The Real Scandal: Akin Means It, Missourians Will Still Vote For Him

Two things on Republican responses to Akin:

• “We feel this is a case of ‘gotcha politics’. …Todd Akin is really getting a bad break here.” – Spokeswoman Connie Mackey for Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council.
• “[It’s not like] I’m the only person in public office who has suffered from foot-in-mouth disease.” – Todd Akin
• “I used the wrong words in the wrong way.” – Todd Akin

Using the wrong words in the wrong way would indicate that the message conveyed was not the message intended.   The message conveyed by Akin was that he believed women who are “legitimately raped” can’t get pregnant.  It is pretty clear that he intended to say women who are “forcibly raped” are less likely to get pregnant. He even said in his first apology on Mike Huckabee’s show that instead of “legitimately raped” he meant “forcibly raped.”  Oh, okay.  How is that better?  The outrage is still there, the science is still junk. 

Compare this to the faux outrage about Barack Obama’s statement from a few weeks ago, the one where he slipped in the phrase “if you’ve got a business” before returning to a phrase about building roads and bridges – “you didn’t build that”.   The message intended tangentially related to businesses; it was about government’s role in infrastructure that all businesses could take advantage of.  But the message – conveyed in a billion Republican-funded ads from now until November – was that Barack Obama doesn’t think business owners built their own businesses.  Ha ha, Barack, gotcha! 

If the punditocracy is playing “gotcha politics” and deliberately misinterpreting Akin’s words, it serves only to turn a false and offensive statement into a false, offensive, and ludicrous statement. 

• “Rep. Akin’s statement was so far out of bounds that he should resign the nomination for U.S. Senate in Missouri.”- Senator Scott Brown, R-Massachusetts, Washington, D.C. politician
• “I am very concerned -- and I know many other conservatives are as well, because they have all written me today -- that if you stay in this race, … this could put the entire state of Missouri, this Senate seat, and even the top of the ticket, in jeopardy in Missouri” – Sean Hannity, New York-based conservative talk show host
• "Notable that Rex Elsass & Nick Everhart, Akin consultants, are in Columbus OH and a bit immune from Beltway CW/storm” – Ben Smith, Buzzfeed, Washington, D.C.-based journalist

You know who is immune from Missouri-based non-storm?  Ben Smith of Buzzfeed.  Akin's views may be out of the mainstream of America, but they fit right in with the mainstream of religious conservative thought.  And the conservative voters of Missouri are the only ones that Akin is beholden to.  

All this scorn from “establishment Republicans” plays right into his hands.  It’s like the whole of America’s political journalists forgot what happened two years ago when the cranky Tea Party ran on a platform of setting fire to the Washington establishment, and they won!  Or even how Claire McCaskill herself manipulated the Republican electorate in Missouri just a few weeks ago by calling Akin a dangerous outsider, knowing this was just the sort of label that would get right-wingers to vote for Akin over more electable opponents.  And now he’s supposed to be in danger of putting the entire state of Missouri in jeopardy of falling into Democrats’ hands?  Everyone knew he was going to say some crazy shit at some point in this campaign.  Claire McCaskill sure knew it!  I mean, all I’m saying is that Missouri’s Republicans all knew what they were getting when they voted for Akin in the primary, so I don’t think Missouri is any more or less “in jeopardy” than on primary day.  Of course he's sticking it out, Scott Brown et al.  Your condemnation only fuels him!

 My hope is that widespread exposure to Akin’s words will increase Democratic turnout in Missouri, because it’s not like Republicans aren’t going to show up anyways. 

Obamacare, Ryancare, it's the Same Damn Concept!

I was listening to an episode of the Diane Rehm Show today (because I’m a senior citizen of course) and the topic was Paul Ryan’s budget.  They got into a discussion about Medicare and the “premium support” plan that Ryan’s budget would eventually implement where elderly individuals would be given a stipend to purchase insurance in health exchanges which would be regulated by the government.  You know, the policy that would “end Medicare as we know it”.  Predictably the Republican in the discussion, Grace Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, voiced strong support for Ryan’s plan, while the Democrat in the discussion, Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, voiced opposition.   Later on in the discussion, the topic switched to Obamacare, a plan that would give poor individuals a stipend to purchase insurance in health exchanges which would be regulated by the government.  The roles were reversed.  Jared Bernstein touted this plan, calling it “the right way” to solve America’s health care problems, while Grace Marie Turner expressed concern over Obamacare’s drastic cuts to Medicare service providers.  

