Tag: 2012

There Is No Third Thing

Ezra Klein, on the tepid reaction to the President’s energy policy:

This brings up one of the toughest questions in punditry: What is the right thing for the president to do on an issue that’s 1) morally urgent and 2) absolutely dead on arrival in Congress?

He forgets one thing:

3) and which his political opposition will be allowed to argue both sides of?

Libya is only the latest example, but there are many, many others. As soon as the President is for it, the GOP is categorically and irrevocably against it regardless of where they stood in the millisecond before Obama made a decision. This is how Obama went from “dangerously disengaged” or “timid” on Libya and missing his big chance to remake the region to dangerously over-aggressive and missing his big chance for peace in our time in the course of approximately 36 hours.

This is precisely why Obama needs to start inveighing against the perils of windpower, the tyranny of train-based transportation, and making demands that every US citizen above the age of 14 be required to carry at least one gun with its safety off at all times.
I’m only half-joking here. Any rational policy decision will have to be couched in, at best, seeming disinterest on the part of Obama. And this is why many issues are currently hung with the “why isn’t Obama saying anything about…” rubric. Once he takes up a position, even if it is the GOP position, you’re going to face instant and intransigent opposition to whatever Obama says. Even if they were the ones promoting it yesterday. On really sticky issues like Libya, you’ll have the Serious Person dream situation: categorical GOP opposition coupled with strong attacks “from the President’s left.” And just how it’s possible to be “to the left” of a radical socialist community organizer is left as an exercise for the student, as these are questions that the MSM simply will not ask. Shrill.
Progressives angry that their pet issue isn’t receiving enough facetime from Obama should frankly count their lucky stars. Once he weighs in, your issue is over. It is only in the face of Presidential disinterest that even incremental policy progress can actually be made in this environment.

Until such time as the GOP gets significant push-back on this form of rampant and entirely political flip-floppery, it will remain the only game in town. Since such push-back would require research and preparation on the part of the MSM, I wouldn’t hold my breath. That this cycle happens to be a game that is measurably and inexorably killing the country is yet another of those facts that do not matter.

The only imaginable reason that Donald Trump would release this obviously unofficial birth certificate is that he is and always has been a secret terrorist anchor baby with malevolent intent towards Our Republic. That he is so brazen in his efforts to overthrow the proper Christian monarchy of the United States is only further proof of his complicity in the global islamofascist movement that is hell bent on instituting Sharia law in those vanishingly few districts of America not already under its inescapable yoke. There is simply no other rational explanation for this. Dark days for America, as Trump is plainly here to restore the caliphate.

Source: newsmax.com

A person, company or nation would be defined as ‘broke’ if it couldn’t pay its bills, and that is not the case with the U.S. Despite an annual budget deficit expected to reach $1.6 trillion this year, the government continues to meet its financial obligations, and investors say there is little concern that will change.

David J. Lynch repeating that which cannot be repeated enough. We have a ~$16 Trillion economy and the lowest tax burden in half a century. And, miracle of miracles, the beloved market realizes this because, as the linked article also notes, we can borrow at historically low interest rates, paying 0.68 percent on a two-year note, down almost 5% from what we were paying on that back in 2007.
Clearly, though: time to panic.
Source: bloomberg.com

Last year, American oil production reached its highest level since 2003. Let me repeat that. Our oil production reached its highest level in seven years. Oil production from federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico reached an all-time high. For the first time in more than a decade, imports accounted for less than half of what we consumed. So any notion that my administration has shut down oil production might make for a good political sound bite, but it doesn’t match up with reality.

