Crumbling Infrastructure-Satellite Edition

From All Things Considered yesterday:

Then, Lubchenco used the occasion to point to the importance of NOAA's satellite program.
Ms. LUBCHENCO: Satellites are a must-have when it comes to being prepared in detecting and tracking dangerous tropical weather. Not having satellites and not applying their latest capabilities could spell disaster.
HAMILTON: And she said there's a very real possibility that could happen.
Ms. LUBCHENCO: The future funding for our satellite program is very much in limbo right now.
HAMILTON: Already, Lubchenco said, the agency has been forced to delay the launch of a critical satellite. It would have traveled in a polar orbit, beaming down information for weather and climate forecasts. As a result, when the current satellite doing that job stops working, there will be no replacement.
Ms. LUBCHENCO: We are likely looking at a period of time a few years down the road where we will not be able to do severe storm warnings and long-term weather forecasts that people have come to expect today.
HAMILTON: And Lubchenco says satellites aren't just for hurricanes.
Ms. LUBCHENCO: For example, our ability to do a five-day heads-up about the severe tornadoes that hit a couple of weeks ago was a direct consequence of our having polar orbiting satellites.
HAMILTON: Lubchenco's comments come after years of warnings by groups, including the National Academy of Sciences, that the U.S. needed to replace many aging satellites used to study and monitor the Earth.

The Republican attempts to slash non-defense, non-entitlement spending, combined with constant tax cuts, leads to valuable basic science funding being slashed.  These programs don't have a strong constituency, but they have large real-life effects, and are extremely cheap based on their usefulness.  This nation will suffer for many years because of the 30 years of malinvestment under generally Republican guidance.

Net Recipient States

Via Ritholz, this:

Happily, the Tax Foundation — a conservative Washington-based think tank — has, however unintentionally, provided the answer. In 2007, the foundation published a survey of 2005 federal spending in each state and compared that with each state’s contribution in federal taxes. In other words, the foundation identified the states that sponge off the federal government and those that subsidize it. The welfare-queen states and the responsible, producing states, as it were.
The list, alas, hasn’t been updated — in part, no doubt, because conservatives didn’t like what it revealed: that those states that got more back from our government than they paid in were overwhelmingly Republican. The 10 biggest net recipients of taxpayers’ largess were, in order, New Mexico, Mississippi, Alaska, Louisiana, West Virginia, North Dakota, Alabama, South Dakota, Kentucky and Virginia. The 10 states that paid in the most and got back the least were New Jersey, Nevada, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Illinois, Delaware, California, New York and Colorado.
Now, that list has surely changed since the middle of the last decade — Virginia has probably gotten richer and paid in more; Nevada has surely gotten poorer and paid in less. But today’s ranking are probably much the same, unless farming and manufacturing suddenly pay more than finance and high-tech. Even allowing for cyclical variations and political transformations, it’s patently clear that the states that drain the government also constitute the Republicans’ electoral base, while those that produce the wealth constitute the Democrats’. Far from strengthening our moral character, the red states plunge us into the slough of dependency.

That is funny overall.  I think it is interesting that a state like Connecticut, home to many hedge fund titans, is a pretty high tax state, but governors in the Midwest claim that people are moving south to get lower taxes.  I think the real driver is the weather, but what do I know, I also thought that I might see the sun for more than 4 days in May.  I just love to see somebody point out the obvious: that the people who are the biggest beneficiaries of government dislike it the most.

Does Privatizing Prisons Work?

Matthew Yglesias says no:

Privatizing prisons hasn’t been the boon that was promised:

The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run prisons — even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates.
The state’s experience has particular relevance now, as many politicians have promised to ease budget problems by trimming state agencies. Florida and Ohio are planning major shifts toward private prisons, and Arizona is expected to sign deals doubling its private-inmate population.

