Froth Slosh B'Gosh

Brave Tim Murphy Ran Away!

What a craven, gutless little coward.

It was supposed to be a chance to “Join Representative Tim Murphy as he discusses his Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act.” But Mr. Murphy. an Upper St. Clair Republican, canceled a workshop scheduled at Duquesne University’s student union at 2:30 p.m. this afternoon.

The decision was hastily made: A Duquesne University spokeswoman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of the cancellation roughly 45 minutes before the event was set to begin.

“We were disappointed to learn that Congressman Murphy’s long-planned tour of the Duquesne University Psychology Department and discussion with students on his Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act had to be cancelled today,” said a spokeswoman for Mr. Murphy. “Duquesne staff brought to our attention at the last minute that organizations not affiliated with the university were planning to disrupt the discussion and campus security was unable to guarantee the safety of all involved.”

Brave Tim Murphy ran away.  Bravely ran away away!  When danger reared its ugly head he bravely turned around and fled!  Bravely taking to his feet he beat a very brave retreat!

Eating Their Own

Hilarious!  And right in my very county council district!

Allegheny County Councilman Matt Drozd says he's abandoning the Republican  Party and running as an independent write-in candidate after losing the primary  election.

Speaking from the courthouse courtyard, Mr. Drozd said he was targeted by a  deceptive mailer from opponent Tom Baker that insinuated he voted for President  Barack Obama's health care overhaul, popularly known as "Obamacare."

If local Republicans are so stupid to believe that a local county council votes on federal legislation, then they're going to get the kind of candidates they deserve.  Meanwhile, if Drozd can run as an independent, he'll likely split the Republican vote, throwing the race to the Democratic candidate. 

I know in the city of Pittsburgh, if you run in a party primary, you cannot run in the general as an idenpendent, but I have no idea if that applies to the county as well.

This Is A Crime?

Errr, what?

The founder of a tea party group in Oklahoma was charged with two felonies on Tuesday for allegedly sending threatening emails to a Republican lawmaker after he refused buy in to the notion that the United Nations was conspiring to transform the country into a communist dictatorship.

According to the Oklahoman, 54-year-old Sooner Tea Party founder Al Gerhart faces up to five years in prison for blackmail and violating the state computer crimes act.

I don't care at all for the Teabaggers, but this is some pretty weak sauce.  Reading the e-mail, I don't find anything terribly threatening about it, unless you consider the ranting of loon to an elected official to be "threatening." 

“Branan, Get that bill heard or I will make sure you regret not doing it,” Gerhart wrote in the email. “I will make you the laughing stock of the Senate if I don’t hear that this bill will be heard and passed. We will dig into your past, yoru [sic] family, your associates and once we start on you there will be no end to it. This is a promise.”

I don't see any threat to harm the elected official.  The "threat," such as it is, is to do nothing more than what an opposing candidate might do during an election.  What is "opposition research" other than an effort to "dig into your past" in order to try an politically wound your opponent?  What's next?  You'll be charged with a felony by "threatening" to work for an elected official's defeat if said official does things you don't like?  Isn't that the very heart of politics?  While the tone is belligerant, there is no threat to physically harm anybody. On the other hand, there's Ted Nugent.

I guess some politicians are a bit touchy.

Poor Little Rich Boy

Phil Mickelson whines about his taxes.  Doesn't understand how progressive taxation works, or the difference between marginal tax rates and effective tax rates.  Golfers don't have to be smart, but there's some world class stupid going on in his head.

Mickelson had suggested "drastic changes" were in store for him -- perhaps moving from his native California -- because of changes in federal and state taxes that he says tap into more than 60 percent of his income. He said it "absolutely" was a factor in deciding against becoming part of the San Diego Padres' new ownership group.

The four-time major champion didn't back away from his outlook, only his decision to talk about it...

"If you add up all the federal and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and the state, my tax rate is 62, 63 percent," Mickelson had said. "So I've got to make some decisions on what I'm going to do."

First of all, Mickelson would only pay more than 60% in taxes if the higher rates applied to his total income.  They don't.  He only pays the higher federal rate on income over $400,000.  His income up to that point is taxed at the lower rates.  Likewise, his California taxes only increase an additional 3.3% on his income over 1 million dollars.  He pays the lower rate on everything under that amount. To be sure, the bulk of his income has the higher rate applied, but that's the marginal, not the effective rate. As for social security taxes, he only pays that on his first $113,700 in income.  Everything over that amount isn't taxed at all.  His belief that he'll pay 62 or 63 percent of his income in taxes is simply wrong. Without knowing what he's able to claim in deductions, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that his total tax bite is closer to 45%, if not lower.  I don't understand why so few in the SCLM ever explains the rather simple concept of progressive taxation whenever a story likes this crops up.  To his credit,  Len Burman has a piece up in Forbes telling Mickelson to put on his big boy pants. 

...suppose Mickelson’s upper estimate on his tax bill–63%–were right. Is he saying that a $10 million endorsement deal wouldn’t be worth doing if he only got to keep $3.7 million after tax? Really? Mr. Mickelson, do you understand that the typical American would have to work about 75 years to earn that much money before tax?

Sir, you get paid astonishing amounts of money for playing golf–directly through the purses you win at tournaments and indirectly through all the endorsement deals that come with golf success.  According to Forbes, you are the seventh highest paid athlete in the world, with $4.8 million in salary and winnings and $43 million in endorsements?

Do you have any idea how lucky you are?

Please stop whining and give thanks for being able to earn a fabulous living playing a game and selling golf clubs (even after tax).  99.999% of people would never have that option, no matter how hard they worked on their swing.

Mickelson made 48 million dollars last year according to Forbes.  Even if he DID have to pay 60% of his income in taxes (and he doesn't) he'd still be left with $28.8 million dollars  to roll around in, Scrooge MacDuck style. We should all have his "problems." 

Shorter Joan Orie Melvin

I'm above the law.

And in a related development, her former colleagues tell her to go pound salt.

The Gyrations of the Silly and the Desperate

Whenever the Democrats win, the right wing will invariably pull out a map like the one on the right to try and illustrate that most of the United States voted for the conservative, even if more people voted for the Democrat.  SEE??? LOOK AT ALL THAT RED!!! LOOK AT IT!!!!!  This is done to try and delegitimize the victor, and somehow "prove" that conservatives are the real majority (much of the "heartland" blather is based on this). 

Just to note before I go on, even though I found this map attached to a posting from yesterday on a conservative website, I'm pretty sure this reflects the 2008 election, instead of 2012, since it shows some counties as blue that I know went for Romney, and some as red that I know went for Obama, but for the purposes of this post it will do.

So where are all those blue counties located?  Generally, they're located where the bulk of the population lives.  Since I live in Pennsylvania, we'll use the Keystone State to dig a little deeper (I made my own color-coded map for PA as a reference, but its a bit messy, although it generally conforms to the above.)

Which counties went for President Obama in Pennsylvania, which as of the last census contained 12,702,379 people?  They would be Philadelphia, Delaware, Montgomery, Bucks, Lehigh, Northampton, Monroe, Luzerne, Lackawanna, Dauphin, Allegheny, and Erie.  Not surprisingly, these counties also contain the state's biggest cities; Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Harrisburg, and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.  These counties contain 6,634,551 people, or over 52% of the state's population.  Not coincidentally, the President took Pennsylvania with 52% of the vote.  Those vast swaths of red are for the most part pretty sparsely populated and rural or mountainous.  Romney didn't get much help from the larger suburban counties he won either.  For example, while Chester County, with a population of nearly half a million people and one of Pennsylvania's largest counties was in Romney's column, he beat the President there by a mere 58 votes.  Centre County, another fairly large county (which not oddly at all, is in the center of the state) and home to Penn State University, went for Romney by 20 votes.  The Republicans aren't going make up ground with anemic wins like that, even if they do manage to garner 60% of the vote in Forest County (population 7,716). 

Just a little something to keep in mind when you see a similar map tossed around (and you probably will).

Population data came from the US Census Bureau website.

2012 election data for Pennsylvania came from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's website.

The Word Of A Republican Politician....

...is worthless.

The whole idea of the budget super committee was to force a compromise by putting all spending on the table for automatic cuts if an agreement couldn't be reached.  The teabagging Republicans refused to compromise, and the automatic cuts are scheduled to shortly begin.  Now, they want to rewrite the law to save programs that are near and dear to the cockles of their shrunken, blackened hearts, while allowing cuts for domestic spending to take place.

Perhaps they should have considered the consequences of their actions when they were stomping their feet and acting like spoiled brats?

BooMan has a particularly useful read on the entire issue, laying out the compromises that Democrats have been willing to make, only to be faced time and time again with the Republicans' refusals to budge.

Ruth Ann Vomits Up Another Article

This time she complains about a politician engaging in politics, takes veiled swipe at Teh Gays, and then pivots to a whine about how ebil liberuls are trying to keep religious people from engaging in bigotry and discrimination.  My favorite part, though, was this: 

But it's possible the cynicism runs deeper -- and the failure of leadership is greater -- than conveniently evolving into a gay marriage advocate just in time to rake in millions from big donors in Hollywood (where the institution of marriage is of course so highly prized).

It's possible.  Of course, there are lots of things that are possible, aren't there?  Ruth Ann should understand that nearly half of all marriages, be they in Hollywood or elsewhere, end in divorce.  Of course, the institution of marriage isn't too prized in Washington D.C. either (just ask Newt Gingrich) or among far right radio talkers (just ask Rush Limbaugh).  Meanwhile, President Obama has gotten along just fine with a single spouse, unlike say, a certain opinion columnist in the pages of the P-G who is, if I'm not mistaken, on husband number 2.

WATB's Of The 1%

Banksters suffer as bonuses are cut.

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex....

“I can’t imagine what I’m going to do,” Schiff said. “I’m crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don’t have a dishwasher. We do all our dishes by hand.”...

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”....

Wall Street headhunter Daniel Arbeeny said his “income has gone down tremendously.” On a recent Sunday, he drove to Fairway Market in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn to buy discounted salmon for $5.99 a pound...

Cry me a river.  The poor who worry about how they're going to afford fucking FOOD don't know about stress???  What a clueless asshole.  When a middle income or poverty stricken person loses a job or has to take a pay cut, it often means forgoing health insurance, or skipping a meal, or losing the house.  So the whiny assed bankster can no longer send his kids to private school or afford the summer home?  Too fucking bad.  YOU helped create this mess.  YOU wanted austerity (for everyone except you, of course), well, now you're going to get it.   The poor get ramen noodles, while the wealthy struggle to get by on salmon that's on sale.  The lack of self awarness and empathy, the sense of privledge and downright selfishness of these people is stunning.  Maybe if Schiff had socked some of his bonuses away instead of fritting it away on expensive rentals he could still send the kids to fancy-pants school.