About Those Federal Pay Freezes...

From Talking Points Memo:

Everyone Hates Obama's Pay Freeze Plan... Except Republicans

The early reviews of President Obama's plan to freeze federal worker pay are in -- and it gets a resounding "F" from just about everybody outside of GOP leadership.

Michael Linden, a budget expert at the liberal Center for American Progress, said the plan is small potatoes that risks driving away valuable civil servants with little budgetary upside.

"Bluntly doing it this way, we risk cutting off our nose to spite our face," Linden said in a phone interview. "We risk not hiring good people, we risk not giving a raise to people who deserve a raise, and we miss not cutting the pay of those who deserve a pay cut."

Linden recalled similarities between the plan Obama announced today and his previous call at an earlier political low point for a discretionary spending freeze.

"Both are sort of blunt instruments for reducing the deficit that don't reduce the deficit very much," Linden said. "The pay freeze is actually much smaller than the discretionary spending freeze," in budget terms.

If enacted, the proposal will disproportionately impact middle-income earners.
...

Honestly, it's hard for me to get very worked up over them.

In theory, of course, they are bad idea for a lot of reasons:

• The amount of dough you save is minuscule relative to the deficit you are trying to pay down.


• Using it as a bargaining chip makes sense only if you get something in return.


• Asking middle class workers -- which most federal employees emphatically are -- to take one for the team while at the same time Wall Street banksters are back to doing wheelbarrows of coke paid for with the Bailout Bonuses which those same middle class workers are underwriting with their tax dollars is, well, I don't have a font big enough to spell out "Amazingly Stupid" and "Gratuitously Insulting" large enough to do it justice.


• Every time you offhandedly screw over government workers to make some trivial political point, you reinforce the ugly wingnut meme that government workers are lazy, featherbedding, SEIU thugs so fuck 'em!


• Solidarity!
  

Yeah, I get it.

However that is theory.

In practice, most government workers I know do not work for the Fed.

They work for other units of government -- the state, the city, the county, school systems, one transit authority or another, etc. -- all of which (like the Fed) have large deficits relative to their annual budgets.

They work very hard.

And for about the last three years, the various units of government for which they work have been a whiplashing blizzard of layoffs:

Chicago Community College Budget Calls for Hundreds of Layoffs
Alex Keefe Jul. 29, 2010

Hundreds of non-teaching staff members could be laid off under the new budget proposal for Chicago's community college system.

Next year's budget for City Colleges of Chicago could fund 311 fewer positions, some through attrition.

But that could include 225 non-teacher layoffs.

Chancellor Cheryl Hyman they would affect administrators, as the district tries to consolidate some workers from its seven colleges.

And...

New Chicago Public Schools Budget: Layoffs, Furlough Days, And Larger Class Sizes To Make Ends Meet

Chicago Sun-Times | Fran Spielman | 04/16/09

About 1,200 city school workers will receive layoff notices this week, and principals will begin sharing the budget pain via pay freezes and six furlough days, as Chicago Public Schools officials move today to plug their remaining $370 million deficit.

pay freezes...

"As outlined in the preliminary budget, the City will continue to generate $70 million in savings next year through union agreements and the extension of unpaid holidays and furloughs for non-union employees. Additionally, non-union employees will not receive a cost-of-living increase in 2010 for a savings of $6 million."

hiring freezes...

"Among many steps to balance the budget Daley said the City will...continue the freeze on non-safety hiring, which has been in effect since 2008, saving an estimated $20 million in 2011."

benefit cuts and unpaid furlough days.

Daley plans new round of furlough days, wage freeze
October 19, 2009

In an effort to save money next year, Mayor Richard Daley today said he will order non-union employees to take off 24 days without pay next year and won't give them cost-of-living raises, saving $26 million.

Also, to make up for these massive loses in productive capacity, the workloads of those who survive the periodic decimations have effectively doubled. No one will say it out loud of course, and the City, at least, has very strict public policies about working on furlough days, but everyone knows (wink/wink) what is expected of them, and everyone knows what the consequences are if the ever-rising tide of work does not get done to the Hall's satisfaction.

In better times, budget gnomes can play lots of complex games with various funding sources and accounting tricks to meet legal requirements while insulating management from taking any real hits by make positions appear and disappear like virtual particles. But these are not better time, and at least at the City, everyone from Fifth Floor down to the shoeshine guys in the lobby knows the situation is Very Fucking Bad -- worse than it has ever been -- and is only going to go sharply downhill from here.

(Except of course if you are in The Club --

From the Sun-Times:

Connected city worker spared in merger, layoffs
Never knew she had clout, Special Events director says

October 22, 2010

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

Clout apparently still counts in City Hall jobs -- despite Mayor Daley's promise to implement a personnel system free of politics in the wake of a hiring scandal that cost taxpayers $12 million to compensate victims of the city's rigged hiring system.

The wife of a former Democratic ward boss -- who also happens to be the daughter-in-law of a former alderman -- has survived a departmental merger that will eliminate 13 jobs and force nine layoffs.

Maureen Volini was a $73,752 administrative services officer for the Mayor's Office of Special Events.

Now that Daley's final budget is merging Special Events with the Department of Cultural Affairs, Volini has avoided the ax with a transfer to the Department of Procurement Services.
...

-- in which case you are still fucking golden.)

All of which is to say that, while I get that freezing federal salaries sucks, if you're expecting a lot of tears of betrayal to be shed over it, I suggest you take it up with some sleep-deprived, stress-sickened city worker who is in their third year of having their financial security cut out from underneath them...while doing twice the work they were hired to do...for a boss who has made it clear that more layoffs are on the way...and consider themselves one of the lucky ones.

