Up Next: Financial Services Reform

Financial reform? It’s about time, Dodd.

One of the unstated benefits of the watered-down health care bill signed into law by Barack Obama last week, is that it will deprive conservatives of the ridiculous talking points that have become so dear to them lo these many months. That is not to say that the Republican Party isn’t trying. Indeed, the GOP is desperately attempting to prolong the health care debate—even after the legislation’s passage—in order for their tried-and-true platitudes to remain relevant.

Whether or not the tea party crowd and other conservatives realize it, the proposed repeal of health reform being bandied about—probably disingenuously since they surely know better—by some congressional Republicans is but pure fantasy. President Obama would never sign a repeal. Therefore, Republicans would have to gain enough seats to obtain a two-thirds majority in each chamber to override a veto, which would require an electoral disaster for the Democrats in November that is without historical precedent. It is absurd even to speak about repealing this law now or in the near future. Yet, there was Mitch McConnell (R – Kentucky) on Saturday delivering the weekly Republican radio address mindlessly canting, “Repeal and reform.”

Eventually, Republicans will come to realize that they must move on, lest they be perceived as beating a dead horse when the Democrats have already saddled up a new one to take them on to banking reform. That debate, which may carry us through the November midterm elections, ought to be a very interesting public discussion, if not a crazy one, even more so than health care. Christopher Dodd (D – Connecticut) recently unveiled his plan to reform the financial services behemoths on Wall Street. As usual with Democratic first drafts, the bill falls well short of what is needed. (To point out one glaring omission, the bill contains no capital requirements, which means that banks can continue to leverage themselves to the hilt—20:1, 30:1, 50:1, whatever, just like before—and wait for the next big crisis lay waste to their balance sheets.) However, at the moment it contains some important regulatory provisions which, if banking reform is ultimately passed will probably be watered down as well. This is how Democrats govern: roll out an initial legislative proposal that doesn’t go nearly far enough in the hopes that it will attract bipartisan support, and when it inevitably doesn’t, dilute it even further to garner a few marginally relevant GOP votes if any at all.

While the big banks went long in donating to Democrats in 2008, they cannot reasonably expect that there will be no financial reform. It’s quite amazing that Congress has yet to do anything on this front, as financial regulatory change is equally, if not more important than health care reform given the global magnitude of the stakes involved. It would be even more amazing—almost impossible—to imagine that there will be no changes at all. Given that there ought to be far less opposition to financial reform than health care, the Democrats should have an easier time passing Dodd’s or a similar piece of legislation. After all, can the tea partiers and their ilk really get whipped up into opposing a bill that seeks to impose new regulations on the financial services sector to ward off a future economic crisis?

Upon preliminary consideration, the answer is no. But the Republicans have shown themselves particularly adept at souring seemingly good policy ideas in order to make them less palatable to their ill-informed base. The key to killing or weakening any banking legislation, whether it’s Dodd’s current proposal or something else, will be to convince Americans that regulating banks will end up hurting them personally. Expect a recurrence of some of the main themes of the opposition to health care. Conservatives will almost surely decry the proposed “government takeover” of our financial system. The addition of more regulation will create cumbersome “red tape” that will hinder lending, and thus cripple all-American “small businesses” which are the “real engines of the economy.” A Consumer Financial Protection Agency will create an unnecessary bureaucracy that will inhibit economic growth, etc.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce absurdly presents itself as being a defender of American workers and consumers by virtue of its being rabidly pro-business, as if the interests of all parties involved do not conflict. It should therefore come as no surprise that the Chamber has already released several ads against the would-be agency. Its most prominent ad (which starts automatically when you go to its site) rails against the CFPA without ever mentioning what the acronym actually stands for or what it would attempt to do for obvious reasons. The commercial features a presumably upstanding white small business owner who is kept awake until the wee hours of the morning worried sick about his struggling finances (for which he actually has Wall Street to thank), whereupon around 5am he walks toward his SUV which is parked right in front an American flag quaintly hanging from the porch of his house in Anytown, U.S.A. (I thought the footage more appropriate for a Paxil advertisement, but that’s just me.)

This is the narrative conservatives will have to weave if they want to stop or weaken banking reform: The CFPA, which under Dodd’s bill would exist as an arm of the Federal Reserve, is not designed to crack down on high-risk and predatory lending; it is not designed to consolidate the regulatory functions of several different bureaucracies into one agency. Rather, it is designed to destroy the fabric of American capitalism by imposing undue restrictions on lending institutions by the creation of a vast superbureaucracy within the already all-powerful Federal Reserve.

This last hypothetical objection leaves the Democrats open to some legitimate criticisms about giving the Fed more power. There is a small but very vocal contingent of Americans—particularly in the tea party crowd—who despise the Fed and its opaque way of doing business. While there is need for a CFPA or something akin, placing it under the aegis of the Fed is a dubious proposition.

Nonetheless, fundamental change is desperately in the financial sector.

We will probably get some change, but again, whatever it is will leave much to be desired. Almost as critical as the reform will be this coming debate about it. As I and countless other analysts have observed, many Americans have an alarming penchant for opposing measures that would actually benefit them. The debate will be crucial, not only because it will shape reform’s outcome, but because it will help pinpoint Americans’ tolerance threshold for corporate propaganda. Although it seems nearly unconscionable that anyone could oppose tightening banking regulations in light of the recent financial crisis, this is what’s going to happen very soon. In relatively short order, the Republicans will drop their phantasmagoric rhetoric about repealing the health care bill when they realize that they’re the only ones still talking about it. They will then paradoxically ride the populist wave of anger in a bizarre attempt to prevent these new bank regulations from being enacted into law. To some extent, it will probably work.

Of course, the main problem with this effort to reform Wall Street is the same that mars all attempts at financial reform: Congress is always regulating the last crisis. Defense is at its best when guarding against plays and formations it’s seen before. The problem is, Wall Street is always devising new high-powered offensive schemes that no defense could anticipate until it’s far too late.

- Max

Dog Rips Bumper Off Police Car

Good boy, eat that police cruiser!

The owner says the dog has never done anything like this before. Is it me, or do the police have a knack for bringing out the worst in people and dogs?

- Max

Speak Of The Devil And He Doth Appear!

Frequently I find that I have perfect timing. A couple of hours ago in this post about Pope Ratzinger ignoring a letter from the Milwaukee Archdiocese regarding a pedophile priest named Lawrence Murphy in its midst, I wrote, “I can’t wait to see what convoluted excuse Bill Donohue comes up with to explain away this one.”

It isn’t often that I watch daytime television, but when I just flipped the TV on MSNBC, sure enough, there was Bill Donohue telling David Shuster that the New York Times article never stated for certain that Ratzinger had seen the letters. This, despite the fact that Ratzinger was the head of the Vatican office to which these letters were sent. Donohue then said that not only should we not jump to any conclusions about Ratzinger, but insisted that there be no further investigation into the matter. But as this letter shows, Murphy himself later wrote to Ratzinger personally to ask him for leniency, which apparently means immunity from disciplinary action. Shortly after this correspondence was received by Ratzinger’s office, the Church’s investigation into the allegations against Murphy ceased at the direction of Cardinal Bertone in Ratzinger’s office. Are we to believe that Ratzinger, who headed this department, knew nothing of this horrendous scandal?

Donohue went on to say that “Catholics aren’t stupid,” and that they know that New York Times has a pro-gay, pro-abortion, “agenda.” Uh huh.

He also said that by the time Ratzinger’s office was apprised of the situation, Murphy was a sickly old man and had already committed his crimes.

So? Does this mean Donohue thinks that former Nazi war criminals should get reprieves because their crimes are behind them? Plus, there was no guarantee that Murphy had stopped molesting kids altogether. He should have been defrocked.

At this point we need to seriously ask ourselves whether the pope or the Catholic Church can do anything that will repulse Bill Donohue. My money’s on, “no.”

If I can dig up the video of the interview, I will post it pronto.

- Max

Ratzinger Ignored Pedophile Priest

His Unholiness

Pope Joseph Ratzinger ignored inquiries from concerned church officials about ongoing sexual molestations by priests. As the New York Times reported yesterday, in 1996 then Cardinal Ratzinger was apprised of the case of priest and serial rapist Lawrence Murphy, who admitted to church officials that he had molested children:

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations…

… In 1993, with complaints about Father Murphy [who died in 1998] landing on his desk, Archbishop Weakland hired a social worker specializing in treating sexual offenders to evaluate him. After four days of interviews, the social worker said that Father Murphy had admitted his acts, had probably molested about 200 boys and felt no remorse.

However, it was not until 1996 that Archbishop Weakland tried to have Father Murphy defrocked. The reason, he wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger, was to defuse the anger among the deaf and restore their trust in the church. He wrote that since he had become aware that “solicitation in the confessional might be part of the situation,” the case belonged at the doctrinal office.

It should also be noted that Weakland would later use $450,000 in Church funds as hush money for his former gay lover who was threatening a lawsuit.

I guess this is what the repulsive and obnoxious American papist Bill Donohue meant when he said the Church should be allowed to treat child rape as “an internal matter.”

It is difficult to discern which party displayed more shameful behavior in this travesty: the Milwaukee Archdiocese, which, when faced with the reality of a confessed child abuser in their ranks, thought it appropriate to contact Vatican officials instead of the local authorities in this, an obvious criminal matter; or Ratzinger and Bertone who swept the allegations under the rug as if they were no big deal.

But as Joe Biden would say, this is a big fucking deal. This is about the future pope, knowingly and willingly ignoring letters from officials within his own church saying that they have a rapist on their hands and that they—incredibly—are unsure what to do about it. In any sane universe, in any responsible organization, Ratzinger would be forced to step down in light of such allegations. But that’s not going to happen because the Church thinks it’s infallible.

I can’t wait to see what convoluted excuse Bill Donohue comes up with to explain away this one.

- Max

Redneck Congressman Loses His Mind, Says Americans Should Have Less Rights

A-hyuck hyuck!

If his floor speeches are any indication, Louie Gohmert (R - Texas) isn’t a very bright man. He may even be crazy. Before I discuss his most recent lunacy, note that last October, Gohmert said this on the floor of the House of Representatives when discussing proposed hate crimes legislation:

If you’re oriented towards animals, bestiality, then, you know, that’s not something that can be used, held against you or any bias be held against you for that. Which means you’d have to strike any laws against bestiality, if you’re oriented toward corpses, toward children, you know, there are all kinds of perversions […] pedophiles or necrophiliacs or what most would say is perverse sexual orientations but the trouble is, we made amendments to eliminate pedophiles from being included in the definition…But people have always been willing to give up their liberties, their freedoms in order to gain economic stability. It happened in the 1920s and 1930s. Germany gave up their liberties to gain economic stability and they got a little guy with a mustache, who was the ultimate hate monger. And this is scary stuff we’re doing here when we take away what has been a traditionally important aspect of moral teaching in America.

Look, I don’t like “hate crimes” laws either. I think when it comes to assaults, you prosecute the crime, not the motive. Punishing people for their motivations is tantamount to punishing people for what they think.

But why is it whenever the issues of gay rights or hate crimes come up, conservative lawmakers always find a way to bring animal-fucking into the conversation? It’s usually lawmakers from rural areas, so it’s not unreasonable to conclude that these guys are speaking from firsthand experience.

Anyway, Congressman Goatfucker has proposed that the Seventeenth Amendment be repealed. What’s the Seventeenth Amendment, you ask? Well, once a upon a time, back before the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, members of the U.S. Senate were chosen by the state legislatures. The Seventeenth Amendment changed this, by providing for the direct election of Senators by the people of their respective states.

You read that correctly. Louie Gohmert doesn’t think Americans should be able to vote for their Senators. His reasoning is that if Senators are accountable to the state legislatures, the Senate would be less likely to pass laws that would infringe on state authority, and therefore conservatives would be more likely to be appointed to the Senate. But this is some seriously flawed reasoning. Does anyone think the New York state legislature would send Republicans to the U.S. Senate? And if it did, how long would it be before New Yorkers get themselves a new state legislature? Ditto for Massachusetts. Granted, Bay Staters voted for Scott Brown, but that is an anomaly. (Sorry, teabaggers.)

Gohmert’s proposal tells us a lot. Here’s a guy who’s a member of the minority party in Congress, and his solution for changing the political landscape is to give the individuals less of a say in government. Genius. It could be argued that preserving states rights gives the people more power, not less, but what’s often overlooked is that state governments are far more susceptible to corporate influence and bullying. Companies routinely lobby state legislatures, and when they don’t get what they want, they sometimes threaten to move their operations to other, more corporate-friendly states. And this happens because states are obviously smaller than say, the federal government, which can’t be threatened so easily. So while the idea of giving more power to the states sounds appealing, we must keep in mind what that means.

But Gohmert’s idea is not even close to being appealing. While the American people can be whipped into opposing their own interests on things like health reform, convincing them to relinquish their right to vote for Senators is an entirely different matter. Americans, no matter how ignorant, are not going to allow their elected representatives to repeal a constitutional amendment so that there will be less elected representatives.

Thankfully, there’s no way to spin this one to convince people that repealing the Seventeenth Amendment is a good idea, so Gohmert’s proposal is DOA.

- Max

Kindle Users Cry An Amazon River

For many people, owning a Kindle means being a bratty, high-maintenance, entitled douchebag.

I just went on Amazon to check out the customer reviews for The Big Short by Michael Lewis which I’m thinking about buying. Surprised was I to see that out of 143 reviews, a majority of them (74) gave the book just one out of five stars. What’s so bad about this book, you ask? Let’s check out some of the one-star comments:

Wow, no Kindle edition. FAIL. I cannot believe this debate is still going on.

When I don't see a Kindle edition, I just move on. The thought of paying more for a hard cover book that I don't need to have, that takes days to get to me on a book that I won't know if I like until I read makes no sense.

Kindle gives me instant access, it's price is right (even if I end up hating the book), I don't kill trees, and I don't have a book lingering about that I will more than likely never re-read. – Jeffrey M. Hester

Sorry Mike, but I'm giving you a terrible review because your publisher hasn't put this on the Kindle. – C. French

I really like Michael Lewis. The New New Thing is one of my favorite books. But the Big Short is not being made available in the format that I like to read books. In my opinion this is an inferior product. It's a bit like a record label only selling an album on casette tape. – Harper D. Lieblich

The reason is that the book is not available on the Kindle. Since I cannot read it on my Kindle I must give it only one star. In addition, past Lewis books have been somewhat underwhelming so its likely that this will also be a simplistic take on a complex issue. Too Big to Fail seems much better. – Naz

I'd like to add my name to the list of people who are very disappointed that this book does not have a Kindle edition. No, I haven't read the book, but I want to -- on my Kindle! If all these one star reviews lead to fewer sales, I think that would be a great result and an excellent lesson for the author/publisher. – Ben Kaplan

Not providing a Kindle option does not inspire me to go buy the hardcover, just the opposite in fact. There are plenty of books available on Kindle from publishers that evidently are happy to have my money. Publishers who ignore this new, growing market do so at their own peril. – B. Cole

Ridiculous this book is not available for the Kindle. It's 2010 people, I don't want to kill a tree, waste gas, throw away shipping packaging, I just want to read the book on my Kindle...I'll buy another book instead but not one from this particular publisher. – D.J. Wilbur

This is a message to the publisher: as a kindle owner, and a lover of ebooks, I think it would be nice to have the ebook available now. Simple economics suggests that it should be available now, at a lower price than paper book options. I believe I have the right to give 1 star to the hardcover book when a lower cost, more environmentally friendly, easier to read electronic version (with text to speech available) is a real world possibility--but is intentionally being held back by the publisher. – D.J. Najarian

Not fair of the publisher to block a Kindle version. I won't buy as a result. – J. Geison

I loved the other books by the author but refuse to buy this until it's available electronically.

