An Enemy Of My Enemy Can Do The Right Thing Sometimes... Even If He's My Enemy Too

There's very little positive an honest man can say about the DCCC. They're part of the problem, not the solution to it. This year their recruitment of conservative and corrupt assholes like Marty Chavez in Albuquerque, Val Demings and Luis Garcia in Florida and Ann Kirkpatrick in Arizona, lays bare their hypocritical railing against conservative Republicans for voting the same way their own conservative kennel votes. On rare occasions they stumble into doing the right thing. Yesterday, for example, they went on an online rampage against Medicare destroyer Paul Ryan (R-WI)-- after assiduously protecting his seat for almost a decade.

Afraid to be blamed, as he should be, for the S&P downgrade of American credit-- something that could cost American citizens billions by increasing the cost of mortgages, auto loans, student loans, as well as the cost of anything you are not paying for with cash and by further slowing the economic recovery and screwing up the jobs market-- Ryan is suddenly open to raising taxes, something that would have prevented this disaster just a few weeks ago.

Ryan said on Fox News Sunday that he would be open to a deal that contains $3 or $4 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increases if it came through a major reform of the tax code and was large enough.

That was the deal Obama offered the GOP all summer and that the American people favored in every poll-- and that Ryan and the GOP flatly turned down. Maybe they were shaken up by the S&P blaming the downgrade on their intransigence. Tight from the S&P report:

The political brinkmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.

...It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options.

...The act contains no measures to raise taxes or otherwise enhance revenues, though the committee could recommend them.

...Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

So... back to the DCCC's new aggressiveness towards Ryan. Supposedly they're going to help Rob Zerban beat him... although I'll believe that when I see it. (Meanwhile, Rob is still counting on you.) But at least they're sending out nice anti-Ryan messages on the Twitter machine, sniping at his lies on Fox:

Today on Fox News Sunday, Republican Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (WI-01) repeatedly and falsely said that he and House Republicans want to “reform” Medicare. 

In reality, Ryan and House Republicans have voted three times to end Medicare and raise health care costs for seniors.

FACT CHECK

Ryan Voted for the Cut, Cap and Balance Plan that is More Extreme than the Republican Budget . The non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote: “The measure […] stands out as one of the most ideologically extreme pieces of major budget legislation to come before Congress in years, if not decades. […] The legislation would inexorably subject Social Security and Medicare to deep reductions.” [H.R. 2560, Vote #606, 7/19/11; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 7/16/11]

Ryan Voted to Deem the Republican Budget as Having been Passed by Congress. Representative Paul Ryan voted to end Medicare by supporting a “deeming resolution” in H. Res. 287 which states “the provisions of House Concurrent Resolution 34 […] shall have force and effect […] in the House as though Congress has adopted such concurrent resolution”. [H. Res. 287, Vote #382, 6/1/11]

Ryan Voted for the 2012 Republican Budget Proposal that Would “End Medicare.” In April, Paul Ryan voted to end Medicare by supporting the Republican budget. The Wall Street Journal reported “The plan would essentially end Medicare, which now pays most of the health-care bills for 48 million elderly and disabled Americans, as a program that directly pays those bills.” [H Con. Res. 34, Vote #277, 4/15/11; Wall Street Journal, 4/4/11]

There's Something Special Happening In The Orlando Area But You Won't Hear About It On Fox & Cox

As you know, Blue America has endorsed Alan Grayson's 2012 bid for a congressional seat. There's no reason to believe the DCCC will help him next year; they certainly didn't help him in 2010 and there are some who have noticed that they've recruited a conservative, religionist to run a primary campaign against him-- the former police chief who was arresting people for feeding the homeless in public parks, a DCCC type of candidate. Nevertheless, the DCCC has financed some robocalls this week against Taliban Dan Webster, the far right ideologue who is currently representing Orlando. Here's the text of the ad:

“Hi, this is Travis calling on behalf of the DCCC. Congressman Daniel Webster and Speaker Boehner would rather our economy default just to protect tax breaks for Big Oil companies and billionaire jet-owners. Republicans quit negotiating with President Obama on raising the debt ceiling. 

“This is serious.  Webster’s billionaire buddies will be ok. But we will pay the price if government can’t pay its bills. Our Social Security and Medicare benefits are at risk. Interest rates would spike for our credit cards, car loans, and mortgages. Our 401(k) retirement accounts would drop. And, gas and food prices would skyrocket.
 
“Enough is enough. Call Congressman Daniel Webster... and tell him not to gamble our future to protect tax breaks for Big Oil and billionaires.

Now, please scroll back up to the video above, a radio interview Grayson did last week with Adam Klugman, host of Portland's seminal radio show Mad As Hell In America. The whole exchange between Grayson and Klugman is wonderful-- how would you like to have radio like this in your town instead of the nonstop right-wing propaganda barrage?-- but I want to go to an answer Grayson gave at the end to a caller asking about more and better Democrats:

We need both more and better Democrats. But Karl Rove has to some extent taken care of that problem for us by knocking off 28 out of the 54 Blue Dog members in Congress. The caucus barely exists anymore. What's going to happen is, over time people are going to see that the only winning strategy for a Democrat is to be a Democrat-- and to be a proud Democrat.

And in another Orlando-area district we have a proud Democrat, Nick Ruiz, running in the 24th CD against right-wing zombie Sandy Adams. Yesterday, commenting on the debt ceiling negotiations Nick-- who was the first candidate endorsed by Blue America for this cycle-- Nick urged President Obama to "shock us and do something progressive; something unabashedly Democratic. After all, to be a Democrat, is to be progressive." He's the kind of independent-minded progressive that makes the DCCC nervous. They want the same kind of party hack automatons-- like Sandy Adams is for the GOP-- not principled freethinkers who feel their only allegiance is to the working families from their districts. Nick:

The reason Obama was elected in 2008, the first African-American president in American history, was that he talked the talk of progressive politics… sort of. Let’s face it: he looked more progressive than he actually talked. And Lord knows, looks aren’t everything. Democrats took the bait like a marlin in the open sea. And now they’re hooked and flailing about.
 
With all this talk of debt-- what say you? Cut the New Deal? That’s their answer. What’s yours?
 
Like flowers that bend toward the sun-- BHO’s domestic policy is bent on Wall Street. Whereas, domestic policy should revolve around Main Street. I would tell House Republicans that default is not an option. Cutting the New Deal is not an option. We will raise the ceiling and we will expand the New Deal in this time of need. With or without you.
 
To the Senate Democrats I would say-– the politics of weakness is a politics of failure. Start acting like Democrats, or start looking for another line of work.
 
The American people want representation-– not bogus advertisements of solidarity.

The DCCC isn't going to help us get people like Alan Grayson or Nick Ruiz into Congress. We have to do it ourselves. Can you help make Congress less the playground of transpartisan crooked lobbyists and oligarchs?

Michigan As Micocosm For Democratic Party Doom... Or Renaissance?

Yesterday we looked at Ken Quinnell's crowd sourced study of which state legislatures were the worst in the country. The big 3 were, Wisconsin, Florida and, at #1 worst, Arizona. I was surprised Michigan only came in at the 10th worst. After all, Rick Snyder and his zombie legislators are attacking the foundations of democracy itself and seem to be on the path to full on fascism. Of course, Michigan has a long and sordid history of flirting with fascism. So Snyder's actions this year aren't considered beyond the pale in many Michigan circles.

Michigan became the first state to pass a Financial Martial Law bill, giving unelected emergency managers extensive powers to run local governments without oversight from local officials, effectively eliminating democracy in areas of the state that hit hard financial times.

The law granted sweeping new authority to appointed managers, including powers to cancel or renegotiate union contracts, sell off assets and privatize public services. In Detroit, the school district’s emergency manager, Robert Bobb, announced shortly after the passage of the bill that 8 schools would be closing and 45 others bid out to private charter operators; in April, he issued layoff notices to every teacher and staff member in the district. In Benton Harbor, manager Joseph Harris issued an executive order effectively stripping all city boards and commissions from taking any action whatsoever.

Word is if you are an orphan, Michigan isn't the place to be, since the state is cutting money to help orphaned children get clothes. The Michigan legislature also doesn't seem to like LGBT people much, as it tried to punish universities that give benefits to same-sex domestic partners.

Non-Michiganders were exposed to what the GOP was up to in that state for the first time this spring with this report from Rachel Maddow:





So perfect for a Democratic takeover, right? Um... maybe... if enough voters decide they can get excited about choosing between the lesser of two evils. Last week Eric Baerren did a study of Michigander's attitudes towards the state's Democratic Party. Pretty bad! His conclusion: "Michigan Democrats hate the Michigan Democratic Party" and that "50 percent of Democratic voters in Detroit think that the Michigan Democratic Party is out of date and too focused on the past."

