The Alternate Reality of Hard Right Wingers

Every now and then we run across a column, or post, or letter that is so off the wall, so barking mad crazy as to defy rational response. The cognitive dissonance we feel is usually due to the strength and mass of the opaque mental constructs of the ideologically extreme. Facts do not obscure the right winger's view of these constructs. Neither do written words. No, the hard right winger see what he wants to see, reads what he wants to read, with no fear whatsoever that what is perceived bears little or no correspondence with what actually exists.

For just one small and insignificant example of this phenomenon in action, we can turn to my friend and recently re-employed Jason Williscroft. I'm happy to report he has re-established his blog. I surfed over there tonight to see what mischief he's been up to and I find he's still mumbling to himself about me after all this time.

As I scanned the first sentence or two, where he called me a "cranky old fibber" (totally unfair -- I am not a fibber.) I wondered if this was going to be as good as when he ragged on my observations on unemployment using health insurance policy sales at his small company to refute the unemployment numbers (huh?). Or when he tried to make the argument that fewer Iraqis were being killed after the Iraq War started than before it began (double huh?). Or when his dad argued that the US Post Office would work a whole better if they were funded by user fees (triple huh? The USPS does run on user fees. They're called "stamps".)

I was a little disappointed then to see that he merely missed the whole point of my light hearted post suggesting that out of work Republican congressional aides find employment as CapitalOne barbarians. Oddly, our Jason thought my point was that I "maintain(ed) that the economy is so bad that the average recently unemployed Republican may have to tighten his belt a notch?"

He then proceeded to lecture me on why the economy is so terrific, without regard to the use of messy facts:

• "national unemployment at record lows," Jason says. Sorry friend. December's unemployment rate was 4.5%. Not bad, but not a record low, considering that rate was 3.9% in the December before President Bush was installed. 6.8 million were unemployed by the BLS' definition in December 2006 when Jason penned this claim. 5.6 million were unemployed six years before.
• "gas prices bottoming out" Jason says. Are you kidding? Being grateful for $2 gasoline after it went up to $3 is like being grateful to the guy beating your head with a ball pien hammer simply because he slowed down a bit. Of course, gas prices may be on the march again, so the shelf life of Jason's optimism may be expiring.

Beyond these unreal claims, what's weirder is that he thought I was talking about the economy at all. These right wingers are so hard wired with their preconceived notions of liberals, folks like Jason will see and hear me claim the economy is terrible and the sky is falling, regardless of whether that has anything to do with what I'm really saying or not. This reality-bending phenomenon is hilariously chronicled by Tom Tomorrow in his This Modern World comic here and here.

So, Jason, for the record: no I do not think the sky is falling down. The economy is not in great shape, but it is not in the tank either. Growth rates are down in the Bush era from the Clinton era, but we aren't in a recession at this point. Unemployment is up from the Clinton era, but it is not to depression levels. There are big economic worries out there, like our massive debt both government and consumer, our annual budget deficits, the bursting of the housing bubble and our ridiculous trade imbalance. However recognizing these present risks is not the same as saying the sky is falling down. There is more to the world than black and white absolutes Jason. Not only are there shades of grey, but there's a wonderful array of colors and hues out there.

As for what the economy is like for our Jason? He says of his recent bout of unemployment after his company collapsed: "I had so many offers rolling in that I took an extra month off just to evaluate them and make sure I didn't blow any opportunities."

Yeah, whatever dude. I'm just glad you found a job. Congratulations and best of luck in your new endeavor.

Our "Unnatural Aristocracy"

There's a meme going around today at Kos, TPM and the LA Times raising the spector of an "unnatural aristocracy" should Sen. Hillary Clinton be elected to President for two terms. If that should happen, then a Bush or a Clinton would have been President for 28 years.

What strikes me as odd is why the hubbub now, with 10 of those 28 years the subject of future speculation? Where was the hand wringing all along about our existing "unnatural aristocracy"? After all, the Republicans haven't nominated a national ticket without a Bush or a Dole on board since 1972, 35 years ago.

