This is Part 2 of this week's overly long TWiA. The first part is here.
Don't forget to follow TWiA on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ThisWeekAmerica, and if you feel like tossing fifteen or twenty cents into the hat, you can do it here: paypal.me/ThisWeekinAmerica.
This Week in Hope and Change
Michael Grunwald, formerly of Time and now at Politico, is one of the sharper policy reporters in the business. This week, he's written a lengthy piece summarizing much of what President Obama has and hasn't accomplished during his 7 years in office so far. Grunwald writes:
As a candidate, Obama was often dismissed as a talker, a silver-tongued political savant with no real record of achievement. But ever since he took office during a raging economic crisis, he’s turned out to be much more of a doer, an action-oriented policy grind who has often failed to communicate what he’s done.
What he’s done is changing the way we produce and consume energy, the way doctors and hospitals treat us, the academic standards in our schools and the long-term fiscal trajectory of the nation. Gays can now serve openly in the military, insurers can no longer deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions, credit card companies can no longer impose hidden fees and markets no longer believe the biggest banks are too big to fail. Solar energy installations are up nearly 2,000 percent, and carbon emissions have dropped even though the economy is growing. Even Republicans like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who hope to succeed Obama and undo his achievements, have been complaining on the campaign trail that he’s accomplished most of his agenda.
He continues:
The economy was bleeding 800,000 jobs a month when Obama took office; it has now enjoyed a record 69 straight months of private-sector job growth, though economists disagree about how much credit Obama deserves for the recovery, and in any case wage growth has been tepid. The deficit has shrunk by nearly $1 trillion, and Medicare’s long-term solvency has been extended by 13 years. The resuscitated auto industry produced 11 million vehicles in 2014. Federal contractors can no longer discriminate against gays, women can now serve in combat and the rich are paying higher taxes. A new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is policing unscrupulous mortgage brokers, payday lenders and other rip-off artists, and the financial system has much less risky leverage.
Before Obama, Americans were using more energy every year; now we use less energy overall, and more of that energy is clean. Oil imports are down 60 percent from 2008 levels, more than a third of America’s coal plants are shutting down and sales of LED bulbs have increased 50-fold. Health care inflation and the uninsured rate have fallen to their lowest levels in half a century, and doctors now use iPads instead of clipboards. Student borrowers can now ratchet down their monthly payments to 10 percent of their discretionary income and get their loans forgiven after 20 years, rules that are gradually and almost silently easing the student debt crisis. Nine of 13 federal appeals courts now have a majority of Democratic-appointed judges; in 2009, it was one of 13.
Often, Grunwald says, we Americans haven't even noticed what's been done for us. "A stark example from the stimulus was Making Work Pay, an $800 tax cut for most workers. His economists wanted to dribble out the cash to recipients a few dollars a week in their paychecks, because studies showed they would be less likely to spend the windfall if they realized they were getting it. His political advisers argued that it would be insanity to conceal middle-class tax cuts rather than send Americans fat envelopes with Obama’s name on them. But Obama sided with his policy team, and later surveys showed that less than 10 percent of the public had any clue he had cut their taxes."
He goes on to detail many other changes, brought about through both legislation and executive action. To people interested in positive change--in a cleaner, more equitable, more fiscally secure, healthier, safer country, vs. people interested only in corporate profits or theocracy, most of these changes are for the better. If a Republican succeeds Obama in the White House, of course, attempts will be made to roll back much of this progress, and with a Republican Congress, some of those attempts will likely succeed. All the more reason to elect a Democrat, because the longer these new policies are in effect, the harder they'll be to kill.
While we're on the subject of what's actually a very strong record of accomplishments, we should mention the December job numbers: "Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 292,000 in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment gains occurred in several industries, led by professional and business services, construction, health care, and food services and drinking places. Mining employment continued to decline."
The White House has more information on its website, including this summary statement: "The economy added 292,000 jobs in December, marking the strongest two years of job creation since 1998-2000."
Quick, what's the main thing 1998-2000 have in common with 2014-2015? That's right, Democratic presidents. The WH report goes on to say, "The robust pace of job growth continued in December as the unemployment rate held at its lowest level since April 2008 and labor force participation ticked up. Our economy has now added more jobs over the past two years than in any two-year period since 1998-2000. In fact, the annual average unemployment rate has seen its fastest two-year decline in thirty years. Most importantly, wages have risen faster over the past year than at any time since the recovery began. Nevertheless, we still have more work to do to drive further job creation and faster wage growth. That’s why the President will continue to push for policies including approving the Trans-Pacific Partnership to open our exports to new markets, investing further in infrastructure, and raising the minimum wage."
All the Republican presidential candidates have their own economic plans and agendas. Trouble is, they all revolve around tax cuts for the rich and reduced government spending--which have been tried time and again, and never work to grow the economy. Voters who care about the economy should make decisions based on historical fact, not magical thinking.
This Week in Terrorists
Dana Milbank wrote at the Washington Post this week about a press conference held by a panel of House Republicans on the first legislative day of 2016. Unsurprisingly, the Oregon terrorists were a major topic of conversation, leading to one of 2016's first major congressional lies.
Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador said (emphasis ours), "You have just a frustration that they feel the federal government is not listening to them anymore, and that’s what leads to what so far has been a peaceful takeover — of an abandoned building, by the way — and the media, I think, is so quick to sort of cast aspersions on that group of people. These people, what they have done so far and hopefully they will continue to do in a peaceful way, they’re trying to express their frustrations. And I think civil disobedience has been something for the most part that the liberal media used to stand up for, but apparently there’s some exceptions to that when us conservatives and pro-Second Amendment people are trying to exercise that same right of civil disobedience. So it’s pretty frustrating.”
Yeah, no.
The headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is not an abandoned building. It was an empty building, closed for the New Year's holiday, as most federal buildings were. We wonder if Labrador would be so cavalier if armed men had taken over his office, which was presumably also empty that weekend.
And as Milbank rightly observes, "No, Congressman. Civil disobedience is when people break laws they think unjust and then peacefully face the legal consequences. The takeover of a federal wildlife facility in Oregon by armed men is sedition."
Milbank sums up this way:
But it’s hard to govern when your caucus is so hostile to government that it has sympathy for seditionists. Asked about the Oregon situation, Ryan deferred to Rep. Greg Walden, a member of GOP leadership who represents the area — and, as The Post’s Mike DeBonis noted, Ryan nodded agreement as Walden spoke.
Walden made clear that “an armed takeover is not the way to go about it,” but he had sympathy for the rebels. “These people just want to take care of the environment — they really do,” he said. “And it is the government that all too often ignores the law.”
Such as: when lawmakers sworn to uphold the Constitution applaud those who take up arms against the government.
* * *
The armed thugs at Malheur claim that the government is overstepping its constitutional authority by owning federal land. They're wrong:
The U.S. Constitution addresses the relationship of the federal government to lands. Article IV, § 3, Clause 2 — the Property Clause — gives Congress authority over federal property generally, and the Supreme Court has described Congress’s power to legislate under this Clause as “without limitation.” The equal footing doctrine (based on language within Article IV, § 3, Clause 1), and found in state enabling acts, provides new states with equality to the original states in terms of constitutional rights, but has not been used successfully to force the divestment of federal lands. The policy question of whether to acquire more, or to dispose of any or all, federal lands is left to Congress to decide.
The initial federal policy generally was to transfer ownership of many federal lands to private and state ownership. Congress enacted many laws granting lands and authorizing or directing sales or transfers, ultimately disposing of 1.275 billion acres. However, from the earliest times, Congress also provided for reserving lands for federal purposes, and over time has reserved or withdrawn areas for such entities as national parks, national forests, and wildlife refuges.
The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 was enacted to remedy the deterioration of the range on the remaining public lands. This was the first direct authority for federal management of these lands, and implicitly began the shift toward ending disposals and retaining lands in federal ownership. In 1976, Congress formally declared that national policy was generally to retain the remaining lands in federal ownership in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
The US Supreme Court has twice ruled that the land on which Malheur sits is federally owned, and has been since before Oregon became a state.
* * *
Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum may be regretting his decision to join the occupation.
"I need to get home," one militiaman and rancher LaVoy Finicum told NBC News Tuesday. "I got cows that are scattered and lost."
According to NBC News, Finicum is an Arizona rancher with 11 kids at home who also told the news outlet that he would rather die than face jail time.
"I have no intention of spending any of my days in a concrete box," Finicum told NBC. "There are things more important than your life and freedom is one of them."
If he doesn't want to spend time in jail, he probably shouldn't have participated in the illegal armed takeover of a federal building.
This Week in Health Care
Another choice moment from the above-mentioned press event was Rep. Mo Brooks (AL) admitting that the Republicans have no plan--7 years later--for replacing the Affordable Care Act. They still want to repeal it, though, as Wednesday's vote showed. “If we repeal Obamacare, the very first thing that happens is we go back to the best health-care system in the world. We had health care six years ago, and it was the best, and that’s where I want to go as a starter.”
