Hullabaloo

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

 
Fighting 47%ers

by digby

Yesterday I wrote about the 47% who don't pay federal income taxes due to the fact that they are able to make so little money (a shameful statistic in the wealthiest country in the world.)I pointed out that this number was mostly made up of single mothers with kids and the elderly poor. I got a note from a reader reminding me of this little factoid as well:

Among the 47% are US military personnel, military civilians, and other civilian agency personnel deployed forward including Iraq and Afghanistan. As you know if one is abroad for a year (actually a little over 11 months), the first $89k or so of income is exempt from income tax.

Are they and their families "whiners" who should "suck it up" too? Normally, I would have said that nobody would think that, but after they booed an active duty soldier at one of their debates, I assume the whole "support the troops" thing is no longer entirely operative with Republicans.


h/t to AS
digby 10/12/2011 10:30:00 AM |

 
What Romney Really Means

by digby

Michael Kinsley helpfully passes on the argument for Mitt Romney's election:

The Republican Party elite isn’t convinced by his attempts to reinvent himself as a right-wing firebrand. The establishment Republicans, business executives and independents who are Romney’s natural constituency believe he is lying when he strikes a conservative posture on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, and when he engages in fatuous Washington-bashing.

“Oh, he has to say stuff like that,” they say, attempting to explain away his various panderings to the Tea Party and the far right. They believe that once in office, his true nature as an establishment, moderate, pro-business Republican will emerge. They believe he’s fundamentally sound.

Perhaps that's true. There are plenty of people who believe that the only reason the Tea Party Republicans are so obstreperous is because they have a particular ax to grind with the person who currently occupies the white house. And that "something" has zero to do with the centrist policies he and these GOP elders seem to think are preferable ("Establishment, moderate, pro-business ...")

But if the Republicans are operating on a more ideological level, as they themselves insist, then Romney will likely be their guy too. It's not as if he's shown himself to have a spine of steel when it comes to political principles. He'll do whatever is necessary. And lucky for him, the GOP rank and file are just ignorant enough that they'll opt for austerity for themselves and tax breaks for their betters. (They just did that in Britain after all, and look at these fine results.)

I'm guessing this is a re-run in reverse of the 2008 campaign when candidate Obama's moderate and centrist views were dismissed by his enthusiastic liberal supporters as mere pandering to get elected. Internet wags coined a phrase called WORM --- What Obama Really Meant --- to describe it:

... a rationalization for a controversial statement by Barack Obama.

Originally a fictitious game show where such rationalizations are put forth.
"Here comes another round of W.O.R.M.!"

This isn't a new thing, of course. Politicians often speak in code. Republicans have been dogwhistling to their Southern base for years. But this may be the first time they've dogwhistled their moderates. Romney's person is the dogswhistle --- everything he says is straight-up Tea Party.

Romney is a born elite so he's especially attractive to the Villagers. I would expect a whole lot of "What Romney Really Meant" (WRRM?)coming from that quarter if he gets the nomination. I'm fairly sure they would be quite pleased to have "the grown-ups" back in charge, even if it means that the country turns into Chile circa 1975. They have plenty of money and status to protect themselves and they would really like it if they could just feel comfortable again. They'll hear Mitt's "moderate" dogwhistle and make sure that plenty of people in the country hear it too.


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digby 10/12/2011 09:10:00 AM |

 
The facepalm award goes to...
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino gets today's facepalm award for his response to the arrests at Occupy Boston:

“We will tolerate demonstrations, we will tolerate expressions of free speech but when it comes to civil disobedience we have a real issue with that, that is why we moved in last night,” Mayor Menino said.

“Civil disobedience doesn’t work for Boston; it doesn’t work for anyone.”

That would be news to the people in Tahrir Square. It would be news to the marchers in Selma. It would be news to Rosa Parks. The suffragettes would have been surprised to hear this, as would Mahatma Gandhi.

There are limits to the efficacy of civil disobedience to be sure, especially when the forms of oppression are more subtle and the solutions less clear. But to claim that civil disobedience "doesn't work for anyone" is simply asinine.

h/t Giles Goat Boy at dkos.


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thereisnospoon 10/12/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

 
Robin Hood(s) to the rescue

by digby

I'm a sucker for Robin Hood. I think this is great:

Today in Chicago, 40 activists dressed as Robin Hoods kayaked down the Chicago River while several hundred more protesters rallied outside a hotel to deliver a message to the Mortgage Banksters attending a national conference inside: It's time for big banks to Pay US Back!

The Mortgage Bankers Association is one of the most powerful lobbying organizations for the big banks and they represent the mortgage arms/tentacles of the BIG 4--Wells Fargo (who happens to be sponsoring the conference), Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup--as well as numerous independent mortgage companies that created the housing bubble and blew up the economy in 2008.

One of the MBA claim's to fame is defeating Judicial Loan Modifications - a piece of legislation that Congress was attempting to pass in order to help millions of homeowners who had fallen victim to the housing crisis. Under the current law, if you only have one home you can’t declare bankruptcy and have a judge renegotiate your debts. But if you own two homes, or a boat, you can. This is unfair and biased against working and middle class families that don’t have boats, airplanes and homes in the Hamptons. Chicago has been hardest hit by foreclosures, mostly due to the MBA blocking this legislation.

Today, the MBA held a conference in a downtown Chicago hotel.

While 600 protesters rallied and chanted outside the hotel, a team of 40 kayakers dressed like Robin Hood paddled down the Chicago River and anchored outside of the hotel chanting "We Are the 99%!" for 30 minutes while another team of activists dropped a banner from the DuSable Bridge at Michigan Avenue.

Inside the mortgage bankster meeting, a fourth team of activists were embedded in the audience, ready to interrupt the banksters' plenary conference. Two activists were able to interrupt the discussion panel before the banksters shut down the meeting entirely to avoid further interruptions.

Check out all the pics here. It looks like a rollicking gathering.

digby 10/11/2011 07:30:00 PM |

 

She'll fix this @#$%$ herself if she has to

by digby

huzzah

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digby 10/11/2011 06:00:00 PM |

 

Who are the 47%?

by digby

Have you been wondering who those lazy 47%ers who refuse to pay their fair share of income taxes are?You know, the ones who need to kick in so that the millionaire jahbcreaters don't have to?

