Four years ago, we were in the midst of a two-person race to clench the Democratic nomination. At that point I called Hillary Clinton, the "Evitable Inevitable." I thought that there was just no way that she would lose the nomination, that she was the establishment candidate--but still was surprised by the real grassroots campaign that Sen. Obama had undertaken, and how salient it had grown. We all know what happened next.
Now we're in the midst of an 8-person race--9 if you include Gary Johnson--for the Republican nomination. And my, what a slate of characters they are. Mitt Romney is now the evitable inevitable. But the thing is that people just don't like Romney. And it's not a new thing either. Four years ago when he first went at it, he was disliked by the rest of the Republican contenders; all of them coalesced around the fact of how much they disliked Romney. They found him phony, condescending, and just an all around irritating person. They don't like him now either. But he has to be the one to run against Obama, I just can't picture any of these other candidates amassing the structure necessary to run a general election. This is amateur hour for all except Romney.
Except that one of the pervasive story-lines that have emerged is that Romney's hit a ceiling of support. He's constantly tapped out at around a quarter of support in the polls from Republican primary voters, and that's on a good day. Sometimes he's tapped out at a fifth or less of support. This nomination process has consistently been derided as the Anyone-But-Romney Primary. First Bachmann was up, then Perry, then Cain; Gingrich and Paul have gained traction and have come within an earshot of the top spot, indeed the only two that haven't had frontrunner status at some point, or getting to that status, are the reasonably sane one, Jon Hunstman, and the reasonably crazy one, Rick Santorum. People just don't like Romney.
And that being said, Romney is the luckiest Republican politician today. He has to win the nomination, he just has to. I bet he looks around the debate stage and sees what he's up against, and just gives thanks under his breath for his undeserved good luck. He's running against two who've said that God wants them to run for President--Bachmann and Cain--so you know, God had to be wrong on at least one occasion, or they just misinterpreted the message. It was probably the latter. Bachmann's lack of knowledge when it comes to domestic and foreign policy is both disturbing and shocking, her fanaticism makes her worldview narrow and dangerous. Cain is in a position that even he probably wonders how he got there; all he wanted to do was sell books and go on a speaking tour, and now he's had sexual allegations brought up against him, and, channeling his internal Captain Renault, he's shocked, shocked, that they would ever surface. He's running against another Texas governor, Rick Perry, who makes George W. Bush look like a Rhodes Scholar, and who can't even remember his own platform or what he's campaigning for. Oops. He's running against a former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, whose 15 minutes of fame was up 15 years ago, and by considering himself the intellectual heavyweight of the Republican Party really just shows how lightweight the intellect of the Republican Party is today. He's running against a Texas Congressman, Ron Paul, who, let's be honest, lives in his own little world, and where he might be right when it comes to a couple of things--much to the chagrin of the Republican Party--but he's never going to get the nomination. Remember when he brought up Reagan and how Reagan raised taxes? That's a no-no. He's running against Huntsman who, no amount of mainstream coverage has been enough to raise his polling from the anemic 1% that he's stuck at. And then there's Santorum. I'll channel my own Jon Stewart: just Google "Santorum."
The Republican primary voters, along with the Tea Party, are responsible for this lineup. There's no serious opposition to the President because the Republican Party has become extremist by nature, and now can't do much to come back to the reasonable middle. And the Republican debate audience hasn't helped. By my count, they've booed a gay active-duty solider (this from the Party that prides itself on supporting the military), cheered executions, showed agreement with the idea of uninsured patients dying, applauded after Cain said that unemployed people are unemployed because of their own fault, applauded after Cain sort-of contested the claims of sexual harassment against him, and last night applauded torture. Maybe here on out, there should be Republican debates without an audience--do we really need a laugh track just to make this meme of Republican debates as sitcoms complete?
And for all of the above, the luckiest politician in America has to be Barack Obama. He looks around and he sees 9% unemployment, disillusionment within his base, relatively stagnant economic growth and there's no way that he'd clinch re-election in a relatively normal election with those statistics...but he then sees this feeble-minded Republican presidential contenders, along with congressional approval hovering around 9%, due mostly in part to the Republican overreach of the 112th Congress. He's probably thinking of how he'll be redecorating the Oval for his second term.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Occupations in the Age of Hypocrisy
The word 'occupation' has such a negative connotation. It conjures up an image of Agincourt, Nanjing, Normandy. It's the act of taking forced possession or control of a certain place, more likely than not, to the chagrin of those who were already there. It is amidst this setting that thousands have descended on a park in lower Manhattan with the purpose to "Occupy Wall Street."
They're cast as being the perennial malcontents--those who are mad as hell and who aren't going to take it anymore. They've been derided by Republican congressmen and presidential candidates as people who hate freedom. In other parts of the Fox News-Limbaugh-Wall Street Journal machine, they're painted as being spoiled rich kids who are protesting for the hell of protesting without knowing exactly what it is they're protesting about, or what it is they're protesting against. Bill O'Reilly last night said that they're being bank-rolled by George Soros, Move On, and unions. That's interesting. Their mere presence is being dismissed as a sideshow executive produced by the Democratic Party, and their grievances ignored.
