Month: August 2012

Weird errors in Romneyland

by David Atkins

Obsessive Hullabaloo readers with photographic memories may remember my writing about Mitt Romney’s big lie, in which the Romney campaign sent me a snail mail letter commending me for being “one of America’s most notable Republicans”, and highlighting the damage that some vague deficit/debt monster has done the American economy. The Romney campaign has been telling that lie over and over again, including in direct mail to voters. Today I received an exact carbon copy of the very same letter.

Tomorrow I’ll write a little more about the content of the letter (again), but for now I have to ask what exactly is going on in Romneyland. As a research/branding guy and seasonal campaign worker, I understand the value of consistent messaging. But sending out an exact carbon copy of the same fundraising letter the campaign sent out exactly a month earlier isn’t exactly professional. It has an air of laziness, especially if the appeal didn’t work the first time (which it obviously didn’t.)

Second, one has to wonder how exactly these mailing lists are being created. Lots of people around the country are presumably getting these mailers, including hardcore progressives, based on a variety of demographic selection criteria. Perhaps I receive them simply by virtue of being a small business owner.

But presumably the campaign would have some sort of exclusion criteria in place to reduce costs, so that Van Jones and Barbara Boxer wouldn’t get Mitt’s mail. Presumably the easily accessible lists of elected Democratic officials and State and County executive board members would be part of the exclusion: it would seem to be a pretty simple and safe place to start, reducing mail costs by at least tens of thousands of dollars per shot. A microtargeting operation as professional and successful as the Republicans’ could crunch that with supreme ease.

It speaks to an insouciant carelessness in the entire Romney operation that ignores a lot of the details, figuring that they can be papered over with a jet stream of endless cash.

Maybe they’re right and maybe they’re wrong. But the last thing it smacks of is fiscal conservatism.

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Letting the cat out of the bag

by digby

“I agree that we have to do this stuff… but you don’t want to do it in public.”

This is the thinking of the Peterson Lame Duck Runaway Train plan. Which should come as no surprise.

I have been on the fence about whether it’s better to take the chance that the Ryan choice means the Obama campaign will sell the idea that he got a mandate for his “balanced approach” if this becomes a big election issue or take our chances with the Peterson plan. This video doesn’t completely settle it, but I’m leaning more toward the risky hope that the election will push the Democrats to the left and force them to abandon their “balanced” plan of cuts in exchange for chump change and full throatedly defend the social insurance safety net. As Biden did yesterday.

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h/t to reader cs

Schmaaaht as whip

by digby

Back in May of 2008 the economy was coming to a screeching halt. Recall that just four months earlier, the Bush administration had pushed though more tax cuts to stimulate the economy but things were still slowing down.

This is what the Very Serious Paul Ryan proposed:

WSJ Column:

Blame Congress for Inflation
By PAUL D. RYAN

Wall Street Journal

May 1, 2008

Yesterday, the Federal Reserve lowered the fed-funds rate to 2%, its lowest level since late 2004. In a nod to growing inflation fears, the Fed said “it will be necessary to continue to monitor inflation developments carefully.”

But if we really want to do something about inflation, Congress should repeal the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978, which dangerously diverted the Fed from its most important job: price stability. When the Fed was created in 1913, its principal role was to maintain a sound currency with stable prices. But Humphrey-Hawkins changed the Fed’s mandate, directing it to focus on long-term price stability and short-term economic growth.

Unfortunately, in its efforts to accomplish both, the Fed could end up satisfying neither. This would make the next 18 to 24 months even more painful, as the Fed reverses course and sharply raises rates to wring inflation out of the economy. These Fed-induced boom and bust cycles are detrimental to our long-term economic growth and living standards.

Because goosing the economy in the short run and maintaining stable prices over the long haul are often at odds, I’m introducing legislation that would rewrite Humphrey Hawkins and give the Fed just one mandate: price stability. The bill, called the Price Stability Act of 2008, allows the Fed to choose how it will put this single mandate into practice (my preference would be an explicit price rule anchored to a basket of commodities), as long as its overriding policy goal is to control inflation.

An explicit commitment to price stability – which Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has endorsed in the past – would have a number of benefits. It would protect the Fed against political pressure to be the “savior” of the economy. It would strengthen the dollar, because it would be a clear indication that our central bank (the world’s de-facto central bank) is committed to sound money. It would also help anchor the public’s inflation expectations, which have recently shown signs of creeping upward. That alone could reduce the amount of monetary tightening needed later on.

Price stability is a basic necessity of long-term prosperity. And, with monetary policy under its jurisdiction, the Fed is the only institution capable of stabilizing prices. But its recent, repeated reductions in the federal funds target rate – down from 5.25% in September – were intended to ameliorate the short-term slump. This threatens to unleash inflationary problems that could hamper the economy for a very long time.

The Fed’s actions have pushed real short-term interest rates into negative territory. This has accelerated the decline of the dollar, and helped drive up the price on a broad range of commodities as global investors flee the greenback for hard assets.

Crude oil prices have doubled over the past year to nearly $120 a barrel, while average retail gasoline prices hit an all-time high of $3.60 per gallon this week. The prices of basic food items are also soaring: Figures from the Department of Agriculture show that the monthly grocery bill for the average American family is $70 higher today than one year ago.

Lower interest rates have also reduced the yield on safe investments such as money market funds and CDs, providing a double whammy for seniors. Capital investment is bound to suffer in an inflationary environment, as long-term planning becomes difficult and the effective tax rate on capital increases (because capital gains taxes are not indexed for inflation).

Clearly, these negative outcomes are not the intention of Fed policy. Mr. Bernanke has been dealt a bad hand – a slowing economy and upward pressure on prices – and he is trying to win on both ends. But Congress, too, is accountable in this – because it set the Fed’s mandate.

Congress is already threatening the economic climate by dangling the prospect of huge tax increases ($683 billion in the House-passed budget) and sharply higher spending. There is no sign that Congress will change its tune on fiscal affairs – but passing the Price Stability Act is a chance at a bipartisan commitment to sound money.

By refocusing the Federal Reserve’s legal mandate, Congress can strengthen the economy and do so without incurring any cost to the budget or increasing the deficit.

The man was an oracle, I tell you:

And those numbers were after the 900 billion dollar stimulus passed in early 2009.

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From the takes-one-to-know-one file: Sarah Palin says Biden is dragging down the ticket

by digby

Now that we know that Joe Biden can’t say the word “chains” because it is racist against Mitt Romney, former half-term governor (and queen of your heart) Sarah Palin would like to share a word salad of Deep Thoughts with her husband’s girlfriend, Greta Van Susteren. What does she think? That Joe Biden is a fucking idiot.

Wonkette:

SARAH PALIN, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR/FORMER ALASKA GOVERNOR: There weren’t enough groans and boos when he said such a disgusting comment, really, especially to a demographic there that is — includes about 48 percent of the community being, um, uh, black Americans.

Greta, if that’s not the nail in the coffin, really, the strategists there in the Obama campaign have got to look at a diplomatic way of replacing Joe Biden on the ticket with Hillary. And I don’t want to throw out that suggestion and have them actually accept the suggestion because then an Obama-Hillary Clinton ticket would have a darn good chance of winning.

But really, Joe Biden really drags down that ticket.

She may not be an expert on much, but that’s something she does know something about.

But the gibberish, my god, the gibberish …

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Banana Republicans

by digby

The thing to keep in mind about all this, is that the Republicans are proud of it. They’re bragging about keeping people from voting. I honestly cannot think of anything more undemocratic. I’d like to say it’s un-American, but unfortunately our history shows that it’s as American as apple pie. It’s the only way this particular political faction has ever been able to stay in power for long:

Hundreds of thousands of potential voters here were left scrambling in the wake of Pennsylvania’s voter ID law — enough to prompt speculation as to whether the law could change the outcome of the election in November.

But one thing is clear: The law is already having a dramatic effect on how the election is being waged.

Democrats and their allies, who vehemently oppose the voter ID legislation, are still pinning their hopes on legal challenges to the law. But if the law survives, political organizers in Pennsylvania will have to alter their outreach plans to include identifying, contacting and getting proper identifications for thousands of voters.

“It scares the shit out of us,” Yuri Beckelman, campaign communications director for the AFL-CIO of Pennsylvania, said of the number of voters potentially affected. The union and several other allied groups are forming a statewide coalition aimed at “education and mobilization” around the voter ID law requirements.

The estimated 750,000 voters who do not have state-issued IDs in Pennsylvania surpasses President Obama’s margin of victory in 2008. Many of the voters without ID are in poor and minority communities — typically blocs that vote Democratic. Democrats’ worst fears appeared to be confirmed when the Republican leader of the state House, who helped shepherd the legislation onto the books, recently boasted that it will “allow” Mitt Romney win the Keystone State.

Democrats now have to make sure voters are aware of the law, know whether they comply, know how to meet the requirements if they don’t already — and do it all before Election Day. This could be a steep climb. Only one of five voters approached by TPM at Obama’s Pittsburgh rally Friday knew the law existed.

So the state passes a draconian voter ID law that will affect three quarters of a million potential voters and they aren’t making any effort to reach out to those citizens or help them obtain what they need? No wonder those republicans are so confident they’ve delivered the state to Romney.

This isn’t just happening in Pennsylvania, as you know. Once they succeeded in taking over the state houses in 2010 the Tea soaked GOP passed vote suppression laws and installed wingnuts into election bureaucracies. Here’s a doozy for you:

A funny thing happened to me when I went to vote in our Aug. 7 primary election. The ballot application form I was given included a question asking whether or not I was a citizen of the United States.

I’m guessing that almost anyone who reads this saw the same question.

My reaction to the citizenship question may have been different from yours — I refused to respond to it — but I assure you I wasn’t reacting out of rebelliousness. I did not respond because I believed that there was no statutory authority for the question.

I follow elections and campaign finances for a living, and I was 99% certain that Gov. Rick Snyder had vetoed legislation to put this citizenship reaffirmation on our ballot applications. It seemed to me on Tuesday morning — and still does now — that faithfulness to the rule of law required me to refuse to respond.

When I told the precinct worker my position, he told me that I’d have to respond if I wanted to vote. I chose not to vote under those circumstances.

When I reached my office, I called the Bureau of Elections and confirmed that the bill had been vetoed. Then I called my city clerk’s office and reported that I had been denied a ballot based on my refusal to respond to a question for which there was no statutory authority.

I’ve been told since that the citizenship question was merely an exercise of administrative procedure. The Department of State has a right to design its forms as it sees fit.

Really? They can unilaterally design a form that is not anchored to a law and deny me a vote if I won’t respond to it? This certainly causes me to wonder: What’s the next question going to be?

Good question. Perhaps more importantly, how can it be that the Secretary of State could unilaterally decide to ignore the Governor’s veto? In some countries she would be on the hot seat, call the whole election into question and probably lose her job. But I don’t think we’re one of those countries. Everyone will “get over it.” We don’t “look in the rear-view mirror” here (unless you are a small time drug dealer with a third strike, of course.)

In Michigan they apparently issued new instructions mid-day, but it was chaotic with some precinct not having the question at all, others refusing to obey. This is America. We’ve been at this a long time now. You’d think we’d have a little pride and behave better than a banana republic.

Paul Ryan was their President already. Why make it obvious?

by David Atkins

As everyone analyzes in detail the meaning of Romney’s oh-so-bold vice-presidential pick, it’s worth remembering this from none other than Grover Norquist earlier this year:

All we have to do is replace Obama. … We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. … We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate…

Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.

The entire Republican primary was a joke played on the fools in the conservative electorate. The only difference between any of them lay in the amount of crazy social conservatism that would come down the executive order pipeline. But as far as major traditional legislation went, they would all be almost exactly alike.

Every single one of them would be a robotic signatory for whatever the Republican House could get past the Senate and onto the desk of whatever Republican rubberstamp figurehead made it into the Oval Office.

And since Paul Ryan rules the Republican budgetary world, his word would be law. Not Mitt Romney’s. Not Rick Santorum’s. Not Newt Gingrich’s. Paul Ryan’s. He’s their man.

Insiders knew this. Democrats worth their salt knew this already, and have been preparing for the possibility of Republicans attempting to bypass the filibuster to pass the Ryan budget to end Medicare. Republicans knew it also, and knew that Democrats would try mightily to tie their nominal presidential candidate to the deeply unpopular Ryan budget. Democrats on the ground know that it’s not only important to re-elect the President who, whatever his other faults might be, would be the only roadblock between a Republican Congress and the passage of the Ryan budget. It’s also important to do whatever it takes to win back the House and put the gavel back in Nancy Pelosi’s hands.

So the only question remains: why did they choose to make it so obvious that Ryan commands their ship? Why give Congressional Democratic candidates an easy blunt instrument with which to nationalize an election in choppy economic waters against their Republican opponents?

Ryan already ruled this roost. The Republicans’ key to success lay in keeping that a secret. Why show their hand before all the cards are down? Nate Silver can’t figure it out, either.

Some have theorized that Republican insiders know that Romney will lose, and are therefore establishing an Overton Window mover for 2016. I think that gives conservatives a little too much credit, though. Romney wants to win, and knows this is his last chance. Big Republican donors are frothing at the mouth, desperate to be rid of Barack Obama. They want to win now, not later. And this decision was made with considerable forethought.

Discover why Republicans chose to unveil their true king so early, and you may discover where Romney and friends are at their weakest.

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Koch head creation

by digby

If anyone thinks that these guys are going to blame their fair haired boy for Romney’s loss, they need to think again:

This month, as a handful of Republicans auditioned at town halls and on bus tours to be Mitt Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan joined a private conference call. For 20 minutes, he walked through his plan to cut government spending and bashed President Obama for weakening welfare work requirements.

His audience: Several hundred field organizers for Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party-inspired group founded by the billionaire conservative philanthropists Charles and David Koch.

When Mr. Romney announced that Mr. Ryan would be his running mate, his campaign emphasized the congressman’s detailed knowledge of the federal budget and his chemistry with Mr. Romney. Less well-known are Mr. Ryan’s close ties to the donors and activists who have channeled Tea Party anger into a $400 million political machine, financed by a network of conservative and libertarian donors that now rivals, and occasionally challenges, the Republican establishment behind Mr. Romney.

Mr. Ryan is one of a very few elected officials who have attended the Kochs’ biannual conferences, where wealthy donors sit in on seminars on runaway government spending and the myths of climate change.

He is on first-name terms with prominent libertarians in the financial world, including hedge fund billionaires like Cliff Asness and Paul Singer, and spent his formative years immersed in the Republican Party’s supply-side wing, working for lawmakers and conservative policy advocates like Jack Kemp.

He has appeared for years at rallies, town hall meetings, and donor briefings for groups like the Club for Growth, which spends millions to defeat Republicans deemed squishy on taxes and spending, and Americans for Prosperity, a grass-roots group focused on economic and budget issues that is now trying to channel Tea Party energy into a permanent electoral force. Its fourth chapter was founded in Mr. Ryan’s home state, Wisconsin.

Now Mr. Ryan could provide Mr. Romney with a critical political and intellectual bridge to the rising conservative counterestablishment represented by the Kochs and their allies, who are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and deploy thousands of volunteers to defeat Mr. Obama. Should Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan win in November, a constituency that has for years fulminated against the failure of Republicans to live up to their own principles could soon have a close — and powerful — friend in the White House.

They want him to be president and there’s no way in hell they’re going to blame him if Romney loses. Romney is tainted by his Taxachusetts past, his pro-life wobbliness, his Mormonism and his overall weirdness. He is rich, but he isn’t a member of this rarefied club that runs the Republican Party. They’re all rich too, of course, with more money than they can possible spend. But they are also hardcore wingnut true believers. And Ryan is their creation.

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So much for the post-racial society

by digby

This is depressing:

Whites believe that they have replaced blacks as the primary victims of racial discrimination in contemporary America, according to a new study from researchers at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School. The findings, say the authors, show that America has not achieved the “post-racial” society that some predicted in the wake of Barack Obama’s election.

Both whites and blacks agree that anti-black racism has decreased over the last 60 years, according to the study. However, whites believe that anti-white racism has increased and is now a bigger problem than anti-black racism.

“It’s a pretty surprising finding when you think of the wide range of disparities that still exist in society, most of which show black Americans with worse outcomes than whites in areas such as income, home ownership, health and employment,” said Tufts Associate Professor of Psychology Samuel Sommers, Ph.D., co-author of “Whites See Racism as a Zero-sum Game that They Are Now Losing,” which appears in the May 2011 issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

That would explain this disgusting piece of offal quite nicely:

No need to show Willie Horton in that one. The message is very clear without it.

They’d better hope this works because elderly whites are their only growing demographic. If they can’t run this game, there’s not much hope for their national prospects over the long haul and probably not over the short haul either. It’s going to require some fancy footwork — as much as these voters may resent Obama giving “their” healthcare to the you-know-whos, the know better than anyone which Party has been trying to destroy Medicare and Social Security for over half a century. They were there, after all.

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Speaking of Vice Presidents

by digby

There’s a lot of talk about the differences between the Ryan Plan and the Romney Plan. But what about the differences between the Biden Plan and the Obama Plan?

Here’s Biden today:

“Hey, by the way, let’s talk about Social Security,” Biden said after a diner at The Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, VA expressed his relief that the Obama campaign wasn’t talking about changing the popular entitlement program.

“Number one, I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security,” Biden said, per a pool report. “I flat guarantee you.”

That’s terrific, but it’s hard to forget about this:

Heading into a crucial negotiating session on a budget deal on Thursday, President Obama has raised his sights and wants to strike a far-reaching agreement on cutting the federal deficit as Speaker John A. Boehner has signaled new willingness to bargain on revenues.

Mr. Obama, who is to meet at the White House with the bipartisan leadership of Congress in an effort to work out an agreement to raise the federal debt limit, wants to move well beyond the $2 trillion in savings sought in earlier negotiations and seek perhaps twice as much over the next decade, Democratic officials briefed on the negotiations said Wednesday.

The president’s renewed efforts follow what knowledgeable officials said was an overture from Mr. Boehner, who met secretly with Mr. Obama last weekend, to consider as much as $1 trillion in unspecified new revenues as part of an overhaul of tax laws in exchange for an agreement that made substantial spending cuts, including in such social programs as Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security — programs that had been off the table.

The intensifying negotiations between the president and the speaker have Congressional Democrats growing anxious, worried they will be asked to accept a deal that is too heavily tilted toward Republican efforts and produces too little new revenue relative to the magnitude of the cuts.

Congressional Democrats said they were caught off guard by the weekend White House visit of Mr. Boehner — a meeting the administration still refused to acknowledge on Wednesday — and Senate Democrats raised concerns at a private party luncheon on Wednesday.

House Democrats have their own fears about the negotiations, which they expressed in an hourlong meeting Wednesday night with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

“Depending on what they decide to recommend, they may not have Democrats,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, said in an interview. “I think it is a risky thing for the White House to basically take the bet that we can be presented with something at the last minute and we will go for it.”

Luckily the Republicans walked away. But that doesn’t mean that the President doesn’t still believe it was the right thing to do. Just last week he was reported to be upset that the Democrats get no credit for being willing to make cuts to those programs, so it wouldn’t seem that he’s changed his mind on that.

I like that Biden is making this “guarantee.” Wouldn’t it be nice if all the other Democrats, including the president, signed on to it?

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Report from Ronnie’s woodshed

by digby

I disagree with many specifics in this thoroughly enjoyable critique of the Paul Ryan dystopian hellscape budget by Reagan budget czar David Stockman, but this, I think, is a very important point for all progressives to understand:

The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for “job creators” — i.e. the superwealthy — to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base. Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends. The crony capitalists of K Street already own more than enough Republican votes to stop that train before it leaves the station.

That’s right. As Dana Carvey doing George Bush Sr used to say, “nah guh happen.” Any benefit for which there is a wealthy constituency will not be touched. Until we fix our corrupt political system, any assumptions of “shared sacrifice” are fairy tales.

Beyond that, it’s true that many “tax expenditures” benefit the well-off more than the middle and working class. But for the past several decades of conservative dominance, that has also been the only vehicle by which the government could get any sort of help to the rest of the American people via wealth redistribution. It’s not my first choice, by a long shot. In a perfect world liberals would be free to create decent government support for working families that didn’t have to be defined as a “tax incentive.” I’d rather have straight up cash and government services delivery. But before we dismantle what little we do have, it would be really nice to ensure that our system is capable of replacing these clunky programs with something else for the average citizens and their families who need them.

Once again, there are many miles of reform to go before this kind of “tax reform” can possibly benefit average citizens. Let’s just raise the rates on the wealthy for now and try to get money out of politics. Once we do something about those problems, maybe then we can have a serious debate about reforming the labyrinthine tax code so that the entire burden doesn’t fall on middle and working class Americans. Right now, it’s the Kochheads’ world and we just live in it.