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Cruz: Not enough votes now for Obamacare shutdown threat
By Kevin Liptak, August 25, 2013
Sen. Ted Cruz, who has crafted a plan to put the government's finances on the line if President Barack Obama's health care plan isn't stripped of its funding, said in an interview this week there aren't enough Republicans on board currently to make his idea a reality.
"We do not have the votes right now," Cruz said, noting that to succeed, he'd need 41 senators or 218 representatives to get behind his legislation - which would provide a year of funding for the federal government, minus Obamacare.
But the Texas Republican, speaking with CNN chief political correspondent Candy Crowley on "State of the Union," argued a coming "grass-roots tsunami" would bring over fellow conservatives to his side in the next month.
"I'm convinced there's a new paradigm in politics, that actually has Washington very uncomfortable. And it has politicians in both parties very uncomfortable," he said. "And that new paradigm is the rise of the grass roots, the ability of grass-roots activists to demand of their elected officials they do the right thing."
Opponents of Cruz's effort say he's risking a government shutdown in order to repeal Obama's health law, and argue the president would never sign a measure defunding the signature legislation of his five years in office.
But Cruz casts the effort differently: Democrats, he said, would be the ones shutting the government down if they refuse to support a measure that funds all federal programs except Obamacare.
"President Obama, Harry Reid, will scream and holler that the mean, nasty Republicans are threatening to shut down the government. And at that point, Republicans have to do something we haven't done in a long time - stand up and win the argument," he said.
"We have voted to keep the government open, to fund the government," Cruz continued. "Why is President Obama threatening to shut the government down to force Obamacare down the the throats of the American people?"
Cruz has support for his plan from a handful of Republicans in Congress, including Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah, but many others in his party have said the plan risks alienating Americans who are tired of seeing the federal government's finances put in the middle of partisan bickering.
Establishment figures like Sen. John McCain and last year's GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, have voiced opposition to the plan, as has Sen. Rand Paul, a tea party-backed Kentucky senator who has aligned with Cruz in the past.
Democrats also fiercly oppose the tactic, including former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who appeared on "State of the Union" Sunday.
"These are crazy ideas from the far right," Dean said, calling Cruz "a slick spokesman."
"God help us if he gets to be anything more than the senator from Texas," he added.
Cruz was speaking with CNN in Houston, where he appeared at a town hall meeting that was part of a tour sponsored by the conservative Heritage Foundation meant to build support for the effort to defund Obamacare.
"Obamacare was passed under false pretenses," Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, a former senator, said on "State of the Union" Sunday. "The American people were lied to and they have every right to demand that their representatives stop this unfair and un-American law."
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Sunday, August 25, 2013
"Republicans have no idea what the hell the 'war on women' is all about"
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The GOP's Strange Obsession With the "War on Women"
By David Weigel, July 26, 2013
You can tell that a line's really angered someone if he refuses to let it go. In early 2012 the Obama campaign and Democrats in general started characterizing Republican legislation to limit abortion rights and Republican opposition to birth control coverage as part of a "war on women." The initial Republican response was inadequate. "If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars," joked RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. Well, over the next six months, Democrats exploited every eruption of social conservative legislation or inarticulate speech (see: Akin, Todd), and won the elections with an 11-point margin among women.
Republicans have given up on dismissing the line and tried to jiujitsu it. In their language, the "war on women" consists of sexual harassment or affairs involving individual women. (By Democrats. Don't mention David Vitter or Scott DesJarlais.) "For over a year now, Democrats have repeatedly used and exploited the term, 'War on Women,' for their own political gain," wrote NRSC spokesman Brad Dayspring in his Tuesday media email. "It’s a campaign based on fear, disinformation, and exploitation – but one that we know the Democrats will use as one of their main messages in 2014. Democrats—those valiant defenders of women. The party of Eliot Spitzer. Anthony Weiner. Bob Filner. Bob Menendez. Sheldon Silver. John Edwards. David Wu. Kwame Kilpatrick. The list goes on and on. Democrats invoke the 'War on Women' charge repeatedly, but they head for the hills when asked about their Democratic colleagues’ actual mistreatment of women. "
What to say about the list? Only one person on it is currently a member of Congress—Sen. Bob Menendez. And the linked story about him is a report about the divorced senator having, maybe, a consensual affair with a married woman. If anything that's a "war on one poor guy." Only two people on the list are serving in government—San Diego Mayor Bob Filner and New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. The rest of these people resigned in disgrace, often after prodding from fellow Democrats. It's rather easy for Democrats to respond to some prodding and reject-denounce the cads, as Debbie Wasserman Schultz did to Filner.
More to the point, aren't Republicans talking about randomized political embarrassment, not policy? Yeah, they are, which is why a look at state newspapers reveals that none of them has covered this as a news story. Typically, successful "hits" appear when a party sends out updates. No one's really bitten on this story apart from the RNC itself, placing op-eds, and BuzzFeed, which published a story about how "Democrats aren’t rushing to the defense of Filner, who served with many of them during his almost 20 years in the House, but they have largely avoided talking about him all together." It was similar to stories about how Republicans, in early 2013, didn't want to talk about Mark Sanford, but Sanford was trying (successfully) to return to Congress. Not really the story the NRSC wanted.
Democrats, unsurprisingly, think this is hilarious. "No one has gotten questions and everyone is perfectly fine throwing all the d* bags under the bus," says Matt Canter, the DSCC's spokesman. "This whole things shows that Republicans have no idea what the hell the 'war on women' is all about—the voter. Protecting equal pay, birth control access, VAWA. It is about issues, not cable soap operas in New York City and San Diego."
Maybe that's dismissive, but the Republican line is even more dismissive. One NRSC attack lampooned Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes because her father (the former state party chairman) donated to Anthony Weiner. "When it comes time to defend real women, actual victims of harassment," wrote the NRSC, "Grimes and her father Jerry Lundergan are empowering the same men who are assaulting women. The Lundergan family has given the maximum amount of donations allowed ($4,950) to fully support entrenched scandal-ridden Anthony Weiner."
The implication is that policy affecting a wide swath of women—making birth control more expensive than the status quo, say—isn't affecting "real women." Right? I'm not even sure of what the attack is telling us, apart from how the party committees are more confident attacking sex scandals than in advertising the state GOP bills that Democrats are grouping into the "war on women."
..................................................................................................................................
The GOP's Strange Obsession With the "War on Women"
By David Weigel, July 26, 2013
You can tell that a line's really angered someone if he refuses to let it go. In early 2012 the Obama campaign and Democrats in general started characterizing Republican legislation to limit abortion rights and Republican opposition to birth control coverage as part of a "war on women." The initial Republican response was inadequate. "If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars," joked RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. Well, over the next six months, Democrats exploited every eruption of social conservative legislation or inarticulate speech (see: Akin, Todd), and won the elections with an 11-point margin among women.
Republicans have given up on dismissing the line and tried to jiujitsu it. In their language, the "war on women" consists of sexual harassment or affairs involving individual women. (By Democrats. Don't mention David Vitter or Scott DesJarlais.) "For over a year now, Democrats have repeatedly used and exploited the term, 'War on Women,' for their own political gain," wrote NRSC spokesman Brad Dayspring in his Tuesday media email. "It’s a campaign based on fear, disinformation, and exploitation – but one that we know the Democrats will use as one of their main messages in 2014. Democrats—those valiant defenders of women. The party of Eliot Spitzer. Anthony Weiner. Bob Filner. Bob Menendez. Sheldon Silver. John Edwards. David Wu. Kwame Kilpatrick. The list goes on and on. Democrats invoke the 'War on Women' charge repeatedly, but they head for the hills when asked about their Democratic colleagues’ actual mistreatment of women. "
What to say about the list? Only one person on it is currently a member of Congress—Sen. Bob Menendez. And the linked story about him is a report about the divorced senator having, maybe, a consensual affair with a married woman. If anything that's a "war on one poor guy." Only two people on the list are serving in government—San Diego Mayor Bob Filner and New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. The rest of these people resigned in disgrace, often after prodding from fellow Democrats. It's rather easy for Democrats to respond to some prodding and reject-denounce the cads, as Debbie Wasserman Schultz did to Filner.
More to the point, aren't Republicans talking about randomized political embarrassment, not policy? Yeah, they are, which is why a look at state newspapers reveals that none of them has covered this as a news story. Typically, successful "hits" appear when a party sends out updates. No one's really bitten on this story apart from the RNC itself, placing op-eds, and BuzzFeed, which published a story about how "Democrats aren’t rushing to the defense of Filner, who served with many of them during his almost 20 years in the House, but they have largely avoided talking about him all together." It was similar to stories about how Republicans, in early 2013, didn't want to talk about Mark Sanford, but Sanford was trying (successfully) to return to Congress. Not really the story the NRSC wanted.
Democrats, unsurprisingly, think this is hilarious. "No one has gotten questions and everyone is perfectly fine throwing all the d* bags under the bus," says Matt Canter, the DSCC's spokesman. "This whole things shows that Republicans have no idea what the hell the 'war on women' is all about—the voter. Protecting equal pay, birth control access, VAWA. It is about issues, not cable soap operas in New York City and San Diego."
Maybe that's dismissive, but the Republican line is even more dismissive. One NRSC attack lampooned Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes because her father (the former state party chairman) donated to Anthony Weiner. "When it comes time to defend real women, actual victims of harassment," wrote the NRSC, "Grimes and her father Jerry Lundergan are empowering the same men who are assaulting women. The Lundergan family has given the maximum amount of donations allowed ($4,950) to fully support entrenched scandal-ridden Anthony Weiner."
The implication is that policy affecting a wide swath of women—making birth control more expensive than the status quo, say—isn't affecting "real women." Right? I'm not even sure of what the attack is telling us, apart from how the party committees are more confident attacking sex scandals than in advertising the state GOP bills that Democrats are grouping into the "war on women."
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Figures!
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Saturday, August 24, 2013
A failed Libertarian presidential candidate-cum-Mad Hatter-- hmm, that could describe any number of right-wingers
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GOP shouldn’t take cues from a libertarian presidential dud
By Ed Lindsey, August 23, 2013
Like Alice tumbling through the rabbit hole into a realm of the contrary and grotesque, there are those curious moments in politics when absurdity has the edge. Moments like those last week, when a repeated political defector demanded Republican faithful excise a popular governor because he offended his own renegade sensibilities.
Bob Barr, the failed 2008 Libertarian presidential candidate-cum-Mad Hatter, said Republicans must strip from their ranks New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and brand the pol as a “disingenuous” political gamer.
“There should be no room in the GOP for Christie’s nebulous, if not disingenuous, political games,” Barr writes at Townhall, “and, it is time conservatives show him the door before his carefully self-nurtured image as the GOP ‘tough guy’ … destroys any remaining semblance of the conservative GOP base first constructed by Reagan two generations ago.”
The irony is almost too great.
This is the same Bob Barr who bolted from the GOP, abandoning many of the policies he once held, and campaigned for president as a Libertarian in 2008 to peel away GOP votes, knowing such a move would help Barack Obama win the White House. The same Bob Barr who now, believing his old party was again politically ascendant, wants Republicans to return him to Congress.
In 2002, Barr deserted his then-district in Cobb County, Ga. to primary a fellow GOP congressman, Fair Tax crusader John Linder, in a neighboring district he believed to be more fertile.
But after an unceremonious spanking at the ballot box at the hands of Rep. Linder, Barr abandoned his party and quickly landed on the payroll of the ACLU, marijuana legalization campaigns, and the notoriously ruthless and corrupt former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.
In the years that followed he abdicated his earlier positions on gay marriage and illicit drugs, even opposing Georgia’s attempt to stem the tide of illegal immigration within our state’s sovereign border.
Republican-turned-libertarian-turned-Republican Bob Barr may think Ronald Reagan would disapprove of Christie, whom he believes is a “liberal masquerading as a conservative,” but it was the former president who famously lectured unfit political gatekeepers that his “eighty percent friend is not my twenty percent enemy.”
Like the Gipper, I do not have to agree with Gov. Christie on every issue to respect his efforts to rein in public labor unions, reduce government waste, and protect our national security.
If Gov. Christie decides to pursue a presidential bid in 2016, he will be a valued addition to a stellar crop of conservative would-be candidates. Candidates, like Sens. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum and Govs. Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker and Rick Perry, who never abandoned their party and principles for personal self-aggrandizement at a perilous time for our country.
