’s elections significantly changes people’s perceptions. But, is that likely to happen?

Let’s say that Romney wins in Michigan by a narrow margin. Will that change his position in the polls in Super Tuesday states? After all, Romney is polling in second place in Ohio, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, and in third place in Georgia. Does anyone seriously think that narrowly winning in Michigan will erase those deficits? And, consider that Romney will win on Super Tuesday in Virginia (where he only faces Ron Paul on the ballot), his home state of Massachusetts, and Vermont. There will also be a handful of delegates parceled out that day in Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming, and North Dakota. Will how those races turn out hinge on tonight’s results? And will those results really mean anything compared to the big prizes like Ohio and Georgia, Virginia and Massachusetts?

I think the truth is that regardless of what happens tonight, Romney is going to win a lot and lose a lot on Super Tuesday. And that means that he will have proven that he can’t close the deal. He’ll have to deal with upcoming primaries and caucuses in Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas, and Missouri, which are all inhospitable states for Romney.

What does all this mean? It means that tonight’s results don’t matter. If Romney wins both contests, he’ll be able to breath a little easier for a week. And then he’ll be in the same place that Matt Dowd said he’d be after Super Tuesday, with conversations going on behind closed doors about how to find another candidate.

For Romney to escape this plotting, he’ll have to win big enough in Michigan to somehow change people’s minds about him in Ohio and Georgia and Tennessee and Oklahoma. Because, unless he can win in the South, he isn’t going to knock his opponents out of the race or get a big enough delegate lead to wrap up the nomination.

We at AmericanLP have created a new ad to spotlight Mitt Romney’s hypocrisy on the issue of bailouts. By now, most observers have learned that Mitt Romney was against a bailout for Detroit. But what even many political insiders don’t realize is that Mitt Romney has been the beneficiary of a Federal bailout of sorts. As head of Bain and Co in the early 90s (he had been brought back from Bain Capital to sort out the mess at the mother company), Romney was in charge of keeping Bain from imploding under a huge mountain of debt. In addition to firing lots of people (naturally), Romney also squeezed suppliers and other creditors. What’s more, Bain had a $38 million loan from the Bank of New England, and that the Bank of New England had its own problems and had been taken over by the FDIC.

Romney shrewdly re-negotiated the Bain loan from $38 million to $28 million. So what does that mean, exactly? Well, since the FDIC is an arm of the Federal government, that means, essentially, that the FDIC (ahem, taxpayers) ate the difference. In other words, Romney conned the government into giving him and his cronies a $10 million bailout.

Yes, this was legal for Romney to do–other business people do it all the time. But it was a bailout to the tune of $10 million, Romney did personally benefit, and it’s a bit rich for Romney to be so sanctimonious about other people getting bailouts. Critics of our ad would suggest that it is unfair to imply that Romney benefited personally from the $10, million write-offs. While the money went to Bain and Co, Romney actually benefited to a much greater degree than $10 million. If Bain and Co had not gotten the bailout, it would have likely imploded. If Bain and Co had imploded, it would have likely tainted Bain Capital to such a degree that it would have been destroyed. If Bain Capital had been dismantled, Romney would have never been able to make his quarter billion that has allowed him the life of the perpetual candidate. Yes, this stuff is complicated–but that’s why rich finance guys like Romney are able to play the system to their advantage.

We start the ad with images of Ronald Reagan talking about the Chicago welfare queen in a Cadillac. This was a story Reagan told over and over again in the 1976 and 1980 campaigns. Even though Reagan never specified it was a black woman, it was widely assumed by most observers across the spectrum that Reagan was in fact talking about a black woman from Chicago with 80 different fake names. (It turns out that Reagan didn’t have his facts straight on this–surprise, surprise)

By showing Reagan at the beginning of the ad, we are trying to evoke the warm feelings conservative Republicans have toward Reagan and his beliefs about “welfare queens.” That is why we are literally showing what appears to be a woman driving a pink Cadillac in an inner city. We then show that in fact the “woman” is none other than Mitt Romney in drag. Romney should actually be seen as a modern day welfare queen who ripped off the government for more than any “welfare queen” from the inner city could ever imagine.
By portraying Romney this way, we are attempting to turn ugly racist beliefs on their head and make people realize that the biggest freeloaders on the government system are actually people who look like Mitt Romney.

