Yeah, Romney's Worse Than Obama, But America's Real Enemy Is Our Political Elite

I'm envisioning next year's presidential race being about how Romney really and truly is worse-- even much worse-- than an admittedly truly horrible Barack Obama. Romney may have been correct when he told the Wall Street Journal that Obama is worse than Carter but Obama is certainly not as bad-- at least he hasn't been so far-- as George W. Bush, who Romney has backed to the hilt. And, more to the point, Romney's record indicates he would be an even worse president than Obama-- on every level. I'm not going to talk about Lily Ledbetter; it's almost embarrassing. And I'm not going to talk about the basically conservative approach to healthcare reform that both Romney and Obama enacted. Instead... start by taking a look at the Rachel Maddow segment above that airs a series of ads that focus on Mitt Romney's record as a destroyer of American jobs.

There's nothing I would say to defend Obama's approach to the presidency. He just plain sucks. But Romney just makes him look... merely mediocre.

Republican Mitt Romney often says, as he did at three campaign stops here Thursday, that he wants to create jobs by lowering taxes. He says he wants to loosen federal regulations on businesses. And he says he has a unique skill set from 25 years in the private sector to develop innovative solutions that can revive the sputtering U.S. economy.

What Romney doesn’t say is which taxes he would lower and by how much. He doesn’t say which regulations he would loosen. And he doesn’t say what his solutions are other than general principles that for years have been Republican Party orthodoxy.

It’s not that the former Massachusetts governor doesn’t have ideas. It’s just that he hasn’t shared them yet.

At a lively town hall meeting here Thursday night, Romney methodically plowed through about 15 questions over the course of an hour, including one from a woman wondering whether he would continue to subsidize big oil companies if elected president.

“What I would like to see us do philosophically is to bring our [corporate] tax rates down to be competitive with the world but get rid of a lot of these special breaks that exist,” Romney answered. “We ought to look industry by industry and say, ‘Where are the lobbyists striking special deals for companies?’ Let’s get rid of that stuff and bring our rate down.”

The audience of about 300 gave him a friendly applause and Romney moved on to the next question, leaving behind a slew of unanswered questions. What would the corporate tax rate be? How does he define a “special break”? Which industry loopholes would he eliminate? And, of course, the original query: Would he continue oil subsidies?

By making the economy an almost exclusive focus of his campaign, Romney has raised the expectations for what he eventually will propose and has some policy gurus in his own party openly wondering whether the presidential front-runner has sound proposals to deal with the big problems he says he is uniquely positioned to solve.

And where will Romney be getting his macroeconomic guidance from? Well, the Team that tanked the economy under Bush, of course. Theirs is exactly the kind of voodoo economics, trickle down nonsense that Romney is comfortable with. He's already started recruiting an economic team-- the worst of the worst: N. Gregory Mankiw, who was chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers; Glenn Hubbard, who preceded Mankiw on the council and currently is dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business; and former Missouri senator Jim Talent.

So... right back into the toilet. And there is just no subtly or shades of grey in Teabagworld:

Still Not Too Late For Obama To Get On The Right Path

Early this year a Democratic consultant sent me a memo on Democratic Party positioning based on polling and economic data. I ran across it by chance while I was trying to make sense out of the reports that President Obama's Grand Bargain that he had offered the GOP included something most rational people would interpret as "cuts" to popular core middle class programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (not to even mention public education, also under increasing threat).

The memo made clear that the upcoming elections-- for the presidency, for Congress and for state governments-- may well be determined on whether hard-pressed Americans in the middle class feel like Democrats are on their side. Voters who abandoned the Democrats in the 2010 midterms were from the working and middle classes most pressed by the economic trauma of the last few years. In 2008, voters who said they were worse off economically in the previous couple of years voted for Obama by 42 points, but in 2010, they voted Republican by 29 points. That 71 percent swing is gargantuan-- and it's why Boehner is Speaker and why the GOP is in a position to block everything progressives would like to accomplish in the House. According to recent polls, Obama's approval rating with these economically downscale, working-class independents’-- swing voters-- has remained flat. Yet, when you look at the key issues in the same polling that shows the Democratic Party in danger of being swamped by Obama's poor job approval numbers, you can't help but notice these voters back a progressive agenda-- far more so than an Obama agenda in fact. Findings from the Stan Greenberg poll done for the Campaign for America's Future found:

* Swing voters supported a message about challenging China on trade, ending subsidies to corporations that send jobs overseas, and stopping NAFTA-like trade deals over a message about increasing exports, passing more trade agreements, and getting government out of the way by 59-28

* Swing voters supported a message about ending tax cuts for those making over $250,0000 a year, adding a bank tax to curb speculative trading, cutting wasteful military spending and ending subsidies to oil companies over a message about cutting 100 billion dollars from domestic programs, raising the Social Security retirement age, and turning Medicare into a voucher program by 51-37

* Swing voters supported a statement about politicians keeping their hands off Social Security and Medicare over a statement about raising the retirement age by 62-36

* 89% of swing voters supported a statement about full disclosure of campaign donations and limiting the power of lobbyists

* 90% of swing voters supported a statement about cracking down on outsourcing and creating jobs by fixing schools, sewers, and roads in disrepair

* Even when framed in direct opposition to a statement about stopping increasing government spending and tax increases, swing voters said they were more worried that we will fail to make the investments we need to create jobs and strengthen the economy by 54-44

The Republicans are on the wrong side of every one of these issues. But where is President Obama? At best, unclear. When he addressed the nation about the dismal jobs numbers last week, he couldn't resist putting a plug in for immensely unpopular NAFTA-like trade agreements that he's promised to deliver for Big Business, the types of trade agreements he and other corporate politicians try selling as job creators when American voters see them as job destroyers. So whose side is he on? To voters focussing on that issue, he's just another Establishment political selling out to the big corporate donors who are so loathed by so many.

Obama didn't fight to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy-- at least not hard enough to make it happen. Obama didn't fight for any of these populist measures to curb Big Banks and Big Oil-- or if he did, he fought and failed (or didn't fight well or strongly). His positioning on keeping hands off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is muddled and confusing. Who's side is he on? It's impossible for an average voter to tell. It's impossible to miss where Bernie Sanders stands on the issue. Is he just a more effective communicator?

The swing voters who moved toward the Republicans in 2010 were mostly white, independent, working- and middle-class, older (seniors went from voting 8 percent for McCain to voting by 22 percent for Republicans in 2010), economically hard-pressed, and economically populist. They hate the biggest banks and tended to blame Wall Street for the economic crisis but still voted Republican-- 35 percent said Wall Street was mostly to blame for the economy, more than any other person or institution (and many of that 35 percent were white, working-class independents, because base Democrats blamed Bush and base Republicans blamed Obama), but those voters went Republican 56-42. They are wary of trade deals, hate outsourcing, and don’t like Big Business. They also hate deficit spending, big government, and government waste (they are swing voters, after all), but they sure don’t have any interest in cutting Social Security, Medicare, education, or infrastructure spending. Perhaps what they hate most of all is business as usual in Washington: lobbyists, special interests, corporate tax loopholes, sweetheart deals for government contractors. The reason they think government doesn’t work for them anymore is that the special interests have taken it over.

Obama seems to have made himself into a posterboy for everything these people hate. What's he's got going for him is how extreme the GOP is trending and how he looks reasonable and sensible compared to a party that has been captured by teabagging radicals. Obama and the Democrats running for other offices need to show both Democratic base voters-- many of whom sat out the 2010 midterms-- and the hard-pressed middle class that Democrats are on their side. Here’s how the memo suggested they should be talking about an agenda leading up to November, 2012:

1. Entrepreneurial populism. Both Democratic base voters and working- middle-class swing voters are angry at the powers that be: a government that never seems to get things done on their behalf; Wall Street mega-bankers who crashed the economy, demanded a bailout, and never showed a moment of remorse; a media establishment more concerned with trivia and sensationalism than with anything really important; and big businesses that ship jobs overseas and have their lobbyists cut sweetheart deals with the government. But a purely angry message going after bankers and tax breaks for the wealthy only brings Democrats into a 45-45 tie with an angry anti-government message from the Republicans. Americans right now are first and foremost very pragmatic, very focused on jobs and the things that will help them make it in tough times. However angry they are at the establishment, they want to be sure that politicians are focused on pragmatic policies that create more jobs and economic growth. Voters are looking for policies that help small-business entrepreneurs get investment capital and create more jobs; policies that help manufacturing companies, big or small, create jobs here in America; and policies that invest in the jobs of the future: infrastructure, R&D, green energy, technology. The winning political formula is what I call entrepreneurial populism: taking on the big Wall Street banks, the jobs outsourcers, and other powerful special interests on behalf of both the middle-class workers and the business innovators who want to create American jobs here and now. President Obama’s investment agenda is a good start, but it needs to be bigger and bolder in terms of job creation, and it would be far more powerful if Obama were taking on wealthy special interests who are keeping things from moving forward.

2. Emphasize job creation at every turn. President Obama and Senate Democrats should be pushing forward a new jobs bill practically every week: more infrastructure spending, more loans and grants to small businesses, more help for solar and wind companies, universal broadband. Whatever the policy is, the connection with jobs should be obvious and repeated over and over again. If the Republicans want to stand in the way on all these jobs bills, let them. If the fight in front of the public is about jobs, even if we lose on the Hill, we still win.

3. Stand up for homeowners in fights with bankers. The combination of the housing bubble and the worst recession since the Great Depression has resulted in a devastating foreclosure crisis. Millions of homeowners are facing foreclosure, and banks have been cooking their books, and presenting made-up paperwork and falsified affidavits in order to avoid helping homeowners keep their homes. Our economy has no chance of significantly improving if the housing crisis is allowed to continue. The government should implement a foreclosure freeze until they are able to sort through the mess that is the current mortgage title system. Additionally, it makes sense to push the banks, along with Freddie and Fannie, very hard to institute widespread mortgage write-downs that reflect current housing prices to underwater homeowners. This can be done without going to Congress, because the Obama administration has plenty of tools to pressure the banks to write down mortgages, and they actually control Freddie and Fannie right now. These policies would dramatically reduce the need for foreclosures and cut the stresses on our economy. Democrats need to counteract the daunting political power held by the big banks and side with the middle class.

4. Fight for the government programs that benefit the middle class. There are certain government programs that are overwhelmingly popular with the public, including with swing voters, because they benefit the broad middle class so much. Among them are Social Security, Medicare, student loan programs, and public education and infrastructure funding. For example, according to a variety of polls done over the last couple of months: 67 percent oppose spending cuts on health care or education; 56 percent oppose reducing the money spent on student loans; 64 percent oppose raising the retirement age for Social Security; 66 percent oppose any benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare; 71 percent oppose cuts in federal aid to states for education or road building. And as people understand the health care law more and more, and start to take advantage of the benefits being phased in, they will be much more likely to support its funding as well. Obama and the Democrats should fight like tigers for all these programs, resisting Republican attempts to slash and radically restructure them.

5. Change Washington by taking on the special interests. One of the things that was clear from Democracy Corps and other pollsters in the last cycle was that in order for Democratic arguments on the economy to be taken more seriously, Democrats need to make clear that they have the courage to take on wealthy special interests and change the way government does business. For example, in a Sept. 20, 2010 memo, Stan Greenberg and James Carville laid out a series of Democratic frameworks for moving the election in the right way. They found in their testing that a message that leads with reforming D.C. and taking on the big money lobbyists, and then goes straight to a strong pro-middle class and pro-small business economic message was by far the most powerful frame for Democrats, moving voters a remarkable +9 points. As Stan and James put it:

"The respondents are a little skeptical of candidates who describe themselves as 'champions of the middle class,' but fighting for change in Washington, bucking privileges, being for small business and American jobs and against breaks for Goldman Sachs makes this an authentic claim.

6. Reform government contracting. The Center for American Progress, US PIRG, and other reform groups have estimated that the federal government could save enormous amounts of money ($100 billion annually or even more) simply by reforming the way they do government contracting. With more and more government services privatized, the amount of government contracting has been growing by leaps and bounds over the last couple of decades, and these contracts have been noted for the waste and corruption entailed in them. No-bid contracts, sweetheart deals, cost overruns, a lack of accountability for getting them done on time, easy to achieve bonus clauses written into most contracts, and special-interest language in appropriations bills favoring one firm over all others have generated enormous amounts of waste. By demanding reform of this process, Democrats could burnish our credentials in terms of cutting waste in government as well as opening up contracting to more innovative and efficient firms.

This kind of agenda-- populist in taking on the D.C. and Wall Street establishment and other corporate special interests, but clearly pro-jobs, small business and the middle class-- has appeal to both swing and working class voters and Democratic-base voters. Even if the economy remains flat for average Americans, which unfortunately is a distinct possibility, it creates a narrative in which the President and Democrats in Congress are clearly fighting for the middle class against powerful special interests.

That was sent to the White House and to Democratic Party leaders almost half a year ago. You tell me... have they taken these finding and suggestions seriously? One week ago former Labor Secretary Robert Reich described President Obama's forays into job creation as fluff and indicated that the White House still doesn't get it.

The President has to have a bold jobs plan, with specifics. Why not exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes for the next year? Why not a new WPA for the long-term unemployed, and a Civilian Conservation Corps for the legions of young jobless Americans? Why not allow people to declare bankruptcy on their primary residences, and thereby reorganize their mortgage debt?

Or a hundred other ways to boost demand.

Fluff won’t get us anywhere. In fact, it creates a policy vacuum that will be filled by Republicans intent on convincing Americans that cutting federal spending and reducing taxes on the rich will create jobs.

Most Americans are smart enough to see through this. But if the Republican snake oil is the only remedy being offered, some people will buy it. And if the President and Democrats on Capitol Hill continue to obsess about reaching an agreement to raise the debt limit, they risk making the snake oil seem like a legitimate cure.

Frank Rich Is Back! And I Bet Obama Wishes He Never Existed

Rich is now in New York and even if the Times can ignore the treasure they lost, Obama isn't likely to. Obama's Original Sin isn't part of the program to make progressives resigned to choosing the lesser of two evils. As Frank's editor points out, "the president’s failure to demand a reckoning from the moneyed interests who brought the economy down has cursed his first term, and could prevent a second." And as Frank reminds us, "Obama arrives at his reelection campaign not merely with a weak performance on Wall Street crime enforcement and reform but also with a scattershot record (at best) of focusing on the main concern of Main Street: joblessness. One is a consequence of the other. His failure to push back against the financial sector, sparing it any responsibility for the economy it tanked, empowered it to roll over his agenda with its own. He has come across as favoring the financial elite over the stranded middle class even if, in his heart of hearts, he does not."

What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. Chronic unemployment remains a constant, painful reminder of the havoc inflicted on the bust’s innocent victims.

...After the 1929 crash, and thanks in part to the legendary Ferdinand Pecora’s fierce thirties Senate hearings, America gained a Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, and the Glass-Steagall Act to forestall a rerun. After the savings-and-loan debacle of the eighties, some 800 miscreants went to jail. But those who ran the central financial institutions of our fiasco escaped culpability (as did most of the institutions). As the indefatigable Matt Taibbi has tabulated, law enforcement on Obama’s watch rounded up 393,000 illegal immigrants last year and zero bankers. The Justice Department’s bally­hooed Operation Broken Trust has broken still more trust by chasing mainly low-echelon, one-off Madoff wannabes. You almost have to feel sorry for the era’s designated Goldman scapegoat, 32-year-old flunky “Fabulous Fab” Fabrice Tourre, who may yet take the fall for everyone else. It’s as if the Watergate investigation were halted after the cops nabbed the nudniks who did the break-in.

Even now, on the heels of Bank of America’s reluctant $8.5 billion settlement with investors who held its mortgage-backed securities, the Obama administration may be handing it and its peers new get-out-of-jail-free cards. With the Department of Justice’s blessing, the Iowa attorney general, Tom Miller, is pushing the 49 other states to sign on to a national financial settlement ending their investigations of the biggest mortgage lenders. What some call a settlement others may find a cover-up. Time reported in April that the lawyer negotiating with Miller for Moynihan’s Bank of America just happened to be a contributor to his 2010 Iowa reelection campaign. If the deal is struck, any truly aggressive state attorneys general, like Eric Schneiderman of New York, will be shut down before they can dig into the full and still mostly uninvestigated daisy chain of get-rich-quick rackets practiced by banks as they repackaged junk mortgages into junk securities.

Those in executive suites at the top of that chain have long since fled the scene with the proceeds, while bleeding shareholders, investors, homeowners, and ­cashiered employees were left with the bills. The weak Dodd-Frank financial-reform law that rose from the ruins remains largely inoperative, since the actual rule-writing was delegated to understaffed agencies now under siege by banking lobbyists and their well-greased congressional overlords. The administration’s much-hyped Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is being sabotaged by Washington Republicans intent on blocking any White House nominee, whether Elizabeth Warren or some malleable hack, to lead it. “We can’t let special interests win this fight,” said Obama when he proposed the agency in October 2009. Well, he missed his moment to fight for both it and Warren, and the special interests won without breaking a sweat.

Rather than purge the crash’s crimes, Wall Street’s leaders are sticking to their alibi: Everyone was guilty of fomenting this “perfect storm,” and so no one is. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever, and ­Masters of the Universe swagger is back. Even Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, about the only bank chief not to be caught with a suspect balance sheet or a $1,400 office trash can, has taken to channeling Schwarzman. In June, he publicly challenged Ben Bernanke about the intolerable burdens of potential regulation—this despite a 67 percent surge in JPMorgan’s first-quarter profits and a 1,500 percent raise in his own compensation from 2009 to 2010. As good times roar back for corporate America, it’s bad enough that CEOs are collectively sitting on some $1.9 trillion in cash-- much of it parked out of the IRS’s reach overseas-- instead of hiring. (How many jobs can you buy for $1.9 trillion? America’s total expenditure on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over a decade has been $1.3 trillion.) But what’s most galling is how many of these executives are sore winners, crying all the way to Palm Beach while raking in record profits and paying some of the lowest tax rates over the past 50 years.

The fallout has left Obama in the worst imaginable political bind. No good deed he’s done for Wall Street has gone unpunished. He is vilified as an anti-capitalist zealot not just by Republican foes but even by some former backers. What has he done to deserve it? All anyone can point to is his December 2009 60 Minutes swipe at “fat-cat bankers on Wall Street”-- an inept and anomalous Ed Schultz seizure that he retracted just weeks later by praising Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein as “very savvy businessmen.”

Obama can win reelection without carrying 10021 or Greenwich in any case. The bigger political problem is that a far larger share of the American electorate views him as a tool of the very fat-cat elite that despises him. Given Obama’s humble background, his history as a mostly liberal Democrat, and his famous résumé as a community organizer, this would also seem a reach. But the president has no one to blame but himself for the caricature. While he has never lusted after money-- he’d rather get his hands on the latest novel by Morrison or Franzen-- he is an elitist of a certain sort. For all the lurid fantasies of the birthers, the dirty secret of Obama’s background is that the values of Harvard, not of Kenya or Indonesia or Bill Ayers, have most colored his governing style. He falls hard for the best and the brightest white guys.

