Matt Yglesias reminds us of something important, Hillary Clinton Has Always Been to Obama’s Left on Economics. This is part of Clinton’s branding campaign. And I have always accepted this. One of the narratives to come out of Bill Clinton’s presidential tenure that I think is actually true is that Hillary was the more liberal of the two. Of course, it was generally presented as, “Bill Clinton is extremely liberal but Hillary is a radical.” Neither of those statements were true, but I think they got the ordering right. I don’t think that Hillary Clinton would ever have ended welfare as we know it.

Now I understand that Hillary has always come off as something of a war hawk. But is she any worse than her husband or Barack Obama or George W Bush? More to the point, could she possibly be as bad as the Republicans running for president? The only candidate for whom a case could be made would be Rand Paul. And he has shown himself to be easily pushed towards a more arrogant and belligerent stance. And let’s not forget that George W Bush ran on an isolationist policy — he wasn’t going to get involved in any “nation building.”

But the truth is that I don’t care. Regardless of what presidential candidates say about foreign affairs and the national security state, the moment they get into office, all the generals and spooks take the new presidents aside and explain that if they don’t continue on with business as usual, there will be a terrorist attack and the president will be blamed. I’m not sure if this is done out of actual concern or in a coercive way, “Nice country you got here; it’d be a shame if something were to happen to it.” But the end result is the same.

None of this really matters to me. I am liberal right down the line, but the truth is that without economic justice, pretty much everything else is worthless. Racism wouldn’t have a tenth of its power if the nation had relative economic equality. Racism is fed by rich people convincing poor white people that their problems are due to poor black people. That doesn’t mean that I don’t fight against racism — including my own — but it does mean that I am focused on economic issues. If there were actual populists in this country — economically liberal and socially conservative — I might have some trouble knowing who to vote for. But as it is, the people who are terrible on social issues are also terrible on economic issues. When it comes to the Democrats, they tend to be good on social issues and okay on economic issues.

Yglesias noted:

Yglesias went on to note that Clinton ran to Obama’s left on economic issues in 2008 and that she was the head of the leftist wing in the Bill Clinton White House. None of this makes me want to abandon my support for Bernie Sanders. I was just going over his page at On the Issue, and there is remarkably little that I disagree with. But the bottom line is that Hillary Clinton is a perfectly acceptable Democrat. And she has potential to be a great president. People should stop saying that she’s just pretending to be liberal to get the nomination. She really is a liberal.

Everywhere in the media ecosystem over the weekend, we were seeing thoughtless repetitions of The Sunday Times article, British Spies Betrayed to Russians and Chinese. According to the article, “Russia and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services.” There is just one problem: it isn’t true. It is just yet another round of the national security operations in the US and UK making yet another push to vilify Snowden — and by extension all whistleblowers.

The article does not contain any information except that anonymous sources claim that MI6 had to pull these officers. But we do have actual evidence that pushes against this. To begin with, Snowden has always claimed that he destroyed his files after turning them over to journalists while in Hong Kong. As Glenn Greenwald noted, “How, then, could Russia have obtained Snowden’s files as the story claims — ‘his documents were encrypted but they weren’t completely secure’ — if he did not even have physical possession of them?” What’s more, Ryan Gallagher reported, “I’ve reviewed the Snowden documents and I’ve never seen anything in there naming active MI6 agents.”

The article is also filled with what can only be claimed sloppy journalism. It repeats the claim that Snowden took 1.7 million documents. The NSA has never claimed this. All they’ve said is that in the course of his work over years as a contractor, he had accessed that many documents. Gallagher responded, “I’ve seen the trove of documents; the claim or insinuation that he leaked 1.7 million is not true.”

The bigger problem is that there is no evidence that any agents have actually been moved. This seems like just another excuse to complain about Snowden — especially after public opinion has started to shift in his direction after the recent passage of the USA Freedom Act. But it is certainly possible that MI6 agents had to be moved. But there is no reason to think that this has anything to do with an intelligence failure — much less that the intelligence failure was due to Snowden. Russia and China, of course, are always working on hacking into spying activities of other countries — including each other’s. Throwing China and Russia together as some kind of unitary force should have raised flags with the original reporters — and certainly with those who have pushed the story since.

