Senseless Violence

We've long believed that it's best to avoid making decisions in the heat of anger. If you make a decision while you're angry, you run a larger than normal risk of your decision being a poor one. Unfortunately, like so many other axioms on anger and violence, this one is ignored far too often.

Most of the attention in the media today - including ours - will be focused on three incredibly heinous acts of violence that took place Tuesday. Sadly, we expect that few of our colleagues, if any, will make the same connections we're making today.

There was the random act of violence yesterday at the Clackamas Town Center mall in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area on Tuesday evening. Three people - including the shooter - died when the gunman ran into a mall with a semi-automatic rifle and opened fire. We can guarantee that most of the media outlets that choose to talk about this incident today will be talking about it exclusively in terms of gun violence. No history of the shooter, no discussion of mental illness, or poverty, or any other factors that lead to this latest disaster will likely be the core focus.

No, the majority of these debates will turn into little more than screaming matches that serve little purpose other than raising our blood pressure. This is the sixth time this year we've faced the topic of gun violence in this digital space. There's little more that we can say about the topic that we haven't already said again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

The second major incident that caught our attention was the premeditated act of violence against the rights of millions of workers in Michigan by that state's duplicitous Governor, Rick Snyder. Even in the midst of over ten thousand of angry Michiganders flooding the Michigan state capitol on Tuesday - and his own comments earlier this year that now prove he's a liar - Gov. Snyder signed a bill striking a massive blow against workers in his state.

As we noted in our Tuesday edition, extremist Republicans have awakened an angry lion by their actions in Michigan. Between GOP extremists attempting to incite violence at the protests, and the Teamsters president James P. Hoffa literally predicting civil war in Michigan, we have no doubt that the only thing that will be passed by Gov. Snyder and his cronies in Michigan the next two years will be gas. If the job of a governor is to govern, Snyder has effectively castrated himself politically. We doubt Snyder's concerned with that, however. Like Jim DeMint, it's likely Snyder has a cushy position waiting for him with Koch Industries once he’s thrown out of office.

It's too bad Snyder and extremist Republicans preferred to satisfy their senseless visceral urges instead of doing the job they were hired to do, of governing.

The third act of violence we noticed Tuesday was a surprise act of violence, as North Korea fired a long-range missile in the general direction of its neighbor South Korea. The missile ended up being a satellite launch - which is effectively an intercontinental ballistic missile - albeit one that North Korea didn't tell any of it's neighbors it was firing. The insanity of the action speaks for itself.

All three acts of violence - along with the continued and ever-escalating insistence by Republicans that they're going to blow up the U.S. economy unless the President and Congressional Democrats give in to their infantile tantrums - have one thing in common.

Denial runs through them all.

If Americans actually cared about reducing preventable deaths from random gun violence, we would enact sensible gun control. If Snyder and the extremist Republicans in Michigan cared about their citizens, they wouldn't have violently steamrolled through their anti-worker legislation. If the North Korean regime cared about its people, they'd stop their insane nuclear weapons program. If Congressional Republicans cared about governing responsibly, they'd realize trying to tank the U.S. and world economies will only end in their demise as a political party.

There are some days that make us just want to pull the covers back over our collective heads, and go back to sleep until all the insane people are gone.

Yesterday was one of those. Let's hope today is better.

Waking The Lion

For all that the holiday season is supposed to be a time of peace and goodwill, the sad and disgusting news coming out of Michigan today ultimately should not come as a surprise.

In case you missed it, after a year that began with Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder saying that 2012 was not the year to jam through anti-worker laws, Gov. Snyder and Michigan state Republican politicians are now on the verge of jamming through a major anti-workers rights law - one that may effectively begin an open-ended state of virtual war in Michigan.

As we already noted, this kind of antagonistic behavior from Republicans shouldn't surprise anyone in America today - even during the holiday season. We've already seen similar divisive - and ultimately unsucessful - attacks on workers and the labor movement over the last two years from Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio. Judging by the actions of these Republican governors, they seem to figure that, as long as their heads are still attached, they may as well stick them into the depths of anti-union laws.

What harm could there be?

Of course, as Congressman Sander Levin noted on Monday, Gov. Snyder doesn't even seem to understand the real-world implications of the law that he and his Republican state lawmakers are attempting to cram down the throats of the people who elected him. Snyder doesn't even understand how unions work.

In short, as President Obama stated so succinctly in his visit to the Daimler-owned 'Detroit Diesel' shop on Monday, so called 'right-to-work' laws really are "right to work for less" laws. This isn't just a catchphrase.

After years of debate, and insane amounts of research, economists and labor experts agree that, under 'right-to-work' laws, workers reap fewer gains from any economic growth or successes enjoyed by their employers. Wages of workers decrease and benefits are cut back drastically, while executives and their corporate parents benefit handsomely.

Furthermore, 'right-to-work' laws encourage freeloaders by allowing non-union workers to get the benefits of the collective bargaining agreement, while paying nothing for them.

Local economies don't benefit from 'right-to-work' either. In fact, they usually pay an even heavier price, since workers' overall compensation shrinks so drastically. Since workers have less money to spend, the local tax base dries up too. Since workers are making less, they rely on public services more, making the burden on cities and states even worse.

There is no significant economic benefit for Gov. Snyder and his Michigan state lawmakers in trying to cram this through. This is a purely emotional reaction to heavy losses suffered by Michigan Republicans at the state level ballot box in 2012, which will put Republicans in the minority in the Michigan House in January 2013.

Don't think this is something that most Michigan Republican voters wanted either. The Detroit Free Press, who supported Snyder religiously over the past two years, blasted him in their Friday editorial. Gallup polls show Americans across the nation agree with the Detroit Free Press, that Americans want compromise - not violent partisanship.

Even Major League Baseball and Major League Football hate the Republican Governor of Michigan right now - and there will likely be players from both leagues, along with thousands of other Michiganders, protesting at their state capitol today.

We truly hope the Governor does not sign this anti-worker legislation into law today.

If he does, it may be the last legislation he'll get the chance to sign until his term is up.

This was one sleeping lion he should have left alone.

Puppetry And Guarantees

While our readers in the Northern Midwest really began feeling the freezing temps of winter this weekend, the annual news freeze also began for those of us working in the national media.

About this time every year, as Americans and others around the world become more involved in the holiday season, the number and type of news stories are all but guaranteed to significantly slow down. Not surprisingly, this is also when the 'countdown stories' - many of which were likely written the week before Thanksgiving - are also dumped into the media, by journalists who may have already headed out for an early vacation.

For our staff, this is still a work week, as it also is for President Obama and Congress. Even so, we can guarantee that many Congressional Republicans, like many of our friends in the media, are "mailing it in" this week - and we can guarantee we've seen their puppet show on taxes before.

Many Americans seem to have missed two key facts in all the 'fiscal cliff' drama: the fact that President Obama and Congressional Democrats have already made massive spending cuts, and the fact that the actual problem is tax revenues being too low.

Suzy Khimm of Wonkblog pointed out over the weekend something we've also noticed most in the major media have missed. The 2011 Budget Control Act that President Obama and Congressional Democrats pushed past Republicans last year included $1.5 trillion in cuts to non-defense discretionary Federal programs. As confirmed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, items like VA medical care and Pell Grants were already cut by Obama and Democrats in 2011, past points that are fiscally sound over the next decade.

Regardless of the facts regarding responsible fiscal policies, a handful of Congressional Republicans and others on the weekend talking-head shows continued to scream for more budget cuts this weekend, blasting anyone who disagreed with their faulty logic.

Surprisingly, some Republicans even openly admitted on those same shows that raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans will need to be part of any 'fiscal cliff' deal, as President Obama has said from the start.

However, raising income tax rates on the wealthiest Americans is only one tool in the revenue-raising toolbox.

To truly make a difference in the nation's overall budget issues, dividends will also need to be taxed like regular income, and capital gains taxes will need to go up - both of which will also hit the wealthy harder than the middle and lower classes. Loopholes that have allowed a growing number of corporations to pay lower tax rates than they should pay will also need to be closed.

We're almost positive that all of these items were discussed this weekend when President Obama and Speaker Boehner met privately to attempt to push budget and tax negotiations along.

But we can also guarantee that no matter what Boehner may be saying to the President in private, the politics of the extremists in the Republican party - people like the über-wealthy, anti-worker Koch brothers - will make Boehner spout more of their extreme anti-tax rhetoric in public this week.

As we noted earlier, we can just about guarantee who's really pulling Boehner's strings.
We've seen this performance before.