Steam Powered Opinions

Dismantling the Public School System

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Mon, 09 May 2011 20:21:00 +0000

My latest post at The Faster Times is up and I am commenting on the on-going dismantling of our public education system via the time honored tradition of privatization.

Colorado GOP Prepares to Play Victim Card on Congressional Redistricting

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Mon, 09 May 2011 19:22:00 +0000

In Colorado we are entering the final 3 days of our annual legislative session, the first session in 10 years to feature a divided legislature with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans running the House. As we head into the final days of the session one major outstanding item remains on the agenda - Congressional redistricting.

Yesterday on Twitter I asked,

Would like to see explanation for why #CO #GOP seems so anxious to send redistricting to the courts. Compromise obvsly not an option.

Allow me to proffer an explanation of my own - the state GOP wants a court to intervene and the more lopsided the decision for Democrats the better.

With most legislative issues there is no escape route should the legislature fail to act. If the House and Senate can't agree on a budget to send to the governor then there simply is no budget until they agree. No other branch of government is going to swoop in and save them.

But with redistricting if the two sides can't agree then it is off to the courts where a judge will do the legislature's work for them.

The 2010 census shows that Colorado gained over 700,000 new residents (me included) in the last 10 years. That's not enough for a new Congressional seat but it is enough to require some tweaking of the districts. Democrats have proposed numerous maps that emphasize competitive districts - and, it should be noted, not even Republicans dispute that the maps are genuinely competitive. Republicans though have proved intractable to any sort of compromise and have fought to skew the districts for partisan advantage. The GOP team sent to bipartisan negotiations wasn't actually authorized to agree to terms. The GOP Speaker of the House, Frank McNulty, has consistently undermined negotiations in other ways as well and publicly declared that he sees no hope for compromise nor any reason to bring the legislature back for a special session in order to finish their jobs.

The GOP's intention to refuse any compromise on redistricting has long been clear, but the question remains - why?

Quite simply it's a safe political bet. The population shift in Colorado hasn't been such that we need a major redrawing of our maps. In reality the maps that the Democrats have proposed, with their emphasis on competitiveness, will likely form the basis of any court decision. So if you're the Colorado GOP and compromise or a court decision both get you to essentially the same place why compromise? Instead you can demagogue the Democrats in the legislature, demagogue the judges and courts who have imposed their (read, partisan) will upon the process and fund raise off of the issue for the next 18 months.

The Colorado Republican party figures it can't lose - and given the overwhelming sense of victim-hood amongst its base I think that is a smart and safe bet.

Cross-posted at Progressive Majority

Private insurers opposed to Ryan plan, for now

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Josh Marshall rightly notes,

But it's critical to understanding the economics and seriousness of the Republican proposal for shutter Medicare and have seniors buy private insurance with the (not that much) help of vouchers. Basically, no one wants to provide that insurance. And frankly, why would they? How much money do you think there is in insuring 75 year olds? How many headaches? If you go back into the history of Medicare, one of the factors -- in addition to the politics and ideological and social push -- was that the private insurers wanted the senior portion of the population taken off their hands. And they still want it off their hands. The private insurance industry is based on getting steady premiums for as healthy as possible of population of people. That's why 'pre-existing conditions' have become such a big issue. And every person over 65 has at least one pre-existing condition: they're old...

As the Ryan plan stands today, yes private insurers are opposed. What makes me nervous though is that with some modification the Ryan plan basically becomes a way to more fully subsidize private insurance for the over 65 set. It's as simple as increasing the dollar amount that seniors will be given for their vouchers or, in the alternative, you simply have the Federal government guarantee against the amount of the vouchers and any loss for the insurers.

To me it looks like a parallel of the student loan boondoggle. Young college kids with no credit history are bad credit risks. But with Federal guarantees these kids have been able to accumulate a hundred thousand dollars of debt with a few pen strokes. Why? There's no risk to the banks - the Feds are guaranteeing the loans.

