Shelter as possible.
Too bad there isn't any shelter...
circle the wagons!
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| They're not coming. They're here. [image source] |
As Americans we can now stand by to see what the 2014 mid term elections will do to the nation. With the oligarchs now firmly in control of the Congress, we can anticipate that the central focus will be on money -- in all places, belonging to anyone and now identified specifically only by what difficulty will be required to move it from where ever it may be presently into the off shore pockets of the plutocrats.
There will be the usual, visible issues -- the perennial "favorites" -- of union busting, exporting jobs, the Keystone XL pipeline, repealing the ACA, deregulating pollution, "Wall Streeting" Social Security, eliminating banking regulations and so forth, but, beyond these "red herrings," there will also be what MeanMesa describes as "structural" attacks on the now slowly revitalizing economy.
While the very mention of "structural" may usher in an unpleasant expectation of complicated economic policy concepts, there is little to be gained from inserting too much of the academic analysis here. Instead, let's define "structural" aspects of the economy simply as concepts with definitions which are complex beyond the limited capabilities of the GOP base's addled comprehension.
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| If she can't understand it, the GOP will have smooth sailing. |
While it may seem that the GOP's options are essentially without limit at this dismal juncture, we must remember that one remaining requirement to "keep this thing going" is to carry elections in the Party's direly gerrymandered Congressional districts. While unlimited billionaire financing and an obedient Supreme Court are certainly helpful, there are, actually, still lines which must not be crossed -- not even with the GOP's base.
Happily, for the think tank "fact twisters," the issues demarcating these lines are very, very, exceptionally simple. If Sean Hannity cannot "explain" one of these "issues" entirely in less than 300 words -- all with fewer than three syllables, -- it simply does not exist for the GOP's base, and there is no possibility whatsoever that such an "issue" will ever have even the least, tiny, insignificant impact imaginable on how the GOP's zombie-like base will continue to vote.
The Republican tea bags will be drawling the same vile ideology they always drawl, but the "real work" ordered by the owners of the GOP will be quietly directed at these "structural" targets. Safely assuming that -- in the minds of these oligarchs -- money is everything, these "structural" targets are just as irresistible to them as a "heroin and cheap sex sandwich after a night of out of control binge drinking."
You can already hear Wall Street salivating from as far away as the Bowery.
Flummoxing the "Man on the Street"
Maximum complication
It's just more politics...
Both Party's are the same...
For those who routinely visit a blog such as this one understanding the grave importance of these "structural targets" is not the least bit overwhelming in terms of complexity or relevance, but the average American voter has been incessantly bombarded with the idea that such matters are "beyond him" and, worse, "don't really affect his affairs." For what the oligarchs are now scheming, this self-acknowledged, uncertainty and prevailing avoidance is "money in the bank."
The GOP's "structural targets:"
Gutting the IRS
Cooking the Books
Holding the Debt Ceiling Hostage (Again)
Cooking the Books
Holding the Debt Ceiling Hostage (Again)
Every side of these policy "propositions" is hard to explain to the barely informed "man on the street" -- especially if he has been relying on the "objectivity" of the domestic corporate media for a fair shot at understanding them.
In fact, matters grow even more discouraging when one realizes that not only the oligarchs [most of whom not only hold masses of stock interest but also occupy seats on the boards of directors for these media corporations] but also the ratings of the media themselves stand to benefit from the damage, fear and chaos which will accompany the more material economic damage to be inflicted on these "structural targets."
The owners of the Republican Party have selected these nearly invisible tactical objectives quite strategically. If large numbers of the electorate were suddenly to be well informed about the matters, not even the tormented gerrymandering and the mass red state disenfranchisement could be trusted to dependably deliver the next horde of low information base votes.
Well, MeanMesa had in mind a post which would deal specifically with the second of the three "targets." However, while researching material for that post, this remarkably educational DailyKOS article "popped" up on the Google. That CBO post has already been begun, but this DailyKOS article is simply too informative to be "sliced and diced" and left on Short Current Essay's cutting room floor.
