Congress – Page 63 – The Wrongologist

Democrats Have Lost America

Members of Congress will formally take their oaths of office on their respective chamber floors when the 114th Congress convenes at noon today.

But even as the new Congress gets sworn in, and Democrats dutifully take up their positions in the minority, It is important to realize that Democrats have taken their collective eye off the ball in the states for the past 6 years: Not only do Republicans control Congress, they control an overwhelming majority of state legislatures as well, including 100% control (legislative and executive) of 24 states.

Despite the Democrats’ obsessive focus on holding the Senate and winning the presidency, DC was not the only battlefield; there was a huge battle for control of the states. The WaPo reported this week that the battle is over. Republicans now control 31 governorships and 68 of 98 partisan legislative chambers.

Before Election Day 2014, the GOP controlled 59 partisan legislative chambers (most states have two chambers, some only one) across the country. The increase to 68 gives Republicans six more chambers than their previous record, set twice after special elections in 2011 and 2012.

Republicans also reduced the number of states where Democrats control both the governor’s office and the legislatures from 13 to 7.

While pundits everywhere are talking about what is going to happen in Washington in 2015, we should spend a little time preparing for a new wave of conservative state laws. Republicans plan to launch fresh assault on:

• Common Core education standards, the national standards adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia. Opposition on the right has led three states — Indiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina — to drop out of the program. Some states will attempt to join those three in leaving the program altogether. Others will try to change testing requirements or prevent the sharing of education data with federal officials.
• Abortion regulations: Measures to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy will advance in Wisconsin, South Carolina, West Virginia and Missouri.
• Corporate and personal income taxes: Arkansas, Arizona, North Carolina, and North Dakota will prioritize cutting personal or corporate income tax rates.
• The power of labor unions: Republicans in nine states are planning to use their power to pass “right to work” legislation, which would allow employees to opt out of joining a labor union. 24 states already have such laws on the books, and new measures have been or will be proposed in Wisconsin, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio, Colorado, Kentucky, Montana, Pennsylvania and Missouri.
• Environmental Protection Agency: A dozen states have challenged proposed EPA regulations on power plants in federal court.
• Challenges to State Pension Programs: Many states will try to deal with underfunded pension plans, which threaten to swamp state budgets over the long term. In Illinois, where the state pension is funded at less than 40%, Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner (R) made pension reform a cornerstone of his 2014 campaign, while fights are brewing in Kentucky and in New Jersey.

All of the above is partly the result of a sustained campaign by Republicans to reduce voting. It is also partly the result of Democrats deciding that Congressional and state political campaigns can be won even without addressing the real issues or the real record of the two parties.

Democrats are facing a long, brutal slog in the states and in the Congress. Mr. Obama gets elected twice, and by a greater margin the second time, yet his party loses control of almost everything else, now politically controlling just 7 states.

What does this say about 2016? Will Hillary have enough coattails to move some legislatures or Senate seats, or will she be the second coming (politically) of Mr. Obama?

Finally, the next time some moron tells you that both parties are the same, remind that person what is about to happen in the states, specifically, the undoing of the social contract that is about to take place. The next time somebody tells you one vote doesn’t count, tell them it doesn’t count unless you cast one.

Maybe Democrats need to get off their duffs and do something about this.

Monday Wake Up Call – January 5, 2015

Let’s start the first Monday of the New Year with this photo of a hermaphrodite Northern Cardinal:

The half-red, half-white plumage of this northern cardinal is caused by its sex chromosomes not segregating properly after fertilization, so the bird is half-male, half-female. You can read more in New Scientist magazine here.

Last night, Wrongo watched Martin Scorsese’s film, The Last Waltz, which documents the last concert by the roots-rock group, The Band. Late in the movie, Robbie Robertson recounts jamming with the great harmonica player, Sonny Boy Williamson in the early 1960s, and making (never-realized) plans to work together. Obviously, Robertson, Helm, et al. went on to be the band that backed Bob Dylan in the 1970s.