Just because Bill Clinton had the good fortune to marry a formidable partner named Rodham, we're supposed to believe our unnatural aristocracy is suddenly a bipartisan problem?

Job Hunting Tip for Out of Work Republicans

Now that the Democrats have taken control of Congress, hundreds of GOP Congressional staffers are now in a mad scramble for employment. "The hundreds of Republican staffers — not to mention more than a few Members — who will lose their jobs in the next few weeks are going to face a hostile marketplace on K Street as unemployed Republicans flood the market."

I really feel their pain. Really. That means the uber-patriots from GOP Congressional offices that shut down the Miami vote counting in 2000 below, are getting their pink slips soon.


Judging from that manufactured display of outrage, it's clear that their best career path is to join the CapitalOne credit card marketing team. What's (Left) in YOUR Wallet?



Miss ya already.

Flashback: Rumsfeld's Handshake With Saddam

So Saddam Hussein has been found guilty of genocide against Kurds in 1982. Shock and surprise. How many of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders will now use that as justification for the Iraq War? Never mind that the US had no problem with Saddam's genocide at the time. That famous picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand took place about a year later, long after we knew full well what went down.

But what was the context of that picture?

One problem with using the Google to surf the internets is that there's relatively little hard info pre-1990 to be found. That's not too surprising, since few people knew what the internet was in 1990. After a session of cleaning out my basement however, I came across this gem, a Newsweek from January 2, 1984. On the Periscope page is a news snippet describing the meetings leading up to that handshake:

"The Case for a Tilt to Iraq
The United States is definitely "moving to improve relations with Iraq," says one senior administration policymaker. The wave of Iranian-inspired terrorism in the Middle East is strengthening the case of those senior American officials who have been urging a U.S. Tilt toward Iraq. These officials argue that resuming diplomatic relations with Baghdad would serve as a kind of "diplomatic retaliation" against Iran. In addition, it would give Syrian President Hafez Assad "something else to worry about," in the words of one State Department source; Syria and Iraq are bitter rivals. Iraq severed ties with Washington in 1967. On his current stay in Baghdad, special envoy Donald Rumsfeld is sounding out officials on their willingness to resume relations. At the very least, Washington would want assurances that Iraq no longer harbors Abu Nidal and other terrorists. With the resumption of relations, Washington might help Iraq's oil exporting operations."

(Here's a jpg of the actual page for those lacking trust in my transcription skills.)

So we see clearly why Rumsfeld was for Saddam before he was against Saddam. How embarrassing for him, to be this wrong AND inconsistent at the same time. We also see that EVEN THEN it all revolved around oil, despite it being presented in an "oh by the way" tone in Newsweek.

Cheer up! Congress is on the Job!

Take a look at our intrepid House of Representatives Armed Services Committee web page.

They've got a plan for Iraq! In fact, they've got an organized "Victory In Iraq" Caucus all set up and working to ensure our... well... Victory in Iraq!

Scroll down the page a little to the "Victory In Iraq Caucus" link for further details on all the excitement! I don't know about you, but I feel SO much better. Tip of the hat to Atrios for spotting this.

The Iraq War: We Told You So.

All right, I've tried to resist this for a long time. I really didn't want to do it. Well actually, I did. Here goes:

We Told You So. We Were Right. You Were Wrong.

The Iraq War is a devastating, bankrupting, economy destroying disaster. Each time you fill your tank up with $2 to 3+ gasoline, remember that:

We Told You So. We Were Right. You Were Wrong.

You don't remember that we warned you before the Iraq invasion? Well on October 14, 2002, six months before the invasion, the group I've been involved with, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, ran a full page ad in the New York Times entitled "They're Selling War. We're Not Buying". The ad spoke of how the war was marketed like a new product, and suggested that warning labels be attached to that product: "Warning: War Will Wreck the Economy"; "Warning: War Will Breed Terrorism"; "Warning: War Will Discredit America in the World's Eyes" and "Warning: War Will Take A Terrible Toll in Human Life".

