Tag Archives: Republicans

So Much for Bobby Jindal

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Earlier this week, Gov. Jindal sold out the unemployed people of Louisiana for the sake of his own political career. Well, folks, all indications are that Jindal’s career is pretty much over now. He’s still governor of Louisiana, of course, but his performance last night delivering the GOP rebuttal to President Obama’s speech was so bad even the Right is embarrassed by it.

As Tbogg says, if even the rightie blogger Ace of Spades is calling you a dork, “There’s not enough Bactineâ„¢ in the world to make that sting go away.”

The Faux Nooz panel panned Jindal’s delivery, although not what he said. David Brooks, on the other hand, was embarrassed by what Jindal said:

Today Michael Gerson has a puff piece on Jindal in the Washington Post, indicating that the GOP was planning to promote him as the future of the party. Well, kiss that off. He’s toast.

Some of the most interesting, in an anthropological sense, responses are on R.S. McCain’s site. McCain (in short, “He’s no Sarah Palin”), wrote,

A big wiffle-ball swing and a miss for the consensus favorite 2012 candidate of Republicans who look down their nose at Sarah Palin.

And the first commenter said,

I think she has bigger balls. Seriously, this guys burnt Milquetoast.

I think McCain may be right that Jindal was being groomed by the faction of GOP insiders who consider Palin a disaster for the party. And I also think the commenter is right that Jindal fails to manifest the macho swagger so essential to a true movement conservative leader. The candidate who makes their extremities tingle is one who reflects their resentments and fears and sasses back to the scary, dark world with style and lots of ‘tude. Whether the candidate can find Canada on a map is irrelevant.

See also:

John Cole, “The Morning After Look at the Jindal Response”

Greg Veis, “Epic Fail, SOTU Rebuttal Version”

Polls: “Stop the Insanity”

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Glenn Greenwald looks at polls to shred apart the “Americans want bipartisanship” myth. In polls and in the voting booth, the only time Americans are expressing a desire for bipartisanship is when it is applied to Republicans.

Let me suggest that what Americans long for is not “bipartisanship,” but sanity. They’re tired of the clown show.

People allegedly want “bipartisanship.” The nation’s political and media powers translate that to mean people want both parties to have an equal say in government, and that policies should be crafted to the “center” of the current political spectrum in Washington.

But I do not think that’s what most people want at all. What most people want are politicians to stop squabbling like children and get serious about governing. They are tired of childish partisan games sucking all the energy out of government. They want real problems addressed in a real-world way. They don’t care which party is in power so long as that party is behaving like grownups.

The GOP continues to behave like 2-year-old stuck in the “no!” phase.

I think what people want from Washington isn’t “bipartisanship” as the villagers understand the word. What they want might more honestly be called “post-partisan” or “anti-partisan” or just plain “not-partisan.” They want the games to stop.

That doesn’t mean they expect Congress to be of one mind. However, they want opposition to the administration to come from somewhere else than Mars. They want opposition that comes from an honest desire to solve problems and make America better, not from whatever pathological character disorders propel right-wingers to grab power, by any means, that they clearly are not responsible to hold.

If you look at today’s headlines, you’d think President Obama is somehow failing the people on “bipartisanship.” For example, the Washington Post: “Obama Gets High Marks for 1st Month, But Survey Finds Sharp Erosion in Bipartisan Support”

Large majorities of Americans in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll support his $787 billion economic stimulus package and the recently unveiled $75 billion plan to stem mortgage foreclosures. Nearly seven in 10 poll respondents said Obama is delivering on his pledge to bring needed change to Washington, and about eight in 10 said he is meeting or exceeding their expectations. At the same time, however, the bipartisan support he enjoyed as he prepared to take office has eroded substantially amid stiff Republican opposition to his major economic initiatives.

In other words, everyone but bitter-ender Republicans approves of Obama. Then the pathological intransigence of the GOP is framed as Obama’s failure and not theirs.

For ABC News, Gary Langer reports — “A Strong Start for Obama – But Hardly a Bipartisan One.”

Barack Obama’s month-old presidency is off to a strong start, marked by the largest lead over the opposition party in trust to handle the economy for a president in polls dating back nearly 20 years. But the post-partisanship he’s championed looks as elusive as ever.

Again, when people express a desire for “post-partisan” government, this does not mean they want right-wing lunatics to have an equal say in government. They want the insanity to stop. Cenk Uygur explains:

As DougJ at Balloon Juice says, “villager” opinion and public opinion have rarely been so far apart.

Choosing Sides

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Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has chosen to refuse $90 million of federal dollars that would have benefited his state’s unemployed citizens. His reason for this is that the state would have been required to change its own laws and expand unemployment eligibility. The federal money would fund the expansion for only three years, after which time the state would have to tax businesses to make up the slack. Therefore, accepting the $90 million would hurt business.

Of course, there is no earthly reason why Louisiana couldn’t plan on phasing out the expansion once the federal money ran out. We’re in an emergency mode, after all. And one would think that putting a little extra money into the pockets of Louisiana residents would be, you know, good for business. People who understand these matters better than I do say that unemployment benefits are a particularly effective stimulus, because nearly every penny is spent:

Temporary increases in unemployment insurance (UI) benefits are particularly effective as stimulus: the benefits go to workers who have lost their jobs, so the added income is likely to be spent quickly. As CBO director Orszag recently told the House Budget Committee, “research has shown that the unemployment insurance system is among the most effective dollar-for-dollar economic stabilizers that we have in terms of counterbalancing periods of economic weakness.”

Already Louisiana is a state that receives more in federal tax dollars than it pays. According to the Tax Foundation, in 2005 for every dollar paid in federal income taxes, Louisiana got $1.30 back. Louisiana got $1.37 back in 2004, so don’t blame Katrina.

Governor Jindal, however, has chosen sides. He is being hailed as a hero by the wingnuts, who are calling the federal dollars a “bribe” and the stipulations attached to it “unconstitutional.”

On the other hand, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger just signed into law a $12.5 billion tax increase. Michael Finnegan writes for the Los Angeles Times,

With that, the Republican governor broke one of the few bonds left between his shrunken party and California’s mainstream voters, marring its hard-won image as a guardian against higher taxes.

Actually, California has a hard-won image of a state that lacks the sense to come in out of the rain, or back away from a mudslide, or whatever.

To be sure, none of the GOP lawmakers who demanded that the state close its $42-billion shortfall without raising taxes detailed the doomsday cuts that approach would entail, nor did the activists who lobbied against the tax increases. If the state had laid off its entire workforce of 238,000 — every prison guard, firefighter and clerk — it still would have fallen billions shy of a balanced budget.

I bet no one in the GOP still is talking about a constitutional amendment that would allow Ahnold to be president.

Anyway, these two governors have chosen their sides. Gov. Jindal chose to stay on the sinking ship that is the GOP. Gov. Schwarzenegger, whatever his many faults, at least is smart enough to know when it’s time to grab a lifeboat.

Update: From Liberal Journal —

Keeping money out of the hands of the unemployed during a severe recession is just the kind of stunt that could vault him to the top of the Republican Presidential primary field in 2012. And with potential competition from the mighty Sarah Palin, BJ can’t leave anything to chance.

Exactly.

Sick of It

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Adventures in the land of the Best Health-Care System in the Worldâ„¢:

They borrow leftover prescription drugs from friends, attempt to self-diagnose ailments online, stretch their diabetes and asthma medicines for as long as possible and set their own broken bones. When emergencies strike, they rarely can afford the bills that follow.

The article is about how you get health care if you’re a 20-something living and working in New York City. However, I suspect this is true of vast numbers of 20-somethings throughout America. And I want to emphasize that we’re talking about children of the middle class. I’m not saying children from lower-class families don’t deserve health care as much. The point is that if this were a coal mine, the canary would be decomposed to a pile of bones and feathers by now.

Of course, some healthy young people who are eligible to get health benefits from employers choose not to do so because they are foolish. But many more, I think, either don’t get health benefits from their jobs or honestly cannot afford what they’d have to pay to join their company group insurance plan.

Today, the same people on the Right who fought S-CHIP expansion tooth and nail suddenly care about young people, although not about their health. Little Lulu and some of the other hysterical shriekers are pushing “porkulus” protests against the stimulus package. Lulu’s got photos of children and youths holding signs saying “I don’t want to pay for the ‘swindle-us’ package” and “Say no to generational theft.” But when Moveon produced videos like the one, for some reason the Right was not moved.

But as Steve M says, if the Right wants to waste its time with tactics that didn’t work for the Left, who am I to complain?

How Conservatism Is Destroying America

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California is on the brink of financial collapse. Jennifer Steinhauer writes for The New York Times,

The state, nearly out of cash, has laid off scores of workers and put hundreds more on unpaid furloughs. It has stopped paying counties and issuing income tax refunds and halted thousands of infrastructure projects.

This crisis has many causes, but addressing it has been rendered nearly impossible by Republicans in the state legislature who block any form of tax increase. Hilzoy says,

They need three (3) Republican votes in each house. They can’t get them. And this despite the fact that the Republicans who have been negotiating have gotten a lot, including, according to the LATimes, “tax breaks for corporations”.

Really. I am not making this up. With the state budget $41 billion in deficit, Republicans held out for corporate tax cuts, and then aren’t even supporting the resulting bill.

Stopping building projects is costing Californians millions of dollars. Borrowing money to keep the government going is going to cost Californians millions of dollars.

As the stimulus bill becomes law today, we learn that a number of Republican governors are lining up to support it. It may be too little, too late for California. But a number of other states, both red and blue, may be pulled back from the brink of disaster by federal dollars — in no particular order, New York, Virginia, Iowa, Tennessee, Missouri, Ohio, etc. etc. Add your state here.

States are in trouble for a lot of reasons, but an immediate one is the loss of revenue by retailers. City and state budgets are breaking all over America.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a Republican, explains,

“It really is a matter of perspective,” Mr. Crist said in an interview. “As a governor, the pragmatism that you have to exercise because of the constitutional obligation to balance your budget is a very compelling pull” generally.

With Florida facing a projected $5 billion shortfall in a $66 billion budget, and social costs rising, the stimulus package “helps plug that hole,” Mr. Crist said, “but it also helps us meet the needs of the people in a very difficult economic time.”

And it appears Americans on the whole are glad Congress came through.

So, who’s not happy? Well, we know, don’t we?

As there weren’t enough Republicans in Washington to provide fodder for the story the New York Times wanted to write – they simply took it on the road to those Republicans Governors who also happen to be the ones most hat in hand when it comes to Federal dollars. Yep, quite a “conservative” bunch this crew. Or so the Times would have one believe. …

… How about if the Feds didn’t suck the money out of states to begin with only to wastefully plow it back in?

If you are wondering how the feds are sucking money out of states, read the comments to the rightie blog post linked above. They’ve noticed that poor New Jersey only gets back 70 percent of what it sends to Congress. Yes, and this is something I’ve written about in the past. The wealthier, more industrialized states (nearly all of which are blue) tend to pay more in taxes than they receive in federal dollars. Poorer, less industrialized states (nearly all of which are red) pay less in federal taxes than they receive in federal dollars.

In other words, for many years blue states have been carrying the load for red states that won’t pay for their own messes.

Now, if the conservatives who run the poor red states want to be real conservatives and stop grabbing money out of the hands of New Jersey taxpayers, I wouldn’t object. Let the freeloaders in Mississippi pay their own bleeping taxes, heh?

Of course, in the real world what would happen is that there would be a belt of states sunken into Third World style poverty by their idiot GOP state government, and this belt would stretch across the southeastern U.S. and reach up to the more rural western states. And in the long run it would hurt the U.S. as a whole more than it would help.

Right-wing economic “theory” is destroying America. It’s doing a bigger job on us that al Qaeda could ever have dreamed.