What’s notable about this is that reporters give anonymous status to government officials pushing the official government line. This is not journalism. Providing anonymity to someone who would face retribution is a different matter. As Glenn Greenwald put it, “The official accusers are being hidden by the journalists so nobody can confront them or hold them accountable when it turns out to be false.” This is truly journalism as stenography. Instead of speaking truth to power, it is obscuring truth for power.

Last week, David Cay Johnston reported, The Top 0.001 Percent Are Different From You and Me. He provided data showing that the super rich are doing vastly better than even the rich. The numbers are striking. Consider the period from 2003 through 2012. If you look at the bottom 99.9% of the top 1%, you see that their average incomes rose from $876,000 to $1.3 million. That’s an increase of 48%. But if you look at the top 0.1% of the top 1%, you see that their average incomes rose from $76 million to $161 million. That’s an increase of 111%. We know we have an inequality problem and this just shows that it is accelerating.

Johnston also went into the way that taxes are all screwed up for this group too. If we look at total federal income taxes, the more people make, the less they pay. In the top 0.001% of the top 1%, the average amount of this tax paid is just 17.6%. But the top quarter of this group plays less: just 16.6%. Meanwhile, the bottom 99.9% of the top 1% pays 23.5%. Johnston didn’t go into it, but even this is unequally divided, with those at the bottom end of the top 1% paying a lot more than those at the top. Note also that those at the very top pay effectively no payroll tax. But even those at the bottom of the top 1% pay only about a quarter of what the rest of us pay — because so much of their income is above the payroll tax cap.

What Johnston also didn’t talk about is the fractal nature of inequality. What he described about the top 1% is true of the entire income distribution: the further people get up the income scale in a relative sense, the bigger the payoff. So rising 20% in terms of your income standing will not increase your income by 20%; it will raise your income by 100% or 200% — something much larger than 20%. This is largely why no one ever feels rich: they always see people who are in their income range but who have far more money. Those people making $161 million per year know people who make a billion. So they think of themselves as “middle class.”

Johnston has done calculations that indicate even while the rich are getting richer and their tax burdens are getting smaller, the middle class is seeing its incomes decrease while its tax burdens go up. For the bottom 80% of income earners from 2003 through 2012, average incomes actually fell. But they are paying more in taxes. Consider just the payroll tax, which is 15.3% right off the top. That’s what we all pay. That tax alone is almost as much as is being paid by those who are making $161 million. When conservatives call for a flat tax, they never include the payroll tax. The idea is to make the taxes that rich people pay flat so that they pay even less.

The reason we have this situation is that the rich are well organized and are incredibly good at misdirection. They’ve got roughly half the nation thinking that the real reason the middle class is struggling so much is because poor kids are getting free school lunches. I say it all the time, but it bears repeating: this is not sustainable. Eventually, the whole system falls apart, and that hurts the rich and the poor. But I suspect the United States will fall apart in a stable way — slowly become a banana republic. In many ways, it already is. But don’t worry. Just keep looking at the fire and the projection of the big head. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain…

A report totaling hundreds of pages has been released regarding the shooting death of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who was playing with a toy gun in a public part in Cleveland. Not surprisingly, the officers involved claim that they had no choice but the kill the boy. Several things struck me while reading German Lopez’s overview at Vox, New Documents Reveal Details About Cleveland Police Shooting of 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice. It seems strange that after going through this exercise, the report isn’t more clear. And even after this, it is still questionable whether there will be an indictment. And it is almost certain that the officers will be found not guilty if they are forced to go to trial.

Much has been made of the fact that the orange tip on the pellet gun was missing. But this seems to be irrelevant. Officer Timothy Loehmann claims that he was forced to shoot Rice because the boy went for the gun that was in his waistband. So the officer wouldn’t have seen the orange tip even if it had been the there. The only thing that would have been different is that after shooting Rice, the officer would have known right away what he had done. Now that might have been useful to know because Rice didn’t die right away.

There was an FBI agent who was in the area and came to scene between four and five minutes after the shooting. He immediately started to administer first-aid. According to Lopez’s article, “The FBI agent described Loehmann and [officer Frank] Garmback as almost shell-shocked — wanting to do something but not knowing what to do.” Rice was eventually taken to the hospital where he died the following night. So in addition to driving up on Rice and quickly shooting him, the two officers did not treat him properly after the incident. I don’t know if Rice would have survived if they had, but when the FBI agent showed up, Rice was still conscious.

Loehmann said of the shooting, “He gave me no choice. He reached for the gun and there was nothing I could do.” This is the sort of thing we hear from police officers all the time. But I’m curious why it is that officers who think they might be dealing with a dangerous person with a gun are so careless about driving up to them. If Rice had been a madman with a gun, he could have just shot both the officers before they ever got out of the car. So the idea here seems to be that the police should just throw themselves into situations where wiser people would be cautious. And then at the slightest sign of trouble, they should just start firing away.

In this case, there is enormous culpability. I don’t think we can say that Loehmann is guilty of murder. But both he and Garmback seem to be guilty of reckless endangerment. And their total uselessness in getting Rice medical attention after he was shot must be seen as criminal negligence for two men who were supposedly trained to deal with situations like this. But I suspect that this is the problem. As far as I can tell, our police officers are trained to be like George Zimmerman: belligerent cowards. The slogan of the police should be changed to, “To protect and serve ourselves.” And the iconic statement should be, “Just the facts ma’am — right after I call my union rep.”

Over the weekend at Vox, Dylan Matthews wrote a great article that ought to surprise no one, but nonetheless is very important, Want to Know What Sets Bernie Sanders Apart From Hillary Clinton? Look at Their Donors. He provided a screenshot of the top donors of the two candidates. All you have to do is look at the very top donor of each because they are entirely typical of the top 20. Hillary Clinton’s top donor is Citigroup Inc, which gave $782,327. Bernie Sanders’ top donor is Machinists/Aerospace Workers Union, which gave $95,000. At the bottom of the list (number 20) is Greenberg Traurig with $273,550 for Clinton and the American Federation of Teachers with $35,567 for Sanders.

These are the top contributions in their careers since 1989. This is basically their whole careers. Clinton didn’t run for office herself until 2000. Clearly, First Lady of Arkansas and the United States are political positions — especially in her case. But these weren’t elected offices and so no one gave her campaign contributions. Sanders was mayor of Burlington from 1981 through 1989. But with a population of roughly 40,000 people (and still the biggest town in Vermont), we can assume he didn’t get big campaign contributions. His national political career started in 1990 when he ran for (and won) Vermont’s one seat in the House of Representatives.

The kinds of donors the two candidates attract really are telling. Clinton’s contributors are big banks, big law firms, and big entertainment companies. The only exceptions are Corning Inc, University of California, and EMILY’s List. Of Sanders’ 20 contributors, 19 of them are labor unions. The exception is the American Association for Justice — which could also be considered a kind of union, since it represents the interests of trial lawyers.

One shouldn’t get the idea that Sanders is beholden to labor unions, however; his biggest contributor gave just over a third of Clinton’s 20th biggest contributor. All of Sanders’ contributions combined are equal to less than Clinton’s top two contributions or almost exactly the same as her bottom four. This is representative of the fact that Clinton was Senator of New York — which takes a lot more money to run for office there. Also: she ran for president. But the amount of money that Sanders has received from organized labor is still not all that great.

The more important point here is that labor unions are not giving to Sanders to get access or to change the way that he votes. Unions know that Sanders is on their side. They want to get him elected because they know he is one of the good guys. They give to him the same way I occasionally give ten bucks to a candidate. I don’t think I’m buying anything — other than trying to get a candidate in office who agrees with me. I don’t think this is what Goldman Sachs is up to when it gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to a candidate. (That’s not to say that labor unions don’t also want access — but you need only look at Obama are card check to see how successful that is.)

This offers up a way of reforming campaign finance. It would be possible to turn Goldman Sachs campaign contributions into Frank Moraes contributions. It would just require that contributions go into a fund that was anonymous. Thus, contributions would be for the purpose of supporting someone the contributor thinks the politician will do rather than having it used as a kind of legalized bribery.

Regardless, this list provides yet more evidence that Bernie Sanders really is the kind of person who the American people would want to vote for if they voted based upon the issues. As much as organized labor has been vilified in this country, Sanders’ donors indicate that he’s looking out for the interests of the American people. Clinton’s do not. (The Republican candidates, of course, look even worse.)

I want to go back to that TAA voter I wrote about yesterday. It went down in flames, 126-302. This vote was followed by a vote on the TPA — fast track authority. It passed barely, 219-210. It was done this way with the hope that the Democrats would pass the TAA and the Republicans would pass the TPA. That’s because Democrats are generally in support of helping workers and Republicans are generally in support of helping big businesses that already make huge profits. But I find the whole thing curious with regard to what it says about the Republicans’ biggest excuse for never getting anything done.

I’m referring, of course, to the Hastert Rule. When Dennis Hastert wasn’t buggering little boys, he was busy making the House of Representatives totally unmanageable. And one of those ways was by explicitly adopting the “majority of the majority” rule. And Boehner has claimed to be tied to this “rule” as if it came down from on Mount Sinai on clay tablets. The idea is that the Speaker of the House cannot bring a bill to the floor for a vote unless the majority of his caucus is in favor of it. So there are 247 Republican seats in the House, so unless 124 Republicans are for a bill, it cannot be voted on — even if 123 Republicans and all the Democrats want it.

Except that this rule only exists as a convenience. It allows the speaker to avoid embarrassing his caucus as well as himself. When it came to the government shutdown in 2013, the Hastert Rule was thrown out — only 38% of the Republicans were in favor of reopening the government. Well, that’s not really true. Almost all of them were happy about it; they just weren’t willing to take any heat from the Republican base that has been led to believe that it can have everything if it is just willing to destroy the entire country.

When it came to the TAA, the Hastert Rule was even more out of alignment: only 36% of the Republicans voted for it. Of course, clearly the Republicans needed to pass the TAA if they want to give the great usurper Obama the right to made any kind of communist deal he wants — which they clearly do. So it is surprising that so many of them still couldn’t bring themselves to vote for it. They really are terrible at their jobs. Of course, when it comes to voting on it next week, maybe they will change their minds. It’s hard to say.

The main thing is that every time that John Boehner mentions that Hastert Rule, he should be laughed off the stage or screen or podium. There is no Hastert “Rule” — there is only a Haster Excuse. It is just a way for the Republican establishment to use its power to push its agenda. I’m not suggesting that listening to the majority of Republicans is a good idea. But to pretend that this is what John Boehner or any other Republican House Speaker is doing is just ridiculous.

There is one thing that all Republicans know: Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster that is destroying the great system that we had before — “The best healthcare in the world!” But their real problem with it is not the policy. As I’ve discussed a lot around here: Obamacare is the most conservative healthcare reform that could work. All the supposed conservative alternatives since have been brainless ideology that would have made the situation worse — things like tort “reform” (not allowing patients to sue when they’ve been harmed) and allowing insurance across state lines (destroying local control and causing a race to the bottom).

The one thing that Republicans have focused on has been the individual mandate. And that has been a winner. The truth is that no one likes it. It’s like how people like Social Security but don’t like payroll taxes. But you can’t have one without the other. The individual mandate is what allows Obamacare to work. Otherwise, people would have an incentive to put off buying insurance until they were sick. This would result in the risk pool being expensive, resulting in high insurance costs. After all this time, you probably know the drill.

But the Republican hatred of Obamacare has no bounds. And there is no rationality to it, so they hate everything in the healthcare law. Of course, if someone mentions pre-existing conditions or coverage of college students, Republicans will always claim that they too will have those things once their replacement comes out — right after America turns into a land of fairies and elves and everyone gets all the cotton candy they want. But one thing Republicans only scoff at are the measures in the law designed to lower healthcare costs. And not surprisingly, no amount of data is going to stop them from thinking that.

A recent study reported in Health Affairs highlights the way that one of those measures is working. Michael Hiltzik has the details, Here’s Another Way Obamacare Is Changing US Healthcare for the Better. One way that healthcare costs more than it should is by not properly treating a patient. If a patient comes in with chest pains, gets released with antacids, and then comes back the next day with a heart attack, it costs a lot more money than if the chest pains had been properly treated in the first place.

Obamacare deals with this issue by cutting back on Medicare reimbursements to hospitals that have too many of these kinds of re-admissions. This is an especially big deal because hospitals are probably the single most dangerous place to be in terms of getting a disease. So there really is a lot that hospitals can do to improve the situation. The authors of the study looked at these re-admission rates and found that Obamacare really was changing behavior and reducing rates. Hooray!

This didn’t stop Paul Ryan — now chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee — from saying this week, “The whole law’s a lemon.” But of course he would. For him, like all Republicans, the complete catastrophe of Obamacare is definitional. It’s interesting to contrast this with Medicare Part D. Many Democrats were against it. But after it was in effect and working as it was supposed to, the Democrats changed their position. But such open mindedness is asking far too much from Republicans.