Ohio CAN have a do-over: How to throw the bums OUT

Markos "kos" Moulitsas wrote in Ohio wishes it could have do-over in governor's race that Ohio is having major buyer's remorse over the election of John "Lehman Brothers" Kasich as governor. Due to citizen disgust at Kasich's reverse Robin Hood budget and the anti-union and anti-public employee SB5, Kasich would lose a new election by 15 points.
Alas Ohio lacks any recall mechanism for state officials - but that doesn't mean we can't throw the bums out - we do have a citizen's initiative process for placing issues and constitutional amendments on the ballot.
Use the Citizen's Initiative Process to Amend the Governor's Term of Office.
An issue could be put on ballot to amend the Ohio constitution to change the dates of the terms for governor and other elected state officials - including members of the Ohio Senate and House, by ending their terms soon after passage, with the new terms being filled by candidates chosen in a special election. We can put a "recall and reset" issue on the ballot just like the gambling companies put casinos on the ballot.
The Amendment could be written to end only the term of the Governor and Lt. Governor, or it could completely clean the slate and put every office up for reset, or something in between.
In the process we can fix one of the tactics the GOP uses to stay in control of a Blue State. They have the Governor and major state offices elected in mid-term elections when voter turnout is lower, thus favoring Republicans. The initiative could reset those terms to coincide with Presidential terms - when voter participation is highest and most representative of the state's population.
And importantly the initiative could add a recall mechanism to remove elected state officials in the future without requiring a constitutional amendment.
Passage of the Amendment would end the current terms of Governor and some other elected officials and provide for a quick special election to elect new office holders. It would be a very short campaign - a rarity in American politics. The new gubernatorial and state office terms would only last until the end of the quadrennial year, and would thenceforth follow the national quadrennial calendar for presidential elections.

Irresponsible

It is time to inextricably link the words Irresponsible and Republican. It is no longer enough to call them the Party of NO, it is time to make their name synonymous with irresponsibility until they change.

The GOP are masters of using language to distort the perception of reality - that is how the Estate Tax - which only effects a small number of the wealthiest families - turned into a unfair tax on dying in the minds of people who will never have to face it after it was rebranded the Death Tax. They achieve this rebranding by having the discipline to put the new terminology into widespread use by all of their politicians and media echo chamber.

Using reasonable discussion and lengthy explanations of the facts does little to counter the reality distortion effect of GOP language or to provoke interest in the attention deficit media. But there is something we can do - add a branding to the counter productive actions of the GOP by using the word Irresponsible every time we say Republican.

Irresponsible Republicans have caused a crisis in our Federal Courts by refusing to allow votes on over half of all judicial nominees - even the ones that have been unanimously approved in committee.

Irresponsible Republicans have blocked passage of an essential Defense Appropriation bill, while our troops are still fighting two wars.

Irresponsible Republicans are blocking the extension of unemployment insurance, saying the jobless are too lazy to work even though there are 5 unemployed Americans for every available job.

Irresponsible Republicans insist on making the slow economy worse by prematurely cutting federal spending and killing the recovery.

Irresponsible Republicans insist that all spending must be paid for - except for the 700 billion in unneeded tax cuts they want to give to the wealthiest 2% of Americans. Or when an Irresponsible Republican is in the White House.

Irresponsible Republicans insist on the discredited supply side trickle down theory that cutting taxes will cut the deficit - even after trying that strategy during the Reagan administration and failing. And trying it during the GHW Bush administration and failing, And trying it during the GW Bush administration and failing.

Irresponsible Republicans have announced they look forward to closing down the government in April by refusing to raise the debt limit - even though they never failed to raise the debt limit during the Reagan and two Bush administrations.

Irresponsible Republicans still support using torture - a crime under the Geneva Convention - even though it never provided any useful information and made America less safe.

Irresponsible Republicans are blocking the renewal of Ronald Reagan's START treaty - even though every single living past and present US Secretary of State say it is essential to pass it.

Irresponsible Republicans want to cut Social Security in order to reduce the deficit - even though Social Security is running a surplus, is self funded with its own taxes, and by law cannot spend general revenue.

Irresponsible Republicans risk turning America into an international pariah state by cynically denying man made global warming (even though they know it is really happening) in order to cater to their big energy company donors.

Reasonable explanations won't penetrate the consciousness of the ADD media and low information patriots, but by repeating Irresponsible Republicans each time we deal with their irresponsible behavior we will be showing just who the grownups really are.

Revive Social Security

Social Security is doing just fine.

Despite the Catfood Commission, Social Security will never increase the national debt. In fact Social Security is just about the ONLY government program that is well funded for as far as we can forecast. It has a huge surplus of well over 2.5 trillion dollars that will continue to grow to well over 4 trillion dollars before it begins to decline. Sometime between 20 and 30 years from now that trust fund will run out, and SS will have to run on its current revenues - just like it did for its first half century of existence. That is not "broken", that is what it was always intended to do. Once the trust fund is gone, we can continue to fund benefits at 80% of current levels basically forever. Not bad, do absolutely nothing at all and SS doesn't have to cut a penny, increase the retirement age or reduce any benefits for at least 20 years, and after that can go forever with just a 20% cut. So why do they want to make those benefit reductions now?

Here's a better idea. Let's enhance Social Security so that it lowers unemployment, stimulates the economy, and restores confidence.

• Reduce unemployment by lowering the voluntary retirement age to 60 instead of raising it to 69. Life expectancy is mainly increasing because fewer people are dying young - but people reaching the end of their working years are not actually living significantly longer - and a lifetime of work, especially physical labor, is not easier on today's sexagenarians. 69 might be a good retirement age for a banker, but not for skilled iron-workers, or auto workers, or even janitors. Let them retire earlier and open up those jobs.
  


• Turn FICA into a true flat tax, rather than the regressive tax it is now. Currently FICA taxes are 12.4% of the first $106,800 in earned wages (split between worker and employer), and absolutely nothing is collected for Social Security on any income above that - and FICA taxes are not collected on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains. Let's make it a true flat tax, Collect it on all income - no exceptions. We could then easily pay for lowering the voluntary retirement age, and never have to reduce benefits, and at the same time we could cut the FICA tax rate to about half of its current level.

Reduce unemployment, substantially reduce FICA taxes for most taxpayers, preserve benefits and create confidence in today's workers that Social Security will be there for their retirement. Damn, that sounds downright conservative!

Alito Was Wrong

Do you remember Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's rebuttal of President Obama during this year's State of The Union address?

"Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections," Said President Obama. "Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito silently mouthed "not true" when Obama criticized the Supreme Court's decision.

Obama was talking about the Court's "Citizen's United" ruling, that threw open the floodgates for unlimited spending on campaign ads by corporations.

In particular, Alito is reported to have been objecting to the claim that foreign corporations would be able to finance campaign commercials in the United States - an interpretation that the Fox News Right had solidly supported in its insistence that Alito Was Right.

Now we get to grade the test. So far this election season campaign ads by outside groups are far outnumbering ads from candidates. One group in particular is more active than the rest - the US Chamber of Commerce (a group which unlike your local chamber represents multinational corporations rather than the small businesses on Main Street) - The US Chamber of Commerce has pledge to spend $75 million during this election season. So where does the Chamber's money come from? Big corporations, including:

• State Bank of India (state-run) and ICICI Bank of India
• Esnaad, a subsidiary of the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
• Russian state-run VTB Bank
• BP [UK]
• Royal Dutch Shell [Netherlands]
• Siemens [Germany]
• Bahrain Maritime & Mercantile International
• Bahrain Petroleum Company (state-owned)
• And hundreds more

Foreign-Funded ‘U.S.’ Chamber Of Commerce Running Partisan Attack Ads

Sam Seder: Mosque at Ground Zero: That's Bullshit

And a related story:

Fareed Zakaria:

Build the Ground Zero Mosque

Five years ago, the ADL honored me with its Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize. I was thrilled to get the award from an organization that I had long admired. But after the ADL publicly called for moving the mosque, I have returned both the handsome plaque and the $10,000 honorarium that came with it. More ›

The End of the Middle Class 2

Also see The End of the Middle Class

Hobos and welfare for America's Rich

Hobos and welfare for America's Rich

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard July 6th, 2010
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited

Reading William Manchester’s Glory And The Dream over the weekend, I came across this remark from President Herbert Hoover, blurted out famously in the cruelest year of 1932.

“Nobody is actually starving. The hobos, for example, are better fed than they have ever been. Hobos are eating well, in fact one had ten meals in a single day.”

Itinerant worker looking for work during the Great Depression

Hoover took deep offence at reports that children were dying of malnutrition. This is not surprising for a man who first made his global reputation organizing food aid for Belgian children at the end of World War One

By then Hoover had lost the plot, a common problem for those over the age of 45 who stop thinking, stop observing, and rely reflexively on whatever set of views worked for them in the past (I am 52).

He never quite lived down these words. After he lost the lost presidency to Roosevelt in 1933, he was taken to see starving families in Colorado. Though Hoover was too self-righteous to admit error. He insisted that economy was well on its way to recovery until President-elect Roosevelt frightened everybody with his “socialistic” adventurism.

Republicans on Capitol Hill who backed the mobilization of $3 trillion of fiscal and monetary support to bail out the financial system are now going to great efforts to prevent the roll-over of temporary benefits to 1.2m jobless facing an imminent cut-off.

I don’t wish to enter deeply into an internal US dispute between Republicans and Democrats, but I do think think that the American political class will have to face up to the new reality of a semi-permanent slump for a decade or more that will blight a great number of lives. The cyclical recovery that normally makes it possible for most Americans to find a job if they want one is not going to happen this time because the overhang of debt, fiscal tightening, and a liquidity trap have combined to jam the mechanism.

Presidential Reunion

How to respond to the Party of NO

Who really deserves the Bankster Bonuses?

Wall Street Banksters - short for Banking Gangsters - are about to receive another round of failure bonuses, even though they are still holding back from loaning money to credit worthy businesses and consumers and making money instead on exactly the same type of derivatives gambling that just required a 3 Trillion dollar taxpayer bailout a year ago.

Meanwhile, there are people out there doing jobs that ought to be getting the kinds of bonuses that the banksters aren't earning.

Here's one: The pilot of United Airlines flight 634 who safely and smoothly landed an Airbus 319 jet with a set of wheels missing. No skidding, sliding or tumbling. Whoever he is he deserves a Bankster bonus.

Airline pilot used to be a very good paying job. Not anymore. Sure the top pilots make pretty good pay, but its about a third of what they made 25 years ago (CPI adjusted). Even the hero of the Hudson - Captain Chessly Sullenberger - had his pay cut 40% a few years before he proved he is worth more than any Wall Street bankster.

Mock Them

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab waited until the last 20 minutes of his flight from Amsterdam to Detroit before he attempted to blow up his underpants - he was probably waiting for the end of the in flight movie ... I think it was "Four Christmases" with Vince Vaughn. Definitely worth delaying your martyrdom for an hour and a half.

And before anyone asks - HELL YES I'm making light of a terrorist act. I'm treating it with all the mockery it deserves.

You see, there are a bunch of idiot politicians and "opinion leaders" trying to make hay off of this attempted attack. In effect they are using it to attack us all over again. Congressman Peter Hoekstra, an idiot, immediately released a fundraising letter asking us to help him defeat the terrorists - he's running for governor of Michigan. Senator Jim DeMint is blasting the lack of strong leadership at the TSA even though he personally has been blocking the confirmation of the new TSA chief for several months. Pat Buchanan, Tom Ridge, Dick Cheney and others are outraged, OUTRAGED I say - that the underpants bomber has been arrested and indicted and will be prosecuted in an actual courtroom just like non-law abiding Americans. Some are even demanding that we torture this stupid deluded kid, even though he has been completely cooperative, has admitted to his plans, his ties to al Qaeda (well, to al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, which is not really the same "al Qaeda" as Bin Ladin's al Qaeda, but birds of a feather), and is answering any questions asked of him, but still, they want him tortured ... not for information (which we are getting), but ... just because ... These are the same idiots who claim it is too dangerous to prosecute international terrorists in US courts, even though we have already convicted over 400 of them and they have been locked away in our federal prisons for years without problem. These idiot cowards have such a low regard for American justice that they would have us become exactly the type of lawless nation that the terrorists accuse us of being.

Here's the deal. These terrorists are not supermen. They aren't bigger than life, they don't have super powers, they aren't able to defeat our justice system, they can't escape from our supermax prisons. They are, to a man, pathetic wimps. They are weaklings. They attack innocent civilians because they know they can't handle a fair fight. They use fear because they are too pathetic and lame to be able to use persuasion.

The idiot coward fools who build them up are helping the terrorists and hurting America rather than protecting it. They are collaborating with the terrorists in making us more fearful and less free. Their approach of ramping up the fear is exactly the wrong thing to do. We need to put the terrorists in their proper place - prison - and treat them as what they are - weaklings, wimps and morons. I love that we are calling this latest guy the "underpants bomber", that disdain is exactly correct. We should be mocking these fools in the media, not building them up as bogeymen.

Sensible security makes sense, but the cost is too high if we trade our freedoms for security. We need to respond to the threat of terror with vigilance and mockery.

Eventually one of these morons is going to get lucky and actually succeed in their attack. We still need to mock them. They send a thousand morons, and one is bound to get through. Give them no respect. Refuse irrational fear. Yes, we'll grieve the loss of innocent life at the hands of moronic cowards who are too afraid to put up a fair fight, but we should never fear or respect them.

Related post: They don't give a damn about our freedom

How to do it

Fox news has taught me that a president must never bow to a foreign leader. Here is the correct way to greet them:

Child Labor Endorsing, Pro-Slavery Freaks

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Best Health Care Bill that Money Can Buy

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Health Care Reform Bill is slowly falling together. The big insurance companies are getting almost everything they want. Public financing to subsidize them, a requirement for the uninsured to buy insurance or pay a fine, and guaranteed profits. Looks like they lose on the public option -except that it will not be available for the vast majority, only to the uninsured - and only if your state decides not to "opt-out". So it won't really be "competition". If you like the insurance your employer offers - you can keep it, and if you don't like the insurance your employer offers - you have to keep it anyway. So much for "options".

A few congressmen will be offering amendments to make the public option a true option for everyone - introducing actual competition. Others will be offering a bill allowing individual states the right to offer a single payer plan in their state - the proven method for providing the best care at the lowest cost. Use the the chart below to understand how your congressional representative makes their decisions (from the Center for Responsive Politics).

Every member of Congress and the total contributions they have received from the Health Care industry from 1989 through June 2009.

30 Senators side with Gang Rape

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Rape-Nuts
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

We're Number 37!

Send in the Big Dog

Ted Kennedy's passing leaves Massachusetts without full representation in the US Senate, and the nation without our greatest champion for Universal Health Care right when we need him the most.

With respect to the probability that Massachusetts will change it's law to appoint a temporary Senator until a new Senator can be chosen in a Special Election in February - most of those suggested in the media as replacements are not going to be interested in a temporary position from which they will be barred (as seems likely) from running in the special election

What Massachusetts, and the nation, needs is an strong interim Senator with no interest in a permanent position, but who has the stature, ability and connections to step into Kennedy's very large shoes and push Ted's health care reform through. Even better if that is someone with a long commitment to universal health care, who would find this temporary role as a chance to fulfill one of his own greatest goals.

I can think of one person who perfectly fits those needs:

Bill Clinton

He'd have to change his address, yet again, but he can afford it. He's been vetted - both as a former president and most recently during Hillary's confirmation.

The Big Dog can carry Kennedy's water for 5 months, working to get Universal Health Care passed, while Massachusetts works out who they want to elect for the permanent position. Then he can retire with his greatest legislative failure as president redeemed, and Ted Kennedy's legacy fulfilled.

SOCIALISM! Booga Booga Boo!

I think conservatives are confused. They see government spending money on social services and think social services ... hmmmm ... socialism. They see the name of the old USSR - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and think ... hmmm ... communism ... is socialism. They look at the name of the Nazi Party - The National Socialist German Worker's Party ... hmmm ... fascism is socialism. Thus in the conservative mind, every form of political-economic system is socialism. Communism is socialism, Fascism is socialism, Capitalism is socialism. EVERYTHING is socialism!

OK.... let's clear a few things up.

Government paying for things is not socialism. Government providing social services is not socialism. Those are both normal functions of a capitalist state - recognized as such since Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations and drove a stake through the heart of mercantilism and defined what would come to be known as the modern Capitalist state. Specifically Smith outlined 3 broad areas of government responsibility; national defense, administration of justice, and providing those public goods which are essential to a free and prosperous society. Those public goods which Smith identified were infrastructure and education - which are essential to both the public weal and commerce. In today's more complex world social safety nets are also essential to commerce. The example of the cost of private healthcare crippling our industries points toward the utility of providing social services within a capitalist system - they are part of the human infrastructure that supports private enterprise and makes it more competitive.

The Nazi Party - formally The National Socialist German Worker's Party, was originally a Worker's party (pro union party) until taken over by Adolf Hitler, he added the word "socialist" to the name in a gambit to attract more working class members, but from the beginning of Hitler's involvement the party was firmly (even homicidally) anti-union and anti-socialist and anti-communist. They finessed the inclusion of "socialism" in their name by saying they were against "liberal" socialism, their "version" of socialism had nothing to do with actual socialism, and consisted instead of a form of social Darwinism.

So what is socialism? It is an economic system where the means of production of goods is owned by the people.

Government buying goods - or services - is not socialism. As an economic system socialism can exist in either democratic or authoritarian political systems.

Authoritarian Socialism is Communism.

Liberal Socialism (not neoliberal) or Social Democracies are democratic states with free enterprise market systems and extensive social welfare systems in which certain key industries may have been nationalized, but those states maintain private ownership of capital. Recently this has been referred to as EuroSocialism. Both modern Capitalist states and EuroSocialist states have mixed economies with both private enterprise and government sector industry, the difference being the relative balance between the two.

Conservatives will accuse progressives of trying to move the balance of the mixed economy in the United States closer to that of European States. And they have a point. But the point is not quite the indictment they make it out to be. To attribute any perceived policy as "socialism" doesn't make it anti-capitalist. Social Welfare programs - which are common to Capitalist and Socialist systems - are not socialist in and of themselves - they are not the means of production of industrial goods. But they do help support the industrial system - social welfare programs ultimately buttress capitalist enterprise. The social welfare system exists to support capitalist industry as much as any other intended benefit.

Perhaps EuroSocialism should be called Democratic Social Capitalism. It's benefit to capitalist enterprise has been well demonstrated in the aftermath of the 2008 economic meltdown and the quick recovery of the EuroSocialist sector while we still flounder here in America. With their stronger safety nets many European citizens suffered no loss of health care, less deprivation from high unemployment rates, and were able to keep buying goods at a great enough level to revive industry and return their economies to positive growth. The 2008 recession ended quickly in Germany, France and much of Scandinavia.

I'm not afraid of the "S" word, I just don't think it is used properly. Mostly it is used as an epithet - and grossly incorrectly at that.

Modern progressives believe in private enterprise and private ownership of property and commerce. They don't want government or public ownership of the means of production, they don't want government factories making shoes, or cars, or consumer goods. They think there are things that government does better to the benefit of the public and of private enterprise, and there are things that government funds better but lets private enterprise provide. That's not really Socialism, so lets call it Social Capitalism.

The High Cost of Doing Nothing

"ObamaCare", the opposition name for the health care reform effort now proceeding through 4 or 5 bills in Congress is rather short on true reform since its number one goal seems to be to preserve the astronomical profits of the industry. But ... is it worse than doing nothing?

The Congressional Budget Office recently scored one of the Democratic proposals, and concluded that it would cost $1 trillion over 10 years, or even $1.5 trillion in the worse case.

My God - how can we afford that! That's like 1/7th of what we spent in a little over a year bailing out Wall Street!

Well, not exactly. The CBO scored an early version without a public option or employer mandate, it now says that plan would "only" cost $600 billion over 10 years and that doesn't include all the savings that would be achieved from such things as new cost controls and far fewer of the very high costs from uninsured people avoiding early care and waiting for expensive publicly funded emergency care. $600 billion - over 10 years - is about a third of what we'll spend on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Still - an extra $60 billion a year is a lot of money. Can we afford it?

Better question: can we afford doing nothing?

America has the most expensive health care system in the world - and for that we provide the best health care industry profits in the world, but not anywhere near the best health care outcomes for our population - we are solidly in the second tier of emerging nations in overall quality of health care, no where near the rest of the industrialized world - we are bested by such industrial powerhouses as Costa Rica, Dominica, Chile, Cyprus and Columbia.

For that we are paying nearly twice as much as any other nation - 17.6% of our GDP - over $2.5 trillion this year. Costs are increasing at a rate of over 6% every year, in 10 years time we'll by spending over $4.6 trillion per year, about 21% of GDP.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services actuarial center (in the Dept of HHS) calculates that 47.4% of the total expenditures on health care in the United States will come directly from government sources this year - and by 2019 that will increase to 51.7%.

With National Health Expenditures increasing from $2.51 trillion this year to $4.67 trillion in 2019, and the public paying 47.4% today increasing to 51.7% in 10 years, the extra cost to taxpayers of doing nothing will be $5.66 trillion dollars.

And on top of that the average taxpayer can expect to be paying twice as much for their private health insurance.

Kinda makes $600 billion look like chump change.

Senator Jefferson Beauregard "Jeff" Sessions III: Tool

In an interview on NPR Senator Jeff Sessions reiterated his problem with statements Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor made in a 2001 speech.

Sessions:
It was a speech that reflected a judicial philosophy that a person's background, sympathies and prejudices (those were her words) can impact your ruling. She said her background could affect the facts she would chose to see as a judge. That's ... I believe that is a disqualifying thing, frankly.
...
This is so basic to American law, your justice and the result in a court should not depend on the judge's personal views, background or ethnicity. A judge makes ... takes an oath to be impartial, the oath says, ah, you will do equal justice to the poor and rich alike, and that you put on that robe and it represents a fundamental commitment to put aside all those things and to be fair and objective in the process.

His statement includes direct quotes from Sotomayor's 2001 Berkeley speech which included the now infamous "wise Latina" remark. In fact, they are from passages that expand and explain that remark:

Sotomayor:
Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which i am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. but I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
...
I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that i reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.

Notice that taken in context the Sotomayor statements - that according to Sessions represent a disqualification for her appointment, explain the need to ensure impartiality and fairness completely the opposite of what Sessions claims she said.

The fact that Sessions admitted he was directly quoting from those statements proves that he was perfectly aware of what she was actually saying.

His mischaracterizations are nothing less than deliberate lies.