There are important general lessons here. The genius of the real private economy is that firms that are really poorly run go out of business. It’s not that some magic private sector fairy dust makes the firms all be runs soundly. Lots of bad businesses are out there. But they tend to lose money and close. Meanwhile, well-run firms tend to earn profits and expand. The public sector doesn’t have this feature. Just because a public agency is inept is no guarantee that it will go out of business. Resources are allocating according to political clout rather than any criteria of merit. It’s a problem. But it’s not a problem that “privatizing” public services actually solves. There’s no magic private sector fairy dust.

I'm not surprised that private prisons end up costing more than publicly-run prisons, as there has to be a profit factor figured in there.  But also, I would guess that while the private prisons pay guards and other workers much less, they end up paying executives more.  They also will end up handling more administrative duties that are spread out over all the prisons in the public system.  Therefore, they end up doing redundant work that adds up to higher costs than a similar publicly-run prison.  I think that higher executive pay and profits for the shareholders is considered a feature by Republican governors like John Kasich, not a bug.  They really don't care about how much government spends, they really care about where they spend it.

Who Owns U.S. Debt?

Robert Reich says rich Americans (via Mark Thoma):

Forty years ago, wealthy Americans financed the U.S. government mainly through their tax payments. Today wealthy Americans finance the government mainly by lending it money. While foreigners own most of our national debt, over 40 percent is owned by Americans – mostly the very wealthy.

This great switch by the super rich – from paying the government taxes to lending the government money — has gone almost unnoticed. But it’s critical for understanding the budget predicament we’re now in. And for getting out of it.  

Over that four decades, tax rates on the very rich have plummeted. Between the end of World War II and 1980, the top tax bracket remained over 70 percent — and even after deductions and credits was well over 50 percent. Now it’s 36 percent. As recently as the late 1980s, the capital gains rate was 35 percent. Now it’s 15 percent.

Not only are rates lower now, but loopholes are bigger. 18,000 households earning more than a half-million dollars last year paid no income taxes at all. In recent years, according to the IRS, the richest 400 Americans have paid only 18 percent of their total incomes in federal income taxes. Billionaire hedge-fund and private-equity managers are allowed to treat much of their incomes as capital gains (again, at 15 percent).

He doesn't have any solid numbers here as to what the wealthiest own, because I'm sure a lot of that debt is held by mutual funds and pension funds.  I would guess most wealthy Americans have fairly small holdings in Treasuries as a percentage of their portfolios.  Regardless, he gets the chance to repeat a lot of numbers which can use repeating. In the meantime, Paul Krugman points out that Paul Ryan is again calling for lower taxes on the wealthy to create growth.  I still want Paul Ryan to explain where all the growth is from the Bush tax cuts.  The fact of the matter is that the wars in Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the Great Recession are most responsible for the deficits we are currently running.  Throw in Medicare Part D, and you have the Republicans as primarily responsible for the mess we are in.  CBPP points that out again.

Add Another Clown to the Circus

Elspeth Reeve reports Michele Bachmann will announce her presidential candidacy in June:

Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign is "beyond speculation," a Republican consultant tells Fox News' Chris Stirewalt. "They are doing this." The Minnesota congresswoman's advisers are telling reporters that it's "very likely" she'll jump in the race now that the lineup is starting to shake out. With evangelical favorite Mike Huckabee dropping out, Newt Gingrich in freefall practically minutes into his campaign, and Sarah Palin looking like she won't run, only Rick Santorum stands between Bachmann and the social conservative vote.

In another good sign for Bachmann, the early favorable polls for Donald Trump's faux candidacy show that some Republican voters, at least, have an appetite for sharp attacks on President Obama, something at which Bachmann excels. Since Trump announced that, you know what, business is his "greatest passion" after all, calls to Bachmann's offices "have been burning up our lines," a source told Fox News' Carl Cameron. One caller deemed the Tea Party favorite "our Margaret Thatcher!"

The Republican candidates for president should ride to the debates in one car, and not because that would be fuel efficient.