Frank's villain in this tragic story: Wall Street huckster and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who seems to have sold Obama not just a bill of goods, but an entire Wall Street-oriented economic team to kill any hopes for embracing a populist solution to the Wall Street caused cataclysm of the final Bush years.

By failing to address that populist anger, Obama gave his enemies the opening to co-opt it and turn it against him. Which the tea party did, dishonestly but brilliantly, misrepresenting Obama’s health-care-reform crusade as yet another attempt by the elites to screw the taxpayer. (The Democrats haplessly reinforced the charge with marathon behind-the-scenes negotiations with insurance and pharmaceutical-­industry operatives.) Once the health-care law was signed, the president still slighted the unemployment crisis. A once-hoped-for WPA-style public-works program, unloved by Geithner, had been downsized in the original stimulus, and now a tardy, halfhearted stab at a $50 billion transportation-infrastructure jobs bill produced a dandy Obama speech but nothing else.

Obama soon retreated into the tea-party mantra of fiscal austerity. Short-term spending cuts when spending is needed to create jobs make no sense economically. But they also make no sense politically. The deficit has never been a top voter priority, no matter how loudly the right claims it is. At Obama’s inaugural, Gallup found that 11 percent of voters ranked unemployment as their top priority while only 2 percent did the deficit. Unemployment has remained a stable public priority over the deficit ever since, usually by at least a 2-to-1 ratio. In a CBS poll immediately after the Democrats’ “shellacking” of last November-- a debacle supposedly precipitated by the tea party’s debt jihad-- the question “What should Congress concentrate on in January?” yielded 56 percent for “economy/jobs” and 4 percent for “deficit reduction.”

Geithner has pushed deficit reduction as a priority since before the inauguration, the Washington Post recently reported in an article greeted as a smoking gun by liberal bloggers. But Obama is the chief executive. It’s his fault, no one else’s, that he seems diffident about the unemployed. Each time there’s a jolt in the jobless numbers, he and his surrogates compound that profile by farcically reshuffling the same clichés, from “stuck in a ditch” to “headwinds” (first used by Geithner in March 2009-- retire it already!) to “bumps in the road.” It’s true the administration has caught few breaks and the headwinds have been strong, but voters have long since tuned out this monotonous apologia. The White House’s repeated argument that the stimulus saved as many as 3 million jobs, accurate though it may be, is another nonstarter when 14 million Americans are looking for work.

...There’s not much Obama can do to alter the economy by 2012, given the debt-ceiling fight, the long campaign, and nihilistic Capitol Hill antagonists opposed to any government spending that might create jobs and, by extension, help Obama keep his own. But the central question before the nation couldn’t be clearer: Who pays? The taxpayers bailed out the elite; now it’s the elite’s turn to return the favor. Massive cuts to the safety net combined with scant sacrifice from those at the top is wrong ethically and politically. It is, in the truest sense, un-American. Obama knows this, and he hit a welcome note last week when he urged some higher corporate taxes for hedge funds and the like. But his forays in this direction are tentative and sporadic. You have to wonder why he isn’t seizing the moment to articulate and fight for the big picture instead of playing a lose-lose game of rope-a-dope with the Republicans on their budgetary turf.

Some Obama fans think it’s tactical genius that’s holding him back-- his fabled long ball. Americans are no longer as angry as they were in January 2009 so much as they are defeated, depressed, and jaded by the slow recovery and by four decades of raging inequality that tells them the deck is stacked no matter who’s in Washington. Better, then, not to ruffle these still waters-- or those easily rattled independents fetishized by political consultants-- and instead scare seniors about imminent Medicare cutbacks and plot deep-think policy initiatives that (like health-care reform) might fix America over time. But the voters’ placidity hardly augurs well for Democratic turnout in 2012. And it may not last. All that’s required is one more economic panic to shatter the phony peace and whip the rage back to center stage, once again to the right’s advantage.

“A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous,” Obama declared at his inauguration. What he said on that bright January morning is no less true or stirring now. For all his failings since, he is the only one who can make this case. There’s nothing but his own passivity to stop him from doing so-- and from shaking up the administration team that, well beyond the halfway-out-the-door Geithner and his Treasury Department, has showered too many favors on the prosperous. This will mean turning on his own cadre of the liberal elite. But it’s essential if he is to call the bluff of a fake man-of-the-people like Romney. To differentiate himself from the discredited Establishment, he will have to mount the fight he has ducked for the past three years.

The alternative is a failure of historic proportions. Those who gamed the economy to near devastation-- so much so that the nation turned to an untried young leader in desperation and in hope-- would once again inherit the Earth. Unless and until there’s a purging of the crimes that brought our president to his unlikely Inauguration Day, much more in America than the second term of his administration will be at stake.

Blue America never endorsed Obama in 2008, when there was a slim chance he might turn out to be a progressive. I'd say there's far less of a chance we'll be working towards his reelection next year. Instead, as you probably know, we'll be working to raise campaign funds for proven progressive leaders running for Congress. We've endorsed 5 who are running for the House so far and starting later this month we'll be adding to that list with candidates from Arizona and Wisconsin. Meantime, can you give us a hand? No matter who wins the presidency, we're going to need smart, aggressive progressives in Congress.

I voted for Obama and all I got was . . .

by Noah

. . . and all I got was this T-shirt. (If I cough up a mere $30, that is.)

Like many of you, I get a lot of mass e-mails asking me for money. Many of them come from politically progressive groups that can and do make good use of the money. Environmental groups? OK. Moveon.org? No problem. ActBlue? You bet.

Today’s e-mail, however, came from Juliana Smoot of the White House. It included an offer of a T-shirt in return for a contribution of $30 or more to President Obama’s 2012 campaign. Not that it’s a bad T-shirt or anything, but I expect more.

Forget the T-shirt! How about a president that doesn’t roll over for the Repugs and Wall Street, and tells his party not to roll over too? How about a president leading a Democratic Party that realizes they are dealing with absolute fascists that could make Mussolini rise from the dead with pride. Instead we have a party of Neville Chamberlain weenies. They are either naïve or in cahoots. I’m convinced, of course, that it’s the latter and no amount of money that I can afford to give the status quo politicians of the burgeoning New World Order is going to offset the bribery setup that is standard operating procedure in D.C.

I also get almost daily appeals from Blue Dog Dem stealth-Republican groups such as the DSCC and the DCCC who feel that I should contribute money for the reelection of fetid balls of slime with names like Ben Nelson, Heath Shuler, and Mary Landrieu just so they can have Democratic majorities that end up rubber-stamping the dark desires of Republicans anyway. Anyone remember Senator Schumer kissing John Roberts’s butt at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. All that did was fast-track Citizens United. Thanks, Chuckie!

Apparently, the bribes from K Street and Wall Street just aren’t enough. Last I looked, no banksters or hedge-fund scum have been hauled into court. Can’t imagine why! Can’t jeopardize the status quo now, can we? Gotta keep those good middle-class jobs moving out of the country while Congress vacuums up all that nice green cash from the K Street Bribery Battalions! Nudge nudge wink wink. Ain’t NAFTA grand? Screw the people! But ask them for their money first.

You know, I happen to think that I and millions of other middle-class voters might have more to give these people if they would first do something about the massive wealth distribution upward that Washington has been engineering for decades; more specifically, our wealth. While the wealth of the top 1% has gone through the roof and productivity has climbed impressively, middle-class wages have stagnated for 30 years. And we all know that a dollar isn’t what it was back then! It’s obviously social engineering Washington can believe in. When it comes to Washington, money can buy a lot of belief. All you have to do is be amoral and fool enough voters into thinking that you are a respectable humanoid of good character.

Instead of a T-shirt, I, like so many people, think repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should be a good start. Stopping the war on the middle class in its tracks would work for me! Oh, and stopping some other wars might be good too. We seem to be spending more on building roads and schools in Afghanistan than we do here.

Afghanistan is reportedly costing us $2 billion a week -- $2 billion a week for schools where young girls aren’t welcome and roads that only serve to get Afghanistan’s drugs to world markets at a faster, more profitable pace. That $2 billion could go a long way here, including paying for some teachers at some new schools! Just tonight (as I write this), President Obama announced that he’s bringing home 10,000 troops. It was the least he could do, and he did it.

If people like Juliana Smoot could tell me that House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer had changed his mind and now says that Medicare should be off the table instead of on it, that would work for me too. If she could tell me that her boss had decided to tell Alan Simpson to shove his Cat Food anti-Social Security Commission up his sagging fat white-haired 90-year-old ass, that would also work for me. If all of these things were done, we middle-class suckers and pawns might even actually have enough money to spread around, even to politicians.

So, Washington, why ask me for money when you are not doing enough things that will help me save money or earn money? A dollar doesn’t even get me a quart of milk or half a dozen eggs anymore. Are there suddenly less cows and chickens? Now I have to think long and hard about buying some eggs to hurl at your limos!

To be fair, saving the auto industry and the 3 million related industry jobs along with it was damn good. Some minor improvements in the health care system may help, but no, it’s not enough, and I don’t buy that it’s the best you could do. Some of the improvements won’t even kick in until 2014, and that’s gonna be up in the air for awhile anyway.

What’s going on is that Washington is trying to get away with doing just enough to keep the wolf (us) from the door. That’s the system that's in place. Buying voters off with the offer of a T-shirt is very symbolic. It’s symbolic of the paltry amount of respect Washington has for those who live outside the Beltway. Sure, I’ll never have enough money to stay out of jail if I foul up an ocean with crude oil while 11 employees lose their lives like Tony Hayward did, but that’s not what we’re asking for.

Our so-called representatives get tens and ten- times-tens of thousands of dollars stuffed into their pockets every day, and the White House offers me a T-shirt. That’s rich. Pun intended. Hell, the T-shirt doesn’t even have a pocket. No pocket for me! Look. I know that Obama is better than any Republican and a Democratic Congress is marginally better than a Republican one, but that’s like saying Americans have a choice of two parties and it's a choice that one can equate with being given a choice of "what kind of cancer would you like?"

The Republicans will kill you and the whole damn country and smile about it as long as they get enough cash out of the deal. They are a disease. The Democrats, on the other hand, might keep you alive but it looks like the most they want to do is just enough to keep you in the state of misery you’re in. Put a kinder, gentler way: The Dems will give you a T-shirt for a cold day. The Repugs will rip the one you have off your back on the coldest day of the year while they give money that should go to your family to the top 1% instead, and they'll get the Dems to go along with it.

Some freedom of choice that is. Keep the T-shirt, Juliana, you can use it to wipe the eggs off the White House windows. Blue America isn't offering any fancy t-shirts in exchange for contributions... just actual real life progressives who will stand up to the right, like Eric Griego, Norman Solomon, and Nick Ruiz. Please take a look... and give them a hand.

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Tom Tomorrow says: "Welcome to the Never-Ending Conservative Carnival of Crazy"

And just imagine, this was before the news of Jon Huntsman's entry into the fray! (Jon Huntsman? Do any U.S. voters outside Utah even recognize the name?)

Jon Huntsman to seek Republican nomination for White House race
Former US ambassador to China served under Obama and had praised the president in the leaked diplomatic cables

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 June 2011 20.30 BST

Jon Huntsman announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination and intention to take on former boss Barack Obama.

There are only a few positive remarks about Barack Obama dotted about in the embassy cables sent by former American ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, and subsequently leaked to WikiLeaks.

But they will be enough to cause problems for the latest Republican president candidate in the months ahead.

Huntsman, from a podium in New Jersey, with the Statue of Liberty in the background, announced on Tuesday that he would join the race to take on his old boss for the White House next year.

Confirming his intention to seek the nomination, he criticised the president's record and, in contrast with his time as ambassador when he projected American strength, portrayed the US as vulnerable.

"For the first time in our history, we are passing down to the next generation a country that is less powerful, less compassionate, less competitive and less confident than the one we got. This, ladies and gentlemen, is totally unacceptable and totally un-American," he said.

Huntsman, 51, could be a formidable presidential candidate, given his experience in foreign affairs and as a former governor of Utah. But many Republicans cannot forgive the fact that he served in the Obama administration.

The president approached Huntsman in 2009 and asked him to be the ambassador to Beijing, and Huntsman accepted, serving until this April. In that time, he worked alongside the Obama on issues ranging from climate change to human rights, and stood side by side with him when the president visited China.

It is rare in US politics for someone who worked for one president to turn around and challenge him. Huntsman's work in the Obama administration is almost certain to be raised by Republican rivals. It could also undercut his attacks on the president. . . .

COMMENTERS, PLEASE KEEP YOUR
FINGER OFF THE "CAPS LOCK" KEY

As I indicated in my reply, I had a tough call on a comment that didn't seem to me really on topic -- but that seemed heartfelt and not definitively off topic. I gave the commenter the benefit of the doubt, but with this proviso:

"What will be a deal-breaker next time is the use of all caps. That's an unforgivable imposition on readers, and please don't you or anyone else do that again. I didn't know till now that I have a rule against it. Now I know, and you do too."

