Tarring with the same brush

By Richard K. Barry

Carlyle, not Williams

We have known for some time that public approval of Congress is miserable, averaging, according to Gallup, around 14 percent for 2013. And in that number we find the greatest coup of the Republican Party over the past few years, which has been to successfully convince voters that Democrats share the blame with Republicans for the dysfunction.

But, as Juan Williams correctly points out, the truth needs to be seen in the context of one of the most quotable quotes of 2013, which Williams calls the quote of the year, from House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio:

We should not be judged on how many new laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal.

This understanding of government as "anarchy plus a constable," in the words of Thomas Carlyle, is just what Republicans seek. When in fact most people, despite what they say, want government to take positive action to solve their problems, or at least help solve them. 

For some reason many people have difficulty seeing the obvious, but is it really that hard to understand that today's GOP has done a great deal to ensure that government accomplishes as little as possible?  And, when very little is accomplished, is it any wonder that voters see the entire institution as a mess. 

As I never tire of saying, Republicans know Washington doesn't work because they broke it. 

The House finally does something right

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Hill:

The House voted unanimously Saturday to retroactively pay back federal workers who are not receiving a paycheck because of the government shutdown.

Members approved the Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act, H.R. 3223, in a 407-0 vote, with 25 members not voting.

Workers will not be paid until the shutdown — now in its fifth day — ends. About 800,000 workers have been furloughed. 

Right, it's not federal workers' fault the Republican Party has been taken over by a gang of teabagging zealots and that in fact the whole damn party has come to embrace anti-government zealotry as a core component of its right-wing ideology -- and that these zealots shut down their work.

Though while retro pay is really great, of course, it might be better, you know, for these people to go back to work NOW and get paid when they're supposed to, rather than to have their and their families' lives fucked around with like this.

Speaking of the House, what's crazier, more absurd and nightmarish, it or, well, House?

Republicans still denying health care to millions of Americans

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From the Times:

A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help, according to an analysis of census data by The New York Times.

Because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans that have declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, they are among the eight million Americans who are impoverished, uninsured and ineligible for help. The federal government will pay for the expansion through 2016 and no less than 90 percent of costs in later years.

Those excluded will be stranded without insurance, stuck between people with slightly higher incomes who will qualify for federal subsidies on the new health exchanges that went live this week, and those who are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid in its current form, which has income ceilings as low as $11 a day in some states. 

If you're poor, the Republicans basically don't give a shit about you -- unless they think they can somehow manipulate you into voting for them, and even then they don't.

They truly are a cruel and vindictive bunch of class warmongering thugs.

The marching morons

By Carl 

Apocryphal or not, the image of lemmings committing mass suicide is ingrained in our culture, so much so that we may borrow it to describe the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives:

As the shutdown lingers, some Republican moderates are openly frustrated that tea party darling Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas appears to be calling the shots on what House Republicans do next. Cruz was one of the first to suggest passing narrow bills that fund those government agencies or functions that generate any public backlash.

"I think the leadership is committed to play the Cruz strategy all the way out," California Rep. Devin Nunes told reporters, before adding "if you can call it a strategy."

For two days, GOP leaders have pushed through a series of piecemeal spending bills for floor votes that would fund things like veterans affairs, national parks and medical research. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Wednesday they plan to continue doing this.

"We've got ways to ease the pain on people," Cantor said. "We agree on a lot around here. We ought to fund that, and then we ought to sit down and talk about that which we don't.

Apparently, lemmings aren't blind. They're just wimps.

Congressman Cantor, you brought this upon yourself. No point in getting weak-kneed now that your own supporters, Teabaggers and fiscal conservatives, are feeling the pain. Hunting season is upon us, yet hunters out west can't go into national parks legally. Poor children with cancer, many of them who live near toxic waste sites and other highly carcinogenic locales in red states where environmental regulations are "lax" to be polite, are without last hope now that the NIH is closed.

Read more »

Obamacare is actually really popular

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Republican-caused government shutdown is about a lot of things, and Obamacare is just one of them. Yes, Republicans want to defund it, or delay it, or whatever, but they also hate government -- except when it comes to law and order to protect their beloved property and make sure people are in their proper place in the social order (basically, there are the rich and the help) and when it comes to enforcing their theocratic moralizing (particularly with respect to women's health).

But Obamacare is still at the center of this mess, and Republicans want to kill it not just because they hate government but because they know, or at least the more perceptive among them do, that it could turn out to be a huge electoral boon for Democrats for years to come -- Republicans are desperately trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters, as you know, but what if voters generally come to reward Democrats for providing expanded access to health insurance while also reducing costs?

Republicans are obviously running out of time. And, really, there's no time left. Obamacare is now in place, for the most part, and it will only further cement itself in the social fabric over time. So this is very much a last-ditch effort to kill it by shutting down the government and, as we'll soon see again, holding the country, and indeed the global economy, hostage over the debt ceiling, threatening what would likely be a massive economic catastrophe just to get their way.

And one thing that seems to be driving them, and giving them the confidence to continue their fight, is Obamacare's supposed unpopularity. The polls say so, and of course their right-wing echo chamber is filled with hatred and venom for anything and everything associated with President Obama, even a market-oriented health-care system that is essentially Republican in origin. All they hear -- from each other, from their constituents, from Fox News and the rest of the conservative media establishment -- is that Obamacare is, in a word, evil.

Are they right about that? Is Obamacare really so unpopular that Republicans could actually stand to benefit from killing it by any means possible?

Well, it depends how you look at it, but, basically, no.

Read more »

Start of the government shutdown

By Frank Moraes 

I haven't had much to say about the government shutdown, because, hey, there isn't a lot to say. But after the first day, there are a few things. I have to admit to being a bit concerned about how the shutdown is playing in the press. Ed Kilgore provided a number of headlines that, intentional or not, feed the Republican narrative. The most obvious partisanship came from Fox News, of course: "Partial Shutdown Begins: Can Congress, White House Compromise?" That one's fun because it pushes the Fox News idea that is everywhere in their coverage this isn't a real shutdown but only a "slimdown." If only Newt had had the help of Fox News in 1995!

What's more generally worrisome about these headlines is that the Republican position is simply that they want compromise. But the issue here is not one of negotiation. This is extortion. It is wrong to say, "The parents don't want to pay any money and the kidnappers want two million dollars; why can't they just compromise?!" That's what's going on. None of the other headlines use the word "compromise," but they are all have similar "both sides now" coverage. For example, the Washington Post headline was: "In Shutdown Blame Game, Democrats and Republicans United: It's the Other Side's Fault." Because each side says that they are right, the good "objective" reports can't look at the actual facts and determine who is right. Our mainstream press is fully in the grip of postmodern analysis, "Who can say which side is right? It's just a matter of opinion!"

Meanwhile, in the trenches, we have Ted Cruz pushing the idea that we should just break up the Federal budget and fund the things we really like. You know, it's really sad that Yosemite is closed on its birthday, so let's open that. Of course, as Matt Yglesias correctly points out, the whole purpose (on both sides) is that a government shutdown is supposed to be painful. I'll go further: Cruz's idea is a typical conservative gambit. The idea is to restart programs that might hurt the rich and middle classes (e.g. the national parks) to take off the pressure to ever start back up programs that help the poor. He is an evil little man.

Read more »

Boehner's turds

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well done, Daily News, very well done:

Republicans vs. children with cancer: The human cost of the shutdown

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's bad enough that the EPA and other agencies are almost entirely closed, that the Social Security Administration has been stripped down to a bare minimum, that NASA has put most of its research on hold, that some programs that support those in need have been halted, that veterans may soon not get disability and pension payments, that the national parks and museums are closed, and of course that hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been furloughed, sent home without pay.

The shutdown isn't just some abstraction. It's directly impacting millions and millions of Americans, not to mention some pretty important things the government does (you know, like environmental protection).

And it's worse than you think:

At the National Institutes of Health, nearly three-quarters of the staff was furloughed. One result: director Francis Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center into clinical trials each week will be turned away. This includes about 30 children, most of them cancer patients, he said.

That's right: children with cancer.

And all because the Republicans, controlled by the far-right extremists who make up their new core and who dominate their base, are batshit insane.

Drunk Republicans?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Salon:

In a Tuesday interview, Rep. Alan Grayson charged that Republican House members have been literally intoxicated while casting votes on the continuing resolutions that set the stage for today's government shutdown. Noting "a number of public reports that you can smell alcohol on their breath as they're voting gleefully to shut down the government and create chaos," Grayson said that he had personally witnessed GOP colleagues smelling like alcohol. "Many of them seem loaded," said Grayson. The Florida congressman declined to name names, saying, "it's the usual suspects," but that he didn't "really feel like getting that personal with people."

A spokesperson for Speaker John Boehner did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Politico reporter Ginger Gibson tweeted Saturday that she could "smell the booze wafting from members as they walk off the floor."

Grayson said he thinks on-the-job alcohol consumption by GOP House members has "been a problem all year long."

"It's a fact we all have to live with," Grayson told Salon, "and it's making them violent and abusive towards America."

Well, that would explain a lot, but for most people drinking booze doesn't turn them into right-wing extremists. So there are probably other reasons as well:

Grayson also blamed today's shutdown on Republicans' "anarchist ideology" and "blind hatred of government," saying they've become "the Captain Ahabs of 21st century American politics."

Well, it's more fascist than anarchist, but, yes, there is that blind hatred of government, although personally I wouldn't link them in any way to great American literature.

The point is, I don't think Republicans need alcohol to push their far-right agenda, nor to wage their relentless war against government, nor to wage their campaign of terrorism against President Obama, nor to shit all over the American people (other than their beloved plutocracy).

The alcohol probably just makes them even less coherent, and perhaps a little more violent as well.

The Republicans' shutdown spectacular

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I want to repeat what I wrote yesterday:

Yes, the federal government of the most powerful country in the world, a country that prides itself, delusionally, on its grandiose historic exceptionalism, a country that rants and raves about how it's supposedly the greatest country in the world, a bastion of liberty and democracy, is about to be shut down because its federal legislative branch, Congress, is apparently incapable of contributing to the governing of the country, and essentially of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities.

But let's be more precise. It's about to be shut down not just because the system reduces the country to governmental paralysis but specifically because the opposition party is allowing it to happen, and indeed wants it to happen, or at least enough of its members to matter do -- an opposition party with enough clout, given its majority status in the House of Representatives, to make it happen.

In other words:

If there really is a #shutdown, it'll be just one more piece of evidence of how totally fucked up the US is. Even if it is the GOP's fault.
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) September 30, 2013

House Republicans, at least those whose heads aren't completely up their asses, showed signs of last-minute desperation earlier this evening, reaching out to Senate Democrats to set up a conference committee to try to work out their differences, but that was a pathetic non-starter given that the GOP plan still calls for delaying Obamacare implementation, a sign that Republicans aren't interested in compromise at all.

House Democrats, for their part, sought compromise with their Republican counterparts earlier in the day, proposing a short-term spending deal that would leave Obamacare untouched but would include some sequester cuts -- a stupid deal, in my view, that should be off the table on Monday, but at least it shows an effort on the part of Democrats to get something done to avoid a shutdown.

In any event, here we are. As of 12:01 am, just a few minutes ago, the shutdown is happening. While there will no doubt be an effort in the media to blame both sides, it's clear where the blame lies: with the Republicans, who obviously want to shut the government down in order to get what they want, so delusional they are, so convinced are they that it's President Obama who will cave. So enamored are they of their far-right ideological agenda, they've taken to taking the country hostage, shutting down the government and threatening debt default that could trigger economic catastrophe.

The federal government of the most powerful country in the world has been shut down, a disastrous development, and the GOP did it. Period.

Shutdown showdown: The Republicans' "doomed spasms"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So here we are. On the verge of a government shutdown. Which is to say, a shutdown of the U.S. federal government.

Yes, the federal government of the most powerful country in the world, a country that prides itself, delusionally, on its grandiose historic exceptionalism, a country that rants and raves about how it's supposedly the greatest country in the world, a bastion of liberty and democracy, is about to be shut down because its federal legislative branch, Congress, is apparently incapable of contributing to the governing of the country, and essentially of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities.

But let's be more precise. It's about to be shut down not just because the system reduces the country to governmental paralysis but specifically because the opposition party is allowing it to happen, and indeed wants it to happen, or at least enough of its members to matter do -- an opposition party with enough clout, given its majority status in the House of Representatives, to make it happen.

And right now it's all because of Obamacare. (I wrote about this the other day.) Yes, Republicans so hate the new health-care law that they're willing to do whatever it takes to block its implementation, whether it's shut down the government or force the country to default on its debts, in the latter case perhaps triggering global economic armageddon.

The rational calculation, given the popularity of the law (and of the president and party behind it) as well as the unpopularity of government shutdowns, is realize that they don't have any real leverage and to concede defeat. But these are Republicans we're talking about. Thinking rationally just isn't what they're about these days. (A separate rational calculation is that the new system will become so popular, and that Democrat will forever be credited for it at the polls, that it's best to try to stop it, or at least delay it, now. But it's still hard to see how they can win this standoff in any meaningful way. Ultimately, they'll be blamed for the shutdown and in any event Obamacare will be implemented.) And so they plow ahead with their far-right ideological agenda, Ted Cruz leading the way, doomed.

Read more »

More evidence of the government's assault on liberty, privacy, and the Constitution

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Reuters:

A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin -- not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence -- information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.

Because the DEA's Special Operations Division (SOD) -- which also includes the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, and DH -- is supposedly targeting (bad) people suspected of drug-related crimes, this will no doubt be written off by many, including the surveillance state apologists, as necessary, just like the supposedly anti-terror surveillance conducted by the NSA.


Read more »

Bradley Manning found guilty, while the real criminals remain free

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Following up on my post from earlier, (courageous whistleblower) Bradley Manning was indeed found guilty today, just not on the most significant, and most ridiculous, charge:

A military judge on Tuesday found Pfc. Bradley Manning not guilty of "aiding the enemy" for his release of hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks for publication on the Internet, rejecting the government’s unprecedented effort to bring such a charge in a leak case.

But the judge in the court-martial, Col. Denise R. Lind, convicted Private Manning of six counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and most of the other crimes he was charged with. He faces a theoretical maximum sentence of 136 years in prison, although legal experts said the actual term was likely to be much shorter.

While advocates of open government celebrated his acquittal on the most serious charge, the case still appears destined to stand as a fierce warning to any government employee who is tempted to make public vast numbers of secret documents. Private Manning's actions lifted a veil on American military and diplomatic activities around the world, and engendered a broad debate over what information should become public, how the government treats leakers, and what happens to those who see themselves as whistle-blowers. 

Okay, well, let's look at the elements of that debate:

First, according to the U.S. federal government -- which, let us not forget, is currently led by Democrat Barack Obama -- no information should become public that is in any way sensitive regarding national security (or pretty much any other area), and certainly no information that might in any way expose what the government is really up to, not least its criminal or even questionably ethical activities.

Second, the U.S. federal government treats leakers like traitors.

Third, the U.S. federal government, including the military, tortures whistleblowers and persecutes them relentlessly.

A fierce warning? Yes, I'd say so. Cross the government, expose its criminal activities, and you're done for.

Read more »

Five reasons GOP government shutdown is suicide

By Frank Moraes 

Whenever I read Ramesh Ponnuru, I wonder why it is the conservative movement can't be more like him. After all, it isn't like he is exactly reasonable. I can't usually read more than two paragraphs without being forced to sit through silly Republican talking points. For example, he never misses an opportunity to slam Obamacare as though he wouldn't be firmly on board with the program if it had been enacted by President McCain.

