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Ted Cruz Is Counting On Republican Voters To Be Less Bloodthirsty Than Most People Think

by LadonnaClune Posted on December 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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One of the interesting things about the GOP primary race is that uber-conservative Ted Cruz is a bit of a dove when it comes to foreign policy. It’s not always easy to see this behind the bellicose rhetoric favored by Republicans, but even at the very beginning of Cruz’s campaign he said things like, “It’s worth noting, in eight years, the largest country Ronald Reagan ever invaded was Grenada.” In the four debates so far, Cruz has adopted less hawkish positions than most of the other candidates, and today he spelled out his national security stance in an AP interview:

While promising to destroy the Islamic State, beat back aggression from Russia, China and Iran, and ensure extremists don’t infiltrate the U.S. homeland, Cruz also places notable limits on his approach to national security. While Syrian president Bashar Assad is undoubtedly a “bad man,” removing him from power would be “materially worse for U.S. national security interests.” He is unwilling to send more U.S. ground forces into the Middle East and rejects the idea that torture can serve as an appropriate interrogation tool.

“We can defend our nation and be strong and uphold our values,” he says. “There is a reason the bad guys engage in torture. ISIS engages in torture. Iran engages in torture. America does not need to torture to protect ourselves.“

But if Cruz is generally trying to position himself as the most conservative candidate running, why the restraint on foreign policy? Brian Beutler argues that it’s because Cruz understands the conservative base better than Marco Rubio and some of the other candidates:

Cruz is highly attuned to the views and grievances that animate Republican voters, even when they are out of step with the right-intellectual consensus. One of these arenas, where the right-wing position on a left-right axis fails to neatly line up with Republican voter sentiment, is foreign policy.

Though they share a desire to be tough on terrorism, grassroots conservatives, unlike many Washington hardliners, don’t want the U.S. mired in unbounded entanglements. Here, the rightmost position—Rubio-esque neoconservatism—is identified with the dreaded Washington establishment, while organic conservative preferences are reflected in broad support for less militarily adventurous candidates. Republican voters trust Donald Trump to fight terrorism more than any other candidate by a wide margin….These voters consider anti-terrorism a priority but are uninterested in a return to the George W. Bush doctrine. It’s why Trump’s line about “bombing the shit/hell” out of ISIS is such a hit with his supporters—but those supporters would also rather Russia get bogged down in an ugly war than us.

It’s also why Cruz isn’t crouching against Rubio’s foreign-policy attacks, but counter-striking with a ferocity, and an approach, that will surprise the shapers of conventional wisdom.

This difference is likely to become sharper over the next month or two. Both Rubio and Cruz probably think it’s helpful to carve out some concrete differences with the other, and both probably think their version of foreign policy is better attuned to the current Republican id.

So who’s right? I wouldn’t presume to guess at the details of the Republican id at the moment. But I will say that both Iowa and New Hampshire probably still bear traces of traditional conservative isolationism, and Cruz’s approach might go down pretty well there. Once the primary moves to other states, who knows? But wins in the first two states sure wouldn’t hurt Cruz’s chances.

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Ted Cruz Is Counting On Republican Voters To Be Less Bloodthirsty Than Most People Think

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Congress Has Agreed On a Highway Bill!

by ArthurAEOG Posted on December 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Maybe Paul Ryan really is getting a handle on this whole governing thing:

Congressional negotiators have agreed to a $305 billion measure to fund highways and mass-transit projects for five years, the longest in almost two decades—and an unexpected show of agreement after years of clamoring by state transportation officials for money for infrastructure projects.

….The agreement was made possible when lawmakers identified a collection of strategies to offset the costs. Among other things, the measure would raise revenue by selling oil from the nation’s emergency stockpile and taking money from a Federal Reserve surplus account that works as a sort of cushion to help the bank pay for potential losses.

The “strategies” here are necessary because the gas tax has declined over the past two decades, and unlike in past eras, inflationary erosion is no longer being offset by a rapid increase in miles driven. As a result, the highway trust fund doesn’t have enough money to pay for all the stuff Congress wants to do. This is being fixed by funding highways partly by gas taxes and partly by other revenue sources, which destroys the principle that “people who use federal transportation systems should pay for the projects.”

Of course, this is a dumb principle anyway. Lots of people benefit from transportation infrastructure who don’t pay gas taxes. We should just ditch this principle for good and instead fund the government like this:

  1. Collect tax money from various sources.
  2. Put it all in the general fund.
  3. Spend the money as Congress directs.

See? Easy peasy. We still have the problem of matching revenue and spending, of course, but at least we get rid of all the nonsense about funding specific programs from specific sources and worrying about trust funds “going broke.” Nothing is going broke. We’re just raising money and spending money. If we’re worried about a balanced budget, then we have to raise taxes or reduce spending, and it doesn’t really matter which taxes or which spending we target. It’s all just money.

So I’m perfectly happy that Congress is ignoring the “principle” of funding transportation projects only via gas tax money. On the other hand, the revenue sources they’re tapping in order to pass this bill are probably pretty ill considered. Both are in the nature of emergency funds, and both are one-time deals that can’t be repeated. But in a world in which taxes not only can’t be raised, but can’t even be kept the same, I guess there’s little choice.

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Congress Has Agreed On a Highway Bill!

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It’s Not Just Middle-Aged Whites Who Are Killing Themselves These Days

by RozellaWinslow Posted on December 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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I’m not sure why Josh Marshall decided to write about the Case/Deaton mortality study today, but he did. Here’s what he says:

They made a startling discovery. As you would expect, every age and ethnic/racial grouping has continued to see a steady reduction of morbidity (disease) and increase in lifespans for decades. But there’s one major exception: middle aged (45-54) white people. Since roughly 1998, disease and death rates for middle aged white men and women has begun to rise.

….We might assume that a middle aged population group, under some mix of economic and societal stress, would be hit by the classic diseases of life stress: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. But that’s not it. These people are quite simply killing themselves — either directly or indirectly. According to Case and Deaton’s study, the reversal in the overall mortality trend is driven by three causes: drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide and chronic liver disease. In other words, either literal suicide or the slow motion suicide of chronic substance abuse.

I don’t really blame Marshall for saying this, since Case and Deaton go to considerable lengths to focus on this age group. But it’s just not true. Their own data shows that every white age group has seen a big increase in mortality from suicide/alcohol/drugs. I’ve tried to make this clear before, but I’ll try again today with a brand new chart. This is based on Figure 4 from the Case/Deaton paper and it shows the increase in mortality for all age groups.

The biggest increase isn’t from 45-54. It’s from 30-34 and 50-54. In fact, 45-49 saw one of the lower increases.

So why did Case and Deaton focus on the 45-54 age group? They explain it themselves:

The focus of this paper is on changes in mortality and morbidity
for those aged 45–54. However, as Fig. 4 makes clear, all 5-y age
groups between 30–34 and 60–64 have witnessed marked and similar increases in mortality from the sum of drug and alcohol poisoning, suicide, and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis over the period 1999–2013; the midlife group is different only in that the sum of these deaths is large enough that the common growth rate changes the direction of all-cause mortality.

That’s it. The 45-54 group doesn’t have the largest increase in death from suicide/alcohol/drugs. The only thing that makes them different is that the increase in these deaths “changes the direction of all-case mortality.” In other words, their line on the chart went from sloping up to sloping down. That’s the only reason to focus on them: because they crossed the zero line.

But that’s purely esthetic. If, say, the mortality rate of one group goes from -3 percent to -1 percent, and the other goes from -1 percent to +1 percent, they’ve both changed by two percentage points. The latter one, however, goes from negative to positive, and that makes for a dramatic chart. But that’s all it does.

I wouldn’t care so much about this except that people are drawing a lot of conclusions about “what’s wrong with middle-aged whites?” without noticing that the answer might very well be “nothing.” A better question is, “what’s wrong with America?” As Case and Deaton show, the mortality of middle-aged US whites did indeed start increasing around 1999, while the mortality rate in other advanced countries continued to decline steadily. I’d like to see that chart for all age groups before I tried to draw any conclusions, but it sure seems like we should be focusing on this, not on middle age. It’s not clear that middle age really has much to do with any of this.

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It’s Not Just Middle-Aged Whites Who Are Killing Themselves These Days

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Quote of the Day: Ted Cruz Angling For Some of That Trump Magic

by RosalynAgee Posted on December 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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From Ted Cruz, apparently feeling gloomy today over Donald Trump’s ability to get attention with outrageous statements:

The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats. The media doesn’t report that.

Huh. Could be, I suppose. Most convicted felons are pretty poor, and poor people tend not to vote for Republicans. Why would they? Of course, they tend The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats. not to vote for Democrats, either. They just don’t vote.

Presumably, Cruz got his data from this study, which estimates that 73 percent of “hypothetical felon voters” would vote for Democrats. However, a more recent study that looks at how many actual felons register as Democrats puts the number at 62 percent for New York, 52 percent for New Mexico, and 55 percent for North Carolina. That’s still not bad, Democrats! You have the felon vote cornered. Except for one thing: only about a third of them registered at all, only about a fifth have active registration records, and only about 10 percent or so actually voted for president recently. Liberals may generally be in favor of allowing released felons to vote, but it sure isn’t because they think it will help them at the polls. Working for felon voting rights is about the most inefficient and futile way imaginable of getting out the vote.

In any case, anyone can play this game. Just find some demographic group that tends to vote for Party X, and then find some bad thing also associated with that group. In this case, poor people tend to vote for Democrats, and felons tend to be poor. Bingo. Most felons are Democrats.

Or this: rich people tend to vote for Republicans, and income-tax cheats tend to be rich. So most income-tax cheats are Republicans.

Or this: Middle-aged men tend to vote for Republicans, and embezzlers tend to be middle-aged men. So most embezzlers are Republicans.

We could do this all day long, but what’s the point? The whole exercise is kind of silly. If Ted Cruz wants some attention, he’s going to have to do better than this.

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Quote of the Day: Ted Cruz Angling For Some of That Trump Magic

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Like a Zombie, You Just Can’t Kill Countrywide Financial

by Dee24Gylizjqka Posted on November 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Back at the height of the housing bubble, Countrywide Financial was responsible for about 15 percent of all the mortgage loans in America. This turned out to be disastrous because the people who ran Countrywide showed no interest at all in the quality of the loans they originated. Thanks to this, their business eventually imploded and in 2008 they were acquired by Bank of America.

But fear not. The executives behind Countrywide are still around, and they’re still shoveling out the loans:

PennyMac, AmeriHome Mortgage and Stearns Lending have several things in common.

All are among the nation’s largest mortgage lenders — and none of them is a bank. They’re part of a growing class of alternative lenders that now extend more than 4 in 10 home loans.

All are headquartered in Southern California, the epicenter of the last decade’s subprime lending industry. And all are run by former executives of Countrywide Financial, the once-giant mortgage lender that made tens of billions of dollars in risky loans that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.

This time, the executives say, will be different.

You betcha! I’m sure these folks have all learned their lessons and will never push the mortgage envelope again. We can all breathe easy.

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Like a Zombie, You Just Can’t Kill Countrywide Financial

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Would You Like Fewer Fries With That?

by RigoberZWR Posted on November 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Aaron Carroll writes today that calorie labeling in restaurants doesn’t seem to have any effect. I skimmed through his review of the evidence in order to get to the part of the story where he tells us what does have an effect, but I was disappointed. Not surprised, though. Hardly anything works. Here’s his single paragraph about alternatives:

Previous work in Health Affairs showed that training servers to ask if customers might like to downsize three starchy sides induced up to a third of customers to order and eat 200 fewer calories per meal. More recent work in the journal showed that changing the “prevalence, prominence and default nature of healthy options” on children’s menus led to sustained changes in what people ordered.

I don’t know about children’s menus, but that first suggestion rings a bell. One of my favorite restaurants offers two sides with dinner entrees. I always order the same thing, and all I want is a single side order of fries. This is all but impossible to get. If I tell my server I want just one order of fries and nothing else, I’m told brightly that it’s no trouble to just double up the fries. If I say I don’t want two orders of fries, the cook gives them to me anyway. I think they want to fill up the plate and make sure I don’t feel ripped off.

Suggesting that we downsize calorie-laden sides might be a good idea. But in my experience, the first step is for restaurants to allow sides to be downsized if the customer asks. Baby steps.

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Would You Like Fewer Fries With That?

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Ben Carson and the Conservative Grift Machine

by GustavoScarberry Posted on November 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the LA Times today Joseph Tanfani and Maloy Moore have a great piece about the American Legacy PAC and its 2014 Save Our Healthcare campaign. It was fronted by Ben Carson, who starred in a video denouncing Obamacare and told viewers, “If you want to hold Washington accountable and truly save American health care, join me and sign our petition today.” Needless to say, when you called the toll-free number, it turned out that Carson wanted more than just your John Hancock. He also wanted your Benjamins:

When Juanita McMillon saw his name, she was eager to get out her checkbook. “I think he is sincere, and I think he is honest, and I think he is exactly what we need,” said McMillon, 80, from the small town of De Kalb in northeast Texas. She gave $350….American Legacy raised close to $6 million in 2014 — and spent nearly all of it paying the consultants and firms that raised the money. Just 2% was donated to Republican candidates and committees, financial reports show.

“I’m really careful who I give money to, but I guess I did not read it close enough,” McMillon said, adding that she had never heard of American Legacy. “I prefer to give money to individuals, and I assumed, I guess, that Dr. Carson was getting my money.”

Though American Legacy didn’t raise much money for Obamacare-hating Republicans, it was a success at something else — finding people willing to give to Carson….When Carson entered the race, the campaign tapped those donors again. Donnell gave another $250 to the campaign, and McMillon another $450. Of the more than 4,000 donors to American Legacy, more than 25% also ended up giving to the Carson campaign, a Los Angeles Times analysis showed.

This is good reporting, but so far there’s nothing all that new here. Conservatives have turned grifting into a high art, and Carson is just the flavor of the month. What makes this piece great is the response from Doug Watts, Carson’s campaign spokesman:

Watts defended the American Legacy effort and offered assurance to donors. “I would say to those people, you did give to Dr. Carson,” Watts said. “They participated in the building of a list” of donors for the campaign.

Booyah! By giving money to Carson’s anti-Obamacare campaign, you identified yourself as a soft touch who would give Carson even more money later on. And that’s a big help. Of course, these elderly donors thought they were helping Carson fight Obamacare, because, you know, that’s what Carson actually said. But what’s the difference? Tomayto, tomahto.

Anyway, read the whole thing if you’ve got the stomach for it.

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Ben Carson and the Conservative Grift Machine

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Republican Candidates Are Too Busy This Morning to Denounce Attack on Planned Parenthood Clinic

by UBOSibyljlemh Posted on November 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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When I went to bed last night, none of the Republican presidential candidates had said anything about the horrific shootings at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. But that was ten hours ago, and it’s now nearly noon on the East Coast. Anything new?

As near as I can tell, no. No tweets, no statements, nothing on Facebook. On Twitter, Donald Trump is still blathering about how much he loves the disabled. Jeb Bush is tweeting about football. Ted Cruz hasn’t put up anything new in over a week.1 Marco Rubio was “sickened” by the killing of Luís Diaz in Venezuela a couple of days ago, but is busy promoting his cold-weather bundle of Rubio gear today. Ben Carson is burnishing his foreign policy credentials by talking to refugees in Jordan. Carly Fiorina has been quiet since Thanksgiving.

But it’s a holiday weekend, so maybe they’ve turned off the news to spend more time with their families. All 14 of them. Still, I know they’re all resolutely opposed to terrorism and adamantly in favor of law and order, so I’m sure they’ll issue uncompromising condemnations sometime soon. After all, we can’t allow depraved attacks against health clinics on American soil to be met with silence that could easily be interpreted as backing down in the face of hate. Right?

1Oops. I was fooled by the fact that Cruz has his demand for President Obama to insult him to his face permanently at the top of his feed. But Cruz did indeed tweet something this morning. Here’s the full version of his statement on Facebook: “My and Heidi’s prayers are with the loved ones of those killed in Colorado Springs, with those injured, and with the first responders who bravely got the situation under control.” Not exactly a stirring condemnation of violence, but I guess it’s a start.

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Republican Candidates Are Too Busy This Morning to Denounce Attack on Planned Parenthood Clinic

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Donald Trump and the Politics of Resentment

by Daniel55Y703642 Posted on November 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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As you surely know by now, the latest round of Republican campaign cretinism came a few days ago when Donald Trump mocked a reporter with chronic arthrogryposis, which restricts the movement of his arms and hands. Today Josh Marshall posted a brief but spot-on explanation of why Trump is not only not apologizing for this, but going on the offensive over it:

If you’re surprised that Donald Trump isn’t apologizing for mocking a reporter’s physical handicap and doesn’t seem to be paying any price for it, let me help. Half of rightwing politics is about resentment over perceived demands for apologies. Apologies about race, about fear of Muslims, about not being politically correct, about not liking the losers and the moochers, about Christmas, about being being white. This will hurt Trump about as much as going after Megyn Kelly did. Remember: his biggest applause line at the first GOP debate came for calling Rosie O’Donnell a fat slob.

About half the juice of far-right politics in this country is rooted in refusing to apologize when ‘elites’ or right thinking people reprove you for not being ‘politically correct.’

The thing about Trump is that he talks as if he’s sitting at home with a couple of his buddies. In settings like that, lots of us make casually derisive remarks that we wouldn’t make in public.1 But Trump does say it in public, and to his supporters that’s great. He’s finally saying the stuff that they’re quite sure everybody says in private.

The giveaway was this bit from Trump about Kovaleski: “He should stop using his disability to grandstand and get back to reporting for a paper that is rapidly going down the tubes.” That’s what Trump’s fans think is going on all over the place. The blacks, the Hispanics, the disabled, the immigrants, the poor: sure, they’ve got problems, but who doesn’t? They’re just making a big deal out of it in order to gain sympathy and government bennies that the rest of us have to pay for. And the worst part is that you know what everyone else is already thinking about this claptrap, but you get in trouble if you say it. Republican candidates have tapped this vein of resentment for years, but usually in coded ways that won’t get them in too much hot water. Trump just dives in. Other politicians may have paved the way, but it’s Trump who’s finally figured out how to turn it into electoral gold.

1Yes, I do it too, and no, for obvious reasons I’m not going to tell you what my sore spots are.

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Donald Trump and the Politics of Resentment

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The Fabulous Memory of Donald Trump

by AngieHerxjuipf Posted on November 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump on the reporter he mocked a few days ago:

Serge Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago — if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did.

Serge Kovaleski on Donald Trump:

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Kovaleski said that he met with Mr. Trump repeatedly when he was a reporter for The Daily News covering the developer’s business career in the late 1980s, before joining The Post. “Donald and I were on a first-name basis for years,” Mr. Kovaleski said. “I’ve interviewed him in his office,” he added. “I’ve talked to him at press conferences. All in all, I would say around a dozen times, I’ve interacted with him as a reporter while I was at The Daily News.”

Donald Trump again:

I have the world’s greatest memory. It’s one thing everyone agrees on.

Donald Trump yet again, during the third Republican debate on October 28:

BECKY QUICK: You had talked a little bit about Marco Rubio. I think you called him “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator” because he was in favor of the H-1B visas.

DONALD TRUMP: I never said that. I never said that.

In fact, Trump had said exactly that in his own immigration plan six weeks earlier. There are legions of examples like this. Perhaps Trump’s memory isn’t quite as infallible as he thinks? Or maybe his memory is great but he’s a serial liar? Decisions, decisions.

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The Fabulous Memory of Donald Trump

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