Let's take a quick look at the recent past and at the birth of the Tea Party. Many of its adherents were people unemployed or underemployed who saw that the banks were being bailed out, but not them. These were people who lost it all or were on the verge of losing it all, and they saw that those on Wall Street who were also on the verge of losing it all, were rescued, not once but twice. There was simmering anger and hatred at the banks and at the government that came to their rescue. And those in Corporate America saw this as an opportunity. They highjacked the movement, bankrolling a number of groups to drive the myth that the reason for their hurt was "Obamacare," and that the reason that they don't have a job is because of government regulations. See Koch, David H. and Charles G. The New Yorker this week had an article on another "titan of industry" who's bank-rolling extreme-right candidates and holding extreme-right positions in North Carolina, while hiding behind Mickey Mouse think-tanks that he's built, and buying influence in what's left of the education system that his groups have been helping to destroy--all the while claiming his groups merit tax-exempt status. The abhorrent Citizens United decision ignored a century of jurisprudence and stare decisis, allowing for an unregulated and worrisome flow of money into politics. Today more than ever the candidate with the most money backing them is inevitably the most likely to win.
And back to the bailouts. There's a poignant scene in "Too Big to Fail" by the Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin where Bernanke is fretting about whether or not the massive government rescue undertaken to save the economic system of this country--and indeed the world--will propel the banks to loosen up the credit markets, allowing for small businesses and others to continue to borrow, and you know, little things, like make payroll. Hank Paulson staring blindly outside his window, says something along the lines of they will, they have to.
They didn't. These banks gambled with the economic security of this country, after successfully financing three decades worth of deregulation. They've treated the Federal Reserve as their private piggy-bank, and the Fed, because acting otherwise would risk the Republic, had no choice but to comply with their desires. These Wall Street corporations risked big and lost big. And instead of taking the losses, they asked for a rescue. And they got it. They had to. Moral Hazard went out the window.
But what about the millions of homeowners who can't afford their homes--you can't rescue them, say the banks, because of Moral Hazard. But what about the millions of Americans who live in abject poverty and despair--it's their fault that they're not wealthy, says Herman Cain. But what about those without health insurance, would you let them die--yeah, screamed the crowd at the Republican Presidential Debate.
And when mere months after the bailouts, the news broke that the financial industry was still handing out massive bonuses, they all came out on Fox News and in editorial after editorial in the Wall Street Journal saying that the bonuses are in their employees' contracts, and that you can't break contracts. When public-sector unions were under siege from municipal governments--in most cases now run by so-called "businessmen"--they all came out on Fox News and in editorial after editorial in the Wall Street Journal saying that you had to break the contracts, that the free-ride that teachers, cops, and firefighters enjoyed for so long has ended.
We live in the Age of Hypocrisy.
We rescue the financial industry from what would have been a catastrophic loss to both them and us, and instead of saying 'thank you, we won't do this again,' they're back to their old habits, fighting Dodd-Frank and its measly regulations which would prevent them from jeopardizing the Republic once again. We bailed them out and gave them money and they've used that money to lobby Congress and bank-roll "free-market" organizations. They road-blocked Elizabeth Warren from being nominated to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and now are planning on filibustering any nominee. Their Republican advocates keep saying that regulations are to blame for no jobs. No, not exactly. It's the trillions of dollars that corporations are sitting on and their tying up the credit markets preventing small businesses to borrow and flourish. They've noticed that they're doing pretty well again.
They hide behind their screams of 'redistribution of wealth' and 'socialism'--their default scare tactics. They want us to ignore that the only redistribution of wealth taking place in this country is from the poor to the rich. Those well-off are terrified to death on only the mere threat of returning to Clinton-era tax rates--one of them comparing the president to Hitler because of this, and Warren Buffett now becoming persona-non-grata. These same corporations who cry about moral hazard, are dependent on millions of dollars in government subsidies and tax loopholes--the really hurt-some welfare state that exists in this country is corporate welfare. And it's not just Republicans; Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) is backed by the oil industry, and is one of the Democratic votes against ending oil subsidies. Never mind their record profits. In Britain, the top tax rate is now 50%--this in a Tory Government. The Economist last week had an article in which it stated that the tax rate doesn't worry the wealthy in Britain as much as any possibility of closing any tax loopholes, because now they'll be expected to actually pay for things that they've gotten away with since Thatcher.
And to add insult to injury, Bank of America unveiled its latest gouging plan last week in which it stated that it will start charging its "customers" $5 a month just for the privilege of using their debit card. They claim that's due to government regulations, but in fact, studies have shown that they'll be making a $2 Billion a year profit on this scheme, much more than they were making before, when their former gouging plan was to charge merchants 44 cents per transaction in fees, for something, which as Joe Nocera in the Times called, mere pennies.
This is what those protesting on Wall Street are mad about. The banks and corporations keep winning and everyone else keep losing. They keep living paycheck to paycheck if they have a paycheck at all, they still don't have health care, they're burdened by student loans which they can't repay, and are still stuck in a tragedy of debt from which they can't escape. They're mad that the government isn't listening to them, but those on Wall Street have the government on speed-dial.
Will the Occupy Wall Street movement succeed? I hope so. But it's too early to say. They have to stop the honest-to-God freak shows of them dressing up like zombies, or flashing passers-by. This country still hates hippies. They need to come out dressed in their normal day-to-day clothing, and talk about the real economic grievances that they have. The We Are the 99% Tumbler is a good model. Like Carville said, it's the economy, stupid. And it's their economy. They need to stress their pocket-books, how they struggle to make rent, pay for utilities, and have to decide whether to buy medicine or food.
What should they be calling for immediately? They need to ask Congress to pass the Jobs Bill. It's not perfect, but it's the best we have so far. The Jobs Bill is a bail-out, but at least the one's being bailed out now are them. They need to march on Congress to pass the Jobs Bill and they need to Occupy Wall Street and tell those corporations who caused this whole big mess to begin with to stop financing opposition to the Jobs Bill. What else should they be calling for? The Bush Tax Cuts to expire and a return to Clinton-era tax rates, which, if I'm not mistaken occurred in pretty good economic times. They need to call for these tax rates and end corporate subsidies and corporate welfare. Make no mistake, this is a time for sacrifice, and everyone is going to have to sacrifice something. Some government programs will be cut, they're going to have to be, but they should also be protesting against cutting fundamental programs that target areas such as health and education.
