Month: October 2011

In the years just before the internet, I had an ongoing argument with a friend of mine over whether a lion or a bear would win in a fight. I thought the lion had certain advantages. My friend thought that the bear would kill the lion with one swat. I always suspected he was right. And now we have the internet to resolve the dispute. What did you used to argue about before the internet?

As I recall my dinner table, we wouldn’t have had anything to talk about. We’d have spent the whole time Googling to prove our points.

Colin Woodard’s big piece in next month’s Washington Monthly is an interesting read. I’m not too enamored with these efforts to explain everything by reference to regionalism, but the article is thought-provoking. There’s one part of it that really resonated with me. It’s the part where he discusses the culture of the Deep South and how it explains what we’re seeing from the Republican Party right now.

The Deep South

Established by English slave lords from Barbados as a West Indies-style slave society, this region has been a bastion of white supremacy, aristocratic privilege, and a version of classical Republicanism modeled on the slave states of the ancient world, where democracy was the privilege of the few and enslavement the natural lot of the many. It spread apartheid and authoritarianism across the southern lowlands, ultimately encompassing most of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana, plus western Tennessee and southeastern Arkansas, Texas, and North Carolina. Its slave and caste systems smashed by outside intervention, it continues to fight for rollbacks of federal power, taxes on capital and the wealthy, and environmental, labor, and consumer safety protections.

And:

The goal of the Deep Southern oligarchy has been consistent for four centuries: to control and maintain a oneparty state with a colonial-style economy based on largescale agriculture and the extraction of primary resources by a compliant, low-wage workforce with as few labor, workplace safety, health care, and environmental regulations as possible. Not until the 1960s was it compelled by African American uprisings and external intervention to abandon caste, sharecropper, and poll tax systems designed to keep the disadvantaged majority of their region’s population out of the political process. Since then, they have relied on fearmongering— over racial mixing, gun control, illegal immigrants, and the alleged evils of secularization—to maintain support. In office they’ve instead focused on cutting taxes for the rich, funneling massive subsidies to agribusiness and oil companies, rolling back labor and environmental programs, and creating “guest worker” programs and “right to work” laws to ensure a cheap, compliant labor supply.

I’m sure many will object to Woodard’s harsh characterization of the Deep South, as well as some of his history, but it’s hard to argue that he’s wrong about the big picture. It’s really quite remarkable how the Deep South has been able to move from a one-party Democratic region to a (nearly) one-party Republican region. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but there’s something strange about that. It’s like their culture can’t really tolerate political instability, and it’s not all that interested in democracy. I suppose that makes sense because they’ve always felt that their way of life is under threat, which means they have to stick together. It also might explain why Republican politicians like Mike Huckabee are so fond of voter suppression. Seriously, it’s been remarkable how aggressively and unapologetically the Republicans have turned to voter suppression over the last couple of years. It seems totally foreign to me, as if it isn’t something that should ever happen in this country, and then I realize that the GOP is now carrying the heritage of Jim Crow. It’s the party of the Deep South, and it’s beginning to act in ways that just don’t compute for most of the country.

We don’t want to be treated like sharecroppers. We don’t want to be governed by people like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.

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Herman Cain’s deep pockets: the Koch brothers

Herman Cain has been tied to the Koch Brothers. The Washington Post reports that Cain’s campaign manager, his economic adviser, and a number of his aids have worked for Americans for Prosperity (AFP) the Koch-founded group that advocates for lower taxes and less government regulation.

Liam Fox resignation exposes Tory links to US radical right

Labour and Lib Dem politicians have stepped up demands for PM David Cameron to explain ministers’ involvement with Atlantic Bridge.

David Cameron has been accused of allowing a secret rightwing agenda to flourish at the heart of the Conservative party, as fallout from the resignation of Liam Fox exposed its close links with a US network of lobbyists, climate change deniers and defence hawks.

In a sign that Fox’s decision to fall on his sword will not mark the end of the furore engulfing the Tories, both Liberal Democrat and Labour politicians stepped up their demands for the prime minister to explain why several senior members of his cabinet were involved in an Anglo-American organisation apparently at odds with his party’s environmental commitments and pledge to defend free healthcare.

At the heart of the complex web linking Fox and his friend Adam Werritty to a raft of businessmen, lobbyists and US neocons is the former defence secretary’s defunct charity, Atlantic Bridge, which was set up with the purported aim of “strengthening the special relationship” but is now mired in controversy.

An Observer investigation reveals that many of those who sat on the Anglo-American charity’s board and its executive council, or were employed on its staff, were lobbyists or lawyers with connections to the defence industry and energy interests. Others included powerful businessmen with defence investments and representatives of the gambling industry.

Fox’s organisation, which was wound up last year following a critical Charity Commission report into its activities, formed a partnership with an organisation called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The powerful lobbying organisation, which receives funding from pharmaceutical, weapons and oil interests among others, is heavily funded by the Koch Charitable Foundation whose founder, Charles G Koch, is one of the most generous donors to the Tea Party movement in the US. In recent years, the Tea Party has become a potent populist force in American politics, associated with controversial stances on global warming.

Via a series of foundations, Koch and his brother, David, have also given millions of dollars to global warming sceptics, according to Greenpeace.  

• The lessons of Atlantic Bridge

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

It seems like no one can quite believe that the Republicans will nominate Mitt Romney, but no one can picture anyone else getting the nomination, either. I know that’s how I feel. There is really only one area where Romney makes sense for the Republicans, and it’s not the economy. Romney is the only Republican candidate who has enough familiarity with foreign affairs to make a plausible president. I don’t mean that Romney has more direct experience. Probably, disgraced former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former Senator Rick Santorum have more experience dealing with foreign dignitaries and matters of national security. But each of them is slightly crazy, in their own way. Romney, like Obama, is qualified to handle foreign policy simply because he’s intelligent, curious, and well-traveled. If he became president he wouldn’t, like Bush the Younger, have to staff his cabinet with people who actually have some idea of how the world works. He could take care of that end of things by himself. He could, in other words, be his own man in the White House.

I don’t think you can say that about Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Ron Paul or Herman Cain. I guess you could say it about Jon Huntsman, but why bother? If anyone other than Romney wins the nomination, they’ll probably have to pick a running-mate who can actually run our foreign policy, much like Dubya tapped Dick Cheney. In other words, they won’t have the luxury of picking someone just to fire up the base. John McCain tried that, and it obviously didn’t work out. But it did pump some adrenaline into his campaign for a while.

However, there’s a problem. Dubya had a field of respected people like Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld to choose from. Where are the respected old-hands now? Who can step in and provide that kind of comfort level? It seems to me as if the modern GOP is utterly bereft of leadership. Over the last decade and a half, their leaders have systematically discredited themselves. Think about the careers of Newt Gingrich, Denny Hastert, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, Bill Frist, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condi Rice. Think about John McCain and Sarah Palin. None of them would be tempting figures for a Republican nominee to bring on as trusted advisors. None of these people would be welcomed back into public life. And, with the exception of John McCain, all of them have left public service.

Frankly, I don’t know how Romney would go about staffing up his cabinet. There are no obvious candidates to be Secretary of State, for example. Maybe Dick Lugar could take the job. Or Jon Huntsman. But the cupboard is startlingly bare.

I think, more than any other factor, this is why Romney is still likely to win the nomination. Even though no one really likes the guy and he’s a terrible fit for the Republican Party’s base, people can at least picture him doing the job.

But just because it’s likely that he will win the nomination, that doesn’t mean he will. If he doesn’t, I don’t think any alternative will be able to convince the people that they, and their team, has what it takes to run the American Empire.

Even though Ann Althouse is an idiot, she inadvertently does a great job of demonstrating why David Gregory is not a tough interviewer. And, she’s right, Herman Cain had no difficulty sailing through his interview on Meet the Press. That’s mainly because David Gregory does softball interviews. Maybe it is a strategy he employs to assure that he can land the guests he wants. I don’t know. But he’s terrible.

Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas exercises his first amendment right to tell the NYPD to stop beating unarmed people who are exercising their first amendment rights:

Lately, whenever I hear Majority Leader Eric Cantor open his mouth, I look around for something to throw at him. The man never tells the truth. And the lies he tells are particularly infuriating. Here he is telling us that Republicans, a.k.a. Job Creators, really want all of us to make more money.

“We know in this country right now that there is a complaint about folks at the top end of the income scales, that they make too much and too many don’t make enough,” Cantor said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, toning down his earlier criticism of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

“We need to encourage folks at the top of the income scale to actually put their money their work to create more jobs so we can see a closing of the gap,” he added…

…Republicans “are about income mobility,” Cantor said as he tried to make the case that the GOP was best equipped to spread the wealth. “And that’s what we should be focused on to take care of the income disparities.”

Cantor fell short of apologizing for calling the protesters “angry mobs” last week. Still, he did not accept host Chris Wallace’s challenge to stand by his comment against a movement that 54 percent of Americans rate positively according to a recent Time poll.

“I think more important than my use of that word is the fact that there is a growing frustration out there across this country (that) too many people are out of work,” he said. “But … we have elected leaders in this town who frankly are joining in an effort to blame others rather than focusing on the [Democratic] policies that have brought the current situation.”

Republicans want to “promote income mobility and not excoriate some who have been successful,” Cantor said. “We want success for everybody.”

Let me start out by saying that Democratic policies did not cause our current unemployment situation. But the issue is income disparity. Take a look at this chart that lists the top marginal income tax rate for every year since the federal income tax was introduced in 1913. The top rate in the 1940’s and 1950’s was never below 80 percent. Right now it is 35 percent. Under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Democratic President John F. Kennedy, the top rate was never lower than 91 percent. Why is that important?

I’ll tell you why. If you are a Board of Directors that is trying to decide how much to pay your CEO, are you going to be interested in giving him a whole bunch of income when 91% of it is going to go straight to the government? No, of course not. Until the emergence of the stock option as a form of executive compensation, high marginal tax rates kept a lid on the potential income disparity between the people in the executive offices and the people in the mail room. In the 1980’s, rich people figured out that they could award each other vast sums in stock options, which would theoretically act as an incentive for CEO’s to run their companies well so that the stock price would go up, they could exercise their option, and then they could buy a really big boat. In reality, it just gave them an incentive to always take the short-view, hoping to quickly boost the stock price, make a windfall, and then move on to the next challenge.

But the stock option wasn’t the only trick they came up with. They also capped the long-term capital gains tax rate at 15%, which is considerably lower that the 35% marginal tax rate CEO’s face on ordinary salary income. Why give your CEO more salary that will be taxed at 35% when you can give him more stock options that will be taxed at 15 percent?

About that 35 percent? They brought the marginal tax rate down to 70% (Nixon), 50% (Reagan), 31% (Reagan), and 39.6% (Clinton), and finally to the 35% (Bush II) rate, where it remains today. To be sure, not all of these cuts were equal. The second Reagan tax cut eliminated massive loopholes and didn’t represent as big of reduction as it might seem. But all of these changes made it more attractive and affordable to offer ever-bigger compensation packages to senior executives.

Of course, more pay is more pay, whether you distribute it equitably or you lavish it only on senior management. With increasing global competition, there is great downward pressure on the price of labor. And that is precisely why the Republican Party hates labor unions and anyone who makes labor more expensive. These fat cats keep telling us that we have to renegotiate our contracts, give away our pensions, trim our benefits, or they’ll have to lay people off. Or maybe they’ll just move our jobs to India or Indonesia or Mexico. Yet, they never trim their own ballooning salaries or fail to interfere to prevent a higher tax burden for themselves.

Eric Cantor doesn’t want people to make more money. That’s a crazy idea. He wants labor costs as low as they can possibly be. And that’s on a good day. Right now, he doesn’t even want people to be paid poorly. He wants them not to be paid at all. He wants high unemployment because he hopes it will hurt the president’s reelection prospects.

And,
yet, he has the gall to say that his party wants income mobility. Whatever he’s pretending to mean by that, the truth is that he wants your income to go into rich people’s pockets. That’s about all he wants.

We need a thread for this:

On the morning of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial dedication, a longtime Georgia congressman and the last surviving speaker from the March on Washington said King was not only a instrumental figure in American culture—but in him, as well.

“I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I tasted the bitter fruits of racism,” Rep. John Lewis said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And he made me a different person. And today I can say I don’t have any bitter feelings or have any anger or hatred (toward) human beings.”

The monument’s dedication was originally set to coincide with the anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” in August but was postponed due to Hurricane Irene.

Lewis, the youngest speaker at the famous 1963 rally on the National Mall, was a leading figure in the civil rights movement and chaired the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

“It is unbelievable that 48 years after the march, that we’re going to dedicate – that we’re going to unveil this unbelievable monument to a man who was never elected to a public office, a man of peace and of love, a man of non-violence,” Lewis told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley.

I can’t wait to go check out the monument. It looks very nice on television. We’ve all come a long way, baby. Maybe it’s because we share a name, but MLK Jr. was one of my first heroes, and nothing has changed. John Lewis has just as big of a place in my heart. He deserves his own place when the time comes, hopefully a long time from now.

Larry Summers and Tim Geithner never worked at Goldman Sachs, although many people are under the impression that they did. In any case, even if their policies were supposedly friendly to Goldman Sachs, the employees there do not see it that way.

Employees of Goldman Sachs, who in the 2008 campaign gave Mr. Obama over $1 million — more than donors from any other private employer in the country — have given him about $45,000 this year. Mr. Romney has raised about $350,000 from the firm’s employees.

It’s a phenomenon that is by no means limited to Goldman Sachs. Wall Street has had a change of heart about the president. And they are slowly throwing in with Mitt Romney. That could be a problem for Romney.

But anger at big banks — manifested by the growing Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City and elsewhere — is palpable enough that Mr. Romney must avoid being seen as a friend of an industry that many Americans blame for onerous bank fees and underwater mortgages.

Among the other candidates, only Rick Perry and Ron Paul have raised a truly significant amount of cash. Perry actually raised $3 million more than Romney in the last quarter, mostly from his Texas network.

What’s ironic is that the people who work on Wall Street seem to be angry with the president less for anything he’s actually done than for some rather mild criticisms he’s leveled in their direction. It’s true that the Dodd-Frank reforms limited what the banksters can do, but most people realize that some reforms were necessary. And, honestly, the reforms were only as strong as Sens. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Scott Brown would tolerate. The reforms passed in the Senate with the new minimum of 60 votes, and only three Republicans supported them in the House. You’d think that voting against regulating Wall Street after they ruined the economy would be political suicide, but the Republicans didn’t see it that way and they certainly weren’t punished at the ballot box in 2010.

That only encouraged them to become more intransigent in defense of Wall Street and the nation’s top-earners. This proves that the Tea Party is the ultimate fleece. Supposedly, the Tea Party arose in reaction to the mere prospect of giving loan forgiveness to people whose mortgages had gone bad. In reality, it arose to support the banks keeping every dime owed to them. By exploiting the resentment of people who managed to pay their mortgage bill on time against those who borrowed more than they could afford, the banks (through the Tea Party Movement) made it too politically toxic to for the administration to carry out an effective anti-foreclosure program.

The end result is a more genuine resentment, seen now with the Occupy Wall Street movement. And Wall Street has convinced itself that Obama gave them a bad deal and a bad rap. In reality, he saved their asses, put the financial industry back on its feet, and merely asked them to pay back the favor by lending money and creating jobs. That’s why people are yelling that Obama bailed out the banks and left everyone else holding the bag. And they’re yelling at the banks because they haven’t kept their end of the deal. Instead, they’ve thrown in with the political opposition that opposes raising any revenues from the richest Americans to pay for the carnage they created.

So, Wall Street can keep their money, or send it to the Republicans where it belongs. The president is doing just fine raising money without Wall Street’s lucre.