brainiac conspiracy

Which Came First . . .

The serial polluter or the compliant government regulator?

During their inspection of the two Iowa farms in the past two weeks, FDA investigators have documented multiple unsanitary conditions that may have caused eggs to be contaminated.

They found dead maggots and live flies that crunched under foot at Wright County Egg, where the FDA also documented a hen house bulging from manure.

Investigators made numerous observations about holes in buildings or gaps in structures, which can allow rodents, pigeons and other animals to enter hen houses. On several occasions, investigators saw live rodents running through hen houses at both farms.

At Hillandale Farms, laboratory tests confirmed the presence of Salmonella enteritidis in water used to wash eggs before they are packaged, said Jeff Farrar, FDA associate commissioner for food protection.

In a written statement, Julie DeYoung, a spokeswoman for Hillandale, said the company was working to address the concerns raised by the FDA and restore consumer confidence. "Regarding the positive finding [of salmonella] in the egg wash water, it is important to note that after washing, all the eggs are rinsed with water containing chlorine as an additional sanitation step," she wrote.

FDA officials said Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms appeared to violate federal regulations for egg safety that took effect July 9, as well as voluntary industry standards for sanitation.

In other news, unemployment appears to be high, the war in Afghanistan appears to be stalemated, and our financial system appears to be insolvent.

Our awesome Feed the World For Cheap® brand of industrial farming is simply not sustainable anymore. One of these days our government should consider policies that make large-scale operations like Hillandale's prohibitively expensive to operate. I'm not exactly sure what the specifics would be, but some simple antitrust legislation would probably be a good place to start.

---Vitelius

Cash for Flunkers

Not sure what the administration is trying to accomplish with this new initiative, other than to invite further ridicule upon itself. Don't get me wrong---there's nothing undesirable about using the persuasive powers of government to convince people to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. I just think that this particular approach is a bit too simplistic. For one thing, a letter grade based on mileage alone ignores the added "carbon costs" associated with manufacturing certain vehicles, such as hybrids, that contain additional components such as electric motors and generators, which require additional amounts of energy to produce---not to mention lithium (batteries), which involves surface-mining operations and all of the energy/environmental costs associated with minerals extraction. And high-mileage vehicles, while being miserly on fuel, can also provide an incentive to be driven more frequently, which may or may not affect carbon emissions but which will exact a future cost of added wear and tear on public roadways.

One thing that I imagine a lot of consumers would like to see right now is some kind of Labor Index, which would estimate the number of American workers that were required to manufacture a given automobile; this would include third-party suppliers and vendors as well as assembly workers, engineers, designers, etc. It would certainly encourage consumers to think about Buying Local, as well as offering the promise of greater rewards to manufacturers who build (or parts-source) models right here in the US. But I don't imagine the administration really wants to go anywhere that involves employment numbers right now.

Of course, if the people who run our government really wanted to drive consumers into more fuel-efficient cars, they could ditch the letter grades and simply raise the federal gas tax. But I guess we can't do that since all those middle-class Mama Grizzlies out there are struggling to make ends meet on only $249,000 a year and need their tax cuts extended forever. Do we live in an awesome nation, or what?

---Vitelius

And Another Thing

Which genius in the White House politics shop thought it would be a good idea for Obama to stop holding televised press conferences? I mean, why in the world would you want an hour of prime time on the networks every three or four months so the most articulate, charismatic and well-spoken President since John Kennedy can argue his case directly to the voters? Or were they relying on a legion of lefty bloggers to handle the PR duties instead? If so, the strategy didn't work out so well.

Maybe, just maybe, it's time to get the President some face time on the teevee again?

---Vitelius

Probably Re-Stating the Obvious One More Time

But, what he said anyway:

Obama and his party are also in a hole because the president has chosen not to engage the nation in an extended dialogue about what holds all of his achievements together, or why his attitude toward government makes more sense than the scattershot conservative attacks on everything Washington might do to improve the nation's lot.

There was a revealing moment in early August when Obama told an audience at a Texas fundraiser: "We have spent the last 20 months governing. They spent the last 20 months politicking." Referring to the impending elections, he added: "Well, we can politick for three months. They've forgotten I know how to politick pretty good."

Obama's mistake is captured by that disdainful reference to "politicking." In a democracy, separating governing from "politicking" is impossible. "Politicking" is nothing less than the ongoing effort to convince free citizens of the merits of a set of ideas, policies and decisions. Voters feel better about politicians who put what they are doing in a compelling context. Citizens can endure setbacks as long as they believe the overall direction of the government's approach is right.

