Month: July 2015

Sellin’ the big nothin’
by Tom Sullivan

There is an emotional scene at the end of the movie First Blood. Rambo, the decorated war veteran with post-traumatic stress, is breaking down.

He tells his best friend – his only friend – how since leaving the army his life has gone to hell.

He shouts, “For me, civilian life is nothin’. In the field, we had a code of honor. You watch my back, I watch yours. Back here there’s nothin’.”

That nothin’ is what our elites are sellin’.

Oh, our leaders love them some troops in uniform. They put their hands over their hearts, get all solemn, and snap to attention when soldiers pass. They may even think they mean it. But the values they praise in the military are not the values by which they (and we) have organized an economy that no longer serves us. We serve it.

Inside the base perimeter, training instills esprit de corps. Teamwork. All for one, one for all. Self-sacrifice. We give medals for it. Leave no one behind. A code of honor.

But outside in Anytown, USA? Screw you, I’ve got mine. Anyone “out of uniform” is unworthy. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Stop picking my pocket. Everyone for himself.

Why is that? What is that?

Inside the perimeter (so the advertising goes), it’s values and honor. Outside? Dog eat dog. Profits before people. Nothing personal, just business.

This side of the line? Leave no one behind. That side? Nothin’.

The values we laud as honorable in our military – the best America has to offer – apply inside the perimeter for the few, for the chosen. But outside? Organizing government around that same code is subversive, contemptible, and dangerous.

What is that?

How did we get from all Men are created equal and caring for the general welfare to this wasteland of the soul and call it virtue? Perhaps it is a carryover from a time when in America, on one side of a line the same man could be free and on the other side a slave.

President Barack Obama’s eulogy for the slain Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney spoke of grace:

According to the Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It’s not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God — (applause) — as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. Grace.

But there is no United States of Grace. As much as we enjoy telling ourselves this country is uniquely blessed of God, we have constructed for ourselves and given ourselves over to an economic system where grace has no place and kinship has no worth. Those we carefully circumscribe within neat, safe boundaries. Inside the church: grace. Outside the church? Contempt for “the least of these.” Inside: unearned blessings, handouts from God. Outside? Handouts breed weakness. The poor deserve being left behind.

Why is that? What is that?

This is not to suggest a union of church and state. Those who think they want it would not stand for their government or their economic system serving the least of these as their holy book recommends. Thus, the system we have constructed bears little resemblance to the ideals therein. There are too many backs we have no interest in watching, and we are too falsely proud to allow them to watch ours.

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of Daily Kos once explained how he went into the army as a Republican and came out a Democrat. He described his time in the artillery this way:

The military is perhaps the ideal society — we worked hard but the Army took care of us in return. All our basic needs were met — housing, food, and medical care. It was as close to a color-blind society as I have ever seen. We looked out for one another. The Army invested in us…

The Army taught me the very values that make us progressives — community, opportunity, and investment in people and the future. Returning to Bush Senior’s America, I was increasingly disillusioned by the selfishness, lack of community, and sense of entitlement inherent in the Republican philosophy.

No code. No honor. Just the emptiness of the self, and an economy structured to make a few impossibly rich while leaving the rest behind. ISIS finds the concomitant sense of isolation fertile ground for recruiting.

At the end of First Blood, Rambo starts crying. Watching, maybe we do, too. Because we know he’s right. “Back here there’s nothin’.”

That nothin’ is what our elites are sellin’.

Maybe it’s time Americans stopped buyin’.

We’ve still got a ways to go

by digby

Sheesh:

I guess the fact that it wasn’t flown anywhere until African Americans started demonstrated for equal rights in the late 50s and early 60s is just a coincidence.  It just happened that at that moment people began to feel their Southern Pride and wanted to celebrate it.

How embarrassing for all of us …

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Don’t worry your pretty little heads about it ladies

by digby

… this doesn’t mean a thing:

The trend is not entirely unexpected. After the 2014 elections handed significant victories to abortion opponents, experts in the field predicted that states would pass more stringent anti-choice laws this year. Several states forged ahead into new territory, enacting first-of-their-kind restrictions on the procedure as a new way of testing the bounds of Roe v. Wade.

For instance, Kansas and Oklahoma both approved a new ban on so-called “dismemberment” abortion, an inflammatory way to describe a specific type of second-trimester abortion procedure. And Arizona and Arkansas both adopted a new type of counseling law that forces doctors to tell their patients about an unscientific theory that medication abortions can be reversed. The Guttmacher report notes that these states are charting “new directions that may well serve as models for other states going forward.”

Many states also passed harsh waiting period requirements lengthening the amount of time that patients must wait before ending a pregnancy. North Carolina and Oklahoma both approved 72-hour waits, among the longest in the nation. Meanwhile, several states — Florida, Arkansas, and Tennessee — approved waiting periods with counseling requirements written in a way that mandates two separate trips to the same abortion clinic.

