This Week in America

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 13)

 

This Week in Health Care

Monday marked the fifth anniversary of the signing into law of the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act, which we usually abbreviate ACA and which Republicans are probably sorry they tagged with President Obama's name. If there is a Republican prediction about the ACA that came true, we don't know what it is. What we do know is that the ACA has been spectacularly successful.  Among people enrolled in it, it's getting rave reviews, with 71% saying their coverage is "good or excellent," swamping the 19% who say it's fair and the 9% who say it's poor. Those averages are on par with the non-ACA part of the health insurance market, which by itself means the ACA outperforms Republican predictions. Politico adds:

"However, those newly insured through the exchanges are more satisfied with the cost of health care — with 75 percent saying so — versus 61 percent of all insured respondents who said they were satisfied with the cost of health care.

"A majority — 68 percent — who received insurance through the exchanges said they plan to renew their policy, while an additional 7 percent said they will look for a new policy, but through the exchanges."

Americans in general are still--thanks to multi-million dollar efforts to obfuscate the truth and a right-wing media only too happen to play along--more ambivalent. Vox.com points out, "If there's any area of consensus, it's in misperceptions of the law: 82 percent of Americans either say the price tag has gone up, or aren't sure (the law's price has actually decreased as compared with initial estimates), and only 13 percent know the law met its first-year enrollment goals." In general, Republicans are more confused about the law than Democrats (thanks to more faith in those right-wing media and the lies told by politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz (R/TX). "Republicans, for example, are 25 percent more likely to believe that undocumented workers can get financial help under Obamacare and 15 percent more likely to believe end-of-life panels exist."

The ACA is big government in action, like Social Security and Medicare. And big government in action has already drastically reduced the number of uninsured Americans while creating jobs, spurring entrepreneurship, and reducing the deficit.

Government can do big things. And those big things can help regular Americans have better lives. The success of Social Security, Medicare, and now the ACA are absolute proof of that. (Interestingly, conservatives oppose all three, on the grounds that...well, what grounds? That they're socialist? That they take money from the rich and use it to help the poor? It's hard to see a legitimate objection. The real issue is that they work, and they help those who need it most. That should be considered a positive by anyone who cares about their fellow Americans.)

* * *

Congress is busy this week trying to pass a budget that both chambers can agree on. It might help if members were given calculators. House Rules Committee chair Rep. Pete Sessions (R/TX) could use one: “If you just do simple multiplication, 12 million [insured individuals] into $108 billion, we are talking literally every single [Obamacare] recipient would be costing this government more than $5 million per person for their insurance. It’s staggering….$108 billion for 12 million people is immoral. It’s unconscionable. ”

One hopes he's suitably embarrassed for speaking such idiocy on the floor of the United States House of Representatives (and we imagine he'll work on getting it scrubbed from the Congressional Record). The real number--if you do real multiplication--is in the neighborhood of $4500 per newly insured person, not $5 million. He was only off by a little.

* * *

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers (R/WA) decided to celebrate the ACA's 5th anniversary by trawling for horror stories on her Facebook page. That's not what she got.

This Week in Veterans' Health

Last year, the New York Times made waves by reporting that US soldiers exposed to old, often discarded chemical weapons in Iraq  between 2003 and 2008 had been denied appropriate medical care, denied Purple Hearts, and told to keep quiet about it. (Some on the right, still seeking justification for an unnecessary and wrongheaded war, claimed this was evidence that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction, after all. Reading the NYT's report in full before reacting would have let them avoid embarrassment.)

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel appointed Under Secretary of the Army Brad R. Carson to "lead a Pentagon working group to identify service members who had been exposed to chemical weapons and to offer them medical screening and other support." This week, according to a new NYT piece, Carson, "apologized for the military’s treatment of American service members exposed to chemical weapons in Iraq, and he announced new steps to provide medical support to those with lingering health effects and to recognize veterans who had been denied awards."

The article's writer, ex-Marine and author C.J. Chivers, adds more detail on his own blog:

"But something else happened that was unusual for senior military leadership, which is often insulated from reality by staff and by the unrelenting information-polishing that goes with being atop a rigid chain of command. Mr. Carson said that any veterans who believed they had been exposed to chemical warfare agents, and were meeting obstacles to getting answers or care, should contact him directly. He said he will then personally become involved. No documentation in your medical record? Stalled Purple Heart application?  Not on the access roster in the lobby at Walter Reed when arriving for a medical screening?  Mr. Carson said he wants to know, and he will work on it himself. He was appointed late last year by Chuck Hagel, then the defense secretary, to lead a working group of all the services to address the many issues related to the exposed veterans, whose cases had been kept secret for years.  And he said he can act only on what he knows. 

"So, then, if you are a veteran who may have been exposed to sulfur mustard, sarin or chlorine, take a moment and cut-and-paste this email address:  brad.r.carson.civ@mail.mil. It leads directly to the under secretary’s in-box, which from my experience I can say he checks himself and is not filtered by staff."

We applaud Hagel and Carson for responding quickly, and Carson for making himself personally available to help vets who need it.

This Week in Economic Predictions

It's not just in the area of health care that conservative predictions of disaster have failed to come true. In both the 2008 and 2012 campaigns--and in between--the right has made all sorts of predictions about the president's more progressive economic policies. They've all been wrong, unless somewhere a conservative came out and said, "Obama's misguided ideas are going to lead to a stretch of private-sector job growth unprecedented in the history of the country, record stock market gains, record corporate profits, the revival of the American auto industry, and a vastly decreased deficit." If one did, we missed it.

In fact--and this is a fact, not a theory--of the two competing economic approaches offered up by the predominant sociopolitical factions of our time, one works and one doesn't. We've tried both recently enough to compare the results. In a recent speech, President Obama described what happened:

"Because their theory does not change. It really doesn’t. It’s a theory that says, if we do little more than just cut taxes for those at the very top, if we strip out regulations and let special interests write their own rules, prosperity trickles down to the rest of us. And I take the opposite view. And I take it not for ideological reasons, but for historic reasons, because of the evidence.

"We know from the facts that are there for all to see that America does better, our economy does better, everybody does better when the middle class does better and we’ve got more ladders for people to get into the middle class if they're willing to work hard. We do better when everyone grows together -- top, middle, bottom. We do better when everyone has a chance not only to benefit from America’s success, but also to contribute to America’s success. And we know from more recent history that when we stray from that ideal it doesn't turn out well. We’ve now got evidence there is a better way, there is a better approach. And I’m calling it middle-class economics.

"For the first eight years of this century, before I came into office, we tried trickle-down economics. We slashed taxes for folks at the top, stripped out regulations, didn't make investments in the things we know we need to grow. At the end of those eight years, we had soaring deficits, record job losses, an economy in crippling recession.

"In the years since then we’ve tried middle-class economics. Today we’ve got dramatically lower deficits, a record streak of job creation, an economy that's steadily growing.

"So when we, the American people, when the public evaluates who’s got the better argument here, we’ve got to look at the facts. It’s not abstractions. There may have been a time when you could just say, well, those two theories are equally valid. They're differences of opinion. They could have been abstract economic arguments in a book somewhere. But not anymore. Reality has rendered its judgment: Trickle-down economics does not work. And middle-class economic does."

The economic ideas that are misguided are the conservative ones. Their only proven effect is to increase inequality. The rich get richer, but at the expense of the rest of us. If that's the goal, which we're becoming convinced it must be, then those ideas work.

We think that goal is the wrong one for America. We saw what vast inequality did in 1929. We saw what growing inequality did in 2008. And the truth is--a truth even conservatives should learn to recognize--even the rich do better when everybody does better. Those record stock market gains and corporate profits? Those benefit the rich more than the rest of us. The rich were hurt in 2008, but they've made up their losses and then some; the poor are still catching up.

Wages on the lower end of the spectrum are starting to rise, which is a sign that we've reached a state close to full employment, and businesses need to pay more to keep and attract workers. As they do, more Americans will be spending more money, which will benefit local communities and big corporations alike.

It's also worth noting that conservative "conventional wisdom" about big government's role in entrepreneurship is often wrong. As The Atlantic reports, "The evidence simply does not support the idea of a consistent tradeoff between bigger government and a more entrepreneurial economy. At least in some cases, the reverse is actually true. When governments provide citizens with economic security, they embolden them to take more risks. Properly deployed, a robust social safety net encourages more Americans to attempt the high-wire act of entrepreneurship."

The climate change debate is over, and reality won. Climate change is here, and anyone who denies it isn't stating a difference of opinion, but is just wrong. The same applies here: the debate is over. The outdated theory of tax cuts, spending cuts, and less regulation is bad for America, and doesn't even confer the greatest benefits on those few who prosper under it. Economic policy targeted toward the middle class grows the economy for all. Anyone who denies that is simply wrong.

* * *

What it comes down to is this: one party wants government to serve Americans--to manage the economy in such a way that it grows instead of shrinks and meets the needs of the most possible people; to create large-scale programs like the ACA that address vital and widespread human needs; and to help in the many small-scale ways that government does, from educating our young to fixing potholes and plowing snow. The other party doesn't believe in government and wants primarily to demonstrate that it doesn't work, while also doing its best to distribute the nation's wealth to the already wealthy. Once, moderate Republicans were willing to run for office because they truly believed government could help, but that a more conservative approach was called for. Now moderate Republicans are essentially extinct. Extreme conservatism rules the party, and extreme conservatives have no use for functional government.

Are we saying that one party has the interests of Americans at heart, and the other doesn't? Yes. This doesn't apply to every elected official claiming that party, of course. Humans are human, and fallible, and both sides have their share of greedy, unprincipled leeches. But of the prevailing philosophies underlying the parties, or the broader swath of liberal/conservative thinking that they tend to represent, one is more interested in having a positive impact on the lives of Americans than the other. It's not hard to see which is which.

* * *

Here's a conservative economist arguing that tax breaks for the rich should be ended and the money used to help lift the poor out of poverty.  We agree. He loses points near the end of his piece, though, when he says we should move from an income tax to a consumption tax, thereby undercutting his own argument, because a consumption tax is much harder on the poor than an income-based one. Still, it's a start, and we'd like to see more conservative opinion-makers looking at real solutions to real issues from their own vantage point.

This Week in School

Here in the US, we spend more educating our kids than in any other country. But many countries get better results than we do. Why? The answers are multiple, but a lot of it comes down to this: Too many of our kids live in poverty. Too many live in neighborhoods segregated by race. We could spend less on education if we spent more on social programs that would lift more children out of poverty (the other benefits, including health, long-term career prospects, lowering crime rates, more stable marriages, and so on, would also be enormous).

Also, what we do spend isn't necessarily spent well. Education money is mostly controlled by states and localities, and those entities often make bad spending decisions (which is why block grants, so popular with conservatives as ways to disburse federal money, are so often terrible ideas). Spending more money schooling well-off kids doesn't really improve academic performance much, but spending more on poor kids does.

Here in TWiA's home state of Arizona, the first budget signed by new governor Doug Ducey (R)  slashes spending on education. His predecessor and her legislature were inordinately fond--as he and the current legislature are--of tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, and as a result he's facing a huge budget deficit. Instead of taking a sensible approach that balances revenue increases and spending cuts, the conservatives running state government want to make it up largely by undercutting education, and therefore the state's future prosperity. At the same time, the budget cuts aid to poor families, making school spending that much more critical.

Their budget fits the conservative criteria: don't raise taxes on the rich even as you make it harder on the poor to get by, and privatize where you can (the budget throws $100 million at the private prison industry, for example), because taking money from the taxpayers and funneling it directly to for-profit corporations is always fiscally sound.

The ideological blinders of the right wing create short-sightedness that never fails to boggle the mind.

Side Note: For a more detailed discussion of segregation and opportunity, go here.

This Week in Neverending War

Depending upon whom you ask, President Obama caved to the neocons, or to the military brass, or to Afghanistan's new president, or to reality, when he froze the number of troops remaining in Afghanistan at 9,800 instead of going ahead with the planned drawdown. He took a lot of heat for sticking to the schedule President Bush had negotiated for withdrawal from Iraq, and the political leadership there wanted our troops out. This time, the Afghans want us to stick around for a while. The Pakistanis seem okay with the idea, as long as they know when we'll be out--and the Pakistanis are key to any negotiations with the Taliban. (A big reason for staying in Afghanistan is that we still have an active drone warfare program across the border in Pakistan, which would be harder to manage from elsewhere.)

* * *

Speaking of war and neocons, we often argue that the people who were so disastrously wrong about Iraq should be roundly ignored when it comes to Iran. Here's a good illustration of why: John Bolton, the guy President George W. Bush appointed as Ambassador to the United Nations (an interesting choice, as Bolton's hatred of the UN was well-documented), wants another war, and he wants it now.

Bolton writes: "Rendering inoperable the Natanz and Fordow uranium-enrichment installations and the Arak heavy-water production facility and reactor would be priorities. So, too, would be the little-noticed but critical uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan. An attack need not destroy all of Iran's nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years."

Great deal, Bolton. We turn Iran into a combination of Chernobyl and Fukushima and make its populace hate us for generations to come, in order to buy three years, because we oppose a deal that could put off its program for at least 10-20 years.

It should be noted that Bolton intentionally dodged Vietnam, later writing, "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost," has no sons, and his only daughter--if there were a draft again, and women were eligible--is beyond draft age. Bolton has always loved the idea of sending other people's kids to war, but has never had to face it in his own life.

* * *

Both houses of Congress have passed their respective budgets in time for them to take their spring vacation (though the two budgets still have to be reconciled in committee). They built in a...let's say, creative...means of raising defense spending. To get around the limits set by the sequester that they demanded, congressional Republicans tossed an imaginary $94 billion into an Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund. This is how the Bush administration paid for its wars--instead of paying them through the regular budget process, so there would be some accountability, they created a "slush fund" they could raid at will. That way the American people never knew exactly how much we were spending, and none of it was counterbalanced by additional revenue or additional cuts. Basically, the money for two of the longest wars in our history  were put on the national credit card, swelling the deficit and the debt (until Obama took office, at which time he insisted that was spending be accounted for).

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter isn't happy about it. "Current proposals to shoehorn [the Pentagon's] base budget funds into our contingency accounts would fail to solve the problem, while also undermining basic principles of accountability and responsible, long-term planning." He also doesn't like cuts for the State, Treasury, or Homeland Security departments, since all contribute to the overall national security effort.

The Pentagon can't simply react to what's going on in the moment. It needs to be able to plan, to prepare for contingencies. That requires that it know, well in advance, how much money will be available. Which means hewing to the ordinary budget process, not hiding money in the OCO, which is only funded year by year.

* * *

In case you weren't confused enough by all that's going on in the Middle East, here's an article explaining why the US is fighting on the same side as Iran in Iraq but on the opposite side in Yemen.

This Week in 2016

Reaction is still rolling in on Sen. Ted Cruz's official entry into the 2016 presidential race (see our earlier roundup here). The Economist calls Cruz "dangerous," saying, "Mr. Cruz will not win the presidency, since he repels the swing voters who decide things. But he could still do harm. If he turns the Republican primary into a conservative purity contest, in which anyone softer on Mr. Obama is labeled a sell-out, other contenders may be dragged so far to the right that they become unelectable in the general election. That would be bad for the Republican Party and for America. Voters in 2016 deserve a choice between two grown-up candidates."

* * *

And speaking of the despicable John Bolton, he's one of the top three foreign policy "experts" Cruz trusts. The others are the relatively mainstream neocon Elliot Abrams and utterly insane former CIA director James Woolsey, who started arguing on 9/12/01 that Iraq had been responsible for 9/11, and hasn't stopped since. "Dangerous," indeed.

* * *

In 2008, the VP nominee, a former half-term governor whose name won't be mentioned in this space until she apologizes for equating the national (that her party is largely responsible for) with the horrors of slavery, tried to hit candidate Barack Obama with the charge of "palling around with terrorists." At press time, Cruz was slated to speak later that day (along with some other unsavory characters) to an organization sympathetic to white supremacists. Would Cruz denounce white supremacism? We'll report next week if he does.

 * * *

Sen. Marco Rubio (R/FL) seems intent on proving beyond any reasonable doubt that he has no idea what's going on in the world of foreign policy.

* * * 

Remember when Sen. Rand Paul (R/KY) was praised because he was a "man of principle?" We suppose, if you looked at him through broken, mud-spattered glasses after ingesting the right psychotropic drugs. Now, though he has demonstrated how authentic his principles are, by reversing most of them in hopes of beating Tailgunner Ted for the far-right-fringe vote in the Republican primaries.

Paul on same-sex marriage in October 2014: "I believe in old-fashioned traditional marriage but I don't really think the government needs to be too involved in this and I think the Republican Party can have people on both sides of the issue."

In early March 2015: "“I’m for traditional marriage. I think marriage is between a man and a woman. Ultimately, we could have fixed this a long time ago if we just allowed contracts between adults. We didn’t have to call it marriage, which offends myself and a lot of people.”

In late March 2015: “Don’t always look to Washington to solve anything. In fact, the moral crisis we have in our country, there is a role for us trying to figure out things like marriage, there’s also a moral crisis that allows people to think that there would be some sort of other marriage. We need a revival in the country. We need another Great Awakening with tent revivals of thousands of people saying, ‘reform or see what’s going to happen if we don’t reform.’”

Paul on military spending in October 2010: "I think the issues are more important than the party. I think often we get too distracted by getting too partisan. I don’t see people who are Democrats as always being wrong or Republicans as always being wrong. I think there has to be a compromise on the budget. In order to address the deficit the only compromise that I think we can have is you have to look at the whole budget. We’ve always excluded the military and said we’re not gonna look at the military. Or the Democrats exclude the social and domestic welfare spending. Everything has to be on the table. We have to do this intelligently."

In March 2015, Paul has a different idea. Time reports:

"In an olive branch to defense hawks hell-bent on curtailing his White House ambitions, the libertarian Senator introduced a budget amendment late Wednesday calling for a nearly $190 billion infusion to the defense budget over the next two years—a roughly 16 percent increase

"The move completes a stunning reversal for Paul, who in May 2011, after just five months in office, released his own budget that would have eliminated four agencies—Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Energy and Education—while slashing the Pentagon, a sacred cow for many Republicans. Under Paul’s original proposal, defense spending would have dropped from $553 billion in the 2011 fiscal year to $542 billion in 2016. War funding would have plummeted from $159 billion to zero. He called it the “draw-down and restructuring of the Department of Defense.” But under Paul’s new plan, the Pentagon will see its budget authority swell by $76.5 billion to $696,776,000,000 in fiscal year 2016."

Paul on ISIS, in June 2014: “Should not the Shiites, the Maliki government, should they not stand up?” And, if they’re ripping their uniforms off and fleeing, if they don’t think Mosul is worth saving, how am I going to convince my son or your son to die for Mosul? Yes, we should prevent them from exporting terror; but, I’m not so sure where the clear-cut, American interest is.”

In August 2014: "“I have mixed feelings about it. I’m not saying I’m completely opposed to helping with arms or maybe even bombing, but I am concerned that ISIS is big and powerful because we protected them in Syria for a year. Do you know who also hates ISIS and who is bombing them? Assad, the Syrian government. So a year ago, the same people who want to bomb ISIS wanted to bomb Syria last year. Syria and ISIS are on opposite sides of the war. We’re now bombing both sides of one war that has spread into another country.”

In September 2014: "The military means to achieve these goals include airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. Such airstrikes are the best way to suppress ISIS’s operational strength and allow allies such as the Kurds to regain a military advantage.”

 And on, and on, and on, and on. Every "shift" in Paul's positions brings him more in line with the central current of Republican voters, and away from the days when he used to praise himself as being his own man. And with each change, he denies that he's changed.

 * * *

GQ has a new piece out on "Dr." Ben Carson, relating just how ignorant Carson in with regard to foreign policy, and just about everyone else. The article reminds us how Carson became popular with the far right:

"Since his inadvertent entry into politics two years ago, Carson has defined himself chiefly as a rhetorical bomb-thrower. He's invoked bestiality and pedophilia while arguing against gay marriage, and earlier this month, during an appearance on CNN, he argued that homosexuality is a choice, 'because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight, and when they come out, they're gay.' (After an uproar, Carson issued an apology and declared he would no longer talk about gay rights.) With equally provocative flair, he's railed against the forces of government, declaring that Obamacare is 'the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery' and, in fact, 'is slavery, in a way.' Similarly outrageous was his contention that 'we live in a Gestapo age' and that America today is 'very much like Nazi Germany.'"

It's funny how the proper sort of ignorance, paired with extreme ideology, goes so far in the conservative world. But not "funny ha-ha."

This Week in Congress

Also in 2016--but not in presidential politics--there will be a major shakeup in Democratic Senate leadership. Minority leader Harry Reid (D/NV) has announced that he won't seek reelection next year, but will retire after a 30-year Senate career.

Former boxer Reid has distinguished himself over the years as a polite, principled, soft-spoken man with a spine of steel and a deep understanding of Senate rules and processes, and a courageous fighter for important policies. Sure, there have been times progressives felt he didn't fight hard enough, and conservatives thought he fought too hard. That's what it means to be minority leader (or majority leader, which he was until early this year).  You have to walk a fine line, balancing the interests of both parties, to get legislation passed.

Steve Benen at Maddowblog pointed to a great Harry Reid story from a New Yorker article a few years ago, about Reid's time as chair of the Nevada Gaming Commission:

"In July of 1978, a man named Jack Gordon, who was later married to LaToya Jackson, offered Reid twelve thousand dollars to approve two new, carnival-like gaming devices for casino use. Reid reported the attempted bribe to the F.B.I. and arranged a meeting with Gordon in his office. By agreement, F.B.I. agents burst in to arrest Gordon at the point where Reid asked, 'Is this the money?' Although he was taking part in a sting, Reid was unable to control his temper; the videotape shows him getting up from his chair and saying, 'You son of a bitch, you tried to bribe me!' and attempting to choke Gordon, before startled agents pulled him off. 'I was so angry with him for thinking he could bribe me,' Reid said, explaining his theatrical outburst. Gordon was convicted in federal court in 1979 and sentenced to six months in prison."

Some people think there should be term limits for members of Congress (some think there should be for any elected office). We've always disagreed, and someone like Reid is exactly why. He's hardly a traditional Democrat--he's a devout Mormon whom the New Yorker piece describes as "pro-gun and anti-abortion"--but he has continued to win his seat, term after term, because he is an effective representative of his state and an effective legislator for his country. It takes a long time to develop a thorough understanding of how Congress works, and the institutional memory of someone like Reid is invaluable to keeping it working. Term limits for elected officials ought to be decided by their voters--if they think someone has served too long, they can vote for another candidate.

Reid still has a long time to serve in his current term, but we wish him well on his last months in office and thereafter.

* * *

Speaker of the House John Boehner has had a rocky path during his years at the helm. The House, under him, has hardly passed any legislation of consequence, mostly because whenever anything was the least bit controversial, Boehner buckled to pressure from his farthest right members, thereby ensuring that Democrats wouldn't support whatever came up for a vote.

This week, he did get a major piece of legislation--a long-needed Medicare "doc fix" passed. And he did it in an unusual way, for him: before he brought it to the floor, he reached out to Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (R/CA) and crafted a deal. Yes, Boehner actually made an effort at bipartisanship, and it paid off. The bill goes to the Senate, and the hope is that bipartisan support there will push it through. President Obama has promised to sign it.

The other hope is that Boehner will remember that this worked--that having the leadership of both parties on board, that writing legislation that compromises the desires of the most extreme members but works for the big bloc closer to the middle, is the route to legislative achievement. The way he was going, he was destined for a spot in the history books as one of the worst, most ineffective Speakers ever. If he learned his lesson here, he has a chance to change that in the years to come.

This Week in Legalized Discrimination

Oh, Indiana. What can we do with you?

This Week in Duck Dynasty

Phil Robertson is a disgusting pig. Just saying. We hear Clint Eastwood is already looking forward to Robertson's prime-time speech at the 2016 Republican convention.

This Week in Bears

Two adorable sun bear cubs at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. were named through input from the general public. Meet Mayni and Muniri.

 

This Week in 2016 (Part 1 of Infinity; Ted Cruz Edition)

Okay, it won't really be infinity. It'll just seem like it.

Reaction to the first major-party candidate to officially throw his metaphorical hat into the imaginary 2016 presidential ring was huge this week, so we're devoting this special mid-week TWiA to that topic. Regular TWiA will be along on Friday, as usual 

This Week in 2016

With a late-night tweet and video followed up by a speech at the far-right, evangelical, ironically named Liberty University (where dancing, kissing, an on-campus Democratic students' group, and skipping Cruz's speech are among the many liberties banned), Sen. Tailgunner Ted Cruz (R/TX) has officially entered the race for president. It's certain to be a long 19 months. Cruz, we expect, will drop out long before that. In the New York Times, Nate Cohen writes, "The most interesting question about Mr. Cruz’s candidacy is whether he has a very small chance to win or no chance at all." He explains that to win a major-party nomination, a candidate needs some support from the party apparatus--the networks of staff, donors, elected officials who run elections in the states and who can stump for a candidate, people who can influence large swaths of voters, etc. Cruz has none of that. Cohen continues, "In April 2013, he was identified as 'The Most Hated Man in the Senate' by Foreign Policy magazine, which described him as 'the human equivalent of one of those flower-squirters that clowns wear on their lapels.'" The senior senator from Cruz's state won't even support his primary bid.

Cruz has endeared himself to hard-right tea party types through stunts like ignoring his own Senate colleagues and making himself the unofficial head of the House's far-far-right caucus. He can persuade them to do things like shutting down the government (costing taxpayers an extra $24 billion, while making no actual point), but there aren't enough of them to really create policy. Cruz's problem, electorally, is that he's very popular with a small segment of voters. That's an entirely different thing from being kind of popular with, or at least acceptable to, a large cross-section of voters. Somebody who is a lot of people's second choice has a much better chance of being nominated than someone who is ferociously beloved by a tiny niche. The best Cruz could hope for would be to become a vice-presidential candidate, a right-wing attack dog to help make a more "moderate" candidate acceptable to the far right.

(Note: When we say Cruz's appeal is to a small segment of voters, we mean in a national election. He may not have much personal appeal to a significant sector of the Republican electorate, but that electorate has moved steadily to the right. Cruz's "no-compromise," ideologically pure approach is destructive to the democratic process, but it's popular among the conservative base--particularly those who come out to vote in primaries. We don't doubt that Cruz could win some states--though he'll have plenty of company out there in the fringes--but are certain he couldn't win a national election.)

Radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh likes Cruz. We're not sure if that reflects worse on Limbaugh or on Cruz. And we have to wonder what Limbaugh thinks the word "charismatic" means. And the word "positive." Praising his campaign launch, Limbaugh said, "We finally now have, on display, someone who can cheerfully, confidently, happily articulate conservatism in a charismatic, positive way."

Theoretically, Cruz is a very smart guy, his inability to grasp the meaning of Green Eggs and Ham notwithstanding. He was educated at Princeton, went to Harvard Law (where he was also widely despised), and is rated by their professors as being among Barack Obama and Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan as their smartest students. And we here at TWiA often say voters should pay attention to intelligence over ideology when electing politicians.

The problem with Cruz is that, while he may indeed be an intelligent guy, he lets ideology trump his own intelligence. or appear to. We're sure he knows better, which means when he's playing to voters who don't, he's trying to sucker them.

A couple of examples. Cruz often says Congress needs to "repeal every word of Common Core." Maybe some voters believe that's possible, but only if they don't understand that Common Core is not a federal program and can't be repealed at the federal level. Asked about that minor problem with his common refrain, a spokeswoman said, "Common Core is a federally created curriculum that the state’s ‘Race to the Top’ grants are tied to. So if the state does not adopt the standards, it gives up the grant money. But since the federal government created this mess, there should be a way to undo it."

As ThinkProgress observes, "Literally every claim in that statement is false."

They're right. Common Core was not federally created. Common Core is not a curriculum, and federal law prevents the federal government from being allowed to "endorse, approve, or sanction any curriculum designed to be used in an elementary school or secondary school." And "Race to the Top" grants were never tied to adoption of Common Core. Some were made available to states that would cooperate on creating common standards, which is a very good idea, since it does the country little good to have students in Alabama learn an entirely different set of things than those in Vermont. But beyond that, there were no requirements about the standards. They didn't have to be Common Core. They didn't have to be large groups of states. Because Common Core is, in principle, a smart thing, most of the states joined in, so most of the Race to the Top money linked to standardization went to Common Core states, but that was never a requirement by the federal government. Finally, because the federal government did not "create this mess," there is no way for the federal government to "undo it."

We don't know anything about that spokeswoman, so we don't know if she's lying or simply ignorant. But her statement, and Cruz's "repeal" rhetoric, are equally nonsensical. If anything, Cruz, a big "states'' rights" guy, should support Common Core, because under it each state devises its own curriculum, and each state participating in it made that decision on its own.