At the end of the ad, we show Mitt Romney’s vacation mansion worth $10 million. We aren’t suggesting that Romney criminally stole tax dollars to buy his house illegally. But money is fungible, so any money that benefits Romney in one account can be used to purchase luxuries from any other account.

The point is that Romney and his colleagues at Bain were already wealthy by the early 1990s when the difficulties with the loan arose. Because, as we know, “corporations are people,” Romney and his cronies weren’t personally liable for the full $38 million. Instead, just the corporate entity of Bain and Company was liable. But there was nothing stopping Romney or his wealthy colleagues at Bain from paying back the full $10 million out of their own pocket at the time. For that matter, Romney and his colleagues could have paid the Government back in later years, after they’d all become super, super rich.

The bottom line is Romney got the best deal he could, just because he could. And yet he belongs to a political party that says people who do that are evil parasites for not being “rugged individuals” and succeeding on their own merits.

Finally, our goal here is to make conservatives sickened by the hypocrisy of Romney taking bailouts and for moderates and independents to be disgusted by Romney for making himself richer at the expense of average taxpayers. This bailout for Romney is a perfect window into why Romney should be seen as an utterly detestable and phony candidate regardless of one’s ideological position. Please take a look at the ad below.

http://youtu.be/-L8oCg_pM2M
<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/-L8oCg_pM2M” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe&gt

Clay Risen once described David Brooks this way:

Brooks has a good sense of humor and an incisive wit. He is ruthless in his depiction of the vagaries and contradictions of Bobo culture (“they want an oven capacity of 8 cubic feet minimum, just to show they are the sort of people who could roast a bison if necessary”). The problem is that he doesn’t know how to turn that wit into anything that might support his conclusion, which, oddly, seems to be that despite their shallow materialism, wishy-washy politics and narrow careerism, the Bobos are really a great bunch of people who “have the ability to go down in history as the class that led America into another golden age.”

That was part of a review of Brooks’s 2000-released book, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. It’s twelve years later now, and there are many things that Brooks still has not learned. For example, he still thinks that Golden and Gilded Age can be used interchangeably. Yet, he is beginning to show small signs of understanding. Today’s column is ostensibly about “opossum Republicans.” These are moderate Republicans, like Orrin Hatch and Richard Lugar, who abandon all moderation in a desperate struggle to survive as viable politicians in the modern Republican Party.

It’s not honorable to adjust your true nature in order to win re-election. It’s not honorable to kowtow to the extremes so you can preserve your political career.

Indeed, it is sometimes better to resign in protest than to compromise your core beliefs. It is one thing to hang on in the hope that you can reform the party from within. But, to do that, you have to retain your core principles and fight for them.

The wingers call their Republican opponents RINOs, or Republican In Name Only. But that’s an insult to the rhino, which is a tough, noble beast. If RINOs were like rhinos, they’d stand up to those who seek to destroy them. Actually, what the country needs is some real Rhino Republicans. But the professional Republicans never do that. They’re not rhinos. They’re Opossum Republicans. They tremble for a few seconds then slip into an involuntary coma every time they’re challenged aggressively from the right.

Brooks seems to have picked up the scent of danger. Born into a Jewish family in Manhattan exactly one week after the president was born in Kenya Honolulu, Brooks has done his best to fit in. And, much like the president, he’s been tremendously successful. He even became the champion of bourgeois values, which isn’t what you’d predict from a nice Jewish boy from Stuyvesant Town. There he is on the PBS Newshour, or on Meet the Press, extolling a form of respectable conservatism even as he watches it be devoured by the Palins and Becks and Limbaughs and Koch Brothers of the world.

He watches as latinos are demonized, blacks are vilified, gays are discriminated against, and women face an assault on their birth control and bodily integrity. And something stirs within his soul. Perhaps it recalls Yeats:

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Did that seem strangely inappropriate? Okay, then. Let’s see what Brooks is about.

Leaders of a party are supposed to educate the party, to police against its worst indulgences, to guard against insular information loops. They’re supposed to define a creed and establish boundaries. Republican leaders haven’t done that. Now the old pious cliché applies:

First they went after the Rockefeller Republicans, but I was not a Rockefeller Republican. Then they went after the compassionate conservatives, but I was not a compassionate conservative. Then they went after the mainstream conservatives, and there was no one left to speak for me.

