On Gay marriage and Obama's 'evolution'

I'm delighted that Obama cited the Golden Rule as one basis of his decision. What strikes me more than anything is the volume of Scripture that people have to ignore in order to justify actively opposing Gay Marriage. If the Gospel teaches us anything its that 1: Our responsibility is to keep our own House in order and concern over condemning others is itself sinful. 2:Prayer should be a private matter between you and your Creator and that public displays of piety count for naught. 3: We are ultimately judged by how we treat prisoners and beggars and outcasts. Engaging in behavior designed to create outcasts is directly contrary to Jesus's direction. It never ceases to amaze me how many people fail to notice these simple points.

Decisions, decisions......?

What I find fascinating at this point is the Republicans seem completely undecided whether Obama is a ruthless thug or a spineless pushover. Having to decide definitely throws them off their game.

The Buffet Tax.....

As an actual policy proposal, the Buffet tax is a really bad idea. It just adds an additional layer of if/then calculations to a tax code that's already virtually incomprehensible. The value it brings to the campaign though is that it demonstrates in stark terms that the Right doesn't care about deficits and in spite of all the wailing and rending of garments, they never did. The fact that it would only cover a small percentage of the deficit is NOT an argument against it. If I have a chance to save 15% on my mortgage payments by refinancing, I'm not going to turn it down just because I still have to pay the rest. The bottom line is that the entire campaign strategy being presented now, is a direct result of the debt limit battle in August. Having demonstrated that Eric Cantor's agenda has dire real world consequences, Obama's now going to run directly against it.

Old Time Rock 'N Roll (Solo Break)

Comment on the IL Primary.

Illinois is unique in that it has all the demographic elements of the entire country laid out in sharply defined geographical boundaries. The city of Chicago is ethnically diverse and solidly Democratic. The surrounding counties (DuPage and Lake) in particular are entirely filled with the sort of preserve-my-wealth Republicans who nevertheless feel comfortable with the city, actually know gay people and are mostly uninterested in the Culture wars. From I-80 south OTOH the entire rest of the State is cornfields peppered with pop. 2000 town and a few minor almost-urban areas (Champaigne, Kankakee, Peoria, Springfield, Joliet) It is there, where fear of strangers, open unapologetic racism, and religious certainty are all welcome, that Santorum is able to shine. The reason that Romney is the inevitable nominee, is that the third category is a large area but very sparsely populated. (Don't tell any of those inhabitants that they don't represent the real America though) Those are fighting words!

The biggest LLC checks to Restore Our Future in January came from entities close to one industry: short-term lenders.

It's interesting that it takes a discussion about campaign finance to finally begin a discussion about predatory lending. As the rich and the poor choose up sides in our political system and invest their best efforts aligning sympathy from those who are neither rich nor poor one simple fact gets easily lost in the noise. Being poor is expensive. It's often said "it takes money to make money". Just as true is a similar slogan. "It costs money to need money" Between the lack of credit and the lack of transportation, not having a leg-up in life ends up being a chronic condition. Of course the reason this sees little discussion is that it interferes with the notion that the poor are just parasites who deserve their fate. At the end of the day though, any business model that relies on the ignorance of its customers is NOT an example of normal Capitalism at work.

Recession?

While everyone goes back and forth arguing over what a recession is, it obscures an important point. We are not in a recession and haven't been for a long time. Corporate profits are quite healthy. Productivity is healthy. The stock market is healthy. What isn't healthy is the job market. The irony then is the fact that we can lay the blame for our current morass on one place and one place only. The Job Creators®. For a bunch of folks who insist that the government can do no right, the current crop of Republicans are sure spending a lot of time blaming the Government for a situation that's directly under the control of the private sector. But as I've said before, when you're a purchaser of labor, high unemployment is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Ron Paul

The central paradox surrounding the Republican party is that they profess to hate the Federal government as an encroachment on their freedom, yet that hatred suddenly evaporates when the portion of the Federal government in question is the one that actually has control of all the weaponry.