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Republican Clown Shows Endangering American Families

This is what the GOP is using to wreck Michigan

Most normal people look at the Republican presidential primary lineup and recoil in horror-- or just shrug it off as a freak show or circus act.

With Gingrich in the race, Republican voters will now be faced with a terrible, Sophie’s Choice-choice: they can either go the safe/uncontroversial route and pick a Tim Pawlenty or a human advertorial like Mitt Romney, or else they can gamble on a candidate with the “charisma” and “wow factor” to match up with Barack Obama.

The only problem with the latter strategy is that that the leading “charisma” candidate is Gingrich, a relentless mirror-gazer and attention-seeker with a wandering pee-pee and a talent for pseudo-intellectualism. Gingrich, hilariously, is the right’s idea of a “thinker,” which is to say he’s a pompous mispronouncer and Thesaurus-raider who lards up same-old/same-old right-wing rhetoric with quotations from obscure academic texts and inane historical references, so that friendly pundits can later describe the resultant utterances as “fresh new ideas.”

But Republican voters don't see it that way. Aside from the sizable contingent of Republicans just angry at the world and unhappy about everything, Republicans take their candidates seriously and don't understand why everyone else is scoffing, laughing... or vomiting.

How do I know Republican voters are happy with their candidates? They keep voting for them. They even vote for them when-- which is always-- these people advance policies and agendas that are direct threats to their own well-being. In the big Democratic victory in NY-26 last night, Republican voters still went overwhelmingly for the cookie cutter kill-Medicare Jane Corwin. It was Democrats and independents that defeated her-- and only in a 47-43% tally. Leave multimillionaires and billionaires aside for a moment, because, well, they're actually well-served, at least in a short-term horizon, by the Republican agenda of greed and selfishness. But what about the middle class voters whose education system is being dismantled or whose social safety net is in shreds? Or what about people, for example, who live along the Mississippi River?

Or the folks who were just slammed by a catastrophic mega-tornado in Missouri? Republican House Leader Eric Cantor's immediate response to the scores of deaths and the destruction in Joplin was to announce that he would take advantage of the crisis of these people by holding federal aid hostage to more deranged right-wing ideological demands. His response, akin to former House Speaker Denny Hastert's declaration that the U.S. should let New Orleans disappear after Katrina, is downright un-American. I wonder if Congressman Billy Long, the right-wing slob who represents Jasper County, Missouri, would agree. He's no friend of FEMA or of federal assistance to emergency victims... like his own constituents in Joplin.

In a stunningly heartless move, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) put strings on emergency relief for the victims of the killer Joplin tornado, saying that other government services would have to be cut to offset aid spending. Yesterday afternoon, the House Appropriations committee passed an amendment by Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) to add $1 billion in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster relief fund, offset by funding reductions from the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program at the Department of Energy. Instead of cutting oil subsidies to pay for the costs of our nation’s increasing climate disasters, the GOP is actually working to increase our dependence on fossil fuels. On MSNBC’s Ed Show, Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) called the decision “just plain wrong” ... When you talk about cutting clean energy programs versus cutting subsidies for big oil, let’s have that debate here in Washington. But not on the backs of the people of Joplin."

The vast majority of congressmembers from districts touching the Mississippi are Republicans. Their constituents are in big trouble. And big predictable trouble. But how are their Republican elected officials responding? With hackneyed ideology and prayers, but not with federal aid. Steve Pearce, Spencer Baucus and Randy Neugebauer, corporate shills representing backwaters in New Mexico, Alabama and Texas, sent around a petition that everyone pray for the victims. Is that what these three clowns and their colleagues were elected to do? The three of them voted for this year's continuing resolution, which included significant cuts to funding for the federal response to weather, climate and natural disasters-- like the tornados that ravaged Alabama, the fires that have destroyed so many people's lives in Texas and now the disaster along the Mississippi.

For example, funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's state and local programs was slashed $783.3 million below FY 2010 levels. The FEMA Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program lost $35 million. The part of FEMA's budget for emergency food and shelter was cut $100 million, and Assistance to Firefighter Grants lost $510 million.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lost $454.3 million in the House's continuing resolution. In March, the agency warned that insufficient funds budgeted for its next generation of polar orbiting satellites could potentially weaken the accuracy of its weather forecasting, especially pertaining to severe events such as blizzards and hurricanes.

The National Weather Service, which is part of NOAA, lost $126 million from FY 2010 levels in the House bill.

"This is the congressional equivalent of having a mortgage lender take your house and then tell all his friends how bad he feels for you," said a Democratic operative who used to work in Congress. "The fact that these guys have no sense of irony or shame is just revolting."

This is Law-of-the-Jungle Republicanism. It's what they believe in; it's what the Ryan budget that all but four of them voted for enshrines. It's what Scott Walker is doing to Wisconsin, what Rick Snyder is doing to Michigan, what Rick Scott is doing to Florida, what Jon Kasich is doing to Ohio. And it's dangerous to the well-being of this country. Hopefully Americans are waking up, and what happened when similar fascist parties in Europe pulled the same strategies in Europe in the '20s and '30s won't happen here.

Remember the House vote on Ryan's plan? Only 4 GOP members voted against Ryan's plan. Now the GOP wants to pretend that vote didn't happen as it isn't testing well in the polls. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) backed away slightly from the House-approved budget proposal drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) that would turn Medicare into a voucher program over ten years.

"I'm for it," Boehner told ABC's Topline. "It's our idea. Right? It's Paul's idea. Other people have other ideas. I'm not wedded to one single idea, but I think it's '" we have a plan."

The GOP has no respect for the intelligence of their red state voters. That they could just try to slip this by the proles who vote for them exemplifies their contempt for their constituents.

The GOP has historically given their top 1% cronies huge tax cuts. Without revenue what happens to the federal government? It runs into the red. Reagan dreamed of "starving the beast" and this reverie has always remained with GOP politicians. Everyone knew that the deficits would increase enormously if the nation was at war and the war wasn't paid for by increases in taxes. It took a boob like W to do this not only once, but twice and also jack up the debt with Homeland Security expenses and a new prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients.

Reagan's dream became the bottom 99%'s nightmare.

...The Democrats have reality on their side. At town hall meetings US citizens are clearly stating they want the US the social-welfare program benefits that they had spent their life contributing to.

It was a deal the citizens had scrimped and sacrificed for. They expect the Republicans to hold up their end of the deal.

So Rick Perry is out (Rick Perry, ferchrissakes?), but Tim "Mr. Invisible" Pawlenty is in

by Ken

And it's hard to know whether to be more appalled by the people who are or the people who aren't seeking the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. As you shake your head at the notion that anyone could ever have seriously thought that cretinous pile of sludge Rick Perry running for president was an idea (forget "good" idea), the capital is rocked with the news that the life form known as T-Paw will announce Monday that it "will formally enter the 2012 Republican presidential race on Monday in Iowa, an aide to his campaign Friday," according to WaPo Fixman Chris Cillizza ( who's also reporting that Princess Sarah Palin has 2012 fire in her belly).

If it comes down to a death struggle between "Mr. Invisible" and Willard Romney, it's hard to know who'll be more crazed -- sane people or right-wingers. After all, no matter how much these giant corporate tools try to hornswoggle the famous Republican base into thinking they're genu-wine nuttier-than-a-pecan-pie wingnuts, is anyone so crazy or stupid not to see that these guys aren't true "believers," but simply the most cynically corrupt whores they've been able to be?

When even someone as demented as well as corrupt as Newt Gingrich finds himself accused -- based on his own words, of course, of being too uncrazy, we've reached a pretty pass. Our pal Al Kamen had some fun at his expense in his Washington Post "In the Loop" column, in an item called "The quotable Mr. Gingrich." "Let Newt be Newt!" he declares, noting: "Conservatives have been throwing more than just glitter at Newt for criticizing Rep. [Paul] Ryan (Wis.), the ideas man of today’s GOP." The rest of the week, of course, Newt spent "humbly apologiz[ing] to Ryan and any other Republican he could find. And he attacked Democrats by saying, 'Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood,' because he has 'said publicly' he didn’t mean it."

Eventually Al gets more serious.

Maybe his departure from the race is inevitable. Maybe he simply can’t get in step with the new GOP. Liberals always attacked him as a conservative firebrand, but that was overwrought and 20 years ago. (It was long before he made those TV commercials with Nancy Pelosi, when he bought into that climate-change hoax.)

For example, in a lengthy 1989 interview with the magazine of the Ripon Society, a liberal Republican think tank, Gingrich talked about “the classic moderate wing of the party, where, as a former Rockefeller state chairman, I spent most of my life.” Hmm . . .

He credited his then-recent election as GOP whip to a coalition with House moderates such as now-Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine) and said, “I believe in the party of the big tent.” Oh, dear.

He spoke fondly of an active government, of “pragmatism,” and of “the cooperative efforts of Americans -- whether it is building the Transcontinental Railroad, populating the West through the Homestead Act, setting up the Agricultural Agent system” etc.

Ayn Rand might be appalled.

Then there’s this: “The more power there is in a political system, the more the powerful exploit it. New York has ended up a dream world for the poor. It has become a place where Donald Trump manipulates the game.” Funny, they seemed to get along just fine at the White House correspondents dinner.

It gets worse. “What we’ve discovered over the last 20 years,” he said, “is that the world that enriches politicians is the world that enriches a handful of millionaire developers.” Not to mention oil and gas billionaires.

If anyone can stave off the appearance of sanity, it's our Newt, but the craziness may have reached a level where no one really can do it. There must surely be a breeze of caution, if not dread, blowing on T-Paw and Willard. They have an obvious advantage in the kind of cash they have access to. However, you have to wonder if they can make themselves appear cracked enough for the people who determine choose Republican nominees.

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Who Says Washington Doesn't Listen?

-by Noah

Back on April 27th, I wrote a post about how I figured the Repug Party would react to the news that President Obama had released his long form birth certificate. Considering the daily and even hourly displays of Republican insanity, my speculations were pretty realistic. But, at the end of my post, I hinted at the commercialization of everything and I asked “Can I have that certificate printed on a mug for my tea?
 
Well, we may not have an end to oil subsidies, even though 74% of the American public has requested that of our bought and sold U.S. Senators. Also, Washington may still be spending billions times billions of our taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan and buying off Wall Street scam artists and bankster flim-flammers, but, hey, sometimes it’s the little things; the very little things.

Yesterday, I was greeted with the news, by way of a White House mass emailing, from BarackObama.com that, yes, the president’s birth certificate will indeed now be available, not only on my requested mug but also on a t-shirt. See! The White House listens! They feel my pain! I can now have a spiffy birth certificate mug for my tea (I don’t drink coffee)! 

Now, I have some additional requests:

1. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a deluxe version that had the birth certificate just disappear as the level of your beveridge went down? Kinda like those old “disappearing clothes” cocktail glasses with the pretty ladies on ‘em?
 
2. OK. Don’t like that one? Too expensive? How about a simple bit of guerilla marketing? What if every lefty bought a mug, or two, and sent it to FOX “News” headquarters in New York? I’d love to see a million of them turn up on their doorstep. This plan would raise millions for FOX’s arch-enemy, President Obama, and cause them a major headache. Imagine the pain it would cause FOX, birther champions that they are, if this plan became some sort of highly ironic viral reality that helped re-elect President Obama. Hell, even I might vote for him. This plan might even save the U.S. Postal Service!
 
3. Send one to the Repug of your choice. Trump? Bachmann? Hannity? Boehner? Fruitcakes all! Just imagine the fun that will ensue for these hate-mongers as their offices are overwhelmed with little boxes of mugs; everyday bringing a fresh shipment to replace the ones discarded the day before. It’s clear that the only way to deal with these people is to drive them up the wall. Makes a great holiday gift for that wacko relative, too! So, have at it. No mercy!
 
4. Speaking of no mercy. You know how Republicans think that Obama wants to indoctrinate school kids with his evil socialistic secret muslim, dastardly “Kenyan world view” ways? Well, kids love stickers! That’s right. Flood our schools with little 3x3 birth certificate stickers! Our nation’s kids will be plastering them everywhere! What’s not to like? Can birth certificate lunch boxes be far behind? No wonder nutjob Republican governors are closing schools as fast as they can.
 
The White House has managed to turn the beliefs and delusions of the Republican Birth Certificate Cult to their advantage. However, polls show that 30% of the crackpot party still believes President Obama was born elsewhere. Crazy is as crazy does. I fully expect the Repugs to dismiss the mugs by claiming that it’s just a conspiracy to sell Kenyan coffee and make it some sort of mandated “national drink.” Maybe it’s time for President Obama to just say “I showed you mine. Now, you show yours.” It would fit nicely on the t-shirt, too.

Mitch Daniels Is Serious The Same Way A Heart Attack Is Serious... Or Paul Ryan

Ryan & Daniels-- as serious as it gets in GOP-land

Beltway pundits are desperately trying to create a serious contender for the GOP. Most have proven their worth by pushing Trump and Newt into the American consciousness for no reason beyond the entertainment value. The president of NBC's entertainment division summed it up beautifully Monday, when announcing Trump's new television season: "the crazier the celebrities, the bigger the ratings." And now the same clods and knaves who brought Trump and Newt into our living rooms day after day are lining up behind a little-known governor for Indiana, Mitch Daniels. Where have you heard that name before? While you're thinking about it, contemplate this vision of America-- one formulated by Paul Ryan when he was reading Ayn Rand-- that Mitch Daniels shares with him:



As Rachel Maddow pointed out Monday, in the video at the bottom of the post, Daniels biggest contribution to America was his deadly stint as head of George W. Bush's OMG, where he led the efforts to turn the Clinton $236 billion surplus into the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression. I suppose that's why right-wing pundits keep pushing him as "serious." Daniels' "fiscal conservatism" left us with a $400 billion deficit after his two year tenure at OMB-- and set us well on the road to utter catastrophe.

[B]ecause of proposals developed on Daniels's watch-- such as tax cuts favoring the rich and unpaid-for projects, including the invasion of Iraq and a new prescription drug plan-- the fiscal situation of the federal government continued to sink over the ensuing years, plunging to a trillion-dollar-plus annual deficit by the time Bush left office in 2009.

Though Daniels was surely not at fault for all the elements in this budgetary catastrophe, he was a central player in the early stages of the process. A former political operative for Ronald Reagan and an Eli Lilly pharmaceutical executive, Daniels was the salesman who pitched and defended Bush's plans. ... [W]ith Daniels at the budget helm, the Bush administration quickly veered off-course and onto the rocks of a worsening debt crisis. Much of the expected surplus was squandered with huge tax cuts, leaving the nation vulnerable to unexpected economic and policy shocks like those that followed the 9/11 attacks.

...In 2002, Daniels famously low-balled the war's cost at $50 billion to $60 billion and joined in the repudiation of Bush's economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, who had ventured an estimate as high as $200 billion. Daniels called Lindsey's price tag "very, very high."

But it turned out that even Lindsey's estimate, which led to his firing later that year, was very, very low. As of fiscal 2011, the Congressional Research Service reported that the Iraq War had cost $806 billion, with estimates putting the eventual total cost of the conflict at over $1 trillion.

Though Daniels's defenders say it is unfair to blame him for all of Bush's policy decisions, Daniels was "a key figure in the administration, helping design policies and pressing publicly for their enactment," Salon.com's Brendan Nyhan reported in a Feb. 12, 2002, article.

Besides citing Daniels's political role in pushing through Bush's deficit-oriented policies, Nyhan noted that Daniels's appointment to run the Office of Management and Budget marked an important evolution in the role of budget director from accounting wonk to political marketer.

"It is another sign of the importance P.R. tactics play in American politics," Nyhan wrote. "The OMB director-- once a budget expert-- is now an operative chosen for his political skills, particularly his ability to sell the administration's economic proposals in the media.

"In August [2001], Daniels admitted as much, telling the Wall Street Journal that '[t]o the extent I bring anything ... to this job, maybe it's an ability to think about how a product, whether it's Prozac or a president's proposal, is marketed.' Predictably, he has displayed a disturbing tendency to make dishonest claims for political advantage on federal budget issues."

For instance, Nyhan noted that Daniels first promoted the Bush tax cuts as a way to "share some of this large overcharge [the surplus] with the American people," but later he repackaged it as an economic stimulus. He also blamed the sudden $1.345 trillion drop in the projected surplus on various economic and technical factors, but the Congressional Budget Office cited the tax cut's $1.7 trillion price tag.

...Daniels also was ready to stoop to accounting trickery to make Bush's budgets seem less irresponsible.

"In the federal budget process, [Daniels's] OMB has employed a number of accounting devices and misleading assumptions to conceal the true costs of tax cuts, restore budgets to balance artificially and otherwise tried to achieve political ends by tricky budgetary means," Nyhan wrote.

"In the Bush budget plan, for example, the administration projects a return to surpluses in 2004 or 2005, but this ignores the cost of extending a provision protecting millions of middle income taxpayers from a tax increase under the individual alternative minimum tax. ...

"It is a matter of serious public concern that the federal budget director has become just another spinner dragging down public debate. Though he is a political appointee heading an executive agency, Daniels is also a public official with a larger responsibility to promote honesty in federal budget debates.

"But after more than a year at his position, he still frequently makes deceptive claims often without challenge. Daniels may not recognize the difference from his previous job [as a pharmaceutical executive], but we must. It is unacceptable to market our nation's economic policies like Prozac."

Yet, Daniels continues to lead a charmed life as far as Official Washington is concerned. From Fox News to MSNBC, he is praised as a "fiscal conservative" who would uplift the debate over the nation's debt crisis. He is widely praised for his work as Indiana's governor and -- although his title as Bush's budget director is mentioned in passing-- his work on some of the most reckless budgets in U.S. history escapes scrutiny.

Much more attention has been spent on his supposedly uncharacteristic deviation as Indiana's governor into enacting some of the nation's harshest anti-abortion rules and other right-wing social legislation. There's also been some coverage of his off-again-on-again marriage and whether his wife wants him to seek the White House.

But Daniels stands today as the latest Republican hailed for his wisdom and courage regarding budget issues.

He follows Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, the House Budget Committee chairmen whose inside-the-beltway reputation as a "serious" thinker only collapsed when the voters got a look at his plan for "saving" Medicare-- by killing the current government-run system and replacing it with a private-sector voucher approach-- while demanding still more tax cuts for the rich.

The fact that the Republicans, including Daniels and Ryan, were major supporting players in George W. Bush's diversion of the United States from its course a decade ago toward a debt-free government-- indeed one with a sizeable surplus-- to one burdened with the largest debt in the history of the world is never mentioned.

Like Ryan, Daniels remains "a fiscal conservative," at least in the boilerplate judgment of Washington's conventional wisdom.

Paul Krugman has been introducing Ryan to the American public for almost a year now-- from his famous flim-flam man column to yesterday's "Ryan turns out to be an empty suit, parroting the usual line...there’s no there there (and there never was)." He needs to get busy on Daniels, who should be even easier pickings even if he can raise millions from the old crowd that financed Bush's profitable (for them anyway) two terms. Maybe he's waiting for him to jump into the race.