Month: February 2014

Not only is there no obvious replacement for the retiring Henry Waxman, but the up-and-coming generation of Democratic leadership in the House is pretty uninspiring. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to win back the House in 2016 on the coattails of a big presidential win, and that will give these people a chance to legislate again. It should be a huge year for us in the Senate, and if we hold our own this year, we could easily get north of 60 members in the Senate in 2016.

I don’t see us doing much beyond treading water until then.

Let’s look at Robert Samuelson’s argument in the Washington Post:

For starters, the poor are not poor because the rich are rich. The two conditions are generally unrelated. Mostly, the rich got rich by running profitable small businesses (car dealerships, builders), creating big enterprises (Google, Microsoft), being at the top of lucrative occupations (bankers, lawyers, doctors, actors, athletes), managing major companies or inheriting fortunes. By contrast, the very poor often face circumstances that make their lives desperate.

Of all the careers or circumstances that Mr. Samuelson lists, it’s only really the latter two that have much to do with keeping the poor, poor. Running a profitable car dealership or creating a major tech start-up has the effect of creating decent-paying jobs, including for people at the lower end of the employment scale. But managing major companies or inheriting a fortune can contribute both to income inequality and in the loss of resources that the poor need to keep their jobs or gain access to the skills they need to find them in the first place.

CEO pay has become exorbitant, and it isn’t tied to performance in any rational way. Moreover, even when it is tied to performance, that performance is measured in profits, not in jobs created. A CEO could cut the labor force in half through mechanization and outsourcing, and still be considered to be doing a great job if the result is a greater return to the stockholders. When top corporate management is sucking up an unhealthy percentage of the company’s profits, it means that lay-offs are more likely and investments to expand the business are more difficult to make. Add in an historically low-level of income tax, and the treasury of the United States is depleted.

The same is true for low levels of taxation on large estates. There aren’t that many large estates changing hands, but when we don’t tax those transfers (or we tax them at a very low rate) then the lost revenue adds up quickly.

Lower revenue means more debt service, and it means less money for investment in jobs- and skills-creating endeavors. So, both within corporate America and in the financial health of the treasury, allowing some people to become incredibly wealthy without taxing them sufficiently, results in more poor people, and more misery for the poor.

Now check out this next bit of sophistry:

Finally, widening economic inequality is sometimes mistakenly blamed for causing the Great Recession and the weak recovery. The argument, as outlined by two economists at Washington University in St. Louis, goes like this: In the 1980s, income growth for the bottom 95 percent of Americans slowed. People compensated by borrowing more. All the extra debt led to a consumption boom that was unsustainable. The housing bubble and crash followed. Now, weak income growth of the bottom 95 percent “helps explain the slow recovery.”

This theory is half right. An unsustainable debt boom did fuel an unsustainable consumption boom. From 1980 to 2007, household debt rose from 72 percent to 137 percent of disposable income. Consumption spending jumped from 61 percent of gross domestic product (the economy) to 67 percent for the same years, a huge shift. These increases could not continue indefinitely. But growing inequality didn’t cause these twin booms. Just because households wanted to borrow didn’t mean lenders had to lend.

Income growth for the bottom 95% slowed so they compensated by borrowing more, but income inequality didn’t cause them to borrow more because the lenders didn’t have to lend to them.

Think about that argument for a minute.

In this logical scheme, a person’s desire to borrow money is a result of them being poor, not a cause, which is fair enough initially. And the lenders coming in an giving them credit and siphoning off more of their wealth didn’t cause them to borrow, nor did it make them poorer. It was just the lenders decision to let it happen.

What really happened is that 95% of the people stopped getting raises the way they used to because the productivity gains were going to top management. To sustain the lost consumer demand, the people were allowed to spend at the previous level, but with borrowed money. Their raises were transformed into interest payments. Look at the rise in the cost of college tuition, for the most glaring example of this. The labor force went into a kind of sharecropper system, where we are allowed to work but an increasing amount of the fruits of our labor are spent on car payments and college loans and credit cards.

Meanwhile, the top 5% just kept getting wealthier and wealthier, their taxes lower, their pay higher.

That’s what the Reagan Revolution was all about. It’s time for it to end for good.

The unfolding ‘Christie’ story presents the most significant opportunity to reestablish vast areas of good governance for the American people in my lifetime, imo. And I’m 63. Now I have ‘Christie’ in single quotes for the simple (and profound) reason that the ways of corruption are certainly not limited to any one man, however BIG they might be. The pervasiveness of the money corruption in our culture is so dominant that few are free to investigate its multitudinous forms. We lucked out, however. ‘Christie’ was (is) the oligarchs dream guy creation. So ‘Christie’ is opening a bunch of doors that can (will) lead to the heart of the darkest fascist power plays (and players) of our time. So don’t go small on ‘Christie’. Don’t stop looking, don’t stop adding one and one together. Don’t let your own judgments (however snarkily excellent they might be!) distract you from peering ever more closely into the very Pits of Psycho Greed Head Hell. We can do this. We can tell the truth here and live once again in a land based in truth and filled with compassion. Don’t let calling someone out or adding an emo-driven label be the only response. When ‘Christie’ is taken as a personal failing, we all lose. Stay centered. Take Heart. Be Indomitable. Perseverance furthers. Evil is being exposed.

This series will highlight links that have been rapidly accumulating for the past three weeks or so. Often, the early reports can contain little facts that assume much greater significant further down the road.

How Christie Used the Port Authority as His Political Cash Cow

“The bi-state agency, with its steady stream of income from tolls and airport fees, provided more than $3.3 billion to support New Jersey projects favored by Governor Christie, who was cutting budgets in Trenton and refusing to raise the gas tax to fund transportation projects. Several of the projects went to state facilities not under the Port Authority’s purview.”

Louise from the comments…..

“‘Chris Christie’ is the most potent threat to our democracy that we have yet faced. Those of us in NJ have watched in horror as this fascist dictator has grown ever more powerful.  If past behavior is predictive, he is using his complete control of Sandy funds as his ultimate piggy bank: $25 billion dollars. You could buy the entire country with the money that will flow into his dark money collection plates.”

Too shrill? Too dark for you? Just imagine what a ‘Christie’ could do with the NSA at his disposal.

Here’s a story from two years ago about cost overruns with the ‘Freedom Tower’.

Getting to the Root of Port Authority Cost Overruns

From the comments……

“Get rid of this dysfunctional useless behemoth of a patronage mill. Let NY take care of their space and let Jersey take of theirs. This black hole money sucking POS organization should have been disbanded when the ports left NY. No it was allowed to get its’ tentacles into too many things it had no need to be into. The World Trade Center is the major cluster fleck this organization was allowed to have a say in. Disband it already!”

Christie’s “Personal Piggy Bank”: the Port Authority

All of these projects were all directed to Christie by David Wildstein and Bill Baroni. They helped Christie scratch backs, or punish or eliminate offenders. The CNN report  that revealed Wildstein’s specially created job says that  “Wildstein’s role included scrutinizing the agency’s business for the governor and that’s why he was given such a broad title, sources said.” Now we know what Wildstein was doing in his specially-created job: looking for money for Christie’s slush fund.

Christie’s interests weren’t being enforced and protected by just Wildstein and Baroni. Dozens of Port Authority jobs went to Christie loyalists, as this 2012 article outlined. Christie lavished “his guys” with no-show and low-work, highly paid livelihoods far more lavish than they could have obtained elsewhere. A review of the names of those so favored is a Who’s Who of NJ political big wheels and their relatives. If you took care of Christie’s family, he would take care of yours. You cross Christie, you starve. In the worst recession since the Great Depression, and in a state with an unemployment rate of 8.4%, those jobs are mighty big and tasty carrots.

No wonder Christie is lawyering up with the Guiliani big guns, and stonewalling investigations that lead to corruption that he doesn’t consider “appropriate.” Citizens of the state may discover just how he has been using their tax dollars and supreme Executive power to enrich himself, his cronies, and the national Republican party.

majcmb1 from the comments….

“This is massively anti-American, even Soviet-style corruption. The Port Authority’s professionals, despite being responsible for running a vital piece of infrastructure, were put under the thumb of apparatchiks who, in service to their party, cared not a whit about the ramifications of their actions on the local people or the economy.

Christie is utterly disgraced but this is the GOTP paradigm of governance. They have infested Congress, the military, the courts and other vital government institutions with unqualified crusading apparatchiks who do not know or care to know the technical and professional details. They only care about following orders and “winning” for their Christianized party.”

List of Christie Referrals for Port Authority Jobs

Dozens of Port Authority Jobs Go to Christie Loyalists

One was a gourmet food broker who landed work as an $85,000-a-year financial analyst at the Port Authority. Another got a $90,000 job to check maintenance contracts.

The co-author of Baroni’s recently released self-help book, “Fat Kid Got Fit: And So Can You!” was hired as the agency’s employment publications editor — a three-day-a-week job that comes with full benefits and a $50,000 salary. The co-author, Damon DiMarco, went to high school with Baroni. He is also the brother of Baroni’s assistant, Gretchen DiMarco, another referral. Baroni calls the DiMarco family one of his “other families” in the acknowledgments of his book, released this month.

Critics Accuse Christie of Turning Port Authority Into Patronage Mill

Baroni’s defense of the governor’s referrals came against the backdrop of an ongoing campaign to overhaul the agency’s management and financial practices, highlighted this week by the release of a audit that labeled the Port Authority “challenged and dysfunctional.”

In a follow up story, Christie told the Record, “I make no apologies about trying to put some people in place who are going to understand what the view of this administration is and execute … in a way that’s consistent with my policies.”

Here’s an interesting little tidbit from reading the minutes of a Port Authority meeting.

Skewed Priorities at the Port Authority of NY & NJ?

During the week of October 28, 2012, Hurricane Sandy and its associated storm surge caused significant flooding and devastating damage in Lower Manhattan and throughout the New York-New Jersey region. The storm resulted in severe flooding throughout the WTC site, particularly affecting the WTC Transportation Hub, Vehicular Security Center, WTC Memorial Museum, and One WTC, among other WTC projects in construction. Although the de-watering of the WTC site was substantially completed in early November, and pre-storm levels of construction activity resumed throughout the WTC site by the end of November 2012, Hurricane Sandy recovery activities are ongoing, to assess and evaluate damaged areas and equipment for future repair or replacement, including efforts to mitigate the impacts of future storms. Through separate actions at its meetings from February 6, 2013 through May 29, 2013, the Board, and the Committee on Operations, acting for and on behalf of the Board pursuant to the By-Laws, ratified and authorized certain actions required for Hurricane Sandy response, recovery and restoration work at the WTC site through June 30, 2013, in a total estimated amount of $306 million.

That meeting was held on June 26, 2013 and took all of 35 minutes. Supposedly, there were eleven speakers, including five members of the public, so it was all above board. As I opined early on, the Christie Jam seems to have been the final straw. There’s a lot of mismanagement to complain about.

Here’s Chris Hedges from The Trouble With Chris Christie

….Romney’s vetters were “stunned by the garish controversies lurking in the shadows of his record.”

A 2010 U.S. Department of Justice inspector general’s investigation of Christie’s spending patterns in the federal job he held before he became governor, the book notes, called Christie “the U.S. attorney who most often exceeded the government [travel expense] rate without adequate justification” and someone who offered “insufficient, inaccurate, or no justification” for stays at exclusive hotels such as the Four Seasons. In addition, the inspector general’s report raised questions among Romney’s vetters about “Christie’s relationship with a top female deputy who accompanied him on many trips,” the book said.

“There was the fact that Christie worked as a lobbyist on behalf of the Securities Industry Association at a time when Bernie Madoff was a senior SIA official–and sought an exemption from New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act,” Halperin and Heilemann wrote. “There [also] was Christie’s decision to steer hefty government contracts to donors and political allies such as former attorney general John Ashcroft, which sparked a congressional hearing. There was a defamation lawsuit brought against Christie, arising out of his successful 1994 run to oust an incumbent in a local Garden State race. Then there was Todd Christie [the governor’s brother], who in 2008 agreed to a settlement of civil charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission in which he acknowledged making `hundreds of trades in which customers had been systematically overcharged.’ (Todd also oversaw a family foundation whose activities and purpose raised eyebrows among the vetters.) And all of that was on top of a litany of glaring matters that sparked concern on [the Romney] team: Christie’s other lobbying clients; his investments overseas; the YouTube clips that helped make him a star but might call into doubt his presidential temperament; and the status of his health.”

CNN Exclusive: Port Authority Job Created for Christie Ally, Source Says

A former Port Authority employee told CNN that agency officials were told in 2010 they had to find a place for WIldstein at the executive level and the directive was coming from Christie’s office. Soon after, the position was created specifically for WIldstein. When Wildstein started, Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni, Christie’s top appointee at the agency, introduced him to people as a good friend of the governor.

Soon after, Wildstein was named the director of Interstate Capital Projects, a title that previously had not existed at the bi-state agency, setting in motion a career that would eventually place the former political blogger at the center of the lane closures controversy at the George Washington Bridge.

Don’t let anyone sell you on the idea that ‘Christie’ has anything other than BIG ideas!

From Christie’s Possible Slush Fund: $2.5 Billion

How would that Federal Grant money end up in a Christie “dark money” black hole? Well, New Jersey taxpayers have suffered under the added costs of “pay-to-play” politics for decades. Non-partisan Common Cause – NJ which concentrates on pay-to-play issues, estimates that approximately 10% of almost every contract granted by all state entities (municipal, county and state) is kicked back to the politicians who authorize them, through donations to their fundraising committees and PACs, as well as other taxpayer-robbing practices. That 10% is automatically built into bids because both sides of the contracts assume it that the bid must cover the cost of kickbacks.

You can do the math. In the case of Sandy relief contracts, 10% of $25 billion is $2.5 Billion. In NJ, that amount is known as “just the cause of doing business.”

In addition, that “perfect storm” of “dark money” political spending is the result of certain conditions possible only in this, my benighted home state:

• New Jersey’s sorry history of pay-to-play.  Pay-to-Play is so common as to be expected as the method of “getting things done”:
• the almost-absolute power of the New Jersey Governor, as created by the 1947 State Constitution. He is described as “the most powerful Chief Executive in the country”;
• the 501(c)(4) Citizens United decision. We have already seen dark money issues in the election which put Cory Booker in the White House ; and
• Christie’s connections to the biggest movers and shakers in both business and Republican politics.

This is from an early report by Steve Kornacki.

The Billion-Dollar Development at the Center of `Bridgegate’

This past week it was learned that David Samson, a former New Jersey attorney general who was appointed by Christie to serve as chairman of the Port Authority, apparently met with Christie in early August – information that came to light in the email and text records of David Wildstein, another Christie Port Authority appointee, which were subpoenaed and released to the public. That apparent Christie-Samson meeting would have come before Christie’s now former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, wrote an August 13 email to Wildstein saying, “Time for some traffic in Fort Lee.”

Baroni, in an appearance before the state Assembly committee investigating the matter in late November, also argued that Fort Lee was getting special treatment with the access lanes.  Taken together, his comment and Christie’s suggest the administration may have been looking at permanently closing or reducing the access lanes back in September.

Christie’s Bigger Sins

Yes, he’s a thug. Yes, he’s trying to change the subject. But isn’t there a lot more to report on about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie? Like the fact that he’s been guilty of wildly irresponsible and sometimes lawless behavior before.

Transportation problems, for example, seem to be a Christie specialty.  As bad as it was to torture Fort Lee with massive traffic congestion for four days, his actions in 2010 to kill the construction of a Hudson River tunnel for the use of New Jersey Transit were far more consequential and have and will hurt the entire region for decades to come.

Decades of planning came to fruition with the decision to build the “Access to the Region’s Core,” or “ARC” Tunnel. Funding came not only from New Jersey itself, but also from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and from the federal government.

So what did Governor Christie do with the job-creating, congestion-reducing, economy-propelling, and environment-restoring project? After the last minute (that is, once the work on the project was underway), he withdrew New Jersey’s support, losing both $3 billion in federal financing and a golden opportunity to strengthen the region for the long term in the process.

And the definition of smoking gun that the press uses is remarkably narrow; it generally requires a scandal, it demands that a politician be caught out. At the moment, it certainly appears that Christie’s “Bridge-gate” qualifies. But the bigger and more important scandals are almost always the ones hiding in plain sight. They require the press (even political reporters!) to report persistently on what a politician has done and not done — and the continuing impact of that conduct on the public — instead of focusing on the question of how and whether a politician will be able to spin something to his or her advantage.

That’s enough for Vol 1. Volumes 2-3-4-5-etc are just waiting in the wings. Click some links. Have fun. But don’t say you haven’t been informed.

I hope you enjoy the Super Bowl, or at least some of the commercials. I am pulling for the Seahawks because I like their style, and also because I have never liked John Elway. But Steven D is a big Broncos fan, so I’ll be happy for him if Denver wins. And I’ll be happy for the Manning family.

Go Giants!!

Do you have any Super Bowl Sunday traditions that I should adopt?

I apologize for the light blogging lately, but I should have announcements soon. When it comes to the Woody Allen thing, I think The Onion nailed it.

Chris Cillizza appears to agree with Rush Limbaugh that the House Republicans will be shooting themselves in the foot for the midterms if they agree to do anything about immigration policy.

At least Mr. Cillizza musters some data to support his position rather than sputtering racist bile, like Limbaugh. But what Cillizza shows is not that the Republicans should think twice before passing immigration legislation, but why they will think twice.

The reason I say that is because Cillizza demonstrates that individual Republican members of Congress have little to fear from angry Latino constituents, and that their endangered members are better off juicing their base rather than alienating them in an effort to appeal to Latinos. But what Cillizza doesn’t focus on is that so few Republicans are endangered that their best play is to pass immigration reform and set their 2016 nominee up nicely to compete for the presidency. Making marginal gains in 2014 that come at the expense of a drubbing in 2016 that wipes out those gains (and then some) and hands the Democrats another four years in the White House? That’s a sucker’s game.

The real problem is exactly as Limbaugh describes it:

We ought not be granting citizenship to people who don’t love the country,” he said. “We ought not be granting citizenship to people who don’t understand the history of this country. … But we do, in the interest of fairness and multiculturalism and being nonjudgmental and all this. But the real reason we do is because the people granting citizenship to people like this share that opinion this is no place special. And that’s what’s so damn frustrating and inconceivable about the Republican Party wanting to open the country up to this kind of immigration. It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s the end of the Republican Party. It’s the end of the country as we know it.”

For conservatives, the problem is that Latinos “don’t love this country,” “they don’t understand…this country,” they don’t think America is any “place special.” Letting Latinos have citizenship would be “the end of the Republican Party [and] the end of the country as we know it.”

These conservatives only care about elections to the extent that they think they can use them to slow down history and keep America white for whites. They don’t want to be more accommodating so they can win elections. They want the Latinos kicked out, whether they’re here legally or not, or even if their ancestors were here since before the Constitution was ratified or California became a state.

When you say that a party should do something, you should mean that in a moral sense. I dare anyone to argue that Cillizza’s analysis is based in any kind of morality.

Scarlett Johansson’s naive SodaStream defense

American actress Scarlett Johansson has become the center of controversy following the announcement that she is the new face of SodaStream, an Israeli company with a large factory in the West Bank.

(+972) – SodaStream produces domestic carbonation machines for making sodas at home, and has a large factory in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone, located inside Ma’ale Adumim, the third largest settlement in the occupied West Bank [Map E1 zone]. (This fact is conspicuously absent from its Wikipedia page). The company has both Palestinian and Israeli employees working in its West Bank factory, branding itself as an environmentally friendly, ethical alternative for soda lovers who want to do away with bottles –  and that is what Scarlett Johansson claims she loves so much about SodaStream and why she is now its first-ever “brand ambassador.”

Johansson has been under severe scrutiny and media attention from anti-occupation activists and advocates of the BDS movement. Both the The New Yorker and NY Magazine covered the controversy, the latter with the funny, if forced headline: “Guilt-Free Seltzer or Blood Bubbles?”  Robert Mackey who writes The New York Times’ Lede Blog has an excellent, detailed report, if you want to read more details.

I reckon the enormous media attention has partly to do with that fact that she is major eye candy and websites love to put her face on their home pages, no less than SodaStream does. Here is a hilarious meme I saw going around that I cannot resist but share.

 « click for story

"Scarlett Johansson enjoys a refreshment outside the employee lounge at #SodaStream's West Bank factory"

Johansson did not respond to the criticism until Friday, after Oxfam- the international aid and development NGO for which she also happens to be an ambassador since 2007 – came out with a statement challenging her involvement with SodaStream (but stopped short of calling on her to step down). According to their statement:

“Oxfam respects the independence of our ambassadors. However Oxfam believes that businesses that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support. Oxfam is opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.”

…

The argument that settlement companies like SodaStream are OK because they employ Palestinians holds no weight, since the political reality of occupation does not allow Palestinian workers to make a free and informed choice regarding their livelihoods. This argument has already been made many times, and especially poignantly by Who Profits, an Israeli NGO that documents Israel’s occupation industry.

Mondoweiss: Deconstructing Scarlett Johansson’s statement on SodaStream

More reactions below the fold …
Scarlett Johansson has been politically active for the Democrats since Kerry in 2004 and wants to be a voice for disadvantaged people. In a 2012 campaign TV ad for MoveOn.org she took a stance on women’s issues. For 2016 she has already indicated to throw her support behind Hillary.

“If you already have the spotlight shining on you, it’s great to direct that toward a cause you believe in and that you can stand behind. It’s nice to be a voice for people who don’t have a voice.”

Scarlett’s statement about her ambassadorship for Sodastream certainly didn’t provide any clarity and was taken apart. Her decision to cut ties with Oxfam indicates her new political activism.

Daniel Birnbaum, CEO of SodaStream, said in a video produced by a pro-Israel group Stand With Us that “we give them an opportunity to not only have a job and health insurance, but also social benefits. And a very high pay-scale which they could never achieve in the West Bank.” A report issued by the Israeli activist group Who Profits? [January 2011 – pdf] outlined major labor rights concerns at SodaStream’s factory in Mishor Adumim can be found here.

Last part posted @Informed Comment – Bad for the Jews: Israeli Annexation of Palestinian West Bank, Scarlett Johansson and BDS.

Don’t you feel sad for Chris Christie? This was supposed to be a great weekend for him. He could showcase his state, while hobnobbing with dozens of major potential financiers of a national campaign as he skipped between skyboxes at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands.

His big weekend has been ruined.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the turreted Cape May, New Jersey house. The photo that I will be using is seen directly below. I will be using my usual acrylics on a 8×10 gallery-wrapped canvas.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time, I have continued to work on the painting.

I began this week’s changes with the covered porch.  The posts are now thicker as well as the header above.  (I see that the railing is not all in line.  Sigh.)  I then turned to the other house, but things were not going well next door.   I finally decided to paint out the house and put in a tree.  Or at least the start of a tree.  I mixed some greenish paint and painted in the lower portion.  Some light greenish paint above was intended to lay a foundation for the sky.  But when I looked again the next morning I realized that there should be two plants, the slightly more distant tree suggested by the lighter paint and the darker bush below.  Why hadn’t I seen that the night before when I applied the paint?  Hmm.

Other changes include darker paint applied to the tree to the far rear and the street.  Both will need more work.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week.  See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

Terms like “take your medicine” and “eat your vegetables” refer to doing something good or necessary for your health even though it is unpleasant. Greg Sargent discovered that, at best, this is how Republican strategists feel about passing some kind of immigration reform. Sargent talked to some strategists in order to run a theory by them. His theory was that the GOP would be better off passing immigration reform this year than next year because, if they wait until next year, the debate within the party about “amnesty” would spill into their primary battles, pull the contenders to the right on the issue, and do severe damage to their chances with the Latino community. Much better, the theory goes, to get that debate done and over with before the presidential race begins in earnest. Sargent’s theory received significant endorsement:

“You could see a scenario where some of the candidates want to do something solutions-oriented on immigration, but then one candidate somehow wins Iowa on a “no amnesty’ pledge,” Patrick Hynes, a New Hampshire-based political strategist who was an adviser on both the McCain and Romney campaigns, tells me. “Then the other canddiates would have to morphe their positions to the right, thereby buttonholing themselves when the inevitable debate comes up again in the next primary states.”

“As we saw in 2012, just by virtue of having this debate, we alienate the fastest growing portion of the electorate,” Hynes continued. “That could result in us starting the next general election on our heels.”

This question concerns the timing of when to act, not whether to act at all. Many Republicans say the party needs to do something on reform, to repair relations with Latinos – just not this year. But as Matt Lewis observes about the need for GOP action now: “There really is no good time to eat your vegetables.”

I don’t think these strategists are thinking clearly. As long as the GOP treats the interests of the Latino community as some “bitter pill” or vile vegetable, they aren’t going to have much appeal to that community. It shouldn’t be so unpleasant to do what’s right. Doing what’s right shouldn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth.