SUBVERTING DEMOCRACY
Look how they just disenfranchised 178,000 South Carolina voters. Look (same clip) how in Republican-led state after state they’re saying young people and poor people shouldn’t vote – basically, they don’t know enough to vote. (They can’t see Russia from their porch? They don’t know who the President of Pakistan is?)
There’s big money in this stuff, folks. If you’re the Koch brothers, and feel oppressed by those who’d confiscate a quarter of your capital gains to help rebuild the country every time you make another $1 billion (what did the country ever do for them?), you revel in installing a guy (with fewer votes than the other guy) who appoints right-wing Justices – in the mold of the one who goes duck hunting with Dick Cheney or the one whose wife is a highly paid right-wing lobbyist – who then strike down the long-standing restraints on corporate influence over elections even as state laws are changed to keep the poor from voting for people who’d try to force you – the ultimate job creators – to pay taxes on dividends and capital gains at (say) the appallingly confiscatory rate you were paying under Ronald Reagan.*
Welcome to the plutocracy.
Peter Kaczowka: ‘If Carl was right yesterday and Democrats need to stop talking like intellectuals, then using words like ‘plutocrat’ won’t help. Most Americans think plutocracy is rule by Mickey’s dog.’
☞ How about, ‘only little people pay taxes.’ Could we get a few Republicans to say that on camera?
DMV – VOTING
Here’s an energetic young guy – a small-government Republican, I’d guess – describing what a nightmare it can be to get something done at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Imagine if he were 88 and disabled but wanted to vote. Or if he had no car to get to the DMV. Or if he didn’t have his birth certificate handy. (Do you have yours?) Or if he’d lose his job for taking a day off work to go do this. Simpler just to throw up your hands and not vote – which is exactly the point. Ideally, only white men with property would be allowed to vote, as the Founders prescribed.
Or watch the 27-second cartoon version.
And speaking of cartoons . . .
MICHELE BACHMANN
Forget her debilitating migraines (she disagrees they’re debilitating, and in any event they’re only brought on by stress, so how could that be a problem if she were President?) – here it appears she believes the end times are at hand. Just the sort of person you want leading you into the future.
CFPB
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened for business yesterday. Here are three minutes describing the law that produced it, and the ongoing attempts to thwart its success.
SEARCH IS BROKEN
Kirk Elliott: ‘I did a search here for ‘SYMS’ and got back a response that said, ‘GOOGLE sorry – Your computer or network may be sending out automated queries. To protect our customers we cannot process your query at this time.’ Huh?’
☞ There was something odd here that my webmaster just fixed. (Thanks, Jason!) If it ever happens again, just use regular Google search (not my version) and include ‘andrewtobias.com’ as one of the search terms . . . so, in this case, you’d search on ANDREWTOBIAS.COM SYMS . . . and you’ll find it works fine.
*28% versus today’s 15%. And sorry for the breathless sentence, but there’s a lot to be breathless about here. Watch that Steve Colbert clip. You will laugh, you will cry, and you may want – breathlessly – to forward it to all your friends.
Monday (I think): Let’s Not Freak Ourselves Out If Some Modest, Sensible Social Security Tweaks Are Included In a Deal (and I say this as a guy hugely in favor of the social safety net)
