The Politics of Extreme

Posted: December 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign | 22 Comments

I pulled this graphic from its original source at Rand. It came via Wonkblog at WaPo that shows an entire set of nifty graphs chosen by economic “experts” as their favorite charts of the year 2011. This was the graphic chosen by former Obama budget guru Peter Orzag who now works for Citigroup.  Here’s his explanation.

“If you want to understand the debt limit debate this year and the ongoing gridlock we are likely to experience for years, study this graph. In the late 1960s, the most conservative Democrats in the House and the most liberal Republicans voted together frequently enough (as shown by the overlap between the two distributions) to make centrist legislating successful. By the late 1980s, that overlap was dwindling. Today, it is largely gone.”

You can actually read the Rand study that begins by discussing the first of the US polarization debates:  Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists.  If you check out the graphics on voter demographics, you’ll see there’s still a split in party identification.   However, there seems to be an increasing tilt towards identification with the Democratic Party from about 1980 onward.  Still, you wouldn’t know it by the way congress gridlocks over the most simple business of the people.

There are several news items that have me thinking today about this in some detail.  First, is the seemingly endless policy hostage-taking coming out of the House of Representatives these days. Second, is this ad made by Romney as he tries to sell out the last vestige of common sense and education he ever demonstrated in search of the credibility that no right winger will ever give him. Romney’s disingenuous spiel  about the fairness frame is beyond any explanation other than crass politics. It continues to play into the Obama is a socialist meme.  You think it would get old hack for Republicans to exclaim socialist at every human attempt to actually level the playing field and remove the gross incentives these days to maintain the wealth and incomes of the very few.

Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy of government.  But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama.  Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities.  President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing—the government.

The truth is that everyone may get the same rewards, but virtually everyone will be worse off.

This last statement is a baldface lie.  The great income inequality that exists is bad for the entire country and that includes the very rich.   However, no amount of historical analysis of economies and finance seems to ever throttle the hysteria surrounding protecting the very wealthy these days.  Romney seems hell bent on attacking Obama on his Republican perceived “otherness” rather than the actual policies.  It’s just nasty code for secret Muslim Kenyan. This is undoubtedly because Obamacare really is Romneycare is DoleCare and most other things Obama has done are seriously no different than any Republican of Romney’s type–or for that matter of the earlier Gingrich incarnations–would’ve done.  Like a magician pulling some kind of slight of hand, Romney and Gingrich both need diversions from their past.

When you look at all the Big Lies Romney has told in recent months, you’ll see a common thread running through them all. They’re all about conveying a sense that you should find Obama’s intentions towards America vaguely suspect; that Obama harbors a deep seated indifference or even hostility towards the fundamentals that make America what it is; and that Obama is in some basic way undermining the foundation of American life as we know it.

Obama has been so good at maintaining the status quo that most liberals have turned on him including Matt Damon who says Obama “rolled over” to Wall Street.

So this leads me to the third thing that has me thinking about the current plight of governance in the US.  Robert Reich has written a shrill piece on “Why the Republican Crack up is bad for America”.  I’ve frequently accused Haley Barbour, Ron Paul and Rick Perry of being neoconfederates much to the chagrin of libertarians I know.  It really confuses me that a libertarian could support incredible intrusions into personal liberties and constitutional rights under the guise of state rights.  To me, these neoconfederates use this excuse in the same way that slave owners used it to maintain the right to own black people.  They use it to control who votes, what women do with their bodies, when stores can sell alcohol, who can get married in civil ceremonies, and all kinds of things. These are the very people that Romney and Gingrich are morphing, shucking, and dancing for.

Reich’s commentary on the recent power surge of the right wing’s John Birch Society/Neoconfederate wing in the Republican party is scathing.  The only problem that I can see is that Reich believes these folks artifacts from the Southern part of the US. All you have to do is listen to some of the stuff coming out of Republicans in Iowa to know that this mentality isn’t limited to the deep South or places where confederates migrated.   These folks have been with us a long time.  The Nixonian Southern Strategy captured them from the Dixiecrats although there are still a few of them floating around both parties.

As Michael Lind has noted, today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority — predominantly Southern, and mainly rural — that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.

It’s no mere coincidence that the states responsible for putting the most Tea Party representatives in the House are all former members of the Confederacy. Of the Tea Party caucus, twelve hail from Texas, seven from Florida, five from Louisiana, and five from Georgia, and three each from South Carolina, Tennessee, and border-state Missouri.

Others are from border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties. The four Californians in the caucus are from the inland part of the state or Orange County, whose political culture has was shaped by Oklahomans and Southerners who migrated there during the Great Depression.

This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans — only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea Party Land.

And the views separating these Republicans from Republicans elsewhere mirror the split between self-described Tea Partiers and other Republicans.

In a poll of Republicans conducted for CNN last September, nearly six in ten who identified themselves with the Tea Party say global warming isn’t a proven fact; most other Republicans say it is.

Six in ten Tea Partiers say evolution is wrong; other Republicans are split on the issue. Tea Party Republicans are twice as likely as other Republicans to say abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, and half as likely to support gay marriage.

Tea Partiers are more vehement advocates of states’ rights than other Republicans. Six in ten Tea Partiers want to abolish the Department of Education; only one in five other Republicans do. And Tea Party Republicans worry more about the federal deficit than jobs, while other Republicans say reducing unemployment is more important than reducing the deficit.

In other words, the radical right wing of today’s GOP isn’t that much different from the social conservatives who began asserting themselves in the Party during the 1990s, and, before them, the “Willie Horton” conservatives of the 1980s, and, before them, Richard Nixon’s “silent majority.”

Through most of these years, though, the GOP managed to contain these white, mainly rural and mostly Southern, radicals. After all, many of them were still Democrats. The conservative mantle of the GOP remained in the West and Midwest — with the libertarian legacies of Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft and Barry Goldwater, neither of whom was a barn-burner — while the epicenter of the Party remained in New York and the East.

But after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as the South began its long shift toward the Republican Party and New York and the East became ever more solidly Democratic, it was only a matter of time. The GOP’s dominant coalition of big business, Wall Street, and Midwest and Western libertarians was losing its grip.

So, this is the group that has Romney and Gingrich forgetting their earliest roots.  It’s also why Romney is so busy playing up the Obama as “other” meme and Gingrich is shouting about arresting judges that disagree with him.  The judiciary has consistently stopped the overreach of the neoconfederates in blocking the ability to vote, restricting women’s rights, segregating schools, and forcing fundamentalist christianity into public life.   Gingrich clearly knows who and what he’s playing to.  We definitely see their dynamic in Congress where there is that incredibly shrinking ability to produce policy that represents any kind of bipartisan overlap as show in the Rand chart above.

Clearly, all recent polls show utter frustration on the part of the majority of Americans–Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike–with these games.  Those of us that live in states that are now captured by these forces–up until the Katrina disaster Louisiana was a swing state–are experiencing a backslide towards the 19th century.  The deal is that gerrymandering has made many politicians safe.  Caucuses and limited primary voting continues to reinforce the patterns of polarization.  Campaigns that rely on the funds of select few donor bases exacerbates all of the above.

I continue to wonder if some third party will develop that can manage to capture the frustrated moderate voter. Until then, we may have to watch the polarization problem play out.  Reich thinks that the main vulnerability is within the Republican party, but I’m not so sure.  I think that polls show a major amount of dissatisfaction with what’s being produced by today’s political environment. That includes both establishment parties.  It’s only a matter of finding the correct vehicles for change and reform.  My personal thoughts are that the Tea Party permanents will be hung out to dry in 2012 in many places outside of the South.  I still have no idea where the rest of voter frustration will go.  There appears to be no beneficiary at this point.  I wonder how long this can continue without some of these cracks in the system becoming unrepairable.

Tuesday Reads

Posted: December 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, morning reads, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, unemployment | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 31 Comments

Out of Town News, Harvard Square

Good Morning!!

Frankly, I’ll be very glad when this holiday season is over. It goes on way too long. This year I saw Christmas stuff at Halloween! At least I don’t get depressed at this time of year anymore, and I’m very happy for people who enjoy the celebration. I’ll probably have a nice time at Christmas dinner, but why do we need a two month build-up? Please forgive my grumbling…. I’ll get to the news, such as it is.

MSNBC’s First Read reports that Boehner and his merry men in the House “punted” on the payroll tax cut bill last night; supposedly they’ll vote on it today.

House Republican leaders emerged following a meeting with rank-and-file members to say that the House would take up their votes on Tuesday. Lawmakers had planned to vote around 6:30 p.m. ET on Monday evening, but the 6 p.m. meeting of GOP lawmakers lasted longer than expected, over two hours.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said that the House Rules Committee, which sets the parameters for votes in the House, would meet tonight to set the stage for tomorrow’s series of votes. Those Tuesday votes would include a measure to reject the Senate’s two month extension, and instead instruct lawmakers to meet in a conference — the formal process of resolving differences with legislation in the Senate.

