2013 - %3, April

Kansas Lawmaker: No Welfare If Your Kid Gets Mono or Depression

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| Fri Apr. 5, 2013 11:02 AM PDT
sick child

Missouri Rep. Steve Cookson, a Republican, caused a stir last year when he offered a bill to ban any discussion of sexual orientation in public schools outside of traditional sex ed and science instruction. That meant teachers couldn't talk about gay and lesbian issues during class, and gay-straight alliances couldn't meet during the school day. Critics called it the "don't say gay" bill. It died in committee.

Now, Cookson is back in the news for introducing another controversial bill. Children of welfare recipients can't miss more than 10 percent of their classes—roughly three weeks of school—or their family loses welfare benefits. The bill, which would amend the state's welfare statute, is a single sentence long:

School age children of welfare recipients must attend public school, unless physically disabled, at least ninety percent of the time in order to receive benefits.

You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks it's OK to skip three weeks' worth class during the school year. But what about an unexpected illness like mono or clinical depression? Cookson has yet to clarify what exactly qualifies for the "physically disabled" exemption in his bill. And so unless mono qualifies as a physical disability, the critics who deride Cookson's bill the "don't get sick" bill make a fair point. A entire family could lose its state assistance if their kid got mono from a classmate.

As the Kansas City Star notes, state Republicans, which control the Missouri General Assembly, recently named Cookson the chair of the House education committee. That means his "don't get sick" bill could get a full airing on the House floor.

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Is the U.S. Economy Powered by Dark Matter?

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| Fri Apr. 5, 2013 10:33 AM PDT

Karl Smith is bullish on America:

“The Great Takedown” [...] is the not yet realized bombshell that the US in general and the US Federal Government in particular made out like gangbusters in the Great Recession. I am still trying to tie this all together but a full accounting of US Treasury “profits” from the Global Financial Crisis look to number in the trillions.

This is based on a theory that if you value assets correctly, based on their financial return, the apparent multi-trillion dollar increase in the U.S. current account deficit over the past few decades hasn't actually happened. It's been offset by exports of "Dark Matter" that aren't included in official accounts:

The US is a net provider of knowledge, liquidity and insurance. As the world became more global financially, the increasing asset value of these services underlies the spectacular increase in dark matter over the last two decades.

As a result, foreign-owned U.S. assets are worth less than official accounts suggest and U.S.-owned foreign assets are worth more. Karl is excited because Paul Krugman kinda sorta endorsed this theory today, but it's worth noting that Krugman leaves open the question of whether there's really been a mis-valuation of assets, or whether this is basically a dangerous leverage play that relies on using cheap U.S. debt to buy risky foreign assets, assuming that those risky assets will pay high returns forever.

Beats me. This is way above my pay grade. But interesting!

A Thorough & Comprehensive Review of "Jurassic Park 3D"

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| Fri Apr. 5, 2013 9:36 AM PDT
Jurassic Park T-Rex Courtesy of Universal Pictures

 

It is Jurassic Park, but in 3D.

Samuel "Hold Onto Your Butts" Jackson's arm comes straight at your face. (As do the velociraptors.)

Here's a CliffsNotes version of the film performed in Legos:

 

Jurassic Park 3D gets a release on Friday, April 5. The film is rated PG-13 for belligerent dinosaurs. Click here for local showtimes and tickets.

Click here for more movie and TV coverage from Mother Jones.

To read more of Asawin's reviews, click here.

To listen to the movie and pop-culture podcast Asawin co-hosts with ThinkProgress critic Alyssa Rosenberg, click here.

Chained CPI and the 2014 Midterms

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| Fri Apr. 5, 2013 9:34 AM PDT

Now that President Obama is poised to officially endorse the adoption of chained CPI in his next budget—a change that would cut the future growth of Social Security benefits—Ed Kilgore ponders the political implications:

Could Republican congressional candidates in 2014 actually run against "Obama's Social Security Cuts," after decades of lusting for "entitlement reform" and several consecutive years of demanding that Obama give Social Security benefits a haircut or worse?

