Tag: 2010

Breaker 1-9

A

“The bottom line is I’m not an expert [on coal mining], so don’t give me the power in Washington to be making rules. You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You’d try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don’t, I’m thinking that no one will apply for those jobs. I know that doesn’t sound…” […] “I want to be compassionate, and I’m sorry for what happened, but I wonder: Was it just an accident?”

–Rand Paul

B

Until about 1900, nearly all anthracite coal breakers [removed] impurities [in the mined coal] by hand, usually by boys between the ages of eight and 12 years old known as breaker boys. […] The breaker boys would sit on wooden seats, perched over chutes and conveyor belts, picking slate and other impurities out of the coal. Breaker boys worked 10 hours a day for six days a week. The work was hazardous. Breaker boys were forced to work without gloves so that they could handle the slick coal better. The slate, however, was sharp, and boys would leave work with their fingers cut and bleeding. Many breaker boys lost fingers to the rapidly moving conveyor belts, while others […] had their feet, hands, arms, and legs amputated when they moved among the machinery and accidentally slipped under the belts or into the gears. Many died when they fell into the gears of the machinery, their bodies only retrieved at the end of the working day. Others were caught in the rush of coal, and crushed to death or smothered. The “dry” coal kicked up so much dust that the breaker boys sometimes wore lamps on their heads to see, and asthma and black lung disease were common. […] The practice of employing children in coal breakers largely ended by 1920 because of the efforts of the National Child Labor Committee, sociologist and photographer Lewis Hine, and the National Consumers League, who educated the public about the practice and succeeded in passing child labor laws.

–Wikipedia on Breaker Boys.

See, I always thought that the practice ended because 8-12 year olds simply quit applying for such dangerous work.

So the next question is simply, “What do the experts on your staff tell you that the top marginal tax rate should be in order to maximize tax revenues, leaving everything else about the tax code the same?” Journalists should relentlessly ask it of the Republican leadership in Congress who continue to make fallacious claims, and the Democratic leadership in Congress ought to ask it politely in a letter to CBO Director Doug Elmendorf.

Andrew Samwick, nailing the Laffer Curve. Add to the list of things an agile Democratic party could positively eviscerate the GOP with by attacking their perceived strengths and, you know, turning them into colossal weaknesses. See: Marriage, getting the government completely out of.

I’d like to see labor unions spend more time negotiating pay and benefits and a lot less time negotiating the kind of stultifying work rules that drive managers crazy. I agree with conservatives that Sarbanes-Oxley went too far and probably ought to be scaled back. And I agree […] that local zoning regs often become little more than hammers for NIMBYism and soft corruption.

Kevin Drum.
To which I add: Harrumph. I think this sort of framing is the model for a new Democratic century (or, for that matter, a new and revitalized GOP; there’s absolutely nothing there that Reagan wouldn’t get behind) . That nobody (well, nobody other than Bloomberg) seems to be taking it up with any seriousness is, shall we say: dispiriting.
And yes, I know that such a platform could end up looking like more ultimately pointless Clintonian triangulation, but one would assume that with Better Democrats™, one could rely on the rather obvious popularity of such measures to drive the debate inexorably forward without recourse to a lot of pulling-the-football-away compromising; otherwise, you craft the bill as inviolable take-it-or-leave-its and let the chips fall where they may, fully intending to run on either consequence.
Either way, you can definitively say it’s never been tried.

A Steele Lockbox

Marc Ambinder, among many others, seems to be looking at the whole “secret debt at RNC” story as a sign of big trouble for the GOP going into the 2010 midterms; he goes so far as to characterize it as a threat to their whole fall product line:

During midterm elections, the national committee plays two essential roles. First, it serves as a bank account that can be drawn upon to shore up House races or put others into play. Second, it coordinates the party’s field operations and funds joint “Victory” committees with state parties. The RNC, at the moment, is barely fulfilling the second function and has less than $10 million on hand, so it cannot help much with House races.

Are our memories really this short and so utterly faulty? This whole “secret debt” thing is entirely, entirely an insidery play against Steele, who seems to be on the way out post-midterms if the inner circle has anything to say about it. Why do I say this? Well, because the GOP has awe-inspiring amounts of money available to it:

a list of ten Republican aligned institutions, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Family Research Council. Next to it is a column listing the amount of money each group has pledged to spend by Election Day. A third column on the right details what those groups actually spent in 2008 on federal elections.

The number at the bottom delivers the key message. If their pledges are fulfilled, these ten groups will unleash more than $200 million in election-focused spending – roughly $37 million more than every single independent group spent on the 2008 presidential campaign combined. This time around, almost every single penny will be going to Republican candidates or causes.

Indeed, what a scene of chaos. How will the GOP ever get by? They’ll run through that quarter-billion dollars in no time at all. Then what?!? Oh, right, more money will roll in.

And yes, for once, this news is genuinely bad for The Democrat. Page Juan Williams.

I think the case for [repeated government shutdowns] happening is twofold. One is that conservative politics is now much more dominated by a set of overlapping, competing media figures who are more interested in ratings than in majorities. The other is that if John Boehner has the courage of my convictions, he’ll believe that a government shutdown will risk sending the economy into a double-dip recession and that ultimately Barack Obama will be blamed for the bad results regardless of what polling says in the moment.

Matthew Yglesias, with emphasis on “ratings” and “Obama will be blamed”: yep, yep, yep, a million times yep.

What, me worry?

In which Krugman and I disagree:

Republicans, by the way, seem less susceptible to this delusion. Since Mr. Obama took office, they have engaged in relentless obstruction, obviously unworried about how their actions would look or be reported. And it’s working: by blocking Democratic efforts to alleviate the economy’s woes, the G.O.P. is helping its chances of a big victory in November.

I think Krugman is being too kind by half. The GOP is unworried because they know their actions will not be reported; they therefore needn’t worry about appearances at all. There is, outside the blogoshpere, precisely zero coverage of across-the-board GOP obstruction. And, why should there be? The Democrat won’t mention it either. Obama is, even still, apparently heralding in a wonderful new day in which everyone works together.

And don’t for a second entertain the thought that, should the GOP capture the House in November, things will change because (why) they’ll have to start taking positions on policy. They certainly will take positions, but it will all be:

  1. The Tax elimination act of 2011
  2. The forced birth bill of 2011
  3. The immigration cessation bill of 2011
  4. The drill everywhere bill of 2011
  5. The Social Security “Personalization” and Welfare Elimination Act of 2011

And etc… That, of course, is ignoring (for now) all the weekly impeachment proceedings. Each of these will, of course, die a quick death in the do-nothing Senate. Well, except for that last one. Democrats will likely take it up in hopes of creating the appearance of bipartisanship. That and, we’ll see a high-minded compromise on #1; there we’ll raise taxes on the bottom 15% in exchange for deep cuts in social programs and an across the board tax decrease on the top 10% as well as elimination of capital gains and estate taxes. It’s win/win!

How do you stop it? Well, you know about it. You thus start talking about it. Now. Repeatedly. Every time a microphone is switched on and several times when one isn’t yet.

That, however, would be shrill.

Unemployment extension: we cannot possibly afford such a deficit exploder; won’t you please think of the children?

Bush tax cuts: Why, we can’t afford not to extend those indefinitely. And no, we don’t need to pay for them in any way. In fact, it would be irresponsible to pay for them.

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2010 GOP. An opponent whose nut(s) The Democrat finds utterly impossible to crack.

(graph via Ezra Klein)