And last Friday, he argued that one of the reasons the recent Republican efforts (to defund Obamacare via government shutdown) will look bad is because the Republicans don't have an alternative for healthcare reform. This is just silly. As I've argued before, Obamacare was the conservative alternative to health-care reform. When they decided that it was a communist conspiracy, they left themselves with nothing. Ponnuru must know that the there is no alternative to Obamacare and thus his suggestion that the Republicans need to have one is just pure conservative propaganda.

But most of the article -- "Drop the Disastrous Plan to Defund Obamacare" -- is quite good. In it, he provided five reasons why the Republican plan to shut down the government or even default on our debt is a bad idea for the Republicans themselves:

1. Republicans are less popular than the Democrats and thus all else equal will lose partisan finger-pointing contests.
2. The executive has natural advantages over a group of legislators in a crisis atmosphere.
3. People will be naturally inclined to assume that the more anti-government party must be responsible.
4. Some Republicans will say that government shutdowns or defaults are just what the country needs, and those quotes will affect the image of all Republicans.
5. The news media will surely side with the Democrats.

I think this can all be boiled down into what I have come to think of as Biden's Law. You may remember in the vice-presidential debate that Paul Ryan was talking about the almost $600 billion taken out of Medicare. He was arguing that the Republicans were the true defenders of Medicare. Joe Biden didn't even counter the specifics; he just said, "Look, folks, use your common sense. Who do you trust on this?"

Read more »

North Carolina Republicans launch formal assault on the Constitution, seeking establishment of state religion

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Just in case you weren't quite sure Republicans are the party of Christian theocracy:

A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.

The legislation grew out of a dispute between the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In a federal lawsuit filed last month, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.

Overtly Christian prayers at government meetings are not rare in North Carolina. Since the Republican takeover in 2011, the state Senate chaplain has offered an explicitly Christian invocation virtually every day of session, despite the fact that some senators are not Christian.

The First Amendment initially prohibited Congress from establishing a state religion at the federal level, but as a result of Everson v. Board of Education (1947) and other subsequent case law the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has come to apply to the Establishment Clause of the First, meaning that the prohibition against establishing a state religion applies not just federally but to the states as well. (It's called "Incorporation.") And there hasn't been a state religion since 1833 (Massachusetts).

The North Carolina proposal ignores all of this:

"The Constitution of the United States does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional; therefore, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the power to determine constitutionality and the proper interpretation and proper application of the Constitution is reserved to the states and to the people," the bill states.

"Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion," it states.

This is the "Nullification" argument that states' rights conservatives have frequently used to try to circumvent federal law, including with respect to slavery. Essentially, it posits the supremacy of the Tenth Amendment, and of course of the states themselves.

Read more »

Must destroy Republican Party

By Frank Moraes 

The same day that House Republicans are proposing to save $600 billion in defense spending by cutting 10% of all federal jobs, the United States Postal Service announces that it is cutting delivery of first class mail on Saturdays. These are linked together. You can file them under "stupid things we do because Republicans are crazy." Let's look briefly at what this all means.

The Postal Service cut has been a long time in coming. Back in 2006, during the lame duck after the Republicans lost control of the House and Senate, the Republicans passed a poison pill that required the Postal Service to pre-fund their retirement program. This is a requirement that no other business has and was put in place because, well, Republicans are evil. That really is what this all comes down to. The Republicans want to kill the Postal Service. Sure, there is the added benefit of helping out our corporate overlords at UPS and FedEx. But it is mostly about trying to destroy anything the government does well. See: Republicans just know that the government can't do anything well. That's why government programs like the Post Service (which is in the Constitution that they supposedly love so much) and Medicare and Social Security must be destroyed. If reality doesn't conform to your ideology, change reality, because your ideology could not possibly be wrong! 

Read more »

Make their day: Why Democrats should stand firm on raising the debt ceiling

By Mustang Bobby 

Oddly enough, the Democrats are itching for a fight with the Republicans over the debt ceiling even to the point of letting them shut down the government.

Well, at least one is: 

Echoing President Obama's refusal to negotiate on the debt limit, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) warned Republicans on Friday that Democrats have no intention of giving in to any of their demands in exchange for lifting the nation's borrowing limit to pay its bills.

"I think that risking government shutdown, risking not raising the debt ceiling, is playing with fire," Schumer told reporters in the Capitol, in response to a question from TPM. "Anyone who wants to come and negotiate, and say 'we will raise the debt ceiling only if you do A, B, C' will not have a negotiating partner. And if then they don't want to raise the debt ceiling, it'll be on their shoulders. I would bet that they would not go forward with that."

The No. 3 Democrat declared that Obama and congressional Democrats have learned their lesson from the 2011 fiasco that nearly led to a default. He predicted that Republicans will give in and cleanly raise the country's borrowing authority — which expires around March — if Democrats stonewall and give them no other option.

"If they realize for sure that they're not going to have a negotiating partner, they'll have to find another route to bring the change that they want and they won't risk the full faith and credit of the United States. The only way they get leverage is when they think we might negotiate on those issues," he said. "There was a very sad moment in 2011 when that happened. And I think there's a strong consensus at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue among Democrats not to repeat what I would call — I think what most of us would regard — as a mistake."

Read more »

The U.S. does not have a spending problem

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) tweeted at 5:02 PM on Wed, Jan 02, 2013: 

At 15.7%, revenue as a percentage of GDP is at or near the lowest level in 60 years. #budget #fiscalcliff 

Which is to say, the way to solve the budget/debt problem is with higher tax rates on those who can afford it (with a threshold well below 400K), along with sensible, progressive tax reform.

It is not by cutting spending, which only hurts those who need help the most -- whether it's discretionary or entitlement spending.

Unless we're talking about the bloated military, which could certainly afford a cut or two.

This is all so obvious.

If only the Democrats weren't so fucking spineless and the Republicans weren't so fucking insane -- and President Obama weren't so desperate to make deals with domestic terrorists.

Great GOP Moments: Craig T. Nelson sums up today's Republican mindset in one sentence

By Marc McDonald


A few years ago, actor Craig T. Nelson was being interviewed by creepy GOP nutcase Glenn Beck and made a comment that was widely ridiculed (see video above).

"I've been on food stamps and welfare, did anyone help me out? No," Nelson said.

Nelson was praising the virtues of America's "capitalistic" society. Many commentators pointed out the contradiction of Nelson's praise of a dog-eat-dog capitalist system and his admission of collecting welfare while bizarrely claiming that nobody had ever helped him out.

What many of these commentators missed though was that there really wasn't any contradiction in Nelson's comments -- at least in the minds of today's Republicans.

I've talked to many Republicans over the years. The vast majority of them claim to be hard-core capitalists, who support a vicious dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest, Ayn Rand/wet dream-type society. In a nutshell, they all are strongly in favor of shutting down all government programs with the exception of the Pentagon.

Read more »

Don't fear the fiscal cliff!

By Frank Moraes 

Ryan Grim has written the best article I have yet read on the Fiscal Cliff, "Fiscal Fail: Government Agencies Plan Few Significant Changes For January, Despite Cliff Hype." He starts by explaining what readers of this site already know: nothing happens on 1 January. The stock market won't freak out. Tax collectors won't go door to door demanding money. And an asteroid will not collide with the earth. Instead, John Boehner's caucus will finally see that in fact they had no leverage all along and an agreement will be made to keep tax rates the same on the bottom 98% of tax payers.

I have been wondering how all of this would affect government agencies. In particular, the IRS has to tell businesses how to withhold taxes. And other government agencies need to know what to assume about their budgets. As Grim points out, they are all in agreement: they will proceed assuming that a deal will quickly be worked out: 

[T]he letter also holds clues to the agency's broader plans -- or lack thereof. The IRS told lawmakers it would not reprogram its system to account for the possibility the AMT would not be patched because "if Congress were to act at some point next year to enact a new AMT patch, the time and substantial expense necessary for the IRS to reprogram its systems... would ultimately be wasted."

Read more »