Month: March 2014

We have a legislative problem more than a messaging problem

by David Atkins

It’s an old complaint: the Left just doesn’t get its message through. You’ll often hear progressives complain that the Democrats don’t phrase their ideas well enough, or that the media is against us, or that the American people are too distracted by their electronic devices, etc.

But that’s actually not true. There may be some failure in terms of deeper narrative framing, but at a policy level most Americans agree strongly with most progressive positions. Consider the minimum wage, courtesy Mark Mellman:

A year ago, every single Republican member of the House voted against increasing the minimum wage. More recently, Illinois gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner one-upped his primary opponents by demanding a reduction in the minimum wage. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) went even further, backing complete repeal of the minimum wage.

Yet, since November alone, no fewer than eight different nonpartisan public polls by six different pollsters have demonstrated overwhelming public support for increasing the minimum wage. Though the questions have differed, support has ranged from 65 percent to 76 percent. On average, Americans favored an increase in the minimum wage by a 43-point margin.
Indeed, in each of the polls for which a partisan breakdown is available, huge majorities of independents and at least pluralities, and often majorities, of rank-and-file Republicans join nearly all Democrats in supporting a minimum wage hike.

Even groups that are not congenial to the idea have been unable to find opposition. Reason, the self-styled magazine of “free minds and free markets,” which espouses libertarian views, conducted a poll in December that found 72 percent favoring a minimum wage increase, with just 26 percent opposed. In that survey, 88 percent of Democrats joined 70 percent of independents and 55 percent of Republicans in supporting a higher minimum wage.

Republicans revealed some interesting divisions, however, that could help explain the solid phalanx of “noes” among GOP politicians. Sixty-three percent of Republicans who make less than $60,000 a year support raising the minimum wage, while only 35 percent of Republicans making more than $60,000 a year favor an increase. Similarly, 64 percent of young Republicans support raising the minimum wage, compared to 43 percent among those over the age of 55. Republican opponents of the minimum wage who hold office tend to be older and richer than the party they lead.

This isn’t an issue where the media has snowed the public, or the public is too distracted, or the Left didn’t message it well enough.

The public is strongly in favor of our position. The public knows that we hold that position, not Republicans.

If more Democrats aren’t getting elected, it’s a matter of people either not believing that Democrats will follow through, or of people prioritizing other issues. Or the districts are gerrymandered.

This isn’t exactly a trenchant observation, of course. But it’s important to be reminded that elections really do matter, and that getting good Democrats who will actually vote to follow through on progressive policy really does matter.

When progressives on the street whine about the media, or about our “messaging”, or about the “sheeple,” etc., what they’re doing is removing their own agency, and their own responsibility for helping to fix the situation.

If we want to raise the minimum wage, the people are with us. But Republicans and some small set of conservative Democrats are standing in the way.

The only way to get rid of them is with phone calls and shoe leather. With 2014 elections right around the corner, there’s no time to start like the present.

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Google happy Bob Jones Sophomores

by digby

Dean Baker makes short work of Paul Ryan’s “poverty study” in this post. But I think the penultimate paragraph says it all:

Ryan’s report is perhaps at its most convoluted when it comes to child care. Among other things, we’re told that child care “increases the likelihood of participation in the labor force”, but then a few paragraphs later that it has “insignificant effects on labor-force participation.” Similarly, we’re told that “child care subsidies have negative effects on child development” but then a few paragraphs later that they have “significant positive effects … on children’s academic performance ….” As this section suggests, too often Ryan’s report reads like a class project cut-and-pasted together by a group of Google-happy sophomores in a 200-level class at Bob Jones University.

That sounds about right.

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“That I will not do. As Attorney General of Kentucky, I must draw the line when it comes to discrimination.”

by digby

I’ve always liked Kentucky AG Jack Conway going back to when he ran against Rand Paul for US Senate. And his statement today about gay marriage confirms my impression of him:

As Attorney General, I have vowed to the people of Kentucky to uphold my duty under the law and to do what is right, even if some disagreed with me. In evaluating how best to proceed as the Commonwealth’s chief lawyer in light of Judge Heyburn’s recent ruling, I have kept those promises in mind.

When the Governor and I were first named as the technical defendants in this lawsuit, my duty as Attorney General was to provide the Commonwealth with a defense in the federal district court, and to frame the proper legal defenses. Those who passed the statutes and the voters who passed the constitutional amendment deserved that, and the Office of Attorney General performed its duty. However, it’s my duty to defend both the Kentucky Constitution and the Constitution of the United States.

The temporary stay we sought and received on Friday allowed me time to confer with my client and to consult with state leaders about my impending decision and the ramifications for the state.

I have evaluated Judge Heyburn’s legal analysis, and today am informing my client and the people of Kentucky that I am not appealing the decision and will not be seeking any further stays.

From a constitutional perspective, Judge Heyburn got it right, and in light of other recent federal decisions, these laws will not likely survive upon appeal. We cannot waste the resources of the Office of the Attorney General pursuing a case we are unlikely to win.

There are those who believe it’s my mandatory duty, regardless of my personal opinion, to continue to defend this case through the appellate process, and I have heard from many of them. However, I came to the inescapable conclusion that, if I did so, I would be defending discrimination.

That I will not do. As Attorney General of Kentucky, I must draw the line when it comes to discrimination.

The United States Constitution is designed to protect everyone’s rights, both the majority and the minority groups. Judge Heyburn’s decision does not tell a minister or a congregation what they must do, but in government ‘equal justice under law’ is a different matter.

I am also mindful of those from the business community who have reached out to me in the last few days encouraging me not to appeal the decision. I agree with their assessment that discriminatory policies hamper a state’s ability to attract business, create jobs and develop a modern workforce.

I prayed over this decision. I appreciate those who provided counsel, especially my remarkable wife, Elizabeth. In the end, this issue is really larger than any single person and it’s about placing people above politics. For those who disagree, I can only say that I am doing what I think is right. In the final analysis, I had to make a decision that I could be proud of – for me now, and my daughters’ judgment in the future.

May we all find ways to work together to build a more perfect union, and to build the future Commonwealth in which we want to live, work and raise all of our families.”

Good for him. But he’s on his own. For now anyway:

Two of Kentucky’s top Democrats split sharply Tuesday over same-sex marriage, with Gov. Steve Beshear saying outside lawyers will be hired to appeal a decision granting recognition to gay couples married in other states after the attorney general announced he would not pursue the case.

Conway knows he’s on the right side of history. But it takes guts to do this anyway. This is Kentucky we’re talking about.

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GOP Senate candidate: Obamacare is a “great idea that can’t be paid for”

by David Atkins

Greg Sargent makes a great catch today:

The other day I noted that Thom Tillis, the expected GOP candidate for Senate in North Carolina, has been struggling to explain his stance on Obamacare — he knows repeal is a non-starter because the goals of Obamacare remain popular, but isn’t willing to embrace any alternatives. Tillis’s equivocations — which capture the problems with the GOP repeal stance in general — have taken a pounding in the North Carolina press.

Now North Carolina Dems have unearthed a radio interview Tillis gave which again illuminates the problem here. It contains this wonderful quote about the ACA:

“It’s a great idea that can’t be paid for.”

In the interview, from February, Tillis insists he’s gung ho for repeal, saying: “If we could effectively nullify and repeal Obamacare in North Carolina, we would do it.” Then, asked whether he supports home state Senator Richard Burr’s replace plan — the leading GOP alternative — Tillis demurs. But he confirms he supports “dealing with preexisting conditions” and “dealing with some sort of safety net for people with catastrophic loss,” adding that “Republicans want to solve the problem” and that “we’re not just saying No to Obamacare.” Then he says:

“I think there’s a lot of things we can do if we focus on a systemic approach to eliminating the bad, and the majority of the stuff that is in Obamacare is bad, because it’s not fiscally sustainable. It’s a great idea that can’t be paid for.”

The ACA can be paid for, of course. It’s a matter of priorities.

But that’s not the point. Increasingly, Republican candidates are coming up against the fact that ACA has already improved the lives of millions of people. The public still doesn’t fully trust the law, but an expanding majority doesn’t want it repealed. The “repeal” mantra is increasingly becoming a millstone around Republican necks.

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Marissa Alexander: can’t win for losing

by digby

I’m sure you all recall the case of Marissa Alexander, the African American Floridian who got a long prison sentence for shooting a warning shot to chase off her abusive husband. We all became aware of it in the shadow of the Trayvon Martin trial as people noted the contrast between the outcomes of the two cases (and the obvious contrast in the color of the skin of the defendant …)

Anyway, there’s news.  And it’s not good:

Florida State Attorney Angela Corey will seek to triple Marissa Alexander’s original prison sentence from twenty to sixty years, effectively a life sentence for the 33-year-old woman, when her case is retried this July, the Florida Times-Union reports. 

Alexander was convicted on three charges of aggravated assault in 2012 for firing warning shots in the direction of Rico Gray, her estranged husband, and his two children. No one was hurt. Alexander’s attorneys argued that she had the right to self-defense after Gray physically assaulted and threatned to kill her the day of the shooting. In a deposition, Gray confessed to a history of abusing women, including Alexander. 

In September of 2013 a District Appeals court threw out the conviction on grounds that Circuit Judge James Daniel erroneously placed the burden on Alexander to prove she acted in self-defense, when she only had to meet a “reasonable doubt concerning self-defense.” 

Judge Daniel originally slapped Alexander with three twenty-year prison sentences, but ordered that they be served concurrently. If Alexander is convicted a second time in July, State Attorney Angela Corey will seek consecutive sentences, adding up to sixty years in prison. 

Florida’s 10-20-Life law imposes a mandatory minimum of twenty years in prison for anyone who fires a gun while committing a felony. Angela Corey’s prosecution team says it is following a court ruling that multiple convictions for related charges under 10-20-Life should carry consecutive sentences.

I guess I don’t understand why this woman is being re-tried on the same charges. I get that the government is concerned with people firing warning shots at others, but it seems to me to be a natural consequence of the state’s loose gun laws. Everybody’s packing heat around there and if there’s ever been a case in which one might go easy on the defendant, it should be this one. It simply cannot be ok that you can actually kill an unarmed person and be considered justified simply because you were “afraid” but that you can spend decades in jail for merely shooting a warning shot for exactly the same reason. The lesson here would be that Marissa Alexander would have been far better off killing her ex-husband. That can’t be right.

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QOTD: Huckleberry Graham connecting the dots

by digby

It started with Benghazi. When you kill Americans and nobody pays a price, you invite this type of aggression. #Ukraine— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) March 4, 2014

Yeah. That’s what happened.

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The new normal

by digby

These long term unemployed just need to get some entrepreneurial spirit:

The number of long-term jobless Americans missing out on federal unemployment insurance this week topped 2 million.

Benefits ended for 1.3 million workers in December. Each week since then, another 70,000 Americans who would have been eligible have joined them.

In a budget proposal released Tuesday, President Barack Obama called on Congress to restore the benefits as “a starting point in achieving opportunity and mobility,” at a cost of $15 billion. The budget outline notes that 35 percent of the unemployed have been out of work six months or longer, a higher rate of long-term jobless than at any other time Congress has dropped extended benefits.

Ok, so there may not be any legitimate jobs out there for the long term unemployed. That doesn’t excuse their laziness. There are liquor stores to be knocked over and anonymous Johns to service. No excuse for all this bellyaching.

The article points out that the chances of restoring those benefits has about as much chance as I have of becoming the third Mrs Brad Pitt. We just don’t care about high unemployment anymore. It’s the new normal.

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Rogue prosecutor

by digby

One of the biggest scandals of the Bush Administration was the politicization of the Justice Department, specifically the practice of appointing political flunkies as US Attorneys with directives to interfere in elections. This was clearly run by the political arm of the White House, undermining the independence of the Justice Department in a particularly partisan fashion. But now, it seems we have a Justice Department which has no control at all over its prosecutors, who seem to operate completely at their own discretion. At least one of them is.

Yesterday, the Huffington Post followed a young man as he submitted himself to federal prison for a 2 year term after being convicted of breaking federal law by working for a legal medical marijuana collective in California. Here’s the story of the prosecutor:

As the White House revised its position on marijuana policy, U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner, an Obama appointee, relied on an evolving rationale to continue prosecuting three people involved with a California medical pot cooperative, according to letters Wagner sent to defense attorneys.

Wagner and his staff cited new reasons to press forward with the case even as they were undermined by shifting administration policy. Ultimately Wagner argued that he had no choice but to push forward because other defendants he had previously prosecuted were still serving long sentences.

It’s quite an evolution of legal rationales over the course of time even citing judicial independence from justice department guidelines (which is correct, of course) and then saying:

Wagner and his staff went on to add that even members of the administration are not subject to directives from that administration, but rather will follow the direction of Congress as they interpret it. “The defendant points to press reports about statements of the Attorney General and the latest in a series of memoranda dealing with U.S. Department of Justice policy and priorities dealing with marijuana enforcement … The Controlled Substances Act continues to be the law until amended by Congress and the Sentencing Guidelines apply no matter where the federal court is located,” they wrote. “Thus, defendant Duncan’s argument in this area should be given little weight.”

The defendants “argument in this area” was to cite the guidelines on marijuana enforcement set forth by the Attorney General of the United States. Basically, this prosecutor is saying that he answers to no one. Now, I’m all for prosecutors operating without political interference, but this is not that. I have never heard that US Attorneys are allowed to simply ignore the Justice Department if they want to. I guess I assumed that if a US Attorney didn’t like Justice Department policy he or she could protest, resign, refuse and/or be fired. But I didn’t know they were allowed to simply interpret the laws as they wished and carry on unobstructed.

But that’s what happened in this case. He has been allowed to prosecute this case with Javert-like zeal to “send a message”:

His changing rationale for pursuing the cases, as seen in the letters, suggests that his analysis was largely political. “The U.S. Attorney said with some clarity that if these guys didn’t get jail time, then that would send the signal that nobody would be jailed for marijuana in the district,” said Tom Johnson, Duncan’s attorney. “It’s just a random application of the federal drug enforcement laws. He was literally at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

While Wagner was prosecuting the three defendants, another branch of the administration had begun to protect the workplace rights of medical marijuana shop employees.

This raises the main question as to why it should be that anyone should be jailed for marijuana under federal law in California in the first place. (I don’t suppose it has anything to do with the practice of asset forfeiture and arrest statistics, but it might be a good idea to ask.) Meanwhile, we have people engaged in legal California medical marijuana businesses being incarcerated under federal law for years. At our expense. And the destruction of their lives and futures.

Can’t anyone stop this? Eric Holder maybe? He is the Attorney General of the United States. I would think he has at least a tiny bit of influence. If he doesn’t, we need to think very hard about reforming the Justice Department in major ways. US Attorneys should not be subject to political pressures to tilt elections, obviously. But they cannot be allowed to operate as extra-judicial fiefdoms without any accountability at all either. It’s a very powerful, unelected office with the ability to ruin lives at the drop of the hat. And they’re using it to do just that.

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“Our planes”

by digby

This is what passes for empathy and bipartisanship from the right wing. Via Charlie Pierce:

Last week, I thought of Ron Silver, the late actor. He was a political activist. He was an ardent Democrat. At Clinton’s first inauguration, he saw military jets flying over the Lincoln Memorial, and was disgusted. Then he thought, “Those are our planes now.” Later, after 9/11, he became a staunch supporter of George W. Bush, and spoke at the 2004 Republican convention. He spoke damn well, too.

I was in Washington last week, walking past the White House. (For some reason, the people never elect me. They won’t let me live there.) I should say, I’ve always loved the White House. It’s one of my favorite buildings. I have loved it since childhood — how it looks and what it stands for. It is a perfect republican building. It is exactly the kind of house the American president should live in. An American, a republican, mansion.

By the way, my great-grandfather had his shop quite close to the White House, at 13th and F. I have a letter to him from FDR.

Anyway, last week, I felt a surge of bitterness. Why? I am disliking the current occupant of the White House more than ever. And, on seeing this house, I winced.

And then I caught myself: “Come on, Jay. It’s still the White House. Presidents come and go. This is a great and glorious country, with a constitution, separation of powers, regular elections . . . Don’t have an ‘our planes’ attitude.”

I think Peggy Noonan could have said it better.

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“I know about job creation because I sign both sides of the check.”

by David Atkins

So, some young Republican insurance executive has decided to throw his hat into the ring for California’s 44th Assembly district here in Ventura County. I don’t normally talk about my local races here on this national issues blog, but I couldn’t help sharing just one quote here:

I know about job creation because I sign both sides of the check,” de la Piedra said in a news release announcing his candidacy. “California is still pushing job-creators out of the state.”

This catechism that people who own businesses are “job creators” is simultaneously one of the dumbest and most harmful pieces of sophistry the Right has produced in the last decade.

Signing both sides of a check doesn’t make someone a “job creator.” As a small business owner myself, I sign both sides of the check, too. So does Warren Buffett. None of us are “job creators.”

Customers are the only “job creators.” Working class and middle class American either have enough money to make it worth it for business to hire employees, or they don’t.

Where do customers come from? Well, they come from a lot of places. Some of them are employed by the private sector. Some, like military personnel or teachers, are employed by the public sector. Some are on Social Security.

Some businesses make little profit, but employ lots of people. Some businesses like WhatsApp, are worth $19 billion, but only employ 56 people. Some businesses help create jobs. Some businesses like Amazon destroy them.

What’s most important is making sure there’s a solid middle class with good education, stability and infrastructure.

When there’s too much redistribution (as in Soviet-style Communism) there’s not enough incentive for innovation or room for growth. This much is known to the Right.

But it also works the other way. When there’s too much inequality–partly because business has gotten very good at figuring out how to make tons of money for owners and executives while employing fewer and fewer people or lower and lower wages–there’s not enough money to go around and fewer customers.

Right now companies are making record profits on record stock prices, but unemployment is high and wages are low. Businesses are doing very well, partly by employing fewer people, cheaper. Businesses only create as few jobs as they can possibly get away with.

When that happens, we need to change the rules of the market to make sure that we put in stronger incentives for executives to employ people for higher wages–and if they won’t or can’t do that, then redistribute some of the record amount of money going to the very, very top so that it flows back to the bottom and the middle.

A billionaire can only buy so many socks, shirts, cars and pillows. If you’re a shirt maker, it doesn’t help you for billionaires to make more and more money. It helps you, rather, if the teacher, firefighter and unemployed/underemployed person down the street have more money to buy shirts. Then maybe you as a shirt maker can expand and hire more people.

This stuff isn’t that hard to figure out. It’s a damn shame the Left has been so passive about letting the Right get away with the “job creator” lie for so long.

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