US Politics - Holiday 2011

[The Progressive]

Thank you for not voting!

[awesome possum]

Just ask all those troops in Liby-, er I mean Ira-, er...

[Commodore]

this should end the DADT debate forever

[ThinkerX]

Didn't anybody here get the memo about Ron Paul being scheduled for a fatal heart attack should he actually win a few primaries?

That said, pretty much alone of the GOP cand-i-nuts, Paul was at least talking with the OWS crowd (you-tube vid somebody linked to here a while back). His views, and theirs, are not that far apart...some of the time. Many OWS types, while eligible to vote, probably do not have a party affiliation, either, and I believe independants can still vote in some republican primaries. So...would it not be interesting if a whole bunch of OWS types showed up and gave Paul a few primary elections?

And, more importantly, how well stocked up is FLOW on anti-OWS spray?

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

And, more importantly, how well stocked up is FLOW on anti-OWS spray?

Most people just refer to it as a "shower".

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

So, how are Republicans loving the Citizens United decision now? All hail the rise of the "super-PAC," i.e. an independent-expenditure only committee, which, after the Speechnow decision, expanding the application of Citizens United, can now raise unlimited sums of money from corporations and unions....

So you'd prefer a setup where workers could not band together in unions and collectively purchase ad time to speak out on issues? Like fighting Scott Walker in Wisconsin, or trying to repeal legislation barring collective bargaining by publiic employees in Ohio? We're better off if the collectively-financed speech of people too poor individually to buy ads is suppressed? So I guess we still disagree.

I can think of one Republican who is almost definitely not a fan right now, as the Mitt's super-PACs bash him right back to the starting line in Iowa. Bet he's regrets consulting for Freddie Mac. Sure does suck when corporations can spend millions of dollars calling you a Freddie Mac lobbyist who accepted $1.6 million and you can't even afford the airtime to say that all your work was in consulting on the issues of transparency

One candidate could massively outspend another even before Citizens United. in the pre-Citizens United world, Obama still had hundreds of millions more than McCain.

In any case, you've identified the problem correctly to some extent. The real problem isn't the pro-Romney PACs, because Romney had the cash to finance those ads himself if he so chooses anyway. The problems are a somewhat misleading ad, which was hardly a rare occurence before Citizens United, and Gingrich not having enough money to respond, which also has nothing to do with Citizens United. In fact, that case does give him another option -- even if he doesn't spend the money himself, private citizens who support him via a PAC (and there are some pro-Gingrich ones), might be able to.

If the choice is between less money and less speech, and more money and more speech, I'll take the latter every time. A core assumption of any democracy is that you have an informed, intelligent citizenry who can sift through competing arguments and choose the correct ones. That applies no less in the modern age than it did in the age of pamphlets and newspaper barons. If we're going to claim that as a fiction, then we might as well pitch the entire concept. And if we accept it, then why are ads financed by PACS any better or worse than ads financed by candidates themselves?

I'd suggest that such ads are an overall improvement to the system, even if you can find fault with particular ones, because they permit input and the raising of issues by people not tied to either party, or are who is disagreement with either party. Get rid of the independent PACs, and the debate is controlled by the parties, and by the professional media.

But don't fret - if elected President, he has a solution!

http://www.newt.org/...iles/Courts.pdf

Hey, it worked for Andy Jackson!

[Shryke]

Gotta love the GOP: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/21/boehners-office-cuts-off-c-span-cameras-as-gop-takes-beating/

As Rep. Stenny Hoyer (D-MD) attempted to call for a vote to extend a payroll tax cut to middle class and working Americans, his Republican colleagues adjourned the House and walked out of the chamber. And if that weren’t odd enough, it got even stranger: As Hoyer railed against them for failing to help working Americans, footage from C-SPAN went silent, then cut away.

Moments later, C-SPAN took to the Internet to explain that it wasn’t their doing, but someone working for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

That's right, Boehner cut the feed to the House of Representatives so that no one would know what was being said.

It’s for reasons just like this, one might infer, that Boehner told C-SPAN back in February it would not be allowed control its own cameras.

The non-partisan political network, produced as a courtesy by the nation’s cable operators, had said it wanted to offer a more “journalistic product,” but the speaker denied their request to place and operate more cameras.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/21/393990/speaker-cuts-off-c-span-cameras-when-dems-attempts-to-bring-vote-on-payroll-tax-cut/

During a quick pro-forma session of the House this morning, Republicans rebuffed a Democratic attempt to force an up-or-down vote on the Senate-passed payroll tax holiday extension, which Republicans have thus far refused to allow. Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), who was serving as the speaker pro-temp, ignored shouts of “Mr. Speaker!” from Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), quickly adjourning the House.

Hoyer continued talking undeterred, saying, “You’re walking away, just as so many Republicans have walked away from middle-class taxpayers [and] the unemployed.” “We regret, Mr. Speaker, that you have walked off the platform without addressing this issue of critical importance to this country,” Hoyer added.