Yes, he went there, all the way to Godwin and back. He’s riffing off Pastor Martin Niemöller. Niemöller was jailed by the Nazis in 1937.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

So, Brooks can now see the signs? A race-based party that obsesses about fertility, hates homosexuality, espouses a hyper-nationalism, and that plays on the majority’s fears and anxieties to maintain its power?

Is David Brooks feeling like that frog who waited too long in the heated pot?

Brooke Garwood Malik is a custom clothier and stylist from Troy, Michigan who currently resides in both Birmingham, Michigan and New York, New York.  Brooke Garwood Malik is a graduate of Central Michigan University, having excelled academically with a triple concentration in Marketing, Logistics and Advertising.   Choosing to combine her educational business training with her acute sense and appreciation for men’s tailoring, Ms. Malik has been employed by renowned custom clothier Paul Cicchini since 2001.

Brooke Garwood Malik splits her time between Birmingham, Michigan where her business is centered and Manhattan, New York catering to her ever expanding clientele of athletes, celebrities and prominent business men.

   

Specializing in custom suiting, Brooke Garwood Malik has overseen the design and production of over 10,000 bench crafted suits.

Brooke Garwood Malik is an avid yoga and Pilates practitioner and raw foodist.  During her free time she enjoys spending time with family and friends, attending Detroit area sporting events, volunteering and attending charitable gatherings.  Amongst her charities and organizations of choice are CARE House of Oakland County, Cranbrook Schools, and MOCAD, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.

Brooke Garwood Malik is actively involved in politics and can often be seen at campaign fundraisers.

Juan Williams tries to penetrate the impermeable membrane of stupid by explaining that the American Recovery Act actually worked. I guess he’s a glutton for right-wing abuse. He also should have pointed out that the Republicans are the ones with blueberry pie on their faces. They were the ones eating the pie.

It is important to keep in mind the dire condition of the economy when the stimulus passed. It was hemorrhaging jobs at the rate of hundreds of thousands per month. During President Bush’s last full month in office, December 2008, the economy lost 779,000 jobs. More jobs were lost that month than in any other single month in the previous 60 years. The GDP, the measure of all economic activity in the country, dropped by an unprecedented 9 percent in the final quarter of 2008.

The stock market took an enormous hit, along with the values of people’s homes and other financial assets.

Still, Republicans lambasted the stimulus plan as socialism, a bailout and the government picking winners and losers.

President Bush had pretty much destroyed this country before he lost 779,000 jobs during his last full month in office. And he couldn’t have done it without the lockstep support of Republicans, particularly in Congress. They screwed things up. And then they were virtually unanimous in opposing the new president’s effort the set things right. That we’ve come this far with no help from the people responsible for creating this mess is a minor miracle. I can imagine how good things would be if the Republicans had had an iota of contrition or any sense of responsibility for what they’d done.

Yes, hard to believe the Bank the everyone loves to hate could go much lower in the estimation of the public, but according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Bank of America (or BOA as I like to call it in honor of the Boa constrictor that will squeeze its prey to death before eating them) imposed “unnecessary and burdensome requirements” on any borrower who relied on disability income, such as myself and my wife (fortunately we do not have our mortgage with BOA). Here’ the story from Reuters:

HUD alleged the second-largest U.S. bank by assets imposed “unnecessary and burdensome requirements” on borrowers who relied on disability income to qualify for their mortgages. The charge, now being handled by the Justice Department, is based on complaints by two borrowers in the state of Michigan and one in Wisconsin. […]

HUD alleged that Bank of America asked some borrowers for proof of their disabilities and requested information about their Social Security income before approving the loans, which were initially denied.

Now anyone who has ever had to apply for disability benefits, whether from a private insurance company or from the Social Security Disability office, then you know how they very frequently put disabled people through the wringer six ways to Sunday, before (after often spending months refusing benefits and requiring a lengthy appeal process) finally granting you the disability income you are owed. So having to prove you are disabled all over again to a f**king bank is beyond the pale. At least in my book. It’s also illegal.

