House Majority Leader Eric Cantor likes government spending just fine, when it comes to projects for his own state. One of the most irritating aspects of the Republican obsession with “wasteful spending” and claiming “the government can’t create jobs” is that they clearly don’t believe their own rhetoric themselves. It is purely a game, for them: something to tell audiences of gullible supporters who want to hear it. In actual practice, however, the rhetoric doesn’t matter a bit. They know they’re lying. Newsweek put together a compilation of letters from tea party-friendly Republicans asking federal agencies for funds for their own districts. For example, Eric Cantor tried to get about $3 billion for a rail project in his state, while decrying rail projects in other states. Other letters are from Allen West, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, David Vitter and Ron Paul : The stack of spending-request letters between these GOP members and federal agencies stands more than a foot tall, and disheartens some of the activists who sent Republicans to Washington in the last election. “It’s pretty disturbing,” says Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, when told about the stack of letters from members, many of whom he supported in 2010. “We sent many of these people there, and really, I wish some of our folks would get up and say, you know what, we have to cut the budget, and the budget is never going to get cut if all 535 members of Congress have their hands out all the time.” Many of the letters seek to tap the stimulus, clean-energy loans, and innovation grants—programs the same Republicans have accused Obama and the Democrats of using to bloat government and jeopardize America’s future. And these fiscal conservatives often used in their private letters the same arguments they pan in public. Many of the letters, of course, explicitly argue that the federal projects will create jobs in their districts. This would of course be the complete opposite of the vast majority of these dishonest hacks say in public, where they vow that government cannot possibly create employment for people. Of course it can. Other letters are attempts to get funds from some of the exact same stimulus and loan programs that Republicans whine so bitterly against, in speeches; there, too, the private letters recognize the obvious benefit of encouraging specific development efforts. It’s all a game. It’s all dishonest, they’re all lying, and every one of them is perfectly fine seeking government help for their districts while freely acknowledging the government’s helpful role in stimulating employment, or infrastructure, or industry. That is what is so profoundly irritating: the complete insincerity of the public game. The public motivations may be for “small government” or the like, but the real motivations are simple greed. They want money to improve their districts, but they don’t want other Americans to get the same. They want to cut taxes, but they don’t really want to cut spending: Let’s face it, they have had, over the past decades, ample opportunities to “cut spending” only to instead balloon it. The only things they regularly demand cutting are aid to the poor, or the old, or the sick. But when it comes to government investment in the economy? Oh, they’re all for that. Every last one of them. And that, in turn, makes the unwillingness to do anything coherent to help the current stagnant economy all the more infuriating. It’s not that these Republicans don’t know that the government can certainly help to lift the economy out of recession or near-recession: They know it, absolutely. They just don’t want to do it. They’d rather America twist in the wind, because they think that makes for better politics. Eric Cantor may be willing to shut down all of government in order to leverage a few more tax breaks for rich people, or a few more benefit cuts to the unemployed, and he may rail against stimulus measures on a daily basis, but none of it has any ideological underpinning that makes any sense. Which, I presume, is why speeches by Cantor, Ryan and the rest are frequently so muddled and nonsensical. It’s difficult to argue for something when you don’t really believe it yourself, and when you know that the second you go back to your desk, you’re going to have to argue for the complete opposite.

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Tea party Republicans have sought plenty of stimulus for their own districts

Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor prepare for next hostage taking. Get ready for the next government shutdown showdown. All because Republicans have to make everything a far-right ideological fight , made even more fun with a stiff dash of the stupid and petty. WASHINGTON, D.C.—Efforts to fund the government for an extended period of time could dissolve over whether the government should purchase cable for federal prisons, limit the use of starchy vegetables in school lunches, or permit federal employees to download porn. Those are just a few of the policy “riders” that lawmakers have attached to various appropriations bills that Senate and House committees are currently crafting. And along with other more poisonous pills—language to defund Planned Parenthood or prohibit money for implementing Obama-care or financial regulatory reform—they are complicating matters as the government figures out how to stay operational. The government is currently funded until Nov. 18, as per the short-term funding bill passed at the end of September. You remember that one, the one where Republicans were holding government funding hostage over providing disaster relief in the wake of a hurricane and earthquake. Having learned from experience, Democrats are raising the alarm bell now about the upcoming shenanigans, possibly in hopes of pointing out to anyone paying attention (Hey! Traditional media! Look at it happening again!) that we’re being set up for another debacle. On October 19, Office of Management and Budget Chairman Jacob Lew wrote a stern letter to appropriators warning that the president would veto a bill that included objectionable riders or cut programs deemed critical. More recently, congressional Democratic leadership has begun publicly airing those concerns. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi warned in a press conference last week that the appropriations bills “shouldn’t be a place for policymaking and riders.” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, meanwhile, released a letter on Tuesday signed by 182 Democrats, pledging to oppose a bill the included “partisan policy riders.” All of which hasn’t exactly fazed their Republican counterparts. “We are committed to working with our Senate colleagues to get appropriations—which will cut spending for the second consecutive year—done as quickly as possible,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner. Where have we heard that before? This month’s fight is going to be made even more fun because the week after funding could run out, the Catfood Commission II is supposed to be done with its work (though their “work” could be nothing more than a resolution to give themselves more time). Here we go again.

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Spending bills cluttered with policy riders as next government shutdown fight looms

National Assessment of Educational Progress scores for fourth and eighth grade math and reading were released Tuesday, and showed little change from 2009. In math , scores for both fourth and eighth grade were up one point, and in reading , fourth grade scores were unchanged while eighth grade scores improved one point. Valerie Strauss notes that the achievement gap between white and black students was essentially unchanged, while the gap between white and Hispanic eighth graders narrowed slightly. The question is what to make of these results. Shankerblog ‘s Matthew Di Carlo makes a strong case for not over-interpreting the results: What I would like to see is for people on both “sides” to acknowledge that, no matter how the results turn out, they can’t be used to draw even moderately strong inferences about what works and what doesn’t. The main NAEP assessments provide a snapshot of math and reading performance among fourth and eighth graders at a single point in time. Even broken down by subgroup, the data can mask serious shifts in the conditions and characteristics of students taking the test. This is especially true given that the past two years are marked by severe economic hardship among U.S. families, as well as massive budget cuts to public education. Strauss suggests that, though the NAEP is a higher-quality test than many standardized tests administered in the states, …it is important to remember that even NAEP has its critics, some of whom point out that the test cannot measure many of the qualities students must develop to be successful, and others who say that the NAEP definition of “proficiency” is unnaturally high. In fact, one study conducted by a former acting director of the National Center for Education Statistics showed that most of the countries that participate in the international tests called TIMSS would not do well under NAEP’s definition of proficiency. It may be time to reconsider just how much stock we put in the NAEP scores. The little-changed scores provide a blank slate for people to interpret according to their own policy agendas, and the fact that policymakers are pushing testing as the answer to all things educational means it’s almost inevitable that every test will be over-interpreted.

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Test described as ‘the nation’s report card’ shows little change in math and reading scores

Janell Ross : Out of work and living on a $189-a-week unemployment check, Rob Linville needs to watch every penny. Lately, he has been watching too many pennies disappear into the coffers of the bank that administers his unemployment check via a prepaid debit card. The state of Oregon, where Linville lives, deposits his weekly benefits on a U.S. Bank prepaid debit card. The bank allows him to make four withdrawals per month free of charge. After that, he must pay $1.50 for each visit to the ATM and $3 to see a teller. Managing his basic expenses, including rent, bus fare and groceries, typically requires more than four withdrawals, he says. Unexpected needs — Linville recently bought a sport coat for $20 to prepare for a job interview — entail more. He’s afraid to withdraw his full benefits in one shot, knowing that the bank could sock him with a $17.50 overdraft fee if he exceeds his balance. So he pulls out small amounts of cash as he needs it, incurring about $15 in fees in the last two months he says. “I’m so broke,” Linville said, his voice expressing resignation that this is simply how the world works. “But I don’t really have any other options.” Well, that sounds fairly terrible all the way around. Why would anyone willingly even sign up for such a crappy service? In several states, the public benefits debit card business involves a largely captive audience that must exert itself to find an alternative means of securing its money. A half dozen states force the unemployed to receive their benefits on prepaid debit cards, according to a May study released by the National Consumer Law Center. Sigh. Top Comments for today are here .

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Open thread for night owls: banks using unemployed Americans as profit centers

Visual source: Newseum Poor Herman Cain. As if the every-growing scandal involving claims he sexual harassed female employees at the National Restaurant Association wasn’t enough. Now the hydra of a story has grown another head: the press is eviscerating Cain’s campaign tactics and exposing it for the amateur hour it’s been all along. The New York Times leads the pack with a blistering editorial: Mr. Cain knew the harassment charges would become public 10 days ahead of time, but still he stumbled for three days. First he said he knew of no settlement between his accusers and the National Restaurant Association — rather implausible, considering he was its chief executive. Then he said he was aware of it but didn’t know the details. Then he put out the details. None of this should be surprising. From the start, Mr. Cain has made outrageous statements, then taken them back, then modified them. He said he would not appoint a Muslim to his cabinet, then apologized, then railed about Shariah law creeping into the courts. He said he wanted a border fence that would electrocute illegal crossers, then said it was a joke, then he still wanted one. Mr. Cain’s core supporters don’t seem to care about such minor details any more than he does. But, eventually, a campaign run solely on charm and hokum tends to wind up in a ditch. The question now is how much of the Republican Party will follow him there David Brooks and Gail Collins chat about whether the Herman Cain bubble has burst: David Brooks: Do you think Cain can be excluded from the presidency based on what we know so far, given the Clinton standard? My impression, for what it’s worth is that no, he can’t. Even if everything that is alleged is true, this is less egregious than Clinton. Gail Collins: Go back to the congressmen with the bare-chested cellphone pictures or the lewd tweets. Why did they have to go away? Because the one thing voters will not abide is behavior that suggests the pol in question is a whack job. Dana Milbank gives us a revealing anecdote about Cain under pressure: At his next stop, a Hilton hotel in Alexandria, the amiable candidate finally blew his stack – and the scene quickly escalated into violence. It began when a reporter asked Cain if he would release his accusers from their confidentiality agreements. “I’m not going to talk about it,” Cain snapped, “so don’t even bother asking me all of these other questions that y’all are curious about. Okay? Don’t even bother.” “It’s a good question,” the reporter pointed out. “Are you concerned?” asked another. Evidently, Cain was. “What did I say?” he hissed at the reporters, then attempted to break through the pack, shouting: “Excuse me. Excuse me! EXCUSE ME!” At that, his bodyguards began throwing elbows and shoving the reporters and photographers. “Stand back! . . . Do not push me! . . . Pushing is against the law!. . . Watch out!. . . Get a grip on yourself!” In the melee, a young boy and his father were shoved up against a wall. His campaign’s fisticuffs with Washington journalists probably won’t do Cain any harm among his supporters in Iowa; in fact, it will probably help. But Cain’s loss of control is a reminder of why he’s never going to be president, no matter how high he rises in GOP primary polls. Jonathan Capehart tears into Cain wearing ignorance like a badge of honor: On my first day at an all-white school in North Plainfield, N.J., and then again in Hazlet, N.J. and then again before I took off for college in Northfield, Minn., my mother delivered a lecture not unfamiliar to other kids of color (and women, for that matter). You have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to not be seen as inferior, deficient and not as up to the task (whatever the task might be) as your white classmates. It ain’t right. It ain’t fair. But that’s the way it is. On a near-daily basis, Herman Cain, the front runner for the Republican nomination for president of the United States, denigrates the high level of expectation and preparation demanded by my mother and mothers everywhere. Sarah Palin was rightly eviscerated for her lack of knowledge on just about everything when she was the GOP’s 2008 vice presidential nominee. She didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was. Even though she’s pro-life, she told Katie Couric that she believed there was a right to privacy in the Constitution, which is a cornerstone of Roe. v. Wade. And she tried to claim foreign policy experience because “as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s right over the border.” That Cain can’t even rise above this decidedly low bar set by Palin is an insult to my mother, who demands excellence of “us,” and to every American who believes his or her nation deserves better from those who would lead it. Justin Sink points out a silver lining for Cain, if it could be called that. The firestorm of a sexual harassment scandal has eclipsed other major policy gaffes made this week: Lost in the calls throughout the past 24 hours for Herman Cain to respond to new details surrounding allegations that he sexually harassed employees during his time as president of the National Restaurant Association were a number of policy statements that in an ordinary week would have raised eyebrows among political watchers. Perhaps most significant was Cain’s suggestion in an interview Monday that China was a threat to American interests because of its attempts to develop nuclear weapons, despite the nation having been a nuclear power since the 1960s.Cain also suggested deploying a fleet of naval warships armed with defensive ballistic missile technology around the globe to project American power. Cain also argued for tort reform and “loser-pay” laws that would punish those found to have filed frivolous lawsuits. Ashely Southall rounds out our roundup with a look at disappointed conservative bloggers: As reports surfaced of a third woman accusing Herman Cain of sexual harassment while he was head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, the bloggers expressed frustration about the way the campaign has handled the claims. “Herman Cain has said, over and over, that we should support him because he is a problem-solver,” [one blogger] said. “If he can’t solve the problems in his own campaign, how can we believe he’ll solve the far larger problems of Obama-sized government? Regrettably, I can’t.” Still, Pamela Geller said on her blog, Atlas Shrugs, that she did not believe the Perry campaign’s denials. “I endorse Herman Cain,” she said. “What he doesn’t know, we’ll teach him.”

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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The absolute, total and complete incompetence of Herman Cain’s campaign

Three’s Company (Larry Downing/Reuters) AP: A third former employee says she considered filing a workplace complaint over what she considered aggressive and unwanted behavior by Herman Cain when she worked for the presidential candidate in the 1990s. She says the behavior included a private invitation to his corporate apartment. She worked for the National Restaurant Association when he was its head. She told The Associated Press that Cain made sexually suggestive remarks or gestures about the same time that two co-workers had settled separate harassment complaints against him. The employee described situations in which she said Cain told her he had confided to colleagues how attractive she was and invited her to his corporate apartment outside work. Herman’s day just got a lot longer. The woman also alleges that: … the behavior included a private invitation to his corporate apartment. Which would explain his earlier need to have the question be more specific about inviting women to his hotel room. Publicity seeking or another nail in the Cain campaign’s coffin?

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AP: Third employee says she was harassed by Herman Cain

Speaker John Boehner. Liar. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters) Think Progress finds this whopper from House Speaker John Boehner, bemoaning goverment and our crumbling national infrastructure. “Everybody believes we have infrastructure deficiencies and more needs to be spent to repair, replace and in some cases build new infrastructure,” Boehner said in a speech. “The problem is nobody wants to pay for it.” Speak for yourself, Boehner. The Senate right now is debating a paid-for infrastructure rebuilding plan. It just so happens that Boehner doesn’t like that pay-for, a surtax that would amount to an increase of less than one half of one percent in income taxes on millionaires, or about 0.1 percent of Americans. So, not to put too fine a point on it, that really isn’t nobody. That surtax, by the way, is an extremely popular idea that everybody (if Boehner can use absolutes, so can I) supports.

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John Boehner: ‘Nobody’ wants to pay for infrastructure

Will the candidate responsible for creating Herman Cain’s sexual harassment problems please identify himself? (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Among the many sad excuses and explanations the right is pulling out of its collective ass for Herman Cain’s little not-so-little sexual harassment problem, this from Ron Paul is definitely a contender for dumbest one so far: “Conceivably it could be another campaign has done this for all we know right now,” Paul told Fox News. Um, no. Sorry. FAIL. Hate to break it to you, Doc, but it wasn’t Michele Bachmann who sexually harassed multiple employees 12 years ago. It wasn’t one of Mitt Romney’s companies that paid off those employees to keep their mouths shut. It wasn’t Rick Santorum who, in the span of 24 hours, denied the incidents entirely, then claimed to know nothing about them, then started remembering and re-remembering completely contradictory details. Maybe Paul meant to blame another campaign for leaking the story—in which case, duh. But that’s not what he said. He’s suggesting some other campaign is somehow responsible for creating this messy situation for Herman Cain. But really, there’s only one candidate who “has done this,” and that would be Cain. In fact, he’s up to his chin in it.

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Ron Paul suggests another campaign is behind Herman Cain’s sexual harassment problems

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Open thread: Mitt Romney’s America

I am putting a picture of popcorn here for no discernable reason. Who could have guessed that this National Restaurant Association story would turn into a total food fight? After not knowing who could possibly be behind the allegations against him, Herman Cain has now determined who is probably behind the allegations against him. His conclusion? The Rick Perry campaign : Herman Cain accused a former consultant to his unsuccessful 2004 Senate campaign, Curt Anderson, of leaking damaging information about past sexual harassment allegations against Cain. Anderson, who is now an adviser to Rick Perry, denied the charge in an email to POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin: Meanwhile, from inside the Fortress of Dumbitude : This view is also backed by Rush Limbaugh , who is an expert in this sort of thing because, um … well, I have no idea. But Limbaugh says it was probably Romney, so there. That is, if it wasn’t Barack Obama, he says. Barack Obama is behind everything . Newt Gingrich, for his part, says all this talk about sex scandals is just “gossip”: “Here’s a situation where we’ve got a guy who’s the front runner for the Republican nomination, has a serious proposal on tax policy: 999, whether you like or dislike it, it is a serious big idea,” Gingrich told Atlanta’s WBS TV, according to ABC News. “He’s out there trying to help a country that’s in desperate trouble, and he has gotten more coverage over the last few days over gossip.” You may remember Newt Gingrich from the 1990s, when OH MY GOD LOOK OVER THERE MONICAGATE EVERYBODY IMPEACH RIGHT NOW and/or from his own scandals involving, among other things, leaving his cancer-striken wife for another woman. Yes, that’s Newt Gingrich, who above all else really doesn’t want you paying attention to silly sex scandals. In any event, it looks like Cain is taking Ron Paul’s advice : if denying the accusations isn’t working, then turn yourself into the victim by hypothesizing over which of your enemies dared bring the whole thing up.

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Herman Cain accuses Perry campaign of leaking Cain sex harassment story