Since Paul Ryan was selected as Mitt Romney’s running mate, Democrats have worked to expose the bad parts of Ryan’s premium support plan.  It will ruin the existing system as we know it and will lead to higher deficits in the future.  What are the arguments Republicans have long made against Obamacare?  That it will ruin the existing system as we know it and will lead to higher deficits in the future.  

How can we as Democrats defend Obamacare but condemn Ryancare? This doesn’t make sense to me.  Democrats rail against Ryancare about how the cost of the support stipend won’t increase each year at the rate of medical inflation, which will lead to seniors having to pay out-of-pocket for coverage they used to get for free.   But the rate of increase of the Obamacare stipend for poor people in the exchanges is tied to the poverty rate, which does not increase at the rate of medical inflation, and everyone is paying out-of-pocket for coverage already.  You know what one difference is between the two plans is?  Ryancare actually has a public option in its exchanges (Medicare).

So Paul Ryan seeks to get rid of a system with a guaranteed benefit in order to replace it with a system of government-regulated capitalism.  And Barack Obama seeks to get rid of a system of exploitative corporate shadiness in order to replace it with a system of government-regulated capitalism.  I can see that each party is motivated to defend the direction in which the proposed systems are moving, but they’re both ending up defending government-regulated capitalism using basically the same arguments for and against.  

As Ezra Klein points out, "[this] has left the two parties in a somewhat odd position: Democrats support the Republicans’ old idea for the under-65 set but oppose it for the over-65 set. Republicans support the Democrats’ new idea for the over-65 set but oppose it for the under-65 set."

This leads to confusion and hypocrisy.  Here’s the hypocrisy: the aforementioned Grace Marie Turner defends “programs that give us a great model” featuring “seniors making choices from among competing private plans”, but she also thinks Obamacare’s exchanges, which feature people making choices from among competing private plans, features too many “complex and onerous bureaucratic rules” that throw up “barriers to competition and consumer choice”.   And on the other side: Barack Obama has labeled the system that joins a mix of private insurance options with one public option (Medicare) as “thinly veiled social Darwinism”, but when he proposed creating a health insurance exchange joining a mix of private insurance policies with one public insurance policy (the Public Option), he characterized it as a system that would “provide more choice and more competition,” one that would “keep the policies affordable”.  

Is it possible for people to be both for market-based health care reforms and against market-based health care reforms?  I guess so, because everybody is. 

Why isn't my Starbucks being taxed?

I hardly ever post on this old political blog of mine, but when I do, I try to mix in an even amount of Oklahoma posts with national political posts.  This ratio is probably going to change though.  I now live in California. 

California politicians seem to be completely the opposite of Oklahoma politicians.  I mean, as far as I know they still haven't even discussed the issue of fetuses in our food, and the perpetrators of the genocidal slaying of California's innocent zygote people remain at-large.  Also of note: Californian legislators seem to have no problems with spending money they don't have, as demonstrated by the $8 billion future boondoggle that will be the Central Valley high speed rail project.

Another striking note of difference between Oklahoma and California: California's politicians are putting a tax increase on the November ballot; they are under the impression that a majority of the people of California are willing to raise taxes on themselves.  I don't know if this a realistic assumption or not, but I do know that any effort by an Oklahoma politician to put a tax increase on the ballot would surely be a sign of that politician trying to kill the tax increase.  In 2010 Oklahomans overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have increased state spending on schools, in part because of the suspicion that taxes would necessarily have to be increased sometime in the future.  If the measure had included these tax increases in the ballot language, the margin of defeat would have increased from 60% to something like 90%, probably. 

But for all the legislative acceptance of higher taxes as a solution to the fiscal problem, there seem to be loopholes that don't make much sense to me.  One of the first things I noticed when moving here was that my Starbucks was cheaper than in Oklahoma.  I soon realized that this was because my grande hot chai tea latte wasn't being taxed for some reason.  For such a progressive state, it made absolutely no sense to me that $4 coffee from Starbucks, far from being a necessity of life, was being treated like grocery store food. 

I searched around online for a reason for this and came across this excellent article and flowchart from the SF Weekly from April of this year.  One of the points of the article is that the tax system for food is highly and arbitrarily convoluted:

A hot sandwich to go would be taxable, while a prepackaged, cold one would not — but a cold sandwich becomes taxable if it has hot gravy poured onto it. Cold foods to go are generally not taxable — but hot foods that have cooled are taxable (meaning a cold sandwich slathered in "hot" gravy that has cooled to room temperature is taxable). Cold, non-carbonated, non-alcoholic beverages to go aren't taxable. Hot beverages to go are, but coffee and tea are specifically exempted from taxation. Soup, however, is taxable. Hot soup that has cooled? Still taxable. But, the BOE specifically informs SF Weekly, cold soups such as gazpacho are exempt.

But the more important point behind all these exemptions is that it is costing the state billions of dollars in tax revenue.  "In the current year, California's Department of Finance estimates revenue losses from exempting food and bottled (non-carbonated) water to be nearly $10 billion."  $10 billion would be about half of the state's predicted costs for the entire high-speed rail plan from San Francisco to Los Angeles - and about twice the state's costs for the recently-approved Central Valley portion of the plan.  It would be 62% of the $16 billion deficit that California is being burdened with this year.

And all for what? So that we can continue to get tax-free Starbucks? So that I can still go to the grocery store and buy frozen pancakes wrapped around Jimmy Dean sausages tax free?  So that all the rich people who shop at Whole Foods can get their food tax free while the poorer clientele who eat at Taco Bell are forced to pay the nation's highest sales tax rate?  I don't think the state has the right incentives here.

I am normally skeptical about sales tax increases since sales taxes are regressive taxes that affect the poor more than the rich, but it doesn't make any sense to me that California is leaving all that potential Starbucks money on the table when they're trying to slash spending and raise every other tax.  I would think that California would be able to increase revenue while lowering the sales tax rate if they got rid of almost all of these food exceptions, maybe only keeping WIC program food tax free.  Instead, the sales tax rate will be going up a quarter percent if voters pass Proposition 30 in November. McDonald's will become more expensive, but Starbucks will remain tax free. 

But hey, at least we Californians can practice Sharia Law and eat all the fetuses we want.

We Are The 1%: Mitt's Megadonors

Billionaire business owners are rich (duh).

Billionaire business owners didn’t get to be rich by throwing millions of dollars away.  They invest; they do not donate. 

When they throw a million dollars to a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, they are not doing it solely from the kindness of their own heart.  They are making a purchase.  They seek to buy power, to buy access to the people who make the laws, and they want to make sure that the person signing all the laws in 2013 is the type of person who will only sign laws favorable to them. 

This is why it is so revealing when a billionaire business owner heavily bankrolls a political action committee.  By figuring out who the donors are and what their motivations are, we can deduce what kind of policies Mitt Romney will be an advocate for.

Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone does excellent work putting together a list of 16 megadonors (defined as a donor who has thrown at least a million bones Mitt’s way), and he has ascribed motivations for each one.  So what do these old white dudes want anyways?  I have summarized Dickinson's list as follows (name – occupation or corporation – what the donor wants from government):

Warriors for the upper class:

• Edward Conard – Wall Street hedge fund guy – continuing the favorable tax policy for rich people
• Julian Robertson Jr. – Wall Street hedge fund guy - continuing the favorable tax policy for rich people
• Robert Mercer – Wall Street guy (non-hedge fund) - continuing the favorable tax policy for rich people
• Paul Singer – Wall Street hedge fund guy – continuing the favorable tax policy for rich people

Dodd-Frank killers:

• John Paulson – Wall Street hedge fund guy – weaker banking regulations
• Kenneth Griffin – Wall Street hedge fund guy – weaker banking regulations / access

Polluters:

