Daily Kos

Ha ha ha!

The South Florida Tea Party — the group that helped Marco Rubio launch his Senate bid and that hosted Donald Trump during his last flirtation with a presidential run — is shedding the words “tea party” as it undergoes a name change.

“We felt for branding reasons that we wanted to differentiate ourselves from certain organizations that have the name ‘tea party’ and we can’t control,” said Everett Wilkinson, leader of the organization that will now be called the National Liberty Federation.

Given what they've done to the "Tea Party" brand, it won't be long before only eight percent want to be associated with the word "liberty."

Maryland state legislator Don Dwyer is a religious conservative who has called himself "the face of the opposition" to gay marriage, chastising fellow legislators to reject it because Jeebus and stuff. Most Americans, however, know this self-proclaimed defender of the Constitution and freedoms and whatnot mostly from his alcohol-fueled boating crash last year (and yes, there were injuries, and yes, he's still facing charges).

In this new, miserably depressing story on Dwyer, he cites two things as the reasons for the "increased" drinking that culminated in his crash with another boat, causing him multiple injuries and fracturing the skull of a five-year-old girl. The first is his 2011 separation from his wife. The second is the pressure of being in the legislature, but more specifically, that time other legislators "betrayed" him by not being sufficiently anti-gay-marriage themselves:

Dwyer says he felt sold out when Dels. Tiffany Alston, Wade Kach and Bob Costa voted for same-sex marriage, an issue he spent years crusading against. Dwyer told reporters one day before the vote that he had enough support to block the bill.

Kach, a Republican from Baltimore County, and Alston, a former Democrat from Prince George’s County, voted against the bill in committee. But Kach changed his vote after hearing testimony from gay couples. Alston shifted her vote after her amendment was adopted.

Kach and Costa, of Deale, were the only two House Republicans to vote for the bill. It passed the House by two votes in  February.

“I had no time to do anything,” Dwyer said. “Had I known earlier, I could have taken some action.”

It was petitioned to the November ballot and passed by 52 percent of voters state wide. Voters in Dwyer’s district, however, rejected it.

“That betrayal really affected me,” he said. “I was physically ill. You pour your heart into an issue like that and it’s devastating.”

He said his drinking culminated in the crash.

So an intense hatred of gay marriage—and not having that hatred reciprocated by his fellow legislators and voters—is what drove this poor defender of proper marriage and proper faith to booze up and crash his damn boat into another boat. That's some powerful hatred, right there.

In the wake of the crash, Dwyer did not resign as any decent person might, instead gaudily announcing he needs to stay put to "defend individual liberty against unconstitutional laws," but he does admit he needs to rebuild "trust" with voters. I don't know that voters should be keen on reelecting someone whose past reaction to other people being insufficiently anti-gay was to booze up and nearly get some people killed, but I am not from Maryland, I am not a Republican voter, and Dwyer seems confident that all will be forgiven, allowing him to get back to expressing his obsessively anti-gay frustrations in some hopefully less child-skull-fracturing ways.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what it means to be an American religious conservative.

This is from last week, but well worth a replay:

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and other congressional leaders:

Dear Mr. Speaker:

I am writing to provide additional information regarding the extraordinary measures Treasury has undertaken in order to avoid default on the nation’s obligations.

Treasury currently expects to exhaust these extraordinary measures between mid-February and early March of this year.  We will provide a more narrow range with a more targeted estimate at a later date.  Any estimate, however, will be subject to a significant amount of uncertainty because we are entering the tax filing season, when the amounts and timing of tax payments and refunds are unpredictable.  For this reason, Congress should act as early as possible to extend normal borrowing authority in order to avoid the risk of default and any interruption in payments.

If the extraordinary measures were allowed to expire without an increase in borrowing authority, Treasury would be left to fund the government solely with the cash we have on hand on any given day.  As you know, cash would not be adequate to meet existing obligations for any meaningful length of time because the government is currently operating at a deficit.

The letter goes on to discuss the ramifications of default and to explain why America's full faith and credit should never be taken hostage, but the key news here is that Congress now has a more concrete deadline—a deadline not for when we're going to hit the debt limit (we've already hit it) but for when the administration says it will no longer be able to easily bail Congress out from its failure to act. And now, as President Obama said today, it's Congress's turn to act.

Reposted from Daily Kos Economics by Roosevelt Institute By Tim Price, originally published on Next New Deal

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The Tim Geithner Era (Slate)

Matthew Yglesias looks back on the mixed record of Tim Geithner, the influential treasury secretary who seemingly only managed to convince one person that he had all the answers, but lucked out with that person being the president of the United States.

