Op-Ed Columnist - The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party - NYTimes.com: "ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier."

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What If?

(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel

What if...GWB did an excellent job at the end of his term stopping a worldwide crash? (Which I believe.)

What if...Barack Obama is doing an excellent job keeping the crash from worsening? (Which I believe.)

What if...Kentucky's McConnell and Ohio's Boehner control Congress once more? (Which I shudder to believe.)


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Building a Nation of Know-Nothings

Thursday, August 26, 2010
Opinion

August 25, 2010, 8:30 pm

Building a Nation of Know-Nothings

By TIMOTHY EGAN

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

Tags:

Fox News, lies, president obama, Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh


Having shed much of his dignity, core convictions and reputation for straight talk, Senator John McCain won his primary on Tuesday against the flat-earth wing of his party. Now McCain can go search for his lost character, which was last on display late in his 2008 campaign for president.

Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. “I have read about him,” she said, “and he’s not — he’s an Arab.”

McCain was quick to knock down the lie. “No, ma’am,” he said, “he’s a decent family man, a citizen.”

That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 47 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.

Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.

Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies.

The Democrats may deserve to lose in November. They have been terrible at trying to explain who they stand for and the larger goal of their governance. But if they lose, it should be because their policies are unpopular or ill-conceived — not because millions of people believe a lie.

In the much-discussed Pew poll reporting the spike in ignorance, those who believe Obama to be Muslim say they got their information from the media. But no reputable news agency — that is, fact-based, one that corrects its errors quickly — has spread such inaccuracies.

So where is this “media?” Two sources, and they are — no surprise here — the usual suspects. The first, of course, is Rush Limbaugh, who claims the largest radio audience in the land among the microphone demagogues, and his word is Biblical among Republicans. A few quick examples of the Limbaugh method:

“Tomorrow is Obama’s birthday — not that we’ve seen any proof of that,” he said on Aug. 3. “They tell us Aug. 4 is the birthday; we haven’t seen any proof of that.”

Of course, there is proof as clear as that baseball box score. Look here, www.factcheck.org, for starters, one of many places posting Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate.

On the Muslim deception, Limbaugh has sprinkled lie dust all over the place. “Obama says he’s a Christian, but where’s the evidence?” he said on Aug. 19. He has repeatedly called the president “imam Obama,” and said, “I’m just throwing things out there, folks, because people are questioning his Christianity.”

You see how he works. He drops in suggestions, hints, notes that “people are questioning” things. The design is to make Obama un-American. Then he says it’s a tweak, a provocation. He says this as a preemptive way to keep the press from calling him out. And it works; long profiles of Limbaugh have largely gone easy on him.

Once Limbaugh has planted a lie, a prominent politician can pick it up, with little nuance. So, over the weekend, Kim Lehman, one of Iowa’s two Republican National Committee members, went public with doubts on Obama’s Christianity. Of course, she was not condemned by party leaders.

It’s curious, also, that any felon, drug addict, or recovering hedonist can loudly proclaim a sudden embrace of Jesus and be welcomed without doubt by leaders of the religious right. But a thoughtful Christian like Obama is still distrusted.

“I am a devout Christian,” Obama told Christianity Today in 2008. “I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” That’s not enough, apparently, for Rev. Franklin Graham, the partisan son of the great evangelical leader, who said last week that Obama was “born a Muslim because of the religious seed passed on from his father.”

Actually, he was born from two non-practicing parents, and his Kenyan father was absent for all of his upbringing. Obama came to his Christianity like millions of people, through searching and questioning.

Finally, there is Fox News, whose parent company has given $1 million to Republican causes this year but still masquerades as a legitimate source of news. Their chat and opinion programs spread innuendo daily. The founder of Politifact, another nonpartisan referee to the daily rumble, said two of the site’s five most popular items on its Truth-o-meter are corrections of Glenn Beck.

Beck tosses off enough half-truths in a month to keep Politifact working overtime. Of late, he has gone after Michelle Obama, whose vacation in Spain was “just for her and approximately 40 of her friends.” Limbaugh had a similar line, saying the First Lady “is taking 40 of her best friends and leasing 60 rooms at a five-star hotel — paid for by you.”

The White House said Michelle Obama and her daughter Sasha were accompanied by just a few friends — and they paid their own costs. But, wink, wink, the damage is done. He’s Muslim and foreign. She’s living the luxe life on your dime. They don’t even have to mention race. The code words do it for them.

Climate-change denial is a special category all its own. Once on the fringe, dismissal of scientific consensus is now an article of faith among leading Republicans, again taking their cue from Limbaugh and Fox.

It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?


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Building a Nation of Know-Nothings - NYTimes.com

Yes! He did it!
(First of three clips from this article)
Building a Nation of Know-Nothings - NYTimes.com: "So where is this “media?” Two sources, and they are — no surprise here — the usual suspects. The first, of course, is Rush Limbaugh, who claims the largest radio audience in the land among the microphone demagogues, and his word is Biblical among Republicans. A few quick examples of the Limbaugh method:"

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Building a Nation of Know-Nothings - NYTimes.com

First of two clips from this piece:

Building a Nation of Know-Nothings - NYTimes.com: "Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies"

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Building a Nation of Know-Nothings - NYTimes.com

Building a Nation of Know-Nothings - NYTimes.com: "Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies."

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From Baseline Scenerio and Yale's Robert Schiller Yesterday

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A Telling Op-Ed

http://my.barackobama.com/RobinsonOpEd





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Op-Ed Columnist - A Case of Mental Courage - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - A Case of Mental Courage - NYTimes.com: "There’s a seller’s market in ideologies that gives people a chance to feel victimized. There’s a rigidity to political debate. Issues like tax cuts and the size of government, which should be shaped by circumstances (often it’s good to cut taxes; sometimes it’s necessary to raise them), are now treated as inflexible tests of tribal purity."

