The natural order of things will not be tampered with

It's been interesting to watch the Republican clown car over the last couple of weeks, as lunatic after lunatic has risen to the top of the cable news feeding frenzy (and as a result, in the Pavolvian response of GOP voters), then crashed and burned after each one's lunacy and idiocy has been so out there for the world to see, that not even a 24/7 news-o-tainment cycle could save them.

For a while there, it seemed as if Newt Gingrich would be the Big Winner™ of the Iowa caucuses, thus demonstrating what a foolish and ridiculous country we are that we allow a bunch of people who get paid to go to meetings to essentially pick our presidential nominees. But whether it's his party turning against him, or Gingrich's own socipathic narcissistic self-aggrandizing musings on The World According to Newt, his own meteoric rise seems to be over. Claiming that low-income children in cities have no role models other than pimps and hos and crack dealers so they should become school janitors after school didn't quite do it in the Party of Mean (perhaps even THAT wasn't quite mean enough), but the Money Wing of the party is concerned enough about this loose cannon that they've been pulling out the stops (NYT link):

Attack ads are blanketing Iowa, fueled by millions of dollars from his rivals and a group supporting Mitt Romney. Mailboxes are filling up with anti-Gingrich leaflets. And on the stump, his rivals have stepped up their assault on Mr. Gingrich’s time in Congress and his commitment to conservative causes.

Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, emerged in early December with a strong lead in some national polls and with commanding leads in Iowa and South Carolina. But new surveys suggest that political gravity could be dragging him down, opening the race up again and highlighting once more the fickle search among conservatives for an alternative to Mr. Romney.

“It’s definitely a full frontal assault,” said John Stineman, a Republican strategist who managed the 2000 presidential campaign of Steve Forbes in Iowa. He said the criticism of Mr. Gingrich has been impossible to avoid in Iowa. “The fact is, he’s getting killed,” he said.

For most of December, Mr. Gingrich has refused to push back aggressively against the attacks, promising a positive approach and pursuing a relatively limited schedule of traditional campaigning. He spent last weekend largely off the trail, attending a concert in Virginia where his wife, Callista, played the French horn.

Perhaps because not attending would have required another half-million in Tiffany's jewelry to placate the former bent-over-the-desk Newtie plaything.

A daily tracking poll by Gallup released on Monday showed that Mr. Gingrich’s lead has all but evaporated, leaving him in a dead heat with Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. A new CNN survey also showed the race tied nationally. And an automated poll of Iowa voters showed an even steeper drop for Mr. Gingrich, though many news organizations have reservations about its methodology.

His decline highlighted the unsettled nature of a contest in which many Republican voters say they are still open minded about whom they will vote for; a New York Times/CBS News poll this month found that two-thirds of likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa were still willing to change their minds. On Monday, Sarah Palin said on Fox Business Network that “it’s not too late” for “folks” to jump into the Republican contest.

Just in case you thought that Evita Mooselini had disappeared.

But you needn't fear that we're going to have another media love affair with Sarah Palin. What this GOP race shows is that when the rubber meets the road, the Money Wing of the Republican Party trumps the God Wing every single time. And right now, Mitt Romney, he of the millions of dollars flowing into his pockets from Bain Capital every year who is and the planned $167/year tax cut for the middle class that he claims will help because "It's not nothing", barring a surge by the Ron Paulites, should do well enough in Iowa to hit New Hampshire in pretty good shape.

Except for one thing. Jeb Bush had an op-ed in the Murdoch Street Journal the other day that sure reads both like like a cri de coeur of the Money Wing of the GOP and a campaign speech.

Let's face it: A Jeb Bush/Paul Ryan ticket is the Money Wing's dream team. Utterly committed to corporate power, huge tax cuts for the richest Americans, and a complete and radical dismantling of the social safety net, combined with a family history of complete and utter loyalty to the haves and the have-mores, and without all that Mormon baggage, it's been clear from the beginning, long before George W. Bush and Dick Cheney managed to steal the executive branch of the United States government and begin their appointed task of wrecking the nation in just eight years, that Jeb Bush has always been the one they wanted. Jeb is smarter than his brother, but every bit as heartless and committed to the destruction of the middle class -- and he's one of THEM in a way Mitt Romney, despite his second-generation money made by putting thousands of middle-class Americans out of work, just isn't -- because of all this stuff about golden plates and Jesus living here in the U.S....and that pesky governor of Massachusetts thing.

But whether Jeb decides to be a late entry, swatting the Grifter Palin away with one hand and riding in on his valiant steed to be Savior of the GOP, or the Paulie Walnuts of Bain Capital prevails, one thing is certain: The Money Wing of the Republican Party always, always, always gets its way.

Even when the Democrat wins.

The forgotten ones

The nearly 14 million unemployed people in this country are a constant reproach to the Republican economic doctrine of shoveling as much money as you can into the pockets of a few already ridiculously wealthy people. For all that the GOP is trying mightily to restrict voting so that those without automobiles or a stable address, or those whose skin pigmentation or age indicates a possible vote against their party, cannot vote; there's still this stubborn reality that there's only so much you can steal an election when a majority of Americans have had enough of waiting until corporate CEOs think they are finally rich enough to trickle some largesse down to the peons by deigning to hire them to do something at their companies. What that something would be when no one other than the 1% can afford to buy anything remains to be seen, but that's the Republican doctrine and they're sticking with it.

I keep thinking of that notion put forth on Up With Chris Hayes last weekend, that this is now a nation of wasted resources -- 13.3 million of them, in fact. But rather than blame the GOP (and to a lesser degres, the Democrats, who are willing to be bought more cheaply), and the people who finance them and turn Congressmen from rural backwaters into multimillionaires simply by demanding legislation in exchange for campaign contributions, it's so much easier to demonize those who are unemployed due to outsourcing, appeasing Wall Street through massive job cuts, changes in technology, or simple obsolescence. After all, if they can just keep those of us who still have jobs separate from those who don't, perhaps enough votes can be squeezed out of the middle class to elect enough Republicans to completely demolish our way of life more quickly than the piecemeal efforts we've seen over the last thirty years.

The easiest way to do this is to paint the unemployed as somehow different from those of us lucky enough to still have jobs. So what the GOP is trying to do is turn all of the unemployed, no matter what their age or race or work history, into "the new n----rs" -- lazy, shiftless, drug-addicted leeches on society. Newt Gingrich advocates that anyone receiving any kind of federal aid (such as extended unemployment benefits) be drug tested. So does Congressman Jack Kingston.