Breaking -- Dateline April, 1861:

President Obama today hailed the shelling of Fort Sumter by the Confederate Army as a "new era in North/South cooperation & bipartisanship."

From Rachel Maddow:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In other Confederacy-related news (from the NYT):

Celebrating Secession Without the Slaves
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

ATLANTA — The Civil War, the most wrenching and bloody episode in American history, may not seem like much of a cause for celebration, especially in the South.

And yet, as the 150th anniversary of the four-year conflict gets under way, some groups in the old Confederacy are planning at least a certain amount of hoopla, chiefly around the glory days of secession, when 11 states declared their sovereignty under a banner of states’ rights and broke from the union.

The events include a “secession ball” in the former slave port of Charleston (“a joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink,” says the invitation), which will be replicated on a smaller scale in other cities. A parade is being planned in Montgomery, Ala., along with a mock swearing-in of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.
...

My belief that most of the problems that now hag-ride my country could have been avoided if William Tecumseh Sherman had had tactical nuclear weapons remains undiminished.

If You Were At All Surprised By WikiLeaks

Then you really,

("Sneakers", 1992)

really,

("The Conversation", 1974)

have not

"Enemy of the State" (1998)

been

"Three Days of the Condor" (1975)

paying

"Neuromancer" (1984)

attention.

"The Cuckoo's Egg" (1989)

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Left

For his entire adult life, Barack Obama has succeeded by offering himself as the perfect midpoint between others. As a mathematical function, not a leader. As an averaging equation, not a true believer.

Since he showed up on the political radar, he has marketed himself relentlessly as

Half black and half white...
Half American urbanite, half world-citizen...
Half wonk, half preacher...
Half Harvard Yard, half Back o' the Yards...
Half red and half blue...

And this bone-deep reflex -- plus his formidable intellect and ability to rise to the rhetorical occasion -- would have prepared him perfectly for the Presidency...if this were 1960.

But it is not 1960 -- nor is he dealing with Harvard Conservatives pals or Springfield Republican pols -- and being a results-agnostic "process guy" when the process is utterly broken no longer works.

Instead, the ideologically-lockstepping Right led by Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers have found in Obama their perfect patsy: the Democrat who seems constitutionally incapable of counter-punching, who can only feel comfortable while suspended between two opposing positions and who will, therefor, find a compromise between opposites even when he has to invent wholly fictional opposing views to which he can cede half the playing field.

From Paul Krugman:

Lacking All Conviction

Mark Thoma directs us to an appalling story — apparently Obama held a meeting after the midterm to debate whether our unemployment problem is cyclical or structural.

What I want to know is, who was arguing for structural? I find it hard to think of anyone I know in the administration’s economic team who would make that case, who would deny that the bulk of the rise in unemployment since 2007 is cyclical. And as I and others have been trying to point out, none of the signatures of structural unemployment are visible: there are no large groups of workers with rising wages, there are no large parts of the labor force at full employment, there are no full-employment states aside from Nebraska and the Dakotas, inflation is falling, not rising.

More generally, I can’t think of any Democratic-leaning economists who think the problem is largely structural.
...

In order to avoid wasting his presidency, squandering the opportunity we have given him, and letting the country spiral into a permanent corporate feudal pest-hole, Barack Obama must do the hardest thing of all: he must exceed his design specifications. This is not unprecedented, but like Franklin Roosevelt the capitalist-turned-social-Democrat or Abraham Lincoln the compromiser-turned-Emancipator, Obama must let go of a central pillar of his identity and embrace the brutal fact that our modern house divided against itself cannot stand.

That we cannot endure permanently half-Fox and half-free.

That we will become all one thing, or all the other.

And that this is your fight, President Obama.

This burden has fallen to you: it cannot be shirked and cannot be delegated.

If you take up this challenge, millions of us will have your back, Mr. President.

But if you cannot summon the inner strength to evolve past your reflexive need to compromise with people who want to destroy you, then we are all well and truly fucked.

Suburberus

Since the Dawn of Recorded Conservative Time (which began on Jan 20, 1981), a mighty beast has guarded the gates to Republican political success: a three-headed Centrist the Greeks called Suburberus.

Legend tells us that Suburberus was developed at the AEI Skunk Works in a join venture between a very busy Conservative movement and a very lazy Establishmentarian media. For Conservatives, the beast's toxic mantra of "Both Sides Do It" has become the ultimate weapon to simultaneously suffocate both any serious media scrutiny of Republican perfidy, and any serious Conservative introspection on the subject of their complicity in a long and horrifying string of Republican crimes, failures, lies and treasons.

Instead, no matter how rancid the hypocrisy or ridiculous the lie behind which a Conservative finds himself cornered, he has been trained to simply incant "Well, yeah, but Libruls are worse!" and then walk away. Smirking. As if Sweet Baby Jebus Himself had reached down from Republican Heaven and high-fived him for being such a silver-tongued genius.

It serves the lazy Villager media machine equally well by insuring that no issue of political accountability -- no matter how blatant or bloody the crime -- ever needs to come down to matters of truth and falsity; ever needs to reach a definitive, factual conclusion that one side is simply and overwhelming shithouse-rat crazy and the other is not. This method of reporting -- while true -- would also alienate the shithouse-rat crazy portion of the audience which would, in turn, make the boner pill and hair dye vendors who pay everyone's salaries very unhappy.

