…is that anyone who signs Carlos Marmol and Kerry Wood’s paychecks is probably not someone who we should spend too much time listening to about who we should hire to run the whole country.
JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion trading loss is top news nationwide. But over at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), such losses are business as usual. USPS reported a typical (for it) $3.2 billion loss for the most recent quarter. Try that comparison on for size.
I don’t necessarily disagree with everything the Heritage Foundation says. I remember several times in the past month saying “My, my, that Heritage Tumblr has a good point.”
But you either don’t KNOW that the USPS is required to fully fund the pensions of employees that haven’t even been BORN yet, or you you do know, and you’re being disingenuous.
So let’s keep that “LOL silly liberals don’t understand the world” on a case-by-case and I’ll extend the same courtesy, much as it contorts my innards.
At this point, I really probably ought to just go ahead and quit all of my jobs and go mow Charlie Pierce’s lawn or something, but he’s got a fantastic piece at Esquire right now about this very thing.
Pierce writes about the history of the Post Office as a cultural institution; the notion of government as an entity that’s able to take a letter from one person’s house in New York to another person’s house in California in a few days’ time for an exceptionally reasonable price; the fact that, but for new laws passed requiring the Post Office to fully fund every pension it will have to pay out in the next 75 years in advance, the USPS would have run at a profit of $2.5 billion in 2011 (note: Pierce doesn’t provide a link to the report he cites; here’s one to a report for the first quarter of 2012 that puts the profit, absent the pre-funding burden, at $200 million); and, crucially, the way that anti-government ideology provides the impetus for trying to destroy the Post Office.
It’s an important read.
But seriously — and I’m still on vacation here, so this will be only partially thought-out —- the thing that gives the birth control discussion legs is that it’s a broad coalition of forces: It’s the people should not be able to fuck without permission squad that also wants to shove probes up the vaginas of anyone who needs an abortion to teach them a lesson; but it’s also the we hate health care in all its forms, so birth control is as good a place start as any crowd; furthermore, the debate that went “if a bunch of shitty Catholic bishops think that people should be able to cite moral concerns as a reason why they should be exempt from certain tax laws, why the fuck have we been paying for an illegal war that so many on our side oppose” actually plays into the hands of the anti-tax fundamentalists who are on board with this because they want everybody to insist that taxes are unfair.
Basically, you have three different interest-groups: the fiercely anti-sex/anti-woman hate brigade, the anti-Obama types who want to undo anything he’s done, and the Norquistian anti-taxers who like the idea that people on the left are suddenly receptive to the argument that people maybe ought to be able to opt out of taxes to fund things they disagree with, since those people disagree with every tax for everything.
Add all that up, and you have three different ways of looking at a situation that is a lot more complicated — and thus scary! — than just the birth control basics. Restricting access to birth control may be a losing issue with a public that overwhelmingly benefits from its existence, but if you can muddy it up with “we’re really doing this to roll back SOCIALISM” and “you hate paying taxes, right” then it’s part of a broadening coalition.
That is what the GOP has been for years, and it’s the way that the Christian nutjobs and the Tea Party hardliners can find common ground. Whether you oppose birth control because you want to dismantle Obamacare piece-by-piece; because you want everyone who has sex to suffer for the unsanctioned pleasure they’re enjoying, there’s a place for you at the party; or because you’re trying to further an anti-tax argument by getting more people to endorse your rhetoric, there’s a place for you at this party.
what you’re seeing in the state legislatures is the activity of the Republican farm team. The people voting for laws springing from the mushy brains of people like Bob Marshall and Lori Klein are the young Republicans who, a few cycles from now, will be running for Congress, probably from safe Republican districts that they’ve helped draw up, and aided immeasurably by voter-suppression laws that they’ve helped pass. Most of them will be the products of the vast conservative candidate manufacturing base — the kids at CPAC, the College Republicans, the various Christianist organization. They will not equivocate. They will not moderate. And they are the future of the party. Anyone who thinks the Republican party eventually again will have to “move to the middle” (this translates from the Punditese to “regain its sanity”) isn’t paying attention. In 2006, the Republicans were handed a defeat every bit as epic as any one ever handed to the Democrats. They did not pause to give it a second thought. Their resolve hardened. They ran what few “moderates” were left right out of the party. And, in 2010, they got a wave election that not only gained them the House of Representativse, but also the legislative majorities in the states that are now producing these goofy-ass laws, and a lot more seriously dangerous ones as well. And, even then, they blew a chance to retake the Senate by running sideshow freaks like Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell. They didn’t care.
