Predicting Character: Who's On First? I Don't Know. THIRD BASE...

(update: Hello Crooks and Liars readers, thank you for following the Mike's Blog Round Up link here!  Thanks again to Batocchio for the linking.  P.S. Here's hoping the UK elections turn up for Labour...)

All I gots is a rehash of an Abbott and Costello routine.

This weekend had three separate announcements for Presidential candidates.  Two on the Republican side and one on the Democrats.

The Republican announcements were unsurprising and uninspiring.

Carly Fiorina announced Monday morning:

Fiorina, 60, pitched herself as an outsider who can bring a business mentality and global contacts to the White House -- and who is not afraid to attack the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Fiorina's minute-long video opens with her watching Clinton's announcement video and snapping it off, saying:  “Our founders never intended us to have a professional political class. They believed that citizens and leaders needed to step forward."

Ben Carson announced either Saturday or Sunday, I'm not sure which:

The announcement is the latest stop on a sudden journey to conservative superstardom. Carson, 63, burst onto the political scene in 2013 when, addressing the typically nonpartisan National Prayer Breakfast, he spoke about the dangers of political correctness, put forward the idea of a flat tax, and criticized President Obama’s health-care law. What made it stand out: He did it right beside a steely faced Obama.

We kinda knew they were coming as they had appeared earlier at an Iowa suck-up gathering, alongside a set of other potential GOP candidates.

The reason I'm not too excited - or terrified - of either candidate is that both of them have major drawbacks.  Let me copy-paste what I wrote about both candidates from that earlier report:

Ben Carson - Surgeon, maybe Maryland (I am not certain which state he will represent) (note: he's making his official announcement from his birthplace of Detroit)
Positives: Among Republicans, he's viewed as a credible anti-Obamacare critic, best-selling Christian spiritual author, anti-gay spokesperson.
Negatives: Has no elected or governing experience to speak of.  While the Constitution doesn't require such experience, any previous elective campaigning would at least provide the needed mindset and endurance to handle a rigorous national campaign.
Chances: His popularity among the Tea Party base is pretty strong...  He's the "Outsider" candidate who can claim he's not corrupt as the "Insider" candidates on the list.  It all depends on if he can find enough financial deep pockets and how he handles himself in debates.
Character Chart: He's the most difficult to pin down as he doesn't have a track record in office to measure his style.  His world-view is akin to a Far Right religious conservative, and his anti-ACA positions show a hatred for government health-care controls.  He presents himself as a Passive-Positive (he may even harbor Passive-Negative habits) but his statements and actions lean Active-Negative.

For Carson, the reasons he's even remotely viewed as a candidate is that he's a fervent Obamacare critic... and because he's Black so he can give a Republican Party that's done a piss-poor job marketing itself to minorities an excuse to pretend they're "diverse".  There's nothing else - no political resume, no track record on any number of other major policy issues - that defines himself as his own man.  As a result he's going to campaign on the base GOP platform... only further Right in order to keep the extremist wingnuts happy.  If he's got any value, he'll draw away votes from the other extremist panderer Ted Cruz...

And now Fiorina:

Carly Fiorina - CEO, California
Positives: One of a handful of women candidates who can broaden the "appeal" of the Republican platform.  Can claim executive experience as a business leader.  She's not as batsh-t crazy as the other prominent woman candidate(s) on the GOP ticket...
Negatives: No elective office or political experience.  She ran a poorly managed Senatorial campaign that ended in a bad loss.  Her track record as CEO - the only real thing she's got - isn't good (was forced out at Hewlett-Packard).
Chances: Slim.  She might run on a platform of "we need a CEO as President", but Romney tried that and didn't win over voters.
Character Chart: There's little on her political resume to confirm a style or world-view, but previous experience with CEO Presidents - Hoover, Bush the Lesser - points to either a person with uncompromising (Hoover) habits or a hands-off administrative style (Bush II).  Considering Fiorina's more aggressive management styles, she leans towards Hoover.  That puts her in the Active-Negative camp.

Like Carson, Fiorina doesn't have any electoral experience.  She's tried but lost, hard.  And like Carson, she doesn't have anything genuine to offer to the electorate other than being a woman candidate in a man-dominated party.  A party that may well run against a strong woman candidate in Hillary.

So to the Republican announcements, I say meh.

What do I say to the Democratic announcement this weekend involving Senator Bernie Sanders?

Avoiding the fanfare that several Republicans have chosen so far when announcing their candidacies, Mr. Sanders issued a statement to supporters that laid out his goals for reducing income inequality, addressing climate change and scaling back the influence of money in politics...
...Mr. Sanders’s bid is considered a long shot, but his unflinching commitment to stances popular with the left — such as opposing foreign military interventions and reining in big banks — could force Mrs. Clinton to address these issues more deeply.

Technically he's not a full party member: Sanders stands as an independent of sorts as a Socialist Democrat... and yes, Sanders openly takes to calling himself that.  He doesn't view 'Socialist' as an insult.

Sanders has been on the national stage a long time, a figure known early on as separate from other more left-leaning politicians - usually Democrats - for pushing a progressive platform fully opposed to the pro-business centrism that the Clintons represent.

Which is part of his appeal as well as a detraction.  Sanders leans far to the Left in a way (too many) Republicans lean too far Right.  In terms of his platform he pursues a blatantly socialist agenda that may sell in Europe (which is habitually socialist as a culture) but honestly doesn't go very far in America... and it's not because America is dominated by an army of Randian Objectivists.  The nation's simply not prepared for some of the agenda, such as a single-payer universal healthcare system: for God's sake, only this month after 4 years of Obamacare has that health-care reform program inched into the "favorable" polling numbers.

Sanders does appeal on specific arguments: he is openly hostile to the income inequality we've been suffering in the U.S. over the last thirty years, a popular issue among Americans; he supports a massive infrastructure program that would generate more jobs; he supports better wages for workers; he is basically the one candidate that would stir the passions of a dispirited progressive Left into paying attention to the Democratic primaries.  Per the New Yorker:

But, for all the challenges Sanders faces, his presence in the Democratic primary field is surely a plus. As I pointed out a few months ago, when he released his Economic Agenda for America, he’s a genuine economic populist, and many of his policy proposals—such as spending a trillion dollars on infrastructure investment, introducing a carbon tax, and replacing private health insurance with Medicare for all—are eminently defensible, if politically unrealistic. Most of all, he will provide a voice to those Democrats who agree with him that the U.S. political system has been bought, lock, stock, and barrel. In the televised debates and elsewhere, he will demand that the other candidates, Clinton included, respond to this indictment and say what they intend to do about it.
That alone is sufficient reason to welcome Sanders to the race. If, in addition, he manages to expand the range of policy options that can be openly discussed and forces Clinton to move from generalities to specifics, he will have performed a real public service.

I would need more research on Sanders' biography to develop the World-View background that Professor Barber would insist making a Character review, but for now I'd have to draw up Sanders' entry like this:

Bernie Sanders - Senator, Vermont
Positives: Has electoral experience for decades serving as a congressman and then Senator.  Has a political agenda that pushes hard Left after decades that most agendas pushed hard Right (the Age of Reagan), meaning a decent chance to shift the goal-posts of the national dialog back to the center.
Negatives: As much as the Far Far Right candidates like Cruz, Rand Paul, and Huckabee (announcing very soon) are poison to the general voting electorate, Sanders is too Far Far Left.  Half of his platform will reek too much of a Socialist agenda too many Americans still despise.  Comes from a small-population state that will not help as a base of voter support.   There is a question that as an independent (not really in the party) that he may not qualify on enough state ballots to count (his campaign is going to have to work overtime to make those ballots).
Chances: Slim.  He's determined, and has a reason to run this thing as far as possible.  But the Democratic Establishment types would be horrified if he gets the nomination: the Wall Street forces will rally like mad for the pro-business candidates like Hillary and could well swamp Sanders' campaign with too much money/power (which ironically will prove Sanders correct about the corruption of campaign money). And he may not appeal across the individual states - especially the more centrist, Red/Purple states in the South and West - he'll need to win primaries.
Character Chart: Sanders' socialist agenda is aggressively behind using the powers of the federal government to the fullest extent of the law, and that government can be used to improve the economy, improve jobs and wages, and uphold broad civil liberties.  On that, Sanders has the look of an Active-Positive (views government as an effective means of change).  However, Sanders displays many of the Active-Negative traits of being Idealistic and Uncompromising: he will not bend on the issues.  The only thing I can be certain of: he will be an Active President if elected.

I just don't see it happening for him.  It would be interesting if he makes it far into the primaries.  But if he becomes the Democratic candidate that will throw the 2016 election into pure chaos, and make the election against the Republican candidate more a campaign over -Isms as philosophical differences and less a campaign over actual effective government.  That could drive moderate voters away from a candidate like Sanders and towards an Establishment-type candidate like Jeb Bush or Scott Walker.

I'd like to think a majority of Americans are ready - after decades of the corrupt anti-tax anti-jobs anti-people self-interest agenda pushed by the Republicans - for a shift back towards the New Deal agenda of the mid-20th Century that sent America forward into a modern, working world.  But I know I don't see eye-to-eye with majority of Americans (dear God, I still can't comprehend how enough Floridians bought the snake-oil that is Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott), so I can't make an honest claim that we are ready.

The Agency of Accountability: The Time Is Now

I didn't write or say much about the killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore because at the time all I had was the same rage as before about the mindset of brutality among our law enforcement officers towards minorities.  We can repeat the names - Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, what is turning out to be tens if not hundreds more - and we can cry for justice, but time and again justice refused to hold their own accountable for their sins of excessive force and perjured ass-covering.

But at about the same time that I heard word about BridgeGate and how Chris Christie's circle of friends was getting smaller, news out of Baltimore sent shockwaves across the nation:

Six police officers were charged Friday in the death of Freddie Gray as Baltimore’s top prosecutor acted with surprising swiftness in a case that ignited protests and rioting here. She described how Gray allegedly was arrested illegally, treated callously by the officers, and suffered a severe spine injury in the back of a police van while his pleas for medical help were ignored.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby publicly delivered her stunning, detailed narrative of extensive police misconduct in the latest of several cases nationwide that have fueled anger over heavy-handed law enforcement tactics in low-income communities.

Unlike other moments where other cops caught on camera are facing up to the false reports and damaged lives left in their wake, this was huge because the incident itself is so recent.  Most other "official" investigations took months, went through grandiose staged grand juries that didn't peruse evidence as much as convict the victims and free the killers.

This time, Baltimore's state attorney controlling the investigation filed charges as soon as the evidence made it clear just what the cops responsible for Gray's death failed to do (and brings up questions about what they might have done):

• Walking down a street with a companion, Gray makes eye contact with a cop and shows aversion, running from the scene.  Cops give chase, leading up to Gray captured and getting injured on his leg.
• A knife is found on Gray, but it's a standard pocket-knife, not a switchblade.  It's legal.  There are no warrants or cause for arrest, yet the cops still take him in, handcuffing him and later putting him in leg irons.  He is not seated but left on the floor.
• Gray begins asking for an inhaler, having problems with breathing, but otherwise appears physically fine to eyewitnesses at his arrest.
• The police van transporting him takes 30 minutes to drive a two-minute route to the nearest station, although halfway there the van stops for paperwork reasons and because the van driver claims Gray is "irate".  Whatever happened here, the prosecutors' office investigated down to the atoms for some reason, rounding up potential eyewitnesses and finding any street cameras that documented the timeline.
• Van arrives at the station, at which point Gray is unable to talk, breathe, or move.  A medic is called, and Gray is taken to a hospital where he slips into a coma and later dies.
• Autopsy reveals that Gray had 80 percent of his spine severed.

What happened to Gray in that van is known as a "rough ride", a shockingly common practice nobody really talks about because it violates the hell out of every legal right in the book, causes excessive injuries to its victims, and is used by cops to deal with "unruly" prisoners who just happen to look at them wrong.  A rough ride - where an unbuckled prisoner would get thrown hard against something whenever the van swerved the wrong way - could have easily caused that spinal injury that killed Gray.

Just note that one part I mentioned in the previous paragraph: It's common.

It's common, apparently, for our law enforcement to act like bullies to the very people they're supposed to serve and protect.  It's common for excessive force to be used every day by the cops, whether it's pulling over guys on bicycles, or using illegal choke holds, or emptying entire clips into one unarmed black man.  It's common to use force, and then the threat of force: because once people know you're capable of it and never get called on it, they have every reason to fear your use of force, don't they...?

It's common because it was... it IS... the policy of the powerful.  To quote Ta-Nehisi Coates:

But I have a problem when you begin the clock with the violence on Tuesday. Because the fact of the matter is that the lives of black people in this city, the lives of black people in this country have been violent for a long time. Violence is how enslavement actually happened. People will think of enslavement as like a summer camp, where you just have to work, where you just go and someone gives you food and lodging, but enslavement is violence, it is torture. Torture is how it was made possible. You can’t imagine enslavement without stripping away people’s kids and putting them up for sale. And the way you did that was, you threatened people with violence. Jim Crow was enforced through violence. That was the way things that got done. You didn’t politely ask somebody not to show up and vote. You stood in front of voting booths with guns, that’s what you did. And the state backed this; it was state-backed violence.

And so the cops rarely answer for the violence they commit.  Because the state profits from it.

The other troubling thing is the crime cops commit on a regular basis for which they never answer: the constant lying about their own actions.  Oh, we know excessive force when it's used, and the cops know too, and so to make themselves look better they perjure themselves.  They lie about the reasons why they went for the gun instead of the pepper spray, they lie about why they used the pepper spray, they lie about the severity of the injuries they've caused, they lie about evidence because that planted gun and bag of drugs has to count for something to earn that conviction rate...

It happens so often the cops call it "testilying".

As far back as the Rodney King assault/arrest, I could barely accept the fact that the jury acquitted the cops of violently beating King to within an inch of his life.  What enraged me further was how the charge that they lied on their arrest reports - they reported "minor injuries" when King suffered concussion and broken bones - didn't stick.  The jury let them slide on the one thing that wasn't in argument: the fact that they lied about what they did to King.  The medical evidence clearly contradicted everything the cops claimed, and the jury still acquitted.

And we complain about the communities rising up in riots after every questionable death.  Because we as a society, we Americans living outside of that poverty zone, outside of those red-lined ghettos, can turn a blind eye because we buy those lies, we take the cops' word when time and again cops have been caught lying.  Because we refuse to hold accountable those who have the law as their excuse.

But it is long overdue for cops to be held accountable (Quis custodiet...).

...But at the same time, (Mosby) added, “those officers that usurped their authority, you have to be able to hold them accountable because it does a disservice to the really hardworking police officers. So for me it’s about applying justice fairly and accurately to those with or without a badge...”

We need to do more than talk about needed reforms in our law enforcement practices.  We need action to reduce the use of excessive force down to nil.  We need a judicial system in place that can better police its own to ensure lying cops do not profit from their lies.

We need to recognize that the injustice of excessive force can no longer be tolerated.

We need to recognize that lies kill.  Lies can kill justice as much as those lies can kill our loved ones.

What Would Happen If Florida Had a Meltdown And No One Cared

That's pretty much what happened last week.

Our Florida government pretty much collapsed, with the Senate and House branches at each others' collective throats and Governor Rick "No Ethics" Scott cheering the radicals in the House towards blowing everything up... as metaphor first.  By the end of June, those radicals will be blowing everything up for reals...

And the overall response of the Florida citizenry?

We were probably too busy worrying about Jameis Winston getting drafted first overall to the Tampa Bay Bucs (I wasn't.  I was pining for Marcus Mariota).

The apathy was so palpable the Tampa Bay Times wrote about it:

But last week's legislative meltdown in Tallahassee, dramatic and dysfunctional as it was, doesn't appear to threaten the political future of Republicans who control both chambers of state government — or of anyone else in their party running for office in 2016.

Most GOP state lawmakers remain in safe, conservative-leaning districts. Democrats have only a thin bench to challenge the ones who don't. And there's little indication that many Floridians are aware that their state Legislature, an institution followed far less closely than Congress, is gridlocked.

"I always use my parents, who live in Orlando, as a measure — and it's fair to say the average Floridian isn't paying a lot of attention compared to the rest of us living in the bubble of Tallahassee," said David Hart, executive president of the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

Even the legal recourse open to us - the courts - seems unable to force the self-serving House leadership to answer to their oaths of office:

Senate Democrats sued the House, asking the court Thursday to bring representatives back to finish their work. On Friday, the Florida Supreme Court ruled the House had violated the state Constitution — but, with the midnight deadline of the regular session approaching, it was too late to call anyone back to Tallahassee.

The House HAS violated the state Constitution... but the courts said "eh, time's up" and moved on.

No accountability applied to the bastards.  No voters will turn on them because they've gerrymandered themselves into safe seats.  (where the hell are the court trials trying to break these gerrymanders under the Fair Districts amendments?)  There's only so much the media can highlight, there's only so much the courts can do to intervene.  Whatever checks and balances are in place to impose service to the law, that's all broken in this rigged game.

Serious question: What penalties can be applied here? What's the felony count on on state legislator who violates the state Constitution?  What do the Statutes say on this?

So far I'm finding nothing linking legislators to any oath of office other than an oath while filing for elections.  I need to do a little more research.

I've skipped over to the Criminal statutes - Title 46 or XLVI - to see if I can browse for anything covering misconduct of elected officials.  The only thing I'm finding relates to Bribery.  I am not seeing anything related to misconduct.  Not yet.  Other than Conspiracy or Fraudulent Practices, the Legislature apparently planned ahead and made certain there would be no repercussions for being a-holes in office.

If there are any legal experts on Florida law, please leave a comment.  If there's a law that can punish the legislators themselves for their insubordination, their refusal to do the job they were elected (and paid, damn them) to do, we need to charge them right here right now.

'Cause the next meltdown will be a doozy: failure next time means 800,000 state residents lose their health care.  And while that may wake the state, while that may make Floridians sit up and take notice that their corrupt Republican overlords are sadistic self-serving sociopaths, by then it will be too late.

In Brief: Bwhahahaha on BridgeGate

There were two criminal investigations of note reporting in today, and I want to just cover in brief the first one.  Following more than a year of digging into who was responsible for shutting down traffic at a key interstate bridge - with serious interference with business, law enforcement, and public safety, AKA BridgeGate - one of the people involved with that shutdown pled guilty:

A former ally of Gov. Chris Christie pleaded guilty Friday to helping to engineer traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 and concocting a cover-up along with two other officials with close ties to Christie.

David Wildstein did not implicate Christie in the scheme that has cast a long shadow over the Republican governor’s White House prospects in 2016.

Wildstein, an official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey at the time of the tie-ups, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy...

...Before Wildstein appeared in court, Christie declined to comment Friday as he left a hotel in McLean, Virginia. Christie has insisted all along that he knew nothing about the scheme...

Considering how all three - Wildstein and the other officials - were all close to Christie and had worked with him for years, Christie's alibi of not knowing about the scheme comes across like a child's poor excuse when caught leaving toys all over the playroom.

Here's the questions about BridgeGate: Who profited from the bridge shut-down?  From whose office did most of the plans originate?  Who behaves regularly with a my-way-or-else mindset - the same mindset behind the bridge shutdown - when dealing with enemy and ally alike?  The answers keep pointing back to Chris Christie.

The entire BridgeGate scandal has the markings of the act of a bully, a behavioral trait easily applied to Christie and one he cannot avoid now.  While that bullying behavior may appeal to Christie's voting base, it's not a winning one (remember the thing Machiavelli warns against: inspiring hate is the one thing a Prince must never do).  Bullying leads to hate of the bully, and more and more people have gotten to hate Christie...

And now all it's going to take is one of the other two who haven't pled yet - Bridget Kelly who was Christie’s deputy chief of staff, and Bill Baroni who was appointed by Christie to serve at the Port Authority (in charge of the bridge) - to give up any detail at all showing Christie knew.  And Christie won't be able to bluff or bully his way out of anything again.

Update Florida: Two Things To Anger The Blood

First up, an update on Rick "No Medicaid For Florida" Scott's idea of suing the Obama administration into keeping afloat a Medicaid funding program that does not exist anymore: he went through with it, the crooked bastard:

Yesterday, the governor took this one step further, going to court to force Washington to give Florida federal funds for a program that will no longer exist. Scott wants health care money from the Obama administration to help Floridians (through LIP), but at the same time, he also doesn’t want health care money from the Obama administration to help Floridians (through the ACA).

LIP doesn't exist anymore, and doesn't need to because the ACA program provides Medicaid funding at a reduced cost to taxpayers and for better coverage.  But Scott would rather fight to the death to get LIP extended another year, all because he's horrified to take anything Obamacare-related.  He's spent his entire political career (even before he was elected Governor in 2010 he fought health care reform plans) against it: accepting any reform funding would kill his self-image and standing among the wingnut voters who flock to him.

The solution to this is simple: Rick "No Ethics" Scott needs to man up and recognize the state of Florida needs that Medicaid money, not only to balance the state's internal budgets but because IT'S THE RIGHT F-CKING THING TO DO FOR 800,000 RESIDENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES.  /headdesk

And speaking of state budgeting, back to the Florida Legislature's mini-Civil War unfurling as the Senate leadership tries to trout-slap the taste out of the House's collective mouth.  Per the Tampa Bay Times again:

...The Florida Legislature's chaotic session hit a new dysfunctional low Wednesday as an irate Senate demanded that House leaders bring lawmakers back to work or risk violating the state Constitution...

...Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, said the House "trick" of shutting down Tuesday could violate a provision in the Constitution that says: "Neither house shall adjourn for more than 72 consecutive hours except pursuant to a concurrent resolution" signed by the two chambers. The session is scheduled to end by midnight Friday.

"You adjourned the Florida House of Representatives in contravention of express provisions of the Florida Constitution," Gardiner wrote in a letter to Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island. "I respectfully request that you reconvene your chamber to finish the important work of the people of Florida."

After the letter was read and senators gave Gardiner a standing ovation, he told them: "This new trick that they did is not part of the negotiating tools. It's wrong, not just for the Senate, but it's wrong for the state of Florida, to essentially say that one chamber is not relevant..."

"...I understand that you are angry that the House concluded our business," Crisafulli wrote (back). "I told you that the House could not pass Obamacare expansion. It's not something that I can force them to pass … This is a matter of the House exercising its constitutional duty to represent those who elected us..."

The problem with your position, Crisafulli, is that there was more on the table to deal with than just the Obamacare funding.  You refused to deal with other budgeting matters.  You left the Senate hanging without resolution to matters covering water policy, state prison reforms, utilities oversight, and even funding for the Far Right's pet project of charter schools.  The House abandoned any effort to work out a budget, and basically flipped off the Senate on the way out the door (the Times article makes it clear most of the House Republicans are pissing on their Senate colleagues over this).  You basically quit out from doing your jobs, and kudos to the State Senate if they decide to charge you ass-clowns in the House of violating your constitutional duties/oaths of office.

...Wait, did I just praise Republicans in the state Senate?!  (rushes off to the bathtub to scourge self)

Florida: Where State Republicans Won't Do Their F-cking Jobs

It just keeps getting worse.  Per the Tampa Bay Times' headline:

Florida House abruptly adjourns session early, saying impasse is insurmountable

Bullsh-t.  It's not insurmountable.  YOU ALL WERE JUST TOO DAMNED SCARED AND LAZY TO DO YOUR DAMN JOB.

This is all about the Florida House Republicans - as noted last time I ranted about the f-ckers, which was less than a week ago -  unwilling to resolve the Medicaid funding gap that's due to open up in June.  Rather than even pretend to care about the matter - which they don't - the House leadership just up and sent everyone home for an early vacation.

Florida's Legislature collapsed into chaos Tuesday as the House unilaterally ended the annual session with more than three days left, leaving dozens of major bills dead and escalating tensions between the House and Senate over their health care stalemate...

...House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, gaveled the legislative session to a close at 1:15 p.m. Tuesday. "We didn't get everything we wanted, and we won't get everything that we hoped, but we have done all that we can do for this session," he said. He then told House members to go home "until the Senate decides they are ready to negotiate."

It marked the first time in Florida's modern history that one chamber shut down and went home on a different day than the other in a regular session. Adjournment records go back only to 1971...

The departure not only left the Medicaid matter unsettled, the House refused to consider other matters as well, effectively abdicating ANY accountability for what they're supposed to do up in Tallahassee.

The House's early exit left unfinished major policy bills that would have rewritten the state's water policy, decided how to spend money from the Amendment 1 environmental measure, increased economic and educational options for people with special needs, reformed the state prison system, revised ethics rules at the Public Service Commission and provided financial benefits to charter schools.

Lazy, unfocused, undedicated...  these bastards do not deserve to draw a paycheck from the taxpayers.

So of course this all means that the Florida Legislature has to call back a special session, which means more money wasted, more time wasted, more political posturing to the base.  It's sick and it's wrong.

The presiding officers of each chamber must now agree to come back in special session in order to complete the state budget — the only bill they are required to pass each year by the June 30 deadline — or Gov. Rick Scott could order them back together.

Given that Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott is openly opposed to the Senate's proposal to go ahead and switch over from the old LIP Medicaid funding to the new ACA "Obamacare" Medicaid funding, I doubt Scott would feel the need to give that order.

Of course, this could all be just political posturing on the part of the Republicans.  There is every likelihood the state leadership is aware they've got few options here, and have to make the switch-over to the ACA Medicaid funding to keep the whole state budget afloat.  This may all be an elaborate kabuki dance, where they'll fidget and postpone all the way up to the June 30 deadline, giving themselves political cover with their wingnut Teabagger base by railing against the dreaded Obamacare directives, and then "reluctantly" play ball with the federal government and take the ACA money.  That way they can claim they were "forced" to submit to EVUL OBAMA and placate that voting base from primarying against them in 2016.

Then again, this might not be a ruse.  We are at the state level of government: where the political players are more partisan and pandering than they would be at the federal level where more attention is paid to what elected officials do (considering how wingnut the Congressional Republicans can get, that's how bad the state Republicans are).  The elected leaders in the state House are a little too sincere, a little too eager to twist the knife in on the whole "killing Obamacare" agenda.  And with a sitting governor in Scott who's proven a few too many times to suck up to the partisan crowd - especially as he's eyeing a Senate run to prolong his political career - there is every likelihood that the state government will let LIP expire without getting replacing ACA funds.

In that scenario, 800,000 Floridians will suddenly lose Medicaid health care funding.  We're talking poor elderly, we're talking poor families with sick kids.  We are talking about nursing homes and assisted living housing losing funds to keep their residents fed and cared for.  We are talking about enough people here in state that everyone will know at least one person suffering because of this.  This will be a level of pain no one will be able to ignore.

And in that scenario, I would not at all be surprised to see the House Republicans and Rick "No Ethics" Scott eagerly point the finger of blame at their Senate colleagues for THEIR not compromising to Scott's plan (of talking the feds into continuing the LIP program for one more year, as though that solves anything).  None of us should be surprised when Scott accuses Obama as being responsible for Scott's refusal to do the right thing for a massive number of Florida residents.

This is the modern Republican Party on full display here.  This is not a party that wants to govern, or make decisions, or do the hard things that need doing.  This is a political party obsessed with "winning", whatever the hell that is, either winning the election cycle or winning the photo op news cycles.

This is what we get Floridians, when enough of you buy into the Republicans' snake-oil con jobs, when enough of you refuse to show up to vote for Democrats who would at least TRY to pass legislation and do their jobs.

We're At the Point Where Obama Truly Has No F-cks To Give

It used to be conventional wisdom that a President entering the last two years of a second term will suffer as a Lame Duck.

Two points: because his leadership begins to suffer as he ends up having few chips to trade with Congress to get things done; and because a fresh round of Presidential candidates rise up - sometimes even within his own party - either to dismiss or deny his efforts at meaningful legacy bills during those years.  Reagan seemed to suffer from it, as had Eisenhower and Bush the Lesser.

But that's not always the case.  In each of those Presidencies, a lot had to do with the failures of those administrations coming back to haunt each one (Eisenhower's failures in foreign policy, Reagan's corrupt administration collapsing under the scandal of Iran/Contra, Bush the Lesser's inept rule and bad wars).  Effective Presidents entering this phase can still craft out legislation and effective policy changes at will, even with an opposing Congress: Clinton had success during his last two years even with the Lewinsky impeachment vote, and now it's looking like Obama might with opening relations with Cuba and Iran.

In particular, Obama seems freed from the obligations of "playing nice" with an opposition party of the Republicans that obstructed him from Day One.  In the past few months, ever since he dissed Congress during his SOTU, Obama has basically been slapping the taste out of the Republicans' mouths.

