There will limited or no blog
posts in the coming week, as the Wrongologist manages a large, public
project in Chicago that he has been working on for the past year. In the
meantime, use the Euripides comment below to write a homily about the
Republican Nihilism currently on display in DC:

More Obama Derangement Syndrome:

Republicans are really good at something: 

Pope Francis sees both sides:

Fox shows more false concern about racism:

One problem with being out of a job for too long:

What’s
Wrong Today:

As
discussed here on Thursday, on Friday the
House passed the “Keep the IRS
Off Your Health Care Act” by a 232-185 vote, the 40th repeal of
Obamacare by the House. Now, they leave DC until September 9th.

When they
return, the battle lines will be drawn for the fight between House Republicans
and the White House on the government’s statutory borrowing limit.

The New York Times reported that Mr. Obama,
while speaking to the House Democratic Caucus on Capitol Hill, was asked by Rep.
Peter Welch (D-VT), what his strategy would be in the face of signals by
Republicans that they would demand major concessions before they voted to raise
the government’s statutory borrowing limit. Mr. Obama said:  

Mr. Obama has been trying to
triangulate the House’s Tea Party Republicans since the start of his 2nd
term. He had success with the fiscal cliff, when the American Taxpayer Relief
Act passed both Houses on
January 1, 2013; the US Senate passed it by a margin of 89–8. The House passed the same legislation without
amendments by a vote of 257–167, with
151 Republicans opposing it.

His
strategy has not seen other success. The Farm Bill, the Transportation and
Department of Housing and Urban Development Bill and Comprehensive Immigration Reform,
have all been left by the side of the road in the House.

Will
Mr. Obama’s strategy work with the borrowing limit?

Speaker
Boehner is signaling that he does not plan to cooperate, threatening to not
raise the debt ceiling. He said:

So, does Boehner control his caucus? He couldn’t with the appropriations
bill for the Department of Transportation and Department of Housing and Urban
Development (appropriately nicknamed THUD) and had to pull the bill from
the floor.
Apparently, Mr. Boehner needs to bone up on math. His problem with THUD is similar
to the failed
farm bill.
The vote on the Farm Bill was 234-195 against passage, as 62 Republicans voted against the bill.

In these two
failures you can see a mortal threat to the existence of the Republican
governing majority in the House. Let’s remember what the Wrongologist wrote
about Speaker Boehner’s leadership problem:

So if you
can’t find 218 Republicans out of 234 to vote for a bill, the other option is
to start with the 201 Democrats and try to add two dozen Republicans.

This is at the heart of Mr. Obama’s
strategy on the borrowing limit, and at the heart of his grand strategy to
splinter the Republican House. Some in DC call this strategy “Pelosi Plus.” And any
threat by Boehner to only offer a Republican Majority House bill on the issue
of the borrowing limit is at best, a bargaining ploy.

A
coalition that fractures the Republican majority in the House could happen, since
any bill passed in the House also needs to pass a majority-Democratic Senate
and be signed into law by a Democratic president. While the Republican majority
may be immune to electoral
defeat,
thanks to favorable district boundaries—it’s not immune to its own dysfunction
in day-to-day governance.

So, can Mr. Obama win
with this strategy? By
saying what he did to Rep. Welch, Mr. Obama has set expectations for the global
financial markets as well as for Mr. Boehner. The economy is getting better,
there is more revenue, consumers are more hopeful, the deficit is shrinking.
He’s on the road with a message to the electorate that he’s not running for office;
he just wants to help the middle class. He’s giving details about how that can
happen and that the GOP is stopping it.  

In the Senate, the
GOP is starting to splinter on the debt ceiling, with a few Republican senators
trying to work with Mr. Obama. He’s held out his hand and offered to work with
them all along and they know it.

The GOP will come
back in September and no matter how much they whip up their base, the rest of
the country sees what they are trying to do. In the GOP splinter group, they
are already talking about a shut down being stupid, and they are all facing the
2014 election cycle. Big business and big money are both pressuring the GOP to
act responsibly. And Mr. Boehner has
drawn an intractable line in the sand so something’s gotta give, and the
President is saying it won’t be him.

That just puts more
pressure on Boehner.