Ha ha ha! That's a knee slapper. To his credit, Ed comes up with the obvious answer: Of course they could.

I Doubt That Obama Really Expects a Grand Bargain With Republicans

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| Fri Apr. 5, 2013 9:14 AM PDT

Greg Sargent tries to explain White House thinking on their decision to embrace entitlement cuts in next week's budget proposal:

They believe a Grand Bargain is good for Democrats in general, because it essentially would lock in a medium-term agreement over core disputes — about the safety net and about the size of government, and who should pay for it — that have produced a debilitating stalemate in Washington.

Yes, Republicans would continue railing about government spending, the thinking goes, but no one would listen, since they would have already endorsed a deal stabilizing the deficit. This would deprive Republicans of the ability to focus attention on one of their core targets — Big Government — as a way to avoid grappling with other issues, such as jobs and long-term middle class economic security, immigration, guns, and perhaps even climate change. Reaching a deal on the deficit will force Republicans to confront those problems more directly and to choose between real cooperation on them or continue to calcify as a hidebound, reactionary party incapable of addressing major challenges facing the country.

Yeah, maybe. Of course, that's also a pretty good reason for Republicans to refuse to cut a deal. Why bother if all it does is pave the way for Obama to spend lots of time on wedge issues that are good for Democrats and bad for them?

The truth is that, for the most part, the deficit isn't a real issue for Republicans. They don't want to raise taxes; they don't want to cut defense spending; they don't want to cut entitlement spending on seniors (the core of their base); and cutting future entitlements doesn't affect the deficit any time soon. The only thing left is cutting spending on the poor, and although Republicans think that's a fine idea, even they can't cut social welfare spending enough to have a serious impact on the deficit.

So it's mostly a charade. And it's a good one! One of the very best, in fact. Cutting the deficit polls well, it lends itself nicely to demagoguery, and it's an all-purpose excuse to oppose any spending proposals they don't like. So why on earth would you cut a deal to take it off the table? That would be crazy. And if they're forced to swallow a tax increase as well, that makes it even crazier. There's literally no benefit at all in this for Republicans.

So they won't do it. Obama's real hope—since I assume he's not an idiot and knows all this perfectly well—is that Republicans will indeed refuse to make a deal, and, as Sargent suggests, this could turn the public against them in the 2014 midterms. I suppose that's possible, depending on how well he plays his hand. It's certainly more possible than assuming that Republicans will voluntarily commit electoral suicide by agreeing to a deal.

The Big GAO Report on Political Intel is Kind of Meh

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| Fri Apr. 5, 2013 9:02 AM PDT
Barack ObamaPresident Barack Obama signs the STOCK Act into law in April, 2012.

On Thursday, the Government Accountability Office released its much-anticipated report on political intelligence, a booming but mostly anonymous industry that harvests information on congressional and regulatory activities and passes it on to hedge funds. The industry has exploded over the last decade; in 2009, the most recent year for which an estimate is available, the industry was valued at $402 million. And the industry's growth shows no signs of letting up.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) pushed hard to inset an amendment into the STOCK Act (which prohibited insider trading by members of Congress) mandating that people who collect and sell political intelligence, many of whom are former Hill aides themselves, formally register as operatives. That was defeated after an intense lobbying effort from hedge funds, who wanted to preserve their anonymity. Slaughter and Grassley had to settle for a GAO study:

 

 

The report is mostly about what we don't know about political intelligence. "The prevalence of the sale of political intelligence is not known and therefore difficult to quantify." "The extent to which investment decisions are based on a single piece of political intelligence would be extremely difficult to measure." "It is also difficult to determine the extent to which nonpublic government information is being sold as political intelligence." "[I]t is not always clear whether such information could be definitively categorized as material...and whether such information stemmed from public or nonpublic sources at the time of the information exchange." "Congress would need to address the lack of consensus on the meaning of the terms 'direct communication' and 'investment decision.'"

