One In Five American CEOs Are Psychopaths-- So Not Just Trump

I don't know CNBC lives on my TV and I rarely read their stuff when I'm looking for information. That said, yesterday I found two pieces of theirs-- somewhat related-- worth passing on. Why don't we start with a specific piece of news-- Wall Street gives thumbs down on both Trump's FED picks-- and close with something a bit more general. The 48-person panel of fund managers, economists and strategists who took CNBC's new Fed Survey over the weekend prefer that the Senate not confirm either Stephen Moore (60%) or Herman Cain (53%). The panel considered both "too political" and "not qualified."

Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. Financial Market Economist at Oxford Economics: "Both Moore and Cain are highly unconventional and politically-biased choices and, if confirmed to the board, would be very disruptive at a time when monetary policy is at an important crossroads.

After announcing he planned to nominate Moore and Cain to the Fed, Trump on Friday substantially raised the ante in his comments and criticism of the Federal Reserve, not only calling for rate cuts but also advocating for the first time new quantitative easing. The Fed used so-called QE in the wake of the financial crisis to drive down interest and stimulate the economy, buying bonds and mortgages.

Not a single respondent agreed with the president’s call for new QE and just 9% think the Fed should cut rates now.

A 47% plurality of respondents believes the nominations along with the president’s critical remarks about the Fed are “reducing the central bank’s independence” and they think that could have implications for markets and the economy.

“Stacking the Fed with partisan hacks would alter how the market views the Fed’s decisions even if two appointments don’t change the Fed’s decision making,″ said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton. “Over time, the loss in credibility will mount.”

The second piece comes from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and it seeks to explain why 20% of CEOs are psychopaths or, at least, have psychopathic tendencies. Think of the psychopath-- no need to talk about "tendencies" here-- who runs the Trump Organization.

Narcissism involves an unrealistic sense of grandiosity and superiority, manifested in the form of vanity, self-admiration and delusions of talent. Here are the main characteristics of narcissistic and toxic bosses:

1. They often crave validation and recognition from others. This is primarily because their self-esteem is high but fragile. Bosses who constantly show off are probably desperate for others’ admiration.

2. They tend to be self-centered. This means they’re generally less interested in others and have deficits in empathy. For this reason, they are rarely found displaying any genuine consideration for people other than themselves.

3. They have high levels of entitlement. Narcissists commonly behave as if they deserve certain privileges or enjoy higher status than their peers enjoy.

As I highlight in my most recent book, Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (And How to Fix It), many wildly celebrated character traits, such as courage and risk-taking, often coexist with psychopathic tendencies.

...By the same token, psychopathic tendencies often co-exist with entrepreneurial traits. This explains why there are so many famous cases of self-made billionaires-- from Bernie Madoff and Jeff Skilling to Steve Jobs and Elon Musk-- whose disruptive personalities made them as unemployable as innovative.

Jobs got fired from his own company and displayed clear patterns of low empathy and antisocial behavior: Parking in the disabled parking spots and bullying and intimidating his employees. Musk’s narcissistic side has also been manifested-- rather often-- in his combative rants with investors, the media and his employees, as well as his confrontational and erratic social media presence.

But it’s not all bad. Jobs and Musk undeniably have talent for entrepreneurship, defined as the ability to translate original and useful ideas into practical innovations.

That can’t be said for every entrepreneur, though. While Elizabeth Holmes lost her “billionaire” title, she styled herself as the Steve Jobs of health care and was clearly ruthless in deceiving investors. Instead of bringing an innovative product to the market, she was selling nothing but a fairy tale.

To some degree, all successful entrepreneurs have problems with authority, which is why they are so eager to demolish the status quo and replace it with something else.

To be sure, too much psychopathy will predispose someone to crime and prison rather than Apple or Amazon. But at the other extreme of the continuum, people who are so conforming and eager to please would much rather follow established rules and remain “good employees” rather than be disruptive leaders.

So while a certain degree of nonconformity and unconventionality is needed to drive innovation and entrepreneurship, any leader will need to have a minimum level of integrity, empathy and altruism to be able to connect with and focus on the well-being of their teams, rather than on advancing their own personal agenda.

It is this range of pro-social and ethical traits that can turn even contrarian and combative personalities into a catalyst for good in society: Replacing the status quo with a better version of progress.

Why is anyone surprised that right-wing "thinkers" degrade women every chance they get?

"[A]ny woman who levels a charge of sexual harassment at a GOP candidate is going to be pummeled by the conservative media and treated like a cross between a crank and a witch. In the reddest, angriest parts of America, it is best for an aggrieved woman just to shut up."

-- Richard Cohen, in his Washington Post column
"Political bully boys trying to intimidate women"

by Ken

Here's one way of looking at it: When even Richard Cohen gets it, how hard can it be to get?

Last week I ventured a suggestion as to why Herman Cain's accusations of sexual harassment hadn't crippled him as badly as Rick Perry's, er, megagaffe ("Why all the fuss about Rick Perry's 'gaffe'? Is there anyone who didn't already know he's a moron and a thug? Really?"):

I would assume the embarrassing "secret" is that GOP voters not only don't hold sexual harassment against a person, they admire it. It gives them hope for a return to the good old days, when everyone understood that the only way to have your women was barefoot and pregnant.

This by now should be so obvious as to be beyond discussion. The only thing that exceeds far-right-wingers' loathing of women is their stark terror of them. Well, there's one other thing that might exceed far-right-wingers' loathing of women: their loathing of people who are racially, ethnically, religiously, or in any other "-ally" way different from them. That's another story, though in a lot of ways it isn't. It's largely the same story, the only difference being that, alone among these enemy species, the women have the mystical power to ensnare men into consorting and in fact cohabiting with them. I would argue that this only increases their loathing. I suppose some benighted souls will argue that men, far from loathing, worship their wimmins. Jeez, wake up and smell the perfume.

Since I try not to keep too close tabs on wingnut punditry, I admit I was taken aback by some of the stuff I found in Richard Cohen's column -- and I like to think that nothing that comes out of those evil, insane mouths surprises me.

The furious counterattack against the women who in the past had accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment was led by Rush Limbaugh, who occupies a vast electronic locker room, making jokes that would be considered immature in junior high school. When one of Cain's accusers, Karen Krau­shaar, said she'd like to coordinate her remarks with other Cain accusers, Limbaugh wondered why: "Do they want to synchronize their menstrual periods? Why appear together?" You can just hear the towel snap.

As is his custom, Limbaugh accused irate women (and men) of not getting the joke -- of being too PC. Earlier, he had some locker-room fun with the name of Sharon Bialek, another of Cain's accusers. Sharon "Buy-a-lick," he called her. My, my, such a potty mouth. My, my, such a jerk.

Limbaugh was hardly alone in turning on the accusing women. For some reason, Bialek's financial history became public knowledge. She had been in debt. She has had two bankruptcies. The Drudge Report noted that she once lived in the same Chicago building as David Axelrod, President Obama's chief political adviser. As if to ice matters, Bialek was represented by Gloria Allred, who in countless media references is called a "celebrity lawyer." Whether this means that she represents celebrities or is one herself is not at all clear, but it does mean -- lest you miss the import -- that she is a tawdry ambulance-chaser and that her client, in the characterization of the New York Post's Andrea Peyser, is a gold digger.

[You can find the links for Limbaugh, Drudge, and Peyser onsite. I'll be damned if I'm going to send them any traffic. -- Ed.]

In this regard, as in so many others, the loons of the Right have an invaluable ally in the primitive nomadic world view of old-time Judeo-Christianity. I don't think there's any reasonable question at this late date that those desert wanderers were scared so doodyless of women that they built their social order around strict oppressive control. Naturally they made believe it was "for their own good," but authoritarians frequently couch their repressive regimes in that sort of empty rhetoric.