Shame on the publishers for doing their part in destroying the environment, all in the name of squeezing out a little more money. – K. Donovan

Where is the Kindle format of this book? I would love to read it, but I'm not going to buy a hardcover. What a waste. – Thomas A. Sobieck

I would love to read "The Big Short" on my Kindle for $9.99. As a recent Kindle owner, I'm never buying a non e-book again. I enjoy reading Lewis's work, but his publisher needs to get with the program. – A. Valentine

You get the idea. The preponderance of one-star reviews are bitching and moaning from people who haven’t even read the book, but are such humongous losers, that they take the time to write, not a review of the book in the review section, but to bitch that it’s not on Kindle. Well fuck Kindle and fuck you. If you like reading e-books, fine. To each his own. But don’t menstruate all over Amazon because the book is only available in book format. The people who wrote that they really wanted to read the book, but have decided they won’t because it’s not available on Kindle are immense tools. What they’re essentially saying is, “This book has the potential to really educate me on the complex subject of financial derivatives, but I’m going to forgo this information because it’s only available as an actual book.”

Has this country gone soft? What a bunch of crybabies. “Waa, waa. I can’t read a book on my Kindle.”

You know, right before the fall the ancient Romans would complain that they couldn’t read Seneca or Tertullian on Kindle either. America, I’d cut that shit out immediately.

- Max

Palin Inks Multimillion Dollar TV Deal

Sarah Palin is close to striking a deal with Discovery Communications for her Alaska travel reality show—even with her asking price reportedly close to $1.2 million per episode...

…It is still undecided which Discovery Communications channel the show would go on. It could fit with mom-friendly TLC (the “L” is meant to stand for learning) or on the Discovery Channel.

NBC Philadelphia

Sarah Palin on The Learning Channel?

Dfsil4ugfdkf98y6lkjkjgzz!

Sorry, but I didn’t know how else to convert a cerebral aneurysm into onomatopoeia.

Since last summer when Palin quit the governorship of Alaska and oddly declared, “With this decision, now, I will be able to fight even harder for you,” she’s demonstrated just how full of shit she was and still is. How can a governor “fight harder” for her constituents by quitting? It’s the highest office in the state! What the fuck?

Anyway, since then Palin has been fighting harder for Alaskans by signing a multimillion dollar book deal, getting Fox News to pay her to promote herself, collecting $100,000 speaking fees, and now by inking a reality television deal that will pay her Seinfeld money.

You’re welcome, Alaska.

- Max

Health Bill Passes, Health Stocks Rise

CEO Uncle Pennybags of Monopoly Managed Care celebrates the passage of health care “reform.”

Quite predictably, health care stocks rose on Monday after the House of Representatives passed health care “reform” on Sunday night. While there are some aspects of the bill that are not HMO-friendly—such as prohibiting discrimination based on preexisting conditions—the insurance mandate is huge for them. Forcing over 30 million uninsured people buy private insurance is a great way to transfer yet more wealth to corporations. This is especially true when you take into consideration the government subsidies for American families pulling in less than $88,000 a year. And Big Pharma is ecstatic because this bill means that by 2014, tens of millions of new people will be able to get prescription drugs more easily. With no provisions for the reimportation of cheaper (but the same) drugs from other countries, and nothing allowing the government to negotiate drug prices under Medicare, this legislation is a can’t miss for the pharmaceutical industry.

The sorry lesson of this health care bill is that if you want to get a major, “historic” piece of legislation passed in the United States, it must contain giveaways to the powerful parties affected. That’s a given. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are very much interested in pissing off the private power centers that throw money at political candidates like confetti at a parade. We’ll see the same thing as banking reform makes its way through the Congress. Last week, the Senate Banking Committee voted 13-10 along party lines to send Christopher Dodd’s (D – Connecticut) imperfect financial reform bill to the floor. The funniest thing about it was that Dodd agreed not to allow any amendments from Democrats in order to garner bipartisan support. I’m glad that worked out.

There are plenty of reasons to believe banking reform will go the way of the health care bill: passed and signed into law, but very watered down, coming up far short of what the situation calls for. I’m sure that enough Democrats—particularly in the Senate—will have reservations about banking reform so the White House and congressional Democratic leadership will have the perfect excuse to pass a bad bill. I can see Nancy Pelosi now with her frozen face and goofy smile in a few months time consoling the disappointed: “We’d love to, but we just don’t have the votes for that kind of reform.” Granted, it will be very difficult for the Republicans to mobilize popular support against banking reform à la the health care debate. But then again, never underestimate the ability of the American population to unwittingly go to bat for the very people who, at this moment, are thinking up new and exciting ways to siphon more money from them.

In the words of Yakov Smirnoff, “What a country.”

- Max

Bill Donohue Is A Disgrace

Nice shit-eating grin.

Recently I wrote a post on the absurdity of Guardian writer Andrew Brown’s reprehensible defense of the Catholic Church in light of the most recent revelations of child abuse. His argument that Catholic priests are no more likely than adults in other professions to rape children is tasteless and irrelevant, especially since it has been documented that Church officials in various parishes and archdioceses actively covered up the abuses.