Republicans are savvy enough to spot a phony, and certainly savvy enough to do so without a phony like Bob Barr lecturing them.
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GOP shouldn’t take cues from a libertarian presidential dud
By Ed Lindsey, August 23, 2013
Like Alice tumbling through the rabbit hole into a realm of the contrary and grotesque, there are those curious moments in politics when absurdity has the edge. Moments like those last week, when a repeated political defector demanded Republican faithful excise a popular governor because he offended his own renegade sensibilities.
Bob Barr, the failed 2008 Libertarian presidential candidate-cum-Mad Hatter, said Republicans must strip from their ranks New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and brand the pol as a “disingenuous” political gamer.
“There should be no room in the GOP for Christie’s nebulous, if not disingenuous, political games,” Barr writes at Townhall, “and, it is time conservatives show him the door before his carefully self-nurtured image as the GOP ‘tough guy’ … destroys any remaining semblance of the conservative GOP base first constructed by Reagan two generations ago.”
The irony is almost too great.
This is the same Bob Barr who bolted from the GOP, abandoning many of the policies he once held, and campaigned for president as a Libertarian in 2008 to peel away GOP votes, knowing such a move would help Barack Obama win the White House. The same Bob Barr who now, believing his old party was again politically ascendant, wants Republicans to return him to Congress.
In 2002, Barr deserted his then-district in Cobb County, Ga. to primary a fellow GOP congressman, Fair Tax crusader John Linder, in a neighboring district he believed to be more fertile.
But after an unceremonious spanking at the ballot box at the hands of Rep. Linder, Barr abandoned his party and quickly landed on the payroll of the ACLU, marijuana legalization campaigns, and the notoriously ruthless and corrupt former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.
In the years that followed he abdicated his earlier positions on gay marriage and illicit drugs, even opposing Georgia’s attempt to stem the tide of illegal immigration within our state’s sovereign border.
Republican-turned-libertarian-turned-Republican Bob Barr may think Ronald Reagan would disapprove of Christie, whom he believes is a “liberal masquerading as a conservative,” but it was the former president who famously lectured unfit political gatekeepers that his “eighty percent friend is not my twenty percent enemy.”
Like the Gipper, I do not have to agree with Gov. Christie on every issue to respect his efforts to rein in public labor unions, reduce government waste, and protect our national security.
If Gov. Christie decides to pursue a presidential bid in 2016, he will be a valued addition to a stellar crop of conservative would-be candidates. Candidates, like Sens. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum and Govs. Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker and Rick Perry, who never abandoned their party and principles for personal self-aggrandizement at a perilous time for our country.
Republicans are savvy enough to spot a phony, and certainly savvy enough to do so without a phony like Bob Barr lecturing them.
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Republicans' central, unstated purpose -- restricting minorities' voting rights
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The sad, sorry Republican retreat from civil rights
By Joel Connelly, August 23, 2013
A half-century after the 1963 March on Washington, "Jim Crow" Democrats who resisted civil rights in that era have been replaced in our capital by a new, evolved, polished species of Jim Crow Republicans.
Republicans in Congress, especially filibuster-busting GOP senators under leader Sen. Everett Dirksen, made possible much of Dr. Martin Luther King's monumental "dream" -- in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act.
As a kid, I watched the great Lincoln Memorial rally on TV, including a delegation from Capitol Hill. Prominent was the shiny bald head of Sen. Jacob Javits, R-N.Y., next to the white mane of his Gotham colleague Kenneth Keating.
What a difference 50 years makes, and not for the better.
"Our country has changed," U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, a Republican, wrote in his recent opinion that gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act.
The Supremes' ruling, in turn, cleared the way for Republican governors and legislatures in North Carolina, Florida and Texas to move forward on restrictive legislation with a central, unstated purpose -- restricting minorities' voting rights.
The new generation of Jim Crow Republicans (e.g. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas) don't have the options once available to Dixie's Jim Crow Democrats. They can't hold whites-only primaries. They can't require lengthy "literacy tests." They can't impose a poll tax.
They can, however, restrict early, and particularly Sunday, voting. They can require government ID and then make it difficult -- particularly for elderly non-drivers -- to get. They can make minority voters spend hours waiting at understaffed polling places.
They can discourage college students by not accepting college-issued photo ID. They can gerrymander legislative and U.S. House districts to such ends as minimizing Hispanics in Texas' congressional delegation.
Is this the party of Lincoln?
Or Eisenhower, whose administration pushed for strong civil rights legislation? Or William McCullough, the Ohio Republican on the House Judiciary Committee who went to the mat for a strong public-accommodations section to the 1964 Civil Rights Act?
It all began to turn in 1964, when GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act and segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina crossed the aisle to become a Republican.
Thurmond became a linchpin in the 1968 "Southern Strategy" of Richard Nixon. The moderate GOP lions of the Senate -- Jack Javits, Thomas Kuchel, Clifford Case -- were purged in GOP primaries.
Now, we get a little lip service, like House Speaker John Boehner recently paying tribute to House colleague Rep. John Lewis, R-Ga., whose head still bears scars from his beating at Selma, Ala.
The dour GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell remembered working as an aide to Kentucky's Republican Sen. John Sherman Cooper, who defied segregationists at home to round up votes to break filibusters in 1964 and 1965.
Would McConnell call in the chits to bust a filibuster today and pass legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act? Of course not.
If a voting rights bill made it through the Senate, Boehner (and such lieutenants as Washington's Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers) wouldn't let it get to the House floor for a vote. Just look how they've bottled up immigration reform.
Once the nation's most prominent African-American Republican, ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell, unlimbered Wednesday night on North Carolina's new, restrictive voting law . . . with Gov. Pat McRory, who signed it, sitting in the audience.
"These kinds of actions do not build on the base," said Powell. "It just turns people away. I want to see policies that encourage every American to vote, not make it more difficult to vote. What it really says to the minority voters is . . . We really are sort of punishing you."
The Republicans of the 21st century are even borrowing the "states' rights" rhetoric once heard coming from the lips of segregationist Southern Democrats.
The U.S. Justice Department said this week it will use other Voting Rights Act provisions, challenging a Texas redistricting plan that minimizes minority representation, and asking for "pre-clearance" of restrictive new election rules.
Justice is seeking to "obstruct the will of the people of Texas," thundered Gov. Perry. "We deserve the freedom to make our own laws, and we deserve not to be insulted by a Justice Department committed to scoring cheap political points," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
Of course, it's not "freedom" but rigging the game. Its purpose: Domination by a reactionary core that fears a more diverse, inclusive America.
A trio of presidents -- Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter -- will return to the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday for a "Let Freedom Ring" rally at the site of Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech.
Unlike 1963, there won't be any Sens. Javits, or Keating, or Clifford Case, or John Sherman Cooper to give bipartisan heft to the goals of civil and human and economic equality in the "Land of the Free."
It's a crying bloody shame.
..................................................................................................................................
The sad, sorry Republican retreat from civil rights
By Joel Connelly, August 23, 2013
A half-century after the 1963 March on Washington, "Jim Crow" Democrats who resisted civil rights in that era have been replaced in our capital by a new, evolved, polished species of Jim Crow Republicans.
Republicans in Congress, especially filibuster-busting GOP senators under leader Sen. Everett Dirksen, made possible much of Dr. Martin Luther King's monumental "dream" -- in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act.
As a kid, I watched the great Lincoln Memorial rally on TV, including a delegation from Capitol Hill. Prominent was the shiny bald head of Sen. Jacob Javits, R-N.Y., next to the white mane of his Gotham colleague Kenneth Keating.
What a difference 50 years makes, and not for the better.
"Our country has changed," U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, a Republican, wrote in his recent opinion that gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act.
The Supremes' ruling, in turn, cleared the way for Republican governors and legislatures in North Carolina, Florida and Texas to move forward on restrictive legislation with a central, unstated purpose -- restricting minorities' voting rights.
The new generation of Jim Crow Republicans (e.g. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas) don't have the options once available to Dixie's Jim Crow Democrats. They can't hold whites-only primaries. They can't require lengthy "literacy tests." They can't impose a poll tax.
They can, however, restrict early, and particularly Sunday, voting. They can require government ID and then make it difficult -- particularly for elderly non-drivers -- to get. They can make minority voters spend hours waiting at understaffed polling places.
They can discourage college students by not accepting college-issued photo ID. They can gerrymander legislative and U.S. House districts to such ends as minimizing Hispanics in Texas' congressional delegation.
Is this the party of Lincoln?
Or Eisenhower, whose administration pushed for strong civil rights legislation? Or William McCullough, the Ohio Republican on the House Judiciary Committee who went to the mat for a strong public-accommodations section to the 1964 Civil Rights Act?
It all began to turn in 1964, when GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act and segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina crossed the aisle to become a Republican.
Thurmond became a linchpin in the 1968 "Southern Strategy" of Richard Nixon. The moderate GOP lions of the Senate -- Jack Javits, Thomas Kuchel, Clifford Case -- were purged in GOP primaries.
Now, we get a little lip service, like House Speaker John Boehner recently paying tribute to House colleague Rep. John Lewis, R-Ga., whose head still bears scars from his beating at Selma, Ala.
The dour GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell remembered working as an aide to Kentucky's Republican Sen. John Sherman Cooper, who defied segregationists at home to round up votes to break filibusters in 1964 and 1965.
Would McConnell call in the chits to bust a filibuster today and pass legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act? Of course not.
If a voting rights bill made it through the Senate, Boehner (and such lieutenants as Washington's Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers) wouldn't let it get to the House floor for a vote. Just look how they've bottled up immigration reform.
Once the nation's most prominent African-American Republican, ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell, unlimbered Wednesday night on North Carolina's new, restrictive voting law . . . with Gov. Pat McRory, who signed it, sitting in the audience.
"These kinds of actions do not build on the base," said Powell. "It just turns people away. I want to see policies that encourage every American to vote, not make it more difficult to vote. What it really says to the minority voters is . . . We really are sort of punishing you."
The Republicans of the 21st century are even borrowing the "states' rights" rhetoric once heard coming from the lips of segregationist Southern Democrats.
The U.S. Justice Department said this week it will use other Voting Rights Act provisions, challenging a Texas redistricting plan that minimizes minority representation, and asking for "pre-clearance" of restrictive new election rules.
Justice is seeking to "obstruct the will of the people of Texas," thundered Gov. Perry. "We deserve the freedom to make our own laws, and we deserve not to be insulted by a Justice Department committed to scoring cheap political points," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
Of course, it's not "freedom" but rigging the game. Its purpose: Domination by a reactionary core that fears a more diverse, inclusive America.
A trio of presidents -- Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter -- will return to the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday for a "Let Freedom Ring" rally at the site of Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech.
Unlike 1963, there won't be any Sens. Javits, or Keating, or Clifford Case, or John Sherman Cooper to give bipartisan heft to the goals of civil and human and economic equality in the "Land of the Free."
It's a crying bloody shame.
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Friday, August 23, 2013
Conservative ideologues are still "stupid"
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Why CEOs can no longer advise politicians
By Mark S. Mizruchi, August 23, 2013
For those worried about the future of the United States, big business looks more like the problem than the solution. Large corporations are too powerful, the critics say, and have too much influence over Congress. Their pursuit of narrow self-interest, their success in gaining favors for themselves and their ability to stymie reforms all are seen as contributing to the gridlock in American politics. But it hasn't always been like this.
There was a time when large American corporations actually addressed the problems of American society: the three decades after World War II.
From 1945 through 1973, the leaders of American business played a central role in developing moderate and pragmatic solutions to the issues of the day. Acting through joint business organizations such as the Committee for Economic Development, they advocated full employment, accepted Keynesian economic policies (including increases in Social Security), supported large increases in funding for education and science, and made their peace with organized labor. In short, they rejected the traditional laissez faire perspective that had characterized most businesspeople since the 19th century.
The corporate leaders of that era were not liberals in an ideological sense, but they were pragmatic. Faced with a strong labor movement and a legitimate and popular government, the leaders determined that it was better to work with these institutions than to try to dismantle them.
