The recall election in Wisconsin is one of the most important American political events of our time. What happens in Wisconsin is not a “local” event, it will have repercussions that will continue to reverberate nationally—one way of the other—for a long time in this country. If progressives can’t win a victory in a state like Wisconsin, god help America, because the Reichwing fangs will be bared with a slobbering viciousness like they never have been before.

But if the little guys win, Republicans will think twice about pulling this kind of shit again. It’s that simple.

The positively heroic level of commitment from the state’s working people to the recall cause and rolling back the corrosive influence of the billionaire Koch Brothers on Wisconsin politics, has truly been a fantastic thing to watch. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen in America in my lifetime… but it’s not over yet.

Before next Tuesday’s Wisconsin recall election, this new ad—featuring a former Republican voter who’s had enough with the Republican Party—will run on television in the district of Republican State Sen. Alberta Darling, now fighting a recall challenge from Democrat Rep. Sandy Pasch.

The recall election in Wisconsin is only a few days away. If you can donate even $3, please go to ActBlue and help them buy airtime for this low-key, but quite effective ad.

You can help get the Democratic vote out from your own home by making canvassing calls for the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s phone bank. They could really use your help.

Help beat back the Reichwing in Wisconsin. If not, your state—and your job—might be next.
 

 
With with the unusual volume of noise in the media lately, one major story that’s getting crowded out is the hotly contested recall election in Wisconsin, which is just a little more than a week away.

A look at the polls show a mixed slate slightly, if not mostly, favoring Democrats. So what can the Republican party do if they can’t win the election fair and square?

Here’s a plan: How about sending absentee ballots to Democrats with instructions to return the paperwork AFTER the election date? That’s exactly what Americans for Prosperity, a conservative front group for the goals of the rightwing billionaire Koch brothers did.

Is there no low these creeps won’t stoop to? Apparently not!

Politico broke the story this morning:

Americans for Prosperity is sending absentee ballots to Democrats in at least two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions to return the paperwork after the election date.

The fliers, obtained by POLITICO, ask solidly Democratic voters to return ballots for the Aug. 9 election to the city clerk “before Aug. 11.”

A Democrat on the ground in Wisconsin said the fliers were discovered to be hitting doors in District 2 and District 10 over the weekend.

“These are people who are our 1’s in the voterfile who we already knew.  They ain’t AFP members, that’s for damn sure,” the source said.

The “1s” referred to above are extremely likely Democratic voters. Along with this lowdown trickery—did they REALLY think this would not get found out? Do they not even care??—Americans for Prosperity have spent another $150,000 of the Koch’s money to buy pro-Republican television airtime in Green Bay, Milwaukee and Madison.

And here’s another item of interest. Not saying this IS suspicious until the fire department have had a proper look, but the timing for this is fortuitous for the GOP isn’t it, when their opponents’s headquarters burn to the ground just a little over a week before an election? Well, that’s what happened to the pro-labor We Are Wisconsin PAC in LaCrosse. From Crooks and Liars:

Fire officials in La Crosse are continuing to investigate a Saturday blaze that destroyed the regional offices of We Are Wisconsin, a union political action committee (PAC) that has pumped millions of dollars into supporting Democratic candidates in the upcoming recall elections.

The La Crosse Tribune reports that the cause of the fire, which started at about 9:30 a.m., remains unknown. Firefighters thought they had the blaze under control in the afternoon, however, that wasn’t the case and it continued into the evening, the newspaper reported.

We Are Wisconsin used the building at 432 Jay St. to oversee its efforts in the 32nd Senate District recall election, which will be held Aug. 9. Incumbent Republican state Sen. Dan Kapanke is being challenged by Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Shilling in that district.

A spokesman for the group told the La Crosse Tribune that the group’s office was a total loss.

Just sayin…

A final word: Don’t look on this as merely a statewide election, What happens in Wisconsin is one of the most important turning points in American life for decades to come. If the left can’t win the state where the labor movement was arguably birthed, this country is fucked.