The Mortgage Mess and Jack Lew (Prospect)

Robert Kuttner argues that progressives should press hard on Jack Lew to find out whether he would have let the latest mortgage settlement happen on his watch—once they're finished rolling their eyes at the president's praise for his budget-balancing skills.

Treasury: We won't mint a platinum coin to sidestep the debt ceiling (WaPo)

Ezra Klein reports that life has killed the dream we dreamed, as the Treasury Department says it won't mint a trillion-dollar coin and the Federal Reserve wouldn't accept it if it did. The only option on the table is for Congress to do the right thing. God help us all.

The Platinum Coin Wouldn't Have Been Goofy to FDR (Bloomberg)

Jonathan Alter notes that despite the absurdity of ideas like the platinum coin, FDR used tactics, like moving off the gold standard, that were no less gimmicky. But he wasn't worried about his critics' jokes given how often the punch line was "and it worked."

Japan Steps Out (NYT)

Paul Krugman writes that Japan, not really a hotbed of radical economic thought, is breaking with the orthodoxy under prime minister Shinzo Abe, whose push for stimulus and inflation is upsetting austerity advocates by failing to upset anyone else.

Obama's Job One: Middle-Class Employment Problems Loom Over Second Term (HuffPo)

Dave Jamieson and Arthur Delaney note that after campaigning on a promise to restore the middle class, President Obama must now figure out how to do that when immigration reform and gun control look like safer bets than getting Congress to care about jobs.

Why the Unemployment Rate Is So High (NYT)

Laura D'Andrea Tyson argues that the evidence shows the U.S. doesn't have a structural unemployment problem, but by letting the unemployed languish for months and years with no new support or opportunities in sight, we're doing our best to create one.

Ouch! No, you're not imagining it. Your paycheck just shrank. (WaPo)

Neil Irwin notes that the expiration of the payroll tax cut became evident with the arrival of the first paychecks of 2013 last week. The question is how many Americans will make cutting back on spending their retroactive New Year's resolution.

This Week in Poverty: Smiley Calls for White House Conference on US Poverty (The Nation)

Greg Kaufmann offers a sneak peek at an upcoming forum that calls for a national plan to end poverty within the next 25 years, and how it could serve as a useful reminder to the White House that a good way to start helping people is by asking what they need.

Paying the Price, but Often Deducting It (NYT)

Question: When is a settlement not a settlement? Answer: When it's also a tax break. Gretchen Morgenson notes that banks may write their payments from recent foreclosure settlements off as business expenses, because there's no budget for shame.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Teachers at two Seattle high schools are standing up and saying "no" to a deeply flawed mandatory standardized test, the Measures of Academy Progress.

Teachers at Garfield High kicked off the rebellion when they said they would refuse to administer the MAP to their students. Then, 25 teachers at Ballard High followed suit with an anti-MAP statement. Both groups of teachers focus not on opposition to all testing, but to the MAP specifically, which they argue is too flawed to use. According to the Garfield teachers:

• Seattle Public School staff has notified us that the test is not a valid test at the high school level. For these students, the margin of error is greater than the expected gain. We object to spending time, money, and staffing on an assessment even SPS agrees is not valid.
• We are not allowed to see the contents of the test, but an analysis of the alignment between the Common Core and MAP shows little overlap. We object to our students being tested on content we are not expected to teach.
• Ninth graders and students receiving extra support (ELL, SPED, and students in math support) are targets of the MAP test. These students are in desperate need of MORE instructional time. Instead, the MAP test subtracts many hours of class time from students’ schedules each year. If we were to participate this year, we would take 805 students out of class during 112 class periods. The amount of lost instructional time is astounding. On average students would EACH lose 320 minutes of instructional time. This is over 5 hours of CORE class time (language arts and math) that students are losing. We object to participating in stealing instructional time from the neediest students.

The Ballard teachers point out that:

The MAP test was purchased under corrupt crony-ist circumstances (Our former superintendent, while employed by Seattle Public Schools (SPS) sat on the corporation board of NWEA, the purveyor of the MAP test. This was undisclosed to her employer. The initial MAP test was purchased in a no-bid, non-competitive process.) [...]

The MAP test is not taken seriously by students, (They don’t need the results for graduation, for applications, for course credit, or any other purpose, so they routinely blow it off.)

While this opposition is specifically to the MAP and its many huge problems, the rebellion points to problems common to many standardized tests. As Jerry Neufeld-Kaiser, a social studies teacher at Garfield, wrote to the Washington Post's Valerie Strauss:

Standardized tests CAN be an okay way to assess student learning, but many of the tests that get used have serious flaws. These problems are in no way unique to the MAP test. There is considerable research that shows convincingly that high-stakes standardized tests often have cultural bias, including class and race biases. And so on.

The problem we have today is we don’t have a really good test that we can trust. Yet we need one, because of the advantages of standardization, including the cost and ease of administering them (compared to, say, debates). So we use the tests we have, despite their flaws.

The MAP appears to be a perfect storm of the problems with standardized testing: put in place through a corrupt, profit-driven process; with an unacceptably high margin of error; not measuring the things students are actually supposed to be learning; and taking needed time away from instructional time in order for students to take a test they don't take seriously. But while its problems may be especially large, they're not unique. What these teachers are doing in saying no to the MAP is brave, it's in their students' best interests, and it's yet another demonstration of how badly teachers' voices are needed in the broader education policy debate.

Are you a Republican who has a devil of a time not opening your piehole and letting gobsmackingly stupid shit about rape spew right out of it? Do you fear that you might open said piehole when the cameras are rolling, and it's a slow news day, and you might inadvertently focus national attention on the aforementioned stupid shit? Do you have a hard time remembering what even a member of Mitt Romney's braintrust thinks is a simple guideline: "If you’re about to talk about rape as anything other than a brutal and horrible crime, stop."

Well, fear no more! The Susan B. Anthony List—an organization dedicated to restricting women's health care—has the solution for you:

Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said the lawmakers are falling for a trap set by proponents of abortion rights who want to focus the debate on extremes such as rape instead of other abortions.

“It’s a tactic to [force pro-life lawmakers to] talk about this rather than the 98 percent of abortions because they know that they lose it,” Dannenfelser said.

She said that SBA List is working on a new training program for candidates and lawmakers to “make sure that in future elections, a candidate can never with a straight face say, ‘I never thought about that or I got caught flat-footed.’”

That's right, Republicans. Your friends at SBA are taking time out of their busy schedule of hating women to set up a new program that will train you to hate women, but in a sensitive way that doesn't cost your party supposedly safe seats in the House and Senate. Because lord knows how those mean gotcha reporters in the lamestream media are always tricking Republicans into volunteering their opinions about how, for example, women have magic lady parts that can detect and deflect legitimate rape sperm. Or how some women rape easy. Or how when your rapist impregnates you, that's just God's way of telling you how super special you are to Him. Damn librul media.

SBA isn't the only organization that thinks Republican politicians need to go to how-to-not-say-stupid-shit-about-rape boot camp:

Marina Ein, whose public relations firm does crisis communications, said the party needs some kind of “sensitivity training” for its candidates if it wants to do better in the next elections.

“It all boils down to whether or not the Republican Party thinks this is a problem,” she said. “If they want to make inroads with women, then they need to subject every one of their candidates to sensitivity training — not to mention reality training.”

The training would have to “educate politicians on subjects that are absolutely taboo, except to say, ‘I sympathize with the pain of anyone who goes through fill-in-the-blank,’” she said.

Right. In other words, the problem for Republicans isn't their ideology or their platform that is at odds with science, reality, and, oh yeah, public opinion. Now that the problem has been identified, with a little training, Republicans can learn how to fight for their deeply unpopular draconian agenda without actually talking about it. And voila! Problem solved.

• Today's comic by Tom Tomorrow is Debating the coin:
  
  
• What you missed on Sunday Kos ...
  

  • James Dobson goes crazy. Is this all the movement can offer, by Hunter
  • Ghosts of War, then and now: Artist pays homage to Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, by Susan Gardner
  • The War on Drugs is a war on people, by Denise Oliver Velez
  • The problem is not John Brennan. It's us, by Laurence Lewis
  • 100,000 cops, by Jon Perr
  • California: back in the black with progressive governance, by Dante Atkins

• Bwahahahahaha!
  
  
  In case you missed it: White House says Texas CANNOT seceed. (But petition signers are free to leave) https://t.co/...
  — @WayneSlater via web
• Apparently Aqua Buddha II wasn't just drunk:
  

  After his arrest last week, the son of U.S. Senator Rand Paul faces a new charge.

  Sheriff's officials in Charlotte confirm to WDRB News there's an active warrant for William Paul's arrest on a new charge of assault on a female by aggravated physical force.

  A sheriff's official says the circumstances are unclear but that it likely stems from his arrest on January 5th at the Charlotte airport.

• Since there is no museum of idiotic Republicans, the Maine State Museum will have to do:
  

  Nearly two years after Gov. Paul LePage had a mural depicting Maine labor history removed from the lobby of the Department of Labor building, the artwork resurfaced Monday at its new home: the Maine State Museum.

• Go figure:
  

  One of the great political shifts in the past decade has been the move of scientists toward the Democratic Party, a casualty of the Republican Party’s war on reality. It’s not about politics for scientists, it’s about the fact that only one party accepts scientific findings on everything from global warming to evolutionary theory to what does and doesn’t prevent pregnancy. Only 6 percent of scientists identify as Republican, whereas 55 percent identify as Democratic.

• Expect a petition to deport Miss America any day now:
  

  On Saturday, beauty pageant contestants learned that if she gives a thoughtful answer on gun control during a high profile pageant--she will be vilified for it. Here's what the New Miss America, Mallory Hytes Hagan of New York, said about the issue.
  

  I don’t think the proper way to fight violence is with violence. I think the proper way is to educate people on guns and the ways that we can use them properly. We can lock them up, we can have gun safety classes, we can have a longer waiting period. The answer is not to fight violence with violence, however.

  The response from the winguttia was swift.
  

  The conservative Media Research Center (MRC) blasted her answer, writing that she was “espousing liberal conventional wisdom on guns” while ridiculing her for supposedly suggesting that “law enforcement officers carrying guns fuels violence.”

  Commenters on MRC’s website agreed ...

• Condolences to family and friends:
  

  Eugene Patterson, a journalist who crusaded for civil rights in American society and higher standards in America's newsrooms, died Saturday after a long illness.

  The former editor, chairman and chief executive officer of the Times was 89. [...]

  In the early 1960s, Mr. Patterson wrote courageous columns for the Atlanta Constitution exhorting whites to acknowledge their responsibility for the racial fracture of the South. His most famous piece ran after four young black girls died in the Birmingham church bombing in 1963.

  "If our South is ever to be what we wish it to be," he wrote, "we will plant a flower of nobler resolve for the South now upon these four small graves that we dug."

• Not the best quality, but an interesting blast from the past:
  
  
  Backstage inaugural moment--in dimly lit room, Frank Sinatra lights cigar for the new President Kennedy: http://t.co/...
  — @BeschlossDC via web
• On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin returns! The reality story of guns continues, with more of the most regularly predictable "unexpected" flukes, mishaps, and unimaginable coincidences ending in accidental shootings. We also broke our all-time record for mentions of the word "penis," but you knew that'd happen eventually. Plus, two other multi-layered gun-related stories: the lack of data about guns and the political machinations behind it, and; what it means that you can't have an "educational" discussion with a gun ultra.

President Obama today on the debt limit:

Republicans in Congress have two choices here. They can act responsibly, and pay America’s bills, or they can act irresponsibly and put America through another economic crisis. But they will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy. The financial wellbeing of the American people is not leverage to be used. The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip. And they better choose quickly, because time is running short.

And by the time the president finished his press conference, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner had already responded.

First, Mr. Turtle:

The President and his allies need to get serious about spending, and the debt-limit debate is the perfect time for it.

And second, the Weeper of the House:

The American people do not support raising the debt ceiling without reducing government spending at the same time. The consequences of failing to increase the debt ceiling are real, but so too are the consequences of allowing our spending problem to go unresolved. Without meaningful action, the debt will continue to act as an anchor on our economy, costing American jobs and endangering our children's future. The House will do its job and pass responsible legislation that controls spending, meets our nation's obligations and keeps the government running, and we will insist that the Democratic majority in Washington do the same.

As you can see, McConnell's statement is boilerplate fluff, devoid of specifics. Sure, he says now is "the perfect time" for a debate on spending, but in his world is there ever a bad time for such a debate? (Actually, there is: when a Republican is president. But I digress.)

Boehner, on the other hand, makes a specific pledge: that House Republicans will raise the debt limit, albeit in concert with other spending cuts. Presumably he means these items will be passed as part of one bill—not as separate measures. Once the House passes its bill, Boehner seems to think his job is done—it'll be up to Democrats whether or not to accept his ransom note.

There's a tiny flaw with Boehner's gambit, however. Well, not just a tiny flaw. It's a big, ugly one: As Greg Sargent points out, once the Senate receives the House bill, they will move to amend it with a clean debt limit increase. If Republicans filibuster, then they will once again be the party responsible for default. And if they don't filibuster, then House Republicans will be back where they started, needing to raise the debt limit—or force default and everything that comes with it.

The only hope Republicans have of prevailing is if President Obama caves on his refusal to negotiate with hostage-takers. Otherwise, the only question is whether or not they will send the country into default. And if they aren't willing to put the country into default, they should end the charade now. The longer they take, the worse the politics will be for them—and, more importantly, the worse it will be for the country.

The national task force established in the wake of the slaughter of kindergarteners in Connecticut by a heavily armed, mentally disturbed gunman last month is set to release its recommendations Tuesday, well within the end-of-January deadline set by President Obama in December.

The proposals are likely to cover a broad range of issues, including possible new restrictions on the kinds of firearms that can be purchased, background checks of buyers, mental health and social service interventions, and other measures. Some mandates, such as ensuring that every buyer of a gun undergoes a background check, probably have a better than even chance of passing the Senate and House. Others, for example, the reinstatement of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004, are in for tough sailing.

There is no expectation that banning Internet sales of ammunition, registering firearms or licensing gun owners will be included in the task force's recommendations.

The Center for American Progress has just released its recommendations. Included in the list is an assault weapons sales and manufacturing ban that goes further than the 1994 ban, but would not confiscate or buy back such weapons from Americans who already own them.

No surprise that the key obstacle to any new restrictions on gun sales is the National Rifle Association. It has its hooks deeply embedded in the Republican Party that holds the majority in the House of Representatives. Although that majority is fractious on some matters, it can be expected to be unified on gun restrictions and at least a few Democrats can be expected to join it. The NRA has made itself clear:

David Keene, president of the National Rifle Association, told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that new restrictions on guns are unconstitutional and ineffective.

"They interfere with people's rights (to gun ownership) without doing anything to solve the problem," Keene said.

The organization has worked diligently since 2008 to persuade Americans that Obama wants to take away their guns despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Biden, who the president chose to preside over the task force, has, like many other Americans, called for a comprehensive approach in dealing with gun violence. To that end he and other Cabinet members have met with a broad range of representatives from gun ownership and gun-control organizations (including the NRA), hunters, community leaders, law enforcement officials, educators, health professionals and representatives of the video game industry.

Please continue reading below the fold

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson If you live in North Carolina or Louisiana, you might be asking yourself, "Can my state government get any worse?" Fear not. They're trying. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wants to end the state income tax and corporate taxes and raise the sales tax to compensate. Ditto North Carolina Republicans:

[North Carolina state Sen. Bob] Rucho and other like-minded lawmakers have a plan to do away with all state individual and corporate income taxes. The plan would replace lost revenue with a new business license fee and a higher sales tax on goods and services not now taxed by the state, such as legal, accounting and spa services, and food.

In his inaugural address on Saturday, Republican North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory promised to work with business "as partners" to eliminate taxes and regulation that stifle growth.

Rucho's plan would remake the North Carolina budget, which now derives 65 percent of its $18.5 billion in total tax revenues from individual income and corporate taxes.

To make up for that much lost revenue, the state sales tax rate would have to rise to 6.53 percent from 4.75 percent, according to a supportive study done by a consulting firm run by Arthur Laffer, a former adviser to Republican President Ronald Reagan and one of the fathers of "trickle-down" economics.

Arthur Laffer being behind this should tell you most of what you need to know. But in case it doesn't, consider this: All those times Republicans have told poor people to just eat cheap, live on rice and beans? Now they're trying to raise taxes on rice and beans to fund a giant corporate tax cut.

Republicans really are trying to turn our country into some kind of corporate dystopia.

(Previous thread.)

9:16 AM PT: So far, 5 question: 3 on debt limit, 2 on guns. Obama is answering a debt limit question at the moment, making the argument that we need to break the cycle of governing by crisis and hostage standoff, and that he's taking a stand on the debt limit and won't back down.

9:21 AM PT: Now a question on appropriations—whether Obama would be prepared to let Republicans shut down the government. Obama points out that Congress has the power of the purse. It would be a terrible make for them to shut down the government, he says, but if they want to do it, they probably have enough votes. But he says they shouldn't: they should, instead, ask what it is they want to achieve, and sit down and talk with Democrats on how to accomplish their agenda. Obama is now hinting at a grand bargain style deal. But Obama says it seems as though the GOP isn't primarily interested in deficit reduction, rather they are on a ideological bender and are obsessed with going after things like Social Security and Medicare. (Well, he says it more politely, but that's basically his point.)

9:25 AM PT: First part of last question is about whether or not President Obama and his staff don't socialize enough. The second part of the question is whether there is enough diversity in his administration.

9:26 AM PT:

9:29 AM PT: Obama points to the diversity of his first term picks, particular with women. And then says people should wait to see his full second term picks before judging. On the question of whether he's a sociable enough guy, he somehow manages to answer the question with a straight face, which is pretty much all the proof you need that he's not that hard to get along with. Obama says the problems aren't personal: it's that there's substantive differences between his views and Republicans.

9:30 AM PT: Man, what a stupid question. (The part about whether he socializes enough with Washingtonians.)

9:32 AM PT: