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Sunday, November 30, 2014

"If Republicans fail to show that they can govern, swing voters may see little cause to support them."

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Politics could keep the gridlock going
By Jim Miller, November 30, 2014

Last week, with due ceremony and a few appropriate remarks, President Barack Obama pardoned a turkey. If some Republicans get their way, that will be the most significant thing he does during his final two years in office. Obama, of course, has other plans.

By issuing an executive order on immigration a few days prior to the turkey pardon, Obama signaled that he does not intend to spend the rest of his term attending solely to the needs of the giblet caucus. Republicans will get a chance to send signals of their own during the lame duck congressional session, and again in January, when the new Congress takes office.

So far, however,  the indications point to those signals being as bellicose as the president’s. That means Obama can pardon all the turkeys he likes but probably will not be talking much turkey with Congress.

The result? You guessed it. More gridlock.

With the Republicans now in the majority in both the House and Senate, they can and will prevent Democrats from advancing their agenda legislatively. Democrats, meanwhile, can rely on the presidential veto to prevent already enacted pieces of that agenda from being repealed. (And yes, that means the health care bill is not going anywhere for at least the next two years.)

The Democrats will blame the resulting stalemate on an intransigent Republican Party whose House members, they say, will not compromise on anything. The Republicans, meanwhile, will argue that Obama ended any chance at cooperation when he issued his executive order, which they consider both high-handed and unconstitutional.

We will find out in two years where voters put the blame.

In the meantime, Republicans can take solace in their power to prevent Democratic bills from passing. If you lean conservative, gridlock is in that sense good news. However, it also comes with a downside. If Republicans fail to show that they can govern, swing voters may see little cause to support them.

Democrats will have to find solace outside the legislative branch. Obama may issue more executive orders, and he can act with a relatively free hand in foreign policy. He’ll have to build the rest of his legacy on those legs without so angering voters that they turn away from his party in 2016.

A skilled politician on either side might break this stalemate, but only if he or she had a partner from the other party and a willingness to defy partisans who prize ideological purity above effective governance. Both the will to compromise and the courage to lead the party base rather than follow it seem in short supply.

For fans of politics-as-spectator-sport, the next two years will surely bring many gripping moments and dramatic storylines. Will Republicans shut down the government again? Will some Democrats break with their party to vote against unpopular sections of the health care bill?

For everyone else, the next two years will likely be disheartening at best. The endless recriminations will provide plenty of fodder for the talking heads on TV, but they will make it impossible for the government to address pressing issues. Comprehensive action on tax reform, climate change or the deficit seems unlikely. So does any real effort to relieve the increasingly pinched middle class or to ensure Social Security remains viable over the long-term.

But hey, at least that turkey is safe.
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"Although it's still not likely to be successful, the effort is more serious than before ..."

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Push for constitutional convention gathers steam
By Albert R. Hunt, November 30, 2014

Rising frustration with Washington and conservative electoral victories across much of the U.S. are feeding a movement in favor of something America hasn't done in 227 years: Hold a convention to rewrite the Constitution.

Although it's still not likely to be successful, the effort is more serious than before: Already, more than two dozen states have called for a convention. There are two ways to change or amend the founding document. The usual method is for an adjustment to win approval from two-thirds of the Congress and then be ratified by three-quarters of the states. There have been 27 amendments adopted this way.

The second procedure is separate from Congress. It requires two-thirds of the states, or 34, to call for a convention. The framers thought this was necessary because Congress wouldn't be likely to advance any amendments that curtailed its powers. But this recourse never has been used.

Two states, California and Vermont, have called for a convention to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that permits huge amounts of unregulated money into federal campaigns. Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist, wants a convention to adopt sweeping changes, including a single six-year presidential term and concomitant House and Senate terms, to create more of a parliamentary system. Petitions to adopt term limits for members of Congress have circulated for years.

But much of the current impetus comes from fervent fiscal conservatives. This includes calls for an amendment requiring a balanced budget and other restraints on the federal government's spending and taxation powers.

A constitutional convention is a rallying cry for right- wing talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin; the idea has been endorsed by Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Oklahoma's Tom Coburn, both conservative Republicans. An influential backer is the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, an organization of conservative state legislators and private sector lobbyists that advocates for corporate interests.

However, many constitutional scholars believe that limits cannot be placed on a convention; if one were convened, anything could be up for consideration. A convention "can propose what they think is appropriate," says Michael Paulsen, a professor at the University of St. Thomas law school in Minneapolis who is an expert on the issue. "There is no good theory under which the convention can be 'limited' to specific topics — far less to a specific proposed `text.'"

Accordingly, say experts such as Walter Dellinger, a former U.S. solicitor general and a constitutional scholar, no limits can be imposed on calls for a convention. That's why he believes the current petitions from states, even if they reach the two-thirds mark, are invalid.

"Thirty-four times zero is still zero," he says.

If, however, the backlash against Washington intensifies, the Republican-led Congress stalls, these imperfections are corrected and a convention were held, Congress would play a relatively minor role. It might decide how the size of different delegations should be determined. After the federal lawmakers "specify the time and place for kicking it off," Paulsen says, "they then have to get out of the way."

Although it's chiefly the political right driving this proposal, there are more than a few staunch conservatives who say it's a bad idea. Foremost is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the longtime leader of the court's conservative bloc, who observed this summer: "Whoa! Who knows what would come out it?"

Some proponents argue that a check on any convention deliberations would be that three-quarters of the states then have to ratify any decisions, so radical stuff such as changing the First Amendment wouldn't fly. "That is a huge hurdle," Paulsen says.

Yet other observers such as Dellinger worry about the possibility of a run-away process that could rattle both the left and right. They doubt that modern-day James Madisons or Alexander Hamiltons would be in attendance to temper the proceedings.
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Saturday, November 29, 2014

"... let's also consider what is it about Republicans that black voters don't like." Well, how about the way that Republicans treat black voters?

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What's the Republican Party's problem with black voters?
By Robert Mann, November 21, 2014

Sen. Mary Landrieu has taken a beating for her poor showing among white voters in the Nov. 4 Louisiana U.S. Senate primary. Only 18 percent of white voters chose Landrieu over her Republican opponents, Rep. Bill Cassidy and Rob Maness. Among white males, Landrieu's support was only 15 percent.

White support for Landrieu was down sharply from 2008, when 33 percent of that demographic group supported her.

What is Landrieu's problem with white voters? It's a complicated matter, but midterm electorates are always older and whiter, which was bad for Democrats everywhere. Cassidy also effectively tied Landrieu to a black president who is unpopular with white voters in Louisiana (Obama got about 16 percent of Louisiana's white vote in 2012.)

While the question of Landrieu's growing disfavor among white voters is worthy of debate and investigation, let's not forget the other side of this voting equation. That is Cassidy's abysmally poor showing among black voters. On Nov. 4, the person who will likely be Louisiana's new U.S. senator received just 3 percent of black votes. Landrieu, meanwhile, captured 94 percent of those voters, a notch under her 96 percent mark in 2008.

Those Cassidy numbers haven't received much attention because they are not surprising. Black voters rarely support Republicans in congressional and statewide races in Louisiana.

To some Republicans, that is a scandal. Among them is state Sen. Elbert Guillory, a black Republican from Opelousas, who has become a celebrity among Republicans for his efforts to persuade black voters to switch parties. In addition to appearing in a spot attacking Landrieu, he showed up on television in North Carolina to assail incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan, who lost on Nov. 4.

"You see, black people are just being used by limousine liberals who have become our new overseers," Guillory said in the North Carolina spot, paid for by the group Our America. "We've only traded one plantation for the other." In his video attacking Landrieu, Guillory said to black voters, "You're just a means to an end, so that she remains in power."

Guillory clearly wants you to know how fervently Republicans like him and Cassidy desire the votes of black people.

There's a problem with this pitch. Cassidy has made no concerted effort to woo black voters. He campaigned briefly with Dr. Ben Carson, a popular black conservative who seems to be plotting a presidential campaign. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., one of two black members of the U.S. Senate, is scheduled to join him at an early voting rally in Monroe on Saturday.

Truth be told, if Republicans like Cassidy were passionate about persuading black voters, they would be doing much more than flying in Carson and Scott and throwing scraps of TV time to Guillory.

Ignoring black votes makes political sense for Cassidy. He doesn't need them to win. Cassidy surely knows he'll get about 75 percent of the white vote, which is more than enough to defeat Landrieu if black voters turn out at the same rate as whites.

Still, why does Guillory -- outraged over Landrieu's perceived disregard for his black constituents -- see no problem with Cassidy's reluctance to woo those same voters?

If asked, I'm sure Cassidy would say that he is eager to win black votes. If, indeed, he is, he has an odd way of showing it. Consider, for example, how he behaved when he had a significant black minority in his congressional district.

When Cassidy was first elected to Congress in 2009, 31 percent of the registered voters in his 6th Congressional District were black. After the 2010 census, however, Louisiana was forced to eliminate one congressional district because of its declining population.

Cassidy saw that as an opportunity to jettison black voters -- and he did. With his approval, the Legislature and Gov. Bobby Jindal handed over a large chunk of his district's black voters to the 2nd Congressional District, a seat held by Cedric Richmond, an African-American congressman from New Orleans.

Cassidy's district is now just 22 percent black. In all, there are today 35,799 fewer black voters in the 6th district than in 2010. Conversely, Cassidy now represents 68,000 more white voters than he did in 2010.

Truth is, Cassidy and state Republicans wanted fewer black voters and many more white voters because that meant a safer Republican district. The district is now 73.7 percent white, one reason former Democratic Gov. Edwin Edwards faces near-impossible odds against Republican Garret Graves in the race to replace Cassidy.

In December, if Cassidy and Graves win their races, pundits will marvel at Landrieu's and the Democrats' collapse among white voters and urge Democrats to address a serious problem that threatens their existence in Louisiana. But let's also consider what is it about Republicans that black voters don't like.

The list of grievances is extensive, and it's one that Republicans like Cassidy, Guillory and their fellow Republican leaders will not soon seriously consider --especially when their party can count on the dependable, overwhelming support of white voters.
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This Republican staffer definitely lacks class and has no business snarking at the Obama girls for their perceived lack of "class"!

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Republican Congressional Aide Says Obama Daughters Lack Role Models
The staffer wrote that the first daughters should “dress like you deserve respect,” then apologized, according to a Tennessee newspaper.
By Arit John, November 29, 2014

A Republican congressional staffer is contemplating what it means to be classy after receiving criticism for an online rant against Sasha and Malia Obama.

Elizabeth Lauten, the communications director for Representative Stephen Fincher, wrote on Facebook Friday that President Barack Obama's daughters should “try showing a little class” after their less-than-enthusiastic appearance at Wednesday’s White House turkey pardon, according to the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis, Tenn.

She added that the girls should respect their roles as members of the first family, even though “your mother and father don’t respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter, so I’m guessing you’re coming up a little short in the ‘good role model’ department.”

Lauten also took issue with the outfits that Malia and Sasha wore to the event. “Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar,” she wrote. 

Among the online pushback: “[W]hy is she even discussing 13- and 16-year-old girls being at a bar anyway? They’re the Obama sisters, not the Bush twins,” wrote Demetria Lucas at The Root, referring to former President George W. Bush's daughters' alcohol-related citations.

Lauten did not respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg Politics. She apologized for her comments in a subsequent Facebook post after “many hours of prayer, talking to my parents, and re-reading my words online,” according to the newspaper. “Please know, those judgmental feelings truly have no place in my heart.”

This isn’t the first time the Obama daughters have been attacked over perceptions that they weren't properly representing themselves or the country. In 2009, commenters on the conservative blog Free Republic hurled racist comments at a then-11-year-old Malia because she wore a t-shirt with a peace sign and her hair in twists during a trip to Rome.
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"Unapologetic populism ... would 'explain better that the Democratic Party is for justice and opportunity — with no qualifiers — for everyone.'"

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Southern Democrats urge a return to party basics
By Bill Barrow, November 28, 2014

Southern Democrats are joining others in the party who say that a return to advocating to lift people out of economic hardship and emphasizing spending on education and public works will re-energize black voters and attract whites as well.

"It's time to draw a line in the sand and not surrender our brand," Rickey Cole, the party chairman in Mississippi, said. He believes candidates have distanced themselves from the past half-century of Democratic principles.

"We don't need a New Coke formula," Cole said. "The problem is we've been out there trying to peddle Tab and RC Cola."

Cole and other Southern Democrats acknowledge divisions with prominent populists such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is expected to run for president in 2016, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Yet they see merit in pushing stronger voting rights laws, tighter bank regulation, labor-friendly policies such as a higher minimum wage and other familiar party themes.

Democratic politics have become a tough sell in the conservative South. A major challenge in the region is finding candidates who can win high-profile races now that Republicans, who scored well in midterm elections earlier this month, dominate the leadership in state legislatures and across statewide offices.

Georgia Democrats thought legacy candidates were the answer. But Senate hopeful Michelle Nunn, former Sen. Sam Nunn's daughter, and gubernatorial challenger Jason Carter, former President Jimmy Carter's grandson, each fell short by about 8 percentage points despite well-funded campaigns and ambitious voter-registration drives.

Arkansas Democrats lost an open governor's seat and two-term Sen. Mark Pryor. Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu led an eight-candidate primary but faces steep odds in a Dec. 6 runoff. Democrats' closest statewide loss in the South was North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan's 1.7 percentage point margin of defeat.

Exit polling suggests Democrats did not get the black turnout they needed and lost badly among whites. Nunn and Carter got fewer than 1 in 4 white votes, while Pryor took 31 percent and Landrieu 18 percent.

Should Landrieu lose, Democrats will be left without a single governor, U.S. senator or legislative chamber under their control from the Carolinas westward to Texas.

J.P. Morrell, a state senator from New Orleans, faulted a muddled message that began with candidates avoiding President Barack Obama. "You have to articulate why the economic policies we advocate as Democrats actually benefit people on the ground," Morrell said.

In Georgia, Nunn supported a minimum-wage increase and gender-pay equity, but her television ads focused on ending partisan rancor. Carter mostly accused Republican Gov. Nathan Deal of shortchanging public education. Nunn and Carter supported Medicaid expansion under Obama's health overhaul, but neither emphasized that argument in television advertising.

"No real economic message got through," said Vincent Fort, a state senator from Atlanta.

Georgia's Democratic chairman, DuBose Porter, defended Carter and Nunn as "world-class candidates" who can run again. He said Democrats "proved Georgia can be competitive in 2016," but he cautioned against looking for a nominee other than Clinton. "She puts us in play," he said.

In an interview, Carter focused more on tactics than on broad messaging, saying the party must register minority voters and continue outreach to whites. "If 120,000 people change their mind in this election, it comes out differently," he said. "But it takes a lot of time to build those relationships. ... You can't expect it to happen in one year."

Gary Pearce, a Democratic strategist and commentator in North Carolina, said Hagan's margin in a GOP wave offers hope for 2016, when statewide executive offices will be on the ballot. Fresh arguments, he said, "will have to come from younger Democrats in the cities." He pointed to several young Democratic candidates who won county commission seats in Wake County, home to Raleigh.

