Progressive Viewpoints

The filibuster's conservative tilt

2010-02-19T21:27:18-08:00

Ezra Klein - The filibuster's conservative tilt .

...the argument for majority rule in the Senate isn't an argument about the relative worth of health-care reform and gay rights. What makes something "democratic-minded" is whether it's, well, democratic. When 41 senators representing less than 20 percent of the population can block legislation, that's not a democratic state of affairs, no matter the issues involved.

In Utah, a plan to cut 12th grade

2010-02-16T08:21:23-08:00

Can you spell "third world country"?

In Utah, a plan to cut 12th grade - latimes.com.

The proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars would chip away at Utah's $700-million shortfall. He's since offered a toned-down version: Just make senior year optional.

The Tea Party in Context

2010-02-09T20:22:18-08:00

The inanity of the media narratives is unbelievable compared to objective reality in America:

65% - Pass comprehensive health-care reform
60% - Republicans aren't doing enough to forge compromise
33% - Iowans support the "tea party"

But the stories glorify tea partyists and a narrative that health care reform is bad and Obama is too left. But the real problem is that Democrats haven't delivered (which of course was the Republican strategy).

These two stories, almost back to back!

The Tea Party in Context -- Political Wire.

Matt Yglesias puts yesterday's poll which showed 33% of Iowans support the "tea party" movement into context, noting that "38% of Americans have a favorable view of Cuba and 36% are favorably disposed toward socialism, but I don't see anyone writing newspaper articles about how a populist wave of socialism is sweeping the country."
"The number of Iowans who like the tea party movement is smaller than the number of Americans who want marijuana legalized or the number of Americans who believe the government has had secret contact with extra-terrestrials."

Most See Republicans as Unwilling to Compromise -- Political Wire.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that nearly six in 10 Americans say the Republicans aren't doing enough to forge compromise with President Obama on important issues; more than four in 10 see Obama as doing too little to get GOP support.
In addition, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they want Congress to keep working to pass comprehensive health-care reform.

Sarah Palin: Faux Populist

2010-02-09T20:11:44-08:00

This, actually, is a much deeper insight than it may appear.

Alec Baldwin: Sarah Palin: Faux Populist.

So, you think Sarah Palin is embarrassed by the crib-notes-on-the-palm incident?

You're kidding, right?

...Palin reads off the palm of her hand because she can't whittle or cast a fly rod or shoot a wild animal while giving a policy speech. (Then again, who knows?) She reads her palm in order to send a message to her anti-Eastern establishment, Obama-hating, OK-You've-Had-Your-Black-President-Experiment, Tea Party types. That message is, "I'm just one person, doing the best I can with what God gave me. Like all y'all out there."

One of the reasons progressives are often flummoxed by the right's obvious hypocrisy, internally inconsistent positions, childish mockery, and lame policy proscriptions, is that progressives mostly fail to see that much of the right as driven more by tribal identity politics than principles and policies. Their goal is to reinforce their "us". They do this via caricature (Kerry's looks so French! We need a commander-in-chief not a law professor!) and demonize others (Obama's palling around with terrorists! And not only that: he's not actually an American!) to draw the distinction clearly and pull themselves closer together.

This tribal identity politics is vastly more important than "deficit reduction", balanced budget, small government, "freedom" (followed by fist pumps), etc. except to the extent it helps define themselves as apart from and beleaguered by The Others. This is part of why the Tea Partiers are actually driving the Republican Party farther away from mainstream America, into their own little corner of non-pragmatic, rightwing nuttery rather toward a larger party.

It produces internal challenges for Democrats because Democrats now occupy three of four quadrants: not only progressive pragmatists and progressive idealists but also conservative pragmatists (Olympia Snowe being, perhaps, the only one left on the national Republican stage). That's a big tent!

Inspired by Why bipartisanship can't work right now: the other axis.

How the First Amendment Works - Opinionator Blog

2010-02-08T21:58:14-08:00

How the First Amendment Works - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com.

... Regarding corporations as persons for some legal purposes ... has been the practice for a long time, but ... giving them rights enjoyed by flesh and blood citizens is arguably something new, and something Justice Stevens vigorously protests against ...: A corporation does not have a conscience. Its interests are exclusively economic and do not include the health and welfare of society. It is not seeking to join and further the free flow of ideas. Its acts do not reflect the will of shareholders. Its massive funding of political advertising amounts to buying votes and can not finally be distinguished from bribery.

The Senate's problem is not disagreement. It's elections.

2010-02-08T13:46:22-08:00

Ezra Klein - The Senate's problem is not disagreement. It's elections. .

