Where were the Tea Parties on CRomnibus?

Where were the Tea Parties when their Republican party just put taxpayers on the hook for up to $300 trillion in bailouts for banks' risky bets on derivatives??

(NB: America's GDP in 2013 was $17 trillion.)

The TPs, as legend has it, were a spontaneous "grassroots" movement in response to the TBTF bank bailouts, but were actually about opposing a minor proposed bailout for distressed mortgage borrowers. A bailout that never happened. 

At any rate, despite all the TPs' huffing and puffing, the TBTF banks were bailed out to the tune of about $30 trillion, and now the 10 largest banks are 28 percent LARGER than they were before!. Just to show Wall Street's power, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon himself made calls to wavering Congressmen urging them to vote on the CRomnibus bill. (Ask yourself: Why was this provision on derivatives so important to Dimon? The answer should scare you.)

Opposing this CRomnibus rider would seem to be right in the TP's anti-bailout wheelhouse, wouldn't it?

Wouldn't it??  Where are you Tea Parties when America needs you? Where was your outrage?  Your consistency? [Crickets chirping].You're just far-right Republicans, that's all you are. To the dustbin of history with you!

Being an 'indispensable nation' is killing America

This op-ed is worth re-posting in full.

Never let it be said I'm a partisan hack: I support Borosage's indictment of President Obama's executive overreach in conducting military operations without Congressional approval for war. 

More damning to my mind has been President Obama's failure to articulate to the nation (and Congress) a national security-military doctrine/vision (call it what you will) that makes it clear when he thinks the United States should send its troops into battle, and when we shouldn't. Granted, this may be the most difficult job of any POTUS in an ever-changing world, and with inherited conflicts of past presidents.

Is it because Obama and his team doesn't have the strategic capacity to develop such a vision? Is it because Obaama is too arrogant to articulate it for us, we're just supposed to trust him not to do "stupid shit"? Or, most likely, is it because a timid Obama fears that no matter what he says, it will be parsed and pilloried by Republicans -- who also can't agree among themselves on a foreign policy -- looking to score partisan political points?

Borosage is right to point out that the opportunity cost of U.S. military adventures abroad is investment in piss-poor education and crumbling infrastructure at home. Maybe our government can buy guns and butter... but not forever, not at a sustainable cost. This is where the "fiscally responsible" yet "pro-military" Tea Parties and Republicans have fallen on their faces as an opposition, by refusing to specify just what they are willing to give up to achieve their stated top priority of fiscal balance.

Being the ‘indispensable nation’ is killing American democracy

By Robert L. Borosage

October 20, 2014 | Reuters

America — proudly dubbed the “indispensable nation” by its national-security managers — is now the entangled nation enmeshed in conflicts across the globe.

President Barack Obama, scorned by his Republican critics as an “isolationist” who wants to “withdraw from the world,” is waging the longest war in U.S. history in Afghanistan, boasts of toppling the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya, launches airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against Islamic State and picks targets for drones to attack in as many as eight countries, while dispatching planes to the Russian border in reaction to its machinations in Ukraine, and a fleet to the South China Sea as the conflict over control of islands and waters escalates between China and its neighbors.

The indispensable nation is permanently engaged across the globe. But endless war undermines the Constitution. Democracy requires openness; war justifies secrecy. Democracy forces attention be paid to the common welfare; war demands attention and resources be spent on distant conflicts. Democracy involves forging coalitions to get action in the Congress; war is waged on executive order. The Constitution restrains the executive in times of peace; constitutional strictures are trampled in times of war.

When the founders wrote the Constitution, they worried about the tendency of kings, or presidents, to make war for personal aggrandizement or national glory.  So they gave Congress the power to declare war, intent on “clogging, not facilitating” the rush to war.  For the Republic, peace would be the normal state of affairs. War was a disruption — entered into only with prior debate and consideration by  Congress, the elected body whose members best reflected the attitudes of their constituents.

The United States, in the words of conservative John Quincy Adams, would provide a shining example of liberty as long as “she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

But now the pursuit of monsters to destroy is unrelenting. Almost inevitably, it seems, the restraints of the Constitution are being trampled. With little debate, U.S. leaders have chosen permanent global intervention even at the cost of undermining the Republic.

