Fred Upton Named "The Most Dangerous Member Of Congress" By The L.A. Times

Yesterday the L.A. Times ran an interesting year in review editorial: Congress' 10 Biggest Enemies of the Earth. For a Republican-owned and slanted newspaper it was shockingly on the money. The 10 biggest enemies are all characters we've discussed here before: John Conyers (R-TX), "the biggest lifetime recipient of oil-industry contributions in the Senate;" Don Young (R-AK), "a tireless advocate for opening Alaska's pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling;" Darrell Issa (R-CA), who's turned "political gamesmanship into an art form, and has been particularly keen to attack environmental regulators and policymaker;" Bob Latta (R-OH), who "has the distinction of sponsoring the most far-reaching and destructive amendment to the most egregious anti-environment bill passed by the House this year;" Edward Whitfield (R-KY) who "offered an amendment that would block the EPA from regulating mercury and other toxics from power plants, and from coming up with a rule on smog and soot that crosses state lines;" Jim Inhofe (R-OK), "one of the most outspoken climate-change deniers in the Senate (he's renowned for calling global warming 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people');" Michael Simpson (R-ID), who adds "dozens of anti-environment riders to must-pass budget legislation;" Miss McConnell (R-KY) "is among the key architects of his party's stance on environmental issues;" Eric Cantor (R-VA), "released a memo in late August listing the top 10 "job-destroying regulations his party would battle in the remainder of the congressional session [&] seven were environmental rules opposed by the fossil fuel industry, including restrictions on emissions from industrial boilers and cement plants, and proposed rulemaking on smog, farm soot and greenhouse gases." The list goes from horrible to even more horrible. Cornyn, in other words, is awful, but Cantor is the worst on the list... so far. There's actually, according to the L.A. Times editorial board, someone even worse than Cantor-- our old pal, hereditary multimillionaire and one percenter Fred Upton (R-MI). Here's what they had to say about Upton and why they named him the single most dangerous Member of Congress:

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich. As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Upton is the gatekeeper for many of the disastrous anti-environment bills that have been approved or proposed in the House this year. Ironically, he was once known among his state's conservatives as "Red Fred" because of a somewhat pro-environment voting record, but a recent electoral challenge from his right changed all that. Because of his powerful position and newfound disdain for green regulation, he represents one of the biggest threats to planet Earth on planet Earth.

And there's more-- lots more. This week it's all about telemarketers wanting access to our cell phones. As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Upton's the power behind HR 3035, the Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011. Upton has opposed every consumer protection bill that has come along and the collection agencies and other disreputable characters behind this one know Upton is their man. The corporations Upton is working with the push this bill forward include American Bankers Association, ACA International, Air Transport Association, Consumer Bankers Association, Coalition of Higher Education Assistance Organizations, Edison Electric Institute, Education Finance Council, Financial Services Roundtable, Housing Policy Council, Mortgage Bankers Association, National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), National Council of Higher Education Loan Program, Student Loan Servicing Alliance, Student Loan Servicing Alliance Private Loan Committee, The Clearing House, and, of course, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In case you are interested in sending Upton a message you don't approve of this law, you can contribute to the progressive Democrat running against him in his Michigan district, John Waltz. And you can do that right here on the main Blue America page. Waltz vehemently opposes this invasion of privacy-- and the weaking of regulatory laws that protect consumers, workers and, of course, the environment.

Eh bien, Monsieur the Former Président (and others of your corrupt ilk): This is going on your PERMANENT RECORD -- so there!

Former French President Jacques Chirac has been meted out a stern judicial finger-wagging for his role in two counts of corruption dating back to 1995 and before, when he was still mayor of Paris and merely laying the groundwork for his presidential run.


"This is a strong message from the court -- a message to all politicians of responsibility. It's also proof of a mature and transparent democracy that is today able to make a distinction and try a former president. I see it as a historic and very important decision for the future of French democracy."

-- Jérôme Karsenti, a lawyer for the French anti-corruption
group Anticor, which pressed for Chirac's prosecution

by Ken

Monsieur Karsenti expresses one viewpoint, advancing a principle with which I think we can all agree: that it is crucial to a would-be democracy to be able and willing to hold "all politicians of responsibility" accountable for their actions, on up to the president himself. How often have we here as well as untold others elsewhere insisted that every failure to hold public officials accountable sends a message that what they're accused of doing was in the end OK. Even more sinister is the accompanying implicit messsage: If you want to find the line you have to cross to be held accountable, you'll have to keep looking. Which means pushing the boundary ever farther until you encounter some kind of pushback.

All accounts of the verdict just delivered against the former French president stress its historic nature. Here's Nina Rai, reporting for Xihuanet:

With the issue of graft in the highest echelons of power becoming more rampant world over, one top dignitary has finally been caught in the legal dragnet and is now facing a prison term for his offence. It is none other than the former French President Jacques Chirac.

In a landmark judgment, 79-year-old Chirac has been found guilty of misappropriation of public funds and accordingly, handed down a two-year suspended jail term for diverting public funds and abusing public trust, as per media reports on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011.

