Categorical Aperitif

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// posted by nash @ 8:23 AM 0 comments links to this post

Y'know, there was a time when I was sympathetic to the idea that we should do just that re. health care reform, but that's because I was thinking that a really good bill would do a lot more to universalize care and cut costs by moving us toward a single-payer system—or by including a serious public option at the very least—rather than mandating that people keep shoveling money into the gaping maws of the same old for-profit entities that helped to create the current mess.

But somehow, I don't think that's what John Boehner and Eric Cantor mean by "a bill that is truly worthy of the support and confidence of the American people." So if they decide to skip Obama's latest in his series of baffling attempts to reach out to his increasingly feral, slavering opposition, fine. Tomasky:

I think that if Obama invites them and they don't show up, and this thing is televised with empty chairs where they were supposed to be...well, Democrats can screw up a lot of things, but I have trouble seeing how they can screw that up. And yes, as soon as I type those words I see that I shouldn't tempt fate in such a way...

// posted by nash @ 7:55 AM 0 comments links to this post

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// posted by nash @ 10:19 PM 0 comments links to this post

Days like today are why I can't imagine life without Democracy Now!

Dennis Kucinich and Glenn Greenwald on the Bush-Obama claim of the president's right to assassinate American citizens overseas without due process or trial (as long as someone thinks they're terrorists, of course). Surely the president can be trusted to kill only the right people!

David Price on the CIA's growing presence at universities. Corporatize, militarize, rah rah rah!

Eamon Javers on the CIA's practice of allowing active-duty operatives to moonlight with private companies, putting their government-grown knowledge and skills at the service of Corporate America. And there was much incest!

I wish I had more in common with Lily Tomlin, but fondness for DN! will have to do.

// posted by nash @ 10:16 PM 0 comments links to this post

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// posted by nash @ 9:07 PM 0 comments links to this post

Sara Robinson has a fine discussion of that scary Kos poll of Republicans that's been much talked about lately.

"Far out of the mainstream" scarcely begins to characterize some of the more popular answers on that thing. Ye gods.

// posted by nash @ 9:02 PM 0 comments links to this post

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// posted by nash @ 6:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

Now that's a holiday I could celebrate. Mark Fiore presents The State of the Union Address We Wish We'd Seen but didn't.

// posted by nash @ 10:25 AM 0 comments links to this post

Dammit, I'm going to try to be cheerier this morning by pointing to John Judis arguing that, while attention has been elsewhere, Obama has been quietly re-progressivizing government under the radar by appointing honest-to-gosh experts—people who actually know, and care about, what they're doing—to key roles in government rather than relying on, you know, fancy-horse-association commissioners and whatnot:

Yet there is one extremely consequential area where Obama has done just about everything a liberal could ask for--but done it so quietly that almost no one, including most liberals, has noticed. Obama’s three Republican predecessors were all committed to weakening or even destroying the country’s regulatory apparatus: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the other agencies that are supposed to protect workers and consumers by regulating business practices. Now Obama is seeking to rebuild these battered institutions. In doing so, he isn’t simply improving the effectiveness of various government offices or making scattered progress on a few issues; he is resuscitating an entire philosophy of government with roots in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century. Taken as a whole, Obama’s revival of these agencies is arguably the most significant accomplishment of his first year in office.

// posted by nash @ 8:22 AM 0 comments links to this post

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// posted by nash @ 7:58 AM 0 comments links to this post

How good it is to have The Editors back?

// posted by nash @ 9:44 AM 0 comments links to this post

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// posted by nash @ 6:00 AM 1 comments links to this post

I haven't had a chance yet to watch the entire hour's worth of Obama in the lions' den from last week, but I sure love William Rivers Pitt's description of the carnage:

One by one, Republican members of Congress stood before Mr. Obama and took their best shots. One by one, he sent them packing with a smile on his face and the facts on his side. One of the most revealing exchanges took place when GOP Congressman Mike Pence (R-Indiana) tried to take the president to task for refusing to support an across-the-board tax cut, and for the massive cascade of job losses that hit the nation last winter. Mr. Obama reminded Pence that the job losses he spoke of took place before he took office, and before any of his programs had been implemented. He excoriated Pence and a number of his Republican brethren for attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies celebrating programs created by the stimulus package they had voted against. He concluded by telling Pence, "I'm going to want to take a look at your math," because Pence's support for massive tax cuts, a spending freeze and a balanced budget all at the same time basically makes no sense whatsoever.

Perhaps, the most revealing aspect of this event came after the deal had gone down. The Republicans in that room were made to look so foolish in the face of this president that a number of them later stated bluntly that it was a mistake to have allowed cameras into the room. Fox News saw how badly those GOP Congress people were being thrashed and cut away from their broadcast of the event a full 20 minutes before it was over, choosing instead to flood their studio with critics of Obama to try and mitigate the damage.

And that, in a nutshell, is the present reality of this Republican Party. When allowed to freely bloviate into the yawning void of modern political journalism, the GOP can score points easily. They are the undisputed world heavyweight champions of the sound bite stab below the fifth rib, and their talents in this regard are fortified by their uncanny ability to have no fealty to the truth whatsoever. When confronted by someone armed to the teeth with the facts, someone who can articulate those facts clearly and completely in front of a battery of cameras broadcasting his words to a national audience on every network, they folded like wet napkins.

The start of an aggressive—and long overdue—pushback against his shameless (terrorist lover! government takeover! death panels!) opposition, or just an entertaining rhetorical display? I hope for the former but fear the latter—but even the latter is better than nothing at this point.

// posted by nash @ 8:13 AM 0 comments links to this post

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// posted by nash @ 7:40 AM 0 comments links to this post

Krugman on the let's-just-accept-unemployment-well-over-five-percent-for-another-half-decade-at-least Obama (Hope! Change!) budget.

Sigh.

Dean Baker on what could be done.

// posted by nash @ 6:40 AM 1 comments links to this post

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// posted by nash @ 6:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

WOW. My instincts tell me it could win the Democrats votes if they had the b*lls to embrace it in the face of the screams of "Marxism!!!" that get flung at any attempt to realign tax policy to favor workers rather than owners. But hey, maybe they could shield themselves with the mantle of St. Reagan:

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was President Ronald Reagan's last fiscal legacy. It showcased his deep belief in trickle-down economics, cutting the top rate on personal income nearly in half.

But Reagan also signed off on a longtime liberal goal: equal taxes on income from work and income from wealth. The bill raised the tax on long-term capital gains from 20 percent to 28 percent, the same top rate that applied to ordinary income. No longer would gains made on Wall Street be taxed at a lower rate than wages on Main Street.

Reagan hailed the bill as "a sweeping victory for fairness." A generation later, with the fierce urgency of now, President Barack Obama should bring back Reagan's liberal breakthrough.

The president knows we've been falling away for the longest time. Listen to this from the Tax Fairness Plan posted on Obama's web site during the 2008 campaign: "For decades, America has been victim to an anti-tax sentiment that has led to tax cuts that favor wealth, not work."

Nothing favors wealth, not work, more neatly than the tax break on capital gains. The first break came from President Clinton, who lowered the tax on long-term gains to 20 percent. President Bush cut it again, to 15 percent, little more than half the rate paid by middle-class Americans on their wages. Bush's action pushed the rate to a 70-year low; it's now at 77 years and counting, going back to 1933.

The Bush tax cuts are due to expire at the end of the year, which would return the capital gains rate to 20 percent. Timid, Mr. President, turn it up a notch, and lead us to the Reagan path.

// posted by nash @ 12:52 PM 0 comments links to this post

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// posted by nash @ 10:25 AM 0 comments links to this post

From the Blinked and Almost Missed It Department: late right-wing radio oldster Paul Harvey was great buds with J. Edgar Hoover—exchanging frequent letters with the FBI Director, taking script suggestions from him, and, um, other things:

Neither man was restrained in his praise of the other. "You were never in better form," Hoover gushed to Harvey about one of his broadcasts in May 1958, and again, in precisely the same words, in February 1959.

Harvey wrote to Hoover in January 1957, saying, "From some future pinnacle, if the Republic has survived, history will record that it was largely due to your vigilance."

In 1963, Harvey dropped by FBI headquarters for a publicity shot with Hoover. Harvey praised the director as "a champion of right-thinking people everywhere," and added that he appeared to be in excellent shape, as well.

Oh, and it turns out that Harvey wasn't above pre-fabricating a story about supposedly wandering onto a laxly secured U.S. nuclear facility. Hmm, making stuff up, mancrushing on authoritarians—he was quite the role model for the talkers of today, huh?

(h/t FAIR)

// posted by nash @ 10:21 AM 1 comments links to this post

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// posted by nash @ 6:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

I don't know that there's any big-name opinion columnist (and, God help us, frequent PBS/NPR guest bloviator) that I despise more than I despise David Brooks, and there is no one who takes him down better for his deceptive, whiny, toadying, class-war-decrying, privilege-serving missives than Matt Taibbi:

And even if I were to accept the Brooksian view of an upper class that must be looked to to fix things and take care of the lower classes and create the needed wealth to help us escape our economic crisis, the whole point is that this upper class he is talking about has abdicated that very responsibility — and, perhaps having reached the cynical conclusion that our society is not worth saving, has taken on a new mission that involves not creating wealth for all but simply absconding with whatever wealth is remaining.

It’s not pessimism or “combative divisiveness” to talk about these problems and insist that they get fixed. On the contrary, it’s a very positive view of what citizenship is to believe that everyone has a real role in fixing his country’s problems, and that when we identify problems, we should try to do something about them because we might actually succeed.

On the other hand, telling oneself that when powerful people “rig the game” one should just tolerate it, because one’s best hope for seeing the situation fixed rests in hoping those same powerful people fix it themselves — I would describe that as pessimism, or something worse than pessimism. The whole point of America is that we are all supposed to be our own masters, never viewing anyone as being by birth or situation inherently better or more capable than ourselves, and so the notion of relying upon some nebulous class of investment bankers to “channel opportunity” from on high strikes me as being un-American.

And besides, the fact that a lot of these guys have made a lot of money recently doesn’t make them “upper class.” They’re the same assholes we all were in high school and college, except that they made some very particular moral choices in adulthood, and became criminals, and have now arranged things so that they’re going to be tough as hell to catch. And when they fall, which a lot of them will… I mean a lot of these guys are ten seconds from losing it all and spending the next ten years working the laundry room at Danbury or pushing shopping carts under the FDR expressway. And they know it. These people aren’t the nobility. They’re people just like us, only stupider and less ashamed of themselves.

// posted by nash @ 7:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

Let's close out the week with a threefer.

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// posted by nash @ 6:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

Jim Naureckas at FAIR does a great job of shredding Joe Klein over a Swampland post wherein Klein blames the public for being too stupid to understand that they've benefited from last year's stimulus package. Naureckas points out that the corporate media deserve a large portion of the blame for any such ignorance thanks to its penchant for unenlightening, faux-objective he-said/she-said reporting:

Here's how you're supposed to report on the stimulus, if you work for a newspaper or daily TV news program:

Obama, GOP Spokesman Differ on Stimulus Results

That's from the Boston Globe (11/27/09), considered one of the most "liberal" corporate news outlets. The story that followed dutifully quoted the president claiming he had cut taxes and extended jobless benefits, followed by Rep. Mike Pence (R.-Ind)  saying that Democrats had taken the economy "from bad to worse with their failed economic agenda and big government plans." Who was right? The story gave readers not a clue, allowing the Globe to successfully avoid taking sides.

Or look at the piece from CNN (1/25/10) that set Klein off, reporting on a poll that found "3 of 4 Americans Say Much of Stimulus Money Wasted."  Is the public right to think that?  The CNN story doesn't say--it's just telling us what we think, not what the facts are.

Now, you do find the occasional report on a study that finds that, in fact, increased government spending does seem to result in lower unemployment. But such stories are  greatly outnumbered by the he-said, she-said of routine political coverage--few if any of which will refer back to the coverage that cited actual data about the stimulus program.  Expecting citizens to figure out on their own which side's line of the day is more credible is like randomly inserting passages from The Lord of the Rings into a history textbook and being surprised when students think Gandalf was a real person.

// posted by nash @ 9:17 AM 0 comments links to this post

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// posted by nash @ 7:30 AM 0 comments links to this post

I was all set to hunt up and read the text of the State of the Union Address this morning (I couldn't watch it last night and haven't perused the blogospheric reaction yet) and see what my reactions were, but almost the first thing I found out upon going online was that the great populist historian Howard Zinn died yesterday (h/t TMW). Damn. So there's one thing we know about the State of the Union this morning: It's immeasurably poorer.

Zinn appeared often on Democracy Now! (good luck finding people like him on Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc.), and it's a safe bet that they'll have a good retrospective on him—if not today, then quite soon. They've already got up a great memorial page with a brief bio and links to his many DN! appearances stretching back to 1996. I'll be spending some time there myself when I can.

Class conflict was one of the main lenses through which Zinn looked at history, and I doubt that any modern-day big-name historian was better at paying attention to the people that official and school history often ignores, distorts, or outright lies about: the marginalized, the losers, the poor, the despised, the downtrodden. His A People's History of the United States is like a big Bible of the Ignored, a great compendium of American tales that the schoolbook histories generally breeze past. I had in my notes a link to his "Three Holy Wars" talk—a look at little-noticed class issues in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II—given for the 100th anniversary of The Progressive magazine; it's well worth a read and/or a listen.

Sigh.

// posted by nash @ 9:59 AM 0 comments links to this post

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// posted by nash @ 8:54 AM 0 comments links to this post

Yesterday's Democracy Now! has a nice segment on Alex Gibney's new film about shameless überlobbyist Jack Abramoff and his astonishing record of greed, mendacity, and right-wing activism. Excerpt:

NEIL VOLZ [former Congressional staffer and Abramoff associate]: The first time I met Jack Abramoff was in the Majority Whip’s office at an event. Jack is one of a kind. I mean, Jack Abramoff could sweet talk a dog off a meat truck. He’s that persuasive. And he’s the king of K Street. This is the guy. And he comes in for five minutes, sits down next to somebody who’s willing to spend millions of dollars, you know, to lobby Washington, and then he leaves in five minutes. And the guy or the woman thinks that Jack’s talking to the President, but he’s probably playing solitaire on his computer. And then he comes back in, and it’s like, “Hey, you know, sorry about that, but you got two more minutes. And by the way, I need about $250,000 a month,” and then walks out the door. One of a kind. One of a kind.

// posted by nash @ 8:51 AM 0 comments links to this post