We could launch an endless theological inquiry, or I could just offer you one word: Eve.

(It might then be asked, tauntingly: So what about them Wingnut Wimmins? You know, like Princess Sarah and Wackadoodle Michele. Seriously?)

To return to Richard Cohen:

Peyser, Matt Drudge and Limbaugh somehow forgot that two cases against Cain were settled and not for inconsiderable sums. If they were mere nuisance complaints, then Cain's employer at the time, the National Restaurant Association, would not have made cash settlements of $45,000 and $35,000. This does not prove that Cain was guilty, only that the claims were deemed not frivolous. This is a bit more than just-go-away money.

Cain is clearly one of those guys who learned years ago that bluster, not the truth, will set you free. He trimmed about not even knowing about (1) the claims or (2) the settlements. This, too, does not prove that Cain is a sexual harasser, merely that he is not particularly persuasive. It's hard to believe that, as the president of the association and the target of the complaints, he was unaware of the settlements. Such a man would be an odd choice for chief executive of the United States.

I know that some women (and men) bring false charges of sexual harassment merely to get a payday. Whether any of Cain's accusers did that, I cannot say, but I doubt it. I know also that some sexual harassment claims arise from misunderstandings -- a remark that went sideways or a "victim" whose shoulder is nothing but chips. But I can also say that these charges are not made without apprehension by women who value their careers. They fear not only retribution -- never mind that retribution is illegal -- but also that their claim will make it hard for them to find another job. No one wants to hire a troublemaker.

Sometimes when Cohen "gets" stuff, it turns out that there's a buried personal connection, and perhaps that's the case here.

I worked for an insurance company back in the “Mad Men” days. I saw the way women were treated, the incessant and quite unremarkable harassment of that period. It was, in this respect, an ugly era -- uglier for blacks, for sure, but ugly for Jews and for other minorities and for all women. Some of this ugliness lingers -- for blacks, for Hispanics, for gays and, it now seems certain, for women. The jokes of the infantile Limbaugh, the attacks on women whose claims were treated seriously by their employers, suggest some slippage in the women’s movement.

The aggrieved women have faded. They chose prudence over valor, the comfort of anonymity to a public gutting. Other women must have taken notice. Cain, whose candidacy is without purpose, may yet prove useful. He reminds us of how far we still have to go.

We've pointed it out here at DWT, though perhaps not often enough, but one of the ugliest facets of the monumentally ugly 21st-century evolution of the Republican Party has been its virulently raging war against women. In which, I should point out, they have found all too many allies in the supposedly less extreme Democratic camp -- a truly unholy alliance.

Those right-wingers keep looking in the mirror and seeing utter worthlessness. Is it any wonder they work so desperately to annihilate everyone who's different from them? Because the chances are that everyone who's different from them is better than they are. How could they not be?


ON THE SUBJECT OF WINGNUT WIMMINS (VS. WINGNUT MENS)

The Washington Post's only moderately whacked-out right-wing columnist Kathleen Parker points out in her column "Perry, Cain and a parade of painful moments" that a pretty male dolt like Rick Perry can't get away with "winkage" in the way that a babe like Princess Sarah could, or Herman Cain either. She argues without much backup that "Perry and Cain are both talented men who deserve more than our contempt," but insists:

Nevertheless, it has become clear that they are not now presidential material. We may indeed overlook their faults, but we needn’t excuse what are more than mere lapses. Their lack of knowledge or recall suggests a lack of depth and an absence of seriousness. We expect more from those who pretend to the throne.

And though Americans admire the self-made who have experienced ordinary life, most don’t want an ordinary person to lead the country.

A funny line is worth a laugh, a song may buy you lunch, but in the end, there’s no winking one’s way to the White House.

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As the GOP presidential "debates" show, to right-wingers what the country most desperately needs more of is -- morons

America needs more morons! The modern-day conservative philosophy might be summed up: "An uneducated voter is our best customer."

"This is a long way from the conservatism I used to respect. Although I often disagreed with conservatives, I admired their prudence, their affection for tradition and their understanding that the intricate bonds of community are established with great difficulty over time and not easy to reweave once they are torn asunder. At their best, conservatives forced us to think harder. Now, many in the ranks seem to have decided that hard and nuanced thinking is a telltale sign of liberalism."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his Washington Post column
today, "The real conservative scandal"

by Ken

On Saturday Howie kicked around a question, "Why Do Conservatives Hate Education?," that really doesn't seem to me all that difficult to answer. Modern-day right-wingers hate education because, well, they hate the whole idea of "the people" being educated. Extreme right-wingers hate the idea even more extremely.

I can't tell you how mad the right-wing conspiracy to moronify the American public makes me (though not, goodness knows, for want of trying). Because we're not talking about merely taking advantage of natural inequalities in mental acuity. We're talking about making sure that broad masses of people never develop their actual intelligence sufficiently to be able to the obfuscation and lies dished out to them by greedy and/or power-lusting political and social forces who reduce them to puppet-brained servants.

The result is what we're getting as a Republican presidential contest. As I've said before, if we thought we'd hit rock-bottom in 2008, what is there to say about the 2012 version? Except maybe that nobody should be surprised -- the plan was already set in motion, and could hardly have led anywhere else.

Proof of the total mental and moral collapse is the endless series of "debates" among the contending clowns. Anyone with a shred less contempt for the voting public, or at least the Republican-presidential-nominating portion thereof, would quake at the though of making public the level of intellectual infamy to which GOP politicking has sunk. And yet those Republican presidential nominators seem adequately hoodwinked into thinking that they're being presented with actual contenders, when what they're being presented with is a bunch of life forms that for the health and safety of the general population should probably be confined in cages. I mean, really, the stuff coming out of these creatures' mouths!

Even more distressing is the extent to which the infotainment noozemedia is going along with the gag, pretending that these "debates" have any connection to the problems or possibilities facing the next president. I mean, why are people even trying to stifle laughter when, say, Michele Bachmann accuses CBS of "bias" because of her choice to develop herself into a raging mental defective.

Or, perhaps more topically, why are most of the infotainment noozers acting as if Rick "Don't Stop Me Before I Kill" Perry's famous debate "gaffe" was important because of its "gaffiness" rather than, as I wrote here, its stark demonstration that the creep is "a wholly unprincipled asshole who doesn't have the slightest idea what he's talking about."

It's hardly surprising that the Washington Post's E. J. Dionne Jr. gets it and isn't having any of it. From his column today, "The real conservative scandal":

What really matters is the subject that sent Perry's brain into lockdown. He was in the middle of describing sweeping changes in the federal bureaucracy closely connected to his spare vision of American government. One presumes a candidate for president ponders such proposals carefully, discusses them with advisers and understands their implications.

Forgetting an idea at the heart of your program, in other words, is not the same as forgetting a phone number, a friend's name, a football score or the title of a recently read book.

Perry's memory lapse showed that he wasn't asserting anything that he is truly serious about because he is not serious about what government does, or ought not to do. For him, governing seems a casual undertaking.

"And I will tell you," he declared, "it's three agencies of government when I get there that are gone: Commerce, Education and the -- what's the third one there? Let's see."

Yes, let's see what "gone" might imply. Would Perry end all federal aid to education? Would he do away with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the part of the Commerce Department that, among other things, tracks hurricanes? Energy was the department he forgot. Would he scrap the department's 17 national labs, including such world-class facilities as Los Alamos, N.M., Oak Ridge, Tenn., or -- there's that primary coming up -- Aiken, S.C.?

I'm not accusing Perry of wanting to do any of these things because I don't believe he has given them a moment of thought. And that's the problem for conservatives. Their movement has been overtaken by a quite literally mindless opposition to government. Perry, correctly, thought he had a winning sound bite, had he managed to blurt it out, because if you just say you want to scrap government departments (and three is a nice, round number), many conservatives will cheer without asking questions. [Emphasis added.]