When asked who is the best Democratic leader in Michigan, most Democratic voters in the latest Denno Research poll, conducted on behalf of Michigan Liberal and First Shift with Tony Trupiano, said U.S. Sen. Carl Levin. Levin got 34.5 percent of votes. Coming in second? "I have no idea," or "None of the above," with 31 percent, edging out Debbie Stabenow 26.3 percent. Mark Brewer, the state party chairman, came in second to last with barely above percent.

Know who does well with Michigan Democrats, probably better than anyone else? Barack Obama. We've heard a lot about the possibility that Obama could lose his base support next year. They like his economic policies (well, except in the U.P.), they like his war policy, they think he's struck the right tone, they think they're better off since he was inaugurated. Right now, according to this poll, Obama will have his base support, especially since it's pretty clear that Democratic voters really, really don't like what Republicans are doing right now.

The people that need to worry about losing their base support is, in fact, the Michigan Democratic Party (my guess is that they've already done it). In every relevant question, the MDP polled poorly. Michigan Democrats and independent voters who vote for Democrats blame poor messaging and leadership for much of last year's wipeout, and in a poll of the best Democratic leader, Mark Brewer beat out only Gretchen Whitmer (which was itself surprising).

Taken as a whole, I think what this poll is, is a giant no-confidence vote in the Michigan Democratic Party among Democrats and progressives. To that bloc of voters, the MDP is wallowing in the past, rudderless, out of date, and too reliant on organized labor.

As angry as Michigan voters are at Snyder and his right-wing legislators, "they place a surprising level of blame for their party's failures last year on lackluster candidates and message... Nearly 50 percent [of respondents] said it was a combination of lousy candidates, bad messaging and a lack of leadership at the top."

How indicative is the Democratic Party mess in Michigan of a national malaise across the country? My gut tells me, very. It's why so many millions of Democrats and left-leaning independents stayed away from the polls entirely in 2010 and let the teabaggers take over the House. No one was enthusiastic about seeing malevolent slimebags like Boehner and Cantor take over but voters were repulsed by the empty promises from Obama and the reactionary politics of the Blue Dogs and other corrupt ConservaDems. So they let them go down to a well-earned defeat. More than half the Blue Dogs were driven from Congress. But did the DCCC learn a thing? Absolutely not. They immediately named an "ex" Blue Dog, conservative hack Steve Israel, to head the committee and started recruiting the exact kind of candidates the voters had just defeated-- in many cases, the very same people, like conservative shills Ann Kirkpatrick in Arizona and, reportedly, Chris Carney in Pennsylvania. And some of the DCCC's "new" faces dredged up by Israel are even more disgusting.

Republican mobster David Rivera (FL-25) is probably the most vulnerable Republican incumbent anywhere. Florida Republicans are so embarrassed by his behavior and his blatant corruption that they're considering adding Democratic-leaning Key West to his district to help get rid of him (and make Ileana Ros Lehtinen safer). So what does the DCCC come up with to fight Rivera? It's as though Israel said, find me the worst garbage in the state and bring him to me. Voila-- Luis Garcia, a former member of the Democrats For Jeb Bush steering committee, who recently threatened to switch parties and join the Republicans.

Similarly, in Albuquerque, the DCCC recruited an anti-union, anti-environment corporate shill, Marty Chavez, to run for the open congressional seat, despite the fact that the state's leading progressive legislator, Eric Griego, was already a declared candidate.

And the DSCC is busy trying to get reactionary Blue Dogs Joe Donnelly (IN) and Jim Matheson (UT), who consistently vote with Boehner and Cantor on key issues, to run for Senate seats. Is there any wonder that ordinary working voters are disgusted with the Democratic Establishment in DC? And that's not even to mention Obama offering to make the Republicans' dreams come true with more devastating tax breaks for the rich coupled with catastrophic cutbacks to Social Security and Medicare. Yes, a "D" is better than an "F"... but how much better? Enough to get you to bother to go vote?

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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Rummaging around among the disclosure forms of the House GOP plutocrats and debthounds

Is Paul "How to Marry a Millionaire" Ryan going to teach us all how to marry a mining heiress?

Frederick Deligne, in Le Pèlerin (France)

by Ken

Wednesday, you may have noticed, was Disclosure Day, when congressmembers' annual financial disclosure forms were made public, listing income, assets, liabilities, and other data. The Washington Post's David A. Fahrenthold and Karen Yourish focused on "the firebrand class of Republican freshmen" and found heavy concentrations of Richie Riches and debthounds. They found "at least 24 new millionaires," joining "a Congress that already had plenty." At the other end of the spectrum, however, they found:

Among the 87 new GOP members of Congress, the documents show, at least 30 had liabilities totaling $50,000 or more in 2010.

Those debts included large mortgages on investment properties, as well as student loans and credit card balances. At least seven freshmen had credit card debt exceeding $15,000.

As the WaPo reporters note,

The newcomers have helped press a simple GOP message about the public debt: The country has too much and must reduce its burden immediately.

"Among those with credit card debt," Fahrenthold and Yourish report, "was Rep. Blake Farenthold (Tex.) [presumably no relation to reporter Fahrenthold], who has pressed for major action to control the national debt."

Earlier this year, Farenthold issued a statement rejecting any increase in the debt limit without major spending cuts.

“Like the rest of America,” the statement said, ‘the government needs to tighten its belt and work within its means.”

Farenthold’s 2010 disclosure forms show credit card debt of $45,000 to $150,000. A spokeswoman for the congressman said she could not comment, because she had not located his accountant to discuss the filing.

SPEAKING OF THOSE CONGRESSIONAL MILLIONAIRES . . .

Meanwhile reporter Fahrenthold teamed with Paul Kane to look at the House plutocrats, starting with the ones who run the place: "House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) , the GOP leaders who rode to power on the grassroots wave of tea-party activists, are multi-millionaires with financial investments in some of the nation’s largest corporations."

OF COURSE HOUSE DEMS AS A CLASS
AREN'T EXACTLY POVERTY-STRICKEN EITHER

As Howie has been pointing at DWT here for years, this has been a cornerstone of the caucus's electoral strategy dating back at least to the reign of Master Rahm Emanuel at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, whose practice was to look wherever possible for "self-funding" candidates, whose personal wealth, and willingness to spend it to get elected, constituted a gift that would keep on giving: not just providing a campaign war chest, but offering strong assurance that in the event of success the newly minted incumbent would faithfully uphold and defend the interests of the plutocrats. Win-win is the technical term, I believe. As the old saying goes, "Money talks, everybody else f**k off."

And then there's the extra-special case of the Man Who Would Be America's Economic Mastermind, at least if the rising-star class of Republicans have their way. (Remember the "Young Guns"?)

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), the House Budget Committee chairman whose 2012 budget has dominated the congressional agenda recently, has practiced what he preaches in his personal finances in terms of shrinking the mounting federal debt. The 41-year-old is worth at least $1 million, much of it from his wife’s family holdings in an Oklahoma mining company and an Oklahoma gravel company. Ryan’s own investments include holdings in Apple (at least $1,000), Berkshire Hathaway ($1,000), Google ($1,000), McDonald’s ($1,000) and Phillip Morris ($1,000). [Emphasis added.]

Now as we've been pointing out ever since Paul "How to Marry a Millionaire" Ryan emerged from whatever rock he crawled out from under, the man is an economic ignoramus -- and that's not a slur, just a simple statement of fact. His tiny brain is apparently so muddled that it's impossible to distinguish the point at which the ignorance and delusion give way to plain old lies. HIs economic "insights" come from the burblings of Ayn Rand, a writer so stupid and ill-informed that she would have had to be smartened up by an order of magnitude to qualify as a moron.

I don't think "ironic" is quite the word to describe the situation where the man anointed as the great economic thinker who has been charged -- by himself, anyways -- with restructuring the U.S. economy is a total tool of . . . well, why don't we just say a total tool? I suppose it's touching to learn that the Ryans, concerned parents, "have already invested more than $150,000 in college savings plans" for their three young children. What a tender tribute to their parental caring! But we need to bear in mind that this is the economic perspective of the man charged with carving up a new version of the American economic pie, whose idea of "equality of opportunity" is heavily weighted toward the children of men who marry into mining fortunes.

Do we need to ask him specifically how he feels about that "second Bill of Rights" President Franklin Roosevelt enumerated in his 1944 State of the Union address? (The last of the rights he enumerated as having already "become accepted as self-evident," by the way, was "the right to a good education.") I doubt it. After all, it's people like him who have been denouncing FDR and the New Deal since it was being formulated, and now see its dismantling within their greedy grasp.

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