Cole, the Mississippi chairman, acknowledged that any new approach won't close the party's gap in the South on abortion, same-sex marriage and guns, and said Democrats intensify that cultural disconnect with "identity politics."

While the party's positions on gay rights, minority voting access, women's rights and immigration are not wrong, Cole said, "those people who don't see themselves in those groups say, 'What have the Democrats got for me?'"

Unapologetic populism, he said, would "explain better that the Democratic Party is for justice and opportunity — with no qualifiers — for everyone."
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"The fact that he [Boehner] had such a difficult time finding legal representation that would stick is hardly a good sign."

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Boehner’s Lawsuit: For Show or for Love of the Constitution?
By Anthea Mitchell, November 30, 2014

Controversy seems to be all the rage lately. Around the time of President Obama’s announcement on his executive action reforming immigration, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) spoke up once more regarding his plans to sue the chief executive on Obamacare. The suit has been in discussion for some time of course, but during the latter half of elections, it died down some — possibly because Republicans were worried the split-off impeachment discussions could spur Democratic voters to the polls.

Now that elections have passed and the president is facing more criticism for what some see as an overstep of power, and others see as a historically consistent capacity, Boehner is back on the board with a lawsuit in his sights. Last week, he announced that the House of Representatives had “filed litigation over President Obama’s unilateral actions on his health care law,” according to the Speaker’s press office.

Too often over the past five years, the President has circumvented the American people and their elected representatives through executive action, changing and creating his own laws, and excusing himself from enforcing statutes he is sworn to uphold,” wrote Boehner in a CNN op-ed published over the weekend.

Boehner’s suit is tailored to address Obama’s signature healthcare law specifically, though his rhetoric certain suggests he’d like to take issue with a whole slew of activity from the executive branch. “The Constitution makes it clear that the President’s job is to faithfully execute the laws. And, in my view, the President has not faithfully executed the laws when it comes to a range of issues, including his health care law, energy regulations, foreign policy, and education,” wrote Boehner.

Other Republicans have been quick to add their voices, and it’s interesting to see that the GOP word choice has been quite similar across commentators. One of the most common words used in criticism of Obama — as we so often see with the gun control debate as well — has been “Constitution.” As in, “The House has an obligation to stand up for the Constitution.”

The interesting thing about appealing to this sort of idea, namely the violation of America’s most sacred document, is that the constitution, while of extreme historical, emotional, and national significance, is hardly a hefty document. Which is why American constitutional law is based on jurisprudence built up over years and years of complex legal changes, not to mention the changes political roles and traditions take on organically over years and years. One simple example would be the Vice Presidency.

Historically, the position of Vice President was actually a fairly weak one; not an unimportant one, but not one through which much action was taken. That role has since changed, particularly visible in the Bush/Cheney era. The key takeaway point here is that government evolves, and making a constitutional argument given where history has taken us in terms of the norms of executive action and Congressional battle of wills with our nation’s backlog of executive leaders isn’t terribly strong. This is especially the case given how unlikely Boehner’s suit is to be taken up. The political purpose of his actions may be successful, he may satisfy highly conservative critics of the Affordable Care Act, and he may place the president in a less than comfortable place; ultimately, though, it’s entirely possible he won’t even get his case heard. The fact that he had such a difficult time finding legal representation that would stick is hardly a good sign.

Boehner describes his suit as a response to the President failing to enforce law passed by Congress as is his constitutional duty, but his two listed litigation targets, “Unlawfully waiving the employer mandate,” and “illegally transferring funds to insurance companies” are somewhat schizophrenic in aligning with the described intent. Instead of a failure to enforce, he seems once again to be in discussion of overstepping power boundaries, and failing to go through Congress.

“What’s disappointing is the President’s flippant dismissal of the Constitution we are both sworn to defend. It is utterly beneath the dignity of office,” wrote Boehner in his op-ed. He’s likely referring to the oft-quoted “so sue me” comment Obama said in a July speech on the economy. Unfortunately for Boehner, it seems entirely plausible that rather than flippant dismissal of the Constitution (he taught constitutional law back in Chicago), he’s rather flippantly dismissing Boehner’s efforts.I mean, everybody recognizes this is a political stunt,” said Obama later that month. “But it’s worse than that, because every vote they’re taking like that,” — in reference to H.Res. 676 — “means a vote they’re not taking to actually help you.”
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Friday, November 28, 2014

The Koch brothers are attempting to bamboozle the millennials now.

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Does a Generation Burdened by Debt Care About Government Spending?
Democrats and Republicans would do well to talk about the federal deficit. No, seriously.
By Michael C. Bender and Julie Bykowicz, November 28, 2014

The political arguments for reducing the national debt often focus on the disastrous results awaiting our children and grandchildren. But do the kids even care?

A Washington-based nonprofit known as The Can Kicks Back set out to answer that question by testing an interactive, online ad campaign in two U.S. House races this year. That data, provided to Bloomberg Politics, show younger voters may indeed be willing to engage on federal spending.

"Growing up in the recession has had a real effect on how they view this stuff," said Ryan Schoenike, executive director of the group.

That rings true to Corie Whalen Stephens, the 27-year-old spokeswoman for another youth-focused political group, Generation Opportunity.

"For a lot of people my age, it's been hard to find jobs, get out of debt from college, save up," she said. "We have to be fiscally conservative with our own finances, so we expect that from our government, too."

To assess millennials' interest in spending issues, The Can Kicks Back deployed a set of online ads in California's 5th Congressional District, just north of San Francisco, where Democratic Representative Mike Thompson easily won reelection; and in New York's 1st District in eastern Long Island, where Republican Lee Zeldin unseated Democratic Representative Tim Bishop. The group identified the two districts as having relatively high rates of millennials (which they're defining as 18- to 34-year-olds).

The marketing campaign exceeded expectations with response rates that topped average Google benchmarks for political ads, according to an analysis from CampaignGrid, the online advertiser. The data showed that millennials were more likely to click on animated ads about the nation's debt issues as opposed to more dramatic or comedic spots. Women were more likely to watch the ads than men, while the click rate among Hispanic viewers skewed higher compared to blacks, Asians and whites.

Democrats, Republicans and independents all clicked through the ads at comparable rates, an indication to Schoenike that there may be bipartisan interest in the issue. "The conventional wisdom is that young voters aren't interested in fiscal issues, and it's just not true," Schoenike said. "It's that no one is talking to them."

The group's research could give some hints on how campaigns can engage young voters, who didn't turn out in the numbers they did in 2012. A report from Pew Research in March showed millennials are generally unattached to organized politics and religion, laden with debt, and more likely than older generations to say they support an activist government. A poll released in October by the Institute of Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government indicated that the youth vote is now up for grabs and could be a critical swing vote.

Harvard defines millennials as 18- to 29-year-olds, and polling director John Della Volpe notes that by the time the younger half of the group started paying attention to politics, President Barack Obama was in office and the country was well into hard economic times. They weren't part of the 2008 "hope and change" Obama promise, he said. "They've known nothing but gridlock and recession."

Boring as it may sound, government spending could be the best way for either party to connect with the kids. Della Volpe said he has been surprised by how high dealing with the deficit has been ranking among other priorities, including foreign policy and the environment, in recent Harvard millennial surveys.

"The issue is there for the taking and can really be a conversation starter between any politician and millennials," he said. He suggested it begin like this: "We all have limited resources. You. Me. Our government. We need to make the right choices as to how we spend money. Here are my ideas."

The Can Kicks Back, which leans Republican in its approach to government spending, will pore over the data and come up with best practices for youth engagement. Heretofore, some of its work in that area has seemed a bit out of touch, like when it got budget hawk and former Republican Senator Alan Simpson to dance Gangham Style. He was 81 years old at the time.

So what does get people's attention? Generation Opportunity, which has been around since June 2011 and gets funding from the billionaire Koch brothers' network of conservative donors, thinks it has found something. "The idea of generational theft, that we're being taken advantage of, that really wakes people up," Whalen Stephens said. Since March, it has been promoting a "petition to end the war on youth."

By signing up, "you are declaring that politicians must STOP STEALING money from young Americans," it says in part.

Generation Opportunity has proved it can do buzzy. Its series of "Creepy Uncle Sam" videos disparaging Obamacare have been viewed about 10 million times.
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It's past the time to "vote" this pair out of their assumed "offices"!

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How segregation and slums were deliberately created by the government

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This is long but worth the reading.
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How a Century of Racist Policies Made Ferguson Into a Pocket of Concentrated Despair
By Joshua Holland, October 27, 2014

Ferguson, Missouri, was a powder-keg waiting for a match long before August 9 and Michael Brown’s fateful encounter with Police Officer Darren Wilson. It is one of many predominantly black communities across the United States plagued by highly concentrated poverty, and all of the social problems that accompany it.

White America has come up with a number of rationales for these enduring pockets of despair. An elaborate mythology has developed that blames it on a “culture of poverty” — holding the poor culpable for their poverty and letting our political and economic systems off the hook. A somewhat more enlightened view holds that whites simply fled areas like Ferguson — which had a population that was 99 percent white as recently as 1970 — because of personal racial animus, leaving them as hollowed-out, predominantly black “ghettos.”

But a study by Richard Rothstein, a research fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, comes to a very different conclusion. In his report, “The Making of Ferguson,” Rothstein details how throughout the last century a series of intentionally discriminatory policies at the local, state and federal levels created the ghettos we see today. BillMoyers.com spoke with Rothstein about the report. The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity.

Joshua Holland: Most people believe that Ferguson became so racially polarized because of “white flight” — white people fled the area because of personal prejudice against African-Americans. In your report, you argue that this misses a crucial point. What are we overlooking?

Rothstein: The segregation that characterizes Ferguson, and that characterizes St. Louis, was the creation of purposeful public policy. We have a segregated nation by design.

The St. Louis metropolitan area was no different from most metropolitan areas of the country. The ghetto in the central city of St. Louis was redeveloped for universities, and for a number of other uses, and the African American population in the central city was shifted to inner ring suburbs like Ferguson.

It was done primarily with two policies: First, public housing was segregated, purposely, by the federal government, so that what were previously somewhat integrated neighborhoods in urban areas were separated into separate black and white public housing projects.

And then, in the 1950s, as suburbs came to be developed, the federal government subsidized white residents of St. Louis to move to the suburbs, but effectively prohibited black residents from doing so. The federal government subsidized the construction of many, many subdivisions by requiring that bank loans for the builders be made on the condition that no homes be sold to blacks.

Because black housing was so restrictive, there were so few places where African-Americans could live in St. Louis. So what was left of St. Louis’ African-American community became overcrowded. City services were not readily available. The city was zoned so that the industrial or commercial areas were placed in black neighborhoods but not in white neighborhoods. So the industrial areas, where African-Americans lived, became slums.

And then white residents in places like Ferguson came to associate slum conditions with African-Americans, not realizing that this was not a characteristic of the people themselves, but rather it was a creation of public policy.

This is a somewhat oversimplified description of a complex array of policies. But every policy that I described in this report can be found in every other metropolitan area throughout the country. These policies applied in the New York City area, and they applied in the liberal San Francisco area. It’s a story that characterizes the entire country, but you cannot understand what’s going on with Ferguson today without knowing this history.

Holland: Who was Adel Allen, and why is his story — which took place in nearby Kirkwood, Missouri — important for understanding how Ferguson came to be the city it is today?

Rothstein: Adel Allen was an African American engineer for the McDonnell Douglas Corporation. He was recruited from Kansas to work in the St. Louis metro area. When he got there, he couldn’t find housing anywhere in the suburban areas near the plant. He was about to move back to Kansas, because the only place he could find housing was in overcrowded conditions in the central St. Louis ghetto.

He finally got a white friend to buy a home for him in the town of Kirkwood. He moved into a block that was overwhelmingly white. There were 30 white families. Seven years later, there were 30 black families and two white families on that block. And this was largely because of practices in the real estate industry.

Realtors engaged in a practice which came to be known as “blockbusting.” When a black family moved onto a block, like Adel Allen did in Kirkwood, the real estate agents would go door to door and try to panic their white neighbors into selling their homes at very reduced prices, with the idea that property values were going to be destroyed because African-Americans were moving into their neighborhood.

Those real estate agents then bought those properties at very low prices and resold them to African-Americans, who had to pay very high prices because they had no other housing options.

Now, this was something that was not considered unethical until the 1970s. In fact, licenses would be suspended by the state real estate commission if a real estate agent sold a home to a black family in a white neighborhood — until the first one sold, and then it was considered perfectly ethical for real estate agents to turn an entire block into an African-American block.

Once they moved into that block, all of a sudden, over the course of a few years, city services began to decline. Other parts of Kirkwood which were overwhelmingly white continued to get good services, but the African-American neighborhoods were denied. The rest of the city got sidewalks and curbs; the black blocks did not.

Holland: You also write, “State sponsored labor and employment discrimination reduced the incomes of African-Americans relative to whites in St. Louis.” So as a result, even absent these kinds of housing policies you describe, African-Americans would be hard-pressed to afford to live in a decent white suburb.

Rothstein: That’s right. In St. Louis, African-Americans were excluded from good-paying jobs for most of the 20th century. They opened up only beginning in the 1970s. For example, construction jobs during the enormous housing boom that created the suburbs in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s were completely closed to African-Americans because they could not be admitted to construction unions, and the federal government certified every one of those segregated unions as the exclusive agent for their trades in those construction sites. So it’s not simply the result of private discrimination by the unions. This was something that was sanctioned by the federal government. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the National Labor Relations Board first withdrew certification from a segregated union and the policy didn’t become widespread for at least another 10 years or so.

There are many other examples I could give you. During the enormous employment boom during World War II, St. Louis was a big center of arms manufacturing. Lots of workers flooded to St. Louis from the Ozarks and other areas, black workers as well as white workers. But the largest ammunition producer would not hire African-Americans until the war was almost over.

So all of those lost opportunities for employment created a situation where African-American incomes were much, much lower than white incomes.

Holland: I’m going to ask you to connect some dots. Many of the things you describe in the paper haven’t been legal for quite a bit of time. How does this legacy of institutional racism in the past set up the unrest that has played out in Ferguson after the shooting death of Michael Brown?

Rothstein: As we know from a lot of recent research, intergenerational income mobility in this country is quite low. If you’re born into a low-income family, the chances are very, very great that you yourself will have a low income. We don’t have nearly the kind of mobility that is mythical in this country.

So after a century of policies which denied African-Americans access to jobs that pay decent wages, the likelihood is that their children and their children’s children will still be paying the price for those policies that held their parents and grandparents behind for so long.

And then there are the housing policies. Let me take the example of the suburb of Kirkwood. In the 1950s, when Kirkwood was being developed, those homes were selling for about $8,000 dollars each, which was about two times the national median income at that time. Working families could afford to buy a home for twice median income, but only whites were permitted to buy into Kirkwood. Any white working family could’ve afforded to buy those homes, and very often, they were further subsidized by the federal government — veterans could buy with no down payment, and obtain loans at very low interest rates.

Those families then benefited from a half-century of equity appreciation in their homes. If they moved, they profited on the sale. And they were able to transmit that equity to their children. Their children were secure. Their children were able to go to college.

Today, those same homes that sold for $8,000 in the 1950s sell for $400,000, which is about six or seven times national median income. So today, working families, whether white or black, can’t afford to buy in Kirkwood. Fifty years ago, when whites similar to them in every other respect except their race were populating the suburbs, African-American families were not permitted to do so, so the legacy of that discrimination continues to this date. Poor African-Americans got crowded into ghettos — into all black, low-income neighborhoods like Ferguson.

And because the Federal Housing Administration refused to guarantee mortgages for African-Americans and would only guarantee mortgages for whites, black people who could afford to buy homes couldn’t get mortgages for them. So speculators sold those homes to them on contract, like on an installment plan. And if they were ever late with a payment, their house would be immediately repossessed and resold again on contract to someone else. In order to be able to make these contract payments, which were very high because the demand for housing was so great relative to the supply available to African-Americans, families doubled up, they subdivided their homes, they rented out parts of their homes. That’s a great example of how public policies led to the formation of slums.

This then became a multigenerational problem.
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"Did Mr. Boehner learn nothing from the 16-day shutdown the House imposed on the country in October 2013?" In short, NO.

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COMMENT:  "... It is not Congress' job to block the President at every turn. Their job is to serve the people of the United States. It's about time they started to do it."
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The New G.O.P. Showdown Threat
By the New York Times Editorial Board, November 27, 2014

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama announced with great gravity the other day that Republicans had decided not to impeach President Obama over his plan to allow millions of immigrants to remain in this country without fear of deportation through his executive authority. But that concession is not the end of the matter. He is planning much more serious mischief: using Congress’s power of the purse to pressure the White House into backing off.

Condemning the immigration action as “unlawful,” Mr. Sessions says he and other Republicans may filibuster any attempt to pay for government operations through the full fiscal year, which ends Oct. 1. Instead, he wants to pay for government through a series of short-term bills, possibly month to month, with each one trying to overturn Mr. Obama’s actions.

That raises the possibility of a budget shutdown fight every month for nearly a year. And Mr. Sessions’ voice will count in that fight — he is in line to be the new chairman of the Budget Committee.

Some Republican leaders, including the next majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, have tried to take a loftier position, saying they want a full year’s spending bill to avert a widespread shutdown. Nonetheless, they are seriously considering using short-term bills to pay for immigration enforcement. That approach is an implicit and reckless threat to close down immigration agencies to prevent them from issuing work permits to immigrants.

In the House, Speaker John Boehner has refused to rule out the possibility of threatening either a narrow or a full-scale shutdown to get Mr. Obama to back off his plans. Did Mr. Boehner learn nothing from the 16-day shutdown the House imposed on the country in October 2013? That deeply irresponsible act — a futile tantrum aimed at the health reform law — harmed hundreds of thousands of government employees, along with countless citizens who depend on important programs. It hurt the reputation of the country, and particularly that of the House and the Republican Party.

Still, he has decided not to anger the most extreme wing of his party, which is agitating for obstruction. When one prominent House Republican — Harold Rogers, chairman of the Appropriations Committee — pointed out that these tactics probably wouldn’t work because many immigration services are funded by fees, not appropriations, he was shouted down by House leaders, who said that he was not speaking for them.

Mr. Obama would presumably veto any spending bill that damages the immigration system or domestic security, at which point Republicans would no doubt blame any resulting shutdown on him. As Senator Ted Cruz of Texas wrote recently in Politico, “If the President is unwilling to accept funding for, say, the Department of Homeland Security without his being able to unilaterally defy the law, he alone will be responsible for the consequences.”

When Congress returns on Monday, it will have only a few business days to choose its approach before the current spending bill runs out on Dec. 11. To be the “mature governing body” that some Republicans promised, Congress needs to pass a full year’s spending bill for every department, along the lines of the bipartisan budget agreement approved last December.

Once Republicans take over both houses of Congress next year, they have every right to pass an immigration bill of their choosing, which Mr. Obama would have a right to veto. But threatening to shut down the government or any part of it to achieve their aims is outrageous.
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Thursday, November 27, 2014

"Just because you've been successful in a completely different arena doesn't mean you ought to run the government. "

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COMMENT: Not to mention the fact that business people always want to start at the top of the political pyramid, rather than entry (or even mid) level.
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Why do we think businesspeople will make good politicians?
By Paul Waldman, November 26, 2014

In every presidential campaign, there are crackpots who run vanity campaigns. We never learn their names, because the press doesn’t bother with them and they don’t appear in televised debates. In order to get the kind of attention that translates into a competitive bid, you need to have one of a small number of qualifications, like having held a high elected office (senator, governor), or been an important government official; a former secretary of state would qualify. But if a world-class mathematician or chef ran for president, people would find it strange. Just because you’ve been successful in a completely different arena doesn’t mean you ought to run the government. So why should we take this seriously?
On a Republican presidential debate stage expected to be filled with more than a dozen current and former politicians, Carly Fiorina envisions herself standing out — as the only woman and the only CEO.

Sensing an opportunity in a crowded field that lacks a front-runner, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive is actively exploring a 2016 presidential run. Fiorina has been talking privately with potential donors, recruiting campaign staffers, courting grass-roots activists in early caucus and primary states and planning trips to Iowa and New Hampshire starting next week.
If Fiorina decides to go ahead with a run, she will be treated like a serious candidate, interviewed on national news programs, and invited to primary debates. Why? Because of the myth that success in business, unlike success in any other area of life, somehow translates directly to competence in politics. This myth persists despite the complete lack of evidence that it is even remotely true.

Just from memory I could rattle off a dozen names of businessmen (they’re mostly, but not all, men) who ran for office saying, “I’m a businessman, not a politician” and ended up being terrible candidates. How many businesspeople can you think of who ran for office, won, and turned out to be good at their new job? Well, there’s Michael Bloomberg, and…that’s about it.

What’s really crazy is that “I’m a businessman, not a politician” is supposed to be a reason to vote for someone and not against them. If you applied for a job as an engineer or an attorney or an electrician and said, “Hire me, because my experience is in a completely different area and I know nothing about the business your company is in,” how well do you think it would go over?

It isn’t just because we believe that politics is inherently corrupt, and if you haven’t been sullied by it then you must be more virtuous than people who have actually done it before. It also suggests that we think that politics is, at its heart, simple. If somebody could just get in there, cut through the bull, roll up their sleeves and get things done, we could solve all our problems.

But that’s not how it works. Politics is, in fact, incredibly complex. That’s what makes it interesting. The idea that success in politics comes from things like “common sense” and “[insert your state's name here] values” is absurd. Yet no matter how many times candidates hand us that line of baloney, we continue to believe it. Even in the area where businesspeople claim expertise — the economy — their experience is of limited value at best. Making widgets and setting macroeconomic policy are not the same thing.

As for Carly Fiorina, she obviously understands business, or she could have never risen to become CEO of a large corporation. But the sum total of her political experience is one disastrously failed Senate campaign. Like most businesspeople-turned-candidates, she probably assumed that her success in one area would translate to the other, but it didn’t. So now she wants to run for president, and the political media will act as though that isn’t a patently ridiculous notion.
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"... the Federal Election Committee was too loosely enforcing a campaign finance regulation ..."

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Judge Rules Fewer Political Groups Can Keep Their Donors Secret
By Lauren Hodges, November 26, 2014

A U.S. district court judge awarded a victory to campaign finance reform advocates on Tuesday when she ruled the Federal Election Committee was too loosely enforcing a campaign finance regulation passed in 2007, allowing some big-money donors to remain anonymous.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act required the identification of contributors giving $1,000 or more to fund "issue ads" near Election Day. But since it was enacted, only a few of those contributors have been revealed, because the FEC ruled those disclosures weren't required for ads supporting specific candidates. The Los Angeles Times reported the details of the ruling:
"The decision concerns a type of issue ads that became ubiquitous in recent elections. Typically, the ads suggest that voters call a senator or congressman and give an opinion about something. When those ads mention a candidate and are run close to elections, they're known as 'electioneering' communications, and the amount of spending has to be reported."
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), along with reform advocacy groups Campaign Legal Center, Public Citizen and Democracy 21, sued the FEC in 2011 to overturn the 2007 regulation. The Associated Press reported that Democracy 21's president, Fred Werthiemer claimed the FEC allowed loopholes in the regulation to fund federal elections with "dark money."

Van Hollen called Judge Amy Berman Jackson's Tuesday decision "a victory for democracy." His partners in the lawsuit also hailed the ruling.

"We are seeing a full-throated endorsement of disclosure by the lower courts," said Tara Malloy with the Campaign Legal Center. "We are enjoying the victory, though I am sure the fight will continue."

Conservative groups that attempted to intervene in the case have voiced their disappointment. Thomas Kirby, an attorney who represents the Center for Individual Freedom, told The Washington Post that "the ruling created an upside-down world in which greater burdens are imposed on those who merely refer to a candidate than on those who expressly advocate election or defeat of a candidate."

In Tuesday's decision, Jackson ruled that the FEC "overstepped" when it wrote the 2007 regulation into the campaign finance laws. That regulation, among other cases, led to the victory of the 2010 Citizens United case in the Supreme Court, which allowed nonprofits to hide their funding sources.

That decision essentially deleted the restrictions of the McCain-Feingold Act. The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that over $140 million of the so-called "dark money" was spent in the 2014 election. Bloomberg's Businessweek reports that tens of thousands of TV ads run this year by GOP fundraising operation Crossroad GPS, founded by former Bush administration adviser Karl Rove, "helped Republicans win control of the Senate."

Jackson's decision that the regulation was "arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law" recalled an original report by the Sunlight Foundation in January. The report stated that Crossroads GPS violated election laws by failing to register itself as a political group instead of a nonprofit, social-welfare operation — a distinction that came with a huge impact.
"In recent years, the group Crossroads GPS has spent tens of millions on political ads fueled by anonymous donors. Registering as a political group would have forced the nonprofit to begin naming its big-time benefactors. Crossroads has also become a model for hundreds of other committees that during the last election cycle pumped more than $300 million into the campaign — an estimate that is undoubtedly low because of the lack of disclosure required of these organizations."
It was also noted in the judge's ruling that the FEC reported their findings in 2007 at 5:05 p.m. before a weekend — what's known in the news industry as a "Friday night news dump" because people are believed to be paying the least attention to the news during that portion of the week.

The FEC now has the option of either appealing Jackson's decision or change its regulations. The six members of the committee are evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats and likely will have a difficult time agreeing on a course of action.

FEC Chairman Lee Goodman told The Washington Post, "I've always said that I'm open to judicial guidance on this issue, and now we'll have to study the court's opinion to determine exactly what obligation the FEC has in response."
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"60 percent of Latino Republicans say they'd oppose Republican moves to stop Obama's plan from going into effect."

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Even Latino Republicans don't want the GOP to block Obama's immigration plan
By Dara Lind, November 24, 2014

  1. A new poll from finds that 89 percent of Latino voters support President Obama's executive actions on immigration.
  2. 80 percent of Latino voters say they'll oppose any attempt by Republicans to block Obama's executive actions
  3. Worryingly for the GOP, that includes 60 percent of Latino Republicans.

Nearly all Latinos support Obama's immigration actions

According to a new poll from Latino pollster Latino Decisions, an overwhelming 89 percent of Latino voters support President Obama's new executive actions. That's an even higher level of support than Latino voters showed for Obama's first executive relief program for unauthorized immigrants (the more limited Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program), even though the DACA program was more popular among all voters than the new plan appears to be.

And 80 percent of Latino voters say they'll oppose any attempt by Republicans to block Obama's executive actions. That's not just a reflection of the fact that Latino voters lean Democratic — 60 percent of Latino Republicans say they'd oppose Republican moves to stop Obama's plan from going into effect.

That's a very worrisome result for any Republicans who are trying to appeal to their conservative base in 2015, while bringing out the rest of the party — not to mention expanding the party's appeal to Latinos — in 2016.
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Wednesday, November 26, 2014

"... what we really need are guides for gently deflecting the conversation away from politics ..."

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Don't argue about politics this Thanksgiving. Just don't.
By Michael Brendan Dougherty, November 26, 2014

Imagine this scene on Thanksgiving day. The turkey is partly carved, the mashed potatoes are being passed around.
Your Mother: What are you thankful for?

You: Well, if I can say so, I'm thankful for ObamaCare because it was great that I was able to sign up for health insurance on the internet.

Caricatured Uncle: Hope Reverend Wright isn't on your death panel! Payback for Ferguson coming to you.

Your Mother [hoping to get control of the situation]: I did something different this year with the sweet potatoes! Do you like it?
Never fear. The pundits are here to save you. Think Progress has a guide on "how to argue with your Evangelical uncle" about marriage equality. Vox is advising you on Bill Cosby, Ferguson, and immigration (you're for it as much as possible, of course).

Last year, some of Michael Bloomberg's dollars trickled down to someone who gave you talking points on gun control. Chris Hayes is once again dedicating an hour of his MSNBC show to the cause.

Less combatively, Conor Friedersdorf advises you to adopt his brand of nodding empathy: "Before you focus on any point of disagreement, ask questions of your interlocutor to figure out why they think the way they do about the subject at hand."

These advice columns are becoming a genre unto themselves. The stock villain: crazy right-wing uncle, the jokes about stuffing. But I recognize them by what they unwittingly emulate: guides for religious evangelism. The gentle, righteous self-regard, the slightly orthogonal response guides, the implied urgency to cure your loved ones of their ignorance. Your raging uncle will know the truth, and the truth will set him free.

That's a problem. Our politics are taking on a religious shape. Increasingly we allow politics to form our moral identity and self-conception. We surround ourselves with an invisible community of the "elect" who share our convictions, and convince ourselves that even our closest and beloved relatives are not only wrong, but enemies of goodness itself. And so one of the best, least religious holidays in the calendar becomes a chance to deliver your uncle up as a sinner in the hands of an angry niece.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone. As a conservative raised in an argumentative and left-leaning Irish-American family, Thanksgiving and other holiday dinners did more than any professional media training to prepare me for MSNBC panels. But arguments like these, particularly when we allow politics to dominate our notions of ourselves, can leave lasting scars. And precisely because our familial relationships are so personal, the likely responses to our creamed and beaten talking points will be defensive, anxious, off-subject, or overly aggressive.

You might think you can sneak in a killer talking point about immigration reform, only to touch off a sprawling congress about the personhood of unborn children, the Vietnam War, and whether it is really sexist to describe Nancy Pelosi as a "tough broad."

Instead, what we really need are guides for gently deflecting the conversation away from politics, as our polite grandmothers once did.

Bringing up politics can be a form of self-assertion, or a way for a family member to test whether he is accepted for who he is. One of the reasons the "conservative uncle" has become the cliched oaf of the Thanksgiving dinner is precisely because he may feel, rightly or wrongly, that the country is moving away from him. He could be testing to see whether his family is ready to reject him, too. Or he could just be an oafish, self-regarding lout. Either way, it doesn't have to be that hard to show he is appreciated as a family member and human being.
Caricatured Uncle: Obummer sure got waxed in that election. Guess he isn't the Messiah, huh?

You: Har har, you got me. But hey, I get to read and think about the news every day. I only see you twice a year. How is the renovation going?
Instead of honing your argument on tax reform into unassailability, maybe ask your parents or siblings ahead of time what some of the further-flung or more volatile members of your family are up to in their lives before they sit down. Get the family's talking points, rather than Mike Bloomberg's.

And if you do want to pointlessly and frustratingly argue about politics with your uncle, just friend him on Facebook.
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"... we've received another reminder that Republican talk about fiscal policy is a rather pathetic and insincere joke."

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GOP demands a pound of flesh in tax deal
By Steve Benen, November 26, 2014

House Republicans haven’t had much success this Congress passing actual legislation into law, but they’ve nevertheless invested quite a bit of time focusing on one of their favorite pastimes: cutting taxes without paying for it.

The Democratic-run Senate has largely ignored the bills from the lower chamber, but in recent weeks, House Republicans and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) have been negotiating a deal on tax breaks set to expire at the end of 2014, and yesterday, a deal took shape. Before we get to the substantive details, it’s important to note how GOP lawmakers approached the talks:
Left off were the two tax breaks valued most by liberal Democrats: a permanently expanded earned-income credit and a child tax credit for the working poor. Friday night, Republican negotiators announced they would exclude those measures as payback for the president’s executive order on immigration, saying a surge of newly legalized workers would claim the credit, tax aides from both parties said.
We really have reached a farcical level of policymaking. Republicans aren’t just obsessed with tax cuts, they’re deliberately scrapping breaks that go to working families. Why? Largely because GOP officials aren’t done with their tantrum over immigration policy – right-wing hissy fits rarely produce sound public policy – and Republicans feel as if they’re entitled to a pound of flesh because the Big Bad President hurt their feelings.

The result is a tax deal that treats the working poor as collateral damage in a political war. Sorry, struggling families, Americans elected a far-right Congress, and your loss is their “payback.”

And as important as this is, it’s not even the most offensive part of the agreement on taxes that came together yesterday.

At issue is a package of 55 tax breaks worth $440 billion over the next decade, nearly all of which benefit corporations, which are already enjoying record profits. Danny Vinik described the agreement as an example of “everything that’s wrong with Washington.
Imagine somebody asked you to imagine the worst possible deal on taxes. It’d probably have the following qualities:

It would be bad for the environment.

It would be bad for the deficit.

It would give short shrift to the working poor.

And it would be a bonanza for corporations.

Unfortunately, you don’t have to conjure up such a package. Congressional Republicans already have.
This may sound like an exaggeration. It’s not. Indeed, perhaps the single most striking aspect of this is that Republicans intend to pay for the tax breaks entirely through deficit financing. After all the talk from GOP lawmakers about killing our grandchildren with mountains of debt, all the rhetoric about how “broke” the United States is, all the claims that we can’t invest in job creation or even jobless benefits unless every penny is offset, we’ve received another reminder that Republican talk about fiscal policy is a rather pathetic and insincere joke.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published a fairly detailed, albeit understated, analysis of the tax deal, calling it “a significant step backward on several key issues facing the nation: long-term budget deficits, high levels of poverty (especially among children), and widening inequality.”

And what about the provision in the deal that’s bad for the environment? At Republicans’ request, the package does not extend the wind-power tax credit – GOP lawmakers said it wasn’t fair to the oil and gas industry, so it had to go.

Given all of this, President Obama has vowed to veto the agreement. I talked to a handful of Democratic aides on Capitol Hill overnight, and each said the package would enjoy very little Dem support in its current form.

The obvious question, aside from why Republicans are so incredibly reckless and irresponsible when it comes to tax breaks for corporations that don’t need them, is why Harry Reid’s office would agree to such a far-right agreement. The Nevada Democrat and his team have been involved in plenty of bipartisan compromises, and they know their way around a negotiating table, so why accept such a ridiculous deal?

Reid’s office hasn’t said much publicly – and with an Obama veto now inevitable, it may be a moot point – but apparently House Republicans were quite inflexible during the talks and this was the best result Democratic aides thought they could get before the GOP takeover of Congress is complete.

What’s more, some of the existing 55 tax breaks, sometimes called “tax extenders,” actually have merit and progressive support. For Republican negotiators, the message was, in effect, “The only way to keep these breaks is to give us more of what we want.”
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"... rather than leading the government in a different direction Republicans seem determined to take it further down the rabbit hole."

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COMMENT: "... If you force a president to act unilaterally, then that is what he should, he is there to serve the people, not the republicans, the rich, and big business."
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Republican Control Is Destined to Fail
By Dale Hansen, November 25, 2014

This week, President Barack Obama used his executive authority to prevent the deportation on millions of undocumented immigrants. It should come as no surprise that Republicans do not support this action and have added it to a growing list of complaints about how the president and congressional Democrats do business. Unfortunately for Republicans, these complaints represent the pinnacle of hypocrisy.

Perhaps executive actions do undermine the "democratic process" as Speaker Boehner suggests, however it should be noted that Obama averages just 32 executive actions per year, while Republican presidents have been far more liberal in their use of this power.

George W. Bush -- 36 per year
George H.W. Bush -- 41 per year
Ronald Reagan -- 47 per year
Gerald Ford -- 56 per year
Richard Nixon -- 57 per year

If this is a problem, it is a problem for all presidents, not just the Democratic ones.

Boehner feels that "President Obama has turned a deaf ear to the people that he was elected ... to serve." According to a release by Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, a Fox News poll shows:
By a 78-21 percent margin, voters favor allowing immigrants in the U.S. illegally to become citizens after they meet requirements such as passing a background check.
Given that the Senate already passed a comprehensive immigration reform act with bipartisan support that included a pathway to citizenship, which the vast majority of Americans favor, by refusing to bring this bill up for a vote in the House it is Boehner who has turned a deaf ear to the people.

For much of the past year, House Republicans, lead by Eric Cantor, have been portraying the Democratic controlled Senate as a place where good bills go to die. With over 300 bills passed by the House waiting for approval in the Senate, such a claim seems accurate. However, history shows that every year around 300 House bills fail to get a vote in the Senate. 2014 is just another year in long line of political dysfunction.

Having said that, the two worst years on record were 2011 and 2012, when Republican filibusters caused a total of nearly 1,300 House bills to stall in the Senate.

If failing to get a vote on House bills is an issue when Republicans control the House, it should also have been a concern for Republicans when Democrats controlled the House.

Of the 46 "jobs bills" the House has passed that Boehner considers "bipartisan" half of them received support from less than 10% of House Democrats with 2 bills receiving zero votes and 12 others garnering under 5% support.

By contrast the Senate currently has 76 bills waiting for the House to vote on. All have the support of at least 10% of Senate Republicans. If a wave of bipartisanship is sweeping Congress, shouldn't that also include Senate bills stuck in the House?

Included in the list of bills being ignored by the House and Speaker Boehner are the following:

-- S. 2912: Don't Tax Our Fallen Public Safety Heroes Act
-- S. 2673: United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014
-- S. 1691: Border Patrol Agent Pay Reform Act of 2014
-- S. 2198: Emergency Drought Relief Act of 2014
-- S. 1417: Newborn Screening Saves Lives Reauthorization Act of 2013
-- S. 287: Helping Homeless Veterans Act of 2013
-- S. 743: Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013
-- S. 853: Reducing Flight Delays Act of 2013

While Republican leadership wants to depict Democrats and the president as uncompromising ideologues, such assertions from a group that have shown to be uncompromising ideologues falls on deaf ears. Americans don't want more political posturing, finger pointing and empty rhetoric. They want a government that spends more time in Washington than raising money. They want a government that acts on the wishes of voters instead of the wishes of the highest bidder. They want a government that finds common ground and rallies public support rather than constantly dividing the nation to win elections.

Unfortunately, rather than leading the government in a different direction Republicans seem determined to take it further down the rabbit hole. That should be disappointing no matter what your political affiliations are.
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"... a whopping 72% of the public either supports the president’s policy or wishes it was even more ambitious."

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Immigration outrage remains quite limited
By Steve Benen, November 26, 2014

It’s been about a week since Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) told USA Today that Americans were poised to “go nuts” in opposition to President Obama’s immigration policy.
Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn warns there could be not only a political firestorm but acts of civil disobedience and even violence in reaction to President Obama’s executive order on immigration Thursday.

“The country’s going to go nuts, because they’re going to see it as a move outside the authority of the president, and it’s going to be a very serious situation,” Coburn said on Capital Download. “You’re going to see – hopefully not – but you could see instances of anarchy. … You could see violence.”
Americans certainly saw violence in Ferguson, Missouri, but the prediction that the country is “going to go nuts” in response to presidential overreach doesn’t seem to be holding up especially well.

Gallup’s daily tracking poll, for example, shows Obama’s approval rating at 44% – which is up a little, not down, since the immigration announcement. In fact, at this point, Obama is nearly as popular as Ronald Reagan was at identical points in their presidencies. A CNN poll also shows Obama at 44% approval.

And speaking of the CNN poll, the survey posed an interesting question to respondents: “A major part of Obama’s new policy changes will allow some immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally to stay here temporarily and apply for a work permit if they have children who are U.S. citizens. Other immigrants in the U.S. illegally will not be eligible for this program and can still be deported. Do you think that plan goes too far, does not go far enough, or is about right?”

The responses probably weren’t what Republicans were hoping for:

* Too far 26%

* Not far enough 22%

* About right 50%

In this sense, a whopping 72% of the public either supports the president’s policy or wishes it was even more ambitious.

The broader point is not to pick on Coburn for a faulty prediction. Rather, what I suspect happens is that congressional Republicans spent a lot of time talking to other congressional Republicans and getting their news from outlets that tell the GOP what it wants to hear. Soon, folks inside the bubble become convinced that everyone sees the world as they do. The backlash against Obama, they assume, will be swift and severe.

After all, “everyone knows” the president is going too far, right?

Actually, no. The president’s policy, while important, was hardly revolutionary. His executive actions relied on established precedent and existing law to pick up the slack after Congress failed once again to do its job.

The country didn’t “go nuts” because there was no reason for a mass freak-out.
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No State of the Union address? Probably just another doomed GOP political tactic.

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Conservatives: Don't Let Obama Give State of the Union Address
By Arlt John, November 26, 2014

A series of political commenters, led by the editor of the National Review, have a new idea for Speaker John Boehner: refuse to invite President Obama from the State of the Union address. 

The thinking behind this proposal is that it would aptly demonstrate the level of GOP discontentment with the president, in case he doesn’t already know. Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review, told The New York Times Tuesday night that if he were John Boehner “I’d say to the president: ‘Send us your State of the Union in writing. You’re not welcome in our chamber.’”

Last week, the conservative website Breitbart suggested suggested Boehner do the same “so that the elected representatives of the people do not have to listen to, or applaud, a man who is violating his oath of office and governing as a tyrant.” Meanwhile, unnamed congressional Republicans are privately considering yanking the State of the Union welcome mat, according to Politico.

While the plan legally checks outthe Constitution simply requires that “from time to time” the president let Congress know what’s going on—the optics would be problematic. “I know many see this as a great idea, but I don’t get it,” Noah Rothman at the conservative Hot Air tweeted. “Look petty, invite bad press, accomplish... What exactly?”

Major conservative groups likely aren't impressed either. Heritage Action—which is pushing Congress to send Obama an appropriations bill defunding the order, even though he'd likely veto said bill—is, at best, indifferent to the idea.

“Rolling back the policy is the important focus and everything else may well be good as long as it doesn’t distract from the actual hard work of rolling back what he did,” Dan Holler, the communications director for Heritage Action, told Bloomberg Politics.

“Where I do think it would be harmful for the Republican party is if they allow that to be their only response,” he added. 

To be clear, this isn’t something Speaker john Boehner has endorsed, or even publicly talked about. Instead, it reads like another doomed political tactic—like impeachment or a government shutdown—that he’ll likely ignore. That may not be so be easy, however.

“Republicans broadly and conservatives specifically are looking for a way to register opposition to what the president did last week in terms of executive action on immigration,” Holler said. “And to the extent that [refusing to invite Obama] falls into that bucket I suspect we’ll hear a lot about it.”

State of the Union viewership has fallen throughout Obama’s presidency—only 33.3 million people watched his 2013 address, the lowest audience for the address since Bill Clinton’s in 2000.

“I don’t think anyone is under the impression that a State of the Union ... fundamentally changes the political playing field,” Holler said.

Given that the major networks declined to air the immigration announcement, Obama might get more attention if he was snubbed.
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Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Cruz "reiterated an argument he’s made countless times, that Republicans should pick a rock solid conservative—such as himself ..." But is he "too right wing"?

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Report: GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson deems Ted Cruz “too right wing”
By Todd J. Gillman, November 25, 2014

update 5:30 pm

The New York Observer now reports that Adelson called to dispute the way it characterized his take on Cruz: “Mr. Adelson made clear to the Observer that he was the only person in the room with Mr. Cruz and thus the only one in a position to know how he felt about the Senator.”

Also they met at the St. Regis, not the Palace.

Whatever Adelson does think of Cruz — other than that it’s something other than previously described — the Observer wasn’t saying.

We sought input hours ago from Adelson’s top political adviser but he hasn’t responded to a call and email.

original post

WASHINGTON – There are donors, and then there are megadonors. On Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz got some quality time with a GOP financier in a league of his own: casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

Cruz sat next to the Las Vegas billionaire Sunday night at the Zionist Organization of America dinner in New York. The next morning, according to the New York Observer, they met privately for two hours at the Palace Hotel.

“According to one source close to Mr. Adelson, the casino owner liked Mr. Cruz but found the senator `too right wing’ and concluded he is a longshot to win the nomination,” the Observer reported.

With a net worth of $32.4 billion, Adelson is the 12th wealthiest American on Forbes’ list. He would be a great friend for any presidential aspirant to have. In 2012, he and his wife Miriam Adelson gave $92.8 million to GOP causes and candidates. Almost single handedly, he bankrolled former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s effort. Any number of 2016 hopefuls have been courting him in what has been dubbed the “Sheldon primary.”

Over a kosher lunch on Monday with a small group of Jewish leaders, according to the Observer, Cruz predicted that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. And he reiterated an argument he’s made countless times, that Republicans should pick a rock solid conservative — such as himself– out of the dozen or more potential candidates.

“There’s one bucket that, for lack of a better word, I’ll call the ‘moderate establishment’ bucket. It’ll be some combination of Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney,” Cruz said over lunch, according to the Observer. “Whoever’s in that bucket will raise tons of money. A lot of donors will rush to write them checks. And yet if the nominee comes from that bucket, the same voters who stayed home in 2008 and 2012 will stay home again and Hillary’s the winner.”

At Sunday’s dinner, Adelson joined the audience in giving Cruz a standing ovation.
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