You can help get the Democratic vote out from your own home by making canvassing calls for the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s phone bank. They could use your help

Help beat back the Reichwing in Wisconsin. If not, your state—and your job—might be next.

Via Politico/Daily Kos

 
I was planning to write a blog post about how appropriately 40% of Americans who receive Medicare deny that they get a government check, but Bill Maher really nailed it in this bit from his Real Time HBO program so I don’t have to. 

What percentage of that ill-informed 40% do you think are Tea partiers? Just asking…

Send this one to all your idiot teabagger relatives just to annoy them.
 

 
From Sen. Bernie Sanders’ website:

“The Republicans have been absolutely determined to make certain that the rich and large corporations not contribute one penny for deficit reduction, and that all of the sacrifice comes from the middle class and working families in terms of cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, LIHEAP, community health centers, education, Head Start, nutrition, MILC, affordable housing and many other vitally important programs.

“I cannot support legislation like the Reid proposal which balances the budget on the backs of struggling Americans while not requiring one penny of sacrifice from the wealthiest people in our country.  That is not only grotesquely immoral, it is bad economic policy.”

Say it loud, Bernie! You’re the only one speaking any sense!
 

 
A) Hilarious? B) Tragic? C) Who gives a flying fuck anymore? D) All of the above.

The saddest thing about the whole debt ceiling spectacle is that the Democrats hold the Senate and the White House during the worst economic downtown since the Depression and we’re actually hearing talk about the death of Keynesian economics? Unfuckingbelievable, but there you go.

Bruce Bartlett writing at The Fiscal Times wonders if Barack Obama is “the Democrats’ Richard Nixon?” He makes some good points

By 1995, Clinton was working with Republicans to dismantle welfare. In 1997, he supported a cut in the capital gains tax. As the benefits of his 1993 deficit reduction package took effect, budget deficits disappeared and we had the first significant surpluses in memory. Yet Clinton steadfastly refused to spend any of the flood of revenues coming into the Treasury, hording them like a latter day Midas. In the end, his administration was even more conservative than Eisenhower’s on fiscal policy.

And just as pent-up liberal aspirations exploded in the 1960s with spending for every pet project green lighted, so too the fiscal conservatism of the Clinton years led to an explosion of tax cuts under George W. Bush, who supported every one that came down the pike. The result was the same as it was with Johnson: massive federal deficits and a tanking economy.

Thus Obama took office under roughly the same political and economic circumstances that Nixon did in 1968 except in a mirror opposite way. Instead of being forced to manage a slew of new liberal spending programs, as Nixon did, Obama had to cope with a revenue structure that had been decimated by Republicans.

Liberals hoped that Obama would overturn conservative policies and launch a new era of government activism. Although Republicans routinely accuse him of being a socialist, an honest examination of his presidency must conclude that he has in fact been moderately conservative to exactly the same degree that Nixon was moderately liberal.

Here are a few examples of Obama’s effective conservatism:

His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary;
He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary;
He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals;
He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever;
And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans.

Further evidence can be found in the writings of outspoken liberals such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has condemned Obama’s conservatism ever since he took office.

I’m with Krugman myself. I simply can’t believe Obama is negotiating with these assholes (see below) and losing! It’s incredible to watch.

What would Obama do in a fist fight, you know? He should have told the House GOP to do their worst but that he’d veto anything too aggressive and make sure the bills were paid under the 14th Amendment. He should have started there!

Then what would have happened?

It would have been a different story altogether. He should have listened to Bill Clinton.

Instead we’re getting a deal that the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, called “a sugar-coated Satan sandwich.”

With fuckin’ Democrats like Obama, who needs Republicans, anyway?

This country is doomed…
 

 
Via Think Progress

 
Click here to see the full chart on the New York Times website.

A timely and handy chart for the understanding what’s going on with the deficit negotiations in Washington.

