Republicans: More Devious Than I Ever Imagined

The Washington Post has the story:
Republican budget writers say they may have found a way to cut the federal deficit even if they borrow hundreds of billions more to overhaul the Social Security system: Don't count all that new borrowing.

As they lay the groundwork for what will probably be a controversial fight over Social Security, Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration are examining a number of accounting strategies that would allow the expensive transition to a partially privatized Social Security system without -- at least on paper -- expanding the country's record annual budget deficits. The strategies include, for example, moving the costs of Social Security reform "off-budget" so they are not counted against the government's yearly shortfall.

(link thanks to &etc.)

If this strategy works I think it will only be the beginning. If they can get away with borrowing without counting it as part of our debt, what won't/couldn't they do from disguising the consequences of their ill-concieved policies?

The Senate Democrats Reid Again

The Democrats might not have been able to stop the nomination of pro-torture Attorney General, but at least we have been able to secured a minor appointment to serve the parochial interests of our Senate Leader:

"In a deal to let 175 of President Bush's nominees take office, an adviser to new Democratic leader Harry M. Reid, the Senate's staunchest opponent of a nuclear waste dump in his home state of Nevada, will be named to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," the Washington Post reports.

Roll Call calls it Reid's "first major political victory" as the new Democratic leader.

Expect a lot of depressing "major political victories" like this, at least untill 2006.

More Things That Are Not True

Looks like the Christian Right will have another martyr persecuted by the unamerican atheist conspiracy that demands that students in public schools be taught "facts":

A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God -- including the Declaration of Independence.

Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian.

"It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful," said Williams' attorney, Terry Thompson.

The Teacher in question is wrong about this "christian nation" business, so very very wrong. The historical record is quite clear on this point. To cite one rather obscure example, Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, which has a treaty is the highest law of the land, which was signed by President John Adams (one of the more religious Founders) and ratified by the US Senate:

"the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion"

Even my younger brother's High School history textbook agrees that the Founders were not especially religious and were enthusiastic supporters of tolerance for all varities of religious belief and non-belief.

Recommendations

ITEM!
Anyone looking for another weblog to read would be well advised to look into Abu Ardvark's site.

ITEM?
Also, some gentlemen scholars from an Esteemed Mid-Western College (brows to the sky) and myself have taken to publishing pamphlets and distributing them on campus. For those unfortunates that sadly do not attend aforementioned Center of Learning there is now the Pamphleteers' Archive. I hope that youn find it to be most informative, since it much more likely that there is a problem with you, not the pamphlets.

Note: Gossip column style post inspired recent e-mails by "Thomas T." informing me of racist or otherwise outrageous statements made by long dead public officials and political figures.

Terror And Liberalism

The Harvard Gazette has an article on an interesting new study:

A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation's level of political freedom.

Associate Professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie examined data on terrorism and variables such as wealth, political freedom, geography, and ethnic fractionalization for nations that have been targets of terrorist attacks...

Instead, Abadie detected a peculiar relationship between the levels of political freedom a nation affords and the severity of terrorism. Though terrorism declined among nations with high levels of political freedom, it was the intermediate nations that seemed most vulnerable.

Like those with much political freedom, nations at the other extreme - with tightly controlled autocratic governments - also experienced low levels of terrorism.

I guess that terrorists do not hate freedom, just incompetent tyranny. Sadly, as Matthew Yglesias made clear in a recent article for the American Prospectfreedom is not on the march.

Things that are not true.

A Gallup poll has found:
Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence. The rest say they don't know enough to say. Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.

Great, 45% of the country is behind the Pope on the evolution question. We are in so much trouble.

All Your INFORMATION Is Belonging To Us

President Bush's second term hasn't officially begun and the new congress has not yet started and already the Republicans are very clearly drunk with power, high gravity power:

Congress passed legislation Saturday giving two committee chairman and their assistants access to income tax returns without regard to privacy protections, but not before red-faced Republicans said it was all a mistake and would be swiftly repealed.

The Senate unanimously adopted a resolution immediately after passing a 3,300-word spending bill containing the measure, saying the provision ``shall have no effect.'' House leaders promised to pass the resolution next Wednesday.

Oops! A little mistake! You know the sort of easy to make slip up that would make it so you could use the federal government to harass your political foes. Nothing to worry about, it is just the sort of thing that happens every day, or at least every day from now on.

DailyKos has more on the Provisionin question and its author Rep. Istook (R-OK).

The Reign of Prudishness

If the Republicans' desire to change America's tax laws to hurt groups likely to support to Democrats was not enough, they are out to establish their Republic of Virtue and are now gunning for our depraved culture, too:

US COMMUNICATION watchdog the FCC is apparently so pleased with its moral crusade following the Janet Jackson boob it now wants to purge what it calls immorality from the interweb and cable channels.

Apparently acting with support from both Republicans and Democrats, the FCC is poised to get even more aggressive about enforcing moral values throughout broadcasting. So far the FCC has been really good at purging swear words and sex from telly by chucking huge fines at the broadcasters. The net result of its actions have been that viewers have been switching to cable in droves.

Some analysts think that this is behind the FCC's move to expanding its jurisdiction to encompass the alternatives, cable TV, satellite TV and radio and the internet.

Just wonderful. I really, really hope the Democrats as a party don't try to go after the moral values crowd by signing off on this. It will be very difficult for the Democrats to out theocrat the fundementalists of today's Republican Party and it would send the wrong message for the Democrats too roll over so easily after the election. And of course trying to censor the sattelite and cable is a terrible idea. These mediums are not the same as broadcast, which comes into every home. If parents want to protect their impressionable darlings from four letter words and nipples of doom they can simply block these channels or not buy these services. Regulating children's exposure to objectionable material is the role of parents, not the government. Speaking of which, this issue provides an excellent opportunity for the Democrats to engange in anti-government populism, the merits of which explored in this post at NewDonkey.com.

The Tax Code As A Political Weapon

As other bloggers have noted, the Republican Tax Reform plan will hurt the citizens of states that vote Democratic as most blue states have higher state and local taxes. The tax reform package being floated now would get rid of federal deductions for these tax cuts. Wealthy blue staters (who are more likely to be Republican) of course would escape the wrath of the Bush plan since the new exemptions for unearned income would favor them overwhelmingly.

Lieberman To Zell Out?

Joe Lieberman, infamous for his willingness to appease the GOP, may have checked to see which way the winds are blowing and found that is time to cast his lot with the gang of idealogues, boobs and crooks that are currently in power:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) "respects the presidency and likes being wooed," the Hartford Courant reports, so "he's not ruling out a Bush Cabinet appointment."

"There's no opening the door a crack in Washington; you're in the game or you're not. And while there's no firm - or even flimsy - signal from the Bush team with regard to Lieberman, there is talk among the connected class in Washington that he could be in the mix for several positions."

Despite Lieberman's relatively liberal voting record, I would not be all that surprised if he joined the Bush Administration. Senator Lieberman's willingness to associate with the erudite neoconservative mouth breathers of the Committee on the Present Danger suggests that he can swallow just about anything.

Above The Law

Whether it's flying to small towns to help Republicans raise money or engineering a redistricting plan giving his party control of the Texas congressional delegation, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay delivers for his members. Now the members have delivered for him.

House Republicans on Wednesday changed a party rule so DeLay, R-Texas, could remain as leader if indicted in a Texas campaign finance investigation that he calls political.

The old rule required GOP leaders and committee chairmen charged with a felony to relinquish their positions. The new language orders a case-by-case review, with the leaders retaining their posts until all House Republicans decide their fate.-The AP

It makes sense that the GOP is protecting DeLay from a "political investigation", since they must have learned a lot about political investigations from their tax payer funded multi-year multi-million dollar quest to destroy a certain popular Democratic President. I wonder if they will change the rules again to let Rep. DeLay to serve from his cell if he gets convicted. It wouldn't be the first time the Republicans kept a criminal in power.

Bush Goes After Ordinary Americans

This may come as a shock to some readers, but President George W. Bush is out to raise your taxes and take away your health insurance so he can give tax breaks for big business and the superich:

The administration plans to push major amendments that would shield interest, dividends and capitals gains from taxation, expand tax breaks for business investment...

To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, the advisers said.
-The Washington Post

Take away deductions for providing health insurance? But scores of employers might take away their employees health benefits. And getting rid of deductions for regressivestate and local taxes? This is terrible. How could President Bush do such an awful thing? He's the kind of guy who you would have a beer with! You know, if he hadn't gone dry because he lacks self-control. Well, at least America is safe from the homosexualist agenda.

Four More Years

Voting

If you have any problems on election day call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Hopefully the next post I write will be a political obituary for one George W. Bush.

Wheeling & Dealing

From Editor and Publisher :
Discussions at the Cleveland Plain Dealer to resolve an impasse between the paper's editorial board and its publisher about who to endorse for president have ended with a Tuesday morning editorial announcing the paper would back neither Bush nor Kerry.

"We believe our readers are perfectly capable of making an informed, rational decision by their own lights," the editorial concludes, "and we strongly urge them to do so."

The paper's editorial board, as E&P first revealed, decided last week that it wanted to endorse Sen. John Kerry, but Publisher Alex Machaskee, who has final say, prefers President George W. Bush. The paper backed Bush in 2000.

Indeed, this morning's editorial confirms, "A majority of the editorial board favored Kerry, but after long and difficult deliberations, it was decided that the better path would be to sit this one out." It does not mention Machaskee's role in this.

Just imagine the howls this would have generated if it had been a Democratic publisher trying to make his newspaper bend to his will. The Plain Dealer example is a clear case of the kind of structural bias in the media that liberals have been warning about. Even though reporters are overwhelmingly Democrats (though not "liberals", they are more economically conservative than the rest of the country and more liberal on cultural issues, or so it is said) this does not matter that much when their owners (and advertisers) do not see things the same way.