More simply put, politics is the public face of policy. It's the rhetorical device one employs to "sell" one's policies to the voters, and to explain why they're preferable to the other guy's. And, as Obama and his political team have been slow to figure out, you can't stop politicking once you've been elected simply because the voters gave you a mandate to govern two years ago. These days, mandates such as those have a shelf life of about six months. After that, you've got to roll up your sleeves, hit the rubber-chicken circuit, and start the campaigning all over again.

You also can't argue---as Obama did, for two long years as a candidate for the presidency---that Republicans lack either the judgment or competence to govern the country, then turn around on a dime and invite those same Republicans to help you formulate your government's policies without inviting the skepticism and wariness of independent voters. Is it any wonder why a lot of Americans---not all of them liberals---have come to wonder exactly what firm political principles Obama genuinely stands for, if he stands for any at all? How do you persuade a majority of Americans that John McCain wasn't qualified to be President in 2008, then make substantial policy concessions while asking, and receiving, nothing substantial in return---on the Recovery Act and the Affordable Care Act---to John McCain and his Republican friends in 2009?

If I were feeling more optimistic about the next two years, I'd probably tack on a different ending to this post. But I'm not.

It is too late to turn the midterm election into a triumph for the administration but not too late to salvage his party's congressional majorities. Given dismal Democratic expectations, that would now be rated as a victory. But doing so will require Obama to think anew about what "politicking" really means, to pick more than tactical fights with his adversaries, and to lay out, without equivocation or apology, where he is trying to move the country. It's just too bad he didn't start earlier.

Let's hope that Obama has at least stockpiled cases of veto pens. He's going to wear out a bunch of them next year.

Update: Proof that someone still doesn't get it. People don't want legislation that gets results in 20 years---they want results now.

---Vitelius

The Contagion of Stupid

Who needs Lucy when Charlie Brown's willing to yank the football away from himself?

With the economy rapidly weakening, some senior Democrats are having second thoughts about raising taxes on the nation's wealthiest families and are pressing party leaders to consider extending the full array of Bush administration tax cuts, at least through next year.

This rethinking comes barely a month after Democrats trumpeted plans to stage a high-stakes battle over taxes in the final weeks before the November congressional elections.

The Bush tax cuts are set to expire in December. Republicans are pushing to extend them all, while President Obama has forcefully argued that the country cannot afford to keep tax breaks on income over $250,000 a year for families and $200,000 a year for individuals.

But a growing cadre of Democrats---alarmed by evidence that the recovery is losing steam and fearful of wounding conservative Democrats in a tough election year---are advocating a plan that would permanently extend tax cuts benefiting the middle class while renewing breaks for the wealthy through 2011, senior Democratic aides said.

Makes sense to me. Saving rich folks a big chunk of money next year sure will help rustle up a few more votes for the Blue Dogs, won't it?

Hedge fund managers assembled at SAC Capital Advisors founder Steven Cohen's home in Greenwich, Conn., Tuesday evening to discuss how to help Republican Party candidates win the upcoming midterm elections.

According to a person familiar with the event, attendees included Bruce Kovner of Caxton Associates, Paul Singer of Elliott Management, Daniel Senor of Rosemont Capital, and various GOP operatives. Spokespersons for Cohen and Kovner declined to comment. Singer and Senor did not respond to requests for comment.

The gathering was intended as a strategy session during which several Republican party operatives discussed with large donors how best to deploy campaign contributions and other support so that Republican candidates could win in the upcoming midterm elections, according to the source.

Kovner, Singer and Senor are long-time supporters of conservative causes.

Among hedge funds, Singer's Elliott Management is the top contributor to Republicans so far for the 2010 election cycle, giving a total of $1.1 million away, 97% of it to the GOP, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan influence tracking group.

Cohen's SAC recently switched allegiances, giving 93% percent of its total 2010 election cycle donations to Republicans (approximately $193,000 of $207,850) through August 1, according to CRP.

Needed context outsourced to Peter Daou:

It's no accident that in 21st century America, torture has been mainstreamed, climate denial has taken firm hold, book burning, racial dog whistles and brazen religious intolerance are part of our discourse and par for the course. This is how the right plays the game, using Limbaugh, Hannity, Fox, Drudge, blogs, chain emails, talk radio, etc. to shamelessly and defiantly drag the conversation as far right as possible.

