Daily Kos

Former lobbyist and convicted felon Jack Abramoff has written a book. And he's having a book party. And the book party is being held by noted used-to-be-on-television conservative Tucker Carlson, which is raising a few eyebrows because of that whole convicted felon part.

You may remember Abramoff from his previous role in mail fraud, bribery of public officials, defrauder of Native American groups, and a bunch of other things. Now, however, his debt to society (well, 42 months in minimum security prison, because conducting multimillion dollar wire frauds or bribing Congressmen and other officials with golf trips to Scotland is, let's be honest here, not really worth that much punishment) has been paid, and it is apparently now the time for the redemption.

Oh, Tucker. Why throw a book party for Jack Abramoff, of all people?

“I’m doing it because I hate pile-ons,” Carlson wrote. “I can’t stand to listen to one more self-righteous windbag denounce him as evil when, as anyone who lives here knows, what he did is hardly out of the ordinary for Washington.

“And in any case, unlike most of the many people here who deserve it, Abramoff actually served his time, quite a bit of it. So in a small way, I hope this party serves as a well-earned middle finger to the various breast-beaters, professional reformers and other holier-than-thou whiners who make this city less fun to live in,” Carlson continued.

I admire the premise that those that have served their time should be given the respect of a fresh start. I'm not quite sure I admire it so much when it is couched in the "everybody here does it" and "hey, crimes like his make our city fun" arguments.

Ah well. I suppose has-beens need to stick together.

Top Comments for today are here.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Continuing their "strange bedfellows" alliance over infrastructure investments, the AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Tom Donohue appeared together on ABC's This Week.

Trumka opened:

We're living off the investments that our parents and grandparents made in this country. We've gone in the last four years from being in the top five infrastructure in the world to 16 and we're falling. [...]

For years and years and years infrastructure was an issue that Democrats, Republicans, Independents, everybody came together and said this needs to be done, let's join together and do it.

Unlike some joint AFL-CIO-Chamber appearances, this one allowed for some airing of the two organizations' differences on how to rebuild infrastructure and create jobs. Donohue referred to differences in how they would approach "the game that's going on over there trying to pass President Obama's tax issue one piece at a time," but the most extensively aired disagreement was over Buy America provisions, with Donohue saying, "We would disagree in the issue of the Buy America component. When we did it in the stimulus, we had to give 170,000 exemptions while we were trying to build roads and bridges."

Trumka responded, "I was sort of tickled by Tom, though, when he said he disagrees with us about not wanting to do Buy America stuff. He'd rather stimulate someone else's economy rather than our economy." Donohue argued, "What we want to do in Buy America is build more things in America, but to set up opposition to us selling things abroad and people selling things here—it costs jobs, it doesn't create jobs."

Typically for a seven-minute television segment, they didn't delve very far into the details (PDF) of the disagreement, though.

Trumka's final comments broadened from the specifics of Buy America to a more general take on the interplay between politics and economy, saying:

The other countries that we deal with, they have a plan and a strategy. They have a plan for manufacturing, they have a plan to build things. We don't have that strategy in the United States and the reason we don't, is that place up there [the Capitol] gets flooded with lobbyists from multinational corporations whose interests are beginning to diverge more and more from the interests of this country. When we can realign those interests, then I think we all start to win and we put America back to work.

Despite the Chamber's continuing push for infrastructure investment, I maintain my skepticism that it will put in the needed political muscle or that Republican politicians will be willing to do even Chamber-approved things to improve the economy if improving the economy helps President Obama's chances for reelection.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson A new report sponsored by Protecting Ohio's Protectors, a coalition of unions representing Ohio police and firefighters, details (PDF) how Ohio public employees have agreed to more than $1 billion in concessions over the past three years. Those agreements were reached through collective bargaining, of course, a right that Ohio Republicans are trying to strip from public workers through Senate Bill 5, which will be on the ballot in November as Issue 2.

