Reality Check!!

In the wake of the re-election of Barack Hussein Obama there is elation in liberal and Democratic circles and soul searching in the Republican folds.

The focus is on the fact that “Democrats have won the popular vote in four out of the last five Presidential elections — including the 2000 race in which Al Gore got 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush nationally, but wound up losing the electoral vote by two votes, courtesy of the Supreme Court.” See here. Of course, at the same time it overlooks that Obama, is the only Democratic President since F.D.R. to be granted a second term by a popular majority. See here.

But the first part sounds good! Makes for good headlines! Even has Republicans eating crow. Thus Governor Bobby Jindal in the most dramatic words of any Republican spokesperson said:  

We’ve got to stop being the stupid party… It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults. It’s time for us to articulate our plans and our visions for America in real terms… We are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes or big anything…We must not be the party that simply protects the well off so that they can keep their toys.

So is it a whole new ball game. Have Republicans seen the light? Or in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, is it  “deja vu all over again".

It is a mere six years since I posted an article on my blog entitled "Euphoria and Reality" in which I pointed out that despite the big win in mid-term elections, the ability to govern was far from our grasp. After 2008 euphoria was even greater, but it was still a very big slog to get real reform enacted. To get the stimulus enacted, three Republican votes had to be found to overcome a filibuster, and the three votes were bought by diluting the crucial funding of state governments, leading to enormous job losses in the state’s public sectors, and a drag on job creation in the private sector.

But now in the elation of 2012 we seem to have forgotten what happened a mere two years ago. That was a real drubbing. As a result in 25 of the 50 states Republicans have complete control of all three branches of government, and 30 of the 50 states have Republican governors.  This came at a very propitious time for them since it followed the 2010 census, allowing them to redraw Congressional and even state legislative lines so as to assure them of a majority in State legislatures and in the House of Representatives into the indefinite future. See here. As of this year Democrats will hold complete sway in only 13 states. See here.

But what of the new Republican awakening as outlined by Jindal? Just recently he introduced into his state legislature a plan to “eliminate Louisiana's income and corporate taxes and pay for those cuts with increased sales taxes…” which according “to the Institute onTaxation and Economic Policy, would end up cutting taxes for the wealthiest Louisianans while raising taxes on the bottom 80 percent of Louisianans. So much for “We must not be the party that simply protects the well off so that they can keep their toys.” The talk has changed! The reality has not!

And is Jindal this new Republican moderate on other issues? According to Raw Story he favors "allowing creationism to be taught in biology classes, opposes abortion in all cases, votes against expanding federal funding for stem cell research and supports a constitutional ban on marriage equality."

So what does he mean when he says we have to stop being “the stupid party"? He means that they have to be better at obfuscation.

The fact is that the shift in state taxes from income to sales taxes, increases the burden on lower incomes, and decreases the burden on upper incomes, and it is happening in Republican controlled states, through out. For example Republicans in North Carolina are pushing such a plan. Kansas, which cut its income tax significantly last year, may trim further. Oklahoma, which tried to cut income taxes last year, is expected to try again. See here.

But far more ominous are Republican attempts to fix not only congressional elections by gerrymandering, but fixing the electoral votes by changing the rules.

They tried to suppress the vote in the last election. It didn’t work, or at least it didn’t work well enough. As the Washington Post wrote, now Republicans:

...who have control of states that went for President Obama in the 2012 election are pushing for their states to change how they award electoral votes. While almost every state awards electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis, Republicans want these states to instead award one vote to the winner of each congressional district. 

The other two electoral votes that each state has likely would be given to the statewide winner, as they are in the two states that currently employ this method: Maine and Nebraska. 

The new system would allow Republicans to consistently win electoral votes (and quite possibly a majority of electoral votes) from states like Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Virginia, regardless of whether they win the statewide vote. 

All five of these states went for Obama in 2012. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have consistently gone blue at the presidential level, and Virginia is tilting in that direction, which would make winning any electoral votes in these states a victory for the GOP. 

Why does it matter? 

It matters because the congressional district method gives the GOP a much better chance of winning, since a strong majority of U.S. congressional districts lean Republican. 

In fact, if every state awarded its electoral votes by congressional district, it’s likely that Mitt Romney would have won the 2012 presidential election despite losing the popular vote by nearly four percentage points. See here.

They are talking about a new party. They are talking about being more inclusive. About courting the Hispanic vote by supporting legalization of the 11 million illegal aliens in the US. Watch what they do, not what they say. It is already no legalization until the borders are secure, and of course we have been trying to make the borders secure for decades. They will never be secure enough to suit these pretend converts. They are owned lock stock and barrel by a majority of Caucasians, mostly rural, who founded this country on slavery and will never, never, accept the idea that they may no longer be the majority. They will do whatever it takes to keep the vote in their hands. Charles Krauthammer writing in the Washington Post speaks for them. “There is an obvious solution: enforcement first.” Even if somehow Republicans in the Congress agree to legalization, i.e. Green Cards, the will never agree to citizenship. Would they really allow 11 million more non-whites to vote, particularly if they are more then likely going to vote Democratic? I think not! Or as the Christian Science Monitor explains: 

In addition to sinking $1 billion into the failed "virtual fence," the US government has spent $2.6 billion for 650 miles of solid border. This wall doesn’t deter people – but it does defy the laws that protect the land.

As for the idea that the illegal aliens have to go to the end of the line before being considered for legalization that is the biggest hoax of them all. As was pointed out in a recent article in the New York Times:

If we really want to tackle unauthorized migration, we need to understand why it exists in the first place. The most important cause is our system of allocating green cards, or visas for permanent residency, which stipulates that no country may have more than 7 percent of the total each year. With an annual ceiling of 366,000 family- and employer-sponsored visas, the per-country limit is 25,620. 

“In practice, this means it is easy to immigrate here from, say, Belgium or New Zealand, but there are long waits — sometimes decades — for applicants from China, India, Mexico and the Philippines. These four max out on the limit every year. When critics admonish prospective immigrants — as well as the 11 million plus undocumented migrants currently in America — to “go to the back of the line,” they should realize that for many people the line is a cruel joke.

Republicans may go along with allowing illegal immigrants, who in the words of Senator McCain are, “… individuals to mow our lawn, serve our food, clean our homes and even watch our children, while not affording them any of the benefits that make our country so great, … I think everyone agrees that it’s not beneficial to our country to have these people hidden in the shadows.”

Republicans may allow them to come out of the shadows, but I predict that giving them citizenship and the right to vote is something that they will fight to the bitter end.

For a history of attempts at immigration reform, see here.

Marco Rubio, a descendent of Cubans, who won his Florida Senate seat, by less than 50% of the vote because his opposition was split, has been touted as the great immigration reformer. Is he? See here.

The cry of  “no amnesty” may no longer be the rallying cry, but citizenship and the right to vote is another matter all together. Of course that “no amnesty" cry was always phony, for we have statutes of limitations for every crime except murder. Why would we not have a statute of limitations for aliens having come here illegally decades ago?

But people who have made lives for themselves in this country, who have been here for decades, who have families here, are entitled to not only come out of the shadows, but to have full participation in our Democracy. Nothing else can or should be accepted.

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The Deficit Reduction Committee

Surprise, Surprise! The Deficit Reduction Committee did not reach agreement.

Our media, as is their wont, bills it as a failure of our two parties unwillingness to compromise, and as a symptom of our broken government. But it is not the former, and it is the latter, only in so far as one of our two major parties, the Republican Party, is determined to keep government from working. As the old saying goes: “it takes two to tango.”

No compromise was possible because the Right (Republican Party) has no interest in what the Committee was charged with accomplishing, i.e. deficit reduction and they demonstrated this again in blocking any possibility of agreement.

           

As I have demonstrated in past writings on the deficit, Republicans have no interest in deficit reduction. It is simply a weapon with which to destroy the hated, “Welfare State.” I discussed this at length, and I urge you to go back and read my posts starting with my latest post on the subject: "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part VI)" and working backwards from there, using the links provided.

           

To repeat part of what I said in these posts:

Their lack of concern with the deficit can easily be seen in that not one of their proposed “reforms” decreases the deficit. The Ryan plan, which has passed the House with almost unanimous Republican support (four Republicans voted against it and no Democrats voted for it) would, according to Representative Paul Ryan himself, add $6 trillion to the national debt over ten years as reported by the Economist, hardly a left wing source, and as far as I can find nowhere else in the media.

This lack of concern with the deficit surfaced again in the deliberations of the “The Deficit Reduction Committee.” Democrats genuinely concerned with the deficit and anxious to reach agreement offered to agree to cuts in entitlement programs, which need to be cut in any case for their sustainability, as I discussed in my post which you can find here. 

They asked that Republicans come to the table with an agreement that would raise revenues, and until a few days before the deadline the Republicans on the panel would not put one dime in increased revenue on the table. With the deadline fast approaching they finally talked about an “increase (in) tax revenue by $300 billion, which was seen by some lawmakers as a breakthrough given the party’s resistance to increased revenues.”  

Since the committee was charged with coming up with at least 1.2 trillion in reduction to the deficit, this would have meant that Democrats would have to agree to $ 900 billion in cuts, a three to one ratio. The Dems swallowed hard and indicated they might be willing to go along. They thought they had a breakthrough, in so far a Republicans finally appeared to have put “added revenue” on the table. Then came the kicker! In order for them to agree to 300 billion in added revenue, Dems would have to agree to extend the Bush tax cuts, or a decrease in revenue of $4 trillion. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to see that if you deduct 2.1 trillion from 4 trillion, you get 1.9 trillion, the amount by which the deficit would be increased. Or to put it another way, it’s the Ryan budget all over again. You cut entitlement spending and you increase the deficit at the same time, which, according to their logic requires further slashing of entitlements and other programs that they don’t like. Or heads we win, tails you lose. Needless to say, there was no agreement.

But where was the media to explain all this? As usual they were missing in action. All they could come up with was a shake of the head and the usual bromide, “Why can’t they agree.” Well there is a damn good reason why! There was no desire on the part of the Republicans to offer anything that remotely accomplishes anything, other than do away with entitlements.

How could any sane Democrat agree to this?

Why doesn’t the media, who even with their fear of speaking the truth is denounced by the Right, speak the truth for once. Why are they so afraid of being accused of partisanship? Telling the truth wherever it may lead, is what good journalism is supposed to be all about.

One of the few media outlets, The Christian Science Monitor reported what happened accurately:

Republicans insisted during the super committee negotiations that curbing tax breaks to raise revenues be coupled with guarantees that all the Bush tax cuts would continue beyond 2012…Democrats countered that the super committee was created to reduce the budget deficit, not add to it by extending tax cuts.

The Economist all alone tells us the way it is:

The game being played here has little to do with the budget itself. It is an ideological debate about the role and obligation of government. First, cut taxes for the wealthy to create a big hole in the budget, have a Great Recession aid the cause by stripping government at all levels of tax revenue, increasing costs of serving people, and creating short-run deficit problems (and a war here and there doesn't hurt the cause either), and finally use the deficit as a club against social insurance programs such as Medicare and Social Security. 

So we have ended up with $1.2 trillion cuts going into effect beginning in 2013. $600 billion of that will be in defense spending which is in addition to a cut of $450 billion previously agreed to. Not the worst of all possible outcomes, and in 2013 the Bush tax cuts will expire. No Congressional action is needed. Beginning in 2013 the deficit will be reduced over the following ten years by 6.1 trillion. The hammer of using the deficit to justify attacks on needed spending will be gone. Not bad negotiating by our President.

In response to my post “What can we, and should we do about the deficit?” Bruce Weintraub wrote:

Republicans should be forced to make choices too:  Either an increase in marginal tax rates for the superwealthy or steep cuts in ‘defense’. But Democrats NEVER put them on the spot.

Well Bruce, they did, and the “Elephants” were maneuvered into agreeing to steep defense cuts.

            

Would Bruce and the Left please apologize to our President and admit he did a brilliant job of negotiating under the most difficult circumstances.


The threat to our National Security according to Admiral Mike Mullin then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is our debt, as shown below:

While Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, has talked about all kinds of disasters from cuts in defense of $1 trillion, this does not square with the facts. As an article in US News and World Report points out: 

Despite the doomsday scenarios continually espoused by Secretary Panetta and the military chiefs, a cut of that size would amount to only 15 percent, in real terms return spending to its 2007 level, and still leave the United States above what we spent on average in the Cold War. Finally, such a cut would be far less than cuts made by Eisenhower (27 percent), Nixon (29 percent), and Reagan, H.W. Bush, and Clinton (35 percent), which were done without jeopardizing security.

           

Now the Republican deception takes full form in a column by Charles Krauthammer that appeared in the November 24 issue of the Washington Post, under the heading “The Grover Norquist tax myth." I will analyze this point by point in my next post.

I regret that I was forced by events to abandon my analysis of where we could beneficially cut spending. Hopefully events will make it possible for me to return to beneficial cutting without ignoring developing news.

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