For the cost of war can be measured in dollars not spent here at home.

An educated citizenry is the foundation of a robust democracy. Yet from the absence of free, full-day pre-K to affordable colleges to advanced training, the United States is skimping on investment in educating its citizens. A modern infrastructure is also essential to a competitive, high-wage economy. But while Washington spends $3 trillion on Iraq, there hasn’t been a serious discussion about bringing America’s aged infrastructure, including our roads, bridges and airports, up to standard — which would cost about the same. 

A bridge to somewhere... now a bridge to nowhere.

Instead of this funding, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies spend more on their militaries than the rest of the world combined. Washington maintains more than 1,000 bases, called “military sites,” across the globe, plus 11 aircraft-carrier task forces that are essentially moveable bases. U.S. conventional and nuclear forces are unrivaled — yet Washington plans to spend another trillion dollars over the next 30 years modernizing nuclear weapons that the United States aims never to use. U.S. intelligence and covert forces are permanently engaged, often secretly creating the implicit commitments that will force the next intervention.

It is only America, as the president said in a speech announcing his intention to “degrade and ultimately defeat” Islamic State, which he refers to as ISIL, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, that “has the capacity and the will to mobilize the world against terrorism … against Russian aggression … to contain … Ebola and more.”

This president, more than his predecessors, understands the perils of being the “indispensable nation.” Elected in large part to get the United States out of the seemingly endless wars in the Middle East, he now finds himself forced into another open-ended commitment.

In his speech to the National Defense University in 2013, Obama argued, “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’ ” Obama warned specifically about this. “The choice we make about war,” the president said, “can impact —  in sometimes unintended ways — the openness and freedom on which our way of life depends.”

Yet even with this awareness, and no reelection race facing him, Obama could not escape the imperatives of America’s role as the indispensable nation. The commitments are too many,  the engagement too permanent, the capacity unrivalled — seemingly making all things possible.  As a result, this former professor of constitutional law has governed over the greatest assertion of executive authority — claiming the power to make war, to surveil, arrest, detain and even kill Americans without prior judicial review or due process.

Ike warned us about the growing "military-industrial complex" that sought to feed itself at the federal trough.

His Justice Department has used espionage laws against reporters and whistleblowers.  The secrecy shields massive waste, fraud and abuse, as the military-industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against consumes the bulk of the national budget, aside from payments on the national debt and the insurance programs of Social Security and Medicare.

When President George W. Bush was about to launch the war in Iraq, millions of Americans – as well as many people around the globe — marched in protest. The large demonstrations against war led the New York Times to dub world public opinion a second superpower. Bush sought authority from Congress and a dramatic congressional debate took place, with strong dissent against the war.

When Obama committed the United States to the fight against Islamic State, he claimed the authority to act without Congress, though adding he would “welcome” congressional support. Yet with the midterm elections then a few months away, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress chose to postpone the debate and the vote.

The bombing began on presidential order. Americans accepted their role as spectators, registering no significant objection to this presidential war-making.  The indispensable nation is not only spending lives and resources on endless wars abroad, it is shredding its Constitution at home.

Ironically, America’s democracy is still strong enough to render it less than competent as a global policeman. Our military is the finest in the world, but still finds it hard to win a war. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate that while presidents can commit the nation virtually anywhere, Americans sour on long, costly interventions on the other side of the world.

This leads to strategies like “no boots on the ground” — designed not to rouse public opposition but almost certain to fail. Polls show that Americans have no interest in policing the globe. If the Constitution no longer constrains the president from making war, the public still limits his ability to wage it.

Voter-ID laws are a good ole fashioned poll tax

Rank-and-filed Republicans can never be convinced that there has never been an incidence of group voter fraud, much less an incidence that swayed an election. (Republican leaders know it's a sham to give them an excuse to suppress voting.)

So my conservative friends, just read this parallel in Hong Kong that Beinart found. It blew me away, because this Leung guy is speaking aloud what Republican leaders are saying behind closed doors:

If Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters succeed in booting C.Y. Leung from power, the city’s unelected chief executive should consider coming to the United States. He might fit in well in the Republican Party.

In an interview Monday with The New York Times and other foreign newspapers, Leung explained that Beijing cannot permit the direct election of Hong Kong’s leaders because doing so would empower “the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month.” Leung instead defended the current plan to have a committee of roughly 1,200 eminent citizens vet potential contenders because doing so, in the Times’ words, “would insulate candidates from popular pressure to create a welfare state, and would allow the city government to follow more business-friendly policies.”

And for those who say getting a new photo-ID just to vote (not for any other use by the voter) isn't a poll tax, consider this:

Acquiring that free ID requires showing another form of identification—and those cost money. In the states with voter-ID laws, notes a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, “Birth certificates can cost between $8 and $25. Marriage licenses, required for married women whose birth certificates include a maiden name, can cost between $8 and $20. By comparison, the notorious poll tax—outlawed during the civil rights era—cost $10.64 in current dollars.”

It's not like poll taxes are OK if they are "affordable" by somebody else's standards. No. Poll taxes are forbidden, period. 

Should the Poor Be Allowed to Vote?

By Peter Beinart

October 22, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/the-new-poll-tax/381791/?single_page=true

Frum: There is no 'libertarian' movement

I hate to use the term "libertards," but... if the orthopedic shoe fits.... 

Why the 'Libertarian Moment' Isn't Really Happening

By David Frum

August 11, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/the-illusion-of-a-libertarian-moment/375844/?single_page=true

The GOP insurgent who heralded the Progressive Era and paved the way for the Tea Parties (Atlantic)

"He’s a fanatic," charged a corporate attorney, "and the way that man goes around spreading discontent is a menace to law, property, business, and all American institutions. If we don’t stop him here he will go out and agitate all over the United States. We’re getting him now; you’ll get him next. That man must be blocked."

"Yes," added an indignant banker, "La Follette will spread socialism all over the world."

Well, according to Glenn Beck, that's just what La Follette and others did in the early 1900s -- by starting the Progressive Movement.

In fact, the Progressives, who were born out of the corrupt 19th century GOP, saved capitalism and American democracy for almost a century. What do I mean? Let me quote myself from 2007:

Progressives wanted government to take action against rising economic inequality, discrimination against freed blacks, child labor, squalid living conditions and "slumlords," price discrimination and monopolies; high protective tariffs; and in general, gov't serving Big Business.

Progressive reforms included: breaking up trusts and interlocking directorates; new food safety standards (Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act); sanitation codes for sweatshops; reform of "reform" schools and prisons; workmen's compensation laws; use of the political referendum; direct election of U.S. Senators via the 17th Amendment (they called the Senate the "Millionaires Club" even back then!); regulation of the railroads through the 1903 Elkins Act and local public utilities commissions; and state corrupt-practices acts. They also campaigned for women's suffrage, the 8-hour workday, and prohibition, but weren't successful until the 1920s.

Sounds like a bunch of stuff straight outta Marx, huh?  In fact it's the America we know today, a country we wouldn't want to give up.

Says Wolraich in The Atlantic  of La Follette:

If "Fighting Bob" were alive today, he’d be howling in the Capitol. A hundred years before the Tea Parties, Senator Bob La Follette of Wisconsin was the original Republican insurgent. In the early 1900s, he led a grassroots revolt against the GOP establishment and pioneered the ferocious tactics that the Tea Parties use today—long-shot primary challenges, sensational filibusters, uncompromising ideology, and populist rhetoric. But there was a crucial difference between La Follette and today’s right-wing insurgents: “Fighting Bob” was a founding father of the progressive movement.

Git yerselves edumacated and read on!....

The Original Tea Partiers: How GOP Insurgents Invented Progressivism

By Michael Wolraich

July 22, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/the-original-tea-partiers-how-gop-insurgents-invented-progressivism/374557/

Waldman: Kansas is a Tea Party lesson for the rest of US

Me and a Democrat buddy of mine (notice I omit the -ic at the end of Democrat to pander to my conservative friends) were complaining about Republican politicians when he said in frustration, "We should just elect all their Tea Party guys and let them run the country into the ground so people can see once and for all what happens."

I admit I'm tempted by that possibility sometimes; then I remember that we're talking about millions of people's lives and well being at stake, including innocent children who would probably lose their food stamps, school meals, libraries, health care, etc. if the Grand Old Tea Party got its way.

Instead we can look to Kansas, one of our 50 "laboratories of democracy," to see what happens when extreme right-wing ideologues take power.  Paul Waldman is Kansas' herald of doom [emphasis mine]:

In 2012 and 2013, [Governor] Brownback and Republicans in the legislature cut income taxes twice, eliminated taxes on corporate profits that are “passed through” to individuals (making it the only state that does this), and since they’re Republicans, made changes to the tax code that had the effect of raising taxes on the poor (the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has agood explanation of the tax changes and their effects). The governor has said his goal is to eventually eliminate the income tax completely.

And what happened? At a time when most states are seeing higher revenues as the country recovers economically, Kansas’ revenues have plummeted. The result has been cuts to schools, cuts to higher education, cuts to libraries, and cuts to local health centers.  Kansas’ job growth and income growth are lagging the nation’s.  In response to the fiscal difficulties, Moody’s recently lowered the state’s bond rating.

Waldman should also have noted that Kansas was not that bad off to begin with in 2012 when the GOP took over. Relatively speaking, Kansas was in the middle. And in terms of economic security as an index of factors, Kansas was one of the most secure economically, post-recession.  

So, based on ideology not fiscal or economic necessity, Gov. Sam Brownback and his GOP super-majority, said basically, "If it ain't broke let's fix it."  

Thankfully, their toxic experiment was contained to relatively isolated and sparsely populated Kansas. The only good results are, as I said, a warning to the rest of us, and that the Kansas GOP is now in a state of "civil war" between Tea Party extremists and everybody else.

GOP governor implements GOP economics, disaster ensues

By Paul Waldman

July 16, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1r4ijC6

Reich: How to save capitalism from itself

I'm stitching several of Robert Reich's remarks together here:

In the United States, the progressive movement in the early 20th century pursued a very similar agenda: They sought a progressive income tax, limits to campaign spending, break-ups of corporate monopolies, food safety and health regulations, labor rights, etcetera. Those changes occurred not because of a cataclysm but because political reformers had enough influence to push extremely important reforms. I am looking to those historical periods for inspiration about the future. They give me hope.

[...] In the United States, we can already see the beginning of a populist and progressive reaction to the concentration of economic wealth. I disagree with the goals of the Tea Party, but it’s important to remember that the movement began as opposition to the bail-outs of Wall Street and rejected the establishment of the Republican Party. On the Left, you had the short-lived Occupy movement. But we can see the rebirth of progressivism in the election of people like Bill de Blasio or Elizabeth Warren. They were elected on explicitly progressive platforms. And if we are to believe surveys, the U.S. public is increasingly weary of concentrated economic power. The Supreme Court decisions on campaign finance are widely greeted with dismay and anger.

[...] I have nothing but admiration for Thomas Piketty’s book, but I think that it shows a lack of political sophistication if you believe that only crises can generate waves of political reform. I believe – and I think that history bears me out – that democratic capitalism has something like a balance wheel: The public becomes deeply offended by great concentrations of economic and political power. That offense quickly moves to outrage, and that can have serious political consequences. 

Reich: "I am optimistic because I see no alternative"

Interview with Martin Eiermann

June 17, 2014 | The European

URL: http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/robert-reich--2/8636-robert-reich-on-inequality-and-austerity

Dems propose Net Neutrality bill that has not a chance in hell

I'd proudly call this a class warfare bill.  Net neutrality is one of those issues that separates the wheat from the chaff.  

So why isn't talk radio and Fox News going nuts over this bill, which should be known as the "Keep the Internet the Way It's Always Been Act"? 

Well, you see, it's much easier for conservative bloviators to foam at the mouth over alleged denials of tax-exempt status by the IRS for clearly political Tea Party groups that are most certainly not "social welfare organizations."  

Yeah, that's the ticket. None of these Tea Partiers are engaged in politics, no sir!....

Democrats Unveil A Bill To Ban Internet Fast Lanes

By Elise Hu

June 17, 2014 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/1kK5XYR

GOP candidate reveals Tea Parties' true motivation

You can read the rest of this article about one of the last "Republican Establishmentarians" fighting (albeit passively) for his political life, but what I found fascinating was this frank admission from Tea Party challenger, Glenn Beck/Breitbart darling and Senator wannabe Chris McDaniel of Mississippi [emphasis mine]:

McDaniel, however, routinely casts his mission not as a break with the past but as a bulwark against a frightening future."Millions in this country feel like strangers in this land," he says. "An older America is passing away. A newer America is rising to take its place. We recoil from that culture. It’s foreign to us. It’s offensive to us." This is a remarkably frank declaration of the vision of the Tea Party embraced by liberal social scientists: an expression, above all, of old white people's anxieties at the prospect of an urbanizing, liberalizing, diversifying America.

Tea Partiers can talk all they want about being for smaller government and fiscal conservatism -- they are -- but that's not what really drives them emotionally, it's not what gets their back up. 

It's the "culture wars" -- more precisely, the demographic destiny of America -- that alternately worries and infuriates them. 

America is getting less white and more liberal and this trend will only continue. The old white Tea Parties know it and it drives them nuts.

Thad Cochran, the Last of the Naive Republicans

By Molly Ball

June 3, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/thad-cochran-the-last-of-the-naive-republicans/372084/

Cox: McConnell's win is a victory for the Tea Parties

My friends in the Tea Parties won't see it this way, but Cox is right: Bevin, et al, have successfully moved the GOP even farther to the Right. Indeed, McConnell is consistently rated as one of the most conservative voters in the U.S. Senate:

McConnell didn't win because he became a Tea Party member – he's so conservative, he didn't have to. (A vote analysis casts him as one of the top 25 conservative members of the Senate, and Tea Party darling and intrastate rival Paul is at number 19.) Instead, McConnell's win just shows how easily the GOP grows over its fringes.

What's happening in the Republican party is the worst of both the Tea Party and more traditional "free-market" (but never really as free as advertised) economics: an aggressive "pro-business" agenda combined with radically retrogressive social policies.

But I don't expect the TP maximalists to take any heart from Bevin's loss.... Even worse, most of them will probably hold their noses and vote for Mitch against his formidable Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes.

UPDATE (30.05.2014): Here's middle-of-the-road political analyst Bill Schneider over at Reuters saying much the same thing as Cox on the same day: "How far right can Republicans go?"

Don’t be fooled: McConnell’s victory in Kentucky is also a Tea Party win

By Ana Marie Cox

May 21, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3pda9

Guerilla class warfare: IRS audits fewer rich, more poor people

Channeling the spirit of my man David Cay Johnston, I'm gonna tell you why this mundane story matters.

See, Republicans in Congress cynically under-fund the IRS year in, year out. So an undermanned, undertrained IRS makes do and does what comes easier, relatively -- auditing people with lower incomes. Because higher-income filers have lawyers and complicated returns and it requires more manpower to check them.  

What this works out to, in reality, is a calculated game of probability by rich filers: if you're wealthy, and you're lawyered up, chances are you'll come away unaudited; and even if you are audited, you'll come away unscathed.  

And so wealth inequality is a double-whammy for the poor and working class: earning so much less, they are still more likely to be audited. 

BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY THE GOP WANTS IT.  Don't be naive and believe otherwise.

Finally, do I really have to explain how this makes no business sense?  As every auditor knows, you focus your attention on the weakest control points with the highest potential for losses. The potential for losses among poor filers is minimal, almost nil.  

All the Tea Partyers who are serious about fiscal health should cheer on  the IRS, because every dollar spent on the IRS  brings in $255 to the U.S. Treasury. Just by enforcing existing tax laws passed by Congress, nothing more. No other government agency can boast of such efficiency!  And so it's time for the TPs to put up or shut up about the IRS, the only government agency that reduces the federal deficit.

U.S. IRS audited fewer wealthy Americans in 2013

By  Patrick Temple-West

March 21, 2014 | Reuters

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service said on Friday that it audited fewer high-income Americans in 2013 than it did in 2012 or 2011, while it conducted more audits of people with no income.

Total audits fell by 5 percent from 2012 to reach the lowest level since 2008 as the IRS said it coped with budget cuts.

For the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2013, the IRS said it audited 24.2 percent of individual tax returns with adjusted gross income of $10 million or more. That was down from 27 percent in 2012 and 30 percent in 2011.

There were also fewer individual tax returns audited in the $5 million to $10 million gross income band, the IRS said.

In total, the IRS audited about 1.4 million individual returns. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in a statement that budget cuts at the agency have "presented challenges."

Wealthy Americans historically are the likeliest to be audited. The IRS a few years ago started a "Global High Wealth Industry Group" to audit high-wealth individuals more efficiently.

But Congress in January cut the IRS's fiscal 2014 budget by about 4 percent to $11.3 billion.

The funding cuts have forced the IRS to cut the number of customer service representatives it employs during tax season, Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union said in a statement. "Both taxpayers and employees are frustrated."

Last year, audits were done on 6 percent of individual tax returns reporting no gross income, up from 2.7 percent in 2012 and 3.4 percent in 2011.

Limbaugh encapsulates idiocy on Ukraine and foreign policy

This whole segment from Rush's show is idiotic. That's a given. But I'm posting it to illustrate two points -- OK, three.

First, the Zero-Responsibility Wing of the GOP (and that includes the Tea Parties) can say whatever they like to badmouth Obama and that's just fine because they're not in charge.  Which leads me to...

...Second, notice here that Rush and his Zero-Responsibility Wing offer no specific instructions what Obama SHOULD do instead. And that's no accident, because Rush is not an idiot. He's an "entertainer," he's a charlatan, but he's not an idiot.  He knows that the U.S. cannot very well insert itself militarily in Ukraine to liberate Crimea from Russian occupation without risking World War III.  So what can the U.S. do?  Rush is silent on that -- yet still critical of President Obama.

Third and finally, just remember this moment next time there's a Republican POTUS in office and Republicans tell Democrats to get in line and "respect the office" or "put partisanship aside" because "politics end at the border."  What Republicans are doing now to undermine President Obama and do their best to make him look weak is the basest form of political partisanship -- especially since they won't suggest anything materially different than what Obama is already doing.  Not the least of which, because, so much depends on agreement with sanctions against Russia by the European Union -- sanctions which require robust U.S. diplomacy.  You know, that gum-flapping, useless talkin' stuff.  Yeah, diplomacy actually still matters, my neocon friends, word up!

Obama Lets Putin Take Crimea

March 13, 2014 | The Rush Limbaugh Show

URL: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/03/13/obama_lets_putin_take_crimea

Preaching 'personal responsibility' to African-Americans

With the audacity of hope, I encourage you -- and my conservative friends especially -- to read Coates's article about how African-Americans struggle to relate to President Obama as "The Man" and his calls for blacks to exercise personal responsibility. Try to understand in particular the last three sentences quoted here [emphasis mine]:

"I am not raising 'nothing niggers," my mother used to tell me. "I am not raising niggers to stand on the corner." My mother did not know her father. In my life, I've loved four women. One of them did not know her father and two, very often, wished they didn't. It's not very hard to look at that, and seethe. It's not very hard to look at that and see a surrender, while you are out here at war, and seethe. It's not hard to look around at your community and feel that you are afflicted by quitters, that your family—in particular—is afflicted by a weakness. And so great is this weakness that the experience of black fatherlessness can connect Barack Obama in Hawaii to young black boys on the South Side, and that fact—whatever the charts, graphs, and histories may show—is bracing. When Barack Obama steps into a room and attacks people for presumably using poverty or bigotry as an excuse to not parent, he is channeling a feeling deep in the heart of all black people, a frustration, a rage at ourselves for letting this happen, for allowing our community to descend into the basement of America, and dwell there seemingly forever. 

My mother's admonishings had their place. God forbid I ever embarrass her. God forbid I be like my grandfather, like the fathers of my friends and girlfriends and wife. God forbid I ever stand in front of these white folks and embarrass my ancestors, my people, my dead. And God forbid I ever confuse that creed, which I took from my mother, which I pass on to my son, with a wise and intelligent analysis of my community. My religion can never be science. This is the difference between navigating the world and explaining it. 

In other words, we should not expect to hear the lessons that we teach our children repeated back to us by our elected leaders, as if we are children.  We don't elect them to be our parents or pastors; we elect them to solve problems that we as individuals or individual communities cannot.  As for the rest of us, as a body politic, we cannot preach "personal responsibility" to each other and thereby wash our hands of our society's problems. If only it were that easy.

(And if you don't believe there are any problems that individuals or communities cannot solve by themselves, as many Tea Party conservatives say, then you should really consider not voting in federal elections at all, since basically all Washington does or can do is "meddle" in our lives.)  

  

The above applies to the socio-economic strife of blacks especially. 

The Champion Barack Obama

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

January 31, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/the-champion-barack-obama/283458/

Tea Parties can't win, but won't disappear

As I've said before, the Tea Party should always be referred to in the plural -- the Tea Parties -- because there is no overarching organization, plan or leadership to this loose confederation of like-minded older white people. Tea Party researcher Theda Skocpol elaborates [emphasis mine]:

Even though there is no one center of Tea Party authority -- indeed, in some ways because there is no one organized center -- the entire gaggle of grassroots and elite organizations amounts to a pincer operation that wields money and primary votes to exert powerful pressure on Republican officeholders and candidates. Tea Party influence does not depend on general popularity at all. Even as most Americans have figured out that they do not like the Tea Party or its methods, Tea Party clout has grown in Washington and state capitals. 

The Tea Parties have a certain clout because they don't want government to do anything at all, therefore they don't need to compromise. It's easier to destroy than create; likewise it's easier to obstruct than to govern. Since TP'ers believe governing is a "necessary evil," for them the less the better. It's very hard to defeat such nihilism that really wants nothing but to throw a monkey wrench into Big Government's gears. At the national level, they use the filibuster, committee hearings, judicial appointments, the debt ceiling and other parliamentary tactics to distract and obstruct our government from doing anything. Indeed, this Congress has been the most do-nothing in history.

It's also hard to compromise with TP'ers who are fundamentally dishonest about their true aims, and hypocritical to boot. Skocpol studied the TP movement and came to this conclusion:

Fiscal conservatism is often said to be the top grassroots Tea Party priority, but ... I did not find this to be true. Crackdowns on immigrants, fierce opposition to Democrats, and cuts in spending for the young were the overriding priorities we heard from volunteer Tea Partiers, who are often, themselves, collecting costly Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' benefits to which they feel fully entitled as Americans who have “paid their dues” in lifetimes of hard work.

Bottom line: electorally, the Tea Parties will never win. That is, they can't do any better than the old GOP. They can simply replace "RINOs" and moderate Republicans in safely Republican districts with their far-right TP candidates. In competitive races, the nutty TP candidate usually loses to a Democrat.

Why the Tea Party Isn't Going Anywhere

By Theda Skocpol

December 26, 2013 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/why-the-tea-party-isnt-going-anywhere/282591/

Big Government? Try smallest in half a century

I missed this story back in October but it's still relevant. For all you Big Gubument hatas out there, just FYI: U.S. federal employment is at a 47-year low. (Gee, I wonder why the Tea Parties haven't noticed? Maybe it's because all they care about is cutting their own income taxes and welfare for "moochers" and not about fiscal responsibility?)

I'll say it again, President Obama is a terrible failure as a closet socialist. For that, the GOTP should rejoice. But something makes me think they won't....

Bloated Government? Federal Employment at 47-Year Low

By Floyd Norris

October 22, 2013 | New York Times

It was the summer of 1966. Lyndon Johnson was in the White House and the Great Society was roaring. In August, the federal government had 2,721,000 employees.

Now it is the fall of 2013. There are complaints from Washington about a bloated federal government. Another Democrat, Barack Obama, is president.

In September, before the government shutdown, the government had 2,723,000 employees, according to the latest job report, on a seasonally adjusted basis. That is the lowest figure since 1966. Until now, the lowest figure for the current century had been 2,724,000 federal employees in October 2004, when George W. Bush was seeking a second term in the White House.

Now, the federal government employs exactly 2 percent of the people with jobs in this country. In 1966, the figure was more than twice that, 4.3 percent.

All these figures, by the way, are for civilian jobs. Members of the armed forces are not counted. If they were included, the contrast would be even sharper. In 1966 the Vietnam War was going on, and around 2.6 million people were on active duty. This year the figure is around 1.4 million.

While the federal government continues to shrink — the September figure is down 3.1 percent from a year ago — state and local government jobs have begun to grow again, albeit slowly.

September is, of course, a month when teachers are back on the job, and it is useful to look at the unadjusted numbers each year to see how school employment is growing, or not. Over the past 12 months, the number of people working in state and local government education jobs rose 0.6 percent. The prior year, through September 2012, the figure was up 0.3 percent. That came after three consecutive years of declines.

Other state and local jobs are up 0.02 percent — 2,000 jobs — over the past 12 months. That is not much, but if revisions do not change it, a string of four consecutive annual declines will have been erased.

The following chart shows the percent changes in government jobs, from September to September, since 2007. The federal government figures exclude temporary jobs hired for the 2010 census.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

JFK's prophetic speech against Tea Party nihilism

[HT: Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone]. Wow, the more things change, the more they stay the same!

Below I edited out [...] several sentences and paragraphs of JFK's final, undelivered speech, on November 22, 1963, which is mostly about Cold War nuclear preparedness, the space race, and fighting Soviet encroachment. You can read the entire text here.

Trade Mart Speech (Kennedy's Last Speech)

[...]

This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level. It is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason -- or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternative, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.

But today other voices are heard in the land -- voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness. At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the single greatest threat to our security.  At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of Federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies.

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.

[...]

Our foreign aid program is not growing in size, it is, on the contrary, smaller now than in previous years. It has had its weaknesses, but we have undertaken to correct them. And the proper way of treating weaknesses is to replace them with strength, not to increase those weaknesses by emasculating essential programs. Dollar for dollar, in or out of government, there is no better form of investment in our national security than our much-abused foreign aid program. We cannot afford to lose it. We can afford to maintain it. we can surely afford, for example, to do as much for our 19 needy neighbors of Latin America as the Communist bloc is sending to the island of Cuba alone.

[...]

This effort is expensive -- but it pays its own way, for freedom and for America. [...] There is no longer any doubt about the strength and skill of American science, American industry, American education, and the American free enterprise system. In short, our nation space effort represents a great gain in, and a great resource of, our national strength -- and both Texas and Texans are contributing greatly to this strength.

Finally, it should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.

[...]

We, in this country, in this generation, are -- by destiny rather than by choice -- the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of "peace on earth, good will toward men." That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: "except the Lord keep the city, the watchmen waketh but in vain."

McAuliffe's win and Obamacare spin

Wow, the headline below is awfully ballsy spin by "Fair & Balanced" FoxNews. They're flirting with yellow journalism. 

(They employ a typical FOX tactic: it's OK to write a stupid and inflammatory headline as long as it ends with a question mark.  Example: "John Stossel To Sell Children's Kidneys on Free Market?").

Let's recall that Terry McAuliffe was losing in the polls to his Republican rival Ken Cuccinelli, 38 to 40 percent, back in March. By August McAuliffe was up only 6 percentage points.  His margin spiked to double-digits during the federal government shutdown, very unpopular with Virginia residents, but after the shutdown his lead returned to about only 6 points.  

McAuliffe probably shouldn't have had a chance. He is a Clintonista carpetbagger who never held political office, and was tied to shady business dealings. There hasn't been a Virginia governor from the same party as the U.S. President since 1977. And McAuliffe already lost once to a popular Republican candidate for Virginia's governor. 

The reason he came back and won this time? Mainly because Cuccinelli is a Tea Party kook who staked out all sorts of far-right positions on abortion, gay rights and climate science. 

As a result, pre-election polls had McAuliffe leading Cuccinelli among women voters 58 to 34 percent!

Money was certainly a factor. McAuliffe was literally a professional fundraiser, he knows how. But notably, the conservative Chamber of Commerce declined to contribute to Cuccinelli's campaign, although they kicked in $1 million for the GOP candidate Bob McDonnell last election. Why? Because Cuccinelli's too kooky.

So this election certainly was not a 'No' vote on Obamacare, it was a 'No' vote on the Tea Party.  Cuccinelli became the GOP nominee through a state convention instead of the usual primary vote, where he probably would have lost to a GOP rival. The Tea Parties hijacked the convention and -- voila! -- kook for a candidate.

And so to my dear Tea Party Republicans I say, please keep doing what you're doing!  You keep setting 'em up and we'll keep knocking 'em down, OK?

'NO' VOTE ON OBAMACARE?
Angry Virginians make gov race close

• AP
  • Democrat Terry McAuliffe (middle, between Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine) wins a surprisingly close Virginia governor's race over Republican rival Ken Cuccinelli as the troubled rollout of ObamaCare looms over the vote.