How low should taxes go?

A few months ago, Ben and I interviewed William Voegeli, author of "Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State." As you might guess, Voegeli's thesis is that Democrats will never stop making more demands for more social welfare programs, and that they need to come up with a limiting principle in order to get Republican buy-in to support any kind of welfare state--which, despite conservative rhetoric, has the support of voters.

I thought of Voegeli when reading Bruce Bartlett today:

Federal taxes are at their lowest level in more than 60 years. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that federal taxes would consume just 14.8 percent of G.D.P. this year. The last year in which revenues were lower was 1950, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

The postwar annual average is about 18.5 percent of G.D.P. Revenues averaged 18.2 percent of G.D.P. during Ronald Reagan’s administration; the lowest percentage during that administration was 17.3 percent of G.D.P. in 1984.

In short, by the broadest measure of the tax rate, the current level is unusually low and has been for some time. Revenues were 14.9 percent of G.D.P. in both 2009 and 2010.

I've been trying to grasp at this question for some time, but seeing it through the Voegeli lens has helped me frame it properly. It's well-established that in good times and bad, Republicans call for lower taxes. Always. So I guess my question for my conservative friends is this: How low is low enough?

I presume that most of my conservative/Republican friends believe that the state should exist and has some functions to perform. (I'm excluding my anarcho-libertarian friends from the conversation for the moment.) And I guess their first response would be: "The minimum it takes to support those minimal tasks and not a cent more." But that doesn't really tell us anything, and it keeps things sufficiently vague that Republicans can make the same pitch, generation after generation. What I want to know is: According to conservatives, what's an appropriate level of taxation to sustain government without unduly oppressing citizens? Is it lower than 14.8 percent of GDP? If so, how much lower? Can we get a number?

Somebody will provide a number, I hope. But I'm guessing for most Republicans, the answer is always and will ever be: "Just a little lower."

Would mandatory paid sick days hurt Philadelphia businesses? Maybe not

The Philadelphia City Council is considering a bill that would require the city's employers to offer paid sick leave to their employees—a new regulation that seems, perhaps, counterintuitive considering the poor nature of the job market here. But it turns out that the state of Connecticut is considering similar legislation—and the Economic Policy Institute has a memorandum suggesting the requirement wouldn't be so burdensome, and might offer some benefits to employers.

Among the highlights:

• If all employees used all five paid sick days, the average cost to an employer that currently provides no paid sick days to any employees would be 0.40% of sales.

• Among workers who currently have access to five paid sick days, the industry-weighted average number of days taken is 2.41 days; if employees used this average number of paid sick days, the total cost would be 0.19% of sales.

Says EPI: "The data clearly show that the potential cost of providing paid sick days is in fact extremely small relative to the total sales of a firm. In addition, available research shows cost-savings for employers that provide paid sick days, largely resulting from reduced employee turnover."

It would be interesting to see similar research brought to bear on Philadelphia, but I'm guessing the outlook wouldn't be all that different. In any case, if I were running a business, I'm not sure why I'd want to put my employees in the position of coming to work sick—infecting other employees, my customers, and even me. Based on EPI's memo, such burdens appear unnecessary.

In Afghanistan, learning the wrong lessons from Bin Laden

Good story in today's Washington Post about whether the Afghanistan war is worth the cost. But even the folks who want to reduce the American footprint there don't seem to have a full grasp of the bigger picture:

Civilian officials argue that recent gains against the Taliban and al-Qaeda have largely been the result of a counterterrorism strategy implemented by Special Operations forces, not the costly, large-footprint counterinsurgency mission that aims to secure the country district by district. Reducing conventional forces, some civilians assert, will not fundamentally alter the calculus that has led to interest among Taliban leaders in exploring peace talks with the Afghan government and U.S. representatives.

“Our mission is to disrupt and dismantle al-Qaeda, and what the bin Laden killing shows us is that you can do that with a small number of highly skilled guys,” the second senior official said. “You don’t need Army and Marine battalions in dozens of districts.”

