Ask Your House Rep & Senators to "Be A Leader" on Overturning Citizens United

Coffee Party USA has launched a campaign called "Be A Leader" to get our House Reps and Senators in DC to go on record with their plans for overturning the disastrous Citizens United v FEC ruling.

They even have some very simple suggested text to use:

Dear Representative or Senator,

It has been three years since the disastrous Citizens United decision.  As a legislator, you are in a position to fix this bad decision, but I don't see anything on your web site about your plans to do so.  Will you please be a leader and post your plans on your web site?  

Your constituent,

 

Below is what Senator Toomey's office sent to me in response to my inquiry. It's clearly a canned response, and it never actually answers the simple question posed.


I've also copied in my reply. I think it's important that our elected leaders hear from us when our questions and concerns go unanswered.

Below the email is additional research and my personal thoughts on Senator Toomey and his position on other issues I feel are important and which influence how I feel about him and his party.

Trust me, I'm not so naive as to believe that he or even a staffer will read my email or feel compelled to respond to it. If they do, I will share it here. I just want the Senator and his staff to know that ordinary citizens are paying attention; very, very close attention.

---

From: "Senator Pat Toomey"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 9:04:01 AM
Subject: Reply from U.S. Senator Pat Toomey

January 23, 2013

Dear Mr. ,

Thank you for contacting me about campaign finance reform. I appreciate hearing from you.

As you may know, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, overturned a federal ban on independent political advocacy by corporations and unions. I understand your concerns regarding this decision and political activities by outside groups and businesses. That said, the Supreme Court has long upheld that political speech, including the funding thereof, is protected by the First Amendment and is an integral part of our constitutional democracy. It is important that Congress be mindful of these constitutional principles, although I understand your concerns about this issue. Please be assured that I will keep your views in mind as Congress continues reviewing changes to campaign finance laws. 

Thank you again for your correspondence. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of assistance.

Sincerely,
 

Pat Toomey
U.S. Senator, Pennsylvania

------


Dear Senator Toomey:

Thank you for your response.

With all due respect, your attempt to characterize the Citizens United vs FEC ruling as upholding the rights and protections afforded to actual citizens by the First Amendment is insulting and disingenuous. It's insulting because you and those who defend the activism of the conservatives on the Court seem to believe that you can dupe all of us into believing your partisan framing of that ruling. I humbly remind you that we are not all "low information voters."

Those of us who oppose Citizens United know that it is not about free speech. It is not even about political speech. It is about money. It is about "dark money" and the inordinate influence so much of it is having from too few sources on you and your fellow elected leaders who are supposed to be representing all of us, not just wealthy donors and corporations. (Again and with all due respect, please spare me any rhetoric on trickle down economics. We both know that it's a failed economic theory.)

You have chosen not to answer my question directly about publishing your plans for overturning Citizens United. Given your past role as president of The Club for Growth and the $2.7million they spent on your behalf on attack ads to win you your seat 51% to 49%, I can't say that I'm surprised. I'm left to conclude, therefore, that you are in favor of that disastrous Supreme Court ruling. I invite you, of course, to please write back immediately to correct me and to share your plans if I've come to the wrong conclusion. Nothing would please me more.

Once more and only with the greatest respect, it seems to me that you have a choice to make, Senator. You can follow - and even lead - the GOP's steady decline into political oblivion with everyone except the aging white male evangelical demographic (your tea party base), or you can be part of a more modern, thriving, and progressive (it's not a dirty word, by the way, and is considered by most to be the opposite of 'regressive') Republican party.

My humble and sincere recommendation is that you start by taking a stand against the corrupting influence of big and dark money in our political system by publishing your plan to combat and overturn Citizens United. I realize that that may seem antithetical to your past role as leader of a tea party PAC, but that's not who you're supposed to be representing in the Senate.

Who knows? You might even win back registered Non-Partisan voters like me.

Sincerely,

----

While not part of the above email, here's some research and conclusions on why ordinary citizens should oppose Senator Toomey (and similarly positioned Republicans).

Energy (the closest "issue" the Senator lists when it comes the Environment and Climate Change)

• Senator Toomey wants to further loosen restrictions on an already under-regulated fossil fuel industry, wants to expand mining and drilling of dirty fossil fuels, and is completely silent on renewable energy. http://www.toomey.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=32

(Affordable) Health Care

• Senator Toomey co-sponsored S.192, the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act," a petty partisan and Bachmann-esque bill that reveals how much more he values the interests of big money from insurance carriers, pharmaceuticals, health care providers, and corporations than he does the actual health and welfare of poor, unemployed, and under-employed people. http://www.toomey.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=34

Life, Family and Marriage (Inequality)

• Senator Toomey seems to have more in common with Rick Santorum than he does with the majority of Americans. Anyone who isn't in support of gay marriage is, in my opinion, a hateful bigot. Period. There is no middle ground and no compromise when it comes to civil liberties, equality, and justice for the LGBTQ community in this country. http://www.toomey.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=33

The GOP: A Party in Decline
It no longer comes as any surprise to me that the GOP is a party in steep decline. This last election was very telling. Beyond older white religious men, Mr. Romney had weak and diminishing appeal(1). And while the GOP kept control in the House, they lost seats in both houses of Congress, and there were fewer votes for House Republicans than there were for House Democrats(2). The GOP's only real appeal now seems to be with a shrinking older, whiter, and more fundamentalist demographic. Oh, and big money.

GOP's Desperate Measures to Rig Elections and Deny Voters Their Rights
This decline in popularity and appeal is undoubtedly part of the reason why Governor Corbett and Republican state legislators all over the U.S. want to change the Electoral College rules so that under-populated and gerrymandered GOP districts have the same Electoral College weight as the overall voting population.

Isn't it ironic? One would think that Libertarians, Teapublicans, and ordinary Republicans everywhere would be staunch supporters of winner-take-all, right? Instead, it looks like the new mantra is, "Since we can't beat the Democrats fairly, we'll rig the system." To whom does this strategy appeal if it's not the white rural evangelical voter; that subset of the party's base who seems intent on voting against their own economic self interests time and time again?

The voter ID law is, of course, another prime example of a party who refuses to face reality. It's nothing more than empty fear-mongering over a problem that simply does not exist except in the minds of Republican politicians and Fox News commentators. To claim that measures must be taken to stop rampant in-person voter fraud is to insult the intelligence of anyone paying attention to the realities of how rare it is for someone to impersonate anyone on election day(3).

Money in Politics
I cling to the belief that politicians are supposed to work for me. My belief was stronger before the Citizens United ruling.

Now it seems all too clear that Senator Toomey and his colleagues on both sides are far more beholden to the Sheldon Adelsons, Harold Simmonses, Karl Roves, and all the Super PACs(4) than they are to you, me, our fellow Pennsylvanians, and ordinary Americans.

To be fair to Senator Toomey, he's presumably most beholden to his biggest donor, the Tea Party SuperPAC, The Club for Growth, According to OpenSecrets,they have contributed $848,033 to him over the course of his political career(5). They also spent $2.7million in negative ads to help their former president to win his seat 51% to 49%(6).

This is what Democracy looks like?

It will take a long and hard struggle to get Citizens United overturned. It's not impossible, and I believe that it's up to us - ordinary citizens - to be united in our unending and unbending effort to understand which politicians agree with us and which don't. I think it's obvious what we need to then do with that information.

Get involved. It only takes a few minutes to let your elected leaders know what you think.
http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/ask_your_representative_to_be_a_leader


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Sources:
(1) CNN Politics; http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/race/president
(2) Bloomberg, Republicans Can't Claim Mandate as Democrats Top House Vote; http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-16/republicans-can-t-declare-mandate-with-more-democrat-house-votes.html
(3) The Wall Street Journal, Voter Fraud: Hard to Identify; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443864204577621732936167586.html
(4) ProPublica, Who are the Super PACs's Biggest Donors; http://projects.propublica.org/pactrack/contributions/tree
(5) OpenSecrets.org, Senator Pat Toomey, Top Contributors (Since 1989); http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00001489&type=C
(6) The Boston Globe, Tea Party super PAC pours fund into congressional races; http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/06/05/tea-party-super-pac-pours-funds-into-congressional-races/GrJs2J4PKl7A2L3t4BQWjM/story.html

Guns and the Future of the GOP

Image found at Moveon.org and credited to source there

History is replete with milestones and turning points. We have arrived at another, for the country and for the GOP.

This one is centered on the Second Amendment. The debate rages about its meaning, intent, and relevancy in a modern world and, in the wake of yet another tragic shooting, what to do about gun violence. The burden and judgement of history, in my opinion, now rests squarely on the shoulders of the Republican party, not the president.
 
Public consensus seems clear. When polled, Americans say they want more checks in place before guns can be purchased. We also are saying that we want fewer - not more - dangerous weapons in the hands of ordinary civilians.


Ignoring Reality
The leadership of the GOP seems to be ignoring reality yet again. They've done so at nearly every turn since the 2008 election cycle, the short-lived and fading Tea Party movement that disrupted the GOP and elections in 2010 notwithstanding.

On some level, it seems to be getting worse. A party willing to give any consideration at all to the likes of a Donald Trump, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Santorum is already difficult to take seriously. Mitt Romney, by most accounts, was the least offensive choice they could present.

On the issue of gun violence, Republicans who now insist on adding public concerns and sentiments about guns to the growing list of realities and shifting societal norms and values they choose to ignore do so not only at their own peril, but they put their entire party at peril for the 21st century.

The reelection of President Obama seems not to have taught Republican leaders a thing except that the more extreme the position they take, the more airtime they'll get with Fox. They truly seem intent on listening only to and parroting the most extreme voices. This time those voices belong to Wayne LaPierre and David Keene of the NRA. Republican leaders are choosing them over their rank-and-file members and even over those Republicans who self-identify as NRA members.

So how is it possible in the wake of so many gun-related tragedies that elected leaders from the Republican party are not uniform in their support for ANY proposals from the president to reduce gun violence?

Is there a turning point in the history of the GOP that helps to answer this question, and that helps to inform us about what the question about gun legislation reveals about the underlying beliefs that have guided the party's thinking into the present day and possibly into its future?


First, What the Pubic Is Saying About Guns
As Juan Williams of Fox News pointed out on January 16th (1), polling shows very clear consensus about what Americans think we should do on issues such as background checks and high-capacity magazines.

   "A USA Today/Gallup poll taken last month found that 92 percent of Americans favor a background check for every gun purchase in the United States and only 7 percent opposed it. According to the same poll, 62 percent say the approved of a ban on the sale and possession of high-capacity magazines that hold more than 10 bullets while 35 percent disapprove.

  "A Pew poll from earlier this week found similar results.

  "According to Pew, 85% of Americans, a roughly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, favor universal background checks on gun buyers including at gun shows. The survey also found that preventing people with mental illness from buying guns is backed by 80% of Americans, including 86% of Republicans and 78% of Democrats.

  "In opposing these common-sense gun safety measures under consideration by President Obama, the NRA is not only at odds with the general public, it is also at odds with its own membership.

   "After the shooting in Aurora, Colorado this summer, Republican pollster Frank Luntz conducted a nationwide survey of gun owners who are members of the NRA. Luntz found that 74 percent of NRA members and 87 percent of non-NRA gun owners support background checks on every gun sale. The poll also found that 79 percent of NRA members and 80 percent of non-NRA gun owners support requiring gun retailers to perform background checks on all employees."

Given this data, how is it possible that Republicans aren't putting petty partisan politics aside and embracing new regulations and laws to curb gun violence?

Why aren't they distancing themselves from the NRA and their desire to arm even more citizens in more places and with ever more lethal firepower?

What legacy does the GOP want to have on the issue of gun violence?

Perhaps most importantly, what are NRA members and faithful Republicans across the board demanding from their elected officials and party leaders on the question about what to do to reduce gun violence in light of what they're purported to be telling Gallup and Pew?




An Historical Turning Point for the GOP
How did the party of Lincoln turn into a party which, big money and influence aside for the moment (2), become so willing to knuckle under to extremists at the NRA, an organization which, I'm learning, has itself been severally radicalized in recent times (3)?

Is there a milestone in Republican party history that can shed more light on how the GOP has become a party seemingly entrenched in antiquated and unpopular views, and incapable of compromise on any level?

As part of my research, I found an article titled "The Dismal Future of the GOP" published by Forbes in 2009 (4). It's author justifiably laments the lose of moderate voices in the Republican party and, hence, its loss of moderate voters.

It's unreasonable, of course, to expect any single article to cover every single milestone and turning point of history. Still, I think the author, Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, a Treasury official under President George H. W. Bush, and the author of "Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action" and "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy" neglected to cover one of the most critically important factors in the transformation - and, hence, the decline  - of the GOP. That critically important factor was Barry Goldwater and his political calculus in the 1964 presidential campaign (5).

Southern Democrats, still feeling the sting 100 years on of Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the defeat in the Civil War were still using violence and intimidation to suppress minorities. This wing of the Democratic party was still insisting on seating all-white delegates at the Democratic National convention. Putting the KKK aside, Southern Democrats were responding favorably to and electing racists like Alabama's Democratic governor and presidential hopeful, George Wallace, who was infamous for statements such as, "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

Racists not only in the Southern wing of the Democratic party but throughout the country were targeted and pursued by Goldwater as part of his "white backlash" strategy in the 1964 campaign. Goldwater (who, according to accounts, is not thought to have been a racist himself) accomplished nothing except the migration of the South from Democratic to Republican control. This was a turning point for the Republican party, making it the party focused primarily on matters important mostly to whites.

1964, therefore, is a very clear and important milestone in the history of the Republican party and its relevance in American politics. White America, including and especially those in the South who had for the previous 100 years used violence and intimidation to keep minorities subjugated and away from primaries and elections, came to see the GOP as a party whose platform included, besides smaller government (which tends to hurt poor and minorities the most), a clear opposition to civil rights. (A quick search on YouTube reveals interviews of Goldwater talking about his opposition to civil rights legislation. It's almost as easy as finding Ayn Rand videos railing against Christianity.)

For Mr. Bartlett to leave Goldwater and 1964 out of his review of the GOP's history and the role that race still plays now and in the party's future is, in my opinion, inconceivable and could only be deliberate. I guess he was willing to go only so far in his critique of his party.


Guns and the GOP's Golden Opportunity
Which brings me back to the current issue of gun violence, gun control, and why the GOP seems intent on supporting the NRA instead of the general populace.

The undercurrent of racism - real or imagined - has been associated with the Republican party at least as far back as 1964.  One look at the demographics of the 2012 election results reinforces its disconnect outside of white America, and especially white Christian male America. If nothing else, it's mathematically correct to say that the Republican party is the party of white Evangelical men. What ought to be obvious is that relying on that demographic is and will continue to be insufficient to win national elections, and may eventually be insufficient to win elections anywhere of any consequence.

This is why the GOP's future is in peril. They seem intent on disenfranchsing everyone but white conservative Christian men. This seems to be true again on the issue of gun violence.

While I haven't looked for or seen data that makes a definitive and precise connection between their reluctance to distance themselves from the NRA and their dwindling racial diversity, it certainly does raise questions for me about the true motivations behind anything the Republican party is doing these days.

After all, we shouldn't forget that this is the party....
....who refused to distance themselves from the racist birther movement and those who questioned the president's religion, patriotism, and what it meant to be American
 ...who not only allowed our economy to be driven into the 2008 recession, but who continue to make unreasonable and unjustifiable demands for cuts to social programs that benefit the poor and aged (whose ranks, by the way, include more than just minorities) while defending and demanding tax breaks for the wealthy (and we all know who makes up the majority of that group)
....who has as their Senate leader a man who publicly stated the party's number one goal was to deny the president any policy victory, thereby creating perhaps the most ineffective Congress in history and doing incalculable damage to our recovery and to the poor and middle class
...who is responsible for state legislation around the country intended solely to make voting more difficult for minorities.

Can there be any doubt, therefore, that race (and gender) play a part in GOP thinking when it comes to gun violence? Which party is it who wants to increase the Defense budget, defund Planned Parenthood, and nationalize "Stand Your Ground" laws?

The question now about what the GOP will do (or not do) about gun violence is one more in a long line of questions about their relevance to anyone outside of a shrinking and ever more extreme subset of white America.


Cowardice and the Crossroads
The answer so far seems to be that the GOP will side with extremists inside and outside the NRA. These people all talk as if the America of the 21st century is some Hollywood version of the Wild West where good guys - always white guys, by the way - with guns kill bad guys with guns. No one is ever caught in crossfire, mistakes are never made about a suspect's guilt or innocence, and it never seems to take more than a single, well-placed, and calmly delivered shot in the most righteous of fairy tales to bring down the bad guy. (Which does beg the question about the need for extended clips, but then I remember it's to repel invading foreign armies and/or a tyrannical domestic government. I suspect the now-popular zombie apocalypse is on that same list somewhere.)

And just below the surface, there's a disturbing sort of "The Birth of a Nation" feeling to the GOP's fear mongering about Obama. The GOP still refuses to refute birthers, those who talk of "others," and those who question Obama's religion or "understanding of what it means to be American."

The cowardice of Republican leaders is tragic and on stark display. They refuse to face down the radical and extreme elements in their party and in the leadership of the NRA. In fact, they seem to relish in pandering to them. This strategy will, in my opinion, be the downfall of the Republican party in the coming decades; maybe sooner. This crisis over how to deal with the NRA will be one of the many milestones marking the end of the journey for a party whose appeal continues to slide further and further into right-wing extremist oblivion.

It's happened before. Political parties who fell out of touch and out of favor have faded into history. The GOP doesn't have to suffer this fate. They can turn it around. The challenges to the NRA on what to do about gun control would be the perfect pivot point for them. They have a golden opportunity to show Americans that they are capable not only of compromise when the health and safety of citizens is at issue, but also that they are capable of refusing to let any organization - even the NRA - bully them into taking positions that are harmful to Americans. (We can keep hoping that they'll someday do the same with Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry, but that's for another post.)

The question now really is will the Republican party and their members take yet another "hard right" at this milestone and side with the NRA, or will calmer and more rational people within the Republican party prevail?

Any hope I cling to is with regular people and their courage to voice their opposition to the NRA and to vote GOP extremists out of office.



Sources:
(1) "What everybody needs to know about our Constitution and gun control"http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/16/what-everybody-needs-to-know-about-our-constitution-and-gun-control/

(2) "How the NRA exerts influence over Congress"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/nra-congress/

(3) "The NRA Once Supported Gun Control" http://www.salon.com/2013/01/14/the_nra_once_supported_gun_control/

(4) "The Dismal Future of the GOP"http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/30/specter-future-gop-opinions-columnists-bartlett.html

(5) "LBJ Fights the White Backlash; The Racial Politics of the 1964 Presidential Campaign"http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/spring/lbj-and-white-backlash-1.html)

The Republican Party's Brand Appeal, or Lack Thereof

"Just think if those Frosted Flakes brand gurus felt that the problem with selling their cereal to diabetics was one of semantics, not sugar, or that customers' inability to afford boxes of the stuff was simply the free market in action. What if the company did things to limit who could hope to buy its products, or found ways to punish customers who didn't. How about if it envisioned a radically new idea of what breakfast meant entirely, including where, when and by whom it would be eaten (and claimed it was the only way breakfast could survive as an institution), only there were other solutions to changing breakfast, and everybody knew about them." - Jonathan Salem Baskin, AdAge

As the paragraph in the AdAge article which precedes the above excerpt points out, "selling products instead of meeting consumer needs" is a predictable path to failure. It’s true for cereal and for politicians.

Republicans in this cycle clearly chose a losing branding and marketing strategy. They branded themselves and their solutions to appeal only to those who were already sold on their ideas. To compound their problems, they then made no attempts to do anything but alienate anyone who wasn’t already sold. How in the world is that supposed to attract new “customers” to their party?

It now seems pretty clear that, along with a deficient "product" in terms of policy positions, the other really big failure came from the decision about whom they chose as their core target market - the ultra-conservative, neo-libertarian, and mostly low-information white male voter. I’m not trying to be unkind with the “low-information” description. I’m simply basing that on the amount of shock and surprise that seems to have overwhelmed all the GOP-supporting media outlets like Fox, AM talk radio, and even the so-called strategists like Mr. Rove. As for the “white male” component, those numbers are easily confirmed at sources like CNN.

Assuming that their core target market is the non-Hispanic white (and more male than female) voter, their core target market is also too narrowly defined, too small in shear numbers, and insufficiently interested in and motivated by their product to have won big in this election. By all accounts with which I’m familiar, and if the trends hold true into the future, the non-Hispanic white market is also going to be a shrinking market. This gives the current GOP strategy even greater appearance as being on the path toward even greater losses in the future.

       “The non-Hispanic white population will increase more slowly than other racial and ethnic groups; whites will become a minority (47%) by 2050.” (Pew Research Center, U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050, February 11, 2008) 

It will be interesting to watch what evidence there will be about precisely what the GOP leadership has learned from this election. I’m pretty skeptical about what that will be. McConnell already sounds as intransigent as ever, and I have almost no expectation that Boehner actually has the courage to distance himself and the rest of the House from the tea party caucus.

To be sure, the post-election landscape is only beginning to take shape. Still, I wonder who the more rational heads are within the GOP?

Yes, Huntsman gets some well-deserved attention as a likely candidate to help lead the GOP back toward a more reasonably-defined center, but he’s currently unemployed, as it were. He also doesn’t seem to me to fit the current mold of a party that inexplicably is willing to give their stage over to the likes of Cain, Bachmann, and Perry as presidential candidates. (Side note: Kudos to the GOP for having the good sense to ostracize Palin and recognize George W. Bush as a marketing liability.)

Without some dramatic and immediate changes, I suspect that the GOP - with the help of Fox, talk radio, and the Sheldon Adelsons of the world - will continue to pursue a strategy based more on spin and deception than on facts and reality. All that said and as much rancor and entrenchment as there seems to be these days, I'm cautiously optimistic.

I’m optimistic that concerned citizens like those involved with the Coffee Party (http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/) will keep taking the time to separate fact from fiction. I’m optimistic that they’ll take the time to try to influence the public discussion about the real problems and challenges facing our society and the world at large, as well as what the options are for addressing them in everyone’s best interest.

I'm even more optimistic about the generation of 20-somethings coming up behind us. Speaking from first-hand experience as the proud father of two 20-somethings, they aren't nearly so gullible and easily duped as our generation (or at least a significant portion of us) seems to be. I only hope we don’t end up leaving messes so big even they can’t clean them up.

It’s important for all of us to take the time to inform ourselves, to ask those to whom we listen or elect to back up their statements and positions with facts, and to be willing to compromise but only to the degree that such a compromise will serve the greatest good.

As for the Republican party, my advice is the same that Hal Ziegler offered just before his passing: real leaders within the GOP better start rising up to loudly and proudly call their colleagues out when they are being ideologues, especially when that ideology isn’t rational, truthful, or anything except obstructionist. And, they better hurry. Their party, to borrow a word from Mr. Rove’s fundraising efforts, really seems to be at a crossroads.

Voter ID Laws Are Unwarranted

Our polling place here "in the sticks" requires me to sign a book next to my name and all the signatures I've made over the years ostensibly so that a poll worker can confirm it. Not sure how long that system has been the norm, but it's basically all I've ever known. 

Even that bastion of liberal journalism, the WSJ, published the same data I've read in other places. 10 cases of voter impersonation since 2000. Ten. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443864204577621732936167586.html) 

Were there more? Undoubtedly. In a perfect world, we'd have zero impersonation but we don't live in a perfect world. 10 cases in 12 years sounds to me to be statistically zero. I think we have bigger problems to solve than this one. After all, the evidence points to a reasonable conclusion that we seem to have been collectively behaving ourselves in the voting booths. 

Voter ID laws strike me as one of those "intrusions into our lives and a waste of taxpayer dollars" that is always part of the rallying call from conservatives. It strikes me as completely antithetical to the principles of smaller government and less waste. 

Anyway, this all got started when I decided to try and figure out what I would have to do if I didn't have a driver's license. First obstacle: what if I was poor(er), didn't have Internet access, or lived way out in the country? Not sure how I would go about even finding out what to do. I guess I'd start with the mayor's office to see if they could point me to the local elections officials. Make a bunch of phone calls. Leave messages. Hope to get a call back. Find someone to give me a ride, etc. etc. 

The simplest of the possibilities I looked at was what if I had had a driver's license that expired more than 1 year ago but after 1990. In that case, and if I could find a way to get to a PennDOT office, I could get a free photo ID without any other documentation. (That seems to be the simplest possibility, but does nothing for someone who has never had a license.) I still have to find a way to get there. We all know they aren't located on every corner or open outside the normal work day. So, now I have to locate the nearest office, check bus schedules or find a ride, take time off work, maybe ask someone else to take time off their job......I could go on and on, but this is way too long already. Not very simple.

IMHO, it's a solution looking for a problem. All I think that it will accomplish is to deter certain voters who, as the data shows, are not breaking any laws today by impersonating others on election day. 

Fox reports that nearly 759,000 PA voters don't have the required ID. Barely 1% have so far received the free ID. (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/13/pennsylvania-supreme-court-hears-arguments-on-voter-id-law/) Why is that? Could it be that it's because it's not so simple? That's the conclusion I've come to after looking at the state's own web site.

I'm convinced that this whole effort is meant to disenfranchise certain voters. Plain and simple. Mathematically and legally, there is no problem here that needs solving. Voter impersonation simply does not exist. Putting that aside (although I don't know why we should) what the "Postpone" post (http://signon.org/sign/postpone-pa-voter-id.fb23?source=s.icn.fb&r_by=48422) is saying is let's postpone the voter ID law until after the election. 

If we're going to put this law into place while the data proves there is no problem, can't it wait so that 759,000 voters in PA who aren't breaking any laws today can still vote this year without the photo ID they've never had to have before? 

Don't we owe it to all the people who aren't  breaking any laws to be able to exercise their most valuable freedom and civic responsibility? Why would we want to make that harder when there is no impersonation? 

Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? 

My personal opinion is that this a law that is completely unwarranted, totally motivated by partisan politics, and never should have been passed. It spends money we don't have in the state coffers, is an onerous and burdensome intrusion into innocent lives, is meant to solve a problem that simply doesn't exist, and is completely contrary to some principles of conservatism as far as I understand them.

Then again, maybe it's a good thing. It starts to look like a government jobs program. Someone has to take all those new pictures!!

Perry's Bigoted Christian Ad

I couldn't believe this was real when I saw it.

http://youtu.be/3K1o78mQjYU

Maybe I can get the conversation started by asking some questions based exactly on the things he says.

1. What is so wrong with gays serving openly in the military?
Have we been attacked since repeal of DADT? Have their been mass resignations? Are the well-armed and well-trained gays suddenly forcing straight servicemen and women to engage in homosexual acts at gun point?

How about we all grow up on this question and stop acting like sex is the only thing that matters or that it's anyone's business but the people involved?


2. Who is keeping anyone from celebrating Christmas openly?
I haven't seen any jack-booted Obamanators rounding up and burning Christmas trees. Christians just seem to be acting like selfish children (again) by not acknowledging that theirs is NOT the only holiday being celebrated at this time of year.

Besides, this whole "season" is mostly about commerce.


3. Prayer in school is a resolved issue.
It flies in the face of separation of church and state. Everyone knows that. If you want your kid to pray in school, send him to a private school that allows open prayer, be it Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or whatever.

How come you never hear Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or Druids or whatever whining about this?


4. Obama's war on religion?
What war? Where? Against whom? Being waged how? Everyone knows what he's implying here: that scary half-black Barack HUSSEIN Obama is really a Muslim, and we all know what that leads to next, right?

Yep. The birth certificate.


5. What Liberal attacks against religious heritage?
No one I know denies the role religion has played in our cultural and national development.

In fact, we liberals seem to be the ones who have to keep reminding people like Perry about that pesky First Amendment to the Constitution.


Look, I get it. Everyone gets it. Faith plays an important role in many people's lives. There's nothing wrong with that. What's wrong, IMHO, is the endless attempts by zealous Christians at rewriting history to somehow claim that it was because we were and are a predominantly Christian nation as the only reason we grew strong as nation and now is how we can somehow regain whatever it is they claim we've supposedly lost.

This ad is just another example of incredibly irresponsible and erroneous hyperbole meant to rile up a segment of the GOP base. It makes me roll my eyes in wonder at what in the world has happened to the GOP and how it is that rational Republicans aren't outraged by Perry.

In my book, the only thing separating a guy like this and a mullah in the tribal regions of Afghanistan is which "flavor" of monotheism he wants to see become the law of the land....at any cost.

When 1% is Bigger than 99%

What I love most about stats and math is that they are apolitical (or at least they used to be). They care not for party affiliation, for whom you vote, or where you get your news.

To wit.....
....If your household income isn't at least $386,000 a year you're in the 99%, not the 1%
....14,000 American families make up the top 0.01% and AVERAGE $31million a year

0.01% is 1 out of every 10,000 families. They earn 5%, or 5 out of every 100 dollars, of all income earned in America. That leaves the other 95 to be split up among the remaining 131,986,000 American households(1).

Is it any wonder poverty in America is now at 14.3%(2)? That's 14 out of every 100 people. 14% is just over 2 out of the 17 people listed in the To: field of the original email from which this post was created. Think about that. 2 people out of every group this size in America lives in poverty. Not working poor. Not middle class. Not having to sacrifice that European vacation or third car in the driveway this year. Not cutting back on eating out or trading in filet mignon for ground chuck at the grocery store.

Poverty.

What is poverty? Poverty defined for a family of 4 is earning $22,314/year(3). That's $10.72/hour if it's full-time work; 40 hours a week, 2080 hours a year, at $10.72 per hour.

The second largest single employer in the U.S. (behind the federal government which, btw, includes everyone in the military before anyone starts ranting about the size of government) is, you guessed it, Wal-Mart. Average employee take home pay at Wal-Mart is $250 a week, or $13,000 a year if they actually work all 52 weeks. Wal-Mart's "full-time" employees average $6 - $7.50 an hour for working 28 - 40 hour weeks(4)

The federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour(5).

Am I the only one who thinks it's madness for companies to be required by law to pay $3.50 an hour LESS than the poverty rate?

I'm not against wealth or the wealthy. I am not a communist.

I'm all for a strong, vibrant, and sustainably-consuming middle class because we are the true engine of the economy. Without us, there are no markets to whom corporations can sell their goods and services, make a profit, and create more wealth for themselves and their shareholders. I am perfectly fine with that.

Something has gone terribly wrong, though, over the last 30 years or so and we need to get back to what we know works.

I'm no big devotee, but for all his faults and his anti-union stance Henry Ford seemed to understand how things could work for himself, his company, and his workers. He knew that in order to build a big, successful company he had to:
a) build a product people would want,
b) price that product (based on cost and a reasonable profit) so enough people could actually afford to buy it and,
c) create a big enough and sustainable market to buy his cars, partly by paying his workers enough to actually buy the damned things.

Like I said, there's a lot about Ford's business methods I don't like, but what confuses me now is how we seem to be living in an age when some of us in the middle class have forgotten this "symbiotic" reality between producing goods and services that markets want and can afford versus how much the people at the top want to earn from that buying and selling.

In other words, without all of us in the 99% underneath the 1% from where is their wealth supposed to come?

Oh, yeah. Wait. That's right.

Their wealth can still come from record-level profits derived at least in part from continuing to outsource what we used to call middle class jobs to the absolute cheapest overseas labor markets. The government isn't forcing them to do that. In fact, "free trade agreements" help to facilitate that. It's a P&L decision made easier by government removing regulation.

If that's not enough, their wealth can still come from duping some of us into believing that what we need to do is elect people who will bring "certainty" to their business, as if that's ever supposed to be a component of a free market and capitalism. Exactly how does government provide certainty to those poor, abused, and fearful titans of industry and commerce? I thought government was supposed to get out of their way, not do things for them?

From what we're being told by one party in particular (and only to a lesser degree by the other), certainty would come if only the following could be realized:

1) Deregulation
If corporations - and especially the financial services sector - were utterly and completely deregulated, the economy would just grow like crazy because who needs a watchdog when you have the "invisible hand" to guide you? We've seen - and even Greenspan has admitted - that hasn't worked out all that well, but what does he know?

2) Lower - even zero - taxes
If only the wealthy "job creators" and corporations - which, when it comes to corporations, we are now told by the Supreme Court and certain GOP candidates are people just like us - could just pay even less - better yet, no - taxes they could hoard even more cash until "certainty" finally arrived. Then they would have the confidence they need to create all those wonderful minimum wage and non-union jobs, and everyone could stop all their occupying and whining about not being able to find a job and get back to work.

3) Fear-driven cuts and bailouts
And if all else fails? Well, the powerful elite will still have their bought-and-paid for minions in Big Government in both parties who will be more than happy to cut social programs for the poor (who have no power anyway) while they take that money - our tax dollars - and distribute what's left to banks and private companies as tax breaks and bailouts for the mistakes they made because, as we all know, a free market based on libertarian principles and pure capitalism cannot afford to fail.


Sources:
(1) Where the One Percent Fit in the Hierarchy of Income, New York Times, 10/28/2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/30/nyregion/where-the-one-percent-fit-in-the-hierarchy-of-income.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1

(2) U.S. Census Bureau Quick Facts.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

(3) U.S. Census Bureau Poverty Data.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/threshld/

(4) Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town, PBS.
http://www.pbs.org/itvs/storewars/stores3.html

(5) U.S. Department of Labor; Wages.
http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/minimumwage.htm

The Inconvenient Truths About the Economy and the GOP

First Trust chief economist Brian Wesbury's 2nd Quarter GDP research reports...

"Corporate profits were also revised up slightly, to a new all-time record high. Profits were up at a 13.7% annual rate in Q2 and are up 8.5% versus a year ago."


How's that for an inconvenient truth for the GOP, for their big business puppet masters, and for the inexplicable non-two-percenters who defend them both?

So where are the jobs?
Where's the recovery?
Anyone? Anyone?

Greta? Gretchen? Shawn? O'Reilly? Anyone?

Herman? Michele? Rick? Mitt? Sarah? Anyone?

How come none of them talk about this?

Corporate profits are at historic levels, as is the wealth gap. Taxes are already at historically low levels, as are interest rates on credit for those rich corporations and individuals who have access to it and the neo-cons, Randians, tea baggers and the GOP want to blame all of our problems in our economy on, what, overpaid civil servants, the 11% of American workers still in a union, illegal immigrants, and the poor and working poor?

Isn't that just a little bit ridiculous?

30 Years Ago: The Day the Middle Class Died

Had to add a few comments to this one.

The Reagan worshipers don't want my emails. Too bad. I would truly like to understand how this narrative can be repudiated.

Didn't they actually live the life described below, too? I can't say with absolute certainty, but I'm pretty sure that no one I know grew up in places like today's Westlake, TX, Kenilworth, IL, Mission Hills, KS, or a whole list of NYC suburbs (http://www.forbes.com/2011/01/18/americas-most-affluent-communities-business-beltway.html), and they don't live there now.

My father was a high school graduate who put 3 of his 4 kids through college without crushing debt and with one decent paying union job at Westinghouse. He owned his own home after paying off the 30-year mortgage. We went on vacations to "exotic destinations" like Washington, DC, and Ocean City, MD. We occasionally but not all that often ordered a pizza or went out for dinner. (Anyone else remember the Ho-Jo fried clams? That was big time for us!). Every 6 or so years he was able to buy new middle class sedans like Plymouth Satellites, Dodge Darts and Ford Futuras (woo-hoo!) made in America by fellow middle class workers. He had decent enough benefits so that he and we weren't bankrupted when he was diagnosed with heart disease and needed a quadruple bypass in the late 70s.

He retired with dignity and with a pension that wasn't anything like a lottery windfall but at least was sufficient enough to keep him from having to find part-time work at a McDonald's or WalMart just to make ends meet.

What was so wrong with that America?

What would be so wrong with having some of that back?

How the hell did we screw things up this badly?

I'll tell you. The unvarnished, bald-faced, honest and harsh truth is that we got here exactly and precisely by believing the lies we were told by Reagan, Greenspan, the GOP, and the rest of the trickle-downers who convinced too many of us that if the rich got richer all our boats would rise with that tide.

It was and still is a lie. Now those of us left in the middle class are left to drown in that rising tide.


Published on Saturday, August 6, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
30 Years Ago: The Day the Middle Class Died
by Michael Moore

From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated. [On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.] On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.

Young people have heard of this mythical time -- but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, "When did this all end?", I say, "It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981."

Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to "go for it" -- to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.

And they've succeeded.

On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.

It was a bold and brash move. No one had ever tried it. What made it even bolder was that PATCO was one of only two unions that had endorsed Reagan for president! It sent a shock wave through workers across the country. If he would do this to the people who were with him, what would he do to us?

Reagan had been backed by Wall Street in his run for the White House and they, along with right-wing Christians, wanted to restructure America and turn back the tide that President Franklin D. Roosevelt started -- a tide that was intended to make life better for the average working person. The rich hated paying better wages and providing benefits. They hated paying taxes even more. And they despised unions. The right-wing Christians hated anything that sounded like socialism or holding out a helping hand to minorities or women.

Reagan promised to end all that. So when the air traffic controllers went on strike, he seized the moment. In getting rid of every single last one of them and outlawing their union, he sent a clear and strong message: The days of everyone having a comfortable middle class life were over. America, from now on, would be run this way:

* The super-rich will make more, much much more, and the rest of you will scramble for the crumbs that are left.

* Everyone must work! Mom, Dad, the teenagers in the house! Dad, you work a second job! Kids, here's your latch-key! Your parents might be home in time to put you to bed.

* 50 million of you must go without health insurance! And health insurance companies: you go ahead and decide who you want to help -- or not.

* Unions are evil! You will not belong to a union! You do not need an advocate! Shut up and get back to work! No, you can't leave now, we're not done. Your kids can make their own dinner.

* You want to go to college? No problem -- just sign here and be in hock to a bank for the next 20 years!

* What's "a raise"? Get back to work and shut up!

And so it went. But Reagan could not have pulled this off by himself in 1981. He had some big help:

The AFL-CIO.

The biggest organization of unions in America told its members to cross the picket lines of the air traffic controllers and go to work. And that's just what these union members did. Union pilots, flight attendants, delivery truck drivers, baggage handlers -- they all crossed the line and helped to break the strike. And union members of all stripes crossed the picket lines and continued to fly.

Reagan and Wall Street could not believe their eyes! Hundreds of thousands of working people and union members endorsing the firing of fellow union members. It was Christmas in August for Corporate America.

And that was the beginning of the end. Reagan and the Republicans knew they could get away with anything -- and they did. They slashed taxes on the rich. They made it harder for you to start a union at your workplace. They eliminated safety regulations on the job. They ignored the monopoly laws and allowed thousands of companies to merge or be bought out and closed down. Corporations froze wages and threatened to move overseas if the workers didn't accept lower pay and less benefits. And when the workers agreed to work for less, they moved the jobs overseas anyway.

And at every step along the way, the majority of Americans went along with this. There was little opposition or fight-back. The "masses" did not rise up and protect their jobs, their homes, their schools (which used to be the best in the world). They just accepted their fate and took the beating.

I have often wondered what would have happened had we all just stopped flying, period, back in 1981. What if all the unions had said to Reagan, "Give those controllers their jobs back or we're shutting the country down!"? You know what would have happened. The corporate elite and their boy Reagan would have buckled.

But we didn't do it. And so, bit by bit, piece by piece, in the ensuing 30 years, those in power have destroyed the middle class of our country and, in turn, have wrecked the future for our young people. Wages have remained stagnant for 30 years. Take a look at the statistics and you can see that every decline we're now suffering with had it's beginning in 1981 (here's a little scene to illustrate that from my last movie).

It all began on this day, 30 years ago. One of the darkest days in American history. And we let it happen to us. Yes, they had the money, and the media and the cops. But we had 200 million of us. Ever wonder what it would look like if 200 million got truly upset and wanted their country, their life, their job, their weekend, their time with their kids back?

Have we all just given up? What are we waiting for? Forget about the 20% who support the Tea Party -- we are the other 80%! This decline will only end when we demand it. And not through an online petition or a tweet. We are going to have to turn the TV and the computer and the video games off and get out in the streets (like they've done in Wisconsin). Some of you need to run for local office next year. We need to demand that the Democrats either get a spine and stop taking corporate money -- or step aside.

When is enough, enough? The middle class dream will not just magically reappear. Wall Street's plan is clear: America is to be a nation of Haves and Have Nothings. Is that OK for you?

Why not use today to pause and think about the little steps you can take to turn this around in your neighborhood, at your workplace, in your school? Is there any better day to start than today?

P.S. Here are a few places you can connect with to get the ball rolling:

Main Street Contract for America
Showdown in America
Democracy Convention
Occupy Wall Street
October 2011
How to Join a Union by the AFL-CIO (they've learned their lesson and have a good president now) or UE
Change to Win
MoveOn
High School Newspaper (Just because you're under 18 doesn't mean you can't do anything!)


---
"I thought Republicans believed in government out of our lives, the precious right of privacy, and the right to be left alone. Well, then what they hell are we doing in abortion, and gay/lesbian issues, and mental health…I have a cousin who was gay who was a war hero, World War II. We're all human beings.”
Former Wyoming GOP Senator Alan Simpson (http://bit.ly/k5FRjB)

Food as Fuel - A Very Bad Idea

....$11B a year in corn subsidies.

I wonder where the Libertarian, tea party, and GOP outrage over this government subsidy of private enterprise is? Perhaps they just don't have the strength and the energy to be simultaneously outraged over that and....oh....I don't know.....the social programs that benefit poor women like Planned Parenthood at the same time. Maybe they consider PP's $70million in annual funding and the $293 million they get through Medicare reimbursements (1), Senator Kyl's NITBAFS lies about abortions notwithstanding, to be a bigger budgetary problem than corn subsidies.

If so, perhaps some remedial math will help. PP's $363million is only 3.3% the size of the corn subsidies, and PP's funding is still only 0.0104% of the 3.5trillion fed budget.


..."Eating up just a tenth of the corn crop as recently as 2004, ethanol was turbocharged by legislation in 2005 and 2007 that set specific requirements for its use in gasoline, mandating steep rises from year to year. Yet another government bureaucracy was born to enforce the quotas."

Perhaps someone can remind me who controlled both houses of Congress and the White House in 2005?

I know. Dems are the ones always being accused by tea-baggers, Randians, and GOPpers of bloating government, but even they must admit in this case that when, "...another government bureaucracy was born to enforce the quotas" that that birth could reasonably be assumed to have happened in 2005 and not 2007, right? Maybe someone will be interested enough to look that one up.

I don't suppose there's much point in reminding anyone about the truth of the Reagan, HW and Wjr years and GOP Congresses when it comes to bloated bureaucracies and budget deficits, either, is there?


Besides all the downsides of treating foodstuffs as fuels that this article brings to light, here are a few final related food facts I also thought worth sharing....
....The average American family wastes $1,200 - or about 500 pounds - of food each year. Add in restaurants and farms, and the total comes to $155billion (with a 'b') worth of food going into landfills every year (2)
....925 million people are hungry. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes. That's one child every five seconds(3).

In the time it took you to read this far, 30 kids died from hunger.

-----
Sources
(1): http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/planned-parenthood-center-budget-shutdown-threat/story?id=13328750

(2): http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/23/earlyshow/contributors/susankoeppen/main4285083.shtml#ixzz1QPOW0xhL

(3): http://www.bread.org/hunger/global/

-----



FEELING the need for an example of government policy run amok? Look no further than the box of cornflakes on your kitchen shelf. In its myriad corn-related interventions, Washington has managed simultaneously to help drive up food prices and add tens of billions of dollars to the deficit, while arguably increasing energy use and harming the environment.
Related
· Times Topic: Corn

Even in a crowd of rising food and commodity costs, corn stands out, its price having doubled in less than a year to a record $7.87 per bushel in early June. Booming global demand has overtaken stagnant supply.

But rather than ameliorate the problem, the government has exacerbated it, reducing food supply to a hungry world. Thanks to Washington, 4 of every 10 ears of corn grown in America — the source of 40 percent of the world’s production — are shunted into ethanol, a gasoline substitute that imperceptibly nicks our energy problem. Larded onto that are $11 billion a year of government subsidies to the corn complex.

Corn is hardly some minor agricultural product for breakfast cereal. It’s America’s largest crop, dwarfing wheat and soybeans. A small portion of production goes for human consumption; about 40 percent feeds cows, pigs, turkeys and chickens. Diverting 40 percent to ethanol has disagreeable consequences for food. In just a year, the price of bacon has soared by 24 percent.

To some, the contours of the ethanol story may be familiar. Almost since Iowa — our biggest corn-producing state — grabbed the lead position in the presidential sweepstakes four decades ago, support for the biofuel has been nearly a prerequisite for politicians seeking the presidency.

Those hopefuls have seen no need for a foolish consistency. John McCain and John Kerry were against ethanol subsidies, then as candidates were for them. Having lost the presidency, Mr. McCain is now against them again. Al Gore was for ethanol before he was against it. This time, one hopeful is experimenting with counter-programming: as governor of corn-producing Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty pushed for subsidies before he embraced a “straight talk” strategy.

Eating up just a tenth of the corn crop as recently as 2004, ethanol was turbocharged by legislation in 2005 and 2007 that set specific requirements for its use in gasoline, mandating steep rises from year to year. Yet another government bureaucracy was born to enforce the quotas.

To ease the pain, Congress threw in a 45-cents-a-gallon subsidy ($6 billion a year); to add another layer of protection, it imposed a tariff on imported ethanol of 54 cents a gallon. That successfully shut off cheap imports, produced more efficiently from sugar cane, principally from Brazil.

Here is perhaps the most incredible part: Because of the subsidy, ethanol became cheaper than gasoline, and so we sent 397 million gallons of ethanol overseas last year. America is simultaneously importing costly foreign oil and subsidizing the export of its equivalent.

That’s not all. Ethanol packs less punch than gasoline and uses considerable energy in its production process. All told, each gallon of gasoline that is displaced costs the Treasury $1.78 in subsidies and lost tax revenue.

Nor does ethanol live up to its environmental promises. The Congressional Budget Office found that reducing carbon dioxide emissions by using ethanol costs at least $750 per ton of carbon dioxide, wildly more than other methods. What is more, making corn ethanol consumes vast quantities of water and increases smog.

Then there’s energy efficiency. Studies reach widely varying conclusions on that issue. While some show a small saving in fossil fuels, others calculate that ethanol consumes more energy than it produces.

Corn growers and other farmers have long exercised outsize influence, thanks in part to the Senate’s structural tilt toward rural states. The ethanol giveaway represents a 21st-century add-on to a dizzying patchwork of programs for farmers. Under one, corn growers receive “direct payments” — $1.75 billion in 2010 — whether they grow corn or not. Washington also subsidizes crop insurance, at a cost of another $1.75 billion last year. That may have made sense when low corn prices made farming a marginal business, but no longer.

At long last, the enormity of the nation’s budget deficit has added momentum to the forces of reason. While only a symbolic move, the Senate recently voted 73 to 27 to end ethanol subsidies. That alone helped push corn prices down to $7 per bushel. Incredibly, the White House criticized the action — could key farm states have been on the minds of the president’s advisers?

Even farm advocates like former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman agree that the situation must be fixed. Reports filtering out of the budget talks currently under way suggest that agriculture subsidies sit prominently on the chopping block. The time is ripe.

Steven Rattner was formerly counselor to the secretary of the Treasury and lead auto adviser. He has spent nearly 30 years on Wall Street as an investor and investment banker and is a contributing writer to Op-Ed.

Do the Math: Nibbling at the Edges Won't Work

I received an email from a friend recently that was purported to be from a recent speech by Senator Tom Coburn. It's supposed to be his frustration about some items in the federal budget.

I'm all for fiscal responsibility. I wish the GOP was, too.

The federal budget is over 3.6 trillion dollars. I agree that's huge. It's way too big and out of control. I agree that something - lots of things, really - need to be done, but what exactly? And how do we put that "what" into some kind of perspective people can come to some agreement about?

To try to understand this, I started out with what the number 3.6 trillion really is. Yeah, I know. It's BIG! ;)

I had to break it down. It's 3600 billion. Still sounds pretty big! 3600billion is also 3600 million-million. Anytime you start saying "million-million" together, you know it's big!

What I don't understand or care much about is how many trips back and forth to the moon that is or what it's height would be in 100 dollar bills stacked up or some shit like that because that's meaningless to me, too. What I can do to understand all these numbers, though, is to compare them against each other. Here's what I discovered when I compared the total budget to some of the budget items that Coburn talks about.

What does it really mean when legislators complain about $150million for the Smithsonian or $500million for state and local fire stations or even $79billion for state education? Hard to say until one puts those numbers into perspective relative to the total budget. That I can do and understand.

So, $150,000,000 for the Smithsonian out of a total budget of $3,600,000,000,000 is 0.00416% of the total. That's 4 one-thousandths of one percent. $500million for state and local fire stations is 0.0138% of the total. Even $79billion for education is only 2.19%.

Putting it another way that I can actually comprehend, it's like saying that if the total federal budget was $3,600.00 Coburn and his colleagues in the GOP think we need to get fiscally responsible by cutting out 15 cents for the Smithsonian, 50 cents for fire stations, and just 79 bucks for education. I can understand that math............ but not the reasoning behind thinking we don't as a society need museums, fire stations, and well-educated kids.

To be sure, it all adds up and, yes, I agree with him that it isn't very smart or fiscally responsible to spend $448M on a new building and $248M on furniture for the Department of Homeland Security when there's supposedly $1.3trillion in empty buildings sitting on the books. What I wonder about is how come he and everyone else don't talk about big budget items like Defense?

I found it disturbing to read just this morning that the cost overruns alone in the Department of Defense these days are $300billion, an amount equal to Clinton's last FULL defense budget. (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/12/opinion/20100313_Pentagonsboondoggles.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1)

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for defending America, but I think it's time to stop pretending we're actually capable of arming Luke Skywalker with missile defense systems costing hundreds of billions of dollars that can actually shoot one missile with another. As the above NY Times piece shows, we've been trying to do that since ancient times - the year I was born - and there's no projected end in sight. The physics and technology are just not realistic, certainly not anytime soon. We seem to be the victims of just a little too much sci-fi.

I didn't realize this until recently, either. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, we spend as much on our military as the next 15 largest countries combined. Our military expenditures in 2009 were #1 on the list at $663billion. China is #2 at $98.8billion. We outspend just China by 670%. Number 3 on the list is the U.K. Are we worried they'll invade our shores? Seems like we ought to be able to kick anyone's ass in a conventional sense even if we cut back some.

There's certainly more than a little work that needs to be done in this country about our finances. For my part, I'd rather see the so-called and self-proclaimed fiscal hawks in the Republican party doing things like cutting defense spending and having an "adult conversation" as they like to say about the fact that what's really needed are the elimination of tax breaks and subsidies to companies like big oil combined with increases in taxes on those who can afford it most - the richest 2%.

Instead, the GOP seems intent on trying to pit middle class Americans against each other over things like a union's ability to bargain collectively, as if killing unions will add one single cent to a budget. They also are trying to sell us bullshit ideas that we need to cut the pennies it costs to keep museums and firehouses open, and the few dollars it takes to educate our kids. Meanwhile, the Defense Department's budget of over $660billion is almost 20% of the total budget and isn't cut but expanded.

Big problems require big courage and big solutions, not politically motivated nibbling at the edges that eliminates vital social functions that are tiny fractions of a percentage of the budget.

Koch Party Part 2: Covert Operations

Here's more justification for changing the GOP to the Koch Party.

I was asked via email recently the following question:
"...isn't the Koch Industries thing kind of tiny compared to the money unions have funneled to the Dems for over 100 years?"

Here is my response.


100 years? Not sure how much of the American labor force was actually unionized in 1910. The National Labor Relations Act wasn't passed until 1934. I heard more stories today at a family funeral of the "blackjacks" - hired thugs - who were beating up my ancestors and their neighbors in the 20s for trying to unionize as coal miners.

OpenSecrets.org has data on contributions dating back 21 years, to 1989. The "Top Donors / Heavy Hitters" section is very revealing. http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/index.php Many of you will be pleased to see how much money is going to Democrats. Hold that thought. I'm coming back to it in a minute or two.

The following excerpts are from a New Yorker article by Jane Mayer from last August on the Koch boys called "Covert Operations". It's a really, really detailed expose. I can't encourage everyone strongly enough to read the whole thing. Yes, you'll need to turn off Beck and Faux Snooze for 20 minutes or so. Do yourself that favor. Things worth reading and learning about take a little quiet time. This is one of those times.

From (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all)

Only the Kochs know precisely how much they have spent on politics. Public tax records show that between 1998 and 2008 the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation spent more than forty-eight million dollars. The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which is controlled by Charles Koch and his wife, along with two company employees and an accountant, spent more than twenty-eight million. The David H. Koch Charitable Foundation spent more than a hundred and twenty million. Meanwhile, since 1998 Koch Industries has spent more than fifty million dollars on lobbying. Separately, the company’s political-action committee, KochPAC, has donated some eight million dollars to political campaigns, more than eighty per cent of it to Republicans. So far in 2010, Koch Industries leads all other energy companies in political contributions, as it has since 2006. In addition, during the past dozen years the Kochs and other family members have personally spent more than two million dollars on political contributions. In the second quarter of 2010, David Koch was the biggest individual contributor to the Republican Governors Association, with a million-dollar donation. Other gifts by the Kochs may be untraceable; federal tax law permits anonymous personal donations to politically active nonprofit groups.



Adding up just the numbers in the paragraph above is $257million in 10 years. Keep that in mind and go back and look at the data at OpenSecrets.org again. Notice again that that data spans 21 years: 1989 to 2010. Now start adding up the numbers up for yourself on the Top All Time Donors list. Be sure to account for the percentage split of those contributions between Dems and Kochs.

In half the time - 1998 to 2008 - and, again, using just the dollar amounts specified in the above paragraph, which clearly isn't everything, the Kochs outspent the top 8 contributors to the Democratic party combined. Half the time, 8 times the contributions.

Do the effing math.

For anyone ready to screech "What about George Soros?", the article goes on to make this point.

Of course, Democrats give money, too. Their most prominent donor, the financier George Soros, runs a foundation, the Open Society Institute, that has spent as much as a hundred million dollars a year in America. Soros has also made generous private contributions to various Democratic campaigns, including Obama’s. But Michael Vachon, his spokesman, argued that Soros’s giving is transparent, and that “none of his contributions are in the service of his own economic interests.” The Kochs have given millions of dollars to nonprofit groups that criticize environmental regulation and support lower taxes for industry. Gus diZerega, the former friend, suggested that the Kochs’ youthful idealism about libertarianism had largely devolved into a rationale for corporate self-interest. He said of Charles, “Perhaps he has confused making money with freedom.”



If you truly care about context and history and facts, then read the whole New Yorker article. The conclusion is inescapable.

You Republicans need to change the name of your party.

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Photograph: RICHARD SCHULMAN/CORBIS

GOP Should Just Go Ahead and Change Name to Koch Party

"In Wisconsin, union leaders agreed to concessions requested by Mr. Walker: to pay nearly 6 percent of their wages for pension costs, up from nearly zero, and double payments for health insurance. At that point, most governors would declare victory and move on. Instead, Mr. Walker has rejected union concessions and won’t even negotiate. His true priority is stripping workers of collective-bargaining rights and reducing their unions to a shell. The unions would no longer be able to raise money to oppose him, as they did in last year’s election, easing the way for future Republicans as well."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/opinion/23wed1.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211


The Wisconsin governor is dutifully following the Koch GOP playbook: kill unions because members and supporters tend to vote Democratic and, as everyone knows, elected GOP politicians will dutifully do the bidding of wealthy capitalists faster and with greater zeal than the Dems.

It's politics. It really isn't about balancing budgets. That's just a convenient excuse to lie some more but, once again, the math doesn't lie and the unions have already agreed to the $300million in concessions on a $3600million dollar budget shortfall. That's 8.3%, and the union has agreed to it so what's the problem?

Wisconsin, and more broadly labor unions everywhere, are targeted elements of a bigger and broader GOP strategy to.......wait for it.........control more of your lives from corporate boardrooms instead of state capitols. The beauty of the plan is that Charles and David Koch never have to appear in public, never have to defend their policies against their opponents in pre-election debates, and never have to run and win elections. They and their allies in conservative media like Limbaugh and Murdoch have gotten very good at spending relatively small amounts of their fortune to whip into a frenzy people who don't or won't bother with facts.

It's just too bad that there are as many Americans as there are who have bought into and now desperately cling to the biggest lie of all: that they are part of the Koch/GOP grand plan for greater American wealth and prosperity. They're not, except as chattel.

Anyone outside the richest 2% who still believes the lies of the GOP is just carrying their water like a dutiful servant is expected to do. They've been duped into the complete masquerade and utter sham that Republicans are fiscal conservatives interested in doing anything at all to improve the condition of average Americans.

Here are more inconvenient numbers from Gallup.

It's really only a slim majority of Republicans, 54%, who even agree with the idea of taking away collective bargaining rights of state union workers. It should be noted that two-thirds of Independents oppose it, as do two-thirds of all adults nationwide. The key word there is 'adults.' People with the maturity, wisdom, and experience to know right from wrong and to discern fact from fiction.

Put simply, if you agree with breaking state unions you are in the minority. There's a reason for that. Opposing workers is not just bad for them, it's bad for America and the economy. We have no economy without a thriving middle class, and state workers - teachers, firefighters, law enforcement, and even the dreaded "bureaucrats" - are part of that middle class.

You can be mad at me for continuing to say these things, and you can dig your heals in deeper because you hate me for rubbing your noses in the reality of where your party is on issues like this. It won't change the facts: the GOP is pro-business and anti-worker. Always has been.

While I've never been a member of a union and probably never will be, I don't see how America rises to such economic prosperity and prominence post-WWII without unions. I'm proud of the fact that my father provided a middle class life to us in part because he was a union worker. I wonder how many reading this are willing to say the same?

What about all that nostalgia for the post-WWII years to which conservatives always seem to want to "take our country back?"

I seriously doubt that my father and all the other hard-working men and women in the 40s, 50s, and 60s would have been able to own a home and raise kids in a working class (and barely middle class) neighborhood had he had to endure the indignities and oppression that his father, a coal miner at the beginning of the 20th century and at the start of the labor movement, endured. Given the generosity and benevolence of late 19th and early 20th century capitalist, I'm completely comfortable saying that the answer would be no. This country rose to economic prosperity as much on the backs of labor as it did on the business acumen of entrepreneurs and capitalists. It's symbiotic. One cannot exist and thrive without the other.

All the trickling down in the world - then and now - doesn't turn the GOP into a party that even remotely approaches being pro-middle class. Tax cuts for the wealthy are not stimulative. That was proven yet again in 2001, 2003, and 2010. Deregulation only opens up more opportunities for corporations and a select few to rig the system so they prosper with all the rewards and none of the risk. We - the middle class - are left with the economic, environmental, and social bills while the Kochs, Murdochs, Limbaughs, and Becks laugh their way to their overseas bank accounts.