A Feature, Not a Bug

A CBO analysis has shown that the Senate Republican tax bill is even worse for the poor than previously thought:

The Senate Republican tax plan gives substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation’s poorest would be worse off, according to a report released Sunday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans are aiming to have the full Senate vote on the tax plan as early as this week, but the new CBO analysis showing large, harmful effects on the poor may complicate those plans. The CBO also said the bill would add $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, a potential problem for Republican lawmakers worried about America’s growing debt.

Democrats have repeatedly slammed the bill as a giveaway to the rich at the expense of the poor. In addition to lowering taxes for businesses and many individuals, the Senate bill also makes a major change to health insurance that the CBO projects would have a harsh impact on lower-income families.

By 2019, Americans earning less than $30,000 a year would be worse off under the Senate bill, CBO found. By 2021, Americans earning $40,000 or less would be net losers, and by 2027, most people earning less than $75,000 a year would be worse off. On the flip side, millionaires and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 would be big beneficiaries, according to the CBO’s calculations. (In the CBO table below, negative signs mean people in those income brackets pay less in taxes).

Silly rabbit.  Republicans think that people are poor because they are evil, and that people are rich because they are virtuous.

Just ask the Kochs.

Trolling Becomes Reality

A week ago, I wrote admiringly of Jeremy Corbyn's proposal to house people displaced by the fire at the Grenfell in empty luxury flats in the area.

Though I did not describe it as such, I felt that this proposal was a world class, and well deserved, troll, but that this would never happen.

I was wrong. The troll has become reality:

Sixty-eight flats in a luxury apartment complex where prices start at £1.6m are being made available to families displaced by the Grenfell Tower fire.

Families who escaped the tower blaze will be able to take up permanent occupation in July and August in the apartments in the Kensington Row scheme about 1.5 miles south of Grenfell, where last Wednesday’s blaze left 79 people dead and missing and presumed dead.

The homes are within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea but in the more affluent south end of the borough. They have been purchased by the Corporation of London and will become part of its social housing stock.
Grenfell Tower fire: death toll raised to 79 as minute's silence held
Read more

The most luxurious four-bedroom apartments are currently on sale in the development for £8.5m but the homes being released to Grenfell residents are part of the affordable quota being built and feature a more “straightforward” internal specification, but have the same build quality.

The complex includes a 24-hour concierge, swimming pool, sauna and spa and private cinema.

It is not yet clear if the Grenfell residents will have access to the facilities, which are normally not included for those in affordable housing.

“We’ve got to start by finding each of them a home,” said Tony Pidgley, chairman of the Berkeley Group, which built the homes. “Somewhere safe and supportive, close to their friends and the places they know, so they can start to rebuild their lives. We will work night and day to get these homes ready.”

The move follows calls by Jeremy Corbyn for luxury homes in the borough to be requisitioned.

Last week he said: “Kensington is a tale of two cities. The south part of Kensington is incredibly wealthy, it’s the wealthiest part of the whole country. The ward where this fire took place is, I think, the poorest ward in the whole country and properties must be found – requisitioned if necessary – to make sure those residents do get rehoused locally.”

My theory is that Coebyn's proposal scared the hell out of the real estate community,  for whom empty buildings purchased by mobsters, despots, and other money launderers that is their bread and butter.

Had even one of these empty flats been requisitioned, the damage to the very high end London real estate market would have lasted for decades.

OK, This Is the Weirdest Political Development of the Week

Note that I'm not saying that this is the weirdest political development in the UK, nor am I saying that it is the weirdest political development if you excluding Donald Trump.

I am saying that this is the weirdest political development in the world this week.

In the past week or so, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has been seen as a dead man walking, has started to look like he's actually going to give the Tories a run for their money:

It would be a severe overstatement to suggest that things are currently going well for Labour. There’s been a recent upturn in the polls, true, but the party is still lagging a good nine points behind the Tories. It’s only because things were looking so bleak before that a comparatively smaller defeat can be interpreted as some kind of success. On a uniform swing, current polling suggests they’ll lose 12 seats while the Conservatives will gain 16. And even that’s optimistic, as evidence suggests that vote losses have been heavier in crucial marginal constituencies.

Still, when you think about where they were a month ago it’s hard not to be somewhat impressed. This election was supposed to be May’s for the taking. Having insisted there would be no early election, she then changed her mind to boost her majority at a time when Labour seemed at its weakest. Since then, her poll lead has halved. In vote share terms, Labour is currently polling only a percentage point lower than its result in the 2005 election – which was enough to secure a significant majority. The reason the Tories are still so far ahead is because, post-EU referendum, they’ve swallowed up most of the Ukip vote by adopting the nationalist agenda.

The release of the parties’ respective manifestos was a pivotal moment. Even some of Corbyn’s harshest critics felt obliged to admit that, actually, the Labour one contains a lot of good stuff. Promises including free childcare for all two- to four-year-olds, a properly funded NHS, free hospital car parking, one million new homes, a cap on rent hikes, an increase in the carers’ allowance, an end to the 1 per cent public sector pay rise cap, an increase in carers’ allowance, the reintroduction of the education maintenance allowance and free higher education made sure there was plenty to appeal to a broad cross-section of society.

Plans to introduce a “fat-cat” tax on banks and a new 50p income tax band for earnings over £123,000 (but no tax rises for anyone earning under £80,000) allayed fears about how such measures will be funded. The whole document was costed in detail – an essential move for a party particularly vulnerable to accusations of economic incompetence.

In contrast, the Conservative manifesto has gone down like a lead balloon. Entirely uncosted (something the Tories find easier to get away with) and almost all punishment with few positive promises to sweeten the deal. Though the largest swing seems to have been amongst 25-49s, who are now 15 per cent more likely to say they’re planning to vote Labour than they were previously, the policy that has attracted most negative attention primarily affects the elderly. The so-called “dementia tax” is basically a levy on inheritance that only affects people unlucky enough to need social care. Critics on the left have pointed out that the policy may deter people for seeking the help they need because they worried about being to leave something for their children. There’s also a strong risk it will encourage suicide.

The backlash was so strong that May was forced into an embarrassing U-turn, but her attempted “clarification” left voters with more questions than it answered. It seems she’s still planning to go ahead with the “dementia cap” but will introduce a cap on the total amount that can be taken. Of course, this only helps the richest who’ve got more than can be taken. Comparatively less wealthy dementia sufferers will be hit just as hard.

Some translation here:  What the Britons call a "Manifesto", we in the States call a platform, and what they call, "Social care," is what we would call "Assisted living".


So, round the clock care for cancer monitoring is covered, but the same (probably less expensive) care for Alzheimers would not be covered.



This has been damaging to the Tories for a number of reasons:

• Many of the proposals in the Tory manifesto show a sort of radicalism that runs counter to British political culture.
• Theresa May is showing herself to be a bit of a social sadist.  (A true daughter of Thatcher)
• May's "U-turn" is transparent weaseling, which makes her appear weak. 

I still think that Labour's chances of winning an election are somewhere near that of the Minnesota Vikings winning a Super Bowl, but they may significantly outperform expectations.

Quote of the Day

“The New Rules Hurting Retirement Security” [Democracy Journal]. “Fewer than one third of Americans aged 65 to 74 have any savings in a retirement account and the accounts that exist are inadequate to provide a secure retirement—the median balance is just $49,000. The situation for younger workers is even more dire.” So, in the face of this crisis, liberals have a complicated “nudge theory” Rube Goldberg device, which sucks, and conservatives have a simple machine (in this case, the screw). The unasked question: Why should people have to “save for retirement” at all?

—Lamberth Strether at Naked Capitalism

Except for calling the screw a simple machine, I think of it as a helical wedge, and think that the ancient Greeks were in error giving it status as a separate element, I agree completely.

Private retirement accounts are primarily about lining Wall Street's pockets, which is why the Clinton/Obama wing of the Democratic Party has been Jonesing to privatize Social Security for decades.

Quote of the Day

We used to joke that conservatives say government sucks and then when they get in power they prove it. Now it seems that conservatives say that government sucks and liberals bend over backwards to make their case for them.

—Atrios

He's making the point that these days, among Senior Democratic Party Leadership at least, any sort of social welfare provisions cannot be universal, but instead must be aggressively (and expensively) means tested, to ensure that "The Poors" get a big serving of dirt that they have to swallow down.

By spending money to require misery, these programs are effectively paying for misery.

Today's Go F%$# Yourself Goes To………

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, better known as "Kos":

Daily Kos publisher and Vox Media co-founder Markos “Kos” Moulitsas, an influential voice in liberal politics, published a blog post (Daily Kos, 12/12/16) that captures just how terribly leading Democratic pundits are taking Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat. In the wake of this loss, some of the more hardcore Clinton partisans have chosen, in lieu of self-examination and internal criticism, to simply lash out at the voters they failed to win over.

With the punitive glee of a medieval executioner, Moulitsas proclaimed: “Be Happy for Coal Miners Losing Their Health Insurance. They’re Getting Exactly What They Voted For”:

Mr. Moulitsas really needs to get over himself.

Another Right Wing Myth Demolished

One of the arguments for providing services and goods to people instead of money is that the direct provision of money leads to spending on bad things, think tobacco and alcohol.

It turns out that the opposite is true:

It is increasingly common for governments to give poor people money. Rather than grant services or particular goods to those in poverty, such as food or housing, governments have found that it is more effective and efficient to simply hand out cash. In some cases, these cash transfers are conditional on doing something the government deems good, like sending your children to school or getting vaccinated. In other cases, they’re entirely unconditional.

For decades, policymakers have been concerned that poor people will waste free money by using it on cigarettes and alcohol. A report on the perception of stakeholders in Kenya about such programs found a “widespread belief that cash transfers would either be abused or misdirected in alcohol consumption and other non-essential forms of consumption.”

The opposite is true.

A recently published research paper (paywall) by David Evans of the World Bank and Anna Popova of Stanford University shows that giving money to the poor has a negative effect on the consumption of tobacco and alcohol. Evans and Popova’s research is based on an examination of nineteen studies that assess the impact of cash transfers on expenditures of tobacco and alcohol. Not one of the 19 studies found that cash grants increase tobacco and alcohol consumption and many of them found that it leads to a reduction.

………

Why on earth would this be? Evans and Popova highlight several possibilities.

One, the cash transfers may change a poor household’s economic calculus. Before receiving the cash, any spending on education or health might have seemed futile, but afterwards, parents might decide that a serious investment in their children’s school was sensible. To make this happen, it might mean cutting back on booze and smoking.

………

Regardless of why, the idea that poor people will use any cash they get for cigarettes and alcohol has been laid to waste.

On a related note it turns out that cash transfers can be an order of magnitude more efficient than the direct provision of services:

Every year, wealthy countries spend billions of dollars to help the world’s poor, paying for cows, goats, seeds, beans, textbooks, business training, microloans, and much more. Such aid is designed to give poor people things they can’t afford or the tools and skills to earn more. Much of this aid undoubtedly works. But even when assistance programs accomplish things, they often do so in a tremendously expensive and inefficient way. Part of this is due to overhead, but overhead costs get far more attention than they deserve. More worrisome is the actual price of procuring and giving away goats, textbooks, sacks of beans, and the like.

Most development agencies either fail to track their costs precisely or keep their accounting books confidential, but a number of candid organizations have opened themselves up to scrutiny. Their experiences suggest that delivering stuff to the poor is a lot more expensive than one might expect.

Take cows. Many Western organizations give poor families livestock, along with training in how to raise and profit from the animals. Cows themselves usually cost no more than a few hundred dollars each, but delivering them -- targeting recipients, administering the donations, transporting the animals -- gets expensive. In West Bengal, India, for example, the nonprofit Bandhan spends $331 to get $166 worth of local livestock and other assets to the poor, according to a report by the rating agency Micro-Credit Ratings International. Yet even this program sounds like a bargain compared to others. In Rwanda, a study led by the economist Rosemary Rawlins found that the cost of donating a pregnant cow, with attendant training classes and support services, through the charity Heifer International can reach $3,000.

………

“Just give the poor cash” is an old refrain. What is new, however, is a burgeoning body of experimental evidence, produced by groups ranging from the nonprofit Innovations for Poverty Action to the World Bank, on how the effect of cash grants compares to that of in-kind donations. Recent studies have come to surprising conclusions, finding that typically lauded approaches to reducing poverty, such as educational and loan programs, are not so effective after all.

One of the best examples is microloans, small, short-term loans to poor entrepreneurs. By opening up credit to people who were too poor to borrow from banks, the logic went, microfinance would give the poor the jump-start they needed to escape their plight. Beginning in the 1990s, the microcredit movement took the development world by storm, leading to a Nobel Peace Prize for the Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank in 2006.

As you might guess, microloans don't show the results that grants do.

Neither do training programs, etc.

This is yet another reason why the Clinton's gleeful destruction of the US Welfare program is so deeply contemptible:  Not only did it make the poor worse off, it cost the rest of us more money to make the poor worse off.

I know a lot of people who hate this idea, and the studies that support it:  A lot of them have a job delivering cows to poor people.

The Clintons are a Cancer on the American Body Politic

I am not talking about Hillary Clinton losing the election, though that is where the buck stops for that debacle, I am talking about the legacy of pain and misery for the poor and minorities that they have left in their wake.

First, of course was the 1994 crime bill, the one that Hillary Clinton supported in racially charged terms when she said that we, "Have to bring them to heel."

While we have the benefit of hindsight, the Clintons could not have known that Nixon's removal of lead from gasoline would have crime falling 25 years hence, (see here, here, and here) and there was a national hysteria over crime.

Second and perhaps more significant, and more contemptible was, the Clinton's systematic dismantling of Welfare, reducing it to little more than a block grant routinely used by states as a slush fund, while severe poverty in the United States has skyrocketed:

Twenty years ago today, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, better known as the Welfare Reform Act. Clinton promised it would “end welfare as we know it.”

And it did. Because of the reform act, welfare funding now is called TANF, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families – with a strong emphasis on “temporary.” Unlike before, welfare recipients now have a clock ticking when they first start receiving benefits. They are cut off from receiving federal benefits after five years (and in some states, it’s less).

The bill also changed how the federal government manages welfare dollars. Now, states get the money first and decide how to distribute it. Before, needy families received cash benefits directly through the federal welfare program.

This has meant welfare money has gone to some pretty surprising items, such as college scholarships for middle-class college students, and relationship counseling for married or seriously dating couples.

………

In the Reveal episode “A Welfare Check,” Marketplace reporter Krissy Clark digs into one of the biggest changes to come out of the reform: States get to manage their welfare dollars. This leaves them with a lot of freedom to choose how to spend the money, and they just have to state that the money is going to one of these four purposes:

………

And what they found was a stark change in how states use welfare dollars. Before reform, states were pretty much in the same place. The overwhelming majority of welfare dollars went to cash assistance. That share has gotten smaller and smaller since 1996, and in 2014, 26 percent of all TANF dollars in the country went to cash assistance. The rest has gone to other things entirely.

In Michigan, for example, the state spends nearly $100 million a year in TANF money on college scholarships. For more than a decade in Oklahoma, TANF dollars funded relationship classes for seriously dating and married couples of all income brackets.

In Indiana it goes to phony anti-abortion "Pregnancy Crisis Centers", which are contractually bound not to inform women of all their health options, because, one way to reduce out of wedlock births, one of the goals of the bill, is to force women to carry their fetus to term.

This was foreseeable, and it was part of a pattern of the Clinton Presidency, turning things into block grants, farming out government functions to more expensive private contractors because it produced political advantage, aggressive deregulation (including repealing Glass-Steagall), etc.

While I have some small fondness for the Clinton Presidency, it is largely an artifact of the Republican's attempted coup impeachment attempt, because the Clintons were bad for the country, and a disaster for the Democratic Party.

The radio show is embedded below:

The Answer Should be, "No".

While I am not a big fan of Nancy Pelosi, she learned the lesson of the Social Security fight with George W. Bush in 2005, when her response was simply "no."

No counter proposals, no deals, just, "No".

It worked, and it did a lot of damage to the both Bush and the Republican Party.

Paul Ryan, the "zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin" is proposing to privatize Medicare.

Nancy Pelosi gets it, and once again, her strategy will be "No", no counter proposals, no deals, just, "No":

Democrats are wandering around in the wilderness once again, shut out of power in Washington after losing a close, hard-fought presidential battle. The last time this happened, after the 2004 elections, the newly reelected president, George W. Bush, over-read his mandate and launched an ill-fated effort to partially privatize Social Security, providing a rallying point for Democrats to begin turning things around.

In an interview with me, House Dem leader Nancy Pelosi argued that history might repeat itself, if House Speaker Paul Ryan — with Donald Trump’s blessing — makes good on his hints to press forward with his plans to privatize Medicare. Pelosi vowed that Democrats would remain united in the battle to stop Ryan’s plan, a goal she described as crucial to defeating it, just as unity enabled Dems to block Bush’s Social Security plan.

“At that time, we committed to each other that we would be unified and disciplined,” Pelosi said. “Bush had just been elected. He gave us an opportunity by saying he would partially privatize Social Security. Everybody stuck together. The opportunity that we have now is the equivalent of the opportunity we had in ’05.”

In that 2005 fight, Pelosi recalled, Democrats actively avoided developing an alternative plan to Bush’s. Instead, Democrats said their plan was to defend Social Security, a very popular government program. At the time, some Democratic strategists warned against uncompromising opposition. But the gamble paid off. Observers noted that Bush’s plan sank in popularity as Dems remained unified behind a refusal to budge in defense of Social Security, a move that was widely credited with helping to put Dems on track to winning back Congress in the 2006 elections.

Now is not the time to listen to the the professional political consulting class of the Democratic Party, who will advise a counter-offer, and compromise, and bipartisanship.

Their advice is horrific policy, and even worse politics, and Pelosi is right to eschew the inevitable calls to capitulation.

These consultants are, with the possible exception of Dick Cheney, the most excessively overemployed people on the eastern seaboard, and they should be fired ……… Out of a cannon ……… and into the sun.

Quote of the Day

Make benefits as universal as possible, and make rich people pay more in taxes. That's how you means test things. The rest is needless complexity designed to suck the life out of people who have it hard already.

—Duncan "Atrios" Black

He's talking about how the Obama/Clinton wing of the party insists on people jumping through hoops to get social benefits.  **Cough** Obamacare **Cough**

Quote of the Day

Think rich people get too many nice things from the government? Raise their damn taxes. Don't use it as an excuse to make giving nice things to everyone else so complicated that it practically isn't worth bothering.

—Duncan "Atrios" Black

This is a most excellent take-down of the over use of means testing of social programs.

It is both morally and fiscally bankrupt.

Yes, I am referring to Hillary Clinton's objection to Bernie Sanders proposal for free college tuition was the remote possibility that Donald Trumps kids might get a free college education.

Thanks Duncan.

Ever since the Reagan administration, the "Very Serious People" VSPs in Washington, DC have tried to find a way to cut/privatize Social Security.

For the first time in recent political memory, expansion of Social Security has become a top of serious discussion, and the impetus for this came from one person, Duncan "Atrios" Black:

In May 2012, ABC broke into its daytime coverage to show President Obama endorsing same-sex marriage, the culmination of years of activist work to take the idea from the radical fringe into the mainstream. We saw an economic version of that this week, and while none of the networks fired up their “Breaking News” graphics for it, the impact on society could be just as large, and the people who helped make it happen should be just as lauded.

“It’s time we finally made Social Security more generous,” said the president in Elkhart, Indiana, to applause, “and increased its benefits so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they’ve earned.” This was totally unexpected: We knew the Elkhart speech was about the economy, but we didn’t know Obama would concur with a rallying cry on the left for several years now: Expand Social Security.

This movement crystallized from research into the looming retirement crisis. Too many Americans are headed into their golden years without nearly the kind of savings needed to maintain their standard of living. And their defined-benefit pensions have gradually transitioned into defined-contribution plans like 401(k)s, which have rewarded Wall Street with hidden and excessive fees while eating away at individual gains. The change also shifted market risks from employers onto employees, who must hope to avoid a drop in stocks as they hit retirement age.

………

Despite all this, the initial impulse from the Obama administration was to use Social Security cuts as a bargaining chip in a larger deal with Republicans. Grand bargain talks from 2011 to 2013 repeatedly invoked a different way to calculate the consumer price index (known as “chained CPI”), which would have resulted in $1,000 less a year for the average 85-year-old. Obama put chained CPI in his fiscal year 2014 budget.

Contrary to some after-the-fact snickering, this was a very credible threat, and it allowed Republicans to point to a Democratic president favoring entitlement cuts. Only the Tea Party’s unwillingness to consider anything resembling a compromise saved retirees from cuts.

At first, liberal groups played defense on chained CPI, accustomed to mobilizing in opposition rather than staking out a bolder claim. But the expansion movement can really be traced back to one blogger: Duncan Black, popularly known as “Atrios,” who waged an initially lonely crusade in a series of 2012 columns in USA Today, explaining why the retirement crisis was coming and how expanding Social Security represented the cleanest solution.

………

Lawmakers followed the rank and file consensus. Elizabeth Warren jumped aboard the Harkin bill in late 2013. A House bill quickly got dozens of co-sponsors. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who holds down the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, endorsed an expansion amendment. Bernie Sanders made it a campaign plank, one that Hillary Clinton eventually had to endorse, albeit in a more targeted fashion.

Now President Obama, who started this all by embracing the opposite position years ago, has explicitly endorsed the expansion of Social Security. This victory is a great credit to Duncan Black and everyone who moved a minority opinion in the corridors of power in the Democratic Party into the mainstream.

(emphasis mine)

Obama was dragged kicking and screaming into this.  So is Hillary Clinton.

He has seen cutting Social Security as a major legacy goal since he entered office in 2009: He thought could show himself reaching across the aisle if he could ground the proverbial "3^rd rail" of American politics.

Thankfully, he was foiled by the Teabaggers in Congress, just as Bill Clinton effort to privatize Social Security was foiled by Gingrich's impeachment efforts in the late 1990s.

Duncan Black has done this country a service by short-circuiting the efforts of the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party to divert money from retirees unto the the pockets of the banksters.

I'll Call These Folks Welfare Queens

I've had a fair amount of exposure to various Ultra Orthodox communities, and as a result, I view the fact that the Heredim communities in Brooklyn have the one of the highest percentages of Section 8 recipients in the nation is as a result of a sophisticated attempt by leaders in this community to game the welfare system.

I call them Schnorrers (שנאָרער).

What is going on here is that people are spending their days studying instead of working to support their families.

As noted in Perkei Avot (Literally Wisdom of the Fathers), "Do not make the Torah into a crown with which to aggrandize yourself or a spade with which to dig."

………

New York City’s 123,000 vouchers make this the largest Section 8 voucher program in the country. Reluctant landlords and rising rents are making vouchers nearly impossible to use in many areas of the city. Tenants, especially larger families, are often relegated to the edges of Brooklyn and the Bronx. That’s why this cluster of Hasidic households stands out.

The neighborhood is home to one of the highest concentrations of Section 8 housing vouchers in the city, according to federal data analyzed by WNYC and the Daily News. In several of its census tracts, Section 8 tenants compose more than 30% of residents, a level reached only in scattered pockets of the Bronx.

The difference: In Brooklyn, the Section 8 tenants live smack in the middle of one of the city’s hottest real estate market.

The juxtaposition happened over years, not overnight. Leaders leveraged longstanding political connections to win favorable zoning changes. Local developers bought and built to meet the need. Residents organized to get in line for rental subsidies. Block by block, the community created a de facto free market, affordable housing plan.

………

A sliver of the community makes money in diamonds, real estate and trading. But many men favor religious study over work, and most women stay at home, so money can be tight. Those who work are often relegated to low-wage jobs due to a lack of secular education.

Here is a news flash: Despite sporting similar facial hair, Orthodox Jews are not the Amish.

Jews are required to engage the rest of the world and to learn about it.

What we have here here is parents deliberately giving their children a 2^nd rate education and creating multi-generational poverty.

My nephews and niece are frum (Orthodox), and their mom and pop are principals at the local religious school, and they have, or are studying for, real careers like systems engineer, lawyer, and therapist.

One can be learned in Torah and make their way in the world, and parents, regardless of religious affiliation, have an obligation to prepare their children to function as self-supporting adults.

A Tory With a Conscience, and Other Myths

Iain Duncan Smith, the British Work and Pensions Secretary,  has resigned over cuts to disability payments to the UK's most vulnerable:

Iain Duncan Smith has resigned as work and pensions secretary, denouncing £4bn of planned cuts to disability benefits as "indefensible".

He complains of pressure to "salami slice" welfare, saying the latest cuts were a "compromise too far" in a Budget that benefits higher earning taxpayers.

David Cameron said he was "puzzled and disappointed" at the resignation.

Earlier, the government had indicated it would look again at some of the proposed disability benefits changes.

'Enormous regret'

BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said: "There had been bad blood off and on between Chancellor George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith over some of the more controversial welfare reforms, but nobody expected this move only 48 hours since the Budget."

She added that she understood Mr Cameron had personally tried to persuade Mr Duncan Smith to stay on and called the resignation "a bombshell at a very sensitive time"
………
Mr Duncan Smith, who was the Conservative Party leader and Leader of the Opposition from 2001 to 2003, wrote in his resignation letter that the changes to disability benefits were "defensible in narrow terms, given the continuing deficit".

But he said they should have formed part of "a wider process" of finding the best way to focus resources on those most in need.

"I am unable to watch passively whilst certain policies are enacted in order to meet the fiscal self-imposed restraints that I believe are more and more perceived as distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest," Mr Duncan Smith said.

"Too often my team and I have been pressured in the immediate run up to a Budget or fiscal event to deliver yet more reductions to the working-age benefit bill.

"There has been too much emphasis on money-saving exercises and not enough awareness from the Treasury, in particular, that the government's vision of a new welfare-to-work system could not be repeatedly salami-sliced.

"It is therefore with enormous regret that I have decided to resign."

………

Over the weekend Iain Duncan Smith discovered the Chancellor planned to offer cuts in Capital Gains Tax and was very unhappy that those tax cuts were to be offered to the better off, while he had been forced to make more welfare cuts prematurely, in his view. When Number 10 and the Treasury then backtracked on the reforms to PIP today, he concluded that he could no longer remain in government.

Sources close to him are absolutely adamant that his decision was in no way related to his views on Europe.

Smith supports a Brexit from the EU, so there is some speculation that his exit was influenced by this difference.

Personally, I am inclined to think that there are crass political motivations, but I'm a cynic that way.

Headline of the Day

Hillary Clinton's Latest Attack on Bernie Sanders Sounds a Lot Like Mitt Romney:

Fresh off a vindicating win in Saturday's Nevada caucuses, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton found herself embroiled in a controversy over remarks denigrating rival Bernie Sanders' policy proposals as "free everything" — an attack, critics charge, that echoes Republican talking points.

The former secretary of state actually delivered the jab on Thursday, as polls showed her locked in a tight contest with Sanders in the Silver State. But the remarks didn't receive widespread attention until late this weekend, after Clinton defeated Sanders by more than 5 percentage points.

Speaking at a campaign rally, Clinton said, "I'm not just making speeches and not just promising free this and free that and free everything." The line was widely interpreted as a dig at Sanders' proposals for tuition-free public college and a single-payer, Medicare-for-All health system.

A familiar refrain? For many listeners, Clinton's remarks evoked memories of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, both patrician Republicans who came under fire for comments suggesting that Democrats sought to curry favor with voters by offering free benefits.

I think that there is a lot more of the "Hillary Rodham Goldwater Girl" from 1964 in her than I had previously realized.

This has Gotta Hurt

The mother of British Prime Minister has signed a petition against her son's cuts of children's services:

Among the 10,000 names on a petition against planned cuts to children’s services by a local council is a name that will cause embarrassment to British Prime Minister David Cameron — his mum.

Mary Cameron, 81, told the Daily Mirror newspaper that she had signed a petition to save children’s centers earmarked for closure by Oxfordshire county council, which is run by her son’s Conservative Party.

“My name is on the petition but I don’t want to discuss this any further,” Mary Cameron, a former magistrate, said.

The petition says: “Our children’s centers are a lifeline to new parents who rely on locally accessible advice and support at a time when it is most needed. Cutting these essential services would leave families vulnerable and isolated and fail an entire generation of children.”

………

Mary Cameron has intervened in her son’s career before. In 2013, she was asked about her son’s support for gay marriage despite opposition from Tory grassroots supporters, and reportedly replied: “I know, but David just won’t be told.”

From his mother?  That's harsh.

Maybe I am a Cynic, but I Think that Hillary was Forced to Do This

You know that if Bernie Sanders were at 10%, Hillary Clinton would not have just pledged never to cut Social Security:

Hillary Clinton promised on Friday that she would not cut Social Security benefits, winning praise from progressive groups that had pressured her to take such a stance -- but drawing questions from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who challenged her commitment to the issue.

"I won't cut Social Security," Clinton wrote in an initialed tweet that included a link to her campaign website’s Social Security page. "As always, I'll defend it, & I'll expand it. Enough false innuendos."

The post was a response to something Sanders had tweeted earlier in the day, when he urged Clinton to "join me in saying loudly and clearly that we will never cut Social Security."

Let me make this clear, I am NOT suggesting that Clinton is lying.

I am suggesting that she was dragged into this kicking and screaming.

If So, I Approve this Camel's Nose………

Matt Bruenig has a very interesting perspective on Bernie Sanders' single payer program, specifically, he believes that it provide the fiscal basis for a massive expansion of social welfare programs:

Currently, total health expenditures in the US make up around 17% of GDP. The average for the OECD is 9.3%. Around half of our healthcare spending is public while the other half is private. Thus, very roughly speaking, to shift all of the current healthcare expenditures onto the public health insurance, you’d need initially to raise the tax level by 8.5 points of GDP (half of 17%).

If you believe, as I do, that switching to a single-payer healthcare system would allow us to better curb healthcare inflation and thus to control costs much more effectively than we currently do, then that means that the 17% of GDP we currently pay towards healthcare could be pushed down over time. Let’s assume that, by keeping healthcare inflation in check through single-payer, we could eventually bring health expenditures down to around 10% of GDP (slightly above the OECD average).

Under this scenario, we would initially raise the tax level by 8.5 points in order to cover the half of health expenditures that are currently paid out privately. Then, over time, we would cut healthcare expenditures by 7 points (from 17% to 10% of GDP). Assuming we didn’t lower the tax level over the expenditure-slimming period, we would be able to use those 7 points of savings towards other welfare programs (child care, child allowance, paid leave, etc.). And there is a lot of stuff you can get with 7 points of GDP.

He's an optimist.

My guess is that these savings, will go to bombs and bullets, because  ……… America!!!!

We have still not accepted the wisdom of Eisenhower's Chance for Peace speech, while we bankrupt ourselves through military procurement and military adventurism.

Lazy Wankers! They Can Work, I Don't Care If They Are Dead!

The Tories Must Be Channeling Monty Python and the Holy Grail

A study by the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK has revealed that over 2,000 people died almost immediately after being declared being fit for work.

The Tories have stopped even trying to pretend that they aren't evil motherf%$#ers who glory in causing pain to the less fortunate:

Nearly 90 people a month are dying after being declared fit for work, according to new data that has prompted campaigners and Labour leadership contenders to call for an overhaul of the government’s welfare regime.

Statistics released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) revealed that during the period December 2011 and February 2014 2,380 people died after their claim for employment and support allowance (ESA) ended because a work capability assessment (WCA) found they were found fit for work.

Ministers insisted that the data could not be used to link claimant deaths to its welfare reforms, but the figures focused attention on the government’s fit-for-work assessment process, which has been dogged by controversy in recent years.

Anita Bellows, researcher with campaign group Disabled People Against the Cuts, said it would take time to fully analyse the figures, but added the group was “very worried by the number of people who died within two weeks of being found fit for work” [see footnote].


Letters: If I can’t decide which biscuits to buy, would you want me making decisions about how much morphine to give your mother?

The mortality data was compiled in response to freedom of information requests, and was released by the department only following a ruling by the Information Commissioner’s Office in April.

 But it gets even better:

The WCA, currently administered by private outsourcing firm Maximus, having for most of the last government been run by Atos, has been widely criticised as error-prone and mechanistic, often causing harm to the sick and disabled claimants who are obliged to undergo it. It has been dogged by administrative delays, which have often left claimants stressed and penniless, and there have been hundreds of thousands of appeals against fit-for-work decisions in recent years, about four in 10 of which have succeeded.

So, not only are they killing people, they are allowing their buddies in business to make a profit out of public money doing it.

At the rate this is going, Dick Cheney is going to have to up his game, or people will begin to think that he is a bleeding heart liberal.

This is Just F%$#ing Evil

And, of course, the targets of such an action are the poor, the mentally ill, and minorities, so the fact that the Senate version of the transportation bill will includes a measure that will cut off social security benefits to everyone who has an outstanding warrant:

The large transportation funding bill moving through the Senate would end Social Security benefits for 200,000 people who have an outstanding felony arrest warrant—but have never been convicted by a court, or have a warrant for violating probation or parole, according to disability rights advocates tracking the legislation.

………

“There are two key issues here,” said T.J. Sutcliffe, income and housing policy director for The Arc, a national disability rights organization. “One is that the Social Security Trust Fund should not be used for unrelated purposes, no matter how important. And the other is Congress is considering cutting off benefits to 200,000 people who rely on Social Security and SSI [disability] benefits, who, in the case of arrest warrants have never been convicted.”

The proposal surfaced in the Senate on Tuesday in a package of amendments (page 949, Section 52303) being added to a transportation bill. The House’s version of the bill only would have extended funds for several months, while the Senate is looking at a six-year proposal—which becomes a vehicle for many other languishing bills.

Slightly different versions of a bill to punish people with outstanding felony warrants, or warrants for violating probation or parole, were introduced in both chambers. Disability and low-income advocates were quick to criticize the proposals, saying that they will punish people who rely on Social Security with little law enforcement benefit.

“It would not help law enforcement secure the arrest of people they are seeking for serious crimes,” explained Justice In Aging. “Law enforcement is already notified of the whereabouts of every person with a warrant for a felony or an alleged violation of probation or parole who turns up in the Social Security Administration (SSA) databases.”

The anti-poverty law group listed 10 reasons why the proposal was unduly punitive and would have very draconian consequences:

• “Those most likely to lose benefits are generally those most in need.
• A significant number of people will become homeless when they lose their benefits.
• Some people have had benefits cut off while residing in nursing homes.
• A very high percentage of those who will lose their benefits are people with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.
• An unusually high percentage of those who lose benefits are African-Americans.
• Many will lose Medicare outpatient (Part B) coverage because of inability to pay the quarterly premium.
• Eliminating what may be their only source of income does not help resolve these issues.
• Many people never know that a warrant has been issued for them as warrants are often not served on the individual.
• These warrants are often not easily resolved since many of those who lose benefits live far from the issuing jurisdiction.
• SSA will have increased administrative costs for processing appeals and requests for waiver of recovery of overpayments.

“A majority of those affected who are receiving benefits based on disability fall into these categories,” it said. “Large numbers of those who will lose benefits had warrants routinely issued when they were unable to pay a fine or court fee or probation supervision fee.”

OK, it's not, "Just F%$#ing Stupid", it's evil AND stupid.

What the hell is wrong with these people?