How the Very Rich Are Different

Chuck Marr compares how Republicans treat the very wealthy compared to average Americans (via Mark Thoma):

Congressional Republican leaders are trying to put a new twist on how the very rich are different.  By seeking to reduce long-term deficits entirely through huge budget cuts that fall disproportionately on low-income programs — rather than a balanced package of budget cuts and tax increases — they are effectively arguing that wealthy Americans shouldn’t have to sit with other Americans at the table where sacrifices will be made.
As the chart shows, the top 400 have enjoyed the best of both worlds over the past couple of decades:  dramatically higher incomes and much lower taxes.  Between 1992 and 2008 (the period the IRS data cover), the average share of their incomes that these households paid in federal taxes dropped from 26 percent to 18 percent, while their annual incomes shot up by over 700 percent, after inflation.  And still, Republican leaders insist that wealthy Americans shouldn’t pay a penny more in taxes.

He goes on to highlight planned Republican cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Pell Grants, and how those will affect Americans who are definitely not very wealthy.  It amazes me that Republicans claim all Americans should share in the sacrifice, but don't ask the best-off Americans to give anything more up.  It is truly bizarre.  Never in the past 60 years have the wealthiest Americans paid less in tax, yet Republicans won't acknowledge that this fact is one of the main reasons we are in such dire financial straits.  And yet when the time comes for sacrifice, people who have benefitted so much as tax rates came down, aren't asked to pay rates closer to what they used to.  Unbelievable.

John Boehner is Full of Crap or Stupid

Steve Benen thinks he means what he says (via Mark Thoma):

But that’s not what this is about. The House Speaker is presenting an economic vision based on fantasy, confusion, and lies. The man simply has no idea what he’s talking about.
Marcus, Bloomberg, and Chait walk through a striking list of bizarre errors of fact from Boehner. He said the economy will be worse off if the debt ceiling is raised without massive cuts. He thinks the Recovery Act “hurt” the economy. He believes the public sector is “crowding out” private investment. Boehner’s certain the economy “never” grows after a tax increase. He’s convinced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “triggered the whole meltdown” of the U.S. financial system.
These claims aren’t just wrong; they’re ridiculous. It has nothing to do with Democrats vs. Republicans, or left vs. right. This is Boehner vs. reality.
At an almost instinctual level, the political establishment tends to strongly resist this. I more or less understandable why — considering Boehner’s rhetoric at face value, and assuming he means what he says, is almost terrifying to think Boehner is so painfully confused.
But here we are. We’re left with the discomforting fact that it appears the Speaker of the House, Congress’ most powerful official, when dealing with the nation’s most important issue, is functionally illiterate, bringing the sophistication of a slow child to the debate.

I am stunned to talk to everyday people who believe what Republicans say.  Either the Republicans are completely ignorant and blind to reality, or they are the biggest, most conscience-free shills for rich assholes who like to screw over people who aren't as lucky and crooked as them (or both).  I haven't decided which is the case, but I'm leaning more and more toward ignorant.  Ten years of tax cuts haven't helped the economy.  All the banks (especially the investment banks) are responsible for the housing boom and bust.  The stimulus stopped the economic freefall.  All of that is obvious to anyone with eyes in their head.  Arguing against this is faith-based argument.

Gingrich Throws His Oversized Ego Into the Ring

Matt Taibbi on Gingrich announcing his presidential candidacy (h/t The Dish):

Purely from a political-theater standpoint, Gingrich brings several really outstanding qualities to this race. For one thing, he’s a legit threat to win the nomination. He wouldn’t be in any normal year, but when the field is Donald Trump, Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum, anyone who can successfully lick a postage stamp without an instruction booklet is going to be a contender.

I can't believe that a single political party could come up with so many pathetic candidates for president, and yet they have.  It is going to be a very entertaining year-and-a-half.  And yet, if the economy tanks again, something I think is a very real possibility, one of these bozos may get elected.  That is not entertaining at all.

Selling Out

AP:

As 2010 drew to a close, the mayor of Newark, N.J., was staring into a budget abyss so deep that he sold 16 city buildings to pay the bills. They included the architecturally significant Newark Symphony Hall and the police and fire headquarters. In New York, the transit authority may sell its Madison Avenue headquarters, complete with an underground tunnel connected to Grand Central Terminal and air rights to build a skyscraper on top.
And soon, if state legislators have their way, private investors will be able to buy plenty of other municipal treasures: power plants in Wisconsin, prisons in Louisiana and Ohio and municipal buildings in Boston.
The Great Government Tag Sale is on. As states and cities struggle with billions of dollars in shortfalls, elected officials are increasingly selling public assets to cover their costs. Sometimes municipalities sell the buildings to pocket a one-time pile of cash and then lease them back so they can continue to use them.

This is pathetic.  We are going to get screwed by private investors who buy these properties, because too many people just hate government.  Taxes on the state and federal level keep getting slashed to help out the people who don't need help, while everybody else has to pay more.  This will not end well.

The Elephant in the Room

It's nearly impossible to cut the deficit entirely on spending cuts.  Especially when the Bush tax cuts would cause most of the future deficit if they are extended like John Boehner and Republicans want:



 Chart via Andrew Sullivan

Boehner and the Republicans need to get their heads out of their asses and face up to the fact that the Bush tax cuts are stupid.

Andrew quoted Ezra Klein's explanation:

Extending the Bush tax cuts over the next 10 years, which Boehner favors, will increase the deficit by twice as much as the $2 trillion in spending cuts he's calling for will reduce the deficit.

These guys have no business being in government.  A vote for them is a vote to destroy our society.

Ohio More Dangerous Than U.S.-Mexico Border

So says CQ Press (h/t John Cole):

Rep. Silvestre Reyes smacks down the Orange Man.

Speaker Boehner should focus on controlling the level of violence in his own state before tarnishing the image of border communities that remain among the safest places to live in America.  As his office asserts that Congress cannot consider reforming our broken immigration system until border violence is under control, the fact remains that the six largest cities in Ohio all have higher rates of violence and crime than every major city along the U.S.-Mexico border.  In fact, the Speaker's own district in Dayton, Ohio saw more homicides in 2009 and 2010 than Texas' four largest border cities combined, despite the fact that Dayton's population of 141,500 is only about one-tenth of the size by comparison.

And the greater violence in Ohio spans all categories:

According to the most recent City Crime Rankings Survey by CQ Press, Ohio's cities have higher rates of violence and crime in every category, including murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft than border communities.

The data:
Murder Rate (National Rate = 5.0 Murders per 100,000 Population)

15. Dayton 25.5
25. Cleveland 20.0
34. Canton 16.6
35. Cincinnati 16.5
69. Toledo 11.3
72. Columbus 10.9
87. Akron 9.7
117. Laredo 7.5
250. San Diego 3.1
252. McAllen 3.0
292. Brownsville 2.2
292. Yuma 2.2
305. El Paso 1.9

Cities Ranked by Highest Rates of Crime (400 total)

7. Cleveland
20. Dayton
22. Washington, D.C.
24. Cincinnati
27. Toledo
37. Canton
47. Akron
49. Columbus
144. Laredo
204. Yuma
221. San Diego
275. El Paso
291. McAllen
304. Brownsville

And what is really amazing is that the murder rate in Dayton was much higher in the 1970's than it is now.  I think the murder rate peaked in 1974.  It is amazing what 24-hour news does to your mind.

What Happened to Sarah Palin?