Naval Gazing...

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:55:00 +0000

An anonymous commenter in my post on the Obama trap,

First optimistic post in a long while. Coincedence?

I assume that he/she means, coincidence that my first positive post comes after a month of no blogging. And of course the answer is no, definitely not a coincidence. Besides not blogging, I also stopped reading most blogs and news and only occasionally fired up Twitter. I don't feel like I was purposefully taking a break from the news per se, but rather was feeling burnt out on the general direction of the country. Frankly, it's damned depressing.

So yes, I definitely believe that Obama laid a trap for the GOP and they fell right into it. But I also wish that we weren't talking about the damned deficit in the first place and instead were talking about jobs. It's easy to see how beating ones head against that and similar walls for months on end can lead to burn out.

My mood fluctuates but I'm hopeful about the future (and am generally a fairly optimistic and happy fellow) even if I feel like the present state of affairs is an unholy mess and we have no clear path out, or apparent leadership to get there.

Someone print up some bumper stickers...

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:46:00 +0000

DougJ,

You go to war with the neoliberal party you have, not the social democrat party you wish you had.

The Obama Budget Trap

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:30:00 +0000

My latest at The Faster Times,

In his speech on Wednesday the President closed the trap that he laid for Republicans in 2012. It was, in terms of sheer gamesmanship, a master stroke. And, best of all, neither Representatives Paul Ryan, or Eric Cantor, nor any of the legion of dutiful GOP shock troops, nor any of the leading Republican Presidential candidates has any idea that they have been ensnared by Obama.

Meep.Meep.

Radio Silence

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:25:00 +0000

Sorry for the radio silence here as of late. More blogging to come shortly. I just haven't had much to say as of lately and have been feeling a bit burned out.

On the upside I have had a lot of time to read some really great books. So I got that going for me... which is nice.

Today in Republican Sociopaths

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 17:12:00 +0000

A gang raped 11 year old had it coming and child labor laws are unconstitutional.

Your modern GOP.

Is our children learning? Yes!

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:50:00 +0000

Yes! Despite the chicken-little tactics of education reformers our schools are performing pretty well actually by historical standards. Kevin Drum points us to a Brookings Institute study which shows the following,

The... numbers show how American students compared to the average of the entire dozen countries. In 1964, we were 0.35 standard deviations below the mean. In the most recent tests, we were only 0.06 and 0.18 standard deviations below the mean. In other words, our performance had improved.

And here is the study's author blowing a hole in the myth of America as the world's former leader in education,

This is a myth. The United States never led the world. It was never number one and has never been close to number one on international math tests. Or on science tests, for that matter....[And] there has been no sharp decline—in either the short or long run. The United States performance on PISA has been flat to slightly up since the test’s inception, and it has improved on Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) since 1995.

This is the big fallacy in the school reform movement - that we are somehow falling behind and doing much worse today than we were 30, 40, or 50 years ago. It's simply not true.

We do need to better serve our poor and urban students but so far no one has been able to demonstrate that privatizing schools through vouchers and charters and making teachers easier to fire has actually improved education outcomes. At best schools that operate under these reforms do about as well as any other school.

So the vitriol aimed at teachers and unions is misguided at best and likely in many cases is more about politics and personal animus, not simply the best interest of the kids as reformers claim.

Answering the Sunday Question for Liberals... Where does the Cabinet rank?

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 23:32:00 +0000

Jonathan Bernstein asks a weekly question of liberals and conservatives. I'm going to try and answer him as best as I can most weeks. Here is his question for today,

Obama's cabinet: who are the winners so far? Losers? Who do you hope will move up to a bigger job? Who do you hope will disappear and never be heard from again? Biggest disappointment? Biggest (positive) surprise?

Really interesting question. I am not going to have something to say on each Cabinet member but here is where I see a few of them...

#Winning!!