Obama, as the saying now goes, has zero f-cks left to give.

Leading to this moment at the White House Correspondents' Dinner:

Yup.  Zero f-cks.

Makes me think of the cool memes we got when he started his Presidency...

Two Crazy Flavors Of Florida, One To Make You Laugh, One To Make You Cry

"Don't all the nuts roll downhill to Florida?"
- from the X-Files episode Agua Mala.

One of the things I've tracked since the beginning of this blog has been the crazy nature of my adopted home state Florida.

I haven't been the only one who noticed.  Since even before the population boom of the 1980s that brought busloads of shifting populations, Florida has been one of the crazier states out of the United States in our past 230-year history.  Florida, thanks to a mad land-scam craze in the 1920s, may have been one of the causes of the Great Depression.  Florida, source of early political conflict when it was a Spanish-held territory in the early 1800s.  Florida, just say "hanging chad" and watch half the nation cry.

FloridaMan and FloridaWoman have Twitter accounts.

TV Tropes documents the atrocities.  FARK has an entire tag devoted to Florida- the only state so honored - as a source of all the crazy stories they report.

There's a popular GIF people like to show whenever they talk about Florida:

Okay, so that's the setup to this blog article.  A couple of things happened recently that highlight how psychotic Floridians can be.

First, the story that sent half the Internet into fits of giggles.  A self-described "Floridian-American" woman filed a law suit against a Georgia judge that pretty much violated every rule of legal etiquette and crossed every line.  Per Raw Story:

... (the) sovereign citizen submitted a nine-page, profanity-laced tirade against a judge who dismissed a lawsuit she filed on behalf of her husband and son.

Tamah Jada Clark alleges that her civil rights were violated when she was arrested nearly five years ago in an armed plot to break her baby’s father out of prison.

“F*ck this court and everything it stands for,” Clark titled her April 20 filing.

“Look here, old man, when I told you I AM Justice – I meant it,” Clark notified U.S. District Court Judge Willis B. Hunt. “It took me about 1 month to study the history of the world and to learn the history and inner workings American jurisprudence, literally. I was born to do this here. Don’t you know that your FBI and CIA have been trying to recruit me since grade school? Lol. But they’re unscrupulous losers like you, so it won’t be happening.”

There aren't a lot of legal briefs that include an LOL.  There aren't a lot of legal briefs that openly insult a sitting judge.

The thing about audacity is that even in the craziest, scariest moments like this you gotta respect the willingness of the crazy person to tap-dance over the Line That Dare Not Be Crossed.

The entire brief deserves reading, much thanks to Gawker for posting screen-captures (shown here are two of the pages with some of the most no-f*cks-given epic insults you will see in your life):

"Just for the record: you are a hoe. This court is a hoe. And I will backhand you both, should you continue to waste my time." - Tamah Jada Clark's submission for quote of the year.

In all honesty, Ms. Clark is in a sh-tload of trouble.  Someone up the chain of the judicial system is going to consider her rant troubling as she mentions her gun-ownership and willingness to get violent to those she views as "hoes".  At the least, this rant falls into Contempt and defamation towards a sitting judge that could well lead to jail time.

Still, the rant itself crosses the line into a warped kind of brilliance.  It's every conspiracy nut's arrogant self-worth elevated to Everest-level heights.  Read how Clark insists she's "much too intelligent" and that the FBI and CIA have been trying to recruit her since grade school.  That she's able to read all of world history in one hour, and how she knows a complex legal system that even half our law students can barely grasp.  That she's the Most Important and Powerful Person In the World... who was easily captured running around Georgia during a half-baked prison break scheme.  /headdesk

Second, the story that outraged much of the nation.  A group of drunken fraternity brothers - so far confirmed as being from my alma mater University of Florida - were caught insulting and spitting on war veterans, as well as stealing a veteran's flag and pissing on it:

A University of Florida fraternity already on conduct probation is under investigation after being accused of disrespecting a group of disabled military veterans by spitting on them and stealing their flags at a Panama City Beach resort last weekend...

...Fraternity members from the UF and Emory University chapters of Zeta Beta Tau holding their spring formals at the Laketown Wharf Resort in Panama City Beach disrupted the Warrior Beach Retreat Friday night, witnesses said...

One letter to UF's President Fuchs described students spitting on veterans, throwing beer bottles over a balcony, ripping flags off their cars and urinating on an American flag.

“These guys were getting out of control,” Cope said. “I was just in tears. This was supposed to be a safe place.”

Cope also said the students had to have known they were insulting veterans from the Warrior Beach Retreat because these veterans were wearing caps and T-shirts.

“They knew who they were and were just getting a kick out of it,” she said. “It is heartbreaking as a mom with a son who sacrificed so much for their freedom.”

About 60 veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan attended the retreat, which has been held twice a year for the last six years, Cope said...

The last I ever heard about anybody spitting on war vets was from legends about the Vietnam War, something that hippies did back in the 1960s and 1970s (although the stories themselves remain apocryphal).

The problem with fraternities reach far across the nation, not just here in Florida, but this particular assault on men and women makes me reflect on the darker, dangerous aspect of the Florida Crazy.  The drunken, violent aspect.  There is nothing audacious or funny about what those fraternity men (not frat boys, which implies youthful indiscretions rather than adult criminal misdeeds) did at that hotel.  Nothing about what they did was forgivable.

Florida Problem #947: We're Led By Crooks and Crazies

Back to the brewing disaster that is Republican leadership in the state of Florida.  To wit, the fight over the state budget over Medicaid funding.  To the Tampa Bay Times coverage:

Blaming the federal government for Florida's financial woes, Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday said he was prepared to call Florida lawmakers back for a special session to complete the budget — and even encourage them to pass a bare-bones budget if necessary...
"...If (lawmakers) fail to cut taxes in this legislative session, it is clear that cutting taxes by more than $1 billion will become the top priority for next year's legislative session when there is no longer any uncertainty around health care funding, which is already over 40 percent of our state's $77 billion budget..."
...The statement came as the Senate and House convened rare meetings — one in the open and the other out of the public eye — but showed no signs of ending the budget showdown that has crippled the legislative session.
During a closed-door meeting, House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, could be heard encouraging the Republican caucus to hold firm in its opposition to Medicaid expansion, one of the key sticking points of the session...
...Senate President Andy Gardiner, meanwhile, received a standing ovation from the entire Senate — and applause from lobbyists and activists in the audience — when he said the Senate would continue its fight for expanded coverage.
One of Gardiner's top lieutenants, Senate budget chief Tom Lee, called out the House and Scott for failing to discuss the issue in a public meeting.
"I do not think that the House or the governor wants this blood on their hands when this cart goes into the ditch because people will not come to the table and have an honest political discussion about legitimate differences we have over health care funding..."

There's Rick "Never My Fault The State I Run Is Broken" Scott blaming the federal government for something he as governor is supposed to do himself.  Then again, what did you expect from a guy who never took responsibility for his healthcare company committing massive acts of Medicare fraud?

So why the crisis?  Why the split between what's usually been a unified state Republican den of thieves?

...With just 10 days left before the 60-day session is scheduled to end, the House and Senate remain at odds over how to handle a potential $1.3 billion hole in the state health care budget.
Its source: the federal government's plan to end the Low Income Pool, a program that helps hospitals cover the costs of treating uninsured and Medicaid patients.
If the program expires on June 30, as it is scheduled to do under an agreement with the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), it could result in an $86 million budget cut for Tampa General Hospital and a $200 million budget cut for Jackson Health System in Miami. Children's hospitals throughout the state stand to lose $117 million.
State health officials have formally petitioned the federal government to continue the program and presented a Senate plan to distribute the funds more evenly than in the past. But it remains unclear how the Legislature would provide support to hospitals if the funding fell through.

The LIP program was a Bush the Lesser era law that helped finance Medicaid-style block grants.  When Obama oversaw the passage of the ACA "Obamacare" program, LIP still co-existed as an alternative.  Especially after the Supreme Court ruling that eventually protected Obamacare but changed the mandatory Medicaid funding to an optional plan.  However, this year Obama's administration said it would phase out LIP - which they're not required to continue - in favor of the Obamacare funding.

This created an ideological choking point for the Republicans.  On one hand, Republicans realize that any loss of federal funding on this scale is a huge hit to their annual budgets that they cannot hide without raising taxes (suicide with their anti-government wingnut base) or slashing other vital programs too deep (suicide with the rest of the state including a lot of businesses that rely on state aid).  On the other hand, Republicans hate Obama to the point that ANYthing Obamacare is toxic to them, even when it works.

Hence the split.  Scott campaigned in 2010 and 2014 to the Far Right in opposition to Obamacare.  The state House is filled with a lot of gerrymander-safe wingnuts who can hide from the general public and play to their base without retribution.  The state Senate doesn't have that luxury: fewer in number and higher-profile - they're usually the ones who run for congressional seats later in their careers - these are the ones fully aware of the human costs if Medicaid funding disappears and 800,000 Floridians are suddenly sh-t out of luck.

That 800,000 covers kids, families, elderly... hospitals and nursing homes rely on Medicaid funding to keep the doors open.  We're a major retiree state with a lot of those retirees thinking the Republicans are serving them.  What do you think will happen when most of them find by June that the Republicans are the ones that screwed them instead?  Despite Scott's efforts to pin this on Obama, it's up to HIM and the Florida legislature to work things out.  The Republicans can easily come up with an alternative means of accepting the Medicaid funding without calling it dreaded "Obamacare": other states have done so.  But Scott won't even budge on that one compromise.

Let's see what Johathan Cohn at the Huff Po says about this:

...Conservatives have plenty of genuine, intellectually honest reservations about the changes that came with Obamacare. They don't like the new government spending and regulation, for example. In some cases, conservatives object to the whole notion of government-sponsored insurance.

But the Florida dispute demonstrates that differences over policy can't, on their own, explain the fervor now on display. The law and its enactment have tapped into something deeper and more primal -- about what the law represents, or, perhaps, the president who signed it...

...But Florida's budget situation is about to change, in ways that make opposition more difficult for these officials to justify. Like many states, Florida hospitals have access to some special federal grants designed to offset the losses that they take when they provide discounted or free care to the poor. These grants date back to a Bush-era program, enacted before the Affordable Care Act was around to give those same people insurance. The federal government has discretion over when to make those grants and, last year, the Obama administration made clear it would not be renewing Florida's beyond 2015, now that the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid money is there for the taking.

Republican leaders in the state Senate understood the implications. They'd have a big hole in the budget to fill unless they came up with some other way to finance health care for the poor. Among the first things to go would be a tax cut that Republicans cherish. "It really puts everything at risk," Andy Gardiner, leader of the Senate Republicans, told The Washington Post's Greg Sargent, who's been following the story closely. "It jeopardizes the tax cuts, it jeopardizes increases in education funding, it jeopardizes our priorities."

Rather than give up on those, Senate Republicans passed a bill to expand Medicaid, albeit with a few conservative modifications. (The merits of those modifications, and what they'd do to Medicaid, are subjects for another day.) It's precisely the strategy that Republican officials in Arkansas and Michigan, among other states, have used. But Florida House Republicans, who met behind closed doors on Tuesday, aren't budging. And neither, it seems, is Scott. Instead, he's decided to sue the federal government -- on the theory that, by refusing to extend the special grant for hospitals, the Obama administration is engaged in unconstitutional coercion of a state.

Gardiner has called Scott's decision "difficult to understand." It's even more difficult to understand given the math.

A few years ago, the Kaiser Family Foundation published an analysis by researchers at the Urban Institute. It projected the cost of expanding Medicaid in each state and then broke down the implications for state budgets. The numbers for Florida were striking. Over 10 years, the researchers found, making Medicaid available to all low-income people would cost about $71 billion above and beyond what the state's Medicaid program would otherwise cost.

That's a lot of money, for sure. But roughly $66 billion of the total, the researchers found, would come from the federal government. That would leave Florida taxpayers on the hook for the remaining $5 billion, with at least some of that money coming back to them in the form of reduced spending on other programs.

To put it another way, expanding Medicaid in Florida would likely require a net investment by state taxpayers that, over the course of a decade, would work out to less than a half-billion dollars a year. That's without accounting for any additional growth and tax revenues that the huge infusion of federal dollars might provide. That's also without accounting for the more than $1 billion a year in that, without expanding Medicaid, Florida would probably have to scrounge up in order to help hospitals defray the cost of charity care.

In short, if the numbers were lopsided in favor of expanding Medicaid before, they are even more lopsided now. And it's not as if anybody is arguing seriously that those grants are a superior way of financing care for the poor. If anything, the opposite is true -- and it's one reason the editorial page of the Tampa Bay Times called Scott's position "indefensible." Other editorial pages, civic organizations, and business groups across the state have made similar statements.

In response, Scott has said he's just looking out for state finances, because the federal government might someday pull back on its Medicaid commitment and leave state government responsible for financing a much larger Medicaid program. But as another Kaiser report has noted, the federal matching rate for Medicaid has remained remarkably stable over time -- except for rare changes that, on balance, meant the feds were paying more.

Of course, conservative fervor to block or repeal the Affordable Care Act has always seemed a bit disconnected from reality, given that the law consists almost entirely of pieces that existed, without such fuss, long before Obamacare came along. The lone exception is the "individual mandate," the requirement that people carry insurance or pay a fee. And that's an idea that plenty of conservatives tolerated -- and some even supported -- less than a decade ago. In fact, it was a conservative expert at the Heritage Foundation who many historians credit with the idea.

No, the level of hostility to Obamacare makes very little sense -- unless it's about something beyond the policy particulars. It could be the fact that Democrats finally accomplished something big, for the first time in several decades, thereby expanding the welfare state at a time when conservatives thought they were on their way to shrinking it. Or it could be the idea that, on net, the Affordable Care Act transfers resources away from richer, whiter people to poorer, darker people. Or it could be the fact that "Obamacare" contains the word "Obama," whose legitimacy as president at least some conservatives just can't accept...

There's the reason why Florida is screwed: the dominant state party - Republicans - hates Obama.  And it's an irrational hate, based on a fictional persona pumped up by wingnuts and Fox Not News.

If we get to June and there's no Medicaid funding, it's an irrational hate that's gonna get a lot of Floridians killed.  And that won't be the fault of Obama: it will be the fault of a governor and state-level Republican Party that can't swallow its pride and recognize that government can work if you know what you're doing.

Off-Topic: Summer Movie 2015 Mayhem

Technically it's started with the April blockbuster releases, but it really doesn't count until my birthday, so there.

All that's missing is the Star Wars movie, all because THAT one is coming out in December and not the summer... :(

So here's the Star Wars trailer as well.

I'm pumped.

Still Thinking About Scandals And How To Rank Them

It's frustrating that every other week the media is filled with politicians and "experts" bleating about this and that being "worse than Watergate" as a scandal.

So I'm trying to come up with a simple chart of Yes/No where we can determine just how bad a scandal really is.

Scandal Grading Curve
Insert -Gate Here
		Yes	No
Did a crime occur?
Was it a felony?
Did it involve one or more murders?
Did people die in some way?
Did it involve theft or fraud?
Did it involve rape?
Was it consensual sex but still salacious?
Did it involve assault?
Was it an unauthorized political operation?
Did it involve overseas allies?
Did it involve overseas rivals / rogue nations?
Were there false statements or facts given to the public before or during the event(s)?
Were false statements given to investigators? Was there obstruction?
Was evidence destroyed?
Have documents normally considered public record been sealed in violation of FOIA rules?
Did the event(s) compromise American civil liberties / rights?
Did it involve unusual or illegal use of public or military resources?
Did it involve bribery or extortion?
Did it involve third parties who could profit from the illegal acts?
Is it something both sides of the political spectrum recognizes as a “problem”?

This is what I've come up with so far.  I also need to scale the severity of the possible crimes / points of scandal: some items on the list need to move up in terms of how horrible they may be.  If I've missed any points of contention that need to be added, please use the Comments field to make the suggestion.

Just Needs To Be Said: Almost Every American Pay Their Taxes And They DON'T Complain About Paying

With all the Republican/Libertarian anti-tax rhetoric in the media, it might surprise most Americans to realize that most Americans (hi, everybody) don't mind paying taxes in the first place:

That Americans hate taxes has become a truism, but it’s not true. Although they disagree sharply about how tax money should be spent, most Americans actually take pride in paying their taxes. Taxpayers in the United States are unusually honest and reliable compared to those in other countries. And, increasingly, Americans are voting for tax hikes.

I can speak with anecdotal evidence here.  Libraries are one of the last places that carry printed tax forms for the public to use (Post Offices used to, but for some reason stopped).  Every year I've gone through the hassle alongside other librarians to get the basic 1040s and the specialty Schedules out on racks and tables for people.  Except this year: due to budget cuts and Congressional delays, the IRS only sent out just the basic forms, AND no instruction booklets.  Everything had to be done online.  The only complaints I got this year were that we didn't have the instruction booklets, or that people uncomfortable with computers had to go online to do their taxes this time.

I have rarely, if ever, gotten complaints about filing taxes, period.  Everyone coming in over the years griped about the complexity of the calculations, or the number of papers they had to file, or the lack of time they had if needed forms were late.  I can't recall the last time I had someone rant about the unfairness of the taxing itself.  Maybe those people weren't coming in looking for forms to begin with.

My anecdotal evidence fits well with the real evidence that Vanessa Williamson brings up in her Atlantic article:

...In national surveys, over 95 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “It is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes,” and more than half see taxpaying as “very patriotic.” One man from Ohio called it a responsibility to “the Founding Fathers.” A former Marine said taxpaying is “the cost of being an American,” while a man from California said tax avoidance is the equivalent of “shorting the country.”

The feeling is bipartisan. Surveys show that Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats to agree that taxpaying is a moral responsibility. One woman in Kansas called taxpaying “a responsibility that we have to our country as citizens” because “the country has to be taken care of.” She is a Christian conservative active in her local Tea Party group. While Tea Party activists and other staunch conservatives object to paying for “the Obama agenda,” as she described it, they regularly use the status of “taxpayer” as shorthand for being an upstanding, contributing citizen.

You might wonder if these attitudes are nothing more than a nice sentiment, but Americans put their money where their mouths are, so to speak. Compared to 14 European countries, Americans report the highest willingness to pay taxes, and the United States has one of the highest rates of tax compliance in the developed world. One might credit this to fear of the IRS, but economists have concluded that high-compliance rates in the U.S. cannot be explained solely by the level of enforcement...

As another point about the IRS, they really don't enforce that much to begin with.  Audit rates are hilariously low.  I'd like to think most Americans know that the odds of getting into trouble with the taxman is rare compared to getting into trouble with the boss if you skip work to go fishing (note to boss: I don't fish, I swear).  The only ones who do get into trouble are the few who try to game the tax system in the first place.

If there's any complaints about our taxes, it comes mostly from the ones who pine for a flat tax or a sales tax over the income tax system we have.  And they're idiots.  The rest of the complainers are the ones who want to shrink / kill government in the first place, so going after our government's means of raising revenues is their agenda.  And they're con artists/frauds.

Real American pay real taxes, because guess what?  We're citizens.  We view the paying of our taxes as our commitment to the nation, to our communities, to our own well-being.  We are - each of us - aware that our taxes go towards such things as roads, clean air and water, regulated utilities, schools, libraries, small loan programs for business start-ups and large loan programs for higher education.  Most of us don't sign up as volunteers to serve in the military: paying for that military with our taxes is our commitment to our soldiers, to their service and direct sacrifice.

Real Americans only complain about how the tax revenues are being wasted, which is a reflection on the lousy approval numbers for a dysfunctional Congress, or they complain about how the tax burden should involve the rich.

What's sad is that there are ways to increase the uber-wealthy individuals and corporations into paying their honest-to-God fair share of the tax revenues without affecting the economy, but we can't pursue a single method because the modern Republican Party is too beholden to those uber-wealthy individuals and corporations who are un-American in their desire to avoid their responsibilities to the United States.  Per Weissmann's Slate article:

Let’s say your only interest is in maximizing the amount of revenue the Feds collect. Conservative guru Art Laffer became famous for pointing out that, at some point, raising taxes becomes counterproductive, because people either stop working or find ways to hide their income. Thankfully, we’re probably nowhere near that point. In their most recent work on the subject, co-authored with Harvard University’s Stefanie Stantcheva, Piketty and Saez conclude that governments would net the most money from a top marginal rate somewhere between 57 percent and 83 percent (that includes state taxes, too). Why the range? The three researchers acknowledge that, when taxes go up, the rich seem to earn less on the job. If you think that’s entirely because they choose to work less, then 57 percent is your number. However, Piketty, Saez, and Stantcheva argue that lower taxes don’t seem to spur executives and other highly paid professionals to work harder so much as they encourage them to bargain harder for extra pay, whether it’s from their board of directors or their partners at a law firm. Negotiating a bigger paycheck for yourself doesn’t actually add anything to the economy. So, if you believe taxes simply discourage that kind of tough bargaining without making star workers much less productive, then 83 percent is your figure.

It's a debate to consider, whether we should impose higher rates.  And it's not like everyone is arguing the top tax rate should go as high as 89 percent or anything, but even talking about bumping the top rate from 39 percent up a full percentage to 40 percent (still way lower than 89 and lower than the 57 percent Weissmann's article hints should be the range) is cause for riots in the halls of Congress for some reason.

In fact, Congress is passing a bill that practically guts the estate tax for the very rich families of our nation.

