At two o’clock this morning I was woken by nearly half a dozen text messages. The reason: the ‘Lion of the Senate’, Senator Edward M. Kennedy had passed away.
In his 47 years in the Senate, he never failed to defend the poor, the downtrodden, and the underrepresented. When it was asked, ‘who among the 80 will stand up for the 20?’ his answer never failed to be ‘I will’. He championed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. He delivered peace in Northern Ireland, multiple minimum wage increases, greater education funding, and healthcare for our nation’s poorest children through SCHIP.
Click ‘Read More’ to continue viewing this commentary.
Californians, facing a $21 billion budget shortfall, are now clamoring for a bailout of their own. I have very little sympathy for them. For years, with a growing economy, they irresponsibly demanded a massive expansion of government services along with a decline in the taxes that would pay for them. Citizens must, in one way or another, be brought to understand that those are competing desires. For too long, our politicians have told an all-too-ready-to-believe populace that they could have tax cuts and benefit increases. That is the conservative myth of supply-side economics. It is nothing but a license to abuse the government coffers.
In 1978, at the height of California’s conservative renaissance, the voters passed Proposition 13, an amendment to the California constitution to require any tax increases to pass with a 2/3rds vote and capped property taxes. The cap slashed property taxes by an average of over 50% according to government records. California might have been able to sustain such a blow, but the 64.8% of Californians who voted for Proposition 13 also elected a series of State Governments that cut all manner of taxes.
Creigh Deeds won the Democratic Party’s Gubernatorial Primary on Tuesday night with nearly 50% of the vote. Two weeks ago it appeared that Terry McAuliffe would win the nomination in close competition with Brian Moran. At that point, the polling looked like McAuliffe would get a huge lift from northern Virginia but relatively little support anywhere else, especially in the most rural areas. Not only that, but McAuliffe was able to raise over $7 million for his primary challenge alone.
However, that was just not how it turned out. About a week ago, McAuliffe, by some polls, fell nearly ten percent: firmly into second place. Creigh Deeds, who was a long shot behind McAuliffe and Moran just a week and a half ago, was able to make a strong showing in northern Virginia. His more moderate positions and rhetoric helped him gain way in the south and west. The result was a massive swing of undecideds to his candidacy in the final week.
Sunday, The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza joined us to preview the race. Click here to listen.
Opponents of closing Guantanamo ask questions like: where will you put them? In the United States? In American Prisons?
Yes!!! Every year we trust those maximum security prisons to keep us safe from serial killers, the plethora of murderers, and convicted rapists. We don’t worry that they might get out. Neither do the residents of Florence, Colorado which has a maximum-security facility with a capacity for 490 prisoners. Among the hardened criminals housed there are 33 terrorists. Among those is Zacarias Moussaoui, a 9/11 conspirator, Ramzi Yousef, leader of the first WTC bombing, and the shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Fox News doesn’t have a conniption fit over their threat to the United States. Hint: it’s because there isn’t one.
The 90 – 6 vote in the Senate against allocating funds to transfer prisoners is unacceptable. It represents an abdication of moral and constitutional responsibilities by the same Senate Democrats that were elected spicifically to restore the supremacy of the rule of law.
In Guantanamo Bay, the prisoners have (or had) in many cases been denied access to legal counsel, have been held for years on end without charges or evidence presented against them, and, in several situations have been abused. While the abuse has not been on the scale of Abu Ghraib, the interrogations have included the use of rabid-like dogs, waterboarding, prolonged sleep deprivation, and other ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques. Meanwhile, the cruelty of some prison guards outside of the interrogation room has led to such famous incidents as the defamation and flushing of a prisoners Koran. Read the rest of this entry »
A new Ad. from House Minority Leader John Boehner:
Public officials have a responsibility to not traffic in fear. Blind terror does not advance effective public policy or aid our political decision making. This is just another example of Republican arrogance and irresponsibility and a final indicator that they have failed to learn ANY lessons from the last 8 years.
President Obama has proposed a bold new plan for restructuring out healthcare system to make it more accountable, more efficient, and to make it cover everyone. Unfortunately, not everyone sees this as a step forward. Congressional Republicans have been on the war path since the measure was called for. Representative Zach Wamp, in an interview that went from conservative to extreme began by saying: “It’s probably the next major step towards socialism.”
Making sure that people don’t die or go bankrupt because they can’t afford treatment is the next step towards a government controlled economy where everyone makes the same wage? Forgive me if I laugh.
He said that we are moving towards a system where the “government is bigger than the private sector.” Excuse me, do you know anything about government? The Federal Government, all told, spent $2.6 trillion last fiscal year. Half a trillion of those dollars were directly spent on hiring private contractors. So, real public sector spending is $2.1 trillion. While that is certainly a lot of money, it does not even begin to approach the amount of money spent in the private sector. Thinking further, how many of the services that you receive on a daily basis are from the government? Relatively few. These are scare tactics that should ring hallow.
He said that “of the 45 million people without health insurance, about half of them choose not to have health insurance.” Not to be impolite, but no they don’t. If they don’t receive health benefits from their employers, which normally means they make below the average American income, then they are expected to pay high premiums for purchasing their own insurance. That’s not to mention that the actual number of uninsured was 47 million before the economic collapse and is probably a lot higher now.
He then explains that Americans who do have health insurance would be taxed to pay for those who don’t currently have health insurance. After accurately describing taxes (as if we needed help) he called it “class warfare”. This is another moment where I have to pause the tape. Does a sitting congressman really believe that taxes are class warfare? If you take Rep. Wamp at his word, then yes. He could have stopped there but that would have merely made him look ignorant. Instead he dug himself deeper by saying that “healthcare is a privilege”.
You know, there’s a theory in psychology that therapists should repeat insane people’s words back to them in the hope that they’ll understand just how ridiculous they sound. I don’t put too much stock in it, but at this point in the interview, that’s what Tamron Hall tried. Here is exactly what he said: “for some people it’s a right, but for everyone, frankly, it’s not necessarily a right”. You’re right, that was frank.
“The problem with the Obama approach is: healthcare for everybody.” This is a point in the interview where I feel it’s important to actually be watching him puerilely wiggle with sarcasm as if the proposition were utterly ridiculous.
He closed with the following statement: “we better stand up and defend our system or it’s going to go away.” Let me address him directly. Congressman, I don’t think you’re going to get many takers for defending the current system. That anyone would defend our healthcare system speaks ill of our values as a nation. I’m not saying that everyone has to get behind Obama’s approach, but I don’t think it’s acceptable that there are people in this country that believe that healthcare is a privilege. People that believe that your chance to survive a disease should be correlated to your personal wealth. People who believe that our society should more vigorously defend the rights and lives of the rich than those of the poor. The transition to universal healthcare is ultimately an affirmation of the American value that “all men are created equal” and to attack that value is to attack the heart of our founding ideals. Ideals which we have yet to live up to, but for which we have fought for over two centuries.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown finished his US visit with a speech before a Joint Session of Congress. In a tribute to the strength of the bond between our two nations he proclaimed that our friendship is “not an alliance of convenience” but “a partnership of purpose.” Through every trial of the last 100 years, the United States and Great Britain have stood together in forging a new way forward. And so we must do now.
Focusing on human rights, climate change, national security, and the economy, Mr. Brown laid out a framework through which the US and the UK would rally the global community to alleviate this moment of crisis. Calling trade “the engine of prosperity”, he recognized the need for all the nations of the world to pass economic stimulus bills to maximize the impact of each and rejuvenate the global economy. But recognizing that our prosperity is wounded by the absence of international law governing global finance he proposed that:
“So that the whole of our worldwide banking system serves our prosperity rather than risks it, let us agree at our G 20 summit in London in April to rules and standards for proper accountability, transparency, and reward that will mean an end to the excesses and will apply to every bank, everywhere, and all the time”
And speaking against the craven greed that led us to believe that sub-prime mortgages could back attractive securities, he recognized that “we have learned through this crisis that markets should be free. But markets should never be values-free.”
But he also reminded us of the liberal human values that unite our two nations in an understanding that we cannot forget “our duty to the least of these: the poorest of the world.”
“Let us never forget in times of turmoil, our duty to the least of these, the poorest of the world. In the Rwandan museum of Genocide there is a memorial to the countless children that were among those murdered, in the massacres in Rwanda. And there is one portrait of a child, David. The words beneath him are brief, yet they weigh on me heavily. It says, name: David, age: 10, favorite sport: football, enjoyed: making people laugh, dreamed: to become a doctor, cause of death: tortured to death, last words: the United Nations will come for us. But we never did. That child believed the best of us. That he was wrong is to our eternal discredit. We tend to think of a day of judgment as a moment to come. But, our faith tells us, as the writer says, that judgment is more than that: it’s a summary court in perpetual session.”
America’s bond with Great Britain is the indispensable alliance. In times of trial such as these, we must heed Mr. Brown’s call and renew our partnership for a new century of challenges that we must face together.
Due to a strong Alabama Democratic Party, although national Democrats are less popular, the Democrats have control of 2/3 of Alabama’s state government. In 2008, there were two extraordinarily close races in Alabama. In the 2nd District, Democrat Bobby Bright squeaked out a win with 50.2% of the vote against Republican Jay Love’s 49.6%. And in the 5th District, Democrat Parker Griffith narrowly edged out Wayne Parker with 51.5% of the vote. As first term Democrats facing re-election in conservative Alabama, they will want help from new district lines assuming they make it past the 2010 elections. The 5th district is boxed in by the 4th which, because they earned a mere 25.1% of the vote in the last election, is a lost cause for Democrats. By reshaping the district lines slightly, they could bolster Congressman Griffith’s standing enough to help him fight back when rage against Republicans wanes. As for Congressman Bright, the2nd district is bordered by the 1st, 7th, 6th, and 3rd. By shifting some population with Rep. Artur Davis’ 7th district stronghold, Bright could gain enough to hang on. Alabama is an excellent display of something that Democrats need to be thinking a lot about in redistricting: protecting vulnerable new members.
With redistricting around the corner after the 2010 elections (a year and a half away), it’s about time to begin looking at partisan control in State governments now versus during the last redistricting in 2001. Although many of the current governors and none of the current sessions of state legislatures will be in office when it comes time to redistrict, it says something about what things are likely to look like in a year and a half.
My maps combine the Gubernatorial, State Senate and State House of Representatives maps into one map by indicating either all Republican, all Democratic, or two thirds of the bodies being in either direction. Here’s 2001:
First, a couple of quick notes about the grey spots on the map. In Minnesota, Governor Ventura (yes, the wrestler) was an independent while the Senate was Democratic and the House was Republican. In Washington, the House of Representatives was tied 49-49 while the Governor’s house and the State Senate were in Democratic hands. In Nebraska the governor was a Republican however they have a unicameral non-partisan legislature (hint: they’re still republicans). Meanwhile, Maine couldn’t get their stuff together so they had an Independent Governor, a tied State Senate, and a Democratic State House.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the numbers. The Democrats dominated government (all 3 posts) in states that had a total of 103 House seats. Republicans dominated government in states with a total of 103 House seats. Although they had parity there, the Republicans had control (2/3) of governments with a total of 125 additional House seats. Democrats came up short by only adding 71 Seats to their total by that measurement. Thus, in total, the Democrats had the opportunity to re-district 174 seats while Republicans re-districted 228 Seats (33 were re-districted by neutral governments).
However, it’s never that simple. At issue is that with the exception of Arkansas, constituents in the South were not about to vote for National Democrats despite the strength of their State Democratic Parties. Those states account for an amazing 59 Seats out of their 174 Seat total. Although their redistricting power might have blunted the power of Republicans there enough to dissuade me from flowing those 59 Seats to some non-partisan column, we certainly have to note that the Democrats didn’t get much mileage out of those opportunities. The actual number of Seats that the Democrats had the power to re-district to the benefit of the National Party was something closer to 115 Seats. Not surprisingly, the Republicans kept control of the House after this redistricting.
Now, to say the least, things have changed. Here’s the 2009 map:
In this model, Democrats dominate the redistricting process in 141 Seats (+38) while Republicans dominate in only 92 Seats (-11) with a net change of 49 Seats in favor of the Democrats’ power to redistrict. Where the real difference is is in control where the Democrats grab redistricting power over an additional 162 Seats (+91) while the Republicans hold sway over a mere 28 additional seats (-97) for a net change of 189 Seats! Totals are the Democrats majority power to redistrict over 303 seats and Republicans with the same power in 120 Seats.
There are other issues which I’ll address at length in later posts. First, Republicans dominate in several states that are at-large-districts which, of course, gives them no power to redistrict. Second, redistricting holds a limited set of advantages especially in urban districts and in states where the national party and the state level party have vastly different popularity levels. Third, the power to redistrict is distinctly opportune if your state is losing or gaining a seat. Fourth, many states sit on the edge of a party switch in 2010 that would greatly influence the outcome of redistricting. I’ll get to these issues and more in the next week.
It now appears that the structural challenges facing the American financial system are more serious than we previously thought. With massive amounts of illiquid assets and no capital on the balance sheets, Bank of America and City Bank are in an untenable situation. Simultaneously, the Dow is falling below 7,000 points. It’s hard to imagine that just one year ago, when we were first declaring a recession, the Dow stood at over 13,000 points. Since then, an unimaginable amount of wealth has simply evaporated. With all of this in the past week, people have begun to ask the big question. This morning, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, a financial analyst for the New York Times was asked if this was a depression. Here was his response: “Well, I’m depressed”.
So are we. A year ago, with forclosures rising and job availability drying up, I determined that this was a recession. But, at that point, I couldn’t have believed that we would reach this point. The economic definition of a recession is economic contraction for two straight quarters. That described the slightly unsettled waters of a year ago. That is utterly undescriptive of the economic hurricane that has rocked this country. How can a country lose half of it’s wealth and not call it a depression? Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t on the scale of a great depression, there is still only one of those. However, a recession is just not descriptive of the danger that our country now faces and the scale of the disaster that this is for middle and working class Americans.
In a 134 page document released today, the Obama Administration unvailed it’s first budget proposal. Previous speculation in many circles rumored a delay in ending the Bush tax cuts and a modest move towards Universal Healthinsurance. Shattering those expectations, President Obama moved boldly to the left.
The blueprint advocates the repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% remain on schedule for cancelation in 2011. It promotes a further increase in the taxes of Americans earning more than $250,000 annually. Those new taxes would cover the costs of adopting Universal Health Insurance by 2012. President Obama heeded the environmental community with a commitment to introduce a system of cap and trade on carbon emissions. These new commitments represent a step towards fulfilling the ideals of his inspiring Presidential Campaign.
While the changes in content over previous budgets are enormously significant, the structural changes are important and should gain bipartisan applause. Over the past 8 years, we have been dealing in budgets that hid key costs. Although the Bush Administration knew that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would cost large sums of money, they would ask for emergency appropriations of dozens of billions of dollars each year. Those appropriations remained obscure to the general public who were somewhat confused about how the government could end up in such massive debt with only moderately over-budget proposals. This new honesty about budgets is an absolute prerequisite to paying down the national debt over the next decade.
David Cameron’s eldest son Ivan passed away yesterday at the age of 6. He lived all of his life with an extreme form of Cerebral palsy. We wish the Camerons all the best as they greive for their son.
“I know that, in an all-too-brief life, he brought joy to all those around him and I know also that, for all the days of his life, he was surrounded by his family’s love,”…”Every child is precious and irreplaceable and the death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should ever have to endure. Politics can sometimes divide us, but there is a common human bond that unites us in sympathy and compassion at times of trial and in support for each other at times of grief.”
Cameron starts off by promising to improve “discipline and behaviour in schools by shifting the balance of power in every classroom back in favour of the teacher”. I’m sorry, since when is that a policy? In practice, what does that mean? Since indeed, the British people would be paying David Cameron to be Prime Minister, I would expect him to take some kind of action.
He packed his green paper with other terrific proposals like a promise to deliver “more teaching by ability which streaches the strongest and nurtures the weakest.” Again, as an implemented policy, what would this look like? It would be nothing while looking like change, which actually fits Cameron’s m.o. just fine.
Finally, Cameron proposes increasing the number of private schools that are publicly funded. That, as it happens, is an actual initiative. Rather rare for him. However, current British law already allows for such schools. In 2000, the Government introduced a program by which a private individual or group (charity/corporation) could contribute up to 2 million pounds to defray the costs of the construction of a new school. The remainder of the funds, an average of 28 million pounds, is taxpayer funded. Under this law, such schools would be considered companies limited by guarantee, and granted charitable tax status.
The sponsoring group or individual would have the responsibility of most major decisions over the school. For example, they would pick the headteacher, be involved in the determination of the budget, appoint a majority of the governing board, and restrict the number of locally elected board members (the option remains for them to set the number at one). 83 such schools are in operation as of the posting of this article.
So, David Cameron’s only substantive proposal on education is to expand a program that would restrict the power of parents to influence their child’s education and transfer responsibility for the school from locally elected officials to unaccountable private entities able to shell out 2 million pounds. Does that sound like a good idea?