Yes! Exactly! My goodness, does that man ever get it! "I don't believe he has given [these things] a moment of thought."

It's at this point that E.J. pens the paragraph I've quoted at the top of this post. What the heck, I think this is worth repeating:

This is a long way from the conservatism I used to respect. Although I often disagreed with conservatives, I admired their prudence, their affection for tradition and their understanding that the intricate bonds of community are established with great difficulty over time and not easy to reweave once they are torn asunder. At their best, conservatives forced us to think harder. Now, many in the ranks seem to have decided that hard and nuanced thinking is a telltale sign of liberalism.

I might just amend that last sentence to encompass any kind of actual thinking being thought of as "a telltale sign of liberalism." Modern-day right-wingers hate facts, and truly believe they're entitled to pretend that any kind of alternative reality they concoct is a reasonable substitute for actual reality if the poll numbers are good enough.

E.J. goes on to consider the fine mess that candidate Herman Cain has gotten himself into -- apparently just by being, you know, who he is, and then lying about it. (If there's anything that right-wing demagogues have learned it's that there are almost only rewards, and no punishment, to be had for lying, and the grander the lie, the more rewarding.) Here too I would argue that the nail in the coffin of Cain's candidacy ought to be the insultingly moronic gibberish he's passed off as his political "program."

(E..J. was of course writing before Cain had his fluff today over Libya ["Cain Stumbles On Libya Questions"], the poor dear being unable to remember whether he agrees or disagrees with the president's handling, though he's pretty sure he disagrees. Unfortunately he can't say why, undoubtedly because, like Governor Rick and his planned government rollback, he has no frigging clue what the hell he's talking about -- and what's more doesn't seem to think this speaks in any way to his presidential qualifications. "I got all this stuff twirling around in my head," he said at one point. Not only can I believe it, I would encourage him to seek prompt help for the condition at his nearest mental-health facility. I don't think running for president is the answer, for him or for the nation.)

But even regarding Cain's problem with the accusations of sexual harassment, E.J. is absolutely right to nail him for his preposterous attempt to blame it all -- most of the time, anyway -- on the "liberal media" and "the Democrat machine." At times, as E.J. notes, he has seemed aware that the likely source of the dirt is enemy Republicans. "In any event," E.J. continues,

while women of a variety of political stripes have been in the forefront in demanding accountability from Cain, plenty of liberals have been happy to look on and let the GOP settle this one. And most members of "the Democrat machine" defended Bill Clinton against impeachment in the Monica Lewinsky matter. They, too, have largely stayed away from the Cain controversy, aware as they are of the meaning of the word "hypocrisy."

Not so with the many conservatives who donned full feminist armor during the Clinton scandal and now defend Cain reflexively, not even asking that he come clean about the facts.

There are honorable exceptions: Bill Bennett, for one, and to some degree -- hard to admit, I know -- Karl Rove. [Not to worry, E.J. It seems clear that our Karl has no concern for the rights and wrongs of the matter, but only for the politics of it. -- Ed.] But that so many other members of a movement theoretically devoted to traditional values on sexual matters would eagerly jump into this mess on Cain’s side speaks volumes about its condition. To paraphrase Bennett from another context, where’s the outrage about a conservatism that is losing both its intellectual moorings and its moral compass?

"Intellectual moorings"? "Moral compass"? Among modern-day "conservatives"? This is a joke, right?

Sorry, pal, red-blooded American right-wingers don't have nuttin' to do with commie fag stuff like "intellectual moorings" and "moral compass." And don't forget, they've got guns, lots of guns, and a Supreme Court whose self-made morons say the peeps have the right to use them to defend themselves against, well, people who aren't morons.

#

Why all the fuss about Rick Perry's "gaffe"? Is there anyone who didn't already know he's a moron and a thug? Really?

"The American people have to decide what’s worse, forgetting which agencies you plan to get rid of or forgetting which ladies you tried to nail when you were running the National Restaurant Association. I can tell you this, if somebody asked me if I remembered who I’d sexually harassed I could sure as shit tell you their names. But please don’t ask me that."

-- Texas Gov. Rick Perry, according to the Borowitz Report

by Ken

Well, sure, I can see where it was awkward when Governor Rick, showing off his rugged-he-man toughness, couldn't remember enough of his script to know exactly which three federal agencies he's going to whack as soon as he marches into the White House. Hey, shut 'em all the f**k down!

Okay, so he's a wholly unprincipled asshole who doesn't have the slightest idea what he's talking about. It can't possibly be the case that there was any living human being who was unaware that he's a moron and a thug. Really? After all, didn't those used to be his good qualities?

Isn't this what our great country is all about? The dream of every American child to become rich and powerful enough to be officially allowed to lie, cheat, and steal anything you can get your grubby mitts on? Governor Rick (and I do want to stress that the fellow is a sitting governor -- albeit in a state with a fairly weak governorship -- and in 2010 he became the first person elected to a third four-year term in the job) believes that the country should be run by and for the benefit of the 1%, and that the goal of the rest of us should be to position ourselves to receive their sloppy seconds.

Coupla guys livin' the real American Dream

So why should any red-blooded American who believes that the next president should be the slimiest moron and thug we can find be anything but cheered by this late-afternoon Washingtonpost.com update?

Rick Perry makes light of gaffe, vows not to quit

By Debbi Wilgoren

Rick Perry scrambled Thursday to recover from a major gaffe during the latest GOP presidential debate, appearing on the morning television news shows, soliciting donations from supporters and agreeing to poke fun at himself alongside David Letterman on “The Late Show.”

The Texas governor rearranged his schedule as he sought to rescue his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, canceling a fundraiser in Tennessee so that he could stay in New York to appear on the TV networks and Thursday night’s Letterman show.

Interviewed on “Fox & Friends,” NBC’s “Today” show, ABC’s ”Good Morning America” and CNN’s “American Morning,” Perry insisted that his inability to recall the name of one of the three federal agencies he had vowed to eliminate shows nothing more than that he is human.

“People make mistakes,” the embattled GOP presidential hopeful told NBC. “One error is not going to make or break a campaign. We’re going to continue talking about the challenges facing this country.” . . .

And there you have it. People make mistakes! Yes, they do.

I dunno, maybe the Post's Amy Gardner and Philip Rucker were right in describing this as "the worst stumble of the presidential campaign." But it's surely not the dumbest thing any of the Republican presidential wannabes have said. In fact, they're at their dumbest when they remember their scripts. And so while of course Herman Cain's sexual-harassment embarrassment should disqualify him for the job, that's a drop in the bucket compared with the psychopathic imbecilities that made him a surprise hit among the GOP electorate. If you try to make sense of the nonsense he talks, you have to conclude that, like all his rivals, he's really one giant gaffe.

I guess the distinction in the world of "gotcha" horse-race politics, the political world we now inhabit, is: You're only allowed to embarrass yourself so far, and then your supporters and would-be supporters begin to feel a tinge of reflected embarrassment. What's interesting is that Cain's woes haven't reached this level. I would assume the embarrassing "secret" is that GOP voters not only don't hold sexual harassment against a person, they admire it. It gives them hope for a return to the good old days, when everyone understood that the only way to have your women was barefoot and pregnant.

Well, sure, Governor Rick is plumb dumb, and a thug, but that's hardly news, is it? Aren't those his good qualities? And is there a 2012 GOP presidential hopeful who's in any useful way smarter? Smartness as such isn't the problem, is it?

With regard to the Governor Rick candidacy, I notice that in the WaPo gaffe report noted above -- headlined, by the way, "Rick Perry stumbles badly in Republican presidential debate" -- reporters Gardner and Rucker write: "At a time when Perry’s team was hoping desperately for a breakout, or at least mistake-free, performance to revive his ailing campaign, the governor’s gaffe could well do lasting damage." Really, do you think?