1. Hilary Clinton. Arguably she had the biggest job starting on Day 1, maybe you put Tim Geithner ahead of her. Regardless, she was charged with fixing State after the George W. Bush administration and restoring some sense of America's honor around the globe. I think she has done a solid job in the face of numerous international crisis as well.

2. Hilda Solis. She has given DOL a new direction and new life. Much like Eric Holder and his revitalization of the Civil Rights Division, Solis' has brought new energy and focus to long dormant agencies which protect worker safety. The West Virginia mining disaster helped remind us all just how important these agencies really are.

Here is a great profile of Solis from The Nation from a year ago.

Losers

1. Tim Geithner. Given his tax issues he's lacked credibility from day one. He projects all of the aura of charisma of a flacid penis. And his role within the cabinet appeared to be on the level of Larry Summers pool boy. The economy has stabilized somewhat but Geithner is widely reviled in the public for all of the above named reasons and then some. People hate him so much that they just assume he used to work at Goldman Sachs - he's not.

Good piece from The Atlantic from April, 2010 on Tim Geithner.

2. Ken Salazar. After the debacle in Louisiana and the related Minerals Management Service screw-up (wherein Salazar utterly and inexplicably failed to implement reforms of a known corrupt high-profile agency until BP helped push it to the front-page - again) I really can't believe he still has his job. I really did not like him as my Senator but I felt that Interior would be a good fit for him given his background. But Salazar has failed and failed publicly, his image is forever tarnished.

Want to Make Him a Winner but...

Eric Holder. As terrible as John Ashcroft was (and I am from Missouri, so I am well aware of the depths of his depravity) the reign of Alberto Gonzalez is just an utter embarrassment. So Holder had quite a crater to pull the DOJ out of and I think on many, many fronts he has. The Civil Rights division in particular has been utterly resurrected. But then there are the civil liberties issues as most recently highlighted by the Bradley Manning fiasco. My gut tells me (or possibly it is just a naive hope) that Holder's heart isn't into it and that the White House is driving these decisions but nonetheless Holder is out front defending them. So I can't make him a winner, but I also have a hard time labeling the man a loser too - he most decidedly is not.

I highly recommend this GQ piece from last year on Holder, it cuts to the heart of the internal conflict which Holder is facing.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Ray LaHood. The guy is on my television twice a week. I'm not really sure what he does besides prepare for, then give, then de-brief from press conferences. He seemed to pursue Toyota vigorously (though plaintiff's attorneys are gunning for the Toyota-exonerating NHTSA report) but his anti-texting zealotry reminds me of C. Everett Koop. Not that he's wrong mind you, just that I'm not used to seeing a Secretary of Transportation taking such a public stance on anything. Where any of them like this over seat-belts or airbags back in the 70's and 80's?

If you're not reading E.D. Kain at Forbes...

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 22:45:00 +0000

Then you are missing some of the best writing anywhere on workers, unions, Wisconsin and economics. E.D. is not some militant leftist (like yours truly?) either, his knee-jerk reaction is not pro-union (like yours truly?). And he self-identifies as a conservative - though that may have changed recently.He writes in a wonderfully lucid fashion and he has the intellectual ability (and patience) to expose the fabulists and their propaganda.

Here is E.D. today highlighting a speech from Michael Moore in Wisconsin,

“America is not broke,” he says. It’s just terribly unequal. Four hundred of the very wealthiest Americans have more wealth than 155 million Americans on the other end of the scale combined. And yet it’s the teachers who need to sacrifice. This is the new class war.

My only quibble is that I don't believe that this is the new class-war. Rather it's been the status quo for close to 40 years.

And here is E.D. calling Matt Yglesias out for being... well... Matt Yglesias and branding those opposed to his particular brand of school "reform" as edu-nighlists,

Nihilism is essentially a philosophy of meaninglessness. If you’re a nihilist, you don’t believe that life has meaning. Graft that into Matt’s ‘edu-nihilism’. He’s basically saying that anyone not on the reform side of the table thinks that nothing at all can be done to fix our education system. Reform is meaningless.

Granted, I think we’ve taken reform way too far, and I think rumors of the appalling state of our nations’ schools are very exaggerated, but nobody in the edu-nihilist crowd that I know of is suggesting that we do nothing at all to make schools better. We just don’t think school-choice, the corporatizing of public schools, and a system of deeply flawed testing and accountability measures are the best way to go about it – and we certainly don’t think blaming teachers is the right approach.

But we edu-nihilists actually do have a lot of ideas. I suggested universal pre-K education in my last post. If that’s too pie-in-the-sky then there are plenty of others. Some critics of the choice and accountability movement have suggested national voluntary curriculum and standards so that kids in Arizona and kids in Connecticut are learning at the same level, or at least have the same basic set of guidelines. The point is, there are really tons of ideas being floated. And none of them fuel the sort of reforms we’re seeing with Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

I don’t think Matt Yglesias wants to see massive teacher layoffs or the sort of heavy-handed tactics Scott Walker is taking against teachers. But he and other reformers like him have praised other similarly top-down approaches in New York and elsewhere. Barack Obama and Arne Duncan have as well. When you start blaming teachers and looking for ways to constantly identify and punish bad teachers, this is the logical conclusion. Scott Walker is just an outgrowth of this movement, emboldened by a national dialogue that has placed teachers on the altar of school reform and that has labeled anyone who might choose to defend them as edu-nihilists.

Thank you E.D. And I would like to add that Matt Yglesias is a proudly ignorant and arrogant son of privilege. And he's kind of an asshole about it too.

McCain, Qahafi, and No Fly Zones

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 22:19:00 +0000

Allow me to steal an entire post from Atrios,

Today on This Week:

On getting President Gadhafi of Libya to step down, McCain said: “He's insane. But perhaps the people around him would begin to depart the sinking ship, and by, again, a no-fly zone, declaring our assistance or support of a provisional government, perhaps which is being formed up now. There's a lot of steps we can take, providing significant humanitarian aid.”

August 2009 on the Twitter:

Late evening with Col. Qadhafi at his "ranch" in Libya - interesting meeting with an interesting man.

And one day earlier:

TRIPOLI, Aug 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator John McCain praised Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi for his peacemaking role in Africa and said Congress would support expanding ties, Libyan state news agency Jana said on Friday.

Ties? Oh. Ties.

Since Washington ended its major sanctions on Libya, U.S. energy companies including ExxonMobil and Chevron have been active in Libya.

This isn't a particularly novel point but rarely is it spelled out so blatantly. I endorse Robert Farley and Seth Masket on this no-fly-zone business

Wisconsin in 2011 or Flint in 1937?

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:06:00 +0000

I had though that the comparisons between Wisconsin and the Flint sit-down strike of 1937 were a bit over-wrought. But now I may need to rethink that position. From the AFL-CIO blog,

As we speak, Gov. Scott Walker & the Senate R’s are literally having the windows of the capital welded shut to keep people from passing food into the building to the people inside.

Our attorneys are collecting affidavits from the people who witnessed this, along with people who have been illegally denied access to a public, government, building.

We will be filing for a TRO [temporary restraining order] to open the Capitol.
It is a sad for democracy when Governor Walker and his R Sena

FPI, Son of PNAC, urges military intervention in Libya

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 23:31:00 +0000

Al-Jazeera English reports,

In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage US intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to "immediately" prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and end the violence that is believed to have killed well over a thousand people in the past week.

The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served under President George W. Bush, was organised and released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a two-year-old neo-conservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the more-famous – or infamous – Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

If you have any question as to whether or not this a sensible idea, well thought out, and with nothing but the best of intentions motivating the actors look no further than the list of signatories,

Among the letter's signers were former Bush deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Bush's top global democracy and Middle East adviser; Elliott Abrams; former Bush speechwriters Marc Thiessen and Peter Wehner; Vice President Dick Cheney's former deputy national security adviser, John Hannah, as well as FPI's four directors: Weekly Standard editor William Kristol; Brookings Institution fellow Robert Kagan; former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor; and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman.

Also, John McCain and Joe Lieberman.

The only people needed to make this a complete set of "War-Mongering Assholes Who Have Never Been Right About a God-Damned Thing in Their Life" are Cheney and Rumsfeld.

The shifting discourse on Unions

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 01:18:00 +0000

Ever since I was a kid I was used to being the only person in the conversation who had a good opinion of unions.Maybe that was because I was generally the only person who had any first-hand experience with unions? I grew up in a strong union household, marched in the labor day parade every year with my dad. I have fond memories of playing around the union hall as a kid. I saw firsthand what unions could provide - a solid middle-class lifestyle in exchange for a hard day's work. It's always seemed like a good deal to me.

As I have gotten older nothing much has changed. Now I work for a union and I am a member of a union. But I'm still pretty much the only guy in the room who has anything good to say about organized labor. Until the last week.

Now I'm the 3rd, 4th or 5th guy into the conversation who is defending labor.

The "how" of this is obvious, Scott Walker has put basic labor I rights on the front burner of the American public discourse. But I still don't know why there has been such a popular outcry of support for collective bargaining generally and the Wisconsin workers specifically. Maybe unions weren't that unpopular to begin with? Maybe the idea of collective bargaining is viewed as a basic right of all working people, even by those who have never belonged or who don't generally support organized labor in 21st century America? Maybe this is the anti-Tea-Party and the populist economic left simply needed one defining event in order to circle the wagons?

The whole discourse has changed in the last week. It's been a nice feeling to see workers and labor being defended again.

Backing them down?

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 01:01:00 +0000

Good news is spreading, the protests in Wisconsin seem to have put a few GOP governor's on notice and derailed similar measures. MSNBC,

With a wary eye on Wisconsin, Republican leaders in several states are toning down the tough talk against public employee unions and, in some cases, abandoning anti-union measures altogether.

Indiana's governor urged GOP lawmakers to give up on a "right to work" bill for fear the backlash could derail the rest of his agenda. In Ohio, senators plan to soften a bill that would have banned all collective bargaining by state workers. And in Michigan, the Republican governor says he'd rather negotiate with public employees than pick a fight.

And as Greg Sargent notes, the conservatives have been drooling over this fight since November and they seem to have misjudged the public mood,

For all the attention being lavished on the likes of Chris Christie and his supposedly successful formula of targeting public employees as the new "welfare queens," the bigger and more interesting story is that they aren't turning out to be such easy targets, after all.

Apparently YouTube hits do not precisely correlate to popular support in the general public.

Give them enough rope...

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:56:00 +0000

John Cole,

For those of you keeping track, the new wingnut Governor in PA earlier suspended regulations regarding the dumping of gas drilling wastewater into rivers and streams and has suspended the regulation of air pollutants. I’m sure I’m just being hyperbolic and there is actually a very well known free market solution that is rooted in Hayekian principles to address the regulation of private polluters while the public regulatory arm unilaterally disarms. I’ll have to check with Reason magazine, or maybe Sullivan has found a new Mitch Daniels policy that would address this.

The bit about the new wingnut governor could be changed to just about any generic Republican position that is a complete boondoggle for big business and the media narrative will stay essentially the same.

Our only hope is that the new GOP governors over-play their hand ala Scott Walker about 10 more times. As independent executives the governor's can let their respective freak flags fly in a way that your run-of-the-mill Tea-bagging congressman just can't. It seems as though that without the soft rhetoric of the establishment and the smart conservative consultants of Washington directing traffic the unvarnished conservative id is not quite as popular as the Tea-baggers had hoped.