MeanMesa doesn't enjoy and secret knowledge which might provide an empirical method to estimate the scope of this time's planned economic looting or a timetable which might suggest how long we have before the oligarchs, once again, implode the national economy. At various times in recent posts, MeanMesa has noted that the typical "performance" of GOP Congressional control usually results in around a $1.25 Tn increase in the national debt per year.
Two months of the 2008 Republican implosion and collapse resulted in a 40% reduction of wealth for those citizens who still had some wealth. The deficit sky rocketed [By 2008 it was already sky high thanks to Bush W. and his cronies]. The Obama administration pushed through an $800 Bn stimulus, but the cash part of that was dwarfed by the invisible "making counter parties whole" monster lurking out of sight in the Federal Reserve's shadows.
MeanMesa's "best guess" is that what's approaching this time will be exponentially more severe. So, forget about a 2018 economic recovery. Take a look at the DailyKOS article. [Visit the original article here - DailyKOS]
attribution: CBPP/Perrspectives
The U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) surged by five percent in the
third quarter, the best performance since 2003. Employers hired 321,000
more workers in November, marking the 57th consecutive month of private
sector job gains. With unemployment down to 5.8 percent, long-stagnant wages are now showing signs of edging up.
Plummeting gas prices and record stock prices are putting more money in
Americans' pockets and bank accounts. Meanwhile, federal tax revenues
have exceeded forecasts even as spending is flat (as it has been
throughout the Obama presidency), resulting in shrinking deficits. It's
no wonder consumer confidence is at its highest level in seven years.
But with Barack Obama's approval numbers on the upswing, the new
Republican majorities in the House and Senate have a simple message for
the president and his Democratic allies: Nice economy you have there; it would be a shame if anything happened to it.
That's right. With their toxic combination of bad budgeting, bad math
and bad faith, Republicans are once again threatening to cripple the
federal government and derail the American economy in 2015 in three
different ways:
- Gutting the IRS
- Cooking the Books
- Holding the Debt Ceiling Hostage (Again)
The GOP's gangster approach to government starts, but certainly doesn't end, with gutting the budget of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). As Politico
reported, in the just complete "CRomnibus" spending bill, Congressional
Republicans once again took an axe to their least favorite government
agency:
Spending negotiators this week froze most agency budgets but reduced the IRS funds to $10.9 billion, a 3 percent cut over last year and $1.5 billion below the president's request. Appropriators bragged in a release that the level is even lower than the IRS's 2008 budget.
Those new cuts come atop more than a $1 billion reduction to the IRS budget since 2010, which has forced the tax-collecting agency to shed 13,000 employees while it serves an additional 7 million taxpayers, according to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
The results of this right-wing temper tantrum are as predictable as they
are counterproductive. IRS customer service will continue its steady
erosion. Even before the cuts, only 53 percent of taxpayers calling the
agency for help were projected to even get through, while wait times
were forecast to grow to 34 minutes. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen
warned that the tax collector may have to resort to furloughs and shutdowns
to balance its own books, painful steps which could delay taxpayers'
refund checks. Meanwhile, the government's ability to prevent, detect
and punish tax cheats, frauds and evaders will be further curtailed,
with the result that the estimated $500 billion "tax gap" between what Americans owe Uncle Sam each year and what they actually pay will continue to grow.
As it turns out, the House GOP caucus was only delivering on RNC Chairman Reince Priebus' April promise
that "we're done playing footsie here with the IRS" over its supposed
scandals. But the real scandal is that Republicans and their
conservative amen corner have for decades been doing something much
worse to the IRS.
After their successful 1990s crusade to defang the Internal Revenue
Service, the GOP is once again slashing its budget, demonizing its
employees and even questioning the legitimacy of its mission. With its
funding cut by Congress for five years in a row, the agency now has 10
percent fewer agents and officers than five years ago and fewer agents
auditing returns than at any time since at least the 1980s. Even as
congressional Republicans have blocked Obama administration efforts to
end "inversions" that enable American corporations to move overseas to
avoid paying taxes, the Government Accountability Office reported an
epidemic of tax dodging by small businesses. The result is that the tax gap
has mushroomed to an estimated $500 billion from $195 billion in 1998.
To put that in context, that's roughly equal to the entire projected
federal budget deficit for the past year.