Joshua Green goes back to Sarah Palin's fight against the oil companies in Alaska, and asks what might have been:

Let’s stop here and go back for a moment to the convention speech—the alchemic moment of excitement and fantasy when Sarah Palin became the star of national politics. Listening to it today, you can practically hear her shift registers, the state figure morphing into a national one, the old Palin becoming the new. She touches on the pipeline, the corruption, how she broke the oil companies’ “monopoly on power” and ended a “culture of self-dealing.” But all of that is overshadowed by the full-throated assault on Barack Obama, rooted in deep cultural resentment, that became the campaign’s ethos and remains Palin’s identity. What resonate are her charges that Obama wanted to “forfeit” the war in Iraq and that he condescended to “working people” with talk of “how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns.”
That didn’t carry her to Washington, but it did reshape the contours of American politics. Today, there aren’t many Republicans of the type Palin was in Alaska; but nearly every Republican seeking the White House strives to evoke the more grievance-driven themes of her convention speech. Regardless of whether she runs too, her influence will be more broadly and deeply felt than anyone else’s. But it’s hard to believe that her party, or her country, or even Palin herself, is better off for that.
What if history had written a different ending? What if she had tried to do for the nation what she did for Alaska? The possibility is tantalizing and not hard to imagine. The week after the Republican convention, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the whole economy suddenly seemed poised to go down with it. Palin might have been the torchbearer of reform, a role that would have come naturally. Everything about her—the aggressiveness, the gift for articulating resentments, her record and even her old allies in Alaska—would once more have been channeled against a foe worth pursuing. Palin, not Obama, might ultimately have come to represent “Change We Can Believe In.” What had he done that could possibly compare with how she had faced down special interests in Alaska?

I am violating my original rule of not mentioning Sarah Palin unless she announces a run for President, which I made on my first day of blogging.  I think she may have come up in an aside on a post or two, but I generally haven't followed her soap opera.  I think this article is definitely worth reading, as it presents an interesting portrayal of Alaska, the oil industry and Sarah Palin's amazing, really, accomplishment in taking on her own party and  Big Oil.  I think it is interesting when mentioning the convention speech that he also doesn't mention the mantra of that convention, "Drill, Baby, Drill."  Somehow, the ultimate slogan of obsequiousness to Big Oil became the rallying cry most often voiced by the one opponent of the industry in Alaska that beat them.  Unfortunately, the former governor's personal flaws and biases combined with her competitive nature to undermine all that she actually did accomplish.  I think Joshua Green's article title is correct, "The Tragedy of Sarah Palin."  The whole thing is worth reading.

The Tea Party and Liberals Each Misrepresent the Founding Fathers

William Hogeland looks at the economic roots of the American Revolution and how various factions have appropriated what they want to support their causes, even if it is incorrect (h/t Yves Smith):

Yet despite constant appeals to founding values by politicians and pundits across the political spectrum, a perennial American eagerness to avoid framing our founding period in economic terms can make it strangely difficult to keep those all-important 18th-century finance issues in historical focus. The Tea Party movement, for example, has laid its claim on the founding period, and to a great extent that claim is indeed an economic and financial one. Casting the modern welfare state as a form of tyranny, in large part because of what they see as its excessive taxation, Tea Partiers invoke the famous American resistance to Parliament’s efforts to raise a revenue in the colonies without the consent traditionally given by representation. Seeing founding-generation American patriots as unified against British taxation (and frequently misrepresenting the politics even of the elites they invoke), the Tea Party defines its own anti-government, anti-tax values as essential to American identity.
The Tea Party thus edits out an alternative view of government that prevailed among the ordinary 18th-century Americans who were all-important to achieving independence. Those Americans opposed elites epitomized by the Boston merchant class, which the Tea Party, perhaps appropriately enough, so strongly identifies with. The internal struggle for American equality was as important to the founding as the high-Whig resistance to England, but the Tea Party can’t deal with the populist leaders and militia rank-and-file who wrote the socially radical 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution, or the Shaysites of Massachusetts who marched on the state armory, or the so-called whiskey rebels who inspired federal occupation of western Pennsylvania. American Revolutionary patriots all, those democratic-finance leaders had ideas about government’s role in ensuring economic equality that prefigured programs of the 19th-century Populists and the 20th-century New Dealers, the very programs the Tea Party wants to dismantle. Tea Party history therefore has to expunge the welfare state’s roots in America’s founding.
Liberals, too, can have a problem with the economic conflicts of the founding period. Alexander Hamilton’s national finance program, which Madison and Jefferson opposed with such intensity, was economically regressive. Under the influence of the founding financier Robert Morris, Hamilton made a stunningly successful effort to yoke American wealth to great national projects by beating down the popular-finance movement and promoting the interest (in both senses!) of the high-finance elites. Yet when some of today’s liberals look to Madison for support in critiquing Hamiltonian finance, they come up empty. Madison’s attacks on central banking represented anything but an argument for democracy and economic equality.

