Attention That's Long Overdue

Salon's Joan Walsh practically oozes good intention when she writes

Pointing to Warren and Sanders’s shortcomings when it comes to racial politics doesn’t mean they’re evil, or they can’t learn to see things with a different frame. But they’re going to have to, or they’ll find that the populist energy that’s eclipsing Democratic Party centrists will be dissipated by racial tension no one can afford.

Walsh notes that in her article in Vox

Dara Lind points to Sanders’ socialist analysis as a reason he’s reluctant to focus on issues of race: he thinks they’re mainly issues of class. She samples colleague Andrew Prokop’s Sanders profile, which found:

Even as a student at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, influenced by the hours he spent in the library stacks reading famous philosophers, (Sanders) became frustrated with his fellow student activists, who were more interested in race or imperialism than the class struggle. They couldn’t see that everything they protested, he later said, was rooted in “an economic system in which the rich controls, to a large degree, the political and economic life of the country.”

Chris Hayes, observed Walsh, found that in Senator Sanders' announcement speech, he had spoken little of police violence and mass incarceration, to which Walsh remarks

These are the same questions I raised last month after watching Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio hail the new progressive movement to combat income inequality at two Washington D.C. events. Both pointed to rising popular movements to demand economic justice, most notably the “Fight for $15” campaign. Neither mentioned the most vital and arguably most important movement of all, the “Black Lives Matter” crusade. (Which is odd, since “Fight for $15″ leaders have explicitly endorsed their sister movement.) And the agendas they endorsed that day made only minimal mention, if they mentioned it at all, of the role that mass incarceration and police abuse plays in worsening the plight of the African American poor.

To her credit, Walsh links mass incarceration and police abuse to the plight of the African-American poor, a welcome departure from the commentators, in print and especially broadcast, journalism, which link those criminal justice policies to African Americans, without differentiating between the affluent and the poor.

That understanding, ironically, underscores that Walsh's argument is wrong. There is a reason Sanders believes many social problems, including racial discrimination, stem from "an economic system in which the rich controls, to a large degree, the political and economic life of the country." It is because they do.

Recognizing that blacks were tragically left out, Walsh apparently has grown tired (though she ambiguously calls them "stirring") of Senator Warren's

stories about her upbringing: the days when her mother’s minimum wage job could support a family, when unions built the American middle class, and when Warren herself could attend a public university for almost nothing. Like a lot of white progressives, she points to the post World War II era as a kind of golden age when income inequality flattened and opportunity spread, the result of progressive action by government. I’ve written about the political lessons of that era repeatedly myself.

Northern liberal Republicans and Democrats, recognizing a nation in which life changes hinged unacceptably upon skin color, responded by passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing various kinds of discrimination; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the Civil Rights Act of 1968, banning discrimination in housing; and with much lesser known legislation and executive actions, all meant to alleviate substantially the lack of opportunity afforded blacks.

We know what happened next: far more blacks, though far fewer than desirable, ascended to the middle class.    We know, too, that as of the late 1970s, as Conor Lynch explains, "the top 0.1 percent in the United States owned 7 percent of household wealth; by 2012 their share had more than tripled to 22 percent. During this same period, the bottom 90 percent has gone from owning a high of 36.4 percent to a Great Depression low of 22.8 percent in 2012."  Barry Ritholtz reminds us "in 1968 the middle class received 53.2% of the nation's income. By 2010, that share had fallen to 46.5 percent" (graph from U.S. Census Bureau via Ritholtz).

Recovery from the great recession has not curbed the inequity, given that since 2009, 95% of the financial growth has gone to the top 1% while in real terms the bottom 90% have lost income.

Emphasis on rectifying society's ills by eliminating ethnic discrimination has done only so much. Notwithstanding gains in income among blacks, wealth (hence, political power) has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of individuals- and families- at the very top. The number of blacks in this rarefied stratosphere is niggling.

The problem is not largely one of race, for minorities who have made it into the middle class are widely accepted by whites, often (sometimes superficially or patronizingly) even more so than their white peers.  The hurdles faces by African-Americans in society are predominantly ones of the black underclass, inadvertently demonstrated by the examples- mass incarceration and police abuse- cited by Walsh.

Those phenomena are played out daily in poor black communities. We hear nothing of the mass incarceration of blacks residing in affluent communities. Similarly,when we hear of police abuse, real or merely alleged, it's typically in such places as Cleveland, Staten Island, Ferguson, Baltimore, or other areas in which large numbers of poor black people reside.  They (and to a lesser extent, most of the rest of us) are victimized by increasing domination of wealth, and of the wealthy.

That is the sort of thing Bernard Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are talking about.  "Increasingly," Walsh argues, "black and other scholars are showing us that racial disadvantage won't be undone without paying attention to, and talking about, race."   Surely, it won't be completely undone without addressing race, which we were doing long before George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Brown.  (And while we are talking about race more now, no more progress has been made.)  But whatever good is accomplished directly addressing race pales in comparison to that which would be accomplished by talking about class and economic disadvantage.

Walsh and others can continue to consider the impact of race. Now, fortunately, we have at least a couple of elected officials boldly addressing economic disadvantage, a subject hitherto generally ignored by the political class.






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More Important Than A Distraction. But Not Much.

In the book "All the President's Men," it was "the key was the secret campaign cash, and it should all be traced." In the movie, it was the simpler, pithier "follow the money."

The Indy Star has reported "Business, civic and sports leaders who have strongly called for a fix to the divisive "religious freedom" legislation flanked Indiana Republicans as they announced sexual orientation and gender identity will be explicitly protected in the new law." The deal came about after two legislative leaders, Governor Pence's chief of staff, "and a small handful of business leaders, including Republican powerbroker and Indianapolis Motor Speedway CEO Mark Miles met continuously Tuesday and Wednesday.

Some revision of the law became inevitable when, as Charles Pierce comments

for a while, it looked like Arkansas was going to follow Indiana into the gorge of eternal peril. But then the CEO of Walmart announced that these religious liberty restoratives were inconsistent with Walmart's social conscience. (Apparently, he owns an electron microscope.) Then, in what I am certain is purely coincidental, Governor Asa Hutchinson not only came out in opposition to the Arkansas law, he threw it back into the legislature whence it had come to his desk.... Translation from the original WeaselSpeak: Good god, Pence is an idiot. Bring yo' bidness to Arkansas!

Whatever the details of the proposed revision, there is need for, as Joan Walsh put it, "a reality check." She lamented an "Indiana law that has gotten no pushback from the business community over the years: Its 2005 voter identification legislation that paved the way for a rollback of voting rights across the country."  Richard Posner, who wrote the district court decision upholding the law in 2007, since has expressed grave misgivings about his role and last year wrote the decision overturning Indiana's prohibition on same-sex marriage. However, Walsh notes

Some of the business community has evolved along with Posner. But it has not joined his effort to push back against restrictions on voting rights. It’s hard not to assume that’s because corporate America is not as concerned about the rights of potential “customers” who can’t afford $75 to obtain a birth certificate or other form of valid identification. By definition, the people whose voting rights are being curtailed don’t have the economic clout to call for boycotts against their states.

Business didn’t rise up over Pence’s last bone-headed wingnut move, either: reversing his administration’s plans to expand Indiana’s preschool programs to thousands of low-income children with tens of millions of federal dollars, just last October. Pence’s own team had backed the expansion, but he spiked the application, citing vague concerns about “strings” attached to the federal money.

Indiana is also the state, by the way, that just sentenced a woman to 20 years in prison for “feticide,” becoming the first state to imprison a woman for what it claims was an unsuccessful attempted abortion.

Her pleasure at the uprising over the Indiana law (and at the effort to impose a similar one in Arkansas) is mitigated by the realization

that corporate America’s benevolence only extends so far. It’s great that Apple’s Tim Cook, who happens to be gay, lent his voice to the protest against the Indiana law. But if Apple would pay the federal taxes it owes, we could vastly expand preschool programs nationwide. If corporate America would join the fight to restore the Voting Rights Act, the bill in Congress might have more than one Republican supporter (Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner still stands alone). If businesses punished the rightward drift of the Republican Party by withholding campaign contributions, we’d see more action on hiking the minimum wage and expanding infrastructure (two issues that used to be bipartisan), and maybe even fighting income inequality.

Creating a fairer tax system, extending preschool, maintenance (and expansion) of voting rights would be important steps in ameliorating inequality. So, too, would be heading off privatization. And as (bad) luck would have it, we have the example brought to us by Richard J. Eskow (photo from Katherine Welles via Shuttercock/Salon).  The Indiana Toll Road, sold to a Spanish and Australian consortium in 2006, is now up for bid amid toll revenues far below projections, as well as "long waits at toll plazas, bridges that haven’t been repaired in more than a year and rest stops that reek of urine." Eskow adds

Private companies also charge far more for water and sewer services than governments do. (Food and Water Watch found that their rates were 33 percent higher.)  Private prisons appear to cost more, as the New York Times reported, while the ACLU found that higher incarceration rates lead to windfall profits under privatized prison systems.

Nor is the inefficiency and greed limited to civilian life. The privatization of military housing has proven costly, according to the Government Accounting Office, and an Air Force major who studied the privatization of Newark Air Force Base stated (in a rather folksy way) that “the Air Force seems to be just flat out paying more for the same service it received under the old depot system.”

Privatization is often a bad deal for investors, too, as the Congressional Budget Office noted in 2012. The CBO studied eight highway projects and found that, with one exception, “private equity investors’ expectations of profitability for the projects have been unfulfilled.”

Under privatization, the goal is no longer to provide publicly funded services effectively and efficiently. Nor is the goal to make a profit for investors. The deal itself is the goal, because that’s where intermediaries make their profits.

Temper thy ardor- or, as Larry David would put it, curb your enthusiasm.  Although Walsh believes "the LGBT rights struggle is powered by righteousness," she admits that which can only be whispered: the movement is aided by "the fact that it doesn't cost businesses a dime." For the rest of us, things don't look so favorable.



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Stop It. Stop It Now.

Commenting on the death of Eric Garner (video of protesters, below) at the hands of police officer Daniel Pantaleo in New York City's Staten Island (the traditionally Republican part of NYC), Rand Paul on Hardball opined

Obviously, the individual circumstances are important, but I think it’s also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes, so they’ve driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive. But then some politician also had to direct the police to say, ‘Hey, we want you arresting people for selling a loose cigarette.

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos responded "That's right, the guy who claims that 'you'll find nobody in Congress doing more for minority rights than me right now, Republican or Democrat' thinks that the killing of a black man by a police officer was actually about taxes."

Charles Pierce similarly wasn't convinced and remarked

Just last June, a little less than a month before Eric Garner's killing,  a guy in Brooklyn was busted for selling untaxed cigarettes. He was found with almost 900 boxes of contraband and $90,000. He also was not choked to death by the arresting officers so, no, sorry, I think there might have been (ahem) other, more immediate factors in play in the case of Eric Garner, but thank you for your input.

Paul, as you might have guessed, wants us all to imagine Big Government was at fault and blaming everything on "taxes" (income? sales? excise?) never lost anyone a vote in Repub presidential primaries.

Eric Garner wasn't choked to death because of cigarette taxes. Joan Walsh notes

we don’t even know for sure that Garner was selling loose cigarettes at the time he was taken into custody and killed. Also, a lot of folks who sell loose cigarettes buy them cheap, and sell them for more than they paid — but also pay taxes on them. It’s not always a tax dodge. So it’s not even clear if Paul is right about the tax issue.

It's not always a tax dodge, Garner may not have been selling loose cigarettes but the officers (legitimately) believed he was.  And then they moved in to confront and ultimately to apprehend the presumed offender. The choke hold- contrary to departmental policy- aside, the police were following fairly normal policy.

And the name of this policy is "broken windows" policing.  Slate's Justin Peters explains

Why was Garner approached at all? Because of the emphasis on “broken windows policing” under NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. As Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s police commissioner in the 1990s, Bratton presided over a surge in petty-crime law enforcement, on the theory that vigorously enforcing the small laws in some way dissuades or prevents people from breaking the big ones. There’s little evidence that theory is correct. Nevertheless, mayor-elect Bill de Blasio brought Bratton back as New York’s police commissioner last December. Bratton’s return meant the return of broken windows policing. “If you take care of the little things, then you can prevent a lot of the big things,” Bratton said in March, spouting the broken windows gospel. It’s that philosophy as much as anything else is to blame for Eric Garner’s death.

The city adopted broken windows and combined it with the computer program Compstat, which monitors crime rates citywide..  Nonetheless,

We do know that the declines in violent crime in New York have been comparable to declines in cities that didn’t use Compstat or broken windows. As criminologist Richard Rosenfeld put it in a 2002 paper, “homicide rates also have decreased sharply in cities that did not noticeably alter their policing policies, such as Los Angeles, or that instituted very different changes from those in New York, such as San Diego.” The takeaway: Crime just keeps going down everywhere. Nobody is sure why.

Since liberal Democrat Bill DeBlasio was elected mayor partly in response to disenchantment with the stop-and-frisk tactics instituted by his predecessor, "broken windows has replaced stop-and-frisk as the controversial police tactic du jour." According to The New York Times, arrests of peddlers and peddlers on the subway, for low-level violations in public housing developments, and for drinking beer in public and riding a bike on the subway have increased. But, Peters continues

This renewed emphasis on misdemeanor “quality of life” arrests has sparked renewed criticisms from community members who are tired of being hassled. These criticisms spiked after Garner’s death in July. Six members of New York’s congressional delegation sent Attorney General Eric Holder a letter noting that “Mr. Garner’s death has taken place in the context of a broken windows policing strategy that appears to target communities of color for the enforcement of minor violations and low-level offenses.”

"Communities of color" (colored communities?) are targeted because they are disproportionately economically deprived and thus (surprise!) there are more offenses committed there. But whatever the justification for concentrating efforts in black neighborhoods, the obsession with minor offenses undermines police-community relations and understandably sparks a suspicion of racial intent.

It is destructive and relatively ineffective. Were law enforcement aggresively to implement broken windows, there would be more of the kind of confrontation law enforcement had with Eric Garner (and with Michael Brown, who was unacceptably walking in the street).   When police officers are met with resistance when they attempt to enforce the law, they are not amused.   Confrontation over cigarettes or streetwalking (double entendre intended) is not worth the gamble and disintegration of community relations. End it for the benefit of everyone, inner-city blacks and all of us.












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It's Just The Man's Style

Paul Ryan is an important man.  As chairperson of the House Budget Committee, he soon will be rolling out the Repub budget proposal, which will be heavily influenced by a 204-page document, "The War on Poverty: 50 Years Later," he rolled out earlier this month.  It blamed poverty on- wait for it- poverty programs, neglecting to mention the growing national divide between the rich and poor.  And he is (as he has been, notwithstanding Chris Christie), along with Scott Walker and Marco Rubio one of the three leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination. (Alert Chris Cilllizza, who's imagining things.) More recently, he provoked controversy for his remarks suggesting culture in the inner city has created generations of men who aren't working or even "thinking about work."

Joan Walsh has called Ryan out, in part for citing the work of Charles Murray, who believes in the "inherent" inferiority of blacks, a good reason for cynicism about the Wisconsin congressman.  Aside from his antiquated view of race, Murray is stunningly (though, considering the source, not surprisingly) dishonest. Walsh points to Murray's claim "In all the critiques of The Bell Curve in particular and my work more generally, no one ever accompanies their charges with direct quotes of what I’ve actually said."  But Walsh notes that she has "written about Murray’s work extensively, and with lavish documentation and direct quotes (and I’m not the only one)" and "debated Murray on WBUR in 2012."

In the explicitly racial "The Bell Curve," Murray argued "if the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences."   After Murray wrote "The Bell Curve" and then "Coming Apart," he wrote "Losing Ground: The State of White America, 1960-2010,:  Upon its publication, in which he contrasted "Fishtown" (based on a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood of the same name) with Belmont, Massachusetts, the author stated in an online chat

We’re talking about IQ more than culture. It helps to be living in a neighborhood where smart actions about money are common, but the main breakdown is IQ. Lots of smart people in Fishtown do the right thing, but (politically incorrect warning) there are more smart people in Belmont than in Fishtown.

As the above suggests and despite protestations to the contrary, so much of Murray's work relies on genetics rather than culture, nature rather than nurture.

But it speaks also to an intellectual dishonesty which extends to one of his followers.  In Ryan's recent 200+ page report (photo below from Reuters via Salon, 8/12),  he cited the work of many academic researchers, among them Jane Waldfogel, Barbara Wolfe, Jeffrey Brown/Amy Finkelstein (who worked together), and William Karnes. Each of them says Ryan "misunderstood or  misinterpreted their research," in the words of The Fiscal Times.

And let's not forget the vice presidential nomination speech, in which the congressman spoke, according to the Center for American Progress, at least six lies.  Three (see 1, 4, and 5) were merely misleading and self-serving; two, however, were untruths deliberately uttered.

Representative Ryan falsely stated that Senator Obama while campaigning for president promised that a General Motors plant, which later was shuttered, would not be closed down.   Also, he claimed Obama had accumulated “More debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined," which was objectively, demonstrably, numerically untrue, a reprehensible lie for most politicians, more so for the chairperson of the House Budget Committee.  He charged also "What did taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt.  That money wasn’t just spent and wasted, it was borrowed, spent and wasted."  But given that an estimated 1-3 million jobs were created, it's incomprehensible that the money was "wasted."  (Neither is it likely, for the same reason, that it created additional debt.)

Perhaps "borrowed, spent and wasted" would have been the fate of stimulus money Representative Ryan himself requested, funds he denied requesting until proof was presented. Even then, he passed it off as "constituent service requests," close cousin to "it depends on what the meaning of 'is,' is."

One of the items cited by CAP, though not a formal lie, ironically calls attention to the mission of this Ayn Rand disciple.   The man who idolized the apostle of selfishness proclaimed "The greatest of responsibilities is that of the strong to protect the weak," a remarkable comment from a politician who has dedicated his career to strengthening the powerful and condemning the powerless.

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Overrated, Phony And Contemptible

Budget Committee chairperson Paul Ryan wants to let you know that he's no racist.

And he's not.  But he's not above leaning on a racist for intellectual support. After Ryan was criticized for remarks he made on Bill Bennett's radio program Wednesday morning, the former Repub vice-presidential nominee pleaded (to Crew of 42, from which the picture below is taken) “It was a long talk and he asked about the culture and I just went off of that. This has nothing to do whatsoever with race. It never even occurred to me. This has nothing to do with race whatsoever,"

He figures if he says it enough, maybe even he will begin to believe it.

The Wisconsin Repub had told Bennett's audience "We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. There is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with."

Representative Barbara Lee (D-TX) pounced, maintaining "Let's be clear, when Mr. Ryan says 'inner city,' when he says 'culture,' these are simply code words for what he really means: 'black.'"

Barbara and Paul: you're both wrong.  Ryan's comments did not have "nothing to do whatsoever with race." But he didn't mean "black;" he meant "black ghetto" or "urban black poor."

And Paul Ryan is no racist, even if he cites Charles Murray to substantiate his viewpoint.   In The Bell Curve Murray, Salon's Joan Walsh summarizes, "relied on explicitly racist (and mostly discredited) scientists to argue that blacks and Latinos lagged behind whites and Asians in wealth and income because they had lower IQs, and the basis wasn’t centuries of oppression and deprivation but genetics." It wasn't only nurture but also nature which made some minorities inferior, the stuff of which genuine racism is composed.

But that's not the end of it and (in my opinion) not the worst of it.  If we conclude, understandably, from the above that Paul Ryan excuses racism or racism we are missing the crux of the modern Repub Party, which is not racist but something equally bad.

Murray made matters worse, though far less controversially, with his follow-up book, "Losing Ground," an effort to show that he didn't look down upon poor and working-class African-Americans only because they are black.  Walsh notes

He demonstrated that in his last book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.” Murray argues that white people have developed the same character problems that claimed African Americans 50 years ago, which he outlined in “Losing Ground:” they prefer shacking up to marriage, they don’t go to church, they’re lazy and dishonest and enjoy the government dole. After all, the same percent of white children are now born to single mothers – just over 25 percent — as were black children back when Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued his alarms about “the Negro family.” And the reasons are largely the same: promiscuity, laziness, women who insist on equality – and lower IQ.

“Coming Apart” relies on the same ugly genetic fatalism and bogus notions of genetic differences Murray’s been peddling for years – this time among upper and lower income whites. In his awful book “The Bell Curve,” he relied on explicitly racist (and mostly discredited) scientists to argue that blacks and Latinos lagged behind whites and Asians in wealth and income because they had lower IQs, and the basis wasn’t centuries of oppression and deprivation but genetics. This time around Murray told his reviewers he was going to dodge the racial trap, and talk about white people. And again, he finds an IQ gap between the “cognitive elite” and lower-class whites that he says helps explain our winner take all society.

Before noting how Ryan was lucky enough to have been born into a family which enriched itself via government contracts, then paid for college by Social Security survivor benefits, and now assiduously attacks poor people while he enjoys a Lexus lifestyle on a fat government salary, she explains

But it’s worth noting that even with all the evidence that Murray is now stigmatizing a lot of white people, Paul Ryan is still using dog-whistle racist language like “inner city” to share his concern about poor people lacking “a culture of work” In denying any racism behind his remarks, he actually didn’t use the best evidence he could have mustered. He didn’t have the courage to say, “Hey, my boy Charles Murray thinks lower-income white people are lazy and shiftless, too!” But that would require insulting much of the GOP base. Ryan’s too ambitious for that.

I once foolishly believed Murray’s equal-opportunity contempt for the poor and working class might wake up those struggling white folks that he and his Republican admirers disrespect. That didn’t happen, because outside of the rarified confines of right-wing think tanks and the occasional Rick Santorum speech, they don’t talk about white people that way. The folks Murray – and Ryan – hold in contempt went big for Romney-Ryan in 2012.

The key is not to mention "black" or "white" but simply to talk of people in general.  Disdain for the poor and the working class becomes shrouded in more generalized rhetoric.  Paul Ryan though he was covering up sufficiently by referring to the "inner cities" but Representative Lee called him on it. It was not unlike when he said in January, 2013 "We don't want a dependency culture...And so our concern in this country is with the idea that more and more able-bodied people are becoming dependent upon the government than upon themselves for their livelihoods." He was referring to whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, everyone he believes presumptuous enough to accept the Social Security or Medicare to which they're entitled.  But he didn't mention race, so the mainstream media could portray him as bold and forthright.

As with most Republicans, Paul Ryan is not a racist.  Call it equal opportunity contempt: it's really anybody who isn't in that 53% which he and his 2012 running mate find acceptable

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Snake Oil Returns

Interviewed by Salon's Joan Walsh, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi commented

Again, we want this to be a year [debt-ceiling extension]. That it’s six weeks, it’s ridiculous. But if we can help them do both, open the government and protect the full faith and credit of the United States – well, we reserve the right to do both. But six weeks is not a good thing. I mean, these are both “No’s” – shut down government, and lift the debt ceiling for just six weeks – it’s not like one’s good, and one’s a bitter pill. No. They’re both bitter pills. It’s all bad. But we’ll see what we have to do. And one thing they know about us is that we’re responsible. And they think that we’ll hold them in good stead, that they can be irresponsible and we will save the day. So I think that we have to think about the long term in all of this.

Asked then whether "could being the 'responsible' party actually be irresponsible, because it keeps them coming back and asking for more," Pelosi responded "That’s exactly right. We’re enablers. We’ve become enablers. We can’t be that anymore."

Can't be, but may be.

A scheme to lift the debt ceiling briefly, then enter into negotiations to effect "modest reforms to entitlement programs and the tax code" was proposed earlier this week by none other than House Budget Committee Chairman Pompous Paul Ryan and quickly became the official position of the GOP caucus in the lower chamber.  With stinging criticism, Charles Pierce finds Ryan's

"budget" is a naked blueprint for a plutocratic dystopia. He trotted it out in 2010 and was laughed at by, among other people, the laff riots at the CBO. He ran for vice-president and the Democrats hung Ryan's zombie-eyed granny-starving around Willard Romney's neck -- where, it must be said, it fit like a tailored short. Ryan and his economic snake oil was resoundingly rejected by the entire country, and now people are lining up to help him peddle it again.

Nonetheless, Pierce laments, The New York Times (a fixture in the "liberal media") gushed (and not on the editorial pages)

The fact that Mr. Ryan's plan quite obviously made no mention of the health care law as a bargaining chip quickly drew him scorn from some on the right, but to Democrats and more moderate Republicans, the sidelining of the health care fight immediately gave the plan credibility.  

Pierce issues a challenge:  "Find me," he says, "the Democrats who believe this. Find them and bring them to me. (For that matter, find me 'moderate Republicans.')"

There is, of course, no more moderate Republicans in Congress, except those meeting weekly in a telephone booth (anachronistic reference, admittedly), with room to spare.  But there might be one very important Democrat open to the idea.   Representatives of Republican leadership and of theWhite House met Thursday

In addition to ending the shutdown and increasing the debt limit, under the proposal Congress and the White House would explore ways to ease across-the-board federal budget cuts that began taking effect a year ago, and replace at least part of them with benefit-program curbs that have been included in recent presidential budgets. Officials who described the approach did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss private conversations.

Politico reported Friday that National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling

reiterated that the president will not negotiate with Republicans under the threat of default but that once this is out of the way, the White House stands ready to negotiate a budget deal — large, small or medium.

“If you essentially reward a faction of our government for saying they will put the country into default if they do not get their policy concessions, what that would do is essentially sanction that kind of negotiation or extortion and ensure that it continues and becomes a routine part of our form of governing," Sperling said.

And late Friday afternoon CNN revealed

Carney and Boehner spokesman Michael Steel issued identical statements that the two leaders spoke by phone and called for talks to continue among all parties.

At the same time, Carney reiterated that Obama opposes negotiations on broader budget and deficit reduction issues during a shutdown and under the threat of a possible first-ever U.S. default."Because budget negotiations are complicated business and each side has principled views, they should not be conducted under the cloud of the government being shut down and they certainly shouldn't be conducted under the threat of default," he said.

President Obama refuses to reward the GOP temper tantrum- until it ends and at that point, he has hinted, he'll be ready to entertain the kind of ideas Ryan pitches.  Few rank-and-file Democrats are intrigued by Ryan's plan, and "moderate Republicans" is largely a fixture of the Beltway imagination.  Nevertheless, President Obama appears comfortable that, as Pierce explains, "Paul Ryan's 'credibility' depends on nothing except his willingness to find mendacious sales techniques with which to pitch the destruction of every bit of progressive Democratic economic accomplishment back past the New Deal and all the way back to the Progressives of the early 20th century. This never has changed."


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The Odd Link Between the NSA And Abortion

Now relocated from weekend mornings to weeknights, Chris Hayes continues his run as the best talk show host on MSNBC.  With a peculiar attraction to principle over personality, he may be heard veering from the company line on President Obama.

And so it was that Hayes recently appeared on the network's NOW with Alex Wagner (who herself contributes a powerful insight every year) to discuss (video below) the NSA spying scandal.  Wagner noted that the Pew Research Center found that in 2006 37% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans "accepted" the NSA surveillance program.  But by 2013, a radical shift had occurred: 64% of Democrats accepted the program while a lesser number, 52%, of Republicans supported it. In Twilight of the Elites, Wagner noted, Hayes had written "Because we cannot investigate and verify the millions of bits of knowledge that float through our lives, we outsource the vast majority of screening it all to others."   He explained to the MSNBC audience

What accounts for the change is people don't have a lot of information to operate on.  I mean we don't know much about this massive secret thing- that's why it's called secret.  And so what they do is they take cues from people they trust. And they say "you know what, I trust the Democratic Party or I trust Barack Obama."

To which I would add one word:  abortion.  The 2012 Democratic Party platform- not unlike that in previous years read-

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right. Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way.

The Republican Party platform, by contrast, in 2012 included

Faithful to the "self-evident" truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organizations which perform or advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.

As the charts (way below, from the St. Louis Fed via Business Insider) below indicate, corporate profits are at an all-time high and wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low.  Corporate taxes (graph, from The Economist, way below) as a share of all taxes continue their downward trend and are at a near all-time low.   A Wall Street Journal analysis found that after the recession nearly 75 percent of all jobs created by 35 U.S. multinationals were created overseas.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court unleashed nearly unfathomable amounts of corporate cash upon the American political process in ruling for the rich and powerful in Citizens United. One of the more subtle results was described last September by Mike Lux in The Huffington Post:

I have begun having conversations with members of Congress on a regular basis who are factoring into their voting decisions the awareness that if they piss off a big money special interest, they will have to contend with a huge amount of cash -- hundreds of thousands, even millions -- being dumped into their race. Because so much of the money is not reported, they don't know for sure when it might come or if it will come, but the fear of making someone with a bunch of money mad is so much bigger than it used to be. Because the amounts being thrown into these races are so much bigger than they used to be, and because so much more of the money is secretive, the fear factor has grown exponentially.

And with all this money coming to bear on the American political system, allowing the rich and the powerful to dominate the poor and the middle class (which already had been losing ground) virtually shutting out the poor and the middle class, which already had been losing ground, comes this:

Two decades after President Bill Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it," Americans blame government handouts for persistent poverty in the United States more than any other single factor, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday.

Given a list of eight factors and asked to choose the one most responsible for the continuing problem of poverty, 24 percent of respondents in the poll chose "too much government welfare that prevents initiative."

Progressives long have been concerned that so many middle-class, and not a few of the (non-minority) poor whose interests coincide more with the liberal policies and with the Democratic Party than with the Repub Party, nevertheless support conservative causes and candidates.    It is the abiding theme of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?, which in turn inspired Joan Walsh's unfortunately titled What's the Matter with White People? and so much of the critique by the populist left of American politics.

Now, Chris Hayes, making sense of Democrats opposing spying by the Bush Administration and favoring it in the Obama Administration- while Republicans do a reverse flip- provides a partial explanation for this phenomena. You know what, I trust Barack Obama or I trust the Democratic Party.

The obverse- to an even greater degree- is true of Republicans and conservatives.  So you have a Michelle Bachmann claiming the IRS "is going to be in charge of our health care;" that "scientists tell us that we could have a cure in 10 years for Alzheimer's" except for "overzealous regulators, excessive taxation and greedy litigators;" that the federal government is "taking ownership or control of 51 percent of the American economy;" that of every "three dollars in food stamps for the needy, seven dollars in pensions and benefits (go to) the bureaucrats who are supposed to be taking care of the poor."  Big government, regulation of the private sector, income taxes, govenment employees, lawyers who take on corporations, these are some of the right's emotional G-spots Bachmann has exploited; other Repubs have slammed the poor, unions, the minimum wage.

And many working-class and middle-class conservatives, who ought to be aggravated by the economic destruction wrought by Republicans as they please their corporate masters, soak it up.  They buy it because Bachmann and other conservatives have purchased their trust by their determined opposition to reproductive freedom.   Say, as she has and others have implied, "I am 100 per cent pro-life" and "believe in moving toward and promoting a culture that values and respects the sanctity of life" and you've bought a lot of credibility with pro-life persons on matters completely unrelated to reproductive freedom.

As it is with abortion, so it is with NSA spying.   Just as most Democrats (foolishly) trust President Obama, pro-life Republicans (foolishly) trust pro-life politicians and their party on a whole range of issues.  Partisans on both sides, though, need to consider Digby's words "I think the one thing we might want to ensure people know is that these government agencies exist outside 'our guy' and 'their guy.' Presidents come and go but the NSA is forever."



 

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Health Care And Now Immigration

A while back,I wrote "Joan Walsh is a national treasure (though I reserve the right to criticize her in the future)."  Commenting on the application of President Obama's contraception regulations to Roman Catholic institutions, Walsh revealed "a singular understanding that one institution, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, speaks for itself, has been wrong, and has wronged its constituents, who deserve better." (Is there a special place in Hell for people who quote themselves? I hope not.)

It's sixteen months later, and Joan Walsh still understands what others don't.   Walsh has noticed that Democrats are willing to concede almost anything to obtain a super-super majority in the Senate, and she's blowing the whistle on them. Recognizing the "dynamic" that is playing out as Democrats strive to make comprehensive immigration reform palatable to Republicans, Walsh remarks

Gang of Eight leader Chuck Schumer told Politico, “Our goal is to get 70 votes. It is going to take a lot of work.” His GOP partner John McCain agrees. Supposedly 70 votes is the magic number that will shame enough members of the crackpot House GOP majority into supporting it when it gets to their chamber. But how bad will the bill have to get to reach that goal? (Also remember that the artificial 60-vote super-majority requirement is already a GOP-imposed barrier to progressive reform.)

She quotes a kindred spirit, America’s Voice executive director Frank Sharry, who wrote in a statement “We would remind them that it’s far better to pass a good bill with 60-70 votes than a hopelessly compromised bill with 70-80 votes. The Senate bill is already a carefully balanced compromise between the right and the left.”

It's unlikely, however, that Sharry or virtually anyone on the left other than Walsh has noticed

The immigration reform bill isn’t the only example of this dynamic. The Affordable Care Act incorporated more than 150 Republican amendments during the Senate committee process – and didn’t get a single Republican vote. Important liberal priorities like the public option, letting people buy into  Medicare before 65 and greater bargaining power to lower prescription drug costs all got traded away in search of nonexistent GOP support. I was pilloried by other liberals,on “Hardball” and on Twitter, for even briefly suggesting that no bill might be better than a bad bill. Same with the deals that ended the debt-ceiling hostage crisis – the “sugar-coated Satan sandwich” – and postponed the “fiscal cliff.”

Aside from the Rube Goldberg-nature of both immigration reform and health care and the major concessions made by liberals (allegedly) to improve chance of passage of the initiatives, there is a more specific connection between the Affordable Care Act and the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigra- tion Modernization Act (text here).  John Judis explains

Just look at the tortuous way the bill deals with immigrants’ access to the Affordable Care Act. The bill denies health insurance coverage to the eleven million undocumented workers, who will become “registered provisional immigrants” (RPIs), and to over 100,000 guest agricultural workers (who will get “blue cards” rather than “green cards”). Only after immigrants become permanent residents, which in the case of the eleven million undocumented will take a minimum of ten years and as long as 15 years, will they become eligible for Obamacare.

This is obviously bad health policy. Low-skilled immigrants who work in physically strenuous and polluted settings will be denied preventive coverage and treatment for chronic diseases, and if they acquire serious illnesses—tuberculosis, cirrhosis of the liver, and several cancers are common among immigrant farm workers—they will have to go to sequester-squeezed emergency rooms.

But it’s also bad economics. It creates an incentive for employers to hire the new immigrants over citizens or green-card holders and to provide neither with health insurance. Under the Affordable Care Act, employers with fewer than 50 workers do not have to buy health insurance for their employees, but businesses with 50 or more workers—which employ about three-quarters of American workers—either have to provide insurance or pay a fine for those workers who buy insurance through the exchanges the act creates. The fine is ordinarily $2,000 but can run as high as $3,000.

Businesses with 50 or more employees that choose to pay a fine rather than provide insurance will not have to pay fines for the RPIs or blue-card holders because they are not eligible for the exchanges. So employers will be able to save from $2,000 to $3,000 a year by hiring a new immigrant over an American citizen. For salaries that hover between $15,000 and $25,000, as they do in many immigrant-heavy industries, that’s no small savings. Even an advocate for low-income immigrants sees the language as a potential problem: “We don’t want them to hire immigrants over citizens because of that loophole,” says Sonal Ambegaokar, who analyzes health policy for the National Immigration Law Center. “We want a level playing field.”

The bill’s denial of coverage doesn’t only give immigrants an advantage over citizens when it comes to new hires. It also gives larger businesses that employ immigrants a reason to drop insurance altogether. If they offer insurance to one employee, they need to offer it to all employees, including immigrants. But if they deny it to everyone, they’ll only pay fines for workers who are citizens.

Denying health insurance coverage to employed illegal immigrants is a critical provision, one for which neither Senate Democrats wishing to accommodate their GOP colleagues nor those conservatives themselves are responsible. Judis continues

This all could have been avoided if Obama care had just insured undocumented immigrants in the first place. But in the fall of 2009, the administration, facing charges from Republicans that the health care bill secretly funded “illegal immigrants,” urged Senate Democrats to bar the undocumented from coverage. The administration, fearful of political trouble, reflexively carried this over to its own immigration-reform proposals. “The point was to get immigration done,” one White House official told me.

So we come full circle.  "The point was to get immigration done," the Administration believed two-and-a-half years ago.   Now, Gang of Eight leader Wall Street Schumer cites his goal as to get 70 votes, as if House Republicans care more about what Senators (not their favorite group of individuals) do than what either their corporate base or their popular base thinks about the legislation.  Pursuit of a magical 70% is so silly as to make one suspect that Democratic Senators, one eye focused on wealthy donors, are pleased to see the bill fashioned so as to drive down the wage rate.  Alas, in consideration of Occam's Law, passage of legislation for thes ake of passage of legislation  is a more likely motive.
   
Walsh argues, convincingly, "Democrats ought to hold the line" because "abandoning ever-larger categories of potential beneficiaries of the bill... is bad for undocumented immigrants, and bad for Democrats, too."   It is, she might have mentioned, bad for workers, thus bad for America, too.

We come full circle.  "The point was to get immigration done," the Administration believed two-and-a-half years ago.   Now, Gang of Eight leader Wall Street Schumer cites as his goal to get 70 votes, as if House Republicans care more about what Senators (not their favorite group of individuals) do than what either their corporate base or their popular base thinks about the legislation.  Democratic Senators, one eye focused on wealthy donors, may be pleased to see the bill fashioned to drive down the wage rate.  Clearly, however, they want a bill to get done.  Any bill.

Walsh argues, convincingly, "Democrats ought to hold the line" because "abandoning ever-larger categories of potential beneficiaries of the bill... is bad for undocumented immigrants, and bad for Democrats, too."   It is, she might have mentioned, bad for workers,and thus for America, too.

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It's Not Guns



Joan Walsh, taking heart from a changed political climate which brought Democrats close to almost securing a mild gun safety law, notes

And it’s become a law of nature: When Democrats run away from their legacy – whether on civil rights, anti-poverty programs, climate change or gun control – Republicans don’t recognize their conciliation and meet them in the middle: they run far to the right. They reject former Republican ideas – cap and trade, the individual mandate for health insurance, and even background check legislation, which was once the “reasonable” alternative to more stringent gun control, supported by not only Republicans but the NRA.

Wayne LaPierre learned that lesson well. Even after Newtown, he moved the debate to the right, rather than compromising.

She also may be realistic in her hope that "this defeat is just the beginning, not the end, of a serious gun-control movement in this country." Certainly, as she maintains, "Democrats and a handful of Republicans of conscience just have to get used to fighting hard on this issue."  Then she concludes by approvingly quoting former Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who wrote Wednesday in a New York Times op-ed

Mark my words: if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s. To do nothing while others are in danger is not the American way.

Strong, and important, words from a victim of the massacre in front of the Safeway supermarket two+ years ago in Tucson:  if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities' interests ahead of the gun lobby's.  That is a call to a litmus test, arguing that a different Congress must be one that will push the interest of gun safety to the forefront of its agenda.

Which party is it which will dedicate itself to sensible, even moderate firearms legislation? Four of 46 Republican Senators voted to proceed with debating a bill co-sponsored by two conservative Senators- one risking his career in gun-friendly West Virginia and the other a walking, talking sponsor of corporate America.  Rejecting cloture, forty-two Republican Senators decided they didn't even want to talk about it.

And what about the Democratic Party, a vast majority of whose Senators voted in favor of the compromise- will it commit itself, beyond a possible convention plank, to some sort of gun control legislation?   Last month, the National Journal reported

 “This is becoming an early litmus test for potential 2016 candidates,” said Democrat strategist and 2008 Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee. “You don’t have to be 100 percent for gay marriage but you have to at least be in favor of relationship equality.”

Public opinions on gay marriage have shifted dramatically over the past decade. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released Monday shows that 58 percent of Americans support gay marriage, while only 36 percent say it should be illegal. That’s a complete reversal of public opinion from where it stood in 2003.

To win a Democratic primary, supporting gay marriage is shaping up to be a requirement: The poll found 72 percent of Democrats support same-sex marriage, up from 43 percent in 2004.

Ben LaBolt, the Obama campaign’s 2012 spokesman, said on MSNBC shortly after Clinton’s announcement that “you can't be a Democratic candidate in 2016 and oppose same-sex marriage.”

No one expects a Democratic strategist to declare "you can't be a Democratic candidate in 2016 and oppose gun-safety legislation, " even expanded background checks, whose support among the public eclipses that for same-sex marriage.   The statement would not apply in a national campaign, let alone in Montana, Alaska, North Dakota, and Arkansas (in which a Democratic Senator voted with the winning side) and other states in which a Democratic candidate will soft-pedal his/her support.

A litmus test is "a crucial test using a single issue or factor as the basis for judgment."  If there is more than one test, neither is crucial- nor, obviously, is it a single factor.  The Democratic Party is staking its claim on one issue, and it's not gun safety.

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Misstep In Colorado


At Fox News, Charles Krauthammer said that polls should tighten a bit with Mitt Romney's solid debate (transcript, here) performance in Denver.  The Republican demonstrated to voters bombarded by ads attacking him that he "does not have horns"  while, Krauthammer observed, Barack Obama unwisely sat on a lead.

Sat on a lead, indeed.   There were at least ten instances in which President Obama stated or strongly implied agreement with his opponent, including

When it comes to our tax code, Governor Romney and I both agree that our corporate tax rate is too high.

On energy, Governor Romney and I, we both agree that we've got to boost American energy production.

Now, Governor Romney and I do share a deep interest in encouraging small-business growth.

When it comes to corporate taxes, Governor Romney has said he wants to, in a revenue-neutral way, close loopholes, deductions — he hasn't identified which ones they are — but thereby bring down the corporate rate. Well, I want to do the same thing, but I've actually identified how we can do that.

You know, I suspect that on Social Security, we've got a somewhat similar position. 

Now, in fairness, what Governor Romney has now said is he'll maintain traditional Medicare alongside it.

Now, Governor Romney has said he wants to repeal Dodd-Frank, and, you know, I appreciate, and it appears we've got some agreement that a marketplace to work has to have some regulation, but in the past...

And it happens we've got some agreement that a marketplace to work has to have some regulation.

...the irony is that we've seen this model work really well in Massachusetts, because Governor Romney did a good thing, working with Democrats in the state to set up what is essentially the identical model. And as a consequence, people are covered there. It hasn't destroyed jobs.

There's a reason why Governor Romney set up the plan that he did in Massachusetts. It wasn't a government takeover of health care. It was the largest expansion of private insurance. But what it does say is that insurers, you've got to take everybody. Now, that also means that you've got more customers.

At MSNBC, Ed Schultz noted that Obama said nothing about Bain Capital, the 47%, offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands or elsewhere.   Schultz noted that Romney was animated, yet not angry, and appeared to want the job, whereas the incumbent appeared almost indifferent to remaining president.   Mitt Romney, Chris Matthews recognized, "seemed to endure the evening while Romney seemed to relish it."    Chris Hayes, who also realized that Romney helped himself in the debate,  asserted that the President's people believe that Obama's biggest asset is his personality and feared that a more aggressive approach would have undercut that.     Left unsaid: Team Obama worries constantly about the President appearing to be an angry black man.

Reverend Al Sharpton argued that, despite initial impressions of the debate, Romney in the next couple of weeks will have to answer for "his lies."   At Salon, Joan Walsh notices a few of Romney's conflicts with objective reality: the candidate denied proposing a $5 trillion tax cut, contended he is "not going to cut education funding," claimed the Affordable Care Act had raised taxes by a trillion dollars, and, describing inaccurately the Independent Payment Advisory Board, maintained Obama has established "a board that will tell people what kind of treatment they're going to get,"   Whether fact checkers will have much of an impact on the public's perception of the veracity or integrity of the challenger remains to be seen.

Still, there is a major opening for the Obama campaign in Romney's declaration "But you make a very good point, which is that the — the place you put your money makes a pretty clear indication of where your heart is."  That would make for a delightful campaign ad given, as Walsh's Salon  colleague, Alex Seitz-Wald, notes, "The obvious rejoinder, ready-made for a DNC attack, is that Romney’s heart must be in the Cayman Island, Bermuda or Switzerland, where Romney has put his money.

It's on to the vice-presidential debate and the following two presidential debates.   Before this encounter, many pundits had argued that the first debate between Obama and Romney would be the most important of the three, and few if any maintained that either of the last two would be more important.   Fortunately for the incumbent, that will prove false.  Voters will tune in to Obama-Romney II and III to determine if their first impressions were correct.  If so, that bodes ill for the President; if not, his election will be almost assured.  In either case, the first debate, despite an almost unanimous decision for the challenger, thankfully will not prove pivotal.




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In Retreat, For Now



On Friday, anticipating Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as a running mate, The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza commented

But the good thing about the Ryan pick is that the Presidential campaign will instantly turn into a very clear choice between two distinct ideologies that genuinely reflect the core beliefs of the two parties. And in that sense, Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan is good news for voters.

Following Saturday's announcement, Salon's Joan Walsh made a similar point when she remarked

Ryan’s selection by Mitt Romney is a huge gift to Barack Obama and Joe Biden – and to the country. This is a clear electoral choice, with the potential for a rousing debate about the future of our country. Romney has spent two years refusing to tell us what he’d do as president. He’s literally said on more than one occasion that he won’t reveal his plans for specific program cuts, because if he did, people might not vote for him. But now he’s tied to a guy who’s revealed his pro-plutocrat agenda in bloody detail. What Obama this week called “Romneyhood” – Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor and giving to the rich – is best described as “Ryanhood.” Ryan’s budget is so devastating to the poor and middle class that it earned him a rebuke from the nation’s Catholic Bishops, the first time in memory they’ve entered politics for any reason but to deny women freedom and promote Republicans.

A skeptical Tristero, blogging at Digby's Hullabaloo, responded Saturday to Lizza

It would be nice if that were true. But Randism isn't so much an ideology as it's a cult, roughly akin to Scientology. Randism has as much intellectual integrity as intelligent design creationism or birtherism. As a result, "two distinct ideologies" aren't at play. There is only one: centrism, represented by Obama. What Romney and Ryan offer is just battiness, not a truly coherent vision...

Then on Sunday, Tristero reacted similarly to Walsh:

Ayn Rand's crackpot notions have now moved to the exact center of the national debate about what kind of country we should be, with an unprecedented level of visibility.

I don't want "a rousing debate about the future of our country" between centrist/moderate and extreme rightwing presidential candidates. I want a serious debate between liberal and conservative (in the Rockefeller/Eisenhower meaning of the term) presidential candidates about the future of our country.

Besides unfairly equating intelligent design with birtherism, Tristero gave insufficient credit to Walsh, who noted "Ryan’s addition to the GOP ticket makes the choice between Republicans and Democrats crystal clear. As long as Democrats remember that they’re Democrats."    Tristero worries some Democrats may not remember they're Democrats, most notably President Obama whom, The New York Times recently reported  

has come to believe the news media have had a role in frustrating his ambitions to change the terms of the country’s political discussion. He particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security, while Republicans oppose almost any tax increase to reduce the deficit.

Still, aside from hanging, nothing focuses the mind like a desire to be re-elected and even Barack Obama, accurately if uncomfortably, will portray the Gas and Oil Party as targeting Medicare and Social Security.   The selection of Ryan was, nevertheless, not as bold as the congressman's worshipers and the news media suggest it was.

Consider that Mitt Romney's announcement was made before the national convention.   On a Saturday morning.   During the Olympics.   And far from wanting to sharpen ideological differences, Romney on Saturday chose to muddy the waters.   "Unlike the current president," he stated, "who has cut Medicare funding by $700 billion, we will preserve and protect Medicare and Social Security."

When Republicans such as Romney, who opposes the defense cuts scheduled in the budget sequester, dishonestly attack the President for cuts in defense, they do not declare a determination to "preserve and protect national defense."   They want to bolster national defense, as do the President and Democrats; Medicare and Social Security, not so much (or at all).   Talking Point Memo's Sahil Kapur, observing GOP criticism of Obama's Medicare cuts, commented

The trouble with this argument — made frequently by Republicans, including Ryan himself — is that Republicans have voted overwhelmingly for Ryan’s own budget which sustains the Medicare cuts in “Obamacare.” Conservatives argue that Ryan’s plan, unlike the Affordable Care Act, doesn’t use the Medicare savings to fund additional spending.

Talking points circulated by the Romney campaign Saturday similarly instruct surrogates to make the “Obama cut Medicare” argument to blunt voters’ fears over Ryan’s Medicare plan.

Romney- who earlier endorsed the Ryan budget- neglects to mention, as Kapur points out, that the decrease in Medicare funding is not in benefits, but primarily in reduced payments to hospitals, discounts on Medicaid prescription drugs, and pay cuts to private insurers under Medicare Advantage.  

While Romney introduces the guy who enthralls the right partly because he wants to cut off the elderly at the knees, he slams the President because of a relatively paltry cut to the Medicare program.      It is the same Mitt Romney who, seeking an edge in the nomination process, allied himself with the Ryan plan and now, having chosen its architect to be second in line for the presidency, is qualifying  his support.   On Sunday, asked by CBS News' Bob Schieffer about "Paul Ryan's budget plan," Romney replied "well, I have my budget plan as you  know that I've put out.   And that's the budget plan that we're going to run on."

In so doing, Romney was being Romney- splitting the difference, hedging his bets, trying to have it both ways, and enabling a cliche-obsessed blogger.   He puts Ryan on the ticket, then throws his budget (sort of) overboard.  He slams Obama's cuts to Medicare, then says he wants to raise the eligibility age for "those of us who are younger," as he told Schieffer.    It may be characteristic Mitt Romney; but bold, it is not.




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Still Romney, Here Or Abroad


Mitt Romney has apologized, or at least acknowledged having "made a few" in London, acknowledging

When the games themselves begin and the athletes take over, all of the mistakes that the organizing committee -- and I made a few -- all of those are overwhelmed by the many things that the athletes carry out that capture the spirit of the games.   What I've seen shows imagination and forethought and a lot of organization and expect the games to be highly successful...

This was a fine gesture, though a bit surprising for the man whose book is entitled "No Apology."    But then, summoning a vivid imagination, he has accused President Obama of wandering the world apologizing for America.     So maybe we shouldn't be surprised.  Nevertheless, No Apology is indicative of the perspective of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee (and certain nominee, unless he makes the tactical mistake of releasing several years of his tax returns).     Romney wrote

England [sic] is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions. Yet only two lifetimes ago, Britain ruled the largest and wealthiest empire in the history of humankind. Britain controlled a quarter of the earth's land and a quarter of the earth's population.

It's a little odd for a guy who has said he wants to put a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office to claim if Britain "hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions.    He might instead have given a little credit to that hero of his, W. Churchill, who played more than a bit role in saving the world from Hitler.
  
But Mitt Romney is either confused or deceptive having declared last September in New Hampshire "In the private sector, if you don't change your view when the facts change, well you'll get fired for being stubborn and stupid. Winston Chuchill said, 'When the facts change, I change too, Madam.'"     That would be an impressive statement from a conservative like Churchill, less surprising given that it came from John Maynard Keynes- the original Keynesian (safe bet), thus someone Romney would be loathe to credit (publicly) with wisdom.

More disturbing, though, inasmuch as this guy could become the 45th President, is that he would whack England for "its roads and houses (being) small."     Small roads aside, there are tens of millions of Americans who own- let alone inhabit- small houses.   No doubt if pressed (hardly likely), Romney would acknowledge that these voters are people, too.    Just not his kind of people, nor Ann Dressage Romney's kind of people.
  
Joan Walsh, assuming minimal burden, has noted a few incidents reflecting Mitt's sense of privilege, though the media (including those on the left) generously refer to them as mere "gaffes."    No one is perfect, but only some people have earned the right to consider themselves superior to his fellow Americans.    More significant, however, is what Romney has done, the behavior he has exhibited which offer insight into a facet of his character which might affect his presidency. 

Walsh concludes

What accounts for Romney’s capacity to consistently insult even those he’s trying to court? I’d argue it’s his fantastic sense of entitlement, with its accompanying inability to feel empathy for the less fortunate. It may or may not be connected to his pranking/bullying impulse which showed itself in his school days when he forcefully cut the hair of a gay classmate, led a sight-impaired teacher into a closed door, or intimidated friends by impersonating a state trooper. Romney clearly lacks the ability to put himself in the shoes of others (except other wealthy business owners). That’s a bad trait on the campaign trail, but when it extends to the leaders of other sovereign nations, it’s a terrible trait in a president.



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Article Of The Week.   Or Month.   Or Day.


In an article in Salon, Joan Walsh examines the state of racial politics in the U.S.A.     Observing how the left thinks nowadays about political demographics, she explains

it’s now remarkable the extent to which the Republican Party has become a white party. Where that was an advantage back in Buchanan’s day, though, it’s an eroding base in the 21st century. About 52 percent of white voters call themselves Republicans, according to the Pew Research Center, as opposed to 8 percent of blacks and 22 percent of Latinos.   Ina provocative New York magazine piece, Jonathan Chait says white voters are all that stands between the Republican Party and “demographic extinction.” But since white America itself will soon be demographically extinct, as the dominant racial group anyway, Chait sees the GOP doubling down on its 40-year strategy of fomenting culture war and racial resentment for a “last stand” that calls to mind Custer’s.

No hostility or condescension in Walsh's writing, however.      She argues

Sometimes the cold demographic analysis of the Democratic Party’s future can sound like we’re waiting for the white working class to die off. But that’s dangerous: if they rally to the Republican Party in this next election, they can do enough damage to make life very difficult for the Democratic majority that’s waiting to emerge – the young, women, lower-income blacks, Latinos and Asians – and for themselves. Waiting for them to die off seems like a risky strategy, and a little mean, to boot. I can’t do that; most of my extended family is among them.

Obviously, Walsh generally agrees with those policies benefiting the working class- white or minority- recommending the President's re-election strategy for what it has "become since the summer: a full-throated commitment to building an economy that works for everyone, backed by a government that’s run for everyone, not just for the 1 percent."          The GOP, of course, will take the opposite tack.    The Salon editor has

been amazed by the extent to which the leading candidates are comfortable demonizing “dependency,” which includes the now 46 million Americans now on food stamps as well as the 7.5 million receiving unemployment benefits, the vast majority of both groups being white. This is the new GOP narrative: that Obama is extending the welfare state, just as the right-wing has always feared — but they’re now calling certain groups of whites the new moochers. After Limbaugh’s disgusting attack on Sandra Fluke, conservatives began a new, more genteel crusade against her, calling her a "welfare queen," who wanted the government to pay for her birth control.

Walsh observes Rick Santorum blaming all- not only black- struggling Americans for the breakdown of the nuclear family and notes

South Carolina Tea Party Sen. Jim DeMint also warns about the growing spread of “dependency” throughout the populace. “Republican supporters will continue to decrease every year as more Americans become dependent on the government. Dependent voters will naturally elect even big-government progressives who will continue to smother economic growth and spend America deeper into debt.” Chat quotes DeMint warning ominously: “The 2012 election may be the last opportunity for Republicans.” Paul Ryan, he of the “Ryan Plan” to abolish Medicare, divides the electorate into “makers” and “takers.”

Walsh, especially, should be amazed by none of this.        She knows Rush Limbaugh has said Barack Obama "casts aside white, working-class families while setting up African-Americans for Obama" and that the President's campaign "says to white working classs families:   We're not interested in your votes; we don't care."     It is only fitting, then, that Limbaugh has been a leader in casting wealthy Americans against middle-class and poor Americans, of whatever race.      Characteristically, the Vice-Chairman of the Republican Party (a de-facto position second only to that held by Grover Norquist)  in February accused "the Democrats" (perhaps you were expecting specificity?) of "a campaign aimed at the takers, the dependents, in this country -- that they vastly outnumber us, the producers."      Despite Rush's ample racial animosity, these "dependents" include a huge chunk of whites, given that in the same rant he accused Obama of campaigning "on the notion there are more takers than there are producers, that there are more people dependent on government than there are not."

But Repub voters are not expected by their ringleaders to understand that Limbaugh is talking about them.       DeMint, Walsh realizes, is using

coded language meant to whip the GOP base into a frenzy of fear and resentment. Because for the last 40 years, we’ve all known who the “takers” were, or were supposed to be, anyway: the “welfare queens,” the urban rioters, the students, the slackers, the various people the Democrats sided with in the 1960s, most of them, in the partisan story-telling, African American.    Yet today, many white folks who are voting Republican don’t seem to know one important fact: they are, in fact, the “takers."  

In various areas of public policy, the GOP is coming after them.    Walsh explains

Yet once Republicans realized that even in the whitest states, same-day voter laws empower citizens who are more likely to vote against them—students, young people, the lower-income of every race, and yes, the nonwhite—they’ve fought these voter laws ruthlessly. “Voting liberal, that’s what kids do,” a New Hampshire Republican said in defense of a bill that would prohibit people from voting with only a college ID – and given his state’s demographics, he’s mainly talking about white kids. Thus the radical GOP is now rolling back rights white people have long taken for granted – and in Maine, at least, they fought back. 

American society is far more than the division between white and non-white.       Walsh, who recognizes "subtle and not so subtle signs of white status anxiety, real and imagined," has found

Upper middle class and wealthy kids of every race are doing OK; poor and working class kids, including whites, not so much. The Pew Research Center says that an astonishing 45% of black middle class children end up “near poor,” the rate for white families is 16% — and that data is from 2007, before the recession. The rate for both groups is too high for any society that prides itself on upward mobility. We can’t reassure ourselves, if we live in a majority-white area, that we’ll be supported by kids who will be doing well. We all have reason to worry, about everyone’s children.

Walsh urges us to "forego petty racial score-setting and 20th century conceptions about identity. And only if more white people wake up to what they’ve let the Republican Party do to the country in the last 40 years, in the name of holding on to what they think they have."

The piece is ironically titled "What's the Matter with White People"  but Joan Walsh no more blames white people than does Thomas Frank, author of "What's the Matter with Kansas," blames ordinary Kansans.   Possessed of the luxury of lacking racial or gender bias, Walsh clearly understands the matter extends far beyond one race, politician, or election.




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