Rand Paul Tells Millions He’s Doing Them a Favor By Cutting Off Unemployment Benefits

Rand Paul Tells Millions He’s Doing Them a Favor By Cutting Off Unemployment Benefits

By: Sarah Jones more from Sarah Jones

Sunday, December, 8th, 2013, 10:58 am

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was on Fox News Sunday to continue his minority outreach to African Americans, by saying we shouldn’t extend unemployment benefits set to expire momentarily because he knows one black businessman who wants tax cuts.
Video:


Paul said, “I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they’re paid for, but if you extend it past that you do a disservice to these workers.” His reasoning is that when you “allow people” to be on unemployment for longer, you are causing them to be “perpetually unemployed”. Don’t forget about his one black businessman.
See, it’s not that there are no jobs, it’s that employers don’t like to hire people who have been out of work for very long. Thus, by taking away the “incentive” to stay unemployed, Paul thinks he can solve the unemployment problem. It’s the “firmer hand” theory, also used as an argument for slavery.
There can be no other explanation for Paul’s reasoning other than people want to stay unemployed, otherwise he wouldn’t think that taking away unemployment benefits creates job opportunities. This veers dangerously close to the “lazy urban” narrative that Republicans favor. It is not accurate to suggest that starving will create jobs. So this is not a good plan for jobs or for the unemployed.
Paul said that African American unemployment hasn’t budged under this President, implying that he thinks he can get the African American vote by criticizing this president and blaming him for higher unemployment among African Americans, as if this is a new phenomenon best addressed by letting a white Southern man make decisions for African Americans and this president. Some things just shouldn’t be said by certain people, especially not people who employed a white supremacist. It’s bad optics.
The carrot dangling is far from over. You know what the number once concern is for African Americans, after tax cuts for businesses? School choice, apparently. “My economic stimulus plan would stimulate Detroit. There is no other plan on the table. If my plan would pass I think it’s the only one that would pass. I am also talking about restoring voting rights and school choice.”
Voting rights? His party is the party that came after voting rights nationally and his party is the party that made Detroiters’ votes meaningless under Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. That’s going to be a hard sale.
When asked for alternatives to ObamaCare, Rand criticized ObamaCare and then said he’s for Freedom of Choice. Seriously. The anti-choicer is for Freedom of Choice, which means no plan. It means repeal ObamaCare because the “premiums are higher” – which they aren’t for the majority of people. So that’s his big sell to Detroit: Come and get nothing in order to protect the rich. That’s new for Republicans in Detroit. Detroiters will never see through that (see sarcasm). Clearly Sen. Paul is unaware of the high priority most Americans put on the issue of affordable healthcare. It’s an issue of economic survival for many. Not something they want to toss away into the GOP “freedom” for corporations ring.
Yes, 2016 2016 2016. The Senator is a GOP presidential front runner, and it seems he is already running for President, “the thought has crossed my mind, Chris.” But he’s concerned about the “haters and hacks”. So are we, Senator.
Image: Fox News

Rand Paul Tells Millions He’s Doing Them a Favor By Cutting Off Unemployment Benefits was written by Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Sun, Dec 8th, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

Rand Paul Throws a Tantrum on CNN and Calls Harry Reid A Big Bully

Rand Paul Throws a Tantrum on CNN and Calls Harry Reid A Big Bully

By: Jason Easley and Sarah Jones 

Thursday, November, 21st, 2013, 3:27 pm

The crying has only just begun now that Republicans won’t be able to hold up judicial and executive branch nominees (the filibuster rule changes do not apply to SCOTUS nominees or legislation). Mitch McConnell’s spokesperson inaccurately accused Obama of court packing, and now Rand Paul started a whine fest on CNN during which he complained that Republicans need an anti-bullying ordinance to protect them from “dictator” Harry Reid.
Video:

Senator Rand Paul said on CNN, “I think what we really need is an anti-bullying ordinance in the Senate. I mean, now we’ve got a big bully, Harry Reid says he’s just going to break the rules and make new rules. Never been done this way before.”
“He’s gotta have everything his way, he’s gotta control everything. This is more about them trying to control the agenda and shift it away from Obamacare than it is about anything else. Basically, he’s become the dictator of the Senate. He’s going to bend and break the rules to get his way.”
Rand Paul has been one of the main sources of Republican obstruction in the Senate, so it isn’t a surprise that he would cry a river over the fact that he has lost a critical tool that he has used both to gum up the works and call attention to himself.

Harry Reid’s rule change will make it a lot more difficult for look at me 2016 Republican wannabes like Paul and Ted Cruz to use obstructing the Senate to further their presidential ambitions. Obstruction of nominees will no longer be a prime PR tool for Sen. Paul as he daydreams about a presidency that may never be.
The root problem is that Rand Paul rejects the purpose of the Senate. Sen. Paul doesn’t believe in passing laws. Rand Paul thinks he is in the Senate to prevent progress. If Paul can’t obstruct, he serves no purpose in the Senate.
Sen. Paul is throwing a tantrum because he had his favorite toy taken away. Instead of looking like a visionary leader for America’s future, Rand Paul is stomping his feet because Republicans are no longer going to get their obstructionist way on everything.
Mostly though, Rand Paul is upset because he lost a vehicle to promote Rand Paul.

Rand Paul Throws a Tantrum on CNN and Calls Harry Reid A Big Bully was written by Jason Easley and Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Thu, Nov 21st, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

Anonymous Hacks Neo-Nazi Website, Finds Ron Paul Connection

November 18, 2013 | Filed under: Right wing hatred | Posted by: Kimberley Johnson

 

Internet hactivist group “Anonymous” broke into the white supremacist website America Third Position (A3P) and found more than they bargained for. In the document dump that consisted of private forum messages, emails, organizational notes and other personal information, they found connections with former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.
The documents revealed Paul held meetings with the group and regularly met with many A3P members, engaged in conference calls with their board of directors and participated in a “bridging tactic” between A3P and the Ron Paul Revolution. Not surprisingly, A3P is heavily involved in campaigning for Paul. Also revealed, Paul met with Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party — the UK fascist group with neo-Nazi roots.
Live Leaks reported:
“Other excerpts show A3P webmaster Jamie Kelso (whose email account was one hacked by the collective) coordinating meetings between Paul and other members of A3P such as corporate lawyer and chairman of the neo-Nazi group Paul (sic). ‘I’m going to go to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) with Bill Johnson,’ reads an email to an A3P member dated January 2011. ‘Bill and I will be meeting with Ron and Ran Paul. I have a teleconference call with Bill (and Ron Paul) tonight. Much more later. Things are starting to happen (thanks to folks like you).’ In another passage, Kelso, a former Scientologist and account owner of other German Nazi forums, wrote: “I’ll be at CPAC from Feb. 9 to Feb 12. I’ll send back reports to you from personal meetings with Ron Paul, newly-elected Senator Rand Paul and many others. It’ll be here on WhiteNewsNow, a place that is really starting to get interesting because of the presence of folks like you. Birds of a feather flock together, and we are really gathering some quality here.”’
Paul denies the connection. Paul also denied authoring a series of racist newsletters, despite confirmation from his staff that he signed off on every detail.

---

Kimberley A. Johnson (BIO) is the author of The Virgin Diaries and an activist for women’s rights. Like her on Facebook, Twitter or follow her on FB HERE.

 

Rand Paul has another problem

• By Jennifer Rubin

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) 

(James Crisp/Associated Press)

In the spring of 2010 stories first swirled around Sen. Rand Paul’s certification as an ophthalmologist by an outfit called the “National Ophthalmology Board,” an entity he founded. This week I discovered that while he continues to present himself as “board certified” the NOB has been out of business since 2011, and in any event, does not under Kentucky law permit him to advertise as “board certified.”
In 2010 Rand Paul explained that he formed the board in 1997 along with 200 young ophthalmologists to protest a decision by the American Board of Ophthalmologists to grandfather those who were certified by 1992, but to limit certification for a ten year period for those first certified after that date. Rand Paul fell within the latter group. He found that decision “discriminatory” and unfair so he set up the NOB along with his wife and father-in-law to certify himself. Despite calling itself “national,” it appears to have operated purely in Kentucky. The board remained in operation until 2000, when it was dissolved. It was reinstated in 2005. Since the certification story broke, the NOB again dissolved in 2011.
However, it is not clear how that entity would have comported within Kentucky law. Michael S. Rodman, executive director of the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure tells Right Turn, “The Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure does not  license physicians based on their specialty board certification nor is it a requirement for licensure. ” However, he explained that “Board does address specialty board certification  through our regulation on physician advertising.” Rodman confirmed that if a board is not on the list, then a Kentucky specialist is prohibited from advertising himself as board certified.  That list does not include the National Ophthalmology Board.
A physician in Kentucky and elsewhere can still practice without certification, but since the 1990′s the certification has become increasingly important in the medical field. Beth Ann Comber of the American Board of Ophthalmology tells me, “Board certification, and especially MOC [Maintenance of Certification] participation, by an ABMS-recognized board helps patients make more informed choices regarding their medical care. Today, the internet connects patients with a wealth of physician information, but it’s often difficult for patients to determine where the information on those sites comes from, how the ratings are determined, and where paid advertising stops and unbiased information begins. . . .Certification is voluntary, so physicians who make the choice to participate in continuous learning and quality improvement activities are doing so out of a personal commitment to high standards for their patients and their practice.” Moreover, “there are many hospitals, private practice groups, insurers, etc. that require board certification for staff privileges or leadership positions. Some medical specialty societies also require board certification for membership or offer a special class of membership for board certified physicians.”
Rand Paul continues to perform eye “surgery in his home state, often getting favorable media attention for performing free eye procedures. His profile on the website of the Tri-Star Greenview Regional Hospital, where Paul has privileges, includes the notation “Specialty Board Certifications: Ophathalmology.” Likewise on the Healthgrades  Web site where patients can locate physicians his entry reads: “Ophthalmology, Board Certified.”
Since 2005 Rand Paul has not been certified by any board recognized by the state of Kentucky, and since 2011 has had no certification since the NOB was dissolved. I asked Rand Paul’s staff a series of questions, trying to determine why he still held himself out as a “certified” ophthalmologist:

Did the National Board of Ophthalmology have examinations and/or continuing education requirements? If so, what were they?
How many doctors claimed certification through the NBO? Did they continue to do so or did they obtain American Board of Ophthalmology certification?
When it dissolved, did Dr. Rand stop presenting himself as “board certified”?
The Kentucky Board of Licensure’s list of approved accreditation boards does not appear to include the NBO so why did Dr. Rand believe he had the right under Kentucky law to advertise as board certified? Did he receive an exemption or opinion of some sort from the state licensure board?
Is he continuing to hold himself out as “board certified”?
Has he taken any continuing education since he was originally certified? Since 1997?

I got back a nonresponsive answer that recited his medical school and residency record. As to the certification issue, a Rand Paul spokeswoman would only say:

In 1997, Dr. Paul led a nationwide protest against the American Board of Ophthalmology’s decision to require recertification for younger ophthalmologists, but not for older ophthalmologists. Over 200 young ophthalmologists co-signed a letter with Dr. Paul to protest the policy. When ABO refused to extend their recertification policy to all ophthalmologists, the group formed a competing board certification group called the National Board of Ophthalmology.  The group administered its own certification exam for about a decade, but is no longer active.
NBO is a nonprofit corporation and all who took part were volunteers without salary. Dr. Paul has not profited in any way from this group.
The decade-long battle against a policy that the ABO did not make binding on all members is just another example of Dr. Paul’s willingness to fight against any law or rule that doesn’t include equal protection for everyone.

In refusing to answer the direct questions Rand Paul will prompt further inquiry as to whether he skated around Kentucky law, received appropriate continuing education and represented himself forthrightly to his patients, paid or otherwise. It is noteworthy that he says 200 people signed the letter; he does not confirm that any of them relied on the NBO certification.
Rand Paul is already under fire for plagiarism charges, and has reacted angrily to that story. (“It annoys the hell out of me. I feel like if I could just go to detention after school for a couple days, then everything would be okay. But do I have to be in detention for the rest of my career?”)  His reaction doesn’t bode well for presidential campaign-level scrutiny. At one point he told the New York Times, “To tell you the truth, people can think what they want, I can go back to being a doctor anytime, if they’re tired of me. I’ll go back to being a doctor, and I’ll be perfectly content.” If he does, he would be smart to get certified by the American Board of Ophthalmologists to be fully compliant with state law and give patients the reassurance he’s current on the latest developments in his field.
So long as he is a U.S. senator with presidential aspirations, however, he will need to respond calmly and honestly with controversies about his own actions and record. By providing so little information he guarantees continued scrutiny.

Jon Stewart Blasts Rand Paul For Plagiarizing Wikipedia

Posted: 11/08/2013 10:30 am EST  |  Updated: 11/08/2013 10:40 am EST

Rand Paul has had a tough last few weeks as he's addressed charges of plagiarism, seemingly against his better nature. And Jon Stewart was not about to let him off the hook for copying from Wikipedia, of all places.

Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and the Tea Party's 2016 problem

By Bill Scher 10 hours ago The Week

.

View gallery

Frenemies.

As the New York Times detailed over the weekend, and as The Week's Matt Lewis predicted in July, a rivalry is brewing between Tea Party favorites Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Each side is badmouthing the other, saying its rival is unelectable in the 2016 presidential race. Cruz reportedly trashed Paul as fatally linked to his extremist father, while Paul's aides call Cruz "the chief of the wacko birds."

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• Dick Cheney defends the tea party: 'These are Americans' Yahoo News

Intra-party scraps are nothing new, and often the survivor emerges stronger. Barack Obama went the full 12 rounds with Hillary Clinton, and came out the other end battle-hardened. But for conservative insurgents hoping to take over the Republican Party from inside, a Paul-Cruz throwdown is the absolute last thing that they need, because it risks knocking them both out of the ring.
SEE ALSO: Meet the 4 Marvel superheroes who will soon have their own Netflix shows
Many people assume that the right-wing ideologues in the Republican "base" dictate the outcome of their party's presidential primaries. That's not true. A movement conservative has not triumphed over an "establishment" candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1980.
There is a reason for that: Uncompromising conservatives tend to cling to their favorite candidates for too long, dividing their votes among several instead of consolidating their forces behind one. As the base splinters, the establishment's preferred (and always well-financed) choice is able to win early contests with relatively small pluralities. Party loyalty eventually kicks in, peeling off conservative votes and propelling the establishment pick to the finish line.

SEE ALSO: Which professions have the most psychopaths?

This is why Rush Limbuagh's 2008 tirades against John McCain could not make conservatives choose between Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson, and Mitt Romney. Instead, McCain was able to take the pivotal South Carolina primary with a mere 33 percent of the vote. Nor could Limbaugh derail Romney in 2012. Conservatives fractured between Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, allowing Romney to win most contests with less than a majority.
Compare that to 1980, when Reagan was the only movement conservative facing off against a pack of establishment types. While George H.W. Bush was able to emerge as the most plausible alternative, Reagan was able to easily defeat him mano a mano.
SEE ALSO: Watch out, Chris Christie: It's a trap!
I wrote back in May that Rand Paul had a solid shot at the 2016 GOP nod, despite being anathema to the "national security" wing of the party, because the 1980 dynamic could be replicated. Polling at the time showed Paul consolidating conservatives, with the establishment camp splintering between Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio, former Gov. Jeb Bush, and others.

But that was before Ted Cruz became the Tea Party darling du jour, interrupting Paul's ascendency. Now it's pile-up at the top of polls. The most recent survey from Public Policy Polling shows an effective four-way tie between Paul, Cruz, Christie, and Bush. But take either Cruz or Paul out of the mix, and a four-way tie would become a Tea Party romp.

SEE ALSO: Advice for your wedding night (from 100 years ago)

Which raises a serious question for conservative insurgents: How bad do you want to remake the party?
Are you prepared to organize behind a single candidate, even if you have a few quibbles of tactical or substantive disagreement? Are you prepared to pressure anyone who might stand in that person's way to stand down and put their principles ahead of personal ambition?
SEE ALSO: He said he was leaving. She ignored him.
Or are you going throw away a rare moment of establishment weakness and repeat the same mistakes of the past? Are you going to give the establishment you loathe time to regroup and figure out to whom they should funnel their money to because you couldn't collectively decide whether Cruz or Paul would strip down government the most?
The establishment's favorite is always going to have plenty of money, and plenty of prominent surrogates in the media validating his presidential bona fides. Any insurgency is an uphill battle, and it can't be won with divided leadership. If the Tea Party wants to overcome money and elitism with people power, either some of its leaders will have to voluntarily check their egos at the door, or its followers will have to force them to.

SEE ALSO: Why Democrats think they can compete in the South

Did Ron Paul Advocate an Armed Rebellion Against Our Government Over Obamacare?

November 7, 2013 By Allen Clifton

Anyone who follows me knows I can’t stand Libertarians.  Sure, some of them are great people who mean well, but their political philosophy is so completely flawed that I view the entire movement as similar to some kind of adolescent rebellion.  The thing I always laugh at when it comes to Libertarians is the fact that they can’t even define what it means to be a “real” Libertarian.  I can’t count the times I’ve cited something said by one Libertarian only to have another tell me that person isn’t a “real” Libertarian.
Even among themselves they can’t agree on what it means to be a Libertarian, yet they believe this ideology is what’s best for the United States and all humankind.
For many Libertarians, Ron Paul is their hero.  Personally, I think he’s a creepy old man who’s completely out of his mind.  But for many Libertarians (many known as “Paul-bots”) he’s the only hope for the salvation of the United States and true liberty.
But of course he is.
That is, when he’s not advocating for the violent overthrow of the United States and bashing several of our Constitutional Amendments.
Because that’s exactly what it seemed like he was doing a few days ago when he was in Virginia speaking at a rally for the newly failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli.
During this rally, Paul said:

“Jefferson obviously was a clear leader on the principle of nullification.  I’ve been working on the assumption that nullification is going to come.  It’s going to be a de facto nullification.  It’s ugly, but pretty soon things are going to get so bad that we’re just going to ignore the feds and live our own lives in our own states.”

In other words, Ron Paul is currently living under the belief that the United States is headed for an all-out revolution.  Not that it could be headed that way—but that it is inevitable.
He also went after the Seventeenth Amendment (which allows for the direct election of our United States Senators) and our Sixteenth Amendment which allows the government to collect income tax.
In fact, when arguing against the Seventeenth Amendment he used the argument almost all racists used (and a primary argument of the Confederacy during the Civil War) — that it undermines “states rights.”  Isn’t that basically the calling card of ignorance in this country?  Be it in support of slavery,  advocating segregation, denying women or homosexuals their rights — “states rights” is almost always the argument used by these ignorant bigots.
And it just so happens to be the cornerstone argument made by almost every Libertarian.
But Paul went even further, pushing his belief that our Second Amendment wasn’t meant for hunting, but to give citizens the right for revolution against the tyranny.   Paul said, “The Second Amendment was not there so you could shoot rabbits.  Right now today, we have a great threat to our liberties internally.”
Let’s just look at those two sentences, shall we?  First, Paul believes the Second Amendment is meant to give Americans the right to rise up against a tyrannical government.  Then he follows that with the warning that we’re currently under a great threat to our liberties internally.
Who would have ever thought a health care law protecting Americans with pre-existing conditions, and requiring that they purchase comprehensive health insurance so that they don’t go bankrupt paying for medical expenses, would be something that would call for the overthrow of our government?
That’s how ridiculous these people are.
And let’s not pretend that Ron Paul is some freedom loving good person.  He’s been tied numerous times to racist organizations or individuals, has spoken out in opposition to gay rights and is against abortion.  At the end of the day he’s just a typical Republican who rallies against the federal government—until he wants that same government to restrict the rights given to Americans that he disagrees with.

Ron Paul is someone who claims Libertarian principles, but sold out to the Republican party to win elections.  How noble of him.
I would like to invite Ron Paul and all of his supporters to head off to live in any number of poor, developing countries with small centralized governments, low taxes and few regulations.  Considering human history has never yielded a single successful society built on Libertarian principles, those are about the only places they would be able to move to.
In fact, the closest examples we have are poor, disorganized nations.  But hey, I hear Somalia is gorgeous this time of year.  I’m sure Libertarians will love the freedom of no Federal Government, no Federal Reserve, little or no taxes and all of the guns they can possibly get their hands on.

Related Posts on Forward Progressives:

• Rand Paul Proves His Ignorance, says “Liberals Have No Idea of How Capitalism…
• Not The Onion: Rand Paul’s Appallingly Ridiculous Claim about Science and…
• Texas Tea Party Candidate for Congress does Reddit “AMA” – Brutal…

 

GOP’s latest, desperate Obamacare strategy: Try to confuse Americans!

Rather than field inquiries or provide constituents with information, Republicans want them mixed up by Obamacare

By Brian Beutler

 

Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul

 (Credit: Jeff Malet, maletphoto.com/Reuters

/Gary Cameron/Jonathan Ernst)

 

If you’ve received a letter from your health insurance company advising you that your plan has been canceled because of Obamacare (and perhaps offering to shift you into much more expensive coverage) you’re probably wondering what remedies are available to you.
In an ideal world you could call your member of Congress or one of your senators and ask his or her staff to help you sort through your options.
But if your representatives are Republicans, the very idea of providing you assistance runs at cross-purposes with their desire to turn you into a talking point.
Introducing… #YOURSTORY!
It’s a new campaign organized by the Senate Republican conference to turn your frustration, anger and/or confusion over the Affordable Care Act into an anecdote for a floor speech or a sound bite for a reporter whose job it is to find some Obamacare “losers.”
Now obviously most of the submissions Senate Republicans will field will come from constituents who are already unfavorably disposed toward the law. And their stories will be relayed to other constituents who are unfavorably disposed to the law. So the public relations value of #YOURSTORY is probably pretty marginal.
But consider for a moment what it implies about the GOP’s commitment to providing responsible constituent services.
Recall Dianne Barrette, who did an about-face on Obamacare once its benefits were explained to her clearly and responsibly. But it wasn’t a member of Congress who provided that assistance. It certainly wasn’t any of the Republicans who helped turn her into the embodiment of the Affordable Care Act’s failure and President Obama’s broken promises. It was a reporter.
Now I don’t know if Barrette reached out to any elected officials in the first place. For all I know her member of Congress is a Democrat. But it speaks volumes about the GOP’s commitments that they pounced on her story when it was so borderline to begin with, and moved on once she was no longer of any use.
In reality, Barrette’s story illustrates that a little bit of information about Obamacare can turn bewilderment into satisfaction. Many of the people receiving cancellation notices or experiencing rate shock will eventually find that they’re pretty happy with their new options. But when that happens, their human interest value collapses, as does their usefulness toward the end of undermining Obamacare. So what are the odds, do you suppose, that Republicans are providing this kind of information to their constituents themselves?

The ugly subtext to stories like these — which proliferate so rapidly, but then turn out upon closer inspection to be less black-and-white than originally depicted — is that Republicans are fostering and nurturing constituent confusion.
#YOURSTORY is a manifestation of that strategy. A site like #YOURSTORY could be just as easily used to field inquiries and respond to troubled constituents with useful information. Instead it’ll be used as a crowdsourcing tool for anti-Obamacare opportunists.
The existence of a campaign like this suggests that the universe of individual Republicans who are refusing to help constituents navigate the Affordable Care Act is larger than we know. And we know it exists.
“Given that we come from Kansas, it’s much easier to say, ‘Call your former governor,’” Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., told the Hill, referring to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “You say, ‘She’s the one. She’s responsible. She was your governor, elected twice, and now you reelected the president, but he picked her.’”
“We know how to forward a phone call,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. “I have two dedicated staff who deal with nothing but Obamacare and immigration problems. I’m sure there will be an uptick in that, but all we can do is pass them back to the Obama administration. The ball’s in their court. They’re responsible for it.”
The strategic logic here is perverse, but there is a logic to it.
Millions of people are getting cancellation notices from their insurers. Most of those people will be pretty happy with the new system — if they’re made aware of and guided through it by conscientious public servants. The conundrum for conservatives is that once enough people are enrolled in Obamacare, its constituency will be too large for them to support repealing it without offering some alternative that also expands coverage to millions and millions of people. Which is to say, Republicans would be working against their own public policy ambitions if they did right by people receiving these letters. So they’re using them as pawns instead.

Brian Beutler is Salon's political writer. Email him at bbeutler@salon.com and follow him on Twitter at @brianbeutler. More Brian Beutler.

Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul Hope To Tack Right-To-Work Law Onto Employment Non-Discrimination Act

Posted: 11/05/2013 11:58 am EST  |  Updated: 11/05/2013 12:54 pm EST

Dave Jamieson 

dave.jamieson@huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have proposed an amendment to a workplace discrimination bill in the hopes of creating a national right-to-work law.
The measure -- which, as Roll Call reported Monday, would be tacked onto the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) -- would forbid contracts between companies and labor unions that require workers to pay the union for bargaining on their behalf. Prized by Republicans and business groups and loathed by unions, such laws have made it onto the books in 24 states, most recently in Michigan.
Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, McConnell praised Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who signed the state law in December after it was fast-tracked through the Republican-controlled legislature. McConnell said he and Paul were following Snyder's lead.
"The truth is, over the years, 'Big Labor' had come to care more about its own perks and power than the workers it was charged with protecting," McConnell said. "Snyder knew that. And he knew it was time to tip the scales back in favor of workers. Well, he’s not alone."
Right-to-work laws diminish union membership and weaken the clout of organized labor. Unions like to refer to such legislation as "right-to-work-for-less" laws, pointing to studies finding the laws depress wages. Right-to-work's boosters, including McConnell, portray the laws as a matter of workplace choice and a necessary counterweight to "Big Labor," even though unionized workers now make up only 6.6 percent of the private sector.
The Senate cleared a major legislative hurdle Monday night by voting to move forward with debate on ENDA, which would bar discrimination in the workplace for large businesses on the basis of sexual orientation or identity. The measure introduced by McConnell and Paul will now become part of that discussion.
It's highly unlikely, however, that the Democratic-controlled chamber would ever send right-to-work legislation to the president's desk. Unions remain a strong base of the Democratic Party, and right-to-work has proven deeply divisive in states like Michigan.
Speaking after McConnell on Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), said a national right-to-work law would lead to more inequality in the U.S. economy.
"If you look at the state of unionism today, I think the facts speak for themselves," said Durbin, referencing the country's falling union density. "Those who want to eliminate the opportunity for collective bargaining and make it more difficult for workers to stand up and speak for themselves in the workplace, I think frankly are going to condemn us to a much slower-growing economy and much more injustice when it comes to compensation."
Correction: This post originally referred to ENDA as the Employee Non-Discrimination Act. It is the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
 

Sen. Rand Paul Wishes He Could Challenge Plagiarism Critics to a 'Duel'; Calls Them 'Hacks and Haters'

Sen. Rand Paul Wishes He Could Challenge Plagiarism Critics to a 'Duel'; Calls Them 'Hacks and Haters' 

By Imtiyaz Delawala 22 hours ago 

On "This Week" Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., dismissed charges of plagiarism in his speeches and writing made in the last week, saying he was being "unfairly targeted by a bunch of hacks and haters" who he wishes he could challenge to a "duel."
"The footnote police have really been dogging me for the last week. I will admit that. And I will admit, sometimes we haven't footnoted things properly," Paul told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week."
"In some of the other things that are now going to pop up under thousands of things I've written, yeah, there are times when they have been sloppy or not correct or we've made an error," Paul said. "But the difference is, I take it as an insult and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting. I have never intentionally done so."
"When I wrote scientific papers, I sometimes had statements with eight footnotes for one sentence. Is that what you want me to do for my speeches? If it's required, I'll do it," Paul added. "But I think I'm being unfairly targeted by a bunch of hacks and haters. And I'm just not going to put up with people casting aspersions on my character."

Sen Rand Paul (R) Kentucky on 'This Week'

Last week, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow accused the Kentucky senator of plagiarism, alleging that he lifted lines from the Wikipedia entry on the film "Gattaca" in a recent speech in Virginia. Paul seemingly used several lines of description of the film from its Wikipedia page as part of a critique of pro-abortion rights advocates. Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski also reported that Paul had used multiple lines of text from Wikipedia for his description of the film "Stand and Deliver" during a speech in June.
Paul brushed off the accusations of plagiarism in an interview with Fusion's Jorge Ramos the following day, but new examples have continued to surface. On Saturday, Buzzfeed reported that Paul had used nearly verbatim more than 1,300 words from a 2003 Heritage Foundation case study in his 2013 book "Government Bullies." Politico also reported similarities between text in two of Paul's speeches and text from reports by the Associated Press and a conservative magazine. A Paul adviser responded to Politico that Paul would be "more cautious in presenting and attributing sources" going forward.
On "This Week," Paul joked that he wished he could challenge his critics to a "duel" over the charges.
"If dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know, it would be a duel challenge," Paul said. "But I can't do that, because I can't hold office in Kentucky then."

Rand Paul’s staff on Ted Cruz: 'Chief of wacko birds'

November 3

By STEVE KRASKE

The Kansas City Star

The political yak on this Monday morning:

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/11/03/4596106/buzzchatter-monday-you-wont-believe.html#storylink=cpy

• “Chief of the wacko birds.” — the staff of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul referring to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a fellow Republican, according to a piece by Jonathan Martin of The New York Times.
Martin’s story chronicled the growing rivalry between the two conservative senators as Republicans start to look toward 2016.
• “This is not about conspiracy, this is about transparency.” — Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and author who’s neck-deep in a decade-long lawsuit against the CIA, seeking release of the closed documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy.
Thousands of pages of documents about the 50-years-ago assassination remain closed, and historians, conspiracy buffs and others are puzzled why the government — seemingly inexplicably — won’t release them.
• “I don’t think there’s any shame in saying we didn’t anticipate this one glitch.” — former White House senior adviser David Axelrod on NBC’s “Meet the Press” refusing to acknowledge that President Barack Obama erred when he said Americans could keep their health care plan if they liked it.
A simple admission that he made a mistake could get this latest Affordable Care Act controversy behind the president. But Axelrod and the administration refuse to budge on that point.
• “Run Hillary run.” — New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, urging his fellow New Yorker during a speech in Iowa to run for president in 2016.
Schumer, who was relentless in his successful pursuit of Claire McCaskill to run for Senate in 2006 two years after her loss for Missouri governor, painted Hillary Clinton as the Democrats’ best hope for defeating the tea party.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/11/03/4596106/buzzchatter-monday-you-wont-believe.html#storylink=cpy

GREED? THY NAME IS AYN

GREED? THY NAME IS AYN

In Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 13, 2013 at 12:00 am “Thirty years after her death, Ayn Rand’s ideas have never been more important.
“Unfettered capitalism, unregulated business, bare-bones government providing no social services, glorification of selfishness, disdain for Judeo-Christian morality—these are the tenets of Rand’s harsh philosophy.”
So reads the jacket blurb for Ayn Rand Nation: The Struggle for America’s Soul, by Gary Weiss.

“The timing of this book couldn’t be better for Americans who are trying to understand where in the hell the far-out right’s anti-worker, anti-egalitarian extremism is coming from,” asserts Jim Hightower, New York Times bestselling author of Thieves in High Places.
“Ayn Rand Nation introduces us to the godmother of such Tea Party craziness as destroying Social Security and eliminating Wall Street regulation. Weiss writes with perception and wit.”
For those who believe that Rand’s philosophy is the remedy for America’s economic and social ills, a 60 Minutes news story sounds a warning.
New England Compounding Center (NECC) pharmacy, based in Framington, Massachusetts, is under criminal investigation.  The reason: Shipping, in the fall of 2012, 17,000 vials of a steroid to be injected into the joints or spines of patients suffering chronic pain.
But instead of relieving pain, this steroid–contaminated with fungal meningitis–brought only agony and death.

The vials went out to thousands of pharmacies scattered across 23 states.
Forty-eight people have died, and 720 are still fighting horrific infections caused by the drug.
Just as Ayn Rand would have wanted, the pharmacy managed to avoid supervision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
NECC was one of thousands of pharmacies that Congress exempted from FDA oversight. The reason: By law, they are allowed to make custom drugs for just one patient at a time.
But within a few years, NECC went national–and vastly expanded the quantities of drugs produced.
“The underlying factor is that the company got greedy and overextended and we got sloppy, and something happened,” John Connolly, a lab technician for the company, told 60 Minutes, the CBS news magazine.
And, also as Rand would have wanted, the four family members who founded the pharmacy were enriched by it–receiving over $16 million in wages and profits, from December 2011 through November 2012.
Bankruptcy records show the family members racked up $90,000 on corporate American Express credit cards, including charges made after the company shut down in early October.
A month before the first steroid death, Connolly says he warned his supervisor: “Something’s gonna happen, something’s gonna get missed and we’re gonna get shut down.”
His supervisor just shrugged.
NECC was shut down by the authorities.  Barry Cadden, the president and lead pharmacist of the company, was subpoenaed by Congress to testify.  In true gangster fashion, he pleaded the Fifth.
He claims he doesn’t know how the contamination started.
Which brings us back to Ayn Rand–and, more specifically, Ayn Rand Nation.
Among the themes explored in Weiss’ book:

• Atlas Shrugged–Rand’s 1957 novel–depicts a United States where many of society’s most productive citizens refuse to be exploited by increasing taxation and government regulations and go on strike. The refusal evokes the imagery of what would happen if the mythological Atlas refused to continue to hold up the world.  The novel continues to influence those who aren’t hard-core Rand followers, who are known as Objectivists.
• Ayn Rand’s novels dramatically affirm such bedrock American values as independence, creativity, self-reliance, and above all, a permanent distrust of government.
• In Rand’s 1936 novel, We the Living–set in Soviet Russia–her heroine, Kira Argounova, tells a Communist: “I loathe your ideals; I admire your methods.” Objectivists believe in defending capitalism with the same ruthless methods of Communists.
• In Rand’s ideal world, government would control only police, armies and law courts.  To her, a   government which performs more than these three functions is not simply impractical or expensive: it is evil.

Many of those who embrace Rand substitute rage for logic: Tea Partiers are furious about the 2008 Wall Street crash, yet they blame the government for it.
(Ironically, in a way, they are right: The government can be blamed–but not for too much regulation of greed-fueled capitalists but too little.)
Weiss asserts that Tea Party members resent the social and economic realities facing the nation, but lack a coherent intellectual framework to help them focus and justify their rage.  But Objectivists have–and offer–such a framework.
Thus, Tea Partiers form the ideological part of the right wing, and the clarity–and fanaticism–of their views gives them a power far out of proportion to their numbers.
Weiss believes that Rand is presenting a moral argument for laissez-faire capitalism, which means eliminating  Social Security, Medicare, public road system, fire departments, parks, building codes–and, above all, any type of financial regulation.
Weiss maintains that Rand’s moral argument must be directly confronted–and defeated–with moral arguments calling for charity and rationality.
Given the fanaticism of Tea Partiers and the right-wing Republicans they support, success in countering Rand’s “I’ve-got-mine-and-the-hell-with-everybody-else” morality is by no means assured.

Stephen Colbert Defends Rand Paul Against Rachel Maddow Plagiarism Accusations (Video)

Stephen Colbert Defends Rand Paul Against Rachel Maddow Plagiarism Accusations

By Tony Maglio 5 hours ago

Always the good conservative soldier, Stephen Colbert defended Kentucky Senator Rand Paul from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s plagiarism accusations.
While campaigning on behalf of anti-oral sex Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, Paul delivered near-verbatim lines lifted from Wikipedia’s entry for the movie, “Gattaca”: ”In the movie, ‘Gattaca,’ in the not-too-distant future, eugenics is common and DNA plays a primary role in determining your social class,” Paul said.

Also read: Stephen Colbert Seeks Healthcare.gov’s Missing ‘Vaguely Ethnic Smiling Woman’ (Video)

Maddow called Paul out on her show for taking the description word-for-word from the online encyclopedia. But as Colbert speculated Tuesday, it might not be plagiarism at all: Maybe Rand Paul wrote the Wikipedia entry on “Gattaca.”
Either way, the “Colbert Report” host is focusing on the content of the words, rather than the origin: “That is irrefutable scientific evidence that (opponent Terry) McAuliffe’s pro-choice policies will lead to an Ethan Hawke movie,” he said.
Colbert further defended Paul, saying that the man is no plagiarist. The comedian then read directly from a number of Wikipedia entries to explain exactly who Paul is.
Watch the clip:
 

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

Rand Paul constitutional amendment on Congress: Does it miss its mark?

By Peter Grier 5 hours ago

Sen. Rand Paul (R) wants a constitutional amendment to prevent Congress from exempting themselves, and other top US officials, from laws that apply to ordinary Americans. He may be thinking about Obamacare here, but his idea is getting trounced from left and right.

Sen. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky has introduced a constitutional amendment that he says would prevent members of Congress from voting into law special treatment for themselves or for pretty much any other top US federal official.
Why is he doing this? It seems clear he’s aiming at Obamacare provisions that some Republicans say give preferential status to members of Congress and their staffs. There was a lot of talk about that during the recent unpleasantness of the government shutdown and debt-ceiling struggle, if you remember.
The amendment’s language, released Monday on Senator Paul’s official website, seems straightforward. Its first section says, “Congress shall make no law applicable to a citizen of the United States that is not equally applicable to Congress.”
Further sections say similarly that laws have to be equally applicable to the president, vice president, ambassadors, other public US officials, the US Supreme Court, the chief justice, and other federal judges.
That’s about it. Simple, right?

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Well, yes and no. The words may be concise, but in this case their effects would be wide-ranging and unpredictable. And in terms of Obamacare, it’s possible that this amendment, if adopted, would have the exact opposite effect of what Paul evidently intends.
That’s why it has drawn some harsh criticism from both ends of the political spectrum.
“It is a shoddy and sloppy piece of work, as if written on the back of a napkin,” writes right-leaning Washington Post pundit Jennifer Rubin.
Some laws exclude lawmakers for good reason, according to Ms. Rubin. Paul’s language would appear to make them vulnerable to lawsuits or criminal prosecution for their votes, for example.
“The problem ... is that it makes no distinction between laws that give special privileges to members of Congress and laws that exclude them from federal benefits for entirely legitimate reasons,” adds Ian Millhiser at the left-leaning "Think Progress" website.
Taken literally, the amendment might mean that every member of Congress is eligible for, say, Medicare, even if they’re not yet 65, according to Mr. Millhiser. To rule otherwise would entail judging a law to be not equally applicable to lawmakers, he says.
As to Obamacare, the situation is this: The insurance exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act are intended for the use of the self-employed or people who work for a small business that doesn’t offer health coverage and of others who buy individual or family insurance on the open market. They’re not supposed to be used by the employees of large entities.
But during the debate over Obamacare, GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa offered an amendment that requires members of Congress and their staffs to buy Affordable Care Act coverage. He thought Democrats would reject this, leaving them open to a charge of hypocrisy. Instead, they embraced it, and it passed.
That means members of Congress and their aides now must buy health insurance through Obamacare exchanges, instead of the existing government Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. In that sense, they are not “exempt” from Obamacare at all, as some Republicans charge.
However, the Office of Personnel Management has ruled that the federal government can continue to pay a portion of the health-care premiums for lawmakers and their staffers. Virtually all big employers engage in this cost-sharing. Some in the GOP, most notably Sen. David Vitter (R) of Louisiana, have pushed to end these contributions, arguing that they amount to Washington’s true Obamacare exemption.
That’s why conservative Republicans tried, and failed, to attach the “Vitter amendment” eliminating these subsidies to the government-funding bill that finally passed last week.
The problem here with Paul’s proposed amendment is that Congress in essence applied special treatment to itself by voting to put members and staffers in the small-business-oriented section of the Obamacare exchanges in the first place. Workers of other large US employers are prohibited from participating in the program.
“So taking all this together, as to members and employees of Congress, the net result of Senator Paul’s proposed amendment would probably mean that Congress would revert back to the employer-provided insurance system in place before the [Affordable Care Act],” writes Steven Schwinn, an associate professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, on the "Constitutional Law Prof Blog."
This is all theoretical, of course, because it is highly unlikely the amendment will be added to the US Constitution. It would first have to pass by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate. Then 38 of the 50 state legislatures would have to vote to approve it as well.

Ron Paul to keynote conference whose speakers include racists and conspiracy theorists

Ron Paul to keynote conference whose speakers include racists and conspiracy theorists

Christian Dem in NC FollowRSS

Daily Kos member

 

Next month, Ron Paul is due to be the keynote speaker at a conference that can charitably be described as a cesspool of hate.  The Fatima: The Path to Peace conference is being held in Niagara Falls, Ontario--just across the border from Buffalo.  According to Talk2Action's Rachel Tabachnick, even for a guy with a history of hanging around extremists, this is pretty revealing.

Paul is accustomed to sharing the stage with conspiracy theorists - John Birchers, Christian Reconstructionists, and Neoconfederates - but this time it's the international summit of a radical Catholic traditionalist organization. The Fatima Crusaders not only reject the reforms of Vatican II, but also teach that the Vatican is in collusion with the United Nations to form a one-world government.

The Fatima Crusaders believe that God will use Russia to punish the entire world unless Russia is converted to Catholicism.  They take their name from an appearance of the Virgin Mary to three Portuguese children in 1917. The speaker list is chock full of extremists of various shades.  The most revealing one, though, is Roberto Fiore, the leader of Forza Nuova, an Italian neofascist party.  Talk2Action's Bruce Wilson dug up a 2008 video showing Fiore ranting in Budapest against Jews and gays.  Among some of the other extremists due to speak there are a guy who believes Jewish masons are invading the Catholic church and a Euro-MP who claimed the Norwegian massacre of two years ago was due to a "multi-racial society."  The Fatima Center has also frequently put out anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic literature, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
It's amazing that so many people--including some on the left--consider Paul a hero, despite his long history of lying in bed with kooks and racists.  Well, this conference says a lot about the real Ron Paul.
As a side note, one of the speakers is Roméo Dallaire, the leader of the UN peacekeeping force during the Rwandan genocide and now a Canadian senator.  This is alarming to say the least.  Fatima portrays itself as an organization dedicated to world peace, and it's inconceivable Dallaire would have lent his name to this conference if he knew their true extremist agenda.

Rand Paul’s Hate Speech Sounded Just Like Al Qaeda

 by Dean Obeidallah

The Tea Party senator’s attack on Muslims was nothing short of ‘hate speech,’ says Dean Obeidallah, who compares Rand Paul’s words to the bad arguments and vitriol used by al Qaeda recruiters. 

 Was Rand Paul’s most recent, big set-piece speech about A. The government shutdown; B. The debt limit; or C. The dreaded Obamacare? Nope, it was none of them. Instead, Paul spent his 19-minute speech at the Value Voters summit on Friday talking about Muslims.

Now, I’m Muslim and I love attention - so on some level I’m happy when people talk about Muslims.  But despite what some may tell you, not all press is good press. And in the case of Rand Paul’s speech – it was awful press for Muslims.  In fact, by the end of  Paul’s talk, he had almost convinced me to hate Muslims.

Instead, his speech made me realize just how desperately Rand Paul wants to be President. Paul opened his speech with an attention grabbing line:  “From Boston to Zanzibar, there is a worldwide war on Christianity.”

Now, I thought he would be talking the typical fare: “war on Christmas,” Obama wants you to take birth control, gay people have the audacity to want to get married, etc.

But nope. Paul quickly made it clear that the war on Christians is being waged by Muslims.  How did he support this theory?  He would cite isolated actions by a few Muslims in various countries.  In fact, in the cases of Boston and Zanzibar, Paul noted the actions of two Muslims in each location to support his thesis that there are up to a “100 million” Muslims who want to slaughter Christians.

Of course, there was no mention by Paul of the Muslims in Pakistan who recently gathered by the hundreds, locking arms and encircling a church to protect Christians from radicals. Nor did Paul mention that these so-called Muslim terrorists overwhelmingly slaughter more Muslims than people of other faiths.  Indeed, Muslims have been the victims of “between 82 and 97 percent of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years.”

Look, I get why Paul is desperate.  He very badly wants to be President. But it’s not going well.

And then Paul, in an amazing feat of intellectual gymnastics, told the audience that the war on Christianity had come to America. Where you ask? Well, Paul deemed the Boston marathon bombing to have been perpetrated, “not against our government but against us as a people, a Christian people.”

Okay, this raises a big question: Does Paul believe that the Tsarnaev brothers, who allegedly had committed that attack and who had lived for years in the Boston area. couldn’t find a church in Boston? I don’t know if Paul has ever been to the city, but there are churches everywhere.   Clearly, if those two wanted to target Christians, they could have easily bombed a church as opposed to targeting a marathon that attracts runners from over 90 countries. 

But it seems that to Paul, any attack on America is an attack on Christianity because America is a Christian nation, just as Saudi Arabia is a Muslim nation. 

Now in fairness, Paul did use about a minute of his speech to acknowledge that many Muslims are peaceful. He even stated that he hoped that the faith could one day return to a time where Muslims valued, “the scientific method over fanaticism.”

But then Paul’s rhetoric truly became alarming.  He warned the audience that while we wait for Muslims to return to being peaceful: “Christians should be prepared for war…” He did also add that they should, “pray for peace,” but that seemed secondary to his literal call to arms.

Paul’s speech is likely a mirror image of one that would be given by an al Qaeda recruiter.  The difference being that an al Qaeda leader would cite isolated bad actions committed by the West and claim these incidents were proof that the West was waging an all out war on Islam.

Let’s be brutally honest: If Rand Paul had given a 19 minute speech listing every bad act committed by Jews anywhere in the world under the guise of “warning” people about Jews, he would rightfully be dubbed an Anti-Semite.  Or if Paul had given a similar speech setting forth a litany of crimes committed by African-Americans in the US as defining that race, he would be deemed a racist.

But when a speech is given like this about Muslims- it’s somehow seen as simply being “politically incorrect.” No, it's not. It’s hate-just as if it would be if it was directed at Jews, Blacks, gays or any minority group.

Look, I get why Paul is desperate.  He very badly wants to be President. But it’s not going well.  He was publicly smacked down this past summer by Chris Christie, one of his chief rivals for the Republican presidential nomination.  And Paul has recently been overshadowed by Ted Cruz. All you need to do is check out Paul’s speech from last year’s summit which focused solely upon his faith and outlook on life to realize that the stakes have changed for him. 

To Paul, this speech was sort of a fear mongering “Hail Mary” speech. But it failed. Paul came in fourth in the Value Voters straw poll.

My hope is that Rand Paul now recognizes that even the most conservative Americans want to hear about policy, not polemics. They want answers, not accusations.

The question is: Did Rand Paul get the message? I, for one, hope he did.

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Dean Obeidallah is a former lawyer turned political comedian. He has appeared on numerous TV shows, including ABC’s The View, Comedy Central’s Axis of Evil special, and NBC’s Rock Center, and he is a frequent commentator on various cable-news networks. He is also the co-director of the soon-to-be released comedy documentary The Muslims Are Coming! His website is deanofcomedy.com.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

 

 

Growing Up Paul Part One .

Rage of the Privileged

Paul Krugman

Mark Thoma has an excellent column at the Fiscal Times linking the fight over the debt ceiling to the larger issue of extreme inequality. (By the way, I start my day, every day, with a quick skim of the Times followed by Thoma’s blog Economist’s View, which is the best place by far to keep up with the latest in economic discourse.) I’d like, however, to suggest that the reality is even worse than Thoma suggests.
Here’s how Thoma puts it:

Rising inequality and differential exposure to economic risk has caused one group to see themselves as the “makers” in society who provide for the rest and pay most of the bills, and the other group as “takers” who get all the benefits. The upper strata wonders, “Why should we pay for social insurance when we get little or none of the benefits?” and this leads to an attack on these programs.

So he links the debt ceiling fight to the influence of the wealthy, who want to dismantle the welfare state because it’s nothing to them, and they want lower taxes. One could add that the very inequality that distances the rich from ordinary concerns gives them increased power, and so makes their anti-welfare-state views far more influential.
How, then, are things even worse than he says? Because many of the rich are selective in their opposition to government helping the unlucky. They’re against stuff like food stamps and unemployment benefits; but bailing out Wall Street? Yay!
Seriously. Charlie Munger says that we should “thank God” for the bailouts, but that ordinary people fallen on hard times should “suck it in and cope.” AIG’s CEO — the CEO of a bailed out firm! — says that complaints about bonuses to executives at such firms are just as bad as lynchings (I am not making this up.)
The point is that the superrich have not gone Galt on us — not really, even if they imagine they have. It’s much closer to pure class warfare, a defense of the right of the privileged to keep and extend their privileges. It’s not Ayn Rand, it’s Ancien Régime.

 

Rand Paul Says Subsidizing Health Care Of Federal Workers Should Be Unconstitutional, Continues To Accept Subsidized Health Care

 Igor Volsky

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) — who has relied on taxpayer-funded health care since 2011 — plans to offer a constitutional amendment that would prohibit tax dollars from subsidizing the health care of government employees and require all federal workers to purchase insurance through the exchanges included in the Affordable Care Act.
The proposal comes as the senator still appears to be enrolled in government subsidized health care coverage.
“My amendment says basically that everybody including Justice Roberts — who seems to be such a fan of Obamacare — gets it too,” Paul told the Daily Caller. “See, right now, Justice Roberts is still continuing to have federal employee health insurance subsidized by the taxpayer,” Paul said. “And if he likes Obamacare so much, I’m going to give him an amendment that gives Obamacare to Justice Roberts.”
Under current law, lawmakers and some of their aides will be required to drop their existing health care coverage in the tax-subsidized Federal Health Benefits Program (FEHB) and enroll in the insurance exchanges at the core of the health law beginning on Oct 1. Though Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — the author of the amendment responsible for the shift — had initially stipulated that Congressional employees “use their existing employer contribution” to buy insurance, the final law did not specifically mention the role of the employer, leaving regulators concerned that the language could prohibit the government from contributing to the insurance costs of Congressional employees and leave poorly-paid aides responsible for the full cost of coverage.
In August, after the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ruled that the Congress can apply their employer contributions towards their exchange plans, Republicans pledged to forfeit the contribution and fight to undo “special exemption” for government employees. While the federal government will be the only big employer to subsidize coverage in the exchanges for several years, other large businesses could begin contributing to employee health care through the marketplaces in 2017.
The federal government currently pays for approximately 75 percent of Paul’s health care costs and the senator has advocated for expanding the Congressional system. In March of 2012, he co-sponsored legislation to expand the FEHBP to Medicare enrollees, highlighting in a press conference for the plan that “We’re going to offer a plan that would give all seniors citizens in the country the same Congressional health care plan that we have.” “Our health care plan, the Congressional health care plan, or the federal employee health care plan, is 75 percent subsidized,” he bragged.
Paul’s office would not respond to multiple requests for comment.