The Jury Is Still Out . . .

Ken AshfordGodstuffLeave a Comment

even though it has been eighty years since it came back.

Look, folks.  The Earth revolves around the sun.  The Bible is wrong when it says otherwise.  And evolution is real.  The Bible is wrong if it says otherwise.  It is time to face facts.  If your belief in God is so shaky that you have to belief everything in the Bible is literal fact, then your belief in God must be on pretty shaky ground.

From Yahoo News:

Battle on Teaching Evolution Sharpens

WICHITA – Propelled by a polished strategy crafted by activists on America’s political right, a battle is intensifying across the nation over how students are taught about the origins of life. Policymakers in 19 states are weighing proposals that question the science of evolution.

The proposals typically stop short of overturning evolution or introducing biblical accounts. Instead, they are calculated pleas to teach what advocates consider gaps in long-accepted Darwinian theory, with many relying on the idea of intelligent design, which posits the central role of a creator.

The growing trend has alarmed scientists and educators who consider it a masked effort to replace science with theology. But 80 years after the Scopes "monkey" trial — in which a Tennessee man was prosecuted for violating state law by teaching evolution — it is the anti-evolutionary scientists and Christian activists who say they are the ones being persecuted, by a liberal establishment.

"Persecuted"?  Yes, because they cannot spread LIES in public schools, they are being "persecuted".  How ridiculous!

Worthless IOUs

Ken AshfordSocial SecurityLeave a Comment

From The American Street:

Next time you hear some trained Bush monkey echo Bush talking points and claim that the Social Security trustfund is stocked with nothing but a bunch of worthless “IOU’s,” pull out a $20 bill like this one:


A worthless IOU.

Explain to them that if the United States Bonds and Treasury Bills that make up the Social Security trust fund are “worthless IOU’s,” then so is this twenty dollar bill.

You see, Gvt. bonds, t-bills and this twenty are all inherently worthless pieces of paper with some printing on them. They have no real, intrinsic value.

Their only value comes from being backed by the “full faith and credit” of the United States.

So, in essence, what the Bush monkeys and Bush himself are saying is that you just can’t count on the “full faith and credit of the United States.”

A curious argument, and a dangerous one to make.

Dangerous because we are now running annual defecits in the neghborhood of $200 billion a year, based on Bush’s own questinable budget estimates. That means our Gvt does not have enough revenues from taxes, fees, etc to pay for all of its spending on an anual basis. We are $200 billion short…every year.

But, we still make our payments. We don’t print more money to do it. We BORROW that money. Yes, we borrow about $200 billion a year to pay for our Gvt spending habit.

But how, exactly do we borrow it? Do we go to a bank and say: “Hey bank, can you float the US Gvt a $200 billion loan this year?” And then repeat the process every single year for God know how long?

Of course not.

We borrow it by issuing Bonds and Treasury Bills that are bought by investors.

As it turns out, most of those who hold these “IOU’s,” happen to be foreign banks, and investors. Japan, China, Europe, Saudi Arabia…all invest in US Gvt Securities.

And we rely on their confidence in the “full faith and credit” of the United States to mainatin their habit of propping up our Goevrnment’s annual spending.

But what do you think these investors will do if Bush and his trained monkey minions keep saying that US Gvt. Securities are nothing but a bunch of worthless IOUs?

Yes. They will be much LESS likely to buy them because Bush is implying that we will default on them at some point. Thus, they will become more risky! So, in order to attrract buyers for these securities, we will have to RAISE THE RATE OF RETURN on them to make them more attractive. This will kill our economy because this will also raise longterm interest rates.

Or, we will have to massivley increase taxes by at least $200 billion to pay for our spending.

Or, we will have to cut our annual spending by at least $200 billion a year.

That means massive cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, defense and a whole host of other vital programs.

In other words, Bush and the GOP are willing to destroy the product of all the blood, moral authority, and hard work previous generations of Americans put into building up the “full faith and credit” of the United States in order to achieve a short-term short-sighted, cheap-ass propaganda victory on Social Security.

Who needs Al Qaeda when you have the Republican party?

UPDATE: It’s even worse than I thought!

The Rise of the Religious Left?

Ken AshfordGodstuffLeave a Comment

Let’s hope so.  From the Northeast Mississippt Daily Journal:

This past week, leaders of five mainstream Protestant denominations came together to speak in one voice. Standing shoulder to shoulder, leaders of the Episcopal Church USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ, and United Methodist Church together condemned the 2006 Federal budget proposed by President Bush as unjust by biblical standards. They couldn’t be more correct.

