September 2011
Views and Opinions

Phony Fear Factor
Posted: September 30, 2011
Source: Paul Krugman, The New York Times
The good news: After spending a year and a half talking about deficits, deficits, deficits when we should have been talking about jobs, job, jobs we're finally back to discussing the right issue.

The bad news: Republicans, aided and abetted by many conservative policy intellectuals, are fixated on a view about what's blocking job creation that fits their prejudices and serves the interests of their wealthy backers, but bears no relationship to reality.

Listen to just about any speech by a Republican presidential hopeful, and you'll hear assertions that the Obama administration is responsible for weak job growth. How so? The answer, repeated again and again, is that businesses are afraid to expand and create jobs because they fear costly regulations and higher taxes. Nor are politicians the only people saying this. Conservative economists repeat the claim in op-ed articles, and Federal Reserve officials repeat it to justify their opposition to even modest efforts to aid the economy.

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President Obama shouldn't be afraid of a little class warfare
Posted: September 27, 2011
Source: The Washington Post
On Monday, defending his plan to raise taxes on the rich to pay for job creation, President Obama said: “This is not class warfare, it’s math.”

Koch BrothersNo, Mr. President, this is class warfare — and it’s a war you’d better win. Corporate interests and the rich started it. Right now, they’re winning. Progressives and the middle class must fight back, and the president should be clear whose side he’s on.

The class war began in 1971. That year, soon-to-be Supreme Court justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote a confidential memorandum to a friend at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about the “Attack of the American Free Enterprise System.” In the mid-20th century — from the New Deal to Social Security to environmental and civil rights laws — the government had cut into corporate profits while creating middle-class prosperity. Falsely believing that capitalism was under attack, Powell wrote: “It must be recognized that businessmen have not been trained or equipped to conduct guerrilla warfare with those who propagandize against the system.” His proposal, from which the modern conservative movement grew, was to equip business elites for that battle with aggressive policies to make Americans believe that what’s good for wealthy chief executives is good for them, too.

Between 1979 and 2007, the income gap between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the poorest 40 percent more than tripled. Today, the richest 10 percent of Americans control two-thirds of the nation’s wealth, while, according to recently released census data, average Americans saw their real incomes decline by 2.3 percent in 2010. Though our economy grew in 2009 and 2010, 88 percent of the increase in real national income went to corporate profits, one study found. Only 1 percent went to wages and salaries for working people.

Last year, American companies posted their biggest profits ever, and bonuses for bank and hedge fund executives not only reached record highs, but grew faster than corporate revenue. Meanwhile, almost one in 10 Americans is unemployed, and 15 percent live at or below the poverty level.

As a progressive activist who has marched against many wars, I try to avoid militant rhetoric. But only “class warfare” accurately describes a situation in which 400 people control more wealth than the poorest 150 million Americans combined. If “class warfare” isn’t the richest of the rich fighting tooth and nail against unions and any tax increases while record numbers of people lose their homes, what is?
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The demonstrated danger of cross-border trucking
Posted: September 24, 2011
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
By James P. Hoffa
New evidence suggests that the U.S. Department of Transportation is fully aware of the dangers inherent in opening our border to unsafe Mexican trucks.

The Teamsters union has long warned that opening the border to Mexican trucks endangers America’s highway safety and threatens U.S. warehouse and trucking jobs. We’ve been making that argument during the 17 years since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. The agreement calls for Mexican trucks to freely roam our interstates.

Since December 2006, we have had still another reason to fight to keep our southern border closed: the horrific drug wars that have killed 40,000 people in Mexico. But even as the Department of Transportation tried to assuage our concerns about fatigued Mexican drivers and decrepit Mexican trucks, officials have said little or nothing about the possibility of drug violence spilling over our borders.

Earlier this year, DOT announced it would start another pilot program to allow Mexican trucks to travel beyond the narrow border zone. Last month, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said two Mexican carriers would soon get approval to participate in the pilot program.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk was tasked with persuading the American public that opening the border will benefit American workers. He has called the program “a good deal.” That’s exactly what it isn’t. Under NAFTA, Mexico is supposed to grant U.S. carriers the same ability to operate within Mexico that we grant to their carriers. But the Mexican government hasn’t been able to curb the violence that discourages any U.S. trucking company from sending its drivers, equipment or cargo to Mexico.

An inspector general report last week shows the DOT may be more concerned about drug violence in Mexico than it has let on publicly. Officials have been understandably reluctant to send federal inspectors to Mexico to inspect Mexican carriers that want to participate in the pilot program. U.S. law enforcement officials are forbidden from carrying weapons in Mexico.

DOT is required by law to conduct safety audits of Mexican carriers before they can participate in a cross-border trucking pilot program. That law – Section 350(a) of the Transportation Department’s Appropriations Act of 2001 – requires 50 percent of all “pre-authority safety audits” (PASAs) to be conducted on-site in Mexico by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

According to the inspector general’s report, “FMCSA officials informed us in June 2011 that they intend to comply with the law for conducting PASAs and compliance reviews, but have not developed plans and safeguards for conducting PASAs in Mexico. They had previously informed us in April and May 2011 that they did not plan to conduct reviews in Mexico due to safety concerns. FMCSA’s policy for conducting PASAs does not address where PASAs will be conducted.”

There are other aspects of the plan to open the border that DOT won’t acknowledge, at least publicly. It is, first and foremost, a guest worker-on-wheels program that will rob hardworking American trucking and warehouse workers of their jobs. At a time when the U.S. unemployment rate is over 9 percent, we cannot afford to lose any more jobs. For those truckers and warehouse workers lucky enough to keep their jobs, wages will fall because Mexican drivers will be willing to work for so much less.

Worse, DOT wants the U.S. government to pay for the installation of electronic onboard recorders on Mexican trucks, ostensibly so they can be tracked. It is an outrage to tell American taxpayers they have to foot the bill to allow Mexican truck companies to take away American jobs.

Nor has DOT been forthcoming about the inability of Mexican law enforcement to guarantee the safety of their trucks and drivers. Texas inspectors found 1.2 million safety violations in trucks coming from Mexico between 2007 and 2011. And that’s just Texas.
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Initiative I-1125 would choke off transportation projects
Posted: September 23, 2011
Source: The Olympian
Tim Eyman is back before voters with yet another transportation initiative, this one focused on tolls. Under Eyman's Initiative 1125, lawmakers would set toll fees, use those tolls only for that project and the tolls would end when the bonds for the project are paid off. While the measure sounds reasonable, the devil is in the details. Astute voters will study more than just the ballot title for I-1125 and come to the same conclusion as The Olympian's editorial board and vote against Eyman's initiative. Read more: http://www.theolympian.com/2011/09/16/1802385/initiative-would-choke-off-transportation.html#storylink=misearch#ixzz1YodRKOci

Our biggest concern with I-1125 is the provision that requires the state Legislature to set toll rates. While that sounds appropriate, state Treasurer Jim McIntire says no other state in the union vests the Legislature with toll-setting authority for good reason.

Bonding companies prefer an independent toll authority with predictability. Bonding companies would be reluctant to finance projects where funding is set by the whims of the Legislature.

McIntire says that bonding companies would simply refuse to issue bonds for toll projects backed by toll revenue. He says the mandate to have lawmakers set toll fees is a "killer" because it would threaten the construction of the 520 bridge in Seattle, Highway 509 between Seattle and Tacoma, Highway 167 in Pierce County and every other project where tolls are anticipated. Without bonds, backed by independently set toll commissions, Washington's projects would be jeopardized. It would likely lead to higher gasoline taxes.

McIntire puts it succinctly when he says, "We simply cannot sell toll-backed bonds if the Legislature is the toll-setting authority." That's a recipe for gridlock and that fact alone should persuade voters to cast ballots against I-1125.

A reliable transportation system with much-needed road and bridge improvements, is key to a growing Washington economy. A failing transportation infrastructure would cripple this state – from the ability of farmers in Eastern Washington to get their products to the Port of Seattle to the ability of commuters along the Interstate 5 corridor to get to and from work.

We prefer today's existing toll-setting system where the independent, state Transportation Commission sets the rates after relying on recommendations forwarded by a local citizens advisory committee.

In the case of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the nine-member advisory committee is composed of permanent residents living in the vicinity of the bridge. They meet and hold public hearings every time a toll increase is proposed. These are neighbors and fellow bridge users working together to set reasonable rates. The decisions are made locally, and are not subject to political gamesmanship under the Capitol dome.

There are other reasons to vote against Eyman's measure.

For example, I-1125 overrules the will of the electorate when it comes to extending light rail on Interstate 90. The initiative says: "State government, the department of transportation, and other agencies may not transfer or use gas-tax-funded or toll-funded lanes on state highways for non-highway purposes."

The initiative would prevent Sound Transit, the regional light rail system, from replacing the center lanes on I-90 with light rail. Voters in Sound Transit's district boundaries have already approved light rail across the I-90 bridge, so Eyman's initiative would overrule that public vote.

Isn't he the one who is always crying when the Legislature overrules public votes on tax issues? Apparently it's OK for Eyman's initiative to torpedo a public vote, but sinister when lawmakers do the same thing in a budget emergency.
Read the complete source story here.

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Can a Movement Save the American Dream?
Posted: September 23, 2011
Source: The Nation
The modern American dream was inspired by a growing middle class that was the triumph of democracy after World War II. Its promise was and is opportunity: that hard work can earn a good life—a good job with decent pay and security, a home in a safe neighborhood, affordable healthcare, a secure retirement, a good education for the kids. The promise always exceeded the performance—especially with regard to racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and women—and America never did as well as Europe in lifting the poor from misery. But a broad middle class and a broadly shared prosperity at least provided the possibility of a way up.

Now that middle class is sinking, imperiled by an economy that does not work for working people. Twenty-five million Americans are in need of full-time work, wages are declining and one in six people lives in poverty, the highest level in fifty years.

Every element of the dream is imperiled. Wages for the 70 percent of Americans without a college education have declined dramatically over the past forty years, although CEO salaries and corporate profits soared. Corporations continue to ship good jobs abroad, while the few jobs created at home are disproportionately in the low-wage service sector. One in four homes is underwater, devastating what has been the largest single asset for most middle-class families. Healthcare costs are soaring, with nearly 50 million uninsured. Half of all Americans have no retirement plan at work, pensions are disappearing and even Social Security and Medicare are targeted for cuts. College debt now exceeds credit card debt, with defaults rising and more and more students priced out of higher education.

