This is via The Rachel Maddow Show: the very white male House Republican leadership.

Longtime reader and author James McCollough sent me to an amazing article at AlterNet by Laura Gottesdiener, A Year in Jail for Not Believing in God? How Kentucky Is Persecuting Atheists. I don’t think of myself as an atheist especially; although I do self-identify as one, I think it gives an entirely incorrect idea of where I stand on matters spiritual. But this article is an outrage and shows one reason why I have no respect for the conservative Christian movement in this country.

The Kentucky law states that their Homeland Security building must have plaques in front of it claiming how we are only really secure thanks to God. The plaques read in part, “The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.” And if some bureaucrat doesn’t install these plaques, he faces up to a year in jail. This law was taken to the Kentucky state Supreme Court, which upheld it.

This law seems clearly unconstitutional. But frankly, I’m not at all sure that the current US Supreme Court would agree. At this point, we seem to have 4 political hacks on the court who might as well have been elected by the Tea Party. One thing is for sure: if this case does go to the US Supreme Court, some of the justices will vote to uphold. And that is a sad testament to the state of our “justice” system.

What I’m most interested in here is the triviality of the conception of the people who are behind this law. The idea here is of a God as some supreme being. Yet even the most trivial understanding of theology indicates that God can’t be just another thing. If that were the case then it wouldn’t be a god at all, but rather just a being more powerful than we are. An example would be the way we relate to ants: we have almost unlimited power over ants, but we certainly aren’t the reason that ants exist.

I understand that for many people, that last bit was pretty theoretical and metaphysical, so let me take a big step back into reality. The idea of a “personal god” is not only stupid, it is repellent. What it says is people always deserve their suffering. The poor deserve to be poor. The rich deserve to be rich. To state the same thing in a way that relates to our recent elections: rape victims deserve the babies of their rapists.

Consider earthquakes. Few people die as a result of them in the United States, but in 2010, over 300,000 Haitians died as a result of just one. (The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California was the same size and killed 63 people—most from the collapse of a single road: the Cypress Structure.) If God took a personal interest in the lives of humans, how could he possibly allow this? Is it that Americans are just more moral than Haitians? Or is it more likely that in the United States we have wealth and building codes that protect us? The Kentucky Homeland Security building exists as a kind of tribute to the more than 3,000 people who died on 11 September 2001. Surely many of those people were righteous. God did not save them because God, regardless of what it is, does not do that kind of thing.

So you can take your pick of reasons to be appalled by the Kentucky entire government: executive, legislative, and judicial. But it all comes down to the same thing: Kentucky is embarrassing the rest of the nation. They are also embarrassing believers and spiritual seekers in general. And all for what? To make a statement against atheists? And this is in response to an attack by a group very much like themselves: ignorant true believers in the God of their fathers? Each day I despair more for our nation.

This morning Paul Krugman posted an article, The Stiffs and the Players. This is a reference to a speech by Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. In it, he explains to Bud what they are working for. He says that Bud doesn’t want to be some Well Street working stiff making $400,000 per year and flying first class. Bud should want to be rich enough to own his own jet—to be rich enough to not waste time.

Krugman mentions this in reference to the idea by Nate Silver and Josh Marshall that what the Republicans are trying to do in the budget negotiations is to protect the very wealthy at the expense of the “simply” wealthy. In other words: protect the jet owners at the expense of the first class travelers. And he presents a graph that demonstrates this.

On one level, I don’t particularly care: I’m not shedding any tears for any of these people. On another level, this is just wrong. But it is nothing new. For a long time, I’ve been talking about the fact that with our tax system we fuck the “simply” wealthy compared to the very wealthy. Someone who makes about a half million dollars per year probably pays around 30% in federal income taxes. But someone who makes $20 million pays only 15%.

You would think that this would create a class war between these two groups, but for whatever reason it doesn’t. I think a lot of it is that the rich are just as ignorant as anyone else. The caller to Sam Seder’s show is a good example. I suspect that this kind of guy votes reliably Republican, even while the party consistently puts his interests aside for the interests of the really wealthy.

As I’ve said before, I currently think it would be good to create two more marginal tax rates. For the rate above $250k up to $500k: 40%. For $500k up to $1m: 45%. And for income over $1 million: 50%. And as usual, bring the Social Security tax cap way up: $250k or higher. And finally, raise the capital gains rate up to the “work for a living” rate, or at least implement something like the Buffett Rule or a new AMT.

