Even more reason to do nothing. The joy of gridlock will hike capital gains taxes up to 25% in the absence of any actions on the part of Congress. Barring anything actually, you know, happening in the Congress, Mitt and other Masters of the Universe will finally see something approaching a reasonable tax rate. Very Serious People will tell you otherwise, but for the next few years gridlock is decidedly Our Friend.
Charles Pierce has some suggestions for a simple, straightforward set of debate questions:
Mr. Romney, please explain in detail how $56 million diverted [by PG&E] from safety measures to incentive bonuses [and directly resulted in an explosion that killed eight and destroyed 38 homes] really is a victory for all Americans in pursuing their American dream in this, the greatest country on earth and the shining city on the hill.
Mr. Gingrich, please explain in detail why a culture of dependency and moral laxity is inculcated among the poor by $200 a month in food stamps, but why it is not inculcated by millions of dollars of “diverted” funds among the executives of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Mr. Santorum, please explain in detail why two happy gay people who get married is an existential threat to the moral foundation of this country, but sucking up money you gouged out of the ratepayers, allegedly to protect them, is not.
Dr. Paul, please explain in detail why markets work better for all of us when they’re unregulated, and why the real solution to an exploding pipeline that kills eight people and wrecks 38 homes is the fact that, because its pipeline killed eight people and wrecked 38 homes, PG&E will suffer a public-relations problem in the marketplace.
Shrill, but Lincoln-Douglas shrill.
Gingrich’s staff has these five file cabinets, four big ones and this little tiny one. Number one is ‘Newt’s ideas.’ Number two, ‘Newt’s ideas.’ Number three, number four, ‘Newt’s ideas.’ The little one is ‘Newt’s Good Ideas.’
Would [a Constitutional amendment for campaign finance reform] be a good idea on a public policy level? I’d be shocked if someone could convince me that it was. As near as I can tell, just about every campaign finance reform measure of the modern era has either (a) had no real effect, or (b) backfired, making things objectively worse. The idea that we can predict the effect of yet another proposal well enough to set it in stone in the Constitution strikes me as extremely unlikely.
“What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” Romney, a GOP presidential candidate, said. “My last 10 years, I’ve — my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past rather than ordinary income or rather than earned annual income. I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away. And then I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”
According to his most recent financial disclosure statement, he earned nearly $375,000 for nine speaking engagements in 2010 and early 2011.
Well, now, this would seem to be a rather rich potential political line of attack. In one simple, straightforward stroke you have a narrative that both weakens Romney and advances important information in the broader sense relative to what’s really been going wrong in America these past ~40 years. Not only does Mitt (unsurprisingly) pay the preposterously low 15% rate on his largely-investment-based income, a rate dramatically lower than most Americans pay on far less income and but also Mitt reveals that this is aside from the entirely trivial, “not very much” money he made doing speaking engagements, itself a value fully 10 times the median income in these United States.
Naturally, The Democrat thinks it’s high time to leave Mitt alone on such issues:
At least one top Obama surrogate is pushing for the party to shift the balance of its attacks on Mitt Romney away from his days in private equity and on to his time in the public sector. […] “Bain is a little complicated for people to follow.”
Of course, of course. Who among us can possibly understand that Mitt pays a fraction of the taxes you do on wealth so fucking inexhaustibly vast that he considers income in excess of 10 times what you probably make in a year to be “not very much.” There’s just no way to play that information such that people can follow it.
Newt Gingrich knows exactly what he is doing when he calls Obama the “food stamp” president, just as Ronald Reagan knew exactly what he was doing when talking about “welfare Cadillacs.” There are lots of other ways to make the point about economic hard times – entirely apart from which person and which policies are to blame for today’s mammoth joblessness. You could call him the “pink slip president,” the “foreclosure president,” the “Walmart president,” the “bailout president,” or any of a dozen other images that convey distress. You decide to go with “the food stamp president,” and you’re doing it on purpose.
If Joe Lieberman had been elected, I would be wary of attacks on his economic policy that called him “the cunning, tight-fisted president.” If Henry Cisneros had or Ken Salazar does, I would notice arguments about ineffectiveness phrased as “the manana administration.” If Gary Locke were in office, then “the Manchurian candidate” jokes that had been used on John Huntsman would have a different edge. And so on. [A specific commenter on my site] may not recognize it as a dog whistle, but I have no doubt that Newt Gingrich knows what it is. I don’t think that Gingrich has had a racist-style political career; on the contrary. But he knows what this language does.