The thing about this wrestling match
that is particularly absurd is how the Beltway media seems completely OK with
the idea that Mr. Boehner values keeping his job as Speaker over defaulting on America’s
debt. Failure to extend the borrowing limit would have all sorts of negative
international consequences, but the media won’t fault John Boehner for not putting
his job in jeopardy in order to avoid it. Their logic is that if he goes the Pelosi Plus route, he would have
to haul his bourbon bottles out of the
Speaker’s office.

The media accepts that he
will do nothing rather than allow THAT to happen.

The
landscape indicates that Mr. Obama will hold firm. If the Republicans can’t
pass a clean bill extending the debt limit and we face a government shut down, then for all practical purposes we will have reached a
point where we might as well have no
federal government. Then, Mr. Obama will order Jack Lew, his
Treasury Secretary, to keep paying the bills, citing the 14th Amendment.

There are so many nihilists in the Tea
Party caucus
and so many unusual, crosscutting pressures on the full GOP caucus (such as
Sen. McConnell’s effort to avoid a Tea Party challenge in his primary), that the GOP might just shut
down the government, simply because they can’t get their act together.

In the
aftermath, they would be humiliated and in no mood for another fight. Remember when Gingrich did exactly that in 1995 and 1996. If it happens again, the fracturing of the
Republican party in the House would most likely be complete.

No one should wish for broken
government, or a broken Republican party. But they are bringing it on
themselves. Since Republicans are predominantly Christians, they know that you
have to die to be resurrected. Don’t count on this scenario creating an
opportunity to reclaim the House from the Republicans, but it could cause the
number of Tea Party caucus members to decline precipitously in 2014.

Please proceed, GOP.

Then pass the popcorn, things
are gonna get bitchy. 

What’s
Wrong Today:

Yesterday,
the Wrongologist reported
about the 113th Congress’s 126 day work year. In truth, since there
are 110 Saturdays and Sundays in each year, the maximum that most Americans
expect to work is 255 days a year, less paid holidays and vacation, if they are
fortunate enough to get them.

But
the Congress’s work year equals just 49% of that of the average citizen. Of
course, they attend a lot of events when they are not in session in DC, but we
can only judge them by production: An update on yesterday’s post is that only 12 bills have been passed so far by
113th Congress, that is half the rate of the 112th Congress,
which as the chart in yesterday’s post showed, was the worst in history.


The Republicans argue that much of their accomplishment so far this year has been
to stop things from happening. As an example, this is “Stop Federal Abuse
Week” in the House. They are focused on the IRS. One way they will do that
is by defunding Obamacare for 40th time this week. The cool thing from their perspective
is this time they will strip the IRS of any role in Obamacare, since the IRS plays a big role in it,
particularly by enforcing the Mandate.

All of this
may sound crazy to normal people, but a Pew Survey released
yesterday tells a different story:

The Pew survey
was conducted July 17-21, 2013, among 1,480 adults, including 497 Republican
and Republican-leaning registered voters.

It found broad
dissatisfaction among GOP voters with the party’s positions on a number of
issues. And while the general sentiment is that the party should commit to more
conservative positions, two issues stand out. On abortion and gay marriage
about as many Republicans want the party to move in a more moderate direction
as support a more conservative stance:

It is interesting
that the survey results track exactly what is happening in the House right now.
The fight is building on government spending and immigration, the issues that most
conservatives feel the Congress needs to get tougher on. So, the battle lines
are drawn on the debt ceiling: Even in the Senate, a rump group of Republicans,
led by the so-called “Constitutionalists”, that is, Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rand
Paul (R-KY), and Mike Lee (R-UT) plan on blocking deals with Democrats in the
Senate, specifically by holding an increase in the debt ceiling hostage to
defunding Obamacare.

Overall, 35% of
GOP voters say that, in dealing with Democrats, congressional Republicans have
compromised too much. Slightly fewer (27%) say they have not compromised
enough, while 32% say they have handled this about right. However, 53% of the Tea
Party folks feel that they have compromised too much:

The voices that
Republicans in the House listen to the most are on the far right, as the chart
below shows, since the Tea Party has more influence on the primaries than does
the party at large, partly because of their high level of political engagement.
Overall, they are a minority (37%) of all Republicans and Republican-leaning
independents nationally. Yet they are more likely than other GOP voters to say
they always vote in primary elections; and as a result they make up about half
of the Republican primary electorate (49%). See Pew’s chart below:

This outsized
role of the Teas is also seen in the Senate. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senate minority
leader, has been known as a deal-maker in the past, but he is afraid of being primaried
from the right by the same people in Kentucky who worked to elect Sen. Rand Paul by a large
margin. McConnell has therefore moved from being a deal maker to being an
obstructionist. The same is true for the Republican’s #2, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)
the minority whip, who has had to move toward Sen. Cruz. This has opened the
door for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to return to his former status as a Senate deal maker. That
started with McCain emerging as alternate leader to McConnell during the debate
surrounding ending the 60 vote hurdle for Mr. Obama’s nominees by threatening to invoke the so-called
nuclear option. That deal was made by McCain with Sen. Schumer (D-NY) behind
McConnell’s back.

In the House, the
same is happening. Because of favorable redistricting, House Republicans have
little to worry about by not voting for a comprehensive immigration bill, so it
will die. There is a contest between the national Republican party and House
Republicans over the debt ceiling and immigration, but while House Republicans
have nothing to worry about, the National party has a lot to worry about.

The problem for
the national party is that Mr. Boehner (R-OH) is only concerned about holding onto
the House in 2014 and 2016. Another question is whether Mr. Boehner is truly in
control of his party in the House. The year started with Boehner’s fight to
keep his speakership. It wasn’t really close, but Boehner saw that he needed to
play to the far right in House. He walked away from them in the fight for Hurricane
Relief. It passed the House with a majority of Democratic votes and a minority
of Republicans voting for it. After that, the House right wing said to Boehner that
he shouldn’t bring any more bills to floor without majority Republican support
(the Hastert Rule). He has complied with that position on the Farm bill
and has said he would comply with it on Immigration.   


In summary, Mr. Boehner is not equipped to keep his people in line;
redistricting has taken away his power, since very few House Republicans perceive
any electoral threats from Democrats. Their threats are mainly from further on
the right, so there will be no compromise with the Democrats. Moreover, Mr.
Obama won only 27 Republican House districts, and there is limited threat from
him on that score.

So, the House is
now a free-for-all. It isn’t the House run by Tom Delay or Newt Gingrich, both
of whom were able to keep control of their party.

This Fall, it
could spin out of control at any time, with disastrous results for our standing
in the world.

Smell the Exceptionalism!

What’s
Wrong Today:

From PolicyMic: The number of
laws passed by Congress last year was fewer than at any point since 1947. And
to make matters worse, Congress will get 239 “vacation days” in 2013.

The
figures in the chart below are from the House Clerk’s office:

The calendar
for Congress’s first session (ending this December) consists of 126 days,
leaving members of Congress with 239
days of potentially free time. Of course, they need time to raise money and meet & greet constituents.

House
Majority Leader Eric
Cantor’s calendar
shows the days the House will be in session in a light brown shading, without a
single 5-day work week.  Check out the month of August, where they are in
session for 2(!) days.

According
to Ezra Klein, they’ll leave
town Friday and they won’t be back till Sept. 9. He seems very ok with their work schedule. According to the Monkey Cage, the Republican
Conference in the House has released instructions to its members on how to
spend their summer vacations. It doesn’t involve much frivolity, unless one’s
idea of holiday heaven involves writing (or at least cutting-and-pasting)
op-eds, pumping gas, holding meetings with angry people and, most broadly, talking
up how much they hate Washington.

The
Conference helpfully prepared a 31 page
booklet called  “Fighting
Washington for All Americans”, for its members. GOP Conference Chair Rep.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) writes that:

But, only 12%
of the public seems
to agree with her.

Fighting
Washington
consists of a detailed to-do list for the summer “district work period.” It
gives members a sample op-ed to place in local papers, provides details on how
to hold town hall meetings (hint: you should “reserve a space that is large
enough to accommodate the expected number of attendees…” and “take many
photographs and videos”), and suggests a list of issues members might hammer
home at home: the economy, the excesses of Obamacare, the IRS. Also:
“While touring, help constituents pump gas and bag their groceries where
possible.”

According
to Roll Call, House Democrats have
their own toolkit, but its not called “Fighting Washington”. And they have a predictable counterpoint: “Still no jobs, no
budget agreement, no solution from House Republicans, and no willingness to
even sit down and negotiate,” reads one Democratic talking point.

Democratic
leaders encourage members to use online and social media tools to “amplify
events” surrounding their “Economic Agenda for Women and Families,” the party’s
multi-point policy platform unveiled earlier this month. “56% of social network
users are women,” they point out. But they don’t urge caucus lawmakers to affix
a hashtag to every talking point. Rather, they suggest orchestrating intimate
roundtable discussions and forums aimed at helping constituents understand the
downside of the sequester. Such events should feature a “real person” — a
furloughed army official, for instance, or a senior citizen robbed of Meals on
Wheels benefits.

So the
only difference is whom they’re pointing the finger at for breaking Washington.

Now,
here’s the thing. None of this by either party is necessarily bad advice. But
the people receiving it are incumbents and their staffs. Are they really the
kinds of people who need to be told to reserve a hall when holding a meeting? That they should pump gas and bag groceries? Are they auditioning for the crummy jobs that remain in America after the failure of their non-policies to create jobs?

What kind
of people are we electing to the House?

A
month ago, many of us thought that this week on the calendar might see the
completion (or at least some progress) on key issues before Congress departed for its
August recess. For instance, the assumption was that the House might have
accomplished something on immigration reform, or that Democrats and Republicans
would have worked to resolve some of the budget issues. But as the Congress is about
to leave Washington (and not return until after Labor Day), there’s no real activity.
Resolve the impasse over the farm bill? Forget about it. Indeed, despite
record-low disapproval ratings, Congress is simply laying the groundwork for
the fights in the Fall on all of these issues.

With
a straight face, the House GOP, which has done more to break Washington than
any other Congress in history, is going home to whine about how broken
Washington is, and then beg to be sent back to Washington so they can continue
to break it even more, so that they can then return home and rail about how
broken Washington is. Sweet, sweet logic.

Summer
Vacation Time? Congress out of Session?

It must be Executive Order Season!

What’s Wrong Today:

What would you do if a bank broke into your
house while you were on vacation and removed all your belongings and destroyed
them?

Katie Barnett of MacArthur, OH, said
that’s exactly what happened to her. She claims that a bank she doesn’t have an
account with broke into her house while she was on vacation and either took or
destroyed most of her possessions. Apparently, the bank, First National Bank in
Wellston meant to foreclose and repossess a house across the street. The Bank blames
its GPS for the mix-up.

The Wrongologist has written about the
Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) here
and here.  This is not an isolated incident. There have
been many fraudulent events and “OOPS” moments in the mortgage
crisis. Instead of the repo man mistaking the address, in other cases, the MERS
system had a typo in the address when the title changed from one holder of the
loan servicing to another through the bundling of transactions involved in the
whole credit default swap mess.

There are likely a lot of houses that have
been foreclosed on incorrectly, just like Ms. Barnett’s.

As we have reported, there is a bi-partisan
move in Congress to codify the use of the Mortgage Electronic Registration
System as equivalent to a courthouse filing and to loosen or eliminate the
“show the note” requirements followed by most courts in the foreclosure process.

But, the banks have not shown themselves to
be worthy stewards of a codified MERS. They have illegally foreclosed on
members of the military in addition to having been found guilty of “robo-signing”
foreclosures without verifying all the pertinent information. They were also
ordered to end “dual
tracking” in which they pursued foreclosure even as they worked with
homeowners on modifying loans, but many have continued the practice.

The Department of Justice and 40 state
attorneys general announced a $25
billion settlement with five big banks last year over foreclosure fraud.
Returning to Katie Barnett, she said that she asked Anthony Thorne, the
president of the bank, to compensate her for her loss. She asked for $18,000,
but he refused to pay her, apparently saying “We’re not paying you retail
here, that’s just the way it is”.