I think you ought to go a step further and say this: What the bin Laden killing shows us is that you don't need to tie yourself down in Afghanistan if your focus is on Al Qaeda. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan! Maybe, at this point, America's bases in Afghanistan are designed to prosecute anti-terror operations in Pakistan. But the mission—destroy a small, nimble, stateless group—and the strategy—tie down tens of thousands of troops in a single country—don't fit each other. Per the WaPo story, we probably can't afford to sustain our Afghanistan commitment. But even if we could, that doesn't make it the smart play.

Philadelphia cops want to run the city without living here

I'm not fond of this idea, frankly:

The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 is taking Mayor Nutter and the city's Ethics Board to court.

FOP president John McNesby said the union filed a civil lawsuit against the city last week over a decades-old rule that prohibits cops from making political donations.

The police union is the only one in the city that can't make donations to politicians or to a political-action committee.

"We're treated like second-class citizens," McNesby said. "Enough is enough."

The FOP is clearly one of the city's power-brokers, so maybe it's pointless to complain about the union putting its money where it's mouth is. And certainly, I'm not generally one to oppose unions—even municipal unions—acting in the political realm.

It's just that McNesby's "second-class citizens" comment sticks in my craw a bit. After all, McNesby won for his union the right for cops not to have to live in the city limits. That has always been a bad idea. And the result, when combined with McNesby's new effort, is to create a Philadelphia police force that has sway over the city's politics even if—potentially—a substantial portion of its membership doesn't live here anymore. That bothers me.

It might not bother me so much if the department weren't continually awash in corruption scandals. But it is. From where I sit, it appears that the FOP is seeking to expand its power in the community while continually eluding accountability—both formal, and the informal type that comes from having to live among the people you police. It's a toxic mix, and bad for the rest of us.

David Mamet's conversion to conservatism

Over the weekend, a few of my conservative friends touted this Weekly Standard profile of playwright David Mamet, who is rather famously converting to conservatism. Put aside, for the moment, the spectacle of conservatives who profess to disdain Hollywood high-fiving each other when a celebrity turns out to be Republican. There are hints that Mamet—smart as he is—is motivated more by contrarianism than other factors. You don't have to be dumb to be conservative, but (as represented in the article, anyway) Mamet seems to be guilty of rather shallow thinking.

I'll pluck out two of my favorite examples:

“But I saw the liberals hated George Bush. It was vicious. And I thought about it, and I didn’t get it. He was no worse than the others, was he? And I’d ask my liberal friends, ‘Well, why do you hate him?’ They’d all say: ‘He lied about WMD.’ Okay. You love Kennedy. Kennedy didn’t write Profiles in Courage—he lied about that. ‘Bush is in bed with the Saudis!’ Okay, Kennedy was in bed with the mafia.”

I dunno. Lies are lies, I suppose, but to me there's a vast difference between lying about a best-selling book and, say, misrepresenting and hyping intelligence about non-existent WMDs in order to sell an invasion that will bog your country down in a war for a decade, at great cost and at the expense of thousands of lives. Moreover, while both "lies" might reflect on the character of the particular president, only one seems to have real bearing on governance. That Mamet reduces the two to a kind of equivalency suggests A) an overly simplistic moral imagination and B) a carelessness about what the president actually does.

Next example:

“The question occurs to me quite a lot: What do liberals do when their plans have failed? What did the writers do when their plans led to unemployment, their own and other people’s? One thing they can’t do is admit they failed. Why? To admit failure would endanger their position in the herd.”

This statement comes in a magazine edited by Bill Kristol.

I'm not saying liberals are morally pure, or don't succumb to a herd instinct. But I don't think it's an ideological problem; it's a human nature problem. David Mamet, from what I can tell, is just changing herds. And that's fine. I just wish he'd spare us the sanctimony.

Facebook made my hospital stay less miserable

When the doctors told me they were admitting me to the hospital for surgery, the first thing I did—after calling my wife and parents to let them know how dire things had become—was go to Facebook and Twitter.

Surgery for sure. Apparently this is quite serious and disturbing. This account may be dark awhile.

And I meant it. I assumed that if I wasn't too overcome with pain to care about social networking, then I'd at least choose to be stoic and not inflict the details of my illness upon my friends.

