Category Archives: Obama Administration

The American Impasse

Posted on by

Here we are, rolling to the end of another year, about to elect another President.  Very likely the Democratic nominee will be elected, and yet barring divine intervention we’ll be stuck with a Republican majority in the House.  (Right now it appears the Senate could go either way.) So there is still obstruction ahead as far as the eye can see.

Our basic problem, as I see it, boils down to this: There’s a portion of the American population that is prepared, intellectually and emotionally, for the United States to adjust to the 21st century. This portion accepts the U.S. as a multicultural and multi-ethnic nation. It understands the U.S. is one nation among many on this planet, and that our future security and prosperity require friendship and co-operation among nations, for our mutual benefit. It sees government as a means to carry forward the will of we, the people; to secure the rights of citizens; and to be sure that everybody gets a “square deal,” as Theodore Roosevelt promised about 112 years ago.

And then there’s the portion that wants to crawl inside a 1950s-era Disney movie about America and patriotism and never come out. You remember those. In that world, nearly everybody was white. Men were in charge and women were happy to let them be in charge. The few blacks were poor but cheerfully docile, and Native Americans were remote characters who dutifully fell out of trees whenever a white man shot a rifle. You’d think they would have learned to stay out of trees.

There also are a lot of people in neither of those portions. I think a big chunk of the electorate probably knows that Donald Trump is ridiculous and really don’t want to bomb Iran, but they tacitly accept much of the “wisdom” of the Right because that’s all they ever hear — taxes must always be cut, government spending is always bad, and all Middle Easterners are dangerous. They probably don’t accept progressivism, but it’s also the case that it’s probably never been explained to them.

So here we are, this big, strong, wealthy and allegedly dominant nation, and we can’t so much as fix our own bridges. We’re stuck between moving forward as a modern representative democracy or morphing into some kind of authoritarian state run by a cabal of mega-billionaires. If the latter vision wins, the (white) masses will be placated by visions of Fess Parker and his spunky militia protecting the homestead against scary foreign things. Everybody else will be disenfranchised.

A couple of weeks ago,  Rebecca Traister wrote that we’re all suffering through the death throes of while male power.

This moment, this election, these years represent the death throes of exclusive white male power in the United States. That the snarling fury and violence are contemporary does not make them less real than the terrors of previous periods; it makes them more real, at least to those of us living through them. And the presidential-primary contest, while absurdist and theatrical, is reflecting very real fury and violence in the non-electoral world: the burning of crosses and black churches, the execution of black men by police, the resistance of male soldiers to women in elite combat positions, a white man with a history of violence against women himself a “warrior for the babies” after killing people at a Planned Parenthood clinic, and a younger white man killing nine black churchgoers with the explanation “You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country.”

The political contest just projects these panicked resentments on a bigger, more official screen. The public spectacle of this presidential election, and the two that have preceded it, are inextricably linked to the racialized and gendered anger and violence we see around us. Recall that Trump’s rise in politics began with his attacks on Barack Obama as foreign, as Muslim, as other. And that the tea party whence Ted Cruz springs has concerned itself mostly — official protestations about economic priorities to the contrary — with shutting down reproductive-health options for women. That is, when they are not trying to shut down the political ambitions of Hillary Clinton at any cost (see Trey Gowdy’s wild-eyed, profligate, and fruitless Benghazi investigation).

Increasingly, Republican voters want just one thing: revenge. Read what Frank Lutz says about pro-Trump focus groups:

I spent three hours in a deep dialogue focus group with 29 Trump supporters. The phenomenon of “The Donald” is rooted in a psyche far deeper and more consequential than next November’s presidential election. His support denotes an abiding distrust in — and disrespect for — the governing elite. These individuals do not like being told by Washington or Wall Street what is best for them, do not like the direction America is headed in, and disdain President Barack Obama and his (perceived) circle of self-righteous, tone-deaf governing partisans.

Trump voters are not just angry — they want revenge.

Mr Trump has adroitly filled the vacuum of vitriol, establishing himself as the bold, brash, take-no-prisoners megaphone for the frustrated masses. They see him as the antidote to all that Mr Obama has made wrong with America. So to understand why millions love Mr Trump so much, you have to take a step back and listen to why they hate Mr Obama so much.

Here, my Trump voter focus group was particularly illuminating. Some still believe the president is not Christian. Many believe he does not love America. And just about all of them think he does not reflect the values the country was built upon. Indeed, within this growing faction, Mr Trump has license to say just about anything. As we have seen repeatedly, the more outrageous the accusation, the more receptive the ear.

