Rabig Tea Bagger Tenthers on Senate Judiciary Committee

[boutons_deux]

Senate Republicans Stack Judiciary Committee With Two More Constitutional Extremists (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/04/1397541/senate-republicans-stack-judiciary-committee-with-two-more-constitutional-extremists/)
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is no stranger to conspiracy theories; he published an article last year claiming that the United Nations and George Soros are at the head of a global conspiracy to eliminate the game of golf (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/16/446352/tx-sen-candidate-ted-cruz-spouts-paranoid-fantasy-about-united-nationsgeorge-soros-conspiracy-to-eliminate-golf/). (Seriously. We aren’t making this up (http://www.tedcruz.org/blog/2012/01/20/stop-agenda-21-the-constitution-should-be-our-only-%E2%80%9Cagenda-%E2%80%9D/).) So his understanding of the Constitution is similarly idiosyncratic. As head of a conservative think tank’s Tenth Amendment project, Cruz co-authored an unconstitutional plan to nullify the Affordable Care Act (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2010/12/04/176974/interstate-compact/) — claiming that two states can ignore the Constitution and federal law simply by joining together in such lawlessness.

iser (http://thinkprogress.org/author/ian-m/) on Jan 4, 2013 at 5:15 pm
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/cruz-and-flake-300x206.jpg

Two years ago, when Senate Republicans needed to fill a vacant seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, they tapped Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) — a senator who believes that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution (http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/01/27/141186/gop-child-labor/). This year, they needed to fill two seats on the Senate body responsible for overseeing the Constitution. Once again, Senate Republicans chose to fill these seats with senators who believe the Constitution in nothing more than a block of clay (http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2013/01/tea-party-backed-cruz-joins-senate-judiciary-committee.html) that can be formed into whatever the Tea Party wants it to say.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is no stranger to conspiracy theories; he published an article last year claiming that the United Nations and George Soros are at the head of a global conspiracy to eliminate the game of golf (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/16/446352/tx-sen-candidate-ted-cruz-spouts-paranoid-fantasy-about-united-nationsgeorge-soros-conspiracy-to-eliminate-golf/). (Seriously. We aren’t making this up (http://www.tedcruz.org/blog/2012/01/20/stop-agenda-21-the-constitution-should-be-our-only-%E2%80%9Cagenda-%E2%80%9D/).) So his understanding of the Constitution is similarly idiosyncratic. As head of a conservative think tank’s Tenth Amendment project, Cruz co-authored an unconstitutional plan to nullify the Affordable Care Act (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2010/12/04/176974/interstate-compact/) — claiming that two states can ignore the Constitution and federal law simply by joining together in such lawlessness.

Cruz is among the most skilled attorneys in the country, but he devoted his outsized talents to reshaping the Constitution into his own far right image. His first campaign ad touted his successful work to help Texas kill a Mexican national in violation of America’s treaty obligations (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/22/449906/ted-cruz-vote-for-me-because-i-helped-execute-an-illegal-alien/), and he believed in using lawsuits to tear down the health care safety net long before the Affordable Care Act’s opponents brought a completely meritless legal theory to the Supreme Court (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/news/2012/03/07/11260/not-even-close/) and nearly convinced the entire conservative bloc to sign onto it in its entirety. Cruz’s campaign touted his attempt to “to strike down portions of the Medicare Prescription Drug program (http://www.tedcruz.org/proven-record/fighting-for-americas-free-market-economy/) as an unconstitutional intrusion in the sovereign authority of the States.” Although Cruz is more careful in his rhetoric than Sen. Lee, perhaps the most damning aspect of Cruz’s record is the staunch opponent of national child labor laws and Medicare’s endorsement of Cruz’s constitutional vision (http://www.tedcruz.org/proven-record/fighting-for-americas-free-market-economy/). In Lee’s words, “Ted is one of our nation’s leading defenders of the Tenth Amendment. He is a champion for limiting the power, size, and spending of the federal government.”

Cruz is joined on the Judiciary Committee by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who actually thinks his own election to the Senate should be unconstitutional. Flake endorsed repealing the Seventeenth Amendment (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/13/681881/six-top-republicans-who-think-voters-should-not-be-able-to-choose-their-own-senators/), which replaced a system that led to “rampant and blatant corruption, letting corporations and other moneyed interests effectively buy U.S. Senators,” with our current system — electing senators.

Like Cruz, Flake also embraced rethinking the Tenth Amendment as a tool to impose Tea Party values on the country long before the Tea Party even existed. In 2000, Flake signed a position statement claiming that the Departments of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development, in addition to the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities, “should be abolished, per the tenth amendment of the US Constitution.” For the record, nothing in the Tenth Amendment (http://prospect.org/article/rally-round-true-constitution-0) renders any of these things unconstitutional.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/04/1397541/senate-republicans-stack-judiciary-committee-with-two-more-constitutional-extremists/

[boutons_deux]

Five Things Everyone Should Know About GOP Senate Candidate Ted Cruz (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/07/31/619461/five-things-to-know-about-gop-senate-candidate-ted-cruz/)


1) Ted Cruz Believes George Soros Leads A United Nations Conspiracy To Eliminate Golf: In 1992, President George H.W. Bush joined the leaders of 177 other nations (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/16/446352/tx-sen-candidate-ted-cruz-spouts-paranoid-fantasy-about-united-nationsgeorge-soros-conspiracy-to-eliminate-golf/) in endorsing a non-binding UN document known as Agenda 21. This twenty year-old document largely speaks at a very high level of generality about reducing poverty and building sustainable living environments. Nevertheless, Cruz published an article on his campaign website claiming that this non-binding document is actually a nefarious plot (http://www.tedcruz.org/blog/2012/01/20/stop-agenda-21-the-constitution-should-be-our-only-%E2%80%9Cagenda-%E2%80%9D/) to “abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads.” To top it off, Cruz lays the blame for this global anti-golf conspiracy at the feet of a well-known Tea Party boogieman — “The originator of this grand scheme is George Soros.”

2) Ted Cruz Wants To Gut Social Security: In an interview with the Texas Tribune Cruz labeled Social Security a “ponzi scheme” (http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Profiles/Senate/Texas/Ted_Cruz/Views/Social_Security/) and outlined a three-step plan to gut this essential program. Cruz would raise the Social Security retirement age, cut future benefits, and implement a George W. Bush-style plan to privatize much of the program. In other words, in addition to forcing them to work longer for fewer benefits, Cruz would place retirees at the mercy of a fickle stock market. Had Social Security been privatized during the career of a worker who retired near the end of the Bush Administration, that worker would have retired with less money in their privatized account (http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/ss_report.pdf) than they would have if they’d simply kept their money between their mattress and box spring.

3) Ted Cruz Wants To Party Like It’s 1829: The Constitution provides that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause),” and thus cannot be nullified by rogue state lawmakers. Cruz, however, co-authored an unconstitutional proposal claiming two or more states could simply ignore the Constitution’s command (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2010/12/04/176974/interstate-compact/) and nullify the Affordable Care Act so long as they work together. Although the Constitution does permit states to join in “interstate compacts” that have the force of law, under the Constitution such compacts require the consent of Congress and can be vetoed by the President. Cruz falsely claimed (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2010/12/04/176974/interstate-compact/) that states do not need to meet these Constitutional requirements to undermine laws they don’t like.

4) Ted Cruz Is An Islamophobe: At a campaign event earlier this month, Cruz touted another of the Tea Party’s favorite conspiracy theories, claiming that “Sharia law is an enormous problem” in this country. Although it is common for far right politicians to claim that American law is somehow being replaced with Islamic law, these claims have absolutely no basis in reality. Few American courts have ever even mentioned Sharia (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/06/15/244780/no-risk-of-sharia/) or Islamic law, and those that have generally only do so in contracts or similar cases where a party before the court agreed to be bound by Sharia law.


5) Ted Cruz Campaigned On How He Helped Texas Kill A Mexican: Cruz’s very first campaign ad encouraged GOP primary voters to support him because he helped make it easier for Texas to kill an “illegal alien.” (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/22/449906/ted-cruz-vote-for-me-because-i-helped-execute-an-illegal-alien/) According to the ad, “Cruz fought all the way to the Supreme Court” after “the UN and World Court overruled a Texas jury’s verdict to execute an illegal alien.” In reality, the case Cruz won had nothing to do with whether Texas had the authority to kill this man. Rather, it concerned whether Texas could defy a treaty requiring it to inform foreign nationals who are arrested of their right “to request assistance from the consul of his own state.” Even North Korea honored this treaty (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/in-texas-a-death-penalty-showdown-with-international-law/241480/#) that Cruz fought to undermine.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/07/31/619461/five-things-to-know-about-gop-senate-candidate-ted-cruz/

[DarrinS]

Does he want the fed to mint a trillion dollar coin? Now THAT it fucking nuts.

[Th'Pusher]

Does he want the fed to mint a trillion dollar coin? Now THAT it fucking nuts.

LOL at Krugman sending DarrinS into monetary rage.



Monetary Rage
Every once in a while I either publish an op-ed or make a blog post that induces incoherent rage in a certain number of readers. What do I mean by “incoherent”? That the people leaving hostile comments (or, in some cases, phone messages and emails) seem unable even to say what exactly it is that they disagree with.

Oddly, the writings that elicit such responses tend *not* to involve political commentary. Instead, they’re most often straight economic analysis, based in many cases on perfectly ordinary applications of IS-LM type reasoning (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/is-lmentary/).

And so it is that my latest rage-inducer was this innocuous (I thought) post onmoney-printing versus debt issue (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/debt-in-a-time-of-zero/). As best I can tell, what set the ragers off was the suggestion that under current conditions – that is, in a liquidity trap — it really doesn’t matter whether the government covers its deficit by selling debt or just printing money, which is why, among other things, using the platinum coin ploy to sidestep the debt ceiling would be harmless. (The MMTers showed up, as usual, to insist that debt versus money printing *never* makes a difference; but that’s a different story).

Why is this such an upsetting suggestion? Well, a significant number of people, well represented among those who tend to haunt comment boards, is firmly committed for whatever reason to the Eek! Zimbabwe! view of how the economy works, under which any government that has the temerity to deviate from gold-standard orthodoxy even in a deep slump is condemning its citizens to suffering the wrath of the market gods. The appeal of this view is, I think, both political and emotional; it goes along with the general view that doing anything to help the less fortunate (especially if it involves taxing the rich) invites disaster, and it also ties in with the desire to believe that you and your friends have the True Knowledge of how economies work.

You can imagine how disturbing such people find liquidity-trap economics. And as far as I can tell, hardly anyone who started with this view in, say, 2008 has been willing to consider the possibility that four-plus years of very high growth in the monetary base combined with subdued inflation proves them wrong, and actually vindicates the Keynesians. Instead, they still react to anything challenging their worldview with rage – and especially so if it’s stated calmly and analytically.


http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/monetary-rage-2/

:lol

[Winehole23]

Does he want the fed to mint a trillion dollar coin? Now THAT it fucking nuts.about as nuts as Congress refusing to raise the debt ceiling to pay for appropriations it voted for

[Winehole23]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-03/why-we-must-go-off-the-platinum-coin-cliff.html

[boutons_deux]

G.O.P. Freshmen Saddened by Failure to Shut Down Government on First Day

Just hours after being sworn in at the U.S. Capitol, the freshman class of House Republicans said that they were disappointed that they failed to shut down the government on their first day in office.

“We were all like, ‘O.K., we’re sworn in, let’s shut this thing down,’” said freshman Rep. Byron Ernie (R-Kentucky). “We were all pretty bummed that the government just kept running.”

Rep. Ernie acknowledged that it might have been “overly optimistic” of the freshman Republicans to expect to engineer a government shutdown on their very first day, “but bringing the government to a random standstill was the whole reason we became Republicans,” he said.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) chuckled good-naturedly at the ambitions of the high-spirited G.O.P. freshmen, telling reporters, “I remember what it was like to be young and full of big ideas about crippling our historic institutions for no discernible reason whatsoever. There’s nothing like your first time.”

Surveying the cherubic faces of the incoming Republicans, he said, “They’re like kids who want to close down a candy store.”

Looking beyond the disappointment of his first day, Rep. Ernie said he was looking forward to “that magical day” when he and his fellow Republican freshmen get to participate in their very first government shutdown: “We’ll be paralyzing the government in the same building where John Boehner and Eric Cantor did it, and Newt Gingrich before them. It’s like playing basketball in the same arena as Michael Jordan.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/01/gop-freshmen-saddened-by-failure-to-shut-down-government-on-first-day.html#ixzz2HJN6XMWk