So instead we get grotesquely overpaid twats like David Gregory who use their privileged access to American airwaves to plop a decent human being like E.J. Dionne down oppose a babbling sot like Peggy Noonan so they can "debate" whether or not "partisanship" is Barack Obama's fault.

Because, y'know, both sides...

But today is a special day in the life of the story of Suburberus, because today an honest-to-God, silver-haired, old-school journalist took off his pince-nez, put down his copy of "Plutarch's Lives", set aside his Lemon Lift tea and said, "dang it!"

In print.

From James Fallows in "The Atlantic":

In Which I Become a Conservative

Nov 29 2010, 2:42 PM ET
Ross Douthat, an Atlantic alumnus, contends today in the NY Times that the recent controversy over "enhanced" TSA procedures illustrates the dominance of partisan reflex in today's politics. Liberals complained about excessive state power when Bush and Cheney were in charge -- but now they're happy, and it's conservatives up in arms about the excesses of Obama, Biden, and 'Big Sis.' EG:

But people who follow politics closely -- whether voters, activists or pundits -- are often partisans first and ideologues second. Instead of assessing every policy on the merits, we tend to reverse-engineer the arguments required to justify whatever our own side happens to be doing.

Sounds sensible, even-handed, and fairmindedly tut-tutting to all sides. But as it applies to the real world?

The TSA case, on which Douthat builds his column, is in fact quite a poor illustration -- rather, a good illustration for a different point. There are many instances of the partisan dynamic working in one direction here. That is, conservatives and Republicans who had no problem with strong-arm security measures back in the Bush 43 days but are upset now. Charles Krauthammer is the classic example: forthrightly defending torture as, in limited circumstances, a necessary tool against terrorism, yet now outraged about "touching my junk" as a symbol of the intrusive state.

But are there any cases of movement the other way? Illustrations of liberals or Democrats who denounced "security theater" and TSA/DHS excesses in the Republican era, but defend them now? If such people exist, I'm not aware of them -- and having beaten the "security theater" drum for many long years now, I've been on the lookout.

The anti-security theater alliance has always included right-wing and left-wing libertarians (both exist), ACLU-style liberals, limited-government-style conservatives, and however you would choose to classify the likes of Bruce Schneier or Jeffrey Goldberg (or me). I know of Republicans who, seemingly for partisan reasons like those Douthat lays out, have joined the anti-security theater chorus. For instance, former Sen. Rick Santorum. I don't know of a single Democrat or liberal who has peeled off and moved the opposite way just because Obama is in charge.
...

So: it's nice and fair-sounding to say that the party-first principle applies to all sides in today's political debate. Like it would be nice and fair-sounding to say that Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress are contributing to obstructionism and party-bloc voting. Or that Fox News and NPR have equal-and-offsetting political agendas in covering the news. But it looks to me as if we're mostly talking about the way one side operates. Recognizing that is part of facing the reality of today's politics.

The bad news is, of course, that Mr. Fallows has reached this somber and tragic epiphany about, oh, 20 years after every Liberal I know figured it out.

The good news is that he has figured it out: Mr. Fallows is a nice guy and a good writer who I assume will now be cast into the same journalistic Gehenna that awaits everyone who dares to take public notice of the fact that the Right is not only completely fucking unhinged, but completely immune to any arguments based on facts, history or simple causality. And that that is, y'know, a bad thing...

Welcome to Liberalville, Mr. Fallows. We have a secret handshake, some headgear you'll be required to wear at Liberal events, dietary restrictions and a few other things you'll need to know about. Not to worry; the pamphlet will cover it.

We also have an official riddle.

Wanna hear it?

Q: If Dick Cheney were caught red-handed tossing burning kittens at homeless veterans from the White House lawn, what would be the first three words out of Cokie Roberts' mouth?

A: "But the Democrats...."

I wrote that over six years ago and it was old news then.

Still, welcome aboard.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Shatterday

The Mouse Circus was intensely disorienting; a perfect, teevee representation of the schizophrenic rift that has split the American brain right down the middle.

Over in the Higher Reasoning Center –- where all of our math, history, logic skills, blues appreciation and sexual prowess are kept –- Christiane Amanpour interviewed Warren Buffet, Bill and Melinda Gates, Ted Turner and hedge fund manager Tom Steyer.

These are some of the richest people in the history of the world, and they are now giving away huge chunks of their treasure to support causes they believe in.

These are also some of Capitalism’s most successful “Generals on the ground”. Every one of their business cards reads “I understand wealth better than anyone else you will ever meet”, and their consensus opinion of these people is that supply side economics has been a horrible failure, that taxes should be raised on the rich, and the GOP is basically run by skeevy, lying hacks.

Although they were all too polite to put it just that way.

Warren Buffet believes that taxes need to be raised on the rich by a lot. That he got rich because he “won the ovarian lottery” and that “the idea of dynastic wealth is kind of crazy.”

The Gates’ state very clearly that they believe all lives are of equal value, and educational inequality is a scandal.

One of the worst times in Ted Turner’s adult life was when his AOL/Time-Warner deal crashed and burned and he ended up losing $10 million a day, every day, for three years.

At the end of that unimaginable, financial hemorrhage, Ted Turner still had $2 billion in the bank. When asked why he was giving one billion dollars to causes that arguably the government should be doing (securing loose nukes, for example) Turner said that governments are like anybody else. They can use some help. No matter how rich and powerful, everybody can use a little help every now and then.

Socialists, one and all!

Why do these billionaire capitalists hate America?

Meanwhile, over in the drunk, belligerent, power-mad, mendacious half of the American Split Brain, United States Senator John Kyl spent a little time lying about the START treaty.

Then Republican Ratboy Ed Gillespie expressed his great unhappiness that Barack Obama has been insufficiently grovel-y to the Republicans.

Then the Wall Street Journal's human wine-bag -- Peggy Noonan – decked herself out in her best sackcloth and ashes to mourn that the Obama White House has not yet figured out that the solution to all of America’s political problems is to bend over for Republicans much, much further.

According to the Right’s ranking barfly, Obama needs shakes himself, dusts himself off, and gives the GOP everything they want.

After all, 2010 changed everything!

Of course, 2008 changed everything.

And 2006 changed everything.

And 2004 changed everything.

And 2000 changed everything.

And 1994 changed everything.

And 1960 changed everything.

And 1862 changed everything.

Everything changed everything.

Noonan: Obama lost the Center because…

Then, Moar Sarah Palin!

And much talk about “most Americans”?

Do you think most Americans?

What about most Americans?

Most Americans think…

Most Americans believe…

Most Americans want…

But there is no such thing as “Most Americans”. There hasn’t been for years.

I believe it all began in the cell-phoneless 1980s, when – through an accident of astral projection or perhaps Kirlian photography – the American Shadow broke loose from the American Self.

They have been at war with each other ever since; fighting over who gets to be "America" once and for all. Because, as in physics and in Harlan Ellison fiction, it is has become impossible for our America and their America to occupy the same space at the same time.

Unfortunately, unlike “Shatterday”

it is the bad guys who have have been getting stronger every day.

The History of Conservatism In 95 Words

From "The Daily Dish" (whose banner page really, really needs to be this)

FoxNation Or The Onion?

It can get hard to tell them apart at times. But one thing leapt out at me in this story - from the comments section. One FoxNation member wrote:

"HAHAHAHAHAHA OBUMMA – Un-raveled. EPIC FAILURE. IMPEACH it.”

All of which is par for the course, except for that last pronoun. It? Obama is a thing or an animal? Sometimes, the underlying feeling just slips out, doesn't it? I really don't want to believe that the underlying passion among some against the president is racist at its core. And yet, there it is.

And that really is the entire history of Moderates, Centrists and Conservative expatriates like Sullivan, isn't it?

"I really don't want to believe that the underlying passion among some against SOME VERY GOOD IDEA is REALLY DESPICABLE at its core. And yet, there it is."

For decade after decade and on critical issue after critical issue, they could never bring themselves to believe that the Right was motivated to do awful things for depraved motives until it was far, far too late.

And with a mountain of burning, blood-soaked proof at their feet, they still can't.

They simply cannot believe -- long after the average flatworm would have given up and gone Liberal -- that all the awful things that the elitist Dirty Fucking Hippies were warning them about have all turned out to be true.

That, all along, they have been wrong-wrong-wrong.

This is because they are terrible cowards : because the full, unremitting weight of such a revelation would pulverize their weak spines and baby-soft egos and so they climb further and further down the Fox News rabbit hole, following the always just-out-of-reach promise that they will never have to pay for their cowardice and incompetence ever deeper into Hell.

Which is why, on November 2nd, of the few Americans who could be bothered to vote, over half of them voted to make the wealthy ever wealthier, doom the middle class and lock the poor into poverty forever.

The media politely cooperated by postponing most stories about the grotesquely conspicuous consumption of the hyperwealthy (from the 11/28/10 New York Times):

...

The Great Depression ended the last comparable Gilded Age, of the 1920s, and brought about major reforms in American government and business. Not so the Great Recession. Last week, as the Fed’s new growth projections downsized hope for significant decline in the unemployment rate, the Commerce Department reported that corporate profits hit a record high. Those profits aren’t trickling down into new jobs or into higher salaries for those not in the executive suites. And the prospect of serious regulation of those at the top of the top — the financial sector — is even more of a fantasy in the new Congress than it was in its predecessor.

Wall Street is already celebrating the approach of bonus season by partying like it’s 2007. In The Times’s account of this return to conspicuous consumption, we learned of a Morgan Stanley trader, since fired for unspecified reasons, who went to costly ends to try to hire a dwarf for a Miami bachelor party prank that would require the dwarf to be handcuffed to the bachelor. If this were a metaphor — if only! — Wall Street would be the bachelor, and America the dwarf, involuntarily chained to its master’s hedonistic revels and fiscal recklessness with no prospect for escape.

until after all the votes to give them more tax cuts had been counted, but they needn't have bothered. The Right has long since stopped being recognizably human, and their leaders have stopped pretending in anything but the most pro-forma way that they even care about covering up their fascist agenda anymore.

For the most part, the American ruling class no longer has even the slightest sense of national pride or patriotic attachment to the United States: the average plutocrat is now so far removed from the trials and tribulations of the rest of us that they see us no differently than they see the inhabitants of Rio's slums or Haitian cholera wards -- faraway, unsanitary, shithouse-dwelling failures. Public bus/Public school/Free clinic losers useful as interchangeable meat-cog labor, but otherwise wholly disposable.

Every now and then as they raze the American Dream further into oblivion, the ruling class hits a vein of unusually persistent liberty-nostalgia or a particularly intransigent outcropping of constitutionalism that requires them to kick the wingnut killdozer into a higher gear and the grinding sounds of their momentarily-overt, teeth-bared racism or outright contempt for democracy temporarily freaks out the Moderates and Conservative expatriates.