If by "the best" you mean we were spending more money on health care per capita than any other country in the world but were way down the list in terms of health results, health care costs were constantly increasing (both as a measure of people's individual pocketbooks and as a nation) to the point that health care costs were the biggest economic landmine in our path, that people were stuck in jobs they wanted out of but couldn't leave because health insurance wasn't portable, that being a woman was considered a preexisting condition allowing insurance companies to charge women more than men, that tens of millions of Americans didn't have health insurance at all, that health care costs were the single biggest driver of personal bankruptcies, that lifetime caps prevented people from serious health conditions from getting insurance... well, it's a long, long list. And that's what Brooks considers the best in the world?
* * *
In the Washington Post, Catherine Rampell gives Obamacare a checkup, and finds it overwhelmingly healthy.
* * *
A study released in December by the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at the effects of Medicaid expansion under the ACA on health insurance and the labor supply. Its conclusion? "We found that the Medicaid expansions increased Medicaid coverage by approximately 4 percentage points, decreased the proportion uninsured by approximately 3 percentage points, and decreased private health insurance coverage by 1 percentage point. The Medicaid expansions had little effect on labor supply as measured by employment, usual hours worked per week and the probability of working 30 or more hours per week. Most estimates suggested that the expansions increased employment slightly, although not significantly." Other recent studies show the same thing--the law hasn't led to a widespread increase in employers moving workers from full-time to part-time, it hasn't prevented small businesses from staffing up as needed, and the Medicaid expansion hasn't caused people to limit their earnings so they can stay on Medicaid. Yet more nails in the coffin of the "job-killing Obamacare" lie.
* * *
A look at the health insurance situation in Arkansas and Kentucky--two states that took different approaches to Medicaid expansion--shows similar (and significant) results: "In Arkansas, the number of uninsured for the group dropped to 19.4 percent from 41.8 percent; Kentucky’s rate dropped to 12.4 percent from 40.2 percent. The finding is consistent with recent surveys that put Arkansas and Kentucky among the states with the largest overall declines in people without insurance since the health law expanded coverage in January 2014. The study also looked at Texas, whose Republican leaders have refused to expand Medicaid under the law, and found far more modest gains in coverage and access to care among low-income people." Those are huge gains for the people of those states. Too bad for working-class Texans, though.
This Week in 2016
Sen. Marco Rubio has been taking heat from his fellow Republican presidential contenders for a new pair of boots that showed up in a recent tweet. As far as we here at TWiA World Headquarters are concerned, those boots are the best thing about the New RubioTM (aka Trump-Lite). Bloomberg reports that "Marco Rubio has adopted a darker tone in the first week of 2016, deploying increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric and fiercer attacks on Republican rivals that provide a stark contrast with the relatively non-confrontational brand of sunny optimism that had characterized his presidential campaign through 2015." The WaPo says, "The 44-year-old’s stump speech has been undeniably influenced by the populist anger that Donald Trump has tapped into. 'We are going to be a great country again,' Rubio said as he closed the town hall. 'America’s going to be greater than it’s ever been, if you give me the chance to be your president.'”
We still like the boots, if not the message, Marco. If you (or Florsheim) want to send a pair to TWiA, size 9, please.
* * *
At the New Republic, Brian Beutler argues a point we've made several times this cycle: a Ted Cruz nomination might be the only thing that can restore sanity to the Republican Party. Beutler writes: "Where someone like Marco Rubio hopes to run a campaign that conceals a right-wing agenda behind a compelling personal narrative and small-bore heterodoxies, Cruz’s platform is more right-wing still and uncloaked in the language of compassion Republicans discover every four years when the presidency is on the line. Where Rubio touts the fact that he wounded Obamacare, and proposes to transform it into a less generous coverage scheme, Cruz insists on repealing the law with barely a trifle to replace it. Where Rubio proposes to conceal a historically massive tax cut for the affluent behind promises to direct modest tax benefits to working-class families, Cruz pledges to throw out the entire tax code and replace it with an unapologetically regressive combination of value-added and flat income taxes."
Cruz is a pure conservative--as Beutler says, he would be the most conservative nominee since Barry Goldwater. And unlike most conservatives, he doesn't try to hide it. He pretends his extremist ideas would be good for America--he might even believe that. But he doesn't deny what he wants to do. Since the losses of McCain and Romney, conservatives have insisted that Republicans will only win the White House by nominating a true conservative--that the attempt to disguise conservative ideas in centrist language doesn't work. Majorities in Congress and statehouses have convinced them that they're right. Cruz presents the best chance to test that theory.
We're convinced that the theory is wrong. Far-right ideas aren't generally popular nationwide. Most Americans want to go forward, not back, and Cruz's ideas would be disastrous for the country. But until the theory is truly tested, the Republican Civil War will continue. We'd like to see a conservative party that is also a sane party, one with serious policy proposals, willing to work with the opposition to advance America. A party ripping itself apart from the inside can't do that. They should nominate Cruz--and then he should lose spectacularly--so we can once again have two semi-functional political parties.
* * *
And everybody should just stop with the Ted Cruz birther nonsense, including Donald Trump, John McCain, and Nancy Pelosi. Cruz was born in Canada, but his mother was an American, therefore he's an American.
This Week in Gun Safety
Friday marks five years to the day since friend of TWiA Gabby Giffords was shot in the head while doing a "Congress on Your Corner" event in Tucson. She penned an op-ed in the Washington Post on Friday, admonishing supporters of gun safety efforts to never give up.
President Obama had an op-ed of his own in the New York Times this week. In it, he wrote, "Even as I continue to take every action possible as president, I will also take every action I can as a citizen. I will not campaign for, vote for or support any candidate, even in my own party, who does not support common-sense gun reform."
* * *
In the wake of President Obama's announcement about some relatively mild executive actions intended to help reduce gun violence in America, Rep. Steven Palazzo (R/MS) introduced a resolution to "censure and condemn" the president. Palazzo wrote a statement for his website, saying, "For seven years, the President has gradually expanded his powers through executive overreach. His actions this week to take away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens is just the latest, if not most egregious, violation of the separation of powers found in the United States Constitution."
We're not sure where Palazzo gets his information, but it's wrong. The president's actions did nothing to "take away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens." Before, law-abiding citizens could legally buy guns from licensed gun dealers after passing a quick and painless background check. The president's actions would expand the network of licensed gun dealers, while at the same time employing more people to perform those background checks, so they can run 24/7. No law-abiding person wanting to buy a gun legally would be prevented from doing so by those actions. Further, the Constitution gives the president the authority--and the responsibility--to interpret existing law, which is what he did. The only thing under discussion here that violates the constitutional separation of powers is the idea of the House censuring the president. Talking Points Memo describes the problem:
The legal problem with one co-equal branch of government censuring another is that the Constitution prohibits Congress from punishing anyone outside its ranks without a trial — termed a "bill of attainder."
"[A] censure resolution is obviously punitive both in purpose and in effect and would thus appear to constitute a kind of 'trial by legislature” outside the ambit of impeachment and accordingly might be deemed a 'Bill of Attainder' forbidden by Article I, §9, Clause 3," [Harvard Law professor Lawrence] Tribe said in an email.
If Congress wants to discipline the president, they have to do it through impeachment. There's no other option.
We recognize that Palazzo is a relative newcomer to Congress, having been elected during the Tea Party wave of 2010 that brought so many uninformed, unhelpful ideologues to Washington. But isn't there anybody on his staff who can read the Constitution to him slowly, and explain the big words?
* * *
Speaking of people who don't know what they're talking about, House Speaker Paul Ryan also released a statement indicating he slept through the president's announcement. Ryan wrote: "From day one, the president has never respected the right to safe and legal gun ownership that our nation has valued since its founding. He knows full well that the law already says that people who make their living selling firearms must be licensed, regardless of venue. Still, rather than focus on criminals and terrorists, he goes after the most law-abiding of citizens. His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty."
There's so much wrong with this statement that we'll have to take it a paragraph at a time. From day one, the president has done nothing to interfere with safe and legal gun ownership. He still hasn't. Clearly, President Obama understands what the law says about licensed gun sellers--he just wants to require more gun sellers to be licensed, if they're in the business of selling guns (vs., for instance, a guy selling his gun to his neighbor). Requiring those unlicensed gun dealers to be licensed is specifically an attempt to "focus on criminals and terrorists"--to crack down on straw buyers, and on people who take advantage of existing law to sell crime guns without background checks. Finally, how is this more a "form of intimidation that undermines liberty" than the inability to go see a movie or go to school or church or the mall without potentially getting shot? Ryan has a strange concept of "liberty," and of "intimidation."
Ryan's next paragraph: "No matter what President Obama says, his word does not trump the Second Amendment. We will conduct vigilant oversight. His executive order will no doubt be challenged in the courts. Ultimately, everything the president has done can be overturned by a Republican president, which is another reason we must win in November."
These words aren't even that big, Speaker. What President Obama announced on Tuesday were executive actions, not executive orders. You'd understand the difference if you read TWiA. Or a civics textbook. But yes, Ryan is partly correct; some things the president has done can be overturned, which is a reason a Democrat must win in November.
Ryan's last paragraph: "We know that the president wants to spend this year offering distractions from his failed record. We will not allow this strategy to take us off course from giving the American people a clear choice with a bold policy agenda."
"His failed record?" We draw the Speaker's attention to the Michael Grunwald piece excerpted above. Whether one agrees with what the president has done or not, it can't be argued that he hasn't been one of our most consequential presidents of modern times. Since FDR, it's likely that only Johnson and Reagan have accomplished as much. Republicans can't decide whether they want to call Obama a do-nothing or a tyrannical dictator, but he can't be both (and in fact, he's neither).
* * *
According to a new CNN/ORC poll, 67% of Americans support the president's actions, and 32% oppose them. Support is bipartisan, with 51% of Republicans, 65% of Independents, and 85% of Democrats in favor.
* * *
On Thursday, President Obama took part in a town hall event organized by CNN, where he discussed the gun issue and took questions from people on every side of it. At one point, host Anderson Cooper seemed surprised that Obama considered the idea that he wanted to take away everybody's guns a conspiracy theory. He shouldn't have been, because it is--and it's been going around for a lot longer than Obama's presidency, because when Bill Clinton was president, people said the same thing. He never did, and neither has Obama.
In the current issue of The Intelligence Report, the Southern Poverty Law Center* describes the 10 most prominent conspiracy theories of the day, detailing the truth and debunking the lies. Worried about Agenda 21, Common Core, Shariah Law, the Gun Grab, FEMA Concentration Camps, and the like? Read the article, and be ready with the facts the next time your wacky right-wing friends spout off about the conspiracy du jour. (Here's a hint--if you heard about it from Alex Jones of Glenn Beck, it's almost certainly a lie.)
*Full disclosure--because we think the work the SPLC does is so important, we've been monthly contributors for years.
This Week in Political Correctness
In an interview after the above-mentioned Paul Ryan statement was released, Ryan complained about the tears President Obama shed during his speech, when talking about the dead first-graders at Sandy Hook. “I was affected by it, but I thought we should’ve had the same kind of reaction when James Foley was beheaded, when San Bernardino and Paris occurred. That’s the kind of reaction I had when those occurred.”
So Ryan is saying it's politically incorrect to cry about children gunned down at school, whose parents Obama met a couple of days after the shootings, whose pictures he's seen, whose families he's come to know. But only if you also cry at all the other occasions that Ryan thinks are appropriate. Otherwise, it's grounds for criticism.
Speaker, Ryan is a pretty personal thing. You don't get to pick and choose when it happens--sometimes it just happens, and other times it doesn't. When the president cries is not your decision to make.
This Week in Climate Change
Why is America so divided on what should be the noncontroversial topic of climate change? Robert Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science, lays it out in plain English:
Instead, in 1989, a group of fossil fuel corporations, utilities and automobile manufacturers banded together to form the Global Climate Coalition. This group worked to ensure that the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, was not adopted by the United States. In public statements, the Global Climate Coalition continued to deny that global warming was occurring and emphasized the uncertainty of climate science.
The spreading of misinformation continued. In 1998, API, Exxon, Chevron, Southern Co. and various conservative think tanks initiated a public relations campaign, the goal of which was to ensure that the “recognition of uncertainties (of climate science) becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.'”
While that coalition disbanded in 2001, ExxonMobil reportedly continued to quietly funnel climate misinformation through “skeptic” think tanks, such as the Heartland Institute, until 2006, when its funding was exposed. The company — the nation’s largest and wealthiest — continues to work with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a so-called public-private partnership of corporations and conservative legislators, to block climate change policies.
Companies whose continued incredible profits might have been marginally threatened by earlier action have devoted considerable effort to ensuring such action wasn't taken. The entire planet has suffered, and will continue to suffer, because these business interests were watching out for their immediate bottom lines instead of exploring how they might become more profitable by serving humanity instead of attacking it. Conservative politicians supported those efforts, and they still do.
* * *
Incidentally, 2015 was the second warmest year ever recorded (2012 is still the warmest). The Huffington Post reports: "There were 10 extreme climate and weather events in 2015 including storms, floods and a wildfire that each caused more than $1 billion in damages, NOAA said. These events resulted in the deaths of 155 people."
This Week in Bears and Not-bears
Kansas's loss is North Carolina's gain; the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro has a handsome new polar bear named Nikita. The hope is that Nikita and the zoo's female, Anana, will breed. Nikita came from Kansas this week.
And sorry, bear lovers, but this is a Pomeranian-mix dog. Pretty cute, just the same.
Comments