Here is your Monday musical wake-up: Sonny Boy Williamson playing and singing “99”, in which he can’t come up with that last dollar to make the $100 his girlfriend wants:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP668KiaY7E

Here are links that you may have missed:

Drone etiquette is one of several issues covered in the WSJ’s “21 Tech Do’s and Don’ts for 2015.” Really, drone etiquette is gonna be a thing in 2015?

Dynamic scoring is not about succeeding in the bar scene, it’s a new Republican way of using the Congressional Budget Office to make tax cuts look good. The Wrongologist wrote about this in December.

Georgia police chief shoots wife (twice) while “moving” his Glock pistol in their bed. Yea, well, more for the “good guy with a gun” file. BTW, Glocks don’t accidentally fire, they have a unique safety mechanism, so you have to pull the trigger to fire it.

California colleges see surge in efforts to unionize adjunct faculty. At nearly a dozen private colleges in California, adjunct professors are holding first-time contract negotiations, or are campaigning to win the right to do so.

Almost one-fifth of the nation’s enclosed malls have vacancy rates considered troubling by real estate experts (10% or greater). Over 3% of malls are considered to be dying, with 40% vacancies or higher. That is up from less than 1% in 2006. Another impact of income inequality: High-end malls are thriving, while malls with anchor stores like Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney falter.

Don’t try this at home: In 2015, the European Union is increasing taxes on purchases of digital content like e-books and smartphone applications. The taxes are part of a continuing push to tax the region’s digital economy more heavily. It will raise over $1 billion.

The latest ISIS offensive in Iraq’s Anbar Province may have reversed weeks of progress by Iraq’s government forces. And it only took a few hours. No airstrikes were launched by US coalition forces in time to support the ground troops.

“From 07:00 until 11:00, we lost territory that had taken us two weeks to gain. In a few hours, it was gone,” said a senior officer from the Iraqi Army’s 7th Division.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 4, 2015

RIP Mario Cuomo:

(Columbus Day Parade, October 11, 1982. Mayor Edward Koch, Gov. Mario Cuomo and Westchester County Executive Alfred DelBello march down New York’s Fifth Avenue) Credit: Associated Press

You have to wonder how different the country would be if Mario Cuomo had agreed to become a Supreme Court Justice in 1993 when Bill Clinton offered to nominate him to replace Byron R. White. George Stephanopoulos has written that Clinton came within 15 minutes of nominating Cuomo, until the latter rejected the job in a phone call with Stephanopoulos.

The Wrongologist never drops bold-face names in the blog, but today is an exception. In 1988, he (and Ms. Oh So Right) were backstage speaking with Frank Zappa, who was playing in Boston. Wrongo asked who Zappa would support for president the next time around, since the Dukakis debacle had just happened. He said: “only Mario”. At the time, the Wrongologist agreed. But Mario would never run, and Zappa died in 1993.

On Christmas, Neil deGrasse Tyson sent this Tweet:

On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 25, 2014

It caused the usual spewing by the “war on Christmas” crowd, who claimed that Tyson was deliberately provoking them. Tyson replied:

Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.

Speaking of truth, here is the whole objective truth:

2015 will be totally different, except:

We just ceased combat operations in Afghanistan. What did we learn?

Republican leader Scalise attends Klan meeting. What did the GOP learn?

Monday Wake Up Call – December 22, 2014

RE: Sony. The twist in this case is the trope that North Korea is suppressing our Freedom of Speech. And, the suppressed “Freedom of Speech” is a shitty Hollywood movie. So the public is getting spun about an invisible, but somehow tangible, “attack” on our freedoms. The Wrongologist has no skills to determine who hacked Sony, but when the mainstream media jumps on something with both feet, you know it supports SOME government theme.

Is the plan to convince the American people that there are “threats” everywhere and that only the State Security Apparatus can protect them from Evil? The usual pun-holes on the Sunday tube talked about how big the threat is, and how vulnerable we are.

America has become a Factory of Fear. Fear the Muslims, fear Putin, fear China, fear immigrants, fear criminals, fear the national debt, fear detente with Cuba. Trouble is, once again, the only thing we’re being urged to do is muster up the courage to go shopping. Authoritarians need their subjects to be afraid. Their bet is that people will submit to bullying if they believe that the bullies are the only thing standing between them and their terrors.

