Mike Lofgren, a former
staffer for Republicans on the House and Senate Budget Committees, has penned a ridiculous screed in which he rants about why he hates Republicans. A sadly misguided relative sent it to me, and
I noticed that it had gotten some play on some of the lefty blogs, so I put
together a debunking/fisking/response to Lofgren’s absurdities, in the hope that others might realize
how ridiculous his argument is. I’ve
inserted my comments in line with the original, which is indented below.
Both
parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of
the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a
presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive
in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main
reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully
phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no
single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of
drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.
This guy is claiming that the
problem with the health care bill was that it didn’t introduce single-payer,
and claims he’s a Republican? I find
that really hard to believe. Actually, my
speculation is that Lofgren may be a Democrat, and just happened to work on the
Republican side of the aisle, but I don’t know, and it isn’t really relevant to
how awful his argument is.
The reason that there are
“corporate interests” involved in the health care bill is because we need the
potential for profits to drive health care innovation going forward – no
profits means no new treatments, because there’s no way to make any money. Maybe Mr. Lofgren should read some Adam Smith.
But
both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their
share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and
kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.
Given that the Democratic Party
invented “machine politics” (Tammany Hall, the Pendergasts, etc.), I’m not sure
that the comparison works as well as Mr. Lofgren thinks it does.
To
those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics
and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it
may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To
be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share
of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot
outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King,
Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun,
Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional
directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.
Where are Dennis Kucinich,
Maxine Waters, and the list of Democratic “crackpots”? Also, I’d note that none of the Republicans
he mentions are committee or sub-committee chairs…how are these folks the face
of the Republican Party? I hadn’t even
heard of some of these people, and I can recognize members of Congress by the
sounds of their voices….Allen West, while he is a Tea Partier, voted FOR the
compromise bill to increase the debt ceiling, and I wouldn’t consider Michelle
Bachmann a “leading” candidate in the primary – her irrelevance in the debate
the other night and the fact that she’s only drawing about 4% of Republican
primary voters is pretty good evidence of that (although Lofgren wrote this a few
weeks ago, so we’ll let this one slide).
It
was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that
impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on
Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as
last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an
otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the
end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis.
Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally
holding the US and global economies as hostages.
If this was the worry, then
why didn’t Harry Reid just vote to increase the debt ceiling last year when
Democrats still had control of Congress?
He could have just increased it and been done with it; instead he wanted Republicans to be forced to “own” the debt along with Obama and the
Democrats. Also, if we actually had any
Presidential leadership, Obama could have dealt with the situation in the
spring, when we weren’t running up against the ceiling, but he waited until the
last minute to try and gain leverage.
Republicans out-smarted Reid and Obama, using the vote as a way to put
an emphasis on the fact that the government is spending TOO MUCH DAMN
MONEY! Now the left is crying that a
serious conversation about how much our government spends is akin to taking
hostages. Maybe you agree that we should
be spending more than at any time since WW2, but you have to make an argument,
not just complain that your opponents are hostage-takers like a whiny little
bitch.
The
debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political
terrorism. Republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA
safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own
work-related travel - how prudent is that? - in order to strong arm some
union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization.
And now we’ve moved on from
being hostage-takers to being terrorists!
Awesome….Anyone familiar with the legislative history on this issue
would know that the Republican House passed the FAA authorization; it was the
Senate which refused to pass it. The
union provisions that the Democrats wanted removed from the bill were lobbied
for by UPS, as they were facing higher labor costs than FedEx, and wanted to use legislation to become more competitive.
It’s not all business vs. the people, as both parties raise massive
amounts of money from the business community, and large corporations are happy
to use their lobbying clout to benefit themselves at the expense of their
competitors.
Everyone
knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the
negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the
latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former
does not care. This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused
confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in
the Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation. For instance, Ezra Klein wrote of his
puzzlement over the fact that while House Republicans essentially won the debt
ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might
still scuttle the deal. Of course they might - the attitude of many freshman
Republicans to national default was "bring it on!"
Back to hostage takers….OK….When
the House was passing the Ryan Plan, and Cut, Cap, and Balance, where were the
Democratic plans to deal with the debt ceiling?
Harry Reid and Obama just sat on their hands through the debate, and
demanded that the House send them the bill they wanted, which they failed to
explain in specifics. How is that
leadership? At one point in the negotiations, Boehner and
Obama had an agreement in principle on a plan that included $800 billion in new revenues. It was Obama who backed out at
the last minute and demanded that Republicans agree to a 50% increase in the
revenue number. Rather than try to hit a
continually moving target, Boehner walked away from that deal, and built his
own plan which passed the House. And in
the end, it was the Republicans who got the compromise bill over the finish
line.
It
should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is
becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative
democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely
ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.
This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.
Now we’re cultists! Got it.
In
his "Manual of Parliamentary Practice," Thomas Jefferson wrote that
it is less important that every rule and custom of a legislature be absolutely
justifiable in a theoretical sense, than that they should be generally
acknowledged and honored by all parties. These include unwritten rules, customs
and courtesies that lubricate the legislative machinery and keep governance a
relatively civilized procedure. The US Senate has more complex procedural rules
than any other legislative body in the world; many of these rules are
contradictory, and on any given day, the Senate parliamentarian may issue a
ruling that contradicts earlier rulings on analogous cases.
The
only thing that can keep the Senate functioning is collegiality and good faith.
During periods of political consensus, for instance, the World War II and early
post-war eras, the Senate was a "high functioning" institution:
filibusters were rare and the body was legislatively productive. Now, one can
no more picture the current Senate producing the original Medicare Act than the
old Supreme Soviet having legislated the Bill of Rights.
