Far too much media coverage of politics focuses on the horserace angle--who's ahead, who's behind, who's up or down. It relies on false equivalency: if Politician A says X, then the reporter goes to Politician B, who's sure to say Y. That's lazy journalism, and it doesn't actually inform the public about which position (if any) is actually true, or adheres to the facts as we know them. At TWiA, our mission is to discuss politics through the prism of policy--to look, in other words, at the real-world implications of the things that politicians say and do, to make connections others might miss, and to explain it all in language a lay person can understand. Also to offer suggestions of how you can help somebody in need, to report on what's awesome, and to keep tabs on bears. If you like TWiA, share or repost or tell a friend, and be sure to leave comments, even if they're arguments. Especially if they're arguments.
This Week in Self-sabotage
Because Republicans in Congress chose to carve the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) out of the bill they passed last year to keep the rest of the government funded, this week they faced a crisis of their own making. They decided they wanted to tie an obviously doomed effort (because President Obama would certainly veto it, even if it could overcome a Senate filibuster--which it didn't) to overturn Obama's executive actions on immigration enforcement to DHS funding. That was never going to work, but it would send a message to the conservative base, which appears to be the only thing this Congress is interested in doing.
Shutting down the department that enforces border security, among many other things--when they created the department, the Bush administration threw all kinds of different agencies into it--to (as they see it) increase border security never made much sense. Fifteen percent of DHS employees would be immediately furloughed. Border Patrol and ICE agents would still be expected to work, but they'd be working without pay, until the funding was restored and they were paid retroactively. Left unstated by most of the media is that any federal contractors working on DHS contracts would almost certainly not be paid retroactively--they'd be sidelined for the length of the shutdown, and would just lose those paychecks. And DHS funds a lot of other services outside its immediate purview--firefighters, rail security, police, etc., in towns and cities across the country. They would all be affected.
A DHS shutdown is, all in all, a terrible way to argue in favor of more border security.
And none of it had to happen. As the Washington Post reminds us:
"Way back in 2013, when the Senate reached a compromise and passed a big bipartisan bill on immigration, Speaker Boehner refused to bring it up for a vote, saying it wouldn't have the support of a majority of Republicans in the House. Would the bill have passed the chamber with the support of Democrats and a handful of Republicans with large Hispanic constituencies? It's hard to say. But Boehner might be regretting the decision not to find out.
"Boehner explained his thinking at the time: As the speaker, it's his job to represent the interests of the majority party. If most Republicans opposed a bill, he wouldn't bring it up, unless he absolutely had to. Well, now it looks like he has to. In order to extend funding for the Department of Homeland Security past this week, he might have to ask the chamber to vote on an appropriations bill that does not rescind President Obama's actions deferring deportation for undocumented parents of citizens and legal residents. Most of his caucus will probably vote against the bill.
"As a result, Boehner will be in the awkward position of relying on Democrats to provide money for the department. Conservatives within the Republican Party will say he sided with the enemy to abet Obama's executive takeover of immigration policy. If he'd managed to get an immigration bill through the House two years ago, none of this would have happened. And now, even if a funding bill is passed, Congress will be no closer to fixing a system all sides agree is broken."
Have we mentioned lately that Boehner is one of the worst, most ineffective, speakers in the history of the country? Had the bill passed in 2013, the economy would be in better shape, and Congress--having achieved a real bipartisan victory on an important issue--would probably be more respected throughout the country. Instead, congressional inaction forced the president's hand and set up the self-made crisis that was bound to blow up in Boehner's face.
During the week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R/KY) seemed to realize the futility of the effort, and passed a bill to fund DHS, with no strings attached. Boehner, or the radicals in his caucus, couldn't bring themselves to go along with that. Finally, on the eve of the shutdown, they came up with a brilliant plan: delay taking action for three weeks. Or, as the WaPo headline put it, "Congress to delay arbitrary deadline it set for itself." The piece says, "You might ask whether there's any point to setting an arbitrary deadline for yourself if you're just going to push it back when you realize you can't meet it. In fact, though, Boehner's bill confronts opposition from both Democrats who view this as nonsense and conservative Republicans who view it as a concession. It's unclear whether he has the 218 votes he needs to pass it. If the bill fails, the deadline will not be postponed, and the department's funding will expire. In other words, Congress is becoming so dysfunctional it can barely kick the can down the road anymore."
It's true. The Republicans took over both houses of Congress in January, promising to govern responsibly. It hasn't taken long to prove they're incapable of it. Boehner seems to think that having this same argument later will somehow be better than having it now. He thinks that acting now to keep DHS funded will convince Democrats that next time, he'll shoot the hostage instead of buckling yet again. We admit we don't understand his reasoning.
In the end, the House had to pass a 7-day patch, to keep DHS open for a week, giving them time to cave next week. If it's a face-saving measure, it's hard to see how anybody's face comes out of it okay. In the end, not enough of Boehner's Republicans voted for the patch, and Democrats had to come to its rescue.
House Republicans, once again, put ideology ahead of country. We can only hope voters remember that in 2016.
Side Note: When the Senate finally passed a clean bill--and the House refused to do the same--Sen. Mark Kirk (R/IL) said, "Hopefully we're gonna end the attaching of bullshit to essential items of the government... In the long-run, if you are blessed with the majority, you're blessed with the power to govern. If you're gonna govern, you have to act responsibly." We can only hope his colleagues in the House are listening.
Below the fold: Net neutrality, vetoes, Israel, snowballs in the Senate, guns, bears, and more.
This Week in Net Neutrality
The FCC this week passed net neutrality rules that will prevent your broadband service provider from taking money from Disney/Marvel Comics, for instance, to stream comics to your computer faster than DC comics or any of the many indie comics published online can. This is, we believe, a good thing that will keep the internet small-d democratic, and continue to allow those of us with less money and more limited platforms (like TWiA) competitive with moneyed interests (like HuffPo).
For largely inexplicable reasons, net neutrality has turned into a partisan issue. The FCC's three big-d Democratic commissioners voted in favor of the rules, while its two Republicans voted against them. The seemingly inescapable conclusion is that Republicans would rather let wealthy corporations control what you see on the internet than allow the existing system to have regulatory protection. Part of the beauty of the internet, we feel, is that anybody can get on it and have a chance to have his or her voice heard. We'd hate to see the big broadband providers picking and choosing what we can and cannot see, or making us pay extra for particular online sites.
This Week in Vetoes
President Obama vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline bill, as he had promised to do. Through the six years of his presidency, this is only his third veto, and the first two were for technical reasons, not policy ones.
This one is about both, and it's the right thing to do. Those who supported the pipeline can't even explain why in any honest way that makes any sense. It's true that it would create some short-term jobs, during construction. But those would go away quickly and the long-term job creation is nil. There are plenty of more useful infrastructure projects--say, fixing some of the country's many dangerously deficient bridges--that could create those same jobs. Pipelines are inherently safer ways to transport oil than by rail--but so far, no one has explained why we need to let Canadian oil cross our country in the first place, enriching a Canadian oil company and creating jobs in Canada. Pumping all that oil out of the ground and burning it will increase the pace of climate change, which is bad for all of us. And shale oil plays out much faster than conventional oil wells, so even if there were a good reason to let the Canadians ship their oil out of our ports, the pipeline would be there long after its "usefulness" was gone.
So Republicans will claim that he vetoed a "jobs bill," but that will be a lie. They might claim it would have lowered the costs of energy here at home, which would be another lie. The truth is, they like Keystone because they like it, and because a certain portion of the conservative base has decided, against all evidence, that it's important. It might be, if you're a Canadian oil field worker or oil executive. If you're an American, it's not.
This Week in Israeli Politics
It appears that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will make a high-profile campaign stop next week, on the floor of the United States Congress. The outcry in both this country and his has been loud and disapproving. In a recent CNN poll, 63% of Americans oppose Speaker John Boehner's (R/OH) invitation to Netanyahu. And the Prime Minister is making things worse for himself by claiming to speak for all the world's Jews.
Guess what, Benny? You don't.
M.J. Rosenberg writes in The Nation:
"The third way the speech controversy is roiling the US-Israel relationship is that Netanyahu’s action, in challenging the American president and claiming to speak for all Jews when he does so, suggests that it is Israel and not the country in which Jews live and vote that is their homeland. This idea is anathema to the overwhelming majority of American Jews, and it could affect the US-Israel relationship in ways Netanyahu certainly does not intend.
"Think about what Netanyahu is doing. He is coming to the US Capitol to tell Congress that it should not support a president who is working to secure an agreement that president believes serves national interests, among which he has repeatedly said is the security of Israel."
He continues:
"If American Jews feel that they are being forced to choose between the United States and Israel, there can be little doubt that they will choose the country they live in and to which they have always been devoted. Netanyahu is playing with fire when he even hints at such a choice."
One of the smartest writers we know of on foreign affairs, James Fallows, considers Netanyahu's constant claims that Iran presents an existential threat to Israel, and that Iran is in some way comparable to Hitler's Germany in 1938. Both claims, Fallows shows, are nonsensical. He reprints a reader's letter pointing out that Netanyahu and his party have been telling the world since the 1980s that Iran is six months from having a nuclear weapon. At no time in the years since the 1980s has that been true, and it's not now. Israel has nuclear weapons it's not supposed to have and doesn't publicly acknowledge, but they know the world knows it, and that's how they want it.
The best way to keep Iran from getting nukes is diplomacy. We don't think anyone really wants to go to war with Iran (Iraq had been, and we'd been supporting their efforts, but we eliminated that thorn in Iran's side). So Netanyahu can keep making noise about attacking Iran and not doing it, and he can come to the United States to make a speech intended more to sway the electorate in Israel than anyone in the US. But the more he tries to put roadblocks in the way of diplomacy, the more dangerous he makes Iran.
We hope he stays home, and doesn't come to the United States to side with an antagonistic Congress against the elected American president.
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Fallows also points readers to the work of another really smart writer, David Ignatius, to understand how Netanyahu and Obama got to where they are now. "If you’d like background on how Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu came to this impasse, please read two reports by David Ignatius, here and here."
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Netanyahu has a history of pushing the US to get involved in terrible ground wars in the Middle East. And a history of being incredibly wrong. In 2002, he said, "If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.” What good is a guarantee if it's not backed up by anything? And why should anyone assume that his predictions would turn out better now?
This Week in Climate
The crazy in Washington isn't confined to CPAC. There's plenty on display in committee hearing rooms at the Capitol. At a hearing with EPC chief Gina McCarthy, it was out in force:
"Rep. David McKinley of West Virginia told McCarthy that she was, effectively, responsible for an epidemic of mental illness. 'I keep seeing the EPA putting in another regulation on top of another regulation,” he said. “What it’s led, by these overregulation in rural America, it’s led to people, their well-being, their mental health, is all being affected by it. I think we’re having some depression in areas around the county because of the threats of regulation and what it’s doing to jobs … I really believe it’s directly attributed to the regulatory body with it (sic).'”
And
"Even the more cordial of the questioners made clear that they, too, weren’t buying this whole anthropogenic climate change thing. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the third-ranking Republican in the House, told McCarthy, 'I know the president loves talking about global warming—and they're canceling flights all around the country due to snow blizzards.' Rep. Larry Bucshon of Indiana opened his questions by saying, 'Climate is changing, it’s always been changing for centuries, and reasonable people can continue to have a debate on the human impact on that.'”
As John Oliver has pointed out, you can only have an honest debate on that if you bring in 97 climate scientists for every 3 energy industry-paid spokespeople. And Rep. Scalise, "snow blizzards" and other extreme weather events are evidence of climate change, not against it.
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Over in the Senate chamber, climate change-denier (and, absurdly, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee--thanks, Senate Republicans, for putting an anti-science numbskull in charge of the nation's environmental law) took a snowball inside to "prove" that climate change is a hoax. All he proved is that he is even more ignorant than anybody knew, and we knew quite a bit. Why are we paying people who are so hopelessly inane? Why do people vote for politicians who can't understand the simplest concepts?
This Week in Voting
We here at TWiA think the right to vote is central to America's brilliant system of self-government (even if the founders weren't convinced that anyone but land-owning white males should be allowed to vote). Fortunately, the country has little by little expanded the franchise, and rightfully so. All Americans of voting age are affected by the actions of elected officials, and they should all be able to vote for who they want to represent them.
Unfortunately, Republicans control too many state legislatures, and they've pushed voter-restriction efforts in most of them. The Brennan Center for Justice recently published a roundup of those restrictions either carried over from 2014 or introduced in 2015--40 of them. By our count, the number of voter-restriction laws introduced by Democrats is 0.
We are truly aghast that they're making such a blatant effort to take away the vote from so many Americans, and that otherwise sensible people know that and yet still vote Republican. Blocking people from voting is one of the most un-American, unpatriotic acts we can conceive of.
This Week in 2016
Gov. Scott Walker (R/WI), out in front in 2016 Republican polling, is trying hard to be all things to all Republicans. Having won three times in a traditionally blue state proves, he thinks, that he's "mainstream" enough to be elected president. But he's pandering to the far-right with economically destructive measures like busting public sector unions and slashing university funding.
Unions are undeniably good for the economy--the wage stagnation that has beset the middle class these past decades came about in large part because of the diminishing influence of unions. And higher education leans to higher lifetime pay. Some argue that the increased wealth doesn't offset the cost of college for everyone, and that may be true--but less state funding for universities only means the cost to students will go up, making that equation even worse.
But Walker's economic agenda isn't just harmful in the long term. He's hurting his own state right now. Bloomberg News reports:
"At the close of 2010, a year and a half after the recession officially ended, Wisconsin could claim one of the better economic recoveries in the country. Employment had grown at a faster clip than in most states, and the value of Wisconsin's publicly traded companies was up almost 40 percent. Tax revenue, a sign of economic health, had risen more than 50 percent.
"Then Scott Walker became governor. Over the four years that followed, Wisconsin's economic performance ranked 35th in the country, according to the Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States, which tracks the change in a series of economic indicators."
So the question is, will Walker's rhetoric and conservative economic agenda continue to appeal to conservatives? Our guess is probably yes. Today's conservatives are divorced from reality in many areas, from climate change to evolution to whether the president is a Kenyan Muslim socialist or an American Christian who loves his country. Walker's economic choices mirror the standard conservative approach. It's wrong-headed and economically damaging, but the average conservative voter doesn't know that or doesn't care. Ideology is what's important, not objective truth.
In a general election, though, where the votes of independents matter, his record might not play so well. Bloomberg sums it up thusly: "The data does, and it shows that measured by relative economic outcomes, Walker's tenure falls somewhere between lackluster and a failure."
"Scott Walker: Lackluster or Failure?" might not be the bumper sticker he wants to see, come 2016.
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Walker has a problem with foreign policy, too, in that he has zero experience in or knowledge of foreign policy. He thinks that busting unions and surviving protestors makes him prepared to take on ISIS and Iran and Putin--that they'll cower before the mighty governor who went after teachers. His argument is far from convincing.
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Also, Walker seems to have no idea what "net neutrality" is.
This Week in Consumer Protection
If you see the "US Consumer Coalition" cited anywhere, you should know that its interests do not include protecting consumers from anything. They're happy to protect big banks from consumers, though.
This Week in Gun Safety
The ATF is proposing a ban on armor-piercing M855 green tip bullets, commonly used in AR-15 semiautomatic rifles and other rifles for hunting and target shooting, because new handguns can also fire them, and handguns are far more commonly used in crimes than rifles. Law enforcement officials would prefer that their body armor at least have a chance of stopping rounds fired at their officers.
As a result of the proposal, of course, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other pro-gun death groups are freaking out, and gun shops are seeing a run on bullets in stock.
There are, obviously, plenty of other kinds of bullets out there that can be fired by rifles and/or handguns, but that don't have armor-piercing tips (though any bullet can pierce armor under the right circumstances). This is not an attempt to ban all bullets, or to go door-to-door and gather up people's firearms. It is an attempt to make the dangerous job of policing America just a little bit safer. But those organizations have developed an all-or-nothing approach to firearms--they want access to anything, anytime, anywhere. If the administration proposed a ban on bazookas for home use, the NRA would launch fund-raising appeals on behalf of bazooka rights.
* * *
Meanwhile, we don't really have a good grasp on what might make Americans safer when it comes to firearms, because back in the mid-90s, the NRA successfully convinced Congress to prevent the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) from doing any research that might in any way be used to "advocate or promote gun control." You'll notice the NRA didn't object to research that might be used to prevent gun control, because knowing the true impact of gun violence on America would necessarily lead to more restrictions, not fewer. When an organization seeks to defend its "rights" by preventing people from studying reality, you can be pretty sure that reality is not on the organization's side.
Dr. Chana A. Sacks, a relative of one of the children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School, undertook an exhaustive study of available research, and writes: "A similarly scientific, evidence-based approach can be adopted in the effort to reduce morbidity and mortality from firearms. Both the problem's scope and its relevance to physicians and patients are indisputable: in the United States, 30,000 people die each year from firearm injuries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Firearm injuries send 20 children and adolescents to the hospital every day2; every year, 2000 people receive gunshot-related spinal cord injuries and become lifelong patients.3 And this is an American problem: U.S. children 5 to 14 years of age are nearly 11 times as likely to be killed by a gun as their counterparts in other industrialized countries.4 By any rational definition, gun violence is a health issue, and physicians can take the lead on treating that as an apolitical fact."
It would seem hard to argue with the idea that we should be allowed to gather factual evidence on something that kills and wounds so many of our children, so many Americans of every age. But that's exactly what the pro-gun death groups do argue. Don't know the truth, they say, because the truth doesn't support our objective.
And we let them get away with it.
* * *
And then things like this happen.
This Week in Terror
Last week we wrote about a new report on terrorism released by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Now the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have collaborated on their own report on domestic terrorism, and CNN has seen it.
"A new intelligence assessment, circulated by the Department of Homeland Security this month and reviewed by CNN, focuses on the domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists and comes as the Obama administration holds a White House conference to focus efforts to fight violent extremism.
"Some federal and local law enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups as equal to -- and in some cases greater than -- the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups, such as ISIS, that garner more public attention.
"The Homeland Security report, produced in coordination with the FBI, counts 24 violent sovereign citizen-related attacks across the U.S. since 2010."
* * *
Over at Fox "News," meanwhile, nobody seems sure that right-wing domestic terror really exists. Apparently they don't remember people pointing guns at law enforcement personnel at deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy's place, or the couple who went to Las Vegas from there and killed a couple of cops. The Fox crew has probably been watching too much Fox.
Side Note: Speaking of Fox "News," this was on a local Fox station, not the national cable news one. Still, amazingly offensive.
* * *
Rep. Ted Poe (R/TX) has been watching too much Fox, too. This week on a right-wing radio show, he said, "They're [the Obama administration] more aggressive toward Americans, Republicans, conservatives, Christians, and concerned about them being threats to the country, which they’re not, than they are about the real threats to our country."
It's hard to fathom how a sitting member of Congress could be unaware of the fact that we've been dropping bombs on ISIS for more than six months, and we've assembled an international coalition that's taking them on from the air and the ground. We're arming some of those coalition members to help their efforts. And all that we're doing is having a positive effect.
Does Ted Poe think we're also bombing Republican barbecues and Christian churches?
Or maybe it's just the Texas congressional delegation, because Rep. Lamar Smith (R/TX) said--on the same radio show--"He [Obama] was going to ‘degrade and destroy.’ Well, I don’t see any evidence of degrading and I don’t see certainly any evidence of destroying ISIS. Other countries are moving better than we are. And we certainly ought to get other countries engaged without any doubt, but we cannot just sit around and do nothing, all it does is embolden our enemies.”
No, Rep. Smith. We have done more damage to ISIS than any other country, by a wide margin, and we've been the leaders in putting together the opposition and directing its efforts. How is it possible that these men don't know this? Or do they know it, but figure that anybody who would listen to the "Family Research Council's" radio show is so ignorant and gullible that they can tell any lie they want and not get caught?
This Week in Lying Members of Congress
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R/UT) was speaking at the far-right Heritage Foundation, not on a radio show, when he told his whopper of the week. Presumably he thinks the folks at Heritage are just as ignorant and gullible as the folks who listen to the FRC on the radio.
Back in 2010, Hatch wrote this in the Wall Street Journal:
"A third constitutional defect in this ObamaCare legislation is its command that states establish such things as benefit exchanges, which will require state legislation and regulations. This is not a condition for receiving federal funds, which would still leave some kind of choice to the states. No, this legislation requires states to establish these exchanges or says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services will step in and do it for them. It renders states little more than subdivisions of the federal government."
His interpretation is a little suspect--after all, conservatives usually argue in favor of the federal government leaving implementation of programs up to the states--but his meaning is crystal clear.
Now that the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next week on King v. Burwell--the absurd lawsuit that could allow the Court to upend the Affordable Care Act and throw millions of Americans off their health insurance--Hatch is denying that he wrote what he wrote. "Lacking any credible textual basis for their position, the president and his supporters have taken instead to twisting my words and the words of other Obamacare opponents to claim that we used to agree with the president's argument [re: King v. Burwell]. There is no excuse for twisting my words and imputing to me positions I have never held. Not then, not now."
He added, "The text of this provision could not be more clear. The incentive for states to act could not be more clear. ... If a state fails to establish an exchange it loses out on millions, quite possibly billions, in subsidies."
The thing is, Senator, when you write something down and it's published, then people can go back and look at it later. You can deny it all you want, but when you wrote, "This is not a condition for receiving federal funds..." you were right, and you know it. The law never intended to deny federal funds to states that didn't set up their own exchanges. Everybody knew it then, and everybody knows it now.
Side Note: Speaking of health care, most people don't think their health care is subsidized by their fellow taxpayers, even though it is. Medicare recipients are among the most directly subsidized, but they're the most likely group to claim that they aren't getting government help. They are, though, as is everyone who gets subsidies through the ACA exchanges, everyone using Medicaid or the CHIP program, and everyone with employer-provided health insurance. That covers almost all of us.
This Week in VA Lies
While we're on the topic of rank dishonesty, this week Bob McDonald, President Obama's relatively new Secretary of Veteran's Affairs, apologized for a whopper of his own: claiming to a homeless veteran that he had served in the Special Forces.
He didn't. He qualified as an Army Ranger, but never served as one.
Exaggerating one's military career seems like a constant of American life, and it shouldn't be. Service is in itself honorable--why inflate it? And why especially when you're trying to earn the trust of all of America's veterans?
Stupid and sad.
This Week in Milestones
At this writing, it's been 75 days since an American military fatality in a combat zone--the longest such period since Sept. 11, 2001. Let's hope it continues.
This Week in RIP
Leonard Nimoy is gone. Good luck on your next mission, Mr. Spock.
This Week in Bears
Friday was International Polar Bear Day. See some fantastic polar bear photos here.
While much of the country suffers from too much snow, this polar bear in North Carolina is ecstatic.
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