It's a travel day for me. What's going on in the world?

Ben Nelson made an official press release saying the following:

July 30, 2010 – Today, Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson issued this statement on the president’s nomination of Elena Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the seat of retired Justice John Paul Stevens:

“As a member of the bipartisan ‘Gang of 14,’ I will follow our agreement that judicial nominees should be filibustered only under extraordinary circumstances. If a cloture vote is held on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court, I am prepared to vote for cloture and oppose a filibuster because, in my view, this nominee deserves an up or down vote in the Senate.

“However, I have heard concerns from Nebraskans regarding Ms. Kagan, and her lack of a judicial record makes it difficult for me to discount the concerns raised by Nebraskans, or to reach a level of comfort that these concerns are unfounded. Therefore, I will not vote to confirm Ms. Kagan’s nomination.”

Why can't Ben Nelson do the whole "for cloture/against the bill" thing on anything but judicial nominees? Doesn't his explanation for opposing Kagan sound a lot like Vilsack's explanation for why he fired Shirley Sherrod? Essentially, if people say bad things about a Democrat you musn't try to fight back. That's too hard. You must stop supporting the Democrat and join in the Idiot Chorus.

What I suspect is that Nelson wants the support of anti-choice groups in his state that he'll probably need to get reelected. Maybe he'll get some credit for coming out early and cutting the knees out of any Republican who might have been considering voting for confirmation.

The only good thing I can say is that he also provided cover for Republicans who want to split the difference.

I don't live in Nebraska, but I think moves like this one from Nelson wind up pleasing no one. Nelson didn't fight as hard as could to oppose a pro-choice judge so the Lifers aren't going to give him a good score. And the Democrats want to know why Nelson confirms George Bush's judges but not Barack Obama's.

When I saw this story in the Washington Post I had to laugh, because there is no crying in Blogging. But seriously, wtf? Why is the Washington Post still running stories that only Neocons like Dick Cheney and John Bolton and Tea Party Nut Jobs could love?

If Iran came close to getting a nuclear weapon, would Obama use force?

As you can imagine it goes downhill from there:

Imagine that diplomacy has run its course, after prolonged and inconclusive negotiations; that surging international oil prices have undercut the power of economic sanctions against Tehran; and that reliable intelligence says the Islamic republic's weapons program is very close to reaching its goal.

Facing such conditions, would Obama use force against Iran?

Former CIA chief Michael Hayden believes such a move would be necessary, recently telling CNN that a U.S. military strike against Iranian facilities "seems inexorable" because diplomacy is failing.

Yes, that Michael Hayden, the head of the NSA when Bush implemented his policy of electronic surveillance that made it possible for of every email and cell phone call in America to be tapped by your friendly US Intelligence community, warrants or probable cause be damned.

So now that Hayden is no longer in charge of deciding what the 4th amendment means when it comes to the government sneaking peaks at your private information, we should pay attention to him about whether Iran should be unilaterally bombed and a third US war started in the Middle East? The same government whose Intelligence community may have been played by an Iranian defector /double agent?

The strange case of Shahram Amiri has puzzled US intelligence chiefs who approved a $5 million payment to him for information about Iran's illicit nuclear programme.

Former US intelligence agents have predicted that Mr Amiri will disappear into prison or even face death, despite the hero's welcome he was accorded as he was met by his wife and hugged his seven-year-old son.

But his decision to fly back voluntarily, claiming outlandishly that he was kidnapped by CIA and Saudi agents during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia last June and then tortured in the US, has prompted suspicions that he was a double agent working for Iran all along, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

There are also questions about why the Iranian authorities allowed him to travel alone to Saudi Arabia, despite his sensitive work, and why he left his family behind if he was intending to leave Iran permanently.

Well, it doesn't really matter if Iran is close to getting a bomb or merely messing with the heads of top CIA officials, because the only thing that counts is if Obama has the intestinal fortitude to blow shit up over there regardless of the consequences to US forces in the region, America's national security, the world's economy and thousands of innocent people who would be killed:

Whatever progress Iran may make toward weapons of mass destruction, European diplomats and statesmen are likely to parade to Washington, concede America's concerns, affirm its intelligence findings -- and reject its policy recommendations. The United States would be advised to be patient and restock its economic sanctions kit for one more run at Tehran. In private, many strategists would summon their inner George Kennan and advise Washington that containment has worked with more powerful and unpredictable tyrants and can surely handle cautious mullahs and their rudimentary weapon. Washington would have to choose between an international coalition pledging rigorous containment of Iran, and the lonely, unpopular path of taking military action lacking allied consensus.

Yes, that would be difficult. More importantly a unilateral attack on Iran would be STUPID regardless of how close they are to having a "rudimentary" nuclear device. For the record, North Korea has a rudimentary device but no one is suggesting we deliver cruise missiles to Pyong Yang (well, nobody sane anyway).

So why should we blow up large portions of Iran in pursuit of the elusive goal of maybe setting back Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program by a few years?