The economy works fabulously well for the few. The richest 1 percent capture nearly a quarter of the nation’s income and control about 40 percent of its wealth. They have pocketed almost all the rewards of the past decade’s economic growth. Tahrir Square erupted in revolution in January, but America actually suffers greater inequality than Egypt. Instead of an American dream, we have an American nightmare: a government, as Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has written, of the top 1 percent, by the top 1 percent and for the top 1 percent.

This is not an accident; it is a defeat. It is the casualty of class warfare, waged and won, as Warren Buffett has noted, by the wealthiest few. Economists evoke globalization, technology and education as causal factors in our era’s extreme inequality. In fact, it results from policies that have weakened workers, liberated CEOs, starved social protections and savaged the middle class.

For more than thirty years, conservative ideas and corporate cronyism have consolidated their hold on both major political parties. Trade policy has been handed to the multinationals and the banks, which have not only transferred good jobs abroad but have given us a trade imbalance of more than $2 billion a day. Healthcare is dominated by drug companies and the insurance industry, creating a system that costs nearly twice as much per capita as the rest of the industrial world while delivering inferior care.
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Less Liquor For Us, More Money For Costco, An Even Trade?
Posted: September 22, 2011
Source: The Stranger
Believe it or not, this state is a pretty good place to do business in the spirits trade. Small distilleries like mine are growing in number and we all have a selection of spirits at our local liquor stores that many states are envious of. But if Costco has their way, that will all change.

Costco is trying to hijack our state’s liquor system, and they’re trying to get us to do it for them with Initiative 1183. They promise things like “more competition = better liquor prices and availability for you,” but once you read I-1183, you see that this is far from the truth.

First, I-1183 adds a lot of new taxes. Maybe it’s the “new math” that Costco’s using, but the Office of Financial Management that uses REAL numbers says consumers will face a new 27 percent tax hike on liquor. They also estimate that I-1183 will push the current state mark-up on liquor from 51 percent to a stratospheric 72 percent. We go from having one of the highest liquor taxes in the country to the highest liquor taxes in the UNIVERSE. The “better prices” part of this promise isn’t likely to hold up.

And more liquor for consumers? If you define “more liquor” as pallet after pallet of a few brands of half-gallon liquor bottles then this might be true. But most people want selection, and anyone that shops at Costco knows that you don’t go there for selection. Washington State liquor stores currently offer up 700-1200 different products in their stores, with over 1000 others available as special orders. Costco and grocery stores can’t even come close to this.

Then I-1183 decreases Costco’s competition even more. New liquor stores must have at least 10,000 square feet of retail space—HUGE by any standards, so there will be no mom-and-pop specialty liquor stores. And it pushes the new taxes onto a new class of trade in Washington, distributors. These new distributors will pay the new taxes (which they must pass onto you) while Costco, in a different trade class, is exempt from paying this new tax.
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Taxes, the Deficit and the Economy
Posted: September 21, 2011
Source: The New York Times, editorial
Republicans, predictably, are denouncing President Obama's proposal to raise taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations to help wrestle down the nation's budget deficit and pay for his job creation plan.

There was the usual silly talk about class warfare against the rich. But the politicians insisted that their real concern was for middle-class Americans and the economy. Rick Perry said the president's plan "penalizes investment when it is needed most." Mitt Romney blasted the plan's "crushing impact on economic growth." A spokesman for John Boehner, the House speaker, called it a collection of "job-killing small-business tax hikes."

Americans need to take a close look at what Mr. Obama is calling for: a broad tax reform that raises $1.5 trillion over a decade but allows for lower rates on businesses and individuals by cutting tax breaks and loopholes for special interests, and that restores some fairness to a system in which millionaires and billionaires pay lower tax rates than middle-class families.

Republicans want to close the entire budget gap by slashing government spending. The president's balanced approach protects vital services and growth. It includes $245 billion in payroll tax cuts next year for workers and businesses to encourage hiring, investment and spending. It also includes money to invest in infrastructure and to aid struggling states. It only starts reducing the budget deficit in 2013, when the economy should be stronger.

As is his wont, the president is still leaving too many details for Congress to decide.

[...] Mr. Obama was right when he told Congress that the country has choices to make. “Should we keep tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires? Or should we put teachers back to work so our kids can graduate ready for college and good jobs? Right now, we can’t afford to do both.” His argument is sound, and so is the economics behind it. That won’t stop his critics. He needs to keep pushing back.
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The end of the middle class?
Posted: September 20, 2011
Source: Politico
Finally, Washington has turned its attention back to jobs.

With President Barack Obama’s demand that Congress pass his American Jobs Act and his call on the supercommittee to push hard on 10-year deficit reduction, a battle has begun that won’t be resolved until the 2012 election. If then.

But the haunting reality is that neither side of the debate comes close to addressing the scope of our nation’s economic challenge. Washington is fighting over who has the better sand castle — while ignoring the tidal wave that is coming our way.

