Month: July 2012

Progressive/Regressive

by digby

I like the way Robert Reich presents this. He doesn’t explicitly talk about parties, but rather puts it in terms of ideology and practice, which I think is useful:

It’s long past time to ignore the word “conservative” (which seems to have become synonymous with “awesome” in many Americans minds) and properly re-brand these people as what they are:regressive. (I like the word throwback, but I think there might be some resistance…)

I’ve got your progressives to support in this election right here.

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Republicans in disarray

by digby

Hmmm. Looks like Mitt’s having trouble keeping the troops in line:

Representatives of the Romney campaign threatened to prevent New York State party chairman Ed Cox from taking the stage at the national convention in Tampa unless he installed the delegates they’d chosen, sources familiar with the encounter said.
The disagreement comes after months of incidents at state conventions, most recently in Massachusetts, where Ron Paul delegates were required to sign affidavits saying they would vote for Romney. In a host of other states, pro-Romney Republicans have struggled to maintain control of party platforms and delegate slates in the face of insurgent libertarians.

At stake is control of the convention, which the campaign hopes will be an error-free infomercial on Romney’s personal and presidential merits. But conventions are also gatherings of diverse and garrulous local political operatives, each eager for a day in the sun, and the intense focus on the events creates a constant risk of derailment.

In New York, the incident didn’t involve Paul supporters, but a battle of wills between the Romney campaign and the state party chairman over the selection of delegates from the state.

“The Romney people gave Ed Cox their list of people they wanted to have be delegates,” said one Republican operative familiar with what happened. “Cox was like I’m not doing that, I’m doing my people.”

“The Romney people were pissed at him,” the operative said, adding that the Romney representatives had plans to “replace Ed Cox as the person with the authority” to introduce the New York delegation at the national convention.

I get the feeling they don’t exactly respect this guy, don’t you?

This is why I don’t think anyone should ever be fooled into thinking that Mitt will change once he’s in office and become a kinder gentler Republican. I don’t know if he would do it if he could but I do know that they are very unlikely to let him. They don’t trust this guy any more than we do.

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Public workers and the GOP id

by digby

So Romney is making a symbolic bid for the African American vote today. I doubt very seriously that he thinks he has a shot, but it’s an improvement from the time George W. Bush refused to speak before the group, (although one can’t help but suspect they were trying to provoke a bad reaction in order for the racist base to bond with the bot.)

But here’s the main thing. He talked about how Obama has failed to improve the jobs situation and how African Americans are being hurt the most. And that’s true. Unfortunately, Romney’s policies would make things even worse:

Government has shed 2.6 percent of its jobs over the past three years, marking the greatest reduction in history, according to the nonprofit Roosevelt Institute, a progressive-leaning organization. Roughly 265,000 workers were shed from all levels of government last year, after about 221,000 job cuts in 2010.

“Most government jobs have good pay and benefits and are probably what we would consider a good foundation for middle-class incomes, so any loss of government jobs is going to disproportionately hit the middle class,” says Howard University research scientist Roderick Harrison. “The black population, which is more dependent on government for middle-class job opportunities, is going to be more heavily hit.”

The fact is that blacks are 30 percent more likely than nonblacks to work in the public sector. And that’s not by accident. The government was the only employer that was bound to the spirit and letter of the law and went out of its way to hire qualified minorities while the private sector dragged its feet.

the government is no longer bound by the spirit and letter of the law so…

“The three pillars of middle-class African-American life were the public sector, good manufacturing jobs, and black entrepreneurs that served the black community during segregation,” says economist Steven Pitts, who led the Berkeley Center’s research. “With the end of segregation, you put pressure on the black entrepreneurs, and then there was the decline in manufacturing. Now we see the erosion of the third pillar — the public sector.”

Not surprisingly, then, government cuts trigger resentment among African-Americans, especially since “big government” has become a politically polarizing phrase.

Republican elected officials who rode Tea Party support to victory in the 2010 midterm elections placed government cuts at the center of their plans to eliminate state budget shortfalls and reduce the federal deficit. The impact of their strategy is most clearly seen in state government jobs.

More than 70 percent of last year’s government job cuts occurred in just 12 states, all of which are controlled by majority-Republican legislatures, according to the Roosevelt Institute. The legislatures in 11 of those states came under Republican control in 2010.

What Republicans call an attack on “big government,” many blacks see as an attack on their livelihoods, given their heavy reliance on the public sector for employment.

People like to argue that this isn’t about race, it’s about ideology. And that’s true. But much of modern American conservatism is informed by attitudes around race. And I suspect, although I have no proof, that it’s a substantial factor in the attack on public employee workers. Many of the faces of government workers are non-white. And for a certain subset of the population that fact feeds their loathing of government. You do the math.

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A Positive Step In The Right Direction

by tristero

Since I so often criticize my fellow liberals for their rotten rhetorical habits, it is only fair to acknowledge examples of compelling contributions to a new liberal discourse. And, man, they’re on to something really good here. Liu and Hanauer’s notion is that our prevailing mechanistic metaphors for describing the economy are inaccurate and constrain our choices in unhelpful ways. The economy more resembles a garden than a machine, and it needs to be cultivated more than it needs to be oiled. I think they’re absolutely right. And they quite obviously intend you to swap out “economy”for “government”or “society;” the metaphor stands.

To quibble a bit, I’m not fond of their specific neologisms – Machinebrain and Gardenbrain – both of them ugly constructions that sound to my ear like mechanistic or pseudo-computer jargon, symptomatic of precisely the attitude the authors deplore. Still, I don’t have any fancy alternatives to offer; I simply like the idea of characterizing the economy as more a kind of an eco-system than a machine – and leaving it at that.

Regardless, this new metaphor is very promising. It provides a  liberal-leaning alternative model for economic reality that happens to fit the facts far better than the right-wing/libertarian machine models which have led so often to major catastrophe.

UPDATE: Douglas Smith of Econ4 added some astute observations in a personal email:

Gardenbrain is well done/very astute! But, their thinking needs just a bit of weeding in this regard. Note this paragraph:

“Or take taxes. Under the efficient-market hypothesis, taxes are an extraction of resources from the jobs machine, or more literally, taking money out of the economy. It is not just separate from economic activity, but hostile to it. This is why most Americans believe that lower taxes will automatically lead to more prosperity. Yet if there were a shred of truth to this, then given our historically low tax rates we would today be drowning in jobs and general prosperity.”

 This is not why most Americans believe what they do about lower taxes. Most Americans believe what they do about lower taxes because most Americans see taxes as their own money and they don’t want to lose that money.

Moreover, at least below the top 1% … perhaps 5% or so …. lower taxes is actually a good way to provide nutrients to the garden because most Americans today would need to spend that money (good for a consumer driven economy); or, use the money to pay off debts (also good).

Having said this, they are basically entirely correct about Gardenbrain being far superior in health/well being/sustainability of economy than Machinebrain.

Putting up the good fight

by David Atkins

Greg Sargent at The Plum Line highlights the new stronger Democratic rhetoric on the Bush tax cuts. It’s about time:

Sherrod Brown, who is in a competitive race in Ohio, flatly stated that the President’s proposal is right on the substance and on the politics.

“This is simply restoring the tax levels from years ago on two percent of taxpayers,” Brown told me. “I don’t know why some Democrats are queasy. Possibly they think it’s better messaging if the cutoff is $1 million. Elected officials at this level know a lot of people who make $300,000. We generally don’t spend enough time with people who make $30,000.”

“But I think the president is right here,” Brown continued. “The American public thinks that if you make a quarter million dollars, you’re doing really well. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be shouting this from the rooftops.”

“I think independents will see this exactly as the president does — that people making that much can afford to pay a little more,” Brown said.

Senator Jeff Merkley, meanwhile, stressed that Obama’s proposal would keep the tax rates low on income up to $250,000, even for those who make more than that.

“We shouldn’t shy away from this — it’s good policy and good politics as well,” Merkley said. “The point that should be recognized is that this plan essentially treats everyone equally. Those who earn more than $250,000 will still get the cut on the first quarter million they make. The only question in this argument is whether the top two percent are going to get a bonus tax break at the expense of the treasury. And the answer is No.”

There’s room for heaping doses of cynicism, of course. National Democrats had apparently been assuming the economy would start improving on its own enough to run on saving the economy and replaying the Morning in America campaign. With that option off the table, they’re being forced to win votes through economic progressivism.

At this point, though, it matters less how we got here than that we’re here now. The most important thing now is to hold these people to their promises not to extend the Bush tax cuts, at least over the $250,000 mark. It’s basic common sense.

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This one’s for my friends Gloria and Lisa — Nancy Pelosi dancing to ZZTop at Barney Frank’s wedding:

God bless America.

More norm busting

by digby

Here we have a US Senator saying that the tax system is set up as a game and more power to those who know how to play it.

How does this man still have a job?

by David Atkins

Renowned New York Times columnist David Brooks takes a look at the alarming statistics on inequality of income and opportunity, and uses his profound intellect to come to this conclusion:

Equal opportunity, once core to the nation’s identity, is now a tertiary concern. If America really wants to change that, if the country wants to take advantage of all its human capital rather than just the most privileged two-thirds of it, then people are going to have to make some pretty uncomfortable decisions.

Liberals are going to have to be willing to champion norms that say marriage should come before childrearing and be morally tough about it. Conservatives are going to have to be willing to accept tax increases or benefit cuts so that more can be spent on the earned-income tax credit and other programs that benefit the working class.

Brooks thinks that two-thirds of the country is doing OK, and it’s only the bottom third that is in trouble? That moralizing about having a wedding ceremony before childbirth will solve income inequality? That conservatives are somehow opposed to benefit cuts? That the best way to help the poor and middle class is to expand tax credits that further erode the ability to spend on needed programs like education? Most of what Brooks says is nonsensical or based on false premises, and the rest is delusional.

There are millions of Americans with analytical and writing skills superior to those of Brooks. Some of them can be found in the nation’s middle schools. That the New York Times still sees fit to employ Brooks is one minor symptom of the nation’s disregard for meritocratic equality of opportunity. Why does this guy still have a job, again?

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QOTD: David Dreier

by digby

And he’s supposed to be one of the reasonable ones:

Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.) said on Monday evening that he didn’t believe highly expensive health care should be provided to uninsured patients with pre-existing conditions…

“While I don’t think that someone who is diagnosed with a massive tumor should the next day be able to have millions and millions and millions of dollars of health care provided, I do believe there can be a structure to deal with the issue of pre-existing conditions,” Dreier said.

What do you suppose he thinks should happen to this person? Does he think there should be some sort of ….death panel that decides whether he lives or dies? Or should we just assume that anyone with a deadly illness who doesn’t have enough insurance to pay for “millions and millions and millions” of dollars of health care should just be euthanized on the spot? Or perhaps they should be made to suffer. After all they failed to get rich enough or lucky enough to have adequate funds to pay for their needs so maybe it would be best to use some of these sickly parasites as cautionary tales.

I think we may actually be coming to the point of debating whether or not to repeal the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act. And it will fail, of course. At first. The country isn’t there yet. But it will represent one more step in the disintigration of America’s moral fabric (which wasn’t that strong to begin with.) Like torture, it’s in the political ether now, no longer completely taboo. This is how this sort of thing is mainstreamed.

Oh, and don’t expect all the followers of Jesus to come to the rescue. It’s true that he would be appalled, but conservative Christians don’t seem to care much about what he said anymore. (Not that Dreier is one of them…)

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You can’t buy credibility with lunatics, even with human sacrifices

by digby

Recall that the administration once insisted that record deportations would buy him credibility with the right so they could do some kind of Grand Bargain on immigration:

Whenever Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and other immigrant-rights advocates asked President Obama how a Democratic administration could preside over the greatest number of deportations in any two-year period in the nation’s history, Obama’s answer was always the same.

Deporting almost 800,000 illegal immigrants might antagonize some Democrats and Latino voters, Obama’s skeptical supporters said the president told them, but stepped-up enforcement was the only way to buy credibility with Republicans and generate bipartisan support for an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws.

How’d that work out?

They’ll insist that Obama is soft on immigration, no matter what. Not even this will change their minds:

This chart is being touted as some sort of achievement, by the way, even though they know that people who are not criminals are being deported right along with the alleged criminals.

This has been an appalling policy and one I predict will rank up there as a very bad mark on President Obama’s legacy. There was no good reason to do this: the recession had brought illegal immigration to a standstill as it was — something that common sense would tell you was bound to happen. This was a political decision and it hurt people.

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