Once again the pundit I turn to is Andy Borowitz.

BOROWITZ REPORT

Three Things from Rick Perry
About Last Night

Dear American:

Okay, lookit, there are three things I forgot to mention last night.

Firstly, you should never drink before a debate. Right after that danged thing was over I had to stick my head in the porcelain throne and that lawn gnome Ron Paul had to hold my hair. This morning my head hurts like it was hit with a hammer in one of those movies with Larry, Curly, and… Larry, Curly, and what’s the other one? Ah, shit.

Now here’s B: the American people have to decide what’s worse, forgetting which agencies you plan to get rid of or forgetting which ladies you tried to nail when you were running the National Restaurant Association. I can tell you this, if somebody asked me if I remembered who I’d sexually harassed I could sure as shit tell you their names. But please don’t ask me that.

And finally, number 3: what the hell was number 3 again? I’ve got it on the tip of my tongue. Nope, I’ve lost it. Oops.

Vote for me,

Rick Perry

Yeah, Willard Inc. is smarter than Governor Rick. (But then, so is your breakfast raisin bran.) Two things, though:

(1) Has Governor Rick's mental incapacity made him any less dangerous as a politician or governor?

(2) Does Willard Inc.'s superior, er, intellect make him any less dangerous as a politician or potential president?

Imagine a President Perry coping with the world financial crisis, or the climate-change crisis, or the crisis of economic inequality, or the domestic infrastructure crisis, or appointing a Supreme Court justice or two. Now imagine a President Willard Inc. Feel better?

(Some smartypants is bound to suggest imagining those same issues being dealt with by a reelected President Obama, and ask if that makes me feel better. Well, not all that much, but still, there are differences. Aren't there?)


POSTSCRIPT: "THE BEST LITTLE WHORE IN TEXAS"

Since the subject came up in the comments, I want to be sure to direct readers to Matt Taibbi's October 26 Rolling Stone report, "Rick Perry: The Best Little Whore in Texas."

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Who Is Mad Dog Wingnut Rick Santorum, The Google Candidate, Attacking Now? The Hermanator!

Oh, boy we even get dangerous sociopath Bryan Fischer's point of view! And this was even before Romney campaign operatives leaked to the press-- doing their best to make it appear that it came from Niggerhead-- that Herman Cain is a serial sex predator, preying on the women who depended on his good graces for their families' economic well-being!

Most observers don't think Cain's troubles are likely to do Santorum any good (though it isn't stopping the Santorumites from trying). He can't seem to crack into the top tier-- or even the second tier. His very extreme right Senate record, which accounts for his startling 59-41% loss to Bob Casey in 2006, is too easy to access for anyone to take his candidacy too seriously. That and his advocacy that condoms be outlawed. Santorum also fits into the category of Republican candidate, even more snuggly that most, that stands primarily for the high principle that "if Obama wants it, I don't." Today for example, as part of his "We Can't Wait" initiative, Obama took executive action to reduce prescription drug shortages and combat pharmaceutical price gouging.

President Obama today will sign an Executive Order directing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take action to help further prevent and reduce prescription drug shortages, protect consumers and prevent price gouging. The President’s order directs FDA to broaden reporting of potential shortages of certain prescription drugs and to further expedite regulatory reviews that can help prevent or respond to shortages. Under the President’s order, FDA will also work with to the Department of Justice, which will examine whether potential shortages have led to illegal price gouging or stockpiling of life-saving medications.
 
In addition to signing the Executive Order, the White House announced the President’s support for bipartisan legislation (H.R. 2245 and S. 296) that will build on today’s actions to strengthen the FDA’s ability to prevent prescription drug shortages.
 
A small number of drugs in the U.S. experience a shortage in any given year, but the number of reported prescription drug shortages in the United States nearly tripled between 2005 and 2010. While FDA successfully prevented 137 drug shortages between January 1, 2010 and September 26, 2011, prescription drug shortages continue to threaten the health and safety of the American people. 
 
These shortages could lead to price gouging, which has raised serious concerns. For example, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reforms, when announcing his investigation into so-called gray markets, expressed concerns about a report that a leukemia drug whose typical contract price is about $12 per vial was being sold at $990 per vial-- 80 times higher. A Premier healthcare alliance report released in August estimated that the typical gray market vendor marks up prices by an averaged 650 percent. At the extreme, a drug used to treat high blood pressure that was normally priced at $25.90 was being sold at $1,200 due to a drug shortage. 
 
“The shortage of prescription drugs drives up costs, leaves consumers vulnerable to price gouging and threatens our health and safety,” said President Obama. “This is a problem we can’t wait to fix.  That’s why today, I am directing my administration to take steps to protect consumers from drug shortages, and I’m committed to working with Congress and industry to keep tackling this problem going forward.”
 
Early notification of potential drug shortages can help prevent a shortage from becoming a crisis by allowing hospitals, doctors and manufacturers to take action to ensure medications remain available. Currently, the FDA can only require drug manufacturers to disclose the discontinuation of a critical drug when the drug is available through a single manufacturer. The President’s Executive Order directs the FDA to take additional steps to require drug manufacturers to provide adequate advance notice of manufacturing discontinuances or other actions that could lead to critical shortages. These additional steps to increase early notification will help achieve some of the goals of bipartisan legislation supported by the President that would require all prescription drug shortages to be disclosed to the FDA in advance and give the FDA new authority to enforce these requirements.
 
The Executive Order also requires FDA to expand its current efforts to expedite review of new manufacturing sites, drug suppliers, and manufacturing changes to help prevent shortages. 
 
These actions are just some of the steps the Obama Administration is taking to ensure patients have access to the lifesaving medicines they need. Today, the Obama Administration also:
 
• Sent a letter to drug manufacturers reminding them of their responsibility to report the discontinuation of certain drugs to the FDA. The letter also encourages companies to voluntarily disclose to FDA potential prescription drug shortages in cases where disclosure is not currently required by law.
 
• Increased staffing resources for the FDA’s Drug Shortages Program to address the increased workload that will result from additional early notification of potential shortages by manufacturers.
 
• Released a report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) that assesses the underlying factors that lead to drug shortages, and an FDA report on their role in monitoring, preventing, and responding to these shortages.

Santorum, who's a big booster of repealing healthcare reform and of using Paul Ryan's proposal to terminate Medicare and Medicaid entirely and replace them with an inadequate voucher system, had a very different approach than Obama's out on the campaign trail in Iowa today. He explained how Ryan’s plan to privatize the Medicare program for future enrollees would “ration” care to seniors by capping the amount of money beneficiaries would have to spend on health care services: "There will be a rationing of care, there has to be," he insisted. "There is a rationing of every economic resource. There is not unlimited amounts of money to spend on anything…[Obama] has put a cap. Now, that’s one way of solving the problem. The other way of solving the problem is to put a cap in a different place and what Paul Ryan suggested and I believe in-- in fact advocated for in 2003 as part of Medicare… which is putting a cap on the amount of money we give you to buy your own insurance. So instead of capping the overall budget and making you wait, thinking you got a card, but the card isn’t going to be worth anything, because you got to wait for it, we’re going to put the cap on the other end-- on you."

Santorum attempted to establish equivalency between the Affordable Care Act’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB)-- a 15-member commission that would make recommendations to Congress about lowering Medicare reimbursements if costs increase beyond a certain point-- and Ryan’s plan to “limit the government’s exposure” by giving seniors pre-determined vouchers with which to purchase private coverage. But the differences couldn’t be greater: while health reform will begin to change not just how much providers are paid for their services, but how they’re paid for delivering them, the Ryan plan shifts simply some of the costs borne by the federal government to the individual without improving the system’s efficiency or removing its many redundancies. As a result, the federal “cap” that Ryan imposes will fail to keep up with skyrocketing health care spending and force seniors to pay more for the same package of benefits every year.