An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would start a long war and probably not prevent Iran from eventually acquiring nuclear weapons, a think-tank said on Thursday.

The Oxford Research Group, which promotes non-violent solutions to conflict, said military action should be ruled out as a response to Iran's possible nuclear weapons ambitions.

Especially when the consequences of such an attack would be quite possibly extremely detrimental to the state of the world at large (though I'm sure Goldman Sachs would do all right by themselves manipulating the oil market after such an attack):

In terms of Iranian responses, there are two areas in which these can be confidently expected, together with a number of options that may be utilised over a range of timescales. The first immediate response would be a withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a process requiring ninety days notice.This would be a clear signal that Iran no longer felt bound by the Treaty, especially having been attacked by a country that has never signed the Treaty. Iran could claim justification for the decision since Article X of the Treaty requires that a state intending to withdraw gives reasons for that decision, such as if “extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this treaty have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.”

The second, and closely related, response would be an immediate decision to prioritise the development of nuclear weapons to deter further attacks. Such development might use deeply-buried facilities that are reported to be under construction. Indeed, it is probable that the Iranian nuclear planners have long assumed that a military assault was likely and that plans have been made to ensure survival and reinvigoration of a core part of any potential weapons capability.[...]

Iran would also have the potential to act in a number of areas, not all of them directly related to Israel, but many of them targeting the United States and its western partners considered to be so markedly pro- Israeli. Given that the strike aircraft used in the attack would be of US origin, and the closeness of the US/Israel military relationship cited earlier, one should expect that a narrative of US involvement (e.g. “US warplanes in Israeli markings” and an assumption of active US permission and support, whether true or not) would be common and widely accepted.

Spheres of action could include any or all of the following.

• Missile attacks on Israel using conventionally-armed systems might be carried out primarily to demonstrate the survival of a capability after an initial Israeli attack. These would be intended principally to undermine Israeli morale rather than have any serious military effect.

• Closure of the Straits of Hormuz, however brief, would cause a sharp rise in oil prices and be a reminder of Iran’s leverage over Gulf shipping routes. Any sustained price rise would have a potentially catastrophic impact on the global economy.

• Paramilitary and/or missile attacks on western Gulf oil production, processing and transportation facilities would be of very deep concern to the producer states, especially Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. While such facilities have much more intense security than a decade ago, they remain essentially soft targets.

• Action in Iraq and Afghanistan in support of those groups opposing western involvement could be tailored to discourage further attacks on Iran. [...]

The analysis undertaken here is based on the assumption of unwise behaviour by Israel, which from itsown perspective is rational, followed by responses by Iran. It does not take into account unexpected events leading to crises, either before or after an Israeli attack. For example, a new conflict with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon might start through an untoward incident and leading to rapid crisis escalation, including Israeli attacks on supply lines then inciting Syrian and even Iranian responses. The latter could lead, in turn, to a wider war between Israel and Iran beginning with Israeli air assaults against Iranian missile deployments and then to attacks on nuclear facilities. After an attack, while Iranian response might be limited, as indicated above, there would be very high states of tension in the Persian Gulf. In such circumstances, irregular Iranian forces, perhaps acting outside the national command structure, might take action against US forces or against international shipping, leading to responses from western Gulf States or the United States itself, with this quite possibly escalating into a regional conflict.

Naturally none of these potential disatrous consequences are described in the Washington Post story. It merely details the difficulty Obama would have in "going it alone" against Iran wothout support from other nations. But the worst thing about this story is what it buries toward the end of the report:

There are plausible developments that could render this scenario moot. Iran has notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that it is prepared to resume negotiations after Ramadan on the transfer of nuclear fuel to third countries for enrichment. And in the face of strong sanctions, the mullahs may well blink.

Question for all you Beltway journalists? Why do you jump at every bit of chum thrown into the waters of the Potomac by former Bush officials of questionable credibility? And why are you so interested in promoting the possibility of an attack on Iran which would involve the US military in another "long war" against another Middle Eastern country based on little solid evidence of any imminent threat to American interests, an attack that would likely throw the US and world economy into a tailspin?

Just asking.

My plan was to wake up early this morning and drive to Connecticut to meet friends and enjoy some music, but my stomach is killing me. It's something I ate, I guess. I'm still hoping to go, but the outlook is uncertain.

The Senate continues to be an unmitigated mess and California is drowning as a result.

Republican governors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Jodi Rell of Connecticut have supported federal assistance to states to prevent thousands of teachers from losing their jobs because of budget shortages. Schwarzenegger this month declared a fiscal emergency in California, ordering thousands of state employees to take furloughs to help close a nearly $20 billion budget shortfall.

The Republicans don't care. Harry Reid will try again on Monday to get a vote on some money for the states. Maybe it will pass. Maybe it won't.

