Month: December 2013

Obviously, David Brooks must be back from his book leave. It appears that his critics are tanned, rested, and ready. My work here was done by others.

Funny thing, though. I hadn’t noticed that Brooks was missing.

I guess that answers one perennial philosophical question. Does it raise others?

If you want to know why there are so many Somalis in Minnesota, maybe you should ask a Somali. It appears the basic answer is that a large number of Somalis were brought in during the 1990’s to work at chicken factories in Faribault and Marshall. In addition to that, the Lutheran Social Service brought in a group of Somalis in the early 1990’s. Once a community was established, it attracted new immigrants who preferred to be around people from their home country. I guess that they don’t mind the cold and find Minnesotans to be a friendly and tolerant lot. That doesn’t surprise me.

In any case, Fox News is outraged that a YMCA in Minneapolis has developed a swimming program for Somali girls that takes account of the social conservatism of Somali society. So, for example, they only use female lifeguards and they keep the door to the boy’s locker room locked during the lessons. For Fox News host Heather Nauert, this indicates that “the minority is becoming the majority” and that “Sharia Law is now changing everything.”

I am a secular progressive Democrat, so I don’t exactly sympathize with the Somali emphasis on female modesty, but the truth is that I don’t really care and I’m more interested in the benefit these girls will get from learning how to swim. Obviously, female modesty is a theme in Islam, and that influences how Somalis feel about women being seen by men while wearing a bathing suit. But to call this Sharia Law is sub-mental. How women dress is Islamic countries varies widely. It’s also offensive to fear-monger to Fox‘s decrepit white audience by suggesting that this modest swimming class is an indication that the “minority is becoming the majority.”

But that is how Fox makes their living, in the service of the Republican Party.

I’m not sure that Harry Reid is correct that Speaker Boehner will violate the Hastert Rule to pass immigration reform, and I am even less certain that Reid is improving Boehner’s likelihood of doing that by predicting that he will “cave in” to pressure to pass the immigration bill.

On the other hand, Sen. Reid is absolutely right about this:

“We have a lot of these congressional districts, they don’t care because they don’t have people of color in their congressional districts,” Reid said. “They don’t care. But there are a number of them who do care. If the Republicans ever want to elect a Republican president again, they’re going to have to get right with the Hispanic and Asian community who by more than 70 percent voted for [President Barack] Obama last time.”

The problem on this issue is similar to the problem on any number of other issues. The “don’t care” caucus is in control of the House. Boehner has only been willing to buck them a few times, and only at the last possible moment. Immigration reform is a pretty emotional issue on the right, and I’d be surprised if Boehner backtracked from everything he has been saying about doing the bill piecemeal and suddenly allowed a vote on anything that could be joined to the Senate bill in conference. But, we’ll see.

I was greeted by two stories on page 5 of this morning’s Philadelphia Daily News. The first story is about a 92 year-old woman who perished in her Strawberry Mansion rowhouse yesterday when her kerosene heater caused a house fire. An elderly man who lived with her narrowly escaped the blaze.

“We were here yesterday. I told them. I told them it was dangerous,” the survivor’s daughter cried out after learning about the fatal fire.

The woman said she’d come to let the man know she had taken care of a gas bill, that he and [Martha] Frazier wouldn’t have to use a kerosene heater any longer…

…Frazier lived on Stanley Street, near James G. Blaine Elementary School, for more than 50 years, and neighbors referred to her as “Mom” but said she didn’t come out all that often. Frazier had at least one son who had died, a niece said, and neighbors believed that Frazier also had a grandson.

“I don’t think she had too much family left,” said George Glover, 88.

Fire Chief Richard Davison said firefighters got the blaze under control by 9:10 a.m. and investigators had not determined the fire’s cause. Numerous people who gathered on the street said the home had no heat and that Frazier and her housemate were using a kerosene heater to keep warm.

“I know she was having a real hard time with the cold,” Harley said.

Two things about this. First, this is why we need to pay for heating assistance in the winter. Second, this is why the goddamned utility companies are not supposed to cut off your heat in the winter months.