Moments later, the mic appeared to cut out. A few seconds after that, the video feed switched away from the House floor to a still image of the Capitol Dome. It appears someone in House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) office cut the feed, as C-SPAN tweeted afterwards: “C-SPAN has no control over the U.S. House TV cameras – the Speaker of the House does.”

[Lord O' Bones]

this should end the DADT debate forever

Let's hope so. And about fucking time. Though I'm a bit annoyed that it 'randomly' was a hot lesbian couple.

Oh well, go Navy!

[Ser Greguh]

this should end the DADT debate forever

There was never a debate - that would imply valid arguments on both sides - so much as a disagreement between bigots and non-bigots as to who should be running things.

That said, I feel the need to mention the obligatory fact that DADT itself was not really the problem, and that the implementation of DADT was actually a step in the right direction. Not a big enough step, but you have to be realistic about these things.

Minor soapbox incoming. Very few political memes of the past decade have annoyed me quite so much as talk of the "Repeal of DADT". A repeal, as in with prohibition for instance, would mean to reverse the effects of DADT and go back to what it was like pre-DADT - meaning, every member of the military is required to sign a piece of paper affirming that they have never, do not, and will never have any homosexual inclinations, and an active culture of witch hunts to seek out and dishonorably discharge anyone that might have slipped past the radar. As unpalatable as the reality was for gay soldiers under DADT, having to hide their sexual orientation was still a step up from what it was prior to its implementation.

[TrackerNeil]

That's right, Boehner cut the feed to the House of Representatives so that no one would know what was being said.

What's really hilarious about this situation is that the debate here is not if the payroll tax cut will be extended, but what concessions Republicans will extract in exchange for doing so. Ironic that the tax-phobic party has to be bribed into cutting a tax.

I'm dismayed, however, that Democrats have been using the a-big-tax-increase-is-coming line. The expiration of a tax cut is not the same as a tax hike, even though, yes, it means taxes are going to be higher in January then they were in November. That kind of talk legitimizes Republican claims - past and future - that allowing the debt-funded Bush tax cuts to expire is "the biggest tax hike in history."

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

But, surely, if it is a matter of important principles, the type of line-in-the-sand issues that separate one party from the other, then the politicians cannot be expected to budge?

Who said it was a matter of important principles? I just said that they may be right on the merits, but every issue on the merits isn't an important principle.

I think the House GOP is right in that a decision should be made on the full year and not just for two months. However, I don't think it's an issue worth derailing the entire decision over, because the more likely effect of voting down the two month extention is to give enough political cover to Obama to kill the extention and blame it on the GOP.

I think the Senate plan to force Obama to make a decision on Keystone is both politically smart, and principled.

[TerraPrime]

Who said it was a matter of important principles? I just said that they may be right on the merits, but every issue on the merits isn't an important principle.

Oh I know you didn't say it. I'm just speculating that to some Republicans, it can be one of those issues that are defining of who they are. In specific, I suspect that for some of them, this defining principle that separates them from a Democrat is the unrelenting will to oppose anything and everything from the Democrats (although, some Democrats can definitely play as a convincing ally in this!), and I fear that these men (are there women?) of strong principles will simply not budge in order to uphold that valued principle.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Oh I know you didn't say it. I'm just speculating that to some Republicans, it can be one of those issues that are defining of who they are. In specific, I suspect that for some of them, this defining principle that separates them from a Democrat is the unrelenting will to oppose anything and everything from the Democrats (although, some Democrats can definitely play as a convincing ally in this!), and I fear that these men (are there women?) of strong principles will simply not budge in order to uphold that valued principle.

They're worried about getting rolled by the Administration into a series of "extensions" that result in the full year under conditions they'd never have accepted at the outset. The Senate GOP, on the other hand, really does see it only as a two month thing so as to get a decision on Keystone. I think they have more faith in certain Senate Democrats than do the House Republicans.

The two month extension, in reality, is stupid. It's the definition of a short term cut that will have no lasting benefits at all. So I get why the House is opposing it. But the politics of the thing are bigger than the issue of it being only two months.

[KazigluBey]

Meh, the GOP has never seen a tax break it didn't like until it saw one that exclusively helped the poor and middle class. The idea that the GOP has to get *any* concessions from a tax cut goes in the face of everything they claim to stand for. Where was Grover Norquist during this whole thing? Or does he not give a shit since he doesn't pay into social security anyway?

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Meh, the GOP has never seen a tax break it didn't like until it saw one that exclusively helped the poor and middle class.

Except it doesn't. It only helps the working poor, because folks who are unemployed aren't paying payroll taxes. But also, if you go way back to 2001 and the debates on the Bush cuts, it was Democrats who pushed for those quickie rebate checks, and Republicans who didn't want them, and just wanted rate reduction instead based on a belief that only long-term changes in the tax code are of much value. The GOP ended up agreeing to those short-term rebate checks as the price for Democratic support to get the whole tax cut bill passed.

So, to the extent the GOP isn't showing support for a very short term tax cut, that's what happened when a Republican was President back in 2001 as well.

ETA: On a completely unrelated note, shitty few days in that I had to work through a mass layoff by one of my clients whose customer mandated a hugre reduction in hours billed. Sucks to layoff people, and it especially sucks to notify them of a layoff over the holidays. Doesn't make all that nice a Christmas for them.

ETA: House GOP agrees to two month extention of payroll tax cut

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/house-republicans-agree-to-payroll-deal-report-2011-12-22-160590?link=MW_home_latest_news

[Shryke]

Wednesday, at long last, the EPA unveiled its new rule covering mercury and other toxic emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants.

But this one is a Big Deal. It's worth lifting our heads out of the news cycle and taking a moment to appreciate that history is being made. Finally controlling mercury and toxics will be an advance on par with getting lead out of gasoline. It will save save tens of thousands of lives every year and prevent birth defects, learning disabilities, and respiratory diseases. It will make America a more decent, just, and humane place to live.

http://www.grist.org/fossil-fuels/2011-12-21-the-mercury-rules-announced-today-are-a-bona-fide-big-deal?ref=gnep

First, remember that the original Clean Air Act "grandfathered" in dozens of existing coal plants back in 1977, on the assumption that they were nearing the end of their lives and would be shut soon anyway. Well, funny story ... they never shut down! There are still dozens of coal plants in the U.S. that don't meet the pollution standards in the original 1970 Clean Air Act, much less the 1990 amendments. These old, filthy jalopies from the early 20th century, mostly along the eastern seaboard and scattered around the Midwest, are responsible for a vastly disproportionate amount of the air pollution generated by the electricity sector in America, including most of the mercury. They have been environmentalists' bête noire for over 30 years now.

Third, this has been a long time coming. (Nicholas Bianco has some good history here.) An assessment of mercury was part of the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990. EPA stalled and stalled, got sued, and finally did the assessment. Sure enough, as had been known for years, they found mercury is harmful to public health. Then more stalling and more stalling until the Bush administration's malformed 2004 proposal, which instantly got caught up in (and struck down by) the courts. So when the mercury rule finally goes into effect in 2014, 24 years will have passed since Congress said mercury needs regulating. It's been a fight for enviros every step of the way.

Damn job-killing government trying to save us from harmless fluff like mercury!

Estimates say something like 3000 lives 130k cases of childhood asthma a year stopped with this.

[SpicyTurkey]

But by assailing him, they'd have to admit he exists.

I don't think Paul has a chance in hell. He may win Iowa, then he'll have his week in the spotlight. People will look him up and see some of the really intelligent, rational things he has to say on a lot of subjects.

Then they'll see everything else he has to say and wonder how their crazy great-uncle managed to sneak his way into the GOP nominee picture.

Crazy? What is so crazy about civil liberties? What's so crazy about fiscal responsibility? What I think is crazy is those who think that government is the harbinger of freedom which is ridiculous in its own right. I would rather vote for crazy Ron Paul, then the shills offered by both the Democrats and Republicans.

[Guest Raidne]

So you'd prefer a setup where workers could not band together in unions and collectively purchase ad time to speak out on issues? Like fighting Scott Walker in Wisconsin, or trying to repeal legislation barring collective bargaining by publiic employees in Ohio? We're better off if the collectively-financed speech of people too poor individually to buy ads is suppressed?

Yes, because when the dissent reads like this, you know we're all up in arms about the unions;

While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

Ooooh, non-managerial employees banding together to seek the expansion of the power of labor - how pernicious! What a corrupting influence on the political system! You know, I was going to say that I doubt unions even account for all that much campaign money, but I'd be a fucking retard apparently, as I looked it up and 5 of the 10 largest contributors from 1989-2012 are unions (numbers 10 through 14 are too). No wonder we can't amend the NRLA.

It's interesting - the largest donors all donate to Democrats and the largest is ActBlue, which is a PAC with no individual contributions of more than $50,000. And its only been around since 2004! Pretty cool. Tim Kaine is their top recipient this year.

After that? AT&T. No kidding. They are about even, leaning Republican. But Barack Obama is the top recipient this year, although they're giving a bigger percentage to Republicans than they usually do overall. That's a lot of money to spend just to avoid anti-trust.

Goldman Sachs is up there too. They lean Democratic, but this year they LOVE Mitt Romney. Over $300,000 in contributions to Mitt. I mean, AT&T only gave $50K to Obama.

I wonder how THAT would play out if Gingrich seized on that. I mean, sure, he consulted for Freddie Mac, but Romney is like the President, brought to you by Goldman Sachs, the real architect of the mortgage crisis. They want to privatize social security so they can sell even more of the flip side of their own investments off to their own clients.

Holy fuck, Citigroup is the same way - $50K to Romney this year. $37 to Barack. You know Kirsten Gillibrand keeps popping up here a lot too. JP Morgan? $112 to Mitt. Morgan Stanley? $200K to Mitt. Bank of America? $127K to Mitt. He is the top recipient of funds from Wall Street this year by a mile.

Did you know one of the top recipients of NRA money is a Democrat? Mike Ross of Arkansas.

And why does Fannie Mae contribute to Ron Paul?

Anyway this stuff is fascinating - check it out here:

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php

world, Obama still had hundreds of millions more than McCain.

No shit, ActBlue is crazy successful.

In any case, you've identified the problem correctly to some extent. The real problem isn't the pro-Romney PACs, because Romney had the cash to finance those ads himself if he so chooses anyway.

I guess so! But really, it's Gingrich's people blaming the barrage of ads on super-PACs. Romney probably wants to save his own cash for the actual election.

If the choice is between less money and less speech, and more money and more speech, I'll take the latter every time. A core assumption of any democracy is that you have an informed, intelligent citizenry who can sift through competing arguments and choose the correct ones. That applies no less in the modern age than it did in the age of pamphlets and newspaper barons. If we're going to claim that as a fiction, then we might as well pitch the entire concept.

I know. But it's really disturbing to see the effects. Unless you think there is some other reason Gingrich started getting killed in Iowa as soon as the ads started running?

And if we accept it, then why are ads financed by PACS any better or worse than ads financed by candidates themselves?

An expensive baragge of negative ads is effective, more so if it's not done by you. As such, it's a nice carrot to hold out there. And you can make that carrot as big as you want.

Honestly, this would be a genius campaign strategy - it's not like Newt loves the banks, and they clearly hate him. He should go after Mitt as the Wall Street candidate and just crush him. Then somebody will ask him if he supports Occupy Wall Street, and he'll say something hilariously offensive about the OWS movement and get even more votes. And then he takes that to the General Election and kills Obama with the same argument - because Obama has taken a ton of Wall Street money too - more than anyone but Mitt, I think.

I'd suggest that such ads are an overall improvement to the system, even if you can find fault with particular ones, because they permit input and the raising of issues by people not tied to either party, or are who is disagreement with either party. Get rid of the independent PACs, and the debate is controlled by the parties, and by the professional media.

I'm cool with PACs, but I also like funding limits and - particularly - disclosure requirements, which 501©(4) PACS don't have to make. Sunlight says we have 20 super PACs at play in the current election, and only five have released any donor information, and it's outdated. And because Iowa has a caucus and not an election, they will never have to report anything there, like they will if they spend in New Hampshire.

Restore our Future - Romney's biggest PAC - changed from quarterly to monthly filing so they won't have to make any disclosures until after Florida. Nice. Quality. Obviously everyone realizes it's not exactly great news - where the money is coming from. They've raised $12 million - the next largest war chest is half as much (and it's American Crossroads - the one run by Karl Rove).

Anyway, here is a list (at the bottom of the page)

http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2011/presidential-super-pac-disclosures-may-leave-voters-in-the-dark/

Here is another one:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php?cycle=2012

By the way, you know Restore Our Future is run by the guys who ran Romney's 2008 campaign right? Just a reminder - this organization could not exist without the Citizens United decision.

Looks like we do have some information - there were three donations of $1 million each from F8 LLC, W Spann LLC, and Eli Publishing, Inc. Of course, Spann only existed for the amount of time it took to make the donation, and was then dissolved. Turns out all the money came from Edward Conard, a former business parter of Romney's from Bain Capitol. Of course there's also Bob Perry, who funded the swiftboat attack ads. Wiki says the largest contributor is John Paulson, a hedge fund manager who made a killing short-selling subprime mortgages in 2007. Wiki ialso says that Restore our Future plans to spend $3 million in Iowa. It takes Romney a month to raise that kind of money.

[Commodore]

I'm dismayed, however, that Democrats have been using the a-big-tax-increase-is-coming line. The expiration of a tax cut is not the same as a tax hike, even though, yes, it means taxes are going to be higher in January then they were in November.

Tax rates have been the same for a decade, it's definitely a tax increase if they expire. A ten year reduction in rates is not a tax holiday, it's effectively a permanent rate reduction.

Part of it is the asinine congressional budget act, where bills are constructed to game CBO scoring rather than make good policy.

Dems use the same logic to say the Bush tax cuts caused X dollars in deficit. But the same reasoning could be applied to the Kennedy tax cuts, which were far sharper. Is JFK responsible for our current debt/deficit?

[Jaxtile]

JFK also didn't start 2 wars.