Tag Archives: Conservatism

March 25, 2013 · 11:54 AM

Delgado: Is Conservatism Dead?

Alan Colmes’ Liberaland

AJ Delgado at Mediaite:

What happened this month to make it so historic? Three key developments (or three death-knells):

1) Immigration reform is all but a foregone conclusion.

2) The gay marriage debate is essentially over. Why March 2013? It is when the momentum and timing all serendipitously fell into place.

3) The plan to defund ObamaCare — conservatives’ last stand after the Supreme Court failed to throw out the Act — is over.

Consider the magnitude: in this single month, three key, major tenets of conservatism – the battles against (1) amnesty; (2) gay marriage; and (3) socialized medicine (many rightly argue Obama is simply a stepping-stone to nationalized healthcare) – essentially vanished. Poof! Gone. Without these three, is conservatism (or what we generally know as mainstream conservatism) still even in existence?

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January 7, 2013 · 5:31 PM

Entitlement reform” is a hoax

I have a feeling that a lot of people knew this already…but this is for those who might not know…

Salon – Robert Reich

No, Social Security won’t contribute to future budget deficits

It has become accepted economic wisdom, uttered with deadpan certainty by policy pundits and budget scolds on both sides of the aisle, that the only way to get control over America’s looming deficits is to “reform entitlements.”

But the accepted wisdom is wrong.

Start with the statistics Republicans trot out at the slightest provocation — federal budget data showing a huge spike in direct payments to individuals since the start of 2009, shooting up by almost $600 billion, a 32 percent increase.

And Census data showing 49 percent of Americans living in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit – food stamps, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, or subsidized housing — up from 44 percent in 2008.

But these expenditures aren’t driving the federal budget deficit in future years. They’re temporary. The reason for the spike is Americans got clobbered in 2008 with the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. They and their families have needed whatever helping hands they could get.

If anything, America’s safety nets have been too small and shot through with holes. That’s why the number and percentage of Americans in poverty has increased dramatically, including 22 percent of our children.

What about Social Security and Medicare (along with Medicare’s poor step-child, Medicaid)?

Social Security won’t contribute to future budget deficits. By law, it can only spend money from the Social Security trust fund.

That fund has been in surplus for the better part of two decades, as boomers contributed to it during their working lives. As boomers begin to retire, those current surpluses are disappearing.

But this only means the trust fund will be collecting from the rest of the federal government the IOUs on the surpluses it lent to the rest of the government.

This still leaves a problem for the trust fund about two decades from now.

Yet the way to deal with this isn’t to raise the eligibility age for receiving Social Security benefits, as many entitlement reformers are urging. That would put an unfair burden on most laboring people, whose bodies begin wearing out about the same age they did decades ago even though they live longer.

And it’s not to reduce cost-of-living adjustments for inflation, as even the White House seemed ready to propose in recent months. Benefits are already meager for most recipients. The median income of Americans over 65 is less than $20,000 a year. Nearly 70 percent of them depend on Social Security for more than half of this. The average Social Security benefit is less than $15,000 a year.

Besides, Social Security’s current inflation adjustment actually understates the true impact of inflation on elderly recipients — who spend far more than anyone else on health care, the costs of which have been rising faster than overall inflation.

That leaves two possibilities that “entitlement reformers” rarely if ever suggest, but are the only fair alternatives: raising the ceiling on income subject to Social Security taxes (in 2013 that ceiling is $113,700), and means-testing benefits so wealthy retirees receive less. Both should be considered.

What’s left to reform? Medicare and Medicaid costs are projected to soar. But here again, look closely and you’ll see neither is really the problem.

The underlying problem is the soaring costs of health care — as evidenced by soaring premiums, co-payments, and deductibles that all of us are bearing — combined with the aging of the boomer generation.

The solution isn’t to reduce Medicare benefits. It’s for the nation to contain overall healthcare costs and get more for its healthcare dollars.

We’re already spending nearly 18 percent of our entire economy on health care, compared to an average of 9.6 percent in all other rich countries.

Yet we’re no healthier than their citizens are. In fact, our life expectancy at birth (78.2 years) is shorter than theirs (averaging 79.5 years), and our infant mortality (6.5 deaths per 1000 live births) is higher (theirs is 4.4).

Why? Doctors and hospitals in the U.S. have every incentive to spend on unnecessary tests, drugs, and procedures.

For example, almost 95 percent of cases of lower back pain are best relieved by physical therapy. But American doctors and hospitals routinely do expensive MRI’s, and then refer patients to orthopedic surgeons who often do even more costly surgery. There’s not much money in physical therapy.

Another example: American doctors typically hospitalize people whose diabetes, asthma, or heart conditions act up. Twenty percent of these people are hospitalized again within a month. In other rich nations nurses make home visits to ensure that people with such problems are taking their medications. Nurses don’t make home visits to Americans with acute conditions because hospitals aren’t paid for such visits.

An estimated 30 percent of all healthcare spending in the United States is pure waste, according to the Institute of Medicine.

We keep patient records on computers that can’t share data, requiring that they be continuously rewritten on pieces of paper and then reentered on different computers, resulting in costly errors.

And our balkanized healthcare system spends huge sums collecting money from different pieces of itself: Doctors collect from hospitals and insurers, hospitals collect from insurers, insurers collect from companies or from policy holders.

A major occupational category at most hospitals is “billing clerk.” A third of nursing hours are devoted to documenting what’s happened so insurers have proof.

Cutting or limiting Medicare and Medicaid costs, as entitlement reformers want to do, won’t reform any of this. It would just result in less care.

In fact, we’d do better to open Medicare to everyone. Medicare’s administrative costs are in the range of 3 percent.

That’s well below the 5 to 10 percent costs borne by large companies that self-insure. It’s even further below the administrative costs of companies in the small-group market (amounting to 25 to 27 percent of premiums). And it’s way, way lower than the administrative costs of individual insurance (40 percent). It’s even far below the 11 percent costs of private plans under Medicare Advantage, the current private-insurance option under Medicare.

Healthcare costs would be further contained if Medicare and Medicaid could use their huge bargaining leverage over healthcare providers to shift away from a “fee-for-the-most-costly-service” system to a system focused on achieving healthy outcomes.

Medicare isn’t the problem. It may be the solution.

“Entitlement reform” sounds like a noble endeavor. But it has little or nothing to do with reducing future budget deficits.

Taming future deficits requires three steps having nothing to do with entitlements: Limiting the growth of overall healthcare costs, cutting our bloated military, and ending corporate welfare (tax breaks and subsidies targeted to particular firms and industries).

Obsessing about “entitlement reform” only serves to distract us from these more important endeavors.

Edit: Emphasis is mine

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Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written 13 books, including his latest best-seller, “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future;” “The Work of Nations,” which has been translated into 22 languages; and his newest, an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.” His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.

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September 6, 2012 · 1:00 AM

Thank A Liberal – Redux

Thank a liberal

From dKosopedia

If you do not have skin cancer, and have ever stood outside without having a peeling sunburn within moments, thank the ozone layer, thank the ban on CFCs, and thank a liberal.

If you have not died in a heat wave, drought, hurricane, flood, wildfire, or other climate change disaster, and like the idea of your children and grandchildren not living in desert wastelands, thank a liberal.

If you have ever breathed clean air or drank clean water, thank a liberal.

If no woman you know has died or been maimed in a back-alley Abortion, thank a liberal.

If you have never been lynched, or had your children firebombed in a church, thank a liberal.

If you are glad we don’t live in a right-wing dictatorship along the lines of what conservatives overtly and covertly created in Iran, Guatamala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, the Congo, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, the Phillipines, Indonesia and many others, thank a liberal.

If you have ever used Medicare, thank a liberal.

If you have not gotten cancer from radiation, thank the Nuclear test ban and thank a liberal.

If you have ever sat on a public seat, drank from a drinking fountain, stood on a bus, or done anything in public without worrying about being beaten up for being in the wrong section for your skin color, thank a liberal.

If you’ve ever driven on an interstate highway, thank a liberal.

If you grew up in a family of less than 12 kids, like the idea of being able to choose if you have 12 kids or not, if you don’t live in an overpopulated third world slum, or just think birth control is a good idea, thank a liberal.

If your family benefited from the GI Bill of Rights, FHA Mortgages, and so forth, thank a liberal.

If you have ever bought anything from Europe, and are glad the Marshall plan kept it from remained a bombed-out shell or falling to communism or neo-fascism, thank a liberal.

If you are glad that the Nazis don’t control half the world (conservatives opposed joining World War 2 until it was forced on them) thank a liberal.

If you have ever eaten food (agricultural subsidies), flicked on a light switch (rural electrification) or benefited from the Tennessee Valley Authority, thank a liberal.

If you ever drank a beer or a glass of wine without being thrown in jail, thank a liberal.

If you are not a land-owning white male, but have voted, thank a liberal.

If you have not died from tainted meat, been prescribed something useless or poisonous by a quack doctor, have not given your children cough syrup which turned out to have heroin as its secret ingredient, thank a liberal. (and Nixon)

If your workplace is safe and you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights without being lynched, thank a liberal.

If you’ve ever seen a national park, and it hadn’t been strip mined and clearcut into a desert wasteland, thank a liberal.

If you have never suffered from an economy of massive deflation, and have never even heard of an economic phenomenon called a “panic”, thank a liberal.

If your children go to school instead of working in coal mines, thank a liberal.

If you’re a Native American and have not been killed or died in a concentration camp, or if you live near Native Americans and are not at war with them, thank a liberal.

If you have an industrial or high-tech job – or really, any job other than those available in a slave-powered cash crop economy (ie, a third world economy) thank a liberal.

If you’re not a slave or “indentured servant” (white slave), don’t think protection of slavery belongs in the constitution, if you’ve never been chained to a boat where half the passengers die, been whipped, had your family split up, been forced to “breed” with another slave you’ve never met, been raped by your boss, or killed for not being profitable, thank a liberal.

If you oppose political parties starting massive wars to destroy America, just because they lost the election, and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans in process – if you just don’t have that much fanatical hatred of Lincoln’s policy of to restricting slavery to states where it already existed, thank a liberal.

If you’re part-Irish, Catholic, Jewish, or for that matter anything not Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and are allowed to live in America, and are not harassed and attacked for failing to be born Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or if you’ve ever bought or used anything built by a non-ASP American, thank a liberal.

If you kind of like freedom of speech, and don’t want the state government to be able to censor you – (you think the 14th amendment is a good idea) – thank a liberal.

If you have ever bought or sold anything transported by the transcontinental railroad, or eaten food from a farm created by the railroad, thank a liberal.

If you think the US constitution is pretty cool, and have ever traveled too or done business with a country whose democracy was inspired by the American revolution, thank a liberal.

If you have not been drafted and used as cannon-fodder in some war caused by some petty insult between nobles, clan leaders, or other various overfed dictators, or suffered rape or looting in one of those countless wars, thank a liberal.

If you have not been tortured to death in a religious inquisition, thank a liberal.

If you don’t have to walk though ankle-deep sewage in the streets (because sewers are big gummint), thank a liberal.

If you have ever done anything that is a religious or superstitious taboo (ie, done anything at all) without being stoned to death or cast out as a heretic, thank a liberal.

If you have never been raped, and then had the rapist escape punishment on the grounds that he marry you, thank a liberal.

If you are not a slave toiling to build a pyramid for some lazy dictator who’s so spoiled he thinks he’s god, and won’t even see it until he’s dead, thank a liberal.

If you have not been killed as a human sacrifice in the name of some god, thank a liberal.

In short, if you’ve ever enjoyed anything of the post-stone-age world, thank a liberal.

…And if not, become a conservative.

“Liberal policies made America the freest, wealthiest, most successful and most powerful nation in human history. Conservatism in power always threatens to undo that national progress, and is almost always frustrated by the innate decency and democratic instincts of the American people…” - Joe Conason

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August 16, 2012 · 8:52 AM

Joe Conason’s Quote Is Still Relevant…

 

Joe Conason

From Wikipedia:

Joe Conason (born January 25, 1954) is an American journalist, author and political commentator. He writes a column for Salon.com and has written a number of books, including Big Lies (2003), which addresses what he says are myths spread about liberals by conservatives. He currently is editor-in-chief at The National Memo, a new political newsletter and website.

Conason wrote:

Liberal policies made America the freest, wealthiest, most successful and most powerful nation in human history. Conservatism in power always threatens to undo that national progress, and is almost always frustrated by the innate decency and democratic instincts of the American people…

The above quote comes from Joe Conason’s 2003 New York Times Bestseller, Big Lies.

It appears that the Republican attack machine’s vitriolic approach to politics by barely compromising across the aisle with Democrats,  inter alia, may have reached it’s peak during the Clinton Administration and has carried on to this day with perhaps even more vitriol and much less compromise.

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August 7, 2012 · 7:34 PM

Intelligence Study Links Low I.Q. To Prejudice, Racism, Conservatism

As I’ve said before in a similar article, this study is not a conclusive statement that all of the above have low I.Q.s…

The Huffington Post

Are racists dumb? Do conservatives tend to be less intelligent than liberals? A provocative new study from Brock University in Ontario suggests the answer to both questions may be a qualified yes.

The study, published in Psychological Science, showed that people who score low on I.Q. tests in childhood are more likely to develop prejudiced beliefs and socially conservative politics in adulthood.

I.Q., or intelligence quotient, is a score determined by standardized tests, but whether the tests truly reveal intelligence remains a topic of hot debate among psychologists.

Dr. Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology at the university and the study’s lead author, said the finding represented evidence of a vicious cycle: People of low intelligence gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, which stress resistance to change and, in turn, prejudice, he told LiveScience.

Why might less intelligent people be drawn to conservative ideologies? Because such ideologies feature “structure and order” that make it easier to comprehend a complicated world, Dodson said. “Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice,” he added.

Dr. Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist, echoed those sentiments.

“Reality is complicated and messy,” he told The Huffington Post in an email. “Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies.”

But Nosek said less intelligent types might be attracted to liberal “simplifying ideologies” as well as conservative ones.

In any case, the study has taken the Internet by storm, with some outspoken liberals saying that it validates their suspicions about conservatives and conservatives arguing that the research has been misinterpreted.

What do you think? Do conservatives tend to be less intelligent? Or is this just political opinion masquerading as science?

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January 28, 2012 · 5:13 AM

Study Connects Low IQ with Conservatives

I didn’t reproduce this article to disparage all conservatives.  The article and the scientists make it clear that this was not their intent either…

Daily Kos

This article appeared on Yahoo today via livescience.com, which draws a link between low-intelligence and socially conservative ideologies.  I guess in my mind I pretty much already knew this fact as well as most of you out there, but it is nice to have some science to back up that claim.

See this link to the full article at LiveScience.

http://www.livescience.com/…

or at Yahoo

http://news.yahoo.com/… 

Key quotes from the article include:

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found.

In addition, the article added:

As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.

As I stated above, none of this surprises me or should surprise anybody out there, but it should be interesting to hear the backlash from the conservative community, after this article gets out on the internet.

What is funny to me though is that the authors of the article have the need to provide the following disclaimer:

Hodson was quick to note that despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren’t implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said.

“There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals,” Hodson said.

I guess such a disclaimer is needed for the less educated conservatives out there, but the rest of us understand what the word averages mean!  In any other type of study, do you really believe that a researcher would have to provide such a disclaimer?  Was it really necessary to add that not all conservatives are idiots and not all liberals are intelligent?

Ultimately, you all know how much belief conservatives put into actual scientific research and study (i.e. global warming, evolution, etc), this will just be another study that they will find some irrational, illogical manner to dispute or ignore.

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December 28, 2011 · 12:15 AM

The “Muslim Test” – How To Expose The Hypocrisy Of The Religious Right

The following piece by my favorite writer over at Addicting Info, , is an eye-opener for Liberals and Conservatives.

Addicting Info

[...] the Right has spun a truly fantastic yarn where they are an oppressed minority and Christianity is beset on all sides by those with evil intent. But there is a way to pierce this fabrication. I call it “The Muslim Test.”

[...]

So what is the Muslim Test? Simple! It is the fool proof method of revealing this Right Wing hypocrisy. As the last three years have made blindingly obvious, the average conservative has lost all sense of reality. They are so consumed by hatred of Muslims, they’ve jettisoned every shred of rationality. But how do you get through to people this crazed? Well, you really can’t. But what youcan do is force them to confront their lunacy and watch them howl at the moon in outrage. This provides a glimpse for neutral or undecided bystanders into the depths of Right Wing fanaticism while providing liberals with an amusing game to play with mentally unhinged people.

Here’s how the Muslim Test works: Take any conservative claim that they are being oppressed by evil secularists or rival religions, replace Christianity with “Islam” and see if the offended party is still quite as gung-ho. Conversely, take any demand  for special privileges, insist that they be granted to Islam as well and watch the odd conservative head explode.

Let’s try it out!!

Angry conservative: “I’m offended that those darn liberals have taken prayer out of school! I demand that we allow our children to worship in the classroom!”

The Muslim Test: “Well, OK, we’ll allow the principal, Mr. Siddiq, to lead a morning prayer to Allah.”

Angry conservative: “WHAT?! I don’t want my children worshiping another faith!”

The Muslim Test: “Well, then they can stand out in the hallway while the class prays.”

Angry conservative: “ABSOLUTELY NOT! Why should MY children be treated like outcasts?!”

See how easy this is?

Angry conservative: “You can’t build a mosque in our neighborhood! We won’t allow it!”

The Muslim Test: “I guess you if you really feel that strongly about it, it’s OK. I hope you don’t mind, but the Muslim community of Dearborn, Michigan has said the same thing about new churches.”

Angry conservative: “They can’t do that! The Constitution says that I have the right to freedom of religion! I can build a church where ever I want!”

Please don’t look for consistency from these people. You won’t find it.

Angry conservative: “The Constitution does not say anything about keeping Church and State separate! We should base our laws on the Bible!”

The Muslim Test: “Well, OK. We’ll make it illegal to eat, drink or have sex between dawn and dusk during Ramadan.”

Angry conservative: “Wait, that doesn’t sound like the Bible…”

The Muslim Test: “Obviously pork will be illegal.”

Angry conservative: “Now hold on there…”

The Muslim Test: “And state mandated circumcisions for all males.”

Angry conservative: “Wait a minute! I meant MY religion!!!”

The Muslim Test: “Of course you did…”

You should have a pretty good idea of how the Muslim Test works now. Go ahead and try it out on a few of your conservative friends!*

*The staff of Addicitinginfo.org takes no responsibility for the fallout when your conservative friends call you a terrorist sympathizer and defriend you.

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December 6, 2011 · 8:47 AM

Occupied Washington

Mother Jones

Grotesque income inequality is just a symptom of our larger political disease.

A FEW WEEKS AFTER the Occupy Wall Street protests began, we found ourselves having a random conversation with a couple of San Franciscans at a store counter. What were these kids going on about? they asked. Time was tight, the inquiry a pleasantry, really. Best to keep it simple. “Jobs, the economy, income inequality.” Well, one offered, he knew the wife of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, and according to him, the reason companies aren’t hiring is because they are worried about the extra cost of Obama’s health care reform.

Stunned silence.

Because what can you really say to that, except…let them eat cake? Stumpf made $17.6 million in 2010—672 times what the average American takes home. And say what you will about Obamacare, but for large companies that already offer health benefits, it imposes pretty much zero costs and might even save money.

But why single out Stumpf, who actually sounds fairly cuddly for a bank CEO? (His hobby is baking bread, for Christ’s sake.) Let’s turn instead to John Paulson, the billionaire hedge fund manager who unctuously admonished Occupy protesters: “Instead of vilifying our most successful businesses, we should be supporting them and encouraging them to remain in New York City and continue to grow.” Or how about the homeless-themed Halloween party thrown by an upstate New York foreclosure mill? Or the financier David Moore, who, having been dressed down by a panhandler for proffering only a dollar, took to the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages to bray about Obama’s class-warfare rhetoric: “The president’s incendiary message has now reached the streets. His complaints that rich people must ‘pay their fair share’ have now goaded some of our society’s most unfortunate.”

Continue here…

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November 1, 2011 · 4:47 AM

Coulter: ‘Our Blacks Are So Much Better Than Their Blacks’

Are Teapublicans systematically trying to turn back the clock on race relations?

Gawker

Whose blacks are the best blacks? Ann Coulter knows: “Our blacks are so much better than their blacks,” she tells Sean Hannity while discussing Herman Cain and the sexual harassment allegations he’s facing. “Our,” of course, being conservatives (and not, say, the Coulter family); “their,” meanwhile, referring to liberals. And why bother even paying attention to boring old Ann Coulter? Because she has the best blacks. Duh.

See video here…

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October 18, 2011 · 7:59 AM

Herman Cain Claimed That A ‘Liberal Court’ Killed Jesus

The news highlighting the Right’s many positions on a host of issues get more absurd every day, but this is particularly troubling, coming from a presidential candidate!

Think Progress

Daily Kos’s bernardpliers recalls a Herman Cain column from December 2010 where the GOP presidential primary candidate appears to complain that Jesus was killed by liberals.

In a column and blog post titled “The Perfect Conservative,” Cain makes the claim that Jesus was politically conservative and that he “helped the poor without one government program.” After running through a list of reasons Cain believes Jesus to be a model right-winger, the presidential contender concludes that the “liberal court” was responsible for his death:

The liberal court found Him guilty of false offences and sentenced Him to death, all because He changed the hearts and minds of men with an army of 12. His death reset the clock of time. Never before and not since has there ever been such a perfect conservative.

Cain does not explain why he finds the Roman court that sentenced and executed Jesus to be “liberal.” But his claim is baffling for all kinds of reasons, only one of which is the fact that liberals tend to be ideologically opposed to capital punishment while conservatives tend to favor it.

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