The bluing of America

By Carl 

Ted Cruz, the Senator-elect from Texas, has an interesting observation to make:

"If Republicans do not do better in the Hispanic community," he said, "in a few short years Republicans will no longer be the majority party in our state." He ticked off some statistics: in 2004, George W. Bush won forty-four per cent of the Hispanic vote nationally; in 2008, John McCain won just thirty-one per cent. On Tuesday, Romney fared even worse.

"In not too many years, Texas could switch from being all Republican to all Democrat," he said. "If that happens, no Republican will ever again win the White House. New York and California are for the foreseeable future unalterably Democrat. If Texas turns bright blue, the Electoral College math is simple. We won't be talking about Ohio, we won't be talking about Florida or Virginia, because it won't matter. If Texas is bright blue, you can't get to two-seventy electoral votes. The Republican Party would cease to exist. We would become like the Whig Party. Our kids and grandkids would study how this used to be a national political party. 'They had Conventions, they nominated Presidential candidates. They don't exist anymore.'"

Long-time and careful readers of my prose will recognize this statement. I've long held that the U.S. is due to swing the political pendulum back to liberal thinking and policies.

Normally, pendulums lose momentum and gravitate towards the center, and that will eventually happen, but in this instance, Karl Rove and the Republicans, in an effort to create what Rove termed a "permanent Republican majority" have pulled the pendulum really far to the right.

And you know what happens when you pull a pendulum really hard: it swings back, fast and hard.

Cruz is one of a handful of Republicans -- Marco Rubio and Susana Martinez are among the others -- who could prevent this from happening, but it seems really unlikely to occur. It's pretty clear that Florida (Rubio) and New Mexico (Martinez) have cemented the Democratic Party as the party of the minority vote. But that's not the issue, identity politics. It's something much more basic and subtle.

I want you to think back to the election campaign, particularly the general election: can you name one Republican proposal for the next four years that didn't involve lowering taxes for the wealthy?

Meanwhile, Obama still has a raft of policies from his 2008 campaign that he can call upon at any time and propose. This is what we might term "leadership."

People respond to this. People in trouble especially respond to proposals that will lift us all out of trouble. It's fine to propose a tax cut -- claiming it's for all but in truth, it benefits the wealthy the most -- but when people aren't so worried about their next paycheck as their next car or their house or their retirement or their children, short-term proposals lose an awful lot of their luster.

If Hurricane Sandy benefitted President Obama at all -- apart from looking presidential, I mean -- it is on this very subtle point. Sandy showed that everything we build up for ourselves to ensure a future can be wiped off the face of the earth in an instant, and then where do you begin again?

Tax cuts help, to be sure, but they don't address the underlying problem: jobs don't pay as much as they used to and second jobs are really embarrassing.

Wage growth will help Americans. To play with tax cuts at this point in time is preposterous. It's like giving someone a five percent discount off a TV, when what they need is a job that pays enough so they can pay for that TV out of their own pocket, not borrowing the money.

This, above all other reasons, is why I believe America is heading for a progressive agenda over the coming decades. People are tired of crumbs and want the bread, and minorities are only the canary in the coalmine on this point.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Even Newt Gingrich says Romney's a liar

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Okay, he may not have said it outright, but it was nice to see The Newt admitting today that Romney was, oh, something other than honest about his tax plan during last Wednesday's debate:

This morning on Meet The Press, Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs confronted Newt Gingrich on a fundamental inconsistency in Romney's description of his tax plan. During the primary debates, Romney insisted that everyone in America would get a 20% tax cut, including the 1%. But last week's during his debate with Obama, Romney insisted that his tax cut would not reduce taxes at all for wealthy Americans.

Gingrich acknowledged the clear inconsistency, saying "I think it's clear he changed." He described the change as "good politics."

In this case, of course, "good politics" means... lying to the American people.

Because Romney is still proposing a massive tax cut for the rich. (It's pretty much the centerpiece of the entire Romney-Ryan campaign, just as it's the centerpiece of Republicanism generally -- shift the tax burden even more unfairly down onto everyone else.)

There hasn't been a change of policy, just a change of rhetoric.

It was just one of many lies Romney spewed on Wednesday, and no doubt there will be many more to come.

The deluge of dishonesty -- the only hope Mitt has -- will continue.

Behind the Ad: Romney's plan to raise taxes on the middle class

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: Priorities USA (pro-Obama Super PAC).

Where: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

What's going on: This ad, by the leading outside Democratic group supporting President Obama's re-election, highlights a study by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center to suggest that Mitt Romney's plans would raise taxes on the middle class while cutting taxes for the wealthy.

The title of the ad is "We the People," and, predictably, it appeals to middle class voters consistent with the message we heard at the DNC.

According to The New York Times:

The advertisement cites the Tax Policy Center as concluding that a middle class family would pay an average of $2,000 more to help pay for a $250,000 tax cut for some of the wealthiest Americans.

The Romney campaign has aggressively pushed back against the analysis from the Tax Policy Center, saying it is based on unfair assumptions. Other independent analysts say Mr. Romney's tax plan is not sufficiently detailed to offer such a conclusive analysis.

But the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has said that it stands by its conclusion that Mr. Romney's proposals would mean big tax cuts for the highest-income taxpayers and increases for everyone else.

The premise for the Tax Policy Center's position is this:

"A reform proposal that meets the five goals" that Mr. Romney has outlined for overhauling the tax code "would have to raise burdens on middle-class households," the three authors of the analysis wrote in a nine-page response to the criticism.

That is inevitable, they said, mainly as a consequence of two of Mr. Romney's five goals: His insistence that any tax overhaul should be revenue-neutral, neither reducing nor increasing annual budget deficits, and that it should protect or even sweeten existing tax breaks for savings and investment like those for dividends and capital gains income.

Since Mitt Romney has no interest in telling the American people exactly what he would do, it seems reasonable to make assumptions about how his tax policy would work based on available information. No?



(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Mitt Romney promises to do the impossible

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yesterday on Meet the Press, Mitt Romney, having fully embraced the strategy of lying to the American people and counting on mass ignorance to elect him (because his policies don't exactly stand up to reality-based scrutiny), said that he would "not [reduce] taxes on high-income taxpayers." Rather, he would "[bring] down the rate of taxation, but also [bring] down deductions and exemptions at the high end so that the revenues stay the same, the taxes people pay stay the same — middle income people are going to get a break, but at the high end the tax coming in stays the same."

As Think Progress points out, however:

Romney's plan, in reality, would provide the very richest Americans a $264,000 tax break. It also maintains current tax rates on investments that are otherwise set to expire at the end of the year, and it eliminates the estate tax, paid by only the richest one-quarter of one percent of Americans.

Romney is apparently arguing that he will raise enough revenue through the elimination of tax loopholes that benefit the rich to totally offset the tax cut he provides them, though an analysis from the Tax Policy Center found that to be a mathematical impossibility. There simply isn't enough revenue to be generated through the closure of those loopholes to offset the massive cost of Romney's plan, and even if it was possible, Romney again declined to provide host David Gregory a single loophole he would favor closing.

Romney also repeated that he would both balance the budget and reduce taxes on middle-income Americans, another mathematical impossibility. To provide the full tax cut, Romney would have to either abandon his pledge to maintain current revenue levels or raise taxes on middle-class families by as much as $2,000. Doing both, as Romney asserts he will, violates elementary laws of arithmetic.

The Romney campaign has already said it won't be "dictated by fact checkers." Apparently Mitt won't let himself be dictated by mathematics either. (Math has such blatant liberal bias, after all.)

If you think 2+2=5 and don't like thinking for yourself, you're just the sort of rube he's counting on.

The fiscal havoc Republicans have wreaked

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Republicans are in Tampa this week blaming President Obama for... well, for pretty much everything, but mostly, it would seem (based on Christie's speech last night), for not being serious enough and so not doing enough about the bloated budget deficit and ballooning national debt.

The propaganda will be in heavy supply, and Romney is being touted as, and will tout himself as when he takes the podium Thursday night, just the sort of responsible fiscal conservative America needs at this time of fiscal crisis.

Don't believe a word of it.

First, of course, there's the Romney-Ryan (and orthodox Republican) "plan," which mostly focuses on tax cuts for the wealthy (you know, people like... Mitt Romney), paying for them, sort of, by crushing government into oblivion -- there are a lot of unspecified spending cuts, though not to national defense, which is indeed rather bloated, unspecified largely because the devil, as they say, is in the details, or in other words because any such cuts would be unpopular, along with entitlement reform of the kind that would essentially destroy hugely popular and hugely successful programs like Social Security and Medicare -- that is, summing up, paying for them by burdening everyone else, the vast majority of Americans who aren't rich.

You won't hear any of that in Tampa, though you'll hear a lot about how Obama and the Democrats are waging class war and unfairly picking on the wonderful job creating "makers" who just happen to be rich, boo-hoo for them, pity the poor souls and their god-given wealth, and you'll hear a lot about how the only way to get the economy moving again, and to resolve the fiscal crisis, is to reintroduce some serious trickling down. Oh, they won't call it that, but that's what they mean when they propose slashing taxes (on the rich, though they'll claim it's much broader than that) and spending (mostly for programs that benefit everyone else).

But then, second, there's this... the fact that the current fiscal crisis is largely a Republican creation, a product of the gluttonous Bush years, when the GOP controlled the White House and Capitol Hill and ran roughshod all over fiscal responsibility through tax cutting and warmongering.

Here's where a graphic would help, and helpfully Ezra Klein provides one:

Pretty clear, no? As Klein explains:

The top layer, the orange one, that's the Bush tax cuts. There is no single policy we have passed that has added as much to the debt, or that is projected to add as much to the debt in the future, as the Bush tax cuts, which Republicans passed in 2001 and 2003 and Obama and the Republicans extended in 2010. To my knowledge, all elected Republicans want to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Democrats, by and large, want to end them for income over $250,000.

In second place is the economic crisis. That's the medium blue. Recessions drive tax revenue down because people lose their jobs, and when you lose your job, you lose your income, and when you lose your income, you can't pay taxes. Tax revenues in recent years have been 15.4 percent of GDP — the lowest level since the 1950s. Meanwhile, they drive social spending up, because programs like unemployment insurance and Medicaid automatically begin spending more to help the people who have been laid off.

Then comes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's the red. And then recovery measures like the stimulus. That's the light blue, and the part for which you can really blame Obama and the Democrats– though it’s worth remembering that the stimulus had to happen because of a recession that began before Obama entered office, and that the Senate Republicans proposed and voted for a $3 trillion tax cut stimulus that would have added almost four times what Obama's stimulus added to the debt.

Then there's the financial rescue measures like TARP, which is the dark blue line. That's almost nothing, as much of that money has been paid back.

In other words, a largely Republican mess, made worse by a global economic downturn that hardly was Obama's fault. And, indeed, the president has tried to do something about it.

First, he pulled the economy back from the brink of collapse, not least through a stimulus package that Republicans tried to block and through rescuing the domestic auto industry, which some Republicans, including Romney, also tried to block.

So contrary to Republican propagands, it's not that Obama has done so poorly at fixing the economy, it's that the economy would be so much worse were it not for him, were Republicans the ones calling the shots.

Which in many ways they have, controlling the House since 2010, using the filibuster like a disloyal opposition in the Senate, and pursuing a course of absolute obstructionism at every turn, even when the president was handing them a deal that was incredibly friendly to conservatism: "Obama has proposed a multi-trillion dollar deficit reduction plan. Republicans just refused to pass it." He was more than willing to compromise, even to put key entitlement programs on the table, much to the chagrin of progressives, but... no. Never. Refusing to hand him any sort of victory, Republicans chose to block any measure other than one steeped in their right-wing extremism, like the Ryan budget, that aimed to get the country's fiscal house in order.

All of which makes their rhetoric about fiscal responsibility, about how Romney will do what needs to be done, complete and utter bullshit.

"Ryan could hurt Romney in Florida"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

That, via Politico, is the lead headline on the front page of today's Miami Herald. The headline for the Web version is similar: "Ryan could be a drag on Romney in Florida."

Of course, it didn't have to be this way for Romney. Florida is just the sort of swing state he can win: badly struggling economy (foreclosures galore), large military and ex-military population, lots and lots of white seniors.

Someone like Chris Christie or Bobby Jindal, or especially the local Marco Rubio, would have helped him here, but, no, he went and picked Paul Ryan, who of course is best known for a hyper-partisan, completely irresponsible right-wing budget plan, the dishonestly named "Path to Prosperity," that would replace Medicare with a voucher program (ending the program as we know it), slash tax rates for the rich (like Romney), impose massive spending cuts on everything but defence, and in assaulting the very foundations of the federal government essentially ondo the social compact upon which the vast majority of Americans rely.

You really think all that's going to play well in Florida, particularly the attack on Medicare, a plan that even Newt Gingrich called "radical" and "right-wing social engineering" (before caving in to pressure and embracing Ryan's far-right Republican orthodoxy)?

Yeah, good luck with that.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/11/2946098/how-paul-ryan-could-be-a-drag.html#storylink=cpy

Speaking of austerity

By Carl 

When you compare them head-to-head, the Obama and Romney tax plans are nearly identical:

Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, is offering a 20 percent tax cut for everyone. Given the mood of the conservatives in the United States today, that may not surprise you. But even President Barack Obama, who is routinely described as a socialist by his opponents, is peddling a plan under which 99 percent of Americans would pay less than they did under the last Democrat in the White House, Bill Clinton.

A 1% difference really is no difference, unless you're in the one percent. But they can afford it, to be sure. But here's the interesting thing:

According to the International Monetary Fund, in 2011, among the world's 30 leading countries economically, only in New Zealand and in Japan was government revenue a lower share of gross domestic product than in the United States. Countries like Australia, Estonia, Ireland and Switzerland, which tend to favor low taxes and a small state, have government revenue that accounts for more of G.D.P. than does the United States. 

The Internal Revenue Service is relatively restrained, too, compared with recent history. In 1945, at the close of World War II, federal tax receipts were 20.4 percent of G.D.P. (expenditures, by the way, were 41.9 percent, putting the federal budget deficit at 21.5 percent, compared with 8.7 percent in 2011). In 1952, the year the Republican Dwight Eisenhower was elected president, federal government revenue was 19 percent of G.D.P. In 1988, the last year of Ronald Reagan's transformational conservative presidency, the federal tax take was 18.2 percent of G.D.P.

Compare those figures with that of today, when a Democrat is in the White House, nearly half of Americans think their taxes are too high, and both parties are promising to keep taxes low for all, or, in the case of the Democrats, 99 percent of Americans: In 2011, government revenue was 15.4 percent of G.D.P., lower than it was at any time during the Eisenhower or Reagan eras. Like anorexics, who think they are grossly fat when they are very thin, the American body politic is suffering from a national version of body dysmorphia, with nearly half the country believing taxes are high, when they are comparatively and historically low. 

So everyone agrees that taxes are too high, except history.

Obama's plan at least has the weight of recent history on his side: when Bill Clinton lowered taxes on the middle class and poor but raised them (a whole 4%!) on the rich, the economy skyrocketed from the doldrums of the first Bush recession to have the greatest growth in human history AND created budget surpluses, something even the so-called "Reagan boom" -- which only happened after he raised the taxes he had lowered far too much -- could not achieve.

Indeed, Clinton's economy was so great that we very nearly paid off the national debt. Had those policies continued in place, had the three Bush tax cuts not been passed, and two insignificant little gnats not been invaded for few rational reasons -- meaning Bush would have taken the dire warnings the Clinton policy experts levelled seriously and prevented September 11 -- we might still be on the path to prosperity even now.

See, here's the thing: to look at the economy now and forget those eight years of mishandling is to exam why a bridge collapsed without looking at the corroded metal braces. You might come up with some logical explanation-- too much weight, unsafe drivers-- but in the end, you've missed the point entirely.

We were in the midst of a mild recession when George W Bush took office. After the dot-com bubble burst, we had growth of less than 2% and finally dipped into a contraction as Bush took office. But by that summer, we had nearly reversed that and started growing slowly.

And then we double-dipped in 2002. Despite the tax cuts. Despite the spending on ramping up for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite the private sector panicking that al Qaeda was looking over our shoulders for an opportunity to strike again.

Indeed, it wasn't until the third quarter of 2003 that the U.S. began a recovery.

We were almost out in 2001! And you'd think that all the economic stimulus of three tax cuts and two wars and all the homeland security spending -- on the scale of billions when you include private and public sector spending -- would have pulled an already recovering economy straight back up.

And you'd be wrong. Indeed, and here's where we get to this current recession, it turns out that the prime motivator in ending the Bush recession was the move by the Federal Reserve to drop its discount rater (the federal funds rate) from 1.75% to 1%, in steps. This dropped the prime rate to about 4% or so (it generally runs three percent above the federal funds rate, which is the overnight rate that banks can borrow money from each other), and then came all those mortgage refinancings.

Which begat more refinancings. Which begat the "ownership society" of Bush's second term. Which begat subprime mortgages. Which begat derivates of CDOs and CMOs and all those lovely acronyms to represent meaningless valueless gambles disguised as "investments."

And so here we are, still talking about lowering taxes when what we need is a little fiscal discipline and a little fat over the meat on the bone. We need to raise government revenue and have that government spend it to benefit the greater good of all us, get rid of the rust and make the bridge stronger so that we don't grit our teeth and grip the wheel tightly each time we drive over it.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

"We can do this": Not really live-blogging SOTU 2012

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And so it begins...

I have no intention of really live-blogging President Obama's address night. I'm just going to sit here, drink my Traquair Jacobite Ale from Innerleithen, Scotland (a strong beer flavored with coriander), and comment at random on a variety of things, some of them having to do with the SOTU.

No Americans fighting in Iraq in nine years. And Osama bin Laden is "not a threat to this country." True on the first point, not so much on the second. Osama is still powerful, even (or especially) in death. But I get the point. Obama has ended an unpopular war but is anything but a pacifist. He's a militarist, too, and he got the baddest of the bad guys. Trump that, Mitt! -- or... Newt?!

What theater, though. How fitting that the SOTU is on the same day as the Oscar nominations. (I know, the Tonys are theater. But you get the point.)

"What's at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We must reclaim them." Ah, Obama the non-partisan. But a good case to make in a speech that, let's face it, is more or less the opening salvo of Campaign 2012 for Obama. You'll have to find the partisanship between the lines, it seems.

The president is making the case for recovery: businesses are hiring, jobs are coming back, new rules are in place to prevent shit from happening. Fantastic. "I will not return to the policies that brought about this crisis in the first place." Something like that. I just wish I had full confidence in his sincerity. He's done too much for Wall Street for me to believe that he means it -- or, rather, that he'll back up what he means with action, and lasting change.

Well, we heard this before the speech... Osama is dead, GM is alive and kicking. He just made the second point. "The American automotive industry is back." (The quotes may be slightly off, by the way. I'm doing the best I can.)

Message to Americans: Your manufacturing base is not coming back. Sorry. It may get better, and there's certainly an opportunity for innovation to improve domestic manufacturing, but the world has changed -- and it's not changing back. Just ask Apple. Billions and billions of dollars in earnings and cash, but where does it make its iconic "American" products? But, sure, go ahead and try to deal with outsourcing and stop companies from avoiding taxes.

Ah, corporate tax cuts. Of course. What else is new?

Oooh, Eric Cantor looks pissed. Is it because Obama didn't show up with a hammer and sickle?

Don't get me wrong. Policy-wise, I'm for most of this. It's fine. And certainly preferable to what the GOP has to offer. But it's all quite delusional nonetheless. Because, of course, if you tell the truth in American politics, you're doomed. Just ask Jimmy Carter.

"Americans will always win." If there are fair trading practices. Like I said: delusional.

Education... something something something... teachers... something something something... Seriously, it's all good. Though Boner -- sorry, Boehner -- looks unimpressed. I guess he doesn't think kids should stay in school.

Okay, there's no point following this. It's all about speaking points, issue after issue. It's about how the speech will be reported in the media: President Obama said a, b, c, d, etc. I just say, though, there's not a lot that's terribly compelling in this speech so far. He's moving from issue to issue, avoiding partisanship, offering some delusional/aspirational goals, along with a few concrete policy proposals, but that's about it. "We should be working on comprehensive immigration reform now." Okay, but how? And do you really think Congress will be sending you any sort of meaningful reform package anytime soon? Of course not. It's just about hitting the right notes. Like... equal pay for women! Well, fine. Who's against that... other than the Republicans? "Expand tax relief to small businesses." Great. And?

Sorry, I don't mean to be so negative. I know he's doing what he has to do. It's all part of the theater of the SOTU. And I know that leadership requires the communication of such aspirational goals. But I'm not sure what the unifying theme of this speech is. What philosophy, if you will, is driving the president? Or if not philosophy, what vision? Maybe it's coming when/if he ties it all up.

Forget the laundry list of policy proposals for a moment. What is this speech about? Honestly, I'm not sure.

Sullivan, who's live-blogging tonight, of course:

And now a Santorum-style focus on manufacturing -- and the same old abuse of the tax code to influence the economy. This is industrial policy, based on populism. It isn't unleashing the free market through tax reform. It's a throwback to paleo-liberalism. Tax breaks and subsidies to keep jobs at home. It's spitting in the wind of the global economy -- and it fails to grasp government's proper role. Workers here will never be cost-competitive with the Chinese. This is fantasy -- and cheap populism.

I have a different view of "government's proper role" than Andrew does -- I think it should have an activist role to try to rectify capitalism's injustices -- but I tend to agree with this. What we're hearing tonight is populist nationalism. Maybe that's the theme, the vision, the "philosophy." 

And, yes, it's all quite "vapid" (while making the tax code more and more complicated).

More Sullivan:

This speech is beginning to make Bill Clintons' look like clear and visionary. But people loved Clinton's long laundry list of micro-policies. I think this is the worst SOTU Obama has given. But maybe it will work. It sure seems like it has been put through a software program to pander to various industries.

I agree it's the worst, trying to think back to the others (through the haze of this ale). It just seems overly processed, as if lines were approved by focus groups and then glued together.

But who can object to "a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans." Republicans, of course! Once more, I hope he's serious and actually follows through on this. It might help if his presidency weren't sponsored by Goldman Sachs.

Uh-oh, now he's going after millionaires. Class warfare! That's what we'll hear from Romney et al. What we're hearing is that the Republican response will be all about how "divisive" this speech was. As if it's divisive to say that millionaires should pay their fair share of taxes. But that's how Republicans think -- they have no interest in requiring the rich, and especially the super-rich, to sacrifice anything at all, even for the common good.

On foreign policy, especially with respect to the Middle East... again, it's not that I disagree with what he's saying, it's that there's no unifying theme to what he's saying. No argument. No unifying vision. He'll stand up for human dignity... but he'll do everything he can to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons? He may not mean it, but... what... he's still got military action on the table? Military cooperation with Israel -- that got a standing ovation -- hoo-wah! Again, what exactly is Obama's thinking on foreign policy, on America's place and role in the world? Or is it all ad hoc, while sucking up to popularity?

"America is back!" Sure, back from where it was under Bush, but what does that mean? "America is the one indispensable nation..." On behalf of every other country in the world: Screw you, America. Seriously, do we need this sort of jingoism, cloaked as it may be in Obama's liberalism?

Would the world be a significantly worse place without America? Think about it.

And now: the military. De rigueur, of course. (And I'm generally fine with it. Not every U.S. serviceman urinates on corpses. Most of them are honorable men and women. What I object to is Obama's militarism, and, make no mistake, he's a militarist. Maybe not as reckless a militarist as his predecessor, but still one nonetheless. He'd do a lot better if he thought less that the military was the solution and considered other alternatives to the establishment of peace.)

Maybe now we'll get some genuine passion: the mission to get Osama. Oh, please. America is like that Navy Seals unit? That unit is a microcosm of America? "There is no challenge too great, there is no mission too hard..." Uplifting rhetoric, I suppose, but a bit forced, no?

"The state of our union will always be strong." Wait, did he say at any point that it is strong? I mean, I wasn't going to watch because of course we all know the state of the union is awesome. What else was there to say? But I wonder.

Anyway, now I have to stop watching. However mediocre the speech, it's the post-speech punditry that is truly horrendous, and it will be no different tonight.

Here's a final word from Sullivan:

This notion that a country, a democracy, should have the same attitude as troops fighting a war is preposterous and slightly creepy. Yes, we should put aside our differences to get important things done, put aside ideology to focus on solving problems. But we are not a military and the president is not our commander. He is our president. We have every right to argue with one another and to distrust one another at times. The whole idea of getting each others' backs in a boisterous democracy is deeply undemocratic. I do not want to be a citizen trained like a member of the Navy SEALs. Nor should anyone. This isn't Sparta. It's America. And to use the raid on bin Laden as the model of our future cooperation struck me as too easy and trite an analogy.

Yup.

Look, who knows, this speech might have been fine. Gergen just called it "politically shrewd." And that's pretty much as CW as it gets. But it wasn't a powerful speech at all, despite what super-partisan Begala is saying, and while he may have done a lot tonight to reach out to independents, he'll have to do a lot more on the campaign trail to energize those of us who consider ourselves members of his, and his party's base.

Have a good night, everyone.

**********

Okay, just a couple of comments on Mitch Daniels's GOP response:

Not much red meat for the base, but it's got its share of ridiculous partisan points: For example, Obama's "constant disparagement" of business? Really? In what world is this true? How is it anti-business to save Wall Street and the auto industry?

And he praises Steve Jobs as a job creator? What, for creating low-paying jobs in China? Please. I realize this guy is more reasonable than most in his party, but his absolute faith in the private sector (and claim that Obama and Democrats are anti-market and don't trust/believe in the American people) is far more delusional by far than anything Obama said tonight about populist nationalism. In fact, much of what he's saying is just blatantly dishonest.

Ah, there it is: Obama the divider. Please. What a bunch of fucking bullshit. Credit Daniels for saying the rich shouldn't have tax advantages, but otherwise this is just your typical old-school Republican nonsense. Just less crazy, and less crazily put, than what we normally hear from Republicans, Mitt and Newt included.

And now... good night.

Democrats Republicans cave on payroll tax cut extension

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Wait... what? The Republicans caved? Not the Democrats?

Then again, this one would have been hard even for the Dems to lose. Even after caving on the spending bill to keep the government running, they didn't back down when House Republicans demanded unacceptable offsets for a one-year extension of the payroll tax cut, Senate Republicans were already on board for a two-month extension, the extremists in the House were being challenged by members of their own party, like John McCain and Scott Brown, and, in the end, House Republicans faced a simple choice: support a highly popular tax cut or oppose it. Even for this radical bunch of partisan ideologues, the demands of immediate political calculation triumphed.

And it's not just the payroll tax cut, it's unemployment insurance and reimbursement rates for Medicare physicians. Sure, it's just short-term, there will be a go-nowhere conference committee to try to work out the details of a full-year extension, and there will be many more opportunities to cave, but, for the Dems: win, win, win.

What a nice Christmas present. And what a refreshing change.

Oh... so long, John Boehner. You're the biggest loser here.

Smartest Republican of the Day: Scott Brown

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Politico:

Fighting for reelection in deep-blue Massachusetts, GOP Sen. Scott Brown ripped into House Republicans on Tuesday after Speaker John Boehner vowed that his caucus would reject the short-term payroll tax cut extension that nearly 90 percent of senators voted for over the weekend.

"The House Republicans' plan to scuttle the deal to help middle-class families is irresponsible and wrong," Brown said in a statement.

Well, he's right. And I'm sure political self-preservation has nothing to do with it.

A vulnerable freshman, Brown has been running to his left as he prepares for a tough challenge next year from Elizabeth Warren, the presumptive Democratic nominee. While Brown lauded House GOP efforts to secure a full-year extension of the payroll tax cut, he said the two-month Senate compromise would avoid tax hikes for millions of Americans at year's end, when the tax cut expires.


"The refusal to compromise now threatens to increase taxes on hard-working Americans and stop unemployment benefits for those out of work," Brown said. "During this time of divided government, both parties need to be reasonable and come to the negotiating table in good faith. We cannot allow rigid partisan ideology and unwillingness to compromise stand in the way of working together for the good of the American people."

Hey, give him some (but not much) credit, he's smart enough to know what works in Massachusetts -- and throughout much of the rest of the country. Which is to say, he's smart enough to know that being a Republican is toxic, with so many of his fellow Republicans looking completely insane, particularly when the Democrats stand firm on a popular issue and back the GOP into a corner.

(But will the White House cave once again?)

Democrats capitulate to Republican demands, Congress averts government shutdown

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Last night, Congress reached a deal on a massive spending bill that will, among other things, keep the federal government running:

Retreating from their harsh partisan sniping, and perhaps fearing public rebuke, Congressional leaders said Thursday that they had agreed on a large-scale spending measure to keep the government running for the next nine months.

But an accord on extending a payroll tax holiday set to expire at the end of the month remained elusive, with Democrats weighing a possible short-term extension, setting the stage for another fight with Republicans over how to pay for it.  

And there's the problem, or at least the most glaring problem.

President Obama and (presumably) Democrats on Capitol Hill wanted to offset the extension of the payroll tax holiday, which would benefit 160 million workers, by imposing a surtax on income over $1 million, that is, on millionaires. Republicans love tax cuts but, plutocrats that they are, opposed any such tax increase on the wealthy. (Their priority is tax cuts for the wealthy, not tax cuts for everyone else.)

Instead of fighting for the tax cuts for 160 million people, though, Democrats capitulated, taking the surtax off the table and thereby giving up their main bargaining chip.

The spending bill will go through, but, needless to say, the payroll tax holiday battle will continue, with the GOP now holding the upper hand. Democrats are reportedly "considering a plan that would find savings in other ways, including fees on the federal housing finance agencies, and could seek to end certain deductions and other tax benefits for millionaires," but, with Democrats committed to the payroll tax holiday extension, it looks like Republicans will be able to get what they want out of this: not a surtax on millionaires and nothing else that would in any way increase the tax "burden" on millionaires but spending cuts of some kind.

How the hell did this happen? Over to you, Charles Pierce:

Oh, they have made a day of it. First, the pillars of Jell-O in the Senate roll over on the itty-bitty surtax they wanted to lay on the plutocrats to pay for a payroll tax cut for the rest of us. Then, the president announces that he's not going to veto after all the bill in which 400 years of Western jurisprudence is pretty much torn to ribbons and tossed to the wind, albeit slightly less deeply into the wind than the original monstrosity would have liked. And, finally, Ron Wyden of Oregon steps forward to give cover to zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan's latest attempt to "reform" Medicare in the same way that Arthur (Bomber) Harris "reformed" the building codes in Dresden. It's a Very Special Holiday Episode of the long-running hit comedy, Ah, Who Gives a Fk Anyway?

This is an outrage. This is borderline sociopathic. This is so gloriously suicidal that I keep waiting for an angel to come down from heaven to show David Plouffe and Harry Reid what Washington would be like if they'd never been born.

**********

It cannot be emphasized enough. Of the three issues under discussion, the polling data on two of them simply could not be clearer. The American people want taxes raised on the very wealthiest among us, and the American people do not want Paul Ryan's clammy hands anywhere near the Medicare program. Public opinion is (distressingly) ambivalent on the detainee provisions, but it's not overly popular with the people who have to implement it, and it has retired Marine generals throwing bricks at it, and, dammit, the president taught constitutional law, or so we are told repeatedly.

None of these "compromises" will solve a single one of the country's critical problems. None of these "compromises" will create a single job. All they will do is toss away almost every one of the major political advantages the Democratic party has going into the 2012 elections. My god, six months ago, Paul Ryan was a squawking albatross around his party's neck. (Remember how he said he'd "given up fear for Lent," and then proceeded to start charging people a fee to come to his town meetings, and setting the cops on constituents who showed up at his office while he was on vacation? Ah, thim was the days.) The "Ryan Plan" was well on its way to being an anchor. Now, thanks to the Democrats, and to a preposterously compliant elite political press, Ryan's rehabilitation is nearly complete. Nice work, fellas.

Here's a tip, gang: The American people are not angry at government because people yell at each other and nothing ever gets done. The American people are angry because people yell at each other and nothing the American people really want ever gets done. They want higher taxes on billionaires. They want Medicare kept out of the hands of the vandals. If they think about it a little, they even like their jurisprudence with a little habeas corpus sprinkled on top. Instead, they get endless platitudes, and the steady, futile placating of an insatiable political opposition.

Yes, well done. (And brilliantly put, Mr. Pierce.) Democrats willingly relinquish the advantage, to the extent they ever really had it, on winning issues (both in policy and electoral terms), and, while the government stays open, we end up with a convoluted appropriations bill that is heavily Republican.

Yeah, Merry fucking Christmas.

**********

I'm with my friend Libby on this: "I understand the need for pragmatic compromise. But this isn't compromise, it's the same devious cave-in to placate the plutocrats. It's not only spineless, it's stupid. I'm really sick of stupid."

Unfortunately, stupid is all we've got.

Republican economics: give money to rich people and everything will work out

By Richard K. Barry

Isn't it about time that every working man and woman in America realized that the Republican Party doesn't give a crap about you or your ability to have a job and support your family?

In a recent interview, CNBC host Jim Cramer made the mistake of assuming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) would support extending unemployment benefits "given the chaotic situation." Perhaps not all that surprisingly, Cantor replied:

Jim, the most important thing we can do for somebody who's unemployed is to see if we can get them a job. I mean, that's what needs to be the focus. For too long in Washington now we've been worried about pumping up the stimulus moneys and pumping up unemployment benefits and to a certain extent you have states for which you can get unemployment for almost two years and I think these people on unemployment benefits would rather have a job. So that's where our focus needs to be.

The interesting thing for me is that in the same sentence where Cantor says you can get unemployment insurance for almost two years in some states he also says people on unemployment benefits would "rather have a job." What he really means is that supposedly lazy Americans who want to collect government checks for up to two years need to be cut off so they will be forced to get a job.

What Republican bullshit. Working men and women are just too lazy, in Cantor-world, to get themselves off the government dole.

But not only is this view wrong and obnoxious, it's also bad economics. Republicans want to put more money into the hands of their rich friends through tax cuts, or at least not increasing taxes, which they argue will act to create jobs. They don't care that this just doesn't work and hasn't worked as a way to create jobs, they are ideologically wedded to it. They argue that all we need to do is give money to rich people and they, "the job creators," will make sure there's a job for anyone who wants to work.

In fact, the only thing it ensures, and has ensured, is that the rich will get richer and poor will get poorer.

By definition, to be a Republican means that everything the government does is wrong and everything the private sector does is right, even when that is demonstrably untrue.

As Paul Krugman writes:

When the economy is booming, and lack of sufficient willing workers is limiting growth, generous unemployment benefits may keep employment lower than it would be otherwise. But as you may have noticed, right now the economy isn't booming - again, there are five unemployed workers for every job opening. Cutting off benefits to the unemployed will make them even more desperate for work - but they can't take jobs that aren't there.

As Krugman continues, extending unemployment benefits would help.

One main reason there aren't enough jobs right now is weak consumer demand. Helping the unemployed by putting money in the pockets of people who badly need it, helps support consumer spending. That's why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus. And unlike, say, large infrastructure projects, aid to the unemployed creates jobs quickly.

A program like unemployment insurance, which not only helps Americans survive, but is also good for the health of the economy, is of limited interest to Republicans simply because it is not exclusively a private sector solution.

It doesn't matter that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy and job growth, that they have been proven to work. Republicans hold such ideologically narrow views on the role of government that they would rather Americans starve than that we use available and effective policy tools to put the country back to work and the economy on the path to recovery.

The Republican campaign slogan for 2012 should be: "Give Money to Rich People and They'll Make Sure We Are All Taken Care Of." Do you think that would sell?

As I said, any working man or women in American who supports these clowns needs to give their head a good shake.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

The eyes of Texas

By Capt. Fogg

It's no secret that Florida's economy is hurting more than that of many other states, but I'm sure it would be much worse if our sales tax cap on yachts costing more than a quarter million weren't in place. Of course mine didn't cost quite enough for me to benefit significantly, but it's gratifying that some of my friends saved enough to pay for a few thousand gallons of fuel. I'm sure it puts a smile on the faces of the many who have to choose between lunch money for the kids and driving to work. I'm sure that the several of my neighbors in foreclosure are altruistic enough to be glad those with that level of disposable income might use the savings on that Taiwan built vessel for an extra trip to the Abacos this summer.

Texas, which has a share of the yacht trade, is jealous, which is an extraordinary thing to say of our second biggest state with its continental sized self esteem. A Republican sponsored bill to cap the sales tax on yachts is now out of committee and will be considered by the Texas House along with deep cuts to education, nursing homes and other things that benefit only the surplus population.

The eyes of Texas are on taxes and the rest of us are watching.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Rise against the Republican plutocratic agenda

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Republican Party is, when you get right down to it, a party of greed and cruelty wrapped up in theocratic moralizing. (It's hardly any wonder that Donald Trump is doing so well, nor that Franklin Graham, one of the party's chief theocrats, is saying such nice things about him.) And perhaps the core of the Republican agenda, more important than the social conservatism, is tax policy that benefits the rich, both individual and corporate, at the expense of everyone else, that punishes everyone else, and especially the poor and others most in need of help, for not being rich.

This has been the case for a long time, but increasingly, it seems, in these difficult economic times and with the American economy (and American hegemony) in such dire straits, likely never to recover, let alone to be what it once was, Americans are waking up to what Republicans are all about and expressing their opposition. The Tea Party expresses the rage of the right, anti-government rage that complements the Republican agenda. This new opposition, garnering less media attention, expresses not the counter-rage of the left, nor even rage at all, but a genuine concern for fairness, compassion, and fiscal sanity in American politics.

Here's Think Progress:

All across America, a Main Street Movement has broken out to defend the middle class against right-wing attacks on labor rights and basic public services. In recent days, this movement has turned on GOP House members who voted to effectively end Medicare and turn seniors over to private insurance companies when they approved Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) radical budget bill.

On Tuesday, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) was the latest congressman to face the ire of Main Street America during a town hall event with constituents who stopped being polite and started getting real.

First, constituents explained they were upset that Ryan's plan would cut off people under the age of 55 from Medicare. Then, others directly challenged Duffy about defending tax breaks for the wealthy for voting to effectively replace Medicare with a voucher system.

Ryan himself, supposedly a courageous advocate for fiscal sanity but really just a right-wing extremist whose focus is on tax cuts for the wealthy and spending cuts to programs for the poor, was challenged by his own constituents the other day. And Republicans are facing significant criticism over their support for Ryan's Medicare-slashing plan.

I suspect we'll see more and more of this. Or, at least, I hope we do. It's time for Americans to say enough is enough to the greed and cruelty of the GOP.

Here's the Duffy clip:

Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan gets booed by his own constituents

By Michael J.W. Stickings

To Republicans, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is a superstar. To many in the media, he's a towering oracle of economic wisdom. To many in the Democratic Party, he's a political giant far too formidable even to question.

And so Ryan, a worshipper of Ayn Rand, gets away with spinning his right-wing extremism without much of a challenge, except from a few lone liberal voices like Jon Chait and Paul Krugman and from some of us outside the media/political establishment on the left of the political blogosphere.

He is widely touted as one of the true heroes of the moment, if not of our time, a courageous campaigner for fiscal responsibility, for balanced budgets and getting America's economic house in order at long last. And yet what he really is is a campaigner for the same old right-wing Republican economic policies, just with a pretty face and broad media appeal. His version of fiscal responsibility, a pretty standard conservative one, involves cutting programs for the poor and cutting taxes for the rich.

To their and their country's shame, most people don't much care about the poor, who barely have a voice in Washington. Most people also oppose cuts to major entitlement programs like Social Security, and so Ryan, like the rest of his party, doesn't want to go there. Nor, of course, does he support significant cuts to military spending, which would certainly help balance the budget. But the key is that Ryan wants to do everything he can to give the rich as much as possible at the expense of everyone else, not just the poor but everyone who isn't rich, including the middle class, or what's left of it. And in supporting tax cuts for the rich, Ryan exposes himself not as a crusader for fiscal responsibility but as your typical Republican, a party of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, a party that suckers the non-rich into voting for it by playing to deep-rooted fears about race or terrorism or whatever other Other it identifies as a vote-winner.

But you know what? Tax cuts for the rich aren't popular. At all. Republicans generally try to hide their support for such cuts, but they just can't do that anymore, or at least it's more difficult for them to do so, and more and more their real agenda, their plutocratic political agenda, is being exposed. People just need to pay attention.

Which is precisely what some of them are doing, including in Ryan's own district, where this week he was actually booed at a town hall for advocating tax cuts for the wealthy:

In a video posted by ThinkProgress, an attendee at the event this week told Ryan that he believes the rich should pay higher taxes to help close the deficit and strengthen Social Security.

"The middle class is disappearing right now," he said. "During this time of prosperity, the top 1 percent was taking about 10 percent of the total annual income, but yet today we are fighting to not let the tax breaks for the wealthy expire?"

Ryan protested that "We do tax the top," before being drowned out by the audience's jeers.

Here's the clip. Hopefully it's just the start of what Ryan and the GOP deserve, which is the disapproval of voters and, come next November, votes for the other side.

(And instead of cowering in fear before Ryan and his media-enhanced stardom, Democrats should learn from this, as from all the polls showing public opposition to tax cuts for the rich, and counter the Republican agenda with a fair, sensible, and compassionate alternative that doesn't crush the poor, punish the middle class, and let the rich rape and pillage at will.)