These freak-outs never last: they splutter along for a day or two and then are aggressively paved over with thick, David Brooks-flavored Centrist sludge. Alleged Liberal elitism is widely and angrily mocked, nonexistent "traditional" Conservative virtues are sermonized, and Moderates and Conservative expatriates all dutifully slide back into their "both sides do it" comas.

The whole, wild scam works because our rulers believe that enough of us are such hopelessly ignorant rubes that we can be effortlessly suckered out of our birthright every two years by the same, tired, ridiculous lies.

I really don't want to believe that this is how America works.

And yet, there it is.

Smog: Rock Bottom Riser

Professional Left Thanksgiving Edition Podcast

"Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes;
and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons”

-- Aldous Huxley

Button, Button, Who's Got the Button...

This mint-condition memento of the final days of the Mainstream Mediais available at Blue Gal's Cafepress Store (and keep listening later in the year for an opportunity to win one). The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast. Thanks for your listenership and support!

And here is our Podcast Donate Button should you be so inclined...

Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget, our archives are available for free with no downloads at Professional Left.

Tom DeLay Convicted

Rumor has it he did not take the news well.

When You're a Hack

You're a Hack all the way
From your first Richard Cohen
To your last Matthew Bai...

"Salon" has it's list of America's Top 30 Hacks up here.

It is a fine Honor Roll of the Damned which fails on only two, piddling points:

1. It misses being comprehensive by several miles by massively under-representing Fox. This is perhaps due to the fact that the product Fox extrudes can no longer be even nominally defined as a form of "journalism" at which they are spectacularly failing [Hackery] but instead must judged on its own terms: as a purely Republican Pravda-like propaganda delivery and fund-raising machine. A job at which Fox succeeds brilliantly.

2. Seeing David Fucking Brooks bringing up the rear at #30, I can only conclude that someone at Salon has been monkeying the the Excel "sort" function. Less hackish than S.E. Cupp and Pat Caddell? Really? David Brooks is the chief architect and purveyor of the Biggest Conservative Lie Of All: That no matter how fucking depraved the Right becomes, Invisible Liberals are always somehow equally to blame for everything. It is the Big Lie that makes all the hundreds of little Conservative lies possible. He plies his relentlessly dishonest craft from the commanding heights of the most valuable and influential editorial real estate in journalism. This combination easily makes Brooks the most dangerous and duty-derelict hack in America.

But other than a few quibbles, good first effort Salon.

And how sad -- how very, very ,very sad -- that there are absolutely no more good writers or talkers to be found anymore anywhere who could spark just a little light inside the dim, suffocating hack-yurt tree fort of our political discourse.

The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the Congress with His Head Up His Ass While Sucking His Own Balls

Based on his latest 800-word New York Times Centrist embarrassment,

...
This ethos has dissolved, on left and right. The new mentality sees the country not as an equilibrium, but as a battlefield in which the people, who are pure and virtuous, do battle against the interests or the elites, who stand in the way of the people’s happiness.

The ideal leader in this mental system is free from moral anxiety but full of passionate intensity. This leader pushes his troops in lock step before the voracious foe. Each party has its own version of whom the evil elites are, but both feel they’ve more to fear from their enemies than from their own sinfulness.

Compromise is thus impossible. Money matters should be negotiable, but how can one compromise with opponents who are the source of all corruption?

(and yes, every fucking bit of the rest of it is like that) I would hate to have to read a David Brooks police report.

Officer: So you say you saw who mugged you, sir?

Brooks: Yes. It was a big guy. With a bat. Also liberals were involved.

Officer: Leaving aside the liberals for a moment, what did this "big guy" look like?

Brooks: About six foot. Maybe 200 pounds. White. But the Democrats unreasonable position on Medicare contributed...

Officer: Like I said, sir; we'll get back to the Democrats and liberals later. Now about the man who mugged you. Could you describe what kind of clothes he had on?

Brooks: Yes. He was wearing a "Bush/Cheney '04" t-shirt, a tri-corner hat and was carrying one of those "Don't Tread On Me" flags. (pauses) Officer, you seem to be deliberately ignoring the liberal involvement here.

Officer: No sir -- I'm writing all of it down. It's just important that we start with the facts.

Brooks: Well the fact is, officer, that Democrats are clearly implicated here as well as a fringe nutcase who in no way represents the main body of Conservative thinking.

Officer: Alrighty then, Mr. Brooks, you seem to be going into shock or maybe you have a slight concussion, so lets try coming at this another way. You say you were mugged, right?

Brooks: I was definitely mugged. Assaulted and mugged.

Officer: OK, then. How many people were physically holding the baseball bat? How many different people had their hands on it?

Brooks (pauses): Uh...just the one guy.

Officer: The man with the "Bush/Cheney '04" t-shirt?

Brooks (pauses): Yes.

Officer: And how many people actually said to you -- and I quote -- "Gimme your fucking wallet or I'll fucking kill you you fucking Commie"?
Said that out loud.
In your presence.
During the mugging.

Brooks: Well, technically it was that one guy, but...

Officer: And how many separate and distinct people actually hit you in the face with the bat?

Brooks: The one guy.

Officer: The one man with the "Bush/Cheney '04" t-shirt?

Brooks: Yes.

Officer: And how many people -- physical, real people -- were within, say, 30 feet of that one guy? At any time during the incident?