From Baseline Scenerio

But people don’t realize this because, like Roberts’s hypothetical child encountering the tax system for the first time in Monopoly, they only see the tax side of the equation. Leaving aside poverty programs (since those do only affect a minority), they forget about Medicare (“keep the government away from my Medicare”), subsidized student loans, national security, police and fire services, public schools, roads, consumer product testing, clean water, parks, unemployment insurance (the middle class lose their jobs, too), the invasion of Iraq (which was wildly popular back in the day), bailouts of the financial system, and all the other things they get from the government. (If you count tax expenditures as spending, the list gets longer, and includes the mortgage interest tax deduction, the 401(k) deduction, and the employer health insurance exclusion–all of which disproportionately favor the wealthy.)






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Just Add Pepper

Learn why Ohio Needs to

Just Add Pepper

David will stand up for working families, fight waste, fraud and abuse and be a watchdog for your tax dollar

Dear Friend,

Two weeks ago at the Democratic Party State Dinner, I announced that if we do our jobs this election year, 2010 would mark the beginning of a Blue Decade. I want you to meet one of the people who will be instrumental in bringing us this change – David Pepper.

In fact, I ask you to do one simple thing: sign up for David Pepper’s email list right now. It is the simplest and best way you can get connected to his critical race to secure Ohio’s future.

Having served on Cincinnati City Council and the Hamilton County Commission, David Pepper has the track record we need to keep Ohio moving in the right direction. He has fought hard for Ohio jobs, helped governments be more efficient and do more with less, and stood up time and again for working families.

And he is the type of hard-working candidate we need to win in Ohio. In his first run for political office at 29 years old (in 2001), he finished first out of a field of 26 candidates for Cincinnati City Council.

And in 2006, David won a huge number of cross-over voters in his race for County Commissioner, unseating a Republican incumbent and finishing as the top Democratic vote getter on the county ballot. David’s win marked the first time Democrats have held the county majority in 40 years.

As Auditor, David will be an independent watchdog for your tax dollars, while continuing his track record of helping government become more efficient and creating jobs in our communities.

And as you know, the Auditor is one of the three statewide offices to occupy the critical Apportionment Board. After 2010, that Board will have the responsibility of drawing our legislative districts in Ohio, and can undo two decades of cynical gerrymandering that have stifled democracy and accountability in Ohio elections.

I am honored to be able to give David Pepper my support. Please take a moment, join his mailing list and find out from him directly how you can support this critical campaign.

Best Regards,



Chris Redfern

Chairman

Ohio Democratic Party




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Clever Republican Poll

Whit Ayres, a Republican Pollster, in the NYT last week, mentioned in this blog:

[ed note] Can you spot the falsehood in the second question posed, and implied in the first?

Moreover, there is little the Democrats can do to change their standing in the eyes of the most important voters, those who don’t identify with either party. Last month, my firm, Ayres, McHenry & Associates, asked 1,000 likely voters to choose between two statements on a survey for the Republican National Committee:


• Having a president and Congress controlled by the Democrats allows the country to keep moving forward. This election is a choice between continued progress and going back to the failed policies of the Bush administration.

• Having a president and Congress controlled by the Democrats has not worked well for the country. From the economy to the deficit and the debt, the Democrats have not gotten the job done.

[ed note] I would say that the Democrats do not control Congress because of the filibuster threat in the Senate and because many in Congress, Democrats included, fear Talk Radio and thus are afraid to act.


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Political Memo - Obama Campaigns in Seattle and Los Angeles - NYTimes.com

New Theme, a good one:

Political Memo - Obama Campaigns in Seattle and Los Angeles - NYTimes.com: "SEATTLE — In road-testing his stump speech for the midterm elections, President Obama would like American voters to think of a car that has been driven into a ditch. (Take a wild guess who was at the wheel.)"

Rupert Murdoch Gives $1 Million to Republican Governors Association

Just found out that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- owner of Fox News -- has given a cool $1 million to the Republican Governors Association. I don't know about you, but funding the so-called Republican Comeback isn't what I'd call "fair and balanced."


That's a million bucks to a group that's working to put wild-eyed Tea Party candidates in charge of our states and congressional redistricting.


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Op-Ed Columnist - No ‘Graceful Exit’ - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - No ‘Graceful Exit’ - NYTimes.com: "We are never going to build a stable, flourishing society in Afghanistan. What we desperately need is a campaign of nation-building to counteract the growing instability and deterioration in the United States."

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A Link to Commit to Vote

A link to commit to vote in the 2010 elections:




http://my.barackobama.com/Commitment

Richard O. Schwab



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Op-Ed Columnist - Attacking Social Security - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Attacking Social Security - NYTimes.com: "What’s really going on here? Conservatives hate Social Security for ideological reasons: its success undermines their claim that government is always the problem, never the solution. But they receive crucial support from Washington insiders, for whom a declared willingness to cut Social Security has long served as a badge of fiscal seriousness, never mind the arithmetic."

Op-Ed Contributor - It’s Still the Year of the Outsider - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - It’s Still the Year of the Outsider - NYTimes.com: "Indeed, it will be extremely difficult for Democrats to use their “failed policies of the George W. Bush administration” strategy against Republican Senate candidates who were nowhere near Washington during the Bush years. These include Mr. Buck, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Carly Fiorina in California, Linda E. McMahon in Connecticut and Rand Paul in Kentucky."

Note that this argument doesn't hurt, and helps, Steve Driehaus!

