Eideard

Archie Wilson [without his bible] awaiting arraignment

Bible toting Clermont County politician Archie Wilson surfaced from substance abuse treatment Tuesday to answer charges he traded prescription drugs for sex at a bed bug infested motel.

Wilson, 60, of Batavia Township, pleaded not guilty in Kenton District Court to soliciting prostitution and trafficking in a controlled substance, both misdemeanors that could send him to jail for up to 12 months.

Wilson, who is married with one son, refused to answer reporters’ questions as he left the Kenton County Justice Center…

Wilson, who was known for bringing his bible to County Commission meetings, resigned as a Clermont County commissioner earlier this month citing health concerns…

Wilson’s troubles began in June when a female inmate at the Clermont County jail, Amanda Lay [I kid you not], saw Wilson’s photo in a newspaper and asked to speak with a detective. She told investigators that Wilson, over a period of several weeks, had paid to have sex with her in Erlanger motels and that he had provided her with cocaine and pills, according to court records.

Lay…introduced authorities to second woman who claimed she also had “performed services” for Wilson in exchange for cash and prescriptions. While authorities have not released the name of the second woman, they said she told them she would “engage in shows or sexual encounters” for Wilson, whom she first met at the Venus adult dance club in Covington four years ago…

As I have been known to say in the past, there is sort of a natural justice to Family Values right-wing politicians getting caught with their pants down – lying about sex and drugs. I realize Christianity may hold the copyright on hypocrisy; but, today’s Republican Party – with appropriate aid from the Kool Aid Party – has perfected the process.

Republican primary polling station is a pretty quiet place

Beneath Rick Santorum’s stunning three-state sweep on Tuesday stands another stubborn sign of dissatisfaction with the status quo: Republican turnout is down. I’m talking embarrassingly, disturbingly, hey-don’t-you-know-it’s-an-election-year bad. It is a sign of a serious enthusiasm gap among the rank and file, and a particularly bad omen for Mitt Romney and the GOP in the general election.

Here’s the tale of the tape, state by state, beginning with Tuesday night: Minnesota had just more than 47,000 people turn out for its caucuses this year — four years ago it was nearly 63,000 — and Romney came in first, not a distant third as he did Tuesday night. In Colorado, more than 70,000 people turned out for its caucus in 2008 — but in 2012 it was 65,000. And Missouri — even making a generous discount for the fact that this was an entirely symbolic contest — had 232,000 people turn out, less than half the number who did four years ago.

Always proudly rebellious, South Carolina has been the great outlier in this election cycle. With Newt Gingrich making an all-out push for conservatives in a conservative state, turnout was up almost 150,000 over four years before.

But in Florida, the decline became unmistakable. Maybe it decreased because the Romney and Gingrich campaigns, plus super PACS, spent more than $18 million in the Sunshine State on TV ads, of which 93% were negative in the last week alone, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group. After all, negative ads depress turnout. But after all the mud was thrown, 1.6 million people turned out in the nation’s fourth largest state, which might sound impressive until you compare it with the nearly 2 million who turned out in 2008.

Nevada was even worse, with 32,894 people turning out to vote in a state with more than 465,000 registered Republicans. Four years before, more than 44,300 participated in the caucus. Turnout was down more than 25% despite the GOP caucuses being the only game in town. Party officials were expecting a turnout of more than 70,000…

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Woo-Hoo! He got his sign autographed by Rick Santorum
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.

They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.

“Down the road, this data will be used against you,” warned one speaker at a recent Roanoke County, Va., Board of Supervisors meeting who turned out with dozens of people opposed to the county’s paying $1,200 in dues to a nonprofit that consults on sustainability issues.

Local officials say they would dismiss such notions except that the growing and often heated protests are having an effect…

Well, they’re only having an effect on cowardly, opportunist local politicians. A significant portion of the breed.U

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Here’s the Tea Party mayor on equal rights for all Americans

Officials are already doing damage control after City Council’s vote late Monday to scrap a federally funded transit center project.

Troy Chamber of Commerce President Michele Hodges says the controversial decision is causing some fallout in the business community, which was outspoken in its support for the project. The transit center would have combined train, bus, taxi and future light rail service at a three-acre site near Maple and Coolidge…

In a private email to Hodges that went viral Tuesday, Frank W. Ervin III, the manager of government affairs for Magna International Inc., thanked the chamber president for her efforts, adding it’s disappointing that Troy’s legislators are “narrow minded when it comes to the future of Troy and the future of Southeastern Michigan.”

In the email, Ervin also informed Hodges that he plans to draft a memo to all Magna group presidents and corporate executives “strongly recommending that Magna International no longer consider the City of Troy for future site considerations, expansions or new job creation.”

He added that he’ll also recommend “that where ever and when ever possible we reduce our footprint and employment level in Troy in favor of communities who act in the best interest of both the residents and business and not simply use their public position to advance their own private agenda…”

State transportation officials have said that if Troy turned down the federal funding for the transit center, it would be reallocated to another rail project, possibly in another state…

The decision to forfeit the $8.4 million in federal funds passed by a 4-3 vote after the panel listened to about 40 residents and stakeholders share their views for and against the decade-old project…

The center was to be a regional transportation hub and would be built around Birmingham’s Amtrak line and station and provide a transfer point to SMART bus service, taxis and limousines. The facility would include a bridge, elevators, four SMART bus slips and reconfiguration of 116 parking spaces behind the Midtown Square shopping center.

Construction would have required no local or state funding. Just jobs for the folks hired to buid the project – and there would have been DOT funds to aid in hiring fulltime employees after completion in 2013.

Presumably, the citizens of Troy will have sufficient sense to kick the Kool Aid Party types off the city council before then – not that it will do much good at reviving the project months down the road.

Just leave your check in the plate by the door!
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The statement: The Social Security payroll tax cut that President Barack Obama is seeking to extend “will cost the Social Security trust fund another $112 billion, and we don’t have enough money this year in the Social Security trust fund to put out those checks — which means we have to go to the general Treasury to get the money.” — Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann, at Saturday night’s ABC News debate in Iowa. She added that the tax cut “blew a hole” in the trust fund.

The facts: The Obama administration says the Social Security payroll tax cut is projected to cost about $112 billion in the coming year. The administration says the money that would have gone to the trust fund would be made up from general revenues, with “no effect on individuals’ current or future Social Security benefits.”

Social Security paid out $712 billion in benefits and took in $663 billion in taxes in 2010, leaving it with a revenue shortfall of $49 billion. That’s according to figures released in August by the system’s trustees. But interest on its trust fund added another $117 billion, bringing the trust fund’s total balance to $2.6 trillion.

Under current projections, the trust fund — created in the 1980s to prepare for the retirement of the Baby Boom generation — will run out in 2036, the trustees reported in May. At that point, the remaining income will pay about 77% of scheduled benefits.

The verdict: Misleading. Bachmann is correct in saying the payroll tax cut will require a transfer from the Treasury to replace the money that would have otherwise gone to the Social Security trust fund. But she’s mistaken when she says there’s not enough money in the trust fund to cover current benefits.

This is the kind of crap repeated time and again by the same creeps who would privatize social security and turn it over to the benevolent hands of investment bankers and insurance companies who all perform such a lovely job of taking care of ordinary Americans. They have a popularity rating almost as dismal as lawyers, politicians in general and, of course, Congress.

As usual, it’s just the pimps for a percentage of the wealthiest campaign contributors who oppose a measure which would carry the SSA fund into the 22nd Century. By which time, we might even have a sufficient number of bright people in government to come up further solutions. At the moment, the crowd we have is sufficient – if they behave with a modicum of ethics and intelligence.

Support for the Tea Party — and with it, the Republican Party — has fallen sharply even in places considered Tea Party strongholds, according to a new survey.

In Congressional districts represented by Tea Party lawmakers, the number of people saying they disagree with the Tea Party has risen sharply over the year since the movement powered a Republican sweep in midterm elections, so that almost as many people disagree with the Tea Party as agree with it, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center.

Support for the Republican Party has fallen more sharply in those places than it has in the country as a whole. In the 60 districts represented in Congress by a member of the House Tea Party Caucus, Republicans are viewed about as negatively as Democrats.

The survey suggests that the Tea Party may be dragging down the Republican Party heading into a presidential election year, even as it ushered in a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives just a year ago.

Which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Folks outside the ranks of True Believers looked at who bought and paid for the “movement” and recognized them for what they are – and always have been. The moneybags for rightwing extremists and reactionaries who found a home in the Republican Party decades ago.

Many of those inside the Tea Party were either deluded by their own ignorance – or the agitprop they were fed. Many of those, especially seniors, have realized how truly dumb it would for them to be working to scuttle Social Security or Medicare. How foolish it would be to continue the downward spiral of American education – especially for their own kids and grandkids.

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Rick Santorum is the 8th dillweed from the right
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Former U.S. Sen. and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has a well-known Google problem.

For the uninitiated, if you Google Santorum’s name, the first result you’ll probably get is not his personal website but a fake definition of “santorum,” a sexual byproduct that’s a bit too graphic to talk about in detail here.

We’ll get into how that all happened in a second, but here’s what’s new: On Tuesday, the socially conservative politician lashed out at Google, saying the company could get rid of the sexual references to his name on the search results if it wanted to — and perhaps would do so if he were a Democrat…

Santorum contacted Google and asked the company about the issue, Politico said.

In an e-mail to CNN, a Google spokeswoman said, “Google’s search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Web. Users who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly. Once the webmaster takes the page down from the Web, it will be removed from Google’s search results through our usual crawling process.”

She added: “We do not remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines…”

The lewd “santorum” definition popped up after the former senator compared homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality in a 2003 interview with The Associated Press…

That angered gay rights supporters, including gay podcast host and sex columnist Dan Savage, who launched a campaign for his listeners to redefine Santorum’s name. Savage created a website to promote the winning definition and enough bloggers linked to it that the spoof site eventually eclipsed Santorum’s campaign website in search rankings.

Danny Sullivan, who writes at the blog SearchEngineLand, notes that Google has a history of being hands-off when it comes to these controversies, regardless of the politics or sensitivities involved:

“Google is loathe to touch its results in any way, shape or form. That’s because if it does intervene in any way, there’s some interest group that will immediately claim a bias…

Just an example that reactionaries are as likely as anyone else to put in a claim for political correctness.

Yes, there are qualities of bigotry that I personally think should be shunted into the garbage can of discourse – but, I’m not in charge of anything in the public eye except this blog. Santorum is getting exactly what bigots like him deserve. A joking finger up his self-image.

Thanks, Cinaedh

“We’re going to cooperate with who?”
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Those who said after President Barack Obama’s speech last week to Congress that government does not create wealth, does not create jobs and cannot stimulate the economy spoke nonsense. So do those who say that only private business creates wealth, as if any revenue going to taxes destroys wealth.

Adam Smith, who figured out market capitalism in his 1776 book “The Wealth of Nations,” could set them straight. We have plenty of equally competent economists who understand these issues today. They just do not get the attention that the news media lavish on high-profile politicians and pundits who speak with absolute certainty on matters about which their words show they know nothing.

So why are politicians and commentators who speak economic nonsense treated as sages? And why do so many journalists uncritically repeat their nonsense?

Sadly, the answer is that too few people in public life understand economics, numbers or algebra. Too few people learned, or remember, the crucial concept underlying matters of economics and finance known as accounting identities.

Accounting identities are statements that must be true no matter how you arrange the components. Thus 2+1=3 just as 3-1=2. Likewise, net worth equals assets minus liabilities just as assets equal liabilities plus net worth and profits equal revenue minus costs. But water plus flour does not equal steak.

In economics, Gross Domestic Product equals consumer spending plus government spending plus investment plus the net of exports and imports. Or in its simplest form: Spending = Output = Income.

Economics is like a circle, as Smith figured out 235 years ago. More spending by government creates jobs, whether at war plants making smart bombs, dredging ports so cargo moves efficiently or stimulating the gray matter between young ears to create productive adults. Bombs ultimately destroy value, while ports and education add value.

Now…consider these statements by three prominent Republican lawmakers:

“We need to cut spending now in order to create jobs in America” — House Speaker John Boehner on the floor of the House of Representatives in July 2010. “If government spending would stimulate the economy, we’d be in the middle of a boom” — Senator Mitch McConnell in March 2011. “Government doesn’t create jobs, you do” — Representative Nan Hayworth, M.D., speaking in January to business leaders in her New York district.

None of the comments makes sense. The first violates the accounting identity that spending equals income. The second assumes that the stimulus was big enough to make up for the fall in private sector jobs, when it was less than half what accounting identity algebra showed was needed. The third is just plain nonsense…

RTFA for a tad bit more Economics 101. I’m not going to turn this blog into an economics and history course. But, if you watched business news on business news channels – instead of the news as entertainment channels – you’d bump into a fair number of economists. Yes, there are a few who care more for ideology than history. Damned few compared to the clowns in Congress or the patent leather pundits on TV or cluttering up the Web.

Dissent from people like the Republicans and their Tea Party brown shirts – is generally of the “Hoover was right, screw the working people and The South will rise again!”

Crisis averted. Partial-term Gov. Sarah Palin — who was maybe not going to show up at a Tea Party event this weekend because a certain suddenly-unpopular abstinence witch might end up standing too close to her — has agreed to show up at the event that she at which had previously agreed to show up…

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is set to appear at a tea party rally in Iowa Saturday, a source close to Palin told CNN.

O’Donnell was, for the second time in 48 hours, removed from the program Wednesday afternoon. Ken Crow, one of the rally organizers, told the Des Moines Register that he dis-invited O’Donnell at the Palin camp’s request.

You see? That wasn’t that hard was it? All they had to do was make sure that Christine O’Donnell not get any of her stink of failure anywhere near Sarah Palin’s hair, and everything was sorted out fine…

An aide to O’Donnell disputed that people close to her mischaracterized her relationship with Palin to the Iowa rally organizers and asserted they did not lie about the extent of conversations between the two late Wednesday.

It doesn’t really matter who’s lying does it?

Like, we have two loonies trying to appeal to a crowd of nutballs so they can rake in sufficient geedus to keep them in the lap of luxury and never ever accidentally have to work for a living, eh?