The Wrongologist was very curious about the
other side of the story. In
a message on the bank’s
website, First National Bank president and CEO Anthony (Tony) Thorne indicated
that: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

So the bank thinks they took fewer, less
valuable things than what Ms. Barnett says is missing. Here’s a good rule: Don’t
trust the thief, trust the victim!

If only the bank thought that they shouldn’t
have to pay the difference between current value and replacement value for the
damages. But no, they say they didn’t steal all that much.  Since the bank seems
to be in the wrong here, why would Ms. Barnett take anything but replacement
value? And for the bank president to refuse to pay “retail” prices to
replace the stuff his firm stole and destroyed in the first place?

Big Tony needs a few lessons in PR 101.

Consider: How much money will the bank save
by haggling over the $18,000 claim made by Ms. Barnett? A few thousand bucks?
Now consider how much this story will cost the bank in terms of adverse
publicity and damaged reputation.

If you were Mr. Thorne, your first thought
should be: How do we make her so happy that she’ll go away and never mention
the mistake we made to anyone again? The Wrongologist suspects it will cost the
bank’s insurance company a lot more than $18,000.00 to dig out from under this
hot, steaming pile of PR mess.

Imagine how this would look to a jury if it
went to trial. Imagine a jury’s reaction to “we won’t pay retail because
some of those items are old.” The First National Bank of Wellston is not
an insurance company. It is closer to being a burglar! Barnett also called the
police after the incident, but the local police did nothing and a few weeks
later told her the case was closed. Probably because what happened was not
theft.

No, INTENT is required for a theft charge.
Mistakes happen in life. Imagine if you were at a meeting and you picked up a
cell phone that was not yours by mistake. While you had the phone you went to
the beach in Maui and the phone was destroyed. You would not be charged with
burglary or theft. It would be a civil matter (as this is). The bank will
probably lose big time in civil court, but crimes need intent.

A rational (and honest) person who made a
mistake makes an honest effort to return or replace the property. Apologies
made, no harm, no foul. But in this case, even after the error was discovered,
the bank made no effort at recompense to Ms. Barnett.

A few years ago, when we heard a story like this one, most
folks thought it was a random error and bought the bank’s explanation and
settled quietly. But her tale now sounds eerily familiar to many Americans who
have suffered from wrongful foreclosures and other bank misdeeds since 2008.

Maybe we need a law that puts high-level
bankers like Big Tony in jail for a few months when this stuff happens. The
banks might be too big to fail, but individual bankers fail all the time. If
these guys actually faced a few months in a country club prison, this would
stop immediately. You may say that the guillotine has appeal, but baby
steps…the only way to curb this behavior is to put CEOs in personal jeopardy.
Financially, or otherwise. That’s all they care about.

Suppose you were planning on dropping off
your mortgage payment at the bank, but your GPS screwed up, and you left it
across the street: Would the bank be OK with that?

You would lose your house.

Last
post from Maui. The Wrongologist will be flying back to the world of advanced
swordplay and wordplay on Monday. Last week was dominated by
the Weiner issue, the Snowden issue and the Royal issue.

As always, write your own Homily
from the Church Sign message, and enjoy the Cartoons:

House members say they will not increase the debt ceiling:

Finally the NSA gets TMI…from Weiner’s Smartphone:

This relationship is doomed:

How does Snowden do it? Nobody can stay in an airport for 4 hours
much less 4 weeks:

New ideas to distract the Royal Guards:

You need really BIG tax cuts in order to grow a really big deficit:

For those of you who have lived
indoors all of your life, Maui Wowie
is a type of marijuana that originated on the island of Maui. Today, it apparently
means any marijuana from Hawaii. While the Wrongologist has no direct knowledge
of the facts, it is reputed to be a very fine variety of the plant. It’s been brought to my attention that “Maui Wowie” can be commonly found if a medical marijuana patient was to look for the “higher-quality” cannabis strains using legal dispensaries or online alternatives such as if they were to Visit this website or similar medical marijuana providers. However, Maui Wowie is a high-THC strain, which is great for those who want to use marijuana recreationally for the psychoactive elements. This means it lacks in CBD, which is the component that usually makes cannabis medicinal. You can find strains that are higher in CBD at https://cannaunion.com/. If you get some hands on some Maui Wowie, it’s presumed that you just smoke it like you would with any strain of marijuana; whether that be through a bong or something similar to this sherlock pipe for sale is entirely up to you.

The Wrongologist has been to Maui
before, and that’s not to mean the Maui Wowie strain of cannabis has been tried and tested, although with all the ranting and raving about how nice the strain is, it might be some fun to look at some popular cannabis conventions to learn more about this increasingly popular medical substance. It’s to say The Wrongolist has actually been to Maui, so this week he made his second trip. This time to Hana, a very small town on the
easternmost tip of the island that is thought of as an unspoiled paradise. It
is accessible by a less-than-perfect road called the Hana Highway which is
anything but a highway. The so-called highway is very winding and narrow. It
passes over 59 bridges, 46 of which are only one lane wide. There are
approximately 620 curves along the route, virtually all of it through tropical rainforest. Many of the
concrete and steel bridges date back to 1910 and all but one are still in use. Infrastructure, anyone? A circumnavigation of
the eastern half of Maui is ~200 miles and takes about 12 hours.

A nice just-off the Hana Highway stop is Ke’anae. The volcanic nature of
the island is everywhere, but you can get really close to the volcanic rocks
and the waves at Ke’anae. Good public restrooms, too:

When the Wrongologist last traveled
to Hana in 1975, it was an unspoiled place at the end of the road. While Hana
is still described as “unspoiled”, it has evolved to be a tourist-centric
destination with a large hotel and some smaller properties, with many vans
driving tourists between the sights, so “unspoiled” is in the eye of the
beholder. Below is a photo of the still-unspoiled 200′ Wailua Falls. When the
water level is low like it was on Wednesday, you can climb down on the right
and swim in a small pool at the base of the falls.

Along the way are the homes of several
of the 1%. We passed Oprah’s 1000 acre place, from which she had a special road
built that allows her to make the trip to Wailea, an upscale town with spas,
shops, fancy restaurants and hotels in 15 minutes, about 1/3 the time that it takes the average
human on Maui’s curvy roads. Kris Kristofferson has a home in Hana, as does Jim
Nabors who grows macadamia nuts there. Woody Harrelson is a current resident. George Harrison lived there and now his place
has passed to his sister. Apparently, he used to have a plaque in a guest
bathroom that said, “the Beatles sat here.”

Here is a close up of a flower
taken at a small agri-business that specializes in sending cut stems to the US
so that people can propagate exotic tropical plants that are illegal to take out of Hawaii:

Wikipedia reports that Maui
County was the only county in the US that Dennis
Kucinich won during his unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic Party’s
presidential nomination in 2004. Draw your own conclusions; but John Kerry, the Party’s nominee, couldn’t win Florida.

The 2010 census indicates that
about 155,000 people live on Maui. The racial makeup of the county is 33.01% Asian,
28.90% White, 22.24% from two or more races and 10.72% Pacific Islander, with
the balance made up of Hispanics, African and Native Americans and other races.

This makes Maui a great place to
get sushi!

From an age perspective, 64% of
Mauians are under 44. 25.5% of Mauians are under 18, 7.70% are between 18 and 24,
30.90% are from 25 to 44, 24.40% from 45 to 64, and 11.40% are 65 years of age
or older. The median age is 37. Unlike the mainland, there are more males than
females: For every 100 females there are 100.90 males.

According to Maui
Now, Maui has very low unemployment by comparison to America as a whole.
The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for May dropped to 4.7% from
4.9% the month before, while Maui’s rate in May was 4.8%. The top employers are
the state and county governments, totaling 8500 workers, while some 6500 are
employed in the hotel sector on Maui. Maui Land and Pineapple, the largest
private agricultural company, employs 800.

The
largest cash crop on Maui is sugar from cane. An interesting fact is that it
takes 1000 gallons of water to produce one pound of sugar from cane, most of it
utilized in the growing process. The island apparently gets 60 billion gallons
of rainwater per year.

Overall, Maui appears to have 2
economies, a tourist-based service economy and a local economy driven by
agriculture, real estate and services for the locals. Owning real estate isn’t
cheap. The average price of a home in June was $817k, up 15% over last year,
while condos sold at an average price of $536k, up 13% over a year ago.

Maui makes you feel as if you
want to live here. However, the cost of living is higher than many small towns
on the mainland and while service industry jobs are plentiful, they are
low-paying.

Great place to visit!

(all photos by the Wrongologist)

There
will be limited blogging for the next 10 days while the Wrongologist does
research on consumer spending patterns on Maui.

In
the meantime, enjoy today’s homily and a few cartoons:

Detroit’s Next Fix Takes Off:

Congress
Works on Jobs Obamacare Repeal:

Does the Same Legal Theory Apply Here?

Congress Fishes for Lobbyist Cash:

What’s
Wrong Today:

Just
when you think Republicans couldn’t possibly make bigger asses out of themselves,
Virginia’s Attorney
General Ken Cuccinelli,
and Republican nominee for governor, launched a new campaign
website this week highlighting
his efforts to reinstate Virginia’s
unconstitutional Crimes Against Nature law.

The proposed law makes felons out of consenting couples who engage in oral or anal sex in
the privacy of their own homes. The law was struck down by federal courts after Cuccinelli
blocked efforts to bring it in line with the Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas
ruling.

Republicans have left
their party of “small government” brand in the rear view mirror. It’s become the
party of banning abortions, disenfranchising minorities, cutting the poor off from food stamps, trying to ban online adult porn sites such as https://www.m-porn.xxx/, and now,
attempting once again to regulate sexual
conduct between consenting adults.

Apparently, Cuccinelli
see no conflict with promoting “small government” while simultaneously working
to insert his little government into the sex lives of American citizens. For a
party sworn to defend freedom and liberty, this strategy seems inconsistent and
more than a little hypocritical.

The unconstitutional
Crimes Against Nature law Cuccinelli wants to reinstate is disingenuously cloaked in the battle to protect children against
sexual predators. While that is a worthwhile goal, what he fails to
mention is that the law contains language that essentially criminalizes all non-missionary
position and non-procreative sex acts. Cuccinelli’s proposed law states:

Cuccinelli says that
the law “is only applied to sodomy committed against minors, against
non-consenting adults, or in public,” but what he has proposed criminalizes the private behavior of consenting adults. Apparently, he
knows so little about sex that he doesn’t realize that sexual predators might use the missionary position.

Virginia and all other states have
laws against molesting children. Cuccinelli’s law just restricts consensual
adult behavior. It is a continuation of the quest by the conservative anti-government
crew to get into your bedroom while they stay away from your predatory lending
policies, your tax evasion strategies or your plan to gut most of the Bill of
Rights.

In 2009, the Virginia Pilot
reported on Mr. Cuccinelli’s view of why he supported restrictions on the
sexual behavior of consenting adults:

So, it’s the
homophobia that is driving him, not those straight Virginians indulging in oral
sex.

If
Mr. Cuccinelli’s ban on “unnatural” sex acts applied nationwide, the
Virginia law would make 90% of men and women in the US between the
age of 25 and 44 criminals. Check out this chart from the National
Center on Health Statistics on sexual behavior in the US:

Before it
was declared unconstitutional, violating Virginia’s Crimes Against Nature
statute carried a penalty of between one and five years in prison. The Virginia
Department of Corrections prison system only has a capacity of around 30,000. But 64.6%
of Virginia’s 8 million citizens are between the ages of 18 and 65, so the
state lacks the prison capacity to house anywhere near the millions of
Virginians who, in Mr. Cuccinelli’s view, have most certainly committed crimes
against nature.

What about
the sexual behavior of Mr. Cuccinelli and his aides? Mother
Jones asked his campaign if Cuccinelli or anyone working for his campaign
had ever engaged in any of the prohibited conduct and if so, whether Mr. Cuccinelli would
fire them.

MoJo received
no response.

Racism
was once expressed by conservatives as “states’ rights.” Republicans call
Obamacare an “attack on our liberty.” The most oppressive and
invasive measures by the NSA are trumpeted as “ensuring
security.” 
And now, in Cuccinelli’s Virginia, homophobia is
“Think of the CHILDREN!”

A sad commentary on
the state of Republican politics in Virginia was that Mr. Cuccinelli won the nomination
for governor by
acclimation.

After his latest effort to again pass an unconstitutional law,
PPP’s most recent poll of Virginia voters
shows Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe leading Mr. Cuccinelli 41% to 37%. Cuccinelli is viewed in a mostly negative
light by the state, as only 32% of the state has a favorable opinion,
while 47% has an unfavorable opinion of him, including 57% of independents. How can it be so close?

Some of
you Virginia residents are probably hoping to break some laws tonight.

Remember, it’s only illegal if you
catch someone ELSE doing it.

What’s
Wrong Today:

The House
and the Senate have both passed farm bills in the last few weeks. The New
York Times reported that the 608-page farm bill the House passed
was the first since 1973 not to
include a food stamp program.

The
216-to-208 vote reversed an earlier House defeat
of a broader version of the bill last month, but it left the food stamp
program on the side of the road. That program normally makes up about 80%
percent of the farm bill. It costs nearly $75 billion a year, and has been a
constant target for House conservatives who say it has grown too large.

About 47
million Americans receive food stamps.

During a debate in
the House Agricultural Committee over food stamps and farm subsidies, reports Gail
Collins, Stephen Fincher’s (R-TN) hackles were raised when Juan Vargas
(D-CA) quoted the bible while asking why his Republican colleagues wanted to
cut $30 billion in aid to hungry children and the elderly over the next 10
years. After all:

Rep. Fincher reacted
badly to Vargas’ comments and told a Memphis audience, “Man, I really got bent
out of shape. ” He then gave Vargas a bible quote of his own:

Perhaps
Rep. Fincher should do a little research first and find out how many of those
on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) ARE working or have
been recently working and how low their income is and how little additional income
they receive as SNAP assistance. Then look at the spike in assistance as a
direct result of the recession and the projections for future enrollment decline as the
slow recovery continues.

Those
data are freely provided
by the government he supposedly helps govern.

More from Fincher: (emphasis
by the Wrongologist)

Mr. Fincher might
want to consult another part of the Bible, the part that says that he who is
without sin shall cast the first stone: Fincher is a farmer AND the recipient of more than $3.5 million in
federal agricultural subsidies – wages of sin, as he might put it, from
a thieving government that “stole” from us to give to him.

From
Jonathan Chait in New
York Magazine: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Does it get
any clearer than that?

In
the Fox News version of America, food stamp spending is not higher than in the
past because more people are poor and hungry after Wall Street’s shenanigans
brought on the Great Recession. Rather, food stamp use is up because the Obama
European Socialist Machine is deliberately trying to build a bigger, stronger,
government-supporting coalition.

This is the sort of conspiracy-inspired
thinking that leads to the incredible position many conservatives have now
taken, as Chait says, that:

The Tea-Party fellow-traveler,
Heritage Action for America, has run ads saying the purpose of the farm bill
Republicans defeated last week was to “bankroll President Obama’s food-stamp
agenda.” Perhaps it is no longer surprising that conservative Republicans
have positioned themselves to Obama’s left only when domestic spending (like
farm subsidies) benefits their constituencies.

Says Chait:

Finally, the
House bill also included a provision by Rep. Dan Benishek, (R-MI) that requires
additional economic and scientific analyses before a sweeping 2010 law to
improve the food safety system goes into effect. Food safety advocates say the Benishek
provision effectively halts implementation of the law. Nice work Republicans!

In passing their
version of the bill, House Republicans made it easier for Republicans in red
states to vote for a big government program that benefits
mostly-Republican states and interest groups, knowing that they weren’t also
voting for something that pays out to the (mostly-Democratic) poor as well.

Conservatism has
become merely constituent services for
the most reliable parts of the Republican base. The Wrongologist is
uncertain about what kind of conservative opposition would best serve the common
good, but almost any alternative would be preferable to a Republican Party that
doesn’t seem to care about the common
good at all.

Splitting
the bills the way the House has does have some merit: It makes the corporate farmers
stand or sink on their own merits, and it makes politicians who support these
sorts of crony deals defend them on their merits.

And,
by the same token, we should let the food stamp bill stand or sink on its own
merits also.

Finally,
please
quit calling these agri-business corporations “farmers.” These businesses that
collect millions of our tax dollars in corporate welfare are not farmers.

They
are welfare queens.