The Occupy Wall Street movement can succeed. It's getting Too Big to Fail. But the freak shows and the side shows need to end. They need a cohesive message. Where the Tea Party had as theirs being opposition to "Obamacare," they need to have as theirs being the passage of the Jobs Bill and calling for more equitable tax rates.
That's a start.
They're cast as being the perennial malcontents--those who are mad as hell and who aren't going to take it anymore. They've been derided by Republican congressmen and presidential candidates as people who hate freedom. In other parts of the Fox News-Limbaugh-Wall Street Journal machine, they're painted as being spoiled rich kids who are protesting for the hell of protesting without knowing exactly what it is they're protesting about, or what it is they're protesting against. Bill O'Reilly last night said that they're being bank-rolled by George Soros, Move On, and unions. That's interesting. Their mere presence is being dismissed as a sideshow executive produced by the Democratic Party, and their grievances ignored.
Let's take a quick look at the recent past and at the birth of the Tea Party. Many of its adherents were people unemployed or underemployed who saw that the banks were being bailed out, but not them. These were people who lost it all or were on the verge of losing it all, and they saw that those on Wall Street who were also on the verge of losing it all, were rescued, not once but twice. There was simmering anger and hatred at the banks and at the government that came to their rescue. And those in Corporate America saw this as an opportunity. They highjacked the movement, bankrolling a number of groups to drive the myth that the reason for their hurt was "Obamacare," and that the reason that they don't have a job is because of government regulations. See Koch, David H. and Charles G. The New Yorker this week had an article on another "titan of industry" who's bank-rolling extreme-right candidates and holding extreme-right positions in North Carolina, while hiding behind Mickey Mouse think-tanks that he's built, and buying influence in what's left of the education system that his groups have been helping to destroy--all the while claiming his groups merit tax-exempt status. The abhorrent Citizens United decision ignored a century of jurisprudence and stare decisis, allowing for an unregulated and worrisome flow of money into politics. Today more than ever the candidate with the most money backing them is inevitably the most likely to win.
And back to the bailouts. There's a poignant scene in "Too Big to Fail" by the Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin where Bernanke is fretting about whether or not the massive government rescue undertaken to save the economic system of this country--and indeed the world--will propel the banks to loosen up the credit markets, allowing for small businesses and others to continue to borrow, and you know, little things, like make payroll. Hank Paulson staring blindly outside his window, says something along the lines of they will, they have to.
They didn't. These banks gambled with the economic security of this country, after successfully financing three decades worth of deregulation. They've treated the Federal Reserve as their private piggy-bank, and the Fed, because acting otherwise would risk the Republic, had no choice but to comply with their desires. These Wall Street corporations risked big and lost big. And instead of taking the losses, they asked for a rescue. And they got it. They had to. Moral Hazard went out the window.
But what about the millions of homeowners who can't afford their homes--you can't rescue them, say the banks, because of Moral Hazard. But what about the millions of Americans who live in abject poverty and despair--it's their fault that they're not wealthy, says Herman Cain. But what about those without health insurance, would you let them die--yeah, screamed the crowd at the Republican Presidential Debate.
And when mere months after the bailouts, the news broke that the financial industry was still handing out massive bonuses, they all came out on Fox News and in editorial after editorial in the Wall Street Journal saying that the bonuses are in their employees' contracts, and that you can't break contracts. When public-sector unions were under siege from municipal governments--in most cases now run by so-called "businessmen"--they all came out on Fox News and in editorial after editorial in the Wall Street Journal saying that you had to break the contracts, that the free-ride that teachers, cops, and firefighters enjoyed for so long has ended.
We live in the Age of Hypocrisy.
We rescue the financial industry from what would have been a catastrophic loss to both them and us, and instead of saying 'thank you, we won't do this again,' they're back to their old habits, fighting Dodd-Frank and its measly regulations which would prevent them from jeopardizing the Republic once again. We bailed them out and gave them money and they've used that money to lobby Congress and bank-roll "free-market" organizations. They road-blocked Elizabeth Warren from being nominated to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and now are planning on filibustering any nominee. Their Republican advocates keep saying that regulations are to blame for no jobs. No, not exactly. It's the trillions of dollars that corporations are sitting on and their tying up the credit markets preventing small businesses to borrow and flourish. They've noticed that they're doing pretty well again.
They hide behind their screams of 'redistribution of wealth' and 'socialism'--their default scare tactics. They want us to ignore that the only redistribution of wealth taking place in this country is from the poor to the rich. Those well-off are terrified to death on only the mere threat of returning to Clinton-era tax rates--one of them comparing the president to Hitler because of this, and Warren Buffett now becoming persona-non-grata. These same corporations who cry about moral hazard, are dependent on millions of dollars in government subsidies and tax loopholes--the really hurt-some welfare state that exists in this country is corporate welfare. And it's not just Republicans; Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) is backed by the oil industry, and is one of the Democratic votes against ending oil subsidies. Never mind their record profits. In Britain, the top tax rate is now 50%--this in a Tory Government. The Economist last week had an article in which it stated that the tax rate doesn't worry the wealthy in Britain as much as any possibility of closing any tax loopholes, because now they'll be expected to actually pay for things that they've gotten away with since Thatcher.
And to add insult to injury, Bank of America unveiled its latest gouging plan last week in which it stated that it will start charging its "customers" $5 a month just for the privilege of using their debit card. They claim that's due to government regulations, but in fact, studies have shown that they'll be making a $2 Billion a year profit on this scheme, much more than they were making before, when their former gouging plan was to charge merchants 44 cents per transaction in fees, for something, which as Joe Nocera in the Times called, mere pennies.
This is what those protesting on Wall Street are mad about. The banks and corporations keep winning and everyone else keep losing. They keep living paycheck to paycheck if they have a paycheck at all, they still don't have health care, they're burdened by student loans which they can't repay, and are still stuck in a tragedy of debt from which they can't escape. They're mad that the government isn't listening to them, but those on Wall Street have the government on speed-dial.
Will the Occupy Wall Street movement succeed? I hope so. But it's too early to say. They have to stop the honest-to-God freak shows of them dressing up like zombies, or flashing passers-by. This country still hates hippies. They need to come out dressed in their normal day-to-day clothing, and talk about the real economic grievances that they have. The We Are the 99% Tumbler is a good model. Like Carville said, it's the economy, stupid. And it's their economy. They need to stress their pocket-books, how they struggle to make rent, pay for utilities, and have to decide whether to buy medicine or food.
What should they be calling for immediately? They need to ask Congress to pass the Jobs Bill. It's not perfect, but it's the best we have so far. The Jobs Bill is a bail-out, but at least the one's being bailed out now are them. They need to march on Congress to pass the Jobs Bill and they need to Occupy Wall Street and tell those corporations who caused this whole big mess to begin with to stop financing opposition to the Jobs Bill. What else should they be calling for? The Bush Tax Cuts to expire and a return to Clinton-era tax rates, which, if I'm not mistaken occurred in pretty good economic times. They need to call for these tax rates and end corporate subsidies and corporate welfare. Make no mistake, this is a time for sacrifice, and everyone is going to have to sacrifice something. Some government programs will be cut, they're going to have to be, but they should also be protesting against cutting fundamental programs that target areas such as health and education.
The Occupy Wall Street movement can succeed. It's getting Too Big to Fail. But the freak shows and the side shows need to end. They need a cohesive message. Where the Tea Party had as theirs being opposition to "Obamacare," they need to have as theirs being the passage of the Jobs Bill and calling for more equitable tax rates.
That's a start.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Dreams of Obama
Grover Norquist, the high priest of Republican taxation ideology, famously stated that his goal was to ensure that a Democrat elected president can not govern as a Democrat.
Norquist, and his group, Americans for Tax Reform, have bullied and cornered Republican politicians for decades into signing an insidious pledge, and today he's led the vanguard to ensure that no revenues--okay, let's call it by its real name, tax increases--are part of any deal to cut our $14 Trillion debt.
For the first-time ever, Republican politicians have attached spending cuts to raising our debt ceiling. The debt ceiling vote had always been taken for granted, and treated as a matter of congressional housekeeping and good governance.
But then the American people--or rather the 41.3% of eligible voters who turned out--in the 2010 midterm election did an unsavory thing. Which brings us to where we are today.
The Republican Party, emboldened by their die-hard, know-nothing Tea Party-infused freshmen, who like to call themselves the "young guns," are holding hostage the full faith and credit of the Republic. To illustrate the point, this week, they showed a clip from Ben Affleck's film, "The Town." In it, Affleck's character tells his cohort that they're going to hurt some people. His cohort only asks whose car they're taking. After viewing the clip, Rep. Allen West jumped and said that he'll drive the car. Among the people being hurt: seniors on Medicare and Social Security, the poor on Medicaid, and students on Pell Grants and government-backed loans. In short, the middle class and the working poor. Once again, the powerless take the brunt of the cuts and suffer the consequences, while the powerful, keep their corporate-jet loopholes, subsidies to Big Oil and Big Agriculture, and continue to enjoy the lowest tax rates since the Truman Administration.
Where is the justice in that? Right, in this case, did not make might.
The president was elected on a wave of voter discontent with Washington, and on the promise of change. The president has been unfairly attacked for the legislation he championed to try to get--to use his favorite metaphor--the economy out of a ditch. The president was side-lined first by the Supreme Court which changed a century of jurisprudence concerning campaign-finance, and by a determined minority who has been uncompromising in its governance. The president has been painted as a socialist, and a foreigner--not one of us. He's been decried as some sort of a Manchurian candidate, planted to destroy America as we know it, and that only the Tea-Party backed candidates, the "real" Americans, can take America back.
When in reality the president is a moderate Republican, in all but name.
The president has governed slightly right-of-center. His health-care reform was born in the offices out of the conservative-Heritage Foundation in the 1990's, and is first-cousin to Romney's Massachusetts' health-care program. The president has out-Republican'd the Republicans on foreign policy, escalating the war in Afghanistan, continuing to operate Gitmo, and finally killing Bin Laden. If there's one place where I still lean right-of-center is in foreign policy, and am thankful that the president has continued to operate as a more competent and efficient third-Bush Administration. The president caved to the Republicans on extending the Bush tax cuts, one of the real culprits as to why the debt is at the level it is, and has taken no meaningful steps to order the Justice Department to prosecute those who, through their criminal activity, almost brought down the American economy in the Fall of 2008. Today, the president has once again been defeated by the Republicans, where they got cuts equal to any increase in the debt ceiling, no revenues being part of the compromise, triggers that need to be implemented before the debt ceiling is increased past the 2012 elections, and absolutely no meaningful concessions from the Republicans on pretty much anything. Normally, negotiations in DC are a give-and-take, something-for-something. Now it's something-for-nothing. The negotiations were not what to give up in order to achieve a reasonable compromise, but rather how to get the extreme-wing of the GOP to raise the debt ceiling at all. It's like negotiating with the mob: nice economy you have here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it.