...Certainly, it’s hard to see how anyone can possibly believe that the Republican Party, which fetishizes low taxes for the rich above all other priorities, truly cares about wealth inequality; but perhaps this is one of those times when the mere pretense of caring signals that they understand how badly their reputation of callous disregard for everyday Americans’ economic security has hurt them.
In any case, this shallow attempt at appearing to give a damn was short-lived. This week the GOP is voting, as they always do, to ensure that the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune won’t be faced with the terrible responsibility of having to pay taxes on their inheritances...

To clarify about what's at stake here, via The Hill:

Under current law, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that 5,400 estates will have to deal with the tax over the next several years, out of the well over 2 million deaths that occur annually.

That’s because individuals with estates valued at less than $5.43 million this year, and married couples with estates worth less than $10.86 million, are exempt. The 2013 “fiscal cliff” deal set the current parameters, which also include a 40 percent rate and linking the exemption parameters to inflation.

Notice how many people this spares from taxation?  Roughly 5,400 families.  Depending on the actual number, we're still in the low tens-of-thousands affected.  This is out of roughly 317 MILLION Americans.  We're not even talking 1-Percenters, we're talking a percent of a percent.  And the current cutoff of $5 to $10 million as the exemption?  How many people do YOU know are over that rate to qualify paying for the estate tax?  We're talking about a tax that affects a very minor portion of the population.  And a tax that is littered with enough loopholes - means of hiding the overall value - to avoid paying a full rate.

And THIS is what the Republican Congress is fighting to pass?  Nothing about eliminating taxes for middle-class families in the millions across this nation.  Nothing about the regressive tax burdens that are shifting onto the majority of poorer Americans.  They want to save the kids of the insanely wealthy.  Who will still be millionaires and billionaires even after they pay the estate tax anyway.

So like I said in the blog article title: ALMOST Every American Pay Their Taxes.  And ALMOST Every American Doesn't Complain About It.

Just the insanely wealthy greedheads and their Republican suck-ups refuse to pay their taxes, and then complain about it.

Remind me which side are the Real Americans again?

When Your State's Governor Just Wants to be a Dick

This is not going to end well (via the Tampa Bay Times):

Republican Gov. Rick Scott announced Thursday he will sue the federal government for allegedly coercing Florida to expand Medicaid.

I've made it clear before I am not a fan of Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott.  That said: MOTHERF-CKING SONOFAB-TCH.

On two points:

1. Scott has already decided not to expand Medicaid coverage for Florida, much to the dismay of 800,000 residents and their families who could benefit and much to the dismay of health care providers like nursing homes and hospitals that could see improved revenues.
2. Lawsuits can be complete wastes of taxpayers' money, considering that what Scott is suing over are changes to other Medicaid programs that haven't been decided yet by the legislature.

Back to that Times article:

The legal maneuver, which comes amid a tense standoff between the House and Senate over Medicaid expansion, was simultaneously lauded and lambasted. It also complicates negotiations over this year's budget.

The agency targeted by the lawsuit — the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS — is still deciding whether to renew a $2.2 billion program called the Low Income Pool that helps Florida hospitals treat low-income patients. And if no LIP dollars are awarded, Florida could be looking at a $1.3 billion budget gap.

The suit, which has yet to be filed, is only the latest round in an ongoing feud between Scott and CMS in connection with the LIP.

The program is scheduled to expire in June under an agreement between Florida and the federal government. Federal health officials have said they are open to negotiating a successor program, but no deal has been reached.

The negotiations took a turn Tuesday, when CMS told Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration that any decision regarding LIP would be tied to whether the state accepts federal Medicaid expansion money — a politically charged policy option Scott once supported, but now opposes.

Scott's contention is that the federal agency is trying to force Florida to accept the Medicaid expansion against the earlier SCOTUS ruling that said that was illegal.  But what's really happening here is that Scott is making it harder for the state legislature to pass a deal on Medicaid and save its budget:

In Tallahassee, Scott's announcement Thursday exposed the deepening divide between the House, which opposes expansion, and the Senate, which supports expansion and has proposed a plan to extend the LIP program.

House Speaker Steve Crisafulli said Scott was making an important point: "You can't force the state to take on Medicaid expansion."

Senate Appropriations Chairman Tom Lee, R-Brandon, said he wasn't sure if the move was political posturing or if Scott had standing to bring the lawsuit.

"But if they think the federal government has stepped out of bounds, they've got an obligation to defend the state of Florida," he said.

If the legislature fails to pass a deal on LIP, we're seeing a situation where a lot of health care providers lose funding, families lose support... and sick people who could get (and stay) healthy suddenly facing death.  One-point-three billion dollars is a lot of money to find for funding, and the state would either have to make drastic cuts in other social services that are ALREADY cut to the bone or else take a huge cut to health care.  The alternative - raise taxes to generate state revenues to fill the gap - is unthinkable to Republicans controlling this gerrymandered politically-rigged state.

Rick "I'm Trying to Scam Companies In Other States to Move to Florida As It Turns Into a Dystopic Toxic Swamp" Scott is just doing this purely on partisan obstructionism.

To every Floridian who voted for this fraud, burn in hell.

Anniversary: Lincoln's Passing to the Ages

April 14th, 1865, there was another performance of Our American Cousin at the Ford Theater.  Abraham Lincoln had seen the play before but was in the mood for another night out with the wife.

The play itself doesn't translate well into the modern age.  It trades on the satirical views of Americans as simple-minded and vulgar, but also honest and blunt about the hypocrisies of European manners.  The selling points were the various ad-libs allowed to the minor characters such as Lord Dundreary, whose mixed-up bad homilies became known as "dundrearies"

But it was popular for the day, and akin to the modern audience's willingness to watch a half-decent Adam Sandler repeat on the Comedy Channel, Lincoln and others would re-watch repeat performances.

Lincoln was in a good mood anyway.  The war effort was winding down as Lee's surrender was the death-knell of the Confederacy's fighting spirit.  While the ongoing efforts to plan a reconstruction to bring the rebel states back into the Union were looking messy, there was a lot to look forward to.  He had plans to travel the length of the nation, to be the first President to view the Pacific coast from California, to be witness to the efforts of rebuilding the United States through Homestead-granted lands and pioneering citizens (in more fanciful what-ifs, Lincoln could well have visited San Francisco and met the Emperor Norton: there's evidence the two had exchanged letters...).

Unfortunately, the word that Lincoln would attend that evening's show got to an actor (I refuse to name him, although it's already too well-known) familiar to that theater (he was not a member of the cast) who also happened to be a Confederate sympathizer with a local circle of allies.  Seeing an opportunity to avenge a defeated Confederacy, he schemed a quick plan to act out his fantasies of being a national hero at the deadly expense of the nation's leader.

Which becomes one of the most macabre jokes in American history: Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

The loss of Lincoln at the key moment of our history becomes one of the disasters that haunt us to this day.  Instead of a Republican with pragmatic and long-range visions of the national dilemmas over race and poverty leading our nation, we ended up with a Democrat in Andrew Johnson whose political ambitions drove him to institutionalize racism and allow the Southern political powers to retain control.

As much as we need to remember Lee's surrender at Appomattox, we need to remember how the loss of Lincoln tainted our nation's chances to build a stronger Republican that lacked the racism and hatred we cope with to this very day.