• William Koch – Oxbow Carbon – fewer environmental regulations
• Harold Simmons – Contran – fewer environmental regulations
• Steven Webster – Oil and gas guy – pro-drilling policies

Consumer exploiters:

• Frank VanderSloot – Melaleuca Inc. (pyramid scheme cleaning supplies) – weaker consumer protections / anti-gay policies
• Steven Lund – Nu Skin Enterprises (pyramid scheme cosmetics) – weaker consumer protections
• Bob Perry – Perry Homes – caps on jury awards

Quid pro quo:

• L. Francis Rooney III – Rooney Holdings (construction) – access / patronage
• Jim Davis – New Balance Shoes – lucrative defense contract

Family friends / fellow New England Mormons born into privelege:

• Richard Marriott – Marriott Hotels – immigration reform
• J. Willard Marriott Jr. – Marriott Hotels – immigration reform

You can bet that a Romney administration would share the policy ideas of these donors from the 1%, and those policies would do the following things: cut taxes for the rich, kill off what little banking oversight remains in this country, remove environmental protections, and neuter the Consumer Protection Bureau.  (Maybe there would be room for immigration reform, and maybe not.) 

Not only do these people fund Romney’s campaign, these are the rich people that Romney hangs out with.  These are the friends who own NASCAR teams, private jets and multiple estates.  This is the social group from which Romney derives his worldview, a bleak screw-everything-but-the-bottom-line worldview in which greed is great and capital is king.  Romney was born into this social group and has lived there all his life.  His money is tied to investments with these people (he has at least a million dollars invested with Paul Singer).  He is named after the father of the two Marriott brothers, whose massive New England estate his family “summered” at when he was but a mite of a Mitt. 

These megadonors would not be investing so heavily if there was no big payday somewhere in the future for them.  What the billionaire business owners see in Mitt Romney is a man who will weaken government to the benefit of billionaire business owners.  Their self-serving desires are not good for the country as a whole, but their voices are the loudest (because money is speech and therefore a million dollars is like a speech with a megaphone).  But even if they weren't the loudest, Mitt would still be their man.  He comes from them.  He is of them.  He is just like them, except maybe a little bit younger and more good-looking.  That’s apparently worth a million or two.   

Jim Rogers: More Popular Than Republicans!

Last night was the first basically uncontested (sorry Newt, sorry Paul-heads) Republican primary since the media declared that Mitt Romney was firmly, finally the inevitable nominee, the first one since Rick Santorum's frothy surge ended not with a blast but with a dribble (obviously I'm talking about his political surge). 

But the primaries did prove one thing: Oklahoma's Jim Rogers is more popular than the Republican Party in Rhode Island.  15,535 people showed up to the polls in Oklahoma to vote for Democrat Jim Rogers.  Only 14,530 people showed up in Rhode Island to vote for Mitt Romney / Ron Paul / Rick Santorum / Newt Gingrich / Buddy Roemer / Uncommitted / Write-in.  This either means Republicans are unenthused and unpopular in New England, or it means that the Jim Rogers Revolution is just a blimp away from the mainstream!

Individual Freedom and the Birth Control Debate: Finally, a Man's Perspective

This whole recent debate about birth control has been truly one of the worst examples of how we Liberal and Conservative Americans talk to one another. There has famously been a whole lot of name calling, but not a lot of listening. And it definitely has been cutting both ways.

Terrible things have been said by Rush Limbaugh regarding Sandra Fluke's testimony about birth control to Congress, and he has been rightfully excoriated by the mainstream media to the point where his advertisers are having a hard time justifying their sponsorship of his program. But while it is fun and a little bit cathartic to jump on the anti-Rush bandwagon, I think we've lost what is a legitimate concern for right-wing types: why should birth control be subsidized by taxpayers and not by users of birth control?

Limbaugh's tirade came on the heels of an earlier discussion that was kicked off by the Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius when she announced that women needed to be granted free birth control coverage by insurance companies, and that there would not be a religious exemption granted for religious-owned organizations that did not primarily serve a religious clientele. Catholic Church members and social conservatives pointed out that this was an unprecedented government infringement on the separation of church and state. But too often their concerns were blown off as just the same old anti-choice womyn-hating bluster by establishment media.