Here's who they are (this is from a report from 2004)

The zero-tax filers will be largely low-income. Indeed, 75 percent of them will earn less than $20,000 per year and 97 percent will earn less than $40,000. Fewer than 1 percent will earn more than $75,000 per year – a group comprised largely of business owners whose tax liabilities will be erased due to business losses, carry-overs from prior year AMT payments, or foreign tax credits.

Zero-tax filers will be overwhelmingly young. Looking at the age of the primary breadwinner on these tax returns, only 22 percent are 45 years old or older. More than one-third (36 percent) are younger than age 25, and 56 percent are younger than age 35.

Interestingly, there is a large cluster of households (22.4 percent) where the principal wage earner is between the ages of 35 and 44. Most likely, these are modest-income families who are benefitting most from the increased value of the child credit to $1,000...

In general, then, those who don’t pay federal income taxes tend to be young families with children, often headed by a single mother, where the head of household has a job and is trying to make ends meet on a modest income.

Those are the lazy pieces of garbage who refuse to make pay more in taxes so that Paris Hilton doesn't have to. Single mothers. Young people. Families making less than $20, 000 a year. That's who the burden should fall upon. They are losers who must pay.

This is a similar report from this year:

About 46 percent of American households will pay no federal individual income tax in 2011, roughly half of them because of structural features of the income tax that provide basic exemptions for subsistence level income and for dependents. The other half are nontaxable because tax expenditures— special provisions of the tax code that benefit selected taxpayers or activities—wipe out tax liabilities and, in the case of refundable credits, result in net payments from the government. Most important of those tax expenditures are provisions that benefit senior citizens and low-income working families with children.

So the greedy geezers aren't paying their fair share either? Damn them.

How on earth did such a horrible thing happen?

In 1997, Congress enacted a new $500 per-child tax credit and expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-income workers. The 2003 tax cuts increased the value of the child credit to $1,000. These two tax credits – especially the child credit – have had a powerful effect on reducing, and many cases eliminating, the income tax liability for millions of Americans. Of the 44 million tax returns that pay no income taxes, 34 percent claim the EITC and 50 percent claim the child credit. Tax Foundation economists estimate that the expanded child credit alone knocked 5.8 million families with children off the tax rolls.

Essentially, that 53% percent of very, very superior human beings who work hard for a living and don't ask for any handouts want to take the $1,000 of the EITC out of the mouths of poor children rather than ask millionaires to pay more. There's really no other way to look at it.

*I know I don't need to reiterate that all of these people do pay taxes of many different kinds. Anyone with common sense already knows that.

Update: Important to also note that federal income taxes only make up 22% of all the taxes paid in this country.

Those lucky duckies are participating in a whole lot of the other 78%.

h/t to JH
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digby 10/11/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
What to do when you can't get what you want
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

For those who missed it, Ezra Klein had a long 6,000 word article this past weekend in the Washington Post that has been the subject of much discussion. It's well worth the read, but it can be distilled pretty easily:

• The Obama Administration severely underestimated the depth of the economic problems the country faced.


• Even had the Administration known how severe the economic crisis was, there was little more politically they could have done. The needed stimulus would have been $2.5 trillion, but there wasn't enough Congressional support even for the $1.2 trillion the Administration asked for. Congress wanted it under $1 trillion, and even then at $800 billion it was the biggest stimulus in American history.


• A more realistic view of the economic crisis would have led to a slower disbursement of stimulus on longer-term projects that would have had more cumulative second-tier benefit effects.


• The Administration has essentially been playing a "wait for a recovery" game on the economy while tackling a range of other priorities. While that has given the Administration a bunch of "wins" on the scorecard, it has also made them seem politically adrift on the economy.


• Again, however, it was difficult to persuade Congress to do even as much as it did, so the Administration may not have had a lot of choices.

Krugman has responded to Klein with some skepticism about the Administration's total powerlessness to have done much differently, but even so most reasonable observers including Krugman agree that while the Obama Administration could probably have done somewhat better on stimulus, it could not have done too much more considering Congressional political realities.

But few who have written about Klein's article have pointed out that the Administration's biggest problem here wasn't on policy so much as on politics. Meanwhile, those who have focused on the politics have tended to obsess over the "bully pulpit", which is useful in generating popular support but vastly overrated when it comes to moving recalcitrant Senators.

The larger problem has been the Obama Administration's longer-term political strategy regarding the economic crisis. Here I'm leaving aside the Administration's policies vis-a-vis Wall Street specifically, which have been far too coddling. But Wall Street accountability policy and stimulus policy, while connected somewhat especially over the long term, were not directly connected during the Obama Administration's first two years. They are related but separate issues.

The reality is that the Administration probably couldn't have gotten more than a trillion dollars in stimulus through Congress. But what they shouldn't have done is rolled it out to great fanfare with over-optimistic projections, and acted like it would solve the problem. Granted, some of them actually believed the stimulus would solve the problem.

Even then, though, once it became clear that Krugman, Roubini and all the dirty hippies were right that the structural problems with the economy went far deeper than the Administration had given them credit for (partly due to the myopia of the Wall Street "geniuses" giving the Administration economic advice), it was incumbent on the Administration to take a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach.

That was essentially the approach taken by FDR during the Great Depression. Not everything FDR did worked. But he was willing to try just about anything to help push the economy forward. True, FDR had a much more pliant Congress to deal with. But rhetorically, FDR explained to the American people that he was rolling up his sleeves and trying to do everything in his power. Nor did he promise that his policies would lead to instant recovery. Instead, he engaged the public in an all-hands-on-deck attitude toward economic recovery.

One of the Administration's key challenges as it has faced this crisis is that it has seemed almost aloof. Failure to hold Wall Street accountable has been a problem, of course, but only part of it. The other part is simply that the Administration has never seemed to fully take the economic crisis as seriously as it deserves. It did some major, unprecedented things such as the assistance to the auto industry. But it did not take the comprehensive approach that would have been necessary. Most importantly, it did not make clear to the public the depth of the struggle that would be required to pull us out of the crisis.