This is not only good for our economy and our society, it is much more fair to the “simply” rich. True: it does require that they pay more in taxes. But this is about shared sacrifice—what these kinds of people are always calling for. Well, this is what true shared sacrifice looks like. Shared sacrifice is not the rich (who’ve gained 93% of the economic gains of the recovery) paying for half of the budget shortfall. This is only shared sacrifice in the entitled minds of the wealthy. The poor and middle class who have seen almost no gains during the last 30 years of productivity gains have already paid enough. It is time for the rich to pay their fair share. And that necessarily means that the very wealthy much pay a lot more.

Tonight on The Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell made the case that the reason that Obama won the election was that he was an outstanding candidate. Karen Finney and David Corn backed him up. I like all of these pundits, but they are wrong. Obama was certainly a very good candidate. But it’s the turnout, stupid.

The reason that Obama won is that far more Democrats came out to vote than Republicans. Obama won because the policies of the Democratic Party appeal to the poor and middle class. It’s simple demographics. The question is, how do we get these people to come out and vote in 2014?

All we have to remember is this: if there’s high turnout, we win. We don’t need great candidates, except in as far as they goose turnout.

I think of myself as kind of public nuance rather than a stalker. And no one really seems to care. For example, Brad DeLong continues to ignore my helpful suggestion on cleaning up his very ugly blog. And Corey Robin (who is more than willing to correspond with me about history and politics) is silent on the important issue of font color contrast and it relevance to computer accessibility.

The case of Reed Richardson is an interesting one. He has been exceptionally good natured about my pestering. (What do you expect? Just look at his picture!) As best as I can tell, he was once an intern working with Eric Alterman at The Nation. Alterman is the writer of smart and learned liberal books that start with the letter “W” (which is “M” depending upon how you look at it). Thus far, he’s used four:

• Who Speaks for America?
• What Liberal Media?
• When Presidents Lie
• Why We’re Liberals

His last book was The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama. I was sad that he didn’t call it Where We’ve Come From: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama. Then he would have had a matched set!

I’ve been reading Eric Alterman for years. And like it is with anyone you read a lot, I’ve gotten kind of used to what his take is on any given subject. That doesn’t mean he isn’t interesting to read, but I don’t look forward to his articles every week the way I used to. But luckily, Alterman has a special weapon: his former intern Reed F. Richardson.

Each week (but not last week, to my great disappointment), Eric Alterman ends his blog post with, “And now here’s Reed.” Normally, they work together so that they discuss different aspects of the same issue. This adds a great deal to the coverage—especially given that Richardson has a distinct take on these things. Plus, he isn’t quite so gloomy as Alterman.

Anyway, over the last few months I’ve bugged both of these guys. Most recently, I requested that they put in an anchor link to Richardson’s articles, because I find myself more often linking to them than to Alterman’s articles. Eventually, the link was set up, even though it is often broken due to The Nation’s clumsy advertising code. But the one thing I never got, was a picture of Richardson that I could use in articles. So I created an image of a yellow smiley face with the caption, “Reed F. Richardson: Artist’s Rendering.” In fact, the number one result on Google is this exact image.

Last week, Richardson finally set up a Twitter account. Of course, there was no image. It was the usual twitter egg image. So I tweeted:

I figured that subtlety wasn’t working, so I’d just request the image. And he obliged. But I have to say, it is a grainy, low resolution image. But I guess it is better than the smiley face. Barely. (Admit it though: he does have a big smile. That artist’s rendering wasn’t bad. Although he isn’t quite so yellow.)

This is amazing. I can’t say that I blame them, but Fox News quickly got rid of Thomas Ricks after he blasted the network over its Benghazi coverage. Jon Scott interviewed Ricks. He is what Fox News claims is a “straight news reporters.” I’ve always felt that these were the most dangerous people on the network because they deceive the audience in much more subtle ways—in particular, by skewing what they choose to cover. This is clear in the topic of this segment: who else is covering the supposed Benghazi scandal? And now that there is little to report since John McCain has realized that he’s only embarrassing himself, Fox is covering the fact that there isn’t anything to cover.

Ricks was on for less than one minute. In that time, he does manage to provide answers to two questions, but it is all about the same thing: why are McCain and the others cooling off on what Fox News has trumped up to be a bigger scandal than Watergate? Ricks replies:

Scott asks how Ricks can call the deaths of four government personnel “hype.” Rick responds with the question, “How many security contractors died in Iraq, do you know?” Scott responds that he does not know, which was kind of nice when you consider how O’Reilly or Hannity would have responded. Ricks continues:

I’ve always felt that Thomas Ricks was a fairly conservative guy. I still think so. But he certainly isn’t a Republican Party hack. As a result, such a criticism of Fox News has a lot more weight. But Ricks wasn’t on screen for long enough for anyone to notice other than the host and some executive producer who was probably screening in Scott’s ear, “Get him off!”