All this brings us to word this morning of a "compromise" that may be reached today in the budget stalemate that threatens to shut down the government on the 16th of this month. When I hear "compromise" in the context of negotiations on Capitol Hill, what that means is "Democratic Capitulation", because the Democrats have shown again and again that there is no Republican plan to which they won't eventually capitulate, because if they don't, Chuck Todd and Bob Shieffer will paint them as obstructionist. Of course history has shown that capitulation doesn't change the media spin one iota, but that doesn't stop them from doing it. And of course there might be some trickle-down largesse from lobbyists as a consolation prize as well.

Today an editorial from the New York Times breaks down the Republican plan, just so you know what's coming when the Democrats blink, as we all know they will:

At last count, 13.3 million people were officially unemployed and 5.7 million of them had been out of work for more than six months. At no time in the last 60 years has long-term unemployment been so high for so long.

But Republican lawmakers would have you believe that the nation cannot afford jobless benefits and that many recipients are not so much needy, as lazy, disinclined to work as long as benefits are available. When was the last time any Republican lawmaker tried to live on $289 a week, the amount of the average benefit?

Under current policy, federal benefits kick in when state-provided benefits run out, typically after 26 weeks. The duration of the federal payouts depends on the level of unemployment in a given state. Currently, workers in 22 of the hardest-hit states — including California, New Jersey and Connecticut — qualify for up to 73 more weeks of aid. In five other states — including New York — up to 67 more weeks are available. In the remaining 23 states, maximum federal benefits range from 34 weeks to 60 weeks. The cost to continue the program for another year would be about $45 billion.

The Republican plan would cut $11 billion of that in 2012 by slashing up to 40 weeks from the program, reducing by more than half the maximum 73 weeks now available. Because of the way the program is structured, the biggest cuts would come in the states with the highest unemployment. Millions of jobless workers would be quickly left without subsistence, and the weak economy would be weakened further by the drop in consumer spending.

The bill would also impose onerous — and gratuitous — requirements on people who apply for jobless benefits. It would allow states to drug test applicants and would require recipients to be high-school graduates or working toward an equivalency degree

Don't look at your neighbor who does construction and hasn't worked in a year. Don't look at your spouse who can only get contract work for half the pay he used to get and no benefits, paid holidays, or vacation time. Don't look at the sixty-year-old down the street who's spent his own money on courses to keep his skills up to date and can't find a tech job because the industry is "too fast-paced" for him. Don't look at the machinist on the next block who would be happy to retrain for something if he only knew what kind of training would net him a job where he could supplement his wife's pay as a waitress at iHOP and maybe get their home out of foreclosure. Just convince people that all of those people are lazy, shiftless drug addicts -- just like those black people the GOP used to demonize when it was OK to do so (and if you're Newt Gingrich, you think it still is) and that unemployment can't happen to them.

This tactic of pointing people's attention down the economic ladder to the boogeyman of choice while the people up the ladder take the last few bucks out of our back pockets has worked for thirty years, convincing Americans that THEY are somehow different, that poverty will NEVER affect THEM, because THEY aren't LIKE those OTHER PEOPLE.

Except that in the Great Recession of the Oughts, yes, they are. The only question is how many of them know it, and how long it will be before they join them.

Did anyone actually think this would turn out any differently?

I don't know why anyone thought that locking six Republicans in a room with ANYONE who doesn't march in lockstep with them would result in anything other than Nothing Accomplished (NYT link). This is a party that has now definitively identified itself as the Party Of I Got Mine So Fuck Off And Die, so what gave anyone the idea that these people would ever emerge with a plan for the top 1% to kick in even one tiny copper penny more?

I often wonder exactly what Grover Norquist has on these guys, that their oath of fealty to him supersedes any sense of responsibility they might have to their oath of office. And why does it bother no one that this country is run by Grover Norquist, with House and Senate Republicans (and the clown car that is the 2012 GOP field) as his public face?

The Republicans on the committee are claiming Democratic intransigence, but just who's refusing to compromise here?



Republicans have forgotten that they and their wealthy buddies were paying the pre-Bush tax cut rates all through the 1990s, and the economy was humming along just fine. Tax rates seem to have little effect on economic activity, which has many influences. But Republicans live in a world in which only their interests count -- and the interests of those who have made them quite wealthy themselves as they sit in Congress receiving a government check and paid health insurance without contributing even as much to this country as my local DPW guys do -- and God knows the DPW in my town leaves a lot to be desired. Because of their obeisance to Grover Norquist, Republicans would rather see my COPD-afflicted mother suffocate to death rather than have the nebulizer that helps her breathe, and my chemotherapy-undergoing father fade away rather than have treatment that has an 85% effectiveness rate. They'd rather see low birth weight babies among the poor and deaths in childbirth rather than have Medicaid. They'd rather see the disabled dying of exposure on the streets than have such a thing as Supplemental Security Income. Got two kids and your husband dies? Too bad, lady -- get a job, because there are no more Social Security survivors' benefits. That Paul Ryan benefitted from that program is immaterial -- he got his so fuck off and die.

The Republicans have always been like this, but at least they used to be honest about it. Now they dress up in populist clothing and benefit from corporate-funded groups with names like Americans for Prosperity to dupe the uninformed into thinking that no sacrifice is too great for the poor and the middle class to make in the service of allowing the plutocrats to amass more and more and more and more of this country's wealth just so that they can have a vain hope of maybe landing a job someday.

Not one day goes by that I don't have George Carlin's voice in my head reminding me, "It's a big club -- and you ain't in it." Because he knew in 2005 what too many people still refuse to believe in 2011.

And so the so-called supercommittee, which everyone knew was just a ruse to kick the can down the road a little further, has failed. This is a microcosm of the failure of our entire system of government. So perhaps it's time to give up this bullshit about American exceptionalism and admit that we are just another failing empire, just another plutocracy. It's time to stop deluding ourselves and just try to get through as best we can.

Did anyone honestly believe this would turn out any differently?

I don't know why anyone thought that if you put an equal number of elected Democrats and Republicans in a room, they'd come up with anything different from what Republicans have been insisting on ever since the 2010 elections.

Now it seems that this so-called "supercommittee" will be similarly deadlocked, and the across-the-board cuts mandated by its failure will go into effect. Because the Republicans on the committee are adamant: No new revenues, all cuts, most of them in the social safety net:

It’s hard to see how the Super Committee can possibly reach a consensus by this time next week after Republican co-chair Jeb Hensarling’s appearance on CNBC Tuesday night. The short version is that he left the ball in Democrats court, and hinted that if the committee fails, Congress will spend the next year or so trying to change the terms of an automatic penalty to make sure that hundreds of billions of cuts to defense programs never take effect.

Hensarling claimed that if the committee recommended even a dollar of new net tax revenue — the kind of revenue Dems are demanding — it would constitute a step in the wrong direction. He said a GOP plan put forward by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) — one which Republicans claim would raise revenues by nearly $300 billion over 10 years, but would also make the Bush tax cuts permanent — is as far as Republicans are willing to go on revenues. But that’s an offer Democrats flatly rejected as unserious. And unless one of the parties breaks cleanly with its publicly stated position, the committee will either fall well short of reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years as required by law, or will fail altogether.

“We have gone as far as we feel we can go,” Hensarling said. “We put $250 billion of what is known as static revenue on the table, but only if we can bring down rates [but] any penny of increased static revenue is a step in the wrong direction. We can only balance that with pro-growth reform and frankly the Democrats have never agreed to that…. if we can’t get any type of reforms in health care, which has helped drive the nation towards insolvency, then, no, there’s no reason to frankly put any static revenues on the table.”

When Hensarling says “static,” he means revenue that will actually, predictably come into the Treasury. Republicans claim in a Laffer-ite way that their preferred tax policy will create enough economic growth to raise revenues even if the math says it won’t. Democrats reject that kind of analysis.

Democrats reject this analysis because it's been shown over the last thirty years to be not true.

Yes, a low-tax policy DOES serve to make the rich richer, and that is the only group of Americans that matters to Republicans. But the "rising tide lifts all boats" doctrine that has governed Republican economic policy for the last thirty years has been shown to be false. And yet the Republicans insist on raising the tide for the wealthy over and over and over again, followed by finding a nice boogeyman for the middle class and the increasingly poor to point at instead of realizing just who is screwing them over.

The Democrats have blinked again and again in the face of Republican economic terrorism. What hasn't had much coverage is how the Democrats have put Social Security and Medicare on the table in their effort to appease these terrorists. But nothing short of scorched-earth obeisance to the Koch brothers and their ilk will suit these Republicans. And so we may very well soon see what the America of Republian dreams looks like.

Say goodbye to the life you've known, because when this happens, it's game over for the rest of us.

Proof that the Republicans think they'll be taken along when their corporate masters leave this country a rotting, smoking ruin

These Republicans (and the Democrats who similarly do the bidding of banks and corporate CEOs) are a funny lot. There are still the Bush dead-enders who still think that if they Just Work Hard Enough™, they'll be in the Rich Guys Club too someday, but an increasing number of us -- you know, those who watch that George Carlin video over and over again, know that the game was rigged thirty years ago when Ronald Reagan said that if you just give the rich enough money, the stuff that overflows from their stuffed pockets will "trickle down" to us. The saddest cases aren't the long-term unemployed who know they'll never work again and after Working Hard Enough their whole lives, now find themselves going to the church food pantry for some boxed macaroni and cheese. The saddest cases are people like the Peter Griffin soundalike who recently called Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren a "socialist whore":



This is someone who's a victim of The Big Club, but he's so invested in the Just Work Hard Enough meme that to realize that everything he believed in is a lie would probably destroy him. It's easy to forget that when these people send around e-mails of Obama with a bone in his nose, or take guns to Democratic candidate appearances, and vote again and again against their own self interest, choosing candidates who point their attention elsewhere so that the latter's corporate masters can steal the last few bucks out of the former's back pockets, they're operating out of fear -- a fear that the Big Club has spent thirty years tapping, and will continue to tap until we're all scrambling for scraps.

The politicians who do the bidding of the Big Club think they're part of it. They get invited to conclaves given by the Koch brothers and they receive the largesse that the Big Club gives them and they think that when the middle class has been successfully destroyed, they'll be on that Big Boat with the Big Club, swilling Dom Perignon from the cleavage of hookers. They don't realize that they'll be left behind too. And it doesn't matter that

And that explains why, now that they seem to have successfully stymied any attempt to rebuild the job base in this country, they're going after the unemployed (NYT editorial):

Tragically, the more entrenched the jobs shortage becomes, the more paralyzed Congress becomes, with Republicans committed to doing nothing in the hopes that the faltering economy will cost President Obama his job in 2012. Last week, for instance, Senate Republicans filibustered a $60 billion proposal by Mr. Obama to create jobs by repairing and upgrading the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure. They were outraged that the bill would have been paid for by a 0.7 percent surtax on people making more than $1 million.

Things may be about to get worse.

Federal unemployment benefits, which generally kick in after 26 weeks of state-provided benefits, are scheduled to expire at the end of the year. That would be a disaster for many of the estimated 3.5 million Americans who get by on extended benefits — an average of $295 a week. It would also be a blow to the economy, because it would reduce consumer spending by about $50 billion in 2012 — which would mean slower economic growth and 275,000 lost jobs. Unfortunately, given Republicans’ demonstrated willingness to ignore human needs and economic logic, it is more likely than not that jobless benefits will be a major battle in the months ahead.

There are no plausible arguments against an extension — in fact, Congress has never let federal benefits expire when the unemployment rate was higher than 7.2 percent. But there are many specious arguments, chief among them that providing benefits reduces the incentive to get a new job. The evidence says otherwise.

A recent paper by Jesse Rothstein, an economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research, shows that benefit extensions in early 2011 raised the jobless rate by about 0.1 to 0.5 percentage points, but most of that was due to benefit recipients staying in the labor force and actively looking for work during the time they are collecting benefits, rather than, say, dropping out in despair.

Unemployment benefits are the first line of defense against ruin from job loss that is beyond an individual’s control. In a time of historically elevated long-term unemployment, they are an important way to keep workers connected to the job-search market. They are also crucial to ensuring that the weak economy doesn’t weaken further.

The Republicans blocking an extension of unemployment benefits seem to WANT there to be mass despair and a complete elimination of the middle class. They seem to think that when everyone is poor except the Big Club and themselves, that somehow they'll benefit. But there's no way the Big Club can buy enough STUFF to keep an economy this size healthy, and that's really the point. The Big Club already has its sights set elsewhere. It could be China, it could be India, it could be the Philippines, it could be Indonesia. It could be the entire Middle East, for all we know. But if you finish a Big Bulp from 7-Eleven and you're still thirsty, you buy another Big Gulp. And as long as there's another Big Gulp to be had for the Big Club, they don't care about the giant, non-bio-degradable plastic cup they leave behind.

These politicians will find this out after it's too late.

I'm starting to think we may have to eat the shit sandwich again after all

In case you thought that we might be able to survive four years of Mitt Romney:

Speaking at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s annual meeting, Mr. Romney said his plan would cap spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product by 2016, and would require $500 billion a year in spending cuts. To accomplish this, Mr. Romney explained, he would eliminate all nonessential government programs, including Amtrak, return federal programs like Medicaid entirely to the states and improve the productivity and efficiency of the federal government. He would also immediately cut all nonsecurity discretionary spending by 5 percent across the board.

Mr. Romney’s proposal for Medicare is similar to the hotly debated plan that Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, introduced in April. Mr. Ryan’s plan would replace Medicare and offer payments to older Americans to buy coverage from the private market.

Mr. Romney’s proposal would give beneficiaries the option of enrolling in private health care plans, using what he, like Mr. Ryan, called a “premium support system.” But unlike the Ryan plan, Mr. Romney’s would allow older people to keep traditional Medicare as an option. However, if the existing government program proved more expensive and charged higher premiums, the participants would be responsible for paying the difference.

He presented his plan as offering more choice — though younger Americans would need to be prepared to possibly pay more, for instance, depending on which plan they selected.

“Younger Americans today, when they turn 65, should have a choice between traditional Medicare and other private health care plans that provide at least the same level of benefits,” he said. “Competition will lower costs and increase the quality of health care.”

He concluded, “The future of Medicare should be marked by competition, by choice, and by innovation, rather than by bureaucracy, stagnation and bankruptcy.”

Yes, because health insurance companies are stumbling all over themselves to get your business, each one offering a better plan than the one before. And they're so innovative -- like the way they fight every claim just to see how long it'll take to wear you down before you stop fighting.

I've had a pretty decent health plan for Mr. Brilliant and I the last few years. We get it through my employer, so we're "only" paying about $3600 of the annual premium. It's got a $20 co-pay for preventive care, a $250 per person deductible, and covers 90% of "usual and customary" after that. Now "usual and customary" seems to be based on medical fees back in the days when Don Draper was taking little Sally to the pediatrician, but this plan has worked out OK for us.

So of course 2012 is the last year we'll have it.

After 2012, we'll be offered two plans -- an 80% plan with a low deductible, 80% coverage in-network and only 60% outside; or an high-deductible plan with an HSA. The difference in employee premiums is about $2000, so perhaps if I put that $2000 into the HSA along with the $500 the company will kick in, it'll offset most of the $2700 deductible for two people...assuming of course that we could pay for all $225 of your standard office visit out of the HSA, rather than the sixty bucks that in Insurance Delusionland is "usual and customary."

This is the world into which Mitt Romney wants to spill all the elderly. Oh he's making noise now about how there'll be a choice, but what senior citizen in his right mind would choose to try to buy an individual insurance policy instead of Medicare?

Keep in mind that Mitt Romney is worth a quarter of a BILLION dollars, and a health insurance premium is like lunch money to him.

And yet he and his buddies just can't kick even one more nickel apiece. Good heavens, no. After all, Mitt Romney worked so hard to get his money -- working hard to buy up companies, dismantle them, and throw their employees in the trash can. And the Koch brothers certainly shouldn't be asked to kick in anything else. After all, they're billionaires, which means they worked harder than we do, right? And the fact that they inherited their business from their father means nothing, right? How about the Walton children? They have $87 billion. And they made it by starting out as greeters, right? Hardly -- they inherited it from old Sam Walton. But they can't kick any more, can they? Not without extreme hardship.

After all, America has to be kept safe for the Walton children, and Prescott Bush's children, and George Romney's son, and Fred Trump's son, and so on.

And if that means that the poor and the sick and the elderly have to lay down and die, so be it.

So where does that leave us? Do we hold our noses and vote again for a President who's already shown that his futile, quixotic quest to be liked by a bunch of greedy, racist bigots is more important than anything to him? Do we stick with a bunch of corporatist Democrats who give lip service to the middle and working class but behind the scenes know full well that it's all over, and they're going to get their piece of the pie before it all goes to shit and the rest of us start killing each other for cans of baked beans?

In the past we could rely on Democrats to at least be the guardians of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, even if they sold us out on everything else. But thanks to the so-called "supercommittee", and Obama's willingness to let mandatory cuts kick in if this small group of intransigent Republians and sellout Democrats can't come up with a compromise (as if that were even possible), and this tendency they have to learn all the wrong lessons when they get clobbered and move even further to the right, it's hard to have any faith in them either.

So we're left with a choice -- we either let it all go to shit now, or have a few more tolerable years before it's all Mad Max.

Hardly what we had in mind in 2008, is it?

It's a big club...and you ain't in it.

I will post this as many times as it takes:



Yesterday Rick Perry unveiled his so-called "flat tax plan", offering up the twin pillars of temptation for the uneducated: simplicity and the false promise of "job creation" -- as if those who head up corporations are going to magically, out of the goodness of their hearts, "create jobs" if we just give them enough money; if we just make them RICH ENOUGH. How rich that is remains to be seen, but we've been shoveling money into CEO pockets for thirty years now and they don't yet seem to be rich enough -- if in fact the trickle-down doctrine worked, which of course we know it doesn't.

Rick Perry is at six percent in the polls right now, so perhaps even discussing his tax plan is a moot point. But Republican voters have already shown themselves to be a fickle lot, easily tempted by Teh Shiny at any given moment. And Perry is a huckster, a snake-oil salesmen dangling promises of jobs and income tax filing that a ten-year-old can do and a cushy retirement brought to you by the same people who almost brought us to global economic collapse three years ago. His "plan" is the bastard child of Ronald Reagan and Steve Forbes, and it's designed to do one thing: tempt the stupid with the promise of easier April 15ths and the false promise of a better lot through the further enrichment of the already-wealthy. It's snake oil, and we will see in the next few weeks if Republican voters -- and the pundits who have shown themselves to be equally fickle -- buy it.

The ugly underbelly of Perry's speech (which you can read here) is the demonization of what he calls "The Federal nanny state", with its misogynistic undertones. In Rick Perry's world, those in need of help -- the elderly, the sick, those affected by natural disasters who DON'T live in Texas, the poor, the unemployed -- deserve our contempt, not our help. Because in Rick Perry's world, reaching for a brass ring that is systematically out of reach because there are no public schools, no nutrition programs, no Head Start, nothing to help move the children of tomorrow out of poverty or keep the middle class kids of today from sliding into it, is what has to be done in order to keep the rabble from realizing what the 1% has done, is doing, and will continue to do to them.

Rick Perry's plan, as does Herman Cain's plan, is designed to give that top 1% MORE. It reminds me of that ad a couple of years ago, I think it was for big-screen TVs, and the guy is standing there in the electronics store as the voice of Freddy Mercury shouts:

I want it all
I want it all
I want it all.....and I want it now!

Here's what the 1% has gained since Americans started believing Ronald Reagan that if you Just Give The Rich ENOUGH, they will piss silver dollars and gold coins upon you (NYT link):

The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, in a new report likely to figure prominently in the escalating political fight over how to revive the economy, create jobs and lower the federal debt.

In addition, the report said, government policy has become less redistributive since the late 1970s, doing less to reduce the concentration of income.

“The equalizing effect of federal taxes was smaller” in 2007 than in 1979, as “the composition of federal revenues shifted away from progressive income taxes to less-progressive payroll taxes,” the budget office said.


[snip]

The report found that higher-income households got a larger share of the pie, while other households got smaller shares.

Specifically the report made these points:

¶ The share of after-tax household income for the top 1 percent of the population more than doubled, climbing to 17 percent in 2007 from nearly 8 percent in 1979.

¶ The most affluent fifth of the population received 53 percent of after-tax household income in 2007, up from 43 percent in 1979. In other words, the after-tax income of the most affluent fifth exceeded the income of the other four-fifths of the population.

¶ People in the lowest fifth of the population received about 5 percent of after-tax household income in 2007, down from 7 percent in 1979.

¶ People in the middle three-fifths of the population saw their shares of after-tax income decline by 2 to 3 percentage points from 1979 to 2007.

George Carlin was right in 2005. They want it all. They want it all and they want it now...and what little you have, they're going to take it. Your pension? Gone. Now you have a 401(k) that pays fees to Wall Street banks out of your money, and you sit there while a man lies dying of pancreatic cancer in California at the age of 56 and all you can think of is how his death is going to affect your retirement. That statement you get every year that tells you how much you're likely to get from Social Security in retirement? Just shred it. Because you're going to get bupkis. You'll get bupkis because THEY WANT IT ALL AND THEY WANT IT NOW. Whether you're a baby boomer, Gen-Xer, Gen-Yer, millennial or Brownie scout -- forget it. Because you're getting bupkis. You'll get bupkis because THEY WANT IT ALL AND THEY WANT IT NOW. A permanent job with benefits? Forget it, you're getting (if you're lucky) a contract job that pays half of what you used to make. Because THEY WANT IT ALL AND THEY WANT IT NOW. Good public schools for your kids? Forget it. In the very near future you'll have to pay to send your kids to school. There's no money for schools because THEY WANT IT ALL AND THEY WANT IT NOW. Clean air to breathe instead of vaporized mercury? Forget it. We have to dismantle the EPA becase THEY WANT IT ALL AND THEY WANT IT NOW.

They'll promise you that this anal rape with a red-hot poker they're delivering to you will give you a shot at their club...that you too can someday join them in that top 1%. But there's a reason it's the top 1%. It's a big club....and you ain't in it.

And you will never, ever, ever be.

Rick Perry will, though. Because he's aiming for a position where he can give them what they want.

All of it.

Around the Blogroll and Elsewhere: Is It Friday Yet? edition

Well, I've already run over Maggie's tail with the chair casters, so today's not off to a great beginning. And to make matters worse, she insists on sitting on the floor in the same place. Life is like that around here sometimes as Maggie heads into her dotage, one that finds me trying, far too belatedly, to correct her incessant yowling before she get senile and it never stops.

So what's going on?

A week without Driftglass skewering David Brooks ls like a week without sunshine. (WARNING: Some seriously disturbing Photochopping to be found at the link.)

Once upon a time, two nice young men had a blog called Pandagon. Ezra Klein may have gone on to Pundit Stardom, but the OTHER original Pandagonist, Jesse Taylor, does a nice job of pointing out how Herman Cain's Say No Three Times in German plan will make people more expensive to employ. Can we say "Job-Killing Tax CUTS" now?

I really, really, really hate to link to anything at HuffPo, but this is a good one (and Amanda Terkel DID used to be with ThinkProgress): Scott Brown may have plagiarized his web site from Elizabeth Dole, but Herman Cain may have lifted his from Sim City. (More on this from Southern Beale.)

Michael J.W. Stickings blogs even earlier than I do, this time on Rush Limbaugh's War On Romney.

Laffy sets the record straight.

CheezWhiz: The Occupy movement need look no further than FDR's 1944 State of the Union address.

Some "Elsewhere" from the You Can't Make This Up file: The son of the late Bo Diddley, who carries his father's name, was arrested last night as part of Occupy Gainesville (FL), in Bo Diddley Park.

Rick Ungar on Congressional Republicans' relentless drive to kill women.

And on that same subject, I'll leave you with Congresswoman Jackie Speier from last night's Rachel Maddow Show, telling it like it is on the Republicans' war on women:

This is what "Let him die" looks like

This needs no further comment from me:



(via)

Ron Paul's doctrine of "personal responsibility" in action

Yes, Americans who do not buy health insurance must take the consequences of their actions, according to Ron Paul. What he didn't tell you is that part of that "taking the consequences" is leaving behind $400,000 in medical bills for your family to pay:


Once again, I ask you: Exactly what of this (and like the Carlin clip about how you're not in the club, I'm going to post it as many times as I have to), is not true?

All you need to know about the Republican candidates

This is all they've got:

Forget the next world, in THIS world you're on your own*

On Friday Nate Silver wrote about the monetary cost of a storm like the one currently battering the east coast:

The procedure I have used to estimate economic damage — this is going to get a tiny bit technical — is to regress the logarithm of economic damage on three independent variables. The first two variables are the storm’s wind speed, and the distance of the storm from New York City, at its closest approach to Manhattan. The third variable is how many fatalities the storm caused in the Southern United States (these were significant in the cases of Hurricane Donna in 1960, Hurricane Agnes in 1972, and Hurricane Floyd in 1999), which is used as a proxy to segregate out damages caused in the South from those in the Northeast in the case of storms that made multiple distinct landfalls. The figures I am going to show you, therefore, reflect estimates of the economic damage to the Northeast from various types of hurricanes, including but not limited to the New York City metro region.

Click through to the article to see the full-size chart. But we are talking about $3.5 to $5.6 BILLION in economic damage from a storm just like this one. And that's just damage to the city, not to anywhere else. The numbers for damage in the range of this storm, by the time it's over, will be staggering. After wreaking havoc from North Carolina to Maine, it's almost unimaginable.



Of course thanks to Eric Cantor, whom President Obama lacks the courage to confront, we're all going to be on our own after this one, because King Eric refuses to give one dime of Federal aid unless it's offset by spending cuts elsewhere -- and presumably he's going to want those spending cuts to come out of Social Security and Medicare. So if you're, say, in your late fifties or early sixties, you might get federal aid to repair your house, but you're going to pay for it later on.



Even if you don't think you're going to need help because you have insurance, you might want to guess again, particularly if you do not have flood insurance (and most of us who don't live in a designated flood plain don't, though I am seriously reconsidering that).



And that of course brings us to Ron Paul, who thinks FEMA isn't necessary and we should go back to the good old days of the Galveston Flood:

Citing the Galveston hurricane in 1900 that obliterated much of the Texas coast, the libertarian-leaning congressman said Americans were able to rebuild their cities and put up a seawall without the federal government's help.

Yup, thems was the good ol' days, yessirree:

The citizens of Houston knew a powerful storm had blown through and had made ready to provide assistance. Workers set out by rail and ship for the island almost immediately. Rescuers arrived to find the city completely destroyed. It is believed 8,000 people—20% of the island's population—had lost their lives. Estimates range from 6,000 to 12,000. Most had drowned or been crushed as the waves pounded the debris that had been their homes hours earlier. Many survived the storm itself but died after several days trapped under the wreckage of the city, with rescuers unable to reach them. The rescuers could hear the screams of the survivors as they walked on the debris trying to rescue those they could. A further 30,000 were left homeless.



So many died that corpses were piled onto carts for burial at sea.The dead bodies were so numerous that burying them all was not possible. The dead were initially weighted down and dumped at sea, but when the gulf currents washed many of the bodies back onto the beach, a new solution was needed. Funeral pyres were set up wherever the dead were found and burned for weeks after the storm. The authorities passed out free whiskey to sustain the distraught men conscripted for the gruesome work of collecting and burning the dead. More people were killed in this single storm than the total of those killed in all the tropical cyclones that have struck the United States since. This count is greater than 300 cyclones, as of 2009. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

There's a part of me that says, "Yes, let's let the Ron Pauls and the Eric Cantors of the world run things. Let's have the country run by people whose staffers call the police when their constituents try to get a meeting with them, and who charge $15 per question and who assume that everyone who lost his/her job because the CEO ran the company into the ground or outsourced everything to low-wage countries is a drug addict. Let's have a country where the people in this Daily Show segment are in charge:







The one problem with this is that once the teabaggers get a taste of the country for which they clamored, they'll scream bloody murder to have their programs reinstated. But it will be too late.



(For those who didn't get the title reference...)

Dispatch from Cluelessistan

Mitt "Corporations Are People Too" Romney, you know, old "I'm unemployed too" -- is planning to quadruple the size of his house in La Jolla, California:

Romney has filed an application with the city to bulldoze his 3,009-square-foot, single-story home at 311 Dunemere Dr. and replace it with a two-story, 11,062-square-foot structure. No date has been set to consider the proposed coastal development and site development permits, which must be approved by the city.



The former governor of Massachusetts purchased the home three years ago. According to a description from the listing agent, the Spanish-style residence at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac is sophisticated and understated in its décor, “offering complete privacy and unsurpassed elegance.”



Tentative plans call for new retaining walls and a relocated driveway, but would retain the existing lap pool and spa.



“This offering represents a truly unique opportunity for a buyer who appreciates the scarcity of this caliber of real estate,” the listing said.



Constructed in 1936, the three-bedroom, 4.5-bathroom home was among the first built in the Barber tract neighborhood, according to the La Jolla Historical Society, and has a stretch of lawn sloping to the white sand beach.



“I wanted to be where I could hear the waves,” Romney told a gaggle of media last year at a book signing in University City. “As a boy we spent summers on Lake Huron and I could hear the crashing waves at night. It was one of my favorite things in the world; being near the water and the waves was something I very badly wanted to experience again.”

The Romneys also own a $10 million lake house in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire and a townhouse in Washington, DC.



We now return you to the endless right-wing litany of shrieking over Barack Obama's two week stay in Martha's Vineyard. Because only Republican presidents are allowed to take vacations. Especially when they wear "rancher" drag while doing it, because that makes all the manly-men of the media feel all, like, you know, manly.

Next!

Now that Rick Perry has only been running for President for 72 hours and has already accused Fed Chair Ben Bernanke of treason and said he could expect some bodily harm if he ever went to Texas, the Money Guys of the Republican Party appear to be already looking out for an alternative to The Mormon, The Beard, and The Cowboy.



The latest name to be floated? This guy:







Yessirree, the Undead Austerity wunderkind himself:

Bill Bennett, from somewhere in the West, e-mailed me: “There are many talented candidates in the race already, but there is always room for a man of Paul Ryan’s intellectual depth, temperament, talent, and conviction.” Bennett and Ryan go way back. In a piece in the Weekly Standard from January, Fred Barnes recounted:

Ryan came to Washington after graduating from Miami of Ohio in 1992 to work for Republican senator Robert Kasten of Wisconsin. When Kasten lost later that year, he recommended Ryan to [the late Jack] Kemp. As Kemp’s assistant, Ryan met the intellectual leaders of supply-side economics, including Larry Kudlow, Art Laffer, Alan Reynolds, and Jude Wanniski. He sounds starstruck in talking about them today.

Bennett says Ryan hasn’t changed. “He was the exact same person then, only younger.” Bennett remembers Ryan asking him, “Dr. Bennett, I’m thinking about running for Congress. Does this pass the laugh test?” Bennett thought it did. Ryan, elected in 1998, still addresses Bennett as “Dr. Bennett.”

It sounds like Dr. Bennett is prescribing a presidential run. Whether Ryan will oblige remains to be seen. But Bennett is on to something: There is still an opening in the field for a conservative Republican with smarts and a broad electoral reach, especially one who has already successfully engaged the president. For those who think President Obama can be beaten on his policies not by personal quips, Ryan remains an attractive figure.

I don't know about you, but if I'm going to vote for a Creature of the Night, it's going to be this one:

OK, I wanted to do this, but I'd look like a copycat so just click over

IT'S PEOPLE!!!

Eric Cantor shows that George Carlin was right.

I want you to bookmark this post, in which I once again note what George Carlin said back in 2005, barely three years before he decided he'd had enough of this Goddess-forsaken level of reality and checked out of this mortal coil. Bookmark it and watch it every single day for the rest of your life, just to make sure that you're not surprised when the social safety net is completely eliminated because we have to shovel more and more and more and more and more and more and more cash into the pockets of people who already have more than they can spend in 1000 lifetimes. At the very least, watch it every single fucking day until the 2012 eletion, just in case you're ever inclined to believe it again when Barack Obama says he's fighting for you, or Nancy Pelosi says NEXT time we'll draw a line in the sand. You can donate to Blue America candidates if you want, like I did yesterday because I wanted a shot at winning a Green Day-autographed Fender Stratocaster for Mr. Brilliant that he didn't even want because he has a Fernandes electric guitar that he insists is a nicer guitar than today's Strats, but that I figured we could sell and donate the proceeds to some worthy cause because while I adore my colleague whose 12-year-old loves Green Day, I'm not giving a 12-year-old a Stratocaster.

Anyway, if you're like me, you kept checking the bloodbath on Wall Street yesterday, wondering just how much less your retirement savings were going to be worth by the end of the day. I'm not going to say I've done everything right financially in my life. If I had back the money I spent on clothes I bought because they were on sale and never wore and eventually took over to the Caring About the Strays thrift shop I'd probably have at least a few thousand dollars to show for it. Seriously -- I've sold at least 36 pairs of leggings at garage sales for a buck a pair and still kept a few for working out. At one time I thought those were the only pants I'd ever be able to wear, so I bought them whenever they were ten bucks in the Newport News catalog. Then there's the small collection of antique cloche hats that I bought during my Roaring Twenties phase, and the Edwardian costume hats I bought during my Gilded Age phase, and all kinds of other assorted crap I didn't need. But while I didn't start putting any real money into 401(k) plans (yes, Gen-Xers, I came along too late for defined benefit pensions) until I was well into my thirties, I've been diligent ever since and lucky enough to work for employers for the last decade who also kicked in a fair amount. You see, I've always assumed that Social Secrity wouldn't be there for me, because Republicans have been making noise for the last thirty years that they want to get rid of it.

What I didn't bank on is that they also wanted us to get sick and die quickly once we reached a certain age. I know now that it was silly to think that way, especially since I knew that Republicans, blinded with greed as they are, HAVE no souls and HAVE no empathy with those who are poor, or elderly, or disabled. But would they be monsters enough to pull the rug out from the Federal health care system that provides medical care for those who could never possibly buy insurance on the open market, either because they are too sick already or because the actuarial tables don't favor them as profitable?

Well, now we know the answer. Yes they would. And that shandeh far di goyim Eric Cantor is leading the charge:

If you, like me, are over 55, do NOT take any comfort in Cantor's statement that you will be "indemnified" from being cast out on the street. The only thing that Cantor wants to "indemnify" is the Republican Party against a wholesale rejection by every single person in this country who is over 55. Because what Cantor is doing here is not just trying to shore up Republican support among the elderly and soon-to-be-elderly, but also to foment generational warfare. I mean, Gen X would line up all baby boomers against a wall and shoot us TODAY if they thought they could get away with it. What do you think is going to happen in the near-term future, as more Marco Rubios enter Congress, and the now-elderly boomers, having seen our retirement savings collapse and can't even vote anymore because we are now living on the streets, no longer have ANY political clout? If you're already on Social Security and Medicare today, they'll leave you alone because not even David Brooks would tolerate them yanking your benefits from you. But if you are NOT yet in the system, if you are age 61 or under, heed George Carlin's words: They're coming for your Social Security. If you are age 64 or under heed his larger point: they're coming for your Medicare. And the Democrats have proven with this debt ceiling cave-in that they will do absolutely nothing to stop them.

When ideology and lust for power trumps EVERYTHING

We are already starting to see what happens when a political party is hijacked by people who are crazy AND stupid (NYT link):

Even though many on Wall Street believe that a default remains unlikely, the financial markets are starting to become agitated. Volatility in stocks has soared, and some investors say stock prices are falling because a United States default could severely raise companies’ costs of doing business.

In the Treasury market, investors are starting to sell, fearing that the government will not make good on some interest payments that will be due next month. And complex financial instruments that will pay out if the United States defaults have become twice as expensive to buy as they were at the start of the year.

Analysts say the signs of panic are small for now.

“The metaphor is a pile of sand,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “You keep putting one piece of sand on the pile, nothing happens, and then, all of the sudden it just caves.”

Several traders and bankers, including Mr. Zandi, said the imminence of a possible default was already damaging the United States’ standing as the most creditworthy country in the world. The tarnished reputation may linger, even if the government reaches a deal, and especially if the country’s financial books remain unbalanced.

“Our aura is diminished. You know people really view the U.S. as the AAA, the gold standard, and I think we’re tarnishing that,” Mr. Zandi said.

The government began preparing for much tougher borrowing conditions in the years since the financial crisis, shifting toward issuing longer-term debt. This was especially needed because much of the debt issued to cover the financial crisis of 2008 was short-term debt.

The United States still enjoys low borrowing costs — below 3 percent on a 10-year-note — but there is fear that the theatrics around the current debate will increase those costs. Low national borrowing costs translate into lower borrowing costs for American corporations and individuals.

You'd think the crazies that have hijacked the Republican party would listen to their deity, Ronald Reagan:

These reactionaries who control the Republican Party now like to talk about how the Federal budget is just like a household one. But when someone running a household finds himself $20,000 in credit card debt, he doesn't stop paying the mortgage and tell his child who has cystic fibrosis that he can't afford her treatment anymore and tell his boss he can't come to work because he can't buy gasoline and instead has to send all that money to Capital One so that he can pay off $25,000 by the end of next month. What he does is cut out luxuries -- the lattes he buys on his way to work, his gym membership, the weekly dinners at Enzo's Casa La Expensive. He decides what he really needs and comes up with a plan to pay off his debt over the long haul. And he considers taking a second job on weekends or setting up a small business to bring in some extra money. Perhaps his wife decides that now that the sick child seems to be doing OK, she can go back to work. Because if it's important to him to pay off that debt, he's going to go at it from both the spending and the revenue side.

But for today's Republicans, it all has to be from the spending side. And it all has to be taken from the elderly and the poor, which is like the fictional guy I cited above deciding that he has to pay off his debt by stopping his child's treatments and medications because he simply can't wake up without a Starbuck's venti latte with an extra shot of espresso every morning and working out at home is for wusses.

Yesterday I posted about freshman Republicans who are still bringing home the bacon to their home states because one state's pork is another state's vital project. They refuse to cut their own projects. They refuse to cut the military, despite the trillions being spent on two pointless wars and military actions that always threaten to become a third. They refuse to ask the population equivalent of the guy for whom a thermos of coffee from home isn't good enough because he's rather sacrifice his kid's lifesaving meds than give up his Starbuck's to do without the latte and kick in a few more pennies. If this country is like a household, and it's like the family I created for illustration purposes, then the Republicans and their rich donors are like the father in this fictional family if his attitude were "If the kid dies, she dies. She costs me too much money anyway. And oh, Mom? We can't afford to have you live here anymore. Your stuff will be out by the curb tomorrow."

Their tentacles are everywhere

Guess who bought and paid for the opinions of the nation's top climate change-denying scientist:

Dr. Willie Soon is certainly entitled to his theory that global warming is caused by solar variations rather than CO2, especially given his field of study within astrophysics—Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences. But getting paid to $1 million by the Koch Brothers, Exxon and a fleet of other energy industry giants makes Soone a stooge.

Now, it is possible that Dr. Soon developed the theory that solar variations cause climate change before the $1 million in grants began to arrive in his bank account, but it’s just as likely that he was approached by the energy industry and developed the theory for the express purpose of earning his keep.

Soon himself states in a Reuters interview:

I have never been motivated by financial reward in any of my scientific research. I would have accepted money from Greenpeace if they had offered it to do my research

Question: if Greenpeace had funded his studies, would his research have aligned with their point of view?

If we are to get unvarnished scientific opinion, there cannot be the appearance of corporate influence. Soon may be sincere in his theory, but his acceptance of oil and coal industry grants do much to discredit his studies, even if there is possible value in his ideas. And it seems that Soon has had his ideas peer-reviewed.

Greenpeace filed a Freedom of Information Act and obtained information revealing the Koch Brothers gave Soon $175,000 in 2005/2006 and once again in 2010. The American Petroleum institute gave Soon grants totalling $274,000 between 2001 and 2007, and Exxon Mobile provided Soon with $335,000 in grants between 2005 and 2010.

One can’t really fault Soon for wanting a payday or for holding such a theory on climate change—but we can certainly be skeptical of his sincerity now. Like every American, Soon seems to have a price.

I could get behind this

Driftglass has an idea for allowing Obama to cave on a no-revenue, all-cut deal to raise the debt ceiling:

Well, everyone has an imaginary scenario, so here's mine.

The Obama Administration announces next week today that since the GOP refuses to participate in good faith in the actual work of governing the United States, in order to avoid defaulting on our national debt and sending the world into a global financial meltdown, the Administration would accede to Republican demands that all deficit reduction be accomplished solely by making radical cuts to existing government programs with no increase in taxes.

However, in the spirit of the Time Honored Conservative Principle of Federalism, the President adds that the cuts would not be allocated programmatically, but geographically by state.

[snip]

Under the Obama Administration's proposed "Reward Wealth Producers and Penalize Moochers American Value Re-alignment" Act, "wealth producing" states such as New York, California, Illinois who have traditionally received less than a dollar back for every dollar they pay in taxes would be exempt from any budgetary cuts, and would qualify for across-the-board tax cuts since wealth-producing states should always be accommodated and encouraged in every way possible, regardless of circumstances.

On the other hand, the "welfare mooching, deficit-teat-sucking" states such as Kansas, Arizona, Kentucky and Alaska who have for years gotten away with parasitically looting their wealth-producing neighbors by receiving more than a dollar back for every dollar they pay in taxes will now assume 100% of the responsibility for eliminating the federal budget deficit. Each of these welfare mooching, deficit-teat-sucking states will be given a block rescission amount representing the percentage of the federal deficit for which they will be now be help legally responsible.

I'm on board. Let's get moving with it.

This is what happens in the aftermath of "voting by tantrum"

Those independent voters who see Mitt Romney as a shiny new object that they can live with just because they're all pouty and angry at Barack Obama might want to look at Florida governor Rick Scott as a cautionary tale. Because in a sea of really shitty, mean-spirited teabagger governors, this greedy bastard takes first prize:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed “a landmark Medicaid overhaul” yesterday that will put “hundreds of thousands of low-income and elderly Floridians into managed-care plans.” The proposal “gives managed care companies more control over the program that’s paid for with federal and state money,” a shift the state GOP claims will “hold down spiraling costs in the $20 billion program.” However, as TP Health editor Igor Volsky pointed out, a five-county pilot program in Florida already revealed that such a plan produces “widespread complaints and little evidence of savings.” Under managed care, states “have to ensure that private payers aren’t looking out for short term profits by denying treatments or reducing reimbursement rates” and — given what occurred during the pilot program — the results “are already less than promising.”

But Scott may have another reason to push a dubious bill into law. As Mother Jones reported, one of the private managed-care companies that stand to gain from the new law is Solantic, “a chain of urgent-care clinics aimed at providing emergency services to walk-in customers. Solantic was founded in 2001 — by none other than Rick Scott:

The Florida governor founded Solantic in 2001, only a few years after he resigned as the CEO of hospital giant Columbia/HCA amid a massive Medicare fraud scandal. In January, according to the Palm Beach Post, he transferred his $62 million stake in Solantic to his wife, Ann Scott, a homemaker involved in various charitable organizations.[...]

“This is a conflict of interest that raises a serious ethical issue,” says Marc Rodwin, a medical ethics professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. “The public should be thinking and worrying about this.”

But they won't. Because after all, Anthony Weiner has a penis, and that's SO much more important.