Wisco Crisis Bringing New Comrades to the Party

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:13:00 +0000

I would like to welcome Adam Serwer to the band of blogger labor sympathizers. Here is Adam blasting the WaPo's Richard Cohen,

Obviously there's no one who could possibly understand the greed of Wisconsin's rather modestly compensated public sector workers quite as acutely as a beltway columnist who gets paid to write 700 word columns repeating an argument you read on a blog last week. This sort of maddening, paternalistic commentary about Wisconsin, infantalizing people who actually work for a living as nothing more than a bunch of dirty hippies who need a Real American Hero to stomp them in the face, has given me stronger feelings about the role of unions than I think I've ever had before.

One thing that I have noticed while reading the coverage on the blogs of the showdown in Wisco is that Governor Walker's nakedly transparent power grab has really motivated people to side with labor who were never big labor backers before (not that they were anti-union, it just didn't register). But Walker has not even tried to cover his tracks here and, I think, on the heels of the Hacker - Pierson book which was widely read in the liberal blogosphere you are seeing people really connect the dots between workers rights, unions and the broader liberal movement.

Ezra Klein has done great work recently, Jon Chait and Matt Yglesias as well. Kevin Drum has been absolutely on fire, he has had no less than a half-dozen wonderful posts on the topic in recent days as well as a fantastic article in the next edition of Mother Jones, that you can read here.

And my friend Sir Charles has had his usual tremendous output on the importance of labor as well - here, here, and here.

Showdown in Wisco

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:44:00 +0000

I've been traveling so I haven't been able to post on the situation in Wisconsin as much as I'd like but my latest at TFT gets to the heart of the issues there.

On the Road Again

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:29:00 +0000

TPM: Wisconsin Senate Dems leave the state to block vote on union busting provisions of budget.

Been Walkin Across the Lawn, Been Wondering Where My Dog Done Gone

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 04:42:00 +0000

Welcome to the newest family member, Joe.

Patriot Act Defeated in House, How Did CO Vote?

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 04:21:00 +0000

The big news this evening is that the House failed to pass the Patriot Act extension due to a procedural manuever that required a 2/3rds vote for passage. The Whips for the GOP apparently struggle with simple math.

OpenCongress has a run down on the 3 major provisions that would be extended and lays out the likely path by which extension will become law despite tonight's vote.

And how did Colorado's House delegation vote?

In support of extension were: Mike Coffman R-6th; Corey Gardner R-4th; Ed Perlmutter D-7th; Scott Tipton R-3rd;

In opposition: Diana DeGette D-1st; Jared Polis D-2nd

And failing to vote at all we have Doug Lamborn R-5th

Countering Friedersdorf and Wilkinson on Public Employee Unions

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 01:17:00 +0000

An email that I sent to Conor via Andrew Sullivan's blog concerning his sophisticated "heh indeed" to a highly dubious Wil Wilkinson post on public employee unions,

I think there are some major holes in your and Wilkinson's argument.

First, Wilkinson's piece employs a common fallacy - the segregation of public employees from taxpayers. Public employees are taxpayers! They live in the cities and states where they work which means that they too benefit from general government spending. It's not public employees vs. taxpayers because public employees are plainly taxpayers as well.

Second, Wilkinson states "public employees constitute a politically powerful bloc with or without unions." This just isn't true. Name me any segment of society that exerts any influence at all over our politics which isn't organized? You can't because, of course, that's not how representative democracy works. Seniors organize as AARP, gun owners organize through the NRA, business owners have the NFIB. A union for public employees is no different, it is simply a vehicle for public employees to speak with one voice and exert influence on the political process. And, back to my first point, since public employees are also taxpayers they have the same right to petition their government as every other taxpayer and citizen.

Third, Wilkinson and you both seem to rely on the fallacy that somehow if public employee unions disappeared that the issues of their members would no longer be politicized. Somehow in your world it is the employees that are at fault for politicizing public policy and budgeting. This is absurd. With or without unions there would be heated political debate about taxes, budget cuts and the value of public employees. The only thing that eliminating public employee unions would do is to eliminate the collective voice of public employees. I would like for you to explain to me why a taxpayer-who-happens-to-be-a-

public-employee has less of a right to speak out about the issues that matter to him or her than a taxpayer-who-happens-to-be-a-gun-owner/senior-citizen/small-business-owner?