By punishing the IRS for scandals that did not materialize
and for simply doing its job in managing Obamacare tax credits and
penalties, the GOP has opted for a "penny-wise, pound-foolish" policy of
the worst kind. The IRS has repeatedly explained that each additional
dollar added to its budget produces between 7 and 10 times more revenue
for the United States Treasury. As Ezra Klein pointed out when House Republicans first slashed the IRS budget in 2011:
Converting dollar bills into $10 bills is an excellent way to pay off your credit card. Except, it seems, if you're a House Republican.
In the summer of 2013, then House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)
announced his party's intent to slash IRS by 25 percent, a move even Charles Krauthammer called
"silly and small." (As IRS chief Koskinen warned Congress, "I have not
figured out either philosophically or psychologically why nobody seems
to care whether we collect the revenue or not.") Confessed tax cheat
Michael Grimm (R-NY) is the perfect face of what Jonathan Cohn aptly
labeled the "pro-deficits, pro-tax evasion" party.
Meanwhile, as National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olsen warned in November:
"Unless we are able to correct this, very bad things will happen to taxpayers."
Preventing Uncle Sam from collecting tax revenue is one sure way to
starve the government and increase budget deficits. Another is to
systematically overestimate how much revenue federal taxes will generate
in the first place. And by all indications, that's precisely what the
new GOP majority in Congress plans to do beginning in 2015.
That's the meaning of the GOP's twin decisions to demand so-called "dynamic scoring" of budget legislation and to replace the well-respected head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Doug Elmendorf.
Over the years, Elmendorf has established a reputation as an
even-handed, no-drama authority whose budget estimates have both helped
and hurt (especially on the $10.10 minimum wage proposal) President
Obama's agenda. It's precisely because of that credibility that some
Republicans, notably including the American Enterprise Institute and
Bush economists Gregory Mankiw and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, want the new GOP
Congress to keep Doug Elmendorf on for another term at CBO.
But as the New York Times reported, Grover Norquist, the Heritage Foundation, the Wall Street Journal and others in the "tax cuts pay for themselves" crowd want to replace Elmendorf with a compliant GOP ideologue. While AEI's
Michael R. Strain gushed "Doug Elmendorf has been so exceptional, he
seems to be trying as hard as possible to give a fair, unbiased review
of academic literature on all these issues:"
Not so, say the most ardent conservatives, who want Mr. Elmendorf, a former Federal Reserve economist, replaced as soon as his term ends on Jan. 3. Grover G. Norquist, the small-government, low-tax activist at Americans for Tax Reform, has prominently laid out an indictment that includes putting a supposedly inaccurate price tag on the Affordable Care Act and Mr. Elmendorf's "failed Keynesian economic analysis."
Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, agreed. "It would be absurd for a Republican-controlled Congress to keep Elmendorf at the helm of the C.B.O," he said. "For a party looking to change the culture in Washington, this would be a good place to start."
Especially if the culture Republicans want to change is one of honesty and fidelity to the truth.
Now, Republicans painted a target on the CBO
long ago. When the agency in 2011 concluded that repealing Obamacare
would increase the national debt, Eric Cantor called it "budget
gimmickry." Then the 2012 GOP presidential front-runner went even
further, declaring "if you are serious about real health reform, you
must abolish the Congressional Budget Office because it lies." But it is
on the subject of tax cuts that CBO scorekeeping has burst the most
Republican blood vessels.
Ever since Paul Ryan
introduced his "Path to Prosperity" budget, the incoming House Ways and
Means Committee Chairman has faced the same $6 trillion, 10-year hole.
After simple math showed that his tax-cut windfall for the wealthy would
add trillions to the national debt, Ryan among other conservatives
decided to change the way the CBO does math.
As Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post
explained last month, the man Charles Pierce calls the "zombie-eyed
granny starver" plans to change the way the nonpartisan Congressional
Budget Office calculates the impact of tax cuts:
Earlier this year, Camp released a tax reform draft that showed the enormous difficulty of achieving Ryan's goal of getting tax rates down to 25 percent.
Ryan has said it would be easier to hit that target if the Congressional Budget Office used a process called "dynamic scoring" to measure broad effects on the economy when judging tax legislation. While CBO already uses dynamic scoring on a limited basis, Ryan said Wednesday he will have additional recommendations in the new Congress "for making sure we take these things into consideration."
As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)
warned in response, "Budget and tax plans should not rely on 'dynamic
scoring' because the estimates it produces are "highly uncertain and
subject to manipulation." Which is precisely why Paul Ryan and his
Republican allies want to change the way math itself works as soon as they control both chambers of Congress. And if they succeed, voodoo economics will become a feature, not a bug.
In September, Ryan promised the Wall Street group, the Financial Services Roundtable,
"I'd like to improve our scorekeeping so it better reflects reality."
By "improve our scorekeeping," Ryan means forcing the nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to change the way it forecasts (or
"scores") the impact of tax and budget legislation. And by "better
reflects reality," Paul Ryan means rigging the outcome so GOP
tax-cutting bills don't appear to hemorrhage the red ink they inevitably
must. As The Hill reported:
Ryan said if Republicans take control of the Senate, they will be able to calculate the price tag of legislation differently. Republicans have long pushed for the Congressional Budget Office to use "dynamic scoring" when calculating the costs of legislation. Currently, the CBO scores legislation using static scoring, which does not take into account how behavioral changes brought on by legislation could in turn alter how much a particular provision costs.
But Ryan and Republicans argue that adopting a new scoring method would make it easier to adopt revenue-neutral policies, and also paint a more accurate picture. If the GOP controlled Congress, they could change the calculation methods employed by the CBO.
"The scorekeeping we use is not correct," he said.Ryan's crusade to magically whitewash red ink has been a Republican cause for decades. To one degree or another, pretty much every major Republican tax cut scheme from Reagan in 1980, Dole in 1996 and Bush in 2000 to Mitt Romney in 2012 and Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" budget have claimed that the hemorrhage of revenue for the U.S. Treasury from their gargantuan tax cut windfalls for the gilded-class would be offset by "macroeconomic feedback," or bigger collections from a supposedly surging economy. Without resorting to the sleight of hand that is dynamic scoring, these GOP budgets invariably produce red ink as far as the eye can see. That's why House Republicans last proposed H.R. 3582 (the "Pro-Growth Budgeting Act") to require that the CBO estimates also use dynamic scoring to incorporate "supply-side assumptions about the growth-generating magic of tax cuts into official budget estimates, enabling conservatives to evade the deficit-boosting implications (and various congressional barriers that come along with them) of their pet proposals for reducing the tax burden of 'job creators.'"
Most analysts have encouraged the Congressional Budget Office and
other forecasters to steer clear of dynamic scoring for two very
compelling reasons. First, there's no consensus on how to model it,
making the process ripe for manipulation and political chicanery. As
former deputy assistant director for tax policy at the Congressional
Budget Office and current fellow at the Tax Policy Center Roberton
Williams warned:
"We really don't understand the science well enough to do it right. The assumption built into the model determines, in large part, what comes out of the model. There's going to be conflict unless there's some agreement on what ought to go in."But it's not just that "there's a great deal of uncertainty" about "the right way to model things," as TPC's Donald Marron put it. There's also the matter of the historical record: for over 30 years, bogus conservative claims about the revenue-increasing effects of tax cuts have been proven cataclysmically wrong.
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| Warning! Hill billies who have already sold out to their billionaire masters should NOT be running the economy. |
It's worth noting that current conservative economic propagandist and former McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin couldn't make the dynamic scoring alchemy work for the Bush administration, either:
In 2003, Doug Holtz-Eakin was appointed by Republicans to lead the CBO during the Bush years, and he came under intense pressure to use more dynamic analyses. But studies he commissioned found that dynamic scoring was devilishly complicated and wouldn't lead to drastically different estimates. As he explained in a 2011 hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, "it is unlikely to change the bottom line very much over the budget window."Despite the bitter experience of the Bush years, Mitt Romney made the same GOP shell game part of his tax plan in 2012. As Ezra Klein suggested in "The Dynamic Dodge in Romney's Budget," Mitt's scheme once again resurrected David Stockman's "magic asterisk:"
As a matter of theory, stronger economic growth could make Romney's plan work...if Romney really could double or triple the pace of economic growth, it would be much easier to make his numbers add up...
The technical term for the secret sauce that Romney is using in his budget projections is "dynamic scoring." The idea is that tax cuts make the economy grow faster. They make people work harder. They persuade rich people to stop hiding money away. And thus they don't cost as much as a "static analysis" -- one that didn't take into account all these effects -- would suggest.
As it turns out, Romney's 20 percent tax cut plan was basically the same one Bob Dole ran on—and lost on—in 1996. And the architect of that debacle, former Reagan Treasury official Bruce Bartlett,
has long since recanted his support for the "dynamic scoring" at the
heart of virtually every Republican tax plan. As Bartlett put it in
2012:
As the budget deficit increasingly inhibits Republicans' tax-cutting, they are planning ahead for tax cuts that they will insist are costless because they will so massively increase growth. But for that approach to work, the C.B.O. and the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress's official budget and tax estimators, need to be forced to play along...
My concern is that the Republican effort is just a smokescreen to incorporate phony-baloney factors into revenue estimates to justify unlimited tax cutting...In other words, it is an issue of credibility. Republicans don't really care about accurate revenue estimates; they just want them to show that tax cuts pay for themselves, so they can pass more of them without constraint.Constraints, that is, like the facts, the truth and the unchangeable principles of basic math. That's why Paul Ryan wants to rename the new math he and his GOP friends demand the Congressional Budget Office use:
"He also noted that he prefers the term 'reality-based scoring' over 'dynamic scoring.'"
Holding the Debt Ceiling Hostage (Again)
If the past 35 years have confirmed the inconvenient truth that Republicans' tax cuts have produced red ink as far as the eye can see,
reality has another well-known liberal bias as well. Refusing to raise
the debt ceiling, as both parties routinely did until 2011, will trigger
a U.S. sovereign default and with it a global economic cataclysm.
You don't have to take my word for it. Just ask Republican leaders
like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and House
Speaker John Boehner.
In 2011, Ryan acknowledged that "you can't not
raise the debt ceiling." Graham warned "the consequences for the entire
global economy" resulting from a first-ever American default "would be
catastrophic." Four years ago, Speaker-elect John Boehner issued this
dire assessment if Congress did not increase Uncle Sam's borrowing
authority to pay bills the federal government had already incurred:
"That would be a financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on Election Day said, 'we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs.' And you can't create jobs if you default on the federal debt."Nevertheless, four years after Boehner's warning and 42 months after Standard & Poor's lowered America's credit rating in the Tea Party Downgrade of 2011, incoming House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) promised to once again hold the debt ceiling hostage. As The Hill reported two weeks ago:
Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) on Friday said it would be "wise" for Republicans to follow a rule next year that would require any hike to the debt ceiling to be matched by equivalent spending cuts.
Known as the Boehner Rule, it would require Congress to impose "dollar-for-dollar" cuts to offset any hike to the debt ceiling. The practice was established by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and used for much of 2011 after Republicans won House majority.
"I think it was wise, we kind of fell away from that," Price said. "Anything that gets us further in the direction of true reform to save and strengthen your Medicare Medicaid and Social Security is a wise thing for the country but it also helps us from a debt and deficit standing."
Price dismissed the suggestion that reviving the rule would prompt a showdown with President Obama.
"Having these crises moments, I prefer to think about as pinch-points to get good policy," Price said.
Unfortunately for the American people, virtually every other sentient
creature has different view. As MSNBC's Steve Benen summed up this
once-and-future extortion scheme:
As Price sees it, the GOP-led Congress will tell the Obama administration, "We'll cooperate, but only if you slash public investments. If not, we'll default on our debts, crash the economy, and destroy the full faith and credit of the United States."
Chairman Price's blackmail threat doesn't just fly in the face of Mitch
McConnell's promise that "there will be no government shutdown or
default on the national debt." Price's debt-ceiling is all the more
irresponsible given the steep reduction in federal budget deficits
that even Boehner admitted means "we have no immediate debt crisis" and
nondefense discretionary spending as a percentage of the U.S. economy
is already down to levels not seen since the 1950s. Worse still, even
threatening default, as the experience from the summer of 2011 showed,
costs the government money and undermines economic growth.
The GOP's unprecedented debt ceiling brinksmanship which began four years ago didn't just cost the Treasury billions of dollars in higher borrowing costs. American consumer confidence nose-dived during standoff in the summer of 2011:
As Reuters and the Christian Science Monitor explained, the GOP's debt-ceiling debacle was the main culprit for sagging confidence and job creation:
Why has the job market cooled so much? An important factor, many economists say, is that signals from government lately have been hurting rather than helping confidence. The protracted talks over the nation's debt ceiling this summer appeared to dampen the spirits of consumers and businesses alike.On that point, S&P left little doubt in pointing the finger at the kamikaze conservatives in Congress:
A Standard & Poor's director said for the first time Thursday that one reason the United States lost its triple-A credit rating was that several lawmakers expressed skepticism about the serious consequences of a credit default -- a position put forth by some Republicans. Without specifically mentioning Republicans, S&P senior director Joydeep Mukherji said the stability and effectiveness of American political institutions were undermined by the fact that "people in the political arena were even talking about a potential default," Mukherji said. "That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable," he added. "This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns."
Such voices are indeed uncommon—except among congressional Republicans.
And so it goes. There is every indication that 2015 could be a great
year for the American economy. Robust economic growth, strong hiring,
cheap energy and the prospect (finally) of rising wages augur well for
real improvement in Americans' standard of living. Unless, of course,
Republicans get in the way. But by threatening to block judicial and executive branch nominees,
handcuffing the IRS, demanding make-believe budgets and risking the
full faith and credit of the United States, the GOP appears dead set on
doing just that.
For a final, hauntingly flat note in this chorus of deception and larceny, we can look at what David Koch plans for his "free time" once the Congressional looting is safely underway.
David wants to "help out the cause of justice" by "reforming" the judicial system.
His "pitch" is to "reform" it so the "less fortunate" will get a better break -- especially with respect to sentencing. However, aside from those of us born on New Year's Day 2015, we all know better than to even waste time courting such fickle idealism. We've all had more than one chance to see David and Charles' patriotic "idealism" unfold before.
The brothers' "hard earned," personal dynastic wealth mushroomed by around $40 Bn during the last six years while they dumped billions into their craven efforts of unseat the democracy and destroy the President. However, as we find them this minute finally hovering within grasp of taking permanent ownership of the entire country, David must have had a "plutocratic nightmare" in which he saw himself and his brother as 21st Century "Marie Antoinettes."
David Koch's Latest Scheme to Dodge the Guillotine
Just in case the mob gets through the gate and past security...
For a final, hauntingly flat note in this chorus of deception and larceny, we can look at what David Koch plans for his "free time" once the Congressional looting is safely underway.
David wants to "help out the cause of justice" by "reforming" the judicial system.
His "pitch" is to "reform" it so the "less fortunate" will get a better break -- especially with respect to sentencing. However, aside from those of us born on New Year's Day 2015, we all know better than to even waste time courting such fickle idealism. We've all had more than one chance to see David and Charles' patriotic "idealism" unfold before.
The brothers' "hard earned," personal dynastic wealth mushroomed by around $40 Bn during the last six years while they dumped billions into their craven efforts of unseat the democracy and destroy the President. However, as we find them this minute finally hovering within grasp of taking permanent ownership of the entire country, David must have had a "plutocratic nightmare" in which he saw himself and his brother as 21st Century "Marie Antoinettes."
Perhaps the "interestingly sour" potatoes served with the seasoned breasts of a late night sous vide duck didn't agree with David's oligarchic GI tract.
Naturally, after being reassured by his household servants that he was still the richest man within a thousand miles of his tear soaked, silk pillow, he almost immediately undertook this fascinating "judicial reform" hobby -- perhaps soliciting a few ideas and calling in a few favors from his black robed, Koch Industries employees seated on the Supreme Court.
MeanMesa will leave it to you, esteemed visitor, to thread through David's op-ed. It's somehow comforting to know that even this billionaire still shudders at the possibility of sharing a cell. We can only hope.