Until the other day, Brown’s recycled defense of the Church’s child abusers was the worst opinion piece I’ve read about any of the Church’s scandals. But enter Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, and loudmouth windbag extraordinaire. For CNN.com, Donohue writes,

Employers from every walk of life, in both the U.S. and Europe, have long handled cases of alleged sex abuse by employees as an internal matter. Rarely have employers called the cops, and none was required to do so.

Though this is starting to change, any discussion of employee sexual abuse that took place 30 and 40 years ago must acknowledge this reality. Thus it hardly comes as a surprise that Cardinal Sean Brady in Ireland did not summon the authorities about a case involving a priest in the 1970s. What is surprising is why some are now indicting him, acting as if his response was the exception to the rule.

Selective indignation at the Catholic Church is not confined to Brady. Why, for example, are the psychologists and psychiatrists who pledged to “fix” abusers treated so lightly? After all, employers from the corporate world to the Catholic Church were told over and over again that therapy works and to give the offender a second chance.

Where to begin? First off, Donohue is confusing sexual abuse with sexual harassment. It is true that employers often treat sexual harassment as an internal matter. Sexist jokes and unwanted physical advances—when reported—are generally met with disciplinary action, as they should be. The police are not usually called because although lewd jokes or even an awkward grope are tasteless, the victim generally does not notify the police. Suspension or termination may be enough to remedy the problem. Sexual abuse is an entirely different story. The children under the care of pedophile priests were not merely subjected to harassment; they were sexually assaulted. No one I know of, with the exception of Bill Donohue and KBR, would regard rape in the workplace as “an internal matter.” Victims are entitled to press charges, and they should in order to shed light on the sexual perverts who lurk in our places of business and elsewhere.

Bill Donohue thinks differently. If priests, or lawyers, or physicians, or indeed, even kindergarten teachers are believed to be raping children, Donohue says that their supervisors should handle it as “an internal matter,” as he says is the custom. And handle it that way they did. The former Cardinal of Boston, Bernard Law, handled it by simply shuffling accused child-fuckers from parish to parish where they kept abusing children. I guess this is what Donohue means we he says we should “give the offender a second chance.”

Donohue has made it his sole purpose in life to defend the Catholic Church against all enemies, real and imagined, no matter how corrupt, immoral, disgraceful, and discriminatory the institution behaves. Indeed, whenever a set of allegations arises accusing Catholic officials of child abuse, Donohue steps into the breach not to condemn the abuse, but to decry the “hysterical” reactions that inevitably follow, as if the level of indignation at the Church is unwarranted.

Amazingly, Donohue is not a fringe figure. He can occasionally be seen on the various cable news networks whining about perceived public insults to Catholicism, a hilariously ironic development given the ubiquitous and omnipotent presence the Church once enjoyed in the Western world. Clearly, much progress had been made if Catholicism’s defenders have been relegated to complaining about potshots at the Church which they can do absolutely nothing about. Still, Donohue is a minor nuisance despite his overall irrelevance as a cultural “warrior.” Thankfully, the sixty-two year old Donohue and those who think just like him constitute a literally dying breed. And for this endangered species, extinction can’t come fast enough.

- Max

Kill This Health Care Bill

I was glad to read that Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch of South Boston will vote “no” on the health care reform bill. This bill does absolutely nothing to control the runaway cost of health insurance. And worst of all, the bill mandates that everyone purchase health insurance or face a fine. Honestly, I might approve of this bill were it not for the fact that it forces people to enter into private contracts with bloodsucking HMOs, just like we have here in Massachusetts.

No poll I’ve seen shows that majority of Americans favor this current (Senate) bill under consideration by the House of Representatives. Compare this with another poll indicating that 60% of Americans want a public option to compete with private insurance, including 86% of Democrats and 57% of independents. These and other polls indicate that Americans think that the efforts of the Democrats don’t go nearly far enough. And that’s not surprising considering that Democrats are one of the two political factions of what we might call the American Business Party.

So thank you, Stephen Lynch, for letting the Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and the other phony liberals know that you think this bill is a pile of dogshit.

- Max

Heinous Display By Teabaggers

Amazing video shot at a Columbus, Ohio tea party of a man, presumably a health care proponent, with a sign saying he has Parkinson’s Disease. The sign may be true, it may not. But it’s not like these teabaggers would know either way. Whatever the case may be, this is yet another horrifying display of the Randian ideal of looking out for one’s self while telling everyone else to go fuck themselves. It seems there are more Glenn Becks out there than I thought.

Got a horrible disease? Too fucking bad. No handouts for you. You should have thought about the consequences before you acquired what the health insurance companies call a preexisting condition.

It’s bad enough that Americans are stupid. We don’t need to add “malicious” to the equation.

- Max

The Doctrine Of Nullification Is Back!

The Tenth Amendment is not the be-all, end-all of the Constitution.

From the New York Times:

Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a Republican, signed a bill into law on Friday declaring that the federal regulation of firearms is invalid if a weapon is made and used in South Dakota.

On Thursday, Wyoming’s governor, Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, signed a similar bill for that state. That same day, Oklahoma’s House of Representatives approved a resolution that Oklahomans should be able to vote on a state constitutional amendment allowing them to opt out of the federal health care overhaul.