One consequence was that right-wing elements were marginalized. Dwight Eisenhower privately referred to conservative ideologues of the time as "stupid." When the ideologues managed to nominate one of their own, Barry Goldwater, for president in 1964, many corporations defected to the Democrats. Despite problems during the postwar decades - including continuing poverty, racism and social turmoil - real income nearly doubled for the average family, inequality was at historic lows, and the political system functioned in a more effective manner.
This began to change in the 1970s. Faced with increasing foreign competition, an inflationary economy, growing antibusiness sentiment and increased regulation, the business community went on the offensive in the political sphere, at the bargaining table and in the courts. Large corporations allied themselves with the conservatives they had previously shunned. This tougher strategy quickly yielded benefits. Business was able to reduce government regulation, weaken organized labor, thwart initiatives by consumer and environmental activists, and change tax policy to favor businesses.
But these victories came at a cost. Business unity began to fray, leading to defeats, such as the tax reform of 1986, which eliminated deductions for some businesses. Firms also became unable to act collectively to address problems of mutual concern. In the 1990s, large corporations, facing rapidly rising health care costs, initially supported the Clinton health care plan, but internal divisions and pressure from congressional Republicans led them to backtrack. A decade later, corporate leaders, despite concerns about budget deficits and debt, could not agree on a tax strategy and were unable to mount an alternative to President George W. Bush's tax cuts.
The corporate elite has remained ineffectual in the Obama years. Some business groups are pleading for more balanced solutions to the deficit, including tax increases, but Republicans in Congress have ignored them. Democrats and Republicans could desperately use business leaders who are organized and strong enough to mediate disputes between left and right, but no such group exists.
American society faces difficult times. The economy has not fully recovered from the financial crisis. The nation's infrastructure continues to decay. A large proportion of Americans leave school without sufficient skills or education. And continued inaction on global warming threatens to cause irreparable damage to the environment.
In earlier decades, the leading members of the corporate community organized and proposed solutions to problems no less vexing than these. But the corporate elite of those years were moderate and pragmatic because they faced an American voting public that demanded it. Today's CEOs can be better leaders of their companies and the country - but it will take a push from the rest of us.
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Why CEOs can no longer advise politicians
By Mark S. Mizruchi, August 23, 2013
For those worried about the future of the United States, big business looks more like the problem than the solution. Large corporations are too powerful, the critics say, and have too much influence over Congress. Their pursuit of narrow self-interest, their success in gaining favors for themselves and their ability to stymie reforms all are seen as contributing to the gridlock in American politics. But it hasn't always been like this.
There was a time when large American corporations actually addressed the problems of American society: the three decades after World War II.
From 1945 through 1973, the leaders of American business played a central role in developing moderate and pragmatic solutions to the issues of the day. Acting through joint business organizations such as the Committee for Economic Development, they advocated full employment, accepted Keynesian economic policies (including increases in Social Security), supported large increases in funding for education and science, and made their peace with organized labor. In short, they rejected the traditional laissez faire perspective that had characterized most businesspeople since the 19th century.
The corporate leaders of that era were not liberals in an ideological sense, but they were pragmatic. Faced with a strong labor movement and a legitimate and popular government, the leaders determined that it was better to work with these institutions than to try to dismantle them.
One consequence was that right-wing elements were marginalized. Dwight Eisenhower privately referred to conservative ideologues of the time as "stupid." When the ideologues managed to nominate one of their own, Barry Goldwater, for president in 1964, many corporations defected to the Democrats. Despite problems during the postwar decades - including continuing poverty, racism and social turmoil - real income nearly doubled for the average family, inequality was at historic lows, and the political system functioned in a more effective manner.
This began to change in the 1970s. Faced with increasing foreign competition, an inflationary economy, growing antibusiness sentiment and increased regulation, the business community went on the offensive in the political sphere, at the bargaining table and in the courts. Large corporations allied themselves with the conservatives they had previously shunned. This tougher strategy quickly yielded benefits. Business was able to reduce government regulation, weaken organized labor, thwart initiatives by consumer and environmental activists, and change tax policy to favor businesses.
But these victories came at a cost. Business unity began to fray, leading to defeats, such as the tax reform of 1986, which eliminated deductions for some businesses. Firms also became unable to act collectively to address problems of mutual concern. In the 1990s, large corporations, facing rapidly rising health care costs, initially supported the Clinton health care plan, but internal divisions and pressure from congressional Republicans led them to backtrack. A decade later, corporate leaders, despite concerns about budget deficits and debt, could not agree on a tax strategy and were unable to mount an alternative to President George W. Bush's tax cuts.
The corporate elite has remained ineffectual in the Obama years. Some business groups are pleading for more balanced solutions to the deficit, including tax increases, but Republicans in Congress have ignored them. Democrats and Republicans could desperately use business leaders who are organized and strong enough to mediate disputes between left and right, but no such group exists.
American society faces difficult times. The economy has not fully recovered from the financial crisis. The nation's infrastructure continues to decay. A large proportion of Americans leave school without sufficient skills or education. And continued inaction on global warming threatens to cause irreparable damage to the environment.
In earlier decades, the leading members of the corporate community organized and proposed solutions to problems no less vexing than these. But the corporate elite of those years were moderate and pragmatic because they faced an American voting public that demanded it. Today's CEOs can be better leaders of their companies and the country - but it will take a push from the rest of us.
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"Why aren't we just getting that done?" Agreement or no, because the GOP is digging in its heels, that's why!
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Obama: Republicans privately ‘agree’ with me
By Dan Merica and Bryan Koenig, August 23, 2013
President Barack Obama argued some Republicans secretly side with him on wanting to avoid a government shutdown, but they’re afraid they may face backlash from the conservative right.
"Sometimes they say to me privately, 'I agree with you, but I'm worried about a primary from, you know, somebody in the Tea Party back in my district,' or, 'I'm worried about what Rush Limbaugh is going to say about me on the radio,'” Obama said in an exclusive interview with CNN "New Day" anchor Chris Cuomo.
Congress returns next month from a five-week recess with a full plate. If lawmakers do not approve a government funding bill before the fiscal year ends on September 30, the government would run out of money and would be forced into a partial shutdown.
Some Republicans – like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida – have said that they would be willing to shut down the government in order to defund Obamacare, the president's signature healthcare law.
Not all Republicans are behind that message, however. Some establishment Republicans have argued their party would take the bulk of blame for a shutdown and therefore don't support it.
Democrats, quite expectedly, call the plan a nonstarter.
"Nobody thinks that's good for the middle class," Obama said.
The president accused Congress of failing to meet the federal government's basic responsibilities on the eve of yet another legislative fight over federal spending and the debt ceiling.
"There hasn't been a legislative session as far as I can tell," Obama said. "Congress doesn't have a whole lot of core responsibilities. One core responsibility is passing a budget, which they have not done yet. The other core responsibility that they've got is to pay the bills that they've already accrued."
Right now, Congress is on a near record low pace for passing laws, and criticizing Congress for their lack of output has been a common refrain from Democrats. House Speaker John Boehner, however, has said his body should not be judged by the number of laws it enacts.
"We should not be judged on how many new laws we create," Boehner said on CBS. "We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal."
Congress will also be tasked to debate the debt ceiling, the credit limit on how much money the government may borrow. Budget experts expect the government to surpass the limit sometime between mid-October and mid-November.
A fight in Congress over the debt ceiling is nothing new, although fights have become increasingly more forceful in recent years.
In the interview with CNN, Obama at one pointed seemed surprised to even be talking about not raising the debt ceiling or passing a bill to fund the government.
"Why are we even talking about," Obama questioned. "Why aren't we just getting that done?"
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Obama: Republicans privately ‘agree’ with me
By Dan Merica and Bryan Koenig, August 23, 2013
President Barack Obama argued some Republicans secretly side with him on wanting to avoid a government shutdown, but they’re afraid they may face backlash from the conservative right.
"Sometimes they say to me privately, 'I agree with you, but I'm worried about a primary from, you know, somebody in the Tea Party back in my district,' or, 'I'm worried about what Rush Limbaugh is going to say about me on the radio,'” Obama said in an exclusive interview with CNN "New Day" anchor Chris Cuomo.
Congress returns next month from a five-week recess with a full plate. If lawmakers do not approve a government funding bill before the fiscal year ends on September 30, the government would run out of money and would be forced into a partial shutdown.
Some Republicans – like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida – have said that they would be willing to shut down the government in order to defund Obamacare, the president's signature healthcare law.
Not all Republicans are behind that message, however. Some establishment Republicans have argued their party would take the bulk of blame for a shutdown and therefore don't support it.
Democrats, quite expectedly, call the plan a nonstarter.
"Nobody thinks that's good for the middle class," Obama said.
The president accused Congress of failing to meet the federal government's basic responsibilities on the eve of yet another legislative fight over federal spending and the debt ceiling.
"There hasn't been a legislative session as far as I can tell," Obama said. "Congress doesn't have a whole lot of core responsibilities. One core responsibility is passing a budget, which they have not done yet. The other core responsibility that they've got is to pay the bills that they've already accrued."
Right now, Congress is on a near record low pace for passing laws, and criticizing Congress for their lack of output has been a common refrain from Democrats. House Speaker John Boehner, however, has said his body should not be judged by the number of laws it enacts.
"We should not be judged on how many new laws we create," Boehner said on CBS. "We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal."
Congress will also be tasked to debate the debt ceiling, the credit limit on how much money the government may borrow. Budget experts expect the government to surpass the limit sometime between mid-October and mid-November.
A fight in Congress over the debt ceiling is nothing new, although fights have become increasingly more forceful in recent years.
In the interview with CNN, Obama at one pointed seemed surprised to even be talking about not raising the debt ceiling or passing a bill to fund the government.
"Why are we even talking about," Obama questioned. "Why aren't we just getting that done?"
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Mark Meadows and 79 other House Republicans.... TRAITORS?
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80 House members: Shutdown better than 'Obamacare'
By Charles Babington, August 23, 2013
More than a third of House Republicans urged their leader Thursday to trigger a government shutdown rather than fund the implementation of the health care overhaul they call "Obamacare."
A letter from 80 Republicans asked Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to resist any spending bills that would accommodate the new health care law, which is nearing a critical stage of signing up millions of Americans for health coverage.
Because it's virtually certain that President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate would reject such demands, leaders of both parties say the standoff likely would result in a partial shutdown of the federal government, similar to those that occurred in 1995 and 1996.
The letter is mixed news for Boehner and other GOP leaders who view a government shutdown as politically unwise.
With 80 of the House's 233 Republicans signing the letter, a solid majority of 153 has refrained from trying to limit Boehner's options. That presumably would allow the speaker to push a bipartisan bill that funds the health law and is supported by a "majority of the majority" of his fellow Republicans, which Boehner says is essential.
However, he would need more than 60 Democratic votes to pass such a bill. That would give Democrats a major voice in its details.
The federal 2013 fiscal year ends Sept. 30. New money must be appropriated by then to avoid a shutdown of countless government offices and agencies.
Voters chiefly blamed congressional Republicans for the mid-1990s shutdowns, and the fallout boosted Democratic President Bill Clinton. Ever since, many establishment Republicans have urged the party to avoid using shutdown threats as a bargaining tool.
But a new generation of tea party-backed conservatives rejects the advice. They say "Obamacare" - officially the Affordable Care Act - is so unpopular and unworkable that it justifies extraordinary tactics to block it.
A possible solution to the budget impasse, often used in past years, would involve a "continuing resolution" to keep funding the government at current levels. Many top Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, say it's impossible to carve out money for "Obamacare" in any appropriations measure.
The House letter was authored by Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C. It urges Boehner "to affirmatively de-fund the implementation and enforcement of Obamacare in any relevant appropriations bill," including "any continuing appropriations bill."
At least a dozen Senate Republicans have signed a similar letter.
In recent years, Democrats and Republicans in Congress repeatedly have failed to reach major compromises on spending. A string of secret negotiations with the White House, a bipartisan "super committee" and various threats of economic calamity have all proved fruitless.
The impasses led this year to automatic, across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, which have hampered some federal agencies and helped shrink the deficit.
Some House Republicans want deeper cuts still. But others revolted this summer when popular programs were targeted.
Senate Democrats want to replace the sequester cuts with a more generous spending plan, but House Republicans vow to block it.
..................................................................................................................................