Forget the thousand explanations pundits have offered for the administration's beef with the left; this is the single biggest reason the left is furious with Obama: that one by one, he has willingly and unnecessarily bargained away the progressive positions that would move the national debate back to the center. After all, the counterweight to the right is not the mushy middle, it's the principled left. Did progressive bloggers really think Obama was going to establish a single payer health care system, bring all Bush warmongers to justice, stop the looting of the poor by the ultra-rich, revitalize the environmental movement, undo Bush-Cheney's executive power excesses, bring about true social justice and stop needless wars? No. They're far more jaded and pragmatic than anyone admits. But at least make those the debate points rather than ditch them unilaterally.

Put it this way: when you concede those same debating points to a gang of crazy people over and over again, voters just might come to the conclusion that the crazy people are more suited to govern than you are. And as a special added bonus, you piss off the people you're going to need to stand a snowball's chance of holding the Congress in November. Happy Hour starts early tonight.

---Vitelius

#globalwaronterrorFAIL

Bwahahahahahaaaaaa!!!!!

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan — Afghan Sgt. Maj. Barakatullah Kolistani, who trains army recruits, is confident that his fledgling soldiers are learning the discipline, strategic skills and marksmanship needed to defeat the Taliban.

But Kolistani, one of the base's senior enlisted soldiers, is worried about their proficiency in another key skill: driving. Particularly when it comes to the 8,000-pound-plus U.S.-supplied Humvee, the vehicle of choice in the nascent Afghan army.

He's not alone.

Afghan and American trainers at the NATO-run Kabul Military Training Center, where 10,000 recruits receive instruction at any given time, are shocked to discover just how bad the Afghans drive.

"We're losing them faster from vehicle accidents than combat," said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, commander of the 22,000-acre training center, a former Soviet base that still houses a graveyard for Soviet tanks.

More than half of Afghan army injuries result from vehicular accidents. Since 2005, 141 soldiers and recruits have died in rollovers and collisions, many caused by excessive speed, inability to negotiate curves or an unwillingness to yield to other vehicles [. . . ]

About 80% of the recruits are illiterate. Many are from rural villages and have never steered a vehicle more complex than a horse-drawn cart. Those who have driven a car have, in many cases, done so primarily in the clogged, chaotic streets of Kabul, the nation's capital, where traffic resembles a demolition derby.

Even for vehicle-savvy young Americans, the Humvee is a challenge. It is wide and top-heavy and difficult to drive around corners; the braking system is demanding and the ride jarring.

Soon the U.S. will supply the Afghan army with 5,000 Humvees equipped with armored gun turrets and heavy plating meant to withstand the roadside bombs planted by insurgents.

Pickup trucks, also supplied by the Americans, present their own problem: Many Afghan soldiers seem oblivious to their comrades riding in the open bed. A common accident involves a driver hitting a bump at high speed, ejecting the passengers in the back.

Now, you could always chalk this up as a case of creative scapegoating---blame the local peasantry for the failed policies of the Best & Brightest in Washington---but it's somewhat more difficult to explain away this bit of awesome news:

The CIA is making secret payments to multiple members of President Hamid Karzai's administration, in part to maintain sources of information in a government in which the Afghan leader is often seen as having a limited grasp of developments, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The payments are long-standing in many cases and designed to help the agency maintain a deep roster of allies within the presidential palace. Some aides function as CIA informants, but others collect stipends under more informal arrangements meant to ensure their accessibility, a U.S. official said.

The CIA has continued the payments despite concerns that it is backing corrupt officials and undermining efforts to wean Afghans' dependence on secret sources of income and graft.

The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a significant number of officials in Karzai's administration are on the payroll. Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, disputed that characterization, saying, "This anonymous source appears driven by ignorance, malice or both."

A former agency official said the payments were necessary because "the head of state is not going to tell you everything" and because Karzai often seems unaware of moves that members of his own government make.

Your tax dollars at work.

Seems to me that we wouldn't be hearing so much bad news being leaked out of Afghanistan nowadays if there were more folks in our foreign-policy/military/
intelligence establishment over there who genuinely believed that we were heading in the right direction and making good progress instead of feeling the need to leak embarrassing stories to the media. Which is another way of saying, when you start to see stuff like this proliferating in the papers, it's usually being done to let the policymakers in Washington know that their best-laid plans ain't cuttin' it in the field. Perhaps the guy in the Oval Office will sit up and take notice. Let's hope.