They do not stop, even when they’re losing. The country told them, through the 1998 midterms, that it didn’t want Bill Clinton impeached. Bill Clinton got impeached. In 2005, everybody including their Democratic colleagues told them that they were going off the cliff in their meddling in the life and death of Terri Schiavo. There were gobs of polling data to back them up. The Republicans kept meddling even after Ms. Schiavo passed.Is there any evidence that the Republicans are moving “toward the middle” in their presidential contest? Ask poor Willard Romney if that’s the case. The current frontrunner is a nutball ultramontane Catholic who lost his last race by 18 points, at least in part because he was one of the more noxious of the Schiavo meddlers.
The fact is that the presidency is not really that important to them. They have found a way to make it impossible for any Democratic president to govern as a Democrat. Their real goal is in the legislatures, federal and state, where they have been able to exercise their power on the issues they care about. They will not change themselves. They are going to have to have the wingnut flogged out of them over several losing election cycles, and they’ve arranged things in the states so that may not be possible.
Charles Pierce’s politics blog for Esquire has really become indispensable reading every single day.
In the wake of Romney’s 13-point trouncing by Gingrich last night, Ol’ Mitt’s campaign did, at least, get to issue one of my favorite press releases of all time. When you’re starting from a place called “I Think Grandiose Thoughts,” and go on to remind the media that Gingrich has compared himself, variously, to: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Henry Clay, Charles De Gaulle, William Wallace, Pericles, The Duke Of Wellington, A Viking, Thomas Edison, Vince Lombardi, The Wright Brothers, and Moses.
All of that stuff is good, but the viking is the best, obviously, as it highlights exactly how abstractly Gingrich thinks of himself as something big and weird and — yeah — grandiose — out to fuck people up. If the Romney people were a little more savvy, you have to think that they’d have included a Photoshopped picture of Gingrich wearing a Viking helmet for people to make memes of. The spread of that shit on Tumblr alone over the ten days between now and Florida would probably be worth half a percentage point…
In any case, wow, is Romney lucky that Florida happens in ten days and not four or five. If Gingrich takes Florida, you have to expect that he becomes the odds-on favorite, right? Romney can probably buy that election with ten days to go, though (Viking Newt commercials all week long, Mitt! Call me!), which will keep this thing drawn out for a while longer, probably at least through Super Tuesday.
Anyway: the real takeaway from all of this for me personally is that I’ve suddenly acquired a rooting interest, now that the prospect of President Newt has jumped to 11/2 on Paddy Power. I still very much want Barack Obama to win, but I’d take an unprincipled scion of privilege with no dignity or moral compass like Romney every day over Newt Gingrich, because that guy terrifies me. I just watched Ron Paul give a speech about “state’s rights” in front of a confederate flag, and was struck by the fact that he’s still only the third-most racist candidate currently campaigning. Romney and Paul may not give a shit if people I care about live or die, but Gingrich — all ginned up on Culture War and Southern Strategy bullshit — is positioning himself as the guy who actively hopes that they do.
I know Paul decided not to play in Florida — a good decision, as he won’t get any delegates out of it, he doesn’t have the budget to go for first, and his rabid grassroots support means that even barely participating, he’ll probably pull around 10% of the vote — but he’s got to be pulling for Mitt there, too, because his only path to relevance (if not the nomination) is if those dudes just keep trading body blows and everything is muddy for as long as possible. If he can hustle up a significant number of delegates in the four caucus states to follow, then as long as neither Newt or Romney look to have things sewn up, he’s a player. That’s a Good Thing, because Ron Paul is the only candidate in this thing who has the power to push Obama into “constitutional professor” mode, so the longer he is relevant, the better.
Meanwhile, does anyone have any idea what Santorum’s plan is? He’s obviously polling better than Perry did (past week three of his campaign, anyway), but his path to the nomination seems as hard to figure out as the erstwhile Governor’s — which is probably why his odds at being elected President in November are, according to the bookie, 100/1, or twice as bad as Hillary Clinton’s…
Anyway. I’ve been kind of half asleep on politics for most of this campaign, because it is depressing as fuck and I wanted to see what my life would be like if I wasn’t obsessed with American Presidential Politics for a little while, but the thought of President Gingrich has me developing a rooting interest in the Republican primary. Football season is nearly over, after all…
[W]hile parity rules in the NFL, random arbitrariness isn’t usually the way things work: losers, typically, are exposed as losers in the playoffs. The football-watching establishment may be nearly as bored with the long-presumed favorites in Green Bay as the Republican base is with Mitt Romney, but that boredom doesn’t mean that they’ll randomly select the St. Louis Rams — the football equivalent to Rick Santorum — to advance in the playoffs just because it’d be kinda neat.
Which is the point: America, especially in the conservative worldview, likes to see itself as a pure meritocracy. “Jim Abbott,” they like to say, indicating that hard work and determination are enough to make anyone a success. But the Republican primaries, whoever ultimately wins them, indicate something else. You don’t necessarily need to be good in order to win. In the end, it looks like a tight three-way that resulted in Santorum — but that doesn’t make him a winner. It only makes him the person who did less badly than everybody else, because someone — statistically speaking — had to.
So, I filed this week’s Down And Distance last night before Romney pulled off his decisive eight (8) vote victory after every precinct reported. Still, the point seems to be more or less intact (though I’ll lose the super mature Santorum pun) — this is as arbitrary a primary season as has happened in my lifetime, to say the least. While it’d have been hugely unexpected for something as competitive and fascinating as ‘08 to occur a second time, especially with an incumbent as one of the guys in the race — but geez. This makes the loser class of ‘04, which at least had a clear narrative (outsider obviously torpedoed by establishment in favor of their favored Massachusetts empty suit), seem positively high-concept.
You have to assume that, if the primary season had lasted just another 2-3 weeks, and the Santorum surge had been pushed against by some negative ads, the 75.4% who’ll never vote for Romney would have ended up giving Huntsman some love. This isn’t really even anybody but Romney, it’s anybody but everybody, and that’s not how America is designed. Or, at least, not how America sees itself working.
The playoffs are how we wish America worked. The primaries are how it is at its most depressing. That’s never been more clear than this year.
“If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?”—
Rick Santorum, pledging to significantly reduce federal funding for food stamps, arguing that the nation’s increasing obesity rates render the program unnecessary (via sleeplessinsouthie)
I think my jaw almost fell off.
eclecticspectrum: *blank stare*
(via eclecticspectrum)
If food stamps worked at Trader Joes and Whole Foods then maybe we’d see different results? I mean I had a friend who used her moms ebt to buy snacks at the bodega and like, that was awesome for me, but her family cant live off of gum and honey buns.
(via marfmellow)
You can use food stamps at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. This is the wrong argument.
Kat and I were on food stamps several years ago. Our situation was possibly atypical, but I’m not certain of that — a lot of people base their perception of these things on stereotypes. In any case, we were an unmarried, cohabitating white couple in our twenties who just didn’t make much money that winter. I’d spent the summer working a labor job loading trucks, and I hadn’t known how severely the work available to me would drop off when the weather turned. Kat was freelancing at a few universities in Chicago, and times were tough; we decided it’d be best to save some money and move back to Texas. We applied for food stamps and received them for a few months.
At that point in our lives, that was AMAZING. We had $200+ dollars a month to spend on groceries. Since there were only two of us, and we had time to cook, that actually DID mean Whole Foods, or fresh produce from Jewel (or HEB, when we got back to Texas — at the time, at least, Illinois EBT cards worked outside the state). We ate decent, healthy food. Which was great, and also, I think, an important piece to this Santorum bullshit.
I know his isn’t strictly worth pointing out, since anyone contemplating voting for a guy like Santorum is pretty dedicated to the idea of meanness as a personal philosophy, but having access to food stamps helps people prevent obesity. You can use your food stamps on real, decent food, and people do. They also buy junk food and that stuff, because it is cheaper/easier/etc, but having a guaranteed dollar amount every month that can only be spent on food means that people are going to make better decisions, because their grocery budget is no longer competing with their keep-the-lights-on budget, or their winter coat budget, or their gas/bus pass/car insurance budget (or even the Internet bill, or the weekly Redbox rental). It stops being a choice between all those things, healthy food, or junk food, and becomes a choice between just the last two. That alone helps people eat better.
So that’s the thing: it’s not that you can’t use food stamps to buy healthy food. It’s that you CAN, and people do. Not exclusively, not entirely, but of course they do.