"The 2006 Federal Budget that President Bush has sent to Capitol Hill is unjust," they said. "It has much for the rich man and little for Lazarus," harkening to Jesus’ parable of the beggar Lazarus at the gate of an anonymous rich man. Lazarus, you’ll recall, finds his reward at the side of Abraham in heaven when he dies, while the rich man burns in hell.

It’s a grand and ancient tradition. The biblical prophets would be on the White House lawn, the steps of the Capitol, in the chambers of Congress, the Law in one hand, a fistful of indignation in the other, condemning the outright aggression of this administration against the poor.

Consider Medicaid. The President’s budget cuts $45 billion from Medicaid; in Mississippi alone, this accounts for $679 million over the next ten years. How many thousands of Mississippi’s children, poor, and elderly will go without care because of these cuts?

The current Medicaid crisis in our state has already reached critical mass; Gov. Barbour seeks to raid the health care trust fund for $200 million to cover a $268 million gap in funding, and that’s just to cover Medicaid costs through the end of June. Let’s strip another $60 or $70 million a year and see how that helps matters.

James Winkler of the United Methodist Church asked, "How are we as a nation – the richest nation in the world—caring for our children? …The technical resources are available to protect children from the most common diseases, to provide them with the necessities of food, shelter, clothing, and health care. What is lacking are the vision and the moral will." Indeed.

America is the wealthiest, mightiest nation on the planet, spending billions of dollars perpetuating a foreign policy based primarily on threats of war, but when it comes to clothing the needy, sheltering the homeless, or feeding the poor, there is a sore lack of both vision and moral will coming from Washington. There is much for the rich man, and precious little for Lazarus.

The Iraq war drains $6 billion dollars a month from American coffers with no end in sight, and we are told there is no money for the poor, no money for health care, no money for education or homeland security. Difficult budgeting choices must be made, we are told by the politicians. Programs benefiting the poor will suffer unfortunate cuts. There is not much for Lazarus.

Yet somehow we are also told the president’s tax cuts, benefiting the extremely wealthy, the top few percent of Americans, vastly more than anyone else, must be made permanent. The ultra-wealthy are given safety exits within the language of the bankruptcy bill while soldiers, the ill, and the elderly were singularly dismissed, with the Senate shooting down amendments aimed at easing their very specific burdens.

Old Folks

Ken AshfordSocial SecurityLeave a Comment

Yglesius gives George Will the heel of his boot on social security:

George Will, like many other conservatives, is positively irate that old people won’t get behind the president’s plan even though the president has promised not to cut their benefits. In response, it’s worth noting first and foremost that senior citizens may have concerns about this subject other than naked self-interest. But on the subject of naked self-interest, it seems worth pointing out that Will and co. are almost certainly full of shit on this topic. If privatization is put in place, this will create a new, and large, financial gap in Social Security. It will also create a situation where younger voters — everyone under 55 on privatization’s Zero Hour — no longer have a stake in defending the generosity of older people’s Social Security benefits. Right now, if you’re my age, your future benefits depend, in part, on what today’s retirees get. Under privatization, that link will be broken. So when the shortfall starts getting big what, realistically, is going to get the ax?

I can’t say for sure that it will be benefits for current retirees, but it seems likely. At the same time, current retirees have nothing to gain from the creation of private accounts (it won’t apply to them), and nothing to lose from higher income taxes or higher payroll taxes (they’re retired). Privatization might not have a negative impact on older Americans, but from their perspective privatization is all downside risk with no upside reward. Some younger people certainly will wind up better off under privatization than they would be otherwise (and some will lose out), but absolutely no old people will benefit, while many stand a good chance of suffering.

Fake News

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

From the NYT:

"Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government’s role in their production."

Perhaps they should stop it.

Where Am I?

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

Via Yglesius, bold the places you’ve been, underline the places you’ve lived in, and italicize the place you live now:

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

I’m a Racist

Ken AshfordSocial SecurityLeave a Comment

… because I oppose Bush’s privatization of social security idea. 

Well, that’s what the President says.  Pretty amazing.  Here’s what he said yesterday:

And so there are guidelines as to what you can invest in. I was being somewhat facetious on the lottery — but really not. There’s a proper risk reward, a portfolio that will allow you as a younger worker to pick a mix of stocks and bonds. Oh, I know they say certain people aren’t capable of investing, you know, the investor class. It kind of sounds like to me, you know, a certain race of people living in a certain area. I believe everybody’s got the capability of being in the investor class.

This is surely a sign of desparation, when the opposition creates strawmen, i.e., "They say that if you support me, then you are a Nazi racist sexist blah blah blah.  But I say . . ."

