One of the standard reasons given for not cutting homeowners more relief on their mortgages is moral hazard—if people get to shuck off their debts, they’ll just become irresponsible. But of course, when it’s major corporations or big cities, it’s moral hazard, moral shmazard.
•Republicans continue trying to nibble Obamacare to death. Now it’s a proposal that only 40-hour-a-week workers are entitled to health care through their employer.
•First the NY Daily News reports that a “hulking brute” attacked a woman on the subway. When it turns out it’s a cop, suddenlu he’s not hulking or a brute and everything that happened was “alleged.”
•Why has the economy been picking up? Obviously, Repubs say, it’s because there’s a Republican majority in both houses, even if they haven’t done anything! And their immediate goals are slashing money for the disabled and requiring the budget office to use “dynamic scoring”: Rather than assume a $3 billion tax cut (for example) will cost $3 billion in revenue, just assume that it will boost the economy to the point it generates $6 billion in added revenue!
This is actually a game they’ve been playing since the Reagan administration. Assume that tax cuts increase growth, and therefore taxable revenue, and therefore less taxes=more government money! Except facts have repeatedly shown it doesn’t work. And sometimes they admit it. For example, when the 1990s economy was in full bloom and the government was posting a surplus, the argument (from the WSJ, my old employer Freedom News and George W. Bush) was not that “You see, cutting tax rates boosted revenue!” but “You see! Tax rates are too high! We must slash them to lower revenue!”
•A county official threatens to sue because a reporter used his name in a news story without permission. I’ve actually been threatened with the same, but only by a private citizen (who did, however, speak at a city council meeting so it’s automatically on the record) and not quite so publicly and obviously.
•Phyliss Schaffly comes out in favor of affirmative action—women shouldn’t be allowed to make up more than 50 percent of college students! For their own good, because if women outnumber men, men will be able to force them into degrading hook-up culture (women, of course, hate one-night stands and the like).
•You may recall that George Will declared last year that liberals make “rape victim” a “coveted status.” Turns out president wanna-be Jeb Bush thinks the same thing of feminists, civil-rights activists and gay-rights activists.
•Boston University gives fathers paternity leave. So one professor takes it and more or less brags/jokes about how he let his wife do all the work while he sat around and drank.
•I linked recently to the case of Republican Steve Scalise speaking to a white supremacist group. Group founder David Duke says if anyone makes an issue of it, he’ll out all the other politicians who’ve courted the group. Oh, and when Scalise first ran for Congress, he described himself as sharing many of Duke’s beliefs but being more electable.
•Ultra-orthodox Jewish men delay a flight out of JFK because they demand seat assignments get rearranged so they’re not sitting by women.
•This article explains how nerds can have miserable, insecure lives and still benefit from male privilege. As John Scalzi once put it, having male privilege doesn’t mean you win the game, just that your level of difficulty is automatically lower than if you were a woman.
•Proving foreign politicians can be just as obsessed about the importance of women breeding as Americans, Turkey’s Erdogan says women who use birth control are committing treason.
•Conservatives insist that their violent rhetoric cannot possibly cause violence. But of course, when people criticize cops, that automatically leads to violence!