Then there's climate. Last week, he went on Late Night with Seth Meyers and had this exchange:

CRUZ: I just came back from New Hampshire where there's snow and ice everywhere. And my view actually is simple. Debates on this should follow science and should follow data. And many of the alarmists on global warming, they've got a problem because the science doesn't back them up. And in particular, satellite data demonstrate for the last 17 years there's been zero warming, none whatsoever. It's why, you remember how it used to be called global warming, and then magically the theory changed to climate change?

MEYERS: Sure.

CRUZ: The reason is it wasn't warming. But the computer models still say it is, except the satellites show it's not.

He's been spouting versions of the same thing for some time. The difference is that he's now not only a presidential candidate, but he's the chair of the Senate's Subcommittee on Science, Space, and Competitiveness. Which means he oversees NASA (among other agencies), which is one of the government agencies most involved in studying climate change.

That's a problem, because Cruz is completely wrong on the science. Not just off by a little, but what he's saying is the opposite of true. Even the scientist a Cruz spokesman cites as the source of Cruz's theory says he completely misrepresents the science.

If Cruz is really a smart guy, he has to know that. But he doesn't care. He thinks he's playing to the rubes, and he thinks  the rubes don't know that. That's not just our opinion; even a National Review writer, who agrees with Cruz on most policy issues, writes, "Certainly, he is one smart cookie. But to my skeptical ears, there is always a touch of condescension in the pitch — a small whiff of superciliousness that gives one the unlovely impression that Ted Cruz believes his listeners to be a little bit dim." We think he understates the point.

Later in the week, Cruz repeated the same bogus talking points in an interview with a home-state newspaper, while claiming scientific expertise belied by his conclusions, and comparing himself to Galileo. "Today the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-earthers. You know it used to be: 'It is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat.' And this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier."

Senator Cruz, you are no Galileo.

These are just two examples of the Cruz technique. In a piece that views his political approach through the lens of one of our favorite works of political philosophy, Richard Hofstadter's brilliant essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," The Atlantic runs through a list of more:

"In 2010, the former Texas solicitor general claimed that Harvard Law School had employed a dozen communist professors during the time he studied there. Running for office in 2012, Cruz warned supporters about a George Soros-led United Nations environmental initiative to banish golf courses from the local American communities. And during former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s nominating hearing in 2012, Cruz earned rebukes from both Democrats and Republicans for questioning Hagel’s character. Among other things, Cruz insinuated that Hagel had taken money from foreign governments, didn’t fully support Israel, and that his nomination was being 'publicly celebrated by the Iranian government' (a claim that was, at the very least, exaggerated). These intricate conspiracies avoid the ambiguity of reality in exchange for simple and easy to understand narratives. Instead of wading into complex issues and weighing ramifications, Cruz sets up straw men, which are easy—indeed, necessary—to oppose."

Tailgunner Ted, in other words, has no problem with blatant dishonesty if he thinks it'll sucker someone into the voting booth. He may indeed be smart, but he's decided that being smart and getting elected are mutually exclusive, and that his best political results will come from acting like he doesn't understand science, history, current events, or much of anything else.

He's all about the ideology, not the intellect. And in service of that ideology, he's intentionally and consistently dishonest. That should disqualify him from public office at any level. And any news story about him that includes reporting that he's "smart" or "educated" should include the fact that he denies science and objective truth.

* * *

What's Tailgunner Ted's official campaign website? TedCruz.com? Don't think so.  TedCruzforAmerica.com? Pretty sure that's not it. TedCruzforPresident.com? Nope. TedCruz2016.com? Nope. Ted has TedCruz.org, but he let the rest slip past him. Maybe part of pretending to be ignorant involves not paying attention to details.

* * *

Cruz's policy ideas run to extremes. In addition to the impossible "repeal" of Common Core, he's frequently said he wants to "repeal every word of Obamacare"--in other words, yank health insurance away from millions of Americans, even as he and his family benefit from it--and "abolish the IRS." We've occasionally commented on the silliness of this position, since even under Cruz's nightmarish vision for America, there would have to be some revenue-collecting organization, so why tear down the one we have just to build a new one? In the Washington Post, Catherine Rampell takes a more detailed look at Cruz's nonsense.

Another of Cruz's ridiculous ideas--it's hard to prioritize levels of ridiculous, because so many are tied for the top slot (the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien calls the litany of policy "ideas" in his Liberty U speech a "conservative wish list to not only repeal the 21st century, but the 20th, too"--is that the current tax code should be replaced by a flat tax.

O'Brien describes the redistributive nature of a flat tax--a redistribution that is the reason conservatives like Cruz are in favor of it:

"A flat tax would just be a colossal giveaway to the rich—and maybe even take away for the poor—and that doesn't help the economy much. Just look, for example, at Rick Perry's version of this. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that, on average, it would have raised taxes on the bottom 40 percent between $150 and $450, at the same time as it slashed them for the top 0.1 percent by $1.5 million. Or, in percentage terms, that's a 1.5 percent tax hike on the bottom 40 and a 27 percent tax cut for the top 0.1. In all, 34.2 percent of the money would go to the top 0.1, 62.2 percent to the top 1, and 86.6 percent to the top 5 percent.

"Now, I know, I know, that the lower the top tax rate is, the more top earners should work and invest, and the more growth there should be to, yes, trickle down to everyone else. And if you believe that, then this is the plan for you, since it cuts taxes about as much as you can for the rich. But then you probably do believe in unicorns and centaurs—because the evidence says that this theory isn't true. Economist Owen Zidar found that tax cuts for the rich didn't really help states with a lot of rich people, where you'd expect them to work more than anywhere else, while tax cuts for the bottom 90 percent were what did help the economy. Specifically, a 1 percent of gross domestic product tax cut for the non-rich tended to boost jobs growth by 5.1 percentage points over the following two years.

"So if a flat tax wouldn't make GDP much bigger, what would it do? Easy: make deficits a lot bigger."

Much bigger deficits and much greater inequality. And to Cruz and his fellow flat-taxers, this is considered a good idea. Which again raises the question--is Cruz not smart enough to know the inevitable result of his plan? Or is that the result he's looking for?

 * * *

Donald Trump is living proof that you don't need to be smart to make a lot of money. You just have to start, as Trump did, with a rich father who gives you his company. This week, Trump said about Ted Cruz's presidential eligibility, "It’s a hurdle; somebody could certainly look at it very seriously. He was born in Canada. If you know and when we all studied our history lessons, you are supposed to be born in this country, so I just don't know how the courts will rule on this."

Obviously, when we all studied our history lessons, Trump was in the boys' room combing his hair. Ted Cruz's mother was an American citizen. Cruz was born in Canada, but he's still a natural-born citizen, in the American tradition, because he was born to an American. (So was Barack Obama, but Obama was also born in the United States. So was John McCain, though he was born in Panama.)

* * *

More of that climate science bad news Cruz pretends, for electoral reasons only, not to believe.

Side Note 1: Although Cruz is in the news this week as the first announced major-party candidate, the crowded Republican field remains active. Sen. Marco Rubio (R/FL), whose foreign policy "expertise" is supposed to be a selling point, seems intent on proving his grasp of foreign policy is almost nonexistent. Next time, Marco, take a drink of water and ask yourself if you really know what you're talking about before spouting nonsense.

Down in Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), who never wants to be left off of any right-wing bandwagon, is also attacking climate change science. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), understanding that science suggests extreme weather events will become more common and mindful that FEMA funds are finite, wants states to look at how their disaster preparedness efforts take that reality into account. FEMA provides Hazard Mitigation Grants to states to help them prepare for such disasters, but doesn't want to provide that grant money to states that are using magical denial thinking in their "planning." Jindal's response? “This preparation saves lives. The White House should not use it for political leverage to force acquiescence to their left-wing ideology.”

Gov. Jindal is partly right. Preparation saves lives; therefore, it should be performed according to what happens in the real world and not in his fantasyland. Where he's wrong is what "ideology" means. Climate change is fact, not ideology. Climate change denial is ideology, and for a governor whose state sometimes gets smacked pretty hard by hurricanes, it's a dangerous one. Will he embrace reality and take the FEMA funds? Or will his state suffer financially while Louisianans die unnecessarily? Seems like an easy choice to us, but we don't expect that Jindal will do the sane thing. The cost of extreme ideology is getting higher all the time.

Over in Wisconsin, investigative reporter Michael Isikoff (one of the best in the business) discovered that a billionaire who gave $1.5 million to a group supporting Gov. Scott Walker (R), got $1.8 million in special tax credits from a state organization that Walker chairs--and the state backed off on its investigations into the billionaire's many violations of environmental laws, saving him yet more millions in fines. Pretty good return on investment.

And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R/SC) has come up with the most absurd explanation for why the Republican Party is so opposed to climate science: It's Al Gore's fault. (No, Senator, it's really not. And even if it were, who's responsible for the party denying evolution? Vaccinations? Economics?)

Side Note 2: While Cruz was blathering about repealing Obamacare and Common Core and preaching in favor of denying science, likely Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was talking about how to address the lack of social mobility in some American communities. That's a real issue that makes a real difference in the lives of real Americans. Cruz might want to take note.

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 12)

TWiA explores the intersection of policy and politics, and most importantly, how that intersection affects real people. It's dedicated to the proposition that good government is possible, it matters, and taxpayers deserve nothing less. Its starting point is that facts are facts, science is real, data are real, and we can and must learn from history. Below you'll find facts and opinions that derive from fact, informed by a close and careful study of these issues that began in 1968 and has never stopped. Note, when we discuss generic "Democrats" and "Republicans" or "conservatives" and "liberals," etc., we're generally talking about elected officials, unless otherwise noted. Also, bonus bear news and other awesomeness. We appreciate comments and arguments, so please chime in, and if you like it, spread the word.

 

This Week in the Debt Ceiling

March 15 was the day the country hit its debt ceiling, so as of March 16 we were past it. As we've discussed before, raising the debt ceiling doesn't mean that Congress will spend more taxpayer dollars--it means Congress can pay bills it's already run up. Raising it has only rarely been considered a big deal, and that was typically only because some Republican Congress tried to make it one. It shouldn't be a point of negotiation, it should just be a procedural matter that Congress handles as a matter of dealing with the business of running the country.

Unfortunately, that's no longer the case, it seems. Phillip A. Wallach, writing for the Brookings Institution, describes it this way:

"To understand the basic fruitlessness of making the debt ceiling the centerpiece of any fiscal negotiations, our political memories need to extend back farther than 2011. In that year, Republicans dug in their heels and won what they considered to be an important partial victory under the shadow of a debt ceiling-driven default. But that isn’t our only data point. Arguably, it was mixing the debt ceiling into the negotiations around the government shutdown in October 2013 that forced the Republicans to accept ignominious total defeat then. The same can be said about the previous instance in which the debt ceiling played a prominent role in a fiscal fight, in 1995-96. In that episode, Republicans thought they could force President Clinton to accede to their demands by attaching them to a debt ceiling increase, but Clinton had the fortitude to veto these and stare them down. His Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, devised a series of extraordinary measures, including messing around with the funding of the Social Security Trust fund (since explicitly banned by statute), and earned some furious impeachment threats in the process, but ultimately meant that the executive branch could outmaneuver and outlast the legislature in those negotiations. The lesson learned by Speaker Newt Gingrich was an extremely clear one: that the debt ceiling is a “dead loser” for Congress. Go farther back and you find more fruitless disruptions, if usually lower profile.

"This shouldn’t come as a surprise. As I have previously argued, the debt ceiling acts like a roach motel for fiscal conservatives: they can come in to make big speeches, but they cannot leave until they have capitulated to as clean a raise as the President decides to demand."

He adds, "Other than an extremely cheap rhetorical advantage, it’s hard to imagine what anyone hopes that arguing about the debt ceiling can reasonably be expected to yield."

But now we've passed the point where it should have been raised without incident. As we reported last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell still hadn't decided quite what he wanted to hold it hostage for, but he meant to come up with some kind of ransom demand.

This is not, need we say, responsible governing. Manufacturing crisis after crisis in order to try to push through a conservative agenda is pointlessly destructive. Republicans in Congress decided at the beginning of the Obama administration that they would obstruct for political gain, rather than make any attempt to work with Democrats or the president. Sadly, their scheme worked--they achieved the political gains they wanted. Having done so, they find themselves unable or unwilling to abandon the strategy, so now crisis manufacture, in service of pointless ends, is the only tool they know.

More below the fold, including budget blues, staggering reversals, religion and the rich, rank cowardice, insane Arizona, and bears.

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 11)

This is the only America you've got. Use it wisely.

 

This Week in A More Perfect Union

Saturday was a celebration of 50 years of history since the famous "Bloody Sunday" march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama--a march for voting rights, which were won shortly thereafter with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. But Sunday's march across the bridge wasn't just a commemoration of that historical event--it was a brand-new protest in its own right, because the same people who finally won the right to vote in 1965 (to the great shame of America, which should have ensured their full participation in our system long before that) have been systematically disenfranchised these last few years, in states with Republican-controlled legislatures. The Supreme Court ripped the most significant provision from the Voting Rights Act, making it easier than ever for states to deny voters access to the polls.

Much progress has been made in this country in 50 years. But there's still work to be done. Inequality between blacks and whites is systemic and irrefutable, and that costs us not only financially but morally.

At the foot of the bridge, President Obama gave one of the best, most stirring speeches of his career. We're not alone in that assessment. James Fallows writes in The Atlantic, for instance, "The political tribalism of this moment means that Democrats are mostly welcoming today's speech, and Republicans and Fox News mostly condemning it. But these days Martin Luther King Jr. is quoted respectfully even at right-wing gatherings. When the political passions of our time have passed, people of all parties will quote this speech as expressing an essence of our American creed."

 It's hard to imagine anyone, after hearing or reading this speech, criticizing President Obama as not believing in American exceptionalism, or not loving his country*, or not being a Christian. You can read the whole thing here, as delivered, and it's worth doing so. Watch it if you can, because delivery is such an important part of a speech, and his performance here was masterful. In the annals of American political oratory, Obama will go down as one of the best.

Some excerpts:

"What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this, what greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

"That’s why Selma is not some outlier in the American experience. That’s why it’s not a museum or a static monument to behold from a distance. It is instead the manifestation of a creed written into our founding documents: 'We the People…in order to form a more perfect union.' 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' 

"These are not just words. They’re a living thing, a call to action, a roadmap for citizenship and an insistence in the capacity of free men and women to shape our own destiny. For founders like Franklin and Jefferson, for leaders like Lincoln and FDR, the success of our experiment in self-government rested on engaging all of our citizens in this work. And that’s what we celebrate here in Selma. That’s what this movement was all about, one leg in our long journey toward freedom."

***

"There’s nothing America can’t handle if we actually look squarely at the problem. And this is work for all Americans, not just some. Not just whites. Not just blacks. If we want to honor the courage of those who marched that day, then all of us are called to possess their moral imagination. All of us will need to feel as they did the fierce urgency of now. All of us need to recognize as they did that change depends on our actions, on our attitudes, the things we teach our children. And if we make such an effort, no matter how hard it may sometimes seem, laws can be passed, and consciences can be stirred, and consensus can be built."

***

"With effort, we can roll back poverty and the roadblocks to opportunity. Americans don’t accept a free ride for anyone, nor do we believe in equality of outcomes. But we do expect equal opportunity, and if we really mean it, if we’re willing to sacrifice for it, then we can make sure every child gets an education suitable to this new century, one that expands imaginations and lifts their sights and gives them skills. We can make sure every person willing to work has the dignity of a job, and a fair wage, and a real voice, and sturdier rungs on that ladder into the middle class.

"And with effort, we can protect the foundation stone of our democracy for which so many marched across this bridge – and that is the right to vote. Right now, in 2015, fifty years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote. As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood and sweat and tears, the product of so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, stands weakened, its future subject to partisan rancor."

***

"For we were born of change. We broke the old aristocracies, declaring ourselves entitled not by bloodline, but endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. We secure our rights and responsibilities through a system of self-government, of and by and for the people. That’s why we argue and fight with so much passion and conviction, because we know our efforts matter. We know America is what we make of it.

"We are Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea – pioneers who braved the unfamiliar, followed by a stampede of farmers and miners, entrepreneurs and hucksters. That’s our spirit.

"We are Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer, women who could do as much as any man and then some; and we’re Susan B. Anthony, who shook the system until the law reflected that truth. That’s our character.

"We’re the immigrants who stowed away on ships to reach these shores, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free – Holocaust survivors, Soviet defectors, the Lost Boys of Sudan. We are the hopeful strivers who cross the Rio Grande because they want their kids to know a better life. That’s how we came to be.

"We’re the slaves who built the White House and the economy of the South. We’re the ranch hands and cowboys who opened the West, and countless laborers who laid rail, and raised skyscrapers, and organized for workers’ rights.

"We’re the fresh-faced GIs who fought to liberate a continent, and we’re the Tuskeegee Airmen, Navajo code-talkers, and Japanese-Americans who fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied. We’re the firefighters who rushed into those buildings on 9/11, and the volunteers who signed up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"We are the gay Americans whose blood ran on the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge.

"We are storytellers, writers, poets, and artists who abhor unfairness, and despise hypocrisy, and give voice to the voiceless, and tell truths that need to be told.

"We are the inventors of gospel and jazz and the blues, bluegrass and country, hip-hop and rock and roll, our very own sounds with all the sweet sorrow and reckless joy of freedom."

***

"Fifty years from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet finished. But we are getting closer. Two hundred and thirty-nine years after this nation’s founding, our union is not yet perfect. But we are getting closer. Our job’s easier because somebody already got us through that first mile. Somebody already got us over that bridge. When it feels the road’s too hard, when the torch we’ve been passed feels too heavy, we will remember these early travelers, and draw strength from their example, and hold firmly the words of the prophet Isaiah:

“'Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.'

"We honor those who walked so we could run. We must run so our children soar. And we will not grow weary. For we believe in the power of an awesome God, and we believe in this country’s sacred promise.

"May He bless those warriors of justice no longer with us, and bless the United States of America."

* * *

*It took less than a week, and it didn't come from one of the usual suspects, but from the Red State blog's Erick Erickson. He was guest hosting Rush Limbaugh's radio show, so must have felt pressure to say something hateful and repulsive enough that Rush himself might have uttered it. "Barack Obama believes the United States of America is a destabilizing, arrogant force in the world. We need our comeuppance and we need to be humbled. And so everything Barack Obama does domestically and in foreign policy is designed to humble the arrogant crackers who have always run the United States. Barack Obama looks at the United States and sees bad and intends to fundamentally transform it into something good, and in so doing take us down a peg."

Really, Erick? Did you listen to the speech at all? Or, really, any of his speeches?

And as an aside, why don't we ever hear conservatives questioning the love of country of people who talk openly about secession and nullification? If you love the country, you want to make it the best country it can be, not get out of it or pretend its Constitution doesn't exist.

* * *

President Obama pointed out that the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized by Republican presidents Reagan and George W. Bush (who shared the dais with the Obamas on Saturday). When Bush signed it in 2006, it had passed the Senate unanimously, 98-0, and in the House, only 33 Republicans opposed it, while everyone else voted for it. The Voting Rights Act didn't used to be a partisan matter. It's hard to look at the current Republican opposition to it [Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R/WI) has been trying to get a fix to the Supreme Court's action since 2013, but can hardly round up any fellow Republicans willing to co-sponsor a bill; the Senate refuses to even consider it] without also looking at the fact that it coincides with the term of our first African-American president.

* * *

At Talking Points Memo, Ed Kilgore reminds us that while conservatives these days are fond of complaining about government "tyranny," the marchers on Bloody Sunday knew what tyranny and oppression really meant: "police dogs; fire hoses; truncheons; deputized thugs. An entire state mobilized to deny the rights of free speech and peaceful assembly, in the broader aim of denying the right to vote. And all this orchestrated by conservative politicians supposedly devoted to an ideology of decentralized government power and individual rights."

This Week in Recovery

The private sector has added at least 200,000 jobs a month for 12 months straight. That hasn't happened since 1977. Public and private sector job growth combined over 200,000 for 12 months? Last happened in 1995, and before that in 1984. We've had 53 straight months of job growth (best since 1939, after the Great Depression) and 58 straight months of private sector job growth (best in the history of the US). The unemployment rate is down to 5.5%. The Brookings Institute tells us: "However, the main reason the unemployment rate has shrunk more than a percentage point over the past year is that 3.0 million additional adults now hold jobs. Virtually all of the new jobs are full time. Even if a few employers are limiting the work hours of some employees to avoid the Obamacare mandate to provide them with affordable health insurance, all the employment gains we have seen since the Affordable Care Act went into effect have been full-time jobs."

Which doesn't mean the next time most elected Republicans mention Obamacare*, it will be preceded by the demonstrably false "Job-killing." It has done no such thing. None of the doom and gloom predictions about President Obama's economic agenda have been borne out by the facts. It would be nice to hear one of them admit that their tired old conservative economic ideas don't work, and embrace something new.

We're not holding our breath.

* * *

*That didn't take long. Former governor and current presidential pre-candidate Jeb Bush (R/FL), apparently unashamed of speaking with great certainty and no factual basis whatsoever, just said, "In fact (ironic, much?--TWiA) , the greatest job suppressor in the so-called recovery that we've gone through is Obamacare." He reportedly got through the ridiculous falsehood with a straight face, though we don't know if his fingers were crossed.

* * *

And probable presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R/FL) and Sen. Mike Lee (R/UT) have just offered up their new economic plan--an update of one they pitched last year, which was soundly beaten back by sane people. So this year's version is better, right?

Not so fast. Jon Chait says: "But it didn’t get better. It got much, much, much worse. The new Rubio-Lee plan keeps most of its old structure, with its stingy treatment of low-income workers. It layers on top of that two changes: a far more generous treatment of business income, and a complete elimination of all taxes on capital gains and dividends. [Update: The plan would also, unbelievably, completely eliminate the tax on inherited estates, which for a married couple only begins to apply to inheritances above $10 million.] Both of these new features would lavish massive additional tax cuts on the rich, in addition to those already in the original version. The new Rubio-Lee plan would surpass anything George W. Bush or Mitt Romney ever proposed to do in its ambitions to relieve the richest Americans of their tax burdens."

In the New York Times, Josh Barro calls it the "Puppies and Rainbows Tax Plan." The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities adds, "The big losers under the Lee-Rubio plan, therefore, would be the working-poor people who feed and bathe the elderly, care for preschoolers, clean offices, and perform other essential tasks.  The big winners would be the country’s highest-income 400 filers, at a cost of much higher deficits."

The Washington Post observes, "It's hard to imagine this would do anything but explode inequality and the deficit by around $4 trillion or so. The conservative Tax Foundation is giving it the old college try, though, by claiming that this would increase growth so much that, rather than costing the government $414 billion a year, it would increase revenues by $94 billion a year. That's what George W. Bush would call some fuzzy math."

And the Tax Policy Center examines Tax Foundation's math, reaching this understated conclusion: "The Tax Foundation’s growth estimate is, to put it mildly, inconsistent with standard economic analysis."

The Tax Foundation’s growth estimate is, to put it mildly, inconsistent with standard economic analysis.  - See more at: http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/2015/03/11/rubio-lee-hints-tax-reforms-troubling-direction/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All&utm_campaign=vox%20sentences%20-%203%2F12%2F2015#sthash.aWIrmJnH.dpuf

The Tax Foundation’s growth estimate is, to put it mildly, inconsistent with standard economic analysis.  - See more at: http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/2015/03/11/rubio-lee-hints-tax-reforms-troubling-direction/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All&utm_campaign=vox%20sentences%20-%203%2F12%2F2015#sthash.aWIrmJnH.dpuf

The Tax Foundation’s growth estimate is, to put it mildly, inconsistent with standard economic analysis. - See more at: http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/2015/03/11/rubio-lee-hints-tax-reforms-troubling-direction/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All&utm_campaign=vox%20sentences%20-%203%2F12%2F2015#sthash.H9EsQaav.dpuf

The Tax Foundation’s growth estimate is, to put it mildly, inconsistent with standard economic analysis. - See more at: http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/2015/03/11/rubio-lee-hints-tax-reforms-troubling-direction/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All&utm_campaign=vox%20sentences%20-%203%2F12%2F2015#sthash.H9EsQaav.dpuf

The Tax Foundation’s growth estimate is, to put it mildly, inconsistent with standard economic analysis. - See more at: http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/2015/03/11/rubio-lee-hints-tax-reforms-troubling-direction/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All&utm_campaign=vox%20sentences%20-%203%2F12%2F2015#sthash.H9EsQaav.dpuf

The "new" Rubio-Lee plan increases the child tax credit for families somewhat, while also cutting taxes for the rich a lot, under the pretense that wealth will trickle down to the rest of us--despite decades of evidence that it never happens that way--and doesn't pay for any of it. Ballooning the deficit while redistributing America's wealth toward the very richest of us--that's not progress, gentlemen. We've tried that. The course we're on now works much, much better.

This Week in Congress

The nation hits its debt limit on March 15. This week, Congress should vote on a debt ceiling increase, as it always used to do before the Republicans took over the House in 2010 and decided that it would be a good time to hold the increase hostage for something they want but won't get.  This time, though, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R/KY) isn't very reassuring. "We'll figure some way to handle that and hopefully it might carry some other important legislation that we can agree on in connection with it." That sounds like they're still trying to figure out what ransom they'll demand, and they'll definitely manufacture an unnecessary crisis in order to try to get it. And they'll fail, again, and disappoint the hardcore conservative base that doesn't believe in compromise and thinks Congress should blow up the entire government to get what they want.

This Week in They're Not Ronin (or, what is up with Republicans and the number 47?)

To be fair, McConnell and his Senate Republicans have a lot on their mind. A week after their colleagues in the House teamed up with a foreign government to try to undermine US foreign policy, the Senators want their crack at violating the Logan Act. For those who haven't memorized it, the Logan Act says: "Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply himself, or his agent, to any foreign government, or the agents thereof, for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects."

Pretty clear, right? Nobody has any correspondence with foreign governments with the intent "...to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government...in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States..."

The Logan Act is never enforced--there hasn't been an indictment under it since 1803, and there's never been a successful prosecution. It's a relic of bygone days, and possibly unconstitutional, if it conflicts with the First Amendment's free speech guarantee. Still, the principle--that the US has to speak with a single voice on foreign policy, and that voice belongs to the executive branch--has long held.

One could argue that Speaker Boehner violated the Act, too, since he presumably corresponded with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's administration to arrange his appearance before Congress.

But the Senate's violation seems more clear-cut:

" A group of 47 Republican senators has written an open letter to Iran's leaders warning them that any nuclear deal they sign with President Barack Obama's administration won’t last after Obama leaves office.

"Organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton and signed by the chamber's entire party leadership as well as potential 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the letter is meant not just to discourage the Iranian regime from signing a deal but also to pressure the White House into giving Congress some authority over the process.

"'It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,' the senators wrote. 'The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.'

"Arms-control advocates and supporters of the negotiations argue that the next president and the next Congress will have a hard time changing or canceling any Iran deal -- which is reportedly near done -- especially if it is working reasonably well. "

Somebody doesn't fully understand our constitutional system, but while there's no evidence that the Iranians don't, it's clear that 47 Republican senators don't. In the letter, they claim that the president ratifies treaties, which is just not true at all. And the executive branch has set foreign policy virtually since there was an executive branch. As Vox.com explains, "That derives from something called the 'sole organ' doctrine, named for a speech that founding father John Marshall gave in 1800, a year before he became the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Marshall said, 'The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.' A 1936 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Curtiss-Wright, ruled that the 'sole organ' doctrine grants the president inherent constitutional powers in foreign relations."

Congress doesn't get to set its own foreign policy. By law and by tradition, members of congress put country ahead of party and support the president when it comes to that. For these senators to stage an end-run around the president, to undermine delicate negotiations that may be in their final stages, is not only contrary to the way America has always worked (this is literally without precedent in Senate history), but seems to indicate that they're spoiling for war. Diplomacy is meant to avoid war, and should always be tried first. Sanctions by themselves have hurt the Iranian people. but have not prevented them from building their nuclear power program. Already, the negotiations have done more in that regard than the sanctions ever did. If the negotiations fail--or are torpedoed from inside our own Capitol building--we're left with only two options, which might well merge into one. Ever more useless sanctions (and we'd have a hard time getting the rest of the world to go along with us, this time), or war. Or, of course, we could let Iran get nuclear weapons. We hope even ignorant US senators aren't angling for that result, but it's hard to tell for sure. At this point, they're siding with hard-liners in Iran, who also oppose the treaty, and against the official foreign policy of the US government. 

* * *

Vice President Joe Biden is mightily ticked-off at the 47 senators, writing, "I served in the United States Senate for thirty-six years. I believe deeply in its traditions, in its value as an institution, and in its indispensable constitutional role in the conduct of our foreign policy. The letter sent on March 9th by forty-seven Republican Senators to the Islamic Republic of Iran, expressly designed to undercut a sitting President in the midst of sensitive international negotiations, is beneath the dignity of an institution I revere."

The full text of his statement is here, and it contains several important points, not least of which is this one: "The author of this letter has been explicit that he is seeking to take any action that will end President Obama’s diplomatic negotiations with Iran. But to what end? If talks collapse because of Congressional intervention, the United States will be blamed, leaving us with the worst of all worlds. Iran’s nuclear program, currently frozen, would race forward again. We would lack the international unity necessary just to enforce existing sanctions, let alone put in place new ones. Without diplomacy or increased pressure, the need to resort to military force becomes much more likely—at a time when our forces are already engaged in the fight against ISIL."

* * *

Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian Foreign Minister, took the 47 senators to the woodshed in his response. He pointed out, among other lessons, "I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors and that is, the world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by US domestic law. The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfill the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations."

It's a pretty sad day when an Iranian government official knows more about how the world works than most of the Senate Republicans combined.
(Thanks to TWiA Tehran correspondent Marcy Rockwell for the tip.)

* * *

Our European allies--especially those at the table with us and Iran, working to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons--are also rightfully upset.

* * *

Sen. Ted Cruz (R/TX) was the first out of the gate with a Nazi reference. Stay classy, Tailgunner Ted. Also? Learn some history.

* * *

In the Washington Post, Paul Waldman looks at the letter in a historical context:

"The only direct precedent I can think of for this occurred in 1968, when as a presidential candidate Richard Nixon secretly communicated with the government of South Vietnam in an attempt to scuttle peace negotiations the Johnson administration was engaged in. It worked: those negotiations failed, and the war dragged on for another seven years. Many people are convinced that what Nixon did was an act of treason; at the very least it was a clear violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits American citizens from communicating with foreign governments to conduct their own foreign policy."

He adds:

"But as has happened so many times before, Republicans seem to have concluded that there is one set of rules and norms that apply in ordinary times, and an entirely different set that applies when Barack Obama is the president. You no longer need to show the president even a modicum of respect. You can tell states to ignore the law. You can sabotage delicate negotiations with a hostile foreign power by communicating directly with that power."

We think it's hard to view Nixon's actions as anything but treason. The families of every American who died during the seven years of Vietnam that might have been prevented probably feel the same way. He held no political office, and the covert action he took was intended to help his political fortunes and for no other reason. If the Senate letter succeeds in quashing the ongoing negotiations with Iran and ultimately leads to war, then every American death resulting from that will be on the hands of 47 senators who decided to bypass law, tradition, and decency out of their unreasoning hatred for the President of the United States.

* * *

Even conservative WaPo columnist Kathleen Parker thinks the letter was a dumb, immature, and narcissistic idea. "The 47 senators are like food critics who condemn a chef before he has finished preparing the entree. Their letter also signals to the world that they have zero respect for our president, or for the other world powers attempting to try diplomacy first."

* * *

During the week, Sen. Tom Cotton (R/AR) defended his letter, if by "defended" you mean "revealed how little he knows about its topic." Cotton appeared on MSNBC on Tuesday, and...it didn't go well. As Politico reports:

"When asked what an acceptable deal would look like to him, Cotton answered 'complete nuclear disarmament by Iran.'

“'They can simply disarm their nuclear weapons program and allow complete intrusive inspections,' Cotton said.

"MSNBC’s hosts pressed Cotton on the idea of complete disarmament, arguing that Iran would never agree to those terms. 'I think we have to have a credible threat of military force on the table but the real alternative … to a bad deal is a better deal,' Cotton said. 'With more sanctions, with confronting Iran, with only giving them the choice that would completely disarm their nuclear weapons.'”

We're left with the embarrassing spectacle of a United States senator violating every established norm of American foreign policy to lecture the Iranians about our constitutional process, getting that constitutional process wrong, and defending it by citing imaginary weapons.

Cotton is a freshman senator, but before being elected to the Senate, he served a term in the House, beginning in 2013. He has two Harvard degrees. He served in Iraq. We don't know whether he's a quick study or not, but it seems like he should be able to understand what most people already have: Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, or a nuclear weapons program. How can they "disarm their nuclear weapons" when those weapons exist only in Cotton's head? The whole point of the negotiations is to ensure that Iran doesn't develop nuclear weapons.

Lest anybody think it wasn't obvious how unsuited Cotton was to the US Senate, remember that he said this before the election: "Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico who have clearly shown they're willing to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism. They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas." There is, of course, zero evidence linking ISIS with drug cartels in Mexico. ISIS is trying to establish a caliphate in the Middle East--trying, in other words, to take and hold contiguous territory. Not only would they never work with Mexican drug cartels (very few of which are composed of Sunni Muslims) but they would have no reason to do so. A couple of weeks later, Cotton started running a campaign ad that showed parts of an ISIS propaganda video, causing some of us to wonder whose side he's really on.

And once again, we're forced to point out that if voters took intelligence into consideration, instead of just ideology, Congress would look much different and would likely be much more responsive to the actual needs of the American people.

* * *

Perhaps the strangest thing about the entire affair--strange in real terms, though not in terms of recent Republican politics--is that Sen. Cotton, by virtue of his misguided, destructive, ill-considered letter, has become an instant star of the right wing. In Arkansas, they're already looking at changing state law so he can run for the Senate and the presidency in 2020. As this writer observes, "This is how it always goes with the GOP -- a Republican does one showboating, immature, possibly reckless thing, and he or she (usually he) is an immediate star. Look at Ted Cruz. Look at Rand Paul. Look at Ben Carson."

What does it say about a political party that rushes to embrace blatant idiocy? That looks at politicians (or potential ones, like Carson) through such an ideological prism that they don't stop to realize these people are doing stupid things for stupid reasons? Rand Paul became a right-wing star by holding a phony "filibuster" that hinged on a question that anyone with half a brain could have answered--no, "Dr." Paul, the US government won't use drones to kill Americans on American soil. The fact that something is a newish weapon doesn't mean the rules about how weapons are used changes. If the government wanted to go around killing Americans, it could do so with the weapons already on hand. That's really not part of the government's agenda, Rand.

But it worked for him, so Ted Cruz tried the same thing, and in the process demonstrated that all his advanced degrees don't mean he can understand the meaning of a Dr. Seuss children's book.

And Carson? All he did was act like an ass, and now he's being considered as a possible president.

We genuinely do not understand why those on the right don't look at actual accomplishment, or intelligence, or experience, when picking the flavor of the moment. Granted, in the end, in presidential elections the party always goes with the establishment candidate, who at least has held a political office with some degree of responsibility and comes across to the country at large as slightly less loony than the other guys. But for lesser offices (and the US Senate didn't used to be a "lesser" office)?  They seem to have no problem electing intellectually and morally challenged people like Cotton, Paul, and Cruz. If they spout the correct far-right talking points, they're in.

It's a sad fate for a once-great political party, and for the conservative movement in general. We hope it's a passing fad--but we've hoped that for a long time now.

* * * 

Potential Republican presidential candidates from outside the Senate are throwing their support to the letter, despite the fact that doing so makes them look as "plainly stupid" as the senators who already signed on. So far, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry have all jumped on board, making them accomplices after the fact to the probable Logan Act violation. Taking it a step further, Marco Rubio decided to make it a fundraising opportunity.

* * *

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about Sen. Marco Rubio's confusion about whose side Iran is on in the battle against ISIS. Speaking at CPAC, he said, "The reason Obama hasn't put in place a military strategy to defeat ISIS is because he doesn't want to upset Iran."

He was wrong on two counts, in a two-part sentence. Obama does have a military strategy, and it seems to be working. And Iran is fighting against ISIS. Defeating ISIS would not upset them in the least.

That led us to ask the not-rhetorical question, "Does Rubio genuinely not know those things? He's a member of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, after all. Or does he trust that the CPAC audience is so woefully uninformed that they'll believe whatever he tells them. As we have to say on too many occasions, he's either lying or he's ignorant. There are no other choices. Which is it, Senator?"

One would think that in the intervening time, someone on Rubio's staff would have clued him in, if he was indeed ignorant of the truths he so baldly misstated at CPAC. Instead, in a Senate hearing this week, he continued to parrot the same nonsense. His first question for Secretary of State John Kerry was, "I believe that much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran so that they don't walk away from the negotiating table on the deal that you're working on. Tell me why I'm wrong."

So Kerry did, beginning with this stunningly obvious statement: ""Because the facts completely contradict that."

Yes, Sen. Rubio. They do. You've had time to learn the facts. Indeed, you should have already known them. It's very nearly impossible, by this point, to believe that Rubio doesn't know that we and Iran have the same goal regarding ISIS.  Yet multiple times during the hearing, he repeated the non-fact that Iran would be upset if we defeated ISIS.

Is Rubio, like some diehard climate change denier, a person to whom facts are meaningless? Is he so dense that he can't understand that simple truth, or is he so convinced that he's right that the truth just can't sink in?

Or does he really know the truth, but instead of speaking it, is determined to mislead the American people in an attempt to rile up his base--people he considers too uninformed or to stupid to trust with the truth?

None of those scenarios bodes well for a presidential candidate who claims that one of his qualifications for office is that he has more foreign policy experience than any of the governors running. But if there are any other possible explanations for his continued denial of the facts, we haven't heard them.

* * *

One Douglas J. Feith wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall--don't worry, you're better off) this week, arguing that Obama's approach to Iran is fatally flawed. Some of you might be asking, who is Doug Feith? (Those who do remember him might be laughing hysterically.)

Feith was the single individual during the Bush administration who was responsible for or at least connected with the most possible errors in judgment during the Iraq war. He's the guy who convinced the president that his best argument was Saddam Hussein's (nonexistent) WMDs. He pushed to send in fewer troops than the generals thought were necessary. He came up with the "legal" framework for torturing prisoners. He was in charge of Iraq's military prisons, including Abu Ghraib. He was in charge of postwar planning. General Tommy Franks, former head of the US Army Central Command (CENTCOM), called Feith "the dumbest fucking guy on the planet."

It's hard to argue with that assessment.

All the neocons were wrong about Iraq. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, right down the line to pundits like Bill Kristol (who, in fact, Sen. Cotton consulted with while writing his letter, helping to explain why Cotton got such bad advice) who never have to take responsibility for the actions they promote. Iraq was the wrong war. It took attention and resources away from the right war, in Afghanistan. It was poorly planned and executed. Its unintentional consequences--including ISIS and a resurgent Iran--will haunt us for decades.

But Feith was stupendously, colossally wrong at every turn. Even if those other guys accidentally did something right now and then (which we can't vouch for), Feith didn't. Feith is the Peter Principle personified. He kept failing up until he failed right into the job where he could help get thousands of Americans killed and wounded.

Now he thinks negotiating with Iran is a bad idea? There has never been a better reason to negotiate with Iran than Feith's disapproval.

* * *

Finally, we're happy to report that Jeff Flake, the junior senator from TWiA's home state of Arizona, was one of the seven Republican senators who didn't sign this admission of ignorance. The others are Lisa Murkowski (AK), Lamar Alexander (TN), Dan Coats (IN), Thad Cochran (MS), Susan Collins (ME), and Bob Corker (TN).

This Week at NASA

Speaking of Tailgunner Ted Cruz, thanks to voters handing the Senate to Republicans, he's now chair of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, which oversees NASA. NASA's focus has always been on understanding Earth as well as exploring space, and using the lessons from space exploration here at home. Cruz is upset, though, because NASA is worried about climate change. He doesn't want anybody looking at that--especially scientists--so he wants NASA to concentrate on things far, far, far away from here.

This Week in Labor

America's economy thrived--especially that of the middle class--when labor unions were strongest. The labor movement gave us the 8-hour workday, paid vacations and sick leave, employer-provided health insurance, and more. As union membership shrank over the past decades, wages stagnated and the middle class also shrank while inequality grew.

Now, conservative governors race to pass the harshest anti-union laws, and Gov. Scott Walker (R/WI), currently the front-runner (or second, depending on which poll you believe) for the Republican nomination, seems to be out in front of the pack. His earlier attempt to break the public-sector unions was largely successful, but it resulted not only in those unions losing what political power they had, but in rank-and-file workers losing benefits and take-home pay. According to this Washington Post piece, "[Walker's] law required most public employees to pay more for health insurance and to pay more into retirement savings, resulting in an 8 to 10 percent drop in take-home pay. To help compensate for the loss, Anliker said he took an additional 10-hour-a-week job."

It's hard to fathom why Republicans feel that it's a good idea to attack middle class prosperity, but Republican voters don't punish governors or legislatures that enact anti-labor laws. Instead, those politicians are rewarded, as in Walker's case. (In a triumph of Orwellian double-speak, the anti-union law Walker just signed is called a "right-to-work" law. If that phrase is in it at all, it should be amended to "right-to-work-harder-for-less.") We can only put it down to another of the many disconnects between the right wing and reality, because assuming that they just don't understand what they're really supporting seems kinder than assuming that they're simply cruel and want their fellow Americans to be worse off. One of those two has to be true, though--there's just no realistic way to argue that shrinking union membership is good for the middle class or the economy as a whole.

 * * *

This new study shows, in 9 easy-to-grasp charts, what has driven income and wealth inequality in the US between 1979 and 2007. One of the primary factors? Declining union membership. (Emphasis ours.) "One of the main causes of stagnant wages and rising wage inequality is the decline of collective bargaining which has lowered the wages of both union and nonunion workers. The figure shows that the drop in the share of workers under collective bargaining contracts is the mirror image of the rise of incomes of the top 10 percent. This occurs because collective bargaining not only raises wages for organized workers but also leads other employers to raise the wages and benefits of nonunion workers to come closer to union wage standards. This phenomenon occurs when collective bargaining achieves even modest penetration. The erosion of collective bargaining can explain from one-fourth to one-third of the growth of wage inequality between 1973 and 2007 and had a greater impact on men than women. This erosion of collective bargaining occurred despite large numbers of workers indicating they would prefer collective bargaining if they had a choice. But the political power of those with the most income, wealth, and power prevented the adoption of laws to modernize our labor–management system and enable workers to pursue collective bargaining."

* * *

Popular conservative dogma, as practiced at the state level by governors like Walker, Bobby Jindal (R/LA), and John Kasich (R/OH) preaches that lower taxes and less regulation are good for business. Yet the economies of their states are in terrible shape, under the tax and regulatory structures those governors have put in place (WI, LA, OH). What state is beating all the rest in business performance, then? Heavily taxed and regulated California.

"As unemployment declined to 7 percent in December from a peak of 12.4 percent in 2011, California's growth was substantial enough that during the 24-month period ended Sept. 30, 2014, the jobless rate fell the most of any state. This helps explain why California remains the No. 1 state for manufacturing, producing $239 billion, or 12 percent of all manufacturing in the U.S., according to Bloomberg data. Texas is No. 2 with $233 billion.

"If taxes are really the bane of California existence, why aren’t they preventing rich people from making the state their primary residence? Some 123 of the world's wealthiest 400 people live in the U.S., and 28 of them, or 23 percent, are California residents, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. New York is No. 2 with 22 billionaires, or 18 percent, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index."

This Week in Inequality

As we've long argued, the concentration of wealth at the top end of the spectrum isn't a matter of natural law, it's the product of policy decisions that steer wealth in that direction. Policy decisions, once made, can eventually be unmade--though it's often politically difficult to do so, especially under a system in which the wealthy can throw unlimited piles of money into political campaigns.  Here's a description of one way policy works to enrich the wealthy--publicly funded research creates innovation that is then capitalized on by a tiny handful of people:

"One example, flagged by the economist Jeffrey Sachs, is Sovaldi, a drug used to cure hepatitis C. As Sachs explains, the company that sells it, Gilead Sciences, holds a patent for the treatment that will not expire until 2028. As a result, Gilead can charge monopoly prices: $84,000 for a 12-week course of treatment, far more than the few hundred dollars it costs to produce the drug. Last year, sales of Sovaldi and Harvoni – another drug the company sells for $94,000 – amounted to $12.4 billion.

"Sachs estimates that the private sector spent less than $500 million on research and development to develop Sovaldi – an amount that Gilead was able to recoup in a few weeks of sales. The NIH and the US Department of Veterans Affairs, however, had heavily funded the start-up that developed the drug and was later acquired by Gilead."

Nobody's suggesting that the government get out of the R&D business. It's good at it, and can often marshall resources that it would be difficult or impossible for the private sector to pull together. But there are ways to ensure that private companies benefiting from public research share their gains more broadly, and those are things policy-makers should be looking at.

* * *

Again, we'll point you toward the Economic Policy Institute's new study on wage stagnation and income inequality. The first of the 9 charts has two lines, one showing actual middle class income and the other showing what that income is projected to have been without the effect of inequality. It shows that we middle class types were making almost $18,000 less a year than we could have been. Why? Because that $18K was going into the pockets of CEOs and shareholders rather than working people.

If "trickle-down," or "supply-side" economics worked, you'd expect some of those incredible wealth gains at the top to translate down to those in the ranks beneath them. These data show that since 1979, that hasn't happened, yet conservatives still cling to that failed concept. After all, the rich have become very much richer in that time. Where's the trickling? You would think 40 years would be enough to prove to even the diehard supply-siders that it's time to find a new theory. But some people just don't give up.

Or--and this is probably closer to the truth--they don't care that it doesn't work, and they've always known that, because their real goal isn't to help America's working families, it's to shunt ever more wealth to the already wealthy. In that case, supply-side is working out just fine. For about 400 families.

This Week in Poverty

What liberals got wrong (and conservatives did, too). The disintegration of the family unit helps breed poverty, poverty helps breed more poverty. But what's the chicken, and what's the egg? The poor aren't poor because they're lazy and immoral. They're poor because they have no money, and few prospects of getting any.

This Week in E-mail

Former Secretary of State and probable presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D) held a press conference this week (transcript here), at which most of the questions were about her use of a private e-mail address and server instead of the official State Department system. She answered some questions, but some of her answers only raise more questions. Clinton is--perhaps justifiably, given her treatment by the right wing since she first came into national prominence--likely a bit paranoid and overly secretive. But it's better for a presidential candidate to go into the race looking like she doesn't have anything to hide. Will she be able to strike the right balance?

* * *

Another take--the issue isn't so much Hillary herself as it is the times we live in, when privacy is not valued so much, and politicians don't get as much say as they used to in what can be private and what public. Past politicians didn't have to confront questions about their e-mail use, so she might have legitimately not imagined it would become an issue now. But it has, and how she handles it will tell us much about who she is now.

* * *

Elected Republicans never use private e-mail accounts for official business, of  course... Oh, wait. They do? Alert the media!

 * * *

Vox.com says the media and the public are fascinated by the e-mail story because it's easy to understand and doesn't involve any actual policy issues that matter in people's lives. "The GOP's proposed health spending cuts are literally a life-and-death issue for thousands of people, and will seriously impact the personal finances of millions. On the other hand, if the cuts really do boost the long-term growth rate of the American economy in a meaningful way, it could profoundly transform living standards for almost everyone. Digging deep into whether this theory is true is more difficult than "demanding answers" about email protocols. But it's a lot more important."

This Week in Infrastructure

The US is essentially spending $0 on infrastructure projects. That's not a typo. Zero, as a percentage of GDP. Roads, bridges, sewers, electrical grids, schools--all these things are dated and falling apart, and Congress can't bring itself to fund anything. Except a pipeline to benefit Canadian oil companies.

This Week in Gun Safety

The Obama administration has been great for gun and ammo sales. But who's buying all those guns?

Mostly, it turns out, old people who already own guns. In 1985, 31% of Americans owned guns. Now, 22% do. 14% of those gun owners are under 35, and 31% are over 65. Half of the country's Republicans have a gun in the house, twice as many as Democrats and independents. 4 in 10 white Americans have a gun in the house, while only 2 in 10 blacks and Hispanics do.

And 72% of Americans think that anyone buying a gun should have to have a permit.

So look out for those Social Security- and Medicare-collecting white gunslingers. They're well armed and obviously dangerous.

This Week in New Mexico

No, Rep. Martinez (D/NM). Thinking something in your head--if you did--is not the same as saying it out loud. What you said out loud is indefensible.

This Week in Happiness

Who's happier, conservatives or liberals? Past studies have leaned toward conservatives, but those were self-reporting. A new one, with a different approach, reaches a different conclusion. Conservatives are more likely to say they're happy. Liberals are more likely to be happy. The difference, the study finds, is that conservatives are more prone to "self-enhancement," (i.e., evaluating themselves in an unrealistically positive manner"). That might explain why so many featherweight thinkers are running for the Republican presidential nomination.

The best thing about the study? It was conducted by someone named Professor Ditto. That makes us happy.

This Week in Bears

Stretching "America" to encompass Canada, we get the story of the world's only polar bear jail.

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 10)

A relatively brief TWiA this week, because we put a lot of time into Thursday's special report.

This Week in Israeli Politics

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  made his campaign stop in Congress this week. Before he did, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who knows a lot more about the Middle East than we ever will, assessed the damage Netanyahu could be doing to the relationship between our two countries--and how much Netanyahu just doesn't care. This is about keeping his job, and nothing else. Goldberg writes:

"All of this is not to say that Netanyahu isn’t worried about Iran, and isn’t worried about a set of (for now, theoretical) concessions by the West that could put Iran on a slow but steady path to the nuclear threshold. But there is no reason—none, zero, efes—to believe that his putative goal, to stiffen the spine of Congress in advance of a framework agreement, could not have been achieved a) immediately after the election; b) in intensive one-on-one, or one-on-two, or five, lobbying meetings with senators; or c) in a way that didn’t so obviously disrespect the president of the United States, or place Democratic supporters of Israel in an atrocious bind. 'If this didn’t have an electoral quality to it, why not just say to Boehner, "Invite me after the election"?' Dennis Ross, the former Middle East peace negotiator, asked me.

"Netanyahu is engaging in behavior that is without precedent: He is apparently so desperate to stay in office that he has let the Republicans weaponize his country in their struggle against a Democratic president they despise. Boehner seeks to do damage to Obama, and he has turned Netanyahu into an ally in this cause. It’s not entirely clear here who is being played."

Goldberg's piece closes with a quote from former Obama administration peace envoy Martin Indyk:

"'What happens if the president succeeds in doing a deal despite the speech of the prime minister?' he asks. 'Instead of the United States and Israel talking about ways to provide strategic reassurance to Israel, there’s going to be an ongoing fight over this deal. And what if the prime minister then succeeds in killing the deal? How will the president relate to the destruction of one of his signature policy initiatives? And if the sanctions then collapse, as seems likely, and Iran continues moving towards a nuclear weapon, how does the prime minister propose to stop Iran? He will certainly manage in the process to create the impression that he wants the United States to go to war with Iran. I don’t think the American people, in their war-weary state, will appreciate that.'”

No, we won't. Certainly, there remain some neocons who would love nothing more, for perverse reasons of their own, than to see us in another Middle Eastern ground war. Most Americans, though, understand how much there is to lose, and how little to gain, if we let Israel goad us into such a quagmire. (Although a disturbing number of them want us in a ground war against ISIS, with apparently little understanding of what that would entail or what we'd face in Iraq when/if we left again.

* * *

In the Washington Post, the Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan ponders what the event could mean for domestic politics--American domestic politics, not Israeli ones.

"Is anyone thinking about the future? From now on, whenever the opposition party happens to control Congress — a common enough occurrence — it may call in a foreign leader to speak to a joint meeting of Congress against a president and his policies. Think of how this might have played out in the past. A Democratic-controlled Congress in the 1980s might, for instance, have called the Nobel Prize-winning Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to denounce President Ronald Reagan’s policies in Central America. A Democratic-controlled Congress in 2003 might have called French President Jacques Chirac to oppose President George W. Bush’s impending war in Iraq.

"Does that sound implausible? Yes, it was implausible — until now. Now we are sailing into uncharted waters. Those who favor having Netanyahu speak may imagine this is an extraordinary situation requiring extraordinary measures, that one side is so clearly right, the other so clearly wrong. Yet that is often how people feel about the crisis of their time. We can be sure that in the future the urgency will seem just as great. The only difference between then and now is that today, bringing a foreign leader before Congress to challenge a U.S. president’s policies is unprecedented. After next week, it will be just another weapon in our bitter partisan struggle."

* * *

Finally, Bibi gave his speech. It was, by most accounts, almost entirely what everybody expected to hear. Iran bad, Israel good. Never mind that Netanyahu warns us about almost every country in the Middle East, as if he wants us to go in with our own nukes and wipe out everyone except the Israelis.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's (D/CA) reaction was on the money: "I was near tears throughout the prime minister’s speech—saddened by the insult to the intelligence of the United States as part of the P5+1 nations, and saddened by the condescension toward our knowledge of the threat posed by Iran and our broader commitment to preventing nuclear proliferation."

It is a little hard to accept the nerve of someone who runs a country that has nuclear weapons but won't admit it, lecturing us about another country's possible future nuclear weapons (especially when back in 1995 he said Iran would have nukes "within three to five years," and has steadily been moving up Iran's supposed timetable ever since). Then again, a man who claims to speak for all the world's Jews displays arrogance on an epic scale.

Yes, Iran has caused trouble for the US on many occasions, and Israel has been largely a staunch ally. But we shouldn't forget that after 9/11, Iran offered to help us bring the perpetrators to justice (their aid was rejected, because President Bush had called them part of the "Axis of Evil" and didn't trust them). And now they have jets in the sky and boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS. They were once a modern, progressive country, and if they could throw off the yoke of religious fundamentalism, could be again. Engaging with the rest of the world, instead of being isolated from it, might help.

* * *

Netanyahu apparently has no compunction against flat-out lying. His determination to make somebody other than him invade Iran seems to know no bounds. Talking Points Memo reminds us that "Testifying before Congress in 2002, Netanyahu warned that Iraq was operating 'centrifuges the size of washing machines' and asserted that there was 'no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and working and is advancing toward the development of nuclear weapons.'” Here are some of his dishonest talking points from this week's speech.

When it comes to persuading us to invade his enemies, we here at TWiA World Headquarters think Bibi has done more than enough harm, and we hope Israeli voters retire him.

This Week in SCOTUS

The Supreme Court heard arguments this week in King v. Burwell, the nonsensical lawsuit ginned up to challenge the Affordable Care Act in court on the basis of a clumsily written sentence. If that were legitimate grounds for lawsuits, we writers would have to keep attorneys on retainer at all times.

Steven Brill, who writes about health care possibly better than any other journalist today, looks at the basis of the suit, and finds it wanting.

"Congressional intent will be hotly debated in the U.S. Supreme Court this Wednesday in King v. Burwell, the latest litigation vehicle being deployed by opponents of Obamacare. 'Congress could not have chosen clearer language to express its intent to limit subsidies to state exchanges,' the plaintiffs, represented by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, argue in their brief.

"That is fiction. Provable fiction.

"Congress knew exactly what it wanted to do when it passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and contrary to the plaintiffs’ claim, that included wanting subsidies for buying health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges to be available to all citizens, even those residing in the 36 states that did not set up their own exchanges, instead relying on the exchange set up by the federal government.

"I’m a reporter. I hate to take sides. And I certainly didn’t in what has been widely reviewed as my even-handed treatment of the merits and demerits of Obamacare in my recently published book about the broken American healthcare system and how Obamacare was conceived and implemented to fix it. But this is one of those issues where reporters err if they write an “on the one hand, on the other hand” story that creates patently false equivalency."

Brill goes on to describe some of his own reporting, for his book, during which none of the many people he interviewed or documents he studied challenged the obvious notion that Congress intended subsidies to be available to all Americans who needed them, whether through a state-run or federal exchange.

"I know what the legislators intended because in researching my book, I interviewed pretty much everyone involved in the conception and writing of the law. Moreover, I did that long before King v. Burwell had become the Obamacare opponents’ favorite new weapon, which means that those opponents had no reason to spin the fairytale that Congress did not intend for those subsidies to go to the millions of Americans signing up on the federally run exchange. At the time, no one had a dog in a fight over congressional intent, because there was no fight.

"I also reviewed reams of internal emails and memos generated by congressional staffers working for both Democrats and Republicans. In no document from start to finish, in a legislative process that spanned more than two years, is there even a hint of anything but the unambiguous assumption that the law, whose first section is titled “Quality, Affordable Health Care for All Americans,” would indeed provide these insurance subsidies for all Americans who needed them."

His ultimate conclusion is obvious to all but the most bitterly partisan:

"Again, congressional intent is a fact-based inquiry, not a matter of opinion. Given the unambiguous mountain of facts arrayed for the defense (and well-presented in the briefs submitted by the defense side), it is hard enough to see how the lawyers on the plaintiffs’ side could actually believe in their case. Their zeal in wanting to kill Obamacare is acceptable advocacy, I guess.

"But if a majority of supposedly objective justices decide to ignore the facts and buy their argument, they will have engaged in a breathtaking act of political activism. For those of us who have always regarded our highest court as a national monument to the rule of law, it will be profoundly depressing. " 

It's hard for us to even imagine Constitutional grounds that would merit bringing this case to the Court. Brill aptly describes the dispute: "King v. Burwell hinges on one poorly worded sentence cited by the plaintiffs in a 961-page law that seems to negate a linchpin of that law — the availability of those subsidies to middle-class families so they can buy health insurance. The question is whether that sentence should somehow outweigh all the other provisions in the law that contradict it."

Even if all the evidence--we do mean ALL the evidence--didn't support the defendant, the issue could be resolved by adding three or four words to the sentence in question. Congressional Republicans have already announced that they have no intention of allowing such a fix to come up for a vote, yet have offered no real solution of their own. It's sad to see an entire political party salivating so ferociously over the chance to kick millions of needy Americans off their health insurance, but that is indeed the spectacle before us now.

* * *

One of the geniuses--and we use that word with extreme sarcasm, because he's about to prove he's anything but--behind King v. Burwell revealed a few weeks ago how absurd his lawsuit is. As the New Republic reports, "For instance, to combat the impression that the plaintiffs' standing problems stem from a legal argument that only appeals to unreliable kooks and zealots, one of the King architects now lays these difficulties at the feet of the IRS. 'They don't want to get audited,' Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon told USA Today, 'and this administration has a history of using the IRS for ideological purposes.'"

Yeah, no it doesn't. The right wing has a long history of pretending this administration has used the IRS for ideological purposes. Every actual investigation into actual facts has shown that it hasn't--that even if the IRS had singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny, which it didn't, it would have been doing so because the law compels it to check when a seemingly political group declares itself a not-for-profit, nontaxable "social welfare" organization that doesn't engage in politics. There was no collusion between the administration and the IRS, no conspiracy--there were just IRS employees doing their jobs. UFO reports have more factual basis, because in those cases, the people reporting at least saw something, or believe they did. In the IRS case, there was no flying saucer, much less an optical illusion. Nobody saw a thing. Some people at conservative groups got their noses out of joint because the IRS looked sideways at them, before approving their nontaxable status, as it did in the case of every conservative group it investigated.

Everybody who cares about this--outside of those who live in the right-wing bubble, like Michael Cannon apparently does--knows these things. Cannon not only doesn't, but he uses this entirely unrelated non-scandal to justify a nuisance lawsuit that should never have been filed. If he's among the best they've got, the Cato Institute should hang an "Intellectually Bankrupt" sign on the door and close up shop.

* * *

In years to come, should law students ever need an example of a "frivolous lawsuit," King v. Burwell will serve them well. It's not good for anything else.

This Week in Prison

Dr. Ben Carson, possible Republican candidate for president in 2016, says prison rape makes men decide to be gay, because being gay is "absolutely" a choice people make. "A lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight -- and when they come out, they're gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question."

We're not sure how his (demonstrably incorrect) theory applies to gay men who haven't been in prison. But then, this is the guy who not so long ago compared homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality, so we get the feeling he's not a real deep thinker.

This Week in email

We learned this week that former Secretary of State and likely presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used a personal email account, instead of a State Department one, during his tenure in that job. We can't quite imagine how State allowed that to happen, and have to wonder how big a problem it will become for her.

Huge, if the right-wing message machine has its way.

Clinton is not alone in use of a personal email account while in official office--Colin Powell did it when he was Secretary of State in the Bush administration. So did Jeb Bush, in Florida. But the rules have changed since Powell's time. But Bush's White House had its own email scandal, as did Mitt Romney. And emails exchanges she had discussing government business were archived, since the government email addresses they were sent to archive everything.

It's too early to say whether this will be a big problem, or a small one. Generally, a "scandal" that plays to an existing narrative will stick better than one that doesn't, and the right is already trying to paint Clinton as lacking transparency (which is not altogether incorrect--the Clintons have always played their cards close to their vests). This story feeds right into that one, even if every single email she ever wrote winds up online. Obviously the right, desperately hoping to avoid facing Clinton in 2016, will do everything it can to blow the story way out of proportion. On the other hand, the right has thrown everything it could against the Clintons since 1992, and still she has an exceptional record of public service. We'll have to wait and see what happens.

Side Note: We don't blame Secretary Clinton if the State Department wanted to make her use Microsoft Outlook.

This Week in Maryland

Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski (D) has announced that she'll retire when her current term is up, rather than seek a sixth term as senator. Mikulski was the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate (previous women had finished off their husbands' terms--Mikulski was elected on her own merits), and is the longest-serving female senator in the country's history. She was first elected to that body in 1987, after serving in the House for a decade. She's been a voice of reason, a  conscience, an advocate, and a thorn in the side of those who resist change. In 1993, she led a "rebellion" that finally allowed women to wear pants in the Senate. Her presence will be missed, but her impact won't be forgotten.

This Week in Arizona

According to this article in the Arizona Republic, America's Most Corrupt Sheriff^TM might soon cost Maricopa County taxpayers even more millions of dollars. Lots of them, as the court's contempt charges against him might result in payouts for the many, many victims of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's constant and unlawful racial profiling.

* * *

Arizona's new governor, Doug Ducey (R) is already involved in some pretty shady attempts to funnel state money into the coffers of private corporations (and away from public schools and universities), When a governor's first impulse is to savage the futures of his constituents--and the state's economy, which more than ever relies upon an educated workforce--to make a few people richer at taxpayer expense, one has to wonder why anyone voted for him. Ducey came to politics via the corporate world, but he appears to think of politics as a continuation of that world, and doesn't quite grasp the "public service" concept.

This Week in Bears

The only people who are enjoying this winter's snowfall are polar bears.

Undead teleporting bear? Two separate stories of people fined for illegally killing a bear, in Virginia and Louisiana, both published on the same day, and the same black bear photo accompanies both. The fines are the least of their worries...

This Week in Good Government

March 4 marked an important anniversary in American life.

On March 4, 1789, the first United States Congress convened, marking the first time the federal government, as delineated by the Constitution, went to work. (Appropriately, having convened, both houses adjourned for lack of a quorum, making it also the first time Congress took a vacation.) In commemoration of the real birthday of the federal government, here's a special midweek edition of TWiA that explores a single, vital question: Can government work? We think it can, as long as it's not prevented from doing so. Here's why:

 

The House's failure last week to pass a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through the end of the fiscal year (the Senate passed such a bill; House Speaker John Boehner (R/OH) refused to even bring it to the floor for a vote that would surely have passed) offers more proof of a theory we here at TWiA have held for years: that conservatives won't govern effectively, because governing effectively goes against their underlying philosophy.

We're far from the only ones who have noticed that. This week, political blog The Daily Sift echoed our reasoning. Others, like Bloomberg View, have noticed the lack of governance but don't seem to have made the connection that explains it.

The Sift offers this summary of the differing philosophies of the two major political parties:

"Democrats believe that government can change people's lives for the better, and that we can do things together that we can't do for ourselves. Together, we can have parks and libraries and public schools and clean air. We can soften the dog-eat-dog aspects of the capitalist system so that ordinary people have a chance. We can insure each other against disasters from hurricanes to cancer.

"Republicans believe that government can only screw things up."

The Sift's analysis was a bit superficial, we thought, so we'd like to take a deeper look.

First, the short-term. Everybody knew DHS had to be funded. Shutting it down would be foolish; although in the near term it wouldn't threaten our safety, it would be expensive, and if it continued for any length of time, it would do long-term damage.

Bloomberg points out the problem with this constant kicking the can down the road approach: "The title of a September 2009 General Accountability Office study tells the tale: 'Continuing Resolutions: Uncertainty, Limited Management Options and Increased Workload in Selected Agencies.' Hiring freezes upend personnel management, while the threat of Congress blithely cutting off paychecks is hardly an incentive for top-quality candidates to join government agencies. Wily government contractors increase their bids to cover the costs of budget uncertainty."

For government to function optimally, funding stability is absolutely necessary. Again, the people who keep threatening that stability are the ones who don't believe government can function optimally, and have no interest in helping prove themselves wrong. (Note: this is not a new problem, but it's become a constant one.)

Speaker Boehner is reportedly worried about keeping his job. The fact is that ousting him would be difficult, and replacing him even more so. Not that it can't happen, and the far-right fringe caucus might well try, since he caved--as he had to--on Tuesday and promised to bring a clean DHS bill to the floor. But Democrats would rather have a weak Speaker in that chair, one who's afraid of his own right-wing shadow, than a member of the far-right bunch that came to Washington determined never to compromise. Democrats won't go along with replacing Boehner, bad as he is at his job, and it can't be done without them.

But we shouldn't pick on the House, when the Senate leadership is nearly as bad.

This week, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R/KY) penned an op-ed for a Kentucky newspaper. In it, he gave this advice to the states, about coming Environmental Protection Agency carbon standards:

"Don’t be complicit in the administration’s attack on the middle class. Think twice before submitting a state plan – which could lock you in to federal enforcement and expose you to lawsuits – when the administration is standing on shaky legal ground and when, without your support, it won’t be able to demonstrate the capacity to carry out such political extremism.

"Refusing to go along at this time with such an extreme proposed regulation would give the courts time to figure out if it is even legal, and it would give Congress more time to fight back. We’re devising strategies now to do just that."

The only part of that advice a state should follow is the part that says "Think twice." Think twice about relying on McConnell for legal advice, it should say.

Never mind that where tougher energy standards have been put into effect, even if the price of energy rises slightly, corresponding conservation measures make the overall price consumers pay lower. And never mind that McConnell is advising the states to pretend climate change doesn't exist and isn't costing them all money in more extreme weather events, wildfires, flooding, and more.

The real point is that McConnell--one of the two highest ranking Republicans in the country--is urging the states to effectively nullify federal law. They can't do that.  The Constitution says so. The Civil War said so. Those states are part of the whole, and in the whole, federal law trumps state law. The New Republic explains this concept, in case McConnell is shaky on it.

Perhaps worse than that, the EPA rules leave it to the states to determine how they'll meet their targets. It's not a one-size-fits-all policy handed down by the federal government. Conservatives are supposed to be in favor of this kind of effort, one that leaves most of the power to the states. But McConnell seems to think it's more important to deny climate change and to stick it to President Obama whenever possible.

Serious people know we have to do something about carbon, and serious people know states can't simply ignore federal policies they disagree with (especially ones that have implementation deadlines, as this one does--states that don't present a plan by the 2016 deadline will have their plan dictated by the federal government, which is what McConnell should want to avoid. If this were the work of a state legislator, we would laugh it off. Coming from the man in charge of what's supposed to be the world's foremost deliberative body, it's a bit more concerning.

It's been generations since Republicans controlled so many seats in Congress. The conventional wisdom was that they would have to govern, and that once they felt the responsibility to do so, Congress might become less dysfunctional.

In fact, they have no incentive to govern, and plenty of disincentive.

They shut down the government in October 2013, costing the nation billions. They threatened the full faith and credit of the United States government, which is specifically forbidden by the Constitution. Their entire governing approach for the duration of President Obama's administration has been to say "no"--to attack every proposal from the White House or congressional Democrats [or from themselves--see Sen. Marco Rubio's (R/FL) assault on his own immigration plan, or Sen. John McCain's (R/AZ) reversal on his own cap-and-trade plan, or even the entire party's disowning of former Gov. Mitt Romney's (R/MA) health care plan when it was extended out to all the states]. In none of these cases has a Republican alternative been brought up for a vote.  Any alternatives that exist have only been offered as brief synopses of legislation that might, one day, be written--but don't hold your breath.

And don't forget that this is not just coincidence, but the result of a plan of obstruction discussed and agreed to on the night of Obama's inauguration, and is follow-through on (now) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's stated goal: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president"--even though that goal has already failed.

Yet, despite this obvious determination to resist responsible governance, voters rewarded Republicans with full control of Congress. The influential conservative journal The National Review had some advice for Republicans as the 2014 election results became clear: Don't even try to govern. They laid out some of their reasoning, and concluded with a goal that echoed McConnell's earlier one: "But not much progress is possible until we have a better president. Getting one ought to be conservatism’s main political goal over the next two years."

Congressional Republicans seem to have taken that advice to heart. And why not? A practice of obstruction and denial worked for them in 2010 and 2014. And the power that has provided them, particularly in statehouses, means they can improve their future electoral prospects through the seemingly effective method of making it hard for probable Democratic voters to vote. The Sift describes their approach:

"A portion of the blame/credit for the low turnout among minorities and youth in 2014 has to go to the intentional voter suppression Republicans have been focused on since 2010. They discovered that you don't have to formally disenfranchise people to keep them away from the polls, you just have to make voting harder and less rewarding. Make people who don't own cars (and so have no reason to already have a photo-ID drivers license) jump through an extra hoop. Make college students vote where their parents live. Gerrymander districts so that election results are a foregone conclusion. Shorten poll hours, make sure the lines are long in Democratic precincts, and so forth.

"Marginal voters tend to have less slack in their lives than the more established non-urban whites of the Republican base. Getting to the polls is tougher, and standing in line for hours might mean you get fired or the kids are left unsupervised. So sure, each new hurdle in front of the voting booth is going to discourage more Democrats than Republicans."

On Monday of this week, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in a case involving TWiA's home state of Arizona. The indispensable SCOTUSblog explains the background:

"Arizona voters were fed up. After each census, states have to draw new boundaries to elect members of the House of Representatives in Washington. Until 2000, the state legislature took on this job, as it does in many other states. But voters weren’t happy with the results: in Arizona, as elsewhere, it was common for the political party that controlled the state legislature to use its power to its advantage in redistricting, by drawing districts to maximize the opportunities for its members to win election and to ensure that, once in office, those seats were safe. So in 2000, Arizona voters passed an amendment to the state constitution that would turn control of redistricting over to an independent commission. Three years ago, though, the state legislature filed a lawsuit in federal court, challenging the voters’ transfer of redistricting power to the commission."

Arizona's legislature, lest you wonder, has been solidly Republican for those three years (and more). Those Republicans don't feel like the commission has been partisan enough for their liking, so they want to take the redistricting power back in order to draw congressional districts most favorable to them. During oral arguments, the Supreme Court didn't appear very interested in the will of the voters.

With the help of a sympathetic SCOTUS ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act, Republicans have been increasing barriers to voting across the country. They're losing the demographics, but countering that by restricting voting among those demographic groups they don't like. (Note: California has a similar nonpartisan redistricting commission, and it's a much bigger state with much more influential representation in Congress. Should SCOTUS rule against the commission here, California will likely lose their commission, as well. The legislature there is solidly Democratic, for now--but the point remains: partisan politicians shouldn't get to carve up a state in whatever manner is most helpful to their side.)

So conservatives can keep winning elections, despite their unwillingness to actually participate in governance. The more elections they win, the stronger their sway over the legislative process. And since the party's right-most flank is currently its most influential component, and that flank's philosophy is that government is inherently bad, more politicians will likely be sent to Washington determined to prove that philosophy true.

That party has not always been thus. We remember, in our lifetime, Republicans who went to Washington with views that differed from those of Democrats, but who understood that governing requires compromise. Those people were willing to work across the aisle to get big things done: the interstate highway system. Rural electrification. NASA. The Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. And more.

The presidency of Ronald Reagan, with his belief that government was the bad guy, was the beginning of the end. Even he could work, to some degree, with Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill (MA) and did so when, for instance, he had to raise taxes to make up for some of his earlier destructive tax cuts. Conservatives who followed took Reagan's rhetoric to heart more than his actual history, and started the party down a dangerous path.

The degree to which the current crop misunderstands Reagan was demonstrated this week by Gov. Scott Walker (R/WI), who won second place in CPAC's straw poll. Back in January, Walker said:

"One of the most powerful foreign policy decisions that I think was made in our lifetime was one that Ronald Reagan made early in his presidency when he fired the air traffic controllers....What it did, it showed our allies around the world that we were serious and more importantly that this man to our adversaries was serious.

"Years later, documents released from the Soviet Union showed that that exactly was the case. The Soviet Union started treating [Reagan] more seriously once he did something like that. Ideas have to have consequences. And I think [President Barack Obama] has failed mainly because he's made threats and hasn't followed through on them."

This week, at the far-right Club for Growth's winter meeting, he doubled down. The Washington Post reports:

"Walker contended that 'the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime' was then-President Ronald Reagan's move to bust a 1981 strike of air traffic controllers, firing some 11,000 of them.

"'It sent a message not only across America, it sent a message around the world,' Walker said. America's allies and foes alike became convinced that Reagan was serious enough to take action and that 'we weren't to be messed with,' he said."

This is absurd on any number of levels, and by itself should disqualify Walker from serious consideration as president. First of all, the Soviet "documents" he cited don't exist. He either made them up, or somebody else did and Walker naively believed the yarn.

Second, Maddowblog describes some of the other foreign policy decisions made during Walker's lifetime: "...two wars in Iraq, a series of START treaties, Nixon going to China, the end of the war in Vietnam, the Camp David Accords, the war in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran/Contra, the U.S. role in negotiating the Northern Ireland peace process, the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, the Iranian hostage crisis, etc."

Third, if firing air traffic controllers and busting their union in 1981 told other countries that we aren't to be "messed with," how does he explain the Libyan Marine barracks bombing in 1986? 241 American service members were killed in that attack, which occurred after Reagan ordered Americans stationed there not to load their guns. Guards saw the explosive trucks racing toward the compound, but were unarmed and had no way to stop them. Somehow, that incident failed to be anywhere near the Republican scandal that Benghazi became, and Reagan "accepted responsibility" verbally but never in any other way. There was no military response, and the remaining American service members were simply withdrawn from the country. Tough-guy Reagan let terrorists chase us out.

Reagan's "seriousness" didn't stop other countries from "messing with us" then, or at any time thereafter. Respecting President Reagan is one thing; conferring godlike powers on him that he didn't earn and doesn't deserve is something else entirely. But politicians like Walker don't look at Reagan with an accurate eye, and they take his over-the-top rhetoric about government being the enemy of the people as gospel.

Howard Chandler Christy, The Indian Reporter

The Founding Fathers devised the most successful representative democracy in the history of the planet. They knew what they were doing, and the documentation they left behind--particularly the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--were brilliant.

And are so frequently misunderstood by conservatives, sometimes most especially those who claim to hew closest to the Constitution.

"Strict constructionalists" are, from the start, misinterpreting the document they supposedly cherish. It was never meant to be a final statement on everything. It couldn't possibly be, unless history, culture, philosophy, and technology all froze the moment the ink was dry on Abraham Baldwin's signature (Baldwin, the representative from Georgia, was the last to sign). If the Constitution was the last word on every aspect of American life, then blacks would still be slaves and only three-quarters of a man, and only white landowners would vote. The genius of the document is that it established a framework by which those who followed could reinterpret it to keep up with the times; that framework is what has allowed America to continue and to thrive, as it obviously would not have done had we refused to allow any change from the document's specific language.

Too many of today's conservatives cite the Constitution when they think it supports their argument, but forget what it really says. Last week a new poll reported that 57% of Republicans "support establishing Christianity as the national religion." 30% were against the idea, 13% couldn't make up their minds. Can so many people really forget the very first phrase of the First Amendment--aka the Establishment Clause? "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." It couldn't be more clear.

More to the point, the Constitution was written at a time when the states were all creating their own laws without regard to what the others were doing. The framers knew that creating a cohesive nation--a "United States"--would require some oversight of that process, and they designed a strong federal government that could override the laws of individual states in order to create uniformity where there could have been chaos. Other documents from the time, describing the thinking behind the framers' logic, make it abundantly obvious that those who claim the Constitution stresses states' rights over federal power have it completely backward. The Constitution's goal was not to encourage every state to operate independently of every other, but to require that they cooperate, under the umbrella of the federal government, as a single, united country. It was written to replace the Articles of Confederation, which gave too much leeway to the states, and operating without consideration of their role as part of a unified whole was causing chaos. If we were to be one nation, we needed one set of overarching laws.

Nobody, we think, would argue that the federal government's legislative process has been entirely successful--certainly in some areas there are too many laws, in others too few, sometimes they're ill-considered or badly written and have to be amended or repealed. But the framework we have allows for those course corrections.

That document created a system of self-government that has been remarkably successful. Citizens participate at every level of government. We don't directly hire the cop on the beat, but we hire the mayor and town council or city council that cop works for. We don't hire teachers, but we hire the school superintendents and boards of education that oversee them. We don't hire the folks behind the counter at the DMV, but we hire the governors and legislatures who bear that ultimate responsibility. And the people throughout those chains of responsibility are us, and our friends and neighbors. We do the hiring of the people in charge, and we control whether or not they stay in the job (with the obvious and unfortunate limitation created by the massive amounts of money put into political campaigns today, and the also unfortunate apathy of too many of us, which gives that money even more power).

Government, we're fond of saying, is us. And the vast majority of the people working in government--particularly at the lower levels, closer to home--do so not just for the paycheck (which is often not very large) and benefits, but because with that paycheck comes pride and satisfaction in doing work that matters. That DMV clerk isn't working to create profits that redound to the benefit of someone who already lives in a Manhattan penthouse and flies in a private plane--she's helping the community be a safe place to live and to drive. That cop isn't there to benefit distant stockholders, but to try to make sure we can walk the dog at night without fear.

And at every level--especially at the highest levels, where the decisions impact the most people--the Founders created a system that requires compromise.

Three branches of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, are required to create and enforce law. The legislative branch necessarily comprises people of at least two political parties, who come to one of two separate chambers with their own beliefs and ideas and an eye toward serving their constituencies at home (if for no other reason than to keep their seat next election) as well as the nation as a whole. That tripartite setup--more than, because of Congress's two houses--means one thing: Nobody gets their own way.

Of course, some legislation passes easily through Congress with unanimous or near-unanimous support. That's usually things of small import--the name on a post office, or a commemoration of some individual or event. More often, on the stuff that matters, there are opposing views. There's debate, amendments are offered, arms are twisted. The Founders understood that the best ideas are arrived at by having people of different backgrounds and viewpoints bringing those viewpoints to the table, so the issue is examined from multiple sides, and everybody involved has to give something to get something.

Compromise.

The conservatives in the House who won't vote for a clean bill to fund DHS--who insist that any such bill must include language that overturns President Obama's executive action on immigration--each want their own way. They want to get everything without giving anything. That's not how it works. That's not how America was designed to work. If they think it is, they need a crash course in the Constitution. It does no good to carry one in your pocket if you don't read it, and it does little good to read it if you do so only through the lens of your own preexisting beliefs and with no understanding of its historical .

The president's executive action was not arrived at entirely independently. He had a staff of White House lawyers explore the issue, to determine what the legal limits were, what he could accomplish with the power granted him by the Constitution. He no doubt had advice from, and probably arguments with, members of his Cabinet. And he knows that at any time, Congress could pass legislation that renders the action moot.

To do so, of course, Congress would have to remember how to pass legislation of substance. It hasn't done so since Republicans took over the House in 2010, and nobody expects that from it now.

That lack of expectation is tragic. Conservatives who don't believe in government's capability to do good are running one of the three branches of government, and have the most sway over the judicial branch.  Dysfunction proves their point. Dysfunction creates cynicism and apathy, which reduce voter participation, which increases the chances that more conservatives will be elected. It's a vicious circle, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And it's a tragedy, because government--good government--can work. It can make a better, safer, more just America. Through compromise, through the airing of multiple viewpoints and the negotiation the Founders intended to be behind lawmaking, government can address the needs of the have-nots, the powerless, the voiceless, as well as those of the moneyed and powerful.

We--liberals who believe government can work, who believe that government of the people and by the people is the greatest political system yet devised, who work to protect and expand the voting franchise and to increase representation to include a more diverse swath of the nation--think the Founders had the right idea. We believe in America as it was imagined at the beginning, and as it was improved upon when succeeding generations faced new realities and adapted to them. We don't think government is the enemy, we think government is us. We honor the many who work hard to make Americans' lives better even more than we resent their coworkers to whom government service is just a job and who do it without caring about those they serve. We accept that there are others in the country who don't share our views, and we respect their participation in the system.

And there are conservatives--we've seen them--who believe the same thing. Obviously they approach the issues from a different perspective, but with the same goal: trying to make government serve the people in the best way it can. Their side has been hijacked by bomb throwers, lately, and we hope they can take it back (and that the left can avoid the temptation to start throwing bombs, instead of offering solutions). If political candidates and elected officials, pundits and media figures would explain to voters the necessity of compromise, and if voters would vote for people who understand that necessity and vow to live up to the standards required by the Constitution, we can, once again, have a functional Congress and a return to the balance of power the Framers intended.

We reject those who come into government only to sabotage it, who demand their own way and carry on like spoiled schoolchildren when they don't get it. America was founded on the idea that compromise is necessary, and that governing is a privilege that should not be taken lightly or dismissed out of hand.

If government couldn't work--good government with a strong central component--America wouldn't have survived its first half-century. We need women and men of decency and integrity to bring their differences to the process with the unified goal of ensuring that it keeps working, that the vision of the Founders continues, and that our nation remains an example to others of the heights to which they, too, can aspire.

 

Side Note: Matthew Yglesias is a pretty smart guy, and he's written a piece for Vox that makes an interesting counterpoint to this one: American Democracy is Doomed. He raises a lot of good points, but he hedges on the timeframe. He's right to predict that American democracy will probably not last forever. But we here at TWiA World Headquarters think it has plenty of time left on the clock. (Thanks to TWiA special Constitutional correspondent Marcy Rockwell for the tip.)

This Week at CPAC: a TWiA Special Report

We intended to cover CPAC on a daily basis, but it turned out that most speakers offered up the same red-meat inanities, and there was no point in rehashing it day by day. Below are some highlights from the time since our first report.

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Speaking at CPAC, Sen. Marco Rubio (R/FL) tried to distance himself from the various governors and former governors expected to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, by pointing out that senators have much more experience with foreign affairs than governors do.

In the course of his speech, he completely contradicted himself, and offered evidence that his expertise in foreign policy is sadly lacking.

The Huffington Post reports:

"ISIS is a radical Sunni Islamic group. They need to be defeated on the ground by a Sunni military force with air support from the United States," Rubio said.

"Put together a coalition of armed regional governments to confront [ISIS] on the ground with U.S. special forces support, logistical support, intelligence support and the most devastating air support possible," he added, "and you will wipe ISIS out."

Rubio's remarks solicited applause from the mostly college-aged audience, as did the senator's claim that "the reason Obama hasn't put in place a military strategy to defeat ISIS is because he doesn't want to upset Iran," during sensitive negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.

Sounds reasonable, except for that last part. Because in every detail, he's describing Obama's military strategy. And, oh, yeah, Senator, Iran is on our side against ISIS. HuffPo continues:

"Under President Barack Obama's leadership, American forces have been carrying out airstrikes against ISIS since August 2014. As of February 2015, more than 4,000 U.S. troops were deployed to Iraq to help in the fight against the extremist group. In December of last year, U.S. officials confirmed that Iran is also assisting in the effort, conducting airstrikes over parts of Iraq controlled by the militant group."

So the question becomes, does Rubio genuinely not know those things? He's a member of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, after all. Or does he trust that the CPAC audience is so woefully uninformed that they'll believe whatever he tells them. As we have to say on too many occasions, he's either lying or he's ignorant. There are no other choices. Which is it, Senator?

* * *

As expected, Jeb Bush earned boos from the CPAC crowd, although he won more enthusiasm when he repeated the same failed economic message all conservatives cling to these days. 

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Governor Bobby Jindal (R/LA) complained at CPAC that Congress was "about to wave a white flag" in the fight over repealing ObamaCare. Then he went to the simultaneous far-right Club For Growth winter meeting and reiterated his complaint: "It's leadership and other members who, I think, are fearful of being criticized for putting anything out there that could be attacked. If not, why wouldn't we have had a vote by now? I would hope, though, that we're honest enough to say, we campaigned on getting rid of Obamacare."

We can only assume that Jindal hasn't been reading the newspapers for the last several years, and hasn't heard about the 55+ votes Congress has taken on repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)--every one of them a pointless waste of time and of the taxpayer dollars that go to paying the salaries of the people behind those votes, not to mention the electricity to keep the lights on in the chambers of people groping for any way to snatch health care out from underneath millions of Americans.

* * *

Sen. Rand Paul (R/KY) won CPAC's straw poll again--which demonstrates the intellectual deficiencies of the CPAC attendees. Admittedly, his competition (behind him, in order, came Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Jeb Bush) offer little besides bankrupt ideology and a history of turning their backs on reality, so attendees didn't have many good options. But Paul is a particularly noxious mix of willful ignorance and a lack of any intellectual capacity to overcome that ignorance, combined with a history of racism and support for anti-American concepts like secession and nullification and an utter disregard of intellectual property rights, all of it wrapped up in a personality more spoiled and petulant than your average three-year-old. Casting a vote for him for anything other than "senior class loser" reflects as poorly on the voter as on him.

* * *

The best headline to come out of CPAC, it seems--and if it hasn't been a headline, it should have been--is "Scott Walker Single-handedly Stops Schoolteachers from Beheading Students."