Not Up Trump's Alley

At a town hall meeting in December in Iowa, Hillary Clinton was asked whether she'd rather be President or Beyonce. Mrs. Clinton appropriately answered "President," charmingly explaining that she did not have such talent, yet "I want to be as good a president as Beyonce is a performer."







That was nothing.  Politico now reports that in a taping Tuesday of "Ellen," E. Degeneres could be seen

luring Clinton into a facetious game of “Who Would You Rather, VP Edition," which may have been accidentally revealing of Clinton's true feelings about Sanders. The show is set to air Wednesday afternoon.

In the first round, a choice between Joe Biden and Mark Cuban, Clinton said without hesitating: "Oh, Joe!"

But Biden was quickly displaced in a matchup against the actor Tony Goldwyn, a stalwart Clinton surrogate who plays the president on ABC's "Scandal."

"Gotta go with Tony," Clinton said.

The following matchup between Goldwyn and Sanders seemed to present Clinton with another no-brainer for her.

“Tony!” she exclaimed without hesitating. Clinton had a harder time choosing between George Clooney, a big donor to her campaign, and Goldwyn, than she did between Sanders and the actor who only plays a president on television.

She eventually settled on splitting the baby. "Tony can be the first term, George can be the second," she said.

Speaking to an audience undoubtedly well-versed in the entertainment business, Mrs. Clinton can't be blamed for demonstrating that she, too, likes film.  It is not only a nod to popular culture, but an acknowledgement of the ecultural superiority- as is imagined- of film over television (except, of course, for HBO).  CBS, NBC, ABC, even PBS are so twentieth century.  It's almost as if she were tipped off that later that day she could read The New York Times' David Brooks arguing

Clinton’s career appears, from the outside, to be all consuming. Her husband is her co-politician. Her daughter works at the Clinton Foundation. Her friendships appear to have been formed at networking gatherings reserved for the extremely successful.

People who work closely with her adore her and say she is warm and caring. But it’s hard from the outside to think of any non-career or pre-career aspect to her life. Except for a few grandma references, she presents herself as a résumé and policy brief.

But Clinton went a little further than praising Goldwyn and Clooney. Politico added

In choosing Beyoncé in a matchup over Leonardo DiCaprio, Clinton explained: “I really believe in making lemonade out of lemons,” a reference to Beyoncé’s latest visual album whose theme is working through the emotions surrounding a relationship with a cheating spouse.

"Working through the emotions surrounding a relationship with a cheating spouse" is all well and good.  But there are a few other things Beyonce is noted for.

They include her "Formation," released approximately 24 hours before her performance at the Super Bowl, which elicited efforts by police unions to boycott her performances. The Washington Post explained the video

opens with the singer standing atop a half-submerged New Orleans police cruiser, a recurring image throughout. Other related symbols periodically flash on screen: Sirens; a jacket that says “POLICE” on it; graffiti that reads “stop shooting us.”

At one point, a hooded boy dances in front of a line of riot gear-clad officers who later join him in raising their hands — an apparent allusion to Michael Brown, who some initially believed had his hands up to surrender when he was shot dead by a police officer. (That version of events was later challenged by federal authorities.)

At the end of the video, the police cruiser fully submerges in the water, taking Beyoncé with it.







In her Super Bowl show

Beyoncé and her back-up dancers wore costumes reminiscent of the Black Panther Party, whose members projected black empowerment and sometimes committed violent acts during the Civil Rights era. The dancers at one point formed an “X” with their bodies, a possible allusion to Malcolm X.

Whether Beyonce's act encourages police violence, as has been alleged, is questionable. Still, Hillary Clinton's veneration of Beyonce is not only suspicious but disturbing and provides an opening for a conventional right-wing politician. Fortunately, Donald Trump is not conventional and because criticism would be legitimate, he probably will ignore it.

We liberals/progressives should consider ourselves fortunate.  An orthodox Republican well-versed in backlash politics and comfortable with cultural conservatism would successfully link Hillary Clinton's musical taste to an antipathy, real or exaggerated, toward police. Alas, that traditional conservative is relegated to planning his re-election campaign for Senator in 2018 and for President in 2020..









Share |

Giving Us Another Chance

In her closing statement at the Democratic debate in Brooklyn, Hillary Clinton asked

for your support again in the primary on Tuesday to continue that work together, to take what we did in New York and to take those New York values to the White House, and put them to work on behalf of all of our people, to knock down the barriers that stand in the way.

You know, of course we have economic barriers. I’ve been fighting against those trying to even the odds most of my adult life. But we also have racial barriers, gender barriers, homophobic barriers, disability barriers.







There was nothing new there, and that's what makes this statement significant. Commenting on the analysis in the Atlantic by David A. Graham of the debate, Atlantic Senior Editor for Politics Yoni Applebaum wrote

It’s an argument aimed at the heart of the contemporary Democratic Party. Sanders has consistently stressed the primacy of economic questions—solve those, he argues, and other forms of discrimination will diminish. But Clinton has stressed the persistence of other prejudices, and called for addressing them directly, as she did tonight. Young voters—even young minority voters—tend to think Sanders has the better of the argument. But older voters disagree, and Sanders can’t win without them.

It is an argument aimed at the heart of the contemporary Democratic Party because that Party is a collection of interests- ethnic minorities, disabled persons, gay people, public sector union members, unmarried women.  They're very worthy interests and constitute the dreaded "special interests" no more than do other Americans.

It comes as no surprise to voters that while Senator Sanders has not ignored the interests of people who are disabled, gay, female, or of minority status, he has tried to draw attention to the economic concerns and interests of all individuals, whether or not they identify with any of these groups.Bernie Sanders would not be able to draw attention exclusively to the status of the 99% as the 99% if he wished, which he most assuredly does not, and never has, from his days as a civil rights activist through his tenure in the United States Congress and his campaign for President.

In a myriad of ways, Democrats at the state and national level have been trying to level the playing field for the individuals disadvantaged by gender, sexual preference, disability, race, or employment status (the last, to a declining degree).   Sanders has not asked any of these individuals,or the ones who care about them, to forego their identity or their efforts to gain the rights or benefits they need.

Still, a  little balance is in order. Those groups (except for the latter) and their allies have successfully chipped away at discrimination and other barriers preventing full participation in American life. There is, however, one group which has been stymied, and in fact has lost ground.  That is, as variously described, the poor and middle class, the 99%, even the 99.9%. It has been largely ignored by the Democratic Party and pummeled by the Republican Party.   Usually, with age comes wisdom. Not in this case, in which young people have noticed what their elders haven't.

In 2007-2008 John Edwards suggested the quaint notion of "two Americas." Voters didn't much care, with their attention diverted to two bright, shiny objects, one becoming a president who hasn't met a job-killing trade deal he doesn't like.  The other has returned, and we know where her focus is not.

In his new book, Listen, Liberal, or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People, Thomas Frank described the "entrepreneurs first" doctrine dominating the "innovation economy" which has taken hold in the Democratic stronghold of Massachusetts.He lamented (from excerpt in Salon)

The answer is that I’ve got the wrong liberalism. The kind of liberalism that has dominated Massachusetts for the last few decades isn’t the stuff of Franklin Roosevelt or the United Auto Workers; it’s the Route 128/suburban-professionals variety. (Senator Elizabeth Warren is the great exception to this rule.) Professional-class liberals aren’t really alarmed by oversized rewards for society’s winners. On the contrary, this seems natural to them — because they are society’s winners. The liberalism of professionals just does not extend to matters of inequality; this is the area where soft hearts abruptly turn hard. 

Franks points out "When you press Democrats on their uninspiring deeds — their lousy free trade deals, for example, or their flaccid response to Wall Street misbehavior — when you press them on any of these things, they automatically reply that this is the best anyone could have done" (photo below from Salon, which credits the AP and two photographers). However, it was not the best we could have done eight years ago, and Bernie Sanders is around to remind us it's not the best we can do now.

Share |

From The Playbook

Few others have said it better than Tom Frank, who in his seminal work What's the Matter with Kansas? noted

American conservatism depends for its continued dominance and even for its very existence on people never making certain mental connections about the world, connections that until recently were treated as obvious or self-evident everywhere on the planet. For example, the connection between mass culture, most of which conservatives hate, and laissez-faire capitalism, which they adore without reservation. Or between the small towns they profess to love and the market forces that are slowly grinding those small towns back into the red-state dust- which forces they praise in the most exalted terms...

Behold the political alignment that Kansas is pioneering for us all. The corporate world- for reasons having a  great deal to do with its corporateness- blankets the nation with a cultural style designed offend and to pretend-subvert: sassy teens in Skechers flout the Man; bigoted churchgoing moms don't tolerate their daughters' cool liberated friends; hipsters dressed in T-shirsts reading "FCUK" snicker at the suits who just don't get it. It's meant to be offensive, and Kansas is duly offended. the state watches impotently as its culture, beamed in from the coasts, becomes coarser and more offensive by the year. Kansas aches for revenge. Kansas gloats when celebrities say stupid things; it cheers when movie stars go to jail. And when two female rock stars exchange a lascivious kiss on national TV, Kansas goes haywire. Kansas screams for the  heads of the liberal elite. Kansas comes running to the polling place. And Kansas cuts those rock stars' taxes.

Kansas has been pioneering for us all in domestic issues, the interplay between economics and culture. But a similar thing is now taking place in the foreign arena, with conservative Repubs blowing smoke up out... well, you know.

Appearing Sunday (video below) on CNN's State of the Union,  Senator John McCain advised President Obama

The President should get over it. Get over your temper tantrum, Mr. President It's time that we work together with our Israeli friends and try to stem this tide of ISIS and Iranian movement throughout the region which is threatening the very fabric of the region. The least of your problems is what Bibi Netanyahu said during an election campaign. If every politician were held to everything they say during a campaign, obviously that would be a topic of long discussion. This is one of the most Orwellian situations I have ever observed.





Put aside that, as Digby observes, McCain probably doesn't understand what "Orwellian" means. Lay aside that Bibi Netanyahu has demonstrated that he is not our friend, both in openly defying the President of the United States and the view of at least the last three Presidents that a two-state solution is the only viable option in the Middle East.

Ignore even the obvious hilarity of John McCain lecturing Barack Obama on the matter of temper tantrums. After Netanyahu's speech to Congress, an obviously emotionally distraught Obama remonstrated "I did get a chance to look at the transcript and as far as I can tell there was nothing new." And following the Prime Minister's surprisingly large electoral plurality, Obama told the Huffington Post

We continue to believe that a two-state solution is the only way for the long-term security of Israel, Given his statements prior to the election, it is going to be hard to find a path where people are seriously believing that negotiations are possible....

We take him at his word when he said that it wouldn’t happen during his prime ministership. So that’s why we’ve got to evaluate what other options are available to make sure that we don’t see a chaotic situation in the region.

The man is simply out of control!

John McCain criticizing Barack Obama for a temper tantrum is analogous to him knocking Representative Barbara Lee of California for being a warmonger; or Scott Walker rapping Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown for being anti-union; or John Ellis Bush condemning Elizabeth Warren for ignoring the interests of the middle class and rejecting populism. It is flat-out bizarre- more likely, mendacious.

The real issue is that, like conservatives who rail against abortion, same-sex marriage, and paint liberals as fans of Sodom and Gomorrah, McCain doesn't really mean it.  Borger (beginning at aproximately 1:43) asks

But you called the President's response to Bibi Netanyahu a temper tantrum. Why is it a temper tantrum if Netanyahu ostensibly rejects during his campaign the very basis for decades of American policy heading towards some kind of peace process. Should the President sort of pay no attention to that?

McCain, who had excoriated Obama for a temper tantrum, replied "I think the President maybe shouldn't like it," after which he went on about ISIS and Iran.

This wasn't Scott Walker, single-minded in his hatred of unions, John Ellis Bush fascinated by all things Bush, or Ted Cruz, who knows little about anything. This was war hero, reliable hawk, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee member John McCain slamming Obama and then, in one definitive remark, agreeing with the President. Whether their criticism is intended to reassure the voting base or the voting base of their party, conservatives are at it again, with McCain, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and other Republicans chastising President Obama, with only the rare Gohmert suggesting a concrete change to policy.  It's all theater, sound and fury signifying only that they will say anything, whip up any fury or frenzy, to defeat Democrats.




Share |

Brownback Needs Sex To Win.

Kansas native and author/historian Thomas Frank notes the "privatization, deregulation, and an enthusiastic race to the bottom" which has characterized the leadership of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback.  The incumbent faces a major electoral challenge because

You’ve got tax cuts so severe they’ve brought on fiscal catastrophe and thrown the state’s school system into crisis. You’ve got bullying by state legislators against organizations that criticize Brownback’s healthcare plans, and hints of pay-to-play corruption just under the surface. And, of course you’ve got credit downgrades as all this becomes known to the outside world.

The wrecking crew is in full swing in Kansas, and for once the people there seem to be ticked off about it. Once the hero of the state’s sin-hating millions, Sam Brownback is unpopular today. Indeed, his situation is so bad that the only sure way he can be rescued is by a mass disregard for economic reality—by cognitive blinders strapped on simultaneously by millions of individuals.

More ominously, he adds "either that, or by the culture wars."   And now Politico, relying on a report from "a twice-weekly local paper with no website," reports that in 1998, police looking for illegal drugs executed a search warrant at a club known as "Secrets" (or Club 169) near the border of Oklahoma in southeastern Kansas.  The owner of the club was charged with sale of methamphetamine and not having a tax stamp and the business was closed, but not before a police officer in his own words

noticed a white male sitting in a couch with a white female standing over him.  She did not have her top on and was only wearing a G-string. I told them to get on the floor and to keep their hands where I could see them. They got on the floor, but the white male was still in a sitting position. I told him again to lay on his stomach and to keep his hands where I could see them. At this time he did so. When he got on the floor he advised that he was the attorney for the owner of the club and he wanted to see him. I told him that he would have to wait until things were secured.

That was sixteen years and the white male is now 43 years old, married with three children, and Brownback's opponent Paul Davis. Davis was not charged in the incident, nor was there any indication he knew of a connection between the business and illegal activity.   In a normal world, his actions at the strip club nearly a generation ago would eclipse those of Representative Michael Grimm (video below) of New York. Last year, the New York Republican was asked by a reporter about an investigation into campaign finance fraud and responded  "Let me be clear to you, you ever do that to me again I’ll throw you off this f***ing balcony…No, no, you’re not man enough, you’re not man enough. I’ll break you in half. Like a boy.”








He was not charged, and currently leads his Democratic challenger in polls and is favored to win re-election in his Staten Island district.  Davis perhaps faces a greater electoral obstacle because his behavior involved sex rather than a mere threat to kill.   Fortunately for the Democrat, however, he has to defeat only Brownback, who has steered a normally conservative state sharply backward, and to whom Kansans seem to be catching on.

Only last month, Standard & Poor''s Rating Services downgraded the state's credit rating as it cited the sharply lower revenues brought about by the deep cut in taxes pushed by Brownback. S&P suggested the state faces a major deficit in the coming fiscal year and its move comes on top of a credit downgrade by Moody's in April for largely the same reason(s).

Whatever the outcome in Kansas, the real moral of the story might be found in the tale of the tea party Republican Brownback appointed to be the chairperson of the Kansas Securities Commission in 2011.  In a turn of events which could serve as a metaphor for the tea party movement, Frank explains

Can you guess how the Tea Partier played it? Yes, you can: He played it exactly like the hack-n-crony regulators of the Bush Administration that the Tea Party was supposed to be so very different from. Jack’s main agenda item, according to a withering account of his tenure that ran last year in the Topeka Capital Journal, was to get rid of a majority of the commission’s staff and replace them with political allies and, of course, lobbyists. His grand vision was to cut the regulated some slack, to remake the state as a place where hedge-fund types would no longer need to worry too much about “overzealous” supervisors — “to open Kansas as a destination state for hedge fund managers, private equity operators and venture capitalists.” With the tools of deregulation they were going to build a Wall Street on the Plains—and along the way Mr. Jack somehow found money in the commission’s budget to air radio spots in which he himself told listeners about all the neat things he was doing. Finally, when things didn’t work out for him in politics, it was through the revolving door to a local brokerage....

That story has pretty much been lost amid the broader avalanche of calamity in Kansas, but still it’s worth dwelling upon. Ten years ago, when I wrote a book about politics in the place where I grew up, I was impressed by the populist tone of the state’s conservative rebels. I was amused by the way they mocked the state’s successful and well-connected professional class. (This kind of thing still goes on, of course. On Thursday, Republican Senator Pat Roberts, who also finds himself behind in the polls,denounced his opponent as “another millionaire politician trying to deceive voters and buy a U.S. Senate seat.”) In the aftermath of the slump brought to you in 2008 by Wall Street, those populist rebels won. Thanks to the Great Recession, those rebels were able to defeat their opponents completely. The offices of the state are now nearly entirely at their command.

And what have the populists’ leaders done with that power? To say they proceeded to sit down and write passionate love letters to Wall Street is hyperbole, but it’s not sufficient.... 

Think back over all those years of prayer and organizing and going door to door and yelling about the liberal elite with their lattes and their fancy Volvos—what has it fetched the rebellious right-wingers of my home state? Yes, one of their leaders got a cash-out job in leafy Leawood. Hopefully a McMansion, too. But for most of the rest of them it’s crumbling schools and dwindling services and the huge expressionless face of the local ag monopoly, remorselessly bidding down the labor of their neighbors. Before they vote again for that prayerful fellow who makes such a show of genuflecting before Mammon the great and powerful, they need to consider: maybe this guy’s got the wrong god. 

Fittingly or ironically, the only thing that now can save the fanatically anti-abortion rights governor is sex and his shouts of Obama! Obama! The strip club incident occurred almost a long time ago, but the Governor to the 1% needs a titillating diversion to divert attention from the privatization regime (The Young Turks video below) he's destroying his state with.

Share |

He Is, After All, Only The President

Can we stop making excuses for Barack Obama?  Normally sane bloggers Ed Kilgore and Kevin Drumtake a whack at Thomas Frank for his recent Salon piece entitled "Right-wing obstruction cold have been fought: An ineffective and gutless presidency's legacy is failure."

Historian and author Frank wrote

The Obama team, as the president once announced to a delegation of investment bankers, was “the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” and in retrospect these words seem not only to have been a correct assessment of the situation at the moment but a credo for his entire term in office. For my money, they should be carved in stone over the entrance to his monument: Barack Obama as the one-man rescue squad for an economic order that had aroused the fury of the world. Better: Obama as the awesomely talented doctor who kept the corpse of a dead philosophy lumbering along despite it all.

Frank speculates about the future Obama presidential library and notes

... all presidential museums are exercises in getting their subject off the hook, and for Obama loyalists looking back at his years in office, the need for blame evasion will be acute. Why, the visitors to his library will wonder, did the president do so little about rising inequality, the subject on which he gave so many rousing speeches? Why did he do nothing, or next to nothing, about the crazy high price of a college education, the Great Good Thing that he has said, time and again, determines our personal as well as national success? Why didn’t he propose a proper healthcare program instead of the confusing jumble we got? Why not a proper stimulus package? Why didn’t he break up the banks? Or the agribusiness giants, for that matter?
Well, duh, his museum will answer: he couldn’t do any of those things because of the crazy right-wingers running wild in the land. He couldn’t reason with them—their brains don’t work like ours! He couldn’t defeat them at the polls—they’d gerrymandered so many states that they couldn’t be dislodged! What can a high-minded man of principle do when confronted with such a vast span of bigotry and close-mindedness? The answer toward which the Obama museum will steer the visitor is: Nothing.

In point of fact, there were plenty of things Obama’s Democrats could have done that might have put the right out of business once and for all—for example, by responding more aggressively to the Great Recession or by pounding relentlessly on the theme of middle-class economic distress. Acknowledging this possibility, however, has always been difficult for consensus-minded Democrats, and I suspect that in the official recounting of the Obama era, this troublesome possibility will disappear entirely. Instead, the terrifying Right-Wing Other will be cast in bronze at twice life-size, and made the excuse for the Administration’s every last failure of nerve, imagination and foresight. Demonizing the right will also allow the Obama legacy team to present his two electoral victories as ends in themselves, since they kept the White House out of the monster’s grasp—heroic triumphs that were truly worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. (Which will be dusted off and prominently displayed.)

Kilgore responded

Underlying Frank’s attacks on Obama is an implicit conspiracy theory nearly as lurid as the Kenyan Muslim Marxist Alinskyite fantasies of the right: that Obama was deployed as a judas goat by the threatened Neoliberal Order to preempt and then prevent the righteous beatdown capitalism had earned for itself by 2008, when “every thinking person could see that the reigning ideology had failed.” Keeping to the appointed script, the phony agent of change then propped up the evil system that was teetering on the edge of catastrophe and subsequently blamed his betrayal of The People on the crazy people of the Right.

Soon after ridiculing Frank's notion that Obama's defenders have "blamed his betrayal of The People on the crazy people of the Right," Kilgore goes on to blame the President's troubles on those mean and nasty Republicans in the Senate:

There is this institution called the U.S. Senate. Even after two big Democratic cycles in 2006 and 2008, Republicans held 40 seats, enough given absolute unity and a single Democratic defection to thwart anything the majority party attempted, under rules ripe for abuse that neither Barack Obama nor Harry Reid invented or imagined. Just a year after Obama took office, Republicans won a special Senate election and obtained the power to block absolutely any Democratic measure.

Drum argues

Back in 2009, was Obama really the only thing that stood between bankers and the howling mob? Don't be silly. Americans were barely even upset, let alone ready for revolution. Those pathetic demonstrations outside the headquarters of AIG were about a hundredth the size that even a half-ass political organization can muster for a routine anti-abortion rally. After a few days the AIG protestors got bored and went home without so much as throwing a few bottles at cops. Even the Greeks managed that much.

Why were Americans so obviously not enraged? Because -- duh -- the hated neoliberal system worked. We didn't have a second Great Depression. The Fed intervened, the banking system was saved, and a stimulus bill was passed. Did bankers get treated too well? Oh yes indeed. Was the stimulus too small? You bet. Nevertheless, was America saved from an epic collapse? It sure was. Instead of a massive meltdown, we got a really bad recession and a weak recovery, and even that was cushioned by a safety net that, although inadequate, was more than enough to keep the pitchforks off the streets...

All of us who do what Thomas Frank does -- what I do -- have failed. Our goal was to persuade the public to move in a liberal direction, and that didn't happen. In the end, we didn't persuade much of anyone. It's natural to want to avoid facing that humiliating truth, and equally natural to look for someone else to blame instead. That's human nature. So fine. Blame Obama if it makes you feel better. That's what we elect presidents for: to take the blame.

But he only deserves his share. The rest of us, who were unable to take advantage of an epic financial collapse to get the public firmly in favor of pitchforks and universal health care, deserve most of it. The mirror doesn't lie.

Sorry, Kevin: Frank, as well as others, doesn't blame Obama because it makes them feel better. It is other progressive (and some moderate) folks, falling head over heels for a cautious, centrist Senator in 2007-2008, who were motivated in part by a need to feel really, really good.

Drum's faux humility, in which he claims "the rest of us, who were unable to take advantage of an epic financial collapse to get the public firmly in favor of pitchforks and universal health care, deserve most of" the blame," has the feel of an Andy Reid mantra. As the Philadelphia Eagles continued to lose, their head coach would insincerely repeat "I have to do a better job," knowing that would cut off any debate about either his coaching strategy or the players he chose not to bench.  Clever tactic, that.

Drum labels "silly" the idea that "Obama (was) really the only thing that stood between bankers and the howling mob."  There was no "howling mob," admittedly.  But the American people were expected to elect either major Democrat because, recognizing "the reigning ideology had failed," they were primed for significant, fundamental change of the progressive/liberal variety.

Moreover, it was Barack Obama himself who remarked (video, below) "we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship" brought the nation by President Reagan who "changed the trajectory of America" because "he put us on a fundamentally different path."









And who (and individuals such as Kilgore and Drum with convenient memories) can forget the candidate (video, below) declaring ("with profound humility") that his election would mark the time "the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal"?










Matt Stoller of the now-defunct Open Left observed (as did few others) at the time

Obama admires Reagan because he agrees with Reagan's basic frame that the 1960s and 1970s were full of 'excesses' and that government had grown large and unaccountable...

Those excesses, of course, were feminism, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the antiwar movement.  The libertarian anti-government ideology of an unaccountable large liberal government was designed by ideological conservatives to take advantage of the backlash against these 'excesses'.

Stoller's voice was one of only a few, though, because as Obama himself once wrote, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." That is no excuse, however, to deny facts which smakck us in the face.  Ed Kilgore and Kevin Drum don't understand but at least Thomas Frank, as is his wont, does.


Share |

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."



 

Share |

Insane Or Otherwise



Saying “government can’t control the weather” sounds plausible enough," Jonathan Chait writes, and is "a way to take a position that doesn’t sound completely insane to audiences but is, in fact, completely insane. In this way, it is the quintessential Marco Rubio utterance."   Tuesday, Rubio uttered

There are valid reasons to be concerned about the President's plan to grow our government. But any time anyone opposes the President's agenda, he and his allies usually respond by falsely attacking their motives.

When we point out that no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can't control the weather – he accuses us of wanting dirty water and dirty air.

I don't know what Rubio means when he accuses Obama of "accus(ing) us of wanting dirty water and dirty air."   (Neither do most Republicans- but it feels good.)   Even before hearing the President's message live, Rubio probably had seen a copy of the SOTU* message and noted Obama's vicious, partisan attack: "But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change."

In claiming the President "and his allies" usually respond to criticism by "falsely attacking their motives," Rubio follows the script described by Thomas Frank:

Conservatism, on the other hand, is the doctrine of the oppressed majority. Conservatism does not defend some established order of things: It accuses; its rants; it points out hypocrisies and gleefully pounces on contradictions. While liberals use their control of the airwaves, newspapers, and schools to persecute average Americans — to ridicule the pious, flatter the shiftless, and indoctrinate the kids with all sorts of permissive nonsense — the Republicans are the party of the disrespected, the downtrodden, the forgotten. They are always the underdog, always in rebellion against a haughty establishment, always rising up from below.

All claims of the right, in other words, advance from victimhood. This is another trick the backlash has picked up from the left. Even though republicans legislate in the interests of society’s most powerful, and even though conservative social critics typically enjoy cushy sinecures at places like the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal, they rarely claim to speak on behalf of the wealthy of the winners in the social Darwinist struggle. Just like the leftists of the early twentieth century, they see themselves in revolt against a genteel tradition, rising up against a bankrupt establishment that will tolerate no backtalk.

And so it is that Rubio carries water for his corporate benefactors (Obama generally eschews attacking motives; myself, not so much) and makes what Chait identifies that "completely insane" statement, "government can't control the weather."

Although neither government nor anyone else can control the weather, the weather can be influenced, imperfectly, such as by cloud-seeding.  Still, no one claims the power to have a tremendous influence on weather, which is less susceptible to modification than is climate.  But now we begin to understand the Republican idea of American exceptionalism circa 2013: change our lifestyle slightly to save the planet- can't be done!

The fairly uncomplicated chain of events which Chait realizes the Senator "is capable of grasping" is merely

1. The government has a bunch of rules that control how much coal, oil, and whatnot gets burned.
2. The more greenhouse gasses we burn, the warmer the climate gets. It’s science.
3. The warmer the climate gets, the more frequently we have extreme weather events. This is also science.

Chait argues that Rubio is choosing not to deny that burning greenhouse gases results in a warmer climate but

Denying the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change remains as firmly ensconced as ever in the Republican liturgy.  But the party's reputation for scientific ignorance has proven to be at least a slight embarrassment among general election audiences...

So what’s going on here is that Rubio wants to uphold the Republican position without coming across to non-Republicans as a total yahoo. So he is not directly questioning the carbon-climate link, but instead moving his skepticism to the climate-weather link.

Senator Rubio took advantage of the ignorance of many conservatives of the difference between weather and climate.   Consider how often a cold spell (or, worse, snow) is accompanied by a layman (layperson? laywoman? lay?) using the occasion to deny the reality of global warming.  And if he continues to take positions which don't sound completely insane to audiences- but are inaccurate and probably dishonest- we will have Marco Rubio to kick around until at least July, 2016.




*SOTU, POTUS, VPOTUS, FLOTUS: abbreviations are the new jargon of Washington.


Share |

Race-Obsessed, Class-Blind

Chauncey DeVega, editor and founder of the blog We Are Respectable Negroes, has written an interesting, topical, and thoroughly patronizing essay addressed to "angry white conservatives who are mourning Mitt Romney's loss."   If the piece is intended to annoy conservatives as well as liberals who aware of the impact of class, gender (did I mention class?) and factors other than race, it is also a brilliant essay.

Noting "ultimately, Barack Obama is a Black man who is the chief executive of a white government," DeVega recognizes that the President "has done remarkably little in terms of advancing policy goals that would directly benefit people of color in the United States. In fact, Obama has spoken less about race than any president in 50 years."   Remarkably, this was after he asserted that having a black President of the U.S.A. is "a ground breaking achievement that should not be easily discounted or dismissed."  Except, presumably, that he has done virtually nothing to address the unique needs of blacks and has chosen to ignore the issue beyond that of "any president in 50 years."   There are echoes here of Republicans who have responded to the thundering rejection of their party's agenda by Hispanics by vowing to enlist more candidates who speak Spanish and look Latin, whatever their ideology.

DeVega points out

...White men control every major social, political, economic, and cultural institution in the United States. With few exceptions, white men are the CEOs of every Fortune 500 company.
White men control both Hollywood and the mass media. There, approximately 95 percent of the most important positions as writers, directors, advertising, producers, show runners, executives, and the like are held by white men.

This is a great advantage in a country where white men make up 30 percent of the U.S. population.

White men control the United States Congress and Senate. There are now 20 women in the Senate—a record number. But there are no African Americans in the same governing body. There are two Hispanic and Asian senators, respectively. The majority of senior-level and cabinet positions in the federal government are held by white men. White men are also over-represented on the United States Supreme Court.

It is unclear whether DeVega is addressing white people generally or conservative whites when he claims "people who look just like you remain in charge."   Remarkably, however, not all whites look alike, and I haven't yet found "in charge" anyone who looks like the Caucasian neighbor of mine, or is much like him.  Instead, the ones in charge are just like the bank executive who received total compensation of $261 million during his five years as CEO while his firm- which at $476.2 billion was the most generously aided recipient of federal largesse during the financial crisis- lost nearly 90% of its stock price.   Shortly before his recent departure, he steered his corporation to an $88 million quarterly loss, but as CNN Money reports

Citigroup said Friday that the former CEO, who resigned last month in a management shakeup, will receive an “incentive award” of $6.7 million for his work at the bank this year.  Former president and chief operating officer John Havens, who stepped down along with Pandit, is getting $6.8 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The two men will also continue collecting deferred cash and stock compensation from last year, awards valued at $8.8 million for Pandit and $8.7 million for Havens. 

Is Vikram Pandit even white- is he among the "people who look just like you"?   DeVega no doubt would want to know, or would assume he is.  I don't care, nor would historian/author Thomas Frank, who even in 2004 understood "the great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class."   He recognized the general applicability to the nation's conservative movement when he criticized the College Republicans of Kansas University by acknowledging

These complaints are of course small beer by the usual standards of oppression and unfairness.  I was never beaten for trying to vote or shot at for walking off the job. But these developments were nonetheless sufficient to awaken me to the existence of class, of the elite.  Also to the startling fact that I was not part of it.  The Franks may have lived near them, but I could no more choose to join them at their well-appointed table (to return to David Brook's cafeteria metaphor) than I could flap my arms and fly to the moon.  I had about as much of a stake in the order that propped up Mission Hills, I now realized, as did the Section Eight residents in decrepit midtown Kansas City, shuffling along the street muttering curses to themselves.




Share |

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.




Share |

Michele Bachmann And The Politics Of Ridicule


Democrats and Republicans alike, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi maintains, "are making the mistake of laughing at (Michele) Bachmann."

In a profile which is thoroughly entertaining, if less-than intellectually rigorous, Taibbi portrays a candidate whose support among tea party supporters and "brilliantly fortifying lack of self-doubt.... mixed with pathological, relentless, conscienceless lying" makes her a legitimate threat to seize the Repub nomination for President. Mary Cecconi, who once defeated Michelle Bachmann in a school board race, added "I think Michele honestly believes whatever she says in the moment," which suggests a politician who can credibly make any remark advantageous at the time.

Taibbi cites Bachmann's "TV-ready looks, her easy confidence in public speaking, her quick command of a mountainous database of (frequently bogus) facts." Warning critics not to laugh at Bachmann, he then mocks her supporters, arguing

tales by Bachmann work precisely because there are a great many people in America just like Bachmann, people who believe that God tells them what condiments to put on their hamburgers, who can't tell the difference between Soviet Communism and a Stafford loan, but can certainly tell the difference between being mocked and being taken seriously.

Taibbi maintains that if we wrongly conclude that the Minnesota Republican "is uniquely crazy" and "laugh at Michele Bachmann for going on MSNBC and blurting out that the moon is made of red communist cheese, these people don't learn that she is wrong." But while ridicule of Bachmann (and especially of her supporters) is counter-productive, failing to analyze critically her comment and record also would backfire.

Another GOP presidential candidate, the subject of considerable criticism, would understand. Newt Gingrich's candidacy is not tanking; it has tanked. And, with some justification, he blames it on the abuse heaped upon him since he began his quest. The former House Speaker wrongly believes that he was targeted because Democrats fear him, but evidently knows that reports about campaign aides deserting him, as well as his Tiffany line of credit (and an obnoxious, but effective, glittering incident), contributed to his demise.

While attributing coastal elitism Taibbi primarily to others (in his last sentence, appearing to include himself), Taibbi doesn't quite understand conservatives, in images of pop culture, recognize that

Here liberalism is a matter of shallow appearances, of fatuous self-righteousness; it is arrogant and condescending, a politics in which the beautiful and the wellborn tell the unwashed and the beaten-down and the funny-looking how they ought to behave, how they should stop being racist or homophobic, how they should be better people. In an America where the chief sources of one's ideas about life's possibilities are TV and the movies, it's not hard to be convinced that we inhabit a liberal-dominated world.....

Frank wrote seven years ago, when conservative talk radio was not as dominant and social media practically non-existent. But he asserted, in a way Taibbi does not, the value of confronting the self-serving arguments of the conservative elite, rather than the constituency that elite targets. And it is not only Bachmann or Sarah Palin whose rise would be aborted by such scrutiny, but that of Riok Perry and other manipulators on the right.

Share|

Article Of The Week

It's a curious case of populism, that which the media claims finds its voice in the likes of Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck, three of the leading voices of corporate privilege in the U.S.A.

Recently, it had the Washington Post columnist David Ignatius columnist in "Why is Congress protecting a tax code that benefits the rich?" lamenting the "pro-billionaire version of populism (which) seems to have won big in the midterm elections." He cites

the demise of a congressional effort to strike down one of the most outrageous provisions of our messed-up tax code, which is the special treatment of "carried-interest" compensation that's paid to many investment fund managers.

This loophole is so unfair that it gets criticized even by some of the tycoons who have benefited from it, such as former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin and other prominent investors I've queried. Basically, it taxes the money paid to managers of private-equity funds and similar partnerships at 15 percent, as if it were risk capital, rather than at ordinary income rates of 35 percent.

The carried-interest break survives as do other policies which benefit big business

by invoking small business. It's argued that if congressional reformers have their way, they will gut compensation for all the little mom-and-pop partnerships that depend on carried interest....

A similar illogic leads many people to believe you are attacking Main Street if you suggest withdrawing the Bush-era tax cuts to people making more than $250,000.

Ignatius, normally a supporter of President Obama, notes "the politically enfeebled Obama administration has caved to extending the tax cuts." He misses (slightly) only when he suggests that support of tax cuts for individuals so wealthy most Americans never will know anyone they benefit may be "part of the American ethos that we all think we're rich."

Most Americans do not believe they themselves are rich, instead believing, no matter how stratospheric their income or privileged their lifestyle, that they are "middle class." They do believe, consciously or otherwise, no matter how unrealistically, that they may become rich. This fantasy, though long held in this nation, has been fueled in recent years by the ever-spreading practice of legalized gambling- and the mainstream media's glee in reporting, in words and pictures, every big winner. They are so normal and average, we see, just like we are. And if I can just land that one big lottery ticket or the catch the right slot machine....

But Ignatius is right on target (my Sharron Angle language) when he concludes

fixing the carried-interest loophole is probably dead, for this Congress and the next. It was hard enough to beat the big guys. But once they successfully hid under the cover of the little guys, it was impossible.

That political legerdemain is making America more unequal every year, and the polls show people are mad as hell at Wall Street and Washington, both. And yet the popular chorus continues: Save the tax breaks for the rich.

"People are mad as hell at Wall Street and Washington" while "the popular chorus continues: save the tax breaks for the rich." It brings to mind a favorite passage, one I've previously quoted, from page 249 of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? which shows, as Frank argued, that Kansans are similar to other Americans:

The state watches impotently as its culture, beamed in from the coasts, becomes coarser and more offensive by the year. Kansas aches for revenge. Kansas gloats when celebrities says stupid things; it cheers when movie stars go to jail. And when two female rock stars exchange a lascivious kiss on national TV, Kansas goes haywire. Kansas screams for the heads of the liberal elite. Kansas comes running to the polling place. And Kansas cuts those rock stars' taxes.

Share|

Money, Not Culture


She was the head of the pro-abstinence Saviors Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT). She became famous for panning masturbation, arguing "It is not enough to be abstinent with other people, you also have to be be abstinent alone" and has bragged about remaining "chaste" in her thirties. She complained that the U.S.A. "took the Bible and prayer out of public schools" and alleged "American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains." She characterized evolution as a "myth" and claimed to have heard "the audible voice of God." She decried homosexuality as "an identity disorder" and opposed abortion even in the case of rape or incest.

So when U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell of Delaware gave her non-concession concession speech Tuesday night, did she urge victor Chris Coons to consider alternatives to embryonic stem cell research, support traditional marriage, or uphold the sanctity of human life?

Hardly. She beseeched Coons to fight reinstatement of the estate tax (which Frank Luntz has taught Republicans to smear as the "death tax") and

reminded him that he is now in a position to help the people of Delaware who are suffering. I reminded him of Victor Rodriguez and Donald and his family and the many small business owners who are very concerned about these tax hikes. And if he does raise them on the top 2%, they'll be forced to close their doors.

This was not Senator-elect Pat Toomey (R-Pa), former head of the Club for Growth, whose raison d'etre is doing the bidding of the corporate sector. Or Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-Ky), who believes it is just plain mean for government to require private businesses not to discriminate. Or Tea Party honcho Dana Loesch who, asked recently (could it be otherwise?) on CNN's "Parker Spitzer" to name her top priority for Congress, instantly cited extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich.

This was Christine O'Donnell, famous for being a "social conservative" (which really is a "cultural conservative"- oh, never mind). And in that brief moment she had with the incoming Senator of her state, she counseled tax cuts for the wealthy, via elimination of the estate tax, or cutting income taxes for the wealthiest 2% of Americans.

It has been making the rounds, this idea that the Democratic proposal hits mom 'n pop stores. In its report submitted to the U.S. Congress in July, the Joint Committee on Taxation noted (page 10)

The staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that in 2011 just under $750,000 taxpayers with net positive income (three percent of alltaxpayers with net positive business income) will have marginal rate s of 36 or 39.6 percent under the President's propsal....

Obviously, Christine O'Donnell, who was defeated decisively on Election Day, is yesterday's news. But everywhere through the Republican Party there is one message. It's not gay marriage, or right to life, deficit reduction (insert joke here), or national security. It's one message and one message only: cut the taxes of the wealthy.

It's one of the great storylines of American politics over the past 30-40 years, best told (pp. 6-7) by Thomas Frank in "What's the Matter with Kansas":

Old-fashioned values may count when conservatives appear on the stump but once conservatives are in office the only old-fashioned situation they care to revive is an economic regimen of low wages and lax regulations. Over the last three decades they have smashed the welfare state, reduced the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy, and generally facilitated the country's return to a 19th century of wealth distribution. Thus, the primary contradiction of the backlash; it is a working-class movement that has done incalculable historic harm to working class people.

The leaders of the backlash may talk Christ but they walk corporate. Values may matter "most" to voters, but they always take a back seat to the needs of money once the elections are won. This is a basic earmark of the phenomenon, absolutely consistent across its decades-long history. Abortion is never halted, affirmative action is never abolished, the culture industry is never forced to clean up its act. Even the greatest culture warrior of them all was a notorious cop-out once it came time to deliver. "Reagan made himself the champion of 'traditional values' but there is no evidence he regarded their restoration as a high priority," wroter Christopher Lasch, one of the most astute analysts of the backlash sensibility. "What he really cared about was the revival of the unregulated capitalism of the twenties: the repeal of the New Deal."

Frank recognizes in America generally what he says (p. 249) about his native Kansas :

The state watches impotently as its culture, beamed in from the coasts, becomes coarser and more offensive by the year. Kansas aches for revenge. Kansas gloats when celebrities says stupid things; it cheers when movie stars go to jail. And when two female rock stars exchange a lascivious kiss on national TV, Kansas goes haywire. Kansas screams for the heads of the liberal elite. Kansas comes running to the polling place. And Kansas cuts those rock stars' taxes.

Meanwhile, the daughter of a proud Sarah Palin, the purported grand dame of social conservatism, goes Hollywood to the max, performing on "Dancing with the Stars." There you have it: deregulation, tax cuts, and whatever else is on the wish list of the privileged for the party which once claimed family values as its guiding light.

Share|

Article Of The Week

Lower the flag to half mast. It’s bad enough that Thomas Frank has to announce “ This is my last weekly column for the Wall Street Journal,” but concluding “As for me, it's two cans of beer and the escape chute to terra firma. Goodbye and good luck” sounds vaguely ominous.

Frank has appeared in the right-wing libertarian Wall Street Journal for a little over two years now, which would be analogous to Christopher Hitchens being featured in L’Osservatore Romano. Fittingly, his last column, "The Economic Crisis: Lessons Unlearned," is a retrospective, not of his career, reflections, or life journey, but of this nation's politics since autumn of 2008. At the time, he recalls

We were descending further into the worst recession I had ever seen, but at least we were finally going to be done with the farcical intellectual and political consensus of the preceding decades.

Never again, I thought, would journalists fall over one another to flatter CEOs, nor would pundits build careers by finding clever ways to equate the workings of markets to democracy itself. Management theorists would cease to be public intellectuals, and the political advice of stock pickers would henceforth be treated like the toxic sewage it clearly was.

"The market god has failed," I wrote in this space in February 2009, and I thought its flop augured not only a massive reconfiguring of the relationship between investment banks and the rest of society but a complete overturning of the comfortable assumptions of the pundit class.

But, Frank notes those were intellectuals, bound by a different code than politicians and pundits" and

As the right howled "socialism," President Obama took pains to demonstrate his loyalty to the exhausted free-market faith. On trade issues and matters of economic staffing, he loudly signalled continuity with the discredited past. On the all-important issue of regulatory misbehavior—a natural for good-government types—he has done virtually nothing.

The real audacity has all been on the other side. Many Republicans chose to respond to the crisis not by renouncing the consensus faith of the last 30 years but by doubling down on it, calling for more deregulation, more war on government.

Without so characterizing it, Frank indirectly returns to his signature issue, noting "the burgeoning populist movement that now stands beside the GOP, transforming anger over unemployment into anger over the auto bailout and the good pensions enjoyed by public workers." You've seen the script: the GOP right turning not only voters against government, but black against white, worker against worker, middle class against lower class, neighbor against neighbor. Frank is most disappointed in "the world of professional punditry"- it's not only Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck anymore, though they're best at it.

Meanwhile, the left blogosphere urges reform of the filibuster to enable passage of good legislation by the current Democratic majority. This would be, it would seem, sowing the seeds of its own destruction, or at least that of progressive governance. Most of the pundits rate as better than even money election of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives this fall; election of a Senate composed of mostly Republicans is a distinct, though less than 50-50, possibility. And there is little doubt that when there is a majority of Republicans in both chambers, as will happen eventually (as do floods, tornados, hurricanes, and blizzards), it will be controlled by the GOP in a mannner Democrats, under the leadership of a president with a fetish for bipartisanship, have failed to do.

Taking heart from Barack Obama's effort to weaken Social Security, the GOP will eviscerate it; financial reform will be reformed to strengthen the market positionof the largest financial institutions, harmig smaller banks and the public; and health care reform will be undermined. Some Republicans have pledged to rescind health reform; worse yet, they would be likely to revoke only the better parts, giving the insurance industry the goodies President Obama handed to the hospital and drug industries.

Hopefully, traditional and the alternative media will be there to expose the GOP as it continues, with increased power, on its path of destroying the middle class. Thomas Frank will be among, if not the, most insightful of that group, wherever he is writing. I'll be looking for him, and you should, too.

Share|