About-Face

My, how things change in five years.

In the summer of 2006, the Mayor announed "Illegal immigrants are ruining the quality of life, which is the best thing a small town has to offer." The mayor's preferred solution was adoption of an ordinance which prevented illegal immigrants from renting a residence, revoked the licenses of landlords who rented to illegal immigrants or who employed them, and declared English to be the official language of the city, effectuating a prohibition on printing any municipal information in English. If a legal immigrant was unable to speak English and needed written information from the city, so be it.

After considerable controversy and lawsuits, a federal appeals court struck down the ordinance promoted by Mayor Lou Barletta and enacted by Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

After making a name for himself by ostensibly standing tall for legal residents of his city, Mayor Barletta, a Republican, became Representative Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania's 11th congressional district. And now, things seem to be different with the tough guy from Luzerne County. Columnist Joseph N. DiStefano writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer

Employers who legally import 66,000 low-wage foreign workers each year for some of the nation's dreariest jobs - work they say Americans won't do - are mounting a last-minute drive to keep their employees' pay from going up.

In a letter to U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, 48 members of Congress, including Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), Rep. Lou Barletta (R., Pa.), and Rep. Pat Meehan (R., Pa.) say business owners should be able to continue importing cheap, foreign labor at current wages.

The wages are set by the government's H-2B visa program. The employers want the Obama administration to delay or abandon an Oct. 1 increase in wages, which they say is designed to discourage employers from using the foreigners - if U.S. workers are available....

U.S. District Judge Louis Pollak in Philadelphia, in a ruling in 2010, found current wages required by the visa program too low. He said the program could be exploited by bosses who would want to replace U.S. workers with low-paid foreigners.

Solis' department agreed to raise H-2B wage rates by an average of $4.38 an hour, effective Oct. 1. For example, salaries for dishwashers imported under the program would go from $7.90 an hour to $9.24; janitors, from $9.23 to $13.02; landscapers, from $9.84 to $13.88, and roofers, from $14.12 to $21.38.

The kicker? Back in 2006, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported

Mr. Barletta is unsympathetic to claims that the new laws are hurting minority-owned businesses. If they are losing blocs of customers who are in the country illegally, so be it, the mayor said.

Now, DiStefano writes, "Barletta wants to protect small businesses in his area- northeastern Pennsylvania- and their U.S. workers because raising the wages of foreign employees would cause the businesses to shut down," saith the congressman's spokesman. The lower wages, according to the letter from Barletta and others, "makes the program "a lifeline for scores of small and seasonal businesses around the country (that are) frequently unable to find enough local workers to fill their temporary and seasonal job openings, even in today's tough economic climate."

Barletta isn't alone in being misguided or more likely enticed by the lure of campaign cash from business interests, though he is the only one who would be encased in obscurity were it not for hostility to some immigrants. Nor is Barletta the only politician with little faith in the American people believing, contrary to evidence to the contrary, that workers either are insufficiently trained- or too lazy- to take a job.

We heard it during the debate(s) over extending unemployment benefits, with conservatives imagining that people will not look for work when they can stay home, collect free money and be unproductive. With unemployment compensation or immigration, the theme is the same. It's never the pols or the business persons themselves- nor their spouses, offspring, friends, or even neighbors- who are lazy. It's always unnamed individuals who somehow lack the motivation which everyone they know possess in abundance.

Nine days ago, flags flew and love of country was the order of the day. Respect for the American worker lags far behind.

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Class Warfare Continues

The GOP is playing its (not Donald) trump card.

Or maybe it's not their trump card, but I needed to make the pun. Even before President Obama gave his speech this morning about the economy, GOP leaders were out with what lamentably has become known as the "prebuttal."

Leading the way was plutocrat Paul Ryan, so concerned about middle class America that early this year he introduced a budget featuring eventual elimination of Medicare. Sunday morning the House Budget Committee chairman contended

Class warfare, Chris, may make for really good politics but it makes for rotten economics. We don’t need to divide people and prey on people’s fear and envy and anxiety. We need to remove the barriers so entrepreneurs can hire people. These tax increases don’t work. [...]

This is a double tax… If we tax investment and tax more you will get less of it. It looks like to me not a very good sign. It looks like the President wants to move down the class warfare path. Class warfare will simply divide this country more, will attack job creators, divide people, and it doesn’t grow the economy.

Class warfare is something Republicans know well- they've been practicing it for decades, though never as enthusiastically as in the recent years. David Cay Johnston explains

When Reagan was elected president, the top marginal tax rate (the tax rate paid on the last dollar of income earned) was 70 percent. He cut it to 50 percent and then 28 percent starting in 1987. It was raised by George H.W. Bush and Clinton, and then cut by George W. Bush. The top rate is now 35 percent.

Since 1980, when Reagan won the presidency promising prosperity through tax cuts, the average income of the vast majority—the bottom 90 percent of Americans—has increased a meager $303, or 1 percent. Put another way, for each dollar people in the vast majority made in 1980, in 2008 their income was up to $1.01.

Those at the top did better. The top 1 percent’s average income more than doubled to $1.1 million, according to an analysis of tax data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. The really rich, the top one-tenth of 1 percent, each enjoyed almost $4 in 2008 for each dollar in 1980.

The top 300,000 Americans now enjoy almost as much income as the bottom 150 million, the data show.

As the pie chart (from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities from Congressional Budget office data) indicates, the share of the nation's after-tax income rose for the top 1% from 7.5%to 17.1% from 1975 to 2007 while dropping for the bottom four-fifths from 57.9% to 48.9%.

As Johnston emphasizes, the gap has been growing primarily since President Reagan introduced the concept of cutting taxes to bleed government. The table below, derived from IRS statistics, indicates that tor those people not in the top 10% of the income distribution, real income grew by 75% from 1950 to 1980- and by only 1% from 1980 to 2008.

The GOP does have a plan, one based on cutting taxes of corporations and the wealthy and making sure that the slack is picked up by poor and middle class Americans who benefit from the child care tax credit, the earned income tax credit, unemployment compensation, or Social Security. With the overall total tax burden the lowest it has been since 1958, most Republicans are willing to see taxes rise, as long as those least able to pay are the ones giving to the I.R.S.

So, yes, there is class warfare going on in the U.S.A.- and it has been raging for well over a quarter century. It was started by a relatively moderate conservative, Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6), ramped up by "you've covered your ass" George W. Bush, and escalated by the post-Bush GOP. It's being won by the Republican Party, with President Obama's speech today but a small effort to fight back.

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Sure, Everyone Loves The Fellow

There is the conventional belief, voiced here by Reid Wilson of the National Journal, who wrote in August

Polling consistently shows that the majority of Americans view Obama favorably, even while they increasingly disagree with his job performance. There is a nuance to voter sentiment, pollsters say, one that provides Obama with a path to reelection. But the disconnect between the two numbers, if it ever shrinks, could also become a leading indicator that the president's chances for a second term are headed south.

"I consistently find in focus groups that swing voters like Obama personally. But they feel let down by his policies. They believe he is working hard, but going in the wrong direction," said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster at Public Opinion Strategies. Obama "is in danger, though, of becoming Jimmy Carter: Likeable, but unable to lead the country out of difficult times."

Then there is the accurate view, voiced on Hardball (transcript, here) Wednesday by The Huffington Post's Howard Fineman discussing with Chris Matthews' the job proposals made by Barack Obama. Fineman noticed

Yes, that`s exactly what it is because elsewhere in that poll and some other polls, voters were asked about their views of the different pieces of the bill itself, you know, the ideas within the bill. They`re more favorable toward the ideas in the bill than they are to the bill when it`s described as Barack Obama`s bill.

Wilson and Bolger find it significant that in polls and focus groups Americans seem to like President Obama personally. Their superficiality is stunning, as they fail to recognize two reasons people are responding favorably to a question about Barack Obama as a person.

Barack Obama is president. The vast majority of persons not belonging to the opposing party (and perhaps a majority of those who do) want the country to succeed; their hope that circumstances improve will be reflected in any question about their opinion about the person himself. And Barack Obama is the first black president, a fact indelibly etched on the brains of black and white Americans, if not Americans of other races. Blacks, for that and other reasons, are not going to find Barack Obama personally repugnant. Meanwhile, there is slim chance that many Caucasians, concerned that they will be accused of being racist (or thinking that of themselves), will tell a live interviewer that they personally don't like the first black president of the United States. In focus groups, generally videotaped, that fear is amplified. Whites simply do not admit not liking someone who is black. It is not done.

Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are touring (mostly) minority neighborhoods, expressing discontent with Obama's policies and urging a more progressive approach. The man is running a center-right administration, one that has made nary a gesture toward the poor (of which blacks are disproportionately composed) or the black community with little regard toward the working class (of which blacks are disproportionately composed). And a recent survey of the job performance of President Obama shows approval at 33% among whites and 84% among blacks.

Barack Obama's "brand name" is unpopular. Most people are rooting for the President of the U.S.A., as they normally do. Nonetheless, Obama's personal popularity is overestimated while the popularity of his policies is underestimated, which it now has taken Howard Fineman to acknowledge.

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An Unlikely Solution

It's an example of the dangers of government subcontracting programs to the private sector. Ezra Klein reports

To pay for Hurricane Irene relief, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor wanted budget cuts. Democrats didn't. But Cantor (R-Va.) might have found a cut that could be difficult for them to say no to. The House’s stopgap bill to fund the government after Sept. 30 contains a $1.5 billion offset for disaster relief, targeting a fuel-efficiency loan program that one House Republican has compared to government’s support for the ill-fated Solyndra.

The House’s stopgap budget proposes a $1.5 billion cut to the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program to help pay for $3.5 billion in additional disaster relief funds. The ATVM program was originally created by President Bush and Congress to lend auto companies money to help improve their fuel economy, setting a target of $25 billion in loans and giving the program $7.5 billion in credit subsidies — the estimated long-term net cost to the government. So far, the program has spent a little less than half its credit subsidy fund, using $3.5 billion to guarantee loans for both auto giants and start-ups. Ford received a $5.9 billion loan to help develop a fuel-efficient, “EcoBoost” engine; Nissan got a $1.45 billion loan to develop the LEAF electric car and electric battery packs; Fisker received $529 million to develop two plug-in hybrids, and Tesla was given a $465 million loan to open up a new electric-vehicle factory.

The House GOP had developed an amendment to cut funding for the fuel-efficiency loan program in June. But the proposal has gained new force in light of the scandal surrounding Solyndra, the bankrupt solar company that received a similar federal loan guarantee through the stimulus. Florida GOP Rep. Cliff Stearns, chair of oversight for the House Energy and Commerce who held Wednesday’s hearing on Solyndra, criticized the ATVM loans for posing similar risks. “I think we have other Solyndras out there,” he told the New York Times this week. “The government should not be picking winners and losers — that’s what they’re doing with Nissan, Tesla and Fisker...They’re at risk in an global open competitive market” (except if it's the Master of Cronyism, Governor Rick Perry, at work).

David Atkins observes "evidently, big banks are allowed to implode the economy while getting free money from the government, but the government is not allowed to invest in green technology firms that might fail from time to time at a tiny fraction of the cost." Still, maybe we should take seriously the inference from Stearns and his fellow Grand Old Partiers that the federal government should not pick winners and losers. Let's eliminate to the renewable fuels industry its annual subsidy of $6 billion. Then we could eliminate the annual subsidies of $8 billion to the coal industry, $9 billion to the nuclear industry, and $41 billion to oil and gas interests. (Ethanol gets $6 billion.) Given that, we are told, the nation will collapse and the world will end if the deficit isn't reduced, the GOP certainly would applaud such a proposal.

But of course it would not because of the connections these powerful interests have made with high-ranking officials. One example is

U.S. coal companies have pumped $1.5 million into House Speaker John Boehner’s political operation this year, a sign of the industry’s beefed-up efforts to fight new and proposed regulations from the Obama administration.

The coal industry now ranks as one of the top sources of cash for the Ohio Republican, rivaling such perennial GOP donors as Wall Street and the real-estate industry. A large part of the coal industry’s donations came in a single week at the end of June.

This year's bribes donations to the Speaker include $70,00 from William Koch, who owns the coal-mining company Oxbow Corporation, and his wife. William is brother to Charles and David, the right-wing libertarian owners of the second largest private company in the United States and of the Republican Party. A spokesman for Oxbow admits "We are a big supporter of John Boehner. We think he is good for business." Yeah, no kidding.

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The Republican Media- No. 28

For George W. Bush, in a statement reportedly made to televangelist James Robison in 1999, it was "I feel like God wants me to run for President.,,, I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me."

In 2006, Michele Bachmann prayed and "God then called me to run for the United States Congress." Asked earlier this year about a run for the White House, the Minnesotan replied "yes, I've had that calling and that tugging on my heart that this is the right thing to do." A calling, she later explained to Bob Schieffer, comes about "when I pray, I pray believing that God will speak to me and give me an answer to that prayer."

And now Rick Perry. Just before he entered the presidential race everyone knew he would enter, the Texas governor proclaimed "I'm not ready to tell you that I'm ready to announce that I'm in. But I'm getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I've been called to do. This is what America needs."

He, too, has been called, a condition largely unexplored by the mainstream media, one which is in danger of becoming a trend. Governor Perry may indeed have a special calling, but only if each of the following four conditions is met:

1) God exists;

2) God is (currently) active in the world;

3) God has a keen- and particular- interest in the affairs of this nation, including its political judgement;

4) God believes that judgement should be exercised by election of Rick Perry as president

Note that this judgement need not be wisely exercised by Perry's election; only that He would prefer that the governor become #45. This could be for any one of a number of reasons because the judgement which God exercises is not always that which an individual or a nation would welcome.

Nevertheless, all four conditions need be met for Perry's claim to be accurate. Now that Perry has become the favorite (by national polls, for what little that is worth) for his party's nomination, the media ought to ask the Governor why he believes God has an interest in this nation's choice of governing officials exceeding the electorate's choice in any other nation. That in turn would beg the question of why God would prefer Mr. Perry over, say, fellow ultra- conservative and observant Christian Rick Santorum. The public then would be able to form its own opinion as to whether Perry has a unique insight into the Almighty's thinking- or is instead a raving egomaniac.

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Not Stupid, But....

Kathleen Parker is onto something. Just not as much as she thinks she is.

The veteran syndicated columnist, no longer entangled with Elliot Spitzer at CNN, recently criticized

Democrats who pride themselves these days on being members of the "smart" party. Indeed, the Ivies do seem to be mass-producing Democrats, including the last two Democratic presidents. And, alas, even the most recent Republican president, though he seems not to have taken it, or himself, quite so seriously.

She concedes

Republicans have earned some of the ridicule aimed their way. Many are willing to dumb themselves down to win the support of the party's base, preferring to make fun of evolution and global warming rather than take the harder route of explaining, for example, that a "theory" when applied to evolution has a specific scientific meaning. It isn't just some random idea cooked up in a frat house.

Parker obviously recognizes that many Democrats are convinced that many of the extreme, unsubstantiated views apparently held by many conservative Republicans emanate from stupidity- or a kind of mental illness, though she doesn't specifically address that theory. In his controversial CNN online piece urging President Obama to panic, James Carville exclaimed "As I watch the Republican debates, I realize that we are on the brink of a crazy person running our nation."

Parker realizes it's not craziness or stupidity. She notes "anyone who thinks Republicans are stupid is missing the point. What those dummies Bush and Perry have in common, other than having been Teas governors, pilots and cheerleaders (what is it with Texas?), is that they're not stupid at all." Instead, she credits them with a sort of nobless oblige charm- "smart enough to know that most people in this country didn't go to Ivy League colleges- or any college for that matter" and "haven't led privileged lives of any sort."

But Bush graduated from an Ivy League college- and Perry graduated college with a Bachelor's Degree in animal science. Sure, it wasn't climate science but presumably the Texas governor knows a little something about the physical world around us. Nonetheless, in his book, the Texas governor had labeled global warming theory "a contrived mess" with "doctored data" and claimed "we are experiencing a cooling trend." And he has told New Hampshire voters "I think we're seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists that are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man made global warming is what is causing the climate to change."

It's hard to believe that Perry is that stupid (or even ignorant)- and as Parker understands, he's not. In last month's GOP debate, Perry contended President Obama "had $800 billion worth of stimulus in the first round of stimulus. It created zero jobs."

We now have an intelligent man- Kathleen Parker believes so and she is right- telling us that the earth is cooling and $800 billion pumped into an economy created zero jobs, while every estimate has pegged that money as having produced jobs in the (low) seven-figures.

And Perry knows that intimately. The Texas Tribune reported in August "Through the second quarter of this year, Texas has used $17.4 billion in federal stimulus money- including $8 billion of the one-time dollars to fund state expenses that recur over and year. In fact, Texas used the federal stimulus to balance its last two budgets."

Texas, like 48 other states, legally must balance its operating budget annually. If it hadn't gotten that money, other spending would have had to be cut, prompting major job losses. And the state's governor says "it created zero jobs."

Rick Perry isn't alone in his tendencies; he has company in George W. Bush and some other Republicans. But Perry is reputed to be his party's leading candidate to be President of the United States. Meanwhile, he vociferously denies global warming and adamantly maintains that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which supplied him with over $17 billion dollars, nowhere created a job. No, Rick Perry isn't stupid and he doesn't believe what he has been saying. Which makes him something worse than stupid.

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Another Election Rigging Idea

Deeming it "not a Republican-Democrat issue," Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett on a local radio program threw his support behind

a bill championed by top Republican legislators to do away with the winner-take-all apportioning of the state's electoral votes Instead, most of those votes would be parceled out based on the popular vote winner in each of the state's congressional districts.

In 2008, Senator Obama carried only 9 of 19 congressional districts in Pennsylvania, though he carried the state overall by 10 percentage points, thereby gaining all 21 of its electoral votes. Pennsylvania will be losing one congressional district, paring its representation in the House of Representatives to 18 and its electors to 20. The new lines will be gerrymandered drawn by the state legislature, both of whose chambers are controlled by Republicans. Recent speculation has it that that 12 safe GOP, and 6 safe Democratic, districts will result.

If the proposed rules had been in effect in 2008, in an election carried by a wide margin by the Democrat, Barack Obama would have would have been awarded only 11 of the state's 21 electors. If the new rules go into effect, and Pennsylvanians cast their votes in precisely the same way in 2012, Obama would win only 8 or 9 of the state's 20 electors.

This effort, spearheaded by State Senate Majority Leader Dominick Pileggi, is worrying GOP members of the U.S. House. They recognize that if the proposal is implemented, Democrats might move campaign funds and other resources from safe Democratic districts to swing districts (usually suburban) represented by a Republican. It likely would reduce the impact of the state in most presidential elections, with, Nate Silver points out, "fewer favors from Washington, fewer visits from the candidates, less of a windfall for the state's economy, and less face-time for its politicians."

Nevertheless, as described by Mother Jones

If the president wins the states John Kerry won in 2004 plus Ohio—otherwise enough to give him a narrow win—changing the electoral vote rules in Pennsylvania alone would swing the election to the Republican nominee.

"This would effectively extend the effect of gerrymandering beyond Congress and to the Electoral College."

It doesn't necessarily end there. After their epic sweep of state legislative and gubernatorial races in 2010, Republicans also have total political control of Michigan, Ohio*, and Wisconsin, three other big states that traditionally go Democratic and went for Obama in 2008.* Implementing a Pennsylvania-style system in those three places—in Ohio, for example, Democrats anticipate controlling just 4 or 5 of the state's 16 congressional districts—could offset Obama wins in states where he has expanded the electoral map, like Colorado, New Mexico, North Carolina, or Virginia. "If all these Rust Belt folks get together and make this happen, that could be really dramatic," says Carolyn Fiddler, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which coordinates state political races for the Dems.

Democrats would not be able to retaliate. The only states that John McCain won where Dems control both houses of the state legislature are Arkansas and West Virginia.* West Virginia is too small for splitting the electoral votes to have much effect. That leaves Arkansas, another small state—and one where McCain won every district handily in 2008.

Nor is there anything obviously illegal or unconstitutional about the GOP plan. "The Constitution is pretty silent on how the electors are chosen in each state," says Karl Manheim, a law professor at Loyola University in Los Angeles. The GOP plan "would certainly increase the political advantage of politically gerrymandering your districts," he adds.

Obviously, the initiative is about Democratic-Repub politics- and reflects a traditional GOP value. "There are huge portions of Pennsylvania," the Governor told his talk-show host, "that voted for the other candidate in many of the elections and their vote really didn't count."

Corbett is ignoring the huge numbers of Montanans, and Arizonans, and even Texans- residents of a huge state, like Pennsylvania- who voted Democratic and their vote "really didn't count." There were, additionally, in 2000 a hugh number of Floridians- a plurality, it would appear- who voted for the Democratic candidate and their vote didn't count, swinging the election from Al Gore to "You've covered your ass," George W. Bush.

More disturbingly, however, Corbett seems to believe that the leader of the free world and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (when actually called into service) represents land. He does not lament the disenfranchisement of citizens- but of land: "There are huge portions of Pennsylvania," the Governor notes, in a nearly-perfect encapsulation of the GOP preference for property over people.

Voter I.D. laws and now this- if you can't beat 'em fairly, just beat 'em.

*By almost all accounts, Ohio is a swing state.

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