I think it's an incredible stretch to say that it was a mistake to not let the Republicans install the Nuclear Option in 2005, but I get what Chris Bowers is saying. If we didn't have to contend with the 60-vote threshold, both policy and progressive attitudes would be much, much better. I'm happy to see him make arguments like this because it shows he understands reality. As Chris notes, life without the filibuster would have been glorious.

This would have resulted in a wide swatch of changes, including a larger stimulus, the Employee Free Choice Act, a better health bill (in all likelihood, one with a public option, and completed in December), an actual climate / energy bill, a second stimulus, and more. If Democrats had tacked on other changes to Senate rules that sped up the process, such as doing away with unanimous consent, ending debating time after cloture is achieved on nominations, eliminating the two days between filing for cloture and voting on cloture, and restricting quorum calls, then virtually every judicial and administration vacancy would already be filled, as well.

Actually, the health care bill would not only have had a public option, but it would have been completed before the August 2009 recess. A climate bill would have been done by December, and it would have probably included a Cap & Trade scheme (although that's uncertain even at the 51-vote threshold). Someone should write a book about what Congress would have passed if the House didn't preemptively water-down legislation to put it in the same ballpark as what the Senate could conceivably get Olympia Snowe to agree to. I mean, most of what the House has passed over the last year and a half could have won a simple majority in the Senate. But that's because it was designed to be within pissing distance of getting 60 votes. Had they not had to trim their sails, we would have seen much stronger stimulus, a much more robust health care bill, and far stronger regulation of Wall Street. We would also have seen more progressive nominations. In this Congress, according to Progressive Punch, Sen. Jon Tester of Montana would have been the pivot vote on high-priority legislation if the filibuster rule was not in place. Because the filibuster rule was in place, that role has fallen to Susan Collins. On most issues, nothing could pass that Susan Collins didn't sign off on it.

Did you know when you voted for Obama that Susan Collins would have effective veto-power over his entire agenda? Do you think that's what the American people want?

Correct:

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Thursday rejected a bill to aid small businesses with expanded loan programs and tax breaks, a procedural blockade that underscored how fiercely determined the party’s leaders are to deny Democrats any further legislative accomplishments before November’s midterm elections.

You want to know how ridiculous this is? It's this ridiculous.

The small business measure, championed by Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, had the backing of some of the Republican party’s most reliable allies in the business world, including the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business. Several Republican lawmakers also helped write it.

No, wait, it's even more ridiculous.

Senator George LeMieux, Republican of Florida, who helped draft the bill, said Democrats had taken a bipartisan measure and created a partisan firefight over it.

“This small business bill should pass and it should pass with relevant amendments,” Mr. LeMieux said. “Before I am a Republican, I am a Floridian and an American, and this bill is good for our country.”

Mr. LeMieux pointed out that with the House set to adjourn for its summer recess at the end of this week, the Senate is running out of time if it wants to channel aid to small businesses before Congress returns to Washington in mid-September.

With tensions running high, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, immediately jumped in to ask Mr. LeMieux to yield for a question and noted that “if just one” Republican had voted with the Democrats — a pointed reference to Mr. LeMieux himself — the bill would be moving forward.

Mr. LeMieux shot back, “Half the truth is no truth at all.”

We have not yet scaled the peak of ridiculousness.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has promised endangered Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) of Arkansas that the administration will help farmers in her state stay in business.

Emanuel called Lincoln on Thursday morning to tell her the administration would find $1.5 billion within its budget to help farmers in Arkansas and around the country who are coping with natural disasters.

Emanuel promised to provide the assistance administratively to get her to agree to delete $1.5 billion in disaster relief assistance for farmers from small-business legislation....

...A GOP senator told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday that Republicans might drop a filibuster of the bill if he dropped the agriculture disaster assistance... ...The late maneuvering, however, was not enough to save the small-business bill from delay. Republicans voted in unison Thursday to block it.

Also today, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, objected repeatedly to Sen. Mark Udall's (D-CO) attempts to bring up district judges for a confirmation vote.

Any Democrat who isn't ready to chuck the filibuster is either an idiot or actually likes things the way they are.

For the first time in years I am going to direct you to an article at The New Republic. Jonathan Cohn has something to say that you should hear. Here's a teaser:

...consider what happened after the climate change vote in the House last year. When Democrats went back to their districts, conservatives pummeled them--in person and on the air--while liberals just shrugged. And consider what happened after the health care bill passed: Conservatives went into overdrive about socialized medicine, while liberals kept talking about what a lousy bill it was.

It needs to be repeated. So, I'll keep repeating it. We're in a brutal brawl, but, ironically, the left and the right are largely on the same side of the fight.

Arizona is an economic disaster area, and it has nothing to do with the brouhaha over immigration reform.

The biggest problem for Arizona is its love affair with tax cuts.

More than any state in the nation it has cut individual and corporate taxes over the last two decades. And it is those tax cuts which have caused Arizona's economic decline, lost jobs, bankrupt businesses and massive State budget crisis.

For proof of that assertion read on.