In March 2003, BLSP marshaled 7 Nobel Prize winning economists and scores of other businesspeople to sign another New York Times full page ad, this time highlighting the economic cost of a war with Iraq. The message:

"Which is smarter? Spending $80 million a year to disarm Iraq peaceably -- or spending a thousand times more on a war? In a time of economic peril, such a crushing "war surcharge" could only be justified by a clear threat to our nation. Iraq presents no such threat."

On March 6, 2003 I had the opportunity to co-sign a letter to President Bush asking to speak with him concerning the economic consequences of war. That letter predicted lower stock prices, higher oil prices, lower consumer confidence, forced cuts in Federal state and local government programs, disrupted transportation, tourism and shipping and a backlash against American brands abroad. Of those predictions, all have come to pass at least somewhat except one: the stock market is higher than it was in 2003, partly fueled by huge gains in the defense and oil industries.

Of course, none of these ads and letters stopped the war from happening. BLSP didn't give up though. In March 2004 I had the privilege of representing BLSP in Washington unveiling a campaign kicked off by an ad in the New York Times signed by over 70 national business leaders titled: "Have you noticed what's happening to Chief Executives who lie?" and observed:

"We now know that the case the President made for his war was built almost entirely out of falsehoods."

Later, after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the dysfunctional Federal response became obvious to all, again it was business leaders that connected the dots with the Iraq War's drain on our resources, observing:

"They died because the infrastructure of this great nation has been allowed to go to hell in favor of war in Iraq. They died because the National Guardsmen who could have saved lives were shipped off to that war.

The myopia is mind-boggling. This very year hurricane protection projects around Lake Pontchartrain were slashed by 79%. Flood prevention projects in New Orleans took a 53% hit. The Corps of Engineers leader who complained was ousted. FEMA was gutted. Nothing not shaped like a Pentagon got adequate funding from this administration."

Now we see the result of this war. Cost estimates range in the trillions. Well over 2,600 American soldiers killed, as well as over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Anti-American fervor is at a fever pitch in the Islamic world. We have lost all trace of respect and political capital in the world. We're generating hundreds of billions of new government debt owed to foreign governments largely as a result of this disaster. Oil is so expensive that when it drops below $70 per barrel, it's treated as good news. Sectarian violence and anarchy rules in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction found, save some leftover spoiled canisters that the Reagan administration sold to Saddam in the 80's.

We Told You So.

If you're a businessperson, go join BLSP so the message can continue. If you're not a businessperson, go join their sister group True Majority. Enough is enough.

If You Want to Cut Pork, Go to the Pentagon

(Here's the post I spoke of in my last entry.)

The Truth Laid Bear wants all good bloggers to support a bill put forth by a handful of conservative Republican Senators called "The Fiscal Watch Team Offset Package", This bill ostensibly offsets the costs of Hurricane Katrina with a bunch of Federal budget cuts to Medicare and a 5% reduction in all domestic spending. This is apparently a litmus test for bloggers and politicians alike. Support the bill with a specific declaration on your blog, and you are a "Porkbuster". Oppose the bill, and you favor profligate government waste. Faithful right-thinking bloggers are then supposed to declare their support on their blogs, to then be highlighted on the TTLB site. Look closer however, and the whole deal appears to be just another right wing attempt to frame opposition to domestic spending as "trimming wasteful pork".

I would like to say "I support the Fiscal Watch Team Offset Package", but I can't. It's a terrible, highly partisan bill that targets all the wrong areas and lets the main sources of government pork go untouched. This "package" would slash domestic spending across the board by 5%, increase Medicare costs and freeze COLA adjustments for non-military personnel. The recent pay hikes for Congressmen are not affected, nor are any military programs. This package is supposed to save $130 billion in 2 years. The fact that the Medicare savings don't accrue to the benefit of the Federal Budget (being an off-budget Trust Fund program) is apparently lost on our intrepid budget cutters.