In Utah, lawmakers embraced states’ rights with a vengeance in the final days of the legislative session last week. One measure said Congress and the federal government could not carry out health care reform, not in Utah anyway, without approval of the [state] Legislature. Another bill declared state authority to take federal lands under the eminent domain process. A resolution asserted the “inviolable sovereignty of the State of Utah under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.”

Hilarious article in the New York Times today about states’ rights, but as this excerpt shows, it’s more about straight up nullification. Which is funny, because the nullification issue was essentially settled by the Civil War. The Southern states thought that they should be able to nullify federal laws that hampered the institution of slavery. Abraham Lincoln disagreed. It actually should have been resolved in 1819 when Chief Justice John Marshall delivered the Supreme Court’s ruling in McCulloch v. Maryland. In that case, the Court ruled in part that a Maryland state tax on a branch of the Second Bank of the United States was unconstitutional because it violated the Supremacy Clause of Article VI. As Marshall wrote,

This great principle is, that the constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof are supreme; that they control the constitution and laws of the respective states, and cannot be controlled by them.

If the above-cited new state regulations are ever challenged in federal court, they wouldn’t stand a chance. I’m sure that most of the state legislators who passed them know this, but maybe they’re trying to inspire another secessionist movement. And if that’s the case, the rest of the country should do nothing to stop them this time. We will not make the same mistake twice.

- Max

Dick Armey Has No Idea What Alexander Hamilton Was About

Don’t know anything? Make shit up!

Former House Majority Leader and tea party financial backer Dick Armey spoke to the National Press Club on Monday, and made the following claim, cited here by Dana Milbank in his latest Washington Post column:

“The small-government conservative movement, which includes people who call themselves the tea party patriots and so forth, is about the principles of liberty as embodied in the Constitution, the understanding of which is fleshed out if you read things like the Federalist Papers,” Armey explained. The problem with Democrats and other “people here who do not cherish America the way we do,” he explained, is “they did not read the Federalist Papers.”

A member of the audience passed a question to the moderator, who read it to Armey: How can the Federalist Papers be an inspiration for the tea party, when their principal author, Alexander Hamilton, “was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central government”?

Historian Armey was flummoxed by this new information. “Widely regarded by whom?” he challenged, suspiciously. “Today's modern ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that was the case in fact about Hamilton.”

As one of those “ill-informed political science professors,” I can say unequivocally that Armey is wrong. As Milbank points out in his column, Hamilton once advanced the idea of a president serving for life, senators serving for life, state governors appointed by the president, and a national bank. What Milbank and every other commentator on this story has missed, is that in his unadopted proposal for a new Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention, Hamilton also proposed giving the national government veto power over the actions of the states. If Hamilton were alive today, Dick Armey would be railing against him as an apologist for monarchy or tyranny. But most people don’t notice this discrepancy because 206 years have passed since Hamilton took an Aaron Burr gunshot to the abdomen. Plenty of time for a mythical status to be achieved—one that can be used to inspire any cause, no matter how at odds the philosophy of that cause and the ideas of Hamilton might be.

Dick Armey isn’t some shitkicking teabagger from rural Arkansas who happened to get quoted by the media. He’s a leader of the tea party movement. And he doesn’t know shit about the founding of America.

- Max

Card Check Opponents Advance Completely Nonsensical Arguments

Lobbying for the oppression of American workers since 1912.

The propensity of many Americans to oppose their own economic interests never ceases to amaze me. I find this utterly fascinating, as it is the most interesting and mind-boggling phenomenon in American politics. It’s a topic that I have touched upon in posts about the tea partiers, and I hope to explore it greater depth in the coming weeks. For now, I want to examine one particular issue through which this problem has so clearly manifested. That issue is Card Check.

Card Check, also known as “majority sign-up,” would make it easier for workers in a particular company to unionize. There is a bill currently stalled in Congress—the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)—that would make Card Check the law of the nation. The idea is very simple. Under Card Check, workers of a potential bargaining unit sign what are called “authorization cards” which state the employees’ desire to be part of a union. If a majority of workers in a unit sign cards, the cards are sent to the National Labor Relations Board for verification and certification. Once this is done, those workers are officially a union, even the ones who did not sign cards. Card Check simply allows the will of the majority to be obliged (either for or against unionizing), while preventing “free riding” in those units that do become unionized. It wouldn’t be fair if some employees didn’t pay any dues, and yet got to reap whatever benefits the union is able to secure. Even the current law dictates that once a union is formed, all employees are in the union regardless of how they voted. So Card Check changes nothing on this score.

Current law does not allow for automatic unionization after a majority of workers sign authorization cards. Under the present statute, if 30% of the employees or more sign authorization cards, which are then sent to the NLRB, the Board authorizes an election using a secret ballot, in which all employees vote on whether to unionize. The EFCA would keep this provision, while also adding the abovementioned majority sign-up rule.

Opponents argue, rather disingenuously, that Card Check would infringe on workers’ rights by eliminating the right to a secret ballot. But if a majority of employees have signed authorization cards expressing their wish to unionize, an election is superfluous. And if only 30% of employees sign cards, an election using the secret ballot is still held. So what’s really going here?

The main argument against majority sign-up is a strange one. Right-wingers do not publicly advocate against Card Check by stating the actual reason they oppose it, which is that it’s not a business-friendly piece of legislation. Any law that makes it easier for workers to negotiate collectively with management is anathema to American conservatism. But conservatives cannot tell the American people they oppose Card Check for this reason—that it has the potential to empower them as workers and to negotiate better compensation for themselves. Instead, the Right has had to cook up a farcical ruse of an excuse that invokes “worker rights” and the right to have a secret ballot.

A secret ballot is a good thing. But once again, under Card Check, if a majority of workers sign union authorization cards, there is no need—if you are an employee—to have any kind of election, secret or otherwise. However, if you are the employer, then you have every reason to drag out the process as much as possible. Opponents of Card Check argue that a secret ballot is necessary to protect “worker rights” because they say employees will undoubtedly feel pressured into signing a card by their coworkers. Take a look at this advertisement from the Orwellian-named Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which is financially backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Retail Industry Leaders Association, among other groups of for-profit organizations:

Not that it would matter, but someone should tell the assholes behind this ad that this isn’t On the Waterfront. Not every union leader is a fucking mob caricature, which apparently is the only role that Vince Curatola can play. As someone who has engaged in a majority sign-up effort, workers don’t try to intimidate their fellow employees because (1) that’s not right; and (2) you’ll end up alienating people. The best way to approach coworkers is to tell them about the organizing effort and encourage them to ask any questions they have (which most of them will). In my experience, hardly anyone was outright against unionizing. It’s just that most of them had never even considered it and weren’t sure how it worked. I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of the employees who said they’d think it over, ended up asking to sign cards later on.

If workers have to worry about coercion from anyone, it’s their employer, who writes their paychecks. The employer, after all, can use the threat of job loss to whip employees against unionizing. (Even though this is illegal, it happens often.) If a majority of workers sign cards, all an election would do is allow the employer time to lobby against unionization through coercion and staff-splitting.

The passage of Card Check is questionable at this point, even with the supposedly worker-friendly Democratic Party in power. As for the American people themselves, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s magazine recently featured an article misleadingly titled, “Poll shows public opposes card check,” and cites a Voter Consumer Research poll indicating that 61% of respondents oppose Card Check. But if we look at the actual poll, we find that this figure represents 61% of the mere 28% of respondents who said they had actually heard of Card Check. It should also be pointed out that as a news topic, Card Check features more prominently in Right Wing media than anywhere else because it makes great fodder—albeit illogically—for screeds against Democrats and organized labor. Hence, it may very well be that politically-minded conservatives are more likely to have heard of Card Check than liberals.

So how is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce defining “public?” For that, we need only do some simple math. Take the 28% of Americans who’ve heard of Card Check, and multiply that number by the 61% of them who oppose Card Check, and we find that when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that the “public” opposes Card Check, they mean that 17% of Americans oppose Card Check.

That’s a strange way of defining “the public.”

It remains to be seen whether the EFCA will become unstuck in Congress. As of now its prospects look bleak, and if it fails (which is likely), this will only add to the number of ways that Barack Obama has disappointed the people who elected him. If the EFCA is resurrected, expect a fierce battle involving the kinds of crazy conservative rhetoric we became accustomed to last summer during the health care “debate.” It may be an uphill battle. In 2009, for the first time since Gallup started asking the question, “Do you approve or disapprove of unions?” in 1936, less than a majority said they approved. Now, I’m not going to sit here and claim that every union is great and only has the interests of its members in mind, because that is not the case. But there are a lot of good unions that really protect the well-being of their members because they create bargaining opportunities for workers that would not otherwise exist. Everyone recognizes the truth of the “strength in numbers” maxim. And yet, America’s peasant mentality only seems to be worsening. Idiots like Glenn Beck make millions by incoherently ranting against heretofore uncontroversial ideas, such as social justice and collectivism in a sinister effort to perpetuate a notion of extreme individualism. Sure, he’ll support collectivist activities such as the tea parties in the short term, but only as a means to achieve a culture of isolationism and marginalization.

So it is with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, and other business interests of this nation. These organizations have spent millions of dollars to lobby against Card Check under the guise of lobbying for worker rights, which is laughable. And the only thing more absurd than the notion of big business looking out for us, is the fact that people are actually believing it.

- Max

The Public Option Is Officially Dead, And Apparently It's Nobody's Fault

Spare me the excuses, Pelosi.

Yesterday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that there would be no public option in the health care “reform” legislation that she will send to the House floor for a vote next week.

In the words of Sarah Palin, “How’s that hopey changey thing workin’ out for ya?”

Yes, it’s a sad day when the actions of the Democratic Party prompt me to quote the wordsmith of Wasilla, but this is what it’s come to in light of Pelosi declaring, “I’m quite sad that a public option isn’t in there. But it isn’t a case of it’s not in there because the Senate is whipping against it. It’s not in there because they don’t have the votes to have it in there.”

Pelosi made this statement on Friday, one day after Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said if the House version included a public option, he’d whip for it. The White House meanwhile, is publicly keeping its distance from the proceedings, and clearly doesn’t mind the lack of a public option.

So this is it, huh? It seems that just about everyone in the Democratic Party is for the public option, but everyone’s against it. Pelosi is blaming the Senate. The Senate’s leadership is saying they’d try to make it happen if the House passes the public option. And Barack Obama doesn’t seem to care what passes at this point, as long as he can call it “reform.” Call me cynical, but I think this has been one big carefully orchestrated charade in which all of the major players have plausible deniability on the question of who really killed the public option.

The more I watch the Democrats exercise their majorities in Congress with Obama in the White House, the more I’m coming to believe that the Democrats are pathetic on purpose. No powerful organization is this inept and unsure of itself. It’s no secret the Democratic Party is a corporatist party, but nonetheless they are more likely than the GOP to enact laws that are beneficial to the average American. But with the GOP out of power, we can clearly see just how bought-and-paid-for the Democrats really are. A huge majority of registered Democrats want a public option, as does a majority of Americans when Independents and even Republicans are included. And yet the Democratic Party is telling me that they don’t have the votes? Why the fuck not? Especially now with things looking as if the senate is going to pass health care using reconciliation, which will require a simple 51-vote majority in the senate. That means that nine Democrats could defect and vote against the bill, and it could still pass, with Vice President Joe Biden voting for passage to break this hypothetical 50-50 tie.

But this isn’t going to happen because the Democratic leadership is basically saying, “We would really love a public option; it’s just that too many people in the party would oppose it. Only 86% of registered Democrats favor a public option, and the support in Congress just isn’t there.”

The “good news” is that the Democrats are going to implement near-universal care by mandating that people buy private insurance or face fines. With a public option, such a mandate is dubious. Without a public option, such a mandate is downright cruel. If the government wants to provide people with a cheaper alternative to private insurance in order to help working class Americans, I’m all for it. But where the fuck does this administration and this Congress get off telling me I have to purchase insurance? I can’t possibly see how that’s constitutional. While the health insurance mandate has been compared to auto insurance mandates, this is an inappropriate comparison. Drivers must buy auto insurance by virtue of having bought cars. Under the health care bill mandate, people would have to buy health insurance by virtue of simply being alive. Not even the broadest interpretation of the Necessary-and-Proper Clause arrives at a justification for mandating business transactions between private parties under such a circumstance. Of course, we’d like to think that if such a law passes, there would be a benefit in having a constructionist majority on the Supreme Court if the mandate were ever challenged and got that far. But the Roberts Court has shown itself to be so rabidly pro-business, I would not put it past the robed reactionaries to rule in favor of the mandate simply because it helps corporations.

In a recent letter to the Democratic Party, I suggested that I might stay home in 2010 if it didn’t clean up its act. Well, the Democrats aren’t going to clean up their act, so you can count me out of the November midterms. And unless Obama starts to push an actual progressive agenda, you can count me out of the 2012 presidential race too. I won’t legitimize this bullshit we call a political system anymore.

- Max

Hick High School Cancels Prom To Avoid Having To Allow In A Lesbian

Forsooth

A Mississippi high school faces a lawsuit over its decision to cancel its prom rather than allow a lesbian high school student attend with her girlfriend…

...At the center of the lawsuit is a memorandum from the school to students, dated February 5, which states that prom dates must be of the opposite sex.

Also, when McMillen expressed a desire to wear a tuxedo to the prom, the superintendent told her only male students were allowed to wear tuxes, according to court documents.

Superintendent Teresa McNeece also told McMillen that she and her girlfriend could be ejected from the prom if any of the other students complained about their presence there, according to the documents.

The prom was canceled after McMillen and the ACLU tried informally to get the school to change its stance.

CNN

You may have noticed that at select points in some of my writings, I trash the American South. Several people have emailed me to complain about my “Northeast liberal elitism.” But this isn’t about elitism. It’s about the South being as backwards as shit. Whether it’s an attempt to teach creationism in science classes, or willfully telling a journalist that they don’t like Obama because “He’s a fucking nigger,” or treating gays like second class citizens, many Southerners of this fine nation have a serious problem. This isn’t to say that most of them are like this, but there sure are enough ignorant redneck fuckwits to give the whole region a terrible reputation.

Such is the case with Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi, which apparently is run by people so sexually repressed, that in the 21^st century they cannot bear the sight of two gay students attending a prom. As if the poor girl weren’t feeling ostracized enough by her school’s official policy to exclude her and her partner from the prom, the school has sinisterly cancelled the whole thing. Sane people will consider this episode and determine that it is the school officials who are being ridiculous and inconsiderate. But yours truly has spent some time today on the comments threads of the local Southern news media. The anonymous responses are astounding. Many people commenting from locations in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and other red state backwaters have seen fit to blame the lesbian student for the cancellation. There wouldn’t be a problem, one of them says, if only gays wouldn’t try to advance “their perverted lifestyles down all of our throats. Are you really proud of your sickening selves?”

The claim that gays “flaunt it” is a ragged canard. It’s not as if gays go around unwelcomingly hitting on people of the same sex. When homophobics say that gays flaunt themselves, what they’re really complaining about is the fact that more gays are simply out of the closet. The haters liked the good old days when gays were afraid to let it be known who they are. Thankfully, gays are becoming increasingly accepted in American society. And some people just don’t like it.

Why? Who knows? Religion I’m sure plays a large role. Also, people who merely are different have often been the targets of social ridicule, especially in the South. Different religions, different skin colors, different languages, and different sexualities have never played well down there. These are important factors, as is another commonly overlooked motive because of its uncomfortable premise: the theory that homophobia is often (though not always) the product of repressed homosexual desires in the homophobic himself. Think Roy Cohn, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, Roy Ashburn, or any other anti-gay religious or political figure who turned out to be a flaming homo.

So whenever I see rabid homophobia on display, I can’t help but ask myself, what’s really going there?

- Max