Brooks: Well that is very hard to say. I mean, there was a lot going on, what with the one guy screaming at me and hitting me in the face with the bat, and the Democrats causing an equal amount of...

Officer: Oh, I'm sure it was frighting, sir. Very frightening. But it would make my job a lot easier if right now you could just tell me how many other, physical, real people were within 30 feet of that one guy.

Brooks: Well, if I had to guess.

Officer: Yes.

Brooks: -- and this is just an approximation, you understand?

Officer: Of course.

Brooks: I'd have to say...around...

Officer: Yes.

Brooks: Generally...

Officer: Yes.

Brooks: Roughly...

Officer: Yes.

Brooks: In the vicinity of...

Officer: Yes.

Brooks: Bordering on...

Officer: Yes.

Brooks: Verging between...

Officer: Yes.

Brooks: Ballpark...

Officer: I've got all day sir.

Brooks: Más o menos...

Officer: Yes.

Brooks: Somewhere between, maybe, five...

Officer: Yes.

Brooks: And...none.

Officer: And closer to which of those two numbers -- five and none -- would you say would be more accurate?

Brooks: (long whistle) Well the range is potentially unlimited, isn't it? I mean, what with geometric regression and Nancy Pelosi and rounding errors and Harry Reid and fractals...

Officer: Would it help your memory if I told you we have the whole thing on tape?

Brooks: Oh.

Officer: (pointing) See those two cameras? The one on that bank over there and a traffic camera across the street?

Brooks: Uh.

Officer: Between them, they'll give us a very accurate count of how many physical, real people were involved.

Brooks: Oh.

Officer: So you were estimating something about it being between five and none?

Brooks: Uh, let's just go with "none" then. To keep it simple.

Officer: Of course sir. So there were no people other than you and the assailant within 30 feet of the incident. How about 50 feet?

Brooks: None.

Officer: 100 feet?

Brooks: None.

Officer: So it would be fair to say, then, that the entire street was deserted except for you and the big man in the Republican t-shirt, and Tea Party flag and hat who called you -- and, again, I'm quoting -- a "fucking Commie"...

Brooks: Yes.

Officer: ...clubbed you on the head...

Brooks: Yes.

Officer: ...and stole your wallet.

Brooks: Yes, yes, yes. If you want to be a pedant about it, technically that is a description with which I cannot disagree.

Officer: "Pedant" is a big part of my job description, sir.

Brooks: I see. So are we through?

Officer: Not quite sir. A few minutes ago you were quite worked up over some people you seemed to imply were in some way conspiring with big man in the Republican t-shirt, and Tea Party flag and hat.

Flips through his notebook.

Officer: You identified a "Nancy Pelosi" and a "Harry Reid" by name, and implicated two groups called "liberals" and "Democrats".

Brooks: Finally! Yes! The Liberals!

Officer: Now if you would be good enough to point to exactly where these persons and groups were located relative to the crime scene.

Brooks: I don't understand.

Officer: I mean, did you see Nancy Pelosi in one of those windows up there? Perhaps talking to your assailant on a cell phone?

Brooks: Of course not.

Officer: Did you hear a group of these "Liberals" hiding around the corner shouting instructions? Or maybe this "Harry Reid" person drove past you in a car in a threatening manner?

Brooks: No. It doesn't work like that.

Officer: What "doesn't work like that"?

Brooks: (mutters inaudibly)

Officer: I'm sorry sir, could you speak up please? I couldn't hear you.

Brooks: "Centrism", alright? I said "Centrism"?

Officer: Meaning...what?

Brooks: Meaning that Liberals don't actually have to be present or in any way involved to be blameworthy.

Officer: So they're...invisible Liberals?

Brooks: No, no! You don't understand. They're not "invisible"; they're...uh...implicit. See, implicit in everything that guy with the bat did, there is a liberal counter-move or opposite-thingie which makes the Left equally to blame.

Officer stares silently.

Brooks: And that is where the real detective work begins.

Officer: The "real" detective work?

Brooks: Of course! Any idiot can look at mere evidence and blame the crazy Republican with the bat, but a real detective knows he has to keep looking and looking and looking and looking until he figures out the secret Liberal-counter-recto-converse thingie which makes the crazy Republican with a bat and Nancy Pelosi equally to blame.

Officer: Fascinating. Then what happens?

Brooks: Then you write it up in 800-words for the New York Times, go home to your suburban mansion and wait for huge bags of money to arrive.

Officer: Is that all?

Brooks: Basically. You also get invited onto national teevee and radio talk shows where your repeat your column word-for-word, but that's just beer money.

Officer: And that's what you think "real detective work" is?

Brooks: Sure. What else would you call it?

Officer: I'm sure I don't know, sir. I'm a trained police detective and all I see here is one Republican who has been beaten and mugged by another Republican.

Brooks: Ah, but to the truly trained eye, Officer, the implicit Liberalness here is evident.

Officer: (sighs) Mr. Brooks , "implicit" is from a Latin word. "Implicitus". It means "interwoven".

Brooks: You know Latin?

Officer: Yes sir.

Brooks: (mutters) Fuck me.

Officer: So explain to my untrained eye exactly in what way are Liberals "interwoven" with a crime committed against you on an empty street by a crazed Republican with a baseball bat?

Brooks: (petulant) Look, that's just the way it works.

Officer: The way what works?

Brooks: "Centrism".

Officer: So according to this "Centrism", every time a Republican assaults someone, somewhere out there is a Liberal who is at least equally to blame for it?

Brooks: Correct.

Officer: And every time a Liberal does something wrong, a Republican is also at fault?

Brooks: No, every time a Liberal does something wrong Conservatism is vindicated and Ronald Reagan smiles down on us from Heaven.

Officer: I see. (closes his notebook) I think I have all I need here.

Brooks: So what happens now?

Officer: Now we pick this guy up. Based on the description you gave us -- Republican in a funny hat who screams "Commie" at random strangers before smacking them with a baseball bat -- it shouldn't be that hard.

Brooks: And Nancy Pelosi too?

Officer: No, not Nancy Pelosi too; we pedants in the police department are limited to acting only on actual evidence.

Brooks: Then what?

Officer: Then we book him, you ID him, it goes to court and he goes to prison.

Brooks: Oh no, no, no. We can't do that.

Officer: Excuse me?

Brooks: We can't do that.

Officer: Is there a problem?

Brooks: (drops his voice) Honestly, if there is any way for you to just discreetly get my wallet back and let the rest of it drop... (trails off)

Officer: Mr. Brooks, some very serious crimes have been committed here, and but for a little bit of luck you could be lying dead in the street. And given what you've told me, if we act quickly there is a very good chance we can catch the person who did it, put him behind bars and keep him from hurting anyone else.

Brooks: And I appreciate that, but you must understand, there are wider implications.

Officer: What are you taking about? This guy's a violent lunatic -- with club -- who is walking around ripping people off and then smashing them in the head? Why in the world would you not want to press charges against him?

Brooks: (Looks around nervously and whispers) Because he's my boss.

So Let It Be Written

The Ten Lessons of Rahmses: for future reference, a handy index to the complete award-consideration-ready series on the 10 Vital Lessons of Chicago politics as they exist today.

Lesson One: Elections

Lesson Two: Being Da Boss

Lesson Three: Voters

Lesson Four: Budgets (and how to balance them)

Lesson Five: Fighting Legends

Lesson Six: Enemies

Lesson Seven: Job Stress

Lesson Eight: Employee Morale

Lesson Nine: The Banality of Municipal Gummint

Lesson Ten: Public Service in Chicago

Don't let it be forgot

That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

According to the collective wisdom of the Wise Men of the Mouse Circus, it turns out, Barack Obama will have to -- just have to! -- move to The Center, both substantively and symbolically, if he wants to get re-elected.

Shocking, I know.

He'll have to -- just have to! -- lower the top marginal tax rates.

He'll have to -- just have to! -- lower corporate taxes.

Then: Moar!Palin!

Because she's so Sincere!

Sure, she's also a vicious and utterly unqualified grifter, but she's so Real!

And we point cameras at her obsessively because you can never spend too much of America's mainstream political bandwidth huffing stupid straight from the bag.

The only side-show at the Mouse Circus that was even slightly out of the sad, flaccid norm on Sunday was the Very Special Episode of the "Real Chickenhawks of the American Raj" on Fareed Zakaria's GPS.

Fareed put the perennially wrong bad-joke of a Neoconservative war-pimp-with-the-Sargent Rock-cartoon-name -- Max Boot -- in front of a camera and asked him his opinion about Afghanistan, instead of, say, why he continues to have a job anywhere in the Western Hemisphere (from Atrios in 2005)

Yglesias catches Max Boot being full of shit. But, the question is not why is Max Boot full of shit, but why the LA Times opinion editor (cough kinsley cough) puts it in print?

after a career spent trafficking in this kind of bullshit:

"...Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets."

Of course the sad truth is that is Fareed almost certainly knows the answer to that question: that bottom-feeders like Boot have unsinkable media careers precisely because they traffic in this kind of imperial war-porn filth.

The Ten Lessons of Rahmses -- Lesson Ten

Public Service in a post-Daley Chicago:

Da secret?

You gotta work hard.

You gotta be ready for mobs of hungry clout-zombies™ who want to eat your brains.

But mostly, you gotta love it!

And by "it" I mean stabbin' people.

In the neck.

With pencils.

Background via "The Beachwood Reporter" (comes with video, so it's fun for the whole family!)

A County Clout List
By Dane Placko

"FOX Chicago News obtained a copy of a 'clout list' showing who landed jobs funded by a federal disaster grant. The list details who in county government sponsored the employees and contains information about friends and family already working at Cook County.
...
"The list contains the names of 31 people who got jobs or contracts funded by the disaster grant. Written in hand beside many of the names are notations such as 'father and uncle with county,' 'Andrea's brother,' or 'uncle in highway.'"
...

Your 7 Word Review of Harry Potter 7

"Harry Potter and the 1000 Year Reich".

The Thanksgiving Classic

- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Christmas may have the best songs, movies and best catch-phrases (from "God bless us, every one!" to "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!"), may spring from the superior creation myth, may have the most commercially perfect central character as its front man, and may come with the highest probability of drunken office career suicide and/or sexual harassment lawsuits...

...but Thanksgiving will always have this heartwarming holiday classic about one visionary man, some turkeys, and the laws of physics.

The Ten Lessons of Rahmses -- Lesson Nine

The Banality of Municipal Gummint:

If I gotta listen to one more fuckin' grandma bitch about one more fuckin' pothole or one more fuckin' alderman whine about some fuckin' WalMart I'm gonna start takin' hostages.

Fuck! I used to have people killed!

OK, who's next?

Really? The fuckin' police union?

Fuck.

Somebody get in here right now and stab me in the fuckin' neck with a fuckin' pencil.

Tomorrow, The Tenth Lesson: Public Service in Chicago

The Ten Lessons of Rahmses -- Lesson Eight

Employee Morale:

Neck-stab half the fuckin' staff and throw 'em the fuck out with the trash.

Doesn't matter which half: the ones you neck-stab stop being a problem; the ones you spare will be so grateful you didn't neck-stab 'em that you can work 'em until they drop in their traces.

Anybody has a problem with that, they can fuckin' quit and go sell irregular tube socks on an I-94 on-ramp, 'cause they'll never work a real job in my fuckin' city ever again.

So let it be written. So let it be fuckin' done.

Sadly, the background for this Lesson can be found on all sides and in every Chicago paper, every day...

Here.

Arbitrator OKs CTA layoffs starting Sunday
February 3, 2010 6:09 PM

Labor unions at the CTA lost a challenge to the transit agency's plans to lay off more than 1,100 employees starting Sunday as part of major service cuts to reduce a budget deficit.

An arbitrator's ruling today against the unions means that the cuts -- an 18 percent reduction in bus service and 9 percent for trains -- will be implemented, barring any developments to erase a $95.6 million deficit that remains for 2010, transit officials said.

CTA management has introduced more than $200 million in internal cuts and other cost savings, and it said the unions must agree to salary and other concessions to help erase the rest of the deficit and stave off the service cuts. The unions representing CTA bus and rail workers have so far refused, saying they made concessions in the past.

And here.

Fitch downgrades Chicago bonds

Posted by Greg H. at 10/28/2010 3:48 PM CDT on Chicago Business
Chicago's bond rating has suffered another hit, this one from Fitch Ratings.

The New York-based firm on Thursday lowered its rating on $7 billion in outstanding general-obligation city debt to AA- from AA, particularly citing the city's increasing reliance on one-time revenues to fix its budget.

"While the economy remains broad and diverse, the city's financial position has weakened," Fitch wrote. Revenues have been hurt by high unemployment and above-average home foreclosures, while the city has reduced reserves from around $2 billion a couple of years ago to a projected $790 million by December.

Fitch applauded layoffs and other payroll trims implemented by outgoing Mayor Richard M. Daley, but added, "The ability to make further expenditure cuts to personnel is extremely limited" due to union contracts.

"Rising costs for public safety and the continued slow economic recovery will severely limit the city's ability to achieve structural balance without working (politically difficult) structural solutions," it said.

Here.

Chicago Community College Budget Calls for Hundreds of Layoffs
Alex Keefe Jul. 29, 2010

Hundreds of non-teaching staff members could be laid off under the new budget proposal for Chicago's community college system.

Next year's budget for City Colleges of Chicago could fund 311 fewer positions, some through attrition.

But that could include 225 non-teacher layoffs.

Chancellor Cheryl Hyman they would affect administrators, as the district tries to consolidate some workers from its seven colleges.

And here.

New Chicago Public Schools Budget: Layoffs, Furlough Days, And Larger Class Sizes To Make Ends Meet

Chicago Sun-Times | Fran Spielman | 04/16/09

About 1,200 city school workers will receive layoff notices this week, and principals will begin sharing the budget pain via pay freezes and six furlough days, as Chicago Public Schools officials move today to plug their remaining $370 million deficit.

And here.

Standard & Poor's lowers Chicago bonds

(Crain's) — The city of Chicago's general obligation bonds took a hit by Standard & Poor's, which lowered its long-term debt rating, citing ongoing budget strife.

The ratings agency assigned Chicago's general obligation debt an A+ rating, down one notch from AA-. It gave the same A+ rating — also lowered from AA- — to nearly $804 million in general obligation refunding and taxable project bonds.

S&P said in its report that the new rating "reflects our view of the city's ongoing structural imbalance and heavy reliance on non-recurring revenues to bridge its 2011 budget gap, including the use of most of its remaining reserves from the sale of its parking meters."

And here.

Daley To Union: 1,600 City Lay Offs Unless Concessions Made

Chicago Sun-Times:

Mayor Daley will be forced to lay off up to 1,600 city employees -- none sworn police officers or firefighters -- unless organized labor agrees to another round of givebacks to wipe out a potential $300 million shortfall, union leaders were told this week.

But with all the grim news raining down in from every direction, what transforms the situation from merely Very Bad into Utterly Toxic is when city workers look around them and see that, even as the City cries poormouth and demands ever more work for ever less pay -- hard work, long hours, creativity and competence still have nothing whatsoever to do with who gets the axe and who does not.

That no matter what City Hall public information machine says about drowning in red ink and the desperate need for everyone to pull together for the common good, there is still a fucking club,

and they sure as Hell still ain't in it.

From the Sun-Times:

Connected city worker spared in merger, layoffs
Never knew she had clout, Special Events director says

October 22, 2010

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

Clout apparently still counts in City Hall jobs -- despite Mayor Daley's promise to implement a personnel system free of politics in the wake of a hiring scandal that cost taxpayers $12 million to compensate victims of the city's rigged hiring system.

The wife of a former Democratic ward boss -- who also happens to be the daughter-in-law of a former alderman -- has survived a departmental merger that will eliminate 13 jobs and force nine layoffs.

Maureen Volini was a $73,752 administrative services officer for the Mayor's Office of Special Events.

Now that Daley's final budget is merging Special Events with the Department of Cultural Affairs, Volini has avoided the ax with a transfer to the Department of Procurement Services.
...

Tomorrow, Lesson Nine: The Banality of Municipal Gummint