We dreamt that Barack Obama would come to the White House and change politics as usual. That this incredibly intelligent and competent man whose sense of social justice, ethics, and morality, would allow a more civilized government, one that cares for the prosperity and well-being of all its citizens, to take hold. But the president has been too much of the aloof professor, too much of the adult in the room. Jon Stewart continuously says that the president acts as if he's disappointed in us, that we're the ones who have let him down. The president needs to be more of a fighter and confront the Republicans. He needs to get down into the trenches. Republicans are instinctively great at politics and lousy at governing. The president's ground game ain't working. He'll take the deal because it's too late and we're running against the clock--now he'll have to get the left to sign-off on the deal; luckily they're reasonable and responsible and they'll whine and sermonize but do what's right at the end. And he needs to start preparing for the FY '12 budget. And that's it. The president's legislative agenda for this term is over. A do-nothing Congress, in this case, is going to be a good thing.
He needs to start campaigning. Next year's election will be a classic economy election. The Republicans have made sure that the economy will still be on life support, as their cuts will do nothing to enable growth and joblessness will remain around 9-10%. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, has said in the past that his political goal is to ensure that Barack Obama is a one-term president. And they won't care if the economy is down in the dumps if it would assure that result. So he's going to need to fight back and push hard. He needs to call them out on their votes and on who their supporters are. He needs to profile every district and take the message down block-to-block as to how GOP policy would hurt the poor and the middle class. It's going to have to be more than a 50-state strategy, but a strategy centered in every congressional district. Only then can we hope that enough Democrats get elected on the president's coat-tails to take back the House and create a filibuster-proof, super-majority in the Senate.
Every four years, they always say that this presidential election is an important one. 2012's really will be.
Norquist, and his group, Americans for Tax Reform, have bullied and cornered Republican politicians for decades into signing an insidious pledge, and today he's led the vanguard to ensure that no revenues--okay, let's call it by its real name, tax increases--are part of any deal to cut our $14 Trillion debt.
For the first-time ever, Republican politicians have attached spending cuts to raising our debt ceiling. The debt ceiling vote had always been taken for granted, and treated as a matter of congressional housekeeping and good governance.
But then the American people--or rather the 41.3% of eligible voters who turned out--in the 2010 midterm election did an unsavory thing. Which brings us to where we are today.
The Republican Party, emboldened by their die-hard, know-nothing Tea Party-infused freshmen, who like to call themselves the "young guns," are holding hostage the full faith and credit of the Republic. To illustrate the point, this week, they showed a clip from Ben Affleck's film, "The Town." In it, Affleck's character tells his cohort that they're going to hurt some people. His cohort only asks whose car they're taking. After viewing the clip, Rep. Allen West jumped and said that he'll drive the car. Among the people being hurt: seniors on Medicare and Social Security, the poor on Medicaid, and students on Pell Grants and government-backed loans. In short, the middle class and the working poor. Once again, the powerless take the brunt of the cuts and suffer the consequences, while the powerful, keep their corporate-jet loopholes, subsidies to Big Oil and Big Agriculture, and continue to enjoy the lowest tax rates since the Truman Administration.
Where is the justice in that? Right, in this case, did not make might.
The president was elected on a wave of voter discontent with Washington, and on the promise of change. The president has been unfairly attacked for the legislation he championed to try to get--to use his favorite metaphor--the economy out of a ditch. The president was side-lined first by the Supreme Court which changed a century of jurisprudence concerning campaign-finance, and by a determined minority who has been uncompromising in its governance. The president has been painted as a socialist, and a foreigner--not one of us. He's been decried as some sort of a Manchurian candidate, planted to destroy America as we know it, and that only the Tea-Party backed candidates, the "real" Americans, can take America back.
When in reality the president is a moderate Republican, in all but name.
The president has governed slightly right-of-center. His health-care reform was born in the offices out of the conservative-Heritage Foundation in the 1990's, and is first-cousin to Romney's Massachusetts' health-care program. The president has out-Republican'd the Republicans on foreign policy, escalating the war in Afghanistan, continuing to operate Gitmo, and finally killing Bin Laden. If there's one place where I still lean right-of-center is in foreign policy, and am thankful that the president has continued to operate as a more competent and efficient third-Bush Administration. The president caved to the Republicans on extending the Bush tax cuts, one of the real culprits as to why the debt is at the level it is, and has taken no meaningful steps to order the Justice Department to prosecute those who, through their criminal activity, almost brought down the American economy in the Fall of 2008. Today, the president has once again been defeated by the Republicans, where they got cuts equal to any increase in the debt ceiling, no revenues being part of the compromise, triggers that need to be implemented before the debt ceiling is increased past the 2012 elections, and absolutely no meaningful concessions from the Republicans on pretty much anything. Normally, negotiations in DC are a give-and-take, something-for-something. Now it's something-for-nothing. The negotiations were not what to give up in order to achieve a reasonable compromise, but rather how to get the extreme-wing of the GOP to raise the debt ceiling at all. It's like negotiating with the mob: nice economy you have here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it.
We dreamt that Barack Obama would come to the White House and change politics as usual. That this incredibly intelligent and competent man whose sense of social justice, ethics, and morality, would allow a more civilized government, one that cares for the prosperity and well-being of all its citizens, to take hold. But the president has been too much of the aloof professor, too much of the adult in the room. Jon Stewart continuously says that the president acts as if he's disappointed in us, that we're the ones who have let him down. The president needs to be more of a fighter and confront the Republicans. He needs to get down into the trenches. Republicans are instinctively great at politics and lousy at governing. The president's ground game ain't working. He'll take the deal because it's too late and we're running against the clock--now he'll have to get the left to sign-off on the deal; luckily they're reasonable and responsible and they'll whine and sermonize but do what's right at the end. And he needs to start preparing for the FY '12 budget. And that's it. The president's legislative agenda for this term is over. A do-nothing Congress, in this case, is going to be a good thing.