Can you explain to me what you mean by this?
"they'd enjoy the gains that accrue to people when the narrow interests they care a great deal about are adjudicated by legislative bodies with no corresponding lobby on the other side."
If I understand you correctly I think you are arguing that there is no corresponding lobby on the other side of public services? You can't honestly believe that, can you? What do you think is Grover Norquist's job? The Independence Institute? The Tea Party? There is obviously a well organized lobby which opposes public services and public employees.

Fourth, both you and Wilkinson focus on wages and benefits only and act as though unions are able to simply extract concessions from the states through shear will power. Of course any bill dealing with public employee compensation must pass through an elected legislature (or city council) and be signed into law by an elected governor (or mayor). There is no short-cut to this process. So again, why shouldn't all taxpayers be able to avail themselves of the democratic process? Why are some taxpayers considered to be less than citizens by you and Wilkinson?

Fifth, the California link is a cheap stunt. You seek to smear millions of public employees and their unions by pointing to an obvious outlier and, by implication, lay blame for the systemic collapse of policy and politics in that state on public employees and their unions. There are of course thousands of interest groups, politicians and political actors who have contributed to the mess in California. And again, a union cannot unilaterally force concessions on benefits and wages. You and Wilkinson pursue a line of thinking which totally absolves the elected officials themselves from any responsibility for their actions. No interest group can effect change without friendly politicians.

Besides these glaring flaws in your argument I would also add that public employee unions advocate for far more than improved wages and benefi Your and Wilkinson's arguments betray an obvious contempt for public employees, as though they are somehow second class citizens. They advocate for improved and expanded public services. They advocate for more efficient government services. They blow the whistle on waste, fraud and abuse. Public employee unions exert no more or less of a negative influence on our politics than any other interest group. Public employees are no more or less taxpayers than any other citizen of their city and state. They have the same right to be heard and participate in this democracy as you or Wil Wilkinson.

Understanding the Kristol Attack on Beck

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 16:44:00 +0000

Noting that Bill Kristol has been on the offensive against Glenn Beck's delusions Adam Serwer asks,

I'm actually a little confused as to where the substantive daylight is between Beck, Kristol and Lowry on the connections between "caliphate-promoters and the American left." After all, Kristol's group Keep America Safe employed arguments developed by Andrew McCarthy that the Obama Justice Department was filled with terrorist sympathizers for an entire ad campaign, and Lowry's magazine employs McCarthy, who literally wrote an entire book explaining how the American left and "radical Islamists" both have a leader in the current president. Is Beck's incoherent rant really any less crazy than McCarthy's theory that Obama's relatively hawkish foreign policy is actually meant to serve Islamists who think that "al-Qaeda has outlived its usefulness?"...

Anyway I don't get it. Conservatives have spent the last two years espousing the links between "caliphate-promoters and the American left." Why turn on Beck? Because he's just doing it wrong?

Yes. I think that's exactly it. Glenn Beck is widely viewed as a buffoon by the American public and the American media. Bill Kristol meanwhile is a respected member of the political and media elite. If your Bill Kristol your biggest fear is that people outside of movement conservatives will start to explicitly connect the dots between you and Glenn Beck's Crazy Train. You can't afford to be viewed as just another Rodeo Clown. It hurts your personal brand, it damages your magazine and it jeopardizes your influence inside and outside the Republican Party.

How better to establish your Very Serious bona-fide's than to call out Glenn Beck? It doesn't matter if substantively there is a wit of difference between the two of you. All that matters is the style.

DLC Closing: Their Mission of Delivering the Democratic Party to Coroproations Complete

noreply@blogger.com (T.R. Donoghue) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:23:00 +0000

My latest at TFT