---Vitelius

The Pre-Owned Durango and The Olive Tree

Looks like I was beaten to the punch before I got home, but I was glad to see Cole's rebuttal to his new guest blogger's misguided at attempt running the Obama administration's Cash for Clunkers programs through the Econ 101 bullshit grinder. I only have a couple of things to add:

1. It isn't "simply a matter of supply and demand," as one of Kain's linked sources insists. It never is. If the last ten years of Wall Street shenanigans have taught us anything, it's that consumer demand can be egregiously manipulated by any number of factors ranging from unrealistic projections to fudged numbers to outright fraud. What it is is a simple matter of examining the data. Take a look at the used cars that are fetching the highest prices now: BMWs, Cadillac Escalades, Acura MDXs. This isn't a sign of any shortage of used cars on the market but a sign of dealer prices rising to meet demand as more middle- and upper-middle class consumers opt to purchase a used BMW instead of a new one, or trade in their late-model low-mileage X5 for a high-mileage older model in return for lower payments and/or reduced insurance premiums.

Now, if Dodge Neons or Chevy Cobalts---that is to say, crappy subcompacts that poor and working-class people buy when they can't afford a new car---were also fetching a premium at the dealership, we might be able to infer an overall shortage of used cars. But because that's not happening (trust me on this; I had to sell my late father's 2002 Cavalier---Blue Book value $4,200---after he died last year, and no one but Carmax would touch it for more than a grand), we can just as easily conclude that this is not a classic case of commodity shortage driving prices upward but changing consumer spending habits driving prices of certain used-vehicle segments upward. Unless you believe that poor people go shopping for used BMWs and Acuras.

My guess is, used car sales are up, way up---they usually are in a recession---and dealers are taking advantage of the increased demand for certain kinds of vehicles by marking prices up on the models they're most likely to flip quickly. And in this case, they're the most upscale models on the dealer lot since the folks with money are buying used instead of new, and the po' folks ain't in the market for used Corollas, or Cobalts, or anything else right now.

Which is my long-winded way of saying it's not scarcity that's driving prices up, but gouging.

2. I think where Kain's argument fails is in his basic premise, which relies on this prototypical classroom boilerplate:

[M]oney isn’t wealth. Money is at best a measure of wealth, which actually consists of goods. Money retains its value as long as there are goods to be traded for it. When the goods disappear, the economy grows poorer, regardless of how the money is shuffled around.

That may have once been the case when people were trading cows for magic beans, or among certain Nevada primary voters in the present day, but for the rest of us in the real world who don't rely on a barter economy, cash equals wealth, regardless of the scarcity of goods to trade for it, because one can't acquire those goods without cash in the first place. In addition, one no longer needs to engage in the trading of goods or equities to amass greater reserves of cash. Ever heard of hedge bets or credit default swaps?

Second, for all intents and purposes, there is no such thing as "scarcity of goods" anymore. This might have been the case in the mercantilist economies of Adam Smith's time, when trading relied on primarily domestic sources, and imports were minimal and mostly limited to luxury goods. But thanks to the awesomeness of globalization and dozens of international free-trade agreements, the notion of scarcity---at least if we are discussing consumer goods, as opposed to raw commodities such as oil or minerals that can't be "manufactured" anywhere*---is virtually obsolete. If there was a shortage of widgets in the United States in the 19th Century, and the cost of imported widgets was prohibitively expensive due to high tariffs, then yes, you had a domestic scarcity of widgets. But now, if I can't find widgets in the U.S., I can get them cheap from China, or India, or the Seychelles, or wherever. It's because of this lack of scarcity that prices for all manner of goods nowadays, ranging from clothes to computers, can be kept absurdly low, which is great news for consumers but bad news for workers in consumer economies who find their jobs outsourced and their wages depressed.

Finally, it is obvious on its face that the statement

When goods disappear, the economy grows poorer

is unmitigated 18-Century horseshit. When money becomes scarce---as in, when it gets hoovered out of the general economy and into the hands of fewer and fewer people, the economy grows poorer as greater numbers of people have less cash to convert into the most commonly traded goods and services. That's what's happening in America right now, and supply and demand ain't got nothin' to do with it: a rigged financial system and a regressive tax code, however, do.