He needs to start campaigning. Next year's election will be a classic economy election. The Republicans have made sure that the economy will still be on life support, as their cuts will do nothing to enable growth and joblessness will remain around 9-10%. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, has said in the past that his political goal is to ensure that Barack Obama is a one-term president. And they won't care if the economy is down in the dumps if it would assure that result. So he's going to need to fight back and push hard. He needs to call them out on their votes and on who their supporters are. He needs to profile every district and take the message down block-to-block as to how GOP policy would hurt the poor and the middle class. It's going to have to be more than a 50-state strategy, but a strategy centered in every congressional district. Only then can we hope that enough Democrats get elected on the president's coat-tails to take back the House and create a filibuster-proof, super-majority in the Senate.
Every four years, they always say that this presidential election is an important one. 2012's really will be.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
The Internals
A conspicuous component of American politics is poll results. It is what everyone refers to as the "horse-race": who's up, who's down, what's important? Polls themselves are important. They take the general pulse of the American people, and they have the power to change the political narrative—what is the media going to concentrate on? Most polls, sadly, only give the big numbers, concentrating on the president's job approval rating, the leader in a matchup, or the all-important wrong-direction, right-direction numbers. A lot of politicians, 43 most famously, often say that they don't govern based on the polls. I sort of agree with that. Many times the American people don't have all the facts, all the information needed, to form a substantive opinion on most anything. But politicians look at polls. They live and die by them.
One of my favorite things to do when polls are released is to look at the internals. The internals are comprised of the more in-depth questions asked in polls, where the respondents are given different statements to see where they stand on them. The internals also provide information such as the demographic make-up of the respondents. Poll internals are much more important to me than the big numbers. (And yes, one takes into consideration the margin-of-error, the way the statements were written, etc.) And one of my favorite polls is the NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, which is done almost monthly. I've gone through the 31 pages of the poll. Here are my observations:
- 1,000 Respondents, 3.1% margin of error, 200 reached by cell phone: Pretty standard sampling. There's been some evidence to suggest that there's somewhat of an under-poll count for people reach by cell phones, especially when a cell phone is all they have—they tend to be younger, slightly more educated, slightly more affluent than the general population: they tend to vote Democrat. The undercount has suggested in the past that numbers for Democrats or Liberal causes might be 1-3% higher (yes, within the margin of error, so I guess it's fine.)
- 48% Male, 52% Female, most respondents between 30-59, more senior respondents than the young: Seniors are more likely to answer the phone and stick with the interview which lasts awhile. Demographics change. Sometimes the seniors are voting Democratic, sometimes Republicans. I believe that seniors in the last two cycles have trended Republican. Women slightly vote more Democratic than Republican.
- 88% Not Hispanic, 11% Hispanic, 75% White, 11% Black: Almost mirroring the demographics of the nation as a whole.
And here are the questions:
- Right Track: 29%, Wrong Track: 62%: Pretty bad wrong track numbers. The economy isn't helping. A full 12 points higher from last month after the "Osama Bump." But these numbers mirror what the numbers were in April. Getting Bin Laden temporarily made Americans feel that the country was on the right track.
- Obama: 49% Approve, 46% Disapprove: Not terrible. Again the numbers went back to what they were in April. After Bin Laden's death, Obama got a 3 point bump. It's now back. But these are his best numbers since January.
- Obama's Economic Handling: 41% Approve, 54% Disapprove: His approval number actually improved from last month, but the disapproval remains high. Again though, his economic numbers are better than they were in May. Gas prices coming down may be causing these. But they're still dismal numbers. The Republicans are going to run on the economy next year. Politically speaking, it's in their best interest for the economy to still be in the toilet. Maybe that's why they're causing so much uncertainty with the debt ceiling, etc…?
- O's Foreign Policy Handling: 50% Approve, 44% Disapprove: Back to what they were in April. Again Obama got a temporary OBL bump last month. Most are okay with O's handling of Libya and believe the U.S. should remain engaged. (Side note: It's amazing how fast the bump evaporated.) Good enough numbers for foreign policy.
- O's handling of Afghanistan: 54% Approve, 39% Disapprove: Since OBL, best numbers for O in over a year on Afghanistan. Also most people agree with O's timeline for withdrawal as opposed to removing them all now. Half think that OBL's death has little or no effect on terrorism.
- Congress: 18% Approve, 74% Disapprove: Their numbers are the worst they've been in fifteen months. The debt ceiling debate isn't helping for them. And I think there's also buyer's remorse.
- Feelings:
- O's: 49% Overall Positive, 37% Overall Negative.
- Democrats: 38% Overall Positive, 39% Overall Negative.
- Republicans: 30% Overall Positive, 44% Overall Negative.
- Looks like the Republicans are in trouble…goes back to them over-reaching since the Mid-Terms.
- Looks like the Republicans are in trouble…goes back to them over-reaching since the Mid-Terms.
- Tea Party: 28% Overall Positive, 41% Overall Negative.
- Less positive, less negative than the GOP. Interesting.
- Less positive, less negative than the GOP. Interesting.
- Mitt Romney: 27% Overall Positive, 26% Overall Negative: Even as front-runner still has name recognition problem. But the people who know him don't feel positive about him.
- Tim Pawlenty: 14% Overall Positive, 15% Overall Negative: No one knows who he is.
- Newt Gingrich: 16% Overall Positive, 48% Overall Negative: Higher negatives than either political party. What's he still doing in the race? No one likes him.
- Jon Huntsman: 7% Overall Positive, 9% Overall Negative. No one knows who he is either. And actually, he's not that bad.
- Palin: 24% Overall Positive, 54% Overall Negative: Woah! High Negatives. I really wish she gets the nomination. There's no way to turn those negatives around.
- Takeaway: O has higher positives than either party, the tea party, and Republican candidates or maybe candidates (Christie, Ryan, Palin).
- O's: 49% Overall Positive, 37% Overall Negative.
- 51% Gov't should do more, 46% Gov't doing too many things: I guess the small-government message that the Republicans are playing isn't synching. People want a more activist gov't to create jobs, turn the economy around, etc.
- 45% Obama, 40% Generic Republican: Obama beats a generic Republican in 2012. Same numbers all year.
- 44% Republican-Controlled, 44% Democrat-Controlled: Evenly split on who should control congress next year. (Only 1 in 10 has good confidence in congress, 40% no confidence at all.
- Republican House: 13% Brought Right Change, 23% Brought Wrong Change, 60% Brought No Change: An image of a do-noting Congress. 10 points higher on brought wrong change though.
- Republicans in order: Palin, who's not in the race is second. And Cain in third? The only other who pulled out double-digit? Perry and Paul aren't even in the race. It's extremely fluid.
- 45-45 Satisfied Dissatisfied with the Republican Field: At this point during the last campaign, 73% were satisfied with the field.
- Romney 30
- Palin 14
- Cain 12
- Perry 8
- Paul 7
- Gingrich 6
- Pawlenty 4
- Santorum 4
- Bachmann 3
- Huntsman 1
- 45-45 Satisfied Dissatisfied with the Republican Field: At this point during the last campaign, 73% were satisfied with the field.
- Head to Head:
- Obama 49 Romney 43
- Obama 50 Pawlenty 37
- Obama 49 Romney 43
- Positions:
- 54% more likely to vote for a candidate who imposes requirements to curb greenhouse gases: Oddly enough, this was the position with the most positive salience. I had no idea this was such a big deal.
- 47% more likely to vote for a candidate who supports repealing the health care law,
- 47% more likely to vote for a candidate who favors allowing undocumented immigrants who are in the country to stay here if they pay a fine, learn English, and get "to the back of the line,"
- 44% more likely to vote for someone who voted for the health care law. Interesting that there's only a 3-point difference from repealing the law.
- 54% more likely to vote for a candidate who imposes requirements to curb greenhouse gases: Oddly enough, this was the position with the most positive salience. I had no idea this was such a big deal.
- More Internals:
- Romney has a Romneycare issue but it's not as big as the current narrative states: 50% don't care, 35% take less favorable view once they learn about it.
- Slightly more believe that the Republican Party is more influenced by special interests and lobbyists than the Democratic Party. When the question asks if they're equally influenced, most say both are equally influenced.
- Same percentages of people say the economy will get better as well as worse (1/3). The rest say it'll stay about the same. Around 50% say their personal finances have stayed about the same.
- Stimulus: Most people believe it didn't do anything to help the economy.
- More people blame Bush than Obama for the economy, still. Most (62%) believe Obama inherited this problem.
- 63% are more worried about keeping the deficit down, while 31% say that more should be done for boosting the economy, rather than the deficit. More people also believe that cutting federal spending helps rather than hurts the economy.
- More people (44%) believe that we're headed into another recession.
- Biggest Personal Economic Indicators: Increase in gas prices, increase in food prices, decrease in home values, increase in unemployment rates, increase in number of home foreclosures.
- 28% say debt ceiling should be raised, 39% say it shouldn't. When told of the consequences of not raising it, 46% say it should be raised. (42% still won't raise it even when told.)
- Most people think Medicare is fine the way it is. More people say Ryan's changes to it are a bad idea. So much for Ryan's plan.
- Romney has a Romneycare issue but it's not as big as the current narrative states: 50% don't care, 35% take less favorable view once they learn about it.
More Make-Up Questions:
- 35% get the news from the big three (NBC, ABC, CBS). 22% from Fox News, 17% from CNN, 8% from MSNBC.
- 26% of the respondents consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party.
- Of those they see themselves as mostly moderate.
- Of those they see themselves as mostly moderate.
Interesting poll.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
No Blog Post Today
Will post on Sunday as I'm out of town.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:N Herndon St,Arlington,United States
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Leave No Reality Star Behind
TOBY: I was a telemarketer for about a week. I can't remember what we were selling, but you worked off a script. "Hi. Good evening. My name is..." And "Toby Ziegler" was okay for New York, but once I got into the other time zones, I needed a name. I wasn't gonna bother anybody.
BARTLET: Toby, if you have something to say, please say it.
TOBY: Ritchie's good for all time zones.
BARTLET: My family signed the Declaration of Independence. You think I've got an ethnicity problem?
TOBY: Well, the line isn't between light skin and dark skin.
BARTLET: Yeah?
TOBY: It's between educated and masculine... or Eastern Academic Elite and Plain-Spoken.
BARTLET: It's always been like that.
TOBY: Yeah, but a funny thing happened when the White House got demystified. The impression was left that anybody could do it.
"The Two Bartlets" The West Wing.
There's something to be said when two of the leading Republican "potentials" for next year's race are reality show stars. Life, sadly, is again imitating art. Luckily one has bowed out after he was the target of public ridicule, but the other is still driving up the Eastern seaboard of the United States in her mystery machine—even Palin's own mother thinks the bus is a bit much.
Palin is the ultimate political telemarketer. She's trying to be good for all time zones. That explains why she wears a giant crucifix on Sunday at a biker rally in DC, and a Star of David on Wednesday during her time in New York City. That she panders should come to no surprise to anyone. That she's incredibly ignorant of, you know, facts, history, geography, etc., should also come as no surprise. On Thursday, Sarah Palin gave America her version of Paul Revere's ride. According to her, Paul Revere warned the British—not the colonists. And what was Paul Revere's supposed warning to the Brits: that we had guns and bells and that they weren't going to take that away from us— both the guns and the bells, I guess?
When confronted with you know, history, Palin blamed it all on the "gotcha" media. In an interview today on Fox News, even after having a couple of days—enough, one would guess to check out Wikipedia—to get it right, she still managed to get it wrong. And not only did she manage to get it wrong again, but she also had the chutzpah to say that she was right after all. What's even more amazing about this are the multitude of right-wing blogs and Palin apologists who have gone on the internet, re-written history, and said that Palin's version of Revere's ride is essentially correct.
Palin isn't the only Republican potential who probably failed remedial American history in school. Congresswoman Bachmann thought that the founders ended slavery—never mind the Civil War. Herman Cain, in the middle of lecturing Americams to brush up on the Constitution, decided to add a couple of things to it that aren't there—never mind the Declaration of Independence. But I mean, it's not just American history that these people get wrong. It's also the present. And while Romney seems to be the serious adult in this contest for the presidency, apparently he needs to take a class on U.S.-Latin American Relations.
And it's not just those Republicans running for the presidency who need to take a class or two, but it's also those Republicans in Congress today who are legislating on important matters for our country. Apparently, they need to be taught what the debt ceiling is, and don't believe that Geithner has sold them on how important it is. It's amazing that they have to be "sold" on something that they should already have at least a rudimentary grasp of.
It's painfully obvious that not everyone "could do it." Not everyone can be president. But the GOP field today looks like the ultimate, bad episode of "Celebrity Apprentice," with Trump yearning to tell the president "you're fired!" The lights and music would come on and the winner gets four years of public housing at taxpayer's expense and use of a jumbo jet. The problem would be that once the sideshow ends and the public gets tired of it, it doesn't get cancelled at the end of the season. We'll have to live with it for four long, horrible years.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
The Joke’s On Them
"Wall Street is in on the joke," said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Someone forgot to tell Wall Street that because the Dow plummeted 280 points today due to depressing reports on jobs, manufacturing, and auto sales.
I guess then that the joke is on them.
Since the arrival of the Obama Administration, the Chamber of Commerce, one of the key sponsors of the Republican Party, has argued that many of the President's economic policies have created uncertainty in the markets preventing the economy from recovering. They said that during TARP II, the debate over the Bush tax cuts, and the near-miss concerning this year's budget. We were an hour and a half away a couple of months ago from not passing an FY11 budget for the federal government because we were debating $38 Billion in cuts. Looking back on it, those were the good old days. The Speaker, Rep. Ryan, and congressional Republicans met with the President this morning over the big one: the debt ceiling. Some on the Right are calling for trillions in cuts—yes, trillions not billions—and have threatened to derail any vote on the debt ceiling unless those cuts are made.
Talk about uncertainty.
So the House yesterday—in that joke that Josten was referring to—voted, symbolically of course, on the debt ceiling. How did they come down? 318 House members voted against raising it: 236 Republicans and 82 good-for-nothing Democrats. Again the headline: the U.S. House of Representatives actually voted not to raise the debt ceiling. (Never mind that we surpassed it a couple of weeks ago, and the only reason that we're still afloat is because Treasure has taken extraordinary measures giving us until August 2nd to increase the debt ceiling.) They told Wall Street not to fret, that it's pure symbolism, and that it was done in order to show the president that they're ready to pull the trigger if necessary. It's nice that the work of the American people is being done as if it were a high-stakes game of chicken with the president, all the while assuring their donors that it doesn't mean anything. But it does. And the Democrats are as much to blame for the political games as are the Republicans. When it was obvious that the vote was going to come down this way, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer released Democrats to vote with the Republicans so that they won't be subjected to attack ads in next year's elections. Republicans know that the Ryan Budget backfired on them, and they're going to keep the debt ceiling vote as their trump card to show the American people that they are the adults, that they're the ones who are serious about the debt. The problem is that they aren't.
The debt ceiling has to be raised. The White House has stated that failure to raise the debt ceiling would be Armageddon-like. Every serious person, every real Adult, knows that throwing temper-tantrums won't fix the hole that we're in. But both sides are playing politics. And yes, the Republicans are playing it worse than the Democrats. Like always. What happens if you don't raise the debt limit? Jamie Dimon, Chairman of JP Morgan Chase remarked: "Every single company with treasuries, every insurance fund, every—every requirement that—it will start snowballing. Automatic, you don't pay your debt, there will be default by ratings agencies. All short-term financing will disappear." Dimon added, "We are praying." It would be a catastrophic economic event with crippling effects on world markets and our own recovery. Not raising the debt limit is just unimaginable. The U.S. government cannot default on its debts.
Not raising the ceiling has real consequences. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The economic crisis of 2008 will seem as a walk in the park compared to not raising the debt ceiling. A managing director at JP Morgan Chase, in a letter to Secretary Geithner, laid out the consequences:
- Foreign investors will dump bonds leading to a worsening housing crisis as Fannie and Freddie would be in even greater peril.
- Downgrading our credit rating would lead to an increase in Treasury rates making borrowing even more difficult than what it is now. There'd be a drop in lending and a contraction in credit, meaning the key sectors of our economy would come to a near halt.
- There'd be a run on the banks—which was luckily averted when Lehman failed—wreaking havoc on the liquidity of funds, which would force the government to initiate another capital-infusion plan such as the one done in 2008.
This is the nightmare scenario. Call your congressman—and tell them what an idiot (s)he is.
***
I'll be posting every Sunday and Wednesday—sort of like Dowd and Friedman?
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