It is "common knowledge" among conservatives of all stripes, but especially those who embrace the tea party brand of politics, that greater and greater tax cuts are the best way to grow the economy and increase government revenues thus avoiding large government deficits.

Arizona is a leader in this view having reduced taxes in 15 of the last 17 years. If any state comes closest to Grover Norquist's vision of Heaven, Arizona would be it:

The state has become so averse to taxes that a picture of the Sesame Street character, Grover, hangs in the Senate Republican staff room. The caption under the photograph reads: "Ask Grover," referring not to the beloved children's puppet, but to Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, an organization that opposes raising taxes and asks lawmakers to sign on to a pledge to reject any and all increases. Arizona has one of the highest percentage of lawmakers who have added their signatures to the pledge. Since 1992, the state has approved 42 tax cuts to its three major revenue sources--personal and corporate income, and sales--and eliminated statewide property taxes that accrued to the general fund.

So it might comes as a surprise to those who accept as fact that cutting taxes is the only way to ensure economic prosperity and governmental fiscal responsibility that Arizona is in dire economic straits. It's economic growth has stalled while at the same time its deficit has skyrocketed to a projected $2.6 Billion for Arizona's 2011 fiscal year. This despite $1 Billion in spending cuts and the sale of state assets totaling $700 Million in 2009 (source: Tea Party in the Sonora, Ken Silverstein, Harper's, July 2010).

The economists at Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business, however, knew that no amount of spending cuts or state asset sales or more corporate tax cuts like HB2250 would solve Arizona's economic dilemma of massive state deficits, high unemployment, declining real estate prices and a dead in the water economy.

How could they know that? Well they examined Arizona's fiscal and tax policy over the past 20 years (which included all those tax cuts) in "TAX REDUCTIONS, THE ECONOMY AND THE DEFICIT IN THE ARIZONA STATE GOVERNMENT GENERAL FUND", a study published in November, 2008. Here is what they concluded:

Numerous and substantial tax reductions passed by the Legislature over the last 15 years have not stimulated the Arizona economy or caused a surge in government revenues. Relative to the size of the Arizona economy, state government general fund revenue has fallen significantly since 1995, likely reaching a historical low in the near term. Expenditures also have declined relative to the size of the economy. Spending increases beyond the needs of a growing state are not a cause of the current deficit or the long-term structural deficit.

Sounds like heresy doesn't it? Maybe these economists simply didn't consider the magnitude Arizona's tax burden. Maybe in comparison to other states it is so high that even the tax cuts the Legislature passed were too minor to work their supply side magic. Sadly for those who live in Grover Norquists's "All Taxes are EVIL!" world, that wasn't the case. Quite the contrary:

State and local government revenues and expenditures in Arizona also are historically low compared to the rest of the nation. For example, the Tax Foundation ranks the Arizona tax burden, defined as per capita taxes as a share of per capita income, as 41st in the nation in 2008, the lowest on record.

So, only nine states have a lower tax burden than Arizona. Yet, for some reason all those tax cuts didn't stimulate the economy and create budget surpluses. Instead they created the situation which decapitated Arizona's economy in the interest of shrinking Arizona's state and local governments down to where they could drown them in a bathtub.

Much of the structural deficit results from the tax cuts of the last 15 years. These revenue cuts were not matched by spending cuts of a commensurate size because of the increasing population-driven demands for public services and infrastructure, such as education and public safety. The structural deficit also results from an outdated tax code that creates large cyclical swings in revenue and causes revenue to grow more slowly than the pace of the overall economy. Many of the changes to the tax code during the last 15 years exacerbated these problems.

You see, very few states grew at a rate as fast as Arizona over the last 2 decades. More people requires a greater need for government services. Yet despite spending cuts, Arizona has refused to face the fact that if you grow you have to pay for the costs associated with growth. So even when the economy was doing well, the conservative dominated legislature refused to raise taxes or even to stop cutting taxes.

They believed in the magical supply side fairy dust first sold by Ronald Reagan that government revenues will increase if we only cut taxes deep enough. They forgot (or never knew) that Reagan was forced to raise taxes after his "supply side" tax cuts created massive federal deficits.

At the outset of his first term, Reagan's revolution appeared to have unstoppable momentum. His administration passed an historic tax cut based on dramatic cuts in marginal tax rates and began a massive defense buildup. To help compensate for the tax cut, his first budget called for slashing $41.4 billion from 83 federal programs, only the first round in a planned series of cuts. And Reagan himself made known his desire to eliminate the departments of Energy and Education, and to scale back what his first budget director David Stockman called the "closet socialism" of Social Security and Medicaid. [...]

