I suspect (based on what CNN is saying) that this is going to be read as a sign that the economy is slowing down. I think that’s misreading things, mostly because I think we never sped up to begin with. There were a couple of somewhat better months, but I always thought—and in retrospect I think I was right—that those were likely to be temporary blips rather than a real change in trend. So we’re still stagnating. Which isn’t a surprise—our policymakers haven’t really done anything in a year or more to improve things, so things aren’t improving. Of course, the way things are going, we’ll be lucky if they don’t take action to make things worse in the next few months.
Indeed we will. And I shudder to think what they’ll do after the election — no matter which party wins.
For the first time, I’m wondering if Obama’s going to eke out a win.
I have not watched the Edwards trial and I am not intimately familiar with the details of the evidence. But like Amanda Marcotte, I’m glad he was not convicted. I hope the prosecution decides to let it go. Being a horrible person is not a criminal act. If it were, we wouldn’t be able to build enough prisons.
But Amanda explains the real reason why prosecutors should close this case. In this day and age, in this era of obscene electoral profligacy, the pursuit was simply ludicrous. read on …
Some of these details were known long ago, of course. Good policy was scuttled in order to secure industry support. The question is why it was done, and whether it could have been done any other way.
Barack Obama has indeed sold you out. He and many of his Democratic colleagues have sold you out on healthcare, and they’ve sold you out on financial reform. You were looking for a savior, and you’ve been had–not an altogether atypical result for those looking for a strong leader to “save” them.
He hasn’t done this because he’s a bad guy. In fact, he’s a great guy. I think he’s doing pretty much the best job he can. He’s sold you out because he’s not afraid of you. And really, if I may be so bold, he shouldn’t be afraid of you. You don’t know who really runs the show, and you’re far too fickle and manipulable to count on.
The first thing you need to understand about healthcare reform is what Jane Hamsher identified long ago: nothing–absolutely nothing–is going to trump the White House’s deal with PhRMA and the insurance industry. The question you need to ask yourselves is: why? If you’re intellectually mature enough to get past “personal betrayal” as your best answer, you’ll be on the right track.
While you ponder that one, you might want to also consider why nothing has been done–nor will anything serious actually be done–about financial industry reform. Standing up to the financial industry in the current political environment should be a no-brainer. So what in the heck is going on here? If you can think past shadowy conspiracy theories and possible personal enrichment for the Obama family, you’ll be doing the kind of thinking that will help actually solve the problem.
I noted that money to purchase persuasion is extremely powerful. Sophisticated marketing research and framing techniques mean that hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars spent on advertising can be completely devastating to political careers. It’s much harder to “welcome their hatred” when that kind of money is being thrown around that effectively.
To continue:
So here’s what you have to understand. If the health insurance and financial industries really felt scared by any particular politician or political party, or their lobbying efforts were inadequate, they could throw them out of power in a heartbeat. With a wave of their hand and a few billion dollars or so in our direction, the pharma companies and Goldman Sachs could absolutely destroy the Democratic Party in 2010 and beyond. The only reason they don’t do so is that it’s cheaper and easier to buy a few key Democrats off instead, and intimidate the rest. Plus, they don’t have to run the risk of a right-wing populist backlash, either.
That’s why Barack Obama can’t renege on his deal with PhRMA: PhRMA almost singlehandedly destroyed Hillarycare in 1993, and spent the money to tip the balance of the elections in 1994. They can easily do it again. So could Goldman Sachs and the rest of the financial vampires. Rahm Emmanuel knows this, too: the deals are in place in return for their holding their fire.
And each and every one of you is being taken for fools. You work for an election or two to put chosen leaders in place, and expect those leaders to work their “leadership” magic to ram reforms down the throats of the corporate sector, failing to understand just how fully the corporate sector holds the cards. It’s not the campaign contributions: it’s the persuasion money…
If you want to win, you will ORGANIZE. You will organize in the same way the Right has done for the last 40 years, and you will spend money on persuasion, where it really matters. You will, in short, make the politicians as afraid of you as they are of them. The Right has built vast networks of think tanks, newspapers, periodicals, cable news channels, and political advocacy organizations to spread their finely tuned, well-honed messages. Their politicians may fail them, and their actual policies may be deeply unpopular, but their message machine nearly always works its magic to get them what they want, even when Democrats are in power.
That’s partly because the American political Right never quits and never gives up. They know that organization is the key to their success, and they don’t trust politicians to do their work for them. Democrats, on the other hand, get disappointed and quit when our politicians don’t pan out the way we wanted. That’s why we lose.
As the healthcare debacle went on month after month, I didn’t ask myself why the Democratic politicians weren’t pushing single-payer or Medicare for all. I wanted to know where the Left-leaning organizations were. Where were the think tanks, the message machine, the newspapers, the whole infrastructure? Where were the national, well-tested ad campaigns pushing Medicare for All? Where were the free screenings of Sicko at major movie theaters across the nation, complete with sponsored food & drink for those who attended and signed up to take action? Where were the mid-cycle ads done by Madison Avenue professionals targeting specific Senators and making them deeply uncomfortable? Where, in effect, was the message campaign?
It didn’t exist. What we had were labor unions and the AARP delivering generic hopeful messages without an ounce of the power or creativity that one might find in a random Budweiser ad.
If you want to win, ORGANIZE. Develop parallel organizations willing to persuade with the power and intensity of a corporation.
It was the case back then. It remains the case now.
The Affordable Care Act barely squeaked through with a minimum number of votes as it was. Had either PhRMA or the hospital industry come out against the bill to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in ads against those who considered voting for it, it would never have had a prayer of passing. The blessing of PhRMA and the hospitals was a necessary condition for the passage of any bill, which is part of why single-payer was never on the table in the first place.
Replacing Barack Obama with a “stronger progressive” won’t solve this problem, because the problem lies with the system, not with the person in the Oval Office.
The power to defeat PhRMA and the hospitals won’t come from the top down. It will come in two ways: 1) from the bottom up via progressives rolling them over state by state; and more importantly 2) through campaign finance reform that prevents them from threatening the careers of every politician in Washington if they don’t get their way.
But the days of an FDR jamming legislation down the throats of corrupt industries with 70 likeminded Senators isn’t coming back, particularly if we’re interested in holding onto the civil rights movement. FDR may not have compromised with the corporations, but he certainly compromised with the racist Dixiecrats. That is no longer negotiable, morally or logistically. And the corporations aren’t going to stand down, either: they’ve been on the march ever since the Powell Memo, and they’re not going to stop now.
What we do about that is up to us. It’s not entirely clear what the strategies for success will be, but the strategies for failure are obvious: waiting for a progressive savior who will never come because the structures of politics no longer allow it, and assuming that decentralized and disorganized angry people power will magically bring about change.
It’s going to be a long, hard slog. And it’s going to take organizing on a variety of fronts, chief among them campaign finance reform, that don’t seem to immediately impact the problem. But if one wants to cure a disease, it’s important to treat the underlying problems, not just the symptoms. But no one is going to save us from this morass but ourselves.
As one who has long found the breathless election coverage of candidates’ personal lives to be puerile and voyeuristic, I’d usually be sympathetic to complaints about the “vetting” of Mitt Romney in the media this election cycle. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to run for office and put up with it, but then that’s why they’re them and I’m me.
Nonetheless, this lightning rod of an article from Politico on Thursday about unfair coverage of Romney is a bit much. Particularly this part of it:
Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary to President George W. Bush, said the personal coverage of Romney is silly and won’t cut it with voters, but that he finds the media inconsistency with regards to covering Obama to be galling.
“These stories are not unusual, except they were never done about then-Senator Obama in 2008,” Fleischer said. “The press never ran probing, sneering stories about candidate Obama, and yet The Washington Post and New York Times are on overtime covering who-cares stories about Mitt Romney.”
Hoping to drive interest in his congressional campaign, Trevor Thomas is appealing to Michigan pride.
Donors to Thomas’ West Michigan campaign to win the Democratic nomination to face incumbent Justin Amash , R-Cascade Township, in November have a chance to win Madonna memorabilia.
Not just any trinket, though, but “the original and rare RIAA-certified Double Platinum Award Record” for “Vogue,” Madonna’s super smash hit.
Rochester native Madonna gave the record to Howie Klein, a former bigwig at her label, Sire Records. Klein is the founder of Blue America PAC that backs progressive candidates around the country.
Blue America endorsed Thomas and Klein thought Madonna’s Michigan connection would be a good way to raise money.
“Trevor is the example of the inclusive spirit of what ‘Vogue’ was all about in the ’90s and today,” Klein said in a campaign press release. “He’s trying to change the dynamic of politics.”
But to hear some of the biggest donors of 2012 tell it, their six- and seven-figure contributions have instead bought them nothing but grief.
Their personal lives are fodder for news stories. President Barack Obama and his allies have singled out conservative mega-donors as greedy tax cheats, or worse. And a conservative website has launched a counteroffensive targeting big-money liberals.
This is definitely not what they had in mind. In their view, cutting a million-dollar check to try to sway the presidential race should be just another way to do their part for democracy, not a fast-track to the front page.
And now some are pushing back hard against the attention, asking: Why us?
“This idea of giving public beatings has been around for a long time,” said Frank VanderSloot, a wealthy Idaho businessman who donated $1 million in corporate cash to the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney and says he’s raised between $2 million and $5 million for the Romney campaign.
VanderSloot, who is also a national finance co-chairman for Romney, was among eight major Romney donors singled out on an Obama campaign website last month as having “less-than-reputable records,” and he thinks the purpose is clear – intimidation.
“You go back to the Dark Ages when they put these people in the stocks or whatever they did, or publicly humiliated them as a deterrent to everybody else – watch this – watch what we do to the guy who did this.”
Yes, heaven forbid that anyone shine a spotlight these people who want to buy the country’s democratic system outright. If we don’t give them the ability to buy a President in secret, it’s the same as torture in the Middle Ages.
In the absence of real campaign finance reform, disclosure of who is spending the money to buy our elections is the next-best thing. I’ve always been a little skeptical of that approach because the message gets through regardless of whether the messenger is exposed.
But it’s been eye-opening and amusing to see how very sensitive the Masters of the Universe are to exposure and criticism. One would think that people with the ability to buy anything in life wouldn’t care so much about their precious feelings and reputations, but they do. Immensely. It’s said that politicians are vain and egocentric, but that’s not entirely true: it takes a thick skin and high tolerance for abuse to go into public office. It’s not a pleasant place to be for those who constantly crave praise.
No, it seems that the people with the thinnest skins and most bloviated egos lie not at the top of the political chain, but at the top of the financial pecking order. It’s about time they took a little more heat and were exposed to a little more sunlight.
I have always loathed Alan Simpson going all the way back to the 80s. His pro-choice and LGBT rights record always gave him cover as a “moderate” and everyone enjoys his colorful language. But he’s a hardcore fiscal conservative who thinks that everyone can make it in America by just pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Like he did. Of course he had a teensy bit of help from his daddy, former Governor and Senator Milward L. Simpson.
He also doesn’t know what he’s talking about and never has. His folksy speech masks his ignorance but the Villagers are so enthralled by it that they never pin him down on the details. So someone else has stepped up to do it:
It’s nice to see young people challenging the hideous generational taunts that the Pete Peterson acolytes all throw around. They understand very well that we all rise and fall together. Apparently the only thing these elderly millionaires want to do before they shuffle off their mortal coils is wreck that compact.
Others have written much more eloquently about the recall story in Wisconsin than I ever could. Rick Perlstein, for instance, a homeboy who wrote this epic piece just before the primary election in which he made the case for why we should all care about the governor’s race:
Here’s why: the voting in Wisconsin this spring “will be the first national test of the possibility of democracy in the Citizens United era,” writes Ruth Conniff of the Madison-based magazine The Progressive, referring to the historic Supreme Court ruling that allowed unlimited spending on polticial campaigns. If conservatives succeed in breaking public unions in Wisconsin, they will try the same thing everywhere, with mind-blowing seriousness. Already by this February, Walker, taking advantage of a loophole that allows donors to recall targets to blow through the state’s $10,000 contribution cap, had raised an astonishing $12.2 million dollars; then, by April, he had added $13.2 million more. […] So, $25 per vote from reactionary out-of-state donors versus three bucks and one million petition signatures from regular old Wisconsinites: which one of them will prevail in June will tell us what American democracy will look like – if it will look like democracy at all. It’s like one of those posters I saw in Madison last year said. It quoted the Gettysburg Address: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived or so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.” The picket sign added: “MADISON is that battlefield.”
And E.J. Dionne went right to the heart of the matter with this piece on Wednesday:
Walker is being challenged not because he pursued conservative policies but because Wisconsin has become the most glaring example of a new and genuinely alarming approach to politics on the right. It seeks to use incumbency to alter the rules and tilt the legal and electoral playing field decisively toward the interests of those in power.
It’s hard to understate just how important this race is to progressives. The polls this week range from a dead heat to Walker leading by up to six points. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.
But in looking at the Marquette University poll just out yesterday, I couldn’t help but be somewhat surprised by this:
Read on.It’s not good. But it’s not bad either.
Blue America has dubbed June 5th Progressive Super Tuesday and we’re hoping like hell that our candidates all do well. (You can help, here.) And Wisconsin is the leading edge, the place where the latest progressive uprising began and where we’ve poured so much idealism and energy (while the other side has poured buckets of thousand dollar bills.) Keep your fingers crossed.
So the old GOP foreign policy guard is once more ineffectually mewling about the neocon influence on the party:
Colin Powell, who preceded Ms. Rice as Mr. Bush’s secretary of state but backed Mr. Obama in 2008, has expressed concerns about neoconservative sway within the Romney camp. Some foreign policy advisers for Mr. Romney, he said, “are quite far to the right.” He has also taken strong issue with Mr. Romney’s statement that Russia is our “No. 1 geopolitical foe.”
“Come on, Mitt — think. It isn’t the case,” Mr. Powell said last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” adding that Mr. Romney’s comments had caught “a lot of heck from the more regular G.O.P. foreign affairs community.”
Oh really … (Ok, I know there’s nothing to this, but still, it kind of creeps you out a little bit…)
It’s Mormon lore, a story passed along by some old-timers about the importance of their faith and their country.
In the latter days, the story goes, the U.S. Constitution will hang by a thread and a Mormon will ride in on a metaphorical white horse to save it. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says it does not accept the legend – commonly referred to as the “White Horse Prophecy” – as doctrine. […] “You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed,” the diary entry quotes Smith as saying. “It will hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber.”
Not only will the Mormons save the Constitution, under the prediction, but the prophecy goes further, insinuating that Mormons will control the government.
“Power will be given to the White Horse to rebuke the nations afar off, and you obey it, for the laws go forth from Zion,” the prophecy says.
Here’s Wikipedia on the prophesy:
Smith reportedly said that “You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber…. I love the Constitution; it was made by the inspiration of God; and it will be preserved and saved by the efforts of the White Horse, and by the Red Horse who will combine in its defense.”
Smith additionally said, according to the diary, that the Mormons would send missionaries to “gather the honest in heart from among the Pale Horse, or people of the United States, to stand by the Constitution of the United States as it was given by the inspiration of God.” Roberts’ account quotes Smith as predicting numerous wars involving Great Britain, France, Russia, China, and other countries, and saying that the European nobility “knows that [Mormonism] is true, but it has not pomp enough, and grandeur and influence for them to yet embrace it.”
It must be noted that when Mitt was asked about this in 2007 he replied:
“I haven’t heard my name associated with it or anything of that nature,” Mitt Romney told The Salt Lake Tribune during an interview earlier this year. “That’s not official church doctrine. There are a lot of things that are speculation and discussion by church members and even church leaders that aren’t official church doctrine. I don’t put that at the heart of my religious belief.”
Well that’s certainly reassuring. Keep in mind that George W. Bush reportedly believed that he was called by God, so it’s not like it would be unprecedented.
Say, does anyone know where Glenn Beck stands on this?
Sometimes I wonder if amidst all of our world-weary cynicism we are even cynical enough. It’s hard to wrap your mind around the immensity of the problem of money in politics, but it’s this part of it that still shocks and depresses me. Thomas Edsall wrote this column earlier this week:
Four years after the 2008 collapse, the finance industry has regained its dominant position in American politics. Perhaps the development of deepest significance is an absence: the failure of a powerful anti-Wall Street faction to emerge in either the House or the Senate. This is in contrast to the response to previous financial crises, when Congress enacted tough legislation—after the Savings and Loan implosion of the 1980s, for example, and more recently after the bankruptcy of Enron and WorldCom in the early 2000s.
Look at the current political environment this way: if Mitt Romney’s campaign and the Romney-supporting super PAC Restore Our Future were a public company, the financial services industry would have a controlling interest. President Obama, in turn, has been noticeably cautious in his critique of Wall Street, trying instead to focus on Romney’s former company, Bain Capital. Obama’s ambivalence about speaking out is a tacit victory for the industry.
It goes on to discuss the Grand Bargain, “tax reform” and the inevitability of average Americans getting screwed if they do it.Very uplifting. It’ll brighten your day.