Who's Better At Making Fun Of The Hermanator-- Colbert Or Kimmel? Neither Beats Reality

I figured when Herman Cain did that interview a few weeks ago with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC and O'Donnell read the part from his autobiography where Herman talks about how his reaction to the Civil Rights movement was-- in his words-- to "move to the back of the bus," that would be the last we'd ever hear from The Hermanator. Was I wrong! Republicans love their little minstrel shows and Cain spiked in the polls and started regularly beating the inevitable Republican nominee in poll after poll.

Then today Politico broke the news that Cain was harrassing women when he was head of the restaurant association's trade group. The story's been bubbling for almost two weeks but until Sunday no one had enough to get it into print and Cain's camp has steadfastly refused comment. But "in a tense sidewalk encounter Sunday morning outside the Washington bureau of CBS News-- where the Republican contender had just completed an interview on Face the Nation-- Cain evaded a series of questions about sexual harassment allegations."

The women were paid off to keep quiet and moved on to other companies. The Romney camp denies having leaked the information and quietly points the finger at Rick Perry. His campaign denies everything, of course. And Team Hermanator is whining that this whole thing is an "unfair attack."

Cain said he has “had thousands of people working for me” at different businesses over the years and could not comment “until I see some facts or some concrete evidence.” His campaign staff was given the name of one woman who complained last week, and it was repeated to Cain on Sunday. He responded, “I am not going to comment on that.”

He was then asked, “Have you ever been accused, sir, in your life of harassment by a woman?”

He breathed audibly, glared at the reporter and stayed silent for several seconds. After the question was repeated three times, he responded by asking the reporter, “Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?”

Cain was president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association from late 1996 to mid-1999. Politico learned of the allegations against him, and over the course of several weeks, has put together accounts of what happened by talking to a lengthy roster of former board members, current and past staff and others familiar with the workings of the trade group at the time Cain was there.

In one case, Politico has seen documentation describing the allegations and showing that the restaurant association formally resolved the matter. Both women received separation packages that were in the five-figure range.

On the details of Cain’s allegedly inappropriate behavior with the two women, Politico has a half-dozen sources shedding light on different aspects of the complaints.

The sources-- which include the recollections of close associates and other documentation-- describe episodes that left the women upset and offended. These incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices. There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship.

Peter Kilgore, who was the association’s general counsel in the 1990s, and remains in that position today, has declined to comment to Politico on whether any settlements existed, saying he cannot discuss personnel matters.

But one source closely familiar with Cain’s tenure in Washington confirmed that the claims related to allegations of sexual harassment-- behavior that disturbed members of the board who became aware of it, as well as the source, who otherwise liked Cain.

“I happen to know there were sealed settlements reached in the plural. I think that anybody who thinks this was a one-time, one-person transgression would be mistaken,” this source said.

I guess these aren't as funny as they were when I was getting reday to show them earlier today before the story broke. Sexual harassment is always so becoming on the pompous and pius.






UPDATE: Why This Is Good For The GOP

It bolsters the Republican Party's claim that they do have non-gay candidates. And, suddenly, no one is talking about what George Will said about Romney. What did he say? Glad you asked... you didn't read about "The Pretzel Candidate?"

A straddle is not a political philosophy; it is what you do when you do not have one. It is what Romney did when he said that using Troubled Assets Relief Program funds for the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts “was the wrong source for that funding.” Oh, so the source was the bailouts’ defect.

...Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.” But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before “forever”? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?

Well... there's always... Santorum.

The Age-Old Conservative Crusade To Guarantee The Rich Pay Less

Conservatives never give up-- even if they have to go to extremist and radical means to achieve their ends-- and Monday is always a good day to mull over a bit of Corey Robin's book, The Reactionary Mind.

There's a fairly simple reason for the embrace of radicalism on the right, and it has to do with the reactionary imperative that lies at the core of conservative doctrine. The conservative not only opposes the left; he also believes that the left has been in the driver's seat since, depending on who's counting, the French Revolution or the Reformation. If he is to preserve what he values, the conservative must declare war against the culture as it is. Though the spirit of militant opposition pervades the entirety of conservative discourse, Dinesh D'Souza has put the case most clearly.

"Typically, the conservative attempts to conserve, to hold on to the values of the existing society. But... what if the existing society is inherently hostile to conservative beliefs? It is foolish for a conservative to attempt to conserve that culture. Rather, he must seek to undermine it, to thwart it, to destroy it at the root level. This means that the conservative must... be philosophically conservative but temperamentally radical."

How else could you ever explain a Timothy McVeigh or a Glenn Beck or a Jim DeMint? And how else could you ever explain why the conservatives never stop peddling their rejected wares year after year after year. Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio may not look like dried up, selfish, bloated, old vampires yet but their inherently anti-social message of greed and egoism, their hatred of the concept of equality and their vehement disdain for accepted American institutions like Social Security and Medicare, are the same old conservative message in superficially new packaging. Predictably, both also support the age-old flat tax schemes that are never far from the surface of any right-wing movement anywhere. As Robert Reich explained last week, flat tax schemes always mean the rich pay less. Under Cain’s gimmicky 9-9-9 "plan" (a marketing stunt more than a thought-through serious fiscal proposal), almost every family with over $1 million in annual income would get an average tax cut of $487,300. Capital gains would be tax free... free, free at last-- the dream come true.

Herman Cain’s bizarre 9-9-9 plan would replace much of the current tax code with a 9 percent individual income tax and a 9 percent sales tax. He calls it a “flat tax.”

Next week Rick Perry is set to announce his own version of a flat tax. Former House majority leader Dick Armey-- now chairman of Freedom Works, a major backer of the Tea Party funded by the Koch Brothers and other portly felines (I didn’t say “fat cats”)-- predicts this will give Perry “a big boost.” Steve Forbes, one of America’s richest billionaires, who’s on the board of the Freedom Works foundation, is delighted. He’s been pushing the flat tax for years.

The flat tax is a fraud. It raises taxes on the poor and lowers them on the rich.

...The details of flat-tax proposals vary, of course. But all of them end up benefitting the rich more than the poor for one simple reason: Today’s tax code is still at least moderately progressive. The rich usually pay a higher percent of their incomes in income taxes than do the poor. A flat tax would eliminate that slight progressivity.

Nowadays most low-income households pay no federal income tax at all-- a fact that sends many regressives into spasms of indignation. They conveniently ignore the fact that poor households pay a much larger share of their incomes in payroll taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes (directly, if they own their homes; indirectly, if they rent) than do people with high incomes.

...[W]hen Barack Obama calls for ending the Bush tax cut on incomes over $250,000, he’s only talking about the portion peoples’ incomes that exceed $250,000. He’s not proposing to tax their entire incomes at the higher rate that prevailed under Bill Clinton.

Republicans have tried to sow confusion about this. They want Americans to believe, for example, that if the Bush tax cut ended, small business owners with incomes of $251,000 a year would suddenly have to pay 39 percent of their entire incomes in taxes rather than 35 percent. Wrong. They’d only have to pay the 39 percent rate on $1,000-- the portion of their incomes over $250,000.

Get it? We already have a flat tax-- flat within each bracket.

The real problem is the top brackets are set too low relative to where the money is. The top-most bracket starts at $375,000 a year. People with incomes higher than that pay 35 percent-- again, only on that portion of their incomes exceeding $375,000.

This is absurd. It means a professional who’s making, say, $380,000 a year pays the same income-tax rate as a plutocrat pulling in $2 billion or $20 billion.

Our current flat tax at the top is treating the nation’s professional class exactly the same as it treats super-rich plutocrats. My doctor pays the same rate as Steve Forbes.