There is a lot more interesting stuff there, especially when it comes to the New Dealers claiming Jefferson's heritage in their reforms.  I've been struck by the irony of Republicans claiming the mantle of Lincoln, the savior of the Union, emancipator of slaves and supporter of federal grants for the transcontinental railroad and the Land Grant Universities, even though the party is now a states rights party, anti-civil rights, opposed to federal involvement in the economy, and with it base located in the former Confederacy.  Likewise, the Democrats claim Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, even though each would be anathema in today's Democratic Party. 

My favorite more recent example of a party claiming history it now has no business claiming is when Republicans claim that they are the party of civil rights, because liberal Northern (especially Northeastern) Republicans (find me a liberal Republican today) joined with LBJ to pass the Civil Rights Act over the opposition of segregationist Southern Democrats.  I've actually heard Rush Limbaugh make that claim.  He neglects to mention that most of those Southern Democrats became Republicans when Barry Goldwater ran in 1964 on throwing out the Civil Rights Act, and the national Republican party froze out the liberals in the Northeast, who became Democrats.  That is an amazing example of appropriating history which doesn't match reality.

Does Cutting State Taxes and Expenditures Increase Growth?

Richard Florida looks at a new economic study:

A new study by Tulane's James Alm and Janet Rogers of Nevada's Department of Budget and Planning (h/t Ryan Avent, whose deadpan tweet noted that it was likely to spark a "lively discussion") takes a close look at the effects of tax and spending policies at the state level.  Entitled  "Do State Fiscal Policies Affect State Economic Growth?", it examines  50 years of data  (from 1947 to 1997),  tracking  the effects of state tax policies, spending policies, and political orientation on economic growth. Looking at the different policy approaches and strategies that have been pursued at the level of states and cities and comparing their results provides a useful lens through which to examine pressing national issues. Alm's and Rogers' main findings are certainly interesting; "lively" is quite likely an understatement for the sort of debate their findings should inspire.
There are two major take-aways. First, a "state's fiscal policies have a measurable relationship with per capita income growth, although not always in the expected direction." Tax impacts, they report, are "quite variable"; "expenditure impacts are more consistent."
Second, they find "moderately strong evidence" that a "state's political orientation, as indicated by whether the governor is Republican or Democrat, whether the state has enacted tax and expenditure limitation legislation, and whether the state frequently elects a governor of the same party as the incumbent, have consistent, measurable, and significant effects on economic growth."  And then they drop their bombshell: "Having a Republican governor," they conclude, "is associated with lower rates of growth." They qualify their conclusions slightly--but only slightly--noting that past measurement errors may have introduced some distortions into the record.
Taken together, these findings seem to support the spending orientation favored by liberals and pose a rather stark challenge to Republican governors who are embracing austerity.

In the current political environment, any data may run into a chicken or egg problem.  Midwestern states which have lost large numbers of manufacturing jobs have been losing young people for years.  Their populations are aging, and have fairly low college graduation rates, their economies are struggling.  It might be more of an issue of demographics leading to Republicans getting elected, in which economic growth is already stagnated.  Then when the Republicans start pushing through their gay marriage bans and abortion restrictions, they drive away even more young people.  It is an interesting concept, though. 

How Does Privatization Work in Indiana?

Kay at Balloon Juice challenges the alleged competency of Mitch Daniels:

Specifically, I’d like to look at one instance of his alleged competence and responsible stewardship of taxpayer money.
Daniels is currently, right now, embroiled in a lawsuit related to his failed privatization of the administrative services end of food stamp and Medicaid programs. Daniels outsourced the work to IBM. It was abundantly clear the privatization plan was a disaster right from the start for the people who receive food stamps and Medicaid, but Daniels waited two years to stop the statewide roll-out, because the conservative ideology behind the plan was pure and infallible.
IBM sued on the contract Daniels had negotiated and signed on behalf of the people of Indiana, when Daniels (eventually) fired them. That all by itself is amusing, because Daniels stripped middle class public employees of their bargaining rights with a stroke of his mighty executive pen shortly after assuming office. Sadly, Mitch found out IBM doesn’t go down as easy as teachers or firefighters do. They hauled his ass right into court, rather than having their lawyers march on the statehouse and sing solidarity songs.

One of the big things I noted in the discussion of privatizing the Ohio Turnpike was that Ohio's people said Ohio wouldn't get screwed like Indiana.  That takes a little of the sheen off of the mystique of one of the Indiana governor's signal accomplishments.

Bush Did Not Find Bin Laden

ABL at Balloon Juice opens up a great post with a pretty good description of Republicans (maybe not safe for work):

Teabillies: Yes, they are assholes. No they won’t act like adults.

Despite Obama’s calls for unity in the aftermath of “We killed that motherfucker,” Republicans are still acting like Republicans—that is to say—lying assholes.  First, they are falling all over themselves to assign credit to George Bush for nabbing Bin Laden¹, despite two undeniable facts:
Fact One: George Bush gave up on the hunt for OBL, both in 2002 (when, at a press conference, Bush stated that he was no longer worried about finding Bin Laden) and then again in 2006 (when Bush closed the CIA unit tasked with finding Bin Laden).  Whether or not you fall into the weird contingent of people who are shedding morality tears for OBL, one thing is clear—this was all Obama.
Fact Two: Republicans are assholes (I think I may have mentioned that before):

She then goes on to the story of a teacher who, in front of the whole class, told a Muslim student, "I bet you're grieving."  Actually, there isn't anywhere that says the teacher is a Republican, but I would bet money on it.

Guess where that happened, yes, Texas.

Socialist America

Barry Ritholtz:

To those of you who irrationally fear the US is turning into a Socialist state, I say unto thee: YOU ARE TOO LATE! We’ve already turned into a red nation of commies!
At least, that seems to be how some folks see it.  It is a quite a bit more accurate to describe the current circumstances: “The deep recession left the US with a highly elevated long-term unemployment rate;  There are lots of families who currently receive government aid so they can buy buy food for themselves and their children.”
Most Americans seem not to want to admit it, but we have fairly Socialist, rather Christian tendencies as a country. You know, things like charity, feeding the poor, broad government assistance to reduce senior and childhood poverty, etc.

I'm not sure why people don't want to admit this.  Lots of people want to claim that the U.S. is a Christian nation, but they don't want the government to provide any social services.  They often claim that churches also provide these services, and better than government.  I would point out that the churches provide additional services, but they never will be able to carry the load the government carries.  How may people do you know that would donate to their church or favorite charity, all the money they would take home if the government wasn't taxing them as much?  I'll go with none.  How many people would give any more money to charity if they weren't benefitting from the tax deduction?  I'd guess very few. 

And really, what is so bad about trying to help people out?  I know, some people take advantage of the system and some programs make it economically rational for people to not work more, but a larger percentage of people only grudgingly take government help.  And when you add it up, there is a heck of a lot of governmental largesse being extended to corporations.  These bastions of capitalism are doing a pretty fair job of taking advantage of socialist policies.

That is one reason why I think Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is so out of line with American tradition.  Many conservatives like the idea that America is a Christian nation.  One of the big tenets of Christianity is altruism.  Many atheists are also altruistic, even though they are not Christian.  Ayn Rand hated both Christianity and altruism.  To her, selfishness is a virtue.  Many of her fellow-travelers like the idea of being selfish, but they also like the idea of a vengeful God who will strike down all the sinners.  I don't think that Jesus guy would go along with their message.

Conservatives, Katrina and Alabama

I was listening to All Things Considered and heard parts of a story from Alabama.  Here is the summary:

The death toll from this week's tornadoes has topped 340 — and 28 of them came from one small Alabama town. Very little of Rainsville, population 5,000, remains. And yet, survivors continue the difficult task of picking up the pieces. One family, the Hamiltons, struggles to figure out what to do next.

It was heart-wrenching hearing about how they lost everything.  The lady said they needed a trailer or RV sent down to live in while they rebuilt, because they couldn't stay with friends forever.  That reminded me of this email, which my boss received from one of our wingnuttier clients a few years ago.  It claims North Dakota had a major blizzard and the people there didn't need government money or assistance like the folks from New Orleans.  According to Snopes.com, this email has circulated around a number of times, with Muskegon, Michigan, Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Colorado as the supposed site of the disaster.  Of course they are places with primarily white populations, unlike New Orleans.  Also, in all the cases except for Cedar Rapids, the people's homes weren't destroyed. Also, Snopes (that damn liberal site, the same client sent us an email saying Snopes was liberal, and couldn't be trusted because they used FACTS) pointed out that the National Guard was called out to deal with the blizzard in North Dakota.  I am curious if the same racists who circulated this email will reconsider, now that a large number of white folks are now homeless and in need of help.  I doubt it.

Of course, a tornado is much different than a major flood/hurricane, as private homeowner's insurance covers tornados, but government-subsidized insurance covers floods. Regardless, white bigot conservatives will most likely continue to insinuate that white people don't need government help, but useless, lazy blacks are the only people who benefit from government spending. I do not agree with any of those descriptions above, I am just trying to summarize what I hear when conservatives talk about government.

Why Do Christian Conservatives Like Ayn Rand

In his review of the box office failure of Atlas Shrugged, Mark Howard asks the same question (h/t naked capitalism):

The affinity for Ayn Rand by the Tea Party has always been a bit of a mystery. Sure, there is a shared hostility for government, particularly when it endeavors to fulfill its Constitutional obligation to provide for the general welfare. Both Rand and the TP’s despise efforts to aid society’s less fortunate, whom they believe deserve to suffer. But how do predominantly Christian, patriot, Tea Partyers justify their idolization of an anti-American, atheist who regards compassion as evil and selfishness as the pinnacle of human values?

Ironically, a key theme of the book and the film is the rejection of society by the wealthy business class who mysteriously disappear. There is a correlation to that plot point in contemporary America as we have already witnessed the disappearance of business luminaries like Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff, Dennis Kozlowski, Bernard Ebbers, and John Rigas, to name a few. It doesn’t appear that society has suffered from their absence. Yet there is another industrial titan who not only hasn’t vanished, he is masquerading across the airwaves as a presidential candidate. I’m not sure Ayn Rand would approve of this, however, the popularity of Donald Trump at Tea Parties is perfectly understandable. He is the ultimate manifestation of Randian politics: a greedy, conceited, selfish bully. But for every Tea Party supporter there are probably twenty other Americans who wish that Trump would “go Galt.”

It would be nice if the Tea Party were to go Galt.  Unfortunately, they wouldn't be able to cut it on their own, they depend way too much on government support.

New Democrats Make a Move Up North

From ThreeHundredEight.com, the latest polls show the New Democrats making significant gains in Monday's election:

I think multiple parties in the U.S. could make things more interesting, and maybe tamp down the influence of the crazy Republican base.  We might end up with a strong Southern secessionist party, much like the Bloc Quebecois.  I would guess that the current Democratic party would split into more of a Labor and New Democratic makeup like up north. The question would be whether many moderate Republicans would go to the centrists and away from the nutty right.  It is at least an interesting thought-exercise.