The devil is always busy, Rosie Ruiz Republicans, the question that exposes incompetent reporters, The Sprawl, the Democratic Party Platform, missing George W. Bush, auditing America, Obama-steinowitz, a Union in decline, Management Day, Convention bust, a brief discussion on NGDP, Millennial careers and Millennials in the workplace.
Welcome to the Daily Sausage.
First up, Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce dubs the GOP “a Confederate party”.
There is no question in my mind anymore that the Republican Party has reconfigured itself as a Confederate party. Not because it is so largely white, though it is. Not because it is largely Southern, though it is that, too. And not because it fights so hard for vestigial accoutrements like the Confederate battle flag. The Republican Party is a Confederate party, I think, because that is its view of what the government of the United States should be.
Later on, he quotes C. Virginia Fields, a former Civil Rights activist:
“When those who want to make change can’t do it this way, they never give up. They continue until they get something that seems a little more palatable, and seems to be less offensive. So I am not surprised. I learned many years ago growing up that the devil is always busy. The devil never stops. These people never stopped.”
Indeed. The Modern Republican Party is directly descended from Southern Democrats that left the fold after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. When LBJ said that he lost the Democrats the South for a generation, I’m not sure he realized what an understatement that was.
Paul Krugman is back with another barn burner, “Rosie Ruiz Republicans”.
The irony of the GOP using “We Built It!” as a conference slogan for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is that neither of them built anything. Mitt Romney, son of a wealthy man, and had every advantage available. He built his company and his fortune on the backs of the American worker by buying up “underperforming” companies, which were only “underperforming” by Wall Street standards, saddling them with massive debt, laying off employees and slashing benefits, and pocketing massive “management fees”. His Olympics were the most subsidized in US history with billions in giveaways from the Federal government. Meanwhile, Paul Ryan, on the other hand, has never held a job outside of government. He’s the son of one of Wisconsin’s most prominent families with tremendous net wealth.
This is the post-truth campaign. Candidates running on literally nothing but lies in the hopes of appealing to an ever shrinking group of low-information (read: moron) voters by drumming up racial resentment.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research has a great little article on why, any time a reporter asks “Are Americans better off today than they were four years ago?”, you should assume they are incompetent mouth-breathers.
Suppose your house is on fire and the firefighters race to the scene. They set up their hoses and start spraying water on the blaze as quickly as possible. After the fire is put out, the courageous news reporter on the scene asks the chief firefighter, “is the house in better shape than when you got here?” […]
A serious reporter asks the fire chief if he had brought a large enough crew, if they had enough hoses, if the water pressure was sufficient. That might require some minimal knowledge of how to put out fires.
Media, ya burnt.
Ed from Gin and Tacos tackles the doughnut effect of increasingly distant suburbs and exurbs creating a ring of middle/upper-class wealth around a number of major midwest cities while fleeing the encroachment of minorities. He calls it The Spread; personally, I prefer The Sprawl. The problem won’t reverse itself until commuting 30 miles each way in a two ton SUV from a massive McMansion becomes prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest individuals.
Here’s this year’s Democratic Party Platform.
Pro:
- Committment to continuing to improve Health Care
- Committment to Labor
- Slam on the GOP for ending Medicare as we know it.
- Committment to post-DREAM Act Immigration reform.
- Committment to Arts Funding in schools and communities.
- Committment to a woman’s right to choose.
- Committment to same-sex marriage rights.
- Committment to reasonable regulation of firearms.
Cons:
- Lowering the corporate tax rate
I didn’t read through all of it, but if you’re bored there’s forty pages there and there’s bound to be something good.
Matt Taibbi misses George W. Bush. You know what? I kind of do too. Everybody knew Dick Cheney was evil. It was just who Dick Cheney was. Everybody knew George W. Bush was a moron. Those jokes got started during his first campaign. You knew who they were.
Now, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are splitting infinitesimal hairs on policy because they know the vast majority of their positions would make them unelectable in any other era besides either the 1860s or 1920s.
It’s exhausting.
The Daily Show had a great segment on treating America like a business and auditing underperforming states, as defined by the amount of taxes they receive from the federal government versus what they send.
In any given year, roughly half the states receive more in federal tax spending versus what they send in tax revenues. In 2007, 19 states sent more than the received.
Let’s assume for a second that the GOP signs on to a constitutional amendment that states that only those states which are contribution positive, i.e. send more than they receive, may elect the President. For 2012, that would mean Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Illinois, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Nevada, California, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Washington, Georgia, and Ohio would elect the President.
Neither side would win enough electoral votes. However, based on current polling, Obama would be ahead of Romney 208-80. If you take the inverse, Romney wins 141-109.
I guess what I’m saying here is that Obama has an immense majority among states that pay more than their fair share, while Romney’s base is almost entirely “parasite” states living off the largesse of the “producer” states. It’s a good thing they don’t take Ayn Rand seriously, otherwise they’d be fucked.
TPM has an interesting article asking whether or not Obama is the first “Jewish president”.
Okay, look, I get it. We have a tendency to attach certain characteristics to Presidents and dub them the first “blank” President. After all, Bill Clinton was the first “black” President until President Obama, who is the first black President.
Personally, I’d rather we not do this. I’d like to see an actual Jewish President, mainly because I think he or she would be the only person that could get real on Israel without being called an anti-Semite by the Right, although lord knows some of them would try.
In the meantime, can’t we just let President Obama be President Obama?
ThinkProgress has a great graph showing that as union membership decreases, middle class income shrinks. It’s almost as if a large group of people bargaining together have better success than individuals bargaining alone.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor celebrated Management Day yesterday, sending out a tweet that said:
Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.
The reason Labor Day is a national holiday is because this country has a startlingly awful record on the treatment of employees by their management, including but certainly not limited to violence like the Pullman Strike.
Note that he says nothing about the workers on whom that business relies on to be successful. Just the business owner itself.
From Wonkblog, Gallup is reporting that the RNC gave Mitt Romney virtually no bounce whatsoever. Well, that’s going to make winning a bit harder.
Also via Wonkblog, Michael Woodford has written a tremendously important academic paper endorsing NGDP targeting for monetary policy.
Essentially, NGDP targeting directs the Fed to shoot for levels of inflation and economic growth, rather than specific rates. Moreover, it allows the Fed to take action without actually taking action, just by saying it’ll take action. Essentially, it’s telling businesses “We’ve got your back.”
Forbes has a fascinating article on the death of careers with Millennials. To this I respond: gee, I really wish we had the opportunity to have careers to not have.
Following up, PayScale has a great infographic on where Millennials stand in terms of wages.