Far
from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate
confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican
filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is
gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one
could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic.
As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the
instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.
The senate has NEVER been a
majoritarian body – as George Washington once said, “we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool
it." Also, remember Democrats
talking about the importance of the filibuster and collegiality towards the President’s
party back when Bush was President? Now,
it has become a tool for “totalitarians” according to people like Lofgren. I wonder if his tune will change in 2013,
when we have a Republican President again.
John
P. Judis sums up the modern
GOP this way:
"Over
the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal
opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the
majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of
Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the
impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for
today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John
Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they
objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over
slavery."
So now we’re angry
racists! I’m having trouble keeping all
of these insults straight. Lofgren is
suggesting that opposing federal legislation that you disagree with makes one a
racist totalitarian….does that mean that this label would apply to people who
oppose the Patriot Act, which was passed (and reauthorized over and over again)
by a bipartisan majority of Congress? People oppose
legislation all the time – it’s called politics, not nullification. Throwing in a historical term that is
associated with the post Civil War South is just a way to inflame passions, and
has nothing to do with the current issues we face as a nation.
A
couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly
(and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption.
Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it
would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American
people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party
that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
And a reputable source whom I
won’t name just told me that Mike Lofgren is a clown. He heard this “a couple of years ago”? Was this when the Republicans had a minority
in the House, and didn’t even have the votes to mount a filibuster in the
Senate even if they wanted to? And how
were they going to obstruct in the Senate without a filibuster? It seems like this is just something Lofgren
made up to make it sound like the opinion wasn’t just his own. Also, this argument is very similar to one
that Glenn Beck makes from the other side – that Obama is seeking to destroy
the American economy, and is implementing policies to achieve that goal. I give Lofgren’s argument about as much
credit as I’d give to Glenn Beck’s theory about Obama and Cloward-Piven
strategy – that is to say, very little.
Attacking your opponents’ motives generally shows that you don’t have a
good argument.
A
deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that
plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are
tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls
which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular
legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to
form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that
"government is no good," further leading them to think, "a
plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a
school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies
the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place
since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric
at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in
1980).
It’s a lot more likely that
the reason low-information voters take a “pox on both houses” view is because
they really don’t care about the government – they’re just trying to live their
lives. When they see that the government
or even controversy in the news relating to politics is intruding on their
lives, they look past a lot of the “he said, she said” arguments and conclude
that neither side is really looking out for them – which is a lot closer to the
truth than the arguments Lofgren is making.
I would also note that Lofgren is basically trashing the electorate
here, saying that they’re too stupid to know what’s good for them. Reminds me of Berthold Brecht’s poem “The
Solution”: “Wouldn't
it / Be simpler in that case if the government / Dissolved the people and /
elected another?”
The
media are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of
electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment
and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the
"respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for
perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul
Krugman has skewered this
tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago,"
he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the
headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'"
The media is terrified of
being criticized for bias? In what
universe? There’s only a little bit of
irony in the fact that Lofgren cites Paul Krugman to back up this point –
Krugman is a columnist for the New York Times, which is generally considered
“respectable” media (I don’t agree, but that’s an argument for another day). I don’t think the Times, the Washington Post,
NPR, NBC, CBS, ABC, or even Fox News are that worried about seeming biased – if
anything, their bias has become even more prominent over the last decade or so.
Inside-the-Beltway
wise guy Chris Cillizza merely proves Krugman right in his Washington Post
analysis of "winners and losers" in the debt ceiling impasse. He wrote that the
institution of Congress was a big loser in the fracas, which is, of course,
correct, but then he opined: "Lawmakers - bless their hearts - seem
entirely unaware of just how bad they looked during this fight and will almost
certainly spend the next few weeks (or months) congratulating themselves on
their tremendous magnanimity." Note how the pundit's ironic deprecation
falls like the rain on the just and unjust alike, on those who precipitated the
needless crisis and those who despaired of it. He seems oblivious that one side
- or a sizable faction of one side - has deliberately attempted to damage the
reputation of Congress to achieve its political objectives.
Lofgren has provided no
evidence for his belief that Republicans want to destroy people’s faith in the
government other than his anonymous source, yet he now hangs his argument on
it. If this were the goal of
Republicans, they aren’t doing a very good job, because they’re only tying the
results of the Democratic Congress in 2010 in terms of approval ratings. In fact, the reputation of Congress has been
atrocious for years now,
under both Republican and Democratic leadership.
This
constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of
the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters,
means that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our
democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. The United
States has nearly the lowest voter participation among Western democracies;
this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government
institutions - if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why
vote? And if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral
clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three
hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. There were only 44 million Republican
voters in the 2010 mid-term elections, but they effectively canceled the
political results of the election of President Obama by 69 million voters.
I’m seeing this argument used
on the left as the justification for an idea – that the media should stop
giving people on the right a forum for their arguments, because they are wrong,
and presenting their views only legitimizes them. But if people on the left feel they have the
better argument, why run from the fight?
Our “democratic institutions”
have lost their reputation because the government has grown to the point that
it is ineffective, not because of Lofgren’s imagined Republican bogeymen. Some countries, even democracies, require
their citizens to vote, which would lead to more of the “low-information
voters” that Lofgren deplores being involved in the process – I’d say it’s far
better to leave voting to the people who are willing to make the effort to vote
on their own. The argument about the
2010 election is completely dishonest – mid-terms always see lower turnout, and
2010’s was actually quite high when compared with other mid-terms in the
past. It wasn’t a “cancelling” of
Obama’s election, either – just putting a check on his leadership. We won’t get to “cancel” the results of 2008
until November of 2012.