Things have to change. Killing brown people for peace is not working. Our empire is bankrupting us, and has not made us any safer. Unfortunately in the US, our domestic politics, plus our failures in military adventurism, have created ever greater violence and lunacy, further feeding the rolling disaster.

As an example, take New York City. Two police were killed in their patrol car. NY’s Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the police union, reacts by declaring that the NYPD has “become a ‘wartime’ police department, and we will act accordingly.”
Wartime, really? Are these the union’s marching orders to the 35,000 armed members of the biggest police department in the US? The NYPD seems to be asserting their superiority to the NYC executive branch. This has the earmarks of an attempted coup.

As a former military, the Wrongologist respects the absolute need for a chain of command with an elected civilian at the top. As a former military, he knows that many in the military only respect the authority of civilian leadership if the civilian happens to be a conservative.

The NYPD seems to be ready to strike out at their civilian leadership because they have deemed it to be unworthy of leading their “honorable” police force. Their attitude of superiority should scare the living daylights out of all of us. This attitude is not amenable to any evidence to the contrary, or to self-reflection and examination. It will brook no doubts about the moral purity of the NYC police.

This seems to be coming to a head, and seems that it will only get uglier.

Monday’s Wake Up Music: On a much lighter note, some seasonal music. Here are the Capitol Steps with a seasonal song about Guantanamo:

Next, a semi-seasonal tune by The Firemen. Sounds obscure? It is. The Firemen are a duo of Paul McCartney and Martin Glover, who performs as Youth. There are some doubts about whether or not “Dance ‘til We’re High” is a real Christmas song, even though it has lyrics about “winter coming”, “snow falling”, “bells ringing out” and a catchy tune. But, it’s way better than McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime”:

Your Monday Linkage:
Tanks that won’t go away. The CRomnibus funding bill includes $554 billion for defense spending. This lines up almost exactly with President Obama’s original request, but Congress made considerable changes to where this money is being spent. According to analysis by Defense News, 10% of the FY15 defense appropriations budget—and 30% of all line items—were changed in the logrolling process. The biggest ticket items include $120 million more for M-1 Abrams tanks, despite Army protestations (for the third straight year) that no additional tanks are needed.

Oops. On July 3, Homeland Security, which plays a key role in responding to cyber-attacks, replied to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about a malware attack on Google called “Operation Aurora.” Unfortunately, DHS officials made a grave error in their response. DHS released more than 800 pages of documents related not to Operation Aurora but rather to the Aurora Project, a 2007 research effort demonstrating how easy it was to hack into US power and water systems.

Ars Technica calls the Sony hack a “software pipe bomb.” Analysis by Cisco of a malware sample matching the signature of the malware that was used in the attack on Sony Pictures, reveals that the code was full of bugs and was anything but sophisticated.

Our frequent commenter, Terry McKenna, has a great post about Cuba and our Constitution. Go read it.

Bill O’Reilly said this on his show:

It’s easier to believe in a benevolent God — the baby Jesus — than it is in some kind of theory about global warming. It’s just easier, is it not?

O’Reilly was making the point that literal belief in the story of the virgin birth as it appears in the gospels is easy, while believing that burning fossil fuels causes climate change is hard. Another way of putting this is that O’Reilly thinks it is easier to believe that a woman can be impregnated without sperm than it is to believe the consensus of the scientific community on an issue he apparently doesn’t understand.

U-Turn in Cuba/US Relations

Yesterday, Mr. Obama announced that the US and Cuba will resume diplomatic relations after 55 years of dysfunction and belligerence. Predictably, a few Congressional leaders and Republican presidential hopefuls lashed out at the president and the decision. Jeb Bush said:

The benefactors of President Obama’s ill-advised move will be the Castro brothers.

This was followed by these predictable words from Sen. McCain (R-AZ) and his paramour, Sen. Huckleberry Butch Me Up (R-SC), who said that the policy shift reflected that: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

America and the values it stands for [are] in retreat and decline…It is about the appeasement of autocratic dictators, thugs and adversaries, diminishing America’s influence in the world.

The Obama party line is: “the current policy has failed for 55 years. The Castro brothers have outlasted 8 US presidents. Let’s try something different.”

And here we are. This is now possible because the first generation of Cuban émigrés no longer completely control the Cuban voting bloc in Florida, the most crucial swing state to both parties. Consider the following:

• According to the Pew Research Center, there are about 1.9 million Cuban-Americans in the US. 70% of Cuban-Americans live in Florida, making them the most geographically concentrated of the 12 largest Hispanic origin groups.
• We know that the younger Cuban-Americans shifted toward the left during the 2012 election. In 2012, Obama won a majority of the Cuban-American vote in Miami. He won Cubans nationally by two points.

Here is how the political sands have shifted:

Thus, politics no longer drives the decision about our relationship with Cuba. Our 55 year-old hard line position was more about those upper middle class Cuban-American émigrés who hoped that the embargo would eventually force the return of houses that they abandoned 55 years ago when they left Cuba for Miami.

A final reason why this works for both sides right now is the Saudi decision to force lower oil prices. Cuba cannot sustain its economy on its own. As an example, Cuba now imports an estimated 80% percent of the food its people consume, at a cost of more than $1.5 billion per year. Venezuela has been Cuba’s prime financial benefactor, but the Venezuelan economy is in terrible shape, even before the current sharp decline in the price of oil, which is its primary source of state revenue.

They will soon be forced to cut Cuba’s rations. That will be a huge opening for the US, particularly since Cuba’s former benefactor, Russia, has its own economic difficulties as well.

Despite the Republican bleating about Cuba as a communist dictatorship with a horrible human rights record, being a communist government with horrible human rights record hasn’t stopped America from dealing with China, which these same Republicans think is just fine.

So why not trade with Cuba? How can trade with Cuba be a sign of political weakness, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to global economic progress and a spirit of international harmony?

It’s been wrong for the US to continue to hold a cold war grudge against Cuba. The US could most readily help the people of Cuba by opening up trade between the two countries.

Let’s close with a song about going to Cuba by Jackson Browne:

Sample lyric:
I’m going to drink the Ron Anejo
and walk out on the Malecon
in one hand a Monte Cristo
and in the other an ice cream cone.

And they truly love their ice cream.

Good luck to the Cubans, a lovely people, and a lovely country.

Monday Wake Up Call – December 15, 2014

Today’s Wake-Up Call is for Congress and the president. Mr. Obama’s support of the “CRomnibus” year-end spending package showed how the next two years in Washington will play out, and it doesn’t bode well for anyone (you) who doesn’t employ a registered lobbyist.

You already know that the budget bill included a rollback of derivatives reform, and a nearly ten-fold increase in the donation limits for party committees. What may have been less obvious is that the bill cuts $60 million from the EPA and $346 million, about 3%, from the IRS. The IRS cuts tell wealthy earners that tax avoidance is safe, with little expectation of an audit.

The White House basically turned on its own party, accepting roll-backs of liberal priorities. It’s clear that this kind of legislative sausage-making will be the rule in 2015.

Other benefits for specific lobbies:

• Private Pension Plan trustees could cut pension benefits to current retirees, reversing 40 years of promises to workers who earned their retirement packages.
• Voters in DC who approved legalized marijuana will see their initiative die, since Congress prevented the DC government from taxing or regulating the drug’s sale.
• Trucking companies can make their employees put in an 82-hour work week without mandatory time off.
• Pell grants for college students will be cut, with the money diverted to private student loan contractors.
• Blue Cross and Blue Shield will be allowed to count “quality improvement” measures toward their mandatory health spending under Obamacare’s “medical loss ratio” provision, a windfall that saves millions of dollars.
• The EPA is blocked from regulating certain water sources for farmers.
• Reduced nutrition standards in school lunches and the Women, Infant and Children food aid program was a gift for potato growers.
• The bill halts the listing of new endangered species.
• It stops the regulation of lead in hunting ammunition.

The White House never threatened a veto of the CRomnibus over these riders, and actually supported the bill. House Democrats complained of being “lobbied by the White House” on the legislation. This is sure to be a recurring policymaking feature of the next two years.

So this is the new normal on Capitol Hill. The precedent for making changes on headline issues by tucking rollbacks into must-protect or must-pass legislation has been set with the White House’s active cooperation.

In other words, there’s your proof that elections have consequences.

Here are a couple of wake-up tunes for Monday. First, in keeping with the prime directive (well, maybe it’s the sub-prime directive), that the banks can never fail again, here is the late Pete Seeger doing “The Banks are made of Marble”:

The song was written by Les Rice in 1948 or 1949. Rice was a farmer in Ulster County, NY. Seeger lived across the Hudson from him, and apparently they met on several occasions.

Our second tune is in keeping with the other prime directive of a holly, jolly season. Captain Picard does “Let it Snow”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-zdMkOZTKs&app=desktop

Monday’s Hot Links:

The US attempted to co-opt Cuba’s hip-hop scene to foment revolution: USAID tried to recruit underground rappers in Cuba to sow unrest against Raul Castro’s government. They failed. Compared to the CIA torture story, this is small potatoes, but still another example of how we can’t stay out of any country’s internal affairs. Because, freedom!

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that insider trading is ok as long as the person accused of insider trading didn’t know that the original tipper disclosed the information in return for personal gain. Guessing that you’ll never know.

Thirty years after the Bhopal chemical accident, the worst in history, the spill’s effects are hitting a new generation. Professional clean-up hasn’t happened and there are no signs that the environmental catastrophe will end.

Congress and the President are going in the opposite direction from the Federal Reserve. The Fed is making the banks pony up more reserves to protect their balance sheets, while Congress and Obama are saying “go big on derivatives baby, we’ve got your back”.

Study supports the theory that all ‘men are idiots’. Well, it wasn’t a scientific study, but it looked at 318 Darwin Awards cases, of which 282 Darwin Awards went to males, and just 36 awards were given to females. Males made up 88.7% of Darwin Award winners.

Old news department: The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll says that 56% of Americans say the country’s economic and political systems stacked against them. Different result from the NYT survey last week.

Your thought for the week:

I had two options, to remain silent and then be killed. Or I could speak up, and then be killed. I chose to speak up. – Malala Yousafzai, from her Nobel Peace Prize speech

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 14, 2014

Tough week trying to pick the worst from among the many, many wrongs this week:

• Congress passes a budget that defangs Dodd-Frank: Citibank got Congress to let the big banks place their risky derivatives business back under the protection of taxpayer-paid insurance. So we get to shoulder the losses when the next big bank failure comes. The Congress attached it to the CRomnibus spending bill that the president won’t veto. We can dig through the couch cushions for spare change to bail out the banks next time. Simon Johnson said it best:

Give enough clever people the wrong incentives and they will destroy anything.

• Congress also lowered funding for the EPA, and stuck in a provision that allows private funding of national conventions. They were previously publicly funded.
• Some detail on “we tortured some folks” became public with the publishing of the CIA Lite torture report. If that wasn’t wrong enough, many pols and pundits just gave up, and said torture was useful and necessary. One right thing was John McCain’s speech on the floor of the Senate debunking torture as a means of getting information.
• There was more wrong-headed messaging about the Ferguson/Garner cases. But there was also many “die-in” demonstrations around the country along with the usual finger-pointing about the demonstrators’ reactions, both peaceful and not-so-peaceful.

Dick Cheney continued his spirited defense of the indefensible:

CIA Director Brennan insisted on calling torture “Enhanced Interrogation”:

Passing of the torch brings irony to the Senate:

Some see the “shoot first” mentality as a feature, not a bug in the system:

Some see Xmas as their favorite time of the year:

Some see Xmas as a giant pain:

Ferguson Points to Our Real Problem

This is not a column about Ferguson, except by extension. In August, after Ferguson, the images of cops climbing out of armored vehicles with military-grade weapons caused some in both Houses of Congress to push for change in the program. Lawmakers vowed changes to the 1033 Pentagon program that provides military-grade equipment to local police. The Obama administration called for a policy review of the 1033 program, but on Monday, they backed away from substantive changes to the program.

There was a White House meeting on Monday to address the issues raised by military-style policing and Ferguson. Yet, the evidence shows that the meeting has changed nothing. This was The Guardian’s Monday headline:

Obama resists demands to curtail police militarization calling instead for improved officer training

Mr. Obama did call for a $263m, three-year spending which, if approved by Congress, could lead to the purchase of 50,000 lapel-mounted cameras to record police officers on the job.

