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.

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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

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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,

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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

Class Warfare and John Galt; Both are Fiction

A recent Facebook post by The Christian Left (image courtesy of that post), sparked some interesting discussion. Some people apparently saw this as a metaphor for Obama acting as a messiah while simultaneously dividing the country with his "class warfare" against the rich.


This whole idea of "class warfare" strikes me as being mostly an issue for wealthy conservatives. Even more curious is that it's become a rallying cry for middle class conservatives who feel compelled to rise to the defense of the wealthy and the threat they face from onerous government intervention and taxation.

Why is that?

Well, it seems to me that there's no denying that conservative (and GOP) media spokespersons like O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity, Coulter, and that whole crowd are intent on convincing us of the evils of government. Their rhetoric seems focused on protecting their benefactors while simultaneously serving their own greedy self interests by attracting as many eyeballs (and devotees) as possible. Nothing seems to work like some good old hyperbole (devoid to the degree possible of any facts) for riling up the uninformed and for driving wedges between all kinds of people. If it's not the fake (and worn out) War on Christmas, it's the new (and just as fake) Battle Royale between Takers and Makers.

(And before conservatives accuse me of bias, let me at least come clean and admit to mine. I am proud to call myself a progressive and a liberal. Yes, similar accusations can be made about the hyperbole from left wing personalities, too. However, and to my experience, at least they seem to be defending us little guys with their rhetoric. They don't try to scare us into siding with the wealthy in the hopes that someday the wealthy will shower us with generosity in the form of....what?....jobs at Walmart? Oh, and the so-called "liberal media" actually seem to care about and cite real science and actual facts. Bonus points in my book for that sort of behavior.)

Conservative spokespeople from Boehner and McConnell on down through Faux (sorry, Fox) News, The Drudge Report, and tea partiers everywhere would have us all believe that if we don't stop hating the wealthy and don't start supporting even more and more concessions - Boehner is actually proposing lowering the tax rates?!? - we're doomed. They seem to actually think - or more likely, want us to believe - that we in the middle class will actually witness a physical manifestation of the disappearance of "job creators" a la John Galt if the middle class comes out on top in this so-called war of the classes.

In other words, if the middle class triumphs and taxes go up on the wealthy, the wealthy will retreat to points unknown while the rest of us are left standing around wondering from where our next hand out will appear.

For the record, just because I favor raising taxes on all corporate profits, closing all corporate tax loopholes (especially of the offshore variety), and doing away with subsidies to last century's industries like oil, coal, and natural gas doesn't mean I hate the wealthy. Oh, and I'm not a socialist. (Ok, I admit it. I am a little on issues such as universal health care and higher education, but that's for another post.)

And, just because I think the Bush Tax cuts for individuals earning over $250K ought to expire and, frankly, those rates ought to go up a little more, also doesn't mean that I hate the wealthy. Hell, I've spent my entire adult life working pretty hard and taking risks with start-ups - including my own; twice! - to try to be among them. Never once has my tax rate come into the thought process that went into those decisions. Never once have I met a true entrepreneur who said that taxes - especially of the personal income variety - were part of their decision making process for starting a business.

There is no class warfare. It's imaginary, just like that fictional character in that novel written by a Russian atheist who didn't know you-know-what from Shinola when it came to economics. There's nothing to be afraid about. The wealthy are not going to take their marbles and go home if their taxes go up. They aren't going to curl into fetal positions on beach chairs somewhere and wallow in their hatred of government. They'll do what they do best; find ways to create more wealth for themselves.

As for those CEOs and business owners who want to make a statement by laying people off or closing up operations because their taxes are too high, I say this. Either they aren't very bright, they aren't really entrepreneurs, or they are liars. Only a foolish business person would take such actions if the business was doing well. Business people don't just walk away from their business. At the very least, they sell it so they can go someplace sunny the rest of their lives and enjoy their prosperity. I hope to join them one day, so long as it's not as the old guy bringing them fresh towels and cold drinks.

It takes a thriving and prospering middle class to be a thriving and prosperous economy. This is why I'm so absolutely astounded by anyone who isn't making $250K or more who identifies themselves with the GOP and supports the likes of Boehner, Ryan, Cantor, McConnell and that crowd. Here's why I say that.

Businesses cannot survive and thrive without customers. Without a strong and consuming middle class, there is no market, businesses won't prosper, and business people can't make as much money. Smart politicians and business people understand this, and history has proven that the middle class needs more than some "trickle" coming down from on high in order to grow. Ask the medieval kings how that whole serfdom thing worked for them.

Today, it's not class warfare. It's not warfare of any kind. It's ethics and arithmetic. The wealthy are not paying their fair share. That's the arithmetic. More than that are the ethics. The wealthy are not paying enough back to society. It's our society and how economics within it operates, after all, that gives them the environment in which to create, function, and prosper. (No, conservatives, business did not build that.) The wealthy owe a debt back to our society paid in the form of taxes in order to keep our society functioning for this generation of all people and for the next generation of entrepreneurs.

I think that it's childish, silly, and dangerous for us to believe that Big Money isn't pulling the strings in DC. Let's not kid ourselves about which strings they have more of and pull more often. It's the self-appointed defenders of business. It's the GOP.

That said, this "war" being waged over taxes on the wealthy and the possibility that they will therefore refuse to magically create jobs if their taxes go up is even sillier and more dangerous. We need to be more mature in our thinking when it comes to politics, policies, regulations, laws, and tax codes that are more progressive and which move to ensure the majority of Americans are not back in the conditions that most average people endured in the Gilded Age.

My grandparents came to America in the great immigration of the early 20th century. My parents were born in America in 1915 and 1925. They told vivid and disturbing stories of what it was like to live under the boot heal of unregulated, under taxed, and wildly powerful Big Money corporations back then. Why today's middle class thinks we need to return to tax policies and regulatory environments that even come close to those days is beyond my comprehension.

So, I wonder what it will take to get the dwindling middle class in the GOP to stop voting against their own economic self interest?

I wonder if the GOP will ever stop trying to sell us on the fallacy of trickle down economics, and I wonder how many more times we will need to see that economic theory proven wrong before we shunt politicians who espouse it to the sidelines where they belong?

My advice is simple. Let's do the math, do what's right, and put ourselves back on a track toward recovery for the vast majority, not the privileged few. Let's stop pretending that there's a war between the classes, and let's stop believing in fiction as a basis for an economy.

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.

CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

I think this Business Insider article is one of the best collections of facts I've ever seen assembled about the economy.


Each graph is linked to its source or has the source stated as part of the chart image. Most come from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Others are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the CIA (yeah, that CIA), UC Santa Cruz, Institutional Risk Analytics, Reuters, and the New York Times.

It is apolitical. It is simply historical data in graphical form about unemployment, corporate profits, banking, and the like. It doesn't project or forecast anything. It does offer brief descriptions about what that data means to everyone, not just the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The author, Henry Blodget, is no left-wing loon. Besides being CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Business Insider, he has firsthand and what some might call a "colorful" history in the financial services industry.


On a related note, I also thought that the image above was telling. It comes from The Atlantic

Was hoping we all might borrow this idea from that article:
"The greatest threat to our economy is neither corporations nor the government. The greatest threat to our economy is both of them working together," Sinclair writes. "There are currently two sizable coalitions of angry citizens that are almost on the same page about that, and they're too busy insulting each other to notice."


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"If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause we'd better reexamine our reasoning."
Robert McNamara, former president of Ford Motor Company, Secretary of Defense to JFK and LBJ, and former president of the World Bank in the 2003 documentary, "The Fog of War", on America's involvement in Vietnam and the fact that we, as a nation, are not and never have been omniscient or perfect.

Responding to the Conservative Propaganda Machine

Wake up, America.

Spread the word.

Call out the corporate conservative media...
.....and those you know when they regurgitate the b.s. spouted by Fox, Rush, Savage, and the entire GOP-Tea Party.





Responding to the Conservative Propaganda Machine

"Now more than ever, we need effective governance in the various sectors, including both public and private, to save our country from collapse. Yet what we have is a deep collusion between wealthy corporatists and a significant cabal in government. Their collusion is profoundly anti-democratic and even anti-market (as demonstrated by the devastating impacts of their policies on financial markets in 2008). So what we're getting is a group of financiers who set up communication systems to manipulate public perception and drive boom-crash cycles in the economy to siphon all forms of wealth into their coffers."

Everyone Loses Unless You Vote Against the Wrong-Headedness of the GOP/Tea Bagger Party

What and With Whom is the Tea Party So Upset?

The marginal tax rate for median income earners has been unchanged at 15% since 1987. See http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=226

So what exactly is everyone - especially those in the Tea Party - so upset about, why, and with whom?

Could it be they actually don't know the facts, or is it that they simply choose to "refudiate" and ignore those facts?

Now, if you're among the RWMFs the story is admittedly a little different.

As I'm sure all you RWMFs know, the marginal tax rates for the Twice-Median Income Earners climbed from 22% in 1967 to a peak of 43% in 1980. The Dems controlled Congress during this period. The White House was occupied by the LBJ, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. The GOP took back the Senate and White House in 1980 and tax rates start declining but primarily for the rich. Hooray.

As any good Randian knows, that means boon times ahead for all of us! Too bad that didn't work out as planned. The net worth and financial wealth of the top 20% of Americans went from 83.6% and 93.4%, respectively, in 1989 to 85.1% and 93.0% in 2007. (See http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html)

So much for trickle down.

Median Income Earners, BTW, saw a much smaller increase in their marginal income tax rates from '67 to '80 and very little to no decline after 1980 until...............................wait for it...............................the Dems took back the Senate. (See the attached graph of the Tax Policy Center's data on top of which I've laid the parties in power.)

Tax rates declined even more vigorously when the Dems took back the Senate in '87 and once again controlled both Houses. Let me say that again.

TAX RATES DECLINED EVEN MORE VIGOROUSLY WHEN THE DEMS CONTROLLED CONGRESS.

All you have to do is look at the chart above and the Tax Policy Center's data and do the math yourself if you don't trust me.

And what else was happening during the 80's and 90's while tax rates were being reduced? Oh, yeah. The federal debt as a percentage of GDP was climbing. (See http://didyoucheckfirst.blogspot.com/2010/02/one-persons-perspective-on-federal-debt.html for a chart of that, again overlaid with political parties in power.)

And why was our debt rising? Could it have been because of increases in defense spending (here and here) while at the same time the taxes being paid into the Treasury were being cut perhaps? No. Couldn't be. Could it? Really. What do I know, and what do the facts prove? Nothing, right? They are easily "refudiated".

And who was it who increased taxes on the wealthy Twice-Median Income earners? Was it those evil Dems? No. It was a GOP-controlled Congress who increased those taxes in 1998 from 28% to 33%. Look at the chart and the data. The facts don't lie. Yes, the Democratically controlled Congress increased them in 2008 - an act for which they win my admiration - but they also reduced them in 2009.

Now remember, while all of this is going on the marginal income tax rates on the middle class remain the same. Let me repeat that.

MARGINAL INCOME TAX RATES ON THE MIDDLE CLASS HAVE BEEN UNCHANGED AT 15% SINCE 1987!!!!

Curiously enough marginal rates on low income earners have bounced around. They are now just a little higher than middle income earners. Evidence, IMHO, that the less money you have the less power you have in this country. You do get to be a political football, though, if you're poor.

Again, all the data is there if anyone wants to avoid an afternoon of yard work like I have. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=226

Unfunded tax cuts mean simply this: you can't reduce taxes without appreciating that those reductions mean less income to the government. Unless you replace it with some other source of funding, the deficit gets bigger. If you cut that income source by cutting taxes but still care about trying to balance the budget, then those cuts must be balanced - funded, if you will - by some combination of increases in income (taxes) elsewhere and/or cuts in expenditures.

For more on this idea, I refer you to the following:
Invincible Ignorance; Paul Krugman

Middle Class Taxes at Historic Lows; Mike Lillis, The Washington Independent


It's Unanimous! GOP Says No To Unemployment Benefits, Yes To Tax Cuts For The Rich; Brian Beutler, TPMDC (Talking Points Memo)


Bush's Unfunded Tax Cuts Did Not Increase the Deficit; Kathy Kattenburg, The Moderate Voice


Considering what I think is plenty of proof about our slide into mediocrity and mendacity manifest in so many ways by the Tea Party movement, I guess I'm not all that surprised that so many people are so upset without even understanding why.

Here's the reality. The GOP is lying, plain and simple, and Tea Partiers seem completely uninformed about the facts.

When the GOP says that Bush's tax cuts didn't increase the deficit and were good for the economy and so should be extended and don't need to be "funded" they are lying. Either that, or they believe there really are free lunches in this world.

The GOP is lying when they accuse Democrats of being the only ones who raise taxes and spend money. When Democrats have controlled Congress, at least since 1987, they clearly have not raised taxes on the middle class. In fact, if anyone bothers to look at the data they will see that it was a Democratically controlled Congress who lowered the marginal income tax rate for high-income earners in 2009 thanks in part, according to the Tax Policy Center, to the Making Work Pay Credit enacted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

And the GOP and tea partiers have the balls to whine and cry and stomp their feet about extending unemployment benefits??? Their demand that extending unemployment must be paid for while it's ok to extend tax breaks to the wealthy without funding is both asinine and heartless.

What I'm saying - again - is that we can't have it both ways.

If you want to debate facts, let's do that. If you want to present real data, then I implore you to please do so. If any tea partiers out there can explain and defend their anger with this administration with anything even resembling data and facts, I might actually pay money for that.

Otherwise, I remain steadfast in my conclusions that unless one counts themselves among the wealthiest 5% - maybe 10% - in this country it remains simply and utterly inexplicable to me as to how or why the GOP or Tea Party holds any attraction to anyone but the wealthiest among us.....................unless, of course, you choose to ignore the facts.

A Condensed History and Plea for a Better Future

Dateline: October 29, 1929

U.S. stock market crashes. That wouldn't have been such a big deal for most Americans in 1929 except that unregulated banks had invested their depositor's funds into the stock market, too, and without having to tell anyone what they were doing. When the stock market tanked and there no buyers, the banks couldn't sell their holdings either. Some had to close. They no longer had the one thing a bank is supposed to have - money.

Remember, this is an unregulated industry and there was no such thing as the FDIC and deposit insurance. That didn't come along until 1933 (http://www.fdic.gov/about/learn/learning/why/index.html)

Panic about being able to get to one's money, of course, causes the "run" on the banks. Bankers have no money. They lost it all. Oops. Sorry about that.

No money in banks also means no credit for businesses to operate, either. Businesses, naturally, start to worry about preserving whatever remains of their capital so they let workers go. People don't have work so they have no income. Remember, this is before unemployment insurance or any sort of government welfare programs, too. People literally have nothing. No money in the bank and no one working means no one is buying anything, either, so there's no reason for businesses to produce much in the way of goods and services. It certainly doesn't mean there will be any growth and rehiring any time soon. The spiral downward has started, and it's adios amigos to everyone.

Ain't unregulated, unfettered capitalism grand?

And with sincere apologies to some of you, that stupid fucking Russian cunt had the balls to write a few pieces of fiction less than 30 years later and some people like Alan Greenspan either came to believe it was a new religion, suffered severe amnesia about what had happened and why a few decades earlier, simply never bothered to study history at all, or more to what I believe saw then and now that deregulation is the surest way to become filthy rich at expense of ordinary people.

Back to the 30s. So, the federal government creates programs to put people back to work - work that actually benefits society as a whole. My father worked in the CCC program. He and many other young men from PA took care of parts of the Appalachian Trail. So what, you might say. What did that really do for society? Ok. Forget the A.T. Ever hear of the TVA, Triborough Bridge, the Bay Bridge, or Grand Coulee Dam? There's a good chance something where you live that serves you, your neighbors, and the common good - a school, a hospital, or a highway, for example - was built by people employed by BOTH private businesses and the government as a result of the federal government and deficit spending to fund work programs. (See http://americanhistory.about.com/od/greatdepression/tp/new_deal_programs.htm and http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/the-new-new-deal/public-works-administration/693/)

Let's speed things up a bit. This is getting pretty long.

Lawmakers and citizens alike come to realize that businesses and especially banks are either too stupid or too greedy or both to be completely trusted to regulate themselves. Glass-Steagall is passed in 1932. The "Truth in Securities Act" is passed in 1933 and the SEC and a bunch of other laws are passed beginning in 1934. Banks, at least, are safe and some rules are in place to regulate the financial services industry.

Now it's 1999. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a GOP disaster euphemistically referred to as the Financial Services Modernization Act (reminds me the so-called "Patriot Act". We should always get very suspicious of legislation given names that sound like sugar coating or the titles of Mel Gibson movies) effectively repeals Glass-Steagall.

Only a few short years later we find ourselves once again in an economy where too little regulation and oversight exists, thanks mostly to Greenspan, the GOP, and weak-kneed Dems.

W drives the final nails into the coffin up by giving away the federal surplus to the rich, invading 2 countries off the books based on total lies (except for the fact that Afghanistan was harboring bin Laden and he proceeded to fuck that up totally by invading Iraq) and running up the biggest debt since - you guessed it - that other GOP nitwit, Reagan. The financial service sector, who had been merrily creating so-called investments out of highly speculative debt, and the real cold-blooded capitalists who were making even more billions on derivatives tied to that shaky debt, have been doing so without regulation or oversight.

When the bubble bursts ON W's WATCH, who pays? We the taxpayers do.

So I get the tea party anger. Honestly, I do. But the anger, frustration, and demand for change needs to be directed where it belongs; at deregulation, failed GOP economic and fiscal polices dating back to Reagan, and the disaster created that forced Bush to have to put TARP in place for Obama to have to accept and implement. Wake up, tea baggers and you Obama-haters. Have you just conveniently forgotten or chosen to ignore how we got here?

Now I can't believe I'm going to say this, but the more I read and listen to people a lot smarter than I the more convinced I am that TARP had to be done to save the economy and that, perhaps, the biggest mistake being made in DC is that the feds are not spending enough.

The parallels all seem to be there to the 1930s. Some experts say that FDR was too concerned about fiscal restraint in the beginning. Had he done more, they say, the Depression may not have lasted as long or required WWII to really pull us out of it. (I'm sorry that I can't find a reference to that and don't have time to keep searching right now as we're going to a grad party. Maybe someone else can find something on it. I only remember hearing it or reading it somewhere; maybe last Sunday on one of the news programs.)

There are people out there a lot smarter than I who can explain all of this a million times better. Here's one.....

http://robertreich.org/post/719313692/my-father-and-alan-greenspan

What got me going on this today was an article in today's NYT. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/us/politics/11tarp.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

It's proof to me that Americans really aren't very well-informed. Candidates for public office are probably the dumbest of the lot. Trying to make hay on who voted for TARP is like blaming the iceberg for the sinking of the Titanic (the iceberg didn't do anything). Captain W and his administration steered us into that iceberg. In case you haven't noticed, they and their cronies are long gone in their yachts for life boats.

How refreshing would it be for politicians to stand up to the STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE HYSTERIA IN THE MEDIA and actually educate the voters on what really caused the bottom to drop out of the economy and the fact that....gulp....there was no other choice but to go with W's bailout. I mean, really. What alternative was there?

The real objective ought to be what comes next to keep this from happening......AGAIN!

Style Over Substance

http://wimp.com/fareedzakaria/

If I may offer my own opinion (and even if I may not), I would begin by saying that our society is rooted in a culture that values style over substance. (There's a bold statement, eh?!?!) We only have ourselves to blame.

Some like me would say that style-over-substance is the only explanation for how Ronny Ray-Gun, Slick Willy, Dumb-ya and even Obama got elected. Yes, even Obama. He was the right guy with the right message and right delivery at the right time. It's refreshing to have a president who speaks in complete sentences and doesn't come off like some dumb ass cowboy who fell out of his saddle one too many times....or in W's case, who has all the right power-base genes but the intellect of a toaster oven.

Frankly, 2 turds could have beaten any GOP ticket considering how bad W screwed things up. That and the fact that the best the party of Lincoln could come up with was a near-senile ex-maverick and a brainless windbag ex-beauty queen who doesn't read a single newspaper and seems pretty proud of her ignorance. The GOP deserved to lose. Some, including me, would cast them - McCain, mostly - in the role of sacrificial lamb. Hell, let's face it. After W's 8-year debacle a GOP ticket of Jesus Christ and Ayn Rand still would have lost.

One thing I think we might all agree on is that "style" has taken over substance. "Style" when it comes to leaders and especially presidents is overrated. I'll bet "style" isn't exactly the first adjective that comes to mind when we think about Nixon, Carter, or George Herbert. Not that any of them were particularly great leaders. Damn, now that I started on this path I have to admit that they all sucked, too. They sucked *AND* had no style. What a trio of losers, eh? Carter, of course, is my favorite among the three but that's only because of what I've learned about GHWB and Jimmy since they left office.

I wonder if any of us will live long enough to see the voting public mature as a society to a point where we focus on facts, the issues, and policies and forget the rhetoric and hyperbole. Sadly, I suspect not. My hope still rests with my children's generation. Ironically, it seems simultaneously easier and harder to fool the digital generation. Clearly, we have done nothing but screw things up royally.

Speaking of screw ups, what a freak show 2012 promises to be if you real Republicans finally and completely surrender your party to the lunatic fringe nut-jobs and Palin is your candidate. If that happens, I can only hope Inhofe or maybe her fellow Faux News celeb, Huckabee, is her running mate. Wwooooooooo-doggies!!!! We're gonna' have us one big ol' Meet the Kardashian-type media circus campaign, you betcha!!! Break out the grizzly jerky and the Good Book, and let's have us some drilling in the ANWR, deportation of anyone who even resembles a Latino, and teaching Creationism in public schools! Hell, let's just have us one big ol' full blown Christian Taliban White House!! If you ain't a white, heterosexual, god-fearing, conservative, lifetime member of the NRA, and deeeee-vout Christian, well then, you're a commie pinko tree-huggin' fagot socialist and we're gonna' show you the door!

You know us middle-class whites - any chance we get to piss on someone below us on the socio-economic ladder and we'll whip it out just to prove that our lord god and savior, Ronny-boy, was right about trickle down!

Enough of that. It's hyperbole, and I'm sure it pisses some of you off. Sorry, but it serves to make the point. We have ourselves to blame.

The media is about eyeballs and advertisers. You've heard it from me before. The media focuses on the president's emotions or lack thereof because that's what we care about and will watch. We don't care about real leadership. Hell, most Americans wouldn't know what that was if it slapped us squarely in the face. When we think of leadership we think of Ben Rothlisberger or Kobe Bryant or John Wayne. We don't think about intelligence and intellect. We don't think about careful contemplation, consequences, inclusion, or long-term consideration for the common good and the general welfare. We certainly don't seem to think about the truth or facts about anything unless, of course, they appear to fit our preconceived notions, beliefs, and desires for what we want and wish the world to be.

What other explanation is there for the ridicule from some quarters of sources like PolitiFact, FactCheck, Snopes, and other unbiased resources?

What other reason can there for Obama's handlers and his political opponents alike to make so much about his "kicking some ass" comments? One side claims it demonstrates his toughness while the other sees it as an indictment of him and his leadership while ogres like Cheney telling legislators to go f*** themselves and that chimp W's stupid flip of the middle finger to a camera like some delinquent ninth grader gets a pass. Oh, then there's that whole inconvenient torture thing, but, hey, we're Americans! We can do whatever the hell we want, whenever the hell we want, and to whomever the hell we want because............well, that's the bully's prerogative.

So, coming from a self-proclaimed flaming liberal, the real crime is that we citizens don't stop and take the time to ask real questions or do our own homework. There simply is, IMHO, no other rational explanation for why things are as they are. We are complicit in the dumbing-down of America, the media, and American politics. Only we can change that. Nothing could have convinced me more of that than seeing a tea party rally with my own eyes.

I don't care that they hate Obama, I really don't. Like most hate, it's out of ignorance. What I care about is that the media pays any attention at all to this lunatic fringe and their lunatic demigod, Queen Sarah. Sharron Angle? Are you effing kidding? How does someone like that rise to any more prominence than with a bunch of local snake handlers without the media and our moth-like reaction to follow the light?

Every second of attention paid by the media to the tea party movement confers a mistaken and misguided sense of credibility they do not deserve and can only win with an uneducated, uniformed portion of the populace who thinks their values are being echoed when all they really are is more fodder for the movement. Moths to the flame; eyeballs to the advertisers.

I get the frustration, I really do. We all have some. But what I saw on July 3rd in my proverbial backyard was the basest elements of what I thought was a democratic society. These people don't care about democracy. They pay it lip service. They don't care about facts or the truth. Listen to their speakers. What they want is a segregationist's America, complete with discrimination against anyone who isn't a god-fearing white face like themselves. What they want is a white man back in the White House; preferably a good Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Methodist, and in a pinch, a Baptist. No matter what, anyone with a name like Barak Hussein Obama is obviously a Muslim, probably isn't a citizen, and is for sure just a little too tanned for the liking of good ol' fashioned baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet Americans, goddammit.

And we have ourselves and our feeding of the media-beast to blame for all of this. Why else would the president's emotions - real or staged - seem to get more attention than what caused the disaster in the Gulf and what we're going to do as a nation and as a people to make sure this never, ever, ever happens again anywhere, not just in the USA?

Must be because what we value most is style over substance.

Wake up GOP and Conservatives and Quit Being Idiot Tea-Baggers!

http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/Tea-Partiers-Fairly-Mainstream-Demographics.aspx#1

Don't let the title fool you.

Only 28% of U.S. adults admit to being tea-baggers. 26% oppose. 38% neither support nor oppose. 8% don't give a f***.

49% of tea-baggers identify themselves as GOP compared to.....
...... a whopping 28% of all U.S. adults who are willing to admit that they are Republicans.

72% of all U.S. adults are either Independent (40%) or Dems (32%).

Here's a shocker....
70% of tea-baggers say they are Conservative but only 40% of U.S. adults say so. 59% of U.S. adults are either Moderate (38%) or Liberal (21%).

And look, another huge surprise....
19% of tea-baggers earn less than $30K a year
...... 55% make more than $50K

More surprises....
62% of Republicans and 63% of Conservatives have a favorable opinion of tea-baggers, but......
WHOOPS!
More National Adults overall(40% v 37%), Independents (41% v 37%), and Moderates (51% v 24%) have an UNFAVORABLE opinion compared to a favorable one.

Wake up you Republicans and Conservatives before you disappear completely into the cultural oblivion and societal garbage heap which is most certainly the final destination of Queen Tea Bag and her moronic movement.