Category: Washington

Making Romney Relatable

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I can’t subject myself to Republican talking points for very long, and just 9 years ago, I was a registered Republican. In 2000, I volunteered for John McCain. I saw him as the last gasp of rational Republicanism against the Christianist conservative movement embodied by George W. Bush. The reasons why I can’t bring myself to watch or pay attention to gavel-to-gavel Republican convention coverage now are not dissimilar from the reasons why I don’t watch cable news anymore; we have a Democratic Party and a Batsh*t Crazy Party. 

But I watched Ann Romney’s and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s speeches yesterday. 

1. Both speakers worked from a TelePrompTer. When Obama uses one, Republicans mock it and imply that it is bad or inauthentic. What gives? 

2. Ann Romney seems like a nice lady. I have no doubt that she loves her husband very much, and that she’s very supportive of him. How odd it is, however, that in lieu of humanizing Mitt Romney, they sent Ann out to explain how human and relatable he is. She also rushed through her speech so quickly that it was as if she was allergic to words. 

3. Sarah Palin is completely absent from this shindig, and Romney’s choice to wear red – a color Palin also prefers – served almost as a subliminal message that the party will pander to the tea party – but only so much. Gone are the days when Palin would be a marquee speaker. 

4. Make no mistake: Mitt and Ann Romney never wanted for anything. They never had no money, and they never had to worry about how they would make ends meet. While Romney started her speech by talking about “love”, she quickly segued into a soliloquy about  the travails of the American bourgeoisie – a class to which she hasn’t belonged since meeting the candidate, her husband. She told us how she could relate to problems lots of mothers throughout American have – but for one. Money (or “resources”, if you prefer). These people have no idea. 

5. What I mean by the “no idea” quip above is this: Romney spoke about how humbly she and Mitt lived while together in college. I mean, they had a makeshift desk made out of sawhorses and a piece of wood! The difference, of course, is that the Romneys chose to live humbly, all the while cashing in Mitt’s stocks when money was needed. Choosing to live humbly is wildly different from having no choice but to be poor or worrying about money and jobs. 

6. A big applause line: Ann and Mitt have a “real marriage”. What’s the implication there? That the Obamas don’t? Was it a swipe at marriage equality/same-sex marriage? I have no idea, but it was a surprisingly passive-aggressive, accusatory thing to say in response to no suggestion that they didn’t. This was, as far as I can tell, nothing more than hatred.  Perhaps we should start questioning this, and demanding to see the long-form marriage certificate. 

7. Ann Romney said that Mitt didn’t have success handed to him. No, but I’d suggest that a guy whose father was governor, and the influential millionaire CEO of an auto manufacturer – a guy who attended the exclusive Cranbrook School (where he hilariously bullied the gay kids), and attended Stanford, Harvard, and BYU and went on to partner with consultant colleagues who raised millions to start Bain Capital had extraordinary opportunity – he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. Was that handed to him? Perhaps not directly, but he was born into money and privilege, and his path to wealth and prominence was hardly steep. 

8. I happen to respect Chris Christie. I like his brash attitude, and I like the fact that he’s a bit of an asshole. I think most politicians are assholes anyway – it’s nice that he doesn’t try to hide that fact. You know where you stand with him, and you know where he stands. 

9. While Ann Romney had talked about love, Christie said we need to “choose respect over love”. That was awkward. 

10. Christie talked about how his mom had to the take the bus to various jobs – municipal bus. His dad worked at the Breyers plant – was it a union shop? Perhaps the Milk Drivers & Dairy Employees Union? Shame that people like Christie apparently came up from a working-class household that benefited from union wages, benefits, and collective bargaining, and would deny that for future generations. Unions for me, but not for thee. I think Democrats do a lousy job pushing back against union busting. If we’ve learned anything during the employment crisis of the current economic shocks, it’s that a job is certainly important, but there’s more to it than that – we’ve seemingly jettisoned any notion that the employee should have certain rights and privileges in addition to just getting a paycheck. What about a wage you can live off of? Why shouldn’t unions be allowed to represent workers to guarantee fair working conditions and labor practices? I don’t get why politicians are so proud of jobs, jobs, jobs without regard to how people are treated at those jobs.