3. If Cash for Clunkers failed at all, it wasn't due to its economic intentions---which, as Cole mentions, were narrow in scope and which succeeded spectacularly---but its environmental costs, which didn't really factor in the carbon costs of replacing cars that were expensive to drive with cars that got better mileage and cost less money to operate initially but which could be driven economically for far greater numbers of miles, which in turn would encourage owners to drive more frequently---increasing their carbon output on the process---and depress public demand for more efficient, alternative forms of transit such as buses, trains, etc. There was also the matter of scrapping, disposing and recycling all of the clunkers and their assorted toxic by-products, e.g., tires, batteries, gear lubes, et al, which carried considerable costs in energy and money, not to mention secondary economic costs like the added wear and tear to roadways resulting from newer, more fuel-efficient cars being driven for greater numbers of miles.

If anything, however, I think that Kain's argument against Cash for Clunkers really highlights how utterly inadequate the conventional doctrines of neo-classical economics really are to explain the workings of today's gamed and ginned-up global economy. It just ain't about supply and demand anymore---there are too many other "market externalities" to consider, as they say these days---and frankly, it hasn't been for decades.

* Markets in these sectors of the economy also have long and storied histories of fraud and manipulation. See here and here and here.

---Vitelius

Probably Re-Stating the Obvious Again

This should be good news . . .

President Obama's much-maligned economic stimulus package added as many as 3.3 million jobs to the economy during the second quarter of this year, and may have prevented the nation from lapsing back into recession, according to a report released Tuesday by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

In its latest quarterly assessment of the act, the CBO said the stimulus lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 and 1.8 percentage points during the quarter ending in June and increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million. The higher figure would come close to making good on Obama's pledge that the act would save or create as many as 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year.

The CBO said the act also increased the nation's gross domestic product by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent in the second quarter, indicating that the stimulus may have been the primary source of growth in the U.S. economy. The Commerce Department estimates that GDP grew 2.4 percent in the second quarter, a figure many economists expect to be revised lower in a report due out Friday.

The CBO cautioned that the the act's effects are expected to "gradually diminish during the second half of 2010 and beyond," leaving the private sector to pick up the slack in an economy that is already showing signs of deteriorating rapidly.

. . . but it only goes to show how wretched the state of the private-sector economy truly is. Think about it: if these numbers are accurate, we would be looking at negative GDP growth for the year and an unemployment rate (officially, anyway) of around 12.5 percent instead of 9.5 percent. Which is to say, if the CBO report is correct, that whatever recovery we've experienced over the past year and a half has almost entirely been due to the effects of the Recovery Act.

And now the stimulus money has just about all been allocated if not yet spent, and our insolvent awesome private sector is being asked to pick up the slack. Which tells me the question our wise leaders should be asking isn't "Will there be a double-dip recession?" but "How bad will it be, and how long will it last?"

It all goes to show, once again (sigh), that the communist barbarians like DeLong and Krugman and were right all along: the stimulus was too small, at least by half, and the economy urgently needs a second Recovery Act, shorn of useless tax cuts and devoted entirely to infrastructure/manufacturing jobs and aid to states. I know it would be pretty audacious to attempt to pass a stimulus bill in a lame-duck session after the November mid-terms, but some plucky Congressional Democrat should suggest it anyway. Would it be any worse than the lame-duck session I recall from a few years back where some people actually thought it would be a good idea to impeach a President after having their heads handed to them by the voters?

Then again, this is Official Washington, where Presidential Blowjobs and Muslim Hordes are pressing national emergencies in need of decisive action. Millions of blue-collar workers without jobs, no so much.

---Vitelius

Nobody Could Have Possibly Predicted

That various right-wing talking points would be patently full of shit.

---Vitelius

Random Thoughts of The Day

One of these days, our wise leaders in Washington are going to come to the conclusion that our consumer-driven economy, and the global system of credit-based capital that fuels it, are both fundamentally broken, cannot be repaired with their working parts intact, and can only be either (a) kept in a vegetative but viable state courtesy of periodic trillion-dollar infusions from the Fed and/or multi-billion dollar tax credits, or (b) unwound, repackaged and re-sold for a profit, and creditor gnashing of teeth be damned. Too bad they haven't figured it out yet, since we already know at least that the latter approach works, for a fraction of the cost of the former.

Obama likes to ridicule the GOP with his economic "car" analogies (they drove it into a ditch, they want to put in Reverse, etc.). Let's hope he comes to see, and soon, the obvious reality that there's no putting this car in either "D" or "R." The engine is blown, the drivetrain's in pieces, and it's a worthless hunk that's not going anywhere at all until it's been stripped down and rebuilt from the frame up. Otherwise, we may yet get to witness the seriocomic spectacle of a Palin Administration and a Republican Congress turning our proud citizens into a nation of foragers and dumpster-divers by the end of the decade. At least we'll be free of mosques.

---Vitelius

Another Silly Person With Nothing Serious to Say

But more power to him anyway. Maybe he can have a chat with his idiot son over this:

Many fellow conservatives say they understand the property rights and 1st Amendment issues and don’t want a legal ban on building the mosque. They just want everybody to be “sensitive” and force, through public pressure, cancellation of the mosque construction.

This sentiment seems to confirm that Islam itself is to be made the issue, and radical religious Islamic views were the only reasons for 9/11. If it became known that 9/11 resulted in part from a desire to retaliate against what many Muslims saw as American aggression and occupation, the need to demonize Islam would be difficult if not impossible. [. . .]

It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don’t want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society—protecting liberty. [. . .]

This is all about hate and Islamaphobia.

See, that wasn't so hard, now, was it? Senator Reid? President Obama?

---Vitelius

Our Awesome Zombie Decade

I'm not sure why anyone would be too surprised to read this:

They are sticking by HAMP. The narrative seemed to change from helping homeowners to spacing out the foreclosures. I asked them to repeat it, because the idea that billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to smooth out foreclosures for banks struck me as new narrative---it’s explicitly extend-and-pretend, and also fairly cynical.

Couldn't the same thing be said, on a macro-scale, about bank failures and the TARP program? I mean, I'm no whiz on global finance, but it seems to me that when you have these large institutional investors holding various financial instruments that are worth more than twenty times the amount of global annual GDP, there's a lot of worthless paper being held out there that will eventually need to be written down. By pumping close to trillion into the system, and offering up another few trillion in guarantees, we've managed to keep the patient alive, but I can't see how we get past the fact that none of these major financial institutions can even remotely cover all of their hedge bets. Unless, of course, the plan is for the Fed to dump another trillion dollars into the system every few years to buy up more and more mortgage-backed securities, and for Treasury to toss in another trillion in bridge loans, then hope that everybody's stock price/market cap continues to go up and up and up, which provides day-to-day operating capital and gives the banks more time to write down their bad paper piecemeal, as they're doing now for mortgage defaults---a billion here, a billion there, etc., etc. But I am guessing this is all just a holding pattern that's only going to bequeath to us a Zombie Decade of high unemployment and zero growth, to be culminated in the inevitable deflationary collapse of the financial system. I'd really like to be proved wrong here, but I just don't see how anyone who's done any serious reading on the subject can come to an alternate conclusion. Anyone want to try to convince me differently? I'm all ears.

---Vitelius

Is Our Journalists Learning?

I think I've figured it out. This guy is angling for Broder's job.

In a move as predictable as Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, Democrats are using Social Security scare tactics to gain ground before the November election. President Barack Obama is not only tolerating this classic old politics maneuver by his party---he is leading the charge.

Amid a flurry of Democratic Party news releases and press conferences warning voters that Republicans are targeting Social Security for destruction, the President devoted his radio and Internet address last week to commemorating the 75th anniversary of the signing of the law that created the program. He cautioned that "some Republican leaders in Congress don't seem to have learned any lessons" from the past and are "pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress." This familiar refrain might indeed help the Democrats limit their midterm losses, but Obama's involvement shows that on this issue he is putting party before bipartisanship and that he sometimes can be tone-deaf to the human element required to change Washington's acid culture.

So, let's see: informing the voters of Republican plans to privatize Social Security are "scare tactics" that "put party before bipartisanship." Even if they happen to be true. Only in the insular world of Beltway politics would the actual merits of a political argument take a back seat to whether or not it dovetailed with the minority party's ideological bent. In either words, if Republicans don't agree with your position, you'd better change it in the name of "bipartisanship"---even if you're right and Republicans are talking shit. In this fact-free, values-neutral world of perpetual spin, Democrats are not governing responsibly by being honest with voters and failing to adopt GOP talking points, no matter how deceitful they may actually be. In the world Mark Halperin inhabits, Democratic "scare tactics" on Social Security, which happen to be grounded in reality, are no more distinguishable from Republican scare tactics on "death panels," which were grounded in paranoid fantasy.

Of course, Halperin's solution is as dreary as it is predictable:

A bipartisan partnership on Social Security---as on every other tough issue, including Afghanistan, immigration, energy, education, deficit reduction and jobs---is going to require trust: trust between the President and Republican leaders to stand up jointly to the extreme forces in Congress and at the grass roots in both their parties, meet in the center, take some political risks and find creative compromises to get things done. On Social Security, that means Obama will have to support raising the retirement age and cutting some benefits, while Republicans will have to back some increased taxation. And they will have to work together and present a united front.

Can Mark Halperin point to any event in time since January 20, 2009, where this was the case, with the possible exception of funding our awesome wars? Have any Republicans in Congress signaled a willingness to raise taxes on anything, at any time, for any reason, since Obama took office? Name one.

Let's review, shall we? A year and a half ago, the Obama administration larded up the Recovery Act with $250 billion in largely worthless tax cuts in hopes of attracting Republican support. It didn't happen.

The administration acceded to conservatives' wishes and jettisoned a public option from the final text of the Affordable Care Act, and allowed it to be larded up with dozens of Republican proposals, including limits on malpractice litigation and the establishment of interstate insurance exchanges. When it came for a vote, it received no Republican support.

The administration supported a modest cap-and-trade bill to deal with the effects of global climate change. It was originally a Republican proposal in the Bush administration, but no Republicans stepped forward to support it now, and the bill never even came to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

Perhaps Mark Halperin was asleep at the switch when the GOP's ideological guru handed out his marching orders to the troops on Capitol Hill the week Obama was inaugurated: do whatever you can to ensure Obama fails. And time and time again, by using the threat of filibusters and Senatorial holds, which they've invoked an unprecedented number of times in the history of the Republic, they've managed to muck up the machinery of government while diluting Obama's public policy agenda.

With analysis such as this emanating from one the nation's foremost news outlets, is it any wonder why so many of our fellow citizens are so poorly informed about the political process in Washington?

---Vitelius

Good Thing We Know What's Really Important

Lying to Congress about using steroids to win baseball games = grounds for prosecution.

Lying to Congress about torturing people = not so much.

Our wise leaders in Washington have the most awesome priorities, don't they? (Props to Attaturk.)

---Vitelius

Libertarian Paradise

Maybe Rand Paul can explain why there's no need to regulate corporations like this since, you know, nobody in his right mind would ever go to work for them if their businesses practices sucked:

The Iowa egg producer that federal officials say is at the center of a salmonella outbreak and recalls of more than a half-billion eggs has repeatedly paid fines and settled complaints over health and safety violations and allegations ranging from maintaining a "sexually hostile work environment" to abusing the hens that lay the eggs.

In the past 20 years, according to the public record, the DeCoster family operation, one of the 10 largest egg producers in the country, has withstood a string of reprimands, penalties and complaints about its performance in several states.

In June, for instance, the family agreed to pay a $34,675 fine stemming from allegations of animal cruelty against hens in its 5 million-bird Maine facility. An animal rights group used a hidden camera to document hens suffocating in garbage cans, twirled by their necks , kicked into manure pits to drown and hanging by their feet over conveyer belts [...]

• In 1996, DeCoster was fined $3.6 million for health and safety violations at the family's Turner egg farm, which then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich termed "as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop we have seen." Regulators found that workers had been forced to handle manure and dead chickens with their bare hands and to live in filthy trailers.

• In 1999, the company paid $5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit involving unpaid overtime for 3,000 workers.

• In 2001, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that DeCoster was a "repeat violator" of state environmental laws, citing violations involving the family's hog-farming operations. The family was forbidden to expand its hog-farming interests in the state.

• Also in 2001, DeCoster Farms of Iowa settled, for $1.5 million, a complaint brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the company had subjected 11 undocumented female workers from Mexico to a "sexually hostile work environment," including sexual assault and rape by supervisors.

• In 2002, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the family's Maine Contract Farming branch $345,810 for an array of violations. The same year, DeCoster Egg Farms of Maine paid $3.2 million to settle a lawsuit filed in 1998 by Mexican workers alleging discrimination in housing and working conditions.

• In 2003, Jack DeCoster paid the federal government $2.1 million as part of a plea agreement after federal agents found more than 100 undocumented workers at his Iowa egg farms. It was the largest penalty ever against an Iowa employer. Three years later, agents found 30 workers suspected of being illegal immigrants at a DeCoster farm in Iowa. And in 2007, raids at other DeCoster Iowa farms uncovered 51 more suspected undocumented workers.

• In 2006, Ohio's Agriculture Department revoked the permits of Ohio Fresh Eggs because its new co-owners, including Hillandale founder Orland Bethel, had failed to disclose that DeCoster had put up $126 million for the purchase, far more than their $10,000, and was heavily involved in managing the company. By playing down DeCoster's role, the owners had avoided a background check into DeCoster's "habitual violator" status in Iowa. An appeals panel overturned the revocation, saying the disclosure was adequate.

• In 2008, OSHA cited DeCoster's Maine Contract Farming for violations that included forcing workers to retrieve eggs the previous winter from inside a building that had collapsed under ice and snow.

These people are going to be spending a lot of money on legal fees soon, which will really hurt their bottom line. That's why we need to extend the Bush tax cuts forever because small-business owners like Jack DeCoster will be crushed if we don't. And Obama wants to confiscate our eggs and force us to become vegans also too.

---Vitelius

More Dull Agony

I've got another fiver says we'll be seeing this headline at WND or Atlas in the next few days: "Told You So! Islamic Societies Have Higher Crime Rates: Report." You can't teach genius like this.

---Vitelius

The Dull Agony of Predictability

I've got five says that sometime in the next day or two, we're going to see a headline like this on WND or Drudge: "Did Obama Justice Department Quash Wiki Rape Probe?"
I can predict peak wingnut before they even get to thinking about it.

---Vitelius

History Repeats Itself, Unless it Doesn't

Do you remember all those fevered protest rallies back in the 1960s and '70s when thousands of right-thinking Americans took to the streets to prevent a monument to Islamic culture from being erected in Lower Manhattan? Funny, neither do I.

---Vitelius

Classy Conservatives of The Day

There is no place too low for these people to stoop:

Their Twitter logos are nearly identical, but their messages on the proposed mosque near Ground Zero are very, VERY different.

The actual developers of the controversial Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan are tweeting under the handle Park51, while an opposition parody is tweeting as Park51PR.

The real feed includes messages such as "No candidate, least of all one running for governor of New York, should exploit the imagery of 9/11 for political purposes -- Jay Jacobs" and "The Park51 controversy isn’t really about a building. It’s about erasing individuals . . ."

The fake feed, as of this morning, carries inflammatory messages such as: "There IS a need for our project! We need to laugh at Americans! We need to dance on the graves of infidels!" and "Allahu Akbar! Islam will dominate! Down with Israel (little satan) & America (big satan!) Thank u for ur support!"

The parody feed also included the tweet, "We would like to thank the media, who has been so friendly to our plight," followed by a link to a video of the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Nice. One wonders what the Pearl family thinks about that when you consider that Faisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric at the center of the Park51 controversy, delivered one of the eulogies at their son's funeral:

We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.

If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one Mr. Pearl.

And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different. It expresses the same theological and ethical principles and values.

We are here especially to seek your forgiveness and of your family for what has been done in the name of Islam.

Spare me the talk about "sacred ground." Nothing is sacred to these craven little shits. The opposition to the Cordoba Project is rooted in nothing deeper or more profound than the same old racist assholism that Republicans have exploited for political gain since Richard Nixon's time. Only the targets of their vitriol have changed.

---Vitelius

The Congressman from Orkin

If you ever need a lift in the morning, consider subscribing to Alan Grayson's e-mail list. From today's blast:

My opponent Dan Webster---endorsed in the primary by the Orlando Sentinel and by Jeb Bush---may not have a clue on what to do about joblessness, homelessness, expensive healthcare, no money for schools or endless war. But he does know what to do about divorce.

Ban it.

In the Florida Legislature, Dan Webster sponsored and supported a bill to institute "covenant marriage." In a covenant marriage, you can't get divorced.

So Dan Webster's bill reduces the institution of marriage to a roach motel: You can check in, but you can't check out.

This guy gets it. When Teabag office-seekers advance ridiculous policies and say ridiculous things, you don't debate them on the merits of their arguments or equivocate your core values---you ridicule them, again and again, in language that requires no translation. We need more people like him, and fewer people like Harry Reid, representing the Democratic Party, and Democratic principles, in Congress next year. Click here and send him some scratch for his re-election bid.

---Vitelius