Category: Politics As Usual

It’s the policies, stupid

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

The thing is, there’s no one they can run who isn’t closely identified with the exact same policies – which none of these insiders mention, of course! It’s not that Corbett didn’t execute the ALEC agenda. He did! It’s that the policies themselves are so unpopular, and that Corbett says out loud what the rest of the Republicans are thinking:

The biggest question in Pennsylvania politics right now isn’t whether Gov. Tom Corbett will win reelection. It’s whether he’ll even get the chance.

Beset by legislative failures and bleak poll numbers, the Republican looks like the country’s most vulnerable governor heading into the 2014 election. And Republicans are questioning whether they should let Corbett face a near-certain defeat when they could find a ready replacement with a much better chance of winning.

Uh huh. Again, notice they don’t name names. Do they really think Rep. Pat Meehan can win, or that he’ll leave his seat open to the Democrats? That Pat Toomey will resign the Senate for this suicide mission? Mike Fitzpatrick, the lobbyists’ friend? Jim Gerlach? Nah, I don’t think so.

Already, speculation among GOP operatives has shifted to a quartet of candidates the party might turn to, including several Republicans in the state’s congressional delegation. Fearful of alienating a sitting governor, they’ve done little to publicly jockey for the potential opening. But all are said to be keeping a close eye on Corbett.

A dramatic move from Corbett to step aside isn’t imminent. On Tuesday, he replaced his chief of staff with a veteran political operative. Corbett allies say he remains laser-focused on winning reelection, even if he knows his path to victory is narrow. Meanwhile, Republicans aren’t looking to run against him in a primary, only eager to run if he opts not to run for a second term.

But unless Corbett can show improvement in the coming months, Republicans expect the calls for him to step aside to reach a fever pitch. According to one GOP operative in the state, speculation about replacing the governor is “rampant.”

“The problem is, you need a path to victory,” said one GOP source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to offer his blunt perspective about the governor’s situation. “I think they have trouble right now with activists and donors showing them a path to victory. If that doesn’t improve in the next couple of months, they’ll close their wallets and shut their front doors, and activists and donors will make up their mind for him.”

Another GOP strategist added that Corbett is headed for a “historic landslide [loss]” and rank-and-file party members know it.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said the Republican. “Party regulars are just fed up and not willing to help him anymore.”

Hah. The only reason the party regulars won’t support him is because he’s a loser. They still don’t understand: It’s the policies, stupid! (That, and the puppy mills.)

H/t Karin Porter.

Impressive

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Not as impressive as single payer would be, of course, but in country ruled by capitalism, not bad.

Individuals buying health insurance on their own will see their premiums tumble next year in New York State as changes under the federal health care law take effect, state officials are to announce on Wednesday.

State insurance regulators say they have approved rates for 2014 that are at least 50 percent lower on average than those currently available in New York. Beginning in October, individuals in New York City who now pay $1,000 a month or more for coverage will be able to shop for health insurance for as little as $308 monthly. With federal subsidies, the cost will be even lower.

Liz Cheney for Senate

~ susie

No, I’m not kidding:

Next year’s senate primary in Wyoming just got a whole lot more interesting. TheAssociated Press reports that Liz Cheney, the elder of Dick Cheney’s two daughters, has officially announced her plans to challenge Wyoming’s senior senator in the Republican primary.

The move isn’t a complete surprise—rumors of it had been swirling inside the Cowboy State and around the Beltway for weeks—but it’s still rather major news because 69-year-old Sen. Mike Enzi has made it clear that he has no desire to step aside, even for the daughter of his former fly-fishing buddy. Here’s how the New York Times’ Jonathan Martinsummed things up last week in advance of today’s announcement:

Ms. Cheney’s move threatens to start a civil war within the state’s Republican establishment, despite the reverence many hold for her family. Mr. Enzi, 69, says he is not ready to retire, and many Republicans say he has done nothing to deserve being turned out. … The developments underscore the complicated relationship between the Beltway-centered Cheney family and the sparsely populated state that provided its political base.

Cordray confirmed

~ susie

Well, Harry got his deal — for now:

Following a tentative deal to confirm a slew of presidential nominees to executive positions without the use of the “nuclear option,” the U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Barack Obama’s nomination to run the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Sixty-six senators voted to confirm Richard Cordray’s nomination, which was stalled under a lengthy Republican filibuster. Thirty-four senators opposed.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who is credited with hatching the idea for the CFPB, presided over the vote.

I get mail

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Your GOP Congress at work:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Proposed House legislation that would grant a tax amnesty to multinational corporations bringing home billions of dollars of profits now offshore in order to fund an infrastructure bank was strongly criticized today in a letter to House members signed by 30 national organizations working to ensure that big corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

The Partnership to Build America Act, H.R. 2084, introduced by Rep. John Delaney (D-MD), would reward big corporations that avoid taxes through overseas accounting tricks, encourage more future offshore tax dodging, fail to create jobs in America and increase the deficit, according to the letter’s signers, which include AFSCME, MoveOn.org, the National Education Association and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (full list of signers is below).

This most recent push by corporations for the tax holiday is “nothing more than a blatant attempt to escape their tax obligations and shift the burden onto taxpaying Americans, small businesses and domestic firms,” the groups wrote.

The letter signers emphasized that past amnesties have failed to deliver for the American people, instead merely enriching executives and shareholders. The requirement in the current bill that corporations “repatriating” their profits invest part of them in an infrastructure bank does nothing to improve the legislation, since several tax dodging corporations will control the proposed bank, inviting collusion and financial game playing.

Many of the companies bringing home profits under a 2004 repatriation amnesty actually reduced employment, according to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations; of the corporate cash repatriated, 92 percent went to stock buybacks, executive bonuses and dividends, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the letter noted.

Endorsing the concept of an infrastructure bank as a stand-alone idea, the letter signers wrote: “Congress should finance infrastructure investment by closing offshore tax loopholes, not by encouraging corporations to use them.”

The letter was coordinated by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Financial Accountability and Transparency (FACT) Coalition.

Now read this:

Individual income tax payments have been rising fast since the economy began to recover, even though wages have hardly budged. But the same isn’t true for taxes for most corporations.

For the vast majority of America’s 5.8 million corporations, profits soared in 2010 — up 53 percent compared to 2009 — when the recession official ended at mid-year. Despite skyrocketing profits, however, their corporate income tax bills actually shrank by $1.9 billion, or 2.6 percent.

The effective tax rate paid by 99.95 percent of companies fell to 15.9 percent in the robustly profitable year of 2010, from 24.9 percent in the half-recession year 2009.

Those figures do not count the 2,772 companies that dominate the American economy. These giant firms, with an average of $23 billion in assets, own 81 percent of all business assets in America.

Their combined profits soared 45.2 percent to a new record in 2010, but their taxes rose just 14.8 percent, new IRS data show. Profits growing three times faster than taxes means their effective tax rates fell.

In 2010 these corporate giants paid just 16.7 percent of their profits in taxes, down from 21.1 percent in 2009. The official tax rate is 35 percent.

Who abandoned Philadelphia kids?

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Diane Ravitch on Philadelphia and our cuts in education funding:

A new survey shows that Philadelphia has the highest poverty rate of any of the nation’s 10 largest cities.

28% of the city’s people are poor, as are 39% of its children. The national child poverty rate is 23%.

Now we know from reformers that poverty is no “excuse” for low test scores, but we also know from the reality-based world that low income is highly correlated with low test scores. If you want to learn more, read Richard Rothstein’s “Class and Schools,” or google Helen Ladd’s “Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence.”

Thus, it makes no sense to strip the city’s schools of the arts, physical education, librarians, guidance counselors, social workers, and every other support personnel. These children desperately need a good education.

The state of Pennsylvania has a constitutional obligation to educate its children.

And the state thus far has cynically told Philadelphia to extract more taxes from its impoverished population. That is worse than no answer. That is negligence of a high order.

Continue reading “Who abandoned Philadelphia kids?” →

Hunger games

~ susie

Krugman on the farm bill:

Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We’ve gone beyond bad economic doctrine. We’ve even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we’re talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable.

The occasion for these observations is, as you may have guessed, the monstrous farm bill the House passed last week.

For decades, farm bills have had two major pieces. One piece offers subsidies to farmers; the other offers nutritional aid to Americans in distress, mainly in the form of food stamps (these days officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP).

Long ago, when subsidies helped many poor farmers, you could defend the whole package as a form of support for those in need. Over the years, however, the two pieces diverged. Farm subsidies became a fraud-ridden program that mainly benefits corporations and wealthy individuals. Meanwhile food stamps became a crucial part of the social safety net.

So House Republicans voted to maintain farm subsidies — at a higher level than either the Senate or the White House proposed — while completely eliminating food stamps from the bill.

To fully appreciate what just went down, listen to the rhetoric conservatives often use to justify eliminating safety-net programs. It goes something like this: “You’re personally free to help the poor. But the government has no right to take people’s money” — frequently, at this point, they add the words “at the point of a gun” — “and force them to give it to the poor.”

It is, however, apparently perfectly O.K. to take people’s money at the point of a gun and force them to give it to agribusinesses and the wealthy.

Now, some enemies of food stamps don’t quote libertarian philosophy; they quote the Bible instead. Representative Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, for example, cited the New Testament: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Sure enough, it turns out that Mr. Fincher has personally received millions in farm subsidies.

Given this awesome double standard — I don’t think the word “hypocrisy” does it justice — it seems almost anti-climactic to talk about facts and figures. But I guess we must.

The verdict

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

I’ve seen some unjust verdicts in my time, but I’ve always accepted the frustrating principle that, in a system that’s set up to try to protect the rights of the innocent, we will occasionally see guilty people go free. Sounds very high-minded, right? It’s a lot harder to swallow when you see the system treat the innocent as guilty. And that’s what we saw in the trial of George Zimmerman, where, in the eyes of many, Trayvon Martin somehow was the one on trial.

If you want the details of why Zimmerman was found not guilty, you can read this.

But I think Scott Lemieux best addresses the larger issues here:

It is far from obvious that the prosecution (which was unable to even articulate a coherent narrative of the night’s events to counter Zimmerman’s) met its burden of disproving Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. That it failed to reach a guilty verdict cannot be seen as evidence of white supremacy on the part of the jury.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that race didn’t play a major role in the case. Trayvon Martin, guilty of nothing but walking on the street in a hoodie, was certainly killed because of racial profiling. And it is entirely possible that a trial of a poor African American killing a white man in similar circumstances would have played out differently (although the problem is not that the jury’s acquittal of Zimmerman was unreasonable but that a poor African-American man would have been much less likely to receive a fair trial, particularly assuming he could not afford to hire his own counsel). It’s easy to imagine a counterfactual case where a mostly white jury would have been less willing to credit a plausible self-defense claim if it came from an young African American man than a white man. To argue that the jury’s verdict wasn’t obviously wrong as a matter of law is not to argue that persistent racial inequities aren’t relevant to the case in a number of ways.

But it is important not to lose sight of something else: the inadequacy of the law in most states to deal with America’s gun culture. Carrying a deadly weapon in public should carry unique responsibilities. In most cases someone with a gun should not be able to escape culpability if he initiates a conflict with someone unarmed and the other party ends up getting shot and killed. Under the current law in many states, people threatened by armed people have few good options, because fighting back might create a license to kill.
Continue reading “The verdict” →