Republicans have become embarrassing to watch. And it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people. Better, perhaps, to focus on the real policy debates, which are all among Democrats. But here’s the thing: the G.O.P. looked as crazy 10 or 15 years ago as it does now. That didn’t stop Republicans from taking control of both Congress and the White House. And they could return to power if the Democrats stumble. So it behooves us to look closely at the state of what is, after all, one of our nation’s two great political parties.
One way to get a good sense of the current state of the G.O.P., and also to see how little has really changed, is to look at the “tea parties”... antitaxation demonstrations that are supposed to evoke the memory of the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution — have been the subject of considerable mockery, and rightly so. But everything that critics mock about these parties has long been standard practice within the Republican Party. Thus, President Obama is being called a “socialist” who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Reagan and the tea party
Sarah Palin's looks hurt Republicans last November
So says a recent study, Sarah Palin - Objectification - Reaction - Situation
Two researchers at the University of South Florida have developed a study that suggests . . . that a random group of Republicans and independents asked to focus on Palin’s attractiveness felt less likely to vote for the GOP ticket in last November’s elections.
“The idea is that when you focus on a woman’s appearance, this objectifies her, or turns her into an object in your eyes,” said Jamie L. Goldenberg, an associate professor of psychology at USF and co-author of the study, titled “Objectifying Sarah Palin: Evidence that Objectification Causes Women to be Perceived as Less Competent and Fully Human.” “What we found is these perceptions influenced people’s likelihood of voting.”
In their experiment, Goldenberg and graduate student Nathan A. Heflick assembled a group of 133 undergraduates at the school a month before the election. After noting their characteristics — 27 percent were male, 45 percent were Democrats, 24 percent were Republicans and the rest were independents — they were randomly separated into four groups.
Two groups were asked to write about Palin and two groups were asked to write about actor Angelina Jolie. Within each pair, one group was asked to write their thoughts and feelings about the subject’s appearance, and the other was asked to write about the person. They then asked respondents how they would vote in the coming election.
Goldenberg said that, after factoring out Democratic respondents (who solidly supported Obama), the Republicans and independents asked to write about Palin’s appearance said they were less likely to vote GOP than those who simply considered Palin as a person.
“There was an overall tendency to perceive Sarah Palin as less competent than Angelina Jolie,” said Goldenberg, noting their results fell in line with previous studies indicating that, in high status and political jobs, attractive women were perceived as less competent in ways attractive men and women in other jobs were not.
. . . .Goldenberg said the study, which is to be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, may spark more questions than it answers.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Tea Parties...
So the “tea parties” are to a large extent being run by Freedom Works, which is basically Dick Armey with a lot of Koch-Scaife-Bradley-Olin support.
Tea Party... Reconstruction Party?
[Atlanta Tea Party]…scheduled for April 15th (tax day) at the Capitol building. Hannity will be doing his show live as he protests the “wasteful spending” of the Obama administration.
What if Obama supporters threw a “Reconstruction” party? A protest of a different sort, this would point out Georgia’s failing transportation system, the lack of adequate health care and poor trauma care, and the upcoming hike on property taxes through the death of the Homeowners Relief grant.
Keep it local, specific to Georgia. Make it a celebration of Obama’s adminstration, as we cherish his help in providing much needed funds to alleviate our poor state representation. Point out that Rep. Broun and Rep. Deal refuse to ask for federal funds in their district. Illustrate the bone-headed decision to provide $1 billion dollars in tax cuts to Georgia corporations while we can’t even balance our own budget without federal help.
Rarely does it benefit a Georgia Democrat to tie themselves to the national party, but in this case, it would also be an indictment of the piss-poor GOP leadership that has driven our state into the ground on just about every measurable indicator. SAT scores? Among the lowest in the nation. Life expectancy? Median income? Take your pick, Georgia is near the bottom in everything meaningful to a middle class existence.
A Reconstruction Party.
I'm still struck by the tea party meme... that was about taxation without representation. Aside from D.C. nobdy in the states can argue they have no representation. They could argue for better represenation and I'd even show up (instant run-off voting!!!). They could argue money in politics is drowning out the voice of human beings. I'd show up for that too! But tea party?
I couldn't believe I actually agreed with Ben Stein this morning:
These tea parties strike me as off-base, in some respects, though they evoke a certain principle that rings true, or at least possibly true.
First, I don’t quite get the taxation uproar. As far as I know, no new taxes of any size have been enacted. The only new tax I can spot immediately in front of us is the “cap and trade” levy on carbon emissions, which would be a tax on energy consumers. And even that, based on a questionable idea, doesn’t seem imminent.
When the recession ends, though, we will be facing very large budget deficits, even under the best projections. Unless the Federal Reserve is just going to print money — usually a dangerous road to inflation — how will we pay for government, except through taxes? And who has the money to pay, except the rich? So unless I am missing something, don’t we have to tax the rich, defined in some sensible way?
That’s just arithmetic. I wish that lowering spending were an option, but it’s not. Politicians talk about cutting spending and going through the budget, line by line, looking for waste. It never happens — except that sometimes, the military budget is cut, which is the last thing we should cut in a world as dangerous as ours. And right now, over all, the military budget isn’t being cut, although some programs are being reduced while others are expanding.
So, I don’t quite get the tea parties, although I do applaud citizen activism.
I'll be covering the Tea Party here in Henry. Hopefully get some good photos, ideas, and a better understanding of the positions being articulated. I enjoyed going with Deana and two of our friends who were Huckabee supporters down to Macon during the election, hopefullly this will be productive and useful for me as well. One thing i've learned is that actually observing and listening, helps a person better understand not just the surface issues, but what lies unobserved below the surface. We can't have productive governance without better understanding. So i'm giving them a post to make their point. I might try to snag an interview or two.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Republicans on Stimulus
If Government Never Created a Job ...
... then why are anti-stimulus Republicans suddenly clamoring about the stimulative effect of military spending?
Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins key to health care reform
If a health care bill passes this year, it will be because Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins like it a lot.
First-dollar coverage for lumberjacking industries? Super-cobra for workers laid off from their seasonal jobs tapping maple trees?
The Washington Monthly: If Democrats are going to need some Republican votes to pass a major health care reform initiative, it looks like they should start with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) of Maine. Snowe hosted a "listening session" on health care reform this week and made it clear that she wants to support significant changes to the status quo. (thanks to reader A.F. for the tip)
Speaking to the members of the group before taking their testimony, Snowe, a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, said the committee is determined to draft legislation by June and to have it ready for debate on the Senate floor by July. The last attempt to overhaul the nation's health care system was proposed in 1993 and dissolved in "polarization and partisanship," she noted. "I believe the climate in Washington is different now," Snowe said. Recognition is widespread that the nation's health care system is unsustainable, ineffective and inequitable, she said, and the current economic crisis is only making things worse. "This is precisely the right time" for national reform, Snowe said.
Snowe added that she expects to see a vote in the Senate before the end of this year.
"We have a totally dysfunctional system now," she said. While like most Republicans she would prefer to see the private sector collaborate on an effective change, a government-run health care system may be the only way to get the job done, she said. [emphasis added]
Now, that's obviously a paraphrase, not a direct quote. But if Snowe really said this -- the Bangor Daily News, which ran this report, has not run a correction -- it seems like a pretty encouraging development.
tax-cuts vs. fiscal responsibility
Lincoln’s $250 billion estate tax plan would cut taxes for only 60 ’small businesses.’
Last week, 10 Democrats in the Senate joined all 41 Republicans in voting for a $250 billion proposal to cut estate taxes, designed by Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ). More than 99 percent of this cost would go to the inheritors of estates worth over $7 million. Touting the tax cut in a press release, Lincoln claimed that it was “aimed at farms and small businesses.” However, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, Lincoln’s $250 billion proposal would save just 60 small businesses or farms from the estate tax:
An always charged issue is how the estate tax affects small farms and family-owned businesses. We estimate that under the Obama proposal, 100 family farms and businesses would owe tax…The Lincoln-Kyl proposal would cut the number to 40.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, “almost all such estates are able to pay the tax bill without having to sell business assets.”
Another example of tax-cutting to hurt our long term deficit...
For those of us concerned about the Ocean of Debt these kinds of tax-cuts are not good policy.
As CBPP noted regarding this "say one thing do another" ideological attack from some folks:
Many of the same Senators and House members who launched the sharpest verbal attacks this week on the President’s budget or the congressional budget plans — on the ground that the deficits and debt projected under those plans are much too high — then opposed a number of the tough choices the President’s budget makes to start reducing deficits. Those tough choices include allowing many of the generous tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 to expire for people at the top of the income scale, making the 2009 estates tax rules permanent rather than eliminating still more of that tax, and limiting itemized deductions for families making over $250,000 to help finance health care reform that is intended to reduce costs over the long term.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Ocean of debt
We need to worry about the deficits in 2015, 2020, 2025, and beyond--not about the deficits in 2009, 2010, and 2011...
The key to dealing with the deficits in 2015, 2020, 2025, and beyond is--you guessed it--health care. That is the entire ballgame...
[These] long-run deficits...are not much, much worse than they were in 2003--they are somewhat better. Obama has cut the long-run deficit. Bush boosted it. It remains a big problem--but it's not a problem of Clinton's or Obama's or Pelosi's or Reed's creation, it's a problem created by Bush and his cheerleaders
CEPR's done the leg work regarding this with their IOUSA Budget Deficit Calculator which:
allows you to see what the projected U.S. budget deficit would be, as a percentage of GDP, if the United States had the same per person health care costs as various other countries which enjoy longer life expectancies than the United States.
Its time we join the rest of the industrialized world and have some form of Universal Health Care reform--those who oppose competition in the marketplace, which would hurt the profits of insurance companies and help lower the costs for consumers--are the ones creating this long term crisis.
As if ranking 37th in the world for health care isn't bad enough for people... our kids are paying to subsidize private profits...
To see more on our progress in regards to the budget itself you can check out Congressional Budgets Pass Early Tests on Deficits and Economy, but Questions Remain from CBPP
On the whole, the budget plans that the House and Senate approved yesterday pass the twin tests of: (1) beginning to address long-term deficits, or at least not making these deficits worse; and (2) not undermining the fiscal stimulus Congress recently passed. [i] The Senate’s adoption, however, of amendments that are intended both to facilitate a further large tax cut for the estates of the nation’s wealthiest individuals and to make it less likely that Congress will allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for people at the top of the income scale suggests that significant dangers lie ahead. The adoption of these measures raises questions about Senators’ professed concerns about deficits and debt and about whether Congress has the fortitude to begin making hard choices.
Monday, April 6, 2009
House Republican Budget
The House Republican budget, introduced April 1 by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), calls for a massive transfer of resources from the broad majority of Americans to the nation’s wealthiest individuals and corporations.[1] It provides the richest households with a new round of very costly tax reductions by extending the Bush high-income tax cuts and adding another set of tax cuts that are particularly large at the top of the income scale (as well as a cut in corporate taxes). To help pay for these tax cuts, the proposal eliminates Medicare and Medicaid in their current forms, imposes large reductions on other domestic programs, and apparently repeals the Making Work Pay tax credit.
In addition, by cutting spending starting in the fiscal year that begins in October — when the economy almost certainly will still be weak — the House Republican budget would likely prolong and deepen the recession, already the worst since the Great Depression
Memo to GOP tax credits are spending...
Republicans are perfectly happy to propose spending increases of their own, as long as they are masked as tax cuts. The House GOP leadership is proposing a package of massive new housing subsidies, including a $5,000 credit for those who refinance their homes and a $15,000 credit for buyers. I hate to break the news, but these tax credits are spending
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Does the GOP lack economists right now?
I wonder if this country can handle the crisis we’re in. Remember, John Boehner is, in effect, the second-most influential member of the GOP (after Rush Limbaugh). And while Democrats hold a majority, it’s not enough of a majority to make the minority party irrelevant.
So the fact that Boehner’s idea of economics is completely insane matters.
What’s insane about Boehner’s remark? He’s talking about the current economic crisis as if it were a harvest failure — as if we faced a shortage of goods, so that the more you consume the less is left for me. In reality — even most conservatives understand this, when they think about it — we’re in a world desperately short of demand. If you consume more, that’s GOOD for me, because it helps create jobs and raise incomes. It’s in my personal disinterest to have you tighten your belt — and that’s just as true if you’re “the government” as if you’re my neighbor.
Plus, who is “the government”? It’s basically us, you know — the government spends money providing services to the public. Demanding that the government tighten its belt means demanding that we, the taxpayers, get less of those services. Why is this a good thing, even aside from the state of the economy?
Again, this is what the leaders of a powerful, if minority, party think. Can this country be saved?
Just as an aside... because i'm now playing so much catch up with my blog consumption I tend to go through one blogger at a time... which means my blogging goes in theme's. Its as if i'm a Krugman drone... and then i'm a Dean Baker drone... and then I'm a brad delong drone... and then and then and then...
automaton bloggers unite!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | Rush Gets Played by Rahm
I had lunch with a very conservative friend today. We haven't seem eachother since early October of last year, before the Obama victory. The lunch was very civil and we found some common ground when my friend said upfront, he was glad Obama beat McCain and Palin. And then we found some more common ground on Health and Education Reform. So the meal was a lot less tempestuous than I expected. As we were getting in our cars, I asked him "How did Rush allow himself to get played like a stradavarius by Rahm Emanuel?".I think its actually quite shocking how most conservatives I know in GA don't realize what a small group they are. I had great working relationships with Republicans in California... I have next to nothing in common with folks here. I'm not really sure why. One thing I noticed is that most "debates" on issues that I had with Republicans in Cali were productive and I learned a lot from. Most "debates" here are spent dwelling on basic facts, and acknowledgement of how government, markets, human beings exist.
It was at this point that my friend went ballistic on me and said "Obama was a chicken" not to debate Limbaugh one on one, like Rush has been asking on the air for weeks.
As I was driving away he was still ranting and I thought, only if Rush is the Republican Presidential candidate in four years, will he actually get a one on one debate with President Obama. Until then, he's just a bystander who helps the Democrats attract the 80% of the country who think El Rushbo is a drug addled loon.
Because he is becoming the Republican Brand, Limbaugh will find out just how small his "base" of white males really is. This is what I call the "Whig" strategy. Make your party's base so small that centrist's (like Abe Lincoln leaving the Whigs) break away and form a new party. Leaving you with just the dittoheads and the crackers.
Then again, notice I keep saying "Republicans in California." I guess the point is most Republicans here in GA are conservatives.
Keep on talking Rush... keep on talking. It only helps Barrack Hussein Obama, which will hopefully mean a new New Deal coalition of moderates, liberals, and the left.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Ah shucks, democracy shemockracy...
Ah yes, the citizens of D.C. want to be able to, you know, represent(yo!). And my Senators vote no.
Just a shout out to Chambliss and Isackson--I'm sure you had great reasons to vote against people having a voice in their government. Just not sure what those reasons might be.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Think Progress » Louisiana Lt. Gov. Landrieu: Jindal Wrong To Reject Recovery Funds For Unemployment Insurance
Think Progress » Louisiana Lt. Gov. Landrieu: Jindal Wrong To Reject Recovery Funds For Unemployment Insurance
I think this was a great comment from the Govenator:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) responded to new of Jindal’s decision by quipping, “You just tell them that anyone that doesn’t want to take the money: I’m ready to take their money and rebuild California.”
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Amen...
Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.
Monday, February 2, 2009
8 years of bad policy...
Yesterday Gallup released a report on its survey of political party affiliation by voters at the state level. The results, depicted in the map above, show that only five states have a statistically significant majority of voters who identify themselves as Republicans. The data come from interviews last year with “more than 350,000 U.S. adults as part of Gallup Poll Daily tracking.”
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Thomas Frank interview
In the book you talk about this cynicism as being self-fulfilling.
If you believe in bad government you will deliver bad government. If you think big government is by nature going to fail, is corrupt, is evil, that's what you'll deliver. That's the larger message of the book...
...And yet they love big government, in the sense that they've figured out a way to appropriate it.
But they have the deniability. They can always get out of it. "No, we're against Bush. He's a Big Government conservative!" And then the people that criticize Bush will get in and do the same thing. My friend calls it the "no true Scotsman fallacy." The story goes like this: a guy is Scotland says no Scotsman would put soy milk in his porridge and someone says, Oh yeah, Joe Blow puts soy milk in his porridge. "Ah," he responds, "but no true Scotsman would ever put soy milk in his porridge. You can always retreat, but you see it's a fallacy. It's time to make that retreat impossible.That's one of the projects of the book, to take that sanctuary away from the conservatives. Let's examine this beast, this movement, not by what is says but what it has done every time it takes over.