Everyone agrees fiscal cliff is huge problem, does nothing

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 2 Comments

This year will be our last Christmas, because the military programs that fund Santa Claus will be automatically cut in January 2013. That’s when the $1.2 trillion sequester of forced reductions in “defense and non-defense spending”—a weird epithet we have all agreed to use—will kick in as a result of the budget super committee’s failure to do dick about anything. Those spending cuts will coincide with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts to create a sort of economic compression pose known as the Fiscal Cliff. Ben Bernanke coined that expression. It’s his big accomplishment from last year. Meanwhile, businesses have delayed hiring and investment until they see what economic conditions will look like in 2013. The Republican and Democratic parties have agreed on two things this year. One, they will not talk about gun control no matter how many insane people shoot however many sane people. Two, going over the Fiscal Cliff would be bad. As we speak, Congress is working on a third agreement: to do nothing about it.

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NC bill would outlaw sea level estimates

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 2 Comments

Downtown Durham

If you have a cat, make sure he is not sitting on your lap when you read this article about the North Carolina legislature’s plan to make exponential sea level projections illegal, lest the rage beam that shoots out of your face fill your home with the smell of burning hair. As everyone’s grandfather taught them, there are two ways to project future sea levels. One is to make an exponential model based on expected climate phenomena and rates of increase from recent years using math and scientists and stuff, and the other is to make a line graph based on sea levels from the last hundred years. As you might expect, the method that expects next year’s increase to be the same as in 1902 yields a much lower number, since it disregards global warming. “We’re skeptical of the rising sea level science,” says Tom Thompson, who just happens to be chairman of an economic development group representing 20 of North Carolina’s coastal counties.

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Gay judicial nominee blocked to prevent “activism”

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 3 Comments

Richmond prosecutor and almost-judge Tracy Thorne-Begland

The nomination of Tracy Thorne-Begland to the Virginia judiciary had bipartisan support in the Virginia House of Delegates right up until it didn’t. The Richmond prosecutor was backed by the Courts of Justice Committee, but in a 1am vote—conducted after several state legislators had gone home—the House voted 33 to 31 in his favor, short of the 50 votes he needed for confirmation. The opposition and late vote were attributed to The Family Foundation and conservative lawmakers, who worried that he would be a “homosexual activist.” And like that, Tracy Thorne-Begland’s career came to a screeching halt.

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Washington Post: “Republicans are the problem”

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 2 Comments

I think most of us would agree that the federal government does not work as well as it could just now. For example, if you regard 86% of Americans as “most of us,” you might be troubled by the 14% approval rating of Congress. Politicians are rascals, and the two parties vie for control of the United States government in the same way two cats vie for control of a woodpecker. Except what if—stay with me here—the parties were not precisely equal participants in villainy? What if the vying were between one admittedly inept woodpecker biologist and a cat? That is the essential contention of Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein at the Washington Post, who get to this bold statement by the third paragraph:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

It’s a heck of a read.

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Antonin Scalia is not going to read the whole Affordable Care Act

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 8 Comments

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says the word "diligence."

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, so it’s time for another edition of Kombat! Kourt for Kids. In today’s meeting of the KK—dammit! Okay, Kombat! Kourt for Kids is now called Kombat? Judiciary for Kids, and today’s meeting of K?JK is about Antonin Scalia. He is still waiting for someone to bring him Solo and the Wookie. He also did not realize that being a Supreme Court justice would require so much reading. In an exchange with Deputy Solicitor Edwin Kneedler last week, Scalia expressed his incredulity that people might expect him to read the entire Affordable Care Act before ruling on it. “Is this not totally unrealistic?” Scalia said. “That we’re going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?”

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