11. Christie talked about wild spending. Ok, most federal spending overwhelmingly goes to the military. Let’s cut that in half. No administration in the last 30 years has been more spendthrift, more fiscally irresponsible, growing more government than those led by Republican chief executives.

12. Christie criticized Democrats for dividing Americans. No, this Republican Party can’t do that with a straight face and get away with it. Their entire platform is founded on class warfare, fear, and hatred. 

13. The speech Christie gave made no mention of Mitt Romney until the end. It was Christie’s opening to his 2016 run for President. 

14. Christie said America has/d the best health care system in the world. It doesn’t. Not even remotely, under any metric, and we spend wildly more than any other system on Earth. 

15. Obama leads by polls, Christie said. That sort of negates the talking point about how Obamacare is wildly unpopular, no? Cognitive dissonance and disingenuousness were everywhere last night. 

16. Shorter GOP: oh, my God, this European Kenyan usurper N0bama has destroyed America. Let’s quickly go back to the policies that led to the 2008 worldwide economic catastrophe from which the world is still hungover. 

Tonight, Mitt Romney will give his speech. Horserace-obsessed journos will breathlessly report on how big of a “bounce” Romney gets in the polls in the coming days. I will be listening to his tone, and the content of his speech. This is 1996 all over again – the Democratic President is quite vulnerable against an energized Republican base, and the GOP just picked Bob Dole 2.0 – the begrudgingly selected guy whom no one likes, but will say the right things to the right people and whose time it simply is to run. 

I’ll leave you with this scene from the season finale of Aaron Sorkin’s fantastic new series, “The Newsroom”. This illustrates the problem within the Republican Party. While the Democrats have fringe whackjobs, too, the party establishment hasn’t let them take over the show: 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGAvwSp86hY]

Hochul vs. Corwin 2.0

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The only thing missing so far is a kid dressed like Fonzie shoving a camera in an old man’s face. 

Issue: Medicare, Paul Ryan, and what noted Marxist philosopher Newt Gingrich called “right-wing social engineering”. 

The Buffalo News’ Jerry Zremski wrote Monday about how Chris Collins refuses to comment on the Ryan Budget, which would fundamentally transform Medicare from the popular single-payer system seniors enjoy – and future seniors pay into throughout their work history – into an expensive voucher-based privatized program.  

Of course he’s keeping mum. This issue did tremendous harm to his neighbor, Jane Corwin’s, campaign in 2011. 

At the heart of the Republicans’ Medicare Privatization Syndrome Because is to replace a reasonably efficient government bureaucracy with a 97% approval rating from users, and replace it with the fragmented, fundamentally broken, redundant, private (oft for-profit) bureaucracy to take money from the patients through premiums, and nickel-and-dime the physicians on payouts, and futz with what is and isn’t covered. Ungrateful looters & moochers. 

Mitt Romney has now selected the architect of that unfair and likely unconstitutional Medicare voucherization plan to be his running mate, and the fallout is spilling over into the hotly contested NY-27 race. 

Incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul released this Monday morning: 

“Try as he might, Chris Collins cannot run from the fact that he said a budget that ends Medicare as we know it and forces seniors to pay more for their healthcare to fund tax cuts for his millionaire friends ‘doesn’t go far enough,’” said campaign manager Frank Thomas. “Voters deserve to know how much further Chris Collins would go when he already supports decimating Medicare so he can give tax breaks to the rich. How can voters be expected to trust a candidate who will not be candid about his position on an issue that will crush seniors and the middle class.”

Collins told the Batavia Daily News that the Ryan Budget “doesn’t go far enough.” According to the Batavia Daily News, “Collins said he favors the Tea Party push to reduce the federal government. He praised Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, for ‘starting the conversation’ about reducing entitlement programs. But Collins said Ryan doesn’t go far enough. Ryan believes the budget could be balanced in 30 years, Collins said it needs to be done in 10 years. To delay it longer isn’t fair to young Americans who will have to foot the bill.” [Batavia Daily News, 5/9/12]

Collins said his stance on the Ryan Budget is similar to Jane Corwin’s. In March 2012, Collins has admitted that his position does not differ significantly from Jane Corwin’s position. Corwin supported the Ryan Budget, which “would essentially end Medicare.”  [Buffalo News,3/25/12; Wall Street Journal, 4/4/11]

But now Collins refuses to even answer questions on the Ryan budget.  According to the Buffalo News,

Asked in a weekend telephone interview for his reaction to Ryan’s selection, Collins, the former Erie County executive, would not – even when asked again and again – endorse or even comment on Ryan’s budget, which would partly remake Medicare into a voucher program for future seniors while drastically cutting most domestic spending. [Buffalo News, 8/13/2012]

Republican Chris Collins released this, in response: 

“What we are seeing is a desperate public sector millionaire employ every scare tactic under the sun to distract from the issue that matters most to voters – fixing this economy. Of course, with her record of massive tax increases and job killing regulations, it’s no wonder Kathy Hochul wants to talk about anything other than her failed plan to fix the economy. 

With her whole-hearted embrace of ObamaCare, Kathy Hochul has jeopardized the future of Medicare for current seniors. More incredibly, she turned her backs on the seniors she promised to protect when she voted to cut their Medicare and Medicare Advantage by $700 billion. 

The only way we will solve our budget problems is by adopting pro-growth, pro-small business policies that cut our debt, protect Medicare from going bankrupt, and let small businesses thrive. Kathy Hochul’s plan is to cling to ObamaCare, gut $700 billion from Medicare and watch our economy go down the drain. That’s not a leader – that’s a politician. Our region simply deserves better.”

A few quick observations: 1. Hochul’s release is more effective because it takes Collins’ own words and uses them against him. 2. Anyone else find it odd that Collins, of all people, is using “millionaire” as a pejorative against Kathy Hochul? I thought that was “class warfare” or something. 3. Collins’ statement is so much unsupported pablum about tax & spend liberals. 4. Collins is particularly vulnerable when it comes to being consistent and transparent. Whereas he merely spouts off talking points recycled from his last re-election campaign, Hochul provided hyperlinks to the things Collins has said in the past, and merely hoists him by the petard he so carefully constructed. 

From Zremski’s piece, Collins says, 

All I’m saying is that I’ll never support cuts to Medicare for current seniors or anyone close to retirement age, including Medicare Advantage, which my opponent has actually voted to cut.

But if you’re not “close to retirement age”, yet you’ve been paying into Medicare through your FICA for years and years, relying on the promise of hassle-free Medicare coverage when you retire, you can go pound salt. 

Now – about that $700 billion claim. Collins has been using that for weeks – you should follow his aide Michael Kracker on Twitter, and watch him do battle with Hochul’s campaign manager, Frank Thomas. This claim comes up a lot. 

The claim is that Obamacare rips $700 billion out of Medicare – that it’s a cut, that it steals from Medicare to fund Obamacare, etc. The claim is clumsy, palpably and provably false, and worse – assumes you’re stupid and will accept it as truth. 

Does Obamacare cut $700 billion from Medicare? No. Obamacare saves $700 billion in waste while enhancing and improving seniors’ access to healthcare.  This savings extends Medicare’s solvency by a full eight years. 

A Redditor independently examined the claim and reached the same conclusion – that Chris Collins and other Republicans are criticizing Democrats for saving $700 billion from a socialistic, redistributive, government-run single-payer health care system. 

CBO breaks out the $716 billion that Reibus refers to:

  • Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance) = $517 billion
  • Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance) = $247 billion
  • * Medicare Part D (offset) = ($48 billion)
 = $716 billion

To make a little more sense of this, I also referred to CBO’s Analysis of the Major Health Care Legislation Enacted in March 2010 – start at page 24 which basically bulleted the reasons, as follows:

  • Changes to Payment Rates in Medicare: “Permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare’s payment rates for most services in the fee-for-service sector (other than physicians’ services) and the new mechanism for setting payment rates in the Medicare Advantage Program will reduce Medicare outlays by $507 billion during the 2012-2021 period” I found this very confusing, so I referred to Politifact which states: “The biggest portion of that savings…will come from reducing annual increases in payments to medical providers….The healthcare law does not cut $500 billion from Medicare. It just reduces future growth.” So in essence, it aims to curtail Medicare spending, not outlays to recipients. Ironic how the GOP is attacking Obama for an initiative to save money.

  • Disproportionate Share Hospitals: CBO states that “Both Medicare and Medicaid provide additional payments to hospitals that serve a disproportionate number of low income patients. PPACA…modified the formulas use to calculate such payments under Medicare. Projected to reduce direct spending by $57 billion over the 2012-2021 period.” The Urban Institute explains that ” the loss of federal disproportionate share hospital payments and potentially high uncompensated care costs borne by state and local governments on behalf of the uninsured will also motivate states to expand Medicaid under the ACA. On balance, states would experience net budget gains from implementing the Medicaid expansion.” So they are basically phasing out a federal program (disproportionate share hospitals) to expand another (Medicaid) and States would have a net budget gain!

  • Thus far we have accounted for $650 billion of the $716 billion and NONE of these “steal money from Medicare.” They simply attempt to save money, reprogram funding.

As for the remaining $65 billion, CBO says “many of those provisions will reduce spending, whereas others will increase it. The provisions that will reduce spending make a variety of changes to prior law, including establishing a mechanism to reduce the growth rate of Medicare spending if projected growth exceeds a given target, initiating a number of programs intended to modify the health care delivery system, and adjusting payments for prescription drugs in Medicaid….PPACA and the Reconciliation Act include numerous provisions intended to identify opportunities and create incentives for providers to make changes to the health care delivery system that will reduce costs and improve the quality of care.”

So, there you have it. Chris Collins and the Republicans are lying to you about Obamacare, about how it affects Medicare, and about myriad other things. Collins isn’t talking about the Ryan budget and how it effects Medicare because he saw what it did to Jane Corwin. Instead, he’s trying to pivot the debate (by the way, has he agreed to any debates? Will he be releasing any tax information at all?) to lies about how Obamacare is stealing money from Medicare. Are we going to re-litigate the Corwin vs. Hochul debacle of  May 2011? Looks like it, and even with a re-worked district geography and demographic, it’s still got a lot of seniors who don’t appreciate being lied to, and don’t like that Collins supports the partial privatization, decimation, and increased user cost the right wing is proposing for Medicare. 

The Bain of His Existence

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The week just ended did not end well for Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who can’t give a straight answer regarding his tenure at Bain Capital in the late 90s and early aughts. It’s an important question not just because it goes to his credibility and ability or willingness to tell the truth, but because Bain was involved in outsourcing and other activities during that period that may not sit well with parts of the electorate, and Romney has denied responsibility for those decisions. 

But now that his back is in a corner, Romney is playing a very weak defense, claiming that the legitimate questions about his career are unfair personal attacks unbecoming a President. The Obama campaign reacted almost instantly to the suggestion with this: 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDuk6dYjocM]

Not satisfied with that string of examples of Romney’s very real gutter politics, the Obama campaign followed up with what may very well be one of the hardest-hitting ads in recent memory. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud3mMj0AZZk]

Amidst all this talk about Romney’s record at Bain Capital – a record that he uses as evidence of his “job creator” bona fides, (much like a certain former Erie County Executive is doing in NY-27) – is the fact that Romney will only agree to release his tax returns for 2010 and 2011. He will release no previous returns, nor will he release returns that would go to clear up the 1999 – 2002 Bain leadership question. 

Now that President Obama in April 2011 finally satisfied the birthers by asking Hawaii to release his long-form birth certificate, will we see similar calls from similar sources calling for Mitt Romney to release his tax returns? 

Taxes Are Bad! (Unless It's a Poll Tax)

20 comments

Next up? Those pesky Child Labor Laws!

Just a few weeks ago, the vast majority of Americans were redirected to their dusty copies of the Constitution, and perhaps many of them felt compelled to re-read Article 1, Section 8, which enumerates the rights and powers of Congress.  Among its express powers is the power to levy taxes. 

As Chris Smith wrote in Thursday’s Morning Grumpy, there is a massive right-wing push to establish voter ID laws throughout the country, this despite the fact that actual, credible instances of voter fraud represented .000002% of all votes cast in 2011.  In Texas, it’s .0001% since 2002. If voter fraud was as prevalent as certain conservatives claim it to be, we’d retain the services of the UN or EU to monitor our elections for irregularities, like some third world kleptocracy with an disproportionately powerful, wealthy elite and massive income inequalit…. wait, what? 

In fact, the most visible forms of voter fraud have been perpetrated by idiot propagandists like James O’Keefe, who sends people to appear at polling places claiming to be someone they’re not and attempting to vote, to show how easy it is to commit voter fraud. You know, someone could prove how easy it is to blow up a bridge by blowing up a bridge, but that’d be silly and dangerous.

Our conservative-led march into some Dickensian fever-dream of an exploitative third world banana republic notwithstanding, the right to vote is basic and fundamental. It is a constitutional guarantee held by every law abiding citizen – you can only lose the right to vote in certain states, under certain circumstances involving the “law abiding” part.  And historically, our voting laws – indeed, in most cases our Constitution itself – have steadily and consistently expanded the people’s rights over the past 200+ years, to non-property holders, to naturalized citizens, to non-whites, to women, to people 18 and over, to DC residents, etc. 

In Republicanland, you need a photo ID to vote, but any idiot can walk into a Wal*Mart and buy an assault weapon. 

We’ve talked a lot throughout the health care debate about government mandates requiring people to engage in certain economic activity. While the Republican Party now vehemently opposes the insurance mandate it had valiantly championed at a time before President Obama moved to Washington, it is now instead championing a photo ID mandate for any eligible voter. 

The 24th Amendment to the Constitution reads, in relevant part: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.”

That photo ID mandate doesn’t come particularly cheaply, nor is it carefully crafted to avoid constitutional harm or to fix a big public problem. The Texas law, for instance, was invalidated under the Voting Rights Act because it was discriminatory. It was found that as many as 1.4 MM registered Texas voters did not have photo ID, and the vast majority of them happened to be Hispanic or black.  According to Texas’ own numbers, a Hispanic voter is between 47 – 120% more likely to not have photo ID than a non-Hispanic voter.  

Hispanics in Texas, who vote solidly Democratic, are not only more likely to lack ID compared to white voters, but will have a harder time obtaining the voter ID required by the state. There are DMV offices in only eighty-one of the state’s 254 counties. Not surprisingly, counties with a significant Hispanic population are less likely to have a DMV office, while Hispanic residents in such counties are twice as likely as whites to not have the right ID. Hispanics in Texas are also twice as likely as whites to not have a car. “During the legislative hearings, one senator stated that some voters in his district could have to travel up to 176 miles roundtrip in order to reach a driver’s license office,” wrote DOJ.

The law also places a significant burden on low-income residents. Texas is required to provide a free ID to voters, but an applicant must possess supporting documentation in order to qualify. “If a voter does not possess any of these documents, the least expensive option will be to spend $22 on a copy of the voter’s birth certificate,” DOJ noted. That expenditure can be rightly construed as a poll tax, which the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited.

So, in order to “fix” a non-existent voter fraud “problem”, the Republican Party is perfectly willing to mandate that people spend money to obtain an ID at some expense in order to exercise a fundamental civil right we call “casting a vote.” I don’t know what you call that, but I call it a “tax”. 

Poll taxes were part of the Jim Crow laws, designed to disenfranchise the poor and the Black. A Supreme Court ruling in 1937 held them to be constitutional, and several southern states charged certain portions of the population to exercise their right to vote. In 1964 poll taxes were banned by the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, and the Supreme Court extended that abolition to state elections in 1966.  Here is a chart of states requiring ID – some pass legal muster, others don’t. 

But let’s not play make-believe any more. The Republican proponents of these modern-day poll taxes are advocating for a regression back to Jim Crow. They are doing so by manufacturing a legal-sounding pretext of fraud, but the real purpose of these statutes and similar efforts in Florida to purge the voter registration rolls of supposed ineligible people (and getting it wrong), is to help Republicans and hurt Democrats. 

Not only is it a despicable display of anti-Americanism to impose an ID mandate and tax on the poor, the black, and the Hispanic to prevent them from voting Democratic, but it is a cynical admission that the Republican Party has shrunken into a regional, reactionary, theocratic party of the xenophobic and the rich. That the easiest way for them to obtain power is to cheat the system and prevent voters from reaching a ballot box. 

Where’s that posse of constitution-champions calling themselves the “tea party” now? 

Taxes Are Bad! (Unless It’s a Poll Tax)

20 comments

Next up? Those pesky Child Labor Laws!

Just a few weeks ago, the vast majority of Americans were redirected to their dusty copies of the Constitution, and perhaps many of them felt compelled to re-read Article 1, Section 8, which enumerates the rights and powers of Congress.  Among its express powers is the power to levy taxes. 

As Chris Smith wrote in Thursday’s Morning Grumpy, there is a massive right-wing push to establish voter ID laws throughout the country, this despite the fact that actual, credible instances of voter fraud represented .000002% of all votes cast in 2011.  In Texas, it’s .0001% since 2002. If voter fraud was as prevalent as certain conservatives claim it to be, we’d retain the services of the UN or EU to monitor our elections for irregularities, like some third world kleptocracy with an disproportionately powerful, wealthy elite and massive income inequalit…. wait, what? 

In fact, the most visible forms of voter fraud have been perpetrated by idiot propagandists like James O’Keefe, who sends people to appear at polling places claiming to be someone they’re not and attempting to vote, to show how easy it is to commit voter fraud. You know, someone could prove how easy it is to blow up a bridge by blowing up a bridge, but that’d be silly and dangerous.

Our conservative-led march into some Dickensian fever-dream of an exploitative third world banana republic notwithstanding, the right to vote is basic and fundamental. It is a constitutional guarantee held by every law abiding citizen – you can only lose the right to vote in certain states, under certain circumstances involving the “law abiding” part.  And historically, our voting laws – indeed, in most cases our Constitution itself – have steadily and consistently expanded the people’s rights over the past 200+ years, to non-property holders, to naturalized citizens, to non-whites, to women, to people 18 and over, to DC residents, etc. 

In Republicanland, you need a photo ID to vote, but any idiot can walk into a Wal*Mart and buy an assault weapon. 

We’ve talked a lot throughout the health care debate about government mandates requiring people to engage in certain economic activity. While the Republican Party now vehemently opposes the insurance mandate it had valiantly championed at a time before President Obama moved to Washington, it is now instead championing a photo ID mandate for any eligible voter. 

The 24th Amendment to the Constitution reads, in relevant part: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.”

That photo ID mandate doesn’t come particularly cheaply, nor is it carefully crafted to avoid constitutional harm or to fix a big public problem. The Texas law, for instance, was invalidated under the Voting Rights Act because it was discriminatory. It was found that as many as 1.4 MM registered Texas voters did not have photo ID, and the vast majority of them happened to be Hispanic or black.  According to Texas’ own numbers, a Hispanic voter is between 47 – 120% more likely to not have photo ID than a non-Hispanic voter.  

Hispanics in Texas, who vote solidly Democratic, are not only more likely to lack ID compared to white voters, but will have a harder time obtaining the voter ID required by the state. There are DMV offices in only eighty-one of the state’s 254 counties. Not surprisingly, counties with a significant Hispanic population are less likely to have a DMV office, while Hispanic residents in such counties are twice as likely as whites to not have the right ID. Hispanics in Texas are also twice as likely as whites to not have a car. “During the legislative hearings, one senator stated that some voters in his district could have to travel up to 176 miles roundtrip in order to reach a driver’s license office,” wrote DOJ.

The law also places a significant burden on low-income residents. Texas is required to provide a free ID to voters, but an applicant must possess supporting documentation in order to qualify. “If a voter does not possess any of these documents, the least expensive option will be to spend $22 on a copy of the voter’s birth certificate,” DOJ noted. That expenditure can be rightly construed as a poll tax, which the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited.

So, in order to “fix” a non-existent voter fraud “problem”, the Republican Party is perfectly willing to mandate that people spend money to obtain an ID at some expense in order to exercise a fundamental civil right we call “casting a vote.” I don’t know what you call that, but I call it a “tax”. 

Poll taxes were part of the Jim Crow laws, designed to disenfranchise the poor and the Black. A Supreme Court ruling in 1937 held them to be constitutional, and several southern states charged certain portions of the population to exercise their right to vote. In 1964 poll taxes were banned by the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, and the Supreme Court extended that abolition to state elections in 1966.  Here is a chart of states requiring ID – some pass legal muster, others don’t. 

But let’s not play make-believe any more. The Republican proponents of these modern-day poll taxes are advocating for a regression back to Jim Crow. They are doing so by manufacturing a legal-sounding pretext of fraud, but the real purpose of these statutes and similar efforts in Florida to purge the voter registration rolls of supposed ineligible people (and getting it wrong), is to help Republicans and hurt Democrats. 

Not only is it a despicable display of anti-Americanism to impose an ID mandate and tax on the poor, the black, and the Hispanic to prevent them from voting Democratic, but it is a cynical admission that the Republican Party has shrunken into a regional, reactionary, theocratic party of the xenophobic and the rich. That the easiest way for them to obtain power is to cheat the system and prevent voters from reaching a ballot box. 

Where’s that posse of constitution-champions calling themselves the “tea party” now? 

The New Aristocracy (Let Them Drive Bentleys!)

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Since the Reagan Administration, it has been an article of faith among the Republican Party faithful that the best way to grow and help the economy is to cut taxes on the wealthy, and to otherwise make rich people’s lives more comfortable. As a result, the wealthy will spend more money and the wealth will “trickle down” to the middle class and poor.

Yet history shows us that the idea that our economy cannot thrive when the rich are highly taxed is patently false – the postwar boom years of 1946 – 1963 featured the wealthiest Americans paying up to 91 – 92% of their income to the IRS. Until 1982, the last time the wealthiest Americans paid less than a 63% rate was in 1931, when it was 25%.  The masters of the universe, undertaxed and unfettered, love plunging the world into massive depression spirals; we learn little from history. 

Reaganomics was not the panacea it’s remembered as.  The Reagan Administration dropped the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 50% to 38.5%, but as a result income inequality has skyrocketed, and median household income has risen by a paltry 30%, while the richest Americans’ income has tripled or quadrupled in the same time frame. 

When your nation is built upon a mythology of equality not only at birth but in opportunity, this sort of thing – a system that is designed to comfort the comfortable and stymie regular people – tends to cause widespread anger and disgust.  We cut taxes on the people best able to afford them and propose the privatization, cuts, or elimination to social programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and other portions of our hodgepodge of a safety net. 

When you complain about how the system is now bought and paid for by the superwealthy – how the very rich have bought a political party, (if not the entire government), aided and abetted by an almost complete absence of campaign finance limitations, right wing America dismisses you as a Soviet communist engaging in Marxist class warfare. 

But class warfare is patriotic; class warfare is the very cornerstone upon which this country was founded. Our late 18th century revolt against Great Britain was a bourgeois revolution, which overthrew an oppressive colonial aristocratic superpower and established a constitutional representative republic based not on birthright and divine providence, but on law. Gentleman farmers, educated professionals, merchants, and traders united to create the first nation forged out of the ideas of the Enlightenment. 

Yet now, we are told that helping the bourgeoisie is communism, while a new aristocracy is being created and we are repeatedly told that assisting the aristocracy will help the common man. The facts, however, don’t bear that out. Why that isn’t part of the political discussion has a lot to do with misinformation and propaganda. The New Aristocracy and their paid-for media and politicians have in the past two generations mastered how to frame the argument – help us, help yourselves! 

The perfect crystallization of this was revealed this weekend. Republican / New Aristocrat Presidential candidate Mitt Romney attended fundraisers this past weekend in the Hamptons – the uberglitzy, exclusive, and home of ridiculously conspicuous overconsumption – the east coast playground of the New Aristocracy. The Los Angeles and New York Times interviewed attendees, and these quotes ought to be that new class’ “Let them Eat Cake” moment. 

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.

“We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”

and 

A few cars back, Ted Conklin, the owner of the American Hotel in Sag Habor, N.Y., long a favorite of the well-off and well-known in the Hamptons, could barely contain his displeasure with Mr. Obama. “He is a socialist. His idea is find a problem that doesn’t exist and get government to intervene,” Mr. Conklin said from inside a gold-colored Mercedes as his wife, Carol Simmons, nodded in agreement.

Ms. Simmons paused to highlight what she said was her husband’s generous spirit: “Tell them who’s on your yacht this weekend! Tell him!”

Over Mr. Conklin’s objections, Ms. Simmons disclosed that a major executive from Miramax, the movie company, was on the 75-foot yacht, because, she said, there were no rooms left at the hotel.

Oh, the common person is “getting it”. 

I’d very much like it if these people paid a bit more in taxes if it means that regular people get improved access to health care, shoring up Social Security, strengthening of Medicaid and expansion of Medicare, and to help pay for our many overseas military adventures – disproportionately fought by the children of the bourgeoisie and proletariat – and ultimately to help reduce the deficit. 

Fiscal responsibility begins when you ease and help lives that are tough. There’s a class war being waged, and it’s being aggressively promoted by the modern, New World version of titular nobility. 

 

Unraveling the Phony “Fast & Furious” Fury

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Short version: It’s all a big conspiracy to scare people into supporting some hypothetical, non-existent gun control effort Obama is planning. 

Alternate short version: Because the Republican Party is no longer about government, policy, or governing, it must gin up scandals like Whitewater, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, and Fast & Furious for electoral gain. 

Enjoy. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Unraveling the Phony "Fast & Furious" Fury

14 comments

Short version: It’s all a big conspiracy to scare people into supporting some hypothetical, non-existent gun control effort Obama is planning. 

Alternate short version: Because the Republican Party is no longer about government, policy, or governing, it must gin up scandals like Whitewater, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, and Fast & Furious for electoral gain. 

Enjoy. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Allen West Attends the WHCD

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Republican Florida Congressman and likely war criminal Allen West made headlines a few weeks ago for evoking Joe McCarthy, claiming that he had a list of about 80 Democrats who were members of the communist party or some such nonsense. West may be well-regarded in conservative circles as a rising star of some sort, but he’s also got quite a ripe history of saying just crazy and horrible things.  

Let’s examine that. He was “honored to be invited”, and obviously had a swell old time at the nerd prom. It wasn’t until he left the ballroom and was walking to the Metro – which, incidentally, is little more than a Marxist-Leninist socialized transportation conveyance – that he reflected on people who don’t attend humor balls. He omits the fact that he, too, was laughing and dining with the President. Then he ends with the “manipulation” crack, presumably referring to the Washington commentariat attending the ball. 

Well, he might be right about the Beltway press corps, which is all-too ready to be an uncritical transcription service for anyone and everyone, perpetuating “deception” by reflexively presenting “two sides” of a story without telling us who’s right and who’s wrong, and by overwhelmingly favoring conservative commentary over liberal. 

So, shorter: Allen West attends the WHCD, has a great time, feels important, heads to Facebook to criticize everyone there including, inadvertently, himself. 

 

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