Month: December 2010

Taibbi on Young Journalists

Not that this is an area I ever write about, but Matt Taibbi has a great passage in a piece beating up Matt Bai in which he assails the culture many young, ostensibly liberal, journalists adhere to in a well-charted path to Beltway acceptance and success.

Bai is one of those guys — there are hundreds of them in this business — who poses as a wonky, Democrat-leaning “centrist” pundit and then makes a career out of drubbing “unrealistic” liberals and progressives with cartoonish Jane Fonda and Hugo Chavez caricatures. This career path is so well-worn in our business, it’s like a Great Silk Road of pseudoleft punditry. First step: graduate Harvard or Columbia, buy some clothes at Urban Outfitters, shore up your socially liberal cred by marching in a gay rights rally or something, then get a job at some place like the American Prospect. Then once you’re in, spend a few years writing wonky editorials gently chiding Jane Fonda liberals for failing to grasp the obvious wisdom of the WTC or whatever Bob Rubin/Pete Peterson Foundation deficit-reduction horseshit the Democratic Party chiefs happen to be pimping at the time. Once you’ve got that down, you just sit tight and wait for the New York Times or the Washington Post to call. It won’t be long.

I would just advise any young journalist who is coming up through a liberal magazine or news website to ask themselves if this looks like you. If it does, is it really what you want to be doing? How you want to be seen?  It’s not too late to change.

More importantly, people who read up-and-coming young liberal journalists should read this passage and wonder if it looks like your favorite wonk or pundit. Have they recently defended a top administration official for leaving public service to take a luxuriously compensated job at a big Wall Street bank because, after all, the journalist has never personally seen the former public servant drown a bag of puppies, so they can’t possibly be a bad, greedy person? If so, it’s probably time to stop reading this person, as they will soon be beating up on unreasonable liberals (at least, more than they already do).

What Terrifies Conservatives?

Rick Perlstein has a piece in the latest issue of Democracy Journal that takes a historical look at how right wing propaganda has been developed over the last century to the point where it is a smoothly running machine today. One key point Perlstein makes is, “Historically, nothing has terrified conservatives so much as efficient, effective, activist government.” This bears out in an important way today in right wing attacks on public sector workers around the country, at state, federal, and municipal levels.

Governing well in the interests of the broad majority brings compounding political benefits for the party of government. Consider the famous December 2, 1993 memo by William Kristol entitled “Defeating President Clinton’s Health Care Proposal.” The notion of government-guaranteed health care had to be defeated, he said, rather than compromised with, or else: “It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.” Kristol wrote on behalf of an organization called the Project for a Republican Future. The mortal fear is that if government delivers the goods, the Republicans have no future.

The fear easily escalates unto hysteria: Activist government is a fraud in its very essence, an awesomely infernal political perpetual motion machine. “THE LIBS PLAN TO DESTROY US,” runs a recent email circulating widely on the right. The text is mostly made up of a list of government departments, agencies, and programs, “many with mutable locations through the nation.” It goes on to explain, “The people employed in these offices generally earn 31% more than their civilian counterparts.” (In fact, controlling for education and experience, state and local public employees make less than their private-sector counterparts, according to a September 2010 report from the Economic Policy Institute.) “All are supported 100% by the American taxpayer employed in the private profit producing sector.” The hysteria cannot allow, for example, that more private profit has been created out of thin air by a government invention like the Internet than any in the history of man: “they are all parasites.” This essay now arriving in thousands of ordinary, everyday email inboxes concludes: “Before the 50’s the Democratic party was very much the party of the average working man. . . . [Then] the socialists in the party realized that one way for them to gain power and influence was by creating jobs . . . GOVERNMENT JOBS.”

The baseline fear of government actually working is an important guiding post in understanding the right’s prolific attacks on public workers. Perlstein does great work explaining this phenomena, both in historical and contemporary contexts.

Honest Men in Washington

Matt Taibbi’s post yesterday praising the honest and conviction of Senator Bernie Sanders is a great reminder that these are characteristics politicians are capable of possessing in genuine ways. Taibbi writes:

I can live with the president fighting for something and failing; what I can’t stand is a politician who changes his mind for the sake of expediency and then pretends that was what he believed all along. You just can’t imagine someone like Sanders doing something like that; his MO instead would be to take his best shot for what he actually believes and let the chips fall where they may, budging a little maybe to get a worthwhile deal done but never turning his entire face inside out just to get through the day. This idea that you can’t be an honest man and a Washington politician is a myth, a crock made up by sellouts and careerist hacks who don’t stand for anything and are impatient with people who do. It’s possible to do this job with honor and dignity. It’s just that most of our politicians – our president included, apparently – would rather not bother. [Emphasis added]

Bingo. I would say that as a political operative and someone who has spent most of my life drawn to politics and towards the idea of the nobility of public service, the highlighted passage has been a benchmark assumption. Over time, I’ve come to understand that the number of actually honest politicians is a perilously low number. The depressing side of political work comes not from failing to see any people do this work with dignity – there are those that do and are inspiring as a result – but how many people you thought were in that category are actually disinclined from working honestly, with dignity, for the public good. Some walk away from it because it is hard. Others walk away because they never believed in honest service to begin with. In both cases, the challenge is that the system is run by people who don’t bother to do their work “with honor and dignity.” This speaks to the value of Bernie Sanders 8+ hour long speech against the proposed tax cuts. He stood up as a hero for those who opposed the cuts and did so without apology. We need more actions like Sanders’ in both chambers of Congress, as these inspire people who watch them and remind us that it is possible for people of principle to work with dignity in the halls of power.

Blocking the Judiciary

It seems pretty obvious to me that if you are upset or outraged with the ruling this week that the individual mandate in the healthcare bill is unconstitutional – a ruling made by a 20 year GOP activist now sitting for life on the federal bench – then you should care a hell of a lot about the fact that President Obama has about 40 judicial nominees who are awaiting confirmation votes by the Senate. These are not controversial figures. Every single one was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, most unanimously or with only token dissent.

What incentive does Minority Leader McConnell have to let these nominations proceed? Well, none, other than the federal bench is rife with vacancies that are now slowing the wheels of justice around the country. Of course, this will quickly be solved once a Republican again sits in the Oval Office.

Here’s my prediction: while some of these nominees will end up getting a vote, many will not. And the ones that do will tend to be gray-haired judges who don’t have much chance of ever getting a Supreme Court nomination. The Senate Republicans are functionally (and strategically) cutting off the ability of Democrats to grow a liberal bench of judges who can be considered for future Supreme Court vacancies. While I don’t think it’s crucial that nominees to the Supreme Court be members of the federal bench, recent precedent has been dominated by judges. And while there were objections to Harriet Miers for many reasons, I’d expect the hue and cry from the right if a Democrat nominated someone who was not currently a judge to be deafening.

Democrats can’t let Republicans to continue to own a full branch of government. The GOP has spent decades cultivating activist judges, training them, employing them, nominating them, and confirming them. Roberts and Alito are prime examples of how the fruits of their labor have paid off: two corporatist, political, activist justices who will sit on the Supreme Court for another thirty to forty years. It’s time for Democrats to do the same thing: cultivate young attorneys, provide them training and academic opportunity, get them onto the federal bench at a young age and let them grow into future Supreme Court justices. Failure to do so means that we can expect every law of progressive bent signed by President Obama to one day be overturned by the Roberts court.  That’s the game the Republicans are playing and if we don’t start playing it too, America will wind up back in the 1800s.

A Vulnerable Plan

What Digby said:

The plan is vulnerable on a number of fronts (not the least of which is the funding for the Medicaid expansion) and all we heard for months was “don’t worry, once you pass an ‘entitlement’ they’ll never be able to take it away.” And that was nonsense. With the plan taking years to implement, the right having packed the courts for decades and the Republican Party being batshit insane, there was always a very good chance that some element of the plan was going to be struck down. And because it was such a Rube Goldberg mess by the end of it, the result was likely to be the whole thing falling apart. Having something like an optional Medicare buy-in would have been a good back-up just in case. (After all, if they start invalidating Medicare, they know there will be hell to pay.)

All the Very Serious People also told us that the plan would be immediately “improved” and all the problems would be fixed once it was passed, so I suppose they could still add on a Public Option. I was just a teensy bit skeptical that they would even be able to defend the plan as it was, much less “fix” it, and I’m even more skeptical now. But who knows, maybe a miracle will happen.

Packing the Courts

Josh Marshall writes:

A year ago, no one took seriously the idea that a federal health care mandate was unconstitutional. And the idea that buying health care coverage does not amount to “economic activity” seems preposterous on its face. But the decision that just came down from the federal judgment in Virginia — that the federal health care mandate is unconstitutional — is an example that decades of Republicans packing the federal judiciary with activist judges has finally paid off.

While I would find it hard to agree that only just now are Republican efforts to put conservative activists on the bench paying off, Marshall’s point stands. More importantly, it’s obvious that a political faction can pack the courts with activist judges of a particular ideology over a prolonged period of time. This has been a conservative priority for decades and it’s paid off today. It’s a sad statement that the Democratic coalition has ever prioritized the judiciary as much as conservatives have made it a key part of their theory of change in America.

People Hate Banksters

I guess it really doesn’t matter that 88% of Americans think Wall Street bonuses should be either heavily taxed or banned in full, unless you are trying to figure out a way for the big banks to be upstanding members of American society. This does seem to be a great opportunity for the President, though. Rather than respond to idiotic concerns that he isn’t nice enough to them at a time when the stock market and bank profits have exploded, there should be recognition by the banksters that they are hated by the American people and President Obama is standing between them and a very angry public. In an ideal world, this political dynamic should enable the President and Democrats in Congress to extract concessions from Wall Street that will enable greater economic growth.

The biggest question I have is why aren’t  politicians on either side of the aisle trying to speak to  this 88% of America? I would hazard that the person who can best capture this anger politically will be well poised to turn it into political power and use it for improved economic policy-making.

Student Protests in London

Austerity has consequences and it’s not surprising that there have been massive protests in London by students following massive tuition hikes for British students. This speech by a fifteen year-old student is pretty incredible and a real example of what anger about the theft of wealth from working people to pay for the folly’s of banksters.

The notion that the Millenials, which this student describes as previously post-ideological, will become ideological because of cruel austerity measures has got to scare the crap out of those who wish to consolidate wealth into the hands of the powerful.

Do the rich need us?

On Twitter last night I saw NTodd (via Steve Benen) promote this post by Ted Frier of They Gave Us A Republic (neither a blogger nor a blog that I was familiar with). Frier writes an incredibly thoughtful and important post on today’s economic crisis and the cold way in which the wealthy – and their political proxies in the Republican Party – are showing disdain for the continued existence of the American social compact. Frier writes:

Elites can make money from factories in China by selling to consumers in India, says Lind “while relying entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around the country.”  Between the profits they can earn from overseas factories in countries policed by brutal autocracies, and factories in the US manned by non-voting immigrant labor, “the only thing missing is a non-voting immigrant mercenary army whose legions can be deployed in foreign wars without creating grieving parents, widows and children who vote in American elections.” That, maybe in part, is what the Dream Act is about.

There was a time when rich and poor alike subscribed to the promise that a rising tide raises all boats. But American investors and corporate managers no longer need the rest of America to prosper, says Lind, since “they can enjoy their stream of profits from factories in China while shutting down factories in the US.” And if Chinese workers have the impertinence to demand higher wages, says Lind, American corporations can find low-wage labor elsewhere.

…

The point is, says Lind: If the rich do not depend for their wealth – or even their security — on American workers, consumers and soldiers “then it is hardly surprising that so many of them should be so hostile to paying taxes to support the infrastructure and the social programs that help the majority of the American people. The rich don’t need the rest anymore.”

That is all too evident from the contempt for the unemployed that we see coming from Republicans like Jim DeMint, Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle, as the severing of America’s historic social contract now finds institutional expression in a modern Republican party that has abandoned all pretense that it governs on behalf of those other than the upper class.

From my experience both inside and outside the Republican Party, I’ve gradually come to believe that one of the major differences separating Republicans from Democrats is that Democrats view service in Congress as the pinnacle of their careers while Republicans look at their time on Capitol Hill as an internship – a chance to do their time, pay their dues and build up a resume of favors and chits they can cash in later for a far more lucrative second career as lobbyist or corporate hack.

Yes, Democrats pass through the same revolving door between government and K Street that Republicans push on. But Republican behavior while still in government seems far more devoted towards creating jobs for themselves when that Big Day finally arrives and they get to make the jump to an appreciative corporate sector.

There’s real truth to this, though I think the break is more along the axis of conservative versus liberal than it is Republican versus Democrat. There are many conservative Democrats who do exactly what the Republicans Frier refers to in this passage. Later in the piece, he does get more specific along ideological lines.

Eventually, says Drum, someone needs to notice “that Republican policy is no longer rooted in any kind of recognizable conservative principle” and is instead “little more than a program of preventing the middle class from sharing in the gains of economic growth and divvying up the resulting loot among the richest of the rich.”

Conservatives, says Chait, have simply redefined conservatism to be nothing more than an expression of material self-interest, “defined in the narrowest and most short-sighted terms.”

And there’s the rub.  Conservativism is no longer a substantive ideology, but a vehicle to facilitate the transfer of wealth from the poor and working classes in America to the rich.

Go read all of Frier’s piece. It’s a thoughtful look at wealth, power, and economic voodooism that is driving change in America.