Month: June 2012

Here’s an interesting new Pew Poll about polarization. Apparently there are more swing voters, even as the two parties are more distinct and polarized, which says that these people really don’t know their own minds. (After all, if the two parties are very far apart, you’d think it would make it more likely that a person would pick one or the other, not go back and forth.)

While Republicans and Democrats have been moving further apart in their beliefs, both groups have also been shrinking. Pew Research Center polling conducted so far in 2012 has found fewer Americans affiliating with one of the major parties than at any point in the past 25 years. And looking at data from Gallup going back to 1939, it is safe to say that there are more political independents in 2012 than at any point in the last 75 years.

Currently, 38% of Americans identify as independents, while 32% affiliate with the Democratic Party and 24% affiliate with the GOP. That is little changed from recent years, but long-term trends show that both parties have lost support.

Now look at this and tell me what’s wrong with that:

Do you see what I see? That’s right, the Democratic share has been fairly constant. The new Independents are coming from the Republican ranks. Why Pew chose to say that it’s been an equal fall off for both parties is anyone’s guess, but it doesn’t appear to be true.

Meanwhile, the Wankstock dream will never die:

Scott Walker’s America?

by digby

Perlstein’s on the ground in Wisconsin, his home state. And he’s scaring me:

A truck stop. A pleasant woman’s voice over an AM radio station: “… the corrected numbers show large job job gains … the reforms made job creators more confident …. Wisconsin is getting back to work …” The ad’s sponsor is the “WMC Foundation,” as in Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business organization, who have scored the neat trick of simultaneously blanketing the state with misleading pro-Walker ads and mainlining into the media an ostensibly objective survey in which its membership overwhelmingly affirms that thanks to Walker’s “reforms” they’ll be hiring more … soon.


Wisconsinites meanwhile pulled out their phones and saw texts reading, “Tom Barrett is a Union Puppet who will give Union Thugs everything they want. Call & ask why 414-271-8050.” That’s Barrett campaign headquarters – whose switchboard was promptly shut down by the deluge of calls.

Welcome to Scott Walker’s Wisconsin – and, if Wisconsin fails to do the right thing today, Scott Walker’s America: dirty tricks and intricately nested corporate-sponsored lies, states competing with one another to out-Dixie Dixie, glittering simulations of democracy on TV commercials paid for by cruel lying billionaires, passed on verbatim by reporters too lazy to care.

Unfortunately, that vision of Walker’s America is all too real. As I get older I realize more than ever that things can (and often do) get worse.

It’s immensely difficult to beat the kind of relentless corporate backed propaganda and lies that have been blanketing Wisconsin. But if anyone can do it, Wisconsin progressives can. Fingers crossed …

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Get out there and vote!

by David Atkins

It’s super primary Tuesday today. That means Wisconsin recall, and primaries all over the nation, including in South Dakota, California, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Montana.

If you live in Wisconsin, you know what to do. Get rid of Walker and his lackeys in the state senate. Clear that ugliness out of that beautiful capitol building in Madison and give back to teachers, firefighters and so many other working families in Wisconsin the right to negotiate for a decent standard of living.

If you live in California, Howie Klein has a list of great candidates, including fantastic progressive Norman Solomon. There are two initiatives in the state, propositions 28 and 29. Prop28 adjusts term limits from 14 years to 12 (sounds bad!), but crucially it allows legislators to serve all twelve years in one chamber. Please vote on 28 if, like me, you despise term limits. Prop29 is the tobacco tax to fund cancer research. I’m a yes on that, but make your own decision as you see fit.

If you live in Los Angeles, chances are you fall into a district with a battle between Brad Sherman and Howard Berman, and/or Torie Osborn and Betsy Butler. The progressive choices there are Sherman and Osborn, hands down.

If you live in Ventura County, there is a huge Congressional race that is #1 on the national radar right now. There are four Democrats running against the execrable Tony Strickland and the deficit-obsessed, just-switched-from-Republican-to-“independent” Linda Parks. Fortunately, the strongest Democrat in the race is also the most progressive of the bunch, and that’s Julia Brownley, author of the campaign finance disclosure bill in California and a great champion for education and the environment. Overlapping Ventura and Santa Barbara counties is also a State Senate race featuring a Republican (Mike Stoker) and two Democrats (Hannah-Beth Jackson and Jason Hodge.) Hodge is the very definition of a conservadem, while Hannah-Beth is an admirable progressive. Please vote for Hannah-Beth Jackson.

I don’t know much about what’s happening in the rest of the states, but if you have recommendations, especially in Dem vs. Dem primaries where we can help change the Democratic Party for the better, list it in the comments, and I’ll update this post throughout the day.

And for those of you who are going to pipe into the comments and insist what a waste of time voting is because it’s all controlled by the oligarchy blah blah bah, I’m sorry for you and I’m also not listening. Even if you’re right, people in other countries are dying for the right to do what you throw away so casually. It only takes two minutes to vote. Even if you believe voting effectuates practically no change at all, it’s also the very least you can do. Just get out there and do it, please, in the most progressive way you can, however you interpret that. And then go back to making legitimate complaints about the system and organizing in other ways for the rest of the 364 days, 23 hours, and 58 minutes for the next 12 months.

Today we vote. And no matter what happens, tomorrow we keep on fighting for progressive values as best as we know how.

Update: In the comments, Carl Manaster has an excellent reminder: In California’s CD52, please vote for Lori Saldaña, a strong progressive over a lazy weak establishment Dem – competing to take out Brian Bilbray. http://lori4congress.com/ I was up at 5am delivering vote reminders to her declared supporters.

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Another day, another Koch Brothers assault on democracy

by digby

Lee Fang strikes again:

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice asked officials in Florida to suspend the controversial voter purge conducted by Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) administration, citing possible violations of voting rights law. Florida officials had been purging a list of suspected non-citizen voters, estimated at one point to include at least 180,000 people, despite evidence that the list is riddled with errors. Thousands of targeted voters are in fact American citizens. As ThinkProgress and the Miami Herald have reported, a great deal of the individuals also happen to be Hispanics and Democratic-leaning voters, suggesting the effort is deeply partisan.

The plan for the purge, according to a story from the Associated Press, was initiated last year by then-Secretary of State Kurt Browning after a meeting with the governor. Browning said he was motivated by a “Spidey sense tingling” to undergo a massive project to develop the list now being used to send letters to registered Florida voters informing them that they have been flagged as non-citizens. Although both Gov. Scott and Browning have downplayed accusations that the purge is political, a donation from a secret money group may fuel growing suspicions that the effort is partisan.

Just before Browning was selected in 2011 by Scott as Secretary of State, Browning led a group called “Protect Your Vote Inc,” which was set up to oppose fair redistricting. One of the biggest checks to Browning’s organization came from the Center to Protect Patients’ Rights, which gave $100,000 in 2010. At the time of the donation, the source of the money was shrouded in secrecy.

You guessed it: Protect Your Vote Inc is yet another Koch Brothers tentacle of hell.

This would be funny at this point if it weren’t so dangerous. No matter what rock gets overturned, Koch money is underneath it. Of course they can afford it. They’re worth 50 billion dollars. This is chump change to them.

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World is round? Opinions differ

by digby

Stop the presses. Breaking news:

When President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign unveiled its new slogan, some conservative critics were quick to pounce. “Forward,” they asserted, is a word long associated with Europe’s radical left. Its choice reaffirmed their contention that Obama is, to some degree or other, a socialist – a claim that surfaced early in the 2008 campaign and has persisted ever since, fueling a lively industry of bumper stickers and books…

But to many historians and political scientists – and to actual socialists as well – the persistent claim that Obama is a socialist lacks credence.

He’s widely seen as a pragmatist within the Democratic Party mainstream who’s had ample success raising campaign funds from wealthy Wall Street capitalists. Even some of his strongest critics acknowledge that his administration hasn’t sought one of the classic forms of socialism – government control of the nation’s means of production.

You don’t say.

I guess in a country where 46% of the population are creationists, it’s reasonable that a news agency would explore a stupid topic like this. But there is no reason, once they did their “investigation”, not to come right out and say that Obama isn’t a socialist. He says he isn’t and his policies aren’t so this isn’t a matter of interpretation. It is a fact. Obama is not a socialist. End of story. What am I missing?

I don’t suppose you’ll be surprised to learn that I got the link to this story from Fox Nation, where this is a fairly representative comment:

Funny as heII … trolls refuse to acknowledge they or Obama are socialists … yet day after day they flout Europe and Canada’s socialist “successes”. So why are they afraid to be labeled what they endorse?

Because … the Communist Party of the USA has endorsed Obama since day one of his political career. They want to stay as far away from that truth AS POSSIBLE.

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The video all policymakers need to watch

by David Atkins

Digby mentioned yesterday in passing this amazing destruction of two Tory politicians by Paul Krugman, but it really deserves its own post. This needs to be seen by every public policymaker around the world.

It’s so tiresome watching Paul Krugman and fellow anti-austerity activists be right about everything, but continue to be ignored. It’s a big reason why we’re increasingly on edge and impatient with the “centrist” pro-austerity crowd. There’s nothing more frustrating than continually being right and making accurate predictions, only to be ignored time and again by the same discredited yet unfazed, still-confident acolytes of failed conventional wisdom.

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Conservatives: reckless gamblers giving you life planning advice

by David Atkins

One of the most remarkably asinine things you’ll hear conservatives say during this economic crisis is that the answer to youth unemployment and student debt is for more young people to start their own small businesses. You can see example after example of this “very serious” advice, including this clueless article from Time’s business section:

The U.S. government is being strangled by partisan politics. Youth employment is at a 60-year low. Student-loan debt is approaching $1 trillion (and default rates are rising quickly).

Yet young Americans are far more optimistic about the country’s future than the pundits would have you believe — and they are demonstrating that optimism through entrepreneurship. According to a 2011 survey, 23% of young people started a business as a result of being unemployed. Fifteen percent started a business in college. And let’s not forget the veterans, who are twice as likely as other Americans to own businesses.

So why are so few pundits and politicians building on that entrepreneurial energy as a solution to joblessness and economic malaise? The fact is, it’s high time we funneled our collective energy toward rebuilding an entrepreneurial America.

Or there’s the very prim Tory who advocated the same thing to Paul Krugman:

What we need to be doing is really making it easier to young people to start their own businesses, making it far far easier for new entrepreneurs. I mean, you say we have to give them jobs, create jobs, we shouldn’t be about creating jobs, we should be about enabling the economy to create jobs by low tax regimes, opportunities for people to start businesses and so on, not by creating jobs.

Nice fantasy. Here’s reality:

While some two-thirds of small firms make it past the two-year mark, just 44 percent can hack it for four years, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And by “hack it,” we’re just talking survival rates here: Plenty of those “survivors” are choking down ramen noodles to keep the lights on.

If those odds don’t scare you off, consider too that some industries may be inherently tougher to crack than others. Your friends might think that you rival Mario Batali in the kitchen, or that you can go sole for sole with the likes of Kenneth Cole. But the sober truth is that it takes more than talent to run a restaurant, a clothing boutique and a host of other ventures. Sadly, some of the most enticing industries are also the riskiest.

What all these “conservatives” are advocating, then, is that young people spend their twenties going into even more debt to build a small business, over 55% of which will fail within four years, leaving them destitute, in double the debt they started with, and unemployable by age thirty.

So-called conservatives are advocating this. As public policy, it’s sheer madness. I say this as one of the few who made it: I started by own small business at 23 and am still going today. But first, it’s a volatile and gut-wrenching experience I wouldn’t recommend for most people, to say nothing of everyone, and second, I have some advantages: I run it out of home so there’s no major overhead cost, I had no student debt due to scholarships, and I had six years of apprenticeship in the industry from working 30 hours a week in my family business while going to college. So I have every advantage you could ask for in this regard, and it’s still touch-and-go such that I wouldn’t advocate my career choice to most people.

Listening to comfortable conservatives advocate this sort of nonsense for average college graduates is nothing short of insane. It’s insulting. They might as well tell young people to go to Vegas and dump all their money on one play at a roulette table in Las Vegas. At least the roulette table gives you near 50% odds, which is better than the odds of your small business staying afloat for more than four years.

But it makes sense. It’s conservatives, after all, who thought it was a great idea to bet the entire country’s economic future on the whims of the Wall Street casinos. Why wouldn’t they give the same advice to our nation’s youth?

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Forget about tax reform (it’s a con)

by digby

This article by Jonathan Weisman in today’s NY Times indicates that the Republicans are out on the campaign trail saying that the “sequestration” is going to destroy America’s military and must be stopped at all costs. He focuses on Huckleberry Graham, who is nearly hysterical on subject (perhaps because he also says that there is going to be “an air and sea campaign from hell” on Iran!)

But it’s clear that it’s a kabuki dance leading to something I’ve been predicting for a while:

But the threat they created may be doing its job. Mr. Graham is openly talking about revenue increases to offset the costs. Even South Carolina’s ardently conservative House members, Mick Mulvaney, Joe Wilson and Jeff Duncan, said last week that they were ready to talk…

For now, Democrats and Republicans are waiting for the other side to blink. And the pressure may be working. Mr. Graham said the sentiment for raising revenues by closing tax loopholes or imposing higher fees on items like federal oil leases is expanding in his party.

That’s quite a sacrifice, isn’t it? And to think that all they want in return is draconian cuts to social programs and painful shrinkage of the safety net. They’re heroes, for sure.

This is why I don’t care about this ridiculous obsession with “revenues” by the Democrats. Yes, billionaires and corporations should be paying more. They can afford it right now, they are doing quite well. But the way they plan to do that is fraudulent: “tax reform” that consists of lowering rates and allegedly closing loopholes (which will only remain closed for people who can’t afford lobbyists to open them again.) It’s a scam.

Moreover, we don’t really need to be collecting more money right now. We can borrow very cheaply and pay for infrastructure and putting people back to work, creating demand. This entire discussion of deficits is bullshit. We’re in a depression.

As Krugman wrote last Friday:

“The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.” So declared John Maynard Keynes 75 years ago, and he was right. Even if you have a long-run deficit problem — and who doesn’t? — slashing spending while the economy is deeply depressed is a self-defeating strategy, because it just deepens the depression.

As he also points out, this is being done in Europe and here not because any of these people care about deficits. It’s being done because they want to dismantle the welfare state. And they have successfully bought off or confused just about everyone in the country — actually, the world.

Democrats should not die on the tax hikes for millionaires hill (however that’s defined.)”Tax reform” is a joke which will be killed one corporate donation and lobbyist inserted exception at a time. The safety net, on the other hand, will never be the same. They should just say no. We can run these deficits easily for the time being and when the economy does turn around we can do real tax hikes (raise rates, not “reform”) on real millionaires to pay back that debt. Let’s see how that works out before we start slashing away at the safety net people depend upon. There’s just no good reason to do anything else.

Update: Unfortunately, the Democratic buy-in has filtered down to the community level. I got this email this morning from a reader named Bert:

Yesterday, June 3rd, 2012, I was volunteering at Lummis Day. This is a Celebration of North East Los Angeles, named for a remarkable man, Charles Lummis, who was an early City leader and envisioned a multi-cultural California back in the 1880’s. The Celebration is to further that vision.

The Democratic Party was well represented at the Community Booths and I approached Xavier Becerra’s table. I introduced myself to the woman at the table as a constituent and someone who has donated to, and written to Congressman Becerra in the past. I asked her opinion on Social Security and Medicare. What I heard was not reassuring. Briefly she said that politically unaffiliated economists, when they run the numbers, show that we cannot continue supporting these programs because the retiring population is larger than the working population that pays for them. The congressman supports them and wants to keep them, but that changes are going to have to be made. She was not specific about what types of changes and to be fair we were talking generically about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

My response was that once the door is open to making adjustments, then it’s a quick slide down a slippery slope to cutting and more cutting. I told her that the $106,000 tax cap on Social Security taxes should be raised. I felt her response was non-committal, and not the response that I wanted to hear, which would’ve been “We will stand by these programs and fight to the death.”

What I found interesting is that the Washington conversation that there is not enough money for these social programs, is at the level of the community booth. That was disappointing.

That bolded sentence is a piece of propaganda perpetrated by the financial industry. It isn’t true. Seriously, do people think that someone just woke up yesterday and discovered that the baby boom was going to retire? We’ve been around a long time now.

For a thorough explanation of why that line of argument is completely wrong, click here.

Progressive Super Tuesday Countdown

by digby

I was going to write a “day before” rundown of the Progressive Super Tuesday races, but Howie did such an awesome job that I think it would be superfluous. Please click over and read it, you won’t be sorry. Wisconsin is ground zero, of course, but Blue America also has four extremely impressive leaders running in primaries all of whom could make a huge difference in the congress.

I realize that electoral politics seems like old news to a lot of progressives these days. Many of you were highly motivated in 2008, believed in the system, and are now disillusioned. Some of you have decided to work on systemic change outside the government while others are simply standing aside, not wanting to participate is anything as corrupt and immoral as politics, regardless of the result. Some of you feel the big money has it so rigged that it’s pointless. I understand all those reactions. We’re in a bad place right now and it’s very hard to see any light.

However, if you still believe that progressive principles can be successfully applied to democratic government, then supporting progressive candidates for congress is one way to do that. It’s less glamorous than the ecstatic “Camp Obama” experience of 2008 and it’s long term project that goes forward in fits and starts and features plenty of disappointment — but it can result, over time, in changing the way government works.

But we need progressive political leaders to do that, leaders who are not beholden to the big money interests or to the Party establishment apparatus, who are committed to liberal principles and are smart enough to work the levers of state power for the benefit of the people. The four Blue America candidates who are on the ballot tomorrow are among those leaders.

I’m all for doing whatever it takes to save the country. Social movements are necessary and I hope that everyone is thinking about how they can participate. Local involvement is also important, whether in politics or some other form of community work. Education and persuasion on a personal and public level must be among our priorities as well. But you can’t leave the national government solely in the hands of the plutocrats and the authoritarians. We have to at least try to influence the state. It simply holds too much power over all of our lives and the lives of people all over the planet.

As Howie says, tomorrow … our future.

Awful anecdotes from annals of the GWOT