It's conservative lore that Reagan the icon cut taxes, while George H.W. Bush the renegade raised them. As Stockman recalls, "No one was authorized to talk about tax increases on Ronald Reagan's watch, no matter what kind of tax, no matter how justified it was." Yet raising taxes is exactly what Reagan did. He did not always instigate those hikes or agree to them willingly--but he signed off on them. One year after his massive tax cut, Reagan agreed to a tax increase to reduce the deficit that restored fully one-third of the previous year's reduction. (In a bizarre bit of self-deception, Reagan, who never came to terms with this episode of ideological apostasy, persuaded himself that the three-year, $100 billion tax hike--the largest since World War II--was actually "tax reform" that closed loopholes in his earlier cut and therefore didn't count as raising taxes.)

Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives--and probably cost Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection--Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84. [...]

[In 1983] Reagan made one of the greatest ideological about-faces in the history of the presidency, agreeing to a $165 billion bailout of Social Security. In almost every way, the bailout flew in the face of conservative ideology. It dramatically increased payroll taxes on employees and employers, brought a whole new class of recipients--new federal workers--into the system, and, for the first time, taxed Social Security benefits, and did so in the most liberal way: only those of upper-income recipients. [...]

The historic Tax Reform Act of 1986, though it achieved the supply side goal of lowering individual income tax rates, was a startlingly progressive reform. The plan imposed the largest corporate tax increase in history--an act utterly unimaginable for any conservative to support today. Just two years after declaring, "there is no justification" for taxing corporate income, Reagan raised corporate taxes by $120 billion over five years and closed corporate tax loopholes worth about $300 billion over that same period.

In short Reagan was a pragmatist when it came to taxes. When deficits ballooned out of sight, he reversed course. Not so Arizona's Republicans. They stayed the course. In good times and in bad they continued to cut taxes. And now they face an economy and a state deficit teetering on the brink.

A quote from Dennis Hoffman, an economist who has worked with Arizona's Governors since 1983 to forecast revenues (cited in the Harper's article by Silverstein -- sorry, no link available)) points out the truly astounding mess they have created for themselves:

"Could we cut our way out [of our budget crisis] mathematically? Anything is possible, but for practical purposes it can't be done, unless you want to start releasing prisoners, shutting down universities, and eliminating extracurricular activities at schools. We've already has a $2 billion haircut over the past two years. Try another $2 billion and see what the state looks like."

In fact, things are much worse than Hoffman suggests. Already Arizona spending cuts for agencies that deal with water and air quality are having a major impact:

Deep budget cuts have shaken up two state agencies charged with protecting Arizona's natural resources, raising permit fees and a raft of questions about how well water and air will remain protected.

Hardest hit was the Department of Water Resources, whose budget and workforce was slashed by more than half. The statewide planning division, responsible for helping secure future water supplies, was reduced to just two people and funding was eliminated for remote sensors that can alert communities to flood threats. The Department of Environmental Quality also lost significant funding and staff as the governor and the Legislature tried to erase a state budget deficit that topped $3 billion. The department will be forced to double many regulatory fees and issue some air- and water-quality permits with little or no review of specific pollution risks. [...]

Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon chapter and a longtime lobbyist at the Legislature, said the budget cuts will turn ADEQ and the water department into permit mills that simply rubber-stamp applications without going into the field to investigate.

"You can't cut an agency the way they're proposing and actually have it do its job," she said. "What could be more important than making sure we have clean, reliable water supplies for the future? ... It seems like the leadership views these agencies as being in the way."

News flash: Arizona is a desert. Water, especially planning for future water supplies and water quality are critical issues to its future viability as a place where human being can continue to live and thrive. The private sector and the free market are not going to magically resolve that problem, not when Arizona must share the limited water resources in the American West with Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California.

And by reducing sufficient money to warn people of potential flash floods, or monitor water and air quality, people will certainly die in the former case and suffer illness and other health risks that could have been avoided in the latter.

All to appease the fanatics who believe tax cuts and limited government will solve all their problems. Well, it hasn't worked out for Arizona very well so far. What do you think is going to happen when the Federal stimulus money runs out and fire fighters, law enforcement officers and teachers have to be laid off?

As the Economists at ASU's School of Business pointed out in their study of the consequences of Arizona's tax cutting frenzy:

First, unlike much of the private sector, demand does not decline for most public-sector services during a recession. In some government programs, demand rises. Thus, imposed decreases in public spending during recessions come at the same time that demand for public services is stable or rising, resulting in a reduction in the quantity and/or quality of government services. For the most disadvantaged of those consuming public services, real hardship can ensue.

Second, spending reductions by governments during recessions worsen economic conditions. Less spending for goods and services by governments will result in reduced demand for private-sector goods and services. If spending reductions are accomplished by employee layoffs, then private-sector businesses are affected further as laid-off workers either leave the state or cut back substantially on their purchases. It is not realistic to expect that many laid-off government employees will find jobs in Arizona until the recession has ended.

The result of state spending cuts of $1 billion would be to very significantly worsen and lengthen the economic recession. A total of approximately 20,000 workers (8,000 state government and university workers and 12,000 others) might lose their jobs.

Third, cutting the public-sector workforce causes public-sector revenues to decline as the laid-off workers spend less and experience losses in income. Further, the savings to state government of not paying the former workers’ salaries and benefits are partially offset by rising payments to the ex-workers for unemployment insurance and other public health and welfare programs.

This isn't complicated. Just do the math. The ASU economists did and what they found was that more tax cuts combined with more spending cuts are not the answer.

Generally, tax burdens must be far out of line with competitor regions before much of an effect on the economy can be measured. For a state, a tax cut will have little effect on the economy unless the tax burden is comparatively quite high (especially versus competing states) and the tax reduction is very large. In general, tax policy is an inefficient way to stimulate the economy. Investment in infrastructure and education has been shown to have a greater effect on economic growth.

To put it even more succinctly, here is the ASU economist's statement about the impact of tax cuts on Arizona's economy from their follow-up paper PUBLIC FINANCE IN ARIZONA -VOLUME II: CONCEPTS AND ISSUES in December, 2008.

In Arizona, tax increases and decreases over the last 30 years have had no perceptible impact on economic growth.

Got that? Tax cuts = No Perceptible Impact On Economic Growth. In short, they simply don't work.

Unfortunately for Arizona, that's all its Tea Party Infested Republican Overlords know how to do. And they would rather destroy their state than admit that their political philosophy is not just misguided, but horribly, dreadfully wrong.

Why did the Washington Post write this story without getting the opinion (on or off the record) of a single member of Congress? Why don't we know what the Intelligence Committee chairs (Sen. Diane Feinstein and Rep. Silvestre Reyes) think about it? Can't they do better than getting a single spokesperson from the Justice Department to go on the record? Couldn't they get a reaction for a single Republican office holder?

I think it's crap reporting. I'm glad to know that the administration is trying to expand the breadth of electronic communications they can obtain without a warrant, but I'd like to know what Congress thinks about it. I know that the ACLU and other civil liberties groups are going to oppose this, as they should. I'd like to know if I have single ally anywhere on Capitol Hill. And the Washington Post can't even give me a single reaction from anyone.

As far as I am concerned, the government should not be able to see any of my electronic communications or telephone records unless a judge signs off on it. To change my mind, you'd have to demonstrate to me how these National Security Letters actually work to prevent mass casualty events. I think they are an abuse of my rights, and they entice federal agents to abuse other's rights. It used to be that there were people on the Right who agreed with me. Where are they now?

The Party of No continues its work. This time, they refused to give a single vote for cloture on the Small Business bill that Sen. Mary Landrieu is trying to usher through the upper chamber. First they made the Democrats strip out some aid to farmers because Mitch McConnell doesn't think farmers run small businesses. Then they continued to refuse to allow a vote because they weren't allowed to offer an endless number of impertinent amendments. Agriculture is unrelated to small business, but their poison amendments are.

Reid and McConnell are in negotiations over amendments and this bill still might pass. But this is causing more pointless delay. And delay is central to the Party of No strategy. The longer we spend debating a bipartisan bill that should pass easily, the less we can get done on other matters.

This is why we need filibuster reform.

Someone's delusional. The GOP is not trying to attract the Latino vote. They're doing their damnedest to turn the Latino vote into a reliable part of the Democratic base. The Democratic Party has not always been the best friend of black folks, but it has a long record of being the party of immigrants. Immigrant-serving political machines have always been a Democratic phenomenon. Each wave of immigrants has come of age politically through the Democratic Party. Latinos might have been different. Machines are on their way out, and Latinos tend to share some of the culturally conservative values that Republicans espouse. But, then, so do Muslims, and you won't see too many of them voting Republican any time soon. It's a funny thing. People don't vote for political parties than demonize and vilify them.

I live in a Blue Family, so what do I know? Over hear in Blueville, there are certain things you don't do in polite company. For example, you don't break out in song with your rendition of "Barack the Magic Negro Lives in DC." You don't pose open-ended questions about the validity of the president's birth certificate. You don't use every cold day as an excuse to remind people that Al Gore is fat. If you don't know what socialism is, you avoid the topic and remain silent when it comes up. You don't expect your children to remain abstinent until they're married, and you don't expect them to be married until their late 20's. You don't expect your spouse to adhere to traditional gender roles or openly judge others who work or don't work or stay at home with their children or don't stay at home with their children. You expect people to use contraception if they don't want to have a child. You don't call people 'faggots.' You don't care if gay people get married. You don't look at people funny if they don't regularly attend religious services. You don't tell your children that they're going to hell. 'Ragheads' is not a word you hear except when you're at the gym and they have Fox News on the teevee. Most of the time when someone says 'Jesus Christ' they are expressing a certain degree of exasperation. You don't come up to total strangers and offer to lay your hands on them and help them accept their lord and savior into their lives. 'Old Europe' is a place you'd like to visit, not a totem of derision. Science is something smart people do, not a conspiracy to make your child lose religion. You learn evolution so you can understand biology and plate tectonics so you can understand geology and the Bible so you can understand literature, and none of these things interfere with each other. You don't question the manhood of anyone who eats foreign foods. You don't repeat anything Sarah Palin says expecting people to agree with it. Nipples don't freak you out. You haven't met anyone who believes the Teletubbies are homosexuals. And you don't think brown people are destroying the fabric and traditions of society.

We increasingly live in two different, largely incompatible worlds. It's not all North vs. South. But it's definitely Blue vs. Red. And all of it is dividing people along the wrong lines. It should be those who have vs. those who don't. Instead, it's those who are tolerant vs. those who are not. Or, those who believe in science vs. those who see science as a threat. We gotta get outta this place.

One thing you should never do is -- Trust an Insurance Company.

The package arrived at Cindy Lohman’s home in Great Mills, Maryland, just two weeks after she learned that her son, Ryan, a 24-year-old Army sergeant, had been killed by a bomb in Afghanistan. It was a thick, 9-inch-by- 12-inch envelope from Prudential Financial Inc., which handles life insurance for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Inside was a letter from Prudential about Ryan’s $400,000 policy. And there was something else, which looked like a checkbook. The letter told Lohman that the full amount of her payout would be placed in a convenient interest-bearing account, allowing her time to decide how to use the benefit. [...]

Lohman, a public health nurse who helps special-needs children, says she had always believed that her son’s life insurance funds were in a bank insured by the FDIC. That money -- like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by insurers -- wasn’t actually sitting in a bank.

It was being held in Prudential’s general corporate account, earning investment income for the insurer. Prudential paid survivors like Lohman 1 percent interest in 2008 on their Alliance Accounts, while it earned a 4.8 percent return on its corporate funds, according to regulatory filings.

This little scam, by the way isn't exclusive to the beneficiaries of dead soldiers. It applies to a lot of life insurance policies, and quite possibly one of the ones you pay premiums on. That money in the corporate account at your insurance company isn't covered by the FDIC.

In fact, the Federal Government and most states don't regulate insurance companies regarding this this deceitful, unconscionable practice. Unless the beneficiary demand his or her payout immediately, the insurance company keeps the funds, pays bupkiss in interest and reinvests that money in bonds that currently pay around 4 to 5 % interest. In short, it screws people who have just lost a father, husband, wife, son or daughter by making it look like they are being big-hearted and looking out for beneficiaries' interests, when the truth is that they are cheating them out of money.

[MetLife's] letter [to dead soldier's families] omits that the money is in MetLife’s corporate investment account, isn’t in a bank and has no FDIC insurance.

“All guarantees are subject to the financial strength and claims-paying ability of MetLife,” it says.

Both MetLife, which handles insurance for nonmilitary federal employees, and Prudential paid 0.5 percent interest in July to survivors of government workers and soldiers. That’s less than half of the rate available at some banks with accounts insured by the FDIC up to $250,000. [...]

The “checkbook” system cheats the families of those who die, says Jeffrey Stempel, an insurance law professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who wrote ‘Stempel on Insurance Contracts’ (Aspen Publishers, 2009).

“It’s institutionalized bad faith,” he says. “In my view, this is a scheme to defraud by inducing the policyholder’s beneficiary to let the life insurance company retain assets they’re not entitled to. It’s turning death claims into a profit center.” [...]

Insurance companies -- in addition to holding onto the money of survivors, paying them uncompetitive interest rates and giving them misleading guarantees -- may be violating a federal bank law. A 1933 statute makes it a felony for any company to accept deposits without state or federal authorization.

This is the same industry that wants us to repeal health care reform. The industry that is fighting even as we speak to weaken potential regulations. The industry that guaranteed it wouldn't have to compete against a "public option" run by the federal government. An industry that has done everything it could to cheat people out of every last dime they have by denying claims, rescinding coverage and raising health insurance rates by double digits whenever ot could get away with it.

So why should we be surprised that they are engaged in a scheme that might very well be criminal to cheat the beneficiaries of the life insurance policies that people paid for by diverting those funds into their general account to make more profits for the "company." It's who they are. It's what they do.

In short, they are acting as unregulated banks by creating these "accounts", and the funds they hold are not federally insured. If there was a run on the insurance companies by beneficiaries the whole house of cards could collapse.

If one insurer is unable to meet its obligations on retained-asset accounts, people could lose faith in other companies and demand immediate payment, triggering a panic, says Baxter, who has consulted with federal agencies on financial regulation. [...]

“There’s more than $25 billion out there in these accounts,” [Duke Law Professor Lawrence] Baxter says. “A run could be triggered immediately by one insurance company not being able to honor its payout. The whole point of creating the FDIC was to put an end to bank runs.”

And guess what? The financial reform bill that just passed doesn't cover these "retained asset" accounts. Insurance companies are not subject to any federal regulation under the law's provisions. And most people don't know the risk involved in keeping their money in an insurance company account because the insurance companies don't tell them about that inconvenient little piece of information. MetLife, in the 217 page handbook it gives to federal employees it insures under the Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance never once mentions that these "accounts" (which are accounts only in name) are not federally insured.:

This lack of disclosure is unconscionable, says Harvey Goldschmid, a commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2002 to 2005.

“I can’t imagine why bank regulators haven’t been requiring a prominent ‘no FDIC insurance’ disclosure,” says Goldschmid, who’s now a law professor at Columbia University in New York. “This system works very badly for the bereaved. It takes unfair advantage of people at their time of weakness.”

I'll tell you why. Bank regulators regulate banks. They don't have knowledge about the Insurance business, nor do they have a mandate to police the Insurance industry, and I'm darn sure they don't have the personnel on hand to start policing this "quasi-banking" system off which the Insurance companies are making a tidy profit. They have enough work just trying to keep up with the banks that are specifically covered by banking regulations.

By the way, how much profit are we talking about? Well let's ask an informed source: the man who invented this scam back when Ronald Reagan was president.

Gerry Goldsholle, the man who invented retained-asset accounts, says MetLife makes $100 million to $300 million a year from investment returns on the death benefits it holds. A former president of MetLife Marketing Corp., Goldsholle, 69, devised the accounts in 1984. He’s now a lawyer in private practice in Sausalito, California. [...]

Goldsholle says he pondered the billions of dollars of death-benefit proceeds the company paid out each year.

“I looked at this and said this is crazy,” says Goldsholle, who left the firm in 1991. “What are we doing to retain some of this money? It’s very expensive to bring money in the front door of an insurance company. You’re paying very large commissions and sales expenses.”

So he came up with a way for MetLife to hold onto death benefits.

“The company would win because we would make a nice spread on the money,” Goldsholle says, while customers would earn interest on their accounts. MetLife, he says, can earn 1 to 3 percentage points more from its investment income -- mostly from bonds -- than it pays out to survivors.

That's one company making $100 to $300 MILLION a year. Think how many other companies who do the same thing are likely "earning" from this little scheme, and my guess is we're talking BILLIONS of dollars. Billions that should be going to their customers. Oh wait, I forgot. The only customers whose interests insurance companies recognize are their shareholders and senior management. So just remember that the next time you hear your insurance agent say you can trust the company they represent to take care of your interests. Because one thing you should never do is trust an insurance company to do the right thing on your behalf.

Speaker Pelosi celebrates the passage (by voice vote) of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010:

Key Provisions:

Reduces the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1, with a 5-year mandatory minimum for 28 grams of crack cocaine and a 5-year mandatory minimum for 500 grams of powder cocaine.
Eliminates the mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack cocaine (the only mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of a drug).
Significantly increases fines for convicted major drug traffickers.
Significantly increases sentences for drug offenders involved in aggravating factors, including bribing law enforcement; maintaining an establishment for drug manufacturing or distribution; involving minors, seniors, or vulnerable victims in the offense; importing drugs; intimidating witnesses; tampering with evidence; or obstructing justice.

This is the first time in forty years that the government has repealed a mandatory minimum sentence. It even had Republican co-sponsors: Sens. Coburn, Cornyn, Graham, Grassley, Hatch, and Sessions. It's refreshing to see a piece of blatantly racist legislation rectified like this, and without a bunch of whining about how supporters are soft on crime. Majority Whip Dick Durbin was the point man on this in the Senate, and he deserves special praise.

This was a big win, even if it didn't eliminate the disparity entirely. Obama's achievements for the urban community are starting to pile up. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency will crack down on usury in payday loans, the Credit CARD Act eliminated fee-heavy subprime credit cards and other predatory practices, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act was focused almost exclusively at improving low income communities, and the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act (part of the Dodd-Frank bill) is a major piece of pro-urban progressive legislation, too. Then there were the following provisions in the Stimulus bill:

To broaden access to affordable housing, the Act provides for $1 billion in increased funding for the Community Development Block Grant; $4 billion in increased public housing capital funds; $2 billion in payments to owners of project based rental assistance properties to keep them affordable; $2 billion in Neighborhood Stabilization Funds to purchase and rehabilitate forclosed homes; and $1.5 billion in Homelessness Prevention Funds to keep people in their homes;

To expand educational opportunity for low-income students, the Act provides for $13 billion in Title I funds to go to K-12 education in disadvantaged school systems;

To strengthen workforce development, the Act provides $3.95 billion in increased workforce investment training dollars to keep our workers skilled and to employ young people during the summer;

To improve energy efficiency, the Act increases the Weatherization Assistance Program by $5 billion, helping low income consumers save on their energy bills while simultaneously training more workers for a growing field;

To bolster our nation’s transportation infrastructure, the Act provides $1.5 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Transportation to fund projects of regional or national significance as well as $8 billion to jumpstart high speed rail and connect regions to one another; and,

The Act also provides $4.7 billion to provide broadband access to underserved areas.

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