Progressive Viewpoints

Re: The Real Recession Problem: Consumers Are at the End of Their Ropes

Robert Reich nails it!

Re: The Real Recession Problem: Consumers Are at the End of Their Ropes:

Most consumers are at the end of their ropes and can’t buy more. Real incomes are no higher than they were in 2000, while food and energy and health care costs are all rising faster than inflation. And home values are dropping, which means an end to home equity loans and refinancing.

Most of what’s being earned in America is going to the richest 5 percent, but the rich devote a smaller percent of their earnings to buying things than the rest of us because, after all, they’re rich -- which means they already have most of what they want. Instead of buying, the rich invest most of their earnings wherever around the world they can get the highest return.

Add all this together and there’s just not enough consumer demand out there to keep the American economy going. We’re finally reaping the whirlwind of widening inequality and ever more concentrated wealth. Supply-siders who want to cut taxes on corporations and the rich just don’t get it. Neither does most of official Washington.

Re: The Real Recession Problem: Consumers Are at the End of Their Ropes

Robert Reich nails it!

Re: The Real Recession Problem: Consumers Are at the End of Their Ropes:

Most consumers are at the end of their ropes and can’t buy more. Real incomes are no higher than they were in 2000, while food and energy and health care costs are all rising faster than inflation. And home values are dropping, which means an end to home equity loans and refinancing.

Most of what’s being earned in America is going to the richest 5 percent, but the rich devote a smaller percent of their earnings to buying things than the rest of us because, after all, they’re rich -- which means they already have most of what they want. Instead of buying, the rich invest most of their earnings wherever around the world they can get the highest return.

Add all this together and there’s just not enough consumer demand out there to keep the American economy going. We’re finally reaping the whirlwind of widening inequality and ever more concentrated wealth. Supply-siders who want to cut taxes on corporations and the rich just don’t get it. Neither does most of official Washington.

Re: Everything You Know About Fascism Is Wrong

Right-winger Jonah Goldberg is promoting his new book “Liberal Fascism” in an attempt to trash liberalism by deflecting the accusations of fascistic behavior of modern conservatism onto liberals instead.  (See also comments on stupid commentary by Rich Lowry.)

Re: NW Republican: Everything You Know About Fascism Is Wrong:

... fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all.

Goldberg’s book is a fascinating exercise in Orwellian mis-speak -- reversing meanings and confusing the facts.

Let’s not forget the context of the times -- in the gilded age and in the Great Depression there appeared to be a world-wide failure of market capitalism in the sense that it was causing great hardship for the vast majority of people and benefiting only a few -- it was not promoting the General Welfare as our Constitution puts it. The question was whether market capitalism was a failure and something else was needed to replace it (communism, etc.) or whether instruments of government could be used to improve it.

European fascism was a response to this situation by merging of the state and corporate goals together (this is Muscolini’s classic statement) with nationalism providing justification for totalitarian, militaristic control of the population.

The very meaning of the word “liberal” is in opposition to this entire construct, and in any case it is obvious that behavior of liberals (regardless of how you attempt to redefine it) have not classically promoted corporate welfare over the people by giving corporations control of the apparatus of government as the Republican Party's “K-Street” project and Bush administration assigning industry and its lobbyists to head the agencies that are supposed to provide oversight of those industries.

FDR’s response during that period was to recognize that capitalism is the worst form of economy except for all the others (because it relects the way individuals are motivatied and also how people act in groups) but that it has inherent defects for those same human organizational reasons. So that checks and limits on the excesses were an appropriate role of the people to exercise through their government to prevent the externalization of the costs of capitalism onto the people to the benefit of the few corporate owners (of which the Clean Air Act, etc. were later versions in the 1970s -- oh yeah, that as a Republican who passed that, for all the flaws of Nixon).

There is a simpler explanation for Goldberg’s book than the proposition that (a) everything that (b) all of us know about Fascism is wrong, it is that what all of us know is in fact correct and it is simply that one person, Goldberg, is all wrong.

The accusations of fascistic behavior by the modern conservative movement, as exemplified by crony capitalism (think K-Street project among many others) are hitting too close to home, so he’s mounting a classic Karl Rovian defense: accuse your opposition of what is in fact one of your own great weaknesses -- damn the facts and damn hypocrisy, just win!

[This was posted anonymously on NW Republican because their comment section seems to have trouble accepting my TypeKey.]

Technorati Tags: right-wing_myths

Clip: As Public Works Languish, Private Dollars Set Agenda

Re: As Public Works Languish, Private Dollars Set Agenda:

Philanthropic spending adds mainly to the nation’s stock of hospitals, libraries, museums, parks, university buildings, theaters and concert halls. Public infrastructure — highways, bridges, rail systems, water works, public schools, port facilities, sewers, airports, energy grids, tunnels, dams and levees — depends mostly on tax dollars. It is hugely expensive and the money available, while still substantial, has shrunk as a share of the national economy.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that government should be spending $320 billion a year over the next five years — double the current outlay — just to bring up to par what already exists.

....Government outlays on physical infrastructure have declined to 2.7 percent of the gross domestic product, from 3.6 percent in the 1960s. Philanthropic giving, in contrast, has jumped to nearly 2.5 percent of G.D.P., from 1.5 percent in 1995 and 2 percent in the ’60s.

Perhaps most important, big businesses no longer put as much clout and attention behind public infrastructure investments. In an earlier era, corporations, many with deep roots in local communities, lobbied government for the railroads, highways and many other facilities they needed to operate successfully. And they served as a crucial fountain of local tax revenue.

But companies are more mobile today. And many of the urban manufacturers most dependent on public infrastructure have moved or gone out of business. The Winchester Repeating Arms Company, once New Haven’s largest employer, is among the departed. Yale, which pays some taxes and escapes others that most corporations pay — particularly property taxes — is now the city’s biggest employer.

Technorati Tags: taxes

Clip: Edward v. Obama-Cross-Wiring Populism and Progressivism

Re: Open Left:: Edward v. Obama-Cross-Wiring Populism and Progressivism  :

It's a truism that Edwards is running as an economic populist.  But in a deeper sense, Obama is actually running more of a populist campaign, a culturally populist campaign.  While racist and nativist forms of rightwing populism are relatively well-known, Obama's form is both centrist and cultural.

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Justices Indicate They May Uphold Voter ID Rules - New York Times

Perhaps this thought experiment would help the justices sort out the issue:

Oregon has a Democratic House, Senate and Governorship.  If Oregon should pass a law requiring people to obtain a voter id from the Democratic Party, by showing appropriate proof of citizenship/residency, it is only after the election, the Republicans can challenge it and only if they lose, presumably every vote.  There is no bias making it easier or harder for any particular citizen to produce the required id and take it to the Democratic Party for validation and approval.

Sound good guys?

Re: Justices Indicate They May Uphold Voter ID Rules - New York Times:

The tenor of the argument suggested, however, that rather than simply decide the case in favor of the state, a majority of five justices would go further and rule that the challenge to the statute, the strictest voter-identification law in the country, was improperly brought in the first place. Such a ruling could make it much more difficult to challenge any new state election regulations before they go into effect.

The Indiana Democratic Party and the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the 2005 law before it went into effect, seeking a declaration that it was unconstitutional on its face and could not be enforced even against the majority of Indiana voters who could easily produce the required photo ID. Such an approach, known as a “facial challenge,” is the standard way of attacking election regulations like the poll taxes that the Supreme Court struck down in the 1960s and more recent redistricting and ballot-access cases.

But the court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has displayed deep skepticism toward such challenges, most notably on the subject of abortion, on the grounds that they require courts to step outside a limited role of resolving concrete disputes brought by parties with actual injuries.

Re: Rich Lowry on Liberal Fascism on National Review Online

Find that claims of fascist tendencies in the American conservative movement, as it exists today, getting too hot and hitting too close to home, they go on the attack.

Following is a great example of the manipulative ways of the right-wing.  They delve deep into history, but then selectively apply parts to twisted generalizations, while ignoring the plain, accepted meanings of words, in order to re-invent (or at least sufficiently muddy) the meaning of words.  (Similar to how they redefine the Constitution.)

Rich Lowry on Liberal Fascism on National Review Online:

The operational meaning of the word “fascism” for most liberals who invoke it is usually “shut up.” It’s meant to bludgeon conservatives into silence. But many on the left also genuinely believe that there is something fascistic in the DNA of contemporary conservatism....

In his brilliant new book Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg (a colleague of mine) demonstrates how the opposite is the case, that fascism was a movement of the left and that liberal heroes like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were products of what Goldberg calls “the fascist moment” in America early in the 20th century....

By what standard, then, are they considered conservatives who took things to extremes?

Goldberg sees the fascist exaltation of youth, glorification of violence, hatred of tradition and romance of “the street” in the New Left of the 1960s...

By what standard, Mr. Lowry, are today's conservatives fascists and liberals not?  How about this one:

Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and social interests subordinate to the interests of the state or party. Fascists seek to forge a type of national unity, usually based on (but not limited to) ethnic, cultural, racial, religious attributes. The key attribute is intolerance of others: other religions, languages, political views, economic systems, cultural practices, etc. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, statism, militarism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, corporatism, populism, collectivism, and opposition to political and economic liberalism.

And what is the tiresome conservative obsession with the 60s as if everything they disliked about that era defines all liberalism?  Move on, conservatives.  That was 40 years ago.  For most liberals, the 1960s are not a defining moment, because they're too young (me, at 50 wasn't part of that for heaven's sake).

Technorati Tags: right-wing_myths

Huckabee: Future of the Republicans?

Numerous conservative commentators are twisting their heads around the big Huckabee win.  Things like David Brooks' “new conservative coalition”:

Huckabee understands how middle-class anxiety is really lived. Democrats talk about wages. But real middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person’s lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has.

In that sense, Huckabee’s victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition.

or “broader appeal” than “theocon identity” -- he's an economic populist:

My point is that it's way too simplistic to write Huckabee off as the candidate of theocon identity politics. True, that's his base, but he's got a broader appeal, and a real gift for selling himself.

Well, certainly, like Edwards and Obama, he is articulating an anti-establishment and economic populist message.  But his support derived from cultural conservative evangelicals and doesn't include the other half of the old coalition: the economic libertarianism of tax cuts and trickle-down.  So what is he adding as a replacement group?

In the near term,

• There just is no way any Democrat will vote for Huckabee.  There will be no cross-over.
• Independents are so sick of Republicans that they are almost indistinguishaable from Democrats on most issues.
• Many Republicans are so sick of Republicans that they will vote for change to Democratic president to make the point.  Either Obama or Edwards would take some of the economic populists that weren't already in the conservative evangelical camp.

For Republicans it is bleak.  Even if Huckabee causes a flight to McCain by the rest of the party, McCain faces the same obstacles as above.

So that only leaves Brooks wishful thinking that Huckabee represents a new future “coalition” -- not this election -- a post Reaganism cultural conservative + tax cutting supply-siders coaltion.  But what coalition does Huckabee represent?  It is a coalition of one: cutural theoconservatives and subset of other Republicans.  To make a winning coalition you have expand your base, not take a subset.  Why would other (Democratic and Independent) economic populists not be there?  Timing.

Republicans may try capturing the populist economic mantel, but that is a huge hill to climb until they’ve shed the past and that change is going to happen in this election for the Democrats.

Furthermore, how would Democrats and Indpendents react to such a coalition of one?  Democrats and Independents and young people are sick of the theocons self-righteous cultural tyranny.  It is a non-starter for bringing new people in.

Even conservative Peggy Noonan, though perhaps for other reasons, gets some of it right:

I'm sorry to say it is my sense that Mr. Huckabee is not so much leading a movement as riding a wave. One senses he brilliantly discerned and pursued an underserved part of the voting demographic, and went for it.

Update from Gallup Guru in USA Today, Can Huckabee expand his base beyond highly religous Republicans?

One finding that I’m sure is bothering Huckabee and his advisors this morning as they contemplate New Hampshire and the states beyond is the fact that only 14% of those Republicans who said they were not “born again” voted for Huckabee.  He was defeated among this less religious group by Romney, with 33% of the vote,  John McCain (18%) and Fred Thompson (17%). 

...Being aware of these facts (and aware that Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan have also done well in Iowa in the past, but didn’t do much thereafter),  Huckabee is trying hard to avoid being a “one trick pony”, riding his religious background alone.  So he’s talking about taxes and the fact that he is from a working class background and so forth.

In other words, he does not yet represent more than theocons.

Re: Thank You Dodd Open Left:: Thank You Dodd

Re:     Open Left:: Thank You Dodd      :

If Dodd does filibuster the FISA bill again, it will provide another opportunity for the candidates to demonstrate leadership.  Obama could move us away from a surveillance society by using his remarkably built political capital.  I've actually had this conversation repeatedly with both Obama and Clinton staff, and one point I make is that there has been a remarkable limited commitment to fighting progressive battles during this campaign.

Chris Dodd has shown remarkable leadership as a Senator throughout this campaign, and I hope his position in the Senate is strengthened with a grassroots base.  This opportunity to take his leadership and reinforce it with the sizzle and power of Obama really can change America as Obama is already changing America, and mark us a society that believes in freedom, the rule of law, and privacy.  Imagine Obama on the floor of the Senate, helping Dodd filibuster this bill and preserve the rule of law.  That would certainly and completely demolish all possible doubts about his commitment to a progressive country, while at the same time preserving a very fundamental core principle that elites should be held accountable when they break the law.

Clip: The Two Earthquakes

I rarely find much in David Brooks' columns of utility, but ...

Re: The Two Earthquakes - New York Times:

On Obama:

Iowa won’t settle the race, but the rest of the primary season is going to be colored by the glow of this result. Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity — the primordial themes of the American experience.

Yet over the course of his speeches and over the course of this campaign, he has persuaded many Iowans that there is substance here as well. He built a great organization and produced a tangible victory.

He’s made Hillary Clinton, with her wonkish, pragmatic approach to politics, seem uninspired. He’s made John Edwards, with his angry cries that “corporate greed is killing your children’s future,” seem old-fashioned. Edwards’s political career is probably over.

Obama is changing the tone of American liberalism, and maybe American politics, too.

On Huckabee and Republicans:

Huckabee won because he tapped into realities that other Republicans have been slow to recognize. First, evangelicals have changed. Huckabee is the first ironic evangelical on the national stage. He’s funny, campy (see his Chuck Norris fixation) and he’s not at war with modern culture.

Uh, you mean like how he not OK with evolution??

Second, Huckabee understands much better than Mitt Romney that we have a crisis of authority in this country. People have lost faith in their leaders’ ability to respond to problems. While Romney embodies the leadership class, Huckabee went after it. He criticized Wall Street and K Street. Most importantly, he sensed that conservatives do not believe their own movement is well led. He took on Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush. The old guard threw everything they had at him, and their diminished power is now exposed.

Third, Huckabee understands how middle-class anxiety is really lived. Democrats talk about wages. But real middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person’s lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has.

In that sense, Huckabee’s victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition.

A conservatism that recognizes stable families as the foundation of economic growth is not hard to imagine. A conservatism that loves capitalism but distrusts capitalists is not hard to imagine either. Adam Smith felt this way. A conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year is the only conservatism worth defending.

Except Brooks' premise of a “coaltion” forming is counter to the “free market” wing of the party, which has focused on power (authority) and crony capitalism benefiting the rich -- how do you build a “coalition” without that other half?

Will Huckabee move on and lead this new conservatism? Highly doubtful. The past few weeks have exposed his serious flaws as a presidential candidate. His foreign policy knowledge is minimal. His lapses into amateurishness simply won’t fly in a national campaign.

So the race will move on to New Hampshire. Mitt Romney is now grievously wounded. Romney represents what’s left of Republicanism 1.0. Huckabee and McCain represent half-formed iterations of Republicanism 2.0. My guess is Republicans will now swing behind McCain in order to stop Mike.

Huckabee probably won’t be the nominee, but starting last night in Iowa, an evangelical began the Republican Reformation.

Technorati Tags: Barak_Obama