Barack Obama, apparently forgetting that the facts do not matter. Without a coordinated messaging system to repeat this all day every day for 10 years it won’t even make a dent.
But, since we’re pretending facts are things that can be reported on, let’s add: “drill baby drill” won’t and can’t work. There isn’t enough oil in all of ANWR to make a dent in global demand, even if removed today by magic and all at once. As it stands, the best estimates of full production there would be between 0.4 and 1.2 percent of total world oil consumption in 2030. Read: not enough to matter, ever, under any imaginable circumstances on the global market as we know it. But why let that kind of crap thinking get in the way of national energy “policy?”
Every drop of oil in US territory that is thought of as technically recoverable (read: the over optimistic blue sky estimate) amounts to about 134 billion barrels; surely Sarah and the rest of the hockey Moms out there can get most of that extracted for us by tomorrow and all will be well with the world and gas will never rise above $1 a gallon again!
Oh, by they by, we used 20,680,000 bbl a day in 2007. Why, that means there’s US black gold enough to last us clear through 2014 if we really watch it and know-how our way to new and exciting technologies.
But: yawn. Charlie Sheen, everyone!

Shortly after the Democrats’ “shellacking” last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served in the Clinton administration. “It’s 1994 all over again,” he said. “Now we move to the center.”

Robert Reich: Why Obama Isn’t Fighting the Budget Battle.
This is, to say the least, deeply troubling. The administration (and the Beltway media as well) have been all-too-willing to lap up the standard FOXnews and talk-radio line about Obama governing from the “far left” and being a “radical socialist” and so forth. Has not and is not.
In fact, he’s been governing from the center, or even center right all along. That’s simply how it is. Look at the record. Lowered taxes, passed a previously GOP-pushed version of health care reform, pushes previously GOP position on environment, GOP position on torture, GOP position on Guantanamo, GOP position on everything. It’s just that the GOP (wisely, from their viewpoint) promptly disavows these positions and moves the Overton Window ever further to the right. Thus, Obama’s “move to the center” described here will conceivably locate him somewhere to the right of Reagan. Which is what the GOP would certainly enjoy (and but simultaneously of course still criticize his supposedly socialistic positions), but it’s not what the voters who elected Democrats in three straight elections culminating with Obama’s own election want.
The sad fact is that Democratic “strategists” took exactly the wrong message from the “shellacking,” as usual, and are telling all Democrats to forget their ideas, get as far into a defensive crouch as possible, and “weather the storm.” When they lose again in 2012, it’ll me more of the same: this isn’t an example of voter fury with no clear outlet or focus or unifying leader to channel it one way or another (beyond “throw the bums out!”), this isn’t the fault of our lack of strong positions, of not fighting for the will of the people, of not presenting a compelling and alternate vision for America, it’s because we weren’t far enough to the right.
The problem is that it’s not true, hasn’t been true, won’t be true. Ever. This is why they fail.

PAMtastic poll data

Apropos of this post:

The [NBC/WSJ] survey — which was conducted Feb. 24-28 of 1,000 adults (200 reached by cell phone), and which has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points — also listed 26 different ways to reduce the federal budget deficit.

The most popular: placing a surtax on federal income taxes for those who make more than $1 million per year (81 percent said that was acceptable), eliminating spending on earmarks (78 percent), eliminating funding for weapons systems the Defense Department says aren’t necessary (76 percent) and eliminating tax credits for the oil and gas industries (74 percent).

The least popular: cutting funding for Medicaid, the federal government health-care program for the poor (32 percent said that was acceptable); cutting funding for Medicare, the federal government health-care program for seniors (23 percent); cutting funding for K-12 education (22 percent); and cutting funding for Social Security (22 percent).

So, the approach I laid out for the Democrats is not only popular, it’s the most popular. Well, that and people just have no fucking idea about earmarks and their relative proportion of the federal budget. Add that to the striking unpopularity of the GOP’s putative positions and you have a multifaceted issue about which you can be sure that The Democrat will make not one peep, will grudgingly accept the whatever the GOP’s demands are, and will be roundly slaughtered by voter fury about come 2012 but interpret said slaughter as implicit approval of the GOP message and most definitely not anything to do with The Democrat’s utter fecklessness. Optimism!