Instead, everything the Administration has done has been about building "confidence." Happy talk is supposed to breed confidence. Austerity measures, as mindbogglingly stupid in this context as they are, were supposed to breed confidence among the investor class. The notion that that "confidence" is the only thing the economy lacks is predicated on a very neoliberal view that the economic crisis is simply one of attitude first and liquidity second, rather than a function of an economy that is fundamentally broken and in need of structural fixes. But then, that was Herbert Hoover's attitude as well. His constant refrain that "prosperity was just around the corner" was an attempt to instill confidence in the markets. To be fair, Hoover was very laissez-faire; Obama has not been laissez-faire, and comparisons between the two are deeply unfair in this regard. But where the comparison is accurate is in the fact that both men believed that the biggest missing factor in economic recovery was "confidence" rather than more fundamental changes.

In the end, it may well be that even a more progressive President couldn't have gotten much more stimulus out of Congress. But a more progressive President would have made clear, then, that the stimulus Congress did provide was not enough. A more progressive President would have made clear to the American people that he or she understood the depth the problem, and was pushing for all appropriate means of solving it. He or she would have treated the crisis as more a matter of fundamental imbalance than of confidence.

Ultimately, when you can't get what you want, the best approach is to make clear that you didn't get what you wanted, and that you're seeking to redress the problem in other ways. You don't pretend you got everything you wanted, smile and hope for the best. That's political malpractice.


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thereisnospoon 10/11/2011 03:00:00 PM |

 
Classy conservatism

by digby

So Drudge is running a huge banner headline about Chris Christie endorsing Romney as if it amounts to being ordained directly by God.

Just down the page he has this nasty little feature:

I'm not sure what vein of racist misogyny they're tapping in their very primitive lizard brains but I know it's one that I've never seen them use against any other first lady. (They always treat Democratic first ladies like crap, mind you, but this treatment of Michelle is truly reprehensible.)

I guess it's just another small thing among many, but it seems so mean and unnecessary to me. It's a real window into their true selves and what's inside there is not very pleasant.

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digby 10/11/2011 01:00:00 PM |

 

Marie Antoinette gets yet another bonus

by digby

If you want to point to one single thing that exemplifies the privileged, insular, infuriating attitude of the financial elites, this will do nicely:

The onset of what has been described by the Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King as "the most serious financial crisis" in history has failed to dent expectations for bonuses in the City. Nine out of 10 finance professionals expect to receive an annual handout again this year.

The downturn in banking that has forced Deutsche Bank to issue a profit warning and other banks to alter their business plans is expected to be underlined by US firms in the coming days, when JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs report results for the third quarter.

Goldman may report only its second quarterly loss since it ended its partnership structure a decade ago, according to some analysts. The CBI's barometer of confidence among financial firms showed this month that sentiment had worsened for the first time since March 2009.

Even so, expectations for bonuses remain among the staff surveyed by City jobs group eFinancialCareers.

James Bennett, a managing director of the group, said: "External observers may be shocked by the confidence being expressed by bankers ahead of the bonus season. However, the pay-for-performance culture is very much ingrained in the financial psyche, and even in times of market turmoil, financial institutions need to take care of their best talent in order to retain them."

Yes, it's very much ingrained in the financial psyche. And that's the problem.

This is the attitude I was talking about in my article from yesterday. These people are ostentatiously grabbing as much of the nation's wealth as they can stuff in every pocket and telling the people to eat cake. It's the essence of our social and economic dysfunction --- the imperious privilege of these moneyed elites, the total unwillingness to even consider that their behavior is provocative.

Now I hear that the NYC cops are arresting citizens who deign to protest outside of banks. Evidently, they are worried on behalf of the 1% that things might get out of hand. What in God's name did they expect with their ongoing, insolent defiance of basic decency and moral behavior in the face of large scale suffering?

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digby 10/11/2011 11:30:00 AM |

 
The effects of Koch addiction

by digby

There is so much to loathe about the Koch Brothers that it's hard to know where to start. But this is a good place:



Brave New Films is collecting comments that will be delivered in person by local leaders to Koch Industries. Please head over there and leave a couple of thoughts for the brothers.
FYI:

According to a UMass Amherst study, Koch Industries is among the top ten worst air polluters for its cancer causing chemicals. Georgia Pacific, a Koch Industries subsidiary in Arkansas, is one of the largest manufacturers of the human carcinogen, formaldehyde. With such an environmental track record, the surrounding area in Crossett is noticeably affected by air pollution – and there is a neighborhood on nearby Penn Road dying of cancer.

Georgia Pacific plywood, paper mill, and formaldehyde resin plants are the only manufacturer in Crossett, Arkansas. The plant is not disposing of their waste properly and dumps hazardous chemicals into channels and ditches that flow behind the nearby homes – which is a poor, minority neighborhood. Since this wastewater is uncovered, people that live near these ditches are exposed to harsh, cancer causing chemicals.

People are living on breathing respirators and suffer from excruciating headaches, watery eyes, runny noses, and nausea on a daily basis. Most of all, there’s a high rate of cancer deaths, especially on Penn Road. Bear in mind, David Koch has given millions to cancer research, while his company has lobbied against formal recognition of formaldehyde as a carcinogen.

Isn't that special? They make millions by causing cancer but put a little piece of it toward research. I guess they figure that evens it all out. Good luck with that.


Update: Have another Koch. Dday:

Considering that we learned last week that the Koch Brothers traded with Iran, I’m just going to say that they plan to spend $200 million in Iranian money on the 2012 elections.

That works for me.

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digby 10/11/2011 10:00:00 AM |

 
The Third Way plays Fifth Column again
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

By now the script writes itself:

1) Good populist things happen to mobilize progressives.
2) Some Democrats start to realize that populism isn't so bad, after all.
3) One of the three major papers writes a "Democrats divided" story quoting an anonymous "senior official" and some hack from the Third Way.

Today's version is about the Occupy protests courtesy the New York Times. First, the positive setup:

Leading Democratic figures, including party fund-raisers and a top ally of President Obama, are embracing the spread of the anti-Wall Street protests in a clear sign that members of the Democratic establishment see the movement as a way to align disenchanted Americans with their party...

The Center for American Progress, a liberal organization run by John D. Podesta, who helped lead Mr. Obama’s 2008 transition, credits the protests with tapping into pent-up anger over a political system that it says rewards the rich over the working class — a populist theme now being emphasized by the White House and the party. The center has encouraged and sought to help coordinate protests in different cities.

Judd Legum, a spokesman for the center, said that its direct contacts with the protests have been limited, but that “we’ve definitely been publicizing it and supporting it.”

He said Democrats are already looking for ways to mobilize protesters in get-out-the-vote drives for 2012. “What attracts an organization like CAP to this movement is the idea that our country’s economic policies have been focused on the very top and not on the bulk of America,” Mr. Legum added. “That’s a message we certainly agree with.”

Then the "Democrats divided" line:

But while some Democrats see the movement as providing a political boost, the party’s alignment with the eclectic mix of protesters makes others nervous. They see the prospect of the protesters’ pushing the party dangerously to the left — just as the Tea Party has often pushed Republicans farther to the right and made for intraparty run-ins.

And finally the anonymous "senior officials" and Third Way rumps:

“That’s the danger with something like this — that you go from peaceful protests to throwing trash cans,” said a senior House Democratic official, who spoke on condition of anonymity...

Matt Bennett, vice president for Third Way, a Democratic policy institute in Washington that favors a more centrist approach, said he believes the angry and sometimes radical tone of the protests may turn off moderate swing voters who will be critical in the 2012 elections, just as many moderates are put off by the rhetoric of the Tea Party on the right.

Embracing the protests may prove a mistake for Democrats, Mr. Bennett said. “There’s not much upside,” he said, “and there’s a lot of downside.”

There's not much upside for the Third Way crowd because they're big fans of the status quo, economically speaking. The Third Way folks are the same ones heaping praise on Mayor Bloomberg. On policy, they are tools of plutocrats--and very often plutocrats themselves. On the politics, they're morons. The electorate in 2010, far from being turned off by the Tea Party, gave Democrats their most crushing defeat in decades, replacing Dems with rabidly far-right conservatives and taking the independent vote with them. If that's what failure looks like, it would be interesting to see what the Third Way crew thinks success would look like.

It is not an overstatement to say that the Third Way and their allies represent a greater threat to the promise of progressive policy than Republicans do. Republicans are who they are. In a binary election system, so long as they don't destroy the democratic process entirely, Democrats and Republicans will trade office. It's built into the American system. As demographic shifts take fuller effect, it will become more and more difficult for Republicans to maintain their extremist ground, which should leave the door wide open for progressive policymakers.

So the greatest danger to the progressive movement lies not from without, but from within. If the Third Way succeeds in winning the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, it won't matter what Republicans do or don't do. Much of 60% of the public not beholden to the conservative cult will simply abandon electoral politics as a means of creating change.

As for myself, I became involved in the Democratic Party only partly to defeat Republicans. In my neck of the woods in Ventura County, defeating Republicans is simply a matter of when, not if. Demography is destiny, and there's no way Republicans survive in power here over the next ten years.

No, the biggest reason I'm involved in the Democratic Party is to eliminate the influence of Third Way types. I'm active in the Party mostly to ensure that when Democrats do take over, they're as far from the odious Third Way ideology as humanly possible.

I look forward to the day when popular progressive actions by Democrats aren't sullied in the press by the Third Way's political fecal matter. It would be a welcome change.
thereisnospoon 10/11/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Monday, October 10, 2011

 
Cruel and unusual

by digby

There are varying degrees of torture techniques approved in America, but this is definitely one as far as I'm concerned:

Talk about your Monday from hell. Not only did Bridgett Nickerson Boyd's car break down on her way to work, but when she pulled over to the side of the freeway, a sheriff's deputy named Mark Goad pulled behind her, wrote her a ticket for driving on the shoulder, decided to arrest her, followed her to the hospital when her suddenly racing heart prompted a call to paramedics, then took her into custody again after she was treated by doctors and finally drove her to jail.

To make matters worse, Boyd claims in a lawsuit that the handcuffs were put on her wrists painfully tight and that she was forced to listen to conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh "make derogatory comments about black people" all the way to the jail. Boyd is African-American.

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digby 10/10/2011 08:00:00 PM |

 
Takes one to know one

by digby

I haven't written anything about Charlie Savage's explosive revelation of an odious Obama Justice Department memo justifying the president's contention that he has the right to order the assassination of American citizens without even a nod to due process or congressional authority because it's just too much. It's particularly upsetting news that the memo was written by Marty Lederman, one of George W. Bush's harshest critics --- for doing exactly what he then did. For any of you who followed the details of the Yoo and Bybee memos of yore, this is profoundly depressing. I guess it takes on to know one.

You can get the whole sordid story from Greenwald. Oy.


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digby 10/10/2011 06:00:00 PM |

 
Predictable dysfunction

by digby

This is what happens when a political party which has total control of the government fails to respond to the people's needs and so the defeated opposition, in the grip of extremists, regains power prematurely:

The GOP's hyper-partisan turn after Barack Obama's victory in 2008 meant 112th Congress was destined to test the limits of dysfunctional governance. But it also happened to coincide with a moment in history when the country needed the government to do better than the bare minimum. Instead, it's done less. And that's shaken people who've spent their careers steering the ship of state.

"I do believe that we are now in uncharted waters when it comes to the dysfunction in our political system--and it is no longer a joking matter," former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told an audience two weeks ago at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, where he received the Liberty Medal for national service. "It appears that as a result of several long-building, polarizing trends in American politics and culture, we have lost the ability to execute even the basic functions of government much less solve the most difficult and divisive problems facing the country. Thus, I am more concerned than I have ever been about the state of American governance."

The remarks were first flagged by The Atlantic's Jim Fallows, who noted the importance not just of the sentiment, but of who said it.

"I specifically recognize how carefully he has always chosen his public words," Fallows wrote. "For such a person to say plainly that the American government has lost its basic ability to function, and that he is more concerned than he has ever been about this issue is ... well, it's worth more notice than it's received so far."

It should be very interesting to see what happens after 2012. It's nearly impossible to see a scenario in which the Republicans don't hold both houses of congress, although there is a case that the Democrats could take back the House. If they run the table I'm guessing we're going to see some things we've never seen before. From my perspective, gridlock is preferable to almost any alternate plausible scenario.


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digby 10/10/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
The 53%
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

Following up on Digby's superb post below, it's worth pointing out just how delusional the conservative base that makes up 30-40% of the country really is, and why no amount of consciousness-raising will reach them or make them change their minds.

We are the 53% is supposed to provide a counterpunch to the now famous and emotionally powerful We are the 99%. 53%, for those not steeped in the conservative closed information loop, refers to the number of Americans who pay federal income taxes, to be contrasted with the supposedly lucky duckies among the 47% of Americans who don't.

The fact that the bottom 47% of Americans are too poor to pay federal income taxes doesn't bother conservatives. Nor does the fact that even if they did, they have so little income that it wouldn't do much for the federal budget if they did. Nor apparently does it bother them that by making this argument they are playing "class warfare" of the middle class against the poor, and essentially advocating for raising taxes. That was supposed to be against "conservative" beliefs, last I checked.

Most of all, the bottom 47% pay all sorts of other taxes, including sales, social security and payroll taxes that end up taking up as great a percentage or more of their income as the total tax burden for any other group. So the idea that 47% of Americans are skating by on the backs of 53% of Americans is ludicrous in the first place.

All that aside, however, the Republican activists who were responsible for We are the 53% have faced in a choice in the stories they chose to tell. They could choose to tell the stories of the well-to-do (mostly from older white males), which would come off as tone-deaf, arrogant hectoring. Or they could choose to tell the stories of hardworking people struggling to get by who still hold onto conservative beliefs about the economy.

They have chosen to do a little bit of both, which is smart from a messaging point of view. But the irony is that in doing so, they put the lie to their website, because many of the people in the photos aren't in the 53%. They're part of the 47%.

Unless she's making a heck of a lot off drawing cartoons, this person probably pays no income taxes. As an unemployed homemaker seeking work, this person is part of the 47%, not the 53%. This person either pays no income taxes, or has a higher-wage job than he admits. And there are others besides.

These are people so steeped in their own conservative bile that they call themselves part of the 53% without even knowing what the "53%" means in context, to say nothing of why the statistic is bogus.

As for the rest of people there who believe they accomplished everything in their lives on their own and thus have no need of that outdated concept called empathy, I would refer them back to this. Not that they would listen, of course. They, like those who imagine themselves to be part of the overburdened 53%, are impervious to progressive arguments and consciousness-raising. And they will fight our movement with every breath of their being, right alongside the plutocrats.


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thereisnospoon 10/10/2011 02:43:00 PM |

 
"The perennial revolutionary programme of antiquity"

by digby

courtesy Jonathan Schwarz

I've been getting a fair amount of static for my post the other day warning about tribal politics rearing its ugly head as the Occupy movement continues. It's not just the billionaires who will put their resources to bear to undermine the movement, but the rank and file, average Americans who will choose their tribal loyalties over common class concerns. Kansas hasn't changed that much.

For instance, all week-end CNN was drawing comparisons between the Tea party and the Occupy movement, saying they were motivated by a common loathing for the big banks and Wall Street. (This is incorrect, of course. The Tea Party was simply a re-branding of the conservative movement when the GOP was discredited by Bush's failure.) However, lest anyone still be confused, here's the Tea Party Express this morning:

We here at the Tea Party Express find those comparisons to be insulting. Three weeks into the Occupy Wall Street protests, it is still not exactly apparent what they are protesting about. The motivation behind their rage seems to be anything from corporate greed, redistribution of wealth, free college tuition, guaranteed wages (whether you work or not), defending the people against the man, all the way to anarchy. The only commonality that we have is that we are both opposed to the bailouts of Wall Street - and that is it.

Their motivations, their behavior and their disrespect for the principles that made this country great could not stand in starker contrast to ours. We stand for free market capitalism, individual responsibility, self reliance, individual liberties, and a limited federal government.

This is important that we stand up to these comparisons and stand up for our principles.

(Tea Party Nation put out a similar response the other day.)

Somehow I don't think they are going to be allies. And, in fact, their "movement" wasn't in response to economic conditions at all (or even the Wall Street bailouts, truth be known.) It was a response to the election of a Democratic president, which can never be truly legitimate, and one who particularly offended their notions of privilege. As I said, it was the same old conservative movement dressed in a tri-corner hat.

And they have sympathizers, many of whom are going to be activated in response to Occupy. (They don't call them Reactionaries for nothing.)

Jonathan Schwarz has the definitive take on this:

I've been looking at this tumbler We Are the 53%, which of course is a response to We Are the 99%. If anything, the first tumblr is even more heartbreaking than the second. Here's a good example of the "We Are the 53%" people:

I look at that and it tells me that I've failed, you've failed, we've all failed, and because of that we're all going to die. These people not only won't fight the killer billionaires stomping on their windpipe, they'll brag about getting stomped on and ask for more.

It's worse than that. They will happily join the oppressors and help them do the stomping. It's not political and it's not economic -- it's tribal worldview. (Please click over to see Jonathan's great historical find. You won't be sorry.)

Meanwhile, here's a great piece by Mike Konzcal who did a little numbers crunching on the "Wearethe99%" tumblr and discovered a running theme that I don't think anyone's seen before (at least not to my knowledge.)

[T]he demands I found aren’t the ones of the go-go 90s-00s, but instead far more ancient cry, one of premodernity and antiquity.