Anyway, watch it. It is a thing to behold.

I just had oral surgery, so even though I have much on my mind that I’d like to write about, I probably won’t until tonight at least.

In the mean time, here is a picture of a happy lamb courtesy of Cute Overload:

The fucktards at Liberty University are trying another attack on the ACA (Obamacare). Actually, this is an old case, but it is now going forward. The college has two problems with the healthcare reform law: employer mandate and birth control coverage. This is a scattershot approach to destroying legislation that they don’t like. But let’s look at this a little more closely.

Liberty University is the pretend college founded by Jerry Falwell in 1971. It was originally called “Lynchburg Baptist College” and slowly migrated to its current name. And that name is telling. Modern American Christianity has little to do with Christ and lots to do with conservative politics. Consider, for example, Patrick Henry College—you know, “Give me liberty or give me death”? These groups are big on the sort of liberty they think people wanted in the late 18th century: the liberty to force everyone to do as they say.

Kill the Pill

The attack on the birth control mandate in the ACA doesn’t make any sense. No employer will be paying for this. But it is the part of the law that is likely to get the most interests from Scalia and Alito. I have long said that if the right ever managed to outlaw abortion, they would next work on banning birth control. This is obvious now. As the conversion about abortion moves to whether rape victims ought to be allowed one, those on the leading edges of “liberty” are already calling for birth control bans.

The official line from Baptists is that they think birth control is fine as long as it prevents conception. Thus, they’re against using hormonal birth control: the pill. The problem here is that the pill works in two ways: it stops the egg from becoming fertilized and if it does get fertilized, it makes it harder for the egg to get implanted in the womb. There is no killing of fertilized eggs here. Basically, the pill works the way that condoms do. Having a problem with one but not the other shows a shocking lack of understanding of how the pill works.

Employer Mandate

The attack on the employer mandate shows the “good” Christians at Liberty University to be the hypocrites they are. It is one thing for Christian groups to claim that the government shouldn’t be in the “giving a shit about people” business because that’s their own gig. But a Christian college claiming that they don’t want to provide healthcare for their own employees?

I’m sure that the people at Liberty College would argue that they have no problem providing healthcare. They would say that they already do provide healthcare for most of their employees. It is just that the government shouldn’t dictate their behavior. But if that is the case, why the fuss? Does Liberty University really plan to keep their options open in the event of bad economic times? Do they really admit that God would do that to them? And even if He did, wouldn’t he expect them to do the right thing and continue to provide healthcare and close the budget gap some other way, like lowering the university president’s salary?

All of the complaints I’ve heard from conservative business owners sound very immature to me. “You’re not the boss of me!” And, “You can’t tell me what to do!” Coming from the likes of Papa John’s, this is about par for the course. But coming from supposed Christians? It’s just awful.

You all know how much I admire reasonable Republicans. Or at least, you know how much I would admire them if they existed. For the record: any Republican who is reasonable has already become a Democrat. The people like David Frum are not reasonable. This is very simple, people! “Not crazy” does not mean “reasonable.” Instead, “not crazy” means less— perhaps, “reasonable fascist.”

Ross Douthat is a supposed reasonable Republican. How do I know? He’s a Republican and he is sometimes on Up with Chris Hayes. But unlike Josh Barro, who often makes a lot of sense, Douthat just annoys me. In fact, what most annoys me is that he is a Catholic, yet doesn’t evidence much in terms of Christian compassion. Also, he doesn’t write nearly as well as Garry Wills.

Most recently, Douthat tells us about, Our Enemy, the Payroll Tax. It’s a bit weird, because he is making sense but in the cause of evil. He says we should turn Social Security into a plain old-fashioned tax.

Yes! We should do that! If we did that, we could get rid of the Social Security cap. The problem with the way it is now is that people think of it as an insurance program: the more you pay in, the more you get out. And this justifies billionaires paying in a pittance, because they will only get what they consider a pittance out. But if Social Security is just a tax like any other, there is no justification for this most regressive of taxes. In fact, we might even be able to make it a little progressive. But for the time, making Social Security a flat tax would be a huge improvement. (And that ought to give you some idea of how awful the system is today.)

Douthat isn’t for turning Social Security into a regular tax for this reason. He thinks that by making it a regular tax, Social Security will become just another social safety net program. And this will make it easier to cut or even destroy. (Do you see what I’m saying about Douthat’s Catholicism? Forcing the old into poverty just doesn’t strike me as Christ like.)

