GOP Failure Watch Part III

Self portrait.

Well actually, yes, it's from Great Lakes' seasonal Nosferatu. Overindulging in which can easily lead to a self portrait that looks a lot like my avatar. Or so I've been told.

 

Party of Stupid is back in business!!!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/17/mick-mulvaney-shutdown_n_4117113.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) was one of the 144 House Republicans who voted against bipartisan legislation to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. In a statement explaining his position on Thursday, Mulvaney pointed to the "pork" stuck into the bill at the last minute.

"Finally, the 'deal' is full of pork," he said. "A dam project in Kentucky got extra money; the state of Colorado got money to help with its flooding; and the 'Lord's Resistance Army' received special funds. Those may be worth discussing, but that will never happen now, as they were crammed into this 'deal' in order to help it pass. So much for the 'clean' bill that my Democrat colleagues said they wanted so badly."

 

I agree with one of the comments on the page above:

 

Yes. 'Tis a strong brew.

 

Per this article, the President was the tough guy for the Dems. Some of the others were willing to concede points to the Republicans, but not Obama.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304864504579141650091290392?mod=mktw

I still wonder, why would any Republican think that the President would give them something for nothing. The GOP would never give a Democrat something for nothing. So why do they expect such treatment?

Really, I don't get it. If you want a deal, you need to offer something for a deal. Zero is not an offer.

 

I'm starting to find the difference between the GOP and the TP. One is Party of Stupid; the other one is Party of Stupider (est?).

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/tea_partys_new_theory_boehner_sabotaged_them_on_purpose/

Interview with Adam Brandom from FreedomWorks.

So are you suggesting that the Speaker may have gone along with the shutdown in hopes that it would weaken the reputation of the Tea Party?

Maybe. I don’t have any proof to that. But what I don’t understand is, if your goal- all along you were planning to pass this with a Democrat vote, why did you go through all this? Why not just throw it out there to begin with a few weeks ago? A few months ago?

Are you surprised by the way Boehner handled this situation?

Not particularly, no. Look: from the very beginning of this, if you go back to summer, all you find is quotes from Boehner, quotes from McConnell: “We do not want to shut the government. We’re gonna to do everything we can to not shut the government down.” They already outlined their terms of surrender before getting to the ballot. If the GOP would have had a more unified front…You probably could have really gotten some good negotiations and perhaps have delayed the individual mandate.

So if Thursday had come and gone and the debt ceiling hadn’t been raised, do you think that would have been bad for the economy?

Well, uncertainty is bad for the economy, there’s no doubt about it. This system was not designed for the United States not to do this. That is a problem. I don’t think anyone fully understands what would really happen there.

When people said the sequester was going to happen, the sky was going to fall – the sky didn’t fall. I think you could go back to the TARP fight and try to figure out well, what really would have happened? I figure there are several other options the United States had than just bailing out banks. You know, who knows?

I mean it’s problematic. It’s hard when you can’t issue debt in the system that we have, so in the short term it’s problematic. But my fear is in the long run…eventually we’re getting to the point where the United States is not going to be able to pay this debt. So it’s just going to inflate the currency. And how is that good for investors? How is that good for the world economy if you keep debasing the value of your currency?

Because right now I don’t know how – I don’t know of any other way that you get out of this besides that. What happens – here’s the big crisis that’s coming – what happens when interest rates just return to historical averages?…If you think the sequester was big, imagine when we have to come up with another two, three, four, 500 billion dollars a year just to pay the interest on our existing debt.

The projection that was put out by the Treasury Department that said that there was a risk of economic impact worse than what happened in the 2008 crash – do you find that credible?

It – see what I don’t find credible in that argument is, if the United States stops paying its interests on its debts, then the financial system kind of collapses around the world, so yes that would be – but I then kind of reject that argument, based on the fact that the numbers that I have seen is…between 80 and 82 per cent of the necessary funds to fund the government would still be coming in.

So you gotta prioritize…So the first things that I would pay, I’d pay for military, I’d pay for debt service, I’d pay for Social Security. And what are the last thing I would pay? Subsidies for agri-biz and all this. And there is just no will in Washington to prioritize…Why would the Treasury not say, look, pay up world investors, and while we’re sorting this mess out guaranteed…we’re paying our coupon. Don’t worry about it.

How do you think that would have affected the U.S. economy?

It would have an effect. Would it be catastrophic? Would we be beating each other for meat in the street? Would criminals be roaming after the prisons open up? No. And I assume that they’d probably get their house in order pretty quickly in that type of situation. But it’s, I think it’s far from catastrophic…

But I think that the reason we see that stuff is because the design was, you put the people in front of a loaded gun and say, “if you don’t vote for this bill, you’re going to blow up the universe.” …That’s to get people to actually go along with something they don’t want to.

 

Because historically the Democrats have been a buch of P%$#%

 

That "Texas: Keep it Red!" ad that I keep getting has some serious fail in it. And I think BS gets paid if you click on it.

 

2014 is looking brighter by the minute... For Democrats...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...l-war-erupts-business-groups-v-tea-party.html

“We are going to get engaged,” said Scott Reed, senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “The need is now more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness.” The chamber spent $35.7 million on federal elections in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks campaign spending.

Meanwhile, two Washington-based groups that finance Tea Party-backed candidates said yesterday they’re supporting efforts to defeat Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, who voted this week for the measure ending the 16-day shutdown and avoiding a government debt default. Cochran, a Republican seeking a seventh term next year, faces a challenge in his party’s primary from Chris McDaniel, a state senator.

----------------------

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan Washington-based group that tracks races, changed the ratings of 15 U.S. House seats yesterday, all but one in favor of the prospects for Democrats. After three vacancies are filled in the 435-member House, Democrats are expected to need a net pickup of 17 seats to win back the majority they lost in the 2010 elections.

 

The guy's actual post...

http://www.culturalcognition.net/bl...on-religiosity-ideology-and-science-comp.html

Again, the relationship is trivially small, and can't possibly be contributing in any way to the ferocious conflicts over decision-relevant science that we are experiencing.
​

And unless they were actually drawing on this supposedly superior comprehension to shape the GOP's position on science education, environmental or climate issues, etc., then it's an even bigger GOP fail because it shows what blatant demagogues the party leaders are.

 

I bet they failed the climatology section...

Then again, maybe some stereotypes are true:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-18/the-tea-party-by-the-numbers.html

Teabaggers may know some science but they sure don't know economics (not a surprise, granted). From the above article:

"Two-thirds of regular Republicans believe the federal budget deficit has grown this year and 93 percent of Tea Party Republicans agree. Both are wrong; the budget deficit is projected to fall this year from $1.1 trillion to $642 billion."

And, of course, there's always this:

http://www.democracycorps.com/attachments/article/954/dcor rpp fg memo 100313 final.pdf

 

You guys would be too funny if you weren't caricatures of yourselves. You act as if the tea party people are insignificant and irrelevant and never even question how they came to be. At the same time you deride them for shutting the whole government down when they just had a huge increase in corporate power shoved down their throats.

You act as if the dems always played nice, and ignore the fact they used parliamentary sleight of hand to pass the most controversial piece of legislation in recent times. I am not justifying Rep/TP behavior, but many of you forget dems had a lot to do with these problems. You guys willingly dismiss the means they used to bring this about.

There have been comparisons drawn to civil rights, medicare, and medicaid but none of these were a mandate to buy a product from private corporations so none of them apply to this situation. Nor were any of them passed by playing fast and loose with the rules. The same rules apply when the Reps/TP pull their shenanigans. Fair is fair right? Or is it only fair when you agree with the outcome?

I can't believe you never mention the irony of the so called "party of the working man" just redefining the scope of government to include forcing people to do business with corporations. Those same corporations who damned near bankrupt the world just six years ago are all of a sudden going to be the answer.

I think the biggest indicator of how fouled up the bill is the list of who got exemptions, and the biggest tell of who it was designed to take money from is the fact that the people could not get a delay, but big business got one by executive order. The most unpalatable part of the whole thing is how it is touted to help the uninsured when the true benificiaries are corporations and their stake holders.

In all of this the root of the problem has never been addressed. Income disparity and not enough people in the middle to make the cost to each individual less or decent middle class jobs. If you don't fix it then all that is going to happen is you guys are going to pay for those subsidies like you have all along only now you have another party that is going to get a piece as well.

 

Here's an article that explains why the individual mandate and the employer mandate are not comparable.

http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/p...t-and-republicans-lazy-populism-on-obamacare/

 

LOL...ok then.

I am all for unhooking healthcare from employers, but that has nothing to do with the fact they got a break and individuals did not. Go ahead and level the playing field for all companies and just do away with the tax exemption for employer provided insurance. If the exchanges are all that then everybody ought to be required to participate. If the law is so damned good then ought to apply to everybody equally. Kind of a fundamental thing in our system of government.

 

We only give money to Republicans, blah blah blah.

Come back when you give money to (at least some) Democrats because they strike deals and try to have business running as usual, rather than read the Constitution and vote No on everything. Until then, you're not serious, Reed.

 

@JohnR , the mistake you're making is that you think that the Chamber's agenda is to promote business. It's not. Its agenda is to lower the tax rate on rich people.

Look at the outcome of the 2008 crash. If corporate executives cared about their corporations, you'd have seen (for example) the leaders of the car companies agitating desperately for much stronger financial regulation. And the leaders of home improvement companies and home builders and so on. Because companies that produce those big ticket items were crushed by the crash, much more than grocery stores and clothing factories, etc.

But they didn't, did they? That's because the leaders of Ford don't think of themselves as stewards of Ford. They think of themselves as members of the international class of the superrich.

Just speaking for myself, that outcome depressed the hell out of me. And it made stark to me that we really are living in an environment of class warfare. The Founding Fathers counted on competing interests balancing. This change, of the superrich identifying themselves as a distinct class, is one of the keys poisoning our politics.

And to tie in to what I write below, this is a source, I believe, of the Tea Party's frustration. They see this too, they just come to entirely the wrong conclusion as to how to solve this problem. It's why the Tea Party HATES HATES HATES the financial bailout, and why they don't think default on the debt is a big deal. They see the superrich as an enemy too, probably more than mainstream liberals.

Those of us who have read Nixonland know exactly how they came to be.

 

Other sources:

http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Warriors-American-Politics-Twentieth-Century/dp/0691096112

http://www.amazon.com/God-Our-Side-...82186051&sr=1-5&keywords=with+god+on+our+side

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-...sr=1-1&keywords=what's+the+matter+with+kansas

To Dave's point about teabaggers blaming exactly the wrong people for the abuses they see:

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Lunch-Wealthiest-Themselves-Government/dp/1591842484/ref=pd_sim_b_3

 

That makes sense. It explains why the Chamber never supports Democrats. There's no reasonable argument to be made that every Republican is better than every Dem for business. Indeed, given the failure of W's reign, the success of Clinton's, and the halfway decent (sorta) economic results under Obama, if one were to argue pure partisan politics, the Dems might look better. But that would be stupid too. It should be a candidate by candidate decision.

But as you write, the Chamber is about lowering tax rates on high incomes (and capital gains), and on that particular issue it makes sense to line up 100% Republican. That's the core mission of the GOP, after all.

 

The Founding Generation did not have to deal with several things we now have to confront. In their pre-industrial agrarian day, many, many more people were what we would now call "self-employed" rather than working for someone else. The backbone of society in most of the country was the independent yeoman farmer. Even many plantation owners fit this bill, especially compared with today's godawful factory "farms". Nowadays, most of society spends their day working in the top-down totalitarian environment of the corporation and are in no way independent. The recent battles about corporate use of peoples' personal Facebook pages in hiring - and firing - decisions is proof enough of that and it alone creates a huge difference in how most people in the two societies of 18th and 21st centuries see the world.

To the limited extent that they had experience with businesses resembling corporations, our supposedly rabidly libertarian forebears regulated the shit out of them. Until the mid-1800s:

• • There were no limitations protections on liability - managers, directors, and shareholders were liable for all debts and harms and in some states, doubly or triply liable.
  • Corporations had limited duration, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. They were not eternal, like corporate charters are today.
  • The amount of land a corporation could own was limited.
  • The amount of capitalization a corporation could have was limited.
  • The corporation had to be chartered for a specific purpose -- not for everything or anything.
  • The internal governance was very different - shareholders had a lot more rights than they have today, for major decisions such as mergers; sometimes they had to have unanimous shareholder consent.
• The states reserved the right to amend the charters, or to revoke them - even for no reason at all.

By pooling capital and shielding business owners and managers from personal responsibility for their actions, the modern unlimited corporation has made large scale economic tasks possible but it has also caused so many of our economic and social problems. In any case, you cannot understand our current economy and how it differs from that experienced by the Founders before whom we must all genuflect without understanding the corporation, how it came to be and what the alternatives were and still might be. If you don't understand the modern corporation that now dominates every aspect of American social, political and economic life, it is impossible to think at all accurately about our current condition.

These are the best popular treatments of these topics I have found:

http://www.amazon.com/Socializing-Capital-Industrial-Corporation-America/dp/069101034X/ref=sr_1_51?ie=UTF8&qid=1382197107&sr=8-51&keywords=social organization capital

http://www.amazon.com/Organizing-Am...-Capitalism/dp/0691123152/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y

These books are not extremist in any way so both tea partiers and dogmatic Marxists will hate them for different reasons. If anyone has any other resources on this to share, please do so. I'm always up for quality reading material on the topic.

If teabaggers understood how the world they live in was formed and some of the resulting problems, maybe - just maybe - they'd get out of the bind they're in regarding trying to be populist while also being terrified of criticizing corporations for fear of being labeled "commies".

 

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Morans.jpg

I suspect bad sampling methodology.