Giants Among Us

Whether parsecs or googleplex, a trillion dollars or a billion years, the human mind has trouble comprehending big numbers. Analogies can help, if only a little. Here's an interesting take on income disparity:

Jan Pen, a Dutch economist who died last year, came up with a striking way to picture inequality. Imagine people’s height being proportional to their income, so that someone with an average income is of average height. Now imagine that the entire adult population of America is walking past you in a single hour, in ascending order of income.

The first passers-by, the owners of loss-making businesses, are invisible: their heads are below ground. Then come the jobless and the working poor, who are midgets. After half an hour the strollers are still only waist-high, since America’s median income is only half the mean. It takes nearly 45 minutes before normal-sized people appear. But then, in the final minutes, giants thunder by. With six minutes to go they are 12 feet tall. When the 400 highest earners walk by, right at the end, each is more than two miles tall.

Perspective doesn't equate to understanding or to assigning moral significance. But it helps to know what the issue is, anyway.

Watching the O'bama/O'Reilly Super Bowl interview the other day, I wished, when Billo accused the president of being a fervent income redistributer, that Obama had pointed out that the greatest income redistribution in decades occurred with the Bush tax cuts: it's just that it all went upward.

Personally I have no problem with rich people being rich, and I'd say very few liberals do, either. Hard work, quality work, productivity should be incentivized, recognized, and rewarded (a concept which no longer applies to much of medicine nowadays, especially surgery.) Like so many other things, though, it's a matter of finding the fulcrum on which it all turns. Does the guy who invented credit default swaps deserve, say, a thousand times more than a respiratory therapist?

From where I sit typing in obscurity, it seems, as another example, that the current tax rates are out of balance and belong back where they were when the economy was booming, pre-W. Were the rich suffering then, forced to move out of their homes? Was communism rampant, from each/to each? More importantly, was our budget balanced and our debt being paid down? What, I'm trying to understand, is so wrong with that? Even if it means the CDS guy makes only eight hundred times more than the RT?

The Latest

I recently received a forwarded email, breathlessly announcing "THIS IS IT!!!" It contained photos -- actual photos! -- of Obama's Kenyan birth certificate -- you know, the one that you can forge yourself with any name you choose. Whereas it was a little surprising that there are still people out there who think it's something new, it having been circulating for at least two years, what was most noteworthy to me were the words in the body of the accompanying text, "SNOPES CONFIRMS." There were no links, of course, because if there were, it'd have been to this. They'd have had to read, like, the first three words.

Of course it's a lie. But it's also a lie about a lie. Snopes confirms, they said, while surely knowing the exact opposite is true. So what does that say about the people that send such stuff, and about their view of the people to whom they send it? Pretty obvious, isn't it? There are people who take offense at what I write here; fair enough. I'm partisan. But there's a difference between what I say, and what they hear from their heroes, day in and day out: I don't lie. I opine. With links. I point out hypocrisy and deception. I don't lie.

How can you tell when the RWS™ are lying? When they hit "send." When their mouths are moving. How often does it have to happen for people to get it? If you heard it from a RWS™, if you receive an email with stuff about Obama in FULL CAPS, demanding you forward it to everyone you know, IT'S A LIE. How often does it have to occur before it sinks in?

Which brings us to the point: the latest lie.

Guess what: Obama caused the blackouts in Texas. True story. Snopes confirms.

Friday, the Drudge Report prominently displayed several mainstream media reports about energy shortages across several Western states and linked to a story from prisonplanet.com claiming the Texas blackouts were “a direct consequence of the Obama administration’s agenda to lay siege to the coal industry, launch a takeover of infrastructure under the contrived global warming scam, and help usher in the post-industrial collapse of America.”

The White House responded with a couple of inconvenient truths:

According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, these blackouts were actually the result of extreme cold temperatures and high winds, which led to a variety of mechanical failures at more than 50 power plants around the state.

Anytime communities experience major outages, it is a cause for concern, and major utilities and regulators are investigating steps that can be taken to decrease any weather related vulnerability of power generating plants in the state that, unlike their northern counterparts which experience extreme cold every winter, are often not designed to withstand such rare weather conditions.