I think this is exactly right. Using this language is a cynical decision; a means to an end, not an overt display of deeply held beliefs on the part of (in this case) DFS Gingrich. He’s a political operator grasping at straws, and selecting the straws he feels are most likely to play well for the task at hand (a southern US primary swing). Ultimately he could care less if this hurts the broader GOP or Romney; if the tactic helps him, it helps him. Period.
The progressive blogosphere would do well to discuss the language, as there’s plenty of meat there. Leaping to the more reflexive, inherently more tribal cries of “Gingrich reveals racist streak” in response will alienate as many or more than it will draw. Making the deeper points about precisely why this language is not only wrong but is disgracefully, knowingly wrong will be far more beneficial long term, as such an approach ends the meme, instead of merely tarring the meme user.
tl/dr: DFS Gingrich needs no help ending his career. We will need lots of help ending these tactics.
Glenn Greenwald, writing a sort of response to yesterday’s NYT Ombudsman piece (in which he wondered whether NYT journalists should challenge the “facts” they are presented when working stories), really nails the MSM’s ongoing stenography problem. It’s not so much that MSM journalists dutifully and uncritically write down (and then print) what they’ve been told, but that they only do so on behalf of those already in a position of power (be it economic or political):
…there is one important caveat that needs to be added here. This stenographic treatment by journalists — of simply amplifying what someone claims without any skepticism or examination — is not available to everyone. Only those who wield power within America’s political and financial systems are entitled to receive this treatment. For everyone else — those who are viewed as ordinary, marginalized, or scorned by America’s political establishment — the exact opposite rules apply: their statements are subjected to extreme levels of skepticism in those rare instances when they’re heard at all.
[…]
The most damaging sin of this stenographic model isn’t laziness — the failure to subject false statements to critical, investigative scrutiny — although that is part of it. The most damaging sin is that it’s propagandistic: it converts official assertions and claims from the most powerful into Truth, even when those assertions and claims are baseless or false. This stenographic model is the primary means by which media outlets turn themselves into eager spokespeople and servants for the most powerful factions: the very opposite of the function they claim, with increasing absurdity, to perform.
Yep. Read the whole thing.
“So I think this is going to a very, very difficult year and I think, honestly, that HALF-MEASURES LIKE ASSASSINATIONS or sanctions are only going to produce the crisis more quickly. The better way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons is to attack its nuclear weapons program directly, break their control over the nuclear fuel cycle.”
— John Bolton, who has endorsed Mitt Romney.
Half-measures like assassinations!
And but also, I’d like to know exactly how an attack is anything less than a half-measure? Even if said attack works perfectly, and utterly eliminates all nuclear facilities “known” and “unknown,” precisely how does this “break their control” over the nuclear cycle? Within six or nine months they are presumably already right back at it, with a deeper, or more secretive laboratory. Or they never stop because, you know, they already had a deeper or more secretive laboratory. And now you’ve done nothing more than provide indisputable proof that they need nuclear weapons. Only way to fend off these Americans and their constant nosing into our bidness.
Bolton’s “plan” only works, in fact, if you a) go nuclear and functionally exterminate all living matter in Iran, –or– b) conventionally or otherwise invade and govern Iran. There is no other way that has any reasonable chance of success. Period.
I suspect the American people would poll dramatically against either of those “kill ‘em all” style outcomes. Therefore it might behoove reporters to ask about them directly such that we are all clear exactly what this lunatic and lunatics like him are talking about. But they never do. Shrill. We have learned nothing from the W. Bush administration and, apparently, never will. So the Republic crumbles.
Ron Paul shows up to local diner, hoping to find regular ‘Mericans who, we are informed, actually eat in such places; he is instead greeted by ~97 high school students. From Massachusetts. Whose teacher had reserved the entire restaurant. Circus ensues. Vermin Supreme was even in the parking lot, which was also the location of the (apparently) sole New Hampshire voter:
Karen Heller had come to “fall in love with Ron Paul.” Heller remains undecided. “I really love Jon Huntsman,” she said, “but every year I feel like I’m throwing my vote away.”
Gods help me, some days I love politics. Which we all know ain’t the beanbag.
Lemkin 