Let’s bring up a favorite quote around here. Anthropologist David Graeber cites historian Moses Finley, who identified “the perennial revolutionary programme of antiquity, cancel debts and redistribute the land, the slogan of a peasantry, not of a working class.” And think through these cases. The overwhelming majority of these statements are actionable demands in the form of (i) free us from the bondage of these debts and (ii) give us a bare minimum to survive on in order to lead decent lives (or, in pre-Industrial terms, give us some land). In Finley’s terms, these are the demands of a peasantry, not a working class.

The actual ideology of modernity, broadly speaking, is absent. There isn’t the affluenza of Freddie’s worries, no demands for cheap gas, cheaper credit, giant houses, bigger electronics all under the cynical ”Ownership Society” banner. The demands are broadly health care, education and not to feel exploited at the high-level, and the desire to not live month-to-month on bills, food and rent and under less of the burden of debt at the practical level.

The people in the tumblr aren’t demanding to bring democracy into the workplace via large-scale unionization, much less shorter work days and more pay. They aren’t talking the language of mid-twentieth century liberalism, where everyone puts on blindfolds and cuts slices of pie to share. The 99% looks too beaten down to demand anything as grand as “fairness” in their distribution of the economy. There’s no calls for some sort of post-industrial personal fulfillment in their labor – very few even invoke the idea that a job should “mean something.” It’s straight out of antiquity – free us from the bondage of our debts and give us a basic ability to survive.

I also think that the ancient demand to "redistribute the land" makes perfect literal sense in this context too. After all this new aristocracy has gobbled up ever more of the nation's wealth and then used the money to buy up the political system and undermine democracy. A little redistribution of those holdings would go a long way to restoring the proper balance.

And many of their fellow sufferers are going to say "suck it up, you whiners," identifying with the oppressors, perhaps in the vain hope that they will someday be one of them. Or maybe it's just a deep need to see themselves as better than somebody. It's just who they are.

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digby 10/10/2011 01:45:00 PM |

 
Still looking for their hero

by digby

If you ever wondered why critics of the Village look to Politico as the leading example of its conventional wisdom, wonder no more. Today they're running an alternative primary, in which they assume the pose of establishment outsiders who are desperate for a breath of fresh air. Here is their definition of "outside the box" candidates for president, as entertainingly explained by CJRs Greg Marx:

So who’s one of the five candidates VandeHei and Allen put forward to fill this void and restore trust and respect? Hillary Clinton—yes, the Hillary Clinton who has spent two decades as part of the “governing class,” and was very nearly our forty-fourth president. If that weren’t obtuse enough, VandeHei and Allen argue that Clinton would be a viable independent candidate in part because “her family’s access to rich donors is legendary.” Because, as we all know, only legacy candidates with legendary access to rich donors can restore trust in public office.

The other candidates are no more inspired, and hardly offer more of a solution to the problem VandeHei and Allen say needs solving. Empty-headed pundits are forever pining for military leaders to save us from political dysfunction, so of course David Petraeus is here, apparently on the grounds that voters are craving a “no-labels” candidate, especially if he has a strong chin, salutes smartly, and looks good in uniform. (Actual opening sentence to the Petraeus blurb: “In the end, every voter wants the same darn thing: a strong leader they can truly believe in.”)

A corollary to the military savior fantasy is the business savior fantasy, so there’s also a place for Generic CEO, played here Cisco’s John Chambers. Ostensibly, Chambers’s appeal is that he knows how to create jobs in a competitive global economy. (Though not always, apparently.) VandeHei and Allen don’t really say what such a policy agenda might look like. They have, though, given thought to how to package Chambers for voter consumption:

He could run as an authentic outsider, someone who hasn’t spent his life pursuing public office. A Washington-has-no-damn-clue message on navigating and dominating the world economy would resonate for many. His smooth speaking style and self-confidence would play well on the national stage.

Moving on, we get to Condoleeza Rice—because, of course, former Secretaries of State represent such a sharp break from “the conventional governing class.” The case for Rice seems to be that she has held both Republican and Democratic associations, she is generally seen as moderate and temperate, and she balanced the budget while serving as Stanford provost. As for whether she has, you know, anything to say about our current political and economic challenges, VandeHei and Allen acknowledge that, “Rice would need to find a sharper, more populist voice.” But don’t worry about that, they assure us—“she can play at this level.”

Rounding out the line-up is Erskine Bowles, the former White House chief of staff (so unconventional!) who served as co-chair of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission. I can’t decide whether Bowles is the least depressing or most depressing of the candidates here. On the one hand, he’s closely identified with a specific agenda that is responsive to a real, long-term national challenge. On the other hand, it’s the wrong challenge to be obsessing about right now. VandeHei and Allen open the Bowles blurb thusly:

The most depressing reality of modern governance is this: The current system seems incapable of dealing with our debt addiction before it becomes a crippling crisis.

Yeah, that's the most depressing reality alright. To the Village. They must have their human sacrifices or their Gods will be very, very angry.

Unsurprisingly, Pete Peterson's minion David Walker has also made the list.


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digby 10/10/2011 12:00:00 PM |

 
More good OWS media

by digby

Since most Americans get their news from the television, I think it's a good idea to keep track of the smart and interesting voices who are out there talking about Occupy Wall Street in the TV universe, just so that it doesn't get drowned out by idiocy from the likes of Erin Burnett. Alan Grayson's now legendary knock-out of the odious PJ O'Rourke on Bill Maher last Friday is one as well asthese examples from over the week-end by Chris Hayes and the excellent Jess LaGreca.

And now here's Russ Feingold on CBS:



Remember that for the vast majority of Americans, all they know of this movement comes from what they see on TV. It's a good thing for people with an understanding of the impetus for this movement to be featured.

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digby 10/10/2011 11:00:00 AM |

 
The class warfare the rich don't understand

by digby

My latest for Al Jazeera:

"Those who own the country ought to govern it."

- Founding father, John Jay

There have been rumblings in the corners of the Tea Party movement for some time, but the minute president Obama announced that he was going to ask wealthy Americans to kick in a small bit more in taxes to help pay for some infrastructure improvements in his jobs proposal, the Republicans have been clutching their pearls and gasping for breath like Aunt Pittypat awaiting the arrival of the marauding Yankees.