Some are trying to blame these blackouts – which the industry has already provided explanation for – on Clean Air Act standards under consideration to curb dangerous pollution, including carbon pollution. While these claims gained traction on the internet, there is a major problem with this theory – no power plant in Texas has yet been required to do anything to control carbon pollution.

Another article about it concludes with words that could have been written by me:

The right knows the ignorant will believe whatever Limbaugh & Co. shovel in their direction, which in turn creates an incentive for them to lie more often. Our discourse spirals downward, on purpose, because conservatives find it easier than thinking.

Right. Wish I'd said something like that.

A Girl Error

Halftime.

Well, so far my Reaganesque optimism regarding Super Bowl commercials has been sorely wrong. And even if she hadn't screwed up the lyrics, Christina Aguilera's (get it? A girl error...) rendition of the National Anthem has to have been the worst ever. Absolutely pathetic.

Horrible.

Thoughts On A Birthday

Ronald Reagan, so they say, made us feel good about ourselves. His boundless optimism, often based on stories in movies that he mistakenly remembered as real, was nice. After successfully invading that rising threat, the weevil empire and huge nation known as Grenada, he proudly announced we were once again, after the kerfuffle in Vietnam, "walking tall." So there's that. And his nice smile, his very good hair. I don't discount them, either.

But it's amazing to me the extent to which he's retroactively revered by the right. Why, exactly? He said "government is the problem," which they like to hear, and he proceeded to prove it in many ways, which they continue to do to this day: by which I mean they govern poorly. Reagan took the shining city on the hill to a place where the Constitution has no meaning, ignoring acts of Congress by selling weapons to Iran and giving the money to the Contras. He spent more, raised taxes more (mythology notwithstanding) and raised the debt, reversing, in fact, a decades-long trend of his predecessors (restored by Clinton until Bush got ahold of it).

Well, there's an argument to be made -- and make it they do, like breathing (while simultaneously ignoring his lily-livered America-hating born-again nuclear disarmament position) -- that Ronnie ended the Cold War, single-handedly defeated the Soviet Union. Well, that and the emergence of Mikhael Gorbachev, decades of rusting of an unsustainable system (heck, even as a clueless college kid traveling the USSR during the height of the Cold War I saw the crumblings), and a Polish Pope who inspired hope on that side of the curtain. Crappy cars, shoddy shoes, busted buildings making for tiring tovarishchs. But to whatever extent it's deserved, let's give the man credit. I just wish he hadn't sewn the seeds of our own economic calamities in the process.

Ignoring where those seeds were planted and by whom, reading tea leaves, Sarah Palin® celebrates Ronnie's century mark by turning history upside down and backwards. Ignorance and denial, reverence for ahistorical falsehood, clinging to failed economics like some cling to you-know-what and you-know-which: it's the only way to keep his holiness alive, and she's the embodiment, the wine and the cracker.

For some reason, she didn't mention the cut and run after the bombings in Lebanon, or his other softness on terror; nor did she opine on the impression that might have created in the minds of radical Islamists, how it might have fashioned their future thoughts on the value of terrorism. RWS™ were outraged at Clinton over the USS Cole. How can they abide the memory of turning tail after the deaths of three hundred Marines? The former half-term governor didn't bring it up. On this holy day, I won't either.

Two of Reagan's three Supreme Court nominees drove conservatives crazy. Too moderate, not ideologically pure. Reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, ferchrissakes! How does that fit on the icon?

I'm sure Mr Reagan was a nice guy, especially if you weren't poor or otherwise disadvantaged by circumstance, weren't gay, weren't from outer space and didn't have HIV, weren't a black South African. I bet he was entertaining as hell at State dinners, a great story-teller; and I'm sorry he had to suffer the ravages of Alzheimer's while trying gracefully to finish out his presidency. But really, I can't think of anything he did in office the legacy of which has worked out very well for us. O'Connor and Kennedy, maybe. If the timing had been different and he'd have said "Mr Krushchev, tear down this wall," the response would have been a shoe in a different place than a podium. And the economic disaster which was set in motion by Reaganomics has ramifications the reversal of which may still prove to be impossible despite the best efforts of Barack Obama. As governor, what he did to California, it appears, is irreversible. The myth of Reagan, as animated and amplified post mortem: I get why they love it. Perfect in every way. But his perceived greatness in death bears no relation to his actions and their results in his political life. In office, he often wasn't nearly as beloved as is his ghost.

We should all be so lucky.

He sold a lot of Borax, though, and GE products.

So today, on his centenary birthday, I'll adopt Ronald Reagan's reputed optimism and believe that the Super Bowl commercials will live up to their usual standards. If the rest are as good as the one I've already seen, the VW commercial with the kid in his D.V. suit, it'll be a day worth celebrating.

[Addendum, 8pm: I just found an amusing cartoon that says the same thing...]

Do Not Call List

Back in the days, it used to amuse me -- if that's the term -- to hear Condi Rice or George Bush "call upon" some country or other to do some thing or other. How ineffectual it sounded. I suppose others did it before them, but for some reason, when they weren't invading, "call upon" seemed like the way they responded to pretty much everything going on in the world. Call upon. Anyone listening?

I call upon Wall Street to give me back my money.

And, yes, it sounds silly when Hilary or Barack say the same thing.

Which brings me to my point: I look at a million people roiling in Egypt to protest their government, which is impressive and portentous in ways none of us yet know. Whatever else might be true about it, it seems pretty likely that anything anyone says on this side of it would have, rounding off, zero effect that crowd. And yet the punditry is "grading" Obama's response to the situation. Thoughtful Republicans -- not yet a complete oxymoron -- are generally saying he's done well. The RWS™, of course, give him a grade beyond failing; some of them Beckon that he's behind the whole thing, pulling strings from afar, managing the Muslim Brotherhood like Howdy Doody, with the aim of establishing the caliphate in your neighbor's garage.

Simultaneously, the Egypt uprising is a wonderful thing, proof of George Bush's brilliance, and horror unimaginable, proof of Barack Obama's nefariousness. It's democracy sweeping through the Middle East like the floods in Australia, and it's the end of the world. Obama's actions represent careful and effective diplomacy, and it's an impeachable offense.

None of them have a clue what has gone on behind the scenes. Reports suggest that the Obama administration has been talking to Mubarak and working on him to hang it up; working also through the Egyptian military. If we knew what was said, and how, it might be gradable. For now, though, the commentariat is as embarrassing to themselves as is standing in the Rose Garden and calling for stuff.

A million people marching in Egypt. And RWS™ think Obama is behind it, or should have been, or could have been, or should not have been, or isn't.

I call upon them to hang up.

No Comment Comment

Okay. Bad idea. Don't know what I was thinking. I'm no Andrew Sullivan.

The thing is, I blog here as a way to deal with frustrations. It's an outlet. When comments just make me feel worse -- not because I can't take criticism, but because the criticism is so vacuous, so confirmatory of my bleak view of our future -- the blog seems to defeat its own purpose, mental-health-wise.

But, as Sarah says, WTF. It's something to do.

Good For Him

George W. Bush, hardly my favorite person, said something impressive recently.

On January 24, Former President George W. Bush spoke at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where his presidential library will be located, and weighed in on immigration. "What's interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some 'isms' that occasionally pop up -- pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the '20s, for example, there was -- there was an American first policy that said who cares what happens in Europe?...And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians; therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we've been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and nativism. I'm a little concerned that we may be going through the same period."

It was not gladly met by the RWS™ of course, but I give him credit for taking on his own party's hard-core drift.

What's next? Siding with his daughter on gay marriage? Don't hold your breath.

No Comment

I'm in a bit of a bad mood. Related, I've decided not to allow comments, at least for a while. The negative ones are predicatable and, with the occasional exception, devoid of interesting perspective, and nearly universally miss or avoid the central point or make such absurd arguments that I simply stare at the screen, numbly, wondering how these people are able to earn a living. In the end, I think I'll be doing them a favor by preventing them from embarrassing themselves. And while it's nice to know there are people out there who agree with me, I don't need the positive reinforcement.

Fortunately, the people who tend to provide interesting and useful content in their comments also communicate with me directly, and I hope that won't end.

Tijuana Know What's Coming?

A few years back, my family and I detoured from a visit to San Diego to south of the border. Walking toward a restaurant we'd heard of, the most striking thing was the density of pollution from automobiles. At a busy street corner, the eyes burned, the throat constricted, the view was through visible smog at ground level. Where it didn't stink of exhaust, it smelled of sewage. I remember thinking that this would be the US, were it not for our anti-pollution laws. It was impressive, I thought, how much we'd been able to clean up the air and the ground underneath it. Inadequate it may be, but it was nothing like that day in Mexico.

Hasta la vista, EPA. Good news for pulmonologists, oncologists, and, of course, big oil. Bad news for the rest of us.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a sharp challenge to the Obama administration, House Republican leaders intend to unveil legislation to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, officials said. They expect to advance the bill quickly.

EPA chief Lisa Jackson was due on Capitol Hill on Wednesday for the first time since Republicans took over the House and gained seats in the Senate. She probably will have to defend steps by the EPA to control air pollution and water pollution to Senate Republicans, who have introduced bills of their own to delay regulations aimed at abating climate change, or to bar the government from using any environmental law to fight global warming pollution.

Officials said the House bill, which was to be offered Wednesday, would nullify all of the steps the EPA has taken to date on the issue, including a finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health.

In addition, it seeks to strip the agency of its authority to use the law in any future attempts to crack down on the emissions from factories, utilities and other stationary sources.

How nice it must be to live in a world where you can just disregard information you don't like. How clear it is what the party of teabaggers is all about: if it costs money -- especially to big businesses -- cut it. If it hurts people in the process, well, you're already living in a world where you can just disregard information you don't like. (Admittedly, it's sort of a leap, without evidence to support it, to conclude they actually don't like the fact that people will be hurt. cf: health care repeal.)

And There You Have It...

Ta da... After winning power by deliberate falsification of pretty much everything, House Republicans have revealed their budget plans for the year, sort of:

Updating their budget estimates, House Republicans conceded Thursday that their best hope is to cut current appropriations by $32 billion for the remainder of this fiscal year, once new spending for defense and other security needs are added to the equation.

The impact on domestic spending and foreign aid programs would still be very severe, with the GOP seeking an immediate $58 billion cut from President Barack Obama’s once expansive 2011 budget. But with the Congressional Budget Office predicting a nearly $1.5 trillion deficit for the current year, the scaled-back estimates reflect the limits of a budget strategy so focused narrowly on one segment of appropriations.

The increase in projected deficit, by the way, is mostly due to the failure to return the top tax rates to where they belong, thanks to the GOP recalcitrance and, yes, Obama's failure to make the case. Anyhow, as known by everyone whose brain hadn't been turned to stone by the gorgon-zola of the right, the teabaggers were taken for a ride -- a very dishonest and destructive one -- by those calling their shots and fertilizing their astroturf.

There's plenty more to come.

Foxing The Old Folks

An amusing, if depressing, article, on a conservative website, written by a conservative. He coins the term "Fox Geezer Syndrome."

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been keeping track of a trend among friends around my age (late thirties to mid-forties). Eight of us (so far) share something in common besides our conservatism: a deep frustration over how our parents have become impossible to take on the subject of politics. Without fail, it turns out that our folks have all been sitting at home watching Fox News Channel all day – especially Glenn Beck’s program.

Used to be I would call my mom and get updated on news from the neighborhood, her garden, the grandchildren, hometown gossip, and so forth. I’ve always been interested in politics, but never had the occasion to talk about them with her. She just doesn’t care.

Or didn’t. I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but she began peppering our conversation with red-hot remarks about President Obama. I would try to engage her, but unless I shared her particular judgment, and her outrage, she apparently thought that I was a dupe or a RINO. Finally I asked my father privately why Mom, who as far as I know never before had a political thought, was so worked up about Obama all the time.

“She’s been like that ever since she started watching Glenn Beck,” Dad said.

A few months later, she roped him into watching Beck, which had the same effect. Even though we’re all conservatives, I found myself having to steer our phone conversations away from politics and current events. It wasn’t that I disagreed with their opinions – though I often did – but rather that I found the vehemence with which they expressed those opinions to be so off-putting.

