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FOCUS: Barack Obama and the 'Centrist' Fantasy |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=5903"><span class="small">Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast</span></a>
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Thursday, 19 April 2012 12:01 |
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Intro: "Well, lots of people spent Wednesday making fun of Tom Friedman's column pleading with Mike Bloomberg to run for president. Piling on doesn't interest me. What interests me is that Friedman and Financial Times columnist Sebastian Mallaby, whom Friedman quoted, and others in the center-left orbit they inhabit genuinely seem to believe that if Barack Obama put a bold and comprehensive tax-reform plan on the table, the Republicans would be forced to respond and negotiate in good faith. But this is pure fantasy."
Michael Tomasky says centrists are fools to think if Obama compromises with Republicans it will be 'good for the country.' (photo: Amy Sancetta/AP)
Barack Obama and the 'Centrist' Fantasy
By Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
19 April 12
 ell, lots of people spent Wednesday making fun of Tom Friedman's column pleading with Mike Bloomberg to run for president. Piling on doesn't interest me. What interests me is that Friedman and Financial Times columnist Sebastian Mallaby, whom Friedman quoted, and others in the center-left orbit they inhabit genuinely seem to believe that if Barack Obama put a bold and comprehensive tax-reform plan on the table, the Republicans would be forced to respond and negotiate in good faith. But this is pure fantasy. All that would happen would be that Obama would cost himself loads of political capital, and the center of gravity on the subject of taxation would again be pushed to the right. That isn't just bad for Obama, which is a second-order concern; it would be horrible for the country.
I'm sure that people like Friedman and Mallaby, and Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson and Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici, mean well and operate in good faith. They want to see a president issue big and courageous proposals, and they want Congress to rise above the blah-blah-blah. They want our system to vindicate itself. Well, who doesn't?
Unfortunately, it won't. Let's imagine a scenario. Obama comes forward with a tax-reform proposal along Bowles-Simpson lines, one that meets the GOP halfway. He comes up with three marginal rates for individuals, the highest one around 35, maybe 38 tops; or maybe he adds a fourth "LeBron James" rate, a higher rate on dollars earned above some fantastically high figure that applies to something like .2 percent of all tax filers; but that would probably be in there as a bargaining chip. He proposes the elimination of certain "tax expenditures," or deductions and loopholes like the home-mortgage-interest deduction and the deduction for employer-sponsored health care, which are the two big ones; or maybe he's more modest about this and places caps on those, not eliminating them entirely; or perhaps he sticks with something like getting rid of the state and local tax deduction. Finally, he lowers the corporate rate from the current 35 percent, but proposes closing several corporate loopholes, like energy-tax preferences for the oil and gas industry.
WWMD? That is, what would McConnell do—and Boehner, and Cantor, and the rest? Would they scratch their chins and say, "Gee, this is great. We're delighted that the president has put something serious on the table, and we will work hard with him to find common ground"? Actually, they might say that, at first, just to pull the wool over people's eyes. But in short order, the line from them and their confederates in positions of lighter responsibility would be: "This is a massive tax increase! Eliminating these deductions on middle-class people will raise their taxes, so he's breaking his promise, see, we told you! The LeBron tax is just more 'Democrat' class warfare, more punishing the job creators." "The corporate plan," they'll say, "sounds good on paper, but again, he's attacking the job creators by eliminating these important deductions, and many corporations, especially small businesses"—you know they'll throw that one in!—"are going to end up paying more."
If Obama meets Republicans halfway, and then they block a deal, the center will shift further to the right. Republicans know this. That's why obstructionism suits them just fine.
And that's just elected officials. At Heritage and Cato, they'll comb through the fine print and find an Achilles' heel, something that can be distorted to sound just hideous, which will of course be in there, because tax policy is unbelievably complex. And then, once Mr. Oxycontin and the Fox people start hooping and hollering about that, it won't be long before the whole thing can be dismissed as something Marx would be proud of.
No they wouldn't, you say? Why? Because their allegations wouldn't be true? Oh, yes, that has regularly stopped them in the past. Or because there would be too much pressure on them to behave responsibly this time? Pressure from whom? The New York Times and Washington Post editorial pages? Please. Direct me to one instance—and no, the Post and the Iraq War doesn't count, because that was the Post endorsing something Republicans were for anyway—when Eric Cantor has read a Times editorial and said, "Golly, these fellows make some very fair points, I must heed them." The only pressure they pay attention to is from Limbaugh, Fox, and the base. And that pressure will consist entirely of one message: resist, at all costs, or perish.
