Month: August 2011

Iowa Corn Cakes

by digby

Chuck Todd just said that if Michele Bachman looks like she might get the nomination, the business will actively try to stop her because of her views on the debt ceiling. If that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back, they should be mounting a campaign against a whole bunch of Tea Partiers. They nearly got it done.

Indeed, the fact that sane businessmen and wealthy elites aren’t gathering their forces against this whole field of GOP loonies (so looney that Newt Gingrich appears moderate by comparison)tells you just how far politics has gone off the rails.

Even right wing expert Adele Stan was taken aback by how crazy they’ve become:

If there was any doubt that the Republican Party is now firmly in the hands of far-right ideologues, last night’s broadcast surely dispelled that notion. In fact, many of the themes sounded throughout the evening appeared to come right out of the platform of the Constitution Party, the hard-core, theocratic party founded by Christian Reconstructionist Howard Phillips.

Candidates discussed the right of fetuses conceived in rape to be born, a return to the gold standard as the basis for U.S. currency, and the proposed abolition of the Federal Reserve, all tenets of the Constitution Party platform. Rounding out the Reconstructionist agenda was a question to Bachmann about her adherence to the doctrine of “wifely submission,” advocated by several right-wing Christian sects, which she dodged by saying that the term simply meant mutual respect between husband and wife. (AlterNet’s reporting on the influence of Christian Reconstructionism on Bachmann’s beliefs can be found here, here and here.)

Read on for a full rundown of the debate.

I think what struck me the most was how they’ve seamlessly incorporated their extreme social conservatism — even to the point where presidential candidates are now boldly saying that a woman should be forced to bear her rapists child because “it isn’t the fetuses fault” that it was conceived in hideous violence.(The irrelevant gestation vessel apparently must bear her share of the blame however, and accept her just punishment…)This has been commonplace in GOP circles for some time. Warmongering as well, although it was only really discussed with respect to Iran top give the candidates an excuse to show their fealty to US ally Israel. The big change is the full embrace of crackpot wingnut economics, the likes of which you used to only see at those seminars about how to become a sovereign citizens to avoid taxes. These people have officially become economic saboteurs on a level I don’t think we’ve ever seen before. It’s one thing to be against TARP, it’s quite another for presidential candidates to be espousing throwback Christian Reconstructionism in a time of economic crisis.

Read the Christian Reconstructionist Constitution Party Platform — you’ll find it’s very familiar. With the exception of its position on ending wars — which, for different reasons, neither Party will ever embrace — it is now the defacto GOP platform as well.

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Junior’s Id

by digby

Not to pile on Rick Perry after Atkins’ brutal takedown below, but seriously folks, the man makes Bachman look like FDR:

As The New Republic’s Ed Kilgore puts it, “Rick Perry seems to perfectly embody the Republican zeitgeist of the moment, appealing equally to the GOP’s Tea Party, Christian Right, and establishment factions while exemplifying the militant anti-Obama attitude that holds it all together.”

The author of that passage, Andrew Romano, says that he’s nonetheless unelectable because of his positions on social security, medicare and government intervention to prevent a depression. We’d better hope he’s right because is someone with his views gets a mandate from the people, we’re in even deeper trouble than we already are. This man is Beckie:

In Fed Up!, you criticize the progressive era and the changes it produced: the 16th and 17th Amendments, Social Security, Medicare, and so on. I understand being against these things in principle—of longing for a world in which they never existed. But now that they’re part of the fabric of our society, do you think we should actually do away with them?

I think every program needs to stand the sunshine of righteous scrutiny. Whether it’s Social Security, whether it’s Medicaid, whether it’s Medicare. You’ve got $115 trillion worth of unfunded liability in those three. They’re bankrupt. They’re a Ponzi scheme. I challenge anybody to stand up and defend the Social Security program that we have today—and particularly defend it to a 27-year-old young man who’s just gotten married and is trying to get his life headed in the right direction economically. I happen to think that the Progressive movement was the beginning of the deterioration of our Constitution from the standpoint of it being abused and misused to do things that Congress wanted to do, and/or the Supreme Court wanted to implement. The New Deal was the launching pad for the Washington largesse as we know it today. And I think we should have a legitimate, honest, national discussion about Washington’s continuing to spend money we don’t have on programs that we don’t need.

America’s looming debt crisis is a real problem, but neither Republicans nor Democrats have really been addressing it seriously. What solutions should your party be pushing?

I think the states are the ones who should be making the decision on whether or not they want to be spending their dollars on those types of programs—not having it made in Washington, D.C.

I see how that might make sense for, say, education. But what would it mean for something like Social Security—a big, national safety net? In the book, you call Social Security a “failure” that “we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now.” Is it time for it to end?

Well, the counties of Matagorda, Bresoria, and Galveston in 1981 decided they wanted to opt out of this Social Security program. They have now very well funded programs and their employees are going to be substantially better taken care of then anybody in Social Security. So I would suggest a legitimate conversation about let the states keep their money and implement the programs. That’s one option that’s out there. But I didn’t write the book and say here are all the solutions. I think the first step in finding the solutions is admitting we have a problem—and admitting that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

What about Medicare? That’s an even bigger contributor to these debt problems.

Here’s the problem, in the 25 years that I’ve worked in Texas state government both as a legislator, an appropriator, then as lieutenant governor and the governor of Texas: Washington attaches strings to all these programs. They take away the incentive for innovation because they say here is a portion of your money back and here are the only ways that you can spend it. That on its face is bad public policy. And again, I think it’s an abuse of our Constitution. There’s no place in the Constitution that says Washington, D.C. is supposed to be mandated health-care coverage, for example. That gets to the very core of the book. If America really wants to be strong again, we need to get back to the principles this country was based upon. The Constitution as it was written, and the 10th Amendment that clearly says the states are where these decisions should be made. Moving back in that direction will create substantially more competition. States should be laboratories of innovation. I promise you, I know you did a profile on Bobby Jindal, who I happen to think is one of the brightest governors in our country. Bobby knows health care very well. If he were given the freedom from the federal government to come up with his own innovative ways working with his legislature to deliver his own health-care innovations to his citizens, I guarantee he could do it more efficiently and more effectively than one-size-fits-all coming out of Washington, D.C.

But again, Medicare. It’s been in place for more than four decades now. What do you suggest we do to set it on a more fiscally sustainable path going forward?

I think we need to have a national discussion and not be afraid to talk about it. That is my goal. I didn’t write the book and say anywhere in it, I got all the solutions. What I did say is, We have to be courageous as a country and stand up and admit that we have a Social Security program that is bankrupt, that is a Ponzi scheme, that Medicare and Medicaid collective had $106 trillion worth of liability that is unfunded, and that we need to deal with it and quit passing it on to the next Congress and the next generation.

It goes on — and it send a chill down my spine. It’s tempting to think this fellow is a genial doofus but he’s actually a hardcore right wing extremist without whatever restraints George W. Bush had from his establishment roots. He’s Bush’s id.

The Constitution says that “the Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes… to provide for the… general Welfare of the United States.” But I noticed that when you quoted this section on page 116, you left “general welfare” out and put an ellipsis in its place. Progressives would say that “general welfare” includes things like Social Security or Medicare—that it gives the government the flexibility to tackle more than just the basic responsibilities laid out explicitly in our founding document. What does “general welfare” mean to you?

I don’t think our founding fathers when they were putting the term “general welfare” in there were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of health care. What they clearly said was that those were issues that the states need to address. Not the federal government. I stand very clear on that. From my perspective, the states could substantially better operate those programs if that’s what those states decided to do.

So in your view those things fall outside of general welfare. But what falls inside of it? What did the Founders mean by “general welfare”?

I don’t know if I’m going to sit here and parse down to what the Founding Fathers thought general welfare meant.

But you just said what you thought they didn’t mean by general welfare. So isn’t it fair to ask what they did mean? It’s in the Constitution.

[Silence.]

For the full transcript,click here.

Pray for deliverance

by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Regular Hullabaloo readers may remember the the story of Kemp, the Texas town that allowed its water mains to fall into disrepair, and now prays to God every summer for rainy deliverance.

It’s a story that will be repeated nationwide if Rick Perry has his way. Timothy Egan has more in the New York Times today:

A few months ago, with Texas aflame from more than 8,000 wildfires brought on by extreme drought, a man who hopes to the next president took pen in hand and went to work:

“Now, therefore, I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas…”

In the four months since Perry’s request for divine intervention, his state has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Nearly all of Texas is now in “extreme or exceptional” drought, as classified by federal meteorologists, the worst in Texas history…

But Perry’s tendency to use prayer as public policy demonstrates, in the midst of a truly painful, wide-ranging and potentially catastrophic crisis in the nation’s second most-populous state, how he would govern if he became president.

“I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, ‘God: You’re going to have to fix this,’” he said in a speech in May, explaining how some of the nation’s most serious problems could be solved…

Perry is from Paint Creek, an unincorporated hamlet in the infinity of the northwest Texas plains. I’ve been there. In wet years, it’s pretty, the birds clacking on Lake Stamford, the cotton high. This year, it’s another sad moonscape in the Lone Star State.

Over the last 15 years, taxpayers have shelled out $232 million in farm subsidies to Haskell County, which includes Paint Creek — a handout to more than 2,500 recipients, better than one out every three residents. God may not always be reliable, but in Perry’s home county, the federal government certainly is.

After an ugly debate filled with uninspiring candidates last night, Perry is the man the Republican base has been waiting for. A dumber, more aggressive and more authentic George Dubya Bush than the faux Martha’s Vineyard transplant to Crawford. A man who will balloon the nation’s debt on boondoggles to his buddies even faster than Dubya and “Deficits Don’t Matter” Cheney, while begging Jesus to solve all the nation’s real problems.

As disappointing as the Obama Administration has been on many fronts, the are no words for the disaster that would befall the country if this man became President. Even the secular among us would pray for deliverance, but none would come: for President Perry would make the Tea Party rain fall on both the just and the unjust alike.

Foul humans

by digby

There are a lot of things to hate about Los Angeles. It’s sprawling, smoggy metropolis, smoggy, crowded and filled with cars. But some of us are lucky to live in a gigantic city and also have the Pacific ocean as our back yard. I walk on the beach every night to chill out from reading and writing about all this political insanity and I truly believe it’s key to keeping me from losing my mind. And one of the most uplifting events is when dolphins are leaping about in the waves or sea lions are lying on the beach catching their breath. I saw one body surf in to the shore one day and the handful of us standing there watching it all cheered spontaneously. That little piece of nature in the midst of this big city somehow balances things out for me.

And then I read something horrific like this,the worlds collide and somehow it just seems emblematic of everything that’s wrong with the world. I know this sort of thing has gone on forever, but the cruelty of it, the inexcusable need to commit such wanton violence against such a magnificent creature just makes me despair for this species. We either evolve beyond this simpleminded, id-fueled destructiveness toward other people and the creatures we share this planet with or our species is doomed.

I think I’ll pour a little libation and watch the Republican debate. I plan to take a drink every time I hear the words taxes and deficit. Should be properly cross-eyed by 6:15.

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The Good Old Days

by digby

Who said this?

I’m sure you’ve been watching this mess in Washington.

I’d like you to know how I feel about it.

I haven’t voted for one of these lousy budget packages for years and I won’t vote for this one.

It would raise taxes on the wrong people.

Unlike some folks around here I think everyone should pay their fair share. Including the rich.

We need to protect our seniors from Medicare cuts too.

I don’t care if the President or Congressional leaders twist my arm. I won’t support any deal that isn’t a fair deal for the working families.

That was Mitch McConnell 20 years ago. That’s right, boys and girls, that used to be the way Republicans talked in this country. The reason there used to be bipartisanship is because they used to agree with Democrats on some of those basic values and they don’t anymore. In fact, a lot of Democrats don’t believe it anymore.

There really isn’t a better illustration of just how far the Republican Party has moved to the right in the last 20 years. I’ve watched it happen, and it’s still startling. People who would reject such commonplace political bromides as “everyone should pay their fair share” can’t be said to be in the mainstream. And yet they are dominating American politics.

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Simple questions

by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Has anyone in the media considered asking the Republican presidential hopefuls a few simple questions:

• In real dollar terms, how much more money do the rich need before they can create jobs?
• What would happen to the economy if we returned to Clinton era tax rates on the rich?
• Do you know what the marginal tax rates were under Eisenhower? Under Nixon? Why do you think the American economy was booming under those tax rates?
• What did an average college education cost at a public university in the 1960s? Why do we force our kids into a lifetime of student loan debt today?
• If the entire economy is hurting and everyone needs to tighten their belts in shared sacrifice, why are corporations showing record profits?
• Do tax cuts increase or decrease revenue? What tax rate percentage would change that equation?

Any one of these questions would throw the entire conservative messaging agenda on its ear. They’re really simple questions, and they’re pretty much the core questions that need answering.

And yet no one in the media is asking these questions. Which tells you everything you need to know.

Looks like Mitt’s got himself a running mate

by digby

Mitt’s gaffe really is funny and it’s also the kind of thing that can dog a candidate. Coming from somebody like Bush, who was known for speaking gibberish on the campaign trail, it would quickly join the list of “stupid stuff Bush says.” But Romney isn’t that kind of candidate. Everything about him screams privilege and wealth and elitism and his only answer to that is to portray himself as a super-competent businessman — which means that when he claims that corporations are people, he comes across as the guy on the Monopoly money.

I don’t know how much the Supreme Court’s “corporations are people” rulings have penetrated the national consciousness but to the extent they have, I doubt that people like it very much. And it’s the rare issue that cuts against the GOP because of its philosophical complexity — a good thing for Democrats if they relentlessly exploit it. Most of the time it’s the Dems who have to tie themselves into pretzels trying to explain their positions while the GOP goes for the gut.

The problem, of course, is that most Democrats may not think corporations are people but they do see them as their constituents so it gets murky. Still, this could be Mitt’s Macaca Moment if it’s handled right.

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Townhall Report

by digby

So it’s another hot August and another round of hot Q&As at congressional townhalls around the country:

This time it was the liberals who were angry about what’s happening in Washington.

Two years ago, angry protesters disrupted town hall meetings across the land to oppose President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul plan, and U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum heard passionate speeches from both sides at a public hearing in St. Paul.

On Tuesday night, McCollum’s fellow Democrats packed a music recital hall at St. Catherine University to give the six-term congresswoman an earful about their disappointment with Obama and his economic and military policies.

The crowd of about 150 was largely friendly and civil, but they were passionate about their opposition to the conservative policies flowing from the Republican-controlled Congress and what they consider an all-too-conciliatory White House.

John from St. Paul wanted to know why Obama has moved to the right. “Whose side is he on?” he asked. “What are progressives telling him?”

McCollum, who voted against the bill to raise the debt ceiling crafted by Obama and GOP congressional leaders, defended the president, contending he negotiated the best deal he could get. She did say, however, that Obama “could be clearer” about insisting that tax increases on the wealthy be part of future deficit-reduction legislation.

So this is it? Democrats are going to run on demanding tip money from the wealthy as their contribution to (unnecessary and counterproductive)”shared sacrifice.” Very inspiring. I sure hope nobody asks about those Bush tax cuts expiring, though, because they have quite a bit of egg on their faces after promising that they were going to make sure they expired during the last two election cycles. But I’m sure this time they mean it.

Meanwhile at GOP Townhalls they’re passing out “watch lists” with pictures of constituents who’ve asked questions in the past. This one’s on behalf of Daniel Webster, the only marginally sane religious fanatic who beat Alan Grayson:

Each person featured in the watch list is a resident of Webster’s Florida district, several hundred miles from Griffin’s Arkansas district. This reporter was able to confirm that none of the persons featured in the watch list have attended town halls outside of Central Florida. In fact, they did not even attend Webster town halls on the same dates; their attendance was spread across several of Webster’s town halls from April through June.

Although the watch list insinuates that these Florida constituents are professional political operatives, only one works in politics as field organizers for Organize Now, a Florida-based community activist group, not high-level masterminds. A handout instructs attendees to demand that the media ask each of these activists barbed questions, such as whether each one worked for the 2008 Obama campaign. None did.

The watch list suggests that the media ask Reinaldo Vasquez, “Are you or have you ever been, a leader, or a member, or a supporter of OrganizeNow.org, OrganizeFlorida.org, or Moveon.org (sic) or any other Progressive Left group?”

It even suggests that the media ask armed-services veteran Ron Parsell (named in the handout as Don Parsell) about his military service. Parsell’s appearance at a spring town hall made local TV news when he identified himself as a veteran and asked Webster tough questions. The watch list suggests the following questions for Parsell: “Are you a military veteran who served in Viet Nam? If yes, what branch of the Services, what military unit and where specifically in Viet Nam did you serve?”

The “are you now or have you ever been” question format is a very nice touch. Kind of old school, homey.

You can see the flyers, here.

At least we aren’t arguing about mosques this year.

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Some of my best friends are corporations

Field Position

by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Democrats have a few pieces of good news to cheer about, from an electoral standpoint. First, Dems are polling very well for the House, courtesy PPP via the DCCC:

A new poll released today by Public Policy Polling shows that House Republicans are paying the price with voters for their extreme agenda to end Medicare in order to protect subsidies for Big Oil and tax breaks for billionaires, and for playing games with debt limit.

Key Findings:

• Democrats lead Republicans in the generic ballot by 7 points (47-40).
• Democrats lead Republicans with critically important independent voters by 3 points (39-36).
• Independent voters overwhelming disapprove of the Republican Majority in the House (68 disapprove/20 approve).
• Speaker Boehner’s approval rating dropped 31 points since January (28-52).

Public Policy Polling’s conclusions: “…if there was an election today I think that they’d take back the House… There’s little doubt that Democrats are winning the fallout of the debt debate… Last year independent voters were the driving factor behind the GOP retaking the House majority. Now they give it a 20/68 approval rating.”

And again via the DCCC, Republican House members are facing major anger from constituents back at home. Meanwhile, a Marist poll shows Obama leading all GOP contenders:

Obama does have an advantage over several potential Republican rivals:

• He leads Romney 46-41, a 5-point lead.
• He leads Pawlenty 49-36, a 13-point lead.
• He leads Bachmann 52-35, a 17-point lead.
• He leads Perry 52-33, a 19-point lead.

Smart money at this point says that Obama probably gets re-elected, Dems have a good chance of retaking the House, and GOP will likely take over the Senate due to the difficult time Dems will have holding onto their 2006 pickups. It’s early of course, and things can change dramatically in short order. But right now Democrats are looking in fairly good shape, from an electoral point of view.

Strong supporters of Administration, of compromise and the Grand Bargain take these numbers as vindication of the success of their approach, and the rejection of both the conservative hostage-takers by the public at large, as well as frustrated progressives.

But that would be foolish. Even if Democrats do hold onto the White House and put the Speaker’s gavel back in Pelosi’s hands, the damage will already have been done. Austerity is the name of the game in Washington, and social security and Medicare are irrevocably on the negotiating block in a way that would have been unthinkable just five years ago. And the Super Committee is likely to make things even worse.

The point of politics is not to win elections for their own sake, or to prevent the other team from doing damage. The point of politics is to advance one’s preferred legislative agenda. What bipartisan compromise advocates on the left seem not to understand is that the Tea Party agenda will not have failed, even if Democrats do win victories in 2012. It will have succeeded in marvelous fashion.

Conservatives understand that they won’t win every election. They understand that politics is an ebb and flow. They also understand that when you do win, you have to make hay while the sun shines, and advance your legislative agenda as far as possible while you have power. They understand that you have to do everything in your power to stop the other side from doing likewise when you’re in the minority.

Sports metaphors are overused in political reporting from an electoral standpoint, but if anything underused from a public policy standpoint. Due to the two-party system in America, public policy looks very much like a game of American football: whether the question is taxes, regulation, environment or social policy, governance is essentially a zero-sum battle for field position on the gridiron, issue by issue.

Republicans know they won’t always have the ball. They’ll toss a few long passes, and sometimes their playbook will fail. Sometimes the American people will get fed up and force them to punt. But their objective is to tilt the playing field as much as possible in their favor, injure and batter as many members of the opposing team as possible, score as many points as possible and drive the ball as far down the field as possible until they have to give it up. (The analogy fails only in the sense that in football, a team has to give up the ball after they score. Not so in politics. But that’s a minor point.)

Democrats, meanwhile, rejoice whenever it looks like they’re about to get the ball back because Republicans went for too much ground, too fast. And when they do get the ball, they “learn from Republican mistakes”, and run careful plays along the ground to pick up a yard here and there. Nothing too fancy. Nothing too aggressive. Nothing too dangerous. Maybe we score a field goal here and there, particularly on social issues.

But, of course, eventually the GOP will get the ball back again. It’s a two-party system. Nobody stays in power forever. And when they do, they’ll again advance their agenda far more aggressively than Democrats and put more points up on the board.

The point of politics isn’t just to hold power, any more than a team wins a football game by having a longer time of possession than your opponent. The GOP has run up the score, and backed the Democrats up to their own economic 10-yard-line because of the Democrats’ soft defense.

The fact that we may yet get the ball back should hardly be cause for celebration, or an endorsement of the brilliance of our coaching staff. Over the last 30 years, we’re way behind on the scoreboard, and the other guys still have all the momentum.