There are legitimate concerns about government overreach and freedom of religion at the heart of these debates, and I think these concerns need to be acknowledged and addressed.

However, I also think that the concerns of Liberals aren't getting the proper amount of attention. Advocates of free birth control for women are not advocating taxpayer-funded guilt-free sex for sluts. Their concern is the relationship between cost and access to birth control, especially for the poor, and that by expanding access to birth control, poor women would be able to define their own economic destiny more easily. But no one is making this argument. Those who should be making this argument are too often making the argument that Conservatives are bullies and pigs and should be ignored.

One thing all of us Americans should be able to agree on is that the right of an individual to be able to choose things in life (religion, career, products and services) should be preserved whenever pragmatic. That's why it's so annoying to me to see these arguments where the Conservatives are the only ones who are pointing out the government infringement on an individual's right to choose, be it a pious employer or an outraged taxpayer. By choosing to upbraid Rush Limbaugh, liberal media types leave the link between lack of money and lack of choice unexposed, which is surprising considering the success that Occupy Wall Street had in raising awareness at the advantages that wealthy people have in a capitalist society.

And just in case Liberals are thinking that they don't need to address these arguments because the public is on their side, they should really take a look at this recent New York Times / CBS poll (page 22) that shows that 51% of Americans believe that not just religious organizations but all employers ought to be able to opt out of offering insurance that covers birth control if it violates their conscience, compared to just 40% that say employers shouldn't be able to. The numbers go to 57% / 36% when only religious organizations are counted.

We may be winning the Battle of Rush Limbaugh, but we are definitely losing the War of Insurance Coverage for Birth Control (note: we'll probably need to come up with a better name for this war).

Jim Rogers Does it Again!

I'm sort of obsessed with Jim Rogers. Every two years, Jim Rogers will appear on the primary ballot as a candidate for U.S. president or U.S. senator, and despite doing limited campaigning, he will get an extraordinary amount of votes. And by "limited campaigning," I mean "standing on a street corner in a crimson sweatshirt and holding a sign up as traffic honks at him".

Yesterday was Oklahoma's presidential preference primary, and while the important stuff was going down on the other side of the aisle, Oklahoma's Democrats were asked to do one simple thing for democracy: checking the box that says Barack Obama. Unfortunately for the sitting president, only 57% of ornery Oklahoma Democrats are willing to give him a second term. Turns out 18% of Oklahoma Democrats would prefer the anti-abortion activist (and former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Florida) Randall Terry. And 14% would prefer the distinguished hobo from Midwest City Jim Rogers.

The news stories this morning advertised the fact that based on Terry breaking the 15% viability threshhold, Randall Terry would get to claim a delegate or two and spoil what would have otherwise been a perfect delegate tally for Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention. But the news stories are incomplete. Randall Terry doesn't get to have all the fun.

Assuming he's still a candidate on April 4th, and assuming he submits a slate of delegates to the Oklahoma Democratic Party by March 15th, Jim Rogers should be able to claim three national convention delegates. Party rules say that the delegates to the national convention shall be awarded proportionally not only by statewide tally but also by congressional district. Of the 16 statewide delegates at stake, Obama should claim at least 11, leaving 5 to Randall Terry and 0 for Jim Rogers. But in the congressional district vote, Rogers got more than 15% in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th districts (the non-Oklahoma City, non-Tulsa parts of the state). Of the 29 delegates awarded to the districts, Obama should get 22, Terry should get 4, and Rogers should get 3. (Muskogee Politico breaks it down 21, 5, 3).

It's still amazing to me. This guy whose sole contribution to our republic is standing out on Reno and holding a handmade sign has received 15,000 Democratic votes, or 2.28% of the votes cast so far in all Democratic primaries and caucuses. He now has more delegates than Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman, Buddy Roemer, and Gary Johnson combined, as well as a higher percentage of votes cast. Vermin Supreme, New Hampshire's grizzled old coot of a perennial candidate, has one-twentieth of the votes that Jim Rogers has, and that guy's even been on TV.