Well this is just balderdash. Most of the waste in government takes place in the military side of the ledger. In this chart, the red pie slice is the military's portion of all Federal discretionary spending. All, except for one important distinction: the Iraq and Afghanistan operations are funded by off budget emergency appropriations. What you see is the military budget minus our current wars du jour. So when our arch-conservative (and downright loopy) freshman Senator Tom Coburn (R, Mars) exempts all military spending from cuts, he's walking away from the biggest pie slice of all. Of course, that's intentional. The military is the Republicans' third rail, just as domestic spending such as Medicare and Social Security are the Democrats'. This bill therefore is merely a Trojan Horse partisan attack on the Democrats wrapped in anti-pork rhetoric.

If anyone is serious on Capitol Hill about reducing wasteful spending, you have to look at the Pentagon first. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld admitted in 2002 that the Pentagon has lost track of an estimated $2.3 trillion of military transactions. That's $2.3 trillion or over $8,000 for every man woman and child living in the USA. Contrast that with the $77 per person cost of pork identified in the Porkbusters database so far, and the $448 per person that Coburn's bill claims to save. And that before the Iraq War started, before Halliburton snagged those no bid contracts, before those untold billions were unaccounted for in the Iraq reconstruction budget. It's so bad, non-partisan tax watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense said in 2003:

"DOD is by far the most fiscally mismanaged agency. The GAO has said that overhauling the Pentagon's financial management will be a major challenge "that goes far beyond financial accounting to the very fiber of the department's business operations and management culture." In fact, no major part of DOD has ever passed an audit and the Pentagon readily admits that flawed business systems and practices are common within the agency. They claim it would take decades to get all of the agency books in order."

It's not just accounting incompetence though, it's deliberate policy decisions that waste hundreds of billions of dollars. Dr. Lawrence Korb, Asst Secy of Defense under Ronald Reagan, recently wrote a complete analysis of today's military programs. By targeting wasteful weapons systems designed to fight cold war enemies that no longer exist, he's found over $60 billion per year that could be cut from military budgets that actually would strengthen our national security.

Here's just one example from Korb's Report of the kind of unneeded pork we should cut: the V-22 Osprey program. This dog is a tilt rotor craft that takes off like a helicoptor and then flies like a plane. Or at least that's what it's supposed to do. Originally ordered in the 80's, it was dropped by the Army in the late 80's because of enormous technical problems and field test failures. Then-Sec'y of Defense Dick Cheney canceled the program in 1991. It was revived by Congress however and continued to live on in Pentagon budgets ever since. Several serious accidents in continued testing make the Osprey more deadly for our Armed Forces than the entire Kosovo War. The total cost of this dog is up to $50 billion. A little over $500 million was spent on payments to military contractors in FY2003, spread throughout two dozen different congressional districts. This dog should go before it kills any more Marines.

You want another piece of pork to dispense with? It's called "Operation Iraqi Freedom", an unforgiveable boondoggle that wastes $5.8 billion per month. That's $70 billion per year.

Follow Korb's advice on the traditional budget, and follow Congressman Murtha's advice on Iraq, and we'll have saved $260 billion over the next two years while actually strengthening military preparedness. That's twice what the Senator Coburn's package wants to slash, without snatching Medicare benefits from those who need them and slashing every domestic priority we have bedsides.

Dr. Korb presented the idea of his military cuts in October within days of Sen Coburn's Medicare and domestic cut package. But the TTLM "Porkbusters" effort apparently will have none of that. Only domestic programs are attacked in their database they've set up. Yet just that one Marine-killing Osprey program costs more than all of the pork identified in that database put together. So is "porkbusters" just a right wing framing campaign against domestic spending, or are they serious about actually trimming bigtime wasteful spending? It will be very interesting if Korb's recommendations ever makes it on the "Porkbusters" site.

Putting Porkbusters to the Test

In the aftermath of a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration, I was poking around the blogosphere and came across a growing site called "The Truth Laid Bear", which styles itself as a "fully developed portal to the blogosphere". It's pretty impressive too, with something like 7K visits per day and close to 50,000 blogs registered as part of the "TTLB Ecosystem". OK, so I registered my small blog with the group and was immediately branded an "Insignificant Microbe". Dudes, you might want to check with your publicist on the wisdom of that initial Out of the Box Experience. Subsequent scans by their software promoted me to "Slimy Mollusc". I feel so vindicated.

In any event it looks like a pretty nifty community to bop around in. One part of the site that drew my attention, being the hopeless would-be polysci wonk that I am, was a campaign called "Porkbusters". This brainchild of Instapundit is a great idea. It invites all bloggers to identify some particularly noisome example of government waste or pork and blog about it. We're also asked to pressure our Congresscritters to eliminate said pork forthwith. Porkbusters also promises to post each example on their site so that the whole community can share in the outrage.

Well I'm going to put this to the test. You see, the whole campaign appears to have a decidedly rightward tilt. Looking through the pork cited, all of it comes from domestic non military spending. Yet about 50% of the discretionary budget is devoted to the military, not including the Iraq and Afghanistan operations. My suspicions were confirmed by Porkbusters' highlighting of a right wing attempt to cut social programs, framed as the "Fiscal Watch Team Offset Package", an attempt to offset the expenses of cleaning up after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

So my next post will highlight some Pentagon pork. Let's see if the TTLB Ecosystem is up to including that in their efforts.

GOP Senate to Workers: It's Fine to Be Paid 1/3rd Less Than Depression-Era Laborers

First, some perspective. Pictured here are some day laborers working on construction of the Hoover Dam in 1932.


These men were part of a corps of 5,000 men paid 50 cents an hour to do the dirty unskilled labor that created the magnificent dam over 5 years of hard dangerous work. Those who got that 50 cents an hour considered themselves lucky, as wage rates were depressed by the height of the Great Depression. Still, labor unions at the time bitterly denounced the wage rates and working conditions of the Hoover Dam laborers:

"We believe that a great injustice is being perpetrated against the workers at Boulder Dam in the general lowering of working and living conditions on a project directly under the supervision of our Government during this time of depression and unemployment. Labor at Boulder Dam has no voice in the settling of wages, hours of labor, working conditions, safety or living conditions. Last year local Labor Unions attempted to have the Bacon-Davis prevailing wage law apply to the Boulder Canyon project and Boulder City. An investigation by the conciliation Division of the Department of Labor found that the Bacon-Davis Act did not become a law until two days after the Six Companies signed their contract. Further, that reservations were not covered by the prevailing rate of wage law and the result was a general lowering of wages and working conditions. An arbitrary scale of wage was imposed on skilled mechanics twenty-five to fifty percent lower than the prevailing scales for similar work in the territory adjacent to the project."

Picture and quote from the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum. Go there if you're in Vegas sometime. It's an incredible story they tell.

Now fast forward to 2005. The GOP dominated US Senate has just voted down the first increase of the minimum wage since 1997: from $5.15 to $6.25 an hour. All the Democrats plus four Republicans voted for it. It failed 51-49. In the time since the last increase in the minimum wage, Senators voted themselves seven pay raises totaling $28,000 per year.

What does this have to do with the Hoover Dam workers? Well, 50 cents an hour in the Depression translates into $7.89 per hour in today's dollars. (Don't believe me? Do the math with the historical Consumer Price Index.) What the Senate is saying is that today's minimum wage workers should be getting a wage 35% LOWER than unskilled, non-union labor in the height of the Great Depression. This is progress? No. It's a crime against Americans. Next election time, remember who did this to us.

The Called Ball Didn't Fall: Bush Tax Cuts an Objective Failure

Reality is an inconvenient thing sometimes. In the polarized atmosphere of today's politics, reality is often hard to come by. Everyone has their spin, their set of facts and warping of same. Because of this, no one trusts what the other side is saying, and perhaps rightly so. That's why I like to get back to basics and simply rely on hard primary data that no one can dispute or question. So when a friend in another forum claimed that the Bush administration's tax cuts actually worked to foster economic growth and raise tax receipts (as reported by USA Today), I thought it was time to look at the facts.

When playing pool, the way players prevent one another from benefiting from lucky shots is to require each player to call what shot he/she is trying to make. If it happens, then fine. If something else happens, like the wrong ball falling into the wrong pocket, it doesn't count. The President's budget message to Congress each January is the fiscal politics version of calling your shots, though the administration would like us to forget this.

Each year the President's budget message contains five year projections of where the administration thinks revenues, spending and deficits will be. These projections are based upon the enactment of whatever tax and spending plan the President proposes with the message. So if a President suggests a bold new tax cut for example, the predicted effects of that tax cut are built into the numbers. What that means is that revisiting those numbers afterwards tells us if the predictions actually happened the way they predicted.

These numbers distill all of the spin, all the arguments, loaded catchphrases and sales slogans down to mathematical objective reality. In this case the numbers are produced and are sourced from the administration itself in a audited and vetted procedure that no one of either party has questioned for decades. So no one on either side of the aisle should be able to quibble with them.

In January 2002, after 9/11 and President Bush's first round of tax cuts, the administration suggested the rest of their major tax cuts and predicted a swift economic rebound. 9/11 was blamed for the deterioration of Federal finances leading to a $106 billion deficit projected in 2002, the first since 1997. Enacting the Bush plan for 2002 would

"...boost 2002 GDP growth by 0.5 percent and lead to the creation of 300,000 more jobs. The Administration has built its economic forecasts around the assumption that an economic stimulus package will be enacted."

Those forecasts led to projects that by FY2004, economic growth would have been such to generate $2,175 billion in revenues. Offsetting that was $2,189 billion in spending, or a deficit of only $14 billion. Don't take my word for it. The Bush administration figures here are at the OMB's website in Excel, and Lotus 123.

Well 2004 has come and gone. The speeches are all done, the beans all counted. Here then is the REAL "No-Spin Zone". The final report on spending in 2004 comes to us in the President's budget message in January 2005. Bush reported that revenues came in at $1,880 billion, while spending was $2,292 billion.

Let's review. Actual revenues were $295 billion less than what the administration predicted would be the result of their economic growth and tax plan. They were off by almost 14%. They called their shot. The called ball didn't fall in the called pocket. Not even close. The period between prediction and outcome started AFTER 9/11 and ended BEFORE Katrina, so no excuses can be given for unforeseen events.

Now, Keynesian economics posits that raising deficit spending can sometimes jumpstart economic growth. Could any spending restraint by the administration have dampened growth during this time? Hardly. Bush administration projections called for them spending $2,189 billion a year by FY2004. Actual spending came in $103 billion MORE than what they had promised to do. No restraint there. The called ball didn't fall. Not even close.

So what of my friend who pointed to state government revenues as proof the tax cuts were working? Well, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities looks at state government finances closer than any other public source I know. Their data suggests that this area is subject to immense political spin. Turns out State government finances are still in fiscal crisis, though deficits are beginning to shrink. In other words, the growth we are seeing now merely is catching up from the fall those revenues took in recent years. Further, many states are "decoupling" various tax deduction items found in Federal tax codes, a stealth tax increase raising state taxes without fanfare or much notice.

In other words, while state tax revenues might be rising, they signify nothing but an accidental ball falling into the pocket, uncalled by any player. It's just not relevant to answering the question of whether Bush's tax cuts are working. The called ball didn't fall. End of story.