This
tactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it is
schizophrenic. For people who profess to revere the Constitution, it is strange
that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the
material expression of the principles embodied in that document. This is not to
say that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness of
government; I would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal and
Constitutional. But most Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested
in the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, the
weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public
hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the United
States has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. If
anything, they would probably opt for more incarcerated persons, as
imprisonment is a profit center for the prison privatization industry, which is
itself a growth center for political contributions to these same politicians.[1] Instead,
they prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people.
And when a program is too popular to attack directly, like Medicare or Social
Security, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about the
deficit. That concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious.
Revering the Constitution
doesn’t mean that you agree to anything that is done in the name of
government. Conservatives and
Republicans generally believe that the Founders intended for the US to have a
limited government, and that the functions that weren’t provided for by the
federal government could be provided elsewhere.
Lofgren acknowledges that there are limits, but goes on to cite the
Patriot Act, which as I have mentioned previously, was passed by a bipartisan
majority of Congress, and has been reauthorized multiple times
since 9/11, including by President Obama. He then
erratically jumps to prisons, and the injustice of so many people being
imprisoned in the US, and blames it on prison privatization, which accounts for
only about 4% of the prison population in the country.
Undermining
Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime
GOP electoral strategy. But if this technique falls short of producing Karl
Rove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such
techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true
believer's New Jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon
which to fall back. Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of
state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it
more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin,
Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department
of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same
time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies);
by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may
disenfranchise university students.
We’ve now moved on to voter
ID laws – this guy pings between issues so fast it makes my head spin. Do liberals believe that minorities are less
capable of obtaining ID? I’ll bet the
reason for the differences between DMV offices has to do with changes in
population…it would make sense to add hours in places where people are moving,
and close offices in areas with declining population. I’ll also bet that those GOP constituencies
are towns with Republican mayors.
Residency requirements have a lot more to do with in-state tuition than
anything else – it’s a big difference to the state university systems in terms
of money, and the states subsidize the schools, so they want that benefit to go
to kids that grew up in the state, not people that just move there for school.
This
legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years
of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political
participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in
self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy;
exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle
East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically,
they don't want those people voting.
Does that mean that because
Democrats didn’t support Bush’s democratization policies, they should not
support democracy here in the US so they are consistent? These assertions are getting ridiculous. I suppose this sort of thing is convincing to
people who already believe it, but it’s too vitriolic to actually offer any
insight. Which brings us to….
You
can probably guess who those people are. Above
all, anyone not likely to vote Republican. As Sarah Palin would imply, the
people who are not Real Americans. Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims.
Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like
the GOP base. This must account, at least to some degree, for their
extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama. I have joked in the past
that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's
policy of being black.[2] Among the
GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some
"other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice
aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives.
Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Gays [I’m
not reprinting the word he actually uses –ed.]. Feminazis. The list may
change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a
scapegoat to hate and fear.
…the racism and hater charge. This entire paragraph is nothing more than
Lofgren’s fantasy about what Republicans believe. If somebody wants to debate the merits of
policies, that’s great, but assuming that your opponents have only the worst
and basest motives for their actions does nothing to solve our problems, which
is what Lofgren is supposedly upset about in the first place. Oh, and Palin was referring to “common
people”, and asserting otherwise is ridiculous (and I’m not even a big Palin
supporter).
It
is not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and
paranoid claptrap. I would bet that most do not. But they cynically feed the
worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with
a nod and a wink. During the disgraceful circus of the "birther"
issue, Republican politicians subtly stoked the fires of paranoia by being
suggestively equivocal - "I take the president at his word" - while
never unambiguously slapping down the myth. John Huntsman was the first major
GOP figure forthrightly to refute the birther calumny - albeit after release of
the birth certificate.
Ahhh, Birthers. They’re morons. It’s a silly movement, it has no relevance,
and the belief that taking the President at his word represents anything other
than taking the President at his word is just dumb “gotcha” bullshit. And Democrats have nudged up a lot closer to
9/11 truthers…does anyone remember when Michael Moore, who has dabbled in
“trutherism”, sat in Jimmy Carter’s box at the Democratic Convention in
2004? This is sideshow stuff – tell me
something important, like what’s your plan for Social Security, chump?
I do
not mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. While it
surely exists, it is also a fact that Republicans think that no Democratic
president could conceivably be legitimate. Republicans also regarded Bill
Clinton as somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected (well do I
remember the elaborate conspiracy theories that Republicans traded among
themselves). Had it been Hillary Clinton, rather than Barack Obama, who had
been elected in 2008, I am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the
birther myths, conspiracy theories about Vince Foster's alleged murder.
There were plenty of
conspiracy theories about George Bush, too.
It’s an attempt to see your opponent as not only wrong, but
illegitimate. Lofgren should be very
familiar with it, because his entire article is about the illegitimacy of
Republican governance. He is a
hypocrite, and nothing less. It’s kind
of sad, because this is actually one of the only good points he makes, and yet
it is meaningless in the context of his argument.
The
reader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operatives
able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicated
than that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the
deindustrialization and financialization of America since
about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class - without
job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits
evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the
housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is
shrinking.
A lot of the period cited
here was marked by Democratic control of Congress…score another point for both
sides having a lot of blame for the current situation.
What
do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership
Council-style "centrist" Democrats were among the biggest promoters
of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA,
World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. At
the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was
seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.[3]
NAFTA hasn’t been a huge problem, though I will grant that offering
most-favored status to the Chinese may have been mistaken in light of issues
with intellectual property and restrictions on foreign investment in China.
While
Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as
racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of
the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters
and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the
globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental
compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the
fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that
do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum
wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor
to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims.
Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.
So after Lofgren brought out
the race card just a few short paragraphs ago, he’s now going to turn around
and talk about how Democrats have dismissed working class whites as
racist? I would use an old phrase about
a couple of kitchen implements, but that would be racist. He’s right that businesses can often stand
against enforcement of immigration laws, which is what has frustrated many Republicans
on the issue of immigration. Most
Republicans don’t have a problem with a path for immigrants who are already
here, but they do want to see real enforcement before we do another amnesty
like the one in the 1980’s.
And then he’s back to playing
the race and hater card. Again. In the same damn paragraph where he talked
about Democrats dismissing the concerns of middle-class white voters. See the problem here?
How
do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they
do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable
policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what?
- can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare"
won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot,
aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is
supposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep
pounding on that theme?
You
know that Social Security and Medicare are in jeopardy when even Democrats
refer to them as entitlements. "Entitlement" has a negative sound in
colloquial English: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims
something he doesn't really deserve. Why not call them "earned
benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes
to fund them? That would never occur to the Democrats. Republicans don't make
that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate
tax," it is the "death tax." Heaven forbid that the Walton
family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune. All of that lucre
is necessary to ensure that unions be kept out of Wal-Mart, that women
employees not be promoted and that politicians be kept on a short leash.
Messaging. It’s all about messaging. It doesn’t matter if the product is any good,
just how you market it. Lofgren is
repeating another argument that has been making the rounds in liberal circles, which
is what caused “global warming” to become ”climate change”, and wars to become
“overseas contingency operations”.
Obama’s new $450 billion dollar “Son Of Stimulus” is called the American
Jobs Act, so I’d guess Lofgren is jumping for joy. Meanwhile, Democrats are losing the policy
debate.
It
was not always thus. It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer
during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about
exactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a
breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the
Mellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis. After a riot
of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors'
looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of
wealth upward by Wall Street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular
anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At "Washington spending"
- which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food
stamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's
corporate saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against
pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on,
none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.
While Republicans and the Tea
Party have plenty of complaints about Washington spending, there has been
plenty of anger directed at Wall Street and “big business” since the financial
crisis, in the sense that many Republicans, especially those who have
affiliated with the Tea Party, didn’t support TARP and felt that banks should
be forced to acknowledge their losses.
In the end we might have needed some federal funding to help restructure
any banks that failed, but the economy would have been able to move
forward. Instead we are limping along,
which is why we have to pay those higher unemployment, food stamp, and Medicaid
benefits.
Lofgren’s complaint about
“wedge” issues like abortion and gay marriage is misplaced. Ironically, I hear far more about social
issues from liberals than I do from conservatives, especially lately. Republicans are almost completely focused on
the financial and economic state of our country, and the steps we need to take
to fix it. Other issues are important,
but they’re on the back burner as long as the economy is struggling and our
debt is growing at 8-10% of GDP per year.
Thus
far, I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs,
but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist,
authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of
reason, compromise and conciliation. Rather, this mindset seeks polarizing
division (Karl Rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign
strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.
As
for what they really believe, the Republican Party of 2011 believes in three
principal tenets I have laid out below. The rest of their platform one may
safely dismiss as window dressing:
Finally! I was wondering if he was just going to rant
about how horrible and hateful Republicans are by nature, or if he was actually
going to tell us the ways we horrible Republicans implement our horrible hate.
In essence, Lofgren’s “three
tenets” are really just economic policy, foreign policy, and social
policy. Hey! Look at the big brain on Mike! U r soooo smrt, Mike. He just caricatures these policies in the
most ridiculous way possible, and then proceeds to complain that they’re
ridiculous. Way to knock down straw men.
1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about
its rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on the
protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit
and debt is so much eyewash to con the public. Whatever else President Obama
has accomplished (and many of his purported accomplishments are highly
suspect), his $4-trillion deficit reduction package did perform the useful
service of smoking out Republican hypocrisy. The GOP refused, because it could
not abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of
the Walton family or the Koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest
rule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower
effective rate than cops or nurses. Republicans finally settled on a deal that
had far less deficit reduction - and even less spending reduction! - than
Obama's offer, because of their iron resolution to protect at all costs our
society's overclass.
Our deficits have been running at 8-10% of GDP…levels
not seen since WW2. We simply cannot
continue to borrow at that rate without the debt swallowing our economy whole;
that’s reality, not eyewash (I’ll look forward to Lofgren’s suggestions on how
to fix it, but I won’t hold my breath waiting).
And which Obama deficit reduction package is this? The one from April with the funky 12 year
baseline that wasn’t even scored by CBO because, in their words, “We don’t
score speeches”? About $1 trillion of
the purported “savings” that Obama offered was for reducing the troop levels in
Iraq and Afghanistan before 2021, an outcome that would happen no matter what,
but is included in budgetary projections based on the current baseline (funny
accounting – another reason people don’t trust government). Republicans (and Democrats – the President’s
budget went down unanimously in the Senate) didn’t sign on to Obama’s tax
increases because they didn’t want to damage an already weak economy. The Waltons and the Koch brothers wouldn’t
have been affected by the increases Obama was proposing, anyway. Increases in the marginal tax rate on
ordinary income doesn’t affect billionaires much, since most of their income
comes from capital gains (more on that below).
Republicans
have attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with a
fog of misleading rhetoric. John Boehner is fond of saying, "we won't
raise anyone's taxes," as if the take-home pay of an Olive Garden waitress
were inextricably bound up with whether Warren Buffett pays his capital gains
as ordinary income or at a lower rate. Another chestnut is that millionaires
and billionaires are "job creators." US corporations
have just had their most profitable quarters in history; Apple, for one, is
sitting on $76 billion in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. So, where
are the jobs?