Unified Field Theory

First principles:

  1. The recently House-passed continuing resolution only makes a government shutdown more likely by both caving to perceived GOP demands to “cut” while also exhausting the supply of low hanging fruit that Obama has already come out in favor of cutting.
  2. The GOP has the media high-ground, as always, because serious people know that cuts must be necessary, and since the GOP is at dollar value X, and the Democrats are, for all intents and purposes, at dollar value $0 (spending freeze as opposed to new cuts), the serious person answer must be $X/2. That’s the “grand bargain” that Democrats wisely point out will still submarine the economy and the GOP flatly refuses to even discuss. See: shutdown and default in 2011.
  3. Serious People furthermore agitate for deep cuts to Social Security, despite its dedicated funding source and minimal deficit impact in the near future, because, well, because that’s what serious people do. Acceding to the demands for cuts to Social Secuirty is 2012 suicide for the Democrats. It just is.

With all that in mind, what the Democrats need is a concentrated, coordinated effort that steals this idiotic media high ground surrounding the (perceived) absolute necessity of “cuts and a lot of them.” Karl Rove taught us nothing if not the fact that making your enemies’ strengths into their weaknesses is a potent political tool. Think Swiftboating. That The Democrat assiduously avoids the use of this tool is why they fail.

Therefore: the GOP is talking at least $100B in cuts, and immediately. Right or wrong, that’s going to have to be your number too. However, and critically, the GOP wants those cuts to come entirely from the non-military discretionary budget, somewhere around 14% of the whole government budget. This, then, is where and how you attack them. And you’re going to do it specifically and with dollar amounts.

You go down the list of GOP hobby horses: faith-based initiatives, the military, oil subsidies, agribusiness subsidies, general corporate welfare, abstinence-based education, all of it; but you don’t stop with spending, you also target revenue: capital gains taxes, estate taxes, social security taxes (as in: uncapped), and ultimately the tax code itself, which could use a few new brackets up top.

Secretary Gates can likely provide you with a long list of outdated or otherwise no-longer-needed military programs. Lots of them will seem ridiculous or hopelessly out of touch. Mock them and mock the GOP for continuing to support them.
Same goes for oil subsidies. These are the richest companies on Earth and the GOP wants to give them corporate welfare while asking for “shared sacrifice” from the poorest of the poor?

When you’ve run out of spending to cut from GOP programs, you go to work on revenue. That’s right, I said it. You need to too. First: revenue is revenue. Capital gains, management fees, bonuses, and everything else falls under regular pay. Next, you set about raising effective rates on corporations and the rich. The corporate side can be most effectively done by eliminating shelters and loopholes. Any country in which ExxonMobil pays $0 in taxes needs, needs corporate tax reform. Period. Still haven’t hit the number? New tax brackets. Still haven’t hit the number? Uncap Social Security. And so on.

You then pack the whole thing together and unveil it as the “alternative” plan and hoist the GOP upon it each and every day, all day. Because they are guaranteed to hate it. But will have to explain why they prefer to make these cuts on the backs of the poorest instead of the richest and furthermore call it “shared sacrifice.”

You’ve got less than two weeks to put this together. Recent history with the tax cut extension “fight” suggests you haven’t even considered something along these lines yet. But it’s how to win. That’s why it looks so strange to you. Yes, it’s simple minded. But simple minded is what works. You are the last few hundred people in America to come to this realization.

I’m not saying this bill would be what was passed, or that it would even reach the floor in a serious way…but it would drive the conversation in a way that benefits you, The Democrat, and not so coincidentally us the American people.
Currently you’re battling over the 14% that contains the most painful cuts possible. You shouldn’t be. You furthermore don’t even need to be. Change the conversation to terms that have the potential to benefit you. Right now revenue doesn’t even come up. It needs to. It needs to be the first question off the lips of the serious people. Until it is, you will fail.

…how much more concrete could our current situation be? Republicans — and, unfortunately, some Democrats too — are pushing for an economic austerity plan that will keep unemployment high and the job market loose. The result is downward pressure on wages, which keeps middle-class incomes stagnant and corporate profits high. This benefits the executive and investor class, and while it’s a shortsighted benefit, it’s a benefit nonetheless. And it’s not thanks to globalization or returns to education or anything like that. It’s due to a deliberate political decision that favors the rich at the expense of everyone else.

Kevin Drum
If only we had a particularly skilled orator in high office somewhere who could use some sort of bully pulpit to explain this concept in simple terms once or twice a day from now until the thought finally sinks in and takes root. Meh: So it goes.