The report's findings include:

• State employees contributed $350 million in wage freezes, furlough days and increased healthcare costs.
• Teachers and support staff accepted wage freezes in more than 90 percent of collective bargaining agreements this year – concessions not tallied in this report because they are not yet available.
• Last year, at least 65 percent of public employee contracts included at least 1 year of wage freezes, some furlough days, reduced compensation, rollovers or economic re-openers. [...]
• More than 93 percent of public workers already pay for their own pension plans, with no contributions from their employers.
• On average, county and state employees pay more than 15 percent for their health care plans.

It can be hard to look at a series of percentages and know what they mean to the people involved, so let's put those concessions in the context (PDF) of how they hit individual workers:

For example, Salem City School custodians, cafeteria workers and other
non-teaching employees had gone 8 years without a wage increase. The starting wage for a Salem City School custodian and cafeteria worker is $9.92 and $7.81 an hour respectively. [...]

...since 2004 and through 2012, teachers in Jefferson Township Local School District (Montgomery County), whose salaries start at $27,305, bypassed a wage increase for 7 of those 9 years. In the Youngstown City Schools, where teacher’s salaries start at $29,589, educators gave up increases from 2007 through the 2010 school year.

This is what we're talking about when we say that Ohio's public workers are not overpaid and that they're not out for themselves at the expense of state and local budgets.

Vote no on Issue 2.

(h/t The American Independent)

Via the must-read Charles Pierce, Gov. Rick Scott's Florida gets a little bit more insane.

Prepping 17-year-olds for the privileges and responsibilities of voting in a democracy is nothing new for civics teachers, but when Jill Cicciarelli organized a drive at the start of the school year to get students pre-registered, she ran afoul of Florida's new and controversial election law.

Among other things, the new rules require that third parties who sign up new voters register with the state and that they submit applications within 48 hours. The law also reduces the time for early voting from 14 days to eight and requires voters who want to give a new address at the polls to use a provisional ballot.

Republican lawmakers who backed the rules said they were necessary to reduce voter fraud. Critics -- including U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, who testified before a congressional committee -- said the law would suppress voter participation.

Jill Cicciarelli could potentially face thousands of dollars in fines, though she's more likely to get a warning from the state. But what Pierce says:

The fact that Jill Cicciarelli is subject even theoretically to civil penalties is mind-boggling. What in the name of god do you teach in civics if you don't teach kids that they have the right to vote and that they ought to exercise it? How else are they going to figure out that their governor is a snakeheaded Medicare scam artist and that their state legislature is an embarrassment to civic life all the way back to Hammurabi?

More seriously, the new law has led the League of Women Voters to cease their voter registration efforts, as well as complicating registration programs for both political parties. Florida is subject to the federal Voting Rights Act, so some sections of the law are under review in five Florida counties because of past racial discrimination: Collier, Hardee, Hendry, Hillsborough and Monroe. Last week a federal judge dismissed a legal challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union to halt implementation of the law in the state's remaining counties.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Here's a fine example of how Republicans introduce a series of false choices into the national political agenda and then underfund the thing they previously held up as desperately important: transportation funding.

In September, Sen. Tom Coburn held up passage of a short-term FAA and ground transportation reauthorization, objecting to the fact that states are required to spend a percentage of their federal transportation money on "enhancement," including bike paths and bike lanes, pedestrian bridges, wildflowers by the sides of highways, and more. These projects account for two percent of the federal transportation budget, and for that, Coburn was willing to shut down the FAA. To keep the FAA open, Senate leaders made a deal with Coburn to drop that requirement.

Coburn and other Republicans are setting this up as a choice between safe bridges and wasteful turtle crossing tunnels. In his fight to get funding for bike paths and turtle crossing tunnels (about which the Washington Post notes that "defenders ... say it saves motorists from deadly collisions that occurred when they swerved to miss the crossing turtles") eliminated, Coburn has all kinds of pieties about the need to dedicate that money to fixing bridges. And no question, there's a desperate need to invest in bridge repair.

But Coburn and other congressional Republicans aren't actually talking about passing the needed funding:

This disagreement is taking place on a much larger stage, as Congress faces a gargantuan gap between resources and needs. The immediate debate this fall is over how to shape long-term transportation funding that most likely will range between $45 billion and $54 billion a year.

But that discussion in haunted by repeated credible warnings that U.S. transportation systems — highways, the rail network, aviation, ports, mass transit — are worn out, outdated and need investment well in excess of a trillion dollars.

One study put the figure at between $134 billion and $262 billion a year, while another, released last week, said that postponing that investment could inflate the cost to $5 trillion by 2035.

Our Congress is not just prepared but determined to kick a growing problem down the road, claiming we can't afford to fix it now and thereby guaranteeing that a fix will get more and more expensive. When it comes to eliminating a small amount of funding to make it safer to ride a bike or plant wildflowers to reduce roadside erosion, bridge funding is an emergency. When it comes to actually funding bridges, not so much. And so we're sentenced to crumbling infrastructure and an economy devoid of the jobs that maintaining infrastructure would create.

Today in Occupy-related news:

• Police action to disperse Occupy Oakland this morning resulted in at least 85 arrests:

  The police action at the plaza near City Hall began at 4:45 a.m. and involved hundreds of officers from at least 10 law-enforcement agencies, including the California Highway Patrol, the Alameda County sheriff's office and various East Bay police departments. [...]

  At 4:50 a.m., some loud bangs were heard after officers lobbed "flash-bang" grenades, and smoke rose into the air. After a protester apparently released a smoke bomb, officers began putting on gas masks. A police helicopter flew overhead with its spotlight on.

• Across the bay:

  KGO ABC News San Francisco reports that a group of clergy members joined the 99 Percent Movement yesterday for a march to San Francisco’s financial district, including the office buildings for JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America. The demonstrators hailed from different parts of the Bay Area and carried a golden calf, which “represented a young version of Wall Street’s golden bull.”

• Occupy Wall Street facing a major hurdle: self-government. Over drumming. Frankly, it's a depressing read.
• A box of rocks labeled "riot equipment" was found at the Occupy Minnesota encampment. Protestors believe it to be the work of a(n extraordinarily non-subtle) provocateur.
• The most recent push by the conservative gasbag brigade (well, it's not a brigade, exactly, more like a loose confederation) is to claim the Occupy movement is simply a construct of the scary liberal media. Their evidence consists of any reporter or pundit who ever said anything even abstractly sympathetic to the movement.

  As you read that, keep in mind the tea party movement, which was branded by Fox News, heavily promoted and advertised for by the same, and which saw prominent Fox personalities both (1) at the protests themselves, expressing support or (2) explicitly supporting the tea party movement from within the confines of their comfy studios. But that was completely different, for some reason that Rush Limbaugh or Andrew Breitbart cannot possibly explain.

• One of the terribly partisan reporters cited in that article, Matt Taibbi, has written another excellent post on the motivations of the Occupy movement.

  And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners.  But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

• Irony alert: due to widespread lack of confidence in the stock market, banks now have more cash than they can use.
• Elizabeth Warren, who has been dedicated for quite some time to curbing Wall Street corruption and consumer exploitation, supports Occupy Wall Street. Republicans think that is very, very bad, and are looking to make an issue of it. Given the support among the public for Occupy Wall Street: good luck with that, GOP.
• Reporting on the reporters: here's a look at how the media is covering Occupy Wall Street.
• It's as official as it's going to get: Occupy Wall Street is at least as popular as the tea party. I expect Fox News to begin its fawning coverage any minute now. Have they started yet? No? All right, how about now? No? Hmm, this may take a bit longer than I thought.

In general, the Republican reaction to Occupy Wall Street seems to be becoming more McCarthyesque in nature. First they laughed it off: that didn't work. So now we're in the stage where everyone involved is probably a secret communist or something, or are just jealous of rich folks or the like. The obstinance with which critics refuse to even acknowledge that the protests are about wrongdoing by the financial markets and government leaves little question as to what side of that wrongdoing they're on.

Steve Benen highlights part of that Mitt Romney interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal's ed board last week.

"There are four or five major acts that would balance the budget. One would be to bring discretionary accounts back to the 2008 level. Two is to end Obamacare; it’s an extra trillion dollars we simply can’t afford. Three is to return Medicaid to the states—as a block grant—and grow it at one to two percent per years and let states craft their own programs for their own poor. Four is to reduce federal employment by about 10 percent, through attrition. And five is to link government pay with that which exists in the private sector…. Those five steps would balance the budget."

Uh, wrong, as Steve details in the linked post. Most notably, this. Here's what happens with Medicare spending under current law—that is, the Affordable Care Act—according to the Congressional Budget Office.

And should the ACA be repealed:

TPM has the details of the Government Accountability Office fiscal analysis.

"Several provisions under current law, including provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) were designed to control the growth of health care costs," GAO notes. "The full implementation and effectiveness of these cost-control provisions, which are reflected in the Baseline Extended simulation, would slow the growth in federal health care spending over the long term…. However, the Trustees, CBO, and the CMS Actuary have expressed concerns about the effective implementation of certain cost-control measures over the long term."

Current law includes not just the ACA, but the assumption that the Medicare "doc fix," the perennial Congressional fix to prevent payment cuts to doctors, finally expires. The GAO warns that extending the doc fix along with repealing the ACA will blow up Medicare spending. That would make it very hard for a President Romney to balance a budget, unless of course he has a Republican Congress that allows him to follow the Ryan budget down the abolishing Medicare rabbit hole.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin is kicking off the signature drive to recall Wisconsin Scott Walker on Nov. 15. On that same day, Scott Walker can begin accepting unlimited donations:

The fight to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker begins November 15, when the 60-day window opens for progressives, Democrats, and other Walker opponents to gather the more than half-million signatures they'll need to trigger a recall election. Conveniently for Walker, a loophole in Wisconsin elections law opens up the same day and spans the same 60-day window. For that two-month period, the state's $10,000 donation limit for individuals giving to gubernatorial candidates is out the window. That's right: Walker can raise unlimited campaign cash for his recall defense as his opponents round up support to recall him.

In 2010, Walker raised more than $10,000,000 for his campaign without the aid of unlimited donations. With allies like the Koch brothers, who knows who much he could bring in once there is no $10,000 cap.

Further, suggesting that even unlimited donations are not enough for him, Scott Walker is also using public funds to launch websites polishing his image.

Those of us working to defeat Walker in the recall election will have access to neither Wisconsin government resources nor a window for unlimited donations. As such, our only path to recalling Walker will be through grassroots strength.

Please, help recall Scott Walker by contributing $5 to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

The competition for who is the stupidest member of Congress is a pretty fierce race, but clearly, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert is trying like hell to place first:

GOHMERT: If you look at the debt ceiling bill like I did, not many others apparently did, it increased the amount of Pell Grants from $3 billion to $13 billion. My kids, my youngest just graduated from college, and we had to do student loans because I've been in government service and that's— I didn't want them to have to worry about it. We still owe them those. It would benefit me greatly.

But that is not a stimulus, what the president's talking about, in forgiving the student loans. That is a stimulus of his voters to come out a year from now and vote for him. That's all it is. It's buying votes with federal money that we don't have. We'll have to borrow 42 cents of every dollar that he uses to buy students' votes so they'll come out again for him as they did in 2008, hoping that buying those votes they'll come back in 2012.

Okay, first off, raise your hand if you're sick of hearing members of Congress complain about how hard it is for them to get by on their $174,000 a year salaries, while at the same time accusing the 50 percent of wage earners who made only $26,400 last year of not paying their fair share in taxes, of whining as they seek government handouts, of waging class war, and of lying about their economic struggles if they happen to own such luxury items as refrigerators.

But pissing on the poor while whining about their own meager six-figure salaries is nothing new for Republicans. Accusing President Obama of "buying votes" with student loan assistance? That may be a new twist. Is this really such a smart strategy?

Gosh, kids, we'd love to help you out with your college education, but if you get any help—the same help we ourselves have sought for our own children—you might vote for Obama. And we can't have that. Oh no. So, screw you.

Okay, so maybe this isn't a new strategy. It's just standard operating procedure for Republicans: Government aid is good for me, but not for thee.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson The Obama administration today announced some actions it can take to bypass Republican obstruction and reduce the burden of student loans for millions of current students and recent graduates, at no new cost to taxpayers.

Currently, an income-based repayment program lets people with student debt reduce their loan payments to 15 percent of their discretionary income; after 25 years, remaining debt is forgiven. Last year, Congress passed a law reducing that 15 percent to 10 percent and forgiving remaining debt after 20 years. That was set to go into effect in 2014, but President Obama is using regulatory authority to make it take effect in 2012. The administration estimates that this could reduce payments for 1.6 million people. For instance (from an emailed fact sheet):

A nurse who is earning $45,000 and has $60,000 in federal student loans. Under the standard repayment plan, this borrower’s monthly repayment amount is $690. The currently available IBR plan would reduce this borrower’s payment by $332 to $358. President Obama’s improved ‘Pay As You Earn’ plan will reduce her payment by an additional $119 to a more manageable $239 -- a total reduction of $451 a month.

One problem, though, is that the current program suffers from obscurity and many people aren't taking advantage of it. In some cases, that may be a good move; while the program reduces monthly payments, it doesn't reduce total debt, so it can lead to people paying increased interest over the years. However, in this economy, a reduced payment could mean avoiding default for a great many people.

Additionally, a larger group of student borrowers will have a chance to consolidate loans and reduce interest payments:

While all new federal student loans are now Direct Loans thanks to the historic reforms in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, there are still $400 billion outstanding in old Federal Family Education Loans.  These loans offer fewer repayment options and are unnecessarily expensive for taxpayers.  In addition, about 6 million borrowers have at least one Direct Loan and at least one FFEL loan, which requires them to submit two separate monthly payments, a complexity that puts them at greater risk of default.  

These people who have both types of loan will be encouraged to consolidate them, leaving them with just one monthly payment and reducing the interest rate by up to 0.5 percent, a difference that will be small month to month but could add up to hundreds over the life of the loan.

When you consider that there is more than $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt and that these changes affect less than 10 million borrowers, this move is a very small drop in the very large bucket of need. And President Obama isn't claiming otherwise, saying, "Steps like these won’t take the place of the bold action we need from Congress to boost our economy and create jobs, but they will make a difference. And until Congress does act, I will continue to do everything in my power to act on behalf of the American people."

It's a shame Congress is going to keep millions of students and recent graduates waiting for more substantial help as they face a job market in which one survey found that 14 percent of students who graduated between 2006 and 2010 were either unemployed or working part-time because they couldn't find full-time work, and with even those who can find full-time work facing falling entry-level wages. But it's good to see the Obama administration thinking creatively about how to get around congressional obstruction.

You ever wonder why Republicans are so unhappy about their 2012 field? Well maybe it's because they keep on anointing clowns with whom they disagree to frontrunner status. Case in point: Herman Cain, who has rocketed to the top of the GOP field on the strength of his 9-9-9 tax plan ... that 50 percent of Republicans (and 56 percent of all Americans) view unfavorably:

Views are more lopsided on Cain’s idea of setting the federal income tax, business tax and a national sales tax at 9 percent each. Americans by a 20-point margin, 56-36 percent, hold an unfavorable opinion of the 9-9-9 plan. And intensity runs against the idea: it’s seen “strongly” unfavorably rather than strongly favorably by a 3-1 margin, 35 percent vs. 12 percent. [...] The 9-9-9 plan, for its part, doesn’t win majority backing in any of these groups. It’s seen unfavorably by 50 percent of Republicans, rising to about six in 10 Democrats and independents alike.

Keep in mind that those responses are without any negative arguments being given against the plan. Imagine what the numbers would look like if people were told that 84 percent of taxpayers would see a tax hike and only the wealthiest 16 percent would see a cut?

Meanwhile, according to the ABC/Washington Post survey, which was conducted last week and released today, Rick Perry's flat tax proposal actually is more popular than Cain's 9-9-9 plan with both the public at large and the Republican electorate, particularly with very conservative voters:

As noted, very conservative Americans express a favorable opinion of a flat tax plan by a vast 40-point margin. The same group, by contrast, only divides on 9-9-9, with 46 percent seeing it favorably, 49 percent unfavorably

So now we know why Rick Perry just proposed a flat tax. And it has nothing to do with being more principled than Mitt Romney.