I don't buy the argument anyway.  Anybody who runs as a Republican perforce is beholden to the party deregulators, Right-talk radioers, or could be.  We cannot risk our society again.

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Op-Ed Contributor - It’s Still the Year of the Outsider - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - It’s Still the Year of the Outsider - NYTimes.com: "• We need Democrats to keep control of Congress so our government can overcome Republican obstruction and continue making progress on jobs, health care and holding Wall Street accountable."

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Op-Ed Contributor - It’s Still the Year of the Outsider - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - It’s Still the Year of the Outsider - NYTimes.com: "• Having a president and Congress controlled by the Democrats allows the country to keep moving forward. This election is a choice between continued progress and going back to the failed policies of the Bush administration."

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Read This by Republican Pollster

The questions posed are quite good.  His conclusions are not (for Democrats).  What he does not say is how many self-described Independents there are.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/opinion/15ayres.html?_r=1

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A Good Link

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/01/raise-my-taxes-mr-president.html
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Richard O. Schwab

Republicans

They know that winning these 37 key governors' races around the country could allow them to repeal healthcare reform, scrap Wall Street reform, give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, and turn energy reform into a corporate boondoggle.






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Jim Rogers Blog: Bernanke Is Turning The FED Into A Pawn Shop

Do I agree with Jim Rogers here? No. I believe along with Paul Krugman that we need a[nother] well-thought-out stimulus program, and fast. Do I respect him as an investor? Yes. Should this be on the GOFACT website? Yes.

Jim Rogers Blog: Bernanke Is Turning The FED Into A Pawn Shop: "August 13, 2010Bernanke Is Turning The FED Into A Pawn Shop
'We have Ben Bernanke, who is running the Federal Reserve, who does not know what he is doing. The man is taking 400 billion dollars on to the Federal Reserve balance sheets – of dicey loans, bad debt. I mean he is turning the Federal Reserve into a pawn shop. Some day somebody has to pay for this and you know who this somebody is – my little girl, you, me.'"

Baseline Scenario

By Simon Johnson and James Kwak

For many commentators, the only possible response is immediate austerity – the course being taken in Britain and parts of the euro zone. Already the national debt is being used as a hammer to beat down any proposed government spending, no matter what its merits. If we continue to spend, the argument goes, markets will lose faith in our ability to repay our debts, interest rates will skyrocket, the dollar will collapse and our way of life will be at an end.




While this argument is plausible in the abstract, there is no reason for panic. For starters, the Treasury Department can currently borrow money at historically low interest rates. This is no surprise. Investors around the world like saving in a safe currency, the dollar has traditionally been seen as the safest of currencies and recent developments in Europe and the rest of the world have done nothing to change that.



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Op-Ed Columnist - Fire and Imagination - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Fire and Imagination - NYTimes.com: "During the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt explained to the public the difference between wasteful spending and sound government investments. “You cannot borrow your way out of debt,” he said, “but you can invest your way into a sounder future.”"

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Do Not Let Them Forget

Do not forget my opponent sat in office supporting the worst policies in our nation’s history. Do not send him back. His party threw George W. Bush under the bus and now want to start over again. No.  His party has the lowest opinion of the voters. Only 24 percent have 'very' or 'somewhat positive' views of the GOP, which is less than the Tea Party (30 percent) and the Democratic Party (33 percent).

Friday, August 13, 2010 Newsweek Home


Newsweek Home: "Perception of President Obama's handling of the Gulf of Mexico spill has flipped from a net negative to a net positive (42 percent in June to 50 percent now.)

Which party is void of ideas? Forty-three percent say the GOP. Thirty-nine say the Dems."



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Newsweek Home

Newsweek Home: "Perception of President Obama's handling of the Gulf of Mexico spill has flipped from a net negative to a net positive (42 percent in June to 50 percent now.)

Republicans' image is in the doghouse, relatively. Only 24 percent have 'very' or 'somewhat positive' views of the GOP, which is less than the Tea Party (30 percent) and the Democratic Party (33 percent).

Which party is void of ideas? Forty-three percent say the GOP. Thirty-nine say the Dems."

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Thomas Frank

"They excommunicate George W. Bush, deeply unpopular, so therefore, not a true conservative, right? So, that way they get to start over fresh"

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New Poll Suggests Hope for Democrats

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From Richard O. Schwab:

http://mobile.newsweek.com/s/2499/338?itemUriVal=2344680879b891b0c32851800de4873d%2F1013121161541313150101441218832&HeaderTltle=

5500 Ohio Teachers Saved by Driehaus

Bruce:Remember to click on links to registering to vote.


Our Courageous Congressman Steve Driehaus returned to Washington D.C. to help pass the State's Assistance Bill. Greg Schultz describes the dynamics of this critically important vote.

Richard O. Schwab

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com"

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:24:43 -0400

To: Richard Schwab

ReplyTo: info@barackobama.com

Subject: 5,500 teachers in Ohio

Friend --



I want to thank the OFA supporters who stood with House Democrats as they raced back to Washington this week to cast a vote on a state assistance bill. I'm proud to say they passed the bill yesterday and the President immediately signed it into law.



And, because of it, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be saved -- including an estimated 5,500 public school teachers across Ohio.



Republicans called this bill a "bailout" and a "handout." They called the police officers, firefighters, and teachers whose jobs were on the line "special interests." And nearly every House Republican voted no.



But Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats did the right thing, reminding us again of what we're fighting for in the upcoming elections. When voters cast their ballots in November, it's up to us to make sure they remember who's fighting for them.



Thanks for all you do,



Mitch



Mitch Stewart

Director

Organizing for America

GOFACT: memory hole argument

GOFACT: memory hole argument: "What conservatism in this country is about is government failure. Conservatives talk about government failure all the time, constantly. And conservatives, when they're in power deliver government failure."

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Poland Lives With It

(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel

Genny, my daughter, lives in Manila and works for the Asian Development Bank.  She speaks Ziegler Russian and been all over Eastern Europe in her career.(Z=Princeton H.S. plus Cornell minor in Russian)

Yesterday I was fretting about the possibility of the Republicans getting control again, and she said, "Oh Dad, live with it! In Poland after the fall of the Wall, elections swung back and forth each every-so-often, anti-Communist, then Communist, then anti-Communist.  Live with it.  That's democracy."

Just another insight?  Are we going to be a tin-pot democracy like Poland?


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Colorado Race Could Reassure Obama and Democrats - NYTimes.com

A good result for Obama!

Colorado Race Could Reassure Obama and Democrats - NYTimes.com: "On Tuesday, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, a Democrat who had hitched his star to the fortunes of President Obama, survived a bitter primary challenge."

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Pakistani Militants Urge Rejection Of Western Aid - NYTimes.com

Another good result for Obama:

Pakistani Militants Urge Rejection Of Western Aid - NYTimes.com: "'Let's not talk about politics. We were trapped here and they came to evacuate us. You cannot imagine the terrible feeling I had and how happy we are now,' Abdul Rehman, 37, who was evacuated by a U.S. helicopter after being stranded with a new-born baby and wife in the Swat valley.
'They're doing good. Let's appreciate them.'"

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Editorial - A Welfare Check and a Voting Card - NYTimes.com

Editorial - A Welfare Check and a Voting Card - NYTimes.com: "But the best reason to applaud the Justice Department’s new posture is that it will bring more voters into public life. When advocacy groups sued Ohio and Missouri to force their public assistance offices into complying, huge groups of new voters surged onto the rolls — more than 100,000 in Ohio, and more than 200,000 in Missouri. Nationwide enforcement by the Justice Department could add millions more. The more people who have access to the ballot, the better the country will be."

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Politics of Gloom; Smiley Face of Canada

(c) 2010 Rebecca Abel Worple

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GOFACT: Op-Ed Columnist - America Goes Dark - NYTimes.com

GOFACT: Op-Ed Columnist - America Goes Dark - NYTimes.com: "But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and “centrist” Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade."

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Op-Ed Columnist - The Horror Show - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - The Horror Show - NYTimes.com: "At some point we’re going to have to claw our way out of this denial. With 14.6 million people officially jobless, and 5.9 million who have stopped looking but say they want a job, and 8.5 million who are working part time but would like to work full time, you end up with nearly 30 million Americans who cannot find the work they want and desperately need."

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David Axelrod’s Talking Points « The Baseline Scenario

In the interest of fairness, this point goes against Simplism No. 1 without a narrative: "just call them Republicans and leave it at that:"

David Axelrod’s Talking Points « The Baseline Scenario: "Without a narrative, how can anyone make sense of the past 18 months?"

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GOFACT: Lost Down the Memory Hole

GOFACT: Lost Down the Memory Hole: "BILL MOYERS: So, they made the Securities and Exchange Commission a laughing stock, if you will. They really did.



THOMAS FRANK: Right. Well, there's these horrible stories that came out. Once Bush was out, there was a study done of the SEC, as well. These people didn't even have like their own functioning photocopiers, okay? So, we're talking about the lawyers that are supposed to be protecting us from Wall Street. And they have to go stand in line at Kinko's to do their own photocopying. And they're going up against the best paid, you know, best educated lawyers on planet Earth, who represent the investment banks. And they're supposed to be defending us."

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Down The Memory Hole - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

Down The Memory Hole - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com: "Basically, US postwar economic history falls into two parts: an era of high taxes on the rich and extensive regulation, during which living standards experienced extraordinary growth; and an era of low taxes on the rich and deregulation, during which living standards for most Americans rose fitfully at best."

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Head's Up -- Chabot and Glendale Tea Party

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ed. note: This from Jack Buescher, my next door neighbor, who is one of the good guys and who speaks with sarcasm, but is brilliant on political matters (and about anything else):

A fantastic evening awaits at the Iron Horse on Tuesday:


1. At 5pm the regular meeting of the IHCC. [ad hoc group that meets Tuesdays at the Iron Horse]

2. Fried Chicken dinner is being served.

3. The Glendale Tea Party is having their 1st big meeting featuring that wonderful fiscal conservative (Bush Tax Cuts, 2 unfunded wars, underfunded Medicare Part D to name a few accomplishments) Steve Chabot!!!

Join us at 5 and let's watch the action.

Jack

p.s. pls note my new email address

Op-Ed Columnist - America Goes Dark - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - America Goes Dark - NYTimes.com: "How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right"


Now, the full article:
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Op-Ed Columnist

America Goes Dark

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: August 8, 2010

 The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.

And the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 percent, isn’t cash-strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our children.

But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and “centrist” Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade.

In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter.

It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.

In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major drag on the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment.

It’s crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting back. And if you add them together, it turns out that the only big spending increases have been in safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the slump.

That is, for all the talk of a failed stimulus, if you look at government spending as a whole you see hardly any stimulus at all. And with federal spending now trailing off, while big state and local cutbacks continue, we’re going into reverse.

But isn’t keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you’d notice. When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

And what about the economy’s future? Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we’re going backward.

How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right.

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 9, 2010, on page A19 of the New York edition.

Jobless and Staying That Way - NYTimes.com

Jobless and Staying That Way - NYTimes.com: "If that sounds like the last three years, it should. Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian, who run the world’s largest bond fund, Pimco, and coined the phrase in this context, think the new normal has already begun and will last at least another three to five years."

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Answers About Medicare

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This about does it all:

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/answers-about-medicare-part-5/

Simplism No. 1: Call Them What They Are -- Republicans

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(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel

Remember how -- still -- the name-calling of our side as "Liberal" was scrotum-withering?  Well, let's do the same.  Call the opponent a name: "Republican" and leave it at that.

After the Bush years and last two years in Congress, winning an election for any Democrat against the talk-show Republicans -- and all Republicans perforce, must bow to, the talk-show Republicans -- should be as easy as winning a Christian-Democrat -- National Socialist election just after the devastation of WWII. 

On the podium (Driehaus, say, or Strickland, or Pillich, with a raised eyebrow and a touch of sarcasm): "Hey," "This guy, my opponent, is a Republican." 

"Case closed."

This was the approach of William F. Buckley Jr. Toward the end of his life he admitted that the key to his successful arguments was not the content he put out, but the repost, the raised eyebrow.  Let the voters imagine the horrors of the eight years leading up to 2008, when Obama was voted in.  Treat the voters like adults.  They have lived through those eight years.  They know.

P.S. My daughter, upon reading this, points out that "they don't know."  If that is true, turn to the Memory Hole argument.  Or I have another analogy:  the U.S. economy now has pneumonia because the Republicans had it standing coatless in the winter cold for eight years, and even longer in reality, due to intimidating the Clintons, and the Reagan years.  Do we dare stand out in another winter coatless?

Memory Hole Plus: Editorial - In Search of a New Playbook - NYTimes.com

Editorial - In Search of a New Playbook - NYTimes.com: "In part, that is because the significant accomplishments of the last two years — health care reform, the stimulus package, the resuscitation of the auto industry, financial reform — were savagely attacked by the right and aggressively misrepresented as the hoof beats of totalitarianism. Most of those efforts were actually highly diluted to draw centrist support, but they did not really get much of it, and the compromises meant that the bills were defended only halfheartedly by Democrats who should have stood up more firmly to the rage."

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Memory Hole Point Isn't Enough

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(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/opinion/08rich.html?_r=1

This column by Frank Rich must be read again and again.  The Memory Hole argument which I have felt was devastatingly to our advantage against the Republican right-wing, is only 80% effective.  We must warn against what would be coming if the Republicans took control of House and Senate again.

But rather than wait for miracles or pray that Bushphobia will save the day, Democrats might instead start playing the hand they’ve been dealt. Elections, the cliché goes, are about the future, not the past. At the very least they’re about the present. It’s time voters were told just how far right the G.O.P. has lurched since Bush returned to Texas. And the White House might also at long last — at very long last — craft a compelling message, not to mention a plan, to offer real hope to the jobless. Repeated boasts of a resurgent auto industry (where the work force is 30 percent smaller than prerecession) won’t persuade anyone, and neither will repeated assurances that legislation passed months ago will kick in over the long haul. Some 16.5 percent of America’s workers are now either unemployed and trying to find a job, involuntarily working part time, or have stopped looking for work altogether. That figure doesn’t even include the many Americans who’ve had to settle for jobs for which they are overqualified.

See the earlier blog introducing the "Memory Hole" argument we must make at every turn.

Op-Ed Columnist - Putting Our Brains on Hold - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Putting Our Brains on Hold - NYTimes.com: "But instead of exercising the appropriate mental muscles, we’re allowing ourselves to become a nation of nitwits, obsessed with the comings and goings of Lindsay Lohan and increasingly oblivious to crucially important societal issues that are all but screaming for attention. What should we be doing about the legions of jobless Americans, the deteriorating public schools, the debilitating wars, the scandalous economic inequality, the corporate hold on governmental affairs, the commercialization of the arts, the deficits?"

Op-Ed Columnist - The Flimflam Man - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - The Flimflam Man - NYTimes.com: "So why have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam? It’s not just inability to do the math, although that’s part of it. There’s also the unwillingness of self-styled centrists to face up to the realities of the modern Republican Party; they want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense. And last but not least, there’s deference to power — the G.O.P. is a resurgent political force, so one mustn’t point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes."

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Crossroads County - In One Colorado County, Unease May Sway Voters - NYTimes.com

Crossroads County - In One Colorado County, Unease May Sway Voters - NYTimes.com: "Insecurity is the political coin of the realm in this year’s midterm elections, especially for Democrats, but also for many incumbents and establishment candidates. As control of the United States House of Representatives potentially hangs in the balance (and, some say, the Senate too), Colorado promises to be both a bellwether and a decider."

Op-Ed Columnist - Show Me Your Insiders - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Show Me Your Insiders - NYTimes.com: "One thing we learned this week was that people in Missouri are crazy about insiders."

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Consequences of 2010 Election

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Boy, this article sure sums up the consequences of the 2010 elections.




http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2010/08/ohio_legislature_fails_to_over.html

 
Richard O. Schwab

Op-Ed Contributor - Anthony Weiner - Why I Was Angry - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - Anthony Weiner - Why I Was Angry - NYTimes.com: "Instead of engaging in a real debate about how to address the challenges we face, Republicans have turned to obstruction, no matter the issue, and then cry foul after the fact. They claim to want an open legislative process with more consultation and debate, but the truth is they simply don’t want to pass anything."

Lost Down the Memory Hole

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I keep saying this. Bill Moyers is incredible. Here's the message from January 15, 2010.





January 15, 2010

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL.