The second story is about a 21 year-old man who was murdered over his pair of $300 Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. He was killed on Saturday, but his corpse remains in the morgue because his family cannot afford to pay the $2,200-$2,700 it will take to pay for a funeral home. Even worse, potential witnesses refuse to cooperate with the police.

[Christian] Massey’s cousin, Pebble Hill, echoed her aunt’s sentiment that residents of the neighborhood where the young man was slain have been uncooperative in helping to track down his killer.

“My cousin was a beautiful person. He was like a brother to me, and right now, my family can use all the support they can get,” she said. “This has been a great strain on our family emotionally, financially. We love all the outpouring that my family’s received.”

Even though Christian Massey was 21, he only graduated from high school in June. He had started high school at a special-needs facility that is part of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, but he was able to transfer into the Marple Newtown school district where he participated in basketball and football. His football coach is trying to raise money for his burial, and you can help by calling the Marple Newtown School at (610) 359-4215.

These are stories of poverty, and you can react to them with empathy and compassion or dismiss these people as deserving of their fate and not your problem. It’s your choice.

Some liberal bloggers are very sensitive and get upset when people call them the “professional left” or suggest that they are the mirror image of the Tea Party, just with less clout and credibility. I shrug that stuff off.

First of all, there is a professional left, and I have been a part of it. I did a year of consulting work for Democracy for America. It was a rewarding experience, but it also taught me about the tradeoffs these organizations have to make in order to grow their membership and reach their fundraising goals. In issue advocacy, passion is the name of the game, and compromise is a toxin. When your job is to stake out a maximalist position (no new taxes, ever, or no cuts to entitlements, ever) then anyone who falls short of your demands is going to be a sell-out. Unfortunately, nothing can get done without some give-and-take, and legislators need the freedom of action to make a deal.

As for Schumer’s observation, I’m willing to grant that a lot of the left-wing blogosphere is engaged in maximalist rhetoric that mirrors the Tea Party faction on the right, and I am willing to agree that we collectively have less clout than the Tea Party. But I am not willing to agree that we have less credibility than the Tea Party.

While there are outliers, most of the left-wing blogosphere has been very astute and accurate in their predictions going back all the way to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The Tea Partiers can’t predict what is packed in their lunch. The truth (as they understand it) is the lode-star for left-wing bloggers. The truth isn’t even a regret for right-wing bloggers. They have no use for the truth at all. Right-wing blogging is all about tactics and ginning up outrage. Very few of them ever engage in honest analysis; everything is about persuasion.

In other words, the left-wing professional left, at its worst, parallels the right-wing blogosphere at its best. If “credible” means that you can rely on the accuracy, then the difference between left-wing bloggers and right-wing bloggers is the same as the difference between Nate Silver and Dick Morris.

So, I don’t like being insulted by Chuck Schumer, but it doesn’t really bother me because I know that he is wrong about the only thing I care about. And that’s my credibility.

Does this seem right to you?

Private prisons in some states have language in their contracts that state if they fall below a certain percentage of capacity that the states must pay the private prisons millions of dollars, lest they face a lawsuit for millions more.

And guess what? The private prisons, which are holding cash-starved states hostage, are getting away with it, says advocacy group, In the Public Interest.

In the Public Interest has reviewed more than 60 contracts between private prison companies and state and local governments across the country, and found language mentioning “quotas” for prisoners in nearly two-thirds of those contracts reviewed. Those quotas can range from a mandatory occupancy of, for example, 70 percent occupancy in California to up to 100 percent in some prisons in Arizona.

Think about this from your perspective as a taxpayer.

In what universe does Chuck Schumer think this makes him look good and Scott Brown look bad?

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he offered former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) a pass on his 2012 election, if the Massachusetts Republican supported campaign finance reform — but Brown declined.

Because of that, Schumer said he recruited Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run for the seat she occupies today.

“You know I helped persuade her to run. There is a good little story,” Schumer told the New Republic in an interview.

“I can tell this. I went to Scott Brown and said, ‘If you give us the 60th vote for the Citizens United rollback, we won’t go after you.’ I spent a lot of time lobbying him, and met some of his friends and had them lobby him. He said ‘yes.’ Then he said ‘no.’ So I wanted to recruit the strongest candidate against him, and I thought that was Elizabeth Warren.”

Schumer was referring to the Disclose Act, which fell three votes short of advancing in the Senate in 2010.

He was in charge of winning Senate seats for the Democratic Party and he was willing to give Scott Brown of Massachusetts a six-year term in exchange for one vote? It wasn’t even the deciding vote.

I don’t think Chuck Schumer should speak anymore. He should just shut up.

I get the feeling that Ed Rendell wakes up every morning, brews himself a pot of coffee, and then spends the next few hours fielding phone calls from Washington reporters so he can talk shit about the president. And that is on the days that he doesn’t take a limo to New York City to talk shit about the president on the cable news programs. It appears to be a full-time job for Rendell, who having served as mayor of Philadelphia and the governor of Pennsylvania, has nothing better to do career-wise. I am assuming, at this point, that this is personal. Rendell clearly has some kind of grudge that he’s nursing. Yesterday, he was whining to Ron Fournier and today he is whining to Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico.

I don’t understand the point unless Rendell is simply addicted to seeing his name in print. I don’t actually think that he’s doing it on the behalf of the Clintons, although his motivation probably stems from something that happened during the 2008 primaries. Rendell could probably count on a cabinet job in a Clinton administration without spending all his time tearing down Obama. It’s not clear that the Clintons even want Obama to be torn down, since a weak Obama will make it harder rather than easier for Hillary to win the presidency.

In any case, Rendell has turned himself into a clone of Harold Ford. He’s a walking joke.

On one level, I feel like a lot of Washington pundits who just want to see some sign that the government can function, and a budget deal between Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will be welcome regardless of the details. Yet, the details do matter, and some deals are worse than no deal at all.

Someone pointed out to me the other day that it’s ridiculous to talk about the federal government being broke just because it is in serious debt when it holds massive amounts of wealth in land, minerals, and equipment. A person who owed trillions of dollars to creditors would be unlikely to have 650 million acres of land to sell, let alone the massive stores of military equipment held by the Pentagon.

And, of course, this is how the Republicans want to fund the government. They want to sell off its assets.

There is broad agreement that a portion of the sequester should be replaced with targeted spending cuts. But Democrats demand revenues in the mix and Republicans categorically reject new taxes. So to thread that needle, sources familiar with the negotiations say, Murray and Ryan are weighing revenues in the form of asset sales and government fees, rather than Democrats’ preference for raising revenue by scaling back tax loopholes.

So, because the Republicans cannot agree to raise taxes, even by doing away with senseless tax giveaways, we must sell off the government’s assets. We can certainly afford to do so, at least for a while. But, once we start down that road, it won’t be too long before we really are broke.

On November 2nd, 1954, the Democrats won 19 seats in the House and two seats in the Senate to win back control of both chambers of Congress. It might not have been a shellacking, but it ended the Republican Party’s brief respite from congressional oblivion. In the years between 1933 and 1994, the GOP controlled the House only in the years 1947-1948 and 1953-1954. In those same years, the GOP only controlled the Senate in 1947-1948, 1953-1954, and 1981-1986. President Eisenhower’s honeymoon was over. Six days later, on November 8th, 1954, the president wrote a letter to his brother, Edgar. It read, in part:

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

It should be remembered that the Democrats at the time were dominated by Southern segregationists. To give you a flavor of what I am talking about, the week before, the following Democratic senators were reelected without even facing a Republican opponent: John L. McClellan of Arkansas, Richard Russell, Jr. of Georgia, Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana, James O. Eastland of Mississippi, and Sam Ervin of North Carolina. John Sparkman of Alabama and Lyndon Johnson of Texas were reelected with over 80% of the vote.

The politics of the country were quite a bit different back then than they are today, and being culturally or socially conservative did not necessarily mean that someone would also be economically conservative. As a result, economically conservative Republicans were easy to dismiss as “stupid.” But that tiny, stupid, splinter group grew and grew until it took over the central nervous system of the modern Republican Party. They never stopped trying to “abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws.”

So, forgive me if I am not willing to join Brian Beutler in declaring the ObamaCare Repeal Movement dead and buried. Health care repeal is part of the conservative Republicans’ DNA, just like repeal of Social Security always has been, and it may go into a period of dormancy, but it will be decades before it goes away completely.