There would be another effect. Because he also proposes cutting taxes for the wealthy and paying down the British debt, new funding for private schools would almost certainly come at the expense of current public schools. Depriving public schools of funding isn’t going to help struggling families, and it isn’t going to increase opportunities for working-class citizens.
That’s all. David Cameron, the man who thinks he’s ready to be Prime Minister, has exactly 3 ideas on how to improve the UK’s education system. That’s it. You can’t make this stuff up. Never mind that two of the ideas wouldn’t actually translate into any government action. Never mind that the third idea doesn’t actually do anything that isn’t already being done.
However, his lack of actual ideas didn’t stop him from bloviating for the better part of a page. Here’s an excerpt:
In our open and dynamic world, people’s horizons are broader, their ambitions are greater, and they expect to be able to make more and more decisions for themselves. Advancing opportunity means shifting power from the state to individuals and civic institutions, in order to open up this new world of freedom to everyone.
What? His platitudes don’t convince you? This guy’s a snake oil salesman if I’ve ever seen one.
So, if you want someone to get up on TV and talk for half an hour about how kids should be more respectful (see proposal 1 of 3) then pick David Cameron. But, if you want to hire someone who will actually do something, pick someone else. Anyone else.
In the United Kingdom, David Cameron has turned the Conservative Party around to a 20 point (48-28) poll lead over Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour party. This is a serious threat to Labour’s 11 year administration because Gordon Brown will have to call elections by the summer of 2010. Despite his lead in the polls, Cameron is a dangerously unprepared flip-flopper.
He opposed the National Minimum wage in 1998 (there was no British minimum wage prior to that). Even as his fellow Tory MP Peter Bone bragged that he was paying an employee 88 pence an hour. For those unfamiliar, that’s significantly less than $2 an hour. He opposed targeted tax cuts for the bottom brackets in the current recession. He’s proposed less financial regulation as a preventative measure for further recessions. He wants to slash maternity leave and eliminate paternity leave entirely. I suppose he believes that raising a child is only the mother’s job.
He first claimed that raising taxes after the recession was “inevitable” but after he was criticized, he entirely reversed his position, saying that the government would be able to afford tax cuts after the recession. Similarly, he supported the government’s move to shore up the British banking system until he dipped in the polls at which point he reversed his position and began criticizing Brown on the issue.
As for the lack of experience, he had never held a shadow cabinet post (much less an actual cabinet post) until taking over as Conservative leader a few years back. In fact, most of his political experience comes from being a media executive.
The Conservative Party has released Green Sheets on 7 topic areas:
1) Primary and Secondary Education
2) Alternative Energy
3) Poverty
4) Crime
5) Responsibility
6) Healthcare
7) Apprenticeships
Each of these policy’s consists mainly of fluff and Cameron’s chief goal in releasing them is to appear ready to take charge and full of ideas because he’s betting that no one will actually read and criticize his plans. That’s why, for the next 7 days, I will address each of his major proposed reforms.
Our healthcare system is in crisis. We annually spend $2.4 trillion dollars, a stunning 17% of GDP, on healthcare. For the extra 6.5% of GDP (compared to Switzerland who is the 2nd largest spender) we receive the 37th best healthcare system in the world according to the World Health Organization’s rankings. 47 million Americans have no health insurance at all, and millions more are underinsured. Our international corporations are suffering from competition with Japanese and European companies that do not bear the cost of healthcare for their employees. Our employer-based health insurance system is being torn apart.
In a fundamental misallocation of resources, private insurers spend anywhere from 14% to 18% of their income in administrative costs (it varies based upon provider). That money is used to hire employees that actively work to deny coverage. Just as unethically, health insurance companies spend much of your money ‘underwriting’. The word itself sounds mundane which is exactly what it’s supposed to sound like. What they really mean is if you have a family history of an expensive disease or you have a dangerous job (also likely to be a low paying job) you will either be denied coverage or have it offered at prohibitively high rates. The concept is fundamentally this: health insurance companies make money by charging you higher premiums while denying you coverage for expensive and necessary procedures.
The best solution would be universal, single-payer health insurance. To clear up a few things, this is not socialized medicine. In a socialized system, such as the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, the doctors are employees of the state. My proposal is a system in which the federal government pays for health insurance for all Americans. Let me reiterate: the single-payer system would only be a financing mechanism. You still have complete control over which doctor you receive care from and what kind of care you receive. All medically necessary services would be covered including primary care, prescription drugs, emergency care, long term care, dental, and vision.
Many would argue that a government program could not be more efficient than private insurance. In most cases this is probably true. However, the Healthcare system the exception in this regard because of an incentive to deny coverage that is unique to private insurers. Medicare administrative costs are projected at 2% by the Department of Health and Human Services. The net gain of 16% would go a long way to covering the costs of those newly insured. In addition, the government would be able to negotiate bulk-orders of drugs as Canada does. A study commissioned by the US House of Representatives found that the cost of drugs from US manufacturers were 98% higher in the US than they were in Canada.
The opposition will attempt to scare you away from change by telling stories about long waiting periods. To this, I simply say: the plural of anecdote is not data. The statistics tell a different story about single-payer health insurance. In Canada, people undergoing voluntary treatments (plastic surgery) face long waiting times. However, people who need heart transplants aren’t forced to wait. It is time for us to put a system in place that recognizes that healthcare is a right, not a privilege.
Shocking news out of Harvard University today: Matt Cavedon is an investment banker. Just as true as his previous allegation, he took a large part in driving our economy into the ground and then taking million dollar tax-payer-funded bonuses.
The Monday night special edition of the Weekly Filibuster has been canceled. If you haven’t already, please check the archives for last night’s Republican round-table on the Bush Presidency.
Four decades have passed since Martin Luther King fought overt discrimination in our legal system. Now, especially with the election of Senator Obama to the Presidency, we tend to view his dream as largely accomplished. However, it would be a mistake to view his work as merely a historical remnant to remind us of a time when there was racism. It exists today, and we need to acknowledge and fight it like we once did.
Four decades after the civil rights movement, African-Americans have an infant mortality rate twice that of white Americans while 20% of African Americans still lack basic health insurance. In a country with a corroding public school system and violent inner cities where homicide is the leading cause of death amongst people under 50 we have not yet achieved the dream. Racial profiling and police brutality are still far too common in our legal system. Look at our board rooms and our nation’s top colleges which remain difficult for African Americans to enter. African American unemployment is twice that of white unemployment.
But this stain on American society runs far deeper than the mechanics of our businesses, schools, and government. It is a part of who many Americans are. When Obama began his candidacy for President, there was an assumption that as a black American he could not be a ‘one of us’, a patriotic American, or as the McCain campaign termed most of the country, not “real Americans”. There were the rumors that he would not say the pledge of the allegiance. Far worse were the rumors that he was a Muslim. To this I must ask: so what if he was? He isn’t, but why would it matter. Dr. King’s most valuable ideal was the hope that we would one day judge each other by the content of our character. In a world in which the average American can not look beyond an individual’s religion, we have a long way to go.
In fact, one of the largest problems has become that we no longer recognize racism as a disease that ails our national system. We must recognize that that awful history is still a part of our society and we must do everything we can to combat it. I believe, that one day, if we do as Dr. King asked, we will be able to truly judge people by the content of their character.
Please take time today to think about Dr. King’s legacy, what he has sacrificed for our nation, and what we must do to rededicate ourselves to his memory and dream.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, which is required to recommend Eric Holder for AG before the vote passes on to the full Senate, has 19 members. There are 9 members from each side of the isle and one chairman, who, because it is a Democratic Senate, is a Democrat. However, Joe Biden is the 3rd ranking Democrat on the committee and will have to resign the Senate before the Holder nomination comes up for a vote. That will leave the committee at a 9-9 partisan tie and a tie vote is a failed motion. This is critical. Although it would take a lot of guts for Senate Republicans to take on a President this popular at the inception of his Administration, they have the option to attempt to cripple the Obama Administration with an embarrassing episode of weakness right out of the gate. What’s the downside for Senate Republicans? They’d look bad for a week and people would forget within a month. However, I don’t think that this scenario is likely, for that we have to look at the list of members of the Judiciary committee.
For starters, I don’t think there are any Democrats on the committee that there would be a remote chance of turning (Sen. Blanche Lincoln isn’t on Judiciary). Secondly, I think that while most Republicans would be hard to convince, there are several I don’t think would ever go for this play. Among them Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), and Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania). Take note, the Democrats would only need one Republican vote so even if Hatch (R-Utah), Kyl (R-Arizona), Sessions (R-Alabama), and Coburn (R-Oklahoma) decided to try to burn an incoming President, they’d probably be standing alone.
