Oakland, California? The city that elected Ron Dellums and Jerry Brown Mayor, the city represented by Barbara Lee, one of the most liberal members of Congress decides to go all Richard Dailey on the Occupy Wall St. rabble?

Ok then.

Police said they fired the tear gas on protesters in Oakland, California, after the crowd threw paint and other objects at officers.

The crowd of about 500 people defied calls to leave an area of downtown Oakland on Tuesday, according to police. Protesters had camped for weeks in several areas in the city, including near City Hall, police said.

...

"There were a series of safety conditions, including numerous reports of fighting, assault and threatening/intimidating behavior" at the camp, police said in a statement. Medical responders could not get to the scene to provide medical care on at least two occasions, and fire and police also could not get through.

"Sanitation conditions worsened with frequent instances of public urination and defecation, as well as improper food storage," the police statement said. "The existing rodent problem in the park was exacerbated, and authorities were unable to control it because of the campers' presence. Graffiti, litter and vandalism also posed problems, police said.

Atlanta also cleaned out their Obamaville (I think it was Andy who coined that term).

This is the movement the Democrats have pinned their hopes on?

Yeah, good luck with that.

Remember when tea party rally were shut down by force because of sanitation issues? Good times, good times.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:34 AM | Comments (376)
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Meet former Ohio Congressman Steve Driehaus, a whiny sore loser who makes Lisa Murkowski look like a principled candidate who accepts the wishes of the voters.

Charging that its activities contributed to his defeat and thus to his "loss of livelihood," Driehaus is suing the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that supports pro-life candidates for Congress and which has been one of the leading and most effective organizations involved in the fight to cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood.

During the 2010 elections the Susan B. Anthony List engaged in a campaign to identify and call out a group of allegedly anti-abortion-rights members of Congress who provided the margin that allowed President Barack Obama's reform of the nation's healthcare system to get through the U.S. House of Representatives. The Susan B. Anthony List said their vote in favor of the law, which did not include any pro-life protections, amounted to a betrayal of their pro-life principles.

According to Driehaus, who was one of that group, what the Susan B. Anthony List said in its public communications amounted to a malicious lie that contributed to his defeat.

Now, you'd think a case like this would be kicked out of court so fast it would make Driehaus' head spin but you'd be wrong. You see the judge in this case, Timothy Black, an Obama appointee, has apparently never heard of the First Amendment. What Black has heard of is Planned Parenthood. He was President of their local affiliate in Cincinnati. Based on that one might think Black has some strong opinions on abortion and abortion opponents.

So we have a former Congressman who apparently thinks it's actionable to criticize an elected official and that he has some sort of right to draw a paycheck from the federal government. We also have an incompetent federal judge who seems unfamiliar with the protections established well over 200 years ago for political speech in this country or the idea of judicial conflicts of interest.

What do Driehaus and Black have in common? They are Democrats. Elections matter. So much so that Democrats are willing to use the law to punish those who don't vote the "right" way.

Added: John B. in the comments makes a good point in the comments.

They're not using the law -- they are inventing it out of whole cloth.

Thanks to Krakatoa for the heads up on the story.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:52 AM | Comments (100)
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The China house of cards may be starting to collapse. I've been expecting it for a while now, but I suspect it will confound a lot of the China-boosters out there (Thomas Friedman, please come to the white courtesy phone).

What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Global indebtedness, according to Zoakos, has actually increased by 17 percent since the beginning of 2008. Nations have enacted generous bailout and stimulus programs while growth has averaged an anemic 1.2 percent.

Why a Eurozone meltdown poses grave dangers for US Treasury market.

Cloudy, With a Chance of Armageddon.

What we are witnessing now is a very public demonstration of the limits of government led economic growth. Europe's debt crisis may have been accelerated by the US sub-prime debacle but it is a result of a welfare state that has morphed from social safety net into communal hammock. Simply papering over the losses will not solve the deeper issue of how to create growth with a government that consumes over half of GDP.

Our future population challenge: think Children of Men, not Harry HarrisonÂ’s Make Room! Make Room!.

Obama is engaged in another hallowed Democratic tradition he learned in Illinois: buying votes.

FYI: the Wolfson prize is £250,000, so if you’re looking for some extra cash....

What happens to an economy when it has essentially zero per capita GDP growth for a decade or more? Well, weÂ’re in the process of finding out, both here and in Europe.

And the next Euro domino to fall is...Italy! IÂ’m surprised. I thought Spain would fall over before Italy did. But then, the Med Eurozone countries are in a race to see who collapses first at this point.

I suspect that Greece will still win that race, by the way. In Greece, the bank-run may have commenced in earnest.

Should the Eurozone just let Greece go?

The problem with going down this route and then failing is that eurozone leaders will spend a lot of emotional, political and actual capital that they should be spending on preparing for a Greek default. Every euro they take out of taxpayer pockets now is one less available for financing a transition to default. Every bit of political strong-arming or payoff for votes now makes selling the steps needed for an orderly default that much harder. Every bit of trust and goodwill burned now is that much less available for a default solution.

Larry Summers: “Economic war criminal”? No, just an idiot. Our government is full of them.

Stagnationism: an even more-dismal dismal science.

California's economic suicide. I don't know that I'd call it a suicide: suicides intend to kill themselves. Californians are more like drug addicts -- they think they will escape the fate of most other addicts without having to give up their drug of choice. It will end badly, as most addictions do.

A flat tax is bad because...well, because shrinking the size of the government is just unthinkable.

The biggest downside is that by sharply reducing the rates collected from the highest earners, it would force the lower and middle classes to cover more of the cost of government than under the current system of graduated rates.

Remember how the Chevy Cruze was supposed to revitalize GM's commuter-car sector in the same way that the Volt was supposed to stake a claim in the hybrid/electric market? Well...things aren't looking so good for Government Motors or the Cruze. It's almost as if the government bailout of a failed auto-making firm was a huge mistake.

UPDATE 1: Your healthcare costs in retirement are apt to cost a lot more than you expected when you were still working. So plan and save accordingly.

UPDATE 2: A tale of two cities. (Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, to be precise.)

UPDATE 3: Pension DOOM...even for the Church.
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Posted by: Monty at 04:53 AM | Comments (115)
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Still looking good for Gov. Perry. The numbers are out on his tax plan.

Using static analysis, the Perry Plan would raise $23.8 trillion from 2014-2020, or $4.7 trillion less than the CBO baseline of $28.5 trillion over that span. Using dynamic analysis that assumes growth effects from the redesigned tax code, the Perry Plan would raise $26.8 trillion, or $1.7 trillion less than CBO baseline.

Keep in mind the CBO baseline includes on-time expiration of the Bush tax cuts, which I doubt is actually going to happen.

I was more impressed by the GDP projection. Under Perry's plan, the economy would be $3.5 trillion bigger than under the CBO's estimate of current growth.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:29 AM | Comments (101)
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It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:55 AM | Comments (82)
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Why Your Future Is Probably Red

As in red state that is. When you compare the current and long-term fiscal conditions among the states, it's clear that the center of gravity for any future growth will be in the red zones. So the odds are good that you - or your children - will eventually end up moving to the South or some other reddish area.

I guess now is as good a time as any to start coming to terms with your our red state destiny.

CDR Salamander: The South I Know

I have lived up North. I have lived in California. The residents always looked at me funny when I told them that race relations are better in the old Confederacy.

The economics though, are clear. So is the culture - and our nation is voting with its feet.

Lee Habeeb: Southern Like Me
Here self-described Jersey boy Habeeb explains why he moved to Mississippi:

Where there are plants and jobs, people move. And Americans have been moving south from the rust belt and industrial North for decades. In 1960, Detroit had a population of 1,850,000. Today, it has 720,000. Houston is now larger than Detroit, Atlanta is larger than Boston, and Dallas is larger than San Francisco.

Those numbers reflect a shift in political power. Texas picked up four seats in the House of Representatives this past year, while Ohio and New York lost two. Georgia and South Carolina picked up a seat, while New Jersey and Michigan lost one.

What caused this migration of capital — the human, industrial, and political varieties? Ask transplanted business owners and they’ll tell you they like investing in states where union bosses and trial lawyers don’t run the show, and where tax burdens are low. They also want a work force that is affordable and well-trained. And that doesn’t see them as the enemy.

In short, policy matters. So, too, does culture.

And Richard Florida of the Atlantic argues that the South isn't just growing on low wage jobs - it's now a hotbed of high tech startups:

And while the level of venture investment in the South-Central states (including Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Louisiana) remains low relatively speaking, the region saw a staggering 540-percent growth between 2005 and 2010, the largest increase across any region of the country by far. Overall, roughly one in ten of the nation's venture investment dollars are spent in the South.

...But high-tech has spread quite far into and throughout the South. Greater Dallas ranks sixth, putting it ahead of San Francisco, San Diego, New York and Chicago. And 10 Southern metros number among the top 50 (that's one in five on the Milken list, which includes Canada)

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:59 PM | Comments (578)
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Famous last words of a SCOAMF:

But last week, we had a separate vote on a part of the jobs bill that would put 400,000 teachers, firefighters and police officers back on the job, paid for by asking people who make more than $1 million to pay one-half of 1 percent in additional taxes. For somebody making $1.1 million a year, thatÂ’s an extra $500. Five hundred bucks. And with that, we could have saved 400,000 jobs.

Most people making more than $1 million, if you talk to them, theyÂ’ll say, IÂ’m willing to pay $500 extra to help the county. TheyÂ’re patriots. They believe weÂ’re all in this thing together. But all the Republicans in the Senate said no. (Emphasis added).

Occidental? Columbia? Hah-vahd?

To which one of these fine institutions of higher learning do we owe our gratitude for foisting upon the nation a stuttering clustef*ck of a math failure? Or maybe we should spread the wealth and just blame them all, along with his typical white bank vice-president grandmother.

With apologies for the "no math" rule here at the HQ: $1,100,000 x 0.5% = $5,500*

$5,500. Not $500. But what's an order of magnitude between friends now that trillion is the new billion?

But it gets worse:

But even if the president meant to say $5,500, his math continues to pose some challenges. According to the IRS, a total of 235,413 taxpayers earned more than $1 million last year. If each “was willing to pay $[5,]500 extra to help the country,” that would generate only $1.3 billion in revenue — approximately what the federal government spends every three hours. Wouldn’t it be just as patriotic for President Obama to turn off the federal spigot for three hours and dedicate the savings to funding those 400,000 jobs?

... not to mention all the rapes that would be prevented.

Speaking of which, it looks like ol' Slow Joe had the same talking point. If he'd have given them enough detail, I'm sure one of the 4th graders would've called him on it.

* Update: It could be that the half-percent tax only applies to the amount in excess of $1 million, so the $500 in his example would be right (yet still disingenuous). It just exacerbates the second point in that we're not talking about a whole lot of dough here in comparison to what the government spends.

Posted by: andy at 04:38 PM | Comments (285)
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Things are shaking out at the top of the scale. Not so much on the bottom.

Occupying the Red Zone:

scott: 61
Muletrain 2016: 61
Aristomenes from da 54301: 60
The Plague: 59

Occupying Baskin Robbins:

DrewM: 54
Gabe: 53
rd brewer: 51
CDR M: 50
Ben: 49
Andy: 49
DiT: 46
Russ in Winterset: 45

Thanks to STATZGUYS Ben and CDR M

Incidentally, that Herman Cain ad from last night? It's kinda growin on me.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:19 PM | Comments (25)
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Steven Weber is a moron of the highest caliber. Formerly an actor turned adult writer of juvenalia, he has declared, if I remember right, that his trusty sixth-grade Words for Big Kids! thesaurus is his co-author in his screeds.

He really thinks that just sticking in random passive-vocabulary word-substitutions cribbed from a thesaurus is "good writing."

Anyway, this idiot, who, by the way, is in as many movies and tv shows as I am, is back, and dumb as ever.

The scale of Right Wing sociopolitical sabotage necessitates a Nuremberg-scale trial for all the corporate agents and treasonous capitalisto-fascist architects of our democracy's current and most pressing misery. From the blatant Republican doublespeak emanating from think-tank sponsored word doctors to the outright obstruction and lies expectorated by Republican congressional representatives and senators, the very concept of governance can only be considered once the culprits are removed. Driven to real madness by unadulterated greed they have embraced an ideology, the success of which hinges upon the very ruin of this nation.

I tried to find the article in which he confessed that he just opened up his thesaurus and went wild, and I actually wound up finding this old post of mine about him.

And then... well, like the headline was exactly like the one I just wrote, as well most of the points I was going to make.

So, just check this old post. I wrote a poem there in collaboration with Steven Weber, in which I used half his actual quotes from Huffington Post screeds, and half stuff I made up from Lord of the Rings and Iron Maiden songs, to make some kind of collaborative mindpoem.

Posted by: Ace at 01:28 PM | Comments (458)
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It should be noted in both occasions where birtherism came up, it was of course the media bringing it up.

Further, Perry's fuller quote seems to show he's not very serious.

Although, as he says: Show us your transcripts.

RICK PERRY: Well, look, I haven’t– I haven’t seen his– I haven’t seen his grades. My grades ended up on the front page of the newspaper. So, let’s– you know, if we’re going to show stuff, let’s show stuff. So. But, look, that’s all a distraction. I mean, I get it. I’m– I’m really not worried about the President’s birth certificate. It’s fun to– to poke and add him a little bit and say hey, how about– let’s see your grades and your birth certificate.

Bryan Preston notes that Perry followed up with an answer the MBM didn't like, so they didn't report it.

JOHN HARWOOD: Well so–

RICK PERRY: But hereÂ’s whatÂ’s really serious. Is we got people sitting around watching this interview while the president has killed 2 and a half million jobs. ThatÂ’s serious. And thatÂ’s what we got to better get right.

So Perry himself indicated that the birth certificate question was not, in fact, "really serious." In fact, he had said so the previous day as well.

The MBM tries yet again to get him to talk about it, and this time Perry wisely shuts him up.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:29 PM | Comments (252)
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