Anyway, this all may be moot, because Bush’s so-called plan looks dead, dead, and dead.

“I Don’t Know”

Ken AshfordIranLeave a Comment

That’s what I was once told to say when I didn’t know.  I re-learned that lesson as a young lawyer: if a judge asks you a question, and you don’t know the answer, admit that you don’t know the answer.  That is how you maintain your credibility.

Sadly, the Bush Administration didn’t do that with respect to WMDs in Iraq.  But perhaps — just perhaps — they have learned how to say "we don’t know".

That’s why this is important (from today’s New York Times):

Data Is Lacking on Iran’s Arms, U.S. Panel Says

By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, March 8 – A commission due to report to President Bush this month will describe American intelligence on Iran as inadequate to allow firm judgments about Iran’s weapons programs, according to people who have been briefed on the panel’s work.

The report comes as intelligence agencies prepare a new formal assessment on Iran, and follows a 14-month review by the panel, which Mr. Bush ordered last year to assess the quality of overall intelligence about the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

The Bush administration has been issuing increasingly sharp warnings about what it says are Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons. The warnings have been met with firm denials in Tehran, which says its nuclear program is intended purely for civilian purposes.

The most complete recent statement by American agencies about Iran and its weapons, in an unclassified report sent to Congress in November by Porter J. Goss, director of central intelligence, said Iran continued "to vigorously pursue indigenous programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."

As they say, read the whole thing.

And Mr. President, say it with me: We.  Don’t.  Know.

Great Ad

Ken AshfordForeign AffairsLeave a Comment

This is a great advertisement that you will probably never see on American television because it concerns an issue that does not affect Americans.  Which is too bad, because the ad itself is specifically designed to speak to Americans.

The Bankruptcy Bill

Ken AshfordCongress, Corporate GreedLeave a Comment

Let’s start with a story ripped from today’s headlines:

In Cleveland, for example, a municipal court judge tossed out a case that Discover Bank brought against one of its cardholders after closely examining the woman’s credit card bill.

According to court papers, Ruth M. Owens, a 53-year-old disabled woman, paid the company $3,492 over six years on a $1,963 debt only to find that late fees and finance charges had more than doubled the size of her remaining balance to $5,564.

When the company took her to court to collect, she wrote the judge a note saying, "I would like to inform you that I have no money to make payments. I am on Social Security Disability….If my situation was different I would pay. I just don’t have it. I’m sorry."

Judge Robert Triozzi ruled that Owens didn’t have to pay, saying Owens "has clearly been the victim of (Discover’s) unreasonable, unconscionable and unjust business practices."

Read the whole thing.

Now, that is the rationale behind the new bankruptcy bill, laughingly called "The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 ". 

Consumer Protection?  Don’t be fooled.  All the bill will do is close the loophole on people like Ms. Owens.  In other words, it is so credit card companies, who already make a huge fortune off of people, can squeeze that last penny out of everybody.

I mean, are credit cards companies hurting because people are declaring bankruptcy?Blog_la_times_bankruptcy   Nope.  Take a look at this chart here on the right.  Credit card companies profits are skyrocketing.  Yet all this bill does is give protection to the credit card companies.

Let’s look at some more info about the credit card industry, this time from the Washington Post:

Penalty interest rates usually are about 30 percent, with some as high as 40 percent, while late fees now often are $39 a month, and over-limit fees, about $35, [Cardweb CEO Robert] McKinley said. "If you drag that out for a year, it could be very damaging," he said. "Late and over-limit fees alone can easily rack up $900 in fees, and a 30 percent interest rate on a $3,000 balance can add another $1,000, so you could go from $2,000 to $5,000 in just one year if you fail to make payments."

According to R.K. Hammer Investment Bankers, a California credit card consulting firm, banks collected $14.8 billion in penalty fees last year, or 10.9 percent of revenue, up from $10.7 billion, or 9 percent of revenue, in 2002, the first year the firm began to track penalty fees.

That’s a $4 billion increase in penalty revenue in two years in case you’re keeping score at home.

And you have to love this: that penalty rate of 30-40% can be imposed for missing a single payment — in fact, in can be imposed for missing a single payment on a different account, like your telephone bill — but a card spokesman said this was perfectly reasonable because it was "clearly disclosed on account applications." Something tells me that their idea of "clearly disclosed" is a wee bit different from most people’s.

Bottom line: credit card companies now make half their profits from penalties and late fees. They actively seek out customers who are likely to miss payments and end up in a penalty fee spiral, and they make a fortune from them.

In a normally functioning market there’s at least a small incentive to limit loans to these high-risk customers, namely the possibility that they might go bankrupt.  And what does this bankruptcy bill now before Congress do?  It is a brazen attempt to remove even that small but annoying incentive to act responsibly.

Credit card companies want the ability to make risky loans, but they also want federal protection that protects them from bearing the risk that goes along with making those loans. That’s a pretty cushy setup, as long as you can buy yourself enough politicians to make it happen.

And apparently they can.  This is corporate welfare at its worst.  Look at some of the amendments that were attached to the bill — ones that actually might help consumers — and looked how badly they failed to pass:

  • S.AMDT 16 to protect servicemembers and vets — VOTED DOWN 58-38
  • S.AMDT 17 to protect the elderly — VOTED DOWN 59-40
  • S.AMDT 28 to protect people whose own medical problems caused their debt — VOTED DOWN 58-39
  • S.AMDT 29 to protect homeowners with medical debt — VOTED DOWN 58-39
  • S.ADMT 31 to limit the amount of interest charged to 30% — VOTED DOWN 74-24
  • S.AMDT 32 to protect people whose debt is incurred from being caregivers to ill/disabled family members — VOTED DOWN 60-37
  • S.AMDT 37 to protect people whose debt was incurred through identity theft — VOTED DOWN 61-37
  • S.ADMT 38 to protect people from predatory lending practices — VOTED DOWN 58-40
  • S.ADMT 49 to protect employees & retirees from corporate practices that rob them of their earnings/retirement savings when the business files for bankruptcy — VOTED DOWN 54-40

Source.

There’s much more to write about.  But I will leave it to John Podesta from ThinkProgress.org, whose strategy memo is reprinted below the fold.

Read More

My Country’s Representatives Embarrass Me Again

Ken AshfordSex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

US Draws Jeers for Abortion Comments at UN
Fri Mar 4, 2005 08:35 PM ET

By Deborah Zabarenko

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Jeers and catcalls greeted the top U.S. delegate to a global women’s conference on Friday as she stressed Washington’s opposition to abortion and support for sexual abstinence and fidelity.

After withdrawing an unpopular anti-abortion amendment from a key U.N. document, the United States joined in approving the declaration that reaffirmed a 150-page platform agreed 10 years ago at a landmark U.N. women’s conference in Beijing.

The final approval prompted cheers, applause and a standing ovation by some participants.

However, top U.S. delegate Ellen Sauerbrey drew boos from the audience, which included some of the 6,000 activists who came from around the world, when she commented on Washington’s interpretation of the document.

"We have stated clearly and on many occasions … that we do not recognize abortion as a method of family planning, nor do we support abortion in our reproductive health assistance," Sauerbrey said.

The loudest catcalls, unusual at the world body, came when she articulated U.S. policy on AIDS prevention for adolescents: "We emphasize the value of the ABC — abstinence, be faithful, and correct and consistent condom use where appropriate — approach in comprehensive strategies to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS and the promotion of abstinence as the healthiest and most responsible choice for adolescents."

Earlier Friday, Sauerbrey said the United States was dropping its demand that the document be amended to say that abortion is a matter of national sovereignty and not a human right delineated by the 1995 conference in Beijing.

(Source).

Kansas Attorney General – A Liar and a Wanker

Ken AshfordSex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

Kevin Drum is right:

Kansas AG Phill Kline claims he needs abortion records of teenage girls because he figures some of them were raped and he wants to track down the rapists. So why not get the records of teenage girls who actually give birth too? Mouse Words reports that Kline addressed that question today:

I have stated that repeatedly; we are looking for the child predators. You do not find child predators standing in a hospital as their prey gives birth to the child that they father. That’s common sense.

That’s a fine legal mind at work, isn’t it? You’d think that if he were really concerned about child abuse and rape, as opposed to harrassment of abortion clinics, he’d try actually investigating teenage births instead of assuming that the only way to catch the perps is to hang around the hospital hoping they show up. There are only a few dozen a month, after all.

But you’d think wrong. I think it’s safe to say that harrassment of abortion clinics is the real issue here.

Winger Blogs Get It Wrong

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

Typical right-winger blog analysis:

The brutal murder of a family of Coptic Christians in Jersey City, New Jersey may have been carried out by Muslim fanatics in retaliation for the expression of "anti-Muslim" views on the internet….

As we’ve said many times before, these fanatics cannot be reasoned with or deterred. They can only be hunted down and killed, and the more of them that are killed in countries other than this one (Iraq, for example), the better.

—"Hindrocket" on January 16, 2005, at Power Line (Time magazine’s Blog of the Year)

Fact:

Robbery, not religion, was the motive behind the savage slaying of a family of four in January, prosecutors said Friday.

Two paroled drug dealers who were deeply in debt were charged with four counts of murder and held on $10 million bail in the Jan. 11 killing of the Armanious family, Coptic Christians from Egypt who emigrated to the United States in 1997….

"I’d like to make one thing perfectly clear: The motive for these murders was robbery. This was a crime based on greed, the desperate need of money," Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said.

Edward McDonald, 25, who rented a second-floor apartment above the Armanious family, and an acquaintance, Hamilton Sanchez, 30, pleaded not guilty….

—New York Daily News/AP today

(Hat tip: No More Mr. Nice Blog)

So, apparently, no Muslim involvement at all.  But that didn’t stop the wingnuts from spreading the idea that Muslims are killing Christians in America.  And Powerline wasn’t the only one — there was Michelle Malkin (who posted a multi-part series entitled "HATE CRIME IN JERSEY CITY HEIGHTS"), Adam Yoshida (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), Charles Bird, Junkyardblog, Silent Running, and more fringily (and scarily), American Jihad. 

So quick to spread fear.  So slow to apologize and retract . . . if they ever do.  Ladies and gents, the right-wing blogosphere.

Bloggers vs. Journalists

Ken AshfordBloggingLeave a Comment

Matt Yglesius informs us all of the difference between bloggers and journalists in this fine post:

He Said / She Said

I went down to Norfolk to be on a panel discussion with The Washington Post‘s Mike Allen, talking about blogs to interested Virginia Press Association members. Mike had something to say on the topic of "he said, she said" journalism that provided me with some valuable perspective and that I thought readers might be interested in.

Somebody from the audience asked a question which seemed to take as its premise that there was a strict dichotomy between "factual" writing, which is what you see on news pages, and "opinion" writing, which is what you see on editorial pages. The latter, he was saying, seems to be what blogging is mostly about.

I took some issue with that characterization. News pages, I said, aren’t so much giving a "just the facts, ma’am" approach to reporting. Rather, they’re trying to act as neutral arbiters between contending parties. Oftentimes this means there will be political controversy about a basically factual subject ("what’s the effect of X on the deficit?") that goes unresolved by a news writer. Instead of giving us the facts, the news writer gives us a set of meta-facts — "Joe says ‘X’ but Same says ‘Y.’" Bloggers, I said, sometimes do offer pure opinion. More often, what they’re trying to do is present facts in a non-neutral manner. People, including bloggers, become partisans in large part because they think the facts are partisan. When I say that the Bush Social Security plan involves a huge quantity of transition debt that risks provoking a fiscal crisis, I’m trying to state some facts, as I see them. Others who disagree are likewise trying to argue facts. We’re not offering "opinions" as such, though some political disputes (one guy: "executing 17 year-olds is just wrong, man." another guy: "no it’s not.") are like that, must aren’t really.

Allen took issue with that characterization of what news writers are doing. He said that news writers are trying to present both sides’ points-of-view, hence the "he said, she said" quality to it, but that they’re trying to present these points-of-view in such a way so that a discerning reader can tell who’s right based on reading the story.

I tried then to revise my statement of the situation. A good news reporter, on my revised view, tries to "lead a horse to water," while a blogger is more likely to try and "throw the horse in the lake." He seemed happier with that restatement. And I think the restated view has some truth to it. Oftentimes, even though a story doesn’t come out and say, "so-and-so said such-and-such and he was lying," it’s pretty clear from reading the strory that so-and-so was, in fact, lying. Indeed, oftentimes it’s only because it is so clear from the story as written that so-and-so was lying that I, as I reader, find myself annoyed that the reporter didn’t come out and say so. I think, though, that a higher proportion of news writing really is pure "he said, she said" than Allen seemed willing to say. At the same time, he’s one of the better political reporters out there, so probably sees his craft more through the lense of how he practices it, than through how the lense of how others may do the job.

Last but by no means least, I think the "horse to water" model to some extent suffers from a lack of thought about how, in practice, news stories get read. If you need to read something — especially an A1 story that jumps to the inside — all the way through to figure out what’s going on, a very high proportion of readers aren’t going to do that. They’ll scan a few grafs and their takeaway will be "aha! the parties are engaged in a partisan dispute." Now how much can you plame [sic] newspaper writers for the fact that their readers are likely to be lazy and/or rushed as they read? I don’t really know.

Yup. He’s right.