80 House members: Shutdown better than 'Obamacare'
By Charles Babington, August 23, 2013
More than a third of House Republicans urged their leader Thursday to trigger a government shutdown rather than fund the implementation of the health care overhaul they call "Obamacare."
A letter from 80 Republicans asked Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to resist any spending bills that would accommodate the new health care law, which is nearing a critical stage of signing up millions of Americans for health coverage.
Because it's virtually certain that President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate would reject such demands, leaders of both parties say the standoff likely would result in a partial shutdown of the federal government, similar to those that occurred in 1995 and 1996.
The letter is mixed news for Boehner and other GOP leaders who view a government shutdown as politically unwise.
With 80 of the House's 233 Republicans signing the letter, a solid majority of 153 has refrained from trying to limit Boehner's options. That presumably would allow the speaker to push a bipartisan bill that funds the health law and is supported by a "majority of the majority" of his fellow Republicans, which Boehner says is essential.
However, he would need more than 60 Democratic votes to pass such a bill. That would give Democrats a major voice in its details.
The federal 2013 fiscal year ends Sept. 30. New money must be appropriated by then to avoid a shutdown of countless government offices and agencies.
Voters chiefly blamed congressional Republicans for the mid-1990s shutdowns, and the fallout boosted Democratic President Bill Clinton. Ever since, many establishment Republicans have urged the party to avoid using shutdown threats as a bargaining tool.
But a new generation of tea party-backed conservatives rejects the advice. They say "Obamacare" - officially the Affordable Care Act - is so unpopular and unworkable that it justifies extraordinary tactics to block it.
A possible solution to the budget impasse, often used in past years, would involve a "continuing resolution" to keep funding the government at current levels. Many top Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, say it's impossible to carve out money for "Obamacare" in any appropriations measure.
The House letter was authored by Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C. It urges Boehner "to affirmatively de-fund the implementation and enforcement of Obamacare in any relevant appropriations bill," including "any continuing appropriations bill."
At least a dozen Senate Republicans have signed a similar letter.
In recent years, Democrats and Republicans in Congress repeatedly have failed to reach major compromises on spending. A string of secret negotiations with the White House, a bipartisan "super committee" and various threats of economic calamity have all proved fruitless.
The impasses led this year to automatic, across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, which have hampered some federal agencies and helped shrink the deficit.
Some House Republicans want deeper cuts still. But others revolted this summer when popular programs were targeted.
Senate Democrats want to replace the sequester cuts with a more generous spending plan, but House Republicans vow to block it.
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The 1950s-- that's why Republicans are anti-women (keep the little woman in her pearls and in the kitchen)
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Republicans love the '50s, while Democrats prefer the '90s
By Keith Wagstaff, August 21, 2013
Even time travel is partisan in America
This week, The Economist published a poll that provided some insights into Americans' time-travel preferences.
The question was, "Which decade of the 20th century would you most like to go back to?"
Turns out that Republicans "preferred the morally uncomplicated 1950s," while Democrats "tended to opt for Bill Clinton's 1990s." (Barely anyone wanted to visit the 1930s, presumably because Hoovervilles don't make for great vacation destinations.)
So why do Democrats want to return to the '90s, while Republicans want to make like Marty McFly?
If IFC's Portlandia is to be believed, the 1990s were a hipster paradise, currently preserved in the cultural amber that is Portland:
The '90s were the source of some of our most reliable liberal stereotypes: The coffee snob, the skateboarding slacker, the gratuitous liberal arts major — none of which are mutually exclusive.
Perhaps more important to progressives, it was a time when the country had a booming economy under a Democratic president.
Former President Bill Clinton remains as popular with liberals as ever. Last year, right before the Democratic National Convention in September, 90 percent of Democrats had a favorable impression of Clinton, compared to only 44 percent of Republicans, according to a Gallup poll.
The 1950s, on the other hand, was the time of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican. It was also the decade that William F. Buckley founded the National Review.
Last year, conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg used that publication to complain that liberals constantly cited the 1950s as the "belle époque of reasonable conservatism," mainly as a way of disparaging today's GOP.
The Economist poll, however, could indicate that conservatives really do think of the 1950s as a golden age, an era marked by post-war economic expansion and American ascendancy on the global stage, all of which preceded Vietnam, the sexual revolution, and the race riots of the '60s.
Of course, the results could have less to do with political preferences than with simple demographics and good old nostalgia. The poll showed that the 1950s just so happened be the most popular decade for people over 65 years old, an age group that tends to skew Republican.
And the demographic that most loved the '90s? You guessed it: Millennials.
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Republicans love the '50s, while Democrats prefer the '90s
By Keith Wagstaff, August 21, 2013
Even time travel is partisan in America
This week, The Economist published a poll that provided some insights into Americans' time-travel preferences.
The question was, "Which decade of the 20th century would you most like to go back to?"
Turns out that Republicans "preferred the morally uncomplicated 1950s," while Democrats "tended to opt for Bill Clinton's 1990s." (Barely anyone wanted to visit the 1930s, presumably because Hoovervilles don't make for great vacation destinations.)
So why do Democrats want to return to the '90s, while Republicans want to make like Marty McFly?
If IFC's Portlandia is to be believed, the 1990s were a hipster paradise, currently preserved in the cultural amber that is Portland:
The '90s were the source of some of our most reliable liberal stereotypes: The coffee snob, the skateboarding slacker, the gratuitous liberal arts major — none of which are mutually exclusive.
Perhaps more important to progressives, it was a time when the country had a booming economy under a Democratic president.
Former President Bill Clinton remains as popular with liberals as ever. Last year, right before the Democratic National Convention in September, 90 percent of Democrats had a favorable impression of Clinton, compared to only 44 percent of Republicans, according to a Gallup poll.
The 1950s, on the other hand, was the time of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican. It was also the decade that William F. Buckley founded the National Review.
Last year, conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg used that publication to complain that liberals constantly cited the 1950s as the "belle époque of reasonable conservatism," mainly as a way of disparaging today's GOP.
The Economist poll, however, could indicate that conservatives really do think of the 1950s as a golden age, an era marked by post-war economic expansion and American ascendancy on the global stage, all of which preceded Vietnam, the sexual revolution, and the race riots of the '60s.
Of course, the results could have less to do with political preferences than with simple demographics and good old nostalgia. The poll showed that the 1950s just so happened be the most popular decade for people over 65 years old, an age group that tends to skew Republican.
And the demographic that most loved the '90s? You guessed it: Millennials.
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NSA doesn't like it when the shoe's on the other foot
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Thursday, August 22, 2013
Republicans are growing weary of being called global warning deniers
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Gore says climate change deniers melting away
Posted by Ashley Killough, August 22, 2013
Former Vice President Al Gore said he's optimistic about the future of the climate change debate, arguing Republicans are growing weary of global warning deniers.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Gore said climate change activists are in the process of "winning the conversation," just like activists won the civil rights movement.
"The same thing happened on apartheid," he told columnist Ezra Klein in the interview posted online Wednesday. "The same thing happened on the nuclear arms race with the freeze movement. The same thing happened in an earlier era with abolition. A few months ago, I saw an article about two gay men standing in line for pizza and some homophobe made an ugly comment about them holding hands and everyone else in line told them to shut up. We're winning that conversation."
He also pointed to the debate over smoking, saying people thought the late-Sen. Frank Lautenburg of New Jersey was "crazy" for pushing legislation that would ban smoking in airplanes.
"But he was rewarded politically and then politicians began falling all over themselves to do the same. That's the optimistic scenario. And it's not just a scenario! It's happening now," he said, adding that Republicans tell him privately they're starting to accept climate change.
That process of "winning the conversation," however, has been stalled in prior years because "a shrinking group of denialists fly into a rage when it's mentioned," he said.
"It's like a family with an alcoholic father who flies into a rage every time a subject is mentioned and so everybody avoids the elephant in the room to keep the peace," he said, but argued "the ability of the raging deniers to stop progress is waning every single day."
Organizing for Action, the political group formed from the president's re-election campaign, earlier this month delivered unicorn statues to Republican deniers in Congress. The effort was part of a larger push from the group to "hold members of Congress accountable for their positions on climate change," according to a press release.
Gore credited President Barack Obama for his aggressive new climate change strategy that calls for limiting pollution from existing coal-fired power plants and issuing directives requiring the EPA to establish carbon pollution standards for plants that are already active. Gore said he was "very encouraged" by the policy moves.
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Gore says climate change deniers melting away
Posted by Ashley Killough, August 22, 2013
Former Vice President Al Gore said he's optimistic about the future of the climate change debate, arguing Republicans are growing weary of global warning deniers.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Gore said climate change activists are in the process of "winning the conversation," just like activists won the civil rights movement.
"The same thing happened on apartheid," he told columnist Ezra Klein in the interview posted online Wednesday. "The same thing happened on the nuclear arms race with the freeze movement. The same thing happened in an earlier era with abolition. A few months ago, I saw an article about two gay men standing in line for pizza and some homophobe made an ugly comment about them holding hands and everyone else in line told them to shut up. We're winning that conversation."
He also pointed to the debate over smoking, saying people thought the late-Sen. Frank Lautenburg of New Jersey was "crazy" for pushing legislation that would ban smoking in airplanes.
"But he was rewarded politically and then politicians began falling all over themselves to do the same. That's the optimistic scenario. And it's not just a scenario! It's happening now," he said, adding that Republicans tell him privately they're starting to accept climate change.
That process of "winning the conversation," however, has been stalled in prior years because "a shrinking group of denialists fly into a rage when it's mentioned," he said.
"It's like a family with an alcoholic father who flies into a rage every time a subject is mentioned and so everybody avoids the elephant in the room to keep the peace," he said, but argued "the ability of the raging deniers to stop progress is waning every single day."
Organizing for Action, the political group formed from the president's re-election campaign, earlier this month delivered unicorn statues to Republican deniers in Congress. The effort was part of a larger push from the group to "hold members of Congress accountable for their positions on climate change," according to a press release.
Gore credited President Barack Obama for his aggressive new climate change strategy that calls for limiting pollution from existing coal-fired power plants and issuing directives requiring the EPA to establish carbon pollution standards for plants that are already active. Gore said he was "very encouraged" by the policy moves.
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The silly antics of the purist wing of the GOP are making their dire problems even worse
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Republicans are their own worst political enemy
By Chris Cillizza and Sean Sullivan, August 21, 2013
For a Republican hoping to win back the White House in 2016 after eight years in the political wilderness, it’s been a frustrating last few days.
“The party is acting as if the entire world is a GOP primary,” said Mike Murphy, a prominent Republican campaign consultant. “That is a very dangerous way to operate. We have massive image problems with the greater electorate, and the silly antics of the purist wing are making our dire problems even worse.”
Consider the following events on Tuesday:
* Ted Cruz, the flag-bearer of the tea party movement among elected officials, dominated headlines with his renunciation of his Canadian citizenship, a move that quite clearly signaled his interest in running for president in 2016.
* Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander penned an op-ed in the Tennessean defending himself against tea party attacks, insisting: “One good way to put our country on the right track is to send to Washington a conservative, problem-solving former governor who worked well with others to get the results that put our state on the right track.”
* The Senate Conservatives Fund launched radio ads against Republican Sens. Richard Burr (N.C.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), blasting them for their comments about the viability of linking the defunding of President Obama’s health-care law to shutting down the federal government this fall.
* The co-chairman of the Polk County (Iowa) Republican Party resigned, citing the GOP’s move to the right as the main reason. “I find it increasingly difficult to defend issues and statements made by Party leaders,” wrote Chad Brown.
* Weld County (Colorado) got approval on Tuesday to secede from the rest of the state. The move was in reaction to the Democratic-controlled legislature’s action on guns and oil exploration.
Taken one by one, none of the above developments is all that big a deal. Taken together, they illustrate that the Republican Party is on the verge of splitting in two. Now, to be clear, that split won’t happen. The two major parties are the two major parties for a reason. Disputes work themselves out. The pendulum swings.
But, for now, Republicans are caught in the midst of an increasingly public battle between establishment and, for lack of a better term, tea party wings that is — more than anything Democrats have done — complicating the GOP’s path back to power in 2016.
“These groups, once relegated to the fringe were organized and have taken over as many mainstreamers took a vacation or left altogether,” explained former Virginia Republican congressman Tom Davis of the growth in the tea party, adding that they “will either learn coalition politics and be productive or they will get crushed a la [Barry] Goldwater and [George] McGovern.”
The prospect of facing a Goldwater-like election — the Arizona senator won only 36 percent of the popular vote in 1964 — in 2016 is more real than it has been in quite some time, according to close observers of the GOP.
Here’s why. The losses of John McCain and Mitt Romney, both establishment picks viewed with semi-open derision by the party’s conservative wing, in 2008 and 2012 have convinced the base that the only way to win is to stick to core principles and not move to the middle.
The rapid rise of Cruz is evidence of that belief. And, make no mistake that if Cruz runs, he is either in the top tier or just outside of the top tier of candidates.
What Republicans are currently going through is not unique. Democrats went through a similar existential reckoning in the late 1980s and early 1990s before Bill Clinton led them out of a political wilderness.
Of course, Democrats spent 12 years out of the White House before Clinton could rise. Given how badly split Republicans are at the moment, there are already worries within the GOP that they might have to wait a similar amount of time before the party’s intraparty squabble resolves itself and they move forward.
..................................................................................................................................
Republicans are their own worst political enemy
By Chris Cillizza and Sean Sullivan, August 21, 2013
For a Republican hoping to win back the White House in 2016 after eight years in the political wilderness, it’s been a frustrating last few days.
“The party is acting as if the entire world is a GOP primary,” said Mike Murphy, a prominent Republican campaign consultant. “That is a very dangerous way to operate. We have massive image problems with the greater electorate, and the silly antics of the purist wing are making our dire problems even worse.”
Consider the following events on Tuesday:
* Ted Cruz, the flag-bearer of the tea party movement among elected officials, dominated headlines with his renunciation of his Canadian citizenship, a move that quite clearly signaled his interest in running for president in 2016.
* Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander penned an op-ed in the Tennessean defending himself against tea party attacks, insisting: “One good way to put our country on the right track is to send to Washington a conservative, problem-solving former governor who worked well with others to get the results that put our state on the right track.”
* The Senate Conservatives Fund launched radio ads against Republican Sens. Richard Burr (N.C.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), blasting them for their comments about the viability of linking the defunding of President Obama’s health-care law to shutting down the federal government this fall.
* The co-chairman of the Polk County (Iowa) Republican Party resigned, citing the GOP’s move to the right as the main reason. “I find it increasingly difficult to defend issues and statements made by Party leaders,” wrote Chad Brown.
* Weld County (Colorado) got approval on Tuesday to secede from the rest of the state. The move was in reaction to the Democratic-controlled legislature’s action on guns and oil exploration.
Taken one by one, none of the above developments is all that big a deal. Taken together, they illustrate that the Republican Party is on the verge of splitting in two. Now, to be clear, that split won’t happen. The two major parties are the two major parties for a reason. Disputes work themselves out. The pendulum swings.
But, for now, Republicans are caught in the midst of an increasingly public battle between establishment and, for lack of a better term, tea party wings that is — more than anything Democrats have done — complicating the GOP’s path back to power in 2016.
“These groups, once relegated to the fringe were organized and have taken over as many mainstreamers took a vacation or left altogether,” explained former Virginia Republican congressman Tom Davis of the growth in the tea party, adding that they “will either learn coalition politics and be productive or they will get crushed a la [Barry] Goldwater and [George] McGovern.”
The prospect of facing a Goldwater-like election — the Arizona senator won only 36 percent of the popular vote in 1964 — in 2016 is more real than it has been in quite some time, according to close observers of the GOP.
Here’s why. The losses of John McCain and Mitt Romney, both establishment picks viewed with semi-open derision by the party’s conservative wing, in 2008 and 2012 have convinced the base that the only way to win is to stick to core principles and not move to the middle.
The rapid rise of Cruz is evidence of that belief. And, make no mistake that if Cruz runs, he is either in the top tier or just outside of the top tier of candidates.
What Republicans are currently going through is not unique. Democrats went through a similar existential reckoning in the late 1980s and early 1990s before Bill Clinton led them out of a political wilderness.
Of course, Democrats spent 12 years out of the White House before Clinton could rise. Given how badly split Republicans are at the moment, there are already worries within the GOP that they might have to wait a similar amount of time before the party’s intraparty squabble resolves itself and they move forward.
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Hate to say it, but McCain was right about something-- Cruz is a "wacko bird"
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Ted Cruz: Savior or bane of the Republican Party?
By Sean Sullivan, August 21, 2013
In AMES, Iowa — For 30 long seconds on a Saturday early this month, Ted Cruz stood silent and beaming as hundreds of conservative activists showered him with heartfelt applause in a dimly lighted auditorium. Then he started up again.
“And that reaction right there,” he declared, pointing at the crowd with his thumb and forefinger together, “shows how we win this fight. If I were sitting in the Senate cloakroom, the reaction to that statement would be fundamentally different. I don’t know that I’m quick enough to dodge all the things that would be thrown at me.”
Just like that, Cruz summed up his first seven months as a U.S. senator and exposed the conundrum he represents for the Republican Party: a hero to the conservative base and a worry for the establishment.
Cruz, 42, is a full-bore conservative from Texas whose certitude and combativeness in defense of his positions have made him a rock star to the GOP’s far-right-leaning activists. The comment that brought the crowd to it feet was about shredding Obamacare at all costs.
But that certitude and combativeness also have made him one of the most controversial figures in the Senate, a lightning rod for public and private criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. The question many are left to ponder as Cruz travels the country targeting President Obama’s health-care law is: What can he realistically hope to achieve in a Senate steeped in tradition and hierarchy as an eloquent yet sharply polarizing figure?
The question is increasingly important, as Cruz is frequently mentioned as a 2016 presidential contender. This week, he released his birth certificate amid questions from some who doubt whether he is eligible to be president because he was born in Canada. But Cruz makes the point that he was a U.S. citizen at birth (his mother was an American born in Delaware), and he promised Monday to renounce whatever right he has to Canadian citizenship.
The 2016 speculation has also been driven by the amount of time Cruz has been spending in early presidential nominating states such as Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire. He has made two trips to Iowa this year and plans to visit again in October. On Friday, he will be in New Hampshire to headline a fundraiser held by the state GOP.
But he cautions that not too much should be read into those travels. “In my view, it is way too soon for anyone to be focused on the 2016 presidential election,” he said. Cruz insists that his focus is “100 percent” on the Senate, but that is proving a trickier play.
Not a ‘social club’
“Extreme,” “wacko bird” and “over the line” are some of the words Cruz’s Senate colleagues have used to describe him publicly. He has shown none of the traditional deference that junior senators often adopt when dealing with their more senior colleagues.
[snipped]
Outside the Senate chamber one afternoon in late July, Cruz was surrounded by a crush of reporters who tossed out question after question about his push to defund Obamacare. Republican senators, including Tom Coburn (Okla.), Richard Burr (N.C.) and John McCain (Ariz.), have sharply criticized the idea. Cruz chalked up the GOP hesitation to fear.
“There are a great many Republicans who are afraid of this fight because they believe the Democrats will blame Republicans and .?.?. the mainstream media will repeat word for word the argument of the Democrats,” he told reporters.
About 15 feet away stood McCain, encircled by another pack of reporters. He mocked the idea that he is less courageous than Cruz. “I think he’s right. I’m scared, and I surrender,” McCain said sarcastically, as he waved an imaginary white flag.
Cruz acknowledges that he has become a target for some of his colleagues but says he does not intend to engage in that fight.
“I can’t control what other senators choose to do,” he said. “More than a few senators, Democrat and Republican, have made the decision to throw rocks at me and to publicly insult me. I have not reciprocated. I don’t intend to reciprocate.”
The Senate is a place where tradition and seniority still matter and where the ability to forge relationships can mean the difference between success and failure. It is a place where the newest members often keep their heads down until they get their bearings. Cruz, who entered the chamber as a political star, has largely eschewed those conventions, setting him apart from other freshman celebrities who preceded him.
Barack Obama, for example, entered the Senate to great fanfare in 2005, but he kept a notably lower profile, following the example of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Even Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), to whom Cruz is sometimes compared, didn’t go big early. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a hero of liberals in a way that Cruz is to conservatives, has maintained a quiet presence during her first few months on Capitol Hill.
“He doesn’t appear to be hunkering down for a long Senate career, and he certainly isn’t angling for a Senate leadership position,” said Ed Rogers, a longtime Republican strategist. “I think he is more of a loner than Rubio, Warren or even Obama and certainly Hillary.”
Lee, one of Cruz’s closest allies in the Senate, says there is little doubt that Cruz is serious about being a senator. “I don’t think anyone can doubt his sincerity or his commitment or his dedication to the job,” he said.
[snipped]
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Ted Cruz: Savior or bane of the Republican Party?
By Sean Sullivan, August 21, 2013
In AMES, Iowa — For 30 long seconds on a Saturday early this month, Ted Cruz stood silent and beaming as hundreds of conservative activists showered him with heartfelt applause in a dimly lighted auditorium. Then he started up again.
“And that reaction right there,” he declared, pointing at the crowd with his thumb and forefinger together, “shows how we win this fight. If I were sitting in the Senate cloakroom, the reaction to that statement would be fundamentally different. I don’t know that I’m quick enough to dodge all the things that would be thrown at me.”
Just like that, Cruz summed up his first seven months as a U.S. senator and exposed the conundrum he represents for the Republican Party: a hero to the conservative base and a worry for the establishment.
Cruz, 42, is a full-bore conservative from Texas whose certitude and combativeness in defense of his positions have made him a rock star to the GOP’s far-right-leaning activists. The comment that brought the crowd to it feet was about shredding Obamacare at all costs.
But that certitude and combativeness also have made him one of the most controversial figures in the Senate, a lightning rod for public and private criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. The question many are left to ponder as Cruz travels the country targeting President Obama’s health-care law is: What can he realistically hope to achieve in a Senate steeped in tradition and hierarchy as an eloquent yet sharply polarizing figure?
The question is increasingly important, as Cruz is frequently mentioned as a 2016 presidential contender. This week, he released his birth certificate amid questions from some who doubt whether he is eligible to be president because he was born in Canada. But Cruz makes the point that he was a U.S. citizen at birth (his mother was an American born in Delaware), and he promised Monday to renounce whatever right he has to Canadian citizenship.
The 2016 speculation has also been driven by the amount of time Cruz has been spending in early presidential nominating states such as Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire. He has made two trips to Iowa this year and plans to visit again in October. On Friday, he will be in New Hampshire to headline a fundraiser held by the state GOP.
But he cautions that not too much should be read into those travels. “In my view, it is way too soon for anyone to be focused on the 2016 presidential election,” he said. Cruz insists that his focus is “100 percent” on the Senate, but that is proving a trickier play.
Not a ‘social club’
“Extreme,” “wacko bird” and “over the line” are some of the words Cruz’s Senate colleagues have used to describe him publicly. He has shown none of the traditional deference that junior senators often adopt when dealing with their more senior colleagues.
[snipped]
Outside the Senate chamber one afternoon in late July, Cruz was surrounded by a crush of reporters who tossed out question after question about his push to defund Obamacare. Republican senators, including Tom Coburn (Okla.), Richard Burr (N.C.) and John McCain (Ariz.), have sharply criticized the idea. Cruz chalked up the GOP hesitation to fear.
“There are a great many Republicans who are afraid of this fight because they believe the Democrats will blame Republicans and .?.?. the mainstream media will repeat word for word the argument of the Democrats,” he told reporters.
About 15 feet away stood McCain, encircled by another pack of reporters. He mocked the idea that he is less courageous than Cruz. “I think he’s right. I’m scared, and I surrender,” McCain said sarcastically, as he waved an imaginary white flag.
Cruz acknowledges that he has become a target for some of his colleagues but says he does not intend to engage in that fight.
“I can’t control what other senators choose to do,” he said. “More than a few senators, Democrat and Republican, have made the decision to throw rocks at me and to publicly insult me. I have not reciprocated. I don’t intend to reciprocate.”
The Senate is a place where tradition and seniority still matter and where the ability to forge relationships can mean the difference between success and failure. It is a place where the newest members often keep their heads down until they get their bearings. Cruz, who entered the chamber as a political star, has largely eschewed those conventions, setting him apart from other freshman celebrities who preceded him.
Barack Obama, for example, entered the Senate to great fanfare in 2005, but he kept a notably lower profile, following the example of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Even Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), to whom Cruz is sometimes compared, didn’t go big early. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a hero of liberals in a way that Cruz is to conservatives, has maintained a quiet presence during her first few months on Capitol Hill.
“He doesn’t appear to be hunkering down for a long Senate career, and he certainly isn’t angling for a Senate leadership position,” said Ed Rogers, a longtime Republican strategist. “I think he is more of a loner than Rubio, Warren or even Obama and certainly Hillary.”
Lee, one of Cruz’s closest allies in the Senate, says there is little doubt that Cruz is serious about being a senator. “I don’t think anyone can doubt his sincerity or his commitment or his dedication to the job,” he said.
[snipped]
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Has the recession really ended for many Americans?
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Hmmmmm, median income was $52,098-- that's a bit above $4300 a month. I bet there are a lot of fast food (and Walmart) workers who wish they made that much!
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Report: Household income below end-of-recession
By Kelly Evans, August 22, 2013
The average American household is earning less than when the Great Recession ended four years ago, according to a report released Wednesday.
U.S. median household income, once adjusted for inflation, has fallen 4.4 percent in that time, according to the report from Sentier Research. The report is based on an analysis of Census Bureau data.
The median, or midpoint, income in June 2013 was $52,098. That's down from $54,478 in June 2009, when the recession officially ended. And it's below the $55,480 that the median household took in when the recession began in December 2007.
The report says nearly every group is worse off than four years ago, except for those 65 to 74. Some groups have experienced larger-than-average declines, including blacks, young and upper-middle-aged people, and the unemployed.
Video
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Hmmmmm, median income was $52,098-- that's a bit above $4300 a month. I bet there are a lot of fast food (and Walmart) workers who wish they made that much!
..................................................................................................................................
Report: Household income below end-of-recession
By Kelly Evans, August 22, 2013
The average American household is earning less than when the Great Recession ended four years ago, according to a report released Wednesday.
U.S. median household income, once adjusted for inflation, has fallen 4.4 percent in that time, according to the report from Sentier Research. The report is based on an analysis of Census Bureau data.
The median, or midpoint, income in June 2013 was $52,098. That's down from $54,478 in June 2009, when the recession officially ended. And it's below the $55,480 that the median household took in when the recession began in December 2007.
The report says nearly every group is worse off than four years ago, except for those 65 to 74. Some groups have experienced larger-than-average declines, including blacks, young and upper-middle-aged people, and the unemployed.
Video
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501(c)(4) groups must be "operated EXCLUSIVELY for the promotion of social welfare"-- what's not to understand about that?
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Democratic congressman sues IRS over political rules
By Gregory Korte, August 21, 2013
A Democratic congressman filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service on Wednesday, seeking to overturn a 54-year-old rule that allows social welfare groups to engage in political activity.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., seeks to force the IRS to draft new rules requiring that the tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups comply with the section of the Internal Revenue Code for which they're named. That section requires such groups to be "operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare."
"The law is clear. What do you want us to do, put an exclamation point after exclusively?" Van Hollen told reporters.
But since 1959, the IRS has followed a rule that allowed 501(c)(4) groups to engage in political activity, as long as it wasn't their primary mission. That rule has been widely interpreted as allowing such tax-exempt groups to spend 49% of their money on politics — without disclosing where that money came from.
After the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case paved the way for unlimited corporate and union spending to elect or defeat political candidates, political spending from 501(c)(4) groups has tripled, from $83 million in 2008 to $256 million in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington, also comes amid a growing debate about how the IRS oversees tax-exempt groups involved in political activity. In May, the agency admitted that it had wrongly held up applications from Tea Party groups beginning in 2010. Republicans say the groups were unfairly targeted based on their political beliefs; Democrats say the IRS simply took an unfortunate shortcut in trying to resolve the complicated legal issues surrounding political activities by tax-exempt groups.
But Van Hollen isn't happy with how the Obama administration has responded to the Tea Party affair. The lawsuit seeks to overturn a new "safe harbor" provision enacted by acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. That provision allows groups whose activities are less than 40% political to have their tax-exempt applications fast-tracked, but Van Hollen argues that provision is arbitrary.
The Treasury Department would not comment on the lawsuit. But in a little-noticed planning document released this month, the government listed 324 policy areas it will re-examine in the coming year, including guidance "relating to measurement of an organization's primary activity and whether it is operated primarily for the promotion of social welfare, including guidance relating to political campaign intervention."
Van Hollen, the former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, filed the suit in his official capacity. He was joined by three groups that seek to limit money in politics: Democracy 21, Public Citizen and the Campaign Legal Center.
The American Center for Law and Justice, which represents 41 Tea Party groups suing the IRS over alleged political targeting, said the action Van Hollen seeks to force would "raise serious First Amendment issues."
"Political speech is protected by the First Amendment," chief counsel Jay Sekulow said. "Anonymous pamphleteering is as old as our country, and deserves just as much constitutional protection."
Van Hollen, he said, is in the wrong venue. "If he wants to change the code, he should do that through the legislative process," Sekulow said. "This would be a court way overstepping its bounds."
..................................................................................................................................
Democratic congressman sues IRS over political rules
By Gregory Korte, August 21, 2013
A Democratic congressman filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service on Wednesday, seeking to overturn a 54-year-old rule that allows social welfare groups to engage in political activity.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., seeks to force the IRS to draft new rules requiring that the tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups comply with the section of the Internal Revenue Code for which they're named. That section requires such groups to be "operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare."
"The law is clear. What do you want us to do, put an exclamation point after exclusively?" Van Hollen told reporters.
But since 1959, the IRS has followed a rule that allowed 501(c)(4) groups to engage in political activity, as long as it wasn't their primary mission. That rule has been widely interpreted as allowing such tax-exempt groups to spend 49% of their money on politics — without disclosing where that money came from.
After the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case paved the way for unlimited corporate and union spending to elect or defeat political candidates, political spending from 501(c)(4) groups has tripled, from $83 million in 2008 to $256 million in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington, also comes amid a growing debate about how the IRS oversees tax-exempt groups involved in political activity. In May, the agency admitted that it had wrongly held up applications from Tea Party groups beginning in 2010. Republicans say the groups were unfairly targeted based on their political beliefs; Democrats say the IRS simply took an unfortunate shortcut in trying to resolve the complicated legal issues surrounding political activities by tax-exempt groups.
But Van Hollen isn't happy with how the Obama administration has responded to the Tea Party affair. The lawsuit seeks to overturn a new "safe harbor" provision enacted by acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. That provision allows groups whose activities are less than 40% political to have their tax-exempt applications fast-tracked, but Van Hollen argues that provision is arbitrary.
The Treasury Department would not comment on the lawsuit. But in a little-noticed planning document released this month, the government listed 324 policy areas it will re-examine in the coming year, including guidance "relating to measurement of an organization's primary activity and whether it is operated primarily for the promotion of social welfare, including guidance relating to political campaign intervention."
Van Hollen, the former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, filed the suit in his official capacity. He was joined by three groups that seek to limit money in politics: Democracy 21, Public Citizen and the Campaign Legal Center.
The American Center for Law and Justice, which represents 41 Tea Party groups suing the IRS over alleged political targeting, said the action Van Hollen seeks to force would "raise serious First Amendment issues."
"Political speech is protected by the First Amendment," chief counsel Jay Sekulow said. "Anonymous pamphleteering is as old as our country, and deserves just as much constitutional protection."
Van Hollen, he said, is in the wrong venue. "If he wants to change the code, he should do that through the legislative process," Sekulow said. "This would be a court way overstepping its bounds."
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Wednesday, August 21, 2013
What rising middle class?
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This is a long report and only part of it is reproduced here; it is highly recommended that you read the entire piece. Website; PDF; Downloadable PDF
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A Decade of Flat Wages
The Key Barrier to Shared Prosperity and a Rising Middle Class
By Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz, August 21, 2013
The nation’s economic discourse has finally shifted from talk of “grand bargain” budget deals to a focus on addressing the economic challenges of the middle class and those aspiring to join the middle class. Growing the economy from the “middle out” has become the new frame for discussing economic policy. This is long overdue; in our view, an economy that does not provide shared prosperity is, by definition, a poorly performing one. Further, such an economy will not provide sustainable growth without relying on consumption fueled by asset bubbles and escalating household debt. The collapse of the housing bubble and the ensuing Great Recession have laid bare the consequences of this model of unbalanced growth.
The revived discussion of strengthening the middle class, however, has so far failed to drill down to the central problem: The wage and benefit growth of the vast majority, including white-collar and blue-collar workers and those with and without a college degree, has stagnated, as the fruits of overall growth have accrued disproportionately to the richest households. The wage-setting mechanism has been broken for a generation but has particularly faltered in the last 10 years, once the robust wage growth of the late 1990s subsided. Corporate profits, on the other hand, are at historic highs. Income growth has been captured by those in the top 1 percent, driven by high profitability and by the tremendous wage growth among executives and in the finance sector (for more on wage and income growth among the top 1 percent, see Bivens and Mishel 2013).
President Obama’s July 24 speech in Galesburg, Ill., marking the kickoff of the White House’s “A Better Bargain for the Middle Class” initiative, illustrates both the best of this recent focus on the middle class and the failure to adequately acknowledge and address the economy’s failure to broadly raise wages. The president appropriately looked back in time, noting:
EPI’s The State of Working America, 12th Edition (Mishel et al. 2012) provides a comprehensive assessment of recent decades’ wage and benefits trends and an extensive analysis of the causes of wage stagnation and wage inequality. In this paper we document the economy’s continuing failure to provide real wage gains for most workers. We track wage trends (and, where possible, compensation trends, which include not just wages but also fringe benefits such as health care and pensions) using both employer-based and household-based survey data. We focus primarily on trends since 2007, the year the Great Recession began. We generally examine year-over-year trends using calendar years, though to assess the most recent trends we also include year-over-year trends using just the first half of each year. We also discuss these trends in the context of patterns since 2000, as the 2000–2007 business cycle—and especially the recovery years of that business cycle, 2002–2007—were characterized by dismal wage growth. In some cases we provide data going back to 1979, as most workers have experienced weak wage growth for more than three decades.
This paper’s key findings include:
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This is a long report and only part of it is reproduced here; it is highly recommended that you read the entire piece. Website; PDF; Downloadable PDF
..................................................................................................................................
A Decade of Flat Wages
The Key Barrier to Shared Prosperity and a Rising Middle Class
By Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz, August 21, 2013
The nation’s economic discourse has finally shifted from talk of “grand bargain” budget deals to a focus on addressing the economic challenges of the middle class and those aspiring to join the middle class. Growing the economy from the “middle out” has become the new frame for discussing economic policy. This is long overdue; in our view, an economy that does not provide shared prosperity is, by definition, a poorly performing one. Further, such an economy will not provide sustainable growth without relying on consumption fueled by asset bubbles and escalating household debt. The collapse of the housing bubble and the ensuing Great Recession have laid bare the consequences of this model of unbalanced growth.
The revived discussion of strengthening the middle class, however, has so far failed to drill down to the central problem: The wage and benefit growth of the vast majority, including white-collar and blue-collar workers and those with and without a college degree, has stagnated, as the fruits of overall growth have accrued disproportionately to the richest households. The wage-setting mechanism has been broken for a generation but has particularly faltered in the last 10 years, once the robust wage growth of the late 1990s subsided. Corporate profits, on the other hand, are at historic highs. Income growth has been captured by those in the top 1 percent, driven by high profitability and by the tremendous wage growth among executives and in the finance sector (for more on wage and income growth among the top 1 percent, see Bivens and Mishel 2013).
President Obama’s July 24 speech in Galesburg, Ill., marking the kickoff of the White House’s “A Better Bargain for the Middle Class” initiative, illustrates both the best of this recent focus on the middle class and the failure to adequately acknowledge and address the economy’s failure to broadly raise wages. The president appropriately looked back in time, noting:
In the period after World War II, a growing middle class was the engine of our prosperity. Whether you owned a company, swept its floors, or worked anywhere in between, this country offered you a basic bargain—a sense that your hard work would be rewarded with fair wages and benefits, the chance to buy a home, to save for retirement, and, above all, to hand down a better life for your kids.And he correctly identified what broke down:
But over time, that engine began to stall. That bargain began to fray. . . . The link between higher productivity and people’s wages and salaries was severed—the income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, while the typical family’s barely budged.However, when it came to strengthening the middle class, the president was too optimistic. Aside from advocating an increase in the minimum wage, the president overlooked what it will take to solve the wage problem, saying:
With new American revolutions in energy, technology, manufacturing, and health care, we are actually poised to reverse the forces that have battered the middle class for so long, and rebuild an economy where everyone who works hard can get ahead.Innovations in energy, technology, manufacturing, and health care are undoubtedly important. However, in and of themselves, they will not reestablish the broad-based wage growth and improved job quality needed to generate and sustain middle-class income growth. Nor will they, on their own, permit access to a rising middle class for those now left behind.
EPI’s The State of Working America, 12th Edition (Mishel et al. 2012) provides a comprehensive assessment of recent decades’ wage and benefits trends and an extensive analysis of the causes of wage stagnation and wage inequality. In this paper we document the economy’s continuing failure to provide real wage gains for most workers. We track wage trends (and, where possible, compensation trends, which include not just wages but also fringe benefits such as health care and pensions) using both employer-based and household-based survey data. We focus primarily on trends since 2007, the year the Great Recession began. We generally examine year-over-year trends using calendar years, though to assess the most recent trends we also include year-over-year trends using just the first half of each year. We also discuss these trends in the context of patterns since 2000, as the 2000–2007 business cycle—and especially the recovery years of that business cycle, 2002–2007—were characterized by dismal wage growth. In some cases we provide data going back to 1979, as most workers have experienced weak wage growth for more than three decades.
This paper’s key findings include:
- According to every major data source, the vast majority of U.S. workers—including white-collar and blue-collar workers and those with and without a college degree—have endured more than a decade of wage stagnation. Wage growth has significantly underperformed productivity growth regardless of occupation, gender, race/ethnicity, or education level.
- During the Great Recession and its aftermath (i.e., between 2007 and 2012), wages fell for the entire bottom 70 percent of the wage distribution, despite productivity growth of 7.7 percent.
- Weak wage growth predates the Great Recession. Between 2000 and 2007, the median worker saw wage growth of just 2.6 percent, despite productivity growth of 16.0 percent, while the 20th percentile worker saw wage growth of just 1.0 percent and the 80th percentile worker saw wage growth of just 4.6 percent.
- The weak wage growth over 2000–2007, combined with the wage losses for most workers from 2007 to 2012, mean that between 2000 and 2012, wages were flat or declined for the entire bottom 60 percent of the wage distribution (despite productivity growing by nearly 25 percent over this period).
- Wage growth in the very early part of the 2000–2012 period, between 2000 and 2002, was still being bolstered by momentum from the strong wage growth of the late 1990s. Between 2002 and 2012, wages were stagnant or declined for the entire bottom 70 percent of the wage distribution. In other words, the vast majority of wage earners have already experienced a lost decade, one where real wages were either flat or in decline.
- This lost decade for wages comes on the heels of decades of inadequate wage growth. For virtually the entire period since 1979 (with the one exception being the strong wage growth of the late 1990s), wage growth for most workers has been weak. The median worker saw an increase of just 5.0 percent between 1979 and 2012, despite productivity growth of 74.5 percent—while the 20th percentile worker saw wage erosion of 0.4 percent and the 80th percentile worker saw wage growth of just 17.5 percent.
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The GOP has reached "peak crazy"
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Ted Cruz for el Presidente!
By Jason Stanford, August 21, 2013
Now that he has renounced his Canadian citizenship, Sen. Ted Cruz must run for president, but not to save our country from falling deficits, 41 months straight of private-sector job growth, or forcing health insurance companies to spend your premiums on health care. No, our very junior senator absolutely must run for president so he can help me win an ongoing argument with my wife.
Don’t get me wrong. Cruz has a long list of reasons why he should run for president, at the top of which is that he’s got a great a chance to win the Republican nomination before getting walloped in a general election by a country that is no longer buying what Republicans are selling.
But my wife, who is otherwise right about everything, still believes in a place called common ground that exists in a future in which humanity is united by mutual agreement around shared values. In other words, she doesn’t think there’s anything funny about peace, love and understanding.
Crazier still, she thinks we can reason with Republicans. That’s where Ted Cruz comes in. He’s like a bionic candidate, engineered to unite all Republican factions: anti-fluoride cranks, tea partiers, flat Earthers who think Jesus had a pet dinosaur, and those other Republicans who are simply wrong. Cruz combines Ron Paul’s outsider status, Rick Perry’s states’ rights fetish, Rick Santorum’s Leviticus literalism, Marco Rubio’s Hispanic-but-not-Mexican tokenism, Newt Gingrich’s presumed intelligence, and Mitt Romney’s smug self-satisfaction and feigned, raised-eyebrow humility.
Underneath this dream team of attributes, behind his articulate, composed visage, however, beats the heart of happy to call himself crazy. By running for president, Cruz can prove to my wife that Republicans have gone where reason fears to tread. If you still think Cruz is sane, then you haven’t taken a dispassionate look at his record. Forget how comfortingly educated he sounds, how measured he sounds, how normal he appears. Cruz rocks the crazypants.
Here’s what we knew before he got elected: He thinks George Soros is leading a United Nations plot to take away our golf courses, ranches and paved roads. He called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” And even though he should have known—as a former University of Texas law professor—that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land,” he said that Texas and other states could circumvent the president by nullifying Obamacare. If this sounds a little nuts, you’re right.
And then you elected him to the United States Senate where he really let it fly. He said marriage equality will end religious free speech, that the government might make radio host Glenn Beck a political prisoner, called Newtown families “props” while taking credit for blocking background checks, said funding birth control at Planned Parenthood clinics was an “assault on our liberties,” that extending jobless benefits creates unemployment, and that Harvard Law employed 12 Marxist professors who advocated overthrow of the government.
So dedicated is Sen. Cruz to protecting the government against overthrow that he wants to shut it down to block implementation of a law passed by Congress, signed by the President, and upheld by the Supreme Court. Cruz says shutting down the government isn’t any big deal, really, because most government offices are closed on the weekends.
You won’t find a pony of logic by digging through the piles of statements from this foreign-born birther, this anti-immigration immigrant. All you end up with is the conclusion that Cruz is crazy, a badge he wears proudly.
“In the media there is a tendency to describe conservatives as one of two things: stupid or evil … I suppose I feel mildly complimented in that they have recently invented a third category, which is crazy. It’s the alternative to stupid or evil,” Cruz told Time.
We cannot use reason to reach the unreasonable. The Republican Party has reached peak crazy, but until they nominate a pure vessel of their insanity, my wife will labor under the delusion that we can talk them out of their tree. Cruz is the right kind of crazy. If I don’t start winning political arguments with my wife, I’m going to have to demand to see her birth certificate.
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Ted Cruz for el Presidente!
By Jason Stanford, August 21, 2013
Now that he has renounced his Canadian citizenship, Sen. Ted Cruz must run for president, but not to save our country from falling deficits, 41 months straight of private-sector job growth, or forcing health insurance companies to spend your premiums on health care. No, our very junior senator absolutely must run for president so he can help me win an ongoing argument with my wife.
Don’t get me wrong. Cruz has a long list of reasons why he should run for president, at the top of which is that he’s got a great a chance to win the Republican nomination before getting walloped in a general election by a country that is no longer buying what Republicans are selling.
But my wife, who is otherwise right about everything, still believes in a place called common ground that exists in a future in which humanity is united by mutual agreement around shared values. In other words, she doesn’t think there’s anything funny about peace, love and understanding.
Crazier still, she thinks we can reason with Republicans. That’s where Ted Cruz comes in. He’s like a bionic candidate, engineered to unite all Republican factions: anti-fluoride cranks, tea partiers, flat Earthers who think Jesus had a pet dinosaur, and those other Republicans who are simply wrong. Cruz combines Ron Paul’s outsider status, Rick Perry’s states’ rights fetish, Rick Santorum’s Leviticus literalism, Marco Rubio’s Hispanic-but-not-Mexican tokenism, Newt Gingrich’s presumed intelligence, and Mitt Romney’s smug self-satisfaction and feigned, raised-eyebrow humility.
Underneath this dream team of attributes, behind his articulate, composed visage, however, beats the heart of happy to call himself crazy. By running for president, Cruz can prove to my wife that Republicans have gone where reason fears to tread. If you still think Cruz is sane, then you haven’t taken a dispassionate look at his record. Forget how comfortingly educated he sounds, how measured he sounds, how normal he appears. Cruz rocks the crazypants.
Here’s what we knew before he got elected: He thinks George Soros is leading a United Nations plot to take away our golf courses, ranches and paved roads. He called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” And even though he should have known—as a former University of Texas law professor—that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land,” he said that Texas and other states could circumvent the president by nullifying Obamacare. If this sounds a little nuts, you’re right.
And then you elected him to the United States Senate where he really let it fly. He said marriage equality will end religious free speech, that the government might make radio host Glenn Beck a political prisoner, called Newtown families “props” while taking credit for blocking background checks, said funding birth control at Planned Parenthood clinics was an “assault on our liberties,” that extending jobless benefits creates unemployment, and that Harvard Law employed 12 Marxist professors who advocated overthrow of the government.
So dedicated is Sen. Cruz to protecting the government against overthrow that he wants to shut it down to block implementation of a law passed by Congress, signed by the President, and upheld by the Supreme Court. Cruz says shutting down the government isn’t any big deal, really, because most government offices are closed on the weekends.
You won’t find a pony of logic by digging through the piles of statements from this foreign-born birther, this anti-immigration immigrant. All you end up with is the conclusion that Cruz is crazy, a badge he wears proudly.
“In the media there is a tendency to describe conservatives as one of two things: stupid or evil … I suppose I feel mildly complimented in that they have recently invented a third category, which is crazy. It’s the alternative to stupid or evil,” Cruz told Time.
We cannot use reason to reach the unreasonable. The Republican Party has reached peak crazy, but until they nominate a pure vessel of their insanity, my wife will labor under the delusion that we can talk them out of their tree. Cruz is the right kind of crazy. If I don’t start winning political arguments with my wife, I’m going to have to demand to see her birth certificate.
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Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Embarrassing isn't a strong enough word for these stupidities
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Three ways to start a political campaign with a thud
By Jeremy Wallace, August 20, 2013
Every election cycle is filled with embarrassing gaffes by politicians and would-be candidates.
But in just the last 48 hours, we have been reminded time and again that there are some basic rules that anyone running for office should commit to memory.
Here’s my impromptu list of three things every politician should not have to be reminded of, but alas, we have learned otherwise.
1. Spelling Counts
When you make your big announcement, it is best not to unveil a website in which you misspell the name of the office you are seeking.
Yes, it’s true, when Tennessee Republican Joe Carr unveiled his website, he included an image with the words: “U.S. Sentate” underneath his name, the Huffington Post reported.
2. Don’t fudge your resume
If you don’t have a degree from one of the nation’s most respected institutions of higher learning, don’t pretend you do.
In Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race, Republican Matthew Bevin stated on his LinkedIn page that his education was from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he did not graduate from. The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, reported that Bevin had attended some training courses on the MIT campus, but that the program is not a degree program or affiliated with MIT in any other way.
Surprise, Bevin’s opponent Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, is using the resume inflation in new ads against him.
Check it out here:
3. Avoid jobs handling money if you stink at it
If you have a checkered financial history, it is best not to run for an office that requires handling finances. It took just four days for Orlando Democrat Allie Braswell Jr. to learn that lesson.
On Thursday, Braswell announced he was running to be Florida Chief Financial Officer. The next day, the Jacksonville Times-Union uncovered that he had filed for bankruptcy - three times. One of those filings was in 2008.
On Monday, Braswell announced he was pulling the plug on his 4-day old campaign.
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Three ways to start a political campaign with a thud
By Jeremy Wallace, August 20, 2013
Every election cycle is filled with embarrassing gaffes by politicians and would-be candidates.
But in just the last 48 hours, we have been reminded time and again that there are some basic rules that anyone running for office should commit to memory.
Here’s my impromptu list of three things every politician should not have to be reminded of, but alas, we have learned otherwise.
1. Spelling Counts
When you make your big announcement, it is best not to unveil a website in which you misspell the name of the office you are seeking.
Yes, it’s true, when Tennessee Republican Joe Carr unveiled his website, he included an image with the words: “U.S. Sentate” underneath his name, the Huffington Post reported.
2. Don’t fudge your resume
If you don’t have a degree from one of the nation’s most respected institutions of higher learning, don’t pretend you do.
In Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race, Republican Matthew Bevin stated on his LinkedIn page that his education was from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he did not graduate from. The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, reported that Bevin had attended some training courses on the MIT campus, but that the program is not a degree program or affiliated with MIT in any other way.
Surprise, Bevin’s opponent Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, is using the resume inflation in new ads against him.
Check it out here:
3. Avoid jobs handling money if you stink at it
If you have a checkered financial history, it is best not to run for an office that requires handling finances. It took just four days for Orlando Democrat Allie Braswell Jr. to learn that lesson.
On Thursday, Braswell announced he was running to be Florida Chief Financial Officer. The next day, the Jacksonville Times-Union uncovered that he had filed for bankruptcy - three times. One of those filings was in 2008.
On Monday, Braswell announced he was pulling the plug on his 4-day old campaign.
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Aren't we glad that this guy isn't on the Budget Committee!
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Member of Congress Makes Billion-Dollar Error
By Kent Cooper, August 20, 2013
Congress is used to dealing with billions of dollars in the federal budget, but there’s only one member of Congress who reported over a billion dollars in personal wealth.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who ranked No. 1 on Roll Call’s 50 Richest Members of Congress for 2011, filed his personal financial disclosure report covering 2012 on Aug. 13, 2013. McCaul was granted a 90-day extension from the May 15 filing date. The original 101-page report listed an asset of Harding Loevner Funds Inc. (Spouse/DC Asset), purchased on Oct. 26, 2012, for an amount over $1,000,000,000. “Spouse/DC Asset” usually means it was purchased in the name of the spouse and a dependent child. McCaul’s spouse, Linda, is the daughter of Lowry Mays, Clear Channel Communications founder and current chairman.
Two days later, Rep. McCaul filed an amendment to that report indicating that the amount should be listed as only $1,000,000. View amendment.
Personal financial disclosure reports for all members of Congress are available on Political MoneyLine. View the full original personal financial disclosure report from McCaul.
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Member of Congress Makes Billion-Dollar Error
By Kent Cooper, August 20, 2013
Congress is used to dealing with billions of dollars in the federal budget, but there’s only one member of Congress who reported over a billion dollars in personal wealth.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who ranked No. 1 on Roll Call’s 50 Richest Members of Congress for 2011, filed his personal financial disclosure report covering 2012 on Aug. 13, 2013. McCaul was granted a 90-day extension from the May 15 filing date. The original 101-page report listed an asset of Harding Loevner Funds Inc. (Spouse/DC Asset), purchased on Oct. 26, 2012, for an amount over $1,000,000,000. “Spouse/DC Asset” usually means it was purchased in the name of the spouse and a dependent child. McCaul’s spouse, Linda, is the daughter of Lowry Mays, Clear Channel Communications founder and current chairman.
Two days later, Rep. McCaul filed an amendment to that report indicating that the amount should be listed as only $1,000,000. View amendment.
Personal financial disclosure reports for all members of Congress are available on Political MoneyLine. View the full original personal financial disclosure report from McCaul.
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Do you know a woman who is qualified for elected office? Encourage her to run!
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Political Parties and PACs Key to Recruiting More Women for Congress
Since the 1980s, more women have registered to vote than men. In the 2012 election, 7.8 million more women cast ballots than men. Women are more engaged in politics than their male counterparts in a lot of ways. But when it comes to actually making the laws, women are sitting on the sidelines, making up just 18 percent of Congress.
A new report indicates women are not avoiding the political spotlight because they are uninterested in elections or less qualified. They are choosing not to run for office because women experience greater barriers to entry than men, the report concludes.
"We have tried for 200 and 300 years to fix women. We say 'if we just get them to run right or dress right'..blah blah blah," Marie Wilson, the founder and former president of the White House Project, an organization that helps women attain public office, said Monday night during a discussion about women and politics at New York University. "I think we are dealing with structural issues."
FairVote, an advocacy group that campaigns to expand voting rights, released its first draft of the 2013 "State of Women's Representation" report Monday. The report reveals that there are only five states with women governors, that women make up just a quarter of state legislatures and only 12 women are mayors in the country's 100 largest cities. The numbers are clear, but the reason so few women enter politics is much more complicated.
The report shows that one of the greatest factors keeping women out of politics is that despite reaching higher levels of education than men, women are less likely to consider themselves qualified. Making matters worse, political pundits and party leaders don't reach out and encourage women to jump into a race as often as they encourage men. Research shows that women are 10 percent less likely to be asked to run, but when someone shows an interest in their political future, they respond as positively to it as men.
Women are less likely than men to decide to run for political office on their own. In a survey of state legislators, 43 percent of men surveyed said running was entirely their own idea. Only 26 percent of women said they had followed through on their ambitions without encouragement.
"If [political actors] were to focus their efforts on recruiting a larger number of politically-viable women candidates,there could be a dramatic increase in the number of women candidacies, and therefore the number of women serving in elected office," the report says.
Fundraising is another major obstacle that keeps many women from entering the political sphere.
Jessica McIntosh, the communications director for Emily's List, a PAC that supports pro-choice and Democratic women for office, says that the increasing expense of running a campaign disproportionately deters women from getting involved.
"Without money, one cannot be considered a viable candidate," she says.
Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, argues that women's tendency to care more about others than themselves, can hamper their desire to fundraise.
"It is not that women cannot raise money, women can raise money. The problem is that they don't want to," Lake says. "If they are going to raise money, they are going to raise money for the safe house in their neighborhood."
FairVote, however, suggests that the rise of PACs have helped to curb the barriers to entry for women interested in politics. They cite groups like Emily's list and the conservative Susan B. Anthony List, as ways women have found the increasing financial support they needed early on to get their campaigns off the ground.
"The growth of these groups is particularly important because women as a group are disadvantaged by incumbency," the study says. "Incumbents have an intrinsic advantage over challengers due to factors like greater name-recognition, better fundraising, and constituent services. As most incumbents are male, women as a group start out with a competitive disadvantage."
The study shows that one of the most effective ways to increase the number of women holding office is to have more of them seeking higher office. After former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was chosen as a vice presidential nominee in 2008, she was able to catapult her "momma grizzly" brand into a marketing campaign for other conservative women like Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
Moving forward, FairVote advocates that political parties set a numerical goal for female candidates to recruit. Currently 110 countries have quotas to ensure that a certain percentage of representatives in government posts are women. While political parties have yet to adopt rigid guidelines, Democrats and Republicans have begun to see that women candidates must be a key piece of their electoral strategy considering more than half of the electorate are women.
Republicans have launched Project GROW, a grass roots outreach program, in an effort to recruit more female candidates and engage women voters across the country.
Andrea Bozek, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, says that recruiting women and building its coalition of female voters is a “top priority” this year.
“With specific leadership from our female members, Project GROW will empower, encourage and support women across the country, on and off the ballots, to become more engaged in their communities and to stand up for the issues that are affecting them and their families the most," Bozek says.
Democrats, however, say they already have the edge in recruiting women to run for office. In the 113th Congress, there were 17 freshman Democrats who were women. There were three freshman Republicans, according to the FairVote study.
"Democrats were proud to elect the most diverse caucus in American history in 2012 - unlike House Republicans, who are 90 percent white men. We'll continue to build on our efforts in 2014 and beyond by recruiting women who are problem solvers in their communities,” DCCC Chairman Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y. said in an email. “Our most important recruiting tool is what we stand for: Democrats will fight for women while House Republicans continue to wage a war on women that would take them back a century."
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Political Parties and PACs Key to Recruiting More Women for Congress
Women aren't running for office because barriers to entry too high
By Lauren Fox, August 20, 2013Since the 1980s, more women have registered to vote than men. In the 2012 election, 7.8 million more women cast ballots than men. Women are more engaged in politics than their male counterparts in a lot of ways. But when it comes to actually making the laws, women are sitting on the sidelines, making up just 18 percent of Congress.
A new report indicates women are not avoiding the political spotlight because they are uninterested in elections or less qualified. They are choosing not to run for office because women experience greater barriers to entry than men, the report concludes.
"We have tried for 200 and 300 years to fix women. We say 'if we just get them to run right or dress right'..blah blah blah," Marie Wilson, the founder and former president of the White House Project, an organization that helps women attain public office, said Monday night during a discussion about women and politics at New York University. "I think we are dealing with structural issues."
FairVote, an advocacy group that campaigns to expand voting rights, released its first draft of the 2013 "State of Women's Representation" report Monday. The report reveals that there are only five states with women governors, that women make up just a quarter of state legislatures and only 12 women are mayors in the country's 100 largest cities. The numbers are clear, but the reason so few women enter politics is much more complicated.
The report shows that one of the greatest factors keeping women out of politics is that despite reaching higher levels of education than men, women are less likely to consider themselves qualified. Making matters worse, political pundits and party leaders don't reach out and encourage women to jump into a race as often as they encourage men. Research shows that women are 10 percent less likely to be asked to run, but when someone shows an interest in their political future, they respond as positively to it as men.
Women are less likely than men to decide to run for political office on their own. In a survey of state legislators, 43 percent of men surveyed said running was entirely their own idea. Only 26 percent of women said they had followed through on their ambitions without encouragement.
"If [political actors] were to focus their efforts on recruiting a larger number of politically-viable women candidates,there could be a dramatic increase in the number of women candidacies, and therefore the number of women serving in elected office," the report says.
Fundraising is another major obstacle that keeps many women from entering the political sphere.
Jessica McIntosh, the communications director for Emily's List, a PAC that supports pro-choice and Democratic women for office, says that the increasing expense of running a campaign disproportionately deters women from getting involved.
"Without money, one cannot be considered a viable candidate," she says.
Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, argues that women's tendency to care more about others than themselves, can hamper their desire to fundraise.
"It is not that women cannot raise money, women can raise money. The problem is that they don't want to," Lake says. "If they are going to raise money, they are going to raise money for the safe house in their neighborhood."
FairVote, however, suggests that the rise of PACs have helped to curb the barriers to entry for women interested in politics. They cite groups like Emily's list and the conservative Susan B. Anthony List, as ways women have found the increasing financial support they needed early on to get their campaigns off the ground.
"The growth of these groups is particularly important because women as a group are disadvantaged by incumbency," the study says. "Incumbents have an intrinsic advantage over challengers due to factors like greater name-recognition, better fundraising, and constituent services. As most incumbents are male, women as a group start out with a competitive disadvantage."
The study shows that one of the most effective ways to increase the number of women holding office is to have more of them seeking higher office. After former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was chosen as a vice presidential nominee in 2008, she was able to catapult her "momma grizzly" brand into a marketing campaign for other conservative women like Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
Moving forward, FairVote advocates that political parties set a numerical goal for female candidates to recruit. Currently 110 countries have quotas to ensure that a certain percentage of representatives in government posts are women. While political parties have yet to adopt rigid guidelines, Democrats and Republicans have begun to see that women candidates must be a key piece of their electoral strategy considering more than half of the electorate are women.
Republicans have launched Project GROW, a grass roots outreach program, in an effort to recruit more female candidates and engage women voters across the country.
Andrea Bozek, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, says that recruiting women and building its coalition of female voters is a “top priority” this year.
“With specific leadership from our female members, Project GROW will empower, encourage and support women across the country, on and off the ballots, to become more engaged in their communities and to stand up for the issues that are affecting them and their families the most," Bozek says.
Democrats, however, say they already have the edge in recruiting women to run for office. In the 113th Congress, there were 17 freshman Democrats who were women. There were three freshman Republicans, according to the FairVote study.
"Democrats were proud to elect the most diverse caucus in American history in 2012 - unlike House Republicans, who are 90 percent white men. We'll continue to build on our efforts in 2014 and beyond by recruiting women who are problem solvers in their communities,” DCCC Chairman Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y. said in an email. “Our most important recruiting tool is what we stand for: Democrats will fight for women while House Republicans continue to wage a war on women that would take them back a century."
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