“Our members do not want to just punt and do a two-month, short-term fix where we have to come back and do this again,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told reporters at the Capitol.

House Republicans prefer legislation to extend the expiring tax cut by a whole year, and produced legislation to that effect. But Democrats in the Senate rejected that proposal because of some of the cuts used to offset the cost of the bill, which also includes an extension of unemployment insurance.

Meanwhile, Jake Tapper is reporting that the two month extension passed by the Senate and backed by President Obama cannot be implemented in it’s current form.

Officials from the policy-neutral National Payroll Reporting Consortium, Inc. have expressed concern to members of Congress that the two-month payroll tax holiday passed by the Senate and supported by President Obama cannot be implemented properly.

Pete Isberg, president of the NPRC today wrote to the key leaders of the relevant committees of the House and Senate, telling them that “insufficient lead time” to implement the complicated change mandated by the legislation means the two-month payroll tax holiday “could create substantial problems, confusion and costs affecting a significant percentage of U.S. employers and employees.”

ABC News obtained a copy of the letter, which can be read HERE. Isberg agreed that it would be fair to characterize his letter as saying that the two-month payroll tax holiday cannot be implemented properly.

Why on earth can’t those morons on Capital Hill just extend the unemployment insurance for Pete’s sake? The Congressional Republicans make Scrooge look like a piker when it comes to mean-spiritedness. Aren’t most of them supposed to be “Christians?” Good grief!

Please, can’t someone force Boehner and Cantor to visit some homeless shelters and perhaps some parks and street corners in Washington D.C., where no doubt some of the 1.6 million homeless children in the U.S. reside? One out of every 45 kids in this country were homeless last year! And these evil bastards are trying to make this horrendous situation worse!

A huge winter storm was pounding the Southwest and the lower Great Plains States last night.

Interstates and highways were shut down Monday night as a large winter weather system brought heavy snow, fierce winds and ice to at least five states in the West and Midwest.

There were blizzard conditions in parts of western Kansas and southeast Colorado, with visibility of less than a quarter-mile, said Ariel Cohen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

A blizzard warning was in effect for those areas along with northeastern New Mexico, the northwest Texas panhandle and the Oklahoma panhandle, he said. The severe weather was starting to affect Missouri late Monday, with a winter weather advisory in effect for the northwest corner of the state.

Roads were closed in Texas and New Mexico because of blizzard conditions. Wow, some of those people rarely see snow. If you live in the storm area, please stay inside and don’t drive!

The New York Times calls handling of Kim Jong Il’s death “an extensive intelligence failure.”

Kim Jong-il, the enigmatic North Korean leader, died on a train at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in his country. Forty-eight hours later, officials in South Korea still did not know anything about it — to say nothing of Washington, where the State Department acknowledged “press reporting” of Mr. Kim’s death well after North Korean state media had already announced it.

For South Korean and American intelligence services to have failed to pick up any clues to this momentous development — panicked phone calls between government officials, say, or soldiers massing around Mr. Kim’s train — attests to the secretive nature of North Korea, a country not only at odds with most of the world but also sealed off from it in a way that defies spies or satellites.

Asian and American intelligence services have failed before to pick up significant developments in North Korea. Pyongyang built a sprawling plant to enrich uranium that went undetected for about a year and a half until North Korean officials showed it off in late 2010 to an American nuclear scientist. The North also helped build a complete nuclear reactor in Syria without tipping off Western intelligence.

As the United States and its allies confront a perilous leadership transition in North Korea — a failed state with nuclear weapons — the closed nature of the country will greatly complicate their calculations. With little information about Mr. Kim’s son and successor, Kim Jong-un, and even less insight into the palace intrigue in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, much of their response will necessarily be guesswork.

Not good. Maybe the CIA and NSA should concentrate on actual intelligence gathering rather than bugging Americans phone calls and reading their e-mails and tweets and Facebook postings.

Did you notice that Jeb Bush had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday? With Gingrich tanking and Ron Paul rising in Iowa, are the Republicans getting ready to push another Bush for president? Charlie Pierce of Esquire thinks it looks that way:

He was supposed to be the savvy one, the presidential one, not that dolt of a brother who ducked his National Guard duty, ran several businesses into the dust of west Texas, got drunk and challenged the Auld Fella to a fistfight, and kept driving his car into the bushes. But the dolt got Daddy’s money and Daddy’s lawyers behind him and got installed as president, where he did his utmost to lodge the family brand somewhere between those enjoyed by Corvair and leprosy. Meanwhile, the golden child got to be governor of Florida for a while longer.

And now, in the widening gyre, slouching toward Manchester to be born, our moment of… Jeb (!)

Make no mistake. You don’t write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal at this point in the Republican primary process unless somebody, somewhere wants to make people think you’re an legitimate option. You certainly don’t write one as stuffed full of free-market banana-oil as this one unless somebody, somewhere wants to raise enough money to make the world think you’re a legitimate option. There was enough Jeb (!) buzz over the weekend that it’s becoming plain that some very important someone’s have looked over the current Republican field and decided that, by god, it’s just bad enough that there’s room in there to bring back the most discredited surname in American politics. The slogan writes itself:

“Jeb! This time, let’s try the smart one.”

I don’t know. I don’t think any of the Bushes are all that bright. They’re way too inbred. Maybe another Bush presidency is what the Mayans predicted as the world-ending event?

I’ll end with an upbeat story. Remember Jessica Lynch? She just graduated from college.

I don’t really like to talk about what it took to get here. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, or to think I don’t know how fortunate I am. Everyone else in my vehicle in Iraq was killed. My best friend, Lori Piestewa, died as a prisoner of war. I’m still here.

I’m also incredibly proud of this moment. I always dreamed of becoming a teacher, ever since my own kindergarten teacher took me under her wing when I was frightened on the first day of school. We are still in touch today. That’s the kind of teacher I want to be.

In the eight years since my captivity, I’ve had 21 surgeries. I have metal parts in my spine, a rod in my right arm, and metal in my left femur and fibula. My right foot is held together by screws, plates, rods, and pins. I have no feeling in my left leg from the knee down, and I wear a brace every day. Sometimes I’ll get a flash of pain, or feel upset because I can’t run, and then I’ll remind myself: I’m alive. I’m here. Take some ibuprofen.

Go read the whole thing. It’s not very long, and it’s a nice, inspirational story.

Now what are you reading and blogging about today?

Live Blog: Watching the Republican Candidates Beating a Dead Horse?

Posted: December 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Republican presidential politics | Tags: , , , , , , | 55 Comments

Is this really only the 13th debate? It seems like about 30, doesn’t it? Do you have the stomach for it? I plan to listen on satellite radio for as long as I can stand. I figure there could be a few laughs to be had if Mitt and Newt go for each others’ throats. The only other candidate there tonight with a sliver a chance is {eeek!} Ron Paul.

The debate will be on Fox News at 9PM. Here’s how Fox sees it: Gingrich Faces Off Against GOP Field at Iowa Debate

Newt Gingrich enters the high-stakes debate in Iowa Thursday night with a political target on his back, as Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican presidential candidates look to challenge his front-runner status ahead of the Iowa caucuses.

Gingrich, for his part, is vowing to stay positive.

On the day of the debate, his campaign aired a new Iowa ad that claimed his candidacy embodies “bold ideas and new solutions” for the country.

“Others seem to be more focused on attacks rather than moving the country forward. That’s up to them,” Gingrich said in the ad.

We’ll see how long it takes for Mr. Nasty to lash out at someone. Any bets? You can watch the live stream of the debate at Fox.com.
 The coverage actually starts at 8:30PM.

Rasmussen Reports had a new poll out today with Romney taking the lead in Iowa, 23%, to Gingrich’s 20% and Paul’s 18%. So it appears that Romney still has a chance.

Business Insider says tonight’s debate is “HUGE.”

After a rollercoaster shadow primary, the stakes could not be higher this evening. With Newt Gingrich’s lead evaporating, the Iowa race is still anybody’s game. This debate is the candidates’ last chance to make an impression on voters before they hunker down for the holidays. A breakout performance — or major gaffe — tonight could actually make or break a campaign.

They ask: “Can Newt take the heat?” “Will the Mitt-bot self-destruct?” “Can Rick Perry hold it together?” “Will Ron Paul be a factor?” Plus they suggest that Jon Huntsman could be the next candidate to “surge.” I’ll believe that when I see it.

Chris Cillizza calls this “the kitchen sink debate,”

because you can bet any and every attack that the Republican candidates might have been keeping in their pocket will come out tonight. Why? Because it’s the last chance for Iowa voters — and voters nationally — to compare and contrast the candidates before an actual ballot is cast.

And brings up similar questions to those listed above from the Business Insider piece.

I’m ready to live blog, and home some of you will join me. I don’t know how long I’ll last, but I’ll hang in there as long as I can.

Thursday Reads: Defense Authorization Bill, Ron Wyden, the Filthy Rich, and Bird Crashes

Posted: December 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, 2012 presidential campaign, Banksters, Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, George W. Bush, income inequality, indefinite detention, Medicare, morning reads, net-neutrality, Psychopaths in charge, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd, WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 71 Comments

Good Morning!!

So far I haven’t been locked up in Guantanamo or debtors’ prison. I hope the rest of you Sky Dancers still have your freedom too, such as it is.

Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Defense Authorization bill, which includes language permitting indefinite detention by the military of “al Qaeda members” without specific charges or trials. You can read the bill here.

Our craven and cowardly President had promised to veto this bill, but today the White House reneged on that promise, and Obama is set to sign it once it passes the Senate tomorrow or Friday.

The White House backed down from its veto threat of the defense authorization bill Wednesday, saying that the bill’s updated language would not constrain the Obama administration’s counterterrorism efforts.

While the White House acknowledged it still has some concerns, press secretary Jay Carney said President Obama’s advisers wouldn’t recommend a veto, a threat that had been hanging over the Pentagon policy bill for the past month.

Obama and his crew don’t care about the fifth amendment, habeas corpus and all that jazz–just that the president is the one who decides who is an “al Qaeda member” and therefore will be whisked away to indefinite detention. Wanna bet there are suddenly going to be a lot of “al Qaeda members” in the Occupy movement? From Anti-War.com:

As revealed in the Senate deliberations last week, the Obama administration itself requested the principal authors of the provision – John McCain and Carl Levin – to include language authorizing due-process-free military custody for American citizens. The initial threat of veto was apparently nothing more than political theater on the part of the White House.

According to The Hill, the following changes satisfied the White House concerns:

The bill deleted the word “requirement” from the section on the military detention of terror suspects, which was among the most contentious parts of the bill.

The national security waiver allowing the executive branch to move terror suspects from military to civilian courts was placed in the president’s hands rather than the Defense secretary’s, a change Levin said Obama had asked for.

The conference bill was based on the Senate language, which was not as harsh as the House bill when it came to trying terror suspects in civilian courts.

The administration called the provision in the bill that establishes the authority for military detentions unnecessary because the executive branch already was given this authority following Sept. 11.

Carney’s statement said if the administration finds parts of the law “negatively impact our counterterrorism professionals and undercut our commitment to the rule of law,” it expects the bill’s authors will correct those problems.

Oh well, then no worries… Except that lots of people who care about the Constitution aren’t so happy about it. Here’s a statement from Laura Murphy of the ACLU:

“The president should more carefully consider the consequences of allowing this bill to become law,” Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law. The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill. We hope that the president will consider the long view of history before codifying indefinite detention without charge or trial.”

Unfortunately, Barack Obama is no Harry Truman.

Here’s a statement from Human Rights Watch:

“By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side.”

The far-reaching detainee provisions would codify indefinite detention without trial into US law for the first time since the McCarthy era when Congress in 1950 overrode the veto of then-President Harry Truman and passed the Internal Security Act. The bill would also bar the transfer of detainees currently held at Guantanamo into the US for any reason, including for trial. In addition, it would extend restrictions, imposed last year, on the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to home or third countries – even those cleared for release by the administration.

There are currently 171 detainees at Guantanamo, many of whom have been imprisoned for nearly 10 years. As one of his first acts in office, Obama signed an executive order for the closure of Guantanamo within one year. Instead of moving quickly to close the prison and end the use of the discredited military commissions, he supported modifications to the Military Commissions Act.

“It is a sad moment when a president who has prided himself on his knowledge of and belief in constitutional principles succumbs to the politics of the moment to sign a bill that poses so great a threat to basic constitutional rights,” Roth said.

The bill also requires the US military take custody of certain terrorism suspects even inside the United States, cases that previously have been handled by federal, state and local law enforcement authorities. During debate over the bill, several senior administration officials, including the secretary of defense, attorney general, director of national intelligence, director of the FBI, and director of the CIA, all raised objections that this provision interfered with the administration’s ability to effectively fight terrorism. In the last 10 years over 400 people have been prosecuted in US federal courts for terrorism related offenses. Meanwhile during that same period, only six cases have been prosecuted in the military commissions.

“President Obama cannot even justify this serious threat to basic rights on the basis of security,” Roth said. “The law replaces an effective system of civilian-court prosecutions with a system that has generated the kind of global outrage that would delight recruiters of terrorists.”

The bill also reauthorizes the AUMF that Bush used to get us into Iraq. Emptywheel has a lengthy post in which she wonders: Feinstein’s “Fix” on AUMF Language Actually Authorize Killing American Citizens? You probably should read the whole thing, but here’s the summation:

…by affirming all purportedly existing statutory authority, DiFi’s “fix” not only reaffirmed the AUMF covering a war Obama ended today, but also affirmed the Executive Branch’s authority to use deadly force when ostensibly trying to detain people it claimed present a “significant threat of death or serious physical injury.” It affirms language that allows “deadly force” in the name of attempted detention.

In any case, it’s one or the other (or both). Either the AUMF language became acceptable to Obama because it included American citizens in the Afghan AUMF and/or it became acceptable because it affirmed the Executive Branch’s authority to use deadly force in the guise of apprehending someone whom the Executive Branch says represents a “significant threat.”

My guess is the correct answer to this “either/or” question is “both.”

So DiFi’s fix, which had the support of many Senators trying to protect civil liberties, probably made the matter worse.

In its more general capitulation on the veto, the Administration stated that the existing bill protects the Administration’s authority to “incapacitate dangerous terrorists.” “Incapacitate dangerous terrorists,” “use of deadly force” with those who present a “significant threat of death or serious physical injury.” No matter how you describe Presidential authority to kill Americans with no due process, the status quo appears undiminished.

Finally Al Jazeera asks: Is the principle of indefinite detention without trial now an accepted and permanent part of American life? I wonder if Michelle Obama is still proud to be an American today?

There is some other news, of course. For one thing, it seems as if Rep. Ron Wyden of Oregon must have more energy I can imagine having. As of today he managed to get the decisions on rural post office closings postponed until next May; he joined with Rep. Paul Ryan (!) to propose a medicare overhaul; and he and Darrel Isa (!) have proposed an alternative to the entertainment industry bill that would effectively shut down social networking on the internet. Check out those links if you’re interested.

One of my favorite economists, Robert Reich, has an analysis of Newt’s Tax Plan, and Why His Polls Rise the More Outrageous He Becomes.

Newt’s plan increases the federal budget deficit by about $850 billion – in a single year!

….

Most of this explosion of debt in Newt’s plan occurs because he slashes taxes. But not just anyone’s taxes. The lion’s share of Newt’s tax cuts benefit the very, very rich.

That’s because he lowers their marginal income tax rate to 15 percent – down from the current 35 percent, which was Bush’s temporary tax cut; down from 39 percent under Bill Clinton; down from at least 70 percent in the first three decades after World War II. Newt also gets rid of taxes on unearned income – the kind of income that the super-rich thrive on – capital-gains, dividends, and interest.

Under Newt’s plan, each of the roughly 130,000 taxpayers in the top .1 percent – the richest one-tenth of one percent – reaps an average tax cut of $1.9 million per year. Add what they’d otherwise have to pay if the Bush tax cut expired on schedule, and each of them saves $2.3 million a year.

To put it another way, under Newt’s plan, the total tax bill of the top one-tenth of one percent drops from around 38 percent of their income to around 10 percent.

What about low-income households? They get an average tax cut of $63 per year.

Oh, I almost forgot: Newt also slashes corporate taxes.

Wow!

Dakinikat clued me in to this post at Naked Capitalism: “Let Them Eat Pink Slips” CEO Pay Shot Up in 2010, which links to this article in the Guardian.

Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America’s top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation.

America’s highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses’ profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The news comes against the backdrop of an Occupy Wall Street movement that has focused Washington’s attention on the pay packages of America’s highest paid.

The Guardian’s exclusive first look at the CEO pay survey from corporate governance group GMI Ratings will further fuel debate about America’s widening income gap. The survey, the most extensive in the US, covered 2,647 companies, and offers a comprehensive assessment of all the data now available relating to 2010 pay.

And these oligarchs couldn’t care less if we like it or not. They own the White House and the Congress and we don’t.

I’ll end with a bizarre and very sad story out of Utah:

Thousands of migratory birds were killed or injured after apparently mistaking a Wal-Mart parking lot, football fields and other snow-covered areas of southern Utah for bodies of water and plummeting to the ground in what one state wildlife expert called the worst mass bird crash she’d ever seen.

Crews went to work cleaning up the dead birds and rescuing the injured survivors after the creatures crash-landed in the St. George area Monday night.

By midday Wednesday, volunteers had helped rescue more than 3,000 birds, releasing them into a nearby pond. There’s no count on how many died, although officials estimate it’s upwards of 1,500.

“They’re just everywhere,” said Teresa Griffin, wildlife program manager for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resource’s southern region. “It’s been nonstop. All our employees are driving around picking them up, and we’ve got so many people coming to our office and dropping them off.”

Those are my recommendations for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

“Are there any adults left in the Democratic Party?”

Posted: December 14, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Democratic Politics | Tags: , | 32 Comments

So, the first thing I want to say is that I am an independent. The second thing is that the header is in quotes because it’s the punchline to a Harper’s Magazine essay written by John R. MacArthur. Harper’s Magazine is the second oldest magazine in the country. It was first published in 1850. It has a long place in US journalism history for publishing thoughtful essays and fiction of some of America’s greatest writers. John “Rick” MacArthur is its president and grandson of the founder of the magazine. You may frequently see the bug for the MacArthur foundation on all kinds of PBS programs like Frontline. The title of his essay is “President Obama Richly Deserves To Be Dumped”.

Wow.

The essay begins by quoting Bill Moyer’s recent comments about the Presidential speech in Osawatomie, Kansas. MacArthur characterized Moyer’s speech to Public Citizen as one that “puts the lie to our barely Democratic president’s populist pantomime, acted out last week in a Kansas speech decrying the plight of “innocent, hardworking Americans.” He then continues to quote Ron Suskind’s “Confidence Men” as an example of showing how Obama is basically a product of a neoliberal system who has a penchant for picking the wrong people for the most important jobs on purpose.  His argument is that picking plutocratic functionaries is actually what Obama was placed in the White House to do.  He is a tool of the plutocracy that’s residing in the Democratic Party. MacArthur is most concerned about an Obama that rails against bankers on TV and then invites them to a mega fundraiser the next night.  This is concern from a man that was born into the 1 percent.  He believes that this hypocrisy should put an end to the presidency of Obama and argues that dems of the little d should start a movement to replace him immediately.  This is the second time we’ve heard this call.

BostonBoomer offered up some similar evidence to this profile in a Politico piece that quotes Obama as saying that he had no idea about the full extent of the economic crisis. This is ridiculous on all levels. Obama had ongoing advice from Warren Buffet and Paul Volcker as well as many many insiders in Wall Street as early as 2007.  The Confidence Men narrative is full of examples of how much Obama knew and to what extent the entire thing was minimized or just whiffed because of a lack of credible leadership. The backroom wranglings of Rahm and Geithner to thwart Sheila Bair and other regulators meant to hold account Citibank in particular just completely blows this quote right out of the realm of truthfulness. Bair was prepared to bust up Citibank ala what happened to GM and–if Suskind’s account is true–Obama felt that was the correct way to go.  It is also evident from the book that Christie Romer couldn’t get Obama’s ear on her analysis of the crisis.  Obama walked out of a meeting on the economic crisis at one point and left the decision making to Geithner, Emmanuel, and Summers.  He actually told them to work it out amongst themselves and get back to him later. The book shows a President who did anything but attempt to grasp the depth of the crisis and make his staff handle Wall Street appropriately.

President Barack Obama said Tuesday he wishes he knew the full extent of the economic crisis when he took office, if only so he could have let Americans know just how tough the coming years would be.

“I think we understood that it was bad, but we didn’t know how bad it was,” Obama said in an interview with KIRO in Seattle. “I think I could have prepared the American people for how bad this was going to be, had we had a sense of that.”

MacArthur characterizes the Osawatomie speech as “a new standard in deception” and calls the President a functionary for party and party donor interests.

But Obama’s hypocrisy in Osawatomie, Kansas, set a new standard in deception. Among other things, his speech blamed “regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this [the unfettered sales of bundled mortgages], but looked the other way or didn’t have the authority to look at all. It was wrong. It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility all across the system.”

What’s truly breathtaking is the president’s gall, his stunning contempt for political history and contemporary reality. Besides neglecting to mention Democratic complicity in the debacle of 2008, he failed to point out that derivatives trading remains largely unregulated while the Securities and Exchange Commission awaits “public comment on a detailed implementation plan” for future regulation. In other words, until the banking and brokerage lobbies have had their say with John Boehner, Max Baucus, and Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner. Meanwhile, the administration steadfastly opposes a restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act, the New Deal law that reduced outlandish speculation by separating commercial and investment banks. In 1999, it was Summers and Geithner, led by Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (much admired by Obama), who persuaded Congress to repeal this crucial impediment to Wall Street recklessness.

MacArthur fails to mention that Confidence Men also details the gutting of the Volcker Rule and the Consumer Protection Act by Chris Dodd with tacit approval from the White House. I don’t buy this reviewer’s take that it was just Democratic Senators who supported this effort.

Suskind’s reporting on what happened next is stunning: While the country endured a nail-biting period of doubt and even terror over the economy’s spiral,  Democratic senators seemed not to have the best interests of the nation and their newly elected president in mind. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was denuded by Sen. Christopher Dodd, himself. Without the young and inexperienced president’s knowledge, Dodd “had discreetly gutted the Volcker Rule.

“Many were critical of the lame-duck senator (Dodd) for not being more aggressive in his reforms, alleging that his interests were inexorably linked with the lobby he so closely served. But Dodd remained steadfast, arguing that he simply wanted to produce the strongest possible bill that could feasibly withstand a vote.

“The Volcker Rule, with teeth, was dead,” Suskind writes.

Obama, already bloodied from more than a year of contentious attempts at repair and reform, and the Democrats took a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterm elections, losing the House of Representatives to the Republicans. With unemployment hovering around 10 percent, the lack of job creation hurt the president. “People liked the president, but only 32 percent felt real confidence in him as a leader,” Suskind writes.

A stream of wealthy traders and CEOs people this story of confidence run amok, including a JPMorgan investment banking head. After picking up the bill at an expensive extended family dinner, his 80-something steelworker father takes him aside: “Bill, is what you’re doing legal? I don’t see how it can be.” The banker retires and gets involved with financial reform — in London.

MacArthur continues his rant with a bit on Afghanistan which is interesting in the context of the President winding down the Iraq War on Bush’s terms and not his own.  You may recall that Bush signed the agreement to get us out of Iraq right now.  The announcement of that signing was met with two shoes from a journalist. Obama tried to negotiate further US presence.   He is undoubtedly going to take credit for this too, however, as witnessed by his “mission accomplished’ presser complete with the requisite prop soldiers today.  You can read more on that from Juan Cole at Informed Consent.

MacArthur’s essay calls for a Dump Obama movement akin to the Dump LBJ movement of 1967.  He believes that a modern day Allard Lowenstein could arise and change the current dynamics of 2012.

You may say it’s too late, that Obama is impregnable. Consider Gene McCarthy’s obscurity on November 30, 1967, when he announced his insurgent crusade. At the time, many Americans confused him with Senator Joe McCarthy (R., Wis.), the notorious communist hunter, and in January 1968 a Gallup poll showed him winning just 12 percent of the votes in a presidential election. But on March 12, McCarthy nearly beat Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. The opposition was galvanized, Robert Kennedy jumped into the race, LBJ announced he would not seek re-election, and American democracy was revived.

Granted, there are big differences between 1968 and 2012 — for one thing, there’s no military draft to frighten the young — but the great issues are the same: an immoral war and a merciless money power. Moreover, high unemployment and the dominance of Wall Street do frighten the young. They need a tribune.

I was struck by this Eugene McCarthy quote.

“Party unity is not a sufficient excuse for silence”

Of course, RFK eventually became the frontrunner in that race until his assassination. (I have to admit to being too young to really grasp all of this at the time but I know that many of our readers can give fuller accounts than me so I’ll defer to them.)  While the McCarthy run ushered in the Nixon era and is considered a huge black period in the time of the Democratic Party, the lesson here is that no one need accept an incumbent president as inevitable.  Just as Republicans struggle with their terrible, horrible, awful, very bad choices in the Republican party, the Democrats provide no choice at all but a severely weakened and demonstrably inept incumbent President.

The most irritating thing is that any independent run is likely to be a gadfly like Donald Trump or NY Mayor Donald Bloomberg.  Party entrenchment is killing the US during its most vulnerable time since the run up to World War 2.  Are these folks really the only choices a country as big, educated, and powerful as the US can come up with?  Just as the right wing media  is attack the Gingrich insurgency, is there really any way for independents and fed up partisans to create a movement to get a real choice?  I, for one, desperately would like a real choice. As far as I am concerned, the only people that are running for President right now are ones that I’d rather see completely out of public life. Is there anyway that a real leader could actually launch an authentic insurgent candidacy in this age of crony capitalists and pols?

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