Month: February 2012

The Verdict

by digby

This morning David asked if Santorum was stupid or crazy. As far as I’m concerned this tips it way over into the stupid side:

“What they have done? And I referred to it the other day and I got criticized by some of our, well, less-than-erudite members of the national press corps who have a difficulty understanding when you refer to someone’s ideology to the point where they elevate Earth, and they say that, well, men and humanity is just of a variety of different species on the Earth and should be treated no differently.”

He continued: “Whereas, we all know that man has a responsibility of stewards of the Earth, that we are good stewards and we have a responsibility to be good stewards. Why? Because unlike the Earth, we’re intelligent and we can actually manage things.”

“It’s so funny that this party that criticizes the right for being anti-science, but when it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones!” the candidate declared. “We’re the ones who stand for science and technology and using the resources we have to make sure we have a quality of life in this country and maintain a good and stable environment.”

Santorum added that there was “obviously a role for government to play” in environmental regulation, but it was best left to state and local government.

“Freedom isn’t to do whatever you want to do, it’s to do what you ought to do,” he opined.

Uh huh. Any idea what the hell he’s talking about there? I’m beginning to think Sarah Palin deserves more respect.

My favorite dumb remark in that word salad (and there are many) has to be the idea that environmental protection is best left to local and state governments. After all, the air and the water are all confined within the arbitrary lines on the 50 state maps. In fact, they’re confined to the arbitrary lines on the maps of each individual town, village and home. If your little berg wants to belch smoke into the air 24/7 it’s none of my bidness. And there’s no reason for you to be involved if I dump raw sewage into the river that runs through mine.

Why do we have a nation again? I can’t remember.

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Where’s all the campaign cash going?

by digby

Kevin Drum posts an interesting graph showing that presidential contests have become very expensive in just the last few years:

From 1964 all the way through 2000, the cost of presidential campaigns was pretty stable, ranging around $300-600 million in inflation-adjusted terms. It was only in 2004 and 2008 that costs suddenly went through the roof.

I wouldn’t have guessed that. I always figured that campaign costs had been rising inexorably for decades. But apparently not. They’ve only been rising inexorably for the past eight years.

Here’s my question again, which nobody ever seems to ask. Where’s all that money going?

Yesterday, I mused that it must be the television industry, and I’m still assuming that’s the case. But have their prices risen that much? Or is it the consultants? This precipitous rise in campaign costs means that somebody’s making a boatload of cash. Who?

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Going back to the 50s

by digby

I just can’t say how relieved I am that racism is dead in this country. Now we can relax and carry on as if it never happened:

An intensifying conservative legal assault on the Voting Rights Act could precipitate what many civil rights advocates regard as the nuclear option: a court ruling striking down one of the core elements of the landmark 1965 law guaranteeing African Americans and other minorities access to the ballot box.

At the same time, the view that states should have free rein to change their election laws even in places with a history of Jim Crow seems to be gaining traction within the Republican Party.

“There certainly has been a major change,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of election law at the University of California at Irvine. “Now, you have a whole bunch of credible mainstream state attorneys general and governors taking this view. … That would have been unheard of even five years ago. You would have been accused of being a racist.”

Some of the shift appears to be driven by resentment of what tea party members and others perceive as an overgrown, out-of-control federal government, as well as by widespread concern among Republicans about claims of voter fraud at the polls. Part of the change could also stem from more vigorous enforcement of voting rights laws by President Barack Obama’s Justice Department.

The issue has surfaced in the Republican presidential contest, including at one of the televised debates, and could move to the front burner within weeks as a federal appeals court in Washington prepares to rule on the leading lawsuit against the Voting Rights Act. That case, brought by Shelby County, Ala., is backed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Arizona and Georgia. At least three similar constitutional challenges are pending.

[…]

“There are obviously more elected officials today than there were who are willing to question the wisdom of keeping this provision” of the law, said the American Enterprise Institute’s Edward Blum, a longtime critic. “In 2006, it was very lonely being a voice against reauthorization.”

President George W. Bush didn’t just support renewal of the law — he held a Rose Garden celebration for the bill signing that included the entire Congressional Black Caucus and bipartisan supporters from the Senate and House. “Civil rights leaders from around the country were invited,” Blum said. “It was a big deal.”

A key indication that political consensus is crumbling came during a GOP presidential debate last month in South Carolina.

Fox commentator Juan Williams asked then-candidate Gov. Rick Perry of Texas about the federal role in guaranteeing voting rights. Perry drew raucous cheers from the crowd for promising that he would not allow the federal government to take actions “against the will of the people.”

“Are you suggesting on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that the federal government has no business scrutinizing the voting laws of states where minorities were once denied the right to vote?” Williams asked.

“I’m saying that the state of Texas is under assault by the federal government,” Perry replied. “I’m saying also that South Carolina is at war with this federal government and with this administration. If you look at what this Justice Department has done, not only have they taken [South Carolina] to task on voter ID, they’ve also taken them to task on their immigration law. When I’m the president of the United States, the states are going to have substantially more right to take care of their business. And not be forced by the EPA, or by the Justice Department for that matter, to do things that are against the will of the people.”

Readers of this blog are well aware of the GOP assault on voters’ rights over the past 20 years. The whole voter fraud trope is a rightwing construct developed in the wake of Jesse Jackson’s successful voter registration efforts in the late 1980s to suppress the African American vote. We all know what happened to ACORN. But the idea that the federal courts are possibly going to overturn parts of the Voting Rights Act is news to me.

As you can see from the above article this has all happened very, very quickly, picking up tremendous speed in just the last three years or so. There have been a number of events which may have precipitated it, but it’s happening.

It’s pretty hard to believe that the fruits of social progress like voting rights and legal contraception could be rolled back. But clearly they can be. And the funny thing is that it will be done in the name of freedom. But then it will be freeing for the people who will no longer have to accommodate these uppity women and minorities demanding their rights. You know, like it was in the good old days.

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Rick Santorum: Stupid or just Crazy?

by David Atkins

This must have been covered by others before, but here’s Rick Santorum on Twitter from February 13:

Obama is wrong. Government cannot force you to pay for something that violates faith or beliefs. Govt has no right to do this.

Unlike Gingrich or Romney, Rick Santorum doesn’t seem to be the type to say something like this purely as a political ploy. I think Rick actually believes this when he says it.

Which means one of three things:

1) He’s so stupid that he doesn’t understand the implications of this theory of government and taxation, in which case he shouldn’t be allowed near sharp objects unsupervised, much less the nuclear launch codes; or

2) He’s a power-mad situational ethicist who simply doesn’t give credence to any spiritual beliefs that might reject other things government pays for that people find morally objectionable, such as illegal wars, capital punishment, faith-based initiatives, etc. In which case he intends to rule with a dominionist iron fist of theocracy in which government needn’t pay a dime for anything his narrow of band co-religionists find objectionable, but must pay for things that others might well find immoral. In which case he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near power of any kind, even as a manager at McDonalds, to say nothing of Commander-in-Chief; or

3) He’s a member of the sovereign citizen movement, declaring each person a nation unto themselves to determine what if any tax laws apply to them. In which case he belongs under surveillance, not in the Oval Office.

It would be nice if a reporter would ask him to clarify his statement on Twitter, and try to elicit from him which of the three categories of instant disqualifications from the Presidency best fit this madman.

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Independence daze

by digby

Uh oh. It’s little Tommy Friedman, 6 years old*, dreaming of a magical unicorn who will make mommy and daddy stop fighting:

I still don’t know if I’d support an independent. Like others, I worry about electing the wrong person by accident. (See: Ralph Nader and George W. Bush.) But I know what I’d pay good money to see: an intelligent independent candidate just taking part in the presidential debates, because it would make both Obama and his Republican opponent better. One independent I’d like to see play that role is David Walker.

Walker was the country’s chief auditor, serving from 1998 to 2008 as the U.S. comptroller general. He is currently the chief executive of the Comeback America Initiative (www.tcaii.org), a nonpartisan group dedicated to getting America’s fiscal house in order. Walker — who came in second to Hillary Clinton in a reader poll that Politico conducted last October for favorite Third Party candidate — told me that he has no desire to run but that he’s been speaking across the country, trying to do what Perot did.

Yeah, he’s been very helpful — to his mentor and benefactor, wealthy anti-government conservative Pete Peterson, the man who has been saying since the mid 70s that we must immediately end “entitlements” or his grandchildren will all be living like animals. Meanwhile, the original doomed grandchildren are now grandparents themselves …(No word on global warming — apparently not in his wheelhouse.)

There is no secret to all this. It was revealed more than 30 years ago by Reagan’s budget chief David Stockman:

The purpose of ginning up the social security crisis was “to permit the politicians to make it look like they are doing something for the beneficiary population when they are doing something to it, which they normally would not have the courage to undertake.”

I get why David Walker, whose raison d’etre is to fearmonger the deficit does what he does. It’s his job. But what in the world is Thomas Friedman’s excuse?

*trademark Atrios

The Mitch and Michelle show

by digby

Here’s a charismatic pair for you:

I hadn’t heard the term “morning after abortion” before but it’s a good one.

If you didn’t know what they were talking about here, you’d assume that that Obamacare mandated abortions. Which isn’t an accident. They know their audience.

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A model for pushing back on anti-tax “Democrats” nationwide

by David Atkins

There has been an interesting dynamic in a local state senate election in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, which should serve as a model for how to deal with conservative anti-tax Democrats nationwide.

Hannah-Beth Jackson served in the California Assembly as a proud progressive. Eventually she was termed out by term limits, and ran for State Senate in 2008, where she lost by less than 1,000 to the virulently conservative Republican Tony Strickland, who ran a nasty anti-tax campaign against her.

After redistricting made the State Senate seat more favorable to Democrats this year, Hannah-Beth decided to take another run at the seat (Tony Strickland is jumping over to try a run at Congress in CA26 after veteran Republican Elton Gallegly’s retirement.)

Firefighter and conservative Democrat Jason Hodge won a seat on Oxnard’s Harbor Commission in 2010 and has been looking for a race to run in to further his political ambitions, and decided to run against Hannah-Beth in SD19 as well. His optimism in the race is fueled by California’s new top-two primary system, in which the two candidates receiving the most votes in June now advance to November, regardless of party affiliation. That has led to centrist candidates running direct appeals to decline-to-state unaffiliated voters, in an attempt to marginalize the two parties.

Hodge received several local labor endorsements in spite of Hannah-Beth Jackson’s strongly pro-labor record. This was partly due to his being a firefighter, partly due to the longtime conservative leanings of many local labor leaders, and partly due to petty patronage network issues. Hannah-Beth, by contrast, won the California Democratic Party endorsement with massive support from local progressive delegates, despite a hard-fought attempt by some local labor leaders to game the Democratic endorsement process on Hodge’s behalf against the progressive grassroots.

Now the Hodge campaign has been distributing walking literature with the message that he’s “the Democrat who doesn’t think you need higher taxes.”

But an interesting thing has happened since then: rather than buckling under and getting scared of an anti-tax “Democrat” with local labor support, there’s been a major pushback instead by Democrats, labor and progressive groups:

19th Senate District candidate Jason Hodge began his campaign against fellow Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson with an impressive early showing among organized labor, racking up both campaign contributions and endorsements — including that of the Tri Counties Central Labor Council.

But that may be changing, thanks in large part to a piece of campaign literature that Hodge has been leaving on district doorknobs. It proclaims Hodge to be “The Democrat Who Doesn’t Think You Need Higher Taxes…”

But in the context of the 2012 campaign, Hodge’s slogan rankles organized labor, which is rallying behind one or more initiatives that could be headed to the November ballot that will ask California voters to increase taxes to provide additional revenue to boost school spending.

The SEIU reported this week that a “town hall” process involving members in the districts resulted in an endorsement of Jackson. And sources tell me there are efforts afoot to deny Hodge the California Labor Federation federation endorsement when the statewide group meets this spring to consider whether to ratify the local labor caucus’ decision to back Hodge.

Hopefully this sort of pushback will become a model for fighting back against conservative anti-tax Democrats nationwide, even when local labor leaders and powerful politicians support them (Hodge has been endorsed by CA Speaker of the Assembly John Perez, partly because of Hodge’s marriage to termed-out assemblymember Fiona Ma.)

This is also why it’s important for progressives to get involved in institutional Democratic politics if they can stomach it. Before more progressives started getting involved in Ventura and Santa Barbara County Democratic politics about 6 years ago, a candidate like Hodge might well have advanced with much more local institutional support, and without the sort of resistance that Hodge has encountered. But with greater progressive strength locally and a governor in Jerry Brown who isn’t afraid to advance the notion of fairer taxation on the top 1%, the direction of political pressure is finally moving leftward rather than rightward.

And that’s a good thing.

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War without enemies

by digby

Via Republic Report:

Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s campaign manager, assured a group of Democratic donors from the financial services industry that Obama won’t demonize Wall Street as he stresses populist appeals in his re-election campaign, according to two people at the meeting.

At the members-only Core Club in Manhattan, Messina provided a campaign briefing last night for some of the president’s top donors, including Ralph Schlosstein, chief executive officer at Evercore Partners Inc., and his wife, Jane Hartley, co-founder of the economic and political advisory firm Observatory Group LLC; Eric Mindich, founder of Eton Park Capital Management LP; and Ron Blaylock, co-founder of GenNx360 Capital Partners.

Well, that’s a relief …

So, are we going with populism without a villain? Or are we going to blame the poor and the government like the right wingers do? Stay tuned.

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The perils of a cheap and easy argument

by digby

Adele Stan is pitching in at the Washington Monthly this week-end and makes a point that can’t be made enough: if you root your arguments in right wing assumptions, you will eventually find yourself backed into a corner by right wingers. She comments on Ross Douthat’s latest scribble which points out that abortion rates are higher in places where abortion is more available (which strikes me as a thoroughly silly observation.) But then he throws the DLC tested “safe legal and rare” slogan in liberals’ faces, pointing out that we obviously don’t practice what we preach. Adele concedes the problem and then writes:

What’s really at issue in Douthat’s column is the perils of accepting the right-wing frame when constructing liberal positions. By unilaterally presenting abortion as a very bad thing in the 1990s, the message mavens of the Clinton administration, with their construction of “safe, legal and rare,” gave abortion opponents a rhetorical rationale for piling on restrictions that, in many states, make abortion inaccessible to increasing numbers of women — despite the fact that the Supreme Court decided decades ago that their right to the procedure is protected by the Constitution.

Reasons matter. Political arguments must be based upon truth if they are going to ultimately be persuasive. Those grounded in right wing philosophical assumptions are inevitably going to bring you to a right wing conclusion. The minute I heard that “safe, legal and rare” platitude (especially when uttered by Bill Clinton who put a whole lot of emphasis on the “rare” part) I knew it was wrong — it gave credence to all these attempts to stop women from exercising their constitutional right to abortion. As Douthat says, according to liberals, it’s as important that it be rare as it is that it be legal and safe. So, why aren’t we supporting all these crude attempts to talk women out of it?

Stan makes the point further about the “born this way” campaign for the LGBT community. It’s catchy. But it skirts the real issue, which is that it’s none of the government’s damned business who consenting adults love, sleep with or make a family. Every time we concede these points, we end up having to reinvent the wheel.

Fundamental human rights and liberties are fundamental human rights and liberties. Maybe we should just make the arguments on the merits for a change and see what happens. As Adele says:

Our rights come from the Constitution, not from some set of “Judeo-Christian values” selectively defined by right-wing politicians. Leave it to the religious institutions to promote their values as they see fit. After all, that’s their constitutional prerogative.

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My breakfast with Chris Hayes

by digby

As usual, a great Chris Hayes show this week-end featuring segments you just won’t see anywhere else on cable news networks (or anywhere!)

For instance:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I realize that admitting you are a socialist in America is only slightly worse than admitting you are a child molester, but perhaps if people would actually define it like that it might sound a little less ominous.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend earlier talking about the fact that when you are young you tend to think that the reality you know is permanent and that social progress can never be reversed. Here’s a little example of how that isn’t true. The words “socialist” and “communist” were epithets when I was young, for sure. But after the fall of the Soviet Empire I think we all thought that they would no longer be useful or that people would even understand what they meant anymore. That hasn’t turned out to be true, has it? Nobody used it much for 20 years but ever since Obama was elected, it’s been as if Kruschev pounded on the desk with his shoe just yesterday. It’s the damnedest thing. And I’m fairly sure it’s just a vague meme, with no real meaning for most of the people who use it. It was just there lurking in the subconscious waiting to be put to use again whenever they needed it.

Update: This piece by RJ Eskow explains why Obama isn’t actually a socialist — and why that’s too bad.

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