Month: May 2012

Watching is destroy ourselves

by digby

Tom Tomorrow:

It is a mistake to equate federalism’s past with its future. State and local governments have become sites of empowerment for racial minorities and dissenters, the groups that progressives believe have the most to fear from decentralization. In fact, racial minorities and dissenters can wield more electoral power at the local level than they do at the national. And while minorities cannot dictate policy outcomes at the national level, they can rule at the state and local level. Racial minorities and dissenters are using that electoral muscle to protect themselves from marginalization and promote their own agendas.

Accountability for social conservatives

by David Atkins

This photo which has been going viral around the Internet in the last week speaks something I’ve been writing about here for a while:

There is a twin problem here: 1) a large number of the people who held those views forty years ago still hold them; and 2) there’s no accountability for those who did hold them. It’s all down the memory hole.

Progressives often don’t do a good job of holding conservatives accountable to the judgment of history. Which is weird, because old-school conservatism in our personal lives is seen as equivalent to having a sense of responsibility and taking care of the future, even if it comes with delayed gratification today. Modern conservatism, by contrast, is all about preserving the current power arrangement at the expense of the future. What should happen, then, is that we have an obligation to telescope the future into today, in the hope that those conservatives who aren’t sociopaths (the percentage of actual clinical sociopaths being quite small) will learn a sense of shame or at least become nervous about spouting their retrograde views so openly.

One of the ways we can do this is by simply holding accountable those who are consistently on the wrong side of history. We love to make television shows and do retrospectives of our heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr. But what about the people holding the signs in the picture above? Why not go interview them? Rather than interview the people who were beaten at Selma, why not have some interviews with the people who did the beating? Why not find out the story they told their children about race relations? Why not see how their children and grandchildren feel about their progenitors’ actions, and how they feel about the marriage equality fight in that context?

America is a forward-looking nation in many ways. But to keep it looking forward, it could certainly use a few glances backward not just at its brighter pinnacles but at its darkest depths as well. If only so that those depths can serve as direct object lessons for the continuing retrograde behavior of conservatives today.

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Taking care of business

by digby

So once again, you have to scratch your head and wonder what the Democrats are thinking. Dday writes:

It’s more than a little unnerving that, at a time when Wisconsin Democrats could be talking about Scott Walker’s failed jobs record or his assault on working people, they’re spending time trying to pass the blame for potential failure onto the state and national parties.

Top Wisconsin Democrats are furious with the national party — and the Democratic National Committee in particular — for refusing their request for a major investment in the battle to recall Scott Walker, I’m told […]

“We are frustrated by the lack of support from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Governors Association,” a top Wisconsin Democratic Party official tells me. “Scott Walker has the full support and backing of the Republican Party and all its tentacles. We are not getting similar support.”

“Considering that Scott Walker has already spent $30 million and we’re even in the polls, this is a winnable race,” the Wisconsin Dem continues. “We can get outspent two to one or five to one. We can’t get spent 20 to one.”

Specifically, the Wisconsin Dems wanted $500,000 for a field operation, which the DNC stonewalled. Apparently, after this post went up, the party confined its ire to the DNC, because the DGA “has already committed more to the recall fight than they’ve ever committed to a Wisconsin gubernatorial election in recent history.”

Dday thinks that Wisconsin Dems are looking at polls and have gotten cold feet and that state party ineptitude has led to this. But I also suspect the DNC doesn’t really see the harm in having Scott Walker in office. After all, they won’t spend any money to defeat Paul Ryan either. There are just some well connected big money Republicans that don’t seem to bother them very much for some reason.

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Bully pulpit for the ages

by digby

Scott Lemiuex has an interesting post up today talking about the fact that LBJ got his agenda through congress with legislative skill rather than the bully pulpit. I have no idea if he was thinking of this post of mine when he wrote it, probably not, but it made me realize that it’s probably important to distinguish what it is I mean when I talk about the bully pulpit.

It’s not about bullying, for one. I know that Lemieux knows this but it occurs to me that some people might think it means the president shaking his fist and telling everyone how it’s going to be. So no, it’s not that.

And I’m fairly sure that most people don’t think it’s something that takes the place of sharp legislative strategy. Indeed, the people who are least likely to be persuaded by Presidential speeches are legislators. It’s just part of the business to them.

So, what is it exactly? Wikipedia defines it like this:

An older term within the U.S. Government, a bully pulpit is a public office or other position of authority of sufficiently high rank that provides the holder with an opportunity to speak out and be listened to on any matter. The bully pulpit can bring issues to the forefront that were not initially in debate, due to the office’s stature and publicity.

This term was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt, who referred to the White House as a “bully pulpit,” by which he meant a terrific platform from which to advocate an agenda. Roosevelt famously used the word bully as an adjective meaning “superb” or “wonderful” (a more common expression in his time than it is today).

So, all it means is that the prestige of the presidency automatically commands public attention and can therefore be used to set the agenda or articulate certain values. I think that’s important, although I guess your mileage may vary. Indeed, I think it’s one of the few ways that political values can be articulated to the general public outside the morass of electioneering, which is largely a he said/she said endeavor.

The president has the biggest bully pulpit as the only leader elected nationally and whose office represents one branch of our government. Does speechifying have immediate legislative value? Maybe, sometimes. But for the most part it’s about being a leader to the country and explaining the meaning of your decisions, asking them for support, making the case for your political philosophy. Unless you want to leave it to a bunch of lawyers and advertising men to make utilitarian arguments each and every time you want to get something done it can be helpful to articulate a vision and values that last beyond the moment. More importantly, it allows other members of your party and your successors to carry that vision beyond your presidency.

Presidents have many powerful tools to work with. They have the awesome infrastructure of the executive branch and all the regulatory power that goes with that. In terms of affecting everyday lives, that’s the area over which they have the most sway and which gets very little publicity. They have their party apparatus, which is hugely powerful, and their own skills at negotiating to use in legislative battles. And they have the bully pulpit to educate the citizenry and try to change public opinion (or shore it up), which can be helpful, at least on the margins, to move legislation. Some presidents are more successful at wielding some aspects of presidential power than others. But mostly, they use them all to some degree or another to pass their preferred agenda. Indeed, none of them can count on just one.

As an activist I’m certainly thrilled at each momentous step toward progress, whether it’s health care or gay rights and I’m impressed with the various strategies that get them there. But I also hope that each of those gains be seen in ideological terms as expressive of liberal values. It’s damned difficult to reinvent the wheel all the time so an understanding of the ideology that guides a president who is making this progress makes it much easier for the next person to pick up the baton and go to the next step.

The bully pulpit can be an amazing educational tool — it can inspire and teach and create an emotional bond between the people and the political philosophy with which the person giving the speech identifies. Can it pass an individual piece of legislation? Probably not. But it can give the context within which people understand a piece of legislation and support it — and, more importantly, the successive legislation that’s built upon it.

None of this is to say that a president can convince his political opponents to back his program with his mere words. That’s silly. Even the popular Roosevelt had unpersuadable enemies. And in our current polarized political climate with the two sides living in alternate media worlds, that enemy will likely always be fierce and powerful. But any political leader has a responsibility to prepare the ground for the people who come up behind him, if only to secure his own legacy. Failing to use the bully pulpit for that purpose is a failure.

Getting back to Scott’s discussion of LBJ, it’s undoubtedly true that it was his legislative skills that managed to get the civil rights legislation passed. But his speeches on the subject, particularly “We shall overcome” will long be remembered and taught and most people will come away with a profound understanding of the morality of the cause and the context in which he made the case.

Scott also references FDR’s “welcome their hatred” speech and seems to imply that it led to 30 years of gridlock, which I don’t really understand. The amount of progressive legislation passed during Roosevelt’s first term was impressive and it took some time for the country to digest it all (and yes, spit some of it back.) Major legislative advances on race were stymied by the Dixiecrats, but the government itself expanded greatly under under Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon in dozens of ways. It’s true that the major civil rights legislation and Medicare finally passed partially as a result of LBJs legislative skills, but the fact that our young president had just been shot down in Dallas was a huge factor. The nation was riding an emotional tidal wave that Johnson very deftly rode, but it’s hard to see that even with his monumental skills as a legislator that he could have done all that on his own, bully pulpit or not. Just as it’s facile to say that the bully pulpit is all powerful, legislative skills is no foolproof way to predict the outcome of anything. I suspect it’s always a matter of context, timing, and political skill, however you define that.

I would also be interested in seeing some data that proves the “welcome their hatred” speech was what made Roosevelt’s agenda stall. I know that it’s very fashionable to pooh-pooh the idea that presidential speeches are anything more than a ridiculous waste of a thinking person’s time, and that the only thing that ever matters in an election is the economy, but I cannot then understand why a speech could have the power to completely destroy a presidential agenda either. It is certainly true that Roosevelt took a very wrong turn in 1937 and put the country back into a depression, but I’m guessing he was persuaded by his economic advisers that it was time to deal with the budget deficit and so he pulled back — which didn’t work out all that well. I suppose you can make a case that the Republicans made huge gains in 1938 because he was mean to the rich people, but I suspect it was more a result of Roosevelt foolishly backing a policy that made unemployment go up.

Right wing bill of indictment

by digby

Here’s a little quiz for you on a Monday morning. Which of the following do you think the Republicans will impeach Obama over if they get the chance?

Yes, he’s historic, alright.

• First President to Preside Over a Cut to the Credit Rating of the United States Government

• First President to Violate the War Powers Act

• First President to Orchestrate the Sale of Murder Weapons to Mexican Drug Cartels

• First President to issue an unlawful “recess-appointment” while the U.S. Senate remained in session (against the advice of his own Justice Department).

• First President to be Held in Contempt of Court for Illegally Obstructing Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

• First president to intentionally disable credit card security measures in order to allow over-the-limit donations, foreign contributions and other illegal fundraising measures.

• First President to Defy a Federal Judge’s Court Order to Cease Implementing the ‘Health Care Reform’ Law

• First President to halt deportations of illegal aliens and grant them work permits, a form of stealth amnesty roughly equivalent to “The DREAM Act”, which could not pass Congress

• First President to Sign a Law Requiring All Americans to Purchase a Product From a Third Party

• First President to Spend a Trillion Dollars on ‘Shovel-Ready’ Jobs — and Later Admit There Was No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Jobs

• First President to sue states for requiring valid IDs to vote, even though the same administration requires valid IDs to travel by air

• First President to Abrogate Bankruptcy Law to Turn Over Control of Companies to His Union Supporters

• First President to sign into law a bill that permits the government to “hold anyone suspected of being associated with terrorism indefinitely, without any form of due process. No indictment. No judge or jury. No evidence. No trial. Just an indefinite jail sentence.”

• First President to Bypass Congress and Implement the DREAM Act Through Executive Fiat

• First President to Threaten Insurance Companies After They Publicly Spoke out on How Obamacare Helped Cause their Rate Increases

• First President to Openly Defy a Congressional Order Not To Share Sensitive Nuclear Defense Secrets With the Russian Government

• First President to Threaten an Auto Company (Ford) After It Publicly Mocked Bailouts of GM and Chrysler

• First President to “Order a Secret Amnesty Program that Stopped the Deportations of Illegal Immigrants Across the U.S., Including Those With Criminal Convictions”

• First President to Demand a Company Hand Over $20 Billion to One of His Political Appointees

• First President to Terminate America’s Ability to Put a Man into Space.

• First President to Encourage Racial Discrimination and Intimidation at Polling Places

• First President to Have a Law Signed By an ‘Auto-pen’ Without Being “Present”

• First President to send $200 million to a terrorist organization (Hamas) after Congress had explicitly frozen the money for fear it would fund attacks against civilians.

• First President to Arbitrarily Declare an Existing Law Unconstitutional and Refuse to Enforce It

• First President to Tell a Major Manufacturing Company In Which State They Are Allowed to Locate a Factory

• First President to refuse to comply with a House Oversight Committee subpoena.

• First President to File Lawsuits Against the States He Swore an Oath to Protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN, etc.)

• First President to Withdraw an Existing Coal Permit That Had Been Properly Issued Years Ago

• First President to Fire an Inspector General of Americorps for Catching One of His Friends in a Corruption Case

• First President to Propose an Executive Order Demanding Companies Disclose Their Political Contributions to Bid on Government Contracts

• First President to Preside Over America’s Loss of Its Status as the World’s Largest Economy (Source: Peterson Institute)

• First President to Have His Administration Fund an Organization Tied to the Cop-Killing Weather Underground

• First President to allow Mexican police to conduct law enforcement activities on American soil

• First president to propose budgets so unreasonable that not a single representative from either party would cast a vote in favor (“Senate unanimously rejected President Obama’s budget last year in 0-97 vote”, Politico, “House Votes 414-0 to Reject Obama’s Budget Plan”, Blaze)

• First President to press for a “treaty giving a U.N. body veto power over the use of our territorial waters and rights to half of all offshore oil revenue” (The Law Of The Sea Treaty)

• First President to Golf 90 or More Times in His First Three Years in Office

You have to read the comments to get the full bill of indictment. Here’s a good example:

First president that has become more destructive to the US economy and our freedoms, spend more money destroying the freedoms of it’s own civilians than it spent fighting all of America’s enemies for all time, be more destructive to the US economy than America’s biggest enemies, bin laden, WW2 emperor of Japan and hitler, combined.

this is good too:

1st President who is a pathological liar, who hates America with all his soul, and will commit any crime, violate any standard, cross any boundary, and tell any lie in order to fulfill his demented agenda to destroy everything in his path to gain the power and wealth that will assure he is dictator for life.

Let’s just say the paranoid strain is alive and well.

I was joking about Impeachment, but I remember thinking Bob Barr was a clown when he did this:

Barr is best known for his role as one of the House managers during the Clinton impeachment trial. It was Barr who first introduced a resolution directing the House Judiciary Committee to inquire into impeachment proceedings — months before the Monica Lewinsky scandal came to light. Foremost among the concerns Barr cited at the time was apparent obstruction of Justice Department investigations into Clinton campaign fundraising from foreign sources, chiefly the People’s Republic of China.

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Austerity geniuses

by David Atkins

Looks like even the brilliant minds at the Wall Street Journal have figured out what the rest of us did long ago: cutting government jobs during an unemployment crisis is bad for the economy.

One reason the unemployment rate may have remained persistently high: The sharp cuts in state and local government spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and the layoffs those cuts wrought.

The Labor Department’s establishment survey of employers — the jobs count that it bases its payroll figures on — shows that the government has been steadily shedding workers since the crisis struck, with 586,000 fewer jobs than in December 2008. Friday’s employment report showed the cuts continued in April, with 15,000 government jobs lost.

But the survey of households that the unemployment rate is based on suggests the government job cuts have been much, much worse.

No kidding. They even have a nifty chart.

But, you can already hear conservative whines, “what about the deficit?” Yeah, um, about that:

And this is why people who know the first thing about public policy laugh at the bipartisanship fetishists and the people who insist that “both parties have gotten too extreme.” The facts are pretty one-sided here. They suggest that if anything, the President and the mainstream Democratic Party in the United States are too far to the right and too beholden to the austerity mavens, and the Republicans are living on a extremist conservative moon base with Newt Gingrich. This isn’t a problem that more bipartisanship will solve. Rather, it’s a situation where any “bipartisan” solution is almost guaranteed to do more damage than simply doing nothing. If Fiscal Doctor “D” is prescribing a diet of real medicine mixed with fingernails and lint, and Fiscal Doctor “R” is prescribing a diet of arsenic and plutonium, mixing the two prescriptions is a terrible idea.

This stuff doesn’t take a genius to figure out, which is why so many progressives come off as so cynical and angry in our writing. The problems are mostly obvious. The solutions are even more so. It’s clear that the only possible explanations for our collective plight are corruption and/or stupidity.

Which is worse? Well, corruption is theoretically easier to fix: throw the bums out and tighten the rules. Stupidity, groupthink, deer-in-the-headlights mentality and collective hysteria are much harder to deal with. And sadly, the more I see of the people who actually make policy, the more convinced I am that the latter problem far outweighs the former. The way the entire world has embraced austerity bespeaks far more than corruption. It indicates a herd mentality that evidently doesn’t escape policymakers around the world at even the very highest levels.

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Lemme welcome everybody to the Wild Wild West

by digby

Click on the above chart. As you can see, California has the largest state economy in the US. And it is also the 9th largest economy in the world, ahead of Spain, India, Canada, Russia and Australia. Unfortunately, the 9th largest economy in the world, already reeling, is about to go through another hit of austerity:

The state budget shortfall in California has increased dramatically in the last six months, forcing state officials to assemble a series of new spending cuts that are likely to mean further reductions to schools, health care and other social programs already battered by nearly five years of budget retrenchment, state officials announced on Saturday.

Gov. Jerry Brown, disclosing the development in a video posted on YouTube, said that California’s shortfall was now projected to be $16 billion, up from $9.2 billion in January. Mr. Brown said that he would propose a revised budget on Monday to deal with it.

“We are now facing a $16 billion hole, not the $9 billion we thought in January,” Mr. Brown said. “This means we will have to go much further and make cuts far greater than I asked for at the beginning of the year.”

Mr. Brown disclosed the news in a video that had all the trappings of a campaign announcement. In it, he aggressively accounted for the steps he said he had taken to try to scale back a $26 billion deficit he found upon taking office. And he urged viewers to back an initiative he is putting on the November ballot that would increase sales taxes by 0.25 percent and impose an income tax surcharge on wealthy Californians to try to stave off more cuts.

State officials said Mr. Brown’s proposal would include a package of immediate cuts, as well as others that would be triggered only if voters failed to approve his tax plan. The sales tax increase would expire after four years, while the income tax surcharge would last for seven years.

State officials said the shortfall was a result of disappointing revenue collections in April as California continued to struggle to pull out of the recession. “We are still recovering from the worst recession since the 1930s,” Mr. Brown said.

It’s possible that the people will agree to the tax increases, of course. The income taxes fall mainly on the very wealthy. But California’s history suggests they won’t. So what happens then? Is California going to be the kind of drag that Spain is on Europe’s economy? I don’t know. But recall how Paul Krugman compared Ireland and Nevada a couple of years ago:

Climate, scenery and history aside, the nation of Ireland and the state of Nevada have much in common. Both are small economies of a few million people highly dependent on selling goods and services to their neighbors. (Nevada’s neighbors are other U.S. states, Ireland’s other European nations, but the economic implications are much the same.) Both were boom economies for most of the past decade. Both had huge housing bubbles, which burst painfully. Both are now suffering roughly 14 percent unemployment. And both are members of larger currency unions: Ireland is part of the euro zone, Nevada part of the dollar zone, otherwise known as the United States of America.

But Nevada’s situation is much less desperate than Ireland’s.

First of all, the fiscal side of the crisis is less serious in Nevada. It’s true that budgets in both Ireland and Nevada have been hit extremely hard by the slump. But much of the spending Nevada residents depend on comes from federal, not state, programs. In particular, retirees who moved to Nevada for the sunshine don’t have to worry that the state’s reduced tax take will endanger their Social Security checks or their Medicare coverage. In Ireland, by contrast, both pensions and health spending are on the cutting block.

Ok, that’s true for California as well, at least as far as the elder programs are concerned (so far.) However, the consensus seems to be that other federal programs like unemployment, food stamps and medicaid need to be cut back — they’re promoting general laziness among the parasites and all. I think we’re going to continue to see a shrinkage of federal financial support for the states as well as continued shrinkage of the federal workforce. (According to this California has more federal workers than anywhere else in the country.)

And the drag of these state government austerity programs — most of them operate under a balanced budget requirement — is already a huge drag on the national economy:

Commenting on the first graph, Krugman said last month:

Obama, far from presiding over a huge expansion of government the way the right claims, has in fact presided over unprecedented austerity, largely driven by cuts at the state and local level. And it’s therefore an amazing triumph of misinformation the way that lackluster economic performance has been interpreted as a failure of government spending.

So we’re already in an austerity cycle and there’s little hope that I can see for any change at the political level. Indeed, everything indicates the government is going to cut back even further.

If the federal government continues to refuse to help out the states financially — especially a state as large as California, whose economy is actually bigger than Spain’s, it’s hard to see how it doesn’t drag down the entire country.

Here’s Krugman on Spain, just two weeks ago:

So, the euro crisis is risk on again. And this time it’s centered on Spain — which in a way is a good thing, because now the essential craziness of the orthodox German-inspired diagnosis of the crisis is on full display.

For this is really, really not about fiscal irresponsibility. Just as a reminder, on the eve of the crisis Spain seemed to be a fiscal paragon.

What happened to Spain was a housing bubble — fueled, to an important degree, by lending from German banks — that burst, taking the economy down with it. Now the country has 23.6 percent unemployment, 50.5 percent among the young.

And the policy response is supposed to be even more austerity, with the European Central Bank, natch, obsessing over inflation — and officials claiming that the incredibly foolish rate hike last year was actually something to be proud of.

Not exactly the same, but similar enough to be uncomfortable. (Today he says this, and it’s not pretty.)

I realize that Europe and the US face different problems. But one of the problems they have in common is a daft belief among policy makers in austerity during a depression As California goes even further into hardcore austerity mode, I’d expect some unpleasant side effects to the US economy as a whole.

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Risk Management

by digby

Hmmm:

Heads are starting to roll at JPMorgan Chase in the wake of the bank’s staggering $2 billion trading loss.

Ina Drew, the global bank’s chief investment officer and one of the most powerful women on Wall Street, has reportedly resigned, along with two other top executives.

Drew, a close associate of bank president Jamie Dimon, ran the risk-management division that was responsible for the enormous losses. She made $15.5 million last year.

The Wall Street Journal said the other two ousted execs are Achilles Macris, who ran the London-based desk that placed the trades, and managing director Javier Martin-Artajo.

Bruno Michel Iksil, the French-born finacier nicknamed ‘Voldemort’ and ‘the London Whale’ who was directly responsible for the trades, was not reported to be on the list.

I wonder why I keep coming back to this flick every time I read another story about risk management?

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Scouts have honor

by digby

The other day I wrote about how the Catholic hierarchy is going after the Girl Scouts again and I mentioned that they are reviving the old charge that they pass out pamphlets from Planned Parenthood to the girls. I frankly think they should pass out Planned Parenthood pamphlets to the girls but the fact is that it just isn’t true:

Last year, Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) was honored to attend and participate in the 54th Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations, where girls were encouraged to take action on global issues concerning women and girls. Our participation in that conference was recently the subject of numerous internet stories and blogs that are factually inaccurate and troubling. Here are the facts of that meeting:

* The Girls Only Workshop was jointly hosted by Girl Scouts of the USA, UNICEF’s Working Group on Girls, Girls Learn International and The Grail. The meeting was only open to the girls and participating sponsors.

* Only seven adults were in the room at the time of the meeting, each representing one of the sponsors of the event. No one from Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute was in the room to report on the event.

* 30 – 35 girls from across the world participated in this event. All teenagers.

* The girls received a copy of the only document they were working on titled (“The Girls’ Statement”). No other documents were given to the girls as part of this event.

* The room in question was also used to host other events over the course of the multi-day conference. Prior to our girls entering the room, we did not “sanitize’ the room to ensure that no trash or other items were left behind. We did request that those not associated with the sponsors leave the room prior to our session.

* The Girl Scouts of the USA was not contacted by Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) regarding its initial story to discuss the facts of this event. Had they applied these basic journalistic standards, perhaps the true details of this event would have been reported.

Our Mission in Girl Scouting is to build girls of courage, confidence and character – who make the world a better place. We continue to be proud of our girls and look forward to showing the world what our girls can do. We thank everyone for their support of Girl Scouting.

The spokesperson also added that “Girl Scouts does not take a position on abortion or birth control. The national umbrella organization, Girl Scouts of the USA does not have a relationship with Planned Parenthood on a national level and does not plan to have one.”

So, what’s the beef? They don’t take a position on birth control or abortion. They do honor Dolores Huerta, an activist for workers and women’s rights. And they don’t discriminate against lesbians. For this they are lied about and called the “l” word, which is the real problem:

“A collision course is probably a good description of where things are headed. The leadership of the Girl Scouts is reflexively liberal. Their board is dominated by people whose views are antithetical to the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

I’m pretty sure ignoring “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” is antithetical to the teaching of the Catholic Church, and it isn’t the Girl Scouts who are violating it.

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