There are none of the bombshell statistics or anecdotes that the GAO is known for, and the report's one Capitol Hill case study, in which Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) leaked the contents of a speech that would influence stocks of asbestos manufacturers, produced no evidence of actual wrongdoing. The STOCK Act sat dormant for five years until a 60 Minutes report compelled Congress to act. Reformers, aware of the adage that nothing ever gets fixed in Washington without a scandal, have been waiting for a similar catalyst for political intelligence.

If you're an open-government advocate, the most disconcerting thing about political intel may just be how normal it's become. Consider this: While deflecting arguments that its operatives should register, political intel professional also told the GAO auditors that any regulation of their colleagues should apply to that other brand of Capitol Hill gossip-hound—reporters. Per the report: "Other interviewees questioned the need for a media exemption. For example, three political intelligence firms, and one attorney from a law firm said that there should not be an exemption for media organizations because they engage in the same activists as political intelligence firms, and ask the same type of questions about the same issues that their subscribers and clients are interested in."

That sounds cynical—and it is—but it's also a reflection of the extent to which Washington media companies are increasing tailoring their services toward an elite clientele. A 2008 internal memo from Politico famously asked its reporters to ask themselves regularly, "Might an investor buy or sell a stock based on this story?"

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Judge Rules That Emergency Contraception Should Be Available to Everyone

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| Fri Apr. 5, 2013 8:58 AM PDT

A federal judge has ruled that the emergency contraception drug Plan B One-Step, a.k.a. the "morning after pill," must be made available over the counter to everyone. The decision, issued Friday, overturns a rule that required anyone 16 years old and younger to have a prescription in order to get the pill.

In 2011, despite the Food and Drug Administration's determination that Plan B is safe for all ages, the Department of Health and Human Services decided to block teenagers from buying the drug without a prescription. President Barack Obama endorsed HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' decision, arguing that the government "could not be confident that a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old going into a drugstore should be able—alongside bubble gum or batteries—be able to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect."

But Judge Edward R. Korman of Federal District Court ruled Friday that this was not an acceptable reason to deny access, and that Sebelius' decision "was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent." He wrote:

This case is not about the potential misuse of Plan B by 11-year-olds. These emergency contraceptives would be among the safest drugs sold over-the-counter, the number of 11-year-olds using these drugs is likely to be miniscule, the FDA permits drugs that it has found to be unsafe for the pediatric population to be sold over-the-counter subject only to labeling restrictions, and its point-of-sale restriction on this safe drug is likewise inconsistent with its policy and the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act as it has been construed. Instead, the invocation of the adverse effect of Plan B on 11-year-olds is an excuse to deprive the overwhelming majority of women of their right to obtain contraceptives without unjustified and burdensome restrictions.

Reproductive rights groups cheered the court ruling, which came after more than a decade of legal wrangling over the issue. "Science has finally prevailed over politics, to the benefit of millions of women across the United States," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the group that filed suit against the FDA over the decision.

Northup and other reproductive rights group argued that the age limits harmed teenagers who required timely access to the drug, which is supposed to be used within 72 hours of unprotected sex. But the age limit also harmed older women, too, because it meant that they had to have a government-issued ID confirming their age in order to access the pill, and its availability was restricted to the hours that pharmacies are open. The use of emergency contraception has become much more common in recent years, with 11 percent of fertile, sexually active women reporting that they have used EC. Now that Plan B will be easier to access, you can expect that number to increase.

Obama Plans to Offer Very Public Entitlement Cuts in Budget Next Week

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| Fri Apr. 5, 2013 8:15 AM PDT

President Obama's long-delayed budget will finally make it to Congress next week. Jackie Calmes reports:

In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John A. Boehner late last year, before Mr. Boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition to the president’s demand for higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some corporations.