It's good to have a competitive electoral system! But if we're going to give the minority party a reason to want the majority party to fail at governing the country, we can't also give them the power to make the majority party fail at governing the country. We need a legislative system that works alongside our political system, not one that pretends we have a different, more harmonious political system than we really do.

Moving Towards Sanity in Crazy Times

2010-02-06T22:13:42-08:00

Mike Lux: Moving Towards Sanity in Crazy Times.

The Rubin/Summers changes to financial regulation combined with the Bush administration's appointments of the worst set of regulators since the 1920s (at least) created an environment where the big banks became monsters capable of destroying our economy. And they did, creating the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. They quite literally broke our economy, and while things have stabilized some over the panic atmosphere of late 2008/early 2009, it is still broken.
What has also become broken is our ability to govern. Between the absurd filibuster rules and the abuse of them , and the huge and wealthy special interests (the financial behemoths above all), the system has the worst kind of sclerosis built into it. If the minority party and the power house lobbies want to shut things down, they can just do it.
Between the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the emergence of completely unregulated "dark" derivative markets (where no light of day is ever seen), and the laissez-faire regulators of the Bush administration, our country is in the grip of economic powers that have far greater economic and political power than any set of institutions at least since Teddy Roosevelt finally began to tame the robber barons over a century ago. Ponder this fact for a moment: six megabanks control assets amounting to more than 60% of the country's gross domestic product. That is unfathomable. How does our economy ever function under the weight of that kind of concentration of wealth and power? How does our democracy? And with our government so dysfunctional, how do we make the changes we need to make?

Op-Ed Columnist - The State of the Union Is Comatose - NYTimes.com

2010-01-30T21:56:18-08:00

Op-Ed Columnist - The State of the Union Is Comatose - NYTimes.com.

... One year into Obama’s term we still don’t know whether he has what it takes to get American governance functioning again. But we do know that no speech can do the job. The president must act. Only body blows to the legislative branch can move the country forward.
The historian Alan Brinkley has observed that we will soon enter the fourth decade in which Congress — and therefore government as a whole — has failed to deal with any major national problem, from infrastructure to education. The gridlock isn’t only a function of polarized politics and special interests. There’s also been a gaping leadership deficit.

Policies favoring conservatism built into the system

2010-01-27T08:30:26-08:00

Policies favoring conservatism built into the system - baltimoresun.com.

...Progressives must win repeatedly and at every stage, whereas those opposed to change typically need to win but once, at any stage. Power is as power resists.
Consider, for example, that Republican George W. Bush was able to push not one but three far-from-popular income tax cuts through a Congress boasting smaller Republican majorities than those the Democrats enjoy today. Thanks to the Republican voting tendencies of smaller states, the GOP's Senate majority at the time represented fewer Americans nationally than did the Democratic minorities.
What this and other juxtapositions tell us is that a supermajority is needed to govern from the center-left, whereas a simple majority or even a minority is capable of governing from the center-right. See, for example, the 2000 election result.
Despite the built-in advantages, Republicans aren't shy about obstruction. Filibustering was half as common during the first six years of the Bush administration, when Democrats were the Senate's minority party, than during the three-year era of Republican minorities since.

Democrats Now See ‘No Rush’ on Health Care Bill

2010-01-26T21:49:45-08:00

I guess he liked that curveball thrown by Scott Brown so much he like to get a few more thrown at him?

Democrats Now See ‘No Rush’ on Health Care Bill - NYTimes.com.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, deflected questions about health care. “We’re not on health care now,” Mr. Reid said. “We’ve talked a lot about it in the past.” He added, “There is no rush,” and noted that Congress still had most of this year to work on the health bills passed in 2009 by the Senate and the House.

'Stealth Democracy'

2010-01-25T21:46:48-08:00

Ezra Klein - 'Stealth Democracy' quotes from the abstract of the book, Stealth Democracy:

Contrary to the prevailing view that people want greater involvement in politics, most citizens do not care about most policies and therefore are content to turn over decision-making authority to someone else. People’s wish for the political system is that decision makers be empathetic and, especially, non-self-interested, not that they be responsive and accountable to the people’s largely nonexistent policy preferences or, even worse, that the people be obligated to participate directly in decision making.

White House Plans for the Middle Class. Middle Grades

2010-01-25T21:20:55-08:00

I would rate it as less than "middle grades" for the Middle Class. The problem in America isn't that taxes are too high (they are low relative to the rest of the world), it is that incomes are too low. American median income (unless you're in the top few percent) has been flat since about 1980, and has declined for lower income people.

We don't need tax cuts to make the middle class more affordable, we need higher incomes, more jobs.

I grade the tax-cuts-and-deficit-reduction plan a "D".

White House Plans for the Middle Class. Middle Grades. | OurFuture.org.

Mostly, the new initiatives don’t create jobs. Doubling the child tax credit, limiting student loan payments to ten percent of income, expanding tax credits to match retirement savings – they’re just relief. They are designed to help underpaid or unemployed people to cope when they don’t have enough money. They don’t create jobs or generate wealth. asdf

Rebuilding our infrastructure and offering public service jobs when the private sector fails, [Economic Policy Institute] estimates the plan will create over 4.6 million jobs in the first year, at a gross cost of roughly $400. The entire cost would be recouped within ten years by a financial transactions tax, which would take effect three years after enactment.

Open Left:: It's Official: Obama is an idiot .

After passing a stimulus that most economists (not just liberal ones) said was too small, and that was made even more inadequate by being heavily tilted toward poor-performing tax-cuts, Obama is now intentionally recreating FDR's mistake of 1937, when he prematurely cut back spending to try to balance the budget, and sent the country into a new recession.

Links for 2007-04-23 [del.icio.us]

2007-04-24T00:00:00-07:00

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily: The Grassley Tax
Private equity firms usually take a 20% profit share, or "carry," on their complex deals. Under current law, the carry is subject to the 15% long-term capital gains tax. Grassley wants it taxed at the 35% rate for ordinary income. The New York Times has h
People For the American Way - Gonzales Must Go
The "Gonzales Must Go" project's goal is "to bring about Gonzales' departure are part of a larger campaign to restore constitutional liberties. We are working to end the administration's illegal domestic spying program, restore habeas corpus protections,
FRAMESHOP by Jeffrey Feldman
The Blog | Paul Abrams: Three Key Issues for Davos | The Huffington Post
ransnational corporations with a natural tendency to find their lowest level of accountability challenge the world community of nation states for hegemony. It is not that transnationals are inherently bad (although some may be), but rather that their inex
Grounds to impeach Gonzales? - Newsday.com
In the case of the U.S. attorney firings, when the White House begins to insist that its partisan political agenda trumps every other consideration in the administration of public laws, it is essential that Congress push back. And in the case of an attorn
Gonzales should be impeached - The Boston Globe
Gonzales, the nation's highest legal officer, has been point man for serial assaults against the rule of law, most recently in the crude attempt to politicize criminal prosecutions. Obstruction of a prosecution is a felony, even when committed by the atto
FindLaw's Writ - Dean: Refocusing the Impeachment Movement on Administration Officials Below the President and Vice-President
Lowering the aim of an impeachment effort to focus on those who have aided and abetted, or directly engaged in, the commission of high crimes and misdemeanors, would have all the positives, and none of the negatives, of going after Bush and Cheney. It wou
FindLaw's Writ -- Dean: New Developments in the U.S. Attorney Controversy
Lowering the aim of an impeachment effort to focus on those who have aided and abetted, or directly engaged in, the commission of high crimes and misdemeanors, would have all the positives, and none of the negatives, of going after Bush and Cheney. It wou
Political Wire: Democrats on a Roll
"At the same time, Democrats are feeling intensely about their identification as 31 percent identify as 'strong' Democrats, compared to only 21 percent 'strong' Republican partisans."
The People Know Better
When it comes to war, 70 percent of Americans believe that the US has been too quick to resort to armed conflict and a whopping 84 percent believe "initiating military force only when we have the support of our allies should be important to our foreign po

Links for 2007-04-11 [del.icio.us]

2007-04-12T00:00:00-07:00

BlueClimate: The John Kerry/Newt Gingrich Climate Change Debate
The major disagreement between Kerry and Gingrich was over the best and fastest solution to the climate change problem. Kerry argued for a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and to allow the marketplace to put a price on carbon through carbon trading (i.e

Links for 2007-04-09 [del.icio.us]

2007-04-10T00:00:00-07:00

Truthdig - Reports - Religious Conviction vs. Political Dogmatism

Links for 2007-03-02 [del.icio.us]

2007-03-03T00:00:00-08:00

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat - New York Times
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11

Links for 2007-03-01 [del.icio.us]

2007-03-02T00:00:00-08:00

Green Buildings: Win-Win-Win-Win | Campaign for America's Future
Don Gilligan of the National Association of Energy Services Companies told the crowd that a $7 billion annual investment would save consumers $22 billion in energy costs by 2017, while also creating 400,000 jobs annually.