Under the Fair Housing Act, a lender may not “[s]et different terms or conditions for purchasing a loan” for anyone who is disabled. Specifically the law states that:

Sec. 805. [42 U.S.C. 3605] Discrimination in Residential Real Estate-Related Transactions

(a) In General.–It shall be unlawful for any person or other entity whose business
includes engaging in residential real estate-related transactions to discriminate against any person in making available such a transaction, or in the terms or conditions of such a transaction, because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap [i.e., disability], familial status, or national origin.

Obviously, requiring someone to prove they are disabled after they have already been granted disability benefits is exactly the sort of discriminatory lending practice the law was intended to prohibit. No doubt BOA intended to set up these barriers in order to discourage borrowers from obtaining loans from BOA. No doubt many disabled borrowers when confronted with these additional obstacles to obtaining a mortgage loan looked elsewhere for the mortgage rather than file an appeal. Indeed, I suspect many disabled people are not even aware that the Fair Housing Act prohibits these burdensome types of loan underwriting practices by banks. The fact the the Justice Department is now involved in these cases ought to tell you everything you need to know about what their prosecutors think about the likelihood of success on the merits. In general, the DOJ doesn’t prosecute fair housing act cases unless they are fairly certain that they have a slam dunk.

Still, I suppose there is still time for BOA to settle for a small slap on the wrist, so people with disabilities (and anyone else for that matter) be forewarned. Take your banking elsewhere. Bank of America is scum.

Mitt Romney (rapper name: R Money) doesn’t understand why people are hating on his bling-bling. It worked for Notorious B.I.G. back when gangsta rap learned to serve its masters. I mean, how is the following any different from R Money’s rap?

You wanna be my main squeeze baby
Don’tcha, you wanna gimme what I need baby
Won’tcha, picture life as my wife just think
Full length mink, fat X and O links
Bracelets to match, conversation was all that
Showed you the safe combinations and all that
Guess you could say youse the one I trusted
Who would ever think that you would spread like mustard?

For you older folks, “Be thankful for what you’ve got, though you may not drive two great big Cadillacs, diamonds in the back, dog on top, diggin the scene with the gasoline…”

This is America. A man’s got a right to flaunt his money and his connections. You, too, can be R Money’s bitch.

When Romney tells us that corporations are people, that’s code for this:

Seriously, when Donald Trump is something like the national ideal, why is Romney’s act falling on deaf ears? He may not watch NASCAR but he knows many of the car owners. See, he’s high class, not low class. When did this ever become a liability?

I watched some of The Oscars last night. It was all, “Look at me!! I’m so fabulous.” On the red carpet they asked “who” not “what are you wearing?”

How is Romney out of step?

What’s that say besides I Got Mine?

Why they wanna hate a G, and steady talking down
It don’t matter, cause I’m still gon get mine
Now I’m on top of my game, and so I gotta shine
For the hood, cause I got out and got mine

All this talk about how rich he is wouldn’t be a problem if he could do it with self-confidence and style, and maybe a little swagger. But, instead, we get stuff like this:

“I purchased a gun when I was a young man. I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life.”
(April 3, 2007)

“I’m not a big-game hunter. I’ve made that very clear. I’ve always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will. I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then. More than two times.”
(April 5, 2007)

That’s like DJ Elmer Fudd. Compare that to The Donald, who has the unmitigated gall to use the O’Jays’ For the Love of Money as the theme song to his show The Apprentice.

For the love of money
People will steal from their mother
For the love of money
People will rob their own brother
For the love of money
People can’t even walk the street
Because they never know
Who in the world they’re gonna beat
For that lean, mean, mean green
Almighty dollar, money

For the love of money
People will lie, Lord, they will cheat
For the love of money
People don’t care who they hurt or beat
For the love of money
A woman will sell her precious body
For a small piece of paper
It carries a lot of weight
Call it lean, mean, mean green

Almighty dollar

Romney could be selling us the American Dream. He could be giving us Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous. Just like the record executives took gangsta rap from its original focus on drugs, poverty, and police brutality and turned it into hoes, clothes, and gold bling, Romney could promise to make us all rich. Lord knows he’s as packaged as any beer or boner advertisement. We’re all primed for the “greed is good” message. We hear it a hundred times a day.

This is America. It’s not that R Money has a losing message. He just can’t rap.