I think Douthat is completely misreading the situation. Social Security is not sacrosanct because people think of it as an insurance program. It is sacrosanct because it is used by the elderly, and the elderly vote. So this is a fight that I welcome. Let’s make Social Security and Medicare programs like any others. Let’s soak the rich (as much as we are soaking everyone else). And let’s have this fight. I’m certain the forces of evil (Douthat leading his modern Inquisition torturers) will lose.

Bring it on.

Will sent me to this:

A couple of weeks ago, my father asked me about a 60 Minutes segment in which some manufacturing executive complained that he couldn’t find skilled workers who knew trigonometry. My father didn’t know exactly what trigonometry was, but it seemed like some advanced math. So he was confused why a job that required advanced math only paid $12 per hour. I agreed with him. Really, if such works are in demand yet scarce, surely the solution is to raise the rate of pay.

I explained to my father—who is naive in many ways—that this was an old story. The executives should be honest and say, “We can’t find high skilled workers for low skilled pay.” The truth must be that they don’t really want to hire people—they just want to complain. The truth is that if they were truly desperate for workers, they would hire smart people and train them—like companies used to.

Last week, Adam Davidson wrote a very interesting article at the New York Times, Skills Don’t Pay the Bills. He talks about the fact that employers are lying about the “skill shortage.” This is embarrassing:

Note that Isbister doesn’t just pay poorly.[1] Of the qualified people he found, he fired 60% of them because he doesn’t abide strict work rules. What could that mean? State mandated breaks? Occupational safety? I don’t know, but it is clear that there are a lot more reasons to not work for Isbister than the poor pay. But I don’t want to make too big an issue of this. Eric Isbister is just a good example of the assholes who head America’s businesses.

Davidson notes a very damaging aspect of all this fake talk of a skills gap: it is creating a real skills gap. Young people who go to school to get these vaunted in-demand skills quickly learn that they are qualified to take jobs that pay no more than McDonald’s. And so they leave the profession for something that will pay their bills—or at least where they don’t have to deal with assholes like Eric Isbister. Currently, highly skilled manufacturing workers are old and will soon retire from jobs that pay reasonable salaries. Who will be around to take these jobs? Will these employers go the way of GenMet and lower their wages in the hope that that will draw the workers in?

[1] Given that Isbister is so cavalier about finding workers, I can see how he might think of himself as the mythical job creator. In his case, he clearly doesn’t care about maximizing the amount of product he can produce. He just staffs his factory with people he considers deserving. Of course, this makes him a very bad businessman. And that makes him very bad for job creation. If he just tried to maximize profits, he would employ more people. So Eric Isbister isn’t just an asshole, he’s also an idiot.

As I reported before, last weekend, I went to see Lincoln. It was a surprisingly good film. My only real problem with it is that the ending doesn’t particularly work. Or perhaps more accurately, the film goes on too long. It is, after all, about the passage of the 13th Amendment. (In fact, I thought that the title 13th would have been better than Lincoln.) The truth is that although Lincoln is very important in the film, the story is not specifically about him.

The character who most stands out is then Speaker of the House, Thaddeus Stevens. He is one of these men who pepper American history by being so far ahead of their times that they would be considered radical today. My favorite example is Thomas Paine—the atheistic socialist who is probably more important to the founding of this country than any other single man. Stevens was equally radical. Many of their beliefs would today be dismissed as non-starters—just as they were in his own time.

I’m inclined not to tell you too much about the man, because I think everyone should go out and see the movie. I don’t want to ruin any of the film’s twists and turns. But to give you some idea of the main, here is a bit from Wikipedia:

All that stuff about equality and justice would certainly put him well to the left of President Obama, just as it did so 150 years ago under President Lincoln.

Since his death, most portrayals of Stevens have not been kind. This is not just in things like D. W. Griffith’s racist visual screed The Birth of a Nation. Historians have generally portrayed him as kind of an arrogant asshole who wanted to stick it to the south. To a large extent, I can’t blame the man. When you are on the right side of one the greatest wrongs of your nation, I think a bit of arrogance is forgivable. And if I had been around at the time, I’m not sure I would ever have been able to forgive the south.

But I don’t know that much about him. I just got Hans L. Trefousse’s Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. I’m very much looking forward to the book. Lincoln has always been kind of a disappointment as a hero. Although enlightened by the mores of his time, he was still a racist. His proposal to create a South American colony for former slaves still strikes me as vile. Just the same, I expect to find Stevens more of a mixed bag than Paine. While Paine never had the curse of power to soil his character, I’m afraid that Stevens did. But I’ve never expected perfection from my heroes.

Again: go see Lincoln; it will be good for your soul. The film has four intertwined stories that would all be worthy of their own books. The story of Thaddeus Stevens is but one.

Afterword

Here is Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens: