EFFin' Unsound

- posted by demo kid

Veiled racist threat?

[Obama] doesn’t understand enough to realize that what he is advocating is not just dangerous to the US, but dangerous to himself. The same controls that keep him in power keep a mob of people from starting a civil war with Obama as the target for a lynching.

I can just imagine him saying, “Hey, nice President you have here! It’d be a shame if something were to… you know… HAPPEN to him.” You know, with nasty, ugly, bigoted overtones attached. Yet more proof that he’s nothing more than an ethically challenged thug when it gets down to it.

- posted by demo kid

As noted by scottd in the comments of the previous post, the new kid on the Sound Politics board has erased his questionable main page post removed mention of the post from the main page (but it’s still found here — and it is very Googleable!), and he is also deleting any questions about it. The public blog post is still up as well.

But hey, why maintain your site when you can post about souvlaki, right? Priorities, people!

I guess this also means that we’ve found one way that the blogosphere has improved upon newspapers. Why waste time retracting the half-truths on your webpage and trying to correct your mistakes when you can simply shove it under a rug with a few HTML edits?

- posted by demo kid

I’m certain that the powers that be running Sound Politics are REALLY regretting their decision to have a “public blog” now. For the life of me, I could never quite understand WHY they did it, as many of the posts by the nutjobs that write there are bullshit, if not bald-faced lies and propaganda. (Not to mention, of course, that anonymous 18-digit hexadecimal codes make for very lousy names to blog with.)

A few days ago, this all really bit them in the ass. Apparently, someone anonymously posted a pretty serious accusation about a Kirkland city council candidate:

Yes, Penny Sweet, wife of a member of the state legislature, “retired” Group Health Administrator and owner of a prominent Kirkland business, making a second run as a 2009 candidate for Kirkland City Council, received Unemployment benefits. How? Why?

This anonymous tipster then proceeds to point out a line on the public disclosure form filed by Ms. Sweet, and takes her to task for claiming between $4,000 and $20,000 in unemployment benefits:

Really, Penny? Were you unemployed? You owned and operated your own business, for which, later in the same F-1 form, you indicate Code E, meaning over $100,000. This is just not adding up. How many weeks did she tell the State that she was unemployed and how much money did she receive from our state’s treasury?

(The fact that the “Code E” represents assets and NOT income eludes this moron, but we’ll get more into that later.)

However, the worst part of this is that the anonymous douchebag writing this public blog post casts dispersions on her husband, a state representative, implying that they either falsified documents, or managed to pull a few strings to get a few thousand dollars on the side:

And what role did her husband, Rep. Larry Springer (D-45th) play, as a state legislator who we entrust to protect our state treasury.

Serious enough, but one of the new members of the (u)SP brain trust took note of this post and gave it front page status on the main page, claiming:

Of course, as the public blogger points out, there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for the fact that Sweet collected between $4000 and $19,999 in unemployment benefits and the fact that she owns, along with her husband, State Representative Larry Springer, the Grape Choice Wine Shop in Kirkland (good place, btw) and appears to be a revered civic leader.

and later commenting:

Actually, scottd, after reading the so called “hit piece” I researched it myself. I don’t just take everything I read on the public blog (or in the Seattle Times, or at HoresesAss.org or on Drudge or anywhere else) at face value. Before you make wild accusations you better be able to back them up with FACT. And I believe I said something about there being a perfectly reasonable explanation for it all? Certainly more leeway than the liberal media gives people like Sarah Palin, Dino Rossi or those “crazy teabaggers”.

“Appears to be revered civic leader.” I see. So, “a perfectly reasonable explanation for it all” is “have you stopped beating your wife” for the 21st-century conservative? That’s fucking brilliant.

Luckily, the candidate in question managed to find this post, and responded:

In early 2007, in a restructuring process at Group Health, my position along with many others was eliminated. This is a business process used in many large companies. I took the opportunity for severance after 31 years with the organization, withdrew my retirement funds and reinvested them. On April 27, 2007 the organization threw me a retirement party. If the reorganization had not happened, I would have had a full retirement just a few years later.

I have collected unemployment benefits while searching for work. I have spent a significant amount of time and submitted hundreds of applications looking for the right job as per all of the state’s requirements. I filed for unemployment and my former employer verified my eligibility status with the state. This is all documented and submitted to the state.

In April 2009 I had surgery and ceased my job search and submissions for unemployment.

I am still entitled to benefits under Washington State law; but since I am running for elected office, I have not resumed any claims although I have continued to pursue job leads.

Larry Springer and I both own The Grape Choice and have for 25 years. I have never received any salary for my work in the business. It has been Larry’s source of income in the past. In recent years he has often forgone a salary in order to assure that our employees are paid. Being a state representative takes him away for so much time that our employees are NOT optional. Their salaries come first.

…

One last comment. I realize that during a campaign many allegations and accusations will surface. However, to suggest that my husband, State Representative Larry Springer, may have played a role in my receiving unemployment benefits is ridiculous and feels like cheap campaign rhetoric. I am running for Kirkland City Council because I am committed to my community and its future. I think I have demonstrated that over the last 25 years. End of Story.

So much for “comprehensive research”. Luckily, this woman managed to find this post; even while it would have been a minor annoyance, it was far more than what she should have had to deal with from someone who, in her words, “went to extraordinary lengths to hide their identity by setting up an anonymous user name and password and working from a public computer at Kinkos”.

Normally, I’m quite willing to laugh at the far-right-wing nutjobs over there, but there’s a line and SP crossed it. They really screwed up in this case, not only with the policies on their website, but also with the willingness of the regular writers to accept wild, unsubstantiated conjecture as fact from someone who, most likely, was using their website in a very personal smear campaign. And making a half-assed apology while keeping the anonymous public blog entry on their site and continuing to accept anonymous postings at their public blog? It’s bullshit.

It’s a good thing they have no credibility to lose. While the folks over there may have tried to look into the identity of the mystery public blogger — if they were really working from a public computer at Kinko’s — it doesn’t ignore the fact that SP has slid even further into the role of Washington State’s online right-wing political cesspool.

- posted by demo kid

Sometimes you just see some interesting things on Lou’s archive page.

“Clinton’s Biggest Boner: Ignoring Kurds’ Effort to Depose Saddam”

Errrrr…

- posted by demo kid

In the past, pudge has demonstrated himself to have a great working knowledge of the Constitution. I’d recommend that you read his post about selective incorporation of the Bill of Rights here. Even though most of us know some of the basics, there are times when it’s shocking what we don’t know about our own government! For example, if you ask 100 people on the street about a “constitutional right to privacy” for example, I’d hazard a guess that 99 of them wouldn’t have a clue that it isn’t explicitly in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, but a right derived from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (among others). Arguing with someone like pudge that actually knows things like this is much more challenging — and much more rewarding.

His recent post, “How Do I Violate Thee”, is a BIG ol’ crapfest, though. (As is his earlier post, which reflects a completely dense position on WHY people don’t have health insurance.) It shows that he has less of a clue than I thought though. In fact, this is a classic case of RTRD (“Read The Report, Dammit!”). And while it seems he is parroting what others on the right are saying, it just means that he has company in missing the point to an absolutely absurd level.

In this diatribe, pudge claims that the proposed health care mandate violates the Constitution, specifically the Tenth Amendment (reservation of powers), the Fourth Amendment (search and seizure), the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments (due process), and the First Amendment (freedom of association). For teabaggers, that would be quite the rousing speech, and more than enough of a reason to get them to shout out that the government has no place in MediCare or food stamps or something.

Despite this, though, he’s wrong. In fact, the Washington Post article I linked to before unintentionally gives an answer:

This leaves mandate supporters with few palatable options. Congress could attempt to condition some federal benefit on the acquisition of insurance. States, for example, usually condition issuance of a car registration on proof of automobile insurance, or on a sizable payment into an uninsured motorist fund. Even this, however, cannot achieve universal health coverage. No federal program or entitlement applies to the entire population, and it is difficult to conceive of a “benefit” that some part of the population would not choose to eschew.

The other obvious alternative is to use Congress’s power to tax and spend. In an effort, perhaps, to anchor this mandate in that power, the Senate version of the individual mandate envisions that failure to comply would be met with a penalty, to be collected by the IRS. This arrangement, however, is not constitutional either.

Like the commerce power, the power to tax gives the federal government vast authority over the public, and it is well settled that Congress can impose a tax for regulatory rather than purely revenue-raising purposes. Yet Congress cannot use its power to tax solely as a means of controlling conduct that it could not otherwise reach through the commerce clause or any other constitutional provision. In the 1922 case Bailey v. Drexel Furniture, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not impose a “tax” to penalize conduct (the utilization of child labor) it could not also regulate under the commerce clause. Although the court’s interpretation of the commerce power’s breadth has changed since that time, it has not repudiated the fundamental principle that Congress cannot use a tax to regulate conduct that is otherwise indisputably beyond its regulatory power.

It’s actually kinda stupid when you see the answer right there, in an argument AGAINST the Constitutionality of a mandate. It’s like a connect-the-dots puzzle with only two dots.

Simply put, stating that insurance would be “mandated” is a misnomer here, but one that’s necessary to avoid overcomplicating the issue. There is in fact no way that the federal government can mandate a positive obligation like this, like pudge says. And I cannot make this any clearer: you will not be imprisoned or fined directly if you do not buy insurance under any of these proposals, beause it is not legal.

What is possible, however, is to provide a direct or implicit benefit through income taxes. The Sixteenth Amendment does grant the federal government the power to levy income taxes without providing many requirements about HOW those taxes are allocated, and the WP article is correct in stating that this has been used to implement federal policies of all kinds. In fact, when you think about all the deductions that you can take it’s pretty astounding: there are deductions for interest on home loans, purchases of certain types of cars, charitable donations, school tuition, and so forth. None of these are explicitly mandated by the Constitution, but the use of this power by the federal government to further policy is legal (barring issues with due process, equal protection, or the like).

Reframing this as a benefit provided when paying income taxes pretty much deflates the entire legal issue. Due process, search and seizure, and free association are not violated here. You don’t NEED to file any paperwork with the government about what you do to get that tax credit, just like you don’t NEED to get a credit for student loan payments or medical expenses. It applies to everyone equally until you file paperwork for the credit. Likewise, free association doesn’t apply; you’re not required to associate with anyone if you do not want to, just like you don’t need to buy a house if you don’t want to.

Now, I can certainly accept that there’s a PHILOSOPHICAL difference between pudge and myself, but conflating one’s hyperbolic political views with what is actually legal under the Constitution? Stupid. I can understand arguments about costs, or even the legality of a public option… but this is just random, ranting bullshit based on a very narrow reading of the Constitution that is NOT legally applicable.