Who was I kidding? I'm not one to endure pain silently—or, really, anything silently. It's why I blog. I'm a compulsive oversharer. Indeed, my first update to Facebook—dictated to my wife, apparently, through a morphine haze—came just a couple of hours after surgery.

Surgery done. Colostomy! Diverticulitis! Pain! (sec:jcm)

And over the next 24 hours, there were 26 comments appended.

Here's the thing: Surgery is an isolating thing. You're taken away from the people you love, drugged and cut open. After that you have days spent watching TV, giving blood, and drifting in and out of consciousness. The pain was the worst thing about surgery; the colostomy bag was the second. The loneliness could've ranked right up there with it.

But it didn't, quite. Because I kept posting, three and four times a day, to both Facebook and Twitter—and, thank God, folks kept posting right back at me.

Just a few hours after my first update, in fact, President Obama took the airwaves to announce the death of Osama bin Laden. Slightly more alert this time—and leaving the TV on around-the-clock to reduce my sense of dislocation—I posted this at 12:40 a.m.:

News flash: Osama bin Laden was hiding in my gut.

Probably not that funny, I realize. But I'd realized that I'd probably be giving folks regular updates on my recovery. And I'm not an optimist. But I didn't want to scare people away. So I figured a few jokes sprinkled in amongst the self-pity might be helpful.

I wrote about the food. I wrote about my roommates. I wrote about feeling sorry for myself. I wrote about the bad TV. And people kept responding. It was absolutely what I needed.

Social networking's limitations were also helpful. I've been writing longer blog posts this week, but while I was in the hospital I could barely stay awake or concentrate for five minutes at a time. (There were a couple of times I actually did fall asleep while updating my social networks, only to snap awake when I dropped my iPhone in my lap.) One-hundred-forty characters allowed me to communicate without spending the kind of energy required from an actual hospital visit. I could dip in and out of the communications stream as I was able.

Does this mean anything? I don't know. I Googled around to see if there was any link between a patient's social networking practices and their health outcomes, but it doesn't look like the kind of thing that's been researched. (Yet.) All I know is that I've had a love-hate relationship with Facebook and Twitter. It's why I invented "Single-Tasking Sundays" for myself.(Suspended for the duration.) But when I went into the hospital, I was able to take all my living relationships with me, staying in conversation and feeling the love. It was great.

So I hate my fucking colostomy

Warning: This is really gross.

When the doctors came to me that Saturday afternoon and told me I was probably going to need surgery, I got weepy. It wasn't the surgery itself that brought tears to my eyes—though knowing that my belly was about to be sliced open wasn't exactly comforting—but what the docs told me was waiting on the other side: a colostomy bag.

Surgery scared me. The colostomy offended me.

There was my vanity, first off all. Who gets colostomies after all? Old guys, that's who, grampas who've had their sexual day in the sun and don't have to worry about looking good and being attractive to the opposite sex. (I'm married and faithful, but I don't want to be repulsive to other women; this made me feel like I'd be repulsive to both my wife and other women.) Young, virile men don't have colostomies. I'm not young exactly—I'm 38—but I suspected the surgery was a too-early arrival in the precincts of the elderly.

Beyond that, though, the problem was literally visceral: Part of my insides would be hanging outside. I'd be carrying a bag of shit on my gut. It would be like walking around as an extra from a zombie movie, only all the time. Or all the time until it's reversed, which I'm told will happen in the first couple of months.

Truth be told, I didn't do very well the first couple of times the nurses emptied the colostomy bag while I was in the hospital. The fact of clearing out my guts through my gut made me lightheaded; the smell made it worse. The nurses told me that I'd have to start emptying my own bag; even more, I'd have to change it myself once I went home—actually wiping my intestines clean before adhering a new bag to myself.

I felt ... petulant.

Complicating matters was the fact that the colostomy wasn't the only hole in my gut. When I went into the hospital—and here is where I might be guilty of oversharing—I hadn't pooped for two weeks. I was distended, my entire gastrointestinal system inflamed to the point of cutting off the blood supply to vital organs. I was so distended, in fact, that when surgeons tried to make the first colostomy hole in me—at the top of my belly, just under my sternum—it didn't work: they couldn't access my intestine. So they tried again an inch down from there, and managed to open up the pipes. I'm told I popped like a zit, two weeks of pressure buildup in my insides suddenly finding a quick, messy release.

The result of the first incision, though, is that I have two holes in my gut: the colostomy, and what I like to call the "superfluous wound." It's about an inch deep and an inch wide, and requires daily dressing. And the nurses told me that this, too, would require my personal care. The prospect filled me with dread.

Fast forward to this morning. I woke up at 6:16 am and—as has become my habit—felt under my shirt to see if the bag had filled overnight and needed emptying. Something worse had happened: It ruptured on the top side; waste was pooling on my chest and around my wound.

We called the nurse's office. One would be coming at 9, my wife was told. But I might want to clean up and dress everything myself before she got there, if I could.

The choice was to replace my colostomy bag and wound dressing, or sit around a couple of hours and let filth leak into my wound. It didn't seem like a real choice.

So I did what I had to do, with the assistance of my wife. First I cleaned my wound, extracting soupy gauze from the hole and packing fresh stuff in, then covering it up with medical tape. Then we found a fresh colostomy bag and cut a hole in it to match the size of my stoma. It was gross. But I was clear-headed—I even took a photo of the whole mess to show the nurse, just in case some visual help was needed later on.

So I'm proud that I could handle situations I'd dreaded. Sometimes you find you're capable of more than you realized because you're forced to do more than you want to.

On the other hand, the incident only exacerbated my anger about parts of the surgery that no doubt saved my life. I hate my fucking colostomy, and I can't wait for it to be fixed.

Notes from surgery: Pain, then the sponge bath

There are almost no visual components to the memories of my first waking moments after surgery. Mostly, I suspect, this is because I was still pretty doped up—and thus mostly unable to open my eyes. What's left is a mishmash of sound and pain.

Pain. I knew before I was even told that the doctor had made two holes in my body, because I could feel them both, individually, one on top of the other on my abdomen, two fingers of fire—no, something worse than fire, because fire can be extinguished and there was nothing to the intensity of agony in my belly that suggested a temporary nature. I screamed—or tried to at least. Most likely I grunted angrily.

It was going to get worse: I still needed to be transferred from the operating table to a recuperation bed. I could hear the nurses around me talking–male and female voices mixing together in a kind of urgent incoherence—and then the sheet below me tighten in a one-two-three! movement to lift me to my new repose. It squeezed my wounds a little. I screamed. "YOU'RE HURTING ME!" I wanted to say, but I don't think I managed actual speech.

And then: blackness.

Soon after, though, a new sensation emerged. I still hurt, still hurt too much to want to endure or survive. But then the sponge touched my skin: someone was cleaning me, a soothing touch in the midst of misery. Along my left leg, up the calf and thigh. And then, finally, up from there. The post-surgical moment when I first thought I might survive occurred when a nurse—whose face I've still never seen, I don't think—oh-so-briefly washed my balls.

There's nothing erotic to this. But the pain had been so thorough, so penetrating—and the warm, sudsy sponge against my testacles made me feel ... loved. And then, blackness again.

Something similar would happen over my next few days in the hospital. Young men wiped my ass. Older women washed me all over. A beautiful young Indian woman showed me how to empty the shit from the bag on my stomach. At one point on my last day—seriously, I'm not making this up—a woman washed my feet while singing Negro spirituals. It was a resonant moment—possibly slightly absurd, but it felt resonant—that did not get me to return to the Christianity of my youth. But that's as clean a shot as anybody will get, most likely.

Losing control over these basic functions, I guess, should make me angry on some level. But for whatever reason, I resigned myself pretty quickly to the idea that I didn't have control of this situation. And so I accepted it: Every ass-wipe was a gift, a step closer to home and recovery.

Where I've been

At the moment, I have a hole in my belly where I do most—but not all!—of my pooping and farting. It's a colostomy. It's also temporary, knock on wood. And it's why I've been absent from my own blog the last two weeks.

There is no official diagnosis: the main suspect is diverticulitis. The surgery that gave me the hole in my belly wasn't trying to fix any underlying problems—it was simply trying to ease the pressure on a gastrointestinal system that was so distended that the blood supply to critical organs was in jeopardy. A colonoscopy and two more surgeries await me. I've been in such pain, post-surgery, that I'm not really happy at the prospect. Gotta get fixed, though.

Absent an official diagnosis, I'm full of self-recrimination, suspecting that a lifetime of bad decisions about my health and life have led inexorably to this moment. I am being judged. And I am judging myself. My uncertainty—and I'm self-aware enough to know this is all probably just post-op depression talking—is wide enough to encompass nearly all the choices I've made the last two decades. I have a loving wife, and a beautiful son, both of whom are burdened by my circumstances. I feel this keenly.

So I don't know what this blog will be for the next couple of months, given A) that my life will be dominated by medical events and B) I've not been able to sustain the attention span for an entire Sports Illustrated article lately, much less keep up with the nuances of politics. And beyond this, I'm not sure what the blog will be anymore because I'm not certain who I will be anymore. This is re-evaluation time: I must ensure that I am living a creditable life. Anything that doesn't add to the balance probably goes by the wayside.

The Daily News' Howard Gensler treats sex assault like a joke

I guess that gossip columnists are supposed to be a guilty pleasure, but there's nothing really pleasurable about the scribblings of Howard Gensler at the Philadelphia Daily News. I've not got the energy to go back and round up links of what I consider the routine misogyny he displays in his column. Instead, I'll just go ahead and say that today's entry is pretty representative of Gensler's work:

LENNY DYKSTRA may no longer be playing baseball, but he still likes to take his bat out of the rack.

In December, Lenny was accused of bouncing a $1,000 check to a female escort. In January, he was accused of sexual assault by his housekeeper, who claimed that Lenny had forced her to provide weekly oral sexual favors. The Los Angeles Times quoted her as saying she "needed the job and the money" so she went along with Lenny's requests.

Lenny always could get to third base.

Haha! Third base! A baseball joke! Get it! Because forced sexual assault is funny!

Me? I think it's a real problem when a major metropolitan daily newspaper gives regular space to a columnist who comments on sexual assault with frat-boy humor——and that's when he's not treating women with contempt generally. It signals to the broader readership the acceptability of "boys will be boys" behavior and reinforces the atmosphere that permits the Dykstras of the world to do their ugly stuff. Even by the low standards of a gossip column, Howard Gensler is loathsome.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: One minute of boy's monologue while playing with his trucks

"Thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. You're welcome so much. Good job! Thank you! THANK YOU SO MUCH! Beep beep beep beep."

Stairs

Taken at Schuylkill River Park

Jo and T

Taken at Schuylkill River Park

The rich are not unduly burdened by taxes (A continuing series)

Via Paul Krugman, a chart that reminds us the rich aren't unduly burdened by taxes:

On a related note, there's been a lot of effort lately from my conservative friends to assert that merely raising taxes on the rich won't solve America's long-term deficit problem. And you know what? I think they're right! The middle class is going to have to ante up a bit if it wants to maintain some of the services it likes so much. So if Dems suggest they can pay for everything simply by larding up marginal tax rates, well, they're probably wrong or lying.

However...

It's also true that the effective tax rates on the super-rich are the lowest they've been in recent memory. And it's true we face a long-term deficit problem. And it's also true that we were digging ourselves out of debt under the Clinton-era marginal tax rates that are slightly higher than they are now. But it's also true that the Republican plan going forward is to ... further reduce taxes on the rich.

That's silly. Maybe we can't fix everything by soaking the rich. But it's just as dubious to think we can solve our problems by letting them off the hook for their portion of supporting our government.

Ed Whelan says I'm confused about Vaughn Walker and Prop 8. Am I?

At National Review, Ed Whelan takes issue with my criticism of his call to have the Prop 8 verdict set aside. He lumps me in with the folks at Media Matters:

Meanwhile, the only two defenses of Walker’s non-recusal that I’ve run across conveniently misrepresent my argument. Media Matters falsely contends that I am arguing that Walker “should be disqualified because of his sexual orientation” (I have never made that argument) and conflates that argument with my argument that Walker should have disqualified himself because he was in a long-term same-sex relationship. And Cup O’ Joel likewise wrongly claims that I am arguing that Walker’s ruling must be vacated “because Walker has recently come out of the closet and thus can’t be considered impartial.” The implications that the two bloggers claim would flow from my argument rest entirely on their confusion.

I'll gladly cop to occasional confusion, but not to "conveniently misrepresenting" Whelan's argument--at least, intentionally. I do try to argue in good faith. But wait, if I am confused, what exactly did I miss? Let's go back to Whelan's original column:

Two weeks ago, former federal district judge Vaughn Walker, who ruled last summer in Perry v. Schwarzenegger that California’s Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, publicly disclosed for the first time that he has been in a same-sex relationship for the past ten years. A straightforward application of the judicial ethics rules compels the conclusion that Walker should have recused himself from taking part in the Perry case. Further, under well-established Supreme Court precedent, the remedy of vacating Walker’s judgment is timely and necessary.

(snip)

In taking part in the Perry case, Judge Walker was deciding whether Proposition 8 would bar him and his same-sex partner from marrying. Whether Walker had any subjective interest in marrying his same-sex partner — a matter on which Walker hasn’t spoken — is immaterial under section 455(a). (If Walker did have such an interest, his recusal also would be required by other rules requiring that a judge disqualify himself when he knows that he has an “interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”) Walker’s own factual findings explain why a reasonable person would expect him to want to have the opportunity to marry his partner: A reasonable person would think that Walker would want to have the opportunity to take part with his partner in what “is widely regarded as the definitive expression of love and commitment in the United States.” A reasonable person would think that Walker would want to decrease the costs of his same-sex relationship, increase his wealth, and enjoy the physical and psychological benefits that marriage is thought to confer.

Because Walker was deciding how the law in the very jurisdiction in which he lived would directly govern his own individual rights on a matter that a reasonable person would think was very important to Walker personally, it is clear that Walker’s impartiality in Perry “might reasonably be questioned.”

Or, as Whelan put it in his update: "The mere fact that Walker is gay does not trigger the principle that I have set forth, as (without more) it is much more remote and speculative that he would have a strong personal interest in conferring on himself a right to marry a man."

And I can see the distinction between what I said and what Whelan meant: Walker's verdict shouldn't be set aside because Walker is gay. Walker's verdict should be set aside because--to borrow a phrase--Walker lives the gay lifestyle. It's not the orientation that matters, but the fact that Walker acts on it that creates the appearance that Walker has something to gain from overturning Prop 8. For most of us, that's a distinction with little, if any, difference, and as a practical matter it really does seem to suggest there is no gay judge in California capable of ruling with the appearance of impartiality. But it might be a big enough difference that Whelan's argument carries the day in a court of law. OK. He's the lawyer, not I.

However...

My argument didn't revolve entirely around the fact of Walker's homosexuality. Implicit in Whelan's argument, I think, is the presumption that a straight judge could rule without the appearance of a conflict of interest. I wrote:

"Remember that one of the key arguments made by Prop 8 supporters was that gay marriages threaten straight marriages. ... Seems to me then, that any judge who is married or has been married or who might want to be married someday—be they gay or straight—thus finds him- or herself possibly compromised in this matter. Who is to say a straight judge wouldn't be acting to protect his or her marriage from the destabilizing influence of gay unions?

Under Whelan's argument, Prop 8 supporters get to have it both ways. They get to argue that straight marriage is threatened by gay marriage, but they also get to have a straight judge rule on the issue without fear of having to recuse his- or herself. Convenient, as Whelan might say.

Weirdly, that might end up being while gay-marriage advocates could end up carrying the day—if not in court, and not at this time, then somewhere down the road. Think about it: A key argument against gay marriage is that straight marriages will be undermined. But almost nobody takes the argument seriously enough—not even Prop 8 opponents—that they think straight judges face the automatic appearance of a conflict when ruling on the issue. If that's the case, doesn't that radically undermine that key argument against gay marriage?

I'm not a lawyer. I doubt the argument I've just made would carry much sway before the court; it's not strictly a legal argument. But the gay marriage debate isn't contained merely to the court, and what's going on in the court will have ramifications far outside the legal realm. Maybe I am confused about the law, as Whelan suggests. I'm pretty clear on the implications, though: Whelan's argument consigns gays to second-class status, both in marriage and in the legal profession.

Donald Trump and the Republican birthers

That the topic of this week's Scripps column with Ben Boychuk. I'm a little closer to the edge of vitriol this week than I usually like to be, but some topics elicit only contempt from me. And, uh, Trump isn't the target of my ire:

Here's the difference between Democrats and Republicans: Democrats who embrace conspiracy-minded nonsense are chased from public life.

Republicans who do the same are vaulted into the front ranks of presidential contenders.

That's why Van Jones was rightly forced to resign from the Obama Administration in 2009; he'd signed a petition calling for an investigation of the government's secret involvement in the 9/11 attacks on America. His apparent belief in discredited "truther" theories destroyed Jones' credibility and made it impossible for him to serve the president effectively.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, wasn't on anyone's list of presidential candidates until he started giving interviews embracing "birther" nonsense and challenging President Barack Obama's citizenship. Now he tops the polls. And for good reason: Public Policy Polling's results show that only 38 percent of GOP primary voters would support a candidate who clearly states the truth -- that Barack Obama is a natural-born American citizen.

Rather than educate their supporters, cowardly Republican leaders have decided to avoid the topic. That's why House Speaker John Boehner answered questions about the topic in February with slippery language.

"It's not my job to tell the American people what to think," Boehner told NBC's David Gregory, and later added: "Listen, the American people have the right to think what they want to think. I can't -- it's not my job to tell them."

Boehner, of course, does vigorously advocate for the ideas that his base supports. That's how he got his job. And that's why Trump is succeeding with his brand of birtherism -- because the GOP base loves it.

True: A year from now, Trump will probably be back to making TV shows.

But Republican voters will still be Republican voters -- apparently more willing to embrace birther lies than the truth. And that could mean trouble for all of us.

Ben sees both Trump and birtherism as passing fads. Read the column for his take.

Matt Miller on Paul Ryan's really awful budget

For the life of me I don’t understand why the press doesn’t shove this fact in front of every Republican who says the debt limit cannot be raised unless serious new spending cuts are put in place. The supposedly “courageous,” “visionary” Paul Ryan plan — which already contains everything Republicans can think of in terms of these spending cuts — would add more debt than we’ve ever seen over a 10-year period in American history. Yet Ryan and other House GOP leaders continue to make outrageous statements to the contrary.

Without blushing. And without anyone calling them on it.

“The spending spree is over,” Ryan said the other day, after the House passed his blueprint. “We cannot keep spending money we don’t have.” Except that by his own reckoning Ryan is planning to spend $6 trillion we don’t have in the next decade alone.

“We have too many people worried about the next election and not worried about the next generation,” Ryan added. So Ryan is expressing his concern by adding at least $14 trillion to the debt between now and when his plan finally balances the budget sometime in the 2030s (and only then if a number of the plan’s dubious assumptions come to pass).

“We cannot afford to ignore this coming fiscal train wreck any longer,” Eric Cantor says. “Complacency is not an option.” Well, if $14 trillion in fresh debt and unbalanced budgets until the 2030s do not amount to “complacency,” I’d hate to hear what the GOP definition of “profligacy” is.

via washingtonpost.com

I've said it before: Paul Ryan's budget is a "path to prosperity" for the already-prosperous. It doesn't fix the debt but it does weaken the safety net while giving a tax break to the rich. It's just not good.

Grover Norquist's latest very bad idea

My preference would be to keep the administration on a short leash and extend the debt limit by only a small amount and for a short period of time. This debt-limit increase is one of the few pieces of legislation that Obama must sign. Why not have such an extension every month and attach to each of them something small, reasonable, and related to debt or spending?

via nationalreview.com

That's Grover Norquist, in an NRO symposium about whether Congress should raise the debt ceiling. His proposal, of course, would tie Washington down in never-ending debates about the debt ceiling and the budget, leaving the government with no energy or capacity to focus on anything else. Which might be Norquist's aim. But that doesn't mean the rest of us should sign on.

What Col. Qaddafi learned from Iraq

Sending advisers to Libya is the latest in a series of signs of trouble for the NATO campaign, which began in earnest with a stinging, American-led attack but has seemed to fizzle since operational command was transferred to NATO on March 31. After that, a rebel offensive was smashed by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces, which sent the rebels reeling toward the eastern city of Ajdabiya.

New tactics used by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces — mixing with civilian populations, camouflaging weapons and driving pickup trucks instead of military vehicles — have made it hard for NATO pilots to find targets. At the same time, loyalist artillery and tanks have hammered the rebel-held city of Misurata with cluster bombs, which have been banned by much of the world, making a mockery of NATO’s central mission of protecting civilians.

via nytimes.com

I don't know if Col. Qaddafi learned these tactics by watching the war in Iraq. But I do know they're pretty classic insurgent tactics. If you've got a weaker force than your opponent--and at this point, Qaddafi's opponent is NATO--then you don't confront your opponent strength to strength. You hide out in the population and rely on subterfuge instead of overt force. Unsporting? Sure. But Qaddafi wants to hold onto power; there's no reason for him to play by the rules of the West. Becoming an insurgent is the best way for him to hold onto power.

LZ Granderson: The favorite openly gay dad of social conservatives everywhere

Interesting phenomenon the last couple of days: A few of my socially conservative Facebook friends have posted a link to this LZ Granderson essay about the oversexualization of young girls. An excerpt:

And then I realize as creepy as it is to think a store like Abercrombie is offering something like the "Ashley", the fact remains that sex only sells because people are buying it. No successful retailer would consider introducing an item like a padded bikini top for kindergartners if they didn't think people would buy it.

If they didn't think parents would buy it, which raises the question: What in the hell is wrong with us?

Sensible stuff, hitting that sweet spot where social conservatives and feminist liberals can find common ground. And I don't think my socially conservative friends know each other, which indicates the essay is going viral. But I wouldn't mention it except for one thing: LZ Granderson is gay. Openly gay. With a teen son. He's a gay dad.

A conservative friend responds to this observation with one of his own: "If he's right, he's right." And my friend is right!

But here's the thing: So much of the modern argument against gay marriage is actually against gay parenthood. Maggie Gallagher of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage re-made the argument in explicit terms this week in testimony before Congress:

“Marriage is the union of husband and wife for a reason: these are the only unions that create new life and connect those children in love to their mother and father,” Gallagher said. “This is not necessarily the reason why individuals marry; this is the great reason, the public reason why government gets involved in the first place.”

Gallagher said the need to raise children by married parents of opposite genders affirms the rationale for having in place DOMA, the 1996 law that prohibits recognition of same-sex marriage, and criticized the Justice Department for dropping defense of the law.

“This is the rationale for the national definition of marriage proposed by Congress in passing DOMA: ‘civil society has an interest in maintaining and protecting the institution of heterosexual marriage because it has a deep and abiding interest in encouraging responsible procreation and child-rearing,’” Gallagher said. “If we accept, as DOMA explicitly does, that this is a core public purpose of marriage, then treating same-sex unions as marriage makes little sense.”

Implicit in all of this is the idea that gay parents can't be good—or maybe even adequate—parents. And because of this, government shouldn't recognize the unions of gay men and women regardless of whether or not child-rearing comes into play.

But when a gay dad like Granderson describes himself as a "Tiger Dad" whose approach to parenting is to be his son's parent, not his friend—and when that gay dad happens not to mention his gayness—he becomes a hero of social conservatives.

And that's fine. It's good! I don't expect it will convince my socially conservative friends that a mother-and-father parenting relationship isn't the best way to raise kids. But I guess I can hope that admiring Granderson's parenting philosophy can open their minds (just a little bit) to the idea that other types of families deserve government support and recognition.