Mr Trump delights in unleashing harsh attacks on Jeb Bush, the Republican establishment and the “mainstream media”. His childlike joy in ridiculing his critics is tantamount to healing balm for the millions who have felt silenced, ignored and even scorned by the governing and media elite for so long. Is it any wonder that his declaration of war against “political correctness” is his most potent and predictable applause line?

This of course begs the question — what, exactly, has President Obama “made wrong with America”?  Other than being POTUS while black? Do they even know?

The fact that they hate “political correctness” above all things tells me that nothing matters to them more than the freedom to be openly bigoted without being stigmatized for it.

Tom Gogola writes that America really wasn’t ready for a black president.

If hope and change were the Obama buzzwords in 2009, the lesson of 2015 is that a bunch of overstimulated, hopelessly right-wing pseudo statesmen haven’t changed, grown up, dropped the sub rosa race-bait narrative—even as Obama delivered on his fair share of what he promised way back when.

Don’t ask me why Obama’s race is still an issue; ask Lou Dobbs. The immigrant-bashing news anchor blabbed to the Fox masses about how Obama only became president because he played the “race card,” a curiously timed outburst given that Dobbs made it just two weeks ago.

See the rock-solid belief in the minds of true bigots — black people get things handed to them they don’t deserve, at the expense of white people. They even somehow get elected POTUS when they don’t deserve it.

The Trump supporters feel their “values” are being threatened. And, of course, we know what those values are. They value maintaining social and cultural dominance as a birthright. They deserve to dominate because they are white. Being male and overtly Christian also count.

I could go on. Of course,there’s always been a disconnect between the ideal America and the “real” America. We see ourselves as the “good guys” who stand for freedom and compassion. And, y’know, every now and then, we have been. But there’s also always been bigotry and discrimination, sometimes to the point of violence. We’re a nation of mutts uneasily tied together by a Constitution that we all honor, even if we disagree over what it means.  And right now I have no idea where we are heading.

See also: Nate Cohn, Donald Trump’s Strongest Supporters: A Certain Kind of Democrat; Nancy LeTourneau, Republicans Want Revenge and A World View in Its Death Throes.

Taxes and 2016: Some Choices

Posted on by

Although this won’t surprise most of you, do read the in-depth feature in the New York Times about how the mega-wealthy avoid paying taxes.

With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the “income defense industry,” consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means. …

…Operating largely out of public view — in tax court, through arcane legislative provisions, and in private negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service — the wealthy have used their influence to steadily whittle away at the government’s ability to tax them. The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans.

These several thousand Americans making use of the private tax system are mostly supporters of Republicans, and donors within this group are behind most of the money going into conservative Super-PACs. A very small number of them are Democratic Party donors, however.

In the heat of the presidential race, the influence of wealthy donors is being tested. At stake are the Obama administration’s limited 2013 tax increase on high earners — the first in two decades — and an I.R.S. initiative to ensure that, in effect, the higher rate sticks by cracking down on tax avoidance by the wealthy.

While Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have pledged to raise taxes on these voters, virtually every Republican has advanced policies that would vastly reduce their tax bills, sometimes to as little as 10 percent of their income.

At the same time, most Republican candidates favor eliminating the inheritance tax, a move that would allow the new rich, and the old, to bequeath their fortunes intact, solidifying the wealth gap far into the future. And several have proposed a substantial reduction — or even elimination — in the already deeply discounted tax rates on investment gains, a foundation of the most lucrative tax strategies.

The article goes on to say that the wealthy are not so much buying politicians as they are buying policy. The “income defense industry” has been able to lower their tax bills from roughly 27 percent to less than 17 percent over the past 25 or so years. The industry has also managed to hobble the IRS from going after them, even as the Obama Administration has made closing loopholes a priority.

Again, although there are Democrats who have gone along with this, for the most part it’s the Republican Party that supports it.

While you are at the New York Times, be sure to read “$250,000 a Year Is Not Middle Class” by Bryce Covert. Hillary Clinton has pledged not to raise taxes on the “middle class,” which she is defining as anyone who makes $250,000 or less. Covert argues that those who make $206,568 or more are in the top 5 percent of earners; they are not “middle class.” Further, this pledge will prevent a Clinton Administration from being able to fund programs that really would help the actual middle class, such as paid family leave.

Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley both support a policy program that would provide paid family leave as a kind of social insurance, and this would be funded by a 0.2 percent payroll tax increase across the board. I’m seeing Hillary supporters gleefully pounce on this, saying Bernie would raise middle-class taxes and Hillary won’t. But it isn’t quite that simple, as Sanders also has pledged to leave all other taxes on people making $250,000 or less alone. Covert writes,

Mr. Obama, who also made a pledge not to raise middle-class taxes, has seen how limiting it can be. Early last year, he made an effort to levy some taxes on 529 college savings accounts, given that 70 percent of account balances in those and similar accounts are owned by families who make more than $200,000. The revenue from the tax would have been plowed into college subsidies that would reach low- and middle-income Americans.

It was a doomed idea. Some families with closer to median income do use 529 accounts. So adding a tax would, technically, increase some middle-class people’s burden, thus violating Mr. Obama’s promise. Backlash erupted not just from Republicans, but fellow Democrats, and he dropped the idea less than a week after floating it.

IMO this plays into the Republican talking point book about taxes, which says that taxes are an oppressive and horrible drain on the pockets of America, while expecting Americans to spend even more money to pay for things that a tax-funded program could provide cheaply is not.  (See also: health care.) It’s why we can’t have nice things. And it’s a notion supported by the income defense industry.

Also, too: Goats

Don’t Short the Big Short

Posted on by

Paul Krugman himself praises The Big Short, the new feature film on the financial crisis. Let’s all go see it.   Here’s a list of auxiliary reading to accompany the film.

There are lots of good reviews. This is by Peter Travers in The Rolling Stone:

It sounds like a horror show: a doomsday epic about the 2008 financial crisis and the Wall Street wolves who got rich off it. Gone were the homes, jobs and savings of average Joes. But wait. As directed and written by Adam McKay – the dude behind Anchorman and other giddy hits with Will Ferrell, his partner on the website Funny or Die – The Big Short is hunting bigger game. I’d call it a Restoration comedy for right the fuck now, a farce fueled by rage against the machine that relentlessly kills ethics, and a hell of a hilarious time at the movies if you’re up for laughs that stick in your throat.

So who doesn’t like it? Um, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Post, and Fortune. Um, do tell.

I haven’t seen it, but now I’m going to have to make a point of it.

 

Bombs Away

Posted on by

I’m not watching the Republican debate, but I’m betting it’s a bomb fest.

I’m learning that the New York Public schools received a bomb threat very similar to the one that closed Los Angeles schools today.  But the NY schools did not close, mostly because nobody saw the email until it was too late to get the word out. By 9 o’clock or so, the NYPD had determined the threat was a hoax. I don’t know if that’s reassuring.

Ran into wi-fi issues today, which slowed me down. I will write something tomorrow, I promise!

Bad Hair?

Posted on by

Few of the people waxing indignant because The Donald proposed banning Muslims from the U.S. seem not to have noticed that Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush want to allow only Christian refugees from Syria into the country. And many state governors have gone out of their way to be as ugly and nativist as possible, barring Syrian refugees of any sort.

In other words, it appears the Muslim ban thing is only bad because The Donald said it. Is it the bad hair?

Seriously, the only difference between the snake oil Trump is peddling and the snake oil being marketed by the rest of the Republican candidates is that some are using more upscale advertising.

I don’t entirely buy Charles Blow’s argument that Trump the Candidate is a monster created by craven mass media, but I agree with this:

Speaker Paul Ryan said at the House Republican leadership’s weekly news conference, “This is not conservatism.” Maybe it’s not traditional conservatism, but it is modern Republicanism, or at least a large enough portion of it to make the most inflammatory Republican candidate the most liked Republican candidate.

Ryan continued: “What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for and, more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”

I’m not sure which party Ryan has been paying attention to for the last decade, but to my eye and ear, extreme rhetoric is increasingly becoming intrinsic to the Republican Party. The front-runner is simply saying out loud what many conservatives are feeling — he’s not Svengali; he’s a crowd reader.

The truth is that even candidates with more graceful language and elegant delivery than the current front-runner express views that sound eerily similar to his.

People who self-identify as journalists in mass media just about never point out how absurd a politician’s positions are, even when they are, but now for The Donald all bets are off. It’s now okay for them to admit his ideas are nuts and he’s beginning to resemble a cross between a low-rent Mussolini and Pennywise the Clown. But they won’t say the same thing about the other GOP candidates, even though they are all pretty much on the same page in substance, if not in packaging. Although it’s okay to repeat every unsubstantiated rumor about Hillary Clinton.

The GOP is still hoping The Donald will flame out that that a “serious” candidate, i.e. someone with a conventional working relationship with the GOP establishment and its corporate donors, will step up. The longer Trump stays on top of the polls, the harder it’s going to be for that to happen. Heh.

See also Gail Collins, Republicans, Guns and Abortion.

The Thought Police

Posted on by

Not enough attention is being paid to this: Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas, of course), who is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology is using his committee chairmanship to intimidate the government’s own climate scientists.

In October, Mr. Smith issued a subpoena to Kathryn D. Sullivan, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, demanding all internal notes, emails and correspondence concerning a study its scientists published in the journal Science. The study found that the “rate of global warming during the last 15 years has been as fast as or faster than what was seen during the latter half of the 20th century.”

This conclusion disputed the claim, seized upon by climate-change deniers like Mr. Smith, that there has been a slowdown in the rate of global warming in recent years. In fact, 2014 was the warmest year on record, and this year is likely to end up even warmer.

Fortunately, NOAA did not acquiesce to Mr. Smith’s outrageous demands. The agency pointed out that it had provided Mr. Smith’s committee with the scientific briefings, data and studies behind the Science article, as well as two thorough briefings by NOAA scientists. But Mr. Smith was not satisfied. He repeated his demand for all subpoenaed documents and warned of “civil and/or criminal enforcement mechanisms” if the agency did not comply.

Do read the whole article.

Triggers

Posted on by

Righties are apoplectic about this Daily News article, which presents a hypothesis about the San Bernadino mass shooting.  Apparently one of Tashfeen Malik’s c0-workers was a five-alarm loudmouth wingnut bagger who wanted Ann Coulter to be named head of Homeland Security. The Daily News writer called him  “a radical Born Again Christian/Messianic Jew.” Might explain why the shooters went after the workplace, which otherwise made no sense as a terrorism target.

The author also made the point that the shooters and this victim were mirror images of each other, and the Usual Wingnuts are over-the-top indignant. But the only difference I see is that few of  our whackjobs are desperate enough to go beyond the bloviating stage. They’re capable of it, though.

Yakety Yak

Posted on by

Yesterday Senate Republicans killed a couple of gun control proposals:

The first gun control measure proposed by Democrats was legislation from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would deny people on a federal terrorism watch list the ability to purchase guns. The measure failed, 45-54. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) voted with Republicans to reject the measure, and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) crossed over to vote in favor of the gun restrictions.

The second vote revived legislation from April 2013, written in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of 20 elementary school children in Newtown, Conn., with bipartisan backing that would enact universal background checks. The four Republicans who backed the bill then — Kirk and Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who co-authored the measure with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — also voted in favor of the Democrats’ plan on Thursday. Heitkamp also opposed the second gun-control measure, which was blocked on a 48-50 tally. …

… The vote carried little drama: No one changed their position from April 2013, and other than Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) attempting to vote “aye” twice, there was little drama as senators scrolled on their phones during the first major gun vote in two and a half years.

So, Republicans make sure we can’t do anything about our most common form of terrorism — mass shootings. The New York Times editorial board:

In the hours after the attack in San Bernardino on Wednesday, President Obama specifically mentioned that legislation as an important security measure. “Those same people who we don’t allow to fly can go into a store in the United States and buy a firearm, and there’s nothing that we can do to stop them. That’s a law that needs to be changed,” he said on CBS News. The George W. Bush administration backed the terrorist-list bill in 2007.

No matter. The House speaker, Paul Ryan, issued his party’s weak defense of arming potential terrorism suspects on Thursday morning: “I think it’s very important to remember people have due process rights in this country, and we can’t have some government official just arbitrarily put them on a list.” Mr. Ryan’s Senate colleagues demonstrated that they are more worried about the possibility that someone might be turned away from a gun shop than shielding the public against violent criminals.

Short on action, big on talk:

At the Republican Jewish Coalition’s conference on Thursday, the Republican presidential candidates offered little but political attacks. Senator Cruz immediately blamed Mr. Obama: “Coming on the wake of the terror attack in Paris, this horrific murder underscores that we are at a time of war, whether or not the current administration realizes it or is willing to acknowledge it, our enemies are at war with us and I believe this nation needs a wartime president to defend it.”

Gov. Chris Christie injected more fear: “The president continues to wring his hands and say ‘we’ll see,’ but those folks dressed in tactical gear with semiautomatic weapons came there to do something. We need to come to grips with the idea that we are in the midst of the next world war.”

From Jeb Bush, a bizarre slam: “The brutal savagery of Islamic terrorism exists, and this president and his former secretary of state cannot call it for what it is.”

And Donald Trump, true to his birther views, insinuated that Mr. Obama was hiding something: “Radical Islamic terrorism. We have a president that refuses to use the term. He refuses to say it. There’s something going on with him that we don’t know about.”

One, the Planned Parenthood shooter was not an “Islamic terrorist.” The Charleston shooter was not an “Islamic terrorist.” Of course, to Republicans, terrorism is defined by who does it. If a Muslim shoots somebody, it’s terrorism; if a white supremacist or anti-abortion whackjob does exactly the same thing, it isn’t.

Two, the President wants to be clear the United States is not at war with Islam. But, you know, those shrieking magical adjectives could keep us safe …