And that's what the Republicans will do. There's every reason to think it will be even worse in a second Obama term, because the base will be so enraged that the guy "stole" another election that the demand will be that the Republicans be even more obstructionist. And yes, there are a few honest Republicans. But Barney Frank summed up nicely in his interview with New York magazine why they can't be relied on for anything:
"People ask me, 'Why don't you guys get together?' And I say, 'Exactly how much would you expect me to cooperate with Michele Bachmann?' And they say, 'Are you saying they're all Michele Bachmann?' And my answer is, 'No, they're not all Michele Bachmann. Half of them are Michele Bachmann. The other half are afraid of losing a primary to Michele Bachmann.'"
That, alas, is the size of it. Columnists and wise men and women can afford the luxury of pretending or hoping that Republicans will behave as an American political party is supposed to behave. But Obama can't. All it would accomplish is to put himself in an extremely vulnerable position: He'll have expended an enormous amount of political capital in putting forward a big proposal, and he'll lose, and the Republicans will convince a significant portion of the country that it was Obama's fault for being "partisan.
But the worst outcome is this: if Obama makes a big proposal that meets the GOP halfway, and they block it, then the substantive center of gravity will shift to the right one more time. The same people who now wish that Obama would "show leadership" will make the same demand, except that next time, that demand will mean that he offer even lower rates in order to win Republican support. Guess what? The Republicans know this. Obstructionism suits them just fine.
That's the reality of today's GOP. What can change it? Not much. Losing lots of elections. If they're ever down to 38 senators and 153 House members like the good old days, they'll have to deal. Until then, Obama wouldn't be a leader if he tried to negotiate with them in good faith. He'd be a fool.
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The Citizens United Gang |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6907"><span class="small">Jim Hightower, Creators Syndicate</span></a>
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Wednesday, 18 April 2012 15:46 |
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Hightower writes: "The Lone Ranger was a masked man who was out to bring bad guys to justice. Ed Conard is a masked man who is out to bring bad guys to power."
Texas' progressive political curmudgeon, Jim Hightower. (photo: JimHightower.com)
The Citizens United Gang
By Jim Hightower, Creators Syndicate
18 April 12
 he Lone Ranger was a masked man who was out to bring bad guys to justice. Ed Conard is a masked man who is out to bring bad guys to power.
A multimillionaire financier who was a top henchman in Bain Capital, Mitt Romney's old outfit of corporate plunderers, Conard is currently riding with the small but fearsome Citizens United Gang, which has taken over presidential politics in our country.
Unlike the James Gang, the Dalton Boys and other robbers of yore who stole from banks and railroads, these thieves are bankers and high-rolling railroaders. Thanks to the Supreme Court's edict in the infamous Citizens United case, they are now able to use unlimited amounts of their corporate wealth to create Super PACs, which are proving to be devastating weapons against democracy.
Conard is one of the gang of financial elites who've put a million dollars or more into Romney's super PAC, enabling it to whack his opponents and take the GOP nomination with an unprecedented barrage of venomously negative advertising. Conard is known as a masked robber because he tried to disguise his million-dollar involvement by using the fake name of "W Spann." Incredibly, that's not illegal - but it was so glaringly odd that Romney's campaign had to compel Conard to fess up his real name.
Speaking of names, the Romney Super PAC is called "Restore Our Future." Whose future does that mean? Not yours and mine, but theirs - the mega-donors'. This was candidly confessed by another member of the Citizens United Gang, hedge fund hustler Ken Griffin. He says he's in Romney's super PAC because, "I think (the ultra-wealthy) actually have insufficient influence (in Washington). Those who have enjoyed the benefits of our system (must) protect the system."
Rarely do you see such altruism on behalf of the selfish few!
These privileged ones have wielded their enormous wealth this year as cudgels to batter the election process and take the Republican presidential nomination for one of their own.
Romney - who amassed his quarter-billion-dollar fortune by borrowing piles of cash from rich speculators to take over a host of corporations, then firing as many workers as possible and slashing the pay of those who remain, thus allowing him and his speculator partners to pocket the money that had gone to the employees - is a product of the system of financial iniquities that Griffin et al. holds so dear. No surprise then that he has taken a blood oath to preserve and extend that largely unregulated and tax-subsidized system. It's both a legalized mugging and grand larceny.
Ironically, Romney claims to be the man who can "fix" America's economy. Of course, he uses fix in the same sense that veterinarians use it. If you're unclear on the concept, ask your dog or cat for details.
Unfortunately, the mugging by the Citizens United Gang has only begun. Not only is Restore Our Future by far the biggest presidential super PAC of them all - dwarfing Barack Obama's, which is called Priorities USA Action - but its attacks will be supplemented by an even bigger super-super PAC, called American Crossroads. Created by campaign attack-meister Karl Rove and longtime Republican operative Ed Gillespie, this political battering ram intends to pound Obama (and America's TV viewers) mercilessly with a staggering $200 million in bloody-ugly negative ads from now to Election Day.
Besides sharing the same candidate, the two political funds also share a list of heavy hitters. Just three Texas billionaires, for example - Bob Perry, Harold Simmons and Robert Rowling - have already put $4,400,000 into Restore Our Future and another $16,500,000 into American Crossroads. Perry and Simmons are notorious, experienced muggers, with long histories of using campaign money to win government favors for their corporations.
To the barricades, people! The Citizens United Gang's goal is not simply to put Romney in the Oval Office, but to impose a plutocracy over our land. Here are the websites of four national groups that are organizing grass-roots people to defeat this corporate coup: freespeechforpeople.org, movetoamend.org, publiccampaign.org and democracyisforpeople.org.
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Does Anyone Realize What the GOP Just Did? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=15187"><span class="small">Steve Kornacki, Salon</span></a>
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Wednesday, 18 April 2012 09:54 |
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Intro: "Republicans save an unpopular tax loophole that favors the super-rich, and they might just get away with it."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill. (photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
Does Anyone Realize What the GOP Just Did?
By Steve Kornacki, Salon
18 April 12
 enate Republicans used a filibuster to kill the Buffett Rule last night. There was no surprise in this. Without substantial GOP defections, there was no way Democrats would have the 60 votes needed to force an up/down vote. They ended up with 51, with one Republican (Maine’s Susan Collins) crossing over to side with them, and one of their own (Arkansas’ Mark Pryor) joining the GOP blockade.
This is fine by Democrats, who have embraced legislative futility as a political strategy of last resort. The idea, which President Obama and his party’s congressional leaders came around to after last summer’s debt ceiling spectacle, is to force Senate votes that illustrate how out of the mainstream the Obama-era Republican Party has become – and how its obstinacy is preventing progress on the issues that voters most want to see addressed.
This approach has been derided as gimmickry, especially in the case of the Buffett Rule, which would guarantee that the super-affluent pay at least 30 percent in federal income taxes without making much of a dent in long-term deficits.
But the criticism misses the point: Some serious decisions about tax rates and spending levels have to be made by the end of this year, and there’s no reasonable solution to the country’s fiscal problems that doesn’t involve collecting more revenue from the wealthy. And yet, the GOP remains absolutely unwilling to even consider this. As Greg Sargent argued the other day, there’s really nothing left for Democrats to do but shine a light on the GOP’s intransigence and hope it creates enough public pressure to scare Republicans into compromise.
Which brings us to the real suspense surrounding last night’s Buffett Rule filibuster: Will anyone outside of political reporters and C-SPAN2 junkies notice what happened?
On paper, Republicans have fallen into a very dangerous trap here. A CNN poll released earlier in the day found that 72 percent of voters said they favor “a proposal to change the federal income tax rates so that people who make more than one million dollars a year will pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.” So popular is the Buffett Rule in the abstract that 53 percent of Republicans and 40 percent of Tea Party supporters say they favor it as well.
But, of course, this isn’t really how mass opinion works – which is why, for instance, the component parts of Barack Obama’s healthcare law tend to poll much better than “Obamacare.” Most voters, even registered independents, generally identify with one party and respond to partisan cues, while authentic swing voters frequently work backward to form their opinions – deciding, for instance, that they don’t like a president and think he’s pursuing bad policies when their own sense of economic anxiety is high.
There’s also the likelihood that most people who will vote in November aren’t even aware of what happened in the Senate last night. Maybe they’ll happen upon a televised debate later this year, with the Democratic Senate candidate in their state pointing out that the Republican candidate is OK with billionaires paying lower tax rates than secretaries. Then the Republican candidate will respond that the Democrat is being very misleading – that the vote in question was a political stunt that even Democrats admitted would have done little to reduce the deficit, and that the time Democrats wasted is emblematic of their refusal to grapple seriously with the country’s profound fiscal crisis. How many voters who don’t follow Washington closely will have any idea what to make of this?
This isn’t to argue that Democrats are erring by bringing up the Buffett Rule, or that they erred last fall when they forced a series of doomed votes on popular components of Obama’s jobs bill. Rather, it’s a reminder of how fixed mass opinion can be. Realistically, the best Democrats can hope for with this strategy is to swing the electorate their way by a few percentage points, if that. In a close race, this could make all the difference, but there’s also no guarantee they’ll even have that much success.
That said, there is some reason to believe that Obama’s more aggressive posture since the debt ceiling impasse last summer has helped boost his poll numbers (although there are other possible explanations for his improvement). And, as Sargent noted, it’s not like Democrats have any better options at this point. Republicans have dug in their heels on taxes and aren’t going to change their minds unless they’re forced to.
And there is one other, somewhat indirect way that the Democrats’ strategy could succeed. It has to do with how the political world would interpret an Obama victory this fall. Let’s say the economy is still in shaky condition, enough that an Obama win is no slam dunk. If Obama spends the year highlighting and railing against Republican stubbornness on taxing the rich and wins a toss-up election, his victory might then be regarded as a direct result of that message – even if some other factor or collection of factors was really behind it. This wouldn’t make Republican resistance suddenly disappear, but it might cause public fissures in the party that don’t now exist – and that might produce compromise that isn’t now imaginable.
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Corporate Donors Pulling Back From ALEC, NRA |
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Tuesday, 17 April 2012 17:23 |
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Excerpt: "In recent weeks, McDonald's, Wendy's, Intuit, Mars, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have stopped supporting ALEC, responding to pressure from activists and consumers who have formed a grass-roots counterweight to corporate treasuries."
ALEC is losing corporate donors. (image: PR Watch)
Corporate Donors Pulling Back From ALEC, NRA
By The New York Times | Editorial
17 April 12
 year ago, few people outside the world of state legislatures had heard of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a four-decade-old organization run by right-wing activists and financed by business leaders. The group writes prototypes of state laws to promote corporate and conservative interests and spreads them from one state capital to another.
The council, known as ALEC, has since become better known, with news organizations alerting the public to the damage it has caused: voter ID laws that marginalize minorities and the elderly, antiunion bills that hurt the middle class and the dismantling of protective environmental regulations.
Now it's clear that ALEC, along with the National Rifle Association, also played a big role in the passage of the "Stand Your Ground" self-defense laws around the country. The original statute, passed in Florida in 2005, was a factor in the local police's failure to arrest the shooter of a Florida teenager named Trayvon Martin immediately after his killing in February.
That was apparently the last straw for several prominent corporations that had been financial supporters of ALEC. In recent weeks, McDonald's, Wendy's, Intuit, Mars, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have stopped supporting the group, responding to pressure from activists and consumers who have formed a grass-roots counterweight to corporate treasuries. That pressure is likely to continue as long as state lawmakers are more responsive to the needs of big donors than the public interest.
The N.R.A. pushed Florida's Stand Your Ground law through the State Legislature over the objections of law enforcement groups, and it was signed by Gov. Jeb Bush. It allows people to attack a perceived assailant if they believe they are in imminent danger, without having to retreat. John Timoney, formerly the Miami police chief, recently called the law a "recipe for disaster," and he said that he and other police chiefs had correctly predicted it would lead to more violent road-rage incidents and drug killings. Indeed, "justifiable homicides" in Florida have tripled since 2005.
Nonetheless, ALEC - which counts the N.R.A. as a longtime and generous member - quickly picked up on the Florida law and made it one of its priorities, distributing it to legislators across the country. Seven years later, 24 other states now have similar laws, thanks to ALEC's reach, and similar bills have been introduced in several other states, including New York.
The corporations abandoning ALEC aren't explicitly citing the Stand Your Ground statutes as the reason for their decision. But many joined the group for narrower reasons, like fighting taxes on soda or snacks, and clearly have little interest in voter ID requirements or the N.R.A.'s vision of a society where anyone can fire a concealed weapon at the slightest hint of a threat.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, ALEC bemoaned the opposition it is facing and claimed it is only interested in job creation, government accountability and pro-business policies. It makes no mention of its role in pushing a law that police departments believe is increasing gun violence and deaths. That's probably because big business is beginning to realize the Stand Your Ground laws are indefensible.
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