Month: January 2012

The big money

by David Atkins

Josh Marshall makes a good point:

The Gov. Walker recall campaign is going to cost at least $100 million. A few cycles ago that was what a presidential run cost.

In the long run, there’s no way progressives can win with that kind of money being thrown around. The public just doesn’t have the time, attention and energy to mobilize on large scales like that every election cycle, even as corporations make it a regular feature of their expense accounts. As it is, one of the biggest problems with government is the fact that in order to stay in office, politicians have to spend at least four hours a day fundraising. That’s insane. They can’t do their jobs that way, and it’s no wonder the system is perpetually corrupted. Politicians are human like the rest of us. If they know that making a decision that earns the wrath of big pockets means not only taking fire and heat personally, but ensuring that they have to spend hundreds of hours on the phones and rubber chicken dinner circuits just to make up the difference, it’s no surprise that many of them would rather spend that time with their families instead, and cave on important bills.

We can win victories in the short-term on the most crucial and egregious fronts. But unless something is done to nip this in the bud, it’s going to be a losing battle long-term.

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Self-help for frustrated rich people

by digby

So Charles Murray has a new book out called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. And, lo and behold it appears to say that the reason for all our troubles is the bad character of poor people. What a shocker.

Greg Anrig takes a look at some of the excerpts in the Wall Street Journal and concludes that Murray is fudging the numbers. Again. And he’s blaming the usual suspects for bringing us all down. Anrig writes:

Murray goes on, as always, to blame the Great Society reforms:

The creation of Medicare and Medicaid, the enactment of civil rights legislation, and programs like Food Stamps and job training set in motion a vicious cycle that led lower-income whites to stop going to church, watch more TV, and feel more alienated from the rest of the society. Even though we now incarcerate a far higher share of our citizens than any advanced country and violent crime rates have plummeted, it was laxity toward crime back in the 1960s that explains why the gap in out-of-wedlock births became much higher over that time period. The logic for those explanations may be difficult to track, and maybe Murray takes a stab at providing some evidence in support of those claims in the book itself. But if past is prologue, that evidence is likely to be highly dubious.

The solution, Murray argues, is for the upper-class to start wagging its fingers at everyone else:

The best thing that the new upper class can do to provide that reinforcement is to drop its condescending “nonjudgmentalism.” Married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids shouldn’t hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy these norms. When it comes to marriage and the work ethic, the new upper class must start preaching what it practices.

That should work like a charm. And it’s good to know that Murray has finally figured out a way to escape his racist past — he’s blaming poor whites for being too weak-willed to resist the lures of the welfare state that was designed for blacks. Perhaps that’s a form of progress.

Murray has created a quiz for everyone to take to determine if they are a member of the white working class. It would seem that he believes most upper middle class Americans spend their time at the opera or watching re-runs of Alistair Cooke’s America while nibbling on bran muffins with fois gras. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that — well, maybe the fois gras.)

Anyway, you can take the test yourself — or for even more fun, you can take the test with Jay Ackroyd and Marcy Wheeler tonight on Virtually Speaking. According to my quite high score, I am among the great unwashed lower classes, or at least have traveled extensively among them. Who knew? (Except me, of course.)

Anrig notes that David Brooks is all aquiver with excitement about this book, which stands to reason. It is a reprise of Brooks’ anthropological study of American culture as seen through chain restaurants and grocery store buying habits. But like Brooks’ before him, Murray’s latest gives away the game. The test is clearly geared toward the over-educated, upper middle class white person who would buy such a book in the first place. And its thesis about the lower orders lack of good character and bad habits is clearly designed to make those readers feel good about themselves by contrast. Basically it’s Dr Phil for closet racists and wealthy pricks. I’m sure it will sell well.

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Religious Reactionaries stick together

by digby

Perlstein’s column today is a fascinating recent history of religion in American politics. It’s specifically about how the right will have little problem accepting Mitt’s Mormonism because they always come around on this when the chips are down. Read the whole thing. I think it’s persuasive.

I just want to highlight one bit of information which I don’t think is common knowledge:

You may have heard of the group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Nowadays Evangelicals despise it as a heathen outfit bent on banishing God from the public square. (Here they celebrate the civil liberties victory represented by the display of a Flying Spaghetti Monster next to the Nativity scene at the courthouse in Loudoun County, Virginia.) A generation ago, however, Evangelicals were fans – back when the group was known as “Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State,” and was the institutional home for those who feared the Roman church was a wicked conspiracy to colonize the United States.

Think about that. In the 1960s “Americans United for the Separation of Church and State” was called “Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State”. I’m pretty sure that clearly illustrates how times have changed.

All this started changing in the 1970s. Fighting abortion had once been an almost exclusively Catholic crusade; indeed much of the work Americans United for the Separation of Church and State was devoted to fighting those attempting to ban abortion, on the grounds that such attempts sought to introduce into government “a biased religious viewpoint.” Which was around the time Evangelicals began separating themselves from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. They, Evangelicals, wanted to ban abortion too – and were now willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with Catholics to do it. Christianity Today, the magazine founded by Billy Graham, advised its readers in 1975 not to fear joining the “pro-life” cause; it had “matured,” and could “no longer be dismissed as a group of cold-hearted Catholics simply taking orders from the Pope.”

Rick doesn’t go into this in his piece, but it’s worth pointing out here. From The Nation on the occasion of Jerry Falwells death:

While abortion clinics sprung up across the United States during the early 1970s, evangelicals did little. No pastors invoked the Dred Scott decision to undermine the legal justification for abortion. There were no clinic blockades, no passionate cries to liberate the “pre-born.” For Falwell and his allies, the true impetus for political action came when the Supreme Court ruled in Green v. Connally to revoke the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory private schools in 1971. At about the same time, the Internal Revenue Service moved to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, which forbade interracial dating. (Blacks were denied entry until 1971.) Falwell was furious, complaining, “In some states it’s easier to open a massage parlor than to open a Christian school.”

Seeking to capitalize on mounting evangelical discontent, a right-wing Washington operative and anti-Vatican II Catholic named Paul Weyrich took a series of trips down South to meet with Falwell and other evangelical leaders. Weyrich hoped to produce a well-funded evangelical lobbying outfit that could lend grassroots muscle to the top-heavy Republican Party and effectively mobilize the vanquished forces of massive resistance into a new political bloc. In discussions with Falwell, Weyrich cited various social ills that necessitated evangelical involvement in politics, particularly abortion, school prayer and the rise of feminism. His pleas initially fell on deaf ears.

“I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Weyrich recalled in an interview in the early 1990s. “What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.”

These cross-currents are always there. And religious reactionaries seem to be able to find a way to work together when it comes to suppressing any pressure for freedom and equality from below. They just need to find that sweet spot.

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Deterrence

by digby

Let’s put death row on an assembly line:

Republican Rep. Larry Pittman, who was appointed to the District 82 House seat in October, expressed his views in an email sent Wednesday to every member of the General Assembly. […]

“We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out. Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner,” Pittman wrote in the email. “If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.”

I’m for drawing and quartering myself. It really sends a message.

But I don’t think there’s ever going to be a proper deterrent to abortion until women are publicly executed. You’re never going to stop these people from getting themselves pregnant and some of them aren’t going to do their duty no matter what. The only way to properly deter them is to kill them.

The good news is this fellow is just one of many kindly folks who are tragically misunderstood. We just need to convince them of the error of their ways so they’ll understand that we are all in this together. I’m sure they’ll see it sometime soon.

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Citizen Training

Four gutless Dems kill single-payer in California

by David Atkins

If the drama of the first two years of the Obama presidency is any indication, it’s obvious that single-payer healthcare won’t be coming at a national level any time soon. Fortunately, however, individual states can carry the torch where the national system is too corrupt to do so. While single-payer has passed in Vermont, the real reforms will come when big states with negotiating leverage enact it and begin to drive costs down in a big way while expanding and ameliorating coverage. California seemed like the likeliest big state to begin this process: after all, Governor Schwarzenegger twice vetoed a single-payer bill that had made its way through the legislature. So with Jerry Brown in office, it seemed reasonable to expect that the same bill would make it to the Governor’s desk for a signature.

But not so fast:

California’s “Medicare for all” universal health care legislation fell short of the 21 votes needed to pass the state Senate today.

Senate Bill 810 failed on a 19-15 vote during this morning’s floor session, with four moderate Democrats abstaining and one voting no.

Democratic Sen. Mark Leno, who authored the bill, said the proposal would stabilize health care costs and expand access to coverage.

He called the bill, which does not include funding to cover the projected $250 billion annual cost of running the single-payer system, the first step in a “many year project” that will likely require asking voters to approve financing. He encouraged members to support the bill to allow the policy discussion to continue.

No Republicans voted for the bill. Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Moorpark, criticized the proposal as an attempt to create “another costly and inefficient bureaucracy.”

“There’s no doubt that we need health care reform, there’s no doubt that we need to improve our health care system, but members, this is not the bill to move forward,” he said.

The bill faces a Tuesday deadline for passing the state Senate in the current legislative session.

That’s my Republican State Senator Tony Strickland, who narrowly beat my good friend progressive Hannah-Beth Jackson by under 900 votes in the last election, and who is now running for Congress after redistricting made his Senate seat too Democratic to handle (Hannah-Beth will likely pick up the seat this year over primary opposition from anti-tax conservadem Jason Hodge.) Redistricting elsewhere in California should give us a couple more Senate seats as well going into 2013.

But the problem here isn’t so much Tony Strickland. The problem is the gutless Democrats in blue districts who have nothing to lose by voting against single-payer healthcare when there’s actually a chance of passing it, except for the wrath of insurance companies if they go for higher office. But rather than voting for or against the bill, they simple abstained, in the most gutless move possible. jpmassar at DailyKos has a rundown of who they are and their contact information:

Senator Alex Padilla (Pacoima/LA area)
Email: Senator.Padilla@sen.ca.gov
Phone: (916) 651-4020
Fax: 916324-6645

Senator Juan Vargas (San Diego area)
Email: Juan.Vargas@sen.ca.gov
Phone: (916) 651-4040
Fax: (916) 327-3522

Senator Michael Rubio (Fresno/Bakersfield area)
Email: Michael.Rubio@sen.ca.gov
Phone: (916) 651-4016

Senator Rod Wright (Los Angeles area)
Email: Senator.Wright@sen.ca.gov
Phone: (916) 651-4025
Fax: (916) 445-3712

Some of them have tougher districts than others; Padilla, for instance, is utterly inexcusable as he’s in a solid blue district. But it doesn’t matter. Regardless of how tough the district, and even if one grants the unlikely theory that taking a “yea” vote on single-payer would be career suicide, this issue above all is a bill to fall on one’s sword for. The opportunity to really and truly pass single-payer healthcare is why one gets into Democratic politics. It’s the equivalent of taking the game-winning shot at the buzzer in Game 7 of the finals, or kicking the winning field goal in the Super Bowl. And these sniveling cowards didn’t just miss the shot; they didn’t even pull the trigger.

Then, of course, there are the two truly awful Conservadems in the CA Senate, Ron Calderon and Lou Correa, who voted “no”. Their contact information is below–though getting through to them is like talking to a brick wall:

Senator Ron Calderon
Phone: (916) 651-4030
senator.calderon@sen.ca.gov

Senator Lou Correa
Phone: (916) 651-4034
senator.correa@sen.ca.gov

Yes, there’s much to fault the Obama Administration for over the last few years. But the President didn’t have the opportunity to cast a deciding vote on passing single-payer healthcare for tens of millions of people. These guys did, and they blew it on the big stage.

Call them. Email them. Make them feel the heat of ten thousand suns. They deserve no less. They can still change their minds before the Tuesday deadline, but they’re running out of time.

And rest assured that as long as I’m involved in California politics, this California Democratic Executive Board member will work to oppose each and every one of them in a primary for any office they might seek in the future if this bill doesn’t go to the Governor’s desk this year.

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Post partisan depression

by digby

Last week the political world was all agog over Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker article about the administration in which he revealed that after three long years of GOP obstruction the president resigned himself to the fact that post-partisanship wasn’t going to work out. It may have shifted something fundamental — for the first time people in the Village are questioning whether their beloved bipartisanship is the only way the government can function.

Personal invasion

by David Atkins

This is brilliant:

To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.

“We need some gender equity here,” she told HuffPost. “The Virginia senate is about to pass a bill that will require a woman to have totally unnecessary medical procedure at their cost and inconvenience. If we’re going to do that to women, why not do that to men?”

The Republican-controlled senate narrowly rejected the amendment Monday by a vote of 21 to 19, but passed the mandatory ultrasound bill in a voice vote. A similar bill in Texas, which physicians say has caused a “bureaucratic nightmare,” is currently being challenged in court.

Howell said she is not surprised her amendment failed.

“This is more of a message type of an amendment, so I was pleased to get 19 votes,” she said.

She pointed out that there are only seven women in the Virginia senate, and six of them voted in favor of her amendment, along with 13 male senators. Sen. Jill Vogel (R-Fauquier County), the sponsor of the mandatory ultrasound bill, voted against it.

Humor and counterpoint are some of the Left’s most effective tools, and there’s no reason they should be left just to late night comedians.

On another note, I’m increasingly convinced that electing more progressive women to office is a core strategy for the renewal of this country. There are a lot of good ones in state legislatures, ready to move onto the national stage.

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Tell me again why I’m supposed to care that “progressive” Catholics are unhappy that president Obama mandated that Catholic institutions that employ people who are not members of the faith have to provide birth control coverage under the health care law? I’m hearing they feel “betrayed.”

Exceptionalism!

by digby

If we can just get those taxes down to nothing and eliminate all impediments to inheritance, we should be able to successfully recreate the British aristocracy in a generation. The founders would be proud.

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