Another Swampland Post:

Oddly enough I just used the phrase 'the politics of bedwetting' on the Ron Paul thread. I should have saved it for here. Anytime a commenter here (of any persuasion) makes a confident statement about the impending victory of their side in an upcoming election I am reminded of the tendency of people to think that their familiar world extends much wider than it actually does. They know how their neighbors vote and assume that that viewpoint is widespread. The downside to this style of thinking though is that the outer edge of this 'sphere of familiarity' represents a much sharper border in people's minds than it is in real life. No matter how frightening or foreign or dangerous a place seems, it's home to the people who live there and people are WAY more alike than they are different. (It may not seem that way until you remember that the next closest point of comparison are apes) We often marvel at how small the internet makes the world seem, but it's still no substitute for actual travel.

Posted on a Swampland thread re: Teacher's Salaries.

I knew it would be only a matter of moments before we got crowds of people demonstrating the inadequacy of public school teachers by displaying their own ignorance proudly. The truth is that a bad teacher can't keep a motivated student down and a good teacher can only marginally help someone who's uninterested in learning. How we succeed as a nation has a lot more to do with whether we hold education as a value in the first place. The fact that an entire movement is being built up around shouting down experts, decrying elitism (except among skilled gamblers), targeting bright people as worthy of scorn and flat out denying the utility of science says 10 times more about how we are going to fare as a nation than whether schoolteachers manage to pull down 60K or settle for 40. This Heritage foundation (lying with graphs since 1973) study is just a symptom of a much bigger problem.

Saved

I was told to save this link I wonder why?

Efficiency......

Every time I make a phone call to a large company and am greeted by a robot, I am reminded of the fundamental conflict that is at the heart of our current employment crisis. There is a tipping point past which the drive for 'efficiency' is self defeating. There isn't a company on the planet who's primary purpose is "creating jobs" Creating jobs is an unfortunate byproduct, like friction. Unfortunatly creating jobs is also how one creates Consumers aka Buyers. Until we are willing to look at 'creating jobs' as a value in of itself and decide that we're willing to do what's necessary to make it happen, our 'jobless recovery' has all the makings of a new status quo.

Now that that's over.....

Now that this is over and we can "pivot" to jobs, it's time to realize that bringing back jobs is going to require significantly more effort than anyone is currently suggesting. Ever since the Clinton years (yes Clinton) there has been a concerted effort to move manufacturing jobs to places like China, Mexico, India and Brazil. As I've been documenting for a while these places are Dreams of low wages, lousy work conditions and no regulation. (Something to bear in mind whenever anyone complains that it's stifling regulation that chases companies away. They're half right, but imitating our competitors is a lousy idea.)

In the meantime, the steady erosion of manufacturing jobs was effectively masked by Home-equity-driven Consumer spending and Housing bubble-driven construction jobs. (The abrupt end of the Credit Card gravy train is part of the reason people are so confused about the Federal debt. They keep comparing it to consumer debt.)

So there are two things we have to come to grips with.
1: We are never going to compete with the Chinese by 'deregulating'. There's nothing desirable about the result.
2: Home construction jobs aren't coming back and they weren't a good way to drive the economy in the first place. We need to write them off.

Whats the solution. D@mned if I know, but I do know that the current arguments we're having don't even BEGIN to address the actual problem.

Why I am now a Liberal

See this is where your mistaken about me. I'm fully aware that the impulse to regulate can lead to ridiculous extremes. I know that Union rules can lead to ridiculous inefficiencies and be harmful to well intentioned companies. I know that investment decisions are always made with the regulatory environment in mind and that potential areas of growth can languish as a result. If Conservative arguments didn't at least sometimes have merit, then it wouldn't have been possible to end up in our current mess where people think that if a little is good, a lot must really rock.

