Conpassionate Conservatism: Rick Santorum Edition

This stupidity of Rick Santorum knows no bounds.

“If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?” Santorum asked.

People that cannot afford food because of poverty and unemployment aren't hitting all-you-can-eat buffets. Obesity is a separate issue. One thing I can guarantee is Santorum won't pay for a national exercise program if he is president. Santorum is following the Republican narrative of attacking the poor. Republicans will tell voters that the poor are Lucky Duckies and poverty has blessed them with great wealth. The Wall Street Journal took this argument to its extreme.

Who are these lucky duckies? They are the beneficiaries of tax policies that have expanded the personal exemption and standard deduction and targeted certain voter groups by introducing a welter of tax credits for things like child care and education. When these escape hatches are figured against income, the result is either a zero liability or a liability that represents a tiny percentage of income.

The Wall Street Journal took the Lucky duckies op-ed offline. Santorum attacking poor people trying to survive by eating won't fly far politically.

Quote of the Day

"Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?"

David Frum

You know the economy has gotten bad when a former Bush speechwriter is singing praises for Paul Krugman.

Seriously, Erin Burnett is a Wall Street Cheerleader

Erin Burnett is a former Goldman Sachs employee. Burnett did a mocking piece of commentary of Occupy Wall Street. If there was any doubt that Burnett is a Wall Street supporters, Alison Kosik of CNN did a story on Burnett's show about Burnett's "groupies" on Wall Street. This is news. Seriously?

Here is Burnett's infamous "seriously" piece dissing Occupy Wall Street.

Glenn Beck Hates Facts

It's bad when Fox News sister company the Wall Street Journal is calling Glenn Beck an intellectual weakling. Thomas Frank brutally tears Beck apart.

What Mr. Beck's silent phone really symbolizes is a new kind of ignorance, a coming high-tech dark age in which people can choose to blow off professional standards of inquiry; in which they can wall themselves off with cable TV and friendly Web sites, dismiss what displeases as liberal bias, and demand that any contrary view be transmitted to them via telephone call from the president himself.

Frank did some research on Beck's hotline phone. Turns out people that were attacked by Beck were not gien the number.

Professor Robert McChesney: "He never asked me or Free Press to call the red phone."

Mark Lloyd: "No, no one gave me a phone number to call Beck."

Beck doesn't want to debate people he disagrees with. His embarrassing performance on The View is a perfect example.

Barbara Walters: "You are an investigative reporter..."

Glenn Beck: "No, I am not."

Barbara Walters: "You're a reporter."

Glenn Beck: "No, I am not."

Barbara Walters: "So you check no facts at all."

Glenn Beck: "No. I am a commentator."

Beck admits he is ignorant and proud of it. His fans have his same disdain for knowledge.

The Bailout

The Wall Street Journal op-ed must be read to be believed.

Last week, we did our best to destroy the financial system but somehow came through it. This week, Congress will have only 72 hours to ruin the Treasury’s $700 billion mortgage plan before it recesses.

If our luck holds, Hank Paulson will get the extraordinary authority he seeks. If we are really lucky, Paulson may actually fix the mess we have made. So why not give him whatever he needs?

1. Because the bill would make Paulson a federal CEO of lending instituions. Questions remain on what the Sec. of Treasury would do with those piowers.

2. The bailout will create a bigger federal deficit. The Federal Reserve will have have to borrow money to buy the mortgages. The Fed and taypayers eat the loss if the mortgage values depreciate.

3. Greater regulation is needed to make sure future bailouts aren't needed. Taxpayers can't afford to continulously bailout lending institutions. The market rewards selling mortgages to people that can't financially afford a home. Banks sell that debt off as assets. A flow of credit that eventually has to be paid.

4. The Paulson plans is a band-aid. Nothing will be changed by a bailout. Except temporary security; until the sky falls again.

Paulson's plan appear to be dead. Senator Chris Dodd has offered an alternative plan. Economist Paul Krugman likes the plan. The issue is regulation over the mortgage industry.

Lawmakers from both parties, while acknowledging the urgency of the moment, nevertheless object to giving what they characterize as a "blank check" to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to buy troubled assets from financial institutions. They want provisions that would explicitly protect taxpayers.

"We don't have a lot of time. We want to act but we want to act responsibly," said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., at a press briefing Monday afternoon.

Republican operative Patrick Ruffinni urged GOP candidates to use the bailout as a political issue and vote against it. Ruffinni has taken the post down from his blog. Kos, Digby, and Ed Kilgore pointed out how Ruffinni gleefully wanted to turn a disaster into an opportunistic wedge issue.

Republican incumbents in close races have the easiest vote of their lives coming up this week: No on the Bush-Pelosi Wall Street bailout.

God Himself couldn't have given rank-and-file Republicans a better opportunity to create political space between themselves and the Administration. That's why I want to see 40 Republican No votes in the Senate, and 150+ in the House. If a bailout is to pass, let it be with Democratic votes. Let this be the political establishment (Bush Republicans in the White House + Democrats in Congress) saddling the taxpayers with hundreds of billions in debt (more than the Iraq War, conjured up in a single weekend, and enabled by Pelosi, btw), while principled Republicans say "No" and go to the country with a stinging indictment of the majority in Congress.

This creates pressure on the "change" message. If this issue is made controversial, and Obama is not the first to make it an issue, how exactly is a Washington deal backed by Bush's Treasury Secretary "change?"

But for this to be actionable, it has to be controversial. So this can't be a few lonely voices like Coburn and DeMint. It needs to be the bulk of the Republican conference. In an ideal world, McCain opposes this because of all the Democratic add-ons and shows up to vote Nay while Obama punts.

Ruffini is one of the smartest young GOP operatives. There is good reason to believe Republicans will vote against any bailout package. It's easier to watch Rome burn and blame the Democrats for not putting out the fire.

Conserative Newspapers Lay Off Staff

Newscorp has started the layoffs at The Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal is to cut 50 journalist posts in a restructure to centralise the editing of the paper in print and online, its managing editor, Robert Thomson, has revealed in a memo to staff.

Thomson does a lot of spinning in the article. He claims the 50 layoffs aren't really layoffs. "Staffers with the highest skill levels and the enthusiasm to acquire new skills will have a distinct advantage in the selection process, Thomson said.

Thomson also claimed that 95 new jobs will be created from the WSJ's online and international operations. He does not say when these staffers will be hired.

In Florida, The Tampa Tribune laid off 11 reporters.

Janet Coats pulled up a chair in the middle of her Tampa Tribune newsroom to deliver the news to her staff in early July, explaining why 11 reporters (including the newspaper's Florida State Seminoles sports beat writer) were hitting the bricks.

For Coats, the paper's executive editor, cutbacks and financial losses mean wholesale changes in the way a now-smaller newsroom will gather and present news for consumers. She started outlining a new journalism plan without traditional beat structures or titles, a model that relies first and foremost on "audience interaction."

What saved the Wall Street Journal was standout reporting. Journalists at the WSJ were hostile to Rupert Murdoch take over of the paper. Their fears were that Murdoch is going to journalisticly and financially run the respect daily into the ground. Murdoch's The New York Post has lost money for years and is known for sensationalism.

The Tampa Tribune can't boost the WSJ's record of journalistic excellence. Sports writer Tom McEwen was forced out because of his business ties with local teams and George Steinbrenner. The Trib has cited the disgraced Steven Emerson as a terrorism expert. Emerson's plagiarism and fabrication of facts are well-documented.

As Emerson's fame mounted, so did criticism. Emerson's book, The Fall of Pan Am 103, was chastised by the Columbia Journalism Review, which noted in July 1990 that passages "bear a striking resemblance, in both substance and style" to reports in the Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y. Reporters from the Syracuse newspaper told this writer that they cornered Emerson at an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference and forced an apology.

A New York Times review (5/19/91) of his 1991 book Terrorist chided that it was "marred by factual errors…and by a pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias." His 1994 PBS video, Jihad in America (11/94), was faulted for bigotry and misrepresentations--veteran reporter Robert Friedman (The Nation, 5/15/95) accused Emerson of "creating mass hysteria against American Arabs."

Emerson was wrong when he initially pointed to Yugoslavians as suspects in the World Trade Center bombing (CNN, 3/2/93). He was wrong when he said on CNBC (8/23/96) that "it was a bomb that brought down TWA Flight 800."

The Trib's prep sports reporter Rozel A. Lee was fired for manipulating the voting for an award. Brad Smith was fired for fabricating parts of a news story he was personally involved in.

We read about conservative papers always having these journalistic and financial problems. The New York Times and Washington Post have to compete just as hard for readers in the internet age. No one seriously thinks those two publications are going out of business tomorrow. Those are the papers of record. Unsurprisingly, two recent NY Times and Post scandals came from neoconservative Judith Miller and plagiarist Republican blogger Ben Domenech.

The conservative Trib can not compete with the more successful St. Petersburg Times because it doesn't have the same standards of excellence. Conservative news junkies don't want investigative reporting or unbiased media coverage. They distrust the media and turn to Fox News, talk radio and conservative blogs. The echo chamber tells conservatives what they want to hear. Not what they want to read.

Whoopi Goldberg on the Estate Tax

"I'd like somebody to get rid of the death tax. That's what I want. I don't want to get taxed just because I died."

Whoopi Goldberg

My first is the last time I've seen Whoopi was on the Hollywood Squares.

My second thought is the woman so greedy she wants to keep her money after she dies. Damn, Whoopi, just do another Sister Act sequel if money is that important.

The Wall Street Journal jumps on Goldberg's statement. It's really bad when TWJ editorial staff needs The View to make their case.

Ms. Goldberg has her political facts down. It's not just "people with a lot of money" who oppose confiscatory estate taxes. Billionaires like Warren Buffett have made a crusade of urging Congress to keep the death tax, even as he shelters much of his own wealth from that tax by giving to charity. However, according to polls, some 70% of voters favor a full repeal. And many, like Ms. Goldberg apparently, do so on moral grounds. Death as a taxable event and double taxation offend the average American's sense of fairness.

The Wall Street Journal lambasted Buffett for giving money to charity. They aren't bothered by Goldberg wanting to take her cash to the grave.

The estate tax doesn't kick in until $2 million. It goes back up to $3.5 million in 2009. The Death tax crusaders are attempting to change that.

Fact: The estate tax would make the federal deficit worse. Over $1 trillion in revenue would be lost during a ten year period. Conservatives give the absurdist answer that more tax cuts will replace the lost revenue. Bush sold the tax cuts as helping to increase the federal surplus. The White House said that the surplus would be over $3 trillion during the next ten years. We saw how that went.

The estate tax affect less than one percent of the U.S. population. Less than 20 percent the the value of the estate is taxed. Whoopi would be hit, but most people won't.

I look forward to the Wall Street Journal writing an op-ed on Elisabeth Hasselbeck's pro-war position on Iraq.