Then I flew out for a visit, and observed that their television was on all day long, even if no one was watching it. What channel was playing? Fox. Spending a few days in the company of the channel – especially Glenn Beck — it all became clear to me. If Fox was the window through which I saw the wider world, for hours every day, I’d be perpetually pissed off too.

I've had similar experiences, though not with my folks, who never lost their liberal -- meaning thoughtful, fact-based, well-read -- sensibilities. The more people listen to any of the RWS™, I've found, the harder it is to talk to them.

I don't sense advanced age in most of my readers. But the contrarians, many of whom seem congenitally unable to find fault with any of Beck's paranoid delusions, sure seem like geezers.

Truth is, though, it's not really a laughing matter. We have a lunatic (or a very cynical, egotistical, moneymaker) to whom many people, inexplicably, give credence. The results are sad at best, and pretty scary in fact.

Iconography

Paul Ryan, the leading light of economic wisdom on the right side of the aisle, warns us about the evils of Social Security. Accepting the fact that everyone without teabags blocking their vew recognizes his numbers don't add up, it turns out he could be a bit of a hypocrite, too.

One day as a 16 year old, Ryan came upon the lifeless body of his father. Paul Ryan, Sr. had died of a heart attack at age 55, leaving the Janesville Craig High School 10th grader, his three older brothers and sisters and his mother alone. It was Paul who told the family of his father’s death.

With his father’s passing, young Paul collected Social Security benefits until age 18, which he put away for college. To make ends meet, Paul’s mother returned to school to study interior design. His siblings were off at college. Ryan remembers this difficult time bringing him and his mother closer.

See how that worked? Congressman Paul Ryan loses his father at age 16, and Social Security steps up to ease the burden. Of course, his mother also received Social Security benefits as his father's surviving spouse.

And as long as we're deiconifying teabagger icons, how about Ayn Rand, the MatthewMarkLukeJohn of teabaggerism. Seems she was on the public dole, too (Thanks, Eugene):

Critics of Social Security and Medicare frequently invoke the words and ideals of author and philosopher Ayn Rand, one of the fiercest critics of federal insurance programs. But a little-known fact is that Ayn Rand herself collected Social Security. She may also have received Medicare benefits.

An interview recently surfaced that was conducted in 1998 by the Ayn Rand Institute with a social worker who says she helped Rand and her husband, Frank O’Connor, sign up for Social Security and Medicare in 1974.

Federal records obtained through a Freedom of Information act request confirm the Social Security benefits.

Thinking more deeply (which is what I do) it might not be all that inconsistent, after all: for what is teabaggerism if not a high-dudgeon if low-brow, a high-falutin' if low-handed way of justifying selfishness: "I got mine, I'll get more of mine. Screw you."

Lunzing Toward Irrelevance

Obviously, Rs have field-tested their pablum with focus groups and decided they have a winner. Wonder what they paid Frank Lunz. In any case, it's been the terme du annum so far: Obama doesn't believe in "American Exceptionalism." I wrote about it recently, and, after the SOTU, you'd think it would be a dead issue (not that it ever deserved life.) But no:

PARKER: You know one of the words that I listened out for in his speech last night was the word "exceptional." ... But I didn't hear him say it and I thought at a time when you're building a speech around sort of defining the common purpose of America, that seemed to me a rather -- you know, a simple direct line, fairly -- pretty much a no-brainer, but he didn't say it.

BOEHNER: Well, they -- they've refused to talk about America exceptionalism. We are different than the rest of the world. Why? Because Americans have -- the country was built on an idea that ordinary people could decide what their government looked like and ordinary people could elect their own leaders....

....but you can't get the left to talk about it. They don't -- they reject that notion.

PARKER: Why do you think that is?

BOEHNER: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if they're afraid of it, whether they don't believe it. I don't know.

As the article says,

Honestly, were Boehner and Parker even awake during the speech? If so, they heard Obama talk about the qualities that "set us apart as a nation" and the things we do "better than anyone else." And his belief that America is "not just a place on a map, but the light to the world" and "the greatest nation on Earth." And his reminder that "as contentious and frustrating and messy as our democracy can sometimes be, I know there isn't a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth."

Ms Parker has subsequently dumbled down, repeating it in an editorial column. How much ridiculouser can she get? Tow it behind an airplane?

Far be it from Rs to let a little information get in the way of their latest assumption of supporter idiocy. If it works, we're using it, they've obviously decided. Sort of like the big lie concept of Goebbels. Not that I'd say such a thing.

Too divisive.

How about this, then: Listening to our new Speaker spew such sorry stuff, how could anyone believe the man is seriously interested in good governance? Observing the RWS™ continue the emptiness, how can anyone take anything they say seriously? How can anyone deny the contempt they have for their followers? If this vacuous, stupid, and patently false (as well as entirely meaningless) assertion is among those things by which they think they can moove their sheep, there are only a few explanations: they are idiots, they think their listeners are idiots, their listeners are idiots.

When will it end? When will they get serious about the needs of our country?

Seriously. When?

No Crystal

If I were a serious thinker, I'd have somethink to say about Egypt. As it is, all I can do is conundrum my fingers on the keys.

On one hand, it could be seen as validation of the Bush view: by invading Iraq we spread democracy through the region. But it's not a confirmation of one of the RWS™ view of liberals. And most of the RWS™ are seeing dire doings (hard to know what Glenn Beck is saying, but one infers from the tone of the babble that it's nothing good) and -- because it's what they do -- blaming the whole thing on Obama; even before we really know what the whole thing is.

It would seem we can conclude, at least, that the ability of people to rise up against their government is not dependent on another country invading them first, and calling the shots. Nor, it seems, does it require a citizenry armed with assault weapons. Handguns, even. Could seeds have been sewn, instead, when Obama spoke there? If so, was is a bad seed? I'd say neither Bush nor Obama can take much credit (although who knows what's gone on behind the scenes?) It's hard to imagine neighboring countries looking at Iraq, post-invasion, and seeing something to which they'd aspire. And it's hard to imagine a single speech catalyzing decades of foment.

I can't dismiss those who worry who's behind it all, and what sort of government will result. A majority of Egyptians, I've read, favor making Sharia the law of the land. Were that to happen, it wouldn't be good news for the West, nor for Israel. Anwar Sadat was one of my heroes. Though he died for his courage, improbably his legacy of peace lives on. Which, no doubt, is why we've shared a subsequent bed with Mubarak. What price to pay for peace -- or the Mideast version of it? Will his replacement eliminate cooperation with Israel?

I'd place Egypt somewhere between Iraq and the US, in terms of -- for lack of a term -- readiness for democracy. Clearly, Iraq was as unready as Sarah Palin is for grad school, and it collapsed into murderous chaos, over which there is but the thinnest of blankets today; and it frays more every day. On the other hand, in the US, which has a couple of centuries' experience with the process, the election of Barack Obama set off such a storm of hatred and propagandizing and imagined terrors that one (this one, anyway) wonders if democracy has a future here. So by that comparison, we might guess that Egypt will fall somewhere in between: insanity, episodes of mob rule, inability to find common ground, but with fewer guns.

Yet we might hope that what we like to believe about people (with less and less evidence, if the teabaggers are an example) is true: given a greater level of participation in their government and less poverty and income inequality (by some measures, the inequality is greater in the US than in Egypt), maybe even education (remnants are still to be found here), better natures will prevail and they'd opt to get along with their fellow citizens and neighbors than to kill them.

It would be a first, but I guess it could happen.

Credit Due

Rand Paul has gotten very specific, and for that he deserves credit. No one else in his party has, not even Paul Ryan, the Rs anointed budget guru, whose numbers simply don't add up.

Mr Paul presents a plan to cut five hundred billion dollars from the federal budget right away. I'd say it glosses over (to say the least) the consequences; but I hand it to him for sticking out his neck. Here's a summary: (The prior link is directly to Paul's plan.)

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH...............................$1,283,000,000. (23%)
Notes: The Government Printing Office is abolished.

JUDICIAL BRANCH......................................$2,434,000,000. (32%)

AGRICULTURE............................................$42,542,000,000. (30%)
The Agriculture Research Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Resources Conservation Service, and Foreign Agricultural Service are abolished. The Forest Service gets a $1.2 billion haircut.

COMMERCE...................................................$5,322,000,000. (54%)
National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is cut by $857,000,000.

DEFENSE.......................................................$47,500,000,000. (6.5%)

EDUCATION..................................................$78,000,000,000 (83%)
Only the Pell grant program survives.

ENERGY............................................................$44,200,000,000 (100%)
The Defense Department takes over all of Energy's remaining functions (nuclear waste, for example) and about $18 billion of its budget.

HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES..............$26,510,000,000. (26%)
Notes: FDA is cut by $230,000,000; Indian Health Service is cut by $650 million; CDC is cut by $1.17 billion; NIH by $5.8 billion.

HOMELAND SECURITY.................................$23,765,000,000. (43%)
Notes: Coast Guard is shifted to Defense. TSA's funds are cut by $900 million.

HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT....$53,100,000,000. (100%)
Notes: Completely eliminated. Veterans' housing programs are transferred to the VA

INTERIOR........................................................$10,934,000,000. (78%)
Bureau of Reclamation and Bureau of Indian Affairs are abolished.

JUSTICE.............................................................$9,057,000,000. (28%)
Note: Office of Justice Programs is abolished.

LABOR....................................................$2,803,000,000. (2%)
OSHA, MSHA, and the The Employment and Training Administration are spared all cuts (no cuts to unemployment benefits)

STATE...................................................................$20,321,000,000. (71%)
Note: Massive foreign aid cuts. All international commissions and organizations are defunded.

TRANSPORTATION............................................$42,810,000,000. (49%)
Notes: Amtrak is completely de-funded.

VETERANS’ AFFAIRS..........................................No cuts

CORPS OF ENGINEERS......................................$1,854,000,000. (27%)

EPA..............................................................$3,238,000,000. (29%)

GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION.....$1,936,000,000. (85%)

INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS...$24,300,000,000 (100%)

NASA.........................................................................$4,500,000,000 (25%)

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION...............$4,723,000,000. (62%)

OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT.......$9,070,000,000.

SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION.........No cuts

FCC...........................................................$2,150,000,000. (22%)

ABOLISH...............................................................$2,050,000,000. (100%)

(1) Affordable Housing Program.
(2) Commission on Fine Arts.
(3) Consumer Product Safety Commission.
(4) Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
(5) National Endowment for the Arts.
(6) National Endowment for the Humanities.
(7) State Justice Institute.

MISC

Collect delinquent taxes from Federal Employees........$3,000,000,000.
Freeze Federal Government employee pay...................$2,000,000,000.
Reduce Federal Government travel..............................$7,500,000,000.
Repeal Davis-Bacon..................................................... $6,000,000,000.
Prohibit union project labor agreements......................$2,000,000,000.
TARP repeal.................................................................$4,481,000,000.
Sell Federal Buildings..................................................$19,000,000,000.
Reduce Federal vehicle budget..........................................$600,000,000.

There's plenty of meat in it, and I'd guess it can't all be bad. However, when I think of cutting 32% from the judicial branch, when even our hyperconservative Chief Justice says the courts are in crisis for lack of judges and funding, I wonder if it might be too drastic in other areas as well. Homeland security? When the fundament upon which Republicanism has rested of late is fighting their war on terror? And, of course, an 83% cut in education, while entirely consistent with teabagger mindlessness (in more meanings than one), would be devastating except in the view of those whose goal is to produce ill-informed people for their ever-increasing and ever-deluded base.

Housing, environmental protection, science, mass transit, food safety, national parks, drug regulation, health research: not priorities. Foreign aid: gone. Defense, though: token cuts only.

Nonetheless, it's good to see specifics that follow from the quest to balance the budget only with spending cuts, and I commend Rand Paul for that.

Now it's up to teabaggers to digest it, to understand the consequences of their avowed policies, and to tell us if that's what they really meant. (Here's a selection of thoughtful comments from regular people -- assuming "regular" applies to people who read blogs.) And, while the teabaggers stare blankly at the wall, overloaded by the need to think things through and likely unequipped to do so, it's time for Democrats to make a case for the importance of these programs, and why they're vital to our future; to make clear what kind of country we'd be were the randy to get their way.