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George W. Bush's Very Bad Economic Advice |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7384"><span class="small">Paul Begala, The Daily Beast</span></a>
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Sunday, 29 July 2012 15:23 |
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Begala writes: "Dubya might be skipping the GOP convention, but he's not shy about sharing his thoughts on the economy. Too bad America would be better off without them."
George W. Bush. (photo: Getty Images)
George W. Bush's Very Bad Economic Advice
By Paul Begala, The Daily Beast
29 July 12
Dubya might be skipping the GOP convention, but he's not shy about sharing his thoughts on the economy. Too bad America would be better off without them.
 f there were a Mt. Losemore of lousy presidents, George W. Bush would be on it twice. No one in the last century even comes close.
So it was politically wise for Bush to announce he is skipping the GOP convention. Lord knows the people of Tampa have suffered enough. Bush is no genius, but he is politically astute enough to know he is still toxic. He keeps a low profile, and a grateful nation sends its thanks for that.
But wait: a sighting. And another. Perhaps to show he has a sense of humor, Bush has something called The Bush Institute. (Insert joke about Dubya needing to be institutionalized here.) The Institute has a new book out, and the former president is out promoting it.
The book is titled The Four Percent Solution: Unleashing the Economic Growth America Needs. You gotta hand it to Bush. Either he was born without the moral compass that engenders humility or he has one sick sense of humor. To start with, let the record show that George W. Bush was in fact president of the United States for eight years. And for those eight years economic growth averaged not four percent, but 2.04 percent. For Bush to attach his name to a book claiming to be a recipe for economic growth is what we Texans call chutzpah. What's next? Charlie Sheen as spokesperson for Just Say No? Chris Christie's fitness video? Kim Kardashian's tips for a long and happy marriage? The mind boggles.
Where Dubya is concerned I have tried so hard to be Elvis Costello, who famously sang, "I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused." But I just can't get past the retching revulsion I feel about what this man and his policies did to our nation and the world. We will set aside the legacy of lost blood and treasure caused by his unwarranted invasion of Iraq for another day - perhaps when His Airheadedness decides to publish a book on national security. For now let us focus on the economy and the Bush Institute's book.
The institute's executive director, James K. Glassman, who also wrote the introduction, is no stranger to failed economic prophecy. In 1999 he co-authored (with current Romney adviser Kevin Hassett) a book with the unintentionally hilarious title "Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market." They almost got it right. Instead of a rise in the stock market there was a crash. The Dow went to 6,500, and 13 years after their book was published it is around 13,000. So they were only off by 23,000 points.
In promoting the book, the former president gave an interview to the Hoover Institute - fitting, since both Presidents Hoover and Bush presided over economic policies that led to depressions. The beginning of the interview showcases Dubya at his best: he chats amiably and knowledgeably about the Texas Rangers (Lord, why didn't you make Dubya Baseball Commissioner instead of president? He would have been a great Commissioner; he believes baseball should be played on real grass, with pitchers batting, and no interleague play. He is as right about everything baseball-oriented as he is wrong about everything presidentially oriented.)
After baseball, the former president reflects on his time in the Oval Office - the most solemn, difficult job on earth - and summarizes it thus: "Eight years was awesome. And I was famous and I was powerful." Oh my God. For the better part of a decade, the greatest nation on earth was led by a four-year-old.
Although I have not yet begun to tap the depth of my disdain for Bush, intellectual honesty compels to admit that he is right to focus on growth. Too many liberals focus exclusively on fairness; as if everyone drowning in a sinking ship would be okay. And too many conservatives focus only on deficits - although their hawkishness seems to extend only to hammering the middle class and the poor, never to paying their own fair share for a debt caused in great part by tax breaks for the rich. Growth is the secret sauce.
For all their supposed hatred of Europe, it is the Republicans who are proposing the solution that has failed in Europe: austerity. If the problem is a lack of growth, the answer cannot be to reduce demand even further. If unemployment is too high, layoffs won't help.
The key to growth is the middle class. The economic elitists on the right seem to think that if we coddle a privileged class of elite investors, prosperity will, as they say, trickle down to the rest of us. If that were true, the Bush economy would have produced a boom rather than a depression. A middle-class-focused economy like, say, the one Bill Clinton gave us and Barack Obama is fighting for, would invest in people, in education, in infrastructure, in technology, in science and green jobs.
And here's the cool part: it works for everyone. President Clinton used to say he hoped his economic policies would create more millionaires and billionaires than Ronald Reagan could have dreamed of. And they did. Because it is the middle class that drives our economy. When middle class people have more money, they can buy more stuff. And when they buy more stuff the rich people who own the companies that make stuff get richer still.
The wealthiest family in America is not the Zuckerbergs or the Buffetts or even the Gateses. It is the Walton family. Sam Walton started Wal-Mart on the principle that middle class and poor people were the country's economic engine. He focused on them, and today the six people who inherited his fortune are worth an estimated $89.5 billion. That one family of six is wealthier than 48.8 million lower - and middle - income families combined.
If you want to give those 48.8 million lower-income families a shot at becoming the next Walton family, ignore Bush's book. Instead, go read It's the Middle Class, Stupid, by my old runnin' buddies James Carville and Stan Greenberg. They give voice to the folks Bill Clinton used to call "the forgotten middle class." Their book gives clear, compelling policy prescriptions to rescue the middle class, and save the American Dream.
My political advice may surprise you: as much as I enjoy bashing Bush (and will till my dying day), the Democrats' better course would be to focus, as President Obama has, on reviving the middle class. Because if we save the middle class, we will restore growth, and make the poor, beleaguered top one percent richer still.
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Where's the Outrage? |
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Saturday, 28 July 2012 16:25 |
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Blow writes: "Are too many Democratic voters sleepwalking away from our democracy this election cycle, not nearly outraged enough about Big Money's undue influence and Republican state legislatures changing the voting rules?"
Portrait, Charles M. Blow. (photo: Damon Winter/NYT)
Where's the Outrage?
By Charles M. Blow, The New York Times
28 July 12
 re too many Democratic voters sleepwalking away from our democracy this election cycle, not nearly outraged enough about Big Money's undue influence and Republican state legislatures changing the voting rules?
It seems so.
A Gallup poll released this week found that: "Democrats are significantly less likely now (39 percent) than they were in the summers of 2004 and 2008 to say they are ‘more enthusiastic about voting than usual' in the coming presidential election." Republicans are more enthusiastic than they were before the last election.
Some of that may be the effect of having a Democratic president in office; it's sometimes easier to marshal anger against an incumbent than excitement for him. Whatever the reason, this lack of enthusiasm at this critical juncture in the election is disturbing for Democrats.
First, there's the specter of the oligarchy lingering over this election, which disproportionately benefits Republicans. According to a report by Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont, "So far this year, 26 billionaires have donated more than $61 million to super PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And that's only what has been publicly disclosed." That didn't include "about $100 million that Sheldon Adelson has said that he is willing to spend to defeat President Obama; or the $400 million that the Koch brothers have pledged to spend during the 2012 election season."
During a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, Sanders put it this way: "What the Supreme Court did in Citizens United is to say to these same billionaires and the corporations they control: 'You own and control the economy; you own Wall Street; you own the coal companies; you own the oil companies. Now, for a very small percentage of your wealth, we're going to give you the opportunity to own the United States government.' "
Then, of course, there's the widespread voter suppression mostly enacted by Republican-led legislatures.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, at least 180 restrictive voting bills were introduced since the beginning of 2011 in 41 states, and "16 states have passed restrictive voting laws that have the potential to impact the 2012 election" because they "account for 214 electoral votes, or nearly 79 percent of the total needed to win the presidency."
A provision most likely to disenfranchise voters is a requirement that people show photo identification to vote. Millions of Americans don't have these forms of ID, and many can't easily obtain them, even when states say they'll offer them free, because getting the documentation to obtain the "free" ID takes time and money.
This is a solution in search of a problem. The in-person voter ID requirements only prevent someone from impersonating another voter at the polls, an occurrence that the Brennan Center points out is "more rare than being struck by lightning."
The voting rights advocates I've talked to don't resist all ID requirements (though they don't say they are all necessary, either). They simply say that multiple forms of identification like student ID and Social Security cards should also be accepted, and that alternate ways for people without IDs to vote should be included. Many of these laws don't allow for such flexibility.
Make no mistake about it, these requirements are not about the integrity of the vote but rather the disenfranchisement of voters. This is about tilting the table so that more of the marbles roll to the Republican corner.
Look at it this way: We have been moving toward wider voter participation for a century. States began to issue driver's licenses more than a century ago and began to include photos on those licenses decades ago. Yet, as the Brennan Center points out, "prior to the 2006 election, no state required its voters to show government-issued photo ID at the polls (or elsewhere) in order to vote."
Furthermore, most voter laws have emerged in the last two years. What is the difference between previous decades and today? The election of Barack Obama. It is no coincidence that some of the people least likely to have proper IDs to vote are the ones that generally vote Democratic and were strong supporters of Obama last election: young people, the poor and minorities.
Republicans are leveraging the deep pockets of anti-Obama billionaires and sinister voter suppression tactics that harken back to Jim Crow to wrest power from the hands of docile Democrats.
There is little likely to be done about the Big Money before the election, and, although some of the voter suppression laws are being challenged in court, the outcome of those cases is uncertain.
These elements are not within voters' control, but two things are: energy and alertness.
If Democrats don't wake up soon, this election might not just be won or lost, it could be bought or stolen.
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The Palin Hangover |
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Saturday, 28 July 2012 09:44 |
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Myers writes: "When Mitt Romney returns from his overseas summer vacation next week, speculation about his running mate is bound to reach a fevered pitch, one thing is clear: thanks to Sarah Palin, Romney won't choose a woman."
Sarah Palin, pictured during a book signing in Virginia, is weathering... (photo: Richards/Getty)
The Palin Hangover
By Dee Dee Myers, Vanity Fair
28 July 12
 hen Mitt Romney returns from his overseas summer vacation next week, speculation about his running mate is bound to reach a fevered pitch—and stay there until he makes an announcement. As the putative short list ebbs and flows, adding and then deleting names in flurries of anticipation, one thing is clear: thanks to Sarah Palin, Romney won’t choose a woman.
It’s been nearly four years since Palin was plucked from obscurity, with six years as a small-town mayor and two as governor of a remote and sparsely populated state as her only credentials for national office. Since then, virtually everything we’ve learned about the process that produced her—and we’ve learned a lot—has confirmed our worst suspicions: Palin was a political Hail Mary, a long bomb in the closing minutes of a game that John McCain and Co. were certain to lose. They didn’t care if she had the policy or political or emotional capacity to serve as vice president, let alone president. They were willing to drive the country off a cliff, if that’s what it took to win.
In those same four years, Palin’s performance has done nothing to reassure us that it would have been anything short of a disaster if she and McCain had managed to win. During the campaign, she often dazzled crowds on the campaign trail. But her legendary gaffes and often tentative demeanor in less scripted moments betrayed a weak grasp of issues, from U.S-Russia relations, to the economy, to basic American history.
Despite its turmoil, the campaign still created a huge opportunity for Palin to later leverage her sudden fame and undeniable charisma into a meaningful political career. She didn’t take it. Instead, she quit her job as governor, refused to buckle down and educate herself about important issues, and decided she’d rather be a gadfly than a productive part of an important national conversation.
And so it is that for a national candidate to choose a relatively unknown woman from a small state as his running mate is impossible.
Oh, sure, the names of potential female candidates have been bandied about. It’s 2012; the G.O.P. simply has to at least pretend to consider a couple of female running mates for the party’s über-white-guy nominee. And there are several who would be interesting, credible, and potentially exciting. But with the exception of former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice—who has absolutely no interest in running for elective office—they are all first-termers from small states and thus appear dangerously Palin-like. As they might say in Wasilla, ix-nay on the replay.
Last week, as Romney’s role at Bain Capital dominated the political conversation, his campaign tried to change the subject by floating New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte as a possible running mate. A cool-headed conservative, former prosecutor, and sitting member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Ayotte, 44, is a rising star in the G.O.P. firmament. But she represents a small (albeit swing) state and is only two years into her first term. But for Sarah Palin, the Romney camp might have argued that Ayotte has as much experience in the Senate as Barack Obama did when he announced that he was running for president in 2007. But Palin herself made a similar argument in 2008—and it proved specious.
Similarly, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, the nation’s first female Hispanic governor, would be an interesting candidate. A no-nonsense Republican, Martinez, 53, switched parties in the mid-1980s and spent most of her career as a prosecutor, including 14 years as a district attorney. She’s well respected in New Mexico, a state that remains a jump ball. Yet despite the fact that she could narrow Romney’s gap among women and Hispanics—and help him win a swing state—the Palin hangover ensures she won’t even be considered.
South Carolina governor Nikki Haley might also have been on the list. A successful business owner before she ran for the state legislature, Haley is the American-born daughter of Indian immigrants who embodies the American Dream. While pigs would fly before President Obama could win South Carolina in a general election, Haley would have helped paint a picture of a more modern Republican party: younger, more diverse, more open. But because of the Palin debacle, she’s nowhere in the conversation.
Palin’s politics aren’t the problem. Nor is it the fact that she and McCain lost in 2008. Palin actually showed admirable resilience during the campaign, as she was thrust onto the national stage by a campaign that failed epically to prepare or protect her. There’s no doubt that she is gifted in the art of politics, and I do mean that as a compliment. What she has can’t be taught.
The McCain campaign bears more than a little of the blame for the Palin predicament. They set her up to fail for shortsighted and cynical reasons. But the fact remains that she was spectacularly unprepared to serve as vice president, let alone president—and she didn’t do much then, and hasn’t done much since, to fill the gaps in her knowledge or experience. Had she, she could have emerged an important player on the national political stage, rather than merely a controversial and divisive one. Had she, she could have shown the world that even though her candidacy may have been born in desperation, she was up to the task. Instead, she’s become a cautionary tale—and an obstacle to other women who might have successfully followed in her footsteps.
So it isn’t fate but fecklessness that has shoved Sarah Palin to the sidelines of national politics. The real tragedy is that she’s taken a lot of other serious Republican women with her.
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Buchanan: "Decline of White Population Dooms GOP" |
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Friday, 27 July 2012 15:23 |
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Taibbi writes: "We all know Pat Buchanan is a little crazy. We also know that he has a reputation for racially explosive rhetoric. He's staked out this very territory before, in his last book, which hilariously had a chapter entitled, 'The End of White America.'"
Pat Buchanan. (photo: Fox News)
Buchanan: "Decline of White Population Dooms GOP"
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
27July 12
 o the Mad Hatter of the American conservatism, Pat Buchanan, wrote a piece today called "In the Long Run, is the GOP Dead?" It’s basically a fatalistic prediction that the GOP is doomed because it can’t promise enough free lunches for the inexorably rising percentage of nonwhite voters. And there's a line in there that I hope he clarifies, because it seemed crazy even for him.
The piece starts off by looking at California as a test case:
In the Golden Land, a state Nixon carried all five times he was on a national ticket and Reagan carried by landslides all four times he ran, the GOP does not hold a single statewide office. It gained not a single House seat in the 2010 landslide. Party registration has fallen to 30 percent of the California electorate and is steadily sinking.
Buchanan first posits that perhaps this problem is specific to California, a place where conservative positions on abortion and gay rights make statewide wins a challenge. But then he switches to demographics, quoting generally-astute Karl Rove acolyte Steve Schmidt, the hero of Game Change.
"When you look at the population growth," says GOP consultant Steve Schmidt, "the actual party is shrinking. It's becoming more white. It's becoming older."
Buchanan then goes on:
Consider ethnicity. Hispanics were 15 percent of the U.S. population in 2008 and 7.4 percent of the electorate. Both percentages will inexorably rise.
Yet in their best years, like 2004, Republicans lose the Hispanic vote 3-to-2. In bad years, like 2008, they lose it 2-to-1. Whites are already a minority in California, and Hispanics will eventually become the majority.
Say goodbye to the Golden Land.
Um … what?
We all know Pat Buchanan is a little crazy. We also know that he has a reputation for racially explosive rhetoric. He’s staked out this very territory before, in his last book, which hilariously had a chapter entitled, "The End of White America."
That amazing work contained lines like, "Whites may discover what it is like to ride in the back of the bus," and "Every New York cabby must know the odds, should he pick up a man of color at night." He even wrote wistfully of the segregation era, seeming to suggest it was a time that even nonwhite Americans should remember with fondness.
Back then, black and white lived apart, went to different schools and churches, played on different playgrounds, and went to different restaurants, bars, theaters, and soda fountains. But we shared a country and a culture. We were one nation. We were Americans.
Right, except for the fire hoses and the lynchings, there was unity then! A sense of collective purpose! Sure, we used black men as lab rats for syphilis experiments, but dammit, we were all in this thing together. As Americans!
Buchanan’s mind is clearly ripening quickly and it’s been ages since he mattered in the Republican party, but this is pretty crazy stuff, even by his standards.
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uesday, civil rights legend Congressman John Lewis faces a primary. His opponent is attacking Lewis for being too old to serve in Congress. Lewis is 72 years old.