Whether the purpose is postconflict stabilization and reconstruction, promoting the rule of law, encouraging democracy, aiding economic development, combating disease, or preventing the proliferation of nuclear arms, the State Department and USAID need a significant increase in their manpower and funding. To give an idea of how small the departments have become, there are more members of the military bands then there are diplomats and while DOD’s annual budget now stands at $750 billion the combined budgets of USAID and DOS barely reach $31 billion. In fact, when you take into account spending through DOE on nuclear technology and through NASA on iintelligence technology, hard-power accounts for 99% of spending on National Security and Foreign Relations.
This constitutes a major threat to our diplomatic efforts abroad because our diplomatic efforts need a transition from a focus on Europe to a global focus with particular attention to previously ignored developing nations. To meet these emerging US interests will require a significant increase in both personnel and funding. Secretary of Defense Gates agrees saying “Congress has not been willing, decade in and decade out, to provide the kind of resources, people and authority that it needs to play its proper role in American foreign policy.” One of Secretary Gate’s major concerns when making that statement was the level to which DOS responsibilities could not be met because of funding and personnel shortages were transferred to a military that is not adequately trained for those responsibilities.
One of the major problems with cutting Foreign Service Officers is that it has a negative result on FSO training. For training and other purposes the DOD, even under its current strain, only keeps 21% of its personnel forward deployed. However, 68% of the Foreign Service is forward deployed leaving no back bench. If DOS want to give FSOs additional training for new operational responsibilities then they do so at the cost of leaving their job vacant for the remainder of the training. The result is that DOS is reluctant to give FSOs even necessary training. The crisis is even more critical at USAID which has seen a 75% decline in employees since the 1970s. That decline has reduced USAID to a shell of its former-self and transitioned much of their operational (but not planning) responsibility to the military. The negative effects of this decline are clearly seen in the US’s failure to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq because USAID is the department that hires the government’s experts in postconflict reconstruction, a much needed and lacked capability.
Unlike the US military, diplomacy is not capital intensive. Although long term spending will have to be multiplied by 2 to 3 times the current $31 billion budget, experts such as Ambassador Holmes believe that the DOS can make monumental strides forward with $2.5 billion annually for diplomatic operations (a 33% increase) as well as doubling the number of FSO, increasing USAIDS’s staff by 150%, and increasing the number of experts at State by 50%. All of this would come at an annual cost of $6 billion. While this seems like a hefty price to pay, it is currently 2 weeks worth of Iraq War spending and in return the government builds the necessary capabilities to engage in postconflict stabilization and reconstruction.
With only 9 days left until Bush leaves office, I will shamelessly post a hillarious video each day, if for no other reason than that the joke won’t be relevant in a week and a half.
Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com wrote an excellent piece that challenges a Wall Street Journal Editorial on the legitimacy of Franken’s win that was certified by the Minnesota Canvasing Board last Monday.
The original Wall Street Journal article is here - for the other side.
The incoming Obama Administration has begun circulating a $800 billion stimulus package and have told legislatures that the acceptable range of spending is capped at $1.2 trillion. Noticeably absent from the $800 billion plan is any funding for Public Transportation. A re-investment in Public transportation has enormous potential to stimulate the economy with good construction and engineering jobs, while enabling working-class Americans to cheaply arrive at their places of work, and helping the environment by reducing pollutants. Federal spending on Public Transportation is key because un-subsidised, Public Transport is simply too expensive to be commercially viable to its target audience. That can be undone with Federal funding just as it is in a majority of the World’s developed nations.
Critics of spending on Transportation note that it would take years to plan and implement any new transportation projects and therefore would be a poor form of stimulus. However, the Department of Transportation estimates that there are nearly $25.2 billion in transportation projects that could begin construction within a year.
The U.S. Labor Department released Employments statistics that show worse than expected job losses this year. The United States lost some half a million jobs in December alone bringing the total for 2008 to 2.6 million. This brings the unemployment rate to 7.2% up from 6.7% just two months ago. 2008 was the single worst year for job losses since World War II ended in 1945.
As disturbing as those statistics are, the worst news is in under-employment statistics. Under-employment is the phenomenon where Americans seek-out full-time jobs but can only find a part-time job. Under-employment has risen to a record 13.5% out of 14 years of tracking. The Department of Labor Statistics projects that the average weekly paycheck fell anywhere from $200 to $611. This is obviously an imperfect statistic. It counts all people including those who have maintained their jobs throughout this economic crisis when the vast majority of lost income comes from the 20.7% of the population that is either un-employed or under-employed. There is no statistic that accounds for just how much income each of those households would have lost however, the point is that it is a very large sum of money.
Actually, even the Cato Institute unconventional calculations show disproportionate growth in the bottom 40% and the top 20% while relatively modest growth in the middle-class. This growth is accompanied by a higher relative cost of living than existed in 1987.
What this data really shows is that the majority of Americans (around 70%) are coalescing while the top 20% have 1.25% of the expansion of middle-class income.
Cato Institute’s calculations are a disguise. While the bottom 40% and the top 20% have seen relatively similar (more or less 20% pre-tax increase) since 1987 this disguises three things. First, no one has access to pre-tax income. It’s just stupid to calculate on pre-tax. The real calculation of where people are is the post-tax calculations: what people get to keep. Those would show that with a dramatic drop in taxes for the upper-income brackets, the top 20% is doing better than advertised post-tax. Second, they do not stratify far enough. If the Cato Institute broke off a category for the top 1% then even Cato’s figures would see dramatic top 1% increases over the last decade. Third, 120% of $20,000 and 120% of $2,000,000 aren’t even close to being the same! A 20% increase in the income of the top 20% is a huge increase in their standard of living while a 20% increase in a working-class family’s salary is fine, but it might not even be enough to keep up with expanding costs. Certainly any real definition of equality has to account for those three factors!
Senator Feinstein has made significant news in the past three days for her opposition to Leon Panetta, President-elect Obama’s choice to head-up the Central Intelligence Agency. She says that her real issue is experience, however Panetta is well experienced for this new leadership position.
He has experience working with political leaders from his time as a Representative starting in 1976 and served for 17 years. In his period in the House of Representatives he served as the Chairman of the US House Committee on the Budget where he became well versed in the full range of US interests and resource allocation. He was then Picked to be Clinton’s Director of Office of Management and Budget after a year of his 9th term as a Congressman. From there he was selected as White-House Chief of Staff where he served for three years. In those three years, he sat in on every intelligence briefing, had close contact with the National Security Council, was included in every meeting at the Presidential level or slightly below in the Situation Room, and advised President Clinton on those matters. If that isn’t National Security experience, then I don’t know what is.
To start with, Panetta is firmly against warrentless wiretapping, torture, and extrajudicial renditions. These stances are solidly against Senator Feinstein’s. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she has supported reductions in limits on the Executive Branch’s power to tap the phone calls and e-mail of American citizens through FISA. She voted for ex-post immunity for Telecom corporations that enabled the government to illegally wiretap American citizens. She was the original Democratic co-sponsor of the USA PATRIOT Act. Finally, she was one of only six Democrats to vote to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General, a supporter of waterboarding and certain ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ which continue in use today. Her real opposition appears to be more ideological: she supports a much slimmer definition of civil-rights than Leon Panetta does.
Second, as ‘The New Republic’ has pointed out, they have had an antagonistic political relationship for several decades. As Chief-of-Staff to President Clinton, Panetta was responsible for opposing several of Senator Feinstein’s most important priorities. Notably, the Base Closing Commission considered in 1995, closing several military bases in California including Long Beach Naval Shipyard. The Senator lobbied Panetta to scrap the report and force the Commission to start over. Panetta refused and then traveled to California, where he was once a Congressman, and explained the President’s decision to community leaders. In addition to this and other clashes over policy, they were both candidates in the 1998 race for the Democratic Nomination for Governor of California. Although it is far from definitive, there is certainly a significant possibility that part of her opposition has its roots in personal disagreements between the two northern-California politicians.
Just a few rebuttals to Matt’s response that go point by point:
1)The overwhelming majority of tax-relief was for the top 1% of Americans. There was a lowering of taxes for the middle-class as political cover.
2) Your $1 trillion figure for the national debt is over a single year. The total end of fiscal year calculation is over $11 trillion with various exact calculations: http://www.marktaw.com/culture_and_media/TheNationalDebt.html
3) Do we really think that Africans with AIDS never considered abstinence? If they aren’t going to abstain then we should try to help rather than making moralizing statements from Washington DC
4) Drug companies make more money from curing Erectile Dysfunction and Restless Leg Syndrome than they would from curing diseases prevalent among poorer populations. Public funding is necessary to save lives because there will never be a profit motive to cure certain diseases.
5) I understand your position on stem-cells. But they will be destroyed either way. Health clinics won’t keep them frozen indefinitely, only until relatives no longer need them. If they’re going to be destroyed anyway, I can’t see why we shouldn’t attempt to improve people’s lives.
6) I don’t think that Matt hates poor kids. I also don’t think that Bush does. However, SCHIP is a wildly sucessful program. If any government health insurance merits continued funding then certainly it is a state program for poor children’s insurance.
7) Alito is terrible on civil rights and if any group should be charged with standing up for the rights of Americans then it should be the courts. Banks have money, you’re right. But they aren’t loaning it. They can’t pull out of loans they’ve already guaranteed but they’re being very selective about new investments.
9) Many families lost as much as 1/4 of their net worth over the last year. It obviously depends on diversification and which sectors individuals were more heavily invested in. However, many senior citizens would have found themselves in a precarious financial situation.
NOTE: Matt’s list seemed a little like an explaination of how there were a few things Bush didn’t completely screw up. I still haven’t heard what he did right.
Loyalists to the Administration and President Bush himself believe that history will vindicate his Presidency. He has gone as far as to compare his unpopularity with that of Harry Truman and Abe Lincoln. I think that it’s a little presumptuous for a man who can’t string a complete sentence together to compare himself to the deliverer of the Gettysburg address, but let’s look back at Bush’s Presidency and see if it’s something we’ll reconsider.
Like any great presidency, Bush’s started with a loss in the popular vote and a victory in the Electoral College. To achieve that victory, the US Supreme Court stepped in to prevent the counting of ballots in Florida because they would cause “irreparable harm” to Governor Bush. “Irreparable Harm” is the standard set out for the granting of a stay as was done in his case. In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court handed Bush the Presidency in process that was blatantly partisan. With a start like that, I don’t see how it could have gone wrong.
President Bush began with a massive tax-cut for the top 1% of Americans rather than for the middle-class who really needed it. By cutting taxes while conducting an unnecessary war, President Bush expanded the Federal Deficit from $5.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion in the space of just 7 years. Those figures do not account for the loss due to the financial crisis.
Abroad, the President alienated us from traditional allies with his with-us-or-against-us foreign policy. He pushed hard for an invasion of Iraq in 2002 without allowing for weapons inspections to be completed. In this unnecessary war, 4,000 US Soldiers have lost their lives and between 400,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians have died. The Iraqi government has still not arrived at necessary political compromises and the US has no credibility to act as a broker.
Under the Administration’s watch, North Korea gained Nuclear Weapons Capabilities. The A.Q. Khan Network has remained largely operational. Despite 7 years of ’searching’, Bush has not managed to capture Osama bin Laden. In one of his more charming foreign policy decisions, Bush politicized the prevention of AIDS in Africa by insisting that organizations receiving US funding from USAID counsel abstinence until marriage and not hand out condoms except to prostitutes. Some do not even distribute condoms to prostitutes for fear of losing funding. The US is allowing AIDS to spread because evangelical Christians don’t appreciate their values systems: great.
President Bush signed an Executive Order granting the NSA the unconstitutional power to wiretap American citizens without a court warrant. Five years later, he passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which circumvents the independent judicial process mandated by our constitution for ‘unlawful enemy combatants’. The bill further strips those ‘combatants’ of the constitutional right of Habeus Corpus. The Bush Administration vetoed HR 2082 which would have banned the use of waterboarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’. Finally, his administration remained oblivious for months to the atrocities being carried out at Abu Ghraib that shocked the world. Even worse, they condone the outright torture carried out on ‘unlawful enemy combatants’ in other countries from Extrajudicial Renditions and the harsh conditions met by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In 2001, the Administration backed out of the Kyoto Protocols and rolled-over a group of Interior Department scientists in order to divert more water in the Western United States to ranchers, decimating local fish populations. They continue to question whether Global Warming is caused by humans or natural factors despite a scientific consensus on the issue. He argued for the Clear Skies Act of 2003 which would reduce environmental regulations for corporations. Recently, he lifted a long-standing presidential ban on Offshore drilling.
George Bush cut funding for the National Institutes of Health for the first time in 36 years. In 2006, Bush vetoed a bill to allow HHS and NIH to conduct life-saving stem-cell research, preferring that the frozen embryos from in-vitro fertilization simply be destroyed. He then vetoed the States Children’s Health-Insurance Program, a wildly successful federally funded program to provide health-insurance to poor children. He justified this because the bill would have expanded funding to allow 10 million poor children to receive coverage rather than just 6 million. Denying poor children access to health coverage? Who does that?
His administration de-funded under-performing inner-city schools with No Child Left Behind. He denied civil rights for gay Americans by saying that Gay Marriage would be granting ’special rights’ to gay couples. And who can forget Bush’s nomination of the singularly unqualified Harriet Miers to become a Justice of the United States? Of course, when the Democrats took over congress in 2006, she was no longer qualified to be the President’s top lawyer. He then nominated radical rightist Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor’s wise voice of moderation.
Then there are the screw-ups that don’t even require an explanation: Hurricane Katrina, Walter Reid, the Credit Crisis of 2008, invocation of Executive Privilege against staff subpoenas, the leaked identity of Valarie Plame, and the Scooter Libby pardon. There were the times that he displayed his love for democracy with statements like “I frankly don’t give a damn about the polls” and “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.” And then there was his attempt to privatize Social Security…
Although it is certainly funny to claim that Dr. Sanjay Gupta is no more ready to be Surgeon General then Ben Goodman is to Chair the Council on Foreign Relations, it is simply not true. Dr. Gupta has broad administrative experience from serving for several years as a White-House Fellow and Special Adviser. He also has extraordinary medical talents, serving as a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Emory University (one of our country’s top 25 schools). To say that he only performs surgery on a couple of Iraq War vets is also untrue. He regularly performs brain surgery at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta Georgia where he works. So, he has experience in government administration, experience as a surgeon dealing with the problems routinely experienced by other doctors, and he has communication skills that would be helpful to a Surgeon General. He is an excellent pick.
Timothy Geithner is a similarly accomplished nominee. He served in the international division of the Department of the Treasury throughout the Clinton Administration, finally becoming the Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in 1998 and serving there until the Bush administration took over two years later. He continued his experience in US inter-connectivity with Foreign Economies as a Senior Fellow on the Council on Foreign Affairs. In 2003, he was named the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. With the turbulence in the US economy, the rise of China, and the large amount of debt owned by foreign creditors, could there possibly be a better time to nominate someone as well versed in US relationships with Foreign economies as he is? Quite simply, no. He is similarly a fantastic pick.
Leon Panetta, President-elect Obama’s pick to head up the CIA is, once again, a good choice. He has experience working with political leaders from his time as a Representative starting in 1976 and served for 17 years. In his period in the House of Representatives he served as the Chairman of the US House Committe on the Budget where he became well versed in the full range of US interests and resource allocation. He was then Picked to be Clinton’s Director of Office of Management and Budget after a year of his 9th term as a Congressman. From there he was selected as White-House Chief of Staff where he served for three years. In those three years, he sat in on everyintelligence briefing, had close contact with the National Security Council, was included in every meeting at the Presidential level or slightly below in the Situation Room, and advised President Clinton on those matters. If that isn’t National Security experience, then I don’t know what is.
That is not to mention the outstanding nominees who’s credentials have not come under fire from Conservatives: Robert Gates for Defense, Hillary Clinton for State, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Eric Holder for Justice, Susan Rice for UN, Tom Daschle for HHS, and other extremely qualified and competent candidates.
Believe me, I get that Conservatives don’t like the ideology of Obama’s nominees. I’ve lived with that feeling through 8 years of Bush’s Cabinet. Conservatives should criticize the results of the Cabinet, just as Liberals should be skeptical of results. That’s our job as citizens of our great democracy. However, each of these candidates is qualified and we should give them their due.
Governor Blagojevich is still the Governor, and under Illinois law the Governor still retains the power to appoint a senate replacement to an outgoing senator. There is no stipulation for indictments or impeachments, the law says what it says. The Illinois State Legislature had weeks to revoke the Governor’s ability to make pardons and they chose not to. Therefore, it is the express will of the representatives of the people of Illinois that Governors maintain the right to make Senate appointments.
With the very well supported accusations of corruption on a massive scale from attempting to sell the senate seat to blackmailing money from a children’s hospital, he is undoubtedly not in the best position to make an appointment. I believe that it was unethical of him to appoint a Senator given the accusations of illegitimacy that surround him. However, that is an entirely different question. The question here is whether the US Senate should follow the laws that they wrote governing the selection of members of the senate as well as the decisions that they deferred to the respective states. Such deferred decisions include how a selection of a replacement senator is to be made. Senator Reid’s (D-NV) argument rests on the fact that the Secretary of State of Illinois has not yet certified the selection. The Illinois law does stipulate that the appointment must bear the Seal of the State, which only the Secretary of State can give. None the less, the Secretary of State’s role in the proceedings is to affirm that the Governor made the appointment, just as he would affirm that the people made the decision in a standard election. No part of his role is to countermand the decision of the Governor just as it would not be his role to reverse the decision of the people in an election. This is a question of the rule of law, and the law is clear. The Secretary of State and the United States Senate are obligated to uphold it and to do so immediately. If the people of Illinois lack confidence that Burris was the appropriate selection, they will have the opportunity to reverse the decision in the 2010 election.
Does America’s government resemble a House of Commons or a House of Lords. At the surface, there are the oft cited examples of Senator Hillary Clinton, wife of President Bill Clinton, who was elected without prior experience and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, son of Joseph Kennedy and brother of John and Bobby Kennedy. But even in the Senate, the issue runs far deeper. Tom Udall of New Mexico and Mark Udall of Colorado were both elected to the Senate in 2008 from the famed Udall family. The Udalls were leaders in the move westward and are sometimes even termed the ‘Kennedys of the West’. Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon was just unseated by Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley. Senator Smith is also an Udall. Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire is the son of a former Governor of New Hampshire.
Lisa Murkowski, a Senator from Alaska, is the daughter of former Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski who appointed her to the senate. Elizabeth Dole, the recently unseated Senator from North Carolina is the wife of Bob Dole, former senator from Kansas. Mark Pryor of Arkansas was elected to the Senate as the son of Arkansas Governor and former Senator David Prior.
The House of Representatives does not fare much better. Rep. John Salazar is the brother of Senator Ken Salazar (now nominee for Interior). Jessie Jackson Jr. of Illinois is the son of Jessie Jackson and was recently heavily considered as a possible senate apointee. Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island is the son of Senator Ted Kennedy. Speaker Pelosi is the daughter of a former Baltimore mayor and 5 term Congressman. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard’s father was a congressman from the same district. Rep. Sander Levin is the brother of Senator Carl Levin. The list goes on and on.
As if this pehnomenon wouldn’t be ugly enough as a case of nepotism in elected office, it extends far beyond that. Minority Whip Roy Blunt found a lobying job for his son Andrew and wife at Altria. Colin Powell’s son Michael Powell was appointed Chairman of the FCC. Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. Her husband was made Chief Counsel for OMB. Eugene Scalia, son of Justice Scalia, was made chief counsel to the Department of Labor. Strom Thurmond Jr., Son of famed racist Senator Thurmond, is the US Attorney for South Carolina. It’s possible to go on an on. With no-bid contracts, shady employments, and questionable appointments.
NOTE: I don’t mean to say that none of the above people are qualified to hold the jobs that they do. Many of them are. But I think that we should recognize that Politics is very much a family business for many politicians and that isn’t a good thing. For every person who gets a job from nepotism and is qualified, there are probably several who are not.
Here’s a popular piece of political conventional wisdom: Independents swing Republican. But is it actually true? Let’s go through the reasons.
Reason 1: Democratic voter identification has remained significantly higher than Republican identification over the last 50 years and yet Republican candidates have won six of the last ten Presidential elections. In order for that to be true, voters without a fixed political affiliation must have voted with the Republicans in at least six of the last ten elections.
This argument is false at the most basic levels. A lot of the explaination for high Democratic ID comes from the south. Older Southerners who are historically Democrats (as were their parents) but feel that the party has abandoned their conservative views often claim to identify with Democrats and vote for Republicans. For example, Louisiana is 40% Democratic and 32% Republican, Oklahoma is 37% Republican and 39% Democratic, and North Carolina is 35% Republican and 37% Democratic. So, it would seem logical that Democrats would have the electoral edge in all 3 of those states. Well, that’s not quite true because the Democrats lost 2 of them and narrowly won the 3rd.
Exit polls showed that only 75% of Louisiana Democrats voted for Obama while 96% of Louisiana Republicans voted for McCain. They’re holdover Democrats, and they vote like it. But one state isn’t enough to prove the point. In Oklahoma which has a 2% Democratic edge in Voter ID only 67% of Democrats voted for Obama while 95% of Republicans voted for McCain. Even in North Carolina where Obama won he carried 90% of the Democratic vote to McCain’s 95% of Republicans. And that is a vast improvement for North Carolina Democrats over that number in the 2004 election. It gets complicated after this point, but if we were to measure nationally the number of people who say they are Democrats and then vote that way against the number of people who say they are Republican and then vote that way (let’s call that Actual-Party ID), it seems likely that Republican Actual-Party ID would be higher than Democratic Actual-Party ID.
Reason 2: This is a much more academic explanation for why some Political Scientists believe this to be an actual phenomenon. Because it involves the actual use of statistics and facts, it is a less common argument so I tackled it second rather than first. These political scientist point out that Democrats have lost the independent vote in 8 of the last 13 Presidential elections. This explanation merely pretends to be more sound. Including the last 13 elections takes us all the way back to 1960! If you are trying to figure out how 1960’s voters would have decided on a group of candidates in a hypothetical and purely academic pursuit then this information might be useful. However, the political landscape has changed dramatically since then. To pretend that American politics is at all similar to politics before the Reagan Revolution that brought economic libertarianism to prominence in the Republican Party is absurd. So, if we look at how Independents have decided after the Reagan revolution we get a more accurate picture of how independents might vote in future elections. In the last 20 years of Presidential Elections, Independents have voted Democratic four of six times. Starkly opposed to a deficit, it’s a whopping 67% of the time!
Matt Cavedon has, in my view fairly, criticized my previous post Massachusetts v. South Carolina for not taking history properly into account. Although I controlled for a range of factors, history was not one of them and perhaps my argument would be more compelling if I attempted to come to a more well controlled comparison. I would then like to take up Matt’s suggestion that Georgia and South Carolina would be a more apt comparison. Although not nearly as liberal as Massachusetts by any streach of the imagination, Georgia has had some state-wide liberal economic policies over recent decades.
I’ll use the same criteria as I did in my post on Massachusetts and South Carolina.
Georgia’s high school graduation rate of 56.3% seems terrible (and indeed, it is) but not in comparison to South Carolina’s 46.2% graduation rate. Georgia’s #18 Emory University, #35 Georgia Institute of Technology, and #58 University of Georgia are more highly ranked by US News & World Report than South Carolina’s #61 Clemson and #108 University of South Carolina. Not as drastic as the difference between Massachusetts and South Carolina but still significant.
15 Fortune 500 companies reside in Georgia including Home Depot, UPS, Coke, Delta Airlines, Sun Trust Bank, AFLAC, and others while South Carolina has #500 Scana. The State of Georgia performs significantly better in median household income at $49,745 compared to South Carolina which stands at $47,680. Georgia’s unemployment rate of 7.5% compares favorably with South Carolina’s 8.4%. 14.8% of Georgians live below the poverty line compared with 15.7% of South Carolinians.
South Carolina has the highest number per capita of violent crimes and aggravated assault and a murder rate of 70.5 per 1 million citizens compared with Georgia’s 68.7 per 1 million.
Certainly the differences are far less dramatic than in the comparison between Massachusetts and South Carolina. However, the differences in economic policy between Massachusetts and South Carolina were similarly more dramatic. The fact remains that I did not change any of the categories and I used every statistic generally used to analyze the effectiveness of a government and yet South Carolina failed to out-perform Georgia in even a single category.
Which style of governance is more effective? Economic liberalism or economic conservatism? The only way to objectively say is to compare cases studies in each form over a period of not just decades but over a century. Massachusetts is one of the most consistently liberal (not necessarily Democratic) states in the Union. After all, even the Republicans there are liberal: a Republican Governor instituted statewide universal health-care. Similarly there are few states more consistently conservative (not necessarily Republican) than South Carolina. It is a fair comparison because both states have been members of the Union for within months of the same amount of time and they have been of similar population for much of their history.
One of the key measurements of the effectiveness of government in a state is the quality of its education system because that determines whether or not that state will be a leader two or three decades down the road. The high-school drop-out rate in South Carolina is 53.8% compared to Massachusetts’ 11.7%. Massachusetts is home to #1 Harvard University, #4 MIT, #28 Tufts, #31 Brandeis, and #34 Boston College, all higher than South Carolina’s #61 Clemson and #108 University of South Carolina (all according to US News & World Report). So, Massachusetts is a mecca of education and South Carolina, well… isn’t. But there are other things that matter.
Like economic opportunity. 14 of the Fortune 500 call Massachusetts their home compared with exactly 1 headquartered in South Carolina (Scana…yeah, I’ve heard of them btw. they’re #500). The Median household income in Massachusetts is $62,365 to South Carolina’s $43,329. Their low economic production is similarly reflected by their 8.4% unemployment which is considerably higher than Massachusetts’ 5.9%. A stunning 15.7% of South Carolinians live below the poverty line while 9.2% live below it in Massachusetts which is comparably low. Massachusetts’ poor are also protected by a much larger social safety net. Which clearly, by the way, has not slowed down the Massachusetts economy.
But conservatives will keep us safe! Not really. South Carolina is #1 in the nation in violent crimes and aggravated assaults per capita and #7 in Murders per capita at .705 per 1 million citizens. Massachusetts is #45 in the nation with a murder rate so low that it was declared statistically insignificant.
In 1998 Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell, now the Governor of Pennsylvania, attempted to sue the firearms industry. By 2005, 20 cities had filed suit. The Republican congress then stepped in to end the lawsuits, passing an unprecedented liability-shield to protect gun-makers from lawsuits by individuals or cities for either repayment of actual damages or punitive damages.
There are several reasons why suing gun-makers makes sense. Every company is responsible for how their products are used when the intent of the product is to cause damage. Yet, when it comes to gun manufacturers, the standard is different. I’m not talking about hunting rifles. The clear purpose of a hunting rifle or shotgun sold to the general public is for hunting. No one is disputing that and clearly a gun manufacturer should not be held to account for any misdeeds carried out with such weapons. However, when gun companies produce assault rifles with flash suppressors and silencers, the purpose of the weapon is clear. You would not go hunting with a military rifle. Uzzies aren’t good for killing squirrel and AR-15s aren’t good for bird-hunting. The only reason to fire one of these guns is to kill another person. When a company callously produces and profits from a product whose only possible application is to kill another person, cities and individuals should have the right to hold them legally accountable. In this scenario, they are enabling murderers; they are accomplices.
Families have a legal right to demand punitive damages and cities have the right to demand repayment for the excess medical bills and costs of law enforcement foisted on the taxpayer by gun-makers’ irresponsible proliferation of military-grade weapons.
This country is not as socially mobile as we like to believe. In a study released by the Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics in 2003, the argument of social mobility was delt a serious blow.
If your parents are in the top quartile of earnings but your scores on standardized tests are in the bottom quartile you have a 30% chance of finishing a 4 year college which is higher than if your score was in the top quartile buy your parents’ earnings were in the bottom quartile (29%).
The logical conclusion from that is that, when considering who will graduate from college, you parents’ wealth is more important than your intelligence. This is disturbing. There are a lot of problems wrapped up in this but one of the largest ones is the method through which schools are financed. Schools are financed by local government and thus poor areas will deliver under-performing schools and rich areas will develop good schools. If all local tax revenue allocated for education spending was routed through the State who could determine which schools needed which amount of money, our inner-city and rural children would begin to receve an even shot.
However, the study was done based upon test performance. These are kids who, despite being sent to under-performing schools, rose above and achieved in the top quartile of all American students! These are extraordinary students. And yet, they have trouble affording college. In response to this we need to consider two actions. First, we should make attendance at state universities tax deductable (no tax deductions for $40,000 a year + schools). And second, we need to work to move the base cost of state universities down through subsidies because they have moved away from the idea of post-secondary education that was affordable to all Americans, no matter who their parents are.
The Gini index is one of the most common measurements of income inequality. It measures income inequality on a scale of 0 (everyone has the exact same amount of money) to 1 (one person has all of the nation’s wealth) using the Lorenz curve. There is an interesting trend that has been shown for decades in the Gini index. Industrialized nations (France: .327, Denmark: .247, United Kingdom: .36) have low values while non-Industrialized states (Bolivia: .601, Mexico: .461, Turkey: .436) have very high amounts of inequality. The theory being that with increases in GDP, the wealth makes its way around to the general population.
This seems fairly consistent across every nation with one, obvious exception. The United States (.408) is comparable to China (.469) in income inequality.
Some of the difference is in income tax levels. However, much of the difference is accounted for by two factors. First, many European countries tax capital gains at the same rate as normal income. The United States does not. The US tax rate for regular income (in the top bracket) is 35% while capital gains are taxed at only 15%. The wealthiest 1% make large portions of their income in stock options and other investments taxed under the considerably lower rate.
Second, other countries have a much higher rates of unionization than the United States. For example, in 1960, when the US had much lower income inequality, 30% of American workers were union members compared with 32% of Canadians. Today, American union membership is down to 13% while Canada’s has remained constant.
All statistics are from the CIA or US Census Bureau.
New York Governor Paterson has called for 137 new Sales Taxes on items from digital music downloads, to new cigarette and cigar taxes, to cab fees, alcoholic beverages, and satellite TV. At a time when consumer confidence is approaching new lows, now would be a terrible time to raise taxes on consumption. The government needs to be encouraging shopping because decreased sales revenues are forcing companies to cut jobs which forces consumption down further in a cyclical nature.
For example, low sales figures have forced Chrysler to announce a 1 month long halt in production in all of its plants. Similarly, Verizon has announce layoffs and benefit cuts in response to suffering sales figure. These new taxes will put additional pressure on Working and Middle Class Americans whose budgets are already crunched. New York currently has an exemption on sales taxes for clothing under $110 in value. The problem with these Sales Tax proposals is that they target items that are necessities as well as basic leisures. If these Sales Tax proposals go through, families on the edge will have a harder time maintaining their standard of living.
Paterson further plans to close 10 government facilities including 6 family and child care facilities, cut school aid by half a billion, and slice health-care by $3.5 billion. These programs are necessary for Working Class families across the state. When the state cuts child care facilities, it makes it more difficult for both parents to work.
However, New York law forces the Governor to propose a balenced budget which currently has a $15.4 billion dollar gap. Much of this is caused by Unfunded Mandates from the Federal Government. One of the first things to go as the Federal Budget gets tightened is funding for cooperative programs between the Federal and State Governments. New York income and business taxes have also brought in substantially lower yields this year than years past. The problem is difficult but the answer is not to squeeze those with the least to give.
The 2nd Amendment doesn’t say what we think it says. This might sound crazy but take a look at what the 2nd Amendment says:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
That’s the whole 2nd Amendment. That one sentence. Which is why it’s perplexing to me that a majority of the US Supreme Court has decided to completely ignore half of it. It’s not that complicated. The whole preface to the statement is that well regulated militias are necessary. The 2nd Amendment gives States the right to form Well-Regulated Militias and members of such Militias have the right to bear arms. The states had such militias through the Civil War at which point there was a transition to National Guard and Reserve Units which replaced the need for State Militias.
The issue of off-shore drilling was propelled to the national stage when U.S. Presidential Candidate John McCain issued his bold statement “drill here, drill now” at rallies across the country. We find ourselves in a situation in which we are addicted to oil. China’s rapid industrialization and reckless speculation on the Commodities Futures Exchange have pushed up demand for oil to a recent peak. Although alleviated by the collapse in the stock market, higher demand will likely soon return. In this situation, increasing supply relative to demand is roughly the equivalent of attempting to wean an alcoholic off alcohol by making it cheaper.
Offshore drilling poses a massive threat to our environment and biological diversity. For starters, off-shore oil rigs have significant risk of oil spills. One spill in Campeche, Mexico poured 140 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. The oil decimated populations of fish, corral, and other marine life. Proponents claim that the scenario of an oil spill is a worst-case scenario meant to scare people away from an idea that is essentially good. However, in 2001, the worlds biggest oil rig sunk off the coast of Brazil. Yes, it collapsed, and sunk. The practice is also virtually impossible to regulate effectively. For instance, in 1992 alone, Chevron pleaded guilty to 65 violations of the Clean Water Act and paid the Federal Government $8 million dollars in fines. Not that that undid the damage. Their lack of internal safety standards is also disturbing. For example, in 1997, federal inspectors found that Chevron had failed to fix a broken anti-blowout valve in their rig off the coast of Ventura. But, no big deal, the valve only ensures that pressure does not exceed the valve’s maximum capacity and cause an uncontrollable oil spill.
Even without an oil spill, over its lifetime an oil rig can dump as much as 90,000 tons of drilling fluid and metal cuttings into the water surrounding it. It will also drill as many as 100 wells each of which pours nearly 25,000 pounds of toxic metals like lead and mercury as well as carcinogens like benzene into the water. Their contribution to air pollution exceeds that of 7,000 cars driving 50 miles a day. In Louisiana, where some offshore drilling already occurs, on average, 62 square miles of costal wetlands are lost each year. This is a major problem because costal wetlands reduce the effect of storm surges like the ones that breeched the levees of New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.
But what are the benefits? While our nation consumes 25% of the world’s produced oil, America has only 3% of the world’s proven oil reserves. That three percent includes all of the on-land sites. If we were to allow offshore drilling, most industry experts have concluded that it would take a decade for oil companies to get the proper permits, produce the equipment, and conduct the planning necessary for new oil rigs. The necessary equipment is not mass produced leading to long construction periods, installation is complex and the sediment under which oil is located often requires more advanced engineering. In short, we can’t drill our way to energy independence.
However, let us assume for a moment that the Republicans are correct in saying that off-shore drilling will be effective. That result would be far worse because in addition to a slew of ecological problems, free-market forces would prevent the development of alternative energy. The lowered price of crude oil would make would make alternative energy, even with current federal subsidies, unattractively expensive. Investors would understand this and be hesitant to invest in green technology as it would be unlikely to make any money. Thus, research and development of alternative energy would be severely impaired.
Off-shore drilling is a politician’s pander to Americans crying out for relief from high gas prices. Most people don’t know the difference and it helps some people get elected, but it’s a bad policy.
When a television reporter in Central Florida asked Senator Biden whether Obama’s tax policies make him a Marxist, Biden responded by saying “Is that a joke?”
Senator Biden’s much criticized response is completely right.
The accusation is sensationalistic, intellectually dishonest, stupid, and beneath the level of public debate in this country. Those who are saying it are hacks, idiots, or both. To say that Obama is a Marxist for supporting the same Progressive Income Tax system that has been supported by almost every candidate for President since Teddy Roosevelt is absurd. Marxism is an ideology that preaches the overthrow of capitalist society, a dictatorship of the proletariat, state or worker ownership of the means of production, and equal results rather than equal opportunity. Senator Obama’s policies support none of those key facets of Marxism.
As for the wealth redistribution argument, every government policy is wealth redistribution. When the government chooses to not regulate the environment strictly and allows industry to pollute, they force taxpayers to pay for the clean-up. In the process, industrial companies shave off a portion of the cost of production and pass it on to everyone. The owners or stockholders benefit while the vast majority of middle and working class Americans have had their wealth redistributed to the top 3% that disproportionately invests their money in the market.
The reality is that politicians only get criticized for wealth redistribution when they try to give the 95% a break.
Senator Clinton and her surrogates have spent the last several weeks convincing America that Indiana is a “tiebreaker” for the Democratic nomination. That argument overlooks a couple important facts.
First, to have a “tiebreaker”, there has to be a tie. Obama is ahead by about 100 pledged delegates and Senator Clinton lost her firm lead in Superdelegates a few weeks ago. This is merely another chance for Clinton to put a nick (not a dent) in Obama’s considerable lead.
Second, on the very same day as the Indiana primary is the North Carolina primary. North Carolina is a state with two and a half million more citizens than Indiana. Yet, Senator Clinton has made the argument that North Carolina is irrelevant and the media has paid North Carolina significantly less attention than Indiana. So, why is the bigger state not the “tiebreaker”? Senator Clinton has managed to shift attention away from North Carolina because she realizes that she won’t win there.
The Consolidated Federal Funds Report released by the US Department of Commerce shows a vast inequity in the Federal Government’s distribution of funds between the states. The following map shows that while 6 states recieve under $6,500 per capita from the federal government, some states recieve well over $9,000 per capita a year. While 30 states recieve more in federal funds than they give, taxpayers from Mississippi, West Virginia, and New Mexico all recieve an average of $3 for every dollar they send to Wasington D.C.. Delaware, on the other hand, recieves a mere 42 cents on the dollar. Read the full report (120-page PDF)
The White House claimed that Syrian nuclear facilities bombed by Israel in 2007 were capable of producing weapons grade plutonium which is more highly enriched than nuclear material used for energy production would be. Citing similarities between Syrian and North Korean technology, the Bush Administration believes that North Korea supplied the technology and information necessary to advance a nuclear weapons program. The picture below was released as an example of similarities.
The White House made these statements after CIA officials had briefed members of congress on the theory of North Korean involvement. The Administration further cites the secrecy that has shrouded the site, the effort by the Syrian government to hide the remains of the destroyed site, and meetings between the heads of the North Korean and Syrian nuclear programs as further evidence that the site was not intended for the production of energy grade plutonium. The Syrian Ambassador to the UN has denied the charges.
The 6 Party Talks have been very productive thus far, having produced an agreement between North Korea, its neighbors, and the US. Kim Jung Ill has also tried to give the west a more positive view of North Korea by inviting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to play in Pyongyang and giving western journalists limited tours. However, the North Korean government has failed to declare all of its nuclear material by the deadline. This new development will undoubtedly hamper the progress of that agreement.
In recent months, Ethiopia has stationed it’s troops across neighboring Somalia in an attempt to curb the power of the country’s strong radical Islamist movement. International Observers have claimed that Ethiopian troops have perpetrated violent acts against Somali citizens. The army has recently been acused of storming a mosque, killing 20 Somalis, and capturing 40 Somali children. The Ethiopian government denies that the incident happened and the Somalian government has not asked Ethiopian soldiers to leave.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has recommended General Petraeus to head US Central Command (CentCom), citing his work as commander of US Forces in Iraq over the last year. CentCom is a military region that contains everywhere from the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, etc.) to Central Asia. Responsibilities include oversight of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
CNN and MSNBC have both projected a Clinton win. With half of precincts reporting, Clinton leads Obama 54% to 46%. However, her victory will likely put only a small dent in Senator Obama’s delegate lead. CNN projects that when all is said and done, Obama will lead Clinton 1,648 to 1,504 delegates out of the 2025 delegates to nominate. Senator Clinton’s best chance for clinching the nomination remains in convincing the Democratic Super-Delegates that she can win traditionally Democratic voters and states as well as large swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania polls opened today at 7 A.M. Eastern Time. The latest Zogby poll, published by the Huffington Post, has Clinton at 51%, Obama at 41% and 6% undecided. Look for Penn State to give a significant boost to Obama. At campus, about 1,500 people attended the Clinton rally while it was reported that nearly 22,000 attended the Obama rally. Clinton’s stunningly small turnout shows just how difficult certain counties could be for her. A big turnout in Philly will also be crucial for Obama to close the gap.
Click on "archive" at the top to hear some of our most recent broadcasts, including former McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza, MSNBC's David Shuster, and former Senator Mike Gravel.
Looking Ahead
December 27, 2009
Filibuster Christmas
A Holiday Special
Due to a strong Alabama Democratic Party, although national Democrats are less popular, the Democrats have control of 2/3 of Alabama’s state government. In 2008, there were two extraordinarily close races in Alabama. In the 2nd District, Democrat Bobby Bright squeaked out a win with 50.2% of the vote against Republican Jay Love’s 49.6%. And in the 5th District, Democrat Parker Griffith narrowly edged out Wayne Parker with 51.5% of the vote. As first term Democrats facing re-election in conservative Alabama, they will want help from new district lines assuming they make it past the 2010 elections. The 5th district is boxed in by the 4th which, because they earned a mere 25.1% of the vote in the last election, is a lost cause for Democrats. By reshaping the district lines slightly, they could bolster Congressman Griffith’s standing enough to help him fight back when rage against Republicans wanes. As for Congressman Bright, the2nd district is bordered by the 1st, 7th, 6th, and 3rd. By shifting some population with Rep. Artur Davis’ 7th district stronghold, Bright could gain enough to hang on. Alabama is an excellent display of something that Democrats need to be thinking a lot about in redistricting: protecting vulnerable new members.
Banks have money, you’re right. But they aren’t loaning it. They can’t pull out of loans they’ve already guaranteed but they’re being very selective about new investments.
Ben Goodman
Matt Cavedon
Pete Christopher
Robert Burack
Tom Dec
Bob Bowen
Bob Bowen
Remembering Senator Edward M. Kennedy
In Commentary on August 26, 2009 at 10:41 pmAt two o’clock this morning I was woken by nearly half a dozen text messages. The reason: the ‘Lion of the Senate’, Senator Edward M. Kennedy had passed away.
In his 47 years in the Senate, he never failed to defend the poor, the downtrodden, and the underrepresented. When it was asked, ‘who among the 80 will stand up for the 20?’ his answer never failed to be ‘I will’. He championed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. He delivered peace in Northern Ireland, multiple minimum wage increases, greater education funding, and healthcare for our nation’s poorest children through SCHIP.
Click ‘Read More’ to continue viewing this commentary.
Read the rest of this entry »