Jan 4th, 2011 Call Gov. Mitch Daniels at 317-232-4567 UPDATE 12:00pm CST 01/04/12:Indiana has backed down on the new rules limiting free assembly at the State House
"Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost." -- Ronald Reagan
Today, Gov Mitch Daniels (R-IN) is joining the GOP's nationwide war on labor, quality of life and the ability to collectively bargain.
"Indiana begins what is expected to be a raucous debate on Wednesday as a bill is introduced in the state legislature that could make it the first "right-to-work" state in the nation's traditional manufacturing belt.
The legislation is expected to pass the Republican-majority Indiana assembly with the support of Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who said it is "all about new job opportunities."
Indeed. The opportunity for longer hours, less money, no security, no benefits and the dreary desperation of living less and less like Americans and more and more like the residents of a banana republic. Sounds great, doesn't it?
Allow me to register my total lack of surprise. APreports:
"The House Tuesday rejected legislation to extend a payroll tax cut and jobless benefits for two months, drawing a swift rebuke from President Barack Obama that Republicans were threatening higher taxes on 160 million American workers on Jan. 1.
Obama said the two-month compromise is the only way to stop payroll taxes from going up by two percentage points.
"Now let's be clear," Obama said in a surprise appearance in theWhite House briefing room after the House vote. "The bipartisan compromise that was reached on Saturday is the only viable way to prevent a tax hike on January 1st. The only one."
First of all, this was a case of hostage taking. It's plain and simple. If the GOP had wanted to keep the payroll rate in place, all they had to do was vote for it. They insisted that it "had to be paid for." How does this square with their 30 year mantra that "tax cuts" pay for themselves by magically expanding growth? It doesn't and an obedient media is largely obliging them by not asking about that. More predictably and repulsively, they not only insisted that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline was somehow related to the payroll tax rate, but they uniformly parroted each and every proven falsehood regarding that project.
What does it mean for you? The chart below shows it clearly.
A number of readers have asked if will be liveblogging tonight's GOP "debate." My answer is NO. Of course... no. I just can't take it anymore. BooMan explains why it's pointless:
"Voters are not learning anything by watching these debates. They're just being misinformed and presented with an alternate reality that is quite different from anything normal people experience in their lives. Unless you are immersed in right-wing talk radio and Fox News, most of what they're saying doesn't even have a passing relationship to your understanding of the world. Their statistics are fabricated. The problems they identify don't even exist. Their solutions are not plausible on any level you might want to consider. It's really a lot more like pro wrestling than actual politics. Except it's actually less entertaining than actual politics, which proves they're doing it wrong. Even Herman Cain, who was providing some consistent comedic value for a while, is no longer funny now that he's trying to explain how many women he's never harassed. I know it's hard to write about a presidential campaign if you don't watch the debates, but I just can't do it. My capacity to imbibe The Stupid has been maxed out."
"The Republican Party of today is not the party of Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan that I was once a member of; it stands for nothing except the pursuit of power as an end in itself, with no concern whatsoever for what is right for the country. In a recent interview with The Economist magazine, I characterized the Republicans as the greedy, sociopathic party. I stand by that."
-- former Reagan adviser and noted economist Bruce Bartlett telling it like it is in the late Summer of 2009
Or smoke and mirrors... pick any similar metaphor.
From HuffPost Hill: "GOP TARGETS OWN NON-IMPLEMENTED LAW - House Republicans pivoted to #jobs today, they said, bringing to the floor legislation targeting a three percent withholding. Get rid of that withholding, they said, and you'll create #jobs. (Or job creators will, but you get the picture.) But the withholdingwas initially passed into law by the Republican majority in 2006, with the GOP supporting it 229 to 2. Democrats subsequently delayed its implementation. It's currently scheduled to go into effect in 2013, so the GOP's onslaught was against a law that exists only in theory and only thanks to them. (Boehner's office says the initial withholding was one part of a bigger bill, so the roll call isn't that meaningful. Our office says: Whatever!)"
This sums up what's wrong with just about everything.
"Washington Is Rigged." So said Elizabeth Warren last week in announcing her bid for the Massachusetts senate seat now held by Scott Brown.
Well, she certainly has already caused a stir. Robert Kuttner notes:
"Elizabeth Warren’s surprise lead in Massachusetts polls only days after she got into the Senate race to oust Republican Scott Brown has thrown GOP operatives off balance.
Their first storyline was that Warren was either a creature of the Beltway or a pointy-headed Harvard professor. Neither seems to be sticking.
On Tuesday, when the Democratic-affiliated polling firm, Public Policy Polling, reported Warren narrowly leading Brown, 46 to 44 among likely voters, Brown spokesman Colin Reed put out a statement contending that "we have always known that Scott would be the underdog against whichever candidate wins the Democratic primary next September."
But this past summer, before Warren enjoyed decent name recognition, Republicans were touting early polls showing Brown leading Warren 53-28, and declaring him a winner."
The establishment GOP is scrambling. Scott Wong and John Bresnahan carried some of their water in a borderline hit-piece over at Politico yesterday. The article casts doubt on Warren's integrity by alleging a "lack of transparency" during her tenure as the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel which controlled TARP. Wong and Bresnahan should be ashamed. The fact that the panel adhered to all of the requirements placed upon it by congress and that congress has all of the information she is portrayed as having kept from the public is spun to the margins. It's not on a website for the masses, you see.
One wonders if the Wong/Bresnahan piece hadn't been ghost-written by longtime foe, Rep Patrick McHenry (R-NC).
This week also saw the GOP's fear of Warren exposed elsewhere in the form of some truly frantic antics, as Julie Ryan Evans points out:
Their reasoning, according to the Boston Globe: It sends a message that Ivy League schools support Democratic candidates. Can you say desperate?
The salary is in exchange for her services to the university. She will certainly be busy campaigning, but lots of professors have outside employment. She will still be expected to fulfill her obligations to Harvard, and the salary is just in exchange for those obligations, not to fund her campaign."
They don't have much to work with. That fact leads me to expect new lows in both ugliness and innuendo as the campaign heats up.
Quite coincidentally, I am sure, Rush Limbaugh found it necessary today to breathlessly warn his listeners that Elizabeth Warren is a "parasite." One might surmise from this that the Kochs are now involved.
Poor Rep. John Flemming (R-LA) is barely getting by. After "feeding" and taking care of his family, he only has about four hundred thousand dollars a year left over from his businesses. He just can't "create jobs" on that net profit. Mind you, he runs UPS stores and Subway sandwich franchises. Those workers are at or even slightly above the minimum wage.
I am sure you are weeping at the mere thought of his struggle.
Writing for the Chicago Examiner, Julie Driscoll draws some frightening parallels between the behavior of the Tea Party driven GOP during the debt ceiling debate and that of abusive individuals:
"The behavior of the Republicans, in general, and most recently around the debt ceiling debate, reminds me vividly of the abusive personality that I engaged with daily, for years, until my divorce. No compromise was ever allowed - it was his way, or his other way. He never talked about the many ways in which he was wrong - it was "look what you made me do." In his mind, the only one whose behavior needed changing was mine. Any abusive behavior of his was justified because, in his warped thinking, I provoked him. He used bullying and fear tactics and threats and intimidation to get his way; in the end, although never abusive to them, he used my kids as pawns in his abusive game. He refused to share responsibility in any part of our relationship breakdown; I owned it, lock, stock and barrel."
That's my advice as long as the FAA shutdown continues. Saadly, not a very realistic recommendation for millions of Americans. I guess I'' just wish our fellow citizens good luck and hope for the best.
Kirsten Boyd Johnson writes about the underlying cause of the GOP driven refusal to fund one of America's most crucial agencies:
"Predictably, the partisan bickering centers partially around a $14 million subsidy for rural airports that is effectively rendered ridiculous by the $30 million loss in airline ticket taxes sustained each day of the shutdown. The other part is a fight over, what else, unions.
4,000 employees are also being furloughed, and Transportation secretary Roy LaHood had to shift gears from pleading with leaders to now just saying, "nobody panic, America’s actual professionals will not simply go home and watch the sky for little airborne fireballs to laugh at, like Congress."
Oh well. It is good to know there are a great many FAA employees who will continue to keep us safe in spite of the fact that the Republicans are ensuring that they can't feed their families.
Jason Linkins ponders when the next GOP hostage taking might occur:
"So where's the next hostage situation likely to take place? Could be any number of venues. Debate over the gas tax. Policy riders. Per McConnell's promise, certainly the next time there's a need to raise the debt ceiling. Anytime a government shutdown is possible."
Media Mattersnotes that FOX has significantly ramped up their campaign to tax the poor more while leaving the top quintiles untouched. Seriously. Note the dramatic shift in earnings across all sectors since the "Reagan Revolution." One more time, it is abundantly clear that nothing has trickled down over the last three decades.
"From 1979-2006, the lowest two quintiles saw their incomes increase by 11 and 18 percent. That's the group that Doocy thinks should pay higher income taxes. But the top 1 percent, who the co-hosts think already pay "their fair share," saw their incomes increase by 256 percent.
No wonder economists, liberal and conservative alike, and the American public agree that the deficit can't be erased through spending cuts alone, and that revenues will need to be increased. But none of them seem to be calling for those revenues to come from the poorest Americans. It's easy to see why."
It is easy to see why. Unless one has confused avarice and exploitation with "good business."
A better question might be, "who didn't sign the Norquist Pledge?" A complete list is available HERE. It's worth reading if only to confirm how nearly complete a stranglehold the radical anti-tax movement has on the 112th Congress. Only 7 GOP members of the House and 7 GOP members of the Senate had the good sense not to pledge allegiance to Grover over their duty to the country.
Really. It wasn't. Here's an easy to read picture thingy. That's Two Hundred and Seventy Five totally, completely, altogether non-controversial votes to increase the debt limit under the Bush 2 regime.
While drawing attention to a very interesting chart (below via), James Fallows makes some strong points about what drives the deficit most:
"...it identifies policy changes, the things over which Congress and Administration have some control, as opposed to largely external shocks -- like the repercussions of the 9/11 attacks or the deep worldwide recession following the 2008 financial crisis. Those external events make a big difference in the deficit, and they are the major reason why deficits have increased faster in absolute terms during Obama's first two years that during the last two under Bush. (In a recession, tax revenues plunge, and government spending goes up - partly because of automatic programs like unemployment insurance, and partly in a deliberate attempt to keep the recession from getting worse.) If you want, you could even put the spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in this category: those were policy choices, but right or wrong they came in response to an external shock.
The point is that governments can respond to but not control external shocks. That's why we call them "shocks." Governments can control their policies. And the policy that did the most to magnify future deficits is the Bush-era tax cuts. You could argue that the stimulative effect of those cuts is worth it ("deficits don't matter" etc). But you cannot logically argue that we absolutely must reduce deficits, but that we absolutely must also preserve every penny of those tax cuts. Which I believe precisely describes the House Republican position."
Deval Patrick may have provided the answer in a recent Washington Postcolumn:
"At our 25th college reunion in 2003, Grover Norquist — the brain and able spokesman for the radical right — and I, along with other classmates who had been in public or political life, participated in a lively panel discussion about politics. During his presentation, Norquist explained why he believed that there would be a permanent Republican majority in America. One person interrupted, as I recall, and said, "C’mon, Grover, surely one day a Democrat will win the White House."
Norquist immediately replied: “We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat."
... who finds it acceptable to refer to himself repeatedly in the third person.
"He makes sense. He makes it clear. He gives solutions, and he's not afraid to lead."
-- presumed GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain referring toHerman Cain while predicting the American people's reactions to the policy proposals of Herman Cain.