GOP leader Rush Limbaugh called for the smelling salts, saying "If [Obama] would get all of this actually passed, it would represent perhaps a fatal blow to the US private sector ... I don't know how anyone could even argue about the fact that this is on purpose anymore. To boldly lie that it's not class warfare? It is class warfare. Specifically and purposefully class warfare."

Republican economic guru Paul Ryan dolefully declared, "Class warfare may make for good politics, but it makes for rotten economics. We don't need a system that seeks to divide people. We don't need a system that seeks to prey on people's fear, envy, and anxiety." Indeed. What could be more destructive to the average American than to ask the upper one per cent to kick in what amounts to tip money? The guilt they will feel at such unfairness is bound to create a profound spiritual crisis throughout the land. read on ...

Update: Hah! As often happens, I find myself on the same wavelength as Paul Krugman, who tackled the same issue this morning in his column.

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digby 10/10/2011 09:30:00 AM |

 
Leaders and the Left
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

Todd Gitlin has a thought-provoking piece in the New York Times' Sunday Review. It focuses on the rift between hierarchical and anti-hierarchical ideologies, especially when it comes to organizing on the Left. As the Occupy movement gains steam (including with a general assembly in my hometown this week that I am excited to be attending), this is an issue that is going to require some introspection by the movement.

For starters, the Right and the Left in America have differing visions of the power of change through the political structure. Leftism in general over the 20th Century has certainly had its authoritarian impulses, as seen in the Soviet Union and Maoist China, with disastrous results. But most on the American Left would argue that those historical examples were deeply misguided in practice, and that modern European and East Asian models are more suited for a better contrast to American capitalism. In America, the Left tends to be deeply distrustful of hierarchy and power per se:

The Tea Party, for all its apparent populism, revolves around a vision of power and how to attain it. Tea Partiers tend to be white, male, Republican, graying, married and comfortable; the political system once worked for them, and they think it can be made to do so again. They revile government, but they adore hierarchy and order. Not for them the tents and untucked shirts, the tattoos, piercings and dreadlocks that are eye candy for lazy journalists. (“Am I dressed too nice so the media doesn’t interview me?” read one Occupy Wall Street demonstrator’s sign.)

In contrast, what should we make of Occupy Wall Street? The movement is, of course, nascent, and growing: on Oct. 5, it picked up thousands of marching supporters of all ages, many from unions, professions and universities, and crowded Foley Square. Its equivalents rallied in 50 cities. Deep anger at grotesque inequities extends far beyond this one encampment; after all, a few handfuls of young activists do not have a monopoly on the fight against plutocracy. Revulsion in the face of a perverse economy is felt by many respectable people: unemployed, not yet unemployed, shakily employed and plain disgusted. A month from now, this movement, still busy being born, could look quite different.

And yet it remains true that the core of the movement, the (mostly young and white, skilled but jobless) people who started the “occupation” three weeks ago, consists of what right-wing critics call anarchists. Indeed, some occupiers take the point as a compliment — because that is precisely the quality that sets them apart from the Tea Party. Anarchism has been the reigning spirit of left-wing protest movements for nearly the past half century, as it is in Zuccotti Park.

Tea Party trolls who harass me via email and twitter never cease to remind me that the Tea Party as a movement accomplished much of its objective. They see Barack Obama as a dangerous socialist, and their movement helped elect a wide array of wildly conservative extremists to the House, thus (in theory) negating Obama's agenda. The Tea Party approach, funded by billionaires and promoted by Fox News, was to capture the spirit of conservative resentment, and distill it in the form of electoral victories in 2010. That approach, it must be said, was very successful by any quantitative or qualitative measure.

Movement progressives like myself have sought to use the tools the Right has successfully used for decades against them. These tools include the infiltration of Party organizations by progressive groups; a close attention to primaries as a means of selecting more progressive Democrats; a focus on local elections to help breed a new crop of progressive legislators; the creation of think tanks to provide ready-made legislative ideas for lawmakers; the creation of media infrastructure to challenge right-wing orthodoxy; the list could go on and on. The Democratic Establishment has been variously welcoming to this agenda, or has fought it tooth and nail depending on the location. In many cases, it's pulling teeth at the local level to simply get Democrats in local leadership to support good endorsed Democrats, rather than secretly work for conservative decline-to-state candidates because of other personal or organizational allegiances. This battle is long and arduous.

So given the difficulty of this multi-pronged fight for progressives, as well as the fact that institutional hierarchy on what passes for the Left has done little to accomplish real change, it is a legitimate question to ask why we should work for change through organizational rather than anarchic processes at all. After all, isn't the Occupy Movement doing quite well in a leaderless fashion?

It's a good question. But the answer isn't quite so simple:

IN this recent incarnation, anarchism, for the most part, is not so much a theory of the absence of government, but a theory of self-organization, or direct democracy, as government. The idea is that you do not need institutions because the people, properly assembled, properly deliberating, even in one square block of Lower Manhattan, can regulate themselves. Those with the time and patience can frolic and practice direct democracy at the same time — at least until the first frost.

The anarchist impulse is nothing new in America. There were strong anarchist streaks in the New Left of the 1960s — stronger than the socialist streak, in fact, despite all the work Marxists did to define proper class categories for the student movement. “Let the people decide,” one of the early rallying cries of Students for a Democratic Society (of which I was president from 1963 to 1964), meant, in practice, “Let’s have long meetings where everyone gets to talk.” De facto, this meant that politics was for people who, in a sense, talked for a living — in other words, college types...

Disgruntled by big-talking leaders, turned off by celebrity media, the left of the ’70s developed a horizontal style, according limited authority to their own leaders, who were frequently at pains to deny that they were leaders at all. “Affinity groups” and “working groups” replaced organized factions and parties. Even movements that seemed to require some level of verticality — those with concrete goals, like banning nuclear power and weapons, or opposing apartheid — were mostly leaderless.

That explains why, to the bafflement of their ideological opponents, such movements barely paused at the fall of Communism. When Leninist regimes collapsed, and their self-confident social democratic rivals crumpled as well, anarchism’s major competitors for a theory of organization imploded.

This new protest style is more Rousseau than Marx. What the Zuccotti Park encampment calls horizontal democracy is spunky, polymorphic, energetic, theatrical, scattered and droll. An early poster showed a ballerina poised gingerly on the back of Wall Street’s bull sculpture, bearing the words: “Occupy Wall Street. September 17th. Bring Tent.” It likes government more than corporations, but its own style is hardly governmental. It tends to care about process more than results.

And oh, how it loves to talk. It is no surprise that it makes fervent use of the technologies of horizontal communication, of Facebook and Twitter, though the instinct predated — perhaps prefigured — those tools. Not coincidentally, this was also the spirit of the more or less leaderless, partyless revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt that are claimed as inspiration in Lower Manhattan. An “American Autumn” is their shot at an echo of the “Arab Spring.”

OCCUPY Wall Street, then, emanates from a culture — strictly speaking, a counterculture — that is diametrically opposed to Tea Party discipline.

The biggest challenge facing the Occupy movement isn't one of demands but rather goals. The media in typically clueless fashion is constantly asking what the demonstrators want. That question is actually relatively easy to answer. The ultimate goal, however, is far less well defined.

"Consciousness-raising" is usually the primary answer given. And that is indeed an excellent answer, but it's only part of an answer. Raising consciousness about a problem is not an end in itself, but rather a means to an end. The Tea Party motivated its base for two principal reasons: to attempt to weaken and derail the ACA, and to elect conservatives to the right of Attila the Hun to Congress. They failed to do the former, but they succeeded with flying colors in doing the latter. It remains unclear what the Occupy movement is raising consciousness to accomplish.

Leaderless movements can indeed succeed just as they did in Tahrir Square. But without a defined legislative agenda and the leadership to put that legislative agenda into place via the established process, the only thing leaderless movements can really achieve is systemic overthrow. That is perhaps what many in the movement are advocating or hoping for. But in Egypt, Libya and Syria, there were doubtless massive majorities in favor of deposing the regime. America is still deeply politically divided into cultural camps--camps largely defined by geography. Which means that systemic overthrow is likely to end less in peaceful revolution than in the breakup of the Union along red state-blue state divides. And even then it isn't that simple, as the division is less between states than it is between urban and exurban all across America. There are rabidly conservative bastions in California just outside of Los Angeles that share none of the protesters' goals, while even ruby-red Utah has strongly liberal bastions in the urban confines of Salt Lake City.

If systemic overthrow is in the cards, it will be a long, painful and very likely bloody process.

If, on the other hand, the movement seeks change along more traditional lines, then it is going to have to muddy its feet in the nasty realm of politics and hierarchy. It is going to require leaders and defined legislative goals. So far, the Occupy Movement has fiercely rejected those things.

And to be fair, the fault (if it can be described as such) for that lies not with the Movement, but rather with Democratic Leadership. As Gitlin notes:

It makes sense. Here, finally, is what labor and the activist left have been waiting for. For two years, Barack Obama got the benefit of the doubt from fervent supporters — I’d bet that many of those in Lower Manhattan during these weeks went door-to-door for him in 2008 — and that support explains why no one occupied Wall Street in 2009. Now, as Jeremy Varon, a historian at the New School, said of Zuccotti Park: “This is the Obama generation declaring their independence from his administration.”

By allying itself with the protest, the left at large is telling the president that a campaign slogan that essentially says “We’re better than Eric Cantor” won’t cut it in 2012. “We are the 99 percent” would be more like it. If President Obama takes this direction, the movement’s energy may be able to power a motor of significant reform.

Indeed. But even if the Obama campaign attempts to leverage the spirit of the movement, it is unlikely to succeed in doing so. The Obama Administration had its chance for years to prove its populist bona fides, but and was correctly judged to be severely lacking. Many people gave the Administration the benefit of the doubt for months if not years, but the handwriting has been on the wall for a long time now. Further, it's not as if the national Democratic Party is going to wean itself off Wall Street campaign donations overnight, either.

But if not the Obama campaign, then where would political pressure be leveraged? Certainly, support for more progressive Democrats is one option. Tea Partiers were not so cynical about the legislative process that they figured the Republican Party could not be bent to their will. Tea Partiers engaged in primary warfare and forced the GOP to take notice. The Occupy Movement could do likewise, but it would require a significant shift in tactics. The broader question is whether many progressives have lost all faith in the electoral system entirely.

If that is the case, then systemic overthrow is all that is left. But in America, systemic overthrow won't be as in Tahrir Square. The broad swath of conservative America will never come along for the ride, but will fight tooth and nail against the protesters, not just rhetorically but physically as well. Many on the right have been itching to do so already. Real systemic overthrow will require a lot fewer drums, and a lot more boxes of ammunition. But use of that, too, would be contrary to the spirit of the American Left.

So it's difficult to understand where precisely the change will come from. Politicians don't respond to protest movements any more than Dems were cowed from passing the ACA by the Tea Party protests. It takes more direct lobbying, electoral activity and leadership than simple protest to achieve legislative change. If electoral and legislative politics are eschewed, then revolution is all that is left. But that revolution will not be peaceful, and the American Left would need to be prepared for that eventuality.

Gitlin has a perhaps more optimistic take than I can manage:

The culture of anarchy is right about this: The corporate rich — those ostensible “job creators” who somehow haven’t gotten around to creating jobs — rule the Republican Party and much of the Democratic Party as well, having artfully arranged a mutual back-scratching society to enrich themselves. A refusal to compromise with this system, defined by its hierarchies of power and money, would be the current moment of anarchy’s great, lasting contribution.

Until now, fury at the plutocracy and the political class had found no channel to run in but the antigovernment fantasies of the Tea Party. Now it has dug a new channel. Anger does not move countries, but it moves movements — and movements, in turn, can move countries. To do that, movements need leverage. Even Archimedes needed a lever and a place to stand to move the world. When Zuccotti Park meets an aroused liberalism, the odd couple may not live happily ever after. But they can make a serious run at American dreams of “liberty and justice for all.”

Let's hope he's right. For all our sakes.


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thereisnospoon 10/10/2011 07:30:00 AM |