Yeah, whatever right? It’s just not that big of a deal.

Well since we’re celebrating “liberty” this week-end and all, here’s a little reprise of something I’ve posted before by my friend Debra Cooper about why this matters:

For women ALL Roads to freedom and equality – economic equality and most particularly the ability to avoid poverty START with control of their bodies. If they can’t control how they get pregnant and when they will have a child then poverty is the result.

There is theory about something called the Prime Mover – the first action or the first cause. Well for women it IS reproductive rights. It precedes everything. It really is simple. Without the ability to control your own body then you are a slave to everything else.

Frankly sexism, the need to control women’s lives by controlling their bodies and the things that arise from it, are endemic to any social structure. It is ever enduring and even when it seems to be quashed it returns in another form. That is the story in the modern era of women’s rights. One step forward after a long struggle – suffrage and then a step back. (And no way do I say that women are not complicit in their own subjugation. We are.)

In the epilogue to The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin, he makes a point of saying that the loss of power and control is what the elite and the reactionary fear the most. More than a specific loss itself, they fear the rising volcano of submerged anger and power. And for them it’s most acutely felt as a compulsion for control in the “intimate” arena. That is the most vexing and disturbing of all.

It is why they want to control women. And controlling their reproductive lives is the surefire way to control them.

It is why abortion rights are absolutely central to every other kind of freedom.

Just saying.

QOTW: Tweety

by digby

From C&L

“I’m starting to lose faith in Scott Walker as a reasonable person. He’s aping the right wing.”

Seriously? The guy who thinks forced ultrasounds are “cool” and unions are like ISIS? That guy is reasonable?

I wish I understood why so many people think Scott Walker is more “reasonable” than say, Bobby Jindal or Rick Perry. He’s on the far right end of the GOP Governor spectrum.

But hey, I’m glad to see that Chris Matthews is waking up. Maybe the rest of the political media establishment is too.

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Enjoy your national parks — while you can

by digby

If the Kochs have their way, your grandkids won’t be able to:

In an op-ed published in Tuesday’s New York Times, Reed Watson, the executive director at the Koch-backed Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), along with a research associate at the Center, call for no more national parks, citing the backlog in maintenance for existing parks.

“True conservation is taking care of the land and water you already have, not insatiably acquiring more and hoping it manages itself,” the op-ed reads. “Let’s maintain what we’ve already got, so we can protect it properly,” it concludes.

That doesn’t sound so bad does it? We have plenty of them already. We should just take care of those and stop making new ones. No biggie. Except that isn’t their agenda at all. This is just a first step:

While the authors seem to push for “true conservation” from the federal government, in reality, PERC has a long history of advocating for the privatization of America’s national parks and other public lands, and has significant ties to the Koch brothers and fossil fuel industries.

It’s nice of the New York Times to give them space to lie about what they’re doing though.

More at Think Progress about what they’re really up to.

The don’t believe in evolution either …

by digby

If you want to see the essential difference between American liberals and conservatives — and why some people choose those philosophies — I think this is it:

The funny thing is that I think most liberals would believe that change doesn’t preclude adhering to principles. The principles underlying the US were based upon the Enlightenment which has change baked right into it.  Indeed, the country was founded on the biggest change of all: revolution.

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Smart Democrats are worried about base turnout In 2016


by Gaius Publius

The find is by Howie Klein at Down With Tyranny, and it needs amplification. The underlying work is a poll by Stan Greenberg and his group. Here’s a taste from each.

Klein first (my occasional emphasis throughout):

Democrats have reason to worry that by 2016 they may have a hard time getting their voters to the polls, as Alexis Simendinger has written for Real
Clear Politics. Driven by a competing set of emotions: pure greed and
selfishness on the one hand and a sense of ginned-up grievance on the
other, Republican voters are gung-ho to capture the White House and hold
both houses of Congress. A clownish, patently dishonest and openly
racist Donald Trump is polling second among 20 Republicans for the
nomination. Normal people laugh; Republicans drool. …

Klein identifies the disparity in passion by citing the example of Wall Street’s control of “Albany,” the Democratic-controlled New York state legislature:

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters, “The hedge fund contributors loom very large in Albany and they have way too much influence. That is a fact.” I think everyone knows it and few Democrats outside the Beltway careerists can stand it.

Here’s what that looks like nationally. Your bottom line, both Senate and House leadership are willing to lose winnable seats. Their real goal — keep real progressives from ever holding office. In other words, they’d rather run money-corrupted, insider-friendly candidates who could easily lose than real populists who might win.

Starting with the Senate, your key perps are Chuck Schumer, faux-progressive and current DSCC head Jon Tester, and before him, blatant “centrist” and former DSCC head Michael Bennet (who is both a TPP perp and up for reelection in 2016):

When Wall Street gets bent out of shape over the populism of Bernie Sanders
and, especially, Elizabeth Warren, they go whining and fuming to
Schumer, and to their House tool, Steve Israel. Both are working hard to
please Wall Street by recruiting conservative pro-Wall Street, pro-Big
Business candidates to run as Democrats. Schumer is fighting like a savage to make sure lifelong Republican and Wall Street suck-up Patrick Murphy is the Democratic nominee for Marco Rubio’s open Senate seat in Florida, and he is vigilant that as few Democrats as possible from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the party get near party nominations.

And now the House. Your key perps, Wall Street favorite and former DCCC head Steve Israel, current DCCC head Ben Ray Luján, and she who assigns these people the task of selecting candidates — Nancy Pelosi:

Over on the House side, Steve Israel and hapless sock-puppet Ben Ray Luján are also running around recruiting Blue Dogs, New Dems and outright Republicans. Their latest is Mike Derrick, to run against popular Republican Elise Stefanik in NY-21, a district in which Obama beat Romney 63.3 to 35.2%– a phenomenal 28.1 point spread. Derrick is a Republican who’s conveniently calling himself a Democrat now. Apparently Israel doesn’t think a real Democrat could win in NY-21, despite Obama’s landslide there. Similarly, Schumer doesn’t want Grayson, an outspoken tribune for working families, to win a Senate seat, and his solution is Republican-“turned”-Democrat Patrick Murphy, a New Dem backbencher who votes with the Republican Party more than nearly any other Democrat in the House.

Klein’s conclusion:

There are scores of cases just like this across the country. And Democrats wonder why their base doesn’t turn out?

Klein’s whole piece is well worth your reading it. There’s much that I haven’t included.

Protecting the Insider Game

To put this in my language — for Beltway Democrats with power, the real game isn’t to win against Republicans. Yes, they want to do that, but another goal takes precedence — protecting the insider game. Your rule of thumb:

I’ve made this point before — that money-friendly Democrats are “Tea Partying” progressives to keep control of the party, even if it means surrendering control of Congress. 

Which leads to a presidential thought. Would money-friendly Democrats “Tea Party” their post-convention presidential candidate — sabotage his candidacy — if that candidate were Bernie Sanders? We may well see that tested. Stay tuned and watch carefully. Sanders is surging. And it’s not like they haven’t sabotaged progressives before.

What goes around comes around

I said this wasn’t my point, however, what Democrats are doing; nor is it the point of this piece. My point is that the dirty little secret is known to the voters. To repeat Klein:

There are scores of cases just like this across the country. And Democrats wonder why their base doesn’t turn out?

The eroding Democratic base showed its distaste for the Beltway insider game, a protection racket really, by handing Democrats significant losses in 2014. Here’s just one data point from that race (my writing):

[I]f all current leads hold, [DCCC chief] Steve
Israel turned a 35-seat
deficit into a 61-seat
deficit. You can talk “wave election” and
“gerrymandering” all day, but when Dems don’t even compete in 21
winnable seats, your problem starts closer to home — the boss is throwing
the race[.]

I’m not sure the voters knew that “the boss is throwing the race,” but the voters were having none of what the boss (Democratic party leadership) was serving up.

Israel and the DCCC failed to compete in 21 winnable seats (list at the source). Seriously, ponder that. If you had a job in marketing, and you didn’t put your strongest product in 21 of the competition’s weakest markets, you’d be fired. Israel, for this result, got a nice parting gift, and his successor, Ben Ray Luján, is following in his footprints, certainly not by accident.

On the Senate side, you could easily identify several seats the Democrats surrendered in 2014 by running the weaker candidate or covertly sabotaging the stronger one. This doesn’t mean these seats would have been won, but the odds of winning would have been greater. In all cases, the candidates whom the DSCC worked against were progressives, enemies of the money-controlled insider game.

And now the polls … party leaders fear the stay-home problem

Greenberg’s polling data takes this 2014 analysis forward to the 2016 election, and in particular, the presidential race. RealClearPolitics (h/t Klein):

Americans want change and reforms, but “people don’t think any of this is going to happen,” Stan Greenberg, chairman and CEO of polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, said during a reporter roundtable organized by the Christian Science Monitor.

Their skepticism doesn’t turn on the idea of a Democratic nominee who would follow a two-term Democrat, President Obama. “It’s because the old political system is uniquely corrupted” in their eyes, Greenberg said. “What matters is how deep the critique people have about what’s happening in the country, both politically and economically.”

Voters define corruption as money in politics and Washington power brokers who are self-serving and disconnected from everyday Americans and their concerns. This is why Clinton’s wealth, the Clinton Foundation’s fundraising, her decades lived as a VIP, and her missing emails discourage some voters from accepting the leading Democratic candidate as trustworthy, even if they favor the economic and social policies she stakes out.

Keep in mind that Greenberg himself is a deep-dyed centrist, and if you read the poll you’ll see that in many of his questions. They consistently frame decisions or choices, on both the Democratic and Republican side, in seductive, centrist-confirming terms. And yet, insider Greenberg has still found reason to be concerned:

The Democratic Party’s strategy to hold control of the White House and win congressional seats next year relies on America’s shifting demographics and on voter turnout. But “if the disparity in enthusiasm is not addressed, that strategy is at risk,” Democracy Corps [a group Greenberg co-founded] wrote in a synopsis of the findings that began, “Democrats need to give voters a reason to participate.”

The threat comes down to an enthusiasm gap of 19 points between the Democrats who say they are “extremely interested” in the congressional and local races in 2016, and the much more energized GOP voters.

A 19-point enthusiasm gap isn’t going to put Ms. Clinton into the White House without help and some luck, at least as we see it from here. It seems that what Democratic voters (and many activists) have already figured out, has finally percolated up to the ears of party elders.

What do you think they’re going to do about that?

GP

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Ich bin ein Tar Heel
by Tom Sullivan

Atlantic‘s Emma Green cites attorneys David Boies and Theodore Olson on the effect Citizens United has had on local races across the country. The two debated the effects at the Aspen Ideas Festival this week. But let’s begin, as she does, quoting Norm Ornstein:

Loads of money—mostly conservative—went into judicial-retention elections in the last cycle in Florida, following a similar experience in 2010 in Iowa and Illinois. We saw similar efforts on a smaller scale in other states, including Wisconsin and Michigan. All had a ton of attack ads. Those efforts have exploded in the 2014 elections. In North Carolina, where repeal of the state’s Judicial Campaign Reform Act by the right-wing legislature opened the door to a further explosion of campaign spending, and where the GOP sees retaining a majority on the court (ostensibly, but risibly, nonpartisan) as a key to their continued hegemony in politics, the Republican State Leadership Committee spent $900,000 on an unsuccessful primary campaign to unseat Justice Robin Hudson, and will target Court of Appeals Judge Sam Ervin IV in his second attempt to move to the Supreme Court (the first one, in 2012, cost $4.5 million or more).

Ervin won that Supreme Court seat (defeating incumbent Robert N. Hunter, Jr.) as did incumbent Democrats Hudson and Cheri Beasley in these officially nonpartisan elections.

In Aspen, Ted Olson, who represented Citizens United lobbying firm, began:

“The more speech we have, the better—that’s what the Framers of the Constitution thought,” he said. One of the key disagreements in Citizens United is whether money counts as speech—the Court accepted Olson’s argument that it does. “It might be nasty speech, it might be unpleasant speech it might make you uncomfortable. The answer to that is the marketplace of ideas.”

But Boies argued that the Supreme Court mischaracterized the effect that money has on politics. In its opinion, he said, the Court argued that there’s a danger of corruption “with respect with contributions to political candidates, but there is less of a danger with regard to independent expenditures. Who knows that? That’s not something that courts are well-designed to determine.” The Court’s argument follows, he said, if you believe that making political donations is the same as making political statements, but “if you believe that speech and money are different … that money enables speech, but is not speech itself, and if you believe that people really are different [from corporations], then the syllogism breaks down.”

The ads run against Robin Hudson were particularly nasty. But having lost those three NC Supreme Court races last November, Republicans (and Olsen) might well argue that speech won and that the money was not as big a danger as Boies believes. But the money failed here only through some smart, effective campaigning and boots on the ground.

Democrats held those two seats on the court and Ervin won his by running as a team, by representing each other at their events as they crisscrossed the state. Plus, the state party (otherwise considered in disarray) instituted a smart “Blue Ballot” campaign that put easily and cheaply reproduced literature in the hands of volunteers in smaller counties across the state. The Blue Ballot featured judges prominently. Sometimes boots on the ground trump money in the bank.

Republicans were not pleased. One who got in our faces outside the Board of Elections here accused us of cheating because we advertised a list of Democratic judges in the officially nonpartisan election. But Democrats supported members of the party openly, and were not shy about it. Republicans mask their list of judicial candidates with a “conservative judges” label.

Having failed in November, North Carolina Republicans next gambit for gaining an edge in the courts was to pass a bill to provide for retention elections. (Ted Cruz, anyone?) You can bet the money will flow freely ahead of those elections as well.

Turnout will be key in 2016, something Howie has something to say about. (And perhaps Gaius here later.) In the meantime, if people don’t think the money has an impact, let them come to North Carolina.

A little Henri

by digby

For your evening:

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They know what they like

by digby

Via eclectablog:

The red line is Donald Trump after he insulted immigrants.