The jobs we’ve been shedding by the millions are solid, middle-class positions — the kind that could support a family and send children to college. The hard reality is that the relatively few jobs being created are service-related — disproportionately low-wage and low-skill. The broad middle class — the triumph and strength of America’s democracy — is sinking. Unless we change course dramatically, we will become even more a nation of haves and have-nots.

The current debate offers clear contrast. Right now, Obama wants to “jolt” a flagging economy, investing in teachers and infrastructure and cutting taxes on workers and small businesses. Over 10 years, he’d get our books in order by combining spending savings — largely on wars abroad and on Medicare, Medicaid and tax hikes on the wealthy.

Republicans scorn the American Jobs Act but may sign onto extending the payroll tax cut. They push for rolling back regulation, keeping taxes low and passing corporate trade accords. Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) just reiterated their staunch opposition to any tax hikes on the wealthy and their demand that deficit reduction focus on cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The differences are stark — so the choice is likely to be left to voters in the 2012 elections.

But both sides fail to address the scope of our challenge. Republicans seem to believe that simply rolling back Obama’s reforms and returning to former President George W. Bush’s economy will set us straight. But those are the policies that drove us off the cliff. They weren’t working for most Americans even when the economy was growing.

Worse, what little lift we had came from a massive housing bubble — some $8 trillion in exaggerated housing value — that has burst. We can’t go back there and should not want to.
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Egghead and Blockheads
Posted: September 19, 2011
Source: Maureen Down, in The New York Times
[...] Our education system is going to hell. Average SAT scores are falling, and America is slipping down the list of nations for college completion. And Rick Perry stands up with a smirk to talk to students about how you can get C’s, D’s and F’s and still run for president.

The Texas governor did help his former chief of staff who went to lobby for a pharmaceutical company that donated to Perry, so he at least knows the arithmetic of back scratching.

Perry told the students, “God uses broken people to reach a broken world.” What does that even mean?

The Republicans are now the “How great is it to be stupid?” party. In perpetrating the idea that there’s no intellectual requirement for the office of the presidency, the right wing of the party offers a Farrelly Brothers “Dumb and Dumber” primary in which evolution is avant-garde.

Having grown up with a crush on William F. Buckley Jr. for his sesquipedalian facility, it’s hard for me to watch the right wing of the G.O.P. revel in anti-intellectualism and anti-science cant.

Sarah Palin, who got outraged at a “gotcha” question about what newspapers and magazines she read, is the mother of stupid conservatism. Another “Don’t Know Much About History” Tea Party heroine, Michele Bachmann, seems rather proud of not knowing anything, simply repeating nutty, inflammatory medical claims that somebody in the crowd tells her.

So we’re choosing between the overintellectualized professor and blockheads boasting about their vacuity?

The occupational hazard of democracy is know-nothing voters. It shouldn’t be know-nothing candidates.
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Leadership Crisis
Posted: September 18, 2011
Source: The New York Times
As the economy faces the risk of another recession, and the 2012 campaign looms, President Obama has been groping for a response to the biggest crisis of his career. All he has to do is listen to the voters.

The Times and CBS News released a new poll on Friday, and once again we were impressed that Americans are a lot smarter than Republican leaders think, more willing to sacrifice for the national good than Democratic leaders give them credit for, and more eager to see the president get tough than Mr. Obama and his conflict-averse team realize.

So long as the politicians keep reinforcing their misconceptions — and listening only to themselves — the country has little chance of getting what the voters want most: jobs and a growing economy.

Despite what the Republicans loudly proclaim, Americans do not buy into economic theories that were disproved 25 years ago. What the new poll and others show is that most do not see the deficit and “big government” as the main problem, and they do not buy the endless calls for slashing spending and reckless deregulation.

A solid majority said creating jobs should be the highest priority for the government now and that payroll taxes should be cut to help with that. A whopping 8 in 10 think building bridges, roads and schools is important, which means — gasp — spending money.

Many Democrats are so gun shy that they don’t dare even to talk about raising taxes on the rich. But 71 percent of those polled said any plan to reduce the budget deficit should include both spending cuts and tax increases. And Americans understand that there are choices to be made; 56 percent said the wealthier should pay higher taxes to reduce the federal deficit.

It bears repeating that this is all entirely rational, and what the Republicans and some Democrats are proposing is absurd. The country has tried reckless deregulation and overly deep tax and spending cuts before. It brought more than one recession in the last century; caused the near collapse of the financial system and another recession in this one; and helped pile up the current deficit.
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Is common sense returning to state politics?
Posted: September 14, 2011
Source: Concord Monitor
By James P. Hoffa / For the Monitor
It appears common sense may finally be returning to New Hampshire politics. In state houses across the country, including New Hampshire, corporate-backed politicians used the past legislative session to wage war on the middle class. They tried to pit union versus non-union, worker versus worker. New Hampshire's workers are remaining vigilant, expecting more from their elected leaders. And it's working.

In the last legislative session, the New Hampshire House and Senate voted to pass a "right-to-work" bill to destroy unions. Gov. John Lynch did the right thing by vetoing this dangerous bill.

Since July, three special elections in New Hampshire have resulted in wins for right-to-work opponents - two Democrats and a Republican - and two members who voted for right-to-work have resigned.

"Right-to-work" is a misnomer because it confers no rights. It creates no jobs, and lowers wages in the states that have it. It ensures profits for CEOs, while depressing standards for workers and decimating the middle class. There is only one reason for "right-to-work" bills: to take away workers' ability to bargain with their employer over wages, benefits and working conditions.

New Hampshire's right-to-work (for less) bill was supported by out-of-state lobbyists for corporations that certainly have no responsibility to New Hampshire's teachers, police officers, health care or sanitation workers - the people who make New Hampshire work.

The threat of right-to-work is real because the Legislature may still attempt to override Lynch's veto.

New Hampshire has a fast-growing economy, with one of the lowest unemployment rates and highest median incomes in the nation. Workers in New Hampshire are hardworking and productive and businesses are thriving. It is frightening to think the Granite State could yet follow the example of Alabama, Mississippi or Florida. These are among the 22 right-to-work-for-less states where the middle class struggles to stay afloat, where unemployment is high, and where people who have jobs have lower wages and are less likely to have health care for their families. There's a reason we call it "right to work for less."

House Speaker Bill O'Brien cleared union firefighters from the House when right-to-work legislation was being debated. The people of New Hampshire recently responded by making their voices heard at the polls, electing Kevin Janvrin, a proud union firefighter, to the Rockingham County District 14 House seat in a special election. Janvrin is a moderate Republican who has called for a restoration of common sense.

After Janvrin was elected, the Senate voted 17-7 to sustain Lynch's veto of a voter ID law that could have suppressed the right to vote among a number of groups, including students, senior citizens and the disabled.

The recent special elections show that voters will elect those leaders who support working families and will vote out corporate-funded politicians who want to destroy the middle class. As I said to an audience on Labor Day in Detroit, we all have to vote in order to take anti-worker politicians out of office.

As extremist politicians face the opportunity to ratchet up pressure again to pass right-to-work, it is the role of every Granite Stater, Republican or Democrat, to stand up for what's right. We all need to work together. And if our elected leaders forget who they work for, it is up to all of us to remind them.

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GOP Reveals Depth of Voter-Exclusion Plan
Posted: September 13, 2011
Source: In These Times
A new Department of Transportation memo reveals how thoroughly Wisconsin Republicans intend to make the newly imposed voter ID process—fiercely opposed by labor—as onerous and expensive as possible for the low-income people seeking the IDs.

Wisconsin's fundamental pillars of democracy have been under sustained pounding ever since Gov. Scott Walker, with a right-wing playbook from the American Legislative Exchange Council tucked under his arm and cash from the billionaire Koch brothers bulging out of his suit coat, was sworn into office back in January.

Within five weeks, Walker had dropped what he privately called “the bomb” on public employees by unleashing legislation known as Act 10, which makes their unions impossible to operate and sustain. The law was approved on a 4-3 vote by the Supreme Court after a fracas in which right-wing Justice David Prosser put his hands on the throat of Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, earning him the nickname “Madison strangler.” Now in effect, Act 10 facilitates the flow of income from public employees to corporations and the investor class in the form of endless new tax breaks.

Clearly, Walker and his allies both in Wisconsin and nationally are intent on constructing a plutocracy that redistributes income and wealth upward to the richest 1 percent and the corporations they control. They have made great progress: The richest 1 percent now vacuums up the same share of national income—about 24 percent—as they did back in 1928. But of course you can’t have a secure plutocracy alongside a thriving democracy; as long as the majority of citizens enjoy full democratic rights, they pose a mortal threat to the privileges of the select few.

So the most basic right in a democracy—the right for citizens to vote for candidates of their choice—fell under the persistent jackhammers of Republicans claiming to be worried about voter-impersonation fraud, although not a single case was brought forward. On the contrary, there is substantial evidence that 4 million to 5 million voters did not cast a ballot in the 2008 presidential election because they encountered registration problems or failed to receive absentee ballots, according to a study by experts in voting. An additional 2 million to 4 million registered voters—or 1 percent to 2 percent of the eligible electorate—were 'discouraged' from voting due to administrative hassles, like long lines and voter identification requirements.

Thus, the Wisconsin Republicans, acting on the basis of an unproven threat, ignored an authoritative study showing the very real problem of people being obstructed from voting. In total, the study estimated that up to 9 million Americans were unfairly denied the right to vote because of bureaucratic barriers. But the Wisconsin Republicans then proceeded to create as many barriers as they could.

Common Cause State Director Jay Heck has labeled the new Wisconsin law as “the most restrictive, blatantly partisan and ill-conceived voter identification legislation in the nation.” The new law will make voting much harder for those who lack driver’s licenses, which includes 23 percent of elderly Wisconsinites, 59 percent of Latina women and 78 percent of African-American men ages 18 to 24. These people will need to acquire state-issued photo identification to vote. Existing photo IDs for students fail to meet the new standard. The Republicans responded with righteous indignation, claiming that the new law allows all eligible citizens to obtain free photo IDs at Department of Transportation offices.
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The American Jobs Act Highlights The Difference Between The Two Parties
Posted: September 11, 2011
Source: Politicus USA.com
President Obama laid out a specific and detailed jobs bill, the American Jobs Act, that would not add a dime to the national debt and would immediately help the unemployed, the poor, and the middle class, along with giving a laundry list of tax deductions to job-creating small companies to promote hiring.

And it’s all doomed because of four key words that will stop even modest approval for the intractable Republicans: asking large corporation and the rich to “pay their fair share.”

That will, undoubtedly, be the reason that the bill is destined to die on the vine, but it is a good example of the difference between the parties.

Obama, and presumably the majority of Democrats, support (based on the President’s speech):

Republicans stand for:

The Republican protests will be framed as taxing the job creators, too much government intervention, and adding to the national debt; however, it all comes down to those four little words.

We need to remember a few words of own, with elections fast approaching: What do you believe in?

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Focus on creating jobs, then attack the deficit: Jim Hoffa
Posted: September 9, 2011
Source: Jim Hoffa, writing in The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Budget shortfalls result from the staggering inequality that now grips our country. Four hundred of the richest Americans now have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. As billionaire Warren Buffett points out, many of them pay taxes at a lower rate than working families. Repealing the estate tax in Ohio is a perfect example of how growing inequality starves government and harms the public. Loss of revenue from the estate tax -- which only the richest 7 percent of Ohioans paid -- means local governments will have to lay off more middle-class workers.

It's tragic that Kasich and Boehner are ignoring history's very clear lessons on how to create jobs. Government austerity strangled our economy during the early days of the Great Depression. President Herbert Hoover actually increased federal spending, but just by a tiny amount. He refused to run a budget deficit and rejected calls for direct federal relief to individuals -- much as Kasich refused to seek federal funding for unemployment benefits for Ohioans.

During Hoover's one-term presidency, the economy remained mired in a slump. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt's massive stimulus that got the economy growing again. Roosevelt ran large budget deficits, increased corporate taxes and made enormous investments in people and infrastructure through programs like the Works Progress Administration.

From 1933-37, unemployment fell. The economy grew at the fastest pace in history and America started to climb out of its slump. But in 1937, another anti-union Ohio Republican -- Sen. Bob Taft -- along with other conservatives, persuaded Roosevelt to rein in spending. The result was exactly what today's economists, financiers and businesspeople would have predicted: a fall in gross domestic product.

Fortunately, Roosevelt realized his error and quickly changed course. He increased spending, and the economy started growing again.

Today, a vast network of corporate-sponsored front groups would like us to forget the lessons of the Great Depression. They argue that shrinking government and deregulating industry are the ways to create jobs. They are wrong.

Government stimulus works, and it is nonsense to suggest that it doesn't.
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The Jobs Speech
Posted: September 8, 2011
Source: The New York Times, editorial
With more than 14 million people out of work and all Americans fearing a double-dip recession, President Obama stood face to face Thursday night with a Congress that has perversely resisted lifting a finger to help. Some Republicans refused to even sit and listen. But those Americans who did heard him unveil an ambitious proposal — more robust and far-reaching than expected — that may be the first crucial step in reigniting the economy.

Perhaps as important, they heard a president who was lately passive but now newly energized, who passionately contrasted his vision of a government that plays its part in tough times with the Republicans’ vision of a government starved of the means to do so.

The president’s program was only a start, and it was vague on several important elements, notably a direct path to mortgage relief for troubled borrowers. And some of the tax cuts for employers may prove ineffective. Nonetheless, at $447 billion, the plan is large enough to potentially lower the unemployment rate and broad enough to be a significant stimulus.
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Setting Their Hair on Fire
Posted: September 8, 2011
Source: Paul Krugman, in The New York Times
But his plan isn’t likely to become law, thanks to Republican opposition. And it’s worth noting just how much that opposition has hardened over time, even as the plight of the unemployed has worsened.

In early 2009, as the new Obama administration tried to come to grips with the crisis it inherited, you heard two main lines from critics on the right. First, they argued that we should rely on monetary policy rather than fiscal policy — that is, that the job of fighting unemployment should be left to the Fed. Second, they argued that fiscal actions should take the form of tax cuts rather than temporary spending.

Now, however, leading Republicans are against tax cuts — at least if they benefit working Americans rather than rich people and corporations.

And they’re against monetary policy, too. In Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney declared that he would seek a replacement for Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, essentially because Mr. Bernanke has tried to do something (though not enough) about unemployment. And that makes Mr. Romney a moderate by G.O.P. standards, since Rick Perry, his main rival for the presidential nomination, has suggested that Mr. Bernanke should be treated “pretty ugly.”

So, at this point, leading Republicans are basically against anything that might help the unemployed. Yes, Mr. Romney has issued a glossy, well-produced “jobs plan,” but it might best be described as 59 bullet points with nothing there — and certainly nothing to justify his assertion, bordering on megalomania, that he would create no fewer than 11 million jobs in four years.
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Good Jobs
Posted: September 5, 2011
Source: Huffington Post
James P. Hoffa
General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Labor unions raise workers' wages, give them a voice on the job and protect them from financial and medical insecurity. They help turn a job into a good job. Good jobs create more jobs. Well-paid, secure workers spend money in their communities. They support local businesses, which can then grow and hire more workers.

This Labor Day is an especially good time to remind people of these well-established facts about unions. In the past year, corporate-backed politicians have mounted the most vicious anti-union attacks in memory. Government workers in Wisconsin and Ohio were stripped of their collective bargaining rights. Right-to-work laws to destroy unions are being pushed in New Hampshire, Michigan and Indiana.

The ultimate goal of these extremist politicians is to further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few. After all, it's those wealthy few who pay for their political campaigns, court them when they're in office and hire them when they retire from public life. And so giveaways and tax breaks for corporations are being underwritten by cuts to essential services like public education and health care in Michigan, Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin. Already, those states' economies are suffering, with unemployment on the rise.

The same destructive dynamic is at work in Washington, where wildly irresponsible lawmakers threatened to force the U.S. government into default in order to cut spending. Rep. John Mica was willing to partially shut down the Federal Aviation Administration in order to roll back a rule reform that gave airline and railroad workers a fairer process for choosing to join a union. Mica's recklessness resulted in furloughs for 4,000 FAA employees and layoffs for 70,000 construction and transportation workers.

Good government jobs do exactly what good union jobs do -- they stimulate the economy. It is nonsense to suggest that they don't. The current willingness to sacrifice government jobs at the state and federal level is, I'm afraid, a failure to learn from the lessons of the past.
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This Labor Day
Posted: September 5, 2011
Source: The New York Times, editorial
There is something a little puzzling about Labor Day. On Thanksgiving we do give thanks, but on Labor Day we do not labor. To the proverbial visitor from outer space, the name of the holiday might suggest 24 hours of national housekeeping, a communal exertion of effort toward some unspecified end.

Many Americans of a certain age grew up in households where every Saturday was labor day, a day of chores, projects, burdensome errands and visits to the dump. And yet, Labor Day itself became a day of rest.

Historically, the holiday is a direct result of the bloody Pullman strike, which pitted the railroads against striking railway workers in 1894, and it celebrates the labor movement, then and now. This is not a history that crosses the minds of most Americans during a three-day weekend that feels like the border between summer and fall. (On Labor Day, we try our best to remain unaware that stores have already stocked up for Halloween.)

But change the emphasis from labor to jobs and you come upon a subject that is very much on the minds of Americans, and not merely among the 14 million officially unemployed people in this country, a number equivalent to the population of Illinois, Wyoming and Vermont.

Perhaps Labor Day should be a day to consider the struggles of so many Americans eager to work but unable to find jobs. Perhaps it should be a day for parades of the unemployed, to remind us of the dignity of work and the indignity of being out of it.

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The dysfunctional Republican Party
Posted: September 5, 2011
Source: The Washington Post
The big sensation over the weekend (at least for liberals) was a vicious attack on the current Republican Party from a recently retired Republican Hill staffer, Mike Lofgren (via Fallows). Steve Benen ably summarizes the main takeaway:

There is one great overwhelming dilemma that dominates American politics in this early part of the 21st century. It is not the extent to which President Obama has failed to meet the expectations of the progressive base, though this matters. It is not the lazy, negligent and incompetent establishment media, though this matters, too. The issue that should dominate the landscape is the radicalization of the modern Republican Party and the effects of having one of two major political parties descend into madness.

Lofgren, in what I find the most interesting part of the piece, describes the basic strategic thinking of this brand of Republicanism:

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.

Lofgren believes, and I think most Democrats and Republicans would agree, that this strategy has in fact been a huge success. I strongly disagree. Republicans have been using this scorched-earth, bomb-throwing strategy since at least the late 1970s (when Newt Gingrich arrived in the House), and one can certainly argue that it goes back to Richard Nixon. And yet, the promised day of American disgust with government never does show up. Oh, yes, Republicans certainly have succeeded in winning plenty of elections — but 30 (or 40) years on, they’ve never managed to solidify a majority for very long. Nor have they really succeeded in changing the ideological balance. Just as was the case at any point over that span, Americans are happy to tell pollsters they agree with GOP anti-government slogans — and just as happy to agree with liberal slogans (see, for example, William Mayer’s The Changing American Mind for an early look, and generally little has changed since then). Nor has policy shifted radically to the right, no matter what frustrated liberals believe. Both sides have had policy victories since 1980.

That’s not to say, however, that all of this has had no effect or isn’t important. It has, and it is. The effect isn’t in “left” or “right”; it’s in the collapse of the Republican Party’s capacity for making policy, which has the effect of reducing the nation’s ability to make good policy. Not liberal or conservative policy, but effective policy of any kind. And that, I’m afraid, only gets worse as the GOP’s Gingrichified strategy becomes more and more ingrained. I entirely agree with Benen: It’s the biggest problem in American politics right now. The truth is that it should be conservatives, not liberals, who are reading and taking seriously critiques such as Lofgren’s or those from David Frum and Bruce Bartlett and Chuck Hagel and several others. But they don’t, and I have no idea how any of this gets better.

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Undermining the law in the Senate
Posted: September 2, 2011
Source: The Washington Post
Go ahead, right now, and read an important op-ed by Barney Frank about how Republican obstruction is preventing implementation of Dodd-Frank. Which is, you know, a law, duly passed by Congress and signed by the president of the United States.

But as Frank explains, some provisions can’t start working until the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a director. And that’s not happening, because Republicans have decided to filibuster Richard Cordray, the president’s nominee, and anyone else whom Barack Obama chooses. Because, they say, they don’t like the law. And as Frank points out, this is hardly the only case; indeed, Republicans have been blocking Obama’s nominees across the board.

What Frank doesn’t say is what can be done about it. In fact, there are two remedies available. Obama could make a recess appointment; as I’ve said, it’s almost certainly legal despite Republican efforts to block any such appointments. Or the Democratic majority in the Senate could force through a rules change by simple majority vote. There are, in my view, no legal or constitutional reasons not to.

What either remedy would do is break precedent. And in normal times, I’d be hesitant to suggest such things.

But these are not normal times in the Senate. There’s nothing normal about a minority using the filibuster against essentially every single piece of legislation and every single nominee, forcing a true 60-vote Senate that never existed before January 2009.

The best justifications for the filibuster have to do with the rights of intense minorities to have an amplified voice against indifferent majorities. There’s good reason to believe that in such cases, the more democratic solution is for the minority to win. And if Republicans were using the Senate rules selectively to obstruct only those nominations and bills they most intensely opposed, I’d be willing to support them; I do believe the Senate runs best when it empowers minorities, including single senators. What’s happening, however, has nothing to do with that. It’s pure bullying by the minority, and it’s an outrageous violation of the spirit of the Constitution, of democracy and of the best traditions of the Senate. Republicans perpetrating this should be ashamed of themselves, and Barack Obama, Harry Reid and the Democrats should not hesitate from using the legal and constitutional weapons they have at their disposal to put an end to it.
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Eric and Irene
Source: Paul Krugman, in The New York Times
Posted: September 1, 2011
“Have you left no sense of decency?” That’s the question Joseph Welch famously asked Joseph McCarthy, as the red-baiting demagogue tried to ruin yet another innocent citizen. And these days, it’s the question I find myself wanting to ask Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who has done more than anyone else to make policy blackmail — using innocent Americans as hostages — standard operating procedure for the G.O.P.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Cantor was the hard man in the confrontation over the debt ceiling; he was willing to endanger America’s financial credibility, putting our whole economy at risk, in order to extract budget concessions from President Obama. Now he’s doing it again, this time over disaster relief, making headlines by insisting that any federal aid to the victims of Hurricane Irene be offset by cuts in other spending. In effect, he is threatening to take Irene’s victims hostage.

Mr. Cantor’s critics have been quick to accuse him of hypocrisy, and with good reason. After all, he and his Republican colleagues showed no comparable interest in paying for the Bush administration’s huge unfunded initiatives. In particular, they did nothing to offset the cost of the Iraq war, which now stands at $800 billion and counting.

And it turns out that in 2004, when his home state of Virginia was struck by Tropical Storm Gaston, Mr. Cantor voted against a bill that would have required the same pay-as-you-go rule that he now advocates.

But, as I see it, hypocrisy is a secondary issue here. The primary issue should be the extraordinary nihilism now on display by Mr. Cantor and his colleagues — their willingness to flout all the usual conventions of fair play and, well, decency in order to get what they want.
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Union movement can restore America's middle class
Source: The Stand
Posted: September 1, 2011
Labor Day was first celebrated on Sept. 5, 1882, by the members of the Central Labor Union in New York. During the following decade, several states and cities made Labor Day an official holiday.

Meanwhile. the Pullman Co. of Chicago built a company town to produce its railroad cars. Its residents all worked for Pullman, their paychecks drawn from Pullman’s bank, their rent going to Pullman’s profits. In 1893, Pullman laid off hundreds of workers, cut wages, but kept rents up. The workers organized a strike, which the federal government declared a crime, broke up with 12,000 troops, killing two strikers, and jailing Eugene Debs, the president of the American Railway Union.

As a sop to organized labor, Congress made Labor Day a national holiday in 1894, even as the federal government deep-sixed union organizing for 40 years, until FDR and the New Deal.

Fast forward to 1981. When Ronald Reagan became president, one of his first actions was to break PATCO, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. Reagan set the standard for destroying unions and disorganizing workers right up until today.

So now, 30 years later, fewer than 1 out of 12 workers are organized into unions. It is better here in Washington, where every fifth worker is in a union. But that is bad, according to the Boeing boys in Chicago. That’s why they are setting up production in South Carolina, where fewer than 1 out of 20 workers are organized.

Do unions make a difference? They do for the people who actually live in our state. Our median middle class income is more than $60,000. South Carolina’s “middle class” income is $41,000. Our poverty rate is lower than South Carolina’s, our health coverage is better, more of our citizens have high school degrees, college degrees and advanced degrees.

One of the main reasons for this difference in quality of life is that we in Washington have done a much better job at holding onto the New Deal. So what about the New Deal? It was a promise to the people of this country that they could live with a certain amount of economic security and work with a certain amount of respect. Under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s leadership, it became the centerpiece for economic recovery. The New Deal brought Social Security, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, the 40-hour work week, and the right of workers to organize into unions.

FDR did not wave a magic wand and create the New Deal. He acted because of the demands of unemployed workers, poor workers, and workers organizing into unions, risking their wages, their livelihoods, and their lives. They propelled the New Deal, enabling FDR to overcome corporate opponents and conservative politicians seeking to preserve the status quo of wealth and poverty.

We are in a similar economic situation today. One out of 10 workers is unemployed. One of every 5 kids lives in poverty. The wealthy are grabbing more of the national income, while middle-class families pay more for health care and education, and see their wages stagnate.
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