Remember that during the Clinton administration there was actually a SURPLUS coming in that went towards paying down the national debt. George Bush thought this was a bad thing—that the government shouldn’t be bagging surpluses—then promptly gave the average person the cost of a can of soda a day while giving billionaires major tax cuts and starting two costly wars. I think this chart makes it pretty obvious who fucked up this country. Who could deny otherwise? There’s no competition!

No wonder there’s nothing left for schools, roads, seniors, universal healthcare, the out of work and the sick… Isn’t this just infuriating?

H/T Joe.My.God.

 
A guest essay from Charles Hugh Smith, cross-posted from his Of Two Minds blog. His latest book is titled An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times and is available in the Kindle format. You do not need a Kindle Reader to read it, just download the free Kindle app and read it on virtually any device. Get the links, read the Intro, Table of Contents and Chapter One, and buy the ebook of An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times on the info page. For Dangerous Minds readers the ebook is discounted 30% ($6.85) through this Friday, July 29, 2011.

The banks of Europe are the new Feudal Manors and Masters. All Europeans now serve them as debt-serfs in one way or another.

If we knock down all the flimsy screens of artifice and obscuring complexity, what we see in Europe is a continent of debt-serfs, indentured to the banks under the whip of the European Union and its secular religion, the euro.

I know this isn’t the pretty picture presented by the EU Overlords, of a prosperity built not just on debt, but on resolving the problem of debt with more debt, but it is the reality behind the eurozone’s phony facade of economic “freedom.”

What else can we call the stark domination of the big banks other than Neo-Feudalism? In one way or another, every one of the 27-member nations’ citizens are indentured to the big international banks at risk in Europe, most of which are based in Europe.

Amidst the confusing overlay of voices and agendas, there is really only one agenda item: save the big European banks. Everything else is just mechanics. The banks are the new feudal manor houses, the bankers are the new feudal lords, and the politicians of the EU and its influential member nations are the servile vassals who enforce the “rule of law” on the serfs.

Here is the fundamental fact: there are trillions of euros of debt which can never be paid back. In a non-feudal system, one in which the banks were not the Masters, then this fact would be recognized and acted upon: something like 50% of the debt would be written off in one fell swoop, all the banks whose assets had just been wiped out would be declared insolvent and liquidated, the remaining debt would be sized to the economic surplus of each debtor nation, and a new, decentralized banking sector of dozens of strictly limited, smaller banks would be established.

To the degree that is “impossible,” Europe is nothing but a Neo-Feudal Kleptocracy serving its Banker Lords.

The Greek worker whose pay has been slashed in the “austerity” demanded by the banks serves the Banker Lords, as does the German worker who will be paying higher taxes to bail out Germany and France’s Banker Lords. Though the German is constantly told he is bailing out Greece, the truth is Greece is just the conduit: he’s actually bailing out the EU’s Banker Lords.

We can clear up much of the purposeful obfuscation by asking: exactly what tragedy befalls Europe if all the sovereign debt in the EU was wiped off the books? The one and only “tragedy” would be the destruction of the “too big to fail” banks, not just in Europe but around the world. As the big European banks imploded, then their inability to service their counterparty obligations on various derivatives to other big banks would topple those lenders.

While the political vassals call that possibility a catastrophe, it would actually spell freedom for Europe’s 500 million debt serfs. From the lofty heights of the Manor House, then the loss of enormously concentrated power and wealth is indeed a catastrophe for the Lords and their political lackeys. But for the debt-serfs facing generations of servitude for nothing, then the destruction of the banks would be the glorious lifting of tyranny.

Just as a refresher, here is a definition of kleptocracy:

Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, from the Ancient Greek for “thief” and “rule,” is a term applied to a government subject to control fraud that takes advantage of governmental corruption to extend the personal wealth and political power of government officials and the ruling class (collectively, kleptocrats), via the embezzlement of state funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest service. The term means “rule by thieves”.

Extracting the wealth of 500 million people via the EU’s central governance machinery to serve a handful of big banks is definitely a form of systemic embezzlement. As for corruption: where are the politicians who speak to the enormous benefits of writing off these debts and destroying the power of the big banks, utterly and completely, as the only way to free the people from debt-serfdom?

While the European Central Bank (ECB) and the vassals’ favorite form of oppression, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), print or borrow more euros into existence to fund the illusion of solvency, the cold reality is that the only way to service these trillions in impaired debt is to skim the surplus from the labor of the debt-serfs.

Since the political vassals control the means of taxation, then it is their job to squeeze hundreds of billions of euros out of the labor of their nation’s debt-serfs.

There is a fatal weakness in the Grand Scheme of European Neo-Feudalism, and the lackeys in the EU are desperately trying to fix it under the banner of “integration.”

The fatal flaw is that the political union of the EU vassal states did not include fiscal union in which the EU could impose and control taxation within all member states.

This flaw means that the Banker Lords lack the necessary means to impose serfdom directly through the “laws” of the EU itself; instead, they must coerce the vassal political class within each member state to impose debt-serfdom on its citizenry.

This has proven cumbersome, as some nation’s debt-serfs are threatening to refuse to submit to serfdom. Such a rebellion would of course bring down the entire house of cards that is Neo-Feudal Europe, and so the lackeys in Brussels and elsewhere are frantically trying to sell “fiscal integration” as the “necessary step” to centralizing the power of the banker Lords over the citizenry of all 27 EU member states.

The euro was intended to be the enforcement mechanism, but alas, voluntary agreement is not a solid foundation for neo-feudalism. At its heart, the euro currency was ultimately a Grand Arbitrage for the big European banks: they could loan essentially unlimited sums to citizens and sovereign member-states in a stable currency, and be guaranteed that they would be repaid in that same currency regardless of the weaknesses of the debtors.

That was a very sweet deal, an essentially risk-free license to generate monumental profits, all backstopped/guaranteed by the EU and ECB.

In the old, horribly risky system of independent states and currencies, any bank foolish enough to loan vast sums to weak states and its citizenry would soon find the currency in which their loans were paid would weaken to the point that even if the loans were repaid in full, their losses would be crushing.

For example, say a bank loaned Greece 1 billion drachma when the drachma was equal in value to the U.S. dollar. The loan would thus be worth $1 billion. But let’s say that by the time the loan was repaid, the drachma had fallen to 50 cents. Measured in dollars, the bank suffered a loss of 50%, even when the loan was paid in full.

The euro removed all that nasty risk, and created a massive vassal class of EU bureaucrats to enforce the rules and make good any defaulted debt via the European Central Bank (ECB), the supra-national lender that served the big banks as guarantor. Ultimately, the ECB was funded by the member states’ taxpayers, which spread the costs of the arbitrage over such a large number of citizens that it seemed impossible that the guarantee could be broken.

But the Banker Lords got greedy, and they overshot the carrying capacity of the EU’s economy by a trillion euros; the debt loads are now so enormous that the surplus skimmed from the debt-serfs isn’t enough.

That is the core dilemma of the Banker Lords and their political vassals. Since the Banker Lords lack the legal mechanism to impose new taxes via the EU itself, they must rely on the cumbersome processes of illusion and propaganda, of “extend and pretend” extensions of debt and harsh “austerity” to skim as much cream as possible.

The cloak has been removed, and the bloodied whip is now visibly in hand. In a household analogy: your mortgage has been rolled over into a new form of servitude, and your wages have been cut even as your taxes have been raised to service your debt to the Banker Lords. The vassals are bowing and scraping before their Lords, promising deeper cuts and higher taxes; yes, Master, we will obey.

But this isn’t enough, of course; the Lords are demanding the rings off the fingers of the debt-serfs, and the rights to sovereign assets; they are casting a covetous eye on the comely daughter as well, and we can fully expect a discreet demand to exercise droit du seigneur, a right befitting the Lords of the new Feudalism.

Charles Hugh Smith’s latest book is titled An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times and is available in the Kindle format. You do not need a Kindle Reader to read it, just download the free Kindle app and read it on virtually any device. Get the links, read the Intro, Table of Contents and Chapter One, and buy the ebook of An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times on the info page. For Dangerous Minds readers the ebook is discounted 30% ($6.85) through this Friday, July 29, 2011.

 
Graphic via New York Times, text below from James Fallows at The Atlantic:

It’s based on data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its significance is not partisan (who’s “to blame” for the deficit) but intellectual. It demonstrates the utter incoherence of being very concerned about a structural federal deficit but ruling out of consideration the policy that was largest single contributor to that deficit, namely the Bush-era tax cuts.

An additional significance of the chart: it identifies policy changes, the things over which Congress and Administration have some control, as opposed to largely external shocks—like the repercussions of the 9/11 attacks or the deep worldwide recession following the 2008 financial crisis. Those external events make a big difference in the deficit, and they are the major reason why deficits have increased faster in absolute terms during Obama’s first two years than during the last two under Bush. (In a recession, tax revenues plunge, and government spending goes up - partly because of automatic programs like unemployment insurance, and partly in a deliberate attempt to keep the recession from getting worse.) If you want, you could even put the spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in this category: those were policy choices, but right or wrong they came in response to an external shock. 

The point is that governments can respond to but not control external shocks. That’s why we call them “shocks.” Governments can control their policies. And the policy that did the most to magnify future deficits is the Bush-era tax cuts. You could argue that the stimulative effect of those cuts is worth it (“deficits don’t matter” etc). But you cannot logically argue that we absolutely must reduce deficits, but that we absolutely must also preserve every penny of those tax cuts. Which I believe precisely describes the House Republican position.

After the jump, from a previous “The Chart That Should…” positing, an illustration of the respective roles of external shock and deliberate policy change in creating the deficit.

Obama is a fucking idiot the way he’s played his hand on the debt ceiling. He appears to be an ineffectual fool trying to broker peace with a bunch of schoolyard bullies. The whole thing is so Planet of the Apes. When Mitch McConnell (sensibly, for all parties) tried to offer him the political cover to raise it on his own, he should have jumped at the chance. Now look at the mess he’s in. When is the guy going to act like a Democrat (at the very least!)? It’s becoming harder and harder to support him or even give a shit what happens to his presidency anymore (I’m sure I’ll change my tune closer to November 2012, but voting for Obama with the same “passion” I felt for John Kerry is not something I imagined happening a couple of years ago…)

How the Deficit Got This Big (New York Times)

 
Is there even one single member of Congress less sincere-seeming than House Majority Leader, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia? If there is, I can’t think of who that might be.

Cantor’s the most transparently phony and least-charming politician on the national stage today. Everything that comes out of his mouth sounds like he doesn’t believe it himself. I have to turn the channel when I see his face. Yuck. How did a punk like him get to be so powerful? He’s been elected six times. Is the field so shitty in Virginia that Eric Cantor is the best the state can muster? That’s pathetic.
 

 
Via Daily Kos

 
As frequent readers of this blog know, I consider Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont to be a great American and a personal hero. He’s one of the only honest politicians in Washington and a blunt-talking national treasure:

On June 18, 2011 artists Ligorano/Reese presented a temporary monument in the garden of Jim Kempner Fine Art in NYC called “Morning In America.” The installation was witnessed by hundreds and lasted a total of 8 hours throughout the hot day.

...A THOUSAND CUTS is a timelapse video of the event. The soundtrack was inspired by an excerpt from Senator Bernie Sanders 8-hour filibuster on the U.S. Senate floor against the extension of the Bush tax cuts and the effects on the middle class. It is orchestrated to music by composer/violinist Michael Galasso.

The entire text of Senator Sanders speech is available as a book, The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class, published by Nation Books.

 
Below, Bernie Sanders speaks about his career and the remarkable 8-hour speech he gave filibustering President Obama’s extension of the Bush tax cuts and the disappearance of America’s middle class.