Actually, it’s worse than that because the plutocrats get most of their income in the form of capital gains, which are taxed at only 15 percent. That’s why America’s 400 richest people-- who earned an average of $300 million last year, and who have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans put together – now pay at a 17 percent rate (according to the IRS).

The Republicans’ push for a flat tax masks what’s really going on.

Remember: The top 1 percent is now raking in over 20 percent of the nation’s total income and owns over 35 percent of the nation’s wealth. Under almost anyone’s view of fairness, these are grotesque portions. They’re especially large relative to what they were as recently as thirty years ago, when the top 1 percent raked in under 10 percent. And these huge portions at the top continue to increase.

Meanwhile, the top tax bracket is now 35 percent-- the lowest it’s been in three decades. Between the end of World War II and 1980 it never fell below 70 percent. 

Simple fairness requires three things: More tax brackets at the top, higher rates in each bracket, and the treatment of all sources of income (capital gains included) exactly the same.

Not only fairness demands it, but also fiscal prudence. A truly progressive tax would bring in tens of billions of dollars a year from the people at the top who are in the best position to afford it.

Regressives are pushing the flat tax as a smokescreen. They’d rather not have anyone talk about the unfairness and fiscal absurdity of the current system.

Rather than merely oppose the flat tax, sensible people should push for a truly progressive tax-- starting with a top rate of 70 percent on that portion of anyone’s income exceeding $5 million, from whatever source.

And any semblance of economic fairness has been as far from the top of Mitt Romney's priorities list as giving up his ambitions to become the first Mormon president.

In his quick, casual reply—corporations are people—Romney had seemed to give something away, though it wasn’t immediately clear what. The press chose to play the episode as a “gaffe,” as ABC’s Jake Tapper described it, a moment in which the weakness in Romney’s political pitch, the gap between his own privileged experience of the world and that of working-class voters, had been exposed. ­MSNBC, in a spate of giddy incredulity, seemed to keep the clip on loop for a week. But Romney’s own campaign managers did not try to obscure the episode at the state fair, to say he had been misunderstood or to secret it away. Instead they promoted it, as an advertisement of principle, and made the confrontation the centerpiece of a solicitation to supporters. A few days later, Romney’s communication director, Gail Gitcho, told the press that the exchange had raised $25,000 within 24 hours.

The incident, in retrospect, did less to peg Romney as a creature of privilege than it did to reveal something deeper. For Romney, the corporation has long been an object of a certain idealism. It is something he has spent much of his adult life—first as a management-strategy consultant, then as CEO of the private-equity firm Bain Capital—working to perfect, to strip of its inefficiencies until it might function as a perfectly frictionless economic unit.

The political genuflection to businessmen is so gauzy and generic that praise for a candidate’s private-sector acumen can often sound phony. But Mitt Romney is the real thing. He was, by any measure, an astonishingly successful businessman, one who spent his career explaining how business might operate better, and who leveraged his own mind into a personal fortune worth as much as $250 million. But much more significantly, Romney was also a business revolutionary. Our economy went through a remarkable shift during the eighties as Wall Street reclaimed control of American business and sought to remake it in its own image. Romney developed one of the tools that made this possible, pioneering the use of takeovers to change the way a business functioned, remaking it in the name of efficiency. “Whatever you think of his politics, you have to give him credit,” says Steven Kaplan, a professor of finance and entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago. “He came up with a model that was very successful and very innovative and that now everybody uses.”

The protests going on at Zuccotti Park now have raised the question of whether that transition was worth it. What emerged from that long decade of change was a system that is more productive, nimble, and efficient than the one it replaced; it is also less equal, less stable, and more brutal. These evolutions were not inevitable. They were the result, in part, of particular innovations developed by a few businessmen beginning a quarter century ago. Now one of them has a good chance of becoming president.

...By the time Mitt Romney left Bain Capital for good, in 1999, American CEOs looked very different from the predecessors he had met in the seventies—the genial paternalists, spending their careers at a single company. More and more, they were pure meritocrats—well-educated, well-compensated, moving frequently between jobs and industries, trained to look ruthlessly for efficiency everywhere. They look a great deal more, in other words, like Mitt Romney.

...[W]hat separates Romney’s plan from Obama’s—and gives some clues about his potential presidency—is its almost-accidental origin. Romney did not begin with a philosophical quest to improve American health care. He began with the idea of himself as a problem solver and asked those around him for a problem that he might usefully solve. I remembered, when I was told this story, an anecdote I’d heard from a former political staffer of Romney’s. On even basic philosophical questions like abortion, the staffer said, Romney did not try to resolve the question in the abstract, as a matter of principle, and would consider instead various hypothetical cases—for instance, a late-term abortion—and build from them a politics. The line that Romney is a flip-flopper may vastly understate the depth of the condition.

It is arresting to imagine a Romney White House, inevitably filled with as many former Bain colleagues as each of his other public ventures have been: The ­PowerPoints, the 80-20 jargon, the clinical separation of decision-making from ideology, the detachment of those decisions from moral consequence, a persistent blind spot for people as people. It would represent the final ascension of a perfectly American type, one that has already remade the culture of business. I once asked a Bain colleague of Romney’s how Romney thought of his own core competence. “I think Mitt thinks he’s good at being Mitt Romney,” the colleague said.

But Romney’s career-long commitment to his own particular brand of impersonal decision-making might suggest something personal after all. One great mystery about Romney has been where his Mormonism comes in and what it explains. Maybe the clearest answer comes from taking at their word the businessmen with whom he came up, who say they never saw its influence. Romney’s religion constitutes a minority set of beliefs. Poorly understood and widely mocked, it can provoke suspicions about his motives. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that he has adopted a public persona that contains no detectable motives at all, one that is buried in objectivity, in data, in process. The best evidence of how important Romney’s religion is to him could be how far he has kept it from view. But the character that remains visible is at once uniquely American and a little strange: a perfectly objective efficiency machine.

FED-up?

These Republican presidential debates are really idiotic and demeaning-- to the candidates (who deserve to be demeaned) and to the viewers (who don't, at least not the ones watching on TV; the ones in the live audience are part of what's demeaning about these circuses). But one debate that I really would love to see is a mano a mano duke out between The Hermanator and Ron Paul. Subject: The Fed. What, you ask, does a third rate pizza huckster know about The Fed. Well, probably not much, but he's a former regional Fed president (maybe) and a big time Fed defender. Dave Neiwert long ago exposed Ron Paul for the dangerous and extremist right-wing fanatic that he is, but that doesn't mean that Paul can't dance circles around the pizza guy when it comes to the Fed. He can. And that debate would be a lot more worthwhile than the one we see between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry trying to prove who has the bigger weiner while the rest of the 7 dwarves chirp in the background. And they should have that debate soon because-- as Paul could easily explain-- the Fed is out of control (again). An even better source, though, is Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT):

A new audit of the Federal Reserve released today detailed widespread conflicts of interest involving directors of its regional banks.

"The most powerful entity in the United States is riddled with conflicts of interest," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said after reviewing the Government Accountability Office report. The study required by a Sanders Amendment to last year's Wall Street reform law examined Fed practices never before subjected to such independent, expert scrutiny.

The GAO detailed instance after instance of top executives of corporations and financial institutions using their influence as Federal Reserve directors to financially benefit their firms, and, in at least one instance, themselves.  "Clearly it is unacceptable for so few people to wield so much unchecked power," Sanders said. "Not only do they run the banks, they run the institutions that regulate the banks."

Sanders said he will work with leading economists to develop legislation to restructure the Fed and bar the banking industry from picking Fed directors. "This is exactly the kind of outrageous behavior by the big banks and Wall Street that is infuriating so many Americans," Sanders said.

The corporate affiliations of Fed directors from such banking and industry giants as General Electric, JP Morgan Chase, and Lehman Brothers pose "reputational risks" to the Federal Reserve System, the report said. Giving the banking industry the power to both elect and serve as Fed directors creates "an appearance of a conflict of interest," the report added.

The 108-page report found that at least 18 specific current and former Fed board members were affiliated with banks and companies that received emergency loans from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.

In the dry and understated language of auditors, the report noted that there are no restrictions in Fed rules on directors communicating concerns about their respective banks to the staff of the Federal Reserve. It also said many directors own stock or work directly for banks that are supervised and regulated by the Federal Reserve.  The rules, which the Fed has kept secret, let directors tied to banks participate in decisions involving how much interest to charge financial institutions and how much credit to provide healthy banks and institutions in "hazardous" condition. Even when situations arise that run afoul of Fed's conflict rules and waivers are granted, the GAO said the waivers are kept hidden from the public.

The report by the non-partisan research arm of Congress did not name but unambiguously described several individual cases involving Fed directors that created the appearance of a conflict of interest, including:

• Stephen Friedman In 2008, the New York Fed approved an application from Goldman Sachs to become a bank holding company giving it access to cheap Fed loans. During the same period, Friedman, chairman of the New York Fed, sat on the Goldman Sachs board of directors and owned Goldman stock, something the Fed's rules prohibited. He received a waiver in late 2008 that was not made public. After Friedman received the waiver, he continued to purchase stock in Goldman from November 2008 through January of 2009 unbeknownst to the Fed, according to the GAO.

• Jeffrey Immelt The Federal Reserve Bank of New York consulted with General Electric on the creation of the Commercial Paper Funding Facility. The Fed later provided $16 billion in financing for GE under the emergency lending program while Immelt, GE's CEO, served as a director on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

• Jamie Dimon The CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the same time that his bank received emergency loans from the Fed and was used by the Fed as a clearing bank for the Fed's emergency lending programs. In 2008, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $29 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns.At the time, Dimon persuaded the Fed to provide JP Morgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. He also convinced the Fed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired this troubled investment bank.

Jamie Dimon, Jamie Dimon, Jamie Dimon... I know I just saw something about that guy come across the transom. Oh, yeah... the OccupyTheBoardroom folks sent me some info on him. Yes! That's what it was-- as CEO of JPMorganChase he scarfed up $17.5 million in compensation for 2009, after that bank of his took $100.7 billion in a taxpayer bailout. That doesn't seem fair. But that's what our political elites forced down our throats. And can you believe, it wasn't just Boehner and Cantor and Ryan who forced that through... most of those creepy Republican debating for president were pushing it too-- certainly Perry and the pizza guy. Wow and a Chase bank teller gets $10.77/hour-- like $22,391/year-- and on top of that nice salary Dimon also gets around $6 million in Chase dividends per annum. Can't say they don't share it around with the politicians who permit all their bad behavior though. In the 2008 and 2010 cycles they JPMorganChase doled out $9.7 million in legalistic bribes to federal officeholders and spent another $15.7 million on lobbying between 2009 and 1010. and Bernie and Ron Paul may not agree on a lot of stuff but I bet they agree that JPMorganChase has got to be broken up into pieces... just like OccupyWallStreet says.

Strands Of Historical Know Nothingism In Today's Republican Party

Xenophobia and racism are never far from the surface in America, and Tuesday's GOP Las Vegas debate showed them breaking out of their cages-- again. At one point it looked like the candidates all might try to outdo each other on how high and technologically deadly the fence would be if they were elected and how many barriers it would consist of. Earlier in the day, Martin Bashir interviewed Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), and it's worth watching in the video above. Bashir asked him about Cain's proposed border fence, which would electrocute people trying to get into the country without documentation.

The record that [President Obama] illustrated today in terms of enforcement policies, in terms of deportations, in terms of detentions-- the highest since the Eisenhower years-- obviously the approach of the president and the Department of Homeland Security has been a very hard enforcement policy. I hope as a consequence to this announcement today that we understand this issue won’t be solved by who’s the toughest. It’s going to be solved by good security, but it’s also going to be solved by a comprehensive, pragmatic reform to our laws that deals with the human aspect, not just the political rhetoric we’re hearing from Republicans and not just the tough guy approach we’re seeing from the administration.

During the debate last night, an anti-immigration outfit ran ads denouncing not illegal immigration, but all immigration. Their marketing department picked the right audience. Small-minded, bigoted and perfectly described by Corey Robin's book The Reactionary Mind, these are people afraid of everything. And the seven dwarves didn't disappoint. While Obama panders to this mob by bragging of having deported 400,000 undocumented aliens this year alone-- more than any administration in history-- the deranged Republicans do nothing but politicize the issue with paranoid right-wing fantasies.

Everyone's favorite part of the debate was when Romney and Perry-- each of whom has been burned by issues involving immigrants-- got into a catfight on stage. I ran the video in a late night update yesterday.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry called former Gov. Mitt Romney, his rival for the Republican presidential nomination, a hypocrite on immigration on Tuesday because he had employed undocumented workers.

At the GOP debate in Las Vegas, Perry took the issue of immigration-- which has plagued his campaign recently, as rivals portrayed him as weak on the issue-- and turned it against Romney.

"The idea that you stand here before us and talk about that you're strong on immigration, is on its face the height of hypocrisy," Perry said to Romney.

"You stood here in front of the American people and did not tell the truth that you had illegals working on your property,” Perry said. “The idea that you can sit here and talk about any of us having an immigration issue is beyond me.”

Romney, who had faced the issue-- raised in a Boston Globe article years ago-- when he previously ran for president , said he fired the undocumented worker from doing his lawn as soon as he learned that he was in the country unlawfully.

Perry shot back that he continued to employ undocumented workers for a year after the first incident came to light. Romney, growing increasingly angry, said that he did not know the lawn care company had continued to use undocumented workers, in contrast, he said, to its promise to him that it would only have people legally eligible to work. Romney said that he stopped using the company after learning it continued to send undocumented immigrants to work on his lawn.

Romney fired back at Perry by saying that when he was governor of Massachusetts, he did not provide a magnet for undocumented immigrants, unlike Perry, he said.

He told Perry that he provided a magnet for undocumented immigrants to settle in Texas by supporting a law that allows people who are in the country unlawfully to attend public colleges at in-state tuition rates.

"You said I don't want to build a fence," Romney said. "You talk about magnets-- you put in place a magnet."

Perry has said that the in-state tuition law was right for Texas, but that he does not necessarily think that it should be a national law. In the past, he has said it would be wrong to punish the children of undocumented immigrants by making it difficult for them to pursue a higher education, and having them in classrooms would be preferable than having them in the streets.

But at the Nevada debate, he did not defend the in-state tuition law with sympathetic comments about the undocumented. Instead, he said he was indeed tough on immigration because he opposes any policy which would be a form of amnesty and supports building a “strategic fence,” not one along the entire U.S.-Mexican border because, he said, it would be too expensive and take too long to construct.

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said that she would build a double fence and, in a reference to Perry and in-state tuition, would not allow any breaks for the undocumented.

Bachmann also said she would deal with “anchor babies,” a controversial term used to refer to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. Bachmann suggested she would not allow automatic birthright citizenship.

She vowed, too, to make English the “official language” of the United States.

But the most problematic candidate as far as immigration, Bachmann said, was President Obama, whose “uncle and his aunt who have been allowed to stay in this country despite the fact that they’re illegal.”

Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain said he favored a comprehensive border protection plan, including troops.

He did not directly answer the moderator’s question about electrifying the border, a concept he pushed recently, eliciting controversy.

At a Tea Party-sponsored rally in Tennessee, Cain proposed building an electric border fence that could kill people trying to cross it. At the rally he also said he would consider using military troops “with real guns and real bullets” to stop unlawful border-crossers.

At the debate, held at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas, a man in the audience told the candidates that most Latinos were not undocumented immigrants, and what message did they have for the roughly 50 million Latinos in the nation.

None of the candidates directly answered the question; most of the ones who answered it-- after several attempts by moderator CNN reporter Anderson Cooper-- did so vaguely, usually saying that their messages were for all Americans. Some candidates said efforts to single out an ethnic or racial group were not productive.

I hope the debate was translated into Spanish and broadcast far and wide.

Whether it's taxes or gov't regulation, we can always count on right-wingers for a good laugh -- if only it were funny

Governor Kasich struck his blow against gov't regulation.

by Ken

My goodness, the things right-wingers say. It would be beyond belief except for the evident fact that there are Americans who nod and drool and maybe even do a little dance. Nah, it's still beyond belief.

I have, for example, steadfastly resisted finding out what kind of claptrap that co-front-running GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan actually is, knowing that whatever it is, it's nonsense -- not that that by itself prevents it from being given serious consideration by Republican economic "thinkers." But the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus, writing from her attic of isolation, has been pondering the "plan" as if it were something being uttered, by, you know, a major-party presidential contender. And in "Cain’s 9-9-9 plan doesn’t add up" and "More fuzzy math from Cain," she makes it pretty clear that our Herman almost certainly doesn't understand his own plan. Which, happily, doesn't stop him from lying about it. When you're a right-winger, it's your God-given right, even obligation, to lie about anything, even (especially?) your own damned plan.

And he especially isn't telling the truth about who would be impacted by this plan.

The Tax Policy Center analysis shows that Cain has it exactly backward. Compared with current tax rates, 84 percent of taxpayers would pay more under 9-9-9 if it were fully implemented in 2013. Just 14 percent — the wealthiest — would see their tax bills drop.

Oops!

And of course not many things will get a right-wing crowd more worked up than whining about government regulation, despite the evident fact that we are wildly under- not over-regulated. In which connection let me pass on this Daily Kos diary from our colleague Zappatero:

WED OCT 19, 2011 AT 03:48 PM PDT

Ohio Gov Kasich let wild animal
regulations lapse

by Zappatero

(This was already diaried, but I'm going to give it some oomph.)

Ohio Governor John Kasich is a slash-and-burn Republican of the highest order. He came into office and immediately threw in with the Koch Brother Agenda of attacking unions, selling off state assets, and cutting regulations.

One regulation he cut may have come back to bite him in the butt today:

Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Jack Hanna says the scene of wild and dangerous animals running from an eastern Ohio farm after their owner freed them and killed himself was “like Noah’s Ark wrecking.”

“Not full of birds and things, just lions and tigers and bears,” the director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium said today near Zanesville. “I can’t imagine any more animals that would be worse to have out here.”

[...]

Even as law officers tracked the feral escapees, Ohio officials are considering regulations on exotic and wild pets. Former Governor Ted Strickland (a Democrat) issued an executive order banning their keeping before leaving office in January, though it expired under Governor John Kasich.

Here's the regulation that John Kasich, good Republican who is against regulations, let expire:

The Department of Natural resources announced on April 4, 2011 that key stakeholders from across the state would be involved in the development of policies and procedures regarding ownership, sale and transfer of dangerous wild animals in the state of Ohio.

Outreach to stakeholders is taking place at the request of Governor John R. Kasich who supports the regulation of dangerous wild animals to ensure the public’s safety and animals’ humane treatment. He also believes any new regulations should be developed in a transparent way with input from the public and those who have interests at stake.

The Kasich administration initiated this process because of the April 6 expiration of the previous administration’s Executive Order 2010-17S and Emergency Administrative rule 1501:31-19-5, banning the "possession, sale, and transfer."

So let's sum this up: a Democrat puts in a sensible regulation to protect citizens and animals in the state of Ohio. Slash-and-burn Republican gains office and starts selling and deregulating and attacking those very same animals and citizens. And the regulation, which could have been extended by the stroke of a pen, remains expired as a menagerie of animals is killed and the Citizens of Ohio remain in danger due to unregulated wild animals on the loose.

This is the direct cost of Republicans' constant fight against regulations and the common good of the citizenry.

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Nein, Nein, Nein

I can't believe we're still talking about The Hermanator. I guess it's a testament to how unenthusiastic Republican base voters are with the wishy-washy Mormon bishop the party establishment is forcing down their throats. One poll analyst said that when respondents pick "Cain" it's like picking "none of the above." It's kind of a dream scenario for Barack Obama. He's been a pretty mediocre president-- name one in your lifetime who wasn't-- and his one path to reelection, rather than being a great president (too high a bar) was to count on the Republicans to come up with someone really implausible... someone like Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann or... The Hermanator.

This week an actual economist debated Cain's "economic advisor," Rich Lowrie on Larry Kudlow's submit-to-plutocracy-now show as though Cain were a real candidate for president and as though his 9-9-9 were a serious economic and fiscal proposal instead of a slick marketing plan cribbed from an Atari video game (see Rachel in the video above). Bernstein would have devastated Cain's "plan" if it were really a "plan."

A key point here is that the plan, which Bruce Barlett calls a “distributional nightmare,” radically shifts the tax burden from high-income households to everyone else.  I focused on the median household, and Lowrie either doesn’t understand the implications of the plan or he’s deliberately misrepresenting it.

For a $50K household, married couple, two kids, all income from earnings and standard deductions, the current tax burden is $8.3K.  Under 9-9-9, that would grow to $13.5K, an increase of over $5,000 (hat tip: CCH, BS).  The WaPo fact checker came to a similar conclusion.  E Klein too.

(I expect that any minute now the Tax Policy Center will release a slew of data supporting these points with their much more detailed tax model.

But Lowrie wouldn’t accept that conclusion.  In fact, he asserted that their federal tax would be lower because they’d move from a 15% payroll tax to a 9% income tax. This, as I said on air, is “patently wrong.”

First of all, assuming they plan to exist, they’ll need to consume stuff, and thus they’ll also face the 9% sales tax.  That already makes their tax rate 18%, higher than the 15%. 

But as Michael Linden points out, and this is widely agreed upon by tax economists, the incidence of the 9% tax on business income (which denies businesses a deduction for wages paid) also hits them, which is why former Joint Tax Committee chief of staff Ed Kleinbard described the tax as a 27% payroll tax for families whose incomes derive from earnings (note that Lowrie is perfectly comfortable with the standard assumption assigning the incidence of the employers side of the payroll tax to the family-- this one re the business tax is equally standard).

For a family with $500K, same assumptions as above, their tax bill would fall by $44K.

But where this plan really gets regressive is when you get up into the families who derive their income from non-labor sources.  While the details of the plan are fuzzy when it comes to capital gains and dividends, it seems clear that those earning thousands or even millions of dollars in these types of non-labor income would enjoy a massive tax cut.  And that would further widen the disparity between the highly preferential treatment of capital gains and dividends on the one hand, and the taxation of “ordinary” wage and salary income on the other.
We’ve got enough income and wealth inequality coming from the pretax distribution--we don’t need to exacerbate it through the tax code.

Middle class families that depend on earnings will pay more taxes under the Cain tax plan.  High income families will pay a lot less.  His advisors who say otherwise are misleading the electorate and that must not stand.

Of course the author of the Republican plan to do away with Medicare (and Social Security), Wall Street's ultimate buttboy, Paul Ryan, loves 9-9-9. It's right up his alley. “We need more bold ideas like this because it is specific and credible. I’m more of a flat-tax kind of a guy. It’s great to see such bold ideas.” Cain and Ryan have never met but Cain would like to offer him a chance to run for vice-president. No, really.