There were hands in the air in Washington this week, but it wasn't a stickup. The new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, appointed by Congress to find out how America got rolled, began hearings this week. These four are not the victims of one of the greatest bank heists in history - they're the perpetrators, bankers so sleek and crafty they got off with the loot in broad daylight, and then sweet talked the government into taxing us to pay it back. Watching that scene on the opening day of the hearings, it was hard enough to believe that almost a year has passed since Barack Obama raised his hand, too -- taking the oath of office to become our 44th President. Even harder to remember what America looked like before Obama, because we've also been robbed of memory, assaulted by what the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz described as a "fantastic proliferation of mass media." We live in a time "characterized by a refusal to remember." Inconvenient facts simply disappear down the memory hole, as in George Orwell's novel, "1984." President Obama's made plenty of mistakes during his first year, and we've critiqued them frequently here on the JOURNAL, but hardly anyone talks any more about what happened in the years before. He inherited from George W. Bush the biggest financial debacle since the Great Depression, along with two unpopular and costly wars, and a dysfunctional and demoralized government. It's important to remember those years, a time that has been characterized by the historian Thomas Frank, as "A Low, Dishonest Decade." He's here to talk about them with me. Thomas Frank is editor of the recently relaunched BAFFLER magazine, a literary journal; a contributing editor of HARPER'S; a weekly columnist for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; and the author of ONE MARKET UNDER GOD, the bestselling WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? and his latest bestseller, THE WRECKING CREW, now out in paperback. Good to have you back.



THOMAS FRANK: It's my pleasure, Bill.

BILL MOYERS: How is it that the people who are responsible for the mess that Obama inherited are getting away with demonizing him when he's only had less than a year to clean it up. Let me show you just a sample of commentators railing against the President.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: President Obama and the Democrats are destroying the US economy. They are purposefully doing it, I believe.

GLENN BECK: This is a well-thought out plan to collapse the economy as we know it.

JONATHAN HOENIG: The president has, I think if you listen to what he says, a hatred for capitalism. Where do jobs come from? They don't come from the government, they come from the profit seeking self-interest, from what I hear and see, the President never misses an opportunity to smear and [no audio] slap!

RUSH LIMBAUGH: This guy is a coward. He does not have the gonads or the spine to even stand up and accept what he's doing! All of this is his doing. He cannot even probably say, you should like this -- you may not like this, but I'm telling you it's the best thing for you, it's the best thing for me. No! He knows it's a disaster, he has to slough this off, on his previous-- or his predecessor, the previous administration.

SEAN HANNITY: It's his stimulus. It's his record deficit spending. He quadrupled the debt in a year. You know, how many more are the Democrats going to say, "Well, it's George Bush's fault"? This is Obama's economy now.

BILL MOYERS: What goes through your mind as a historian when you watch that?

THOMAS FRANK: Well, that is America for you. I mean, that is the, sort of the demented logic of our politics. Is that now-- Obama's been President for a year. And he will come before the public in the fall, you know, having to defend all of these terrible things. That's how our politics works in this country.

BILL MOYERS: But you called it demented. I mean, you know, demented means crazy, mad. Mad and crazy enough to cause us to forget the world before Obama?

THOMAS FRANK: I'll give you an example what I mean. So, I was on a radio show the other day with a tea party leader, you know, one of these protest leaders. And he seemed like a good guy. But what he did say that struck me was he said he was really against monopoly, you know? And we're laboring under all these monopolies, all these concentrated powers here in America. And what we need to do is get back to free markets. And then we can do away with that. And it was mind-blowing. Because if you look back any further than the Obama Administration, since, I mean, 1980 in this country, we have been in the grip of, you know, of this pursuit of ever-purer free markets. That's what American politics has been about. That's what has delivered this, you know, the awful circumstances that we find ourselves in today. And to think that that's what's missing, that's what we need to get back to, is--

BILL MOYERS: That's more than nostalgia. What is that?

THOMAS FRANK: Well, that's the disease of our time. You know, that sort of instant forgetting.

BILL MOYERS: But what does it do to our politics when the very spokesmen for what some people have called a decade of conservative failure. I mean, remember before Obama, they turned a budget surplus into a deficit. They took us to war on fraudulent pretenses. They borrowed money to fight it. They presided over a stalemate in Afghanistan. They trashed the Constitution. They presided over the weakest economy in decades--

THOMAS FRANK: Not weak for everybody.

BILL MOYERS: No, no.

THOMAS FRANK: Some people did really well.

BILL MOYERS: Okay, they compiled the worst track record on jobs in decades. And they ended up with the worst stock market in decades. I mean, it was a decade of conservative failure. And yet, Obama's their villain?

THOMAS FRANK: Think of all the crises and the disasters that you've described. And I would add to them things like the, what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And the Madoff scandal on Wall Street. And, you know, on and on and on. The Jack Abramoff scandal. The whole sordid career of Tom DeLay.All of these things that we remember from the last decade. I mean, some of them that we're forgetting. Like who remembers all the scandals over earmarking, anymore? And who remembers all the scandals over Iraq reconstruction? All that, you know, disastrous, when we would hand it off to a private contractor to rebuild Iraq. And it would, you know, of course, it would fail. Those things have all sort of been dwarfed by the economic disaster and the wreckage on Wall Street. But I would say to you that all of these things that we're describing here are of a piece. And that they all flow from the same ideas. And those ideas are the sort of conservative attitude towards government. And conservative attitudes towards governance. Okay?

BILL MOYERS: That government is a perversion.

THOMAS FRANK: Government is-- yeah, government is a perversion. And to believe that the federal government can be operated, you know, with all of its programs, can be operated well and do things that are good for the people, is, as you say, is a perversion. And they look at someone like Barack Obama and it makes them seethe. Because that's, you know, that's what he's trying to do. What conservatism in this country is about is government failure. Conservatives talk about government failure all the time, constantly. And conservatives, when they're in power deliver government failure.



BILL MOYERS: Not merely from incompetence, you say, but from ideology, from philosophy, from a view of the world.



THOMAS FRANK: And sometimes from design.



BILL MOYERS: From design? What do you mean?



THOMAS FRANK: Not always from design, but often. The Department of Labor, for example, the conservatives when they in office, routinely stuff the Department of Labor full of ideological cranks. And people that don't believe in the mission. And the result is that it doesn't-- they don't enforce anything. Towards the very end of the Bush-era, the Department of Labor had been whittled down. It was a shell of its former self. And at the very end of the Bush Administration, one of the government accountability programs did a study of the Department of Labor. And, I'm smiling, because it's kind of amusing. It was like an old spy magazine prank. They made up these horrendous labor violations around the country and phoned them in as complaints to the Department of Labor to see what they would do, okay? They responded to one out of ten of these, you know, where they called in as like, "Well, we got, you know, kids working in a meat packing plant during school hours. You know, can you, you going to do anything about that?" "No." Or you look at something like the Securities and Exchange Commission. These guys are supposed to be regulating, you know, the investment banks, okay? Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, that sort of thing. These guys were so under-funded, and not just under-funded, but you had people in charge of it who didn't believe in regulating Wall Street.



BILL MOYERS: So, they made the Securities and Exchange Commission a laughing stock, if you will. They really did.



THOMAS FRANK: Right. Well, there's these horrible stories that came out. Once Bush was out, there was a study done of the SEC, as well. These people didn't even have like their own functioning photocopiers, okay? So, we're talking about the lawyers that are supposed to be protecting us from Wall Street. And they have to go stand in line at Kinko's to do their own photocopying. And they're going up against the best paid, you know, best educated lawyers on planet Earth, who represent the investment banks. And they're supposed to be defending us.



BILL MOYERS: The curious thing about this is that you and I and my audience knows that our ancestors believed that capitalism needed to be supervised. But when the conservatives came to power, they begin to muzzle the watchdog.



THOMAS FRANK: Yeah. Well, or you know, do away with it altogether, de-fund it. Look, the beginning in the 1980s, President Reagan came to office and came to power, and you remember the kind of rhetoric that he used to use in denouncing the Federal workforce. He hated the Federal workforce. And this is an article of faith among conservatives. There's something called the pay gap that they used to talk about a lot in Washington, D.C. Which is, back in the '50s, '60s, and up into the 1970s, Federal workers were paid a comparable amount to what people in the private sector earned. Okay? So, if you're a lawyer working for the government, you got about as much as a lawyer working in the private sector. Not as much, because government benefits are considered to be much better. Okay. Under Reagan, you had this huge gap open up between Federal workers and the private sector. I asked around. And I found out a government attorney makes $140,000 a year on retirement. After he's been there all his life. In the private sector law firm in Washington, you'd be making $160,000 starting salary. That's first year. Right out of law school.



BILL MOYERS: So what's the consequence of this pay gap you described? Or, do we get inferior government because of it?



THOMAS FRANK: Absolutely. It keeps the best and the brightest out of government service, unless you're really dedicated to a cause. But let me go one step further with this, Bill. When I say this is done by design, I'm not exaggerating. And this is one of the more surprising things that I found when I was doing the research for "The Wrecking Crew," is that there's a whole conservative literature on why you want second-rate people in government, or third-rate. I found an interview with the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from 1928, where he said-- this quote, it's mind-boggling to me. But he really said this. "The best public servant is the worst one." Okay? You want bad people in government. You want to deliberately staff government with second-rate people. Because if you have good people in government, government will work. And then the public will learn to trust government. And then they'll hand over more power to it.And you don't want that, of course. Your Chamber of Commerce. And I thought, when I first read this, "That's a crazy idea. I can't believe that sentiment." And then I found it repeated again and again and again. Throughout the long history of the conservative movement. This is something they believe very deeply.



BILL MOYERS: It comes out of a definitive way of seeing things, right?



THOMAS FRANK: Yes. And we can summarize that very briefly. That the market is the, you know, is the universal principle of human civilization. And that government is a kind of interloper, if not a, you know, criminal gang. And getting in the way.



BILL MOYERS: But we saw with this collapse and this bailout, we saw the failure of that.



THOMAS FRANK: Of course.



BILL MOYERS: And yet there's no sense of contrition. What's amazing to me, and you wrote this, that the very people who brought us this decade of conservative failures, the party of Palin, Beck, Hannity, Abramoff, Rove, DeLay, Kristol, O'Reilly, just might stage a comeback.



THOMAS FRANK: I think they might. I think there's a very strong chance of that.



BILL MOYERS: After only 11 months out of power, because of the record. I mean--



THOMAS FRANK: Look, well, the stuff--



BILL MOYERS: --it's crazy.



THOMAS FRANK: --the stuff we've been talking about here today. The stuff in "The Wrecking Crew," that's all forgotten. The financial crisis had that effect of-- that stuff is now off the-- down the memory hole



BILL MOYERS: Do you really think they believe that unfettered capitalism, unregulated markets, will deliver an ideal democracy and prosperity for everybody?

THOMAS FRANK: No, I don't. I think that they believe that, and to some degree, they're sincere in that belief. But the conservative movement in Washington, I'm not talking about grassroots voters in Kansas here. I'm talking about the conservative movement in Washington. And the whole constellation of think tanks and lobby shops and not-for-profits. And, you know, newspapers and fundraisers and all of this stuff. They believe this is an industry, okay? This is an industry that churns out this product. And one of the things that, I mean, it's one of the things that they're doing now is they excommunicate George W. Bush, deeply unpopular, so therefore, not a true conservative, right? So, that way they get to start over fresh. The problem with George W. Bush, the reason we're in such a deep hole is that we never went far enough. As Tom DeLay has said, in his newspaper column, and I'm paraphrasing here. The problem with conservatism isn't that it was tried and failed. It's that it never really got-- we never really tried it in the first place. So, what we have to do -- and I've heard, conservatives have said this. "What we have to do is go back and deregulate all the way. We have to, you know, slash government. We have to tear that thing down. That's what it's all about." And the amazing thing about this. This allows them to represent themselves as dissidents against the sort of established order in Washington. Even though they ran the established order for years and years and years and years.

BILL MOYERS: Here's something else that's bizarre to me. And I wonder what you think about it, as a historian. I mean, right after the failed terrorist threat of Christmas, Obama's critics went to work scrubbing what happened when the Bush White House was out to lunch in the weeks and days leading up to 9/11. I mean, you know, there were terrorists sneaking into the country. There were warnings from the intelligence community about something-- an attack on an American city coming. And that's all been flushed down the memory hole. Giuliani goes on the air and says, "We didn't have any terrorist attacks when Bush was President."



THOMAS FRANK: Yeah, and that's another-- we also forget the anthrax episode which happened right after 9/11. Look, this is not an argument that I have made. That other people have-- that all of these things need to be added to the list of government failures. And if you want to talk why does government fail? You know, there's two answers out there. One is the conservative answer. Government fails because that's the nature of government to fail. And if you want to look a little bit deeper, you know, why does government fail? Because government has been systematically destroyed. When we, whether you're talking about the, you know, the pay gap and making-- deliberately making government an unattractive career option. Or you're talking about outsourcing. This is another conservative strategy for dealing with the state. If you hate and despise government employees. And you understand them as, you know, unbelievable human wickedness, right? What do you do about them? Well, the answer's obvious. And at the same time, you believe in the market. You believe that private industry does everything better. You outsource the Federal workforce.



BILL MOYERS: Have we reached a stage where you make things bad enough that people despair and then you manipulate their despair into-- to your own advantage in the next election?

THOMAS FRANK: It's a cynical town, Washington, D.C. And the conservative movement tends to be deeply, deeply, deeply cynical about government. Now, it's also, I mean, deeply idealistic about the market. I mean, the market can do no wrong, almost by definition. But government they regard as a criminal gang. I mean, many, many conservatives have compared-- oh, they always do, compare government to criminals. All the time. Taxation is a form of theft. It's as bad as a mugger in the street saying, "Give me your money." And America is pretty much unique among the nations in that our

political system, half of our political system is basically dedicated to the destruction of the government from within. I don't know any other country where that's the case. But there's plenty

of countries where government works really, really well. I mean, even, for God's sake, in India, you know, which we don't think of as being an advanced industrial society, their banks didn't all go bust in the latest downturn. Now, why is that? Because their equivalent of the Federal Reserve was not, you know, deregulating, stopping enforcement. They weren't doing any of those things. They were keeping a very tight lid on it. Government can work. It works all the time.

BILL MOYERS: You wrote "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Let me ask you to broaden that canvas and ask, with the answer to the question, what's the matter with America that we tolerate all of this?



THOMAS FRANK: I think a large part of it is that-- well, it's the chronic historical forgetting, you know? We just elected Barack Obama in this-- you know, he had quite a mandate. You know, biggest majority of any President since Reagan. And now a year later, and the public is already turning on him. And that's a part of the problem. But, you know, another part of it is that the conservative argument about government and freedom is very compelling when they say that something like, you know, the national, you know, any proposal for a national health program is a violation of our freedom. Americans don't like to hear that their freedom is being violated. That is a hot button argument. Now, the obvious-- look, there's an obvious response that Democrats could make. Which is no, this is a way of growing our freedom. This will actually expand human freedom, not limit it. They never say that.



BILL MOYERS: Why? So, part of the problem with America is the Democratic Party?

THOMAS FRANK: A huge part of the problem, because look, the conservatives have for decades now made their-- the whole point of their party is to attack government, attack the state, encourage cynicism about government. And then wreck it when they're in charge, right? Democrats never defend the state. They never come out and say, "No, no. It's important to have, you know, government. It's important to have a Department of Labor. These are, you know, having government actually-- a good government increases your freedom. It doesn't ruin it." They never fight back consistently.

BILL MOYERS: Why?



THOMAS FRANK: I think they're-- some of them do. You've got members of Congress here and there that do. But by and large, the prominent leading Democrats in our society don't do that. Why is that? Because I think that would get them in trouble with their funders. I mean, the power of money is huge in the political system. You know, despite all the efforts that have been made over the years to get money out of politics. It's still immensely powerful.



BILL MOYERS: The book is Thomas Frank, "The Wrecking Crew." The literary journal is "The Baffler." Congratulations on both of them. And thanks for being with me on the Journal.



THOMAS FRANK: It was my pleasure.

Op-Ed Columnist - Defining Prosperity Down - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Defining Prosperity Down - NYTimes.com: "What lies down this path? Here’s what I consider all too likely: Two years from now unemployment will still be extremely high, quite possibly higher than it is now. But instead of taking responsibility for fixing the situation, politicians and Fed officials alike will declare that high unemployment is structural, beyond their control. And as I said, over time these excuses may turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the long-term unemployed lose their skills and their connections with the work force, and become unemployable."

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Op-Ed Contributor - Four Deformations of the Apocalypse - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - Four Deformations of the Apocalypse - NYTimes.com: "IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase."