IT'S NOT JUST CONGRESS...

For years, people have bemoaned the fact that relatively few seats in Congress are really contests because the incumbent is usually re-elected.  In the case of corporate board members, the situation is much worse.

Bad Directors and Why They Aren’t Thrown Out
By JAMES B. STEWART
Published: March 29, 2013
NY Times

According to Patrick McGurn, special counsel for one of the major shareholder advisory services, Institutional Shareholder Services, shareholder efforts to remove directors in uncontested elections rarely succeed or come close, even in egregious circumstances. Last year, there were elections for 17,081 director nominees at United States corporations, according to the service. Only 61 of those nominees, or 0.36 percent, failed to get majority support. More than 86 percent of directors received 90 percent or more of the votes. Of the 61 directors who failed to get majority approval, only six actually stepped down or were asked to resign. Fifty-one are still in place, as of the most recent proxy filings.

While paying lip service to principles of shareholder democracy, companies have fought for decades to insulate directors from shareholder disapproval.

Under the plurality voting systems still prevalent at many companies, the nominees who receive the highest number of affirmative votes cast are elected no matter how few votes they get out of the total cast. Since the board decides the number of nominees, and most nominate only as many as there are open seats, they’ll all be elected, even with a single yes vote (which may be their own).

CONSERVATIVE DOGMA & INNOVATION

The standard argument for lower taxes on businesses includes the claim that the extra capital will increase innovation but Matt Yglesias points out that beyond some minimum, innovation isn't driven by capital investment, it's driven by great ideas and those are not particularly a "saleable commodity."

LIES LIZ CHENEY TOLD ME

Her op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal is basically a print version of Glenn Beck.  Here are a few of her lies:

- He [Pres. Obama] believes that more government borrowing and spending are the solution to every problem.
- The president has launched a war on Americans' Second Amendment rights.
- He has launched a war on religious freedom.
- He has launched a war on fossil fuels.
- President Obama stood by and did nothing when its affiliates in Libya killed the U.S. ambassador and three other brave Americans in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11.

UPDATE: Liz's piece sounded like a transcription of a standard conservative talk radio show to me, so Larison's description makes a lot of sense:

The only significance the op-ed has is that it is just the latest in a long line of silly attack pieces that movement conservatives and Republicans have been churning out with regularity for at least four years.

A REMARKABLE OPINION PIECE TITLE

Many conservatives still defend the Iraq War but a larger and larger percentage of them have given up:

Opinion: Columnists
Shikha Dalmia: Obamacare is Obama's Iraq War
March 28, 2013 | 8:00 pm
Washington Examiner

The Iraq War cost $1 trillion and produced a quagmire abroad. Obamacare will cost $1 trillion and will create a quagmire at home.

ST. RONNIE ON THE FUNDIES

(h/t John Fugelsang and MadisonProgressive)

In 1984, Pres. Ronald Reagan made it clear he opposed the Fundie bullshit about religion:

Remarks to Members of the Congregation of Temple Hillel and Jewish Community Leaders in Valley Stream, New York
October 26, 1984

To help preserve that lesson for future generations, I'm satisfied that our General Services Administration has approved the use of the old Customs House by the New York City Holocaust Memorial Commission as a means of commemorating the Holocaust. And it will be a museum of the Jewish people in the Diaspora. It will serve to remind our children and our children's children the tragic consequences of bigotry and intolerance.

We in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson, for we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief.

AS EXPECTED, NPR IS BEING CITED BY THE GASBAGS

Fats Limbaugh jumped all over the NPR disability story and added his own little twist:

"The two big disability programs, including health care for disabled workers, cost some $260 billion a year. ... people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. People on federal disability do not work," but they are fully compensated. "But because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed."

Folks, when you add the fully compensated disabled in this country to the ranks of the unemployed, 14 million people here that could be, should be, added to the totals of people unemployed, but they're not.

Right now, I'm listening to Michael Savage add his vitriol to this latest wingnut issue.

THIS GOES TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER

(h/t Pam Spaulding)

Matt Lewis quotes a fellow who has grasped the essence of the divide between liberals and conservatives:

As Dr. Benjamin Wiker writes in his new book, Worshipping The State, "For liberalism to make sense, we would have to live in a world without ends — to put it in technical philosophical terms, in a non-teleological universe (telos means "goal" or "end in Greek), where, since there are no ends written into nature (including human nature) by God, we are free to create them ourselves."

Yes, we are forced to choose our ends because Godot is not coming.

BEST EDITORIAL CARTOON I'VE SEEN IN A WHILE

Found by Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice...

(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)

THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE MARKETS

David Cay Johnston has crunched some numbers provided by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty and come up with these astounding facts:

Incomes and tax revenues have grown from 2009 to 2011 as the economy recovered, but an astonishing 149 percent of the increased income went to the top 10 percent of earners.

If you wonder how that can happen, the answer is simple: Incomes fell for the bottom 90 percent.

The top 1 percent enjoyed 81 percent of all the increased income since 2009. Just over half of the gains went to the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and 39 percent of the gains went to the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent.

Ponder that last fact for a moment -- the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, those making at least $7.97 million in 2011, enjoyed 39 percent of all the income gains in America. In a nation of 158.4 million households, just 15,837 of them received 39 cents out of every dollar of increased income.

LOOKS LIKE THE FUNDIES ARE TAKING A BEATING

If Mr. War On Christmas snarks them, you know we are approaching the End Times of Disproportionate Fundie Influence:

O’Reilly And Megyn Kelly Agree: Gays Have ‘More Compelling’ Argument, Opponents Just ‘Thump The Bible’
by Andrew Kirell | 9:55 am, March 27th, 2013
MEDIAITE

O’Reilly responded that he agreed with her 100 percent. “The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals,” he said. “That’s where the compelling argument is: ‘We are Americans. We just want to be treated like everybody else.’ That’s a compelling argument. And to deny that you’ve got to have a very strong argument on the other side.”

“And the other side hasn’t been able to anything but thump the Bible,” he concluded.

A LITTLE MORE ON DISABILITY

Media Matters noted that one reason for the increase in the number of people on disability is the dramatic increase in the increase in the number of women in the workforce and CBPP provides a nice chart of this fact:

A CRANKY OLD WHITE GUY POST

This has been mildly annoying me for months so here goes:

People who come here from other countries without following legal procedures are illegal aliens.  Calling them merely undocumented makes it sound like they left their papers in their other pants or something.  I agree with Granpa McWar on this small issue.

McCain Dismisses Request To Drop ‘I-Word’ On Immigration: Call It What You Want, ‘But It’s Illegal’

by Meenal Vamburkar | 11:24 am, Tuesday

HUCKABEE'S BAD FAITH

Reince Priebus thinks a guy who has failed his prime existential responsibility should be a model for Republicans on gay marriage...

Will gay marriage split the GOP?
By Harold Maass | The Week – 7 hrs ago
YAHOO NEWS

2008 GOP presidential hopeful and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee tells Newsmax. "And it's not because there's an anti-homosexual mood, and nobody's homophobic that I know of," says Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor, "but many of us, and I consider myself included, base our standards not on the latest Washington Post poll, but on an objective standard, not a subjective standard."

Bronze Age and Iron Age beliefs are not objective.

A DECENT PERSON ON A MEAN PERSON

Whittaker Chambers disapproved of Ayn Rand's "philosophy" and so did Flannery O'Connor:

“I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.”
-The Habit of Being

DICK MORRIS IS STILL SHILLING

I've heard ads featuring him on KNST pushing this book on Obamacare or maybe this one.

THE NRO EDITORS ARE MAGGOTS

(h/t Roy Edroso)
The editors at the NRO are despicable Americans because they refuse to admit the truth about Iraq. Here's their psychotic editorial:

The Iraq War, Ten Years Later
By The Editors
March 23, 2013 4:00 A.M.
National Review Online

The notion that Bush “lied” about Saddam’s weapons is itself a dastardly lie.

Some time ago I refuted this crap and similar nonsense:

Sunday, June 08, 2008

WHY WE THINK THEY LIED ABOUT IRAQ

It's really simple once you understand the facts. First, a LOT of the intelligence was shaky and they KNEW that. Second, they didn't tell us about the doubts; in fact, they hid them from us.

THREE EXAMPLES:

Cheney:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
August 26, 2002
Vice President Speaks at VFW 103rd National Convention

Rumsfeld:

"We know they have weapons of mass destruction. We know they have active programs. There isn't any debate about it."
DoD News Briefing - Secretary Rumsfeld And Gen. Pace
September 26, 2002

Fleischer:

"We know for a fact there are weapons there."
Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer
January 9, 2003

Posted by Steve J. at 8:16 PM

MICHAEL REAGAN ISN'T A BIG WINGNUT STAR

(h/t Ellen at NewsHounds)

but he has spent a lot of time on FAUX News so his recent denunciation in Newsmax carries some weight:

Night after night on Fox, it's the same issues, the same arguments, the same lame liberal guests showing up to be browbeaten by Hannity and O'Reilly.

...Can't Fox find anyone better than Big, Bad Bob Beckel to go 1-on-4 with (The Five's) conservatives, who, except for funnyman Greg Gutfeld, are like watching Hannity II, III and IV?

...I think even loyal viewers are starting to notice that Fox's slogan should be changed from "Fair and Balanced" to "Stale and Predictable."

...People outside the Beltway are desperate for solutions to our economic and social problems, but Fox and talk radio seem more interested in giving them arguments — tired arguments.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE FUNDIES & THE GOP?

If the GOP comes out in support of gay marriage, something even Karl Rove thinks is possible, then the Fundies will have lost one of their two main issues, the other being abortion.  This has led some Fundie leaders to make open threats:

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a Christian conservative activist group, sent his warning to the party in an email to thousands of supporters.
"If the RNC abandons marriage, evangelicals will either sit the elections out completely—or move to create a third party," he wrote. "Either option puts Republicans on the path to a permanent minority."

I can't see the Fundies trying to create 3rd party but I can see the GOP walking away from them.

RIGHT NOW, I'M A LITTLE DISGUSTED TO BE AN AMERICAN

(h/t Diane Sweet at Crooks & Liars)

Amy Goodman interviewed a reporter for Al Jazeera and he described some of the hellish birth defects that have been occurring in Fallujah.