Sounds good, but there are 765,000 state & local law enforcement officers in America, so you better hope that you are stopped by one of the 6.3% of local police officers that will have a federally-funded camera three years from now. Oh, and hope that the digital file of your brush with the law hasn’t been accidentally erased.

The Institute for Public Accuracy made comments from Peter Kraska available. Kraska is considered a leading expert on police militarization. He said yesterday: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

From my meeting at the White House, frankly, they — like most political players — were interested in a quick fix. They want to hear that by somehow tweaking the 1033 program (which transfers equipment from the Pentagon to local law enforcement) that they can have an impact. That program is important symbolically, but there’s an entire for-profit police militarization industry that wouldn’t be affected.

We also have to review the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant program which provides far more to local police than does the DOD. DHS grants are lucrative enough that many defense contractors are now turning their attention to police agencies — and some new companies focus solely on selling military-grade weaponry to police agencies who get those grants.

That means we’re now building a new industry whose sole function is to militarize domestic police departments. Which means it won’t be long before we see pro-militarization lobbying and pressure groups with lots of (mostly taxpayer) money to spend to fight just the reforms the Obama administration and some in Congress say are necessary.

Say hello to the military/police/industrial complex.

And why have we entered a time of “shoot first” in our cities? It must be because our police feel that their lives are more in danger than ever. Sorry, that isn’t supported by the facts: The number of law enforcement officers killed as a result of criminal acts:

2004: 57
2009: 48
2012: 49
2013: 27

So, if there are 765k in local law enforcement that equates to a 2013 death rate from criminals of 3 per hundred thousand per year. Also, 2013 incidents are equal to the lowest level since 1887. Yet, nationwide, America’s police kill roughly one person a day:

The Economist, August 2014

And evidence exists that this number is dramatically understated. The FB page, Killed by Police says the number of deaths at the hands of police as reported to them since their launch in May 2013, is 1450. In 1994, Congress instructed the DOJ to “acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers” and “publish an annual summary”. They have yet to do that. There are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, yet fewer than 900 report their shootings to the FBI.

Radley Balko in The WaPo concludes that militarization of police and their use of military-style force to suppress protests are bad mistakes. He quotes the Salt Lake City chief of police, Chris Burbank:

I just don’t like the riot gear…Some say not using it exposes my officers to a little bit more risk. That could be, but risk is part of the job. I’m just convinced that when we don riot gear, it says ‘throw rocks and bottles at us.’ It invites confrontation. Two-way communication and cooperation are what’s important. If one side overreacts, then it all falls apart.

We have bulked up America’s police. With DOD’s assistance, they developed units trained and equipped in military-style tactics. They demonstrate a consistent picture of organizations evolving from community-based law enforcement to security services whose primarily focus is maintaining public order. They see protests by minority or politically dissident elements as inherently illegitimate and potentially violent. The police can pretty much do whatever they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. And it’s gonna be your fault.

Order, not justice is the new goal of our police, a significant shift in emphasis. As such, displays of overwhelming force are considered a logical way to prevent organized protests from happening. If demonstrations occur in spite of police presence, then massive use of force is a logical way to quell its impact and prevent its re-occurrence.

Many things demonstrate the evolution in America of police from “Protect and Serve” to a quasi-military force. This creates an emotional distance from the communities they patrol. We see this most clearly in their casual use of force, often disproportionate to the situation, and with a near-total lack of accountability.

That is an ugly symptom of our Republic’s weakness. The crushing of the Occupy Movement’s camps and the militarized response to the Ferguson protests are the natural outcome of our new policing.

When the country was founded, there were no organized police departments, and there wouldn’t be for about 50 years. Public order was maintained through private means, in worst cases by calling up the militia. The Founders were quite wary of standing armies and the threat they could pose to liberty, but they concluded (reluctantly) that the country needed an army for national defense.

They feared the idea of troops patrolling city streets — a justified fear colored by the antagonism between British troops and residents of Boston in the years leading up to the American Revolution.

The Founders couldn’t have envisioned police as they exist today. It is probably safe to say they’d be appalled at the idea of police, dressed and armed like soldiers, breaking into private homes in the middle of the night, as happens on drug busts on most nights in America. Using militarized police to roust demonstrators would likely be appalling to them as well.

Let’s close with Radley Balko:

We got here by way of a number of political decisions and policies passed over 40 years. There was never a single law or policy that militarized our police departments — so there was never really a public debate over whether this was a good or bad thing.

It’s time to have that debate.

Who Gets the Dynamic Score?

No, it isn’t Kobe, it’s the corporations that backed the GOP in November. When Republicans took control of both houses of Congress, they won an important new power: They now can change how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scores tax cuts and budget cuts. The changes they are planning can be used to make tax cuts appear less harmful to the deficit.

For years, the GOP has wanted to change the way that the (supposedly) nonpartisan CBO calculates — or, in Washington speak, “scores” — the budgetary impact of changes to the tax code. The methodology that the Republicans want to use is called “Dynamic Scoring”. Dynamic Scoring has been popular among conservatives since the 1970s. Instead of just figuring out how much more money a tax increase would produce for the Treasury, or how much a tax cut would cost in lost revenue, the GOP wants to use complex computer models to try to predict the long-term, and broader impact of hikes and cuts on the economy, since they are looking for proof of GDP and tax revenue growth.

Here’s how it would work. In January, Republicans will be in charge of the CBO, which produces official budget projections and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), which calculates how tax laws affect revenue.

Today, when the CBO and the JCT calculate the impact of tax laws on government income, they consider how Americans might alter their behavior in response to tax rate changes. But the two staff departments do not evaluate how tax legislation could affect economic growth—largely because those sorts of impacts are hard to predict.

Republicans have believed this as an article of faith since the days of St. Ronnie. Tax cuts lead to greater economic activity, which in turn produces greater tax revenues—a perpetual motion revenue machine that is the wet dream of most Republicans. Scott Walker used this kind of “math” in Wisconsin. The result? A $2.1 Billion budget shortfall. Oh, and there is Kansas, where another Republican governor, Sam Brownback, is staring at $1.3 billion in deficits after cutting taxes and hoping for economic growth.

Math can be much easier when the answer is whatever you want it to be. But, the new math is the first step toward passing the Republican version of tax reform.

A keystone of any successful tax reduction plan is that they ought to be revenue neutral, that is, tax receipts will not go down, despite tax cuts. Using this form of new Republican math, you can inflate the value of possible future revenues from today’s tax cuts. That can be sold to the American people as a new version of “revenue neutral” although it is really a new version of “take the nickel little boy, it’s bigger than the dime”. This is extremely appealing to Republicans, since it makes tax cuts appear to cost the government less than they actually do – it allows them to say that tax cuts mostly pay for themselves—and wave the JCT-CBO seal of approval to justify that claim.

Democratic leaders and progressive economists reject dynamic scoring as an accounting gimmick, pointing to the aftermath of the Bush tax cuts as evidence that tax breaks do not create tax revenue. The Washington Examiner reports that Kenneth Kies, a GOP-nominated former director of the JCT, says that this accounting device falls:

Somewhere between pure mathematics and theology.

The real dynamic score will be by America’s corporations and financial firms.

Think it won’t happen? Incoming Chair of the House Ways and Means committee (which has jurisdiction over tax reform), is Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Last week, in an interview with the Washington Post, Ryan said he will push to make sure that the two congressional budget scorekeepers use dynamic scoring when evaluating GOP tax reform legislation. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), incoming Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said last week that he was open to implementing the change.

Ryan and Hatch can implement dynamic scoring by simply ordering the two budget scorekeepers to accept this budgeting method. If such direct intervention seems too heavy-handed, Republican legislators have another option: They can appoint directors at the CBO and JCT who will use the kind of assumptions the GOP favors. Democrats can do nothing to prevent that.

So, what will stop Congress from using politically motivated economic models that incorporate rosy assumptions? Absolutely nothing.

Behold the future − you voted in the Republicans.

In practice, Dynamic Scoring is just another way for Republicans to enact tax cuts and block tax increases. It is not about honest revenue-estimating; it’s about using smoke and mirrors to institutionalize Republican ideology into the budget process.

Monday Wake Up – November 24, 2014

Today’s wake-up is for the American people.

The NYT reported on Saturday that the Obama administration has changed the rules for American soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan. It means that our troops could have a more direct role in the fighting for at least another year. From the NYT:

Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops, or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year…

The new orders clarify the rules of engagement before US forces engage in combat. They can go after terrorist organizations; they can protect themselves, and they can come to the assistance of Afghan forces in need. This last rule has the potential to bog us down, despite the fact that troop levels are coming down to about 10,000.

Then, on Sunday, came this from the NYT under the headline: “Hour’s Drive Outside Kabul, Taliban Reign”. From the article:

…southern Kapisa Province has quietly become one of the greatest challenges of the war for the new government…In the absence of international troops or their air support, the Taliban have eclipsed the legitimacy of government forces there and in several other parts of the country… the insurgents…already control a crucial stretch of a highway leading into Kabul, and some local officials believe the militants are trying to carve a large area of Taliban rule across the lower two-thirds of the province.

Apparently, our generals have been lobbying Mr. Obama for a more aggressive posture on the ground, which explains the new rules of engagement.

Why is it so hard for us to quit Afghanistan? It was super easy to decide to go in there, and we seem to be bent on playing in that sandbox forever. We have failed once again to leave well (bad) enough alone.

But it was not just the generals and politicians who failed, it was the American people. We were astonishingly easy to corrupt. We can point to any number of contributing factors for that, overly emotional after 9/11, improper education about the Middle East, out-of-control capitalism, rapid social change − you name it, we looked the other way rather than think about consequences. Now, we are where we are, and none of us as individuals are in a position to do much of anything about it. But as a nation and as a people, we didn’t rise to the occasion.

And when was the last time the American people and their politicians actually “rose to the occasion”? Watergate? At least then both parties seemed to understand that a response was needed to the “mistake”. The Church Commission hearings and legislation on the CIA’s abuses? The Savings and Loan clean-up of the late 80s?

Let’s just say it’s been a while. Maybe it’s time we did again.

The question is whether we have any better understanding of what we are doing today. We seem to just recycle the same failed ME strategy. And it seems to be dictated more by the Congressional politics than by some informed sense of how to deal with the multiple threats we have in front of us.

On that happy note, here is today’s wake-up tune, “Sorry I Stole Your Man” by The Detroit-based Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas. They were on Letterman last week doing the same song, but the Wrongologist prefers this live version performed at the Magic Bag in July, 2012:

Some think she sounds like Amy Winehouse, but not the Wrongologist. Like their sound, and you can get up and dance to it.

Monday’s Links:

Mistakes were made: California officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump nearly three billion gallons of fracking waste water into underground aquifers. They were supposed to be off-limits, protected by EPA, who calls them “non-exempt” aquifers. They are underground bodies of water that “contain high quality water” that can be used by humans to drink, water animals or irrigate crops.

Don’t say it can’t happen here: Last week, Germany’s left-leaning Green party won, ending six decades of conservative rule in one of Germany’s wealthiest states. The 30 year-old party that former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt called “environmental idiots” have shaken up politics in their country.

Lower gas prices made gas stations more money: As gas stations cut the cost at the pump, they didn’t pass all of the savings along. The Labor Department reported that margins for fuel and lubricant retailers jumped by 26.1% in October, in a month when gasoline prices fell to an average of $3.12 a gallon from $3.46 in September.

Homeland Security is gathering in Ferguson MO: Facebook pictures of Homeland Security SUVs parked at a hotel cost a Navy veteran his job at the hotel.

Kill the robots: A vending machine that dispenses prescription drugs has been installed on Arizona State University’s campus, allowing any student or university employee to pick up their drugs from the dispenser.

RIP Mike Nichols. We remember you for films like: “The Graduate”, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, “Silkwood”, “Catch-22”, and “Charlie Wilson’s War”.

Your thought for the week: (especially you Republicans)

“The problem with doing nothing is not knowing when you’re finished.” – Ben Franklin

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Congress