Congressional Republicans have dug in against any new tax revenues after higher taxes for the affluent were approved at the start of the year. The administration’s hope is to create cracks in Republicans’ antitax resistance, especially in the Senate, as constituents complain about the across-the-board cuts in military and domestic programs that took effect March 1.

It's not clear precisely what this means, but it sounds as if it mostly embodies the president's sequester-replacement plan that's been on offer for the past two months, which includes about $1.1 trillion in spending cuts over ten years and $700 billion in new revenue. Among other things, this plan offers to cut Medicare by reducing reimbursement levels and cut Social Security by adopting chained CPI. Presumably, however, it will present those cuts in considerably more detail than Obama has done before.

This will be an interesting test of the theory that one of the things preventing a deal has been simple Republican ignorance of what Obama has offered. Once these things are in the official budget, there's simply no way to ignore them. They'll get a ton of coverage—including massive outrage from the liberal base—and there will be enough detail that even Bill O'Reilly should be satisfied that Obama is offering a "real plan." The fact that Obama is proposing serious cuts in entitlements will finally be impossible to ignore.

Will this pave the way for a deal? I have my doubts, because I never thought that ignorance was truly a roadblock. Any Republican paying even minimal attention knew what Obama was offering earlier this year, and the ones not paying minimal attention simply didn't want to know. Their ignorance was mostly a deliberate strategic choice: it allowed them to continue railing against Obama without having to engage with the facts of what he was offering, and that was pretty convenient for most of them. This option will be taken away next week, but since it was never the true roadblock, they'll simply switch to other objections.

At least, that's my guess. As a strategy to change the media narrative, this might work, but as a strategy to change Republican priorities, it won't. It will simply be the latest in a long line of preemptive concessions, none of which have worked before. Republicans will treat the spending cuts as a new baseline to negotiate down from, while treating the revenue increases as dead on arrival.

But I might be wrong! Certainly it will change the tone of the conversation, and the more outraged liberals get about this the better it will be for Obama. Next week we'll start to find out.

UPDATE: It turns out we don't have to wait until next week after all. All we have to do is read Politico right now:

House Speaker John Boehner immediately dismissed President Barack Obama’s package of significant new entitlement cuts tied to new tax revenues, calling them “no way to lead and move the country forward.....Boehner said he will not consider new revenues as part of the deal, arguing that “modest” entitlement savings should not “be held hostage for more tax hikes.”

Quite a shocker, no?

Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs in March

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| Fri Apr. 5, 2013 7:41 AM PDT

The American economy added 88,000 new jobs last month, but about 90,000 of those jobs were needed just to keep up with population growth, so net job growth was actually slightly negative at -2,000 jobs. That's terrible. It's yet another spring swoon, but even earlier than usual. Ever since the end of the Great Recession we've been stuck in an odd pattern where employment growth looks promising in winter and then falls off a cliff in spring, but usually the dropoff doesn't happen until April or May. We're early this year.

Workers continued to drop out of the workforce in large numbers, so the labor force participation rate declined by 0.2 percentage points to 63.3 percent. As a result, despite the terrible jobs numbers the headline unemployment number actually went down to 7.6 percent. The private/public breakdown of the employment numbers followed the same trend as it has for the past few years, with the private sector gaining 95,000 jobs and the public sector losing 7,000 jobs. The size of government continues to decline.

Some of this bad news may have been due to the fiscal cliff deal in January, and the end of the payroll tax holiday, but it's probably too early for any of it to be due to the sequester. However, we can expect that to start biting in April and May. Nice work, Congress.

All in all: yuck.

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for April 5, 2013

Fri Apr. 5, 2013 7:31 AM PDT

Marine Corps instructors with 2nd Combat Engineer Battalion, light fires in a compound during counter improvised explosive device training at Camp Leatherneck, Helmand province, Afghanistan, April 3, 2013. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Tammy K. Hineline.