Ah, the old Warren Buffett
canard. Buffett is an extreme outlier –
building a tax policy around him would be like building a car specifically
designed for 100-mph hairpin turns. Obama
until this week had barely even mentioned capital gains taxes, which are the
real issue when considering Buffett’s tax bill.
It isn’t an issue of the lower marginal rates on ordinary income signed
into law by Bush and Obama, and Buffett said as much in his interview with
Charlie Rose - in fact, he talked about
how we were punishing small business owners by taxing passive investment profits
at a lower rate than small business profits.
While there might be a place for adjustments to capital gains taxes as
part of a comprehensive tax reform, Obama’s just proposing more taxes on top of
what we already have, and is increasing the complexity of the tax code in ways
that make it impossible for individuals and businesses to plan long-term. I would suggest that issue has a lot more to
do with the amount of cash on the sidelines lately than any argument Lofgren is
making. In fact, I’m not even sure what
Lofgren’s argument is here – He jumps back and forth between individual taxes
and corporate profits, so it’s hard to tell what he’s trying to say. Maybe “Apple has cash, Apple make job”? Business planning is a little more complex
than that.
Another
smokescreen is the "small business" meme, since standing up for Mom's
and Pop's corner store is politically more attractive than to be seen shilling
for a megacorporation. Raising taxes on the wealthy will kill small business'
ability to hire; that is the GOP dirge every time Bernie Sanders or some
Democrat offers an amendment to increase taxes on incomes above $1 million. But
the number of small businesses that have a net annual income over a million
dollars is de minimis, if not by definition impossible (as they would no longer
be small businesses). And as data from the Center for Economic and Policy
Research have shown, small businesses account for only 7.2 percent of total US employment,
a significantly smaller share of total employment than in most Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
Does Lofgren understand how
business profits are taxed? Has he ever
heard of an S Corp? “Megacorporations”
don’t pay the individual tax rate, but a lot of small businesses do because the
taxes pass through to the individual owners.
And there are plenty of businesses that have over $1 million in income
that aren’t evil multinational corporations.
Maybe if we called them medium-sized businesses Mr. Lofgren would be
happier? I’m also calling BS on his
statistic here; 7.2% of people are self-employed, not working for small businesses. It appears that Lofgren, as well as the NY
Times writer in the piece I linked to here, don’t seem to understand that
sometimes more than one person works for a small business. These people are called employees, and they
would not be self-employed, but they do work for small businesses. I wouldn’t think that would be so hard to
understand, but I’ve spelled it out here for those who are mentally
challenged. The real data is as follows: according to the Small Business Administration (a government organization), in 2007, businesses of
less than 50 people account for about 28% of employment, and businesses of
under 100 account for about 35% of total employment. That’s a far cry from 7.2%
Likewise,
Republicans have assiduously spread the myth that Americans are conspicuously
overtaxed. But compared to other OECD countries, the effective rates of US taxation
are among the lowest. In particular, they point to the top corporate income
rate of 35 percent as being confiscatory Bolshevism. But again, the effective
rate is much lower. Did GE pay 35 percent on 2010 profits of $14 billion? No,
it paid zero.
Ultimately, corporations
don’t pay taxes. They are ultimately
borne by shareholders, employees, and customers. That said, Lofgren’s point in this paragraph
is exactly why we need corporate tax reform and not a higher corporate tax
rate. For every GE that has an army of
accountants and attorneys and lobbyists out there pushing for this loophole or
that, there are hundreds of small and medium sized business (the ones Lofgren thinks
don’t exist) that don’t have these things, and are getting screwed over as a
result.
When
pressed, Republicans make up misleading statistics to "prove" that
the America's fiscal burden is being borne by the rich and the rest of us
are just freeloaders who don't appreciate that fact. "Half of Americans
don't pay taxes" is a perennial meme. But what they leave out is that that
statement refers to federal income taxes.
There are millions of people who don't pay income taxes, but do contribute payroll
taxes - among the most regressive forms of taxation. But according to GOP
fiscal theology, payroll taxes don't count. Somehow, they have convinced
themselves that since payroll taxes go into trust funds, they're not real
taxes. Likewise, state and local sales taxes apparently don't count, although
their effect on a poor person buying necessities like foodstuffs is far more
regressive than on a millionaire.
OK, let’s look at the data on
income tax, as well as all federal taxes, including payroll, excise, and
corporate taxes derived through stock ownership as
presented by the CBO. In 2006, the top 1% had
18.8% of the income, and paid 39.1% of income taxes, and 28.3% of all federal
taxes. The whole top 20% had 55.7% of the income, and paid 86.3% of income
taxes, and 69.3% of all taxes. The middle 20% had 13.2% of income, and paid 4.4%
of income taxes, and 9.1% of all federal taxes. The bottom 20%, who had 3.9% of
the income, paid -2.8% of income taxes (the negative number is due to EITC),
and 0.8% of all federal taxes. So
even accounting for these other taxes, the wealthy are still paying a share of
taxes that exceeds their share of income.
On the issue of state and local taxes, I think maybe Lofgren should take
that up with state and local governments.
Different government, different system, different taxes. Complaining that the federal government isn’t
accounting for taxes that they don’t levy and don’t have control over is just
barking up the wrong tree. If you want
state governments to have a more progressive tax structure, fine – but it isn’t
the GOP’s fault that it’s not the way you want it. Incidentally, the wealthy do account for a
disproportionate amount of consumer spending, so they likely pay a high
percentage of sales taxes as well.
All
of these half truths and outright lies have seeped into popular culture via the
corporate-owned business press. Just listen to CNBC for a few hours and you
will hear most of them in one form or another. More important politically,
Republicans' myths about taxation have been internalized by millions of
economically downscale "values voters," who may have been attracted
to the GOP for other reasons (which I will explain later), but who now accept
this misinformation as dogma.
After providing no statistics
except his BS 7.2% figure for small business employment, Lofgren now asserts
that the belief that the tax burden in the US is primarily carried by the
wealthy is a lie. The data says
otherwise, so unless he has something more than hyperbole to back up his
assertion, I’d say it’s Lofgren who is lying.
And
when misinformation isn't enough to sustain popular support for the GOP's
agenda, concealment is needed. One fairly innocuous provision in the Dodd-Frank
financial reform bill requires public companies to make a more transparent
disclosure of CEO compensation, including bonuses. Note that it would not limit
the compensation, only require full disclosure. Republicans are hell-bent on
repealing this provision. Of course; it would not serve Wall Street interests
if the public took an unhealthy interest in the disparity of their own incomes
as against that of a bank CEO. As Spencer Bachus, the Republican chairman of
the House Financial Services Committee, says, "In Washington, the view is that the banks are
to be regulated and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to
serve the banks."
CEO compensation for public
companies is already highly transparent…it’s on almost all of the major
financial websites, and is heavily documented in corporate disclosure
documents. Because of this, I’m not
really sure what Lofgren is referring to, but it may be a
provision which required companies to put something in their proxy documents
showing the ratio of CEO pay to the average employee in the company
(Sections 953 and 955). This just isn’t
a relevant metric, and can be highly misleading – of course the CEO of Wal-Mart
will have a higher ratio than the CEO of Goldman Sachs, but what does that tell
us? That Wal-Mart hires a lot of
low-skill, entry-level workers, and Goldman hires lots of investment
bankers. It doesn’t really tell us
anything about how employees are paid relative to their value, and thus is a
waste of the company’s time and energy.
2. They worship at the altar of Mars. While
the me-too Democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the Joneses
with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as John
McCain or Lindsey Graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading
other countries. McCain wanted to mix it up with Russia - a
nuclear-armed state - during the latter's conflict with Georgia in 2008
(remember? - "we are all Georgians now," a slogan that did not,
fortunately, catch on), while Graham has been persistently agitating for
attacks on Iran and intervention in Syria. And these are not fringe elements of the party;
they are the leading "defense experts," who always get tapped for the
Sunday talk shows. About a month before Republicans began holding a gun to the
head of the credit markets to get trillions of dollars of cuts, these same
Republicans passed a defense appropriations bill that increased spending
by $17 billion over the prior year's defense appropriation. To borrow Chris
Hedges' formulation, war is
the force that gives meaning to their lives.
McCain wanted to go to war with Russia?
That’s news to me…I thought he just wanted to provide some rhetorical
(and possibly material) support to Georgia.
Graham has been out front on the Syrian and Iranian issues, but don’t the
Israeli destruction of a secret nuclear facility in Syria and the continued Iranian
quest to become a nuclear power show that his argument has some merit? It doesn’t necessarily mean we should go to
war against either of them, but it certainly advocates a strong posture
militarily to ensure that both countries know that we take the situation
seriously.
A
cynic might conclude that this militaristic enthusiasm is no more complicated
than the fact that Pentagon contractors spread a lot of bribery money around
Capitol Hill. That is true, but there is more to it than that. It is not
necessarily even the fact that members of Congress feel they are protecting
constituents' jobs. The wildly uneven concentration of defense contracts and military
bases nationally means that some areas, like Washington, DC, and San Diego,
are heavily dependent on Department of Defense (DOD) spending. But there are
many more areas of the country whose net balance is negative: the citizenry
pays more in taxes to support the Pentagon than it receives back in local
contracts.
And
the economic justification for Pentagon spending is even more fallacious when
one considers that the $700 billion annual DOD budget creates comparatively few
jobs. The days of Rosie the Riveter are long gone; most weapons projects now
require very little touch labor. Instead, a disproportionate share is siphoned
off into high-cost research and development (from which the civilian economy
benefits little); exorbitant management expenditures, overhead and out-and-out
padding; and, of course, the money that flows back into the coffers of
political campaigns. A million dollars appropriated for highway construction
would create two to three times as many jobs as a million dollars appropriated for
Pentagon weapons procurement, so the jobs argument is ultimately specious.
The military employees
roughly 700,000 civilians and 1.4 million servicemen and women, for a total of 2.1
million employed. Given the $700
billion budget number, that’s about $333,000 per job (and this doesn’t even
count all of the military contractors whose jobs are supported by this budget),
which is less than a lot of the wasteful stimulus jobs cost, and those weren’t permanent
jobs. Also, the civilian economy does
benefit from military research – maybe Lofgren’s heard of something called the Internet, and if not, he might
be familiar with GPS. I think some
people have made some money off of those things, but maybe I heard wrong. We definitely could use some procurement
reform, but Lofgren’s assertion that the jobs argument is specious is, well,
specious.
Take
away the cash nexus and there still remains a psychological predisposition
toward war and militarism on the part of the GOP. This undoubtedly arises from
a neurotic need to demonstrate toughness and dovetails perfectly with the
belligerent tough-guy pose one constantly hears on right-wing talk radio.
Militarism springs from the same psychological deficit that requires an endless
series of enemies, both foreign and domestic.
Now we’re not just racist
terrorist hostage-takers, we’re actually mentally disturbed! Armchair psychology is useless in a political
discussion. I could talk about how this
whole column is about Mike Lofgren lashing out at his former employers because
of a deep psychological need to gain acceptance among a group now that he feels
rejection in a place where he once worked.
However, since I don’t know Lofgren, I’d rather tell you why what he’s
saying is wrong instead of trying to make something up about why he’s
crazy. Maybe instead of trying to
analyze people’s motivations, Lofgren should focus on why his opponents are
supporting the wrong things.
The
results of the last decade of unbridled militarism and the Democrats' cowardly
refusal to reverse it[4], have been disastrous
both strategically and fiscally. It has made the United
States less prosperous, less secure and less free. Unfortunately, the
militarism and the promiscuous intervention it gives rise to are only likely to
abate when the Treasury is exhausted, just as it happened to the Dutch Republic and the British
Empire.
3. Give me that old time religion. Pandering
to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. Beginning in the 1970s,
religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country
and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat
Robertson's strong showing in the 1988 Iowa Caucus signaled the gradual merger
of politics and religion in the party. The results are all around us: if the
American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or
Canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy,
the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the
rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the
Republican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or
quaint beliefs. Also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and
hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information
voter" - or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."
And who was the Republican nominee in 1988? Not Pat Robertson. So Americans tend to be more religious than
Europeans? I would think that would be
somewhat obvious, since our country was initially settled by large numbers of
people fleeing religious persecution in Europe.
All of the beliefs listed here are completely religious, and have
nothing to do with policy (belief in evolution might involve policy, but
Lofgren does not reference its teaching in schools or anything that
limited). What does a person’s belief in
angels have to do with their policy views?
Something like a third of the population
believes in ghosts – what does that say about them?
The
Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious
test for the presidency: major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to
"share their feelings" about their "faith" in a revelatory
speech; or, some televangelist like Rick Warren dragoons the candidates (as he
did with Obama and McCain in 2008) to debate the finer points of Christology,
with Warren himself, of course, as the arbiter. Politicized religion is also
the sheet anchor of the culture wars. But how did the whole toxic stew of GOP
beliefs - economic royalism, militarism and culture wars cum fundamentalism -
come completely to displace an erstwhile civilized Eisenhower Republicanism?
“Our government has no sense
unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith and I don’t care what it
is. With us of course it is the
Judeo-Christian concept, but it must be a religion that all men are created
equal.” –Dwight
Eisenhower, 1952
It
is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a
subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America)
may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For
politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at
least in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.
So he’s going to try and tie
all of this stuff together now, huh?
Should be interesting…
Televangelists
have long espoused the health-and-wealth/name-it-and-claim it gospel. If you
are wealthy, it is a sign of God's favor. If not, too bad! But don't forget to
tithe in any case. This rationale may explain why some economically downscale
whites defend the prerogatives of billionaires.
What are the “prerogatives”
of billionaires? Maybe a lot of
downscale whites support the ability of other people to make money so they can
hire those downscale whites to work in their companies, but I don’t think that’s
what Lofgren is referring to. The US has
far greater social mobility than, say, Western Europe, so a lot of middle class
people support low rates of taxation because they aspire to someday be wealthy
themselves. There are a number of
possible motivations here, so singling out religion in the way Lofgren does is
silly.
The
GOP's fascination with war is also connected with the fundamentalist mindset.
The Old Testament abounds in tales of slaughter - God ordering the killing of
the Midianite male infants and enslavement of the balance of the population,
the divinely-inspired genocide of the Canaanites, the slaying of various
miscreants with the jawbone of an ass - and since American religious
fundamentalist seem to prefer the Old Testament to the New (particularly that
portion of the New Testament known as the Sermon on the Mount), it is but a
short step to approving war as a divinely inspired mission. This sort of
thinking has led, inexorably, to such phenomena as Jerry Falwell once writing
that God is Pro-War.
The Bible has tales of
slaughter, so Republicans are violent. Sounds
like the old violent video games argument.
American fundamentalists prefer the Old Testament? Are they Jewish fundamentalists? Liberals love to trot out the Sermon on the
Mount – they should read the
whole thing; I don’t think it would necessarily fit with their views on
religion. The fact that so many liberals
who think of themselves as “intelligent” are currently passing around this
article, and talking it up as a cogent analysis, makes me laugh.
It
is the apocalyptic frame of reference of fundamentalists, their belief in an
imminent Armageddon, that psychologically conditions them to steer this country
into conflict, not only on foreign fields (some evangelicals thought Saddam was
the Antichrist and therefore a suitable target for cruise missiles), but also
in the realm of domestic political controversy. It is hardly surprising that
the most adamant proponent of the view that there was no debt ceiling problem
was Michele Bachmann, the darling of the fundamentalist right. What does it
matter, anyway, if the country defaults? - we shall presently abide in the
bosom of the Lord.
Ridiculous. No comment needed, other than that if you
believe this stuff, you are truly are paranoid conspiracy theorist. And I’m not referring to Michelle Bachmann in
that regard.
Some
liberal writers have opined that the different socio-economic perspectives
separating the "business" wing of the GOP and the religious right
make it an unstable coalition that could crack. I am not so sure. There is no
fundamental disagreement on which direction the two factions want to take the
country, merely how far in that direction they want to take it. The plutocrats
would drag us back to the Gilded Age, the theocrats to the Salem witch
trials. In any case, those consummate plutocrats, the Koch brothers, are pumping large sums
of money into Michele Bachman's presidential campaign, so one ought not make
too much of a potential plutocrat-theocrat split.
Lofgren seems to be
suggesting that both groups want to go into the past, so they’re both in
agreement. Huh? Is this a movie with a Delorean in it? Theoretically, plutocrats would want small
government so they could make money; theocrats would want big government so
they can control people’s lives. We’re
getting towards the end here, and all Lofgren is doing is serving up
ad-hominems so that liberals can sit at home and nod their heads in agreement, “I
just knew they were evil, and this proves it!”
Lofgren links to an article discussing the $35,000 Bachmann has gotten from Koch-linked organizations. I think he's referring to the same Koch Brothers who gave $20
million to the ACLU to fight the Patriot Act. They definitely must be consummate plutocrats who only
care about themselves and their money…it’s not that they’re
principled believers in limited government.
That’s too simple. There must be
something more nefarious afoot here. CATO,
the Koch-funded think tank, also opposed the Iraq war in 2003, so I’m not sure
how Lofgren squares all of this – wasn’t he just saying that religion had
something to do with it?
Thus,
the modern GOP; it hardly seems conceivable that a Republican could have
written the following:
"Should
any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance
and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party
again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that
believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know
his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or
business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are
stupid." (That was President Eisenhower, writing to his brother Edgar in
1954.)
Republicans have talked about
reforming Social Security, not abolishing it.
They’ve talked about ending extensions of unemployment insurance, not
ending it all together. They want to
scale back some of the labor laws, not eliminate them. Farm programs are far less relevant than they
were almost 60 years ago when Eisenhower wrote this, which is a reminder that political
environments change, so we probably shouldn’t put too much into one quote from
a much different world than the one we live in today. Wasn’t it Lofgren who just said that
Republicans wanted to take us into the past, and now he’s pining for 1955? Are you sure there isn’t a Delorean in this
movie?
It
is this broad and ever-widening gulf between the traditional Republicanism of
an Eisenhower and the quasi-totalitarian cult of a Michele Bachmann that
impelled my departure from Capitol Hill. It is not in my pragmatic nature to
make a heroic gesture of self-immolation, or to make lurid revelations of
personal martyrdom in the manner of David Brock. And I will leave a more detailed dissection of
failed Republican economic policies to my fellow apostate Bruce Bartlett.
Totalitarian cultists…you can
tell we’re getting to the end here; Lofgren is re-using his insults. Lofgren left Capitol Hill because he hates
Michelle Bachmann, and he’s going to leave it to others to shed any light on
why he thinks Republicans are wrong on the economy…which is probably best,
given his lack of ability to understand the difference between being self-employed
and working for a small business.
I
left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene
swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future;
and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their
half-hearted attempts to stop them. And, in truth, I left as an act of rational
self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a
result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and "shareholder
value," the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give
up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP's
decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the
circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a
prospective one.
No one is contemplating
taking away pensions already earned by federal workers, so Lofgren’s excuse for
leaving doesn’t add up. There have been
debates on public sector pensions, but in every case involving larger entities
(i.e. Wisconsin), it’s focused on workers making a little bigger contribution
to their pensions and health care. If
Lofgren really left a good job in Washington because he might, at some point in
the future, have to pay a little more towards his pension and health care seems
a little odd. The irony is, he’s
probably one of the people that says rich people won’t change their behavior in
response to changes in tax policy, but he’s retiring on the theory that
possibly he maybe will have to pay a little bit more at some point.
If
you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your
Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté.[5] They will
move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the
government of revenue that they will be "forced" to make "hard
choices" - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it
means cutting the benefits for which you worked.
You can agree or disagree
with Paul Ryan, but he’s one of the most bold and honest members of Congress in
terms of explaining and attempting to offer solutions for the budget issues we
face. Ryan also does all of this in a
pretty calm and good-natured way, given how heated the political climate is
right now. After trashing his opponents
and calling them every name in the book, for Lofgren to paint Ryan as an
extremist is pretty rich. Maybe Lofgren
needs to look in a mirror if we wants to see extremism and intolerance.
During
the week that this piece was written, the debt ceiling fiasco reached its
conclusion. The economy was already weak, but the GOP's disgraceful game of
chicken roiled the markets even further. Foreigners could hardly believe it:
Americans' own crazy political actions were destabilizing the safe-haven status
of the dollar. Accordingly, during that same week, over one trillion dollars
worth of assets evaporated on financial markets. Russia and China have
stepped up their advocating that the dollar be replaced as the global reserve
currency - a move as consequential and disastrous for US interests as any that
can be imagined.
Foreigners have been worried
for years about the safe-haven status of the dollar, ever since our trade
deficits blew out after the dot-com bust, and especially since the Fed engaged
in quantitative easing in an attempt to boost the economy over the last couple
of years. The evidence of this has been
the rise in the price of gold and other commodities, and the fall in the dollar
to near-record lows against other global currencies. And China and Russia have been advocating
moving away from the dollar for a few years as well – pinning it on the debt
ceiling debate is incorrect, and shows a very limited view of the economic
landscape, driven more by media headlines that by attention to real markets.
If
Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful
electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means
twilight both for the democratic process and America's
status as the world's leading power.
Thank God I’m done with
that. Lofgren really doesn’t have a
cogent argument here – he just seems to ping from issue to issue, expressing
his loathing of everything that the GOP stands for. Rather than really address the policies on
offer from Republicans, he just latches on to his own perception of what the
GOP must believe in their hearts, and proceeds to attack that. But swatting down straw men and assigning
motives to others doesn’t add to Lofgren’s argument, it only shows that he has
very little command of the facts and data that are driving the current
debates. In one of the few instances
where he offers facts or figures to back up his argument, he flails badly. His inability to even understand the
difference between self-employed people and people who work for small
businesses is sad, and even sadder when
you remember that this guy was working for REPUBLICANS on the BUDGET
COMMITTEE! Maybe it’s better he left,
because he doesn’t seem to have done well with numbers.