But I'm also aware that certain industries are harmful to the Commons in ways that aren't reflected in their balance sheets unless the harm is codified as taxes and regulations. I also know that companies would gladly pay less that a dollar an hour for labor if they could find a way to get away with it.

I'm old enough to have watched the baseline of 'reasonable' in this country drift so far to the right that Gov Jim Thompson of Illinois and for that matter Richard Nixon's politics would be instantly written off a "socialist" today. (You may recall that Nixon was the one who created the EPA in the first place. The problems it was set up to address are very real and many of them have been mitigated as a result.

The problem with today's Right Wing is just like that of a substance addict. Their personal dissatisfaction just translates into needing MORE of whatever it is they think will help and negative consequences are washed away in a flood of denial.

As I've been saying all along. If the National Association of Manufacturers AND the Chamber of Commerce and NRO think you've gone off the rails, it's time to step back and reevaluate where you stand

Re. The Debt Limit......

Let me type slowly and clearly. The Republican Party does not and never has cared about debt or deficits. They only care about taxes. The current round of negotiations proves that this has not changed. In the meantime the tax cuts that have been in place for the last ten years have accomplished nothing EXCEPT exacerbate the deficit. If they were the key to job creation, then no one would be complaining about current unemployment.

The problem with employment is unrelated to the current discussion. The housing equity bubble allowed both new home construction and consumer spending to continue well past their natural due date as the actual basis of our wealth, was carefully and deliberately relocated to China, India, Mexico and Brazil.

One other thing remains certain. No matter how you feel about the ability of tax revenues to create jobs, the idea that suddenly cutting off those revenues will do anything but make unemployment worse is sheer fantasy or (more likely) craven dishonesty. The Republicans know that their current threats are designed to make the economy worse.

The opportunity is here, to intelligently address these problems but the primary impediment to the whole process is centered rather firmly in the Tea Party wing of the Republican caucus. You would think that when the same organization that sunk millions of dollars into advertising designed to sink Obamacare, goes on record as opposing your negotiating strategy, that it would be time to reconsider, but ignorance and nihilism seem to be calling the shots and the moment.

Note To Eric Cantor

When you've lost the Chamber of Commerce And The National Association of Manufacturers then you are officially off the rails.

http://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/hill-letters/110712DebtCeilingLetter_0.pdf

E-Verify Employment Check........

No one can deny that proper enforcement of employment restrictions can and will be remarkably more effective at stemming illegal immigration than the system of random harassment that we currently have in place. But I'm am also very wary of "technological" solutions to the problems. In an age of 10+ percent unemployment I still have to jump through 14 hoops if I ever want to talk to a human being on the telephone at any large company. It's time we understood that "efficiency" and "full employment" are in direct conflict with each other and stopped worshiping efficiency at all costs.
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My slogan for years has been "Never Trust A Robot". Nothing I see coming down the pike has changed that outlook.

Why "Church of Reagan" doctrine is wrong........

What activities that make money add value and which one's extract value instead? Contrary to the dichotomy Conservatives dish up about how the only the private sector adds value and the government extracts it, the real difference requires more detail to flesh out. Building roads (a government activity) clearly adds value, and reselling naked CDS's (private sector) clearly fails to add value. Yet one is a highly revered innovation and the other is a parasitic confiscation of private revenue,

You decide......

Stolen From a Swampland Comment

Paul Ryan's plan to "revitalize" Medicare is conceptually similar to the Allies plans to "revitalize" Dresden.

On the Changeover at DOD and CIA

I'm wondering how well Obama will do motivating the DFH contingent to help with his reelection, since it was clear from the moment he arrived in DC, that he would do absolutely nothing to dislodge the actual power structure that remains in place no matter who is in the White House. Empire is Big Business.

I look forward to watching Ron Paul run for President. Expect hours of entertainment as the Republicans suddenly have to decide whether they're anti-Obama Doves or double-down Hawks.