The ex-French head of state was made to stand for trial on charges that goes back to his tenure as Mayor of Paris from the years 1977 to 1995. This is the first time in that country’s history that a former President has faced trial and been convicted in a French Court, since 1945 when Marshal Philippe Petain, the head of the wartime Vichy regime, was found guilty of supporting the Nazis.

The charge against Chirac was nepotism which included creating jobs at Paris City Hall for friends and political allies. Jobs which didn’t in the first place exist. He is even accused of using his power to wrest control of the French right and then making a bid for the presidency. Along with Chirac there are nine other persons facing charges of graft at the highest level.

On grounds of poor health, the aging former head Chirac did not show up in court to hear the court verdict. He has denied any kind of wrong-doing. The Tribunal judge Dominique Pauthe, in his judgement said "Jacques Chirac has breached the duty of probity required for public officials, to the detriment of the public interest of Parisians.”

It now remains to be seen how the French populace will take this verdict and sentence of jail term as Chirac, when he was president from 1995 to 2007 was and is even now a highly popular figure in his country.

One quibble here: Contrary to what ms. Rai writes in paragraph 1 about a "top dignitary . . . facing a prison term for his offence," as she tells us in paragraph 2, Monsieur l'Ancient Président isn't going to be fitted for prison garb anytime soon. That two-year prison "sentence" was suspended. As the AP reported it:

He was given a two-year suspended prison sentence, which goes on Chirac's criminal record, but means he does not have to go behind bars. The court said it took into account his age, health and status as a former head of state when determining the sentence.

That's right, folks, this conviction is going right on Jacques's permanent record!

Compare this with the brutal justice meted out to Chirac loyalist Alain Juppé (right), the current French foreign minister, who served as premier under Chirac from 1995 to 1997 and, according to Washington Post's Edward Cody, "was convicted in 2004 on similar charges and given a suspended sentence of 14 months in prison along with a year of ineligibility for office." The poor fellow was forced to retreat in shame, passing "a spell in the Canada and the United States," after which "he returned to become mayor of Bordeaux and, eventually, foreign minister under President Nicolas Sarkozy."

Cody reports that Chirac himself is said to have appeared "enfeebled in recent outings" and has been "found to be suffering from a neurological afliction leading to memory loss." This was the ground on which he was excused from appearing at his trial. However, Cody also reports: "Chirac caused chuckles across the country last summer when photographers snapped him drinking piña coladas and flirting with girls on the terrace of a cafe at a chic Mediterranean resort town until his wife, Bernadette, came by and, in a scolding tone, told him it was time to leave." ("Time to leave"! That's hilarious! Ha-ha!) But then, that was last summer, whereas it wasn't till the beginning of September that the former president learned definitively that he would go on trial along with nine of his henchmen (all but two of whom were also convicted by the three-member judicial panel that passed sentence on the former president.)

Well, not exactly with those henchmen. On September 5, the Telegraph's Henry Samuel quoted the judge, Dominique Pauthé, explaining: "Mr Chirac will not be ordered to appear in person and as a result he shall be tried in his absence, represented by his lawyers." Yes, this was the same judge who Nina Rai told us declared today, in announcing the sentence: "Jacques Chirac has breached the duty of probity required for public officials, to the detriment of the public interest of Parisians."

Back in September, when Judge Pauthé announced that Chirac would be excused from visiting his trial, the judge had earlier "read from a letter by Mr Chirac's lawyers saying the former president wanted the trial to go ahead as it would be 'useful for our democracy' and show that 'all people are equal under the law.' " Bravo, Chirac! This is so commendable that one feels churlish in pointing out that lawyers for Chirac -- very possibly some of the same ones! -- who had toiled so diligently to delay prosecution after he left the presidency (with its shield against prosecution) in 2005. Who made it possible, for example, for the former president to be discovered by his wife "drinking piña coladas and flirting with girls on the terrace of a cafe at a chic Mediterranean resort town" last summer. When you consider that the corruption counts for which he has now been convicted date back to the period up to 1995, this qualifies as something less than swift or certain justice.

Even with his neurological problems, Chirac has continued to insist that he did nothing wrong. By which he appears to mean "nothing that everyone else wasn't doing." The Post's Edward Cody notes, "Until recently, sleight of hand such as Chirac’s was common practice, and many high-ranking officials were paid with paper bags stuffed with cash taken from secret slush funds."

Paper bags stuffed with cash? Really now! Shades of "Sunny John" Boehner handing out tobacco lobbyists' cash to his members on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives! One likes to think that make-believe democracies have developed far more sophisticated systems for delivering bribes. Surely the Koch brothers aren't having their zillions of corrupting cash handed out stuffed in paper bags!

Let's have a little respect for the democratic process, please. Isn't this what offshore bank accounts are for?

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The GOP Sure Is Queer-- And Not Only In The Good Sense Of The Word

This isn't another post about the plethora of Republican closet queens-- from semi-"out" freaks like Lindsey Graham, Aaron Schock and David Dreier to the hysterical sociopaths who do everything anti-gay under the sun to hide their identity, like Patrick McHenry, Trent Franks and Adrian Smith-- and voting against LGBT equality in Congress and it's not just about how Darrell Issa and his cronies have set about to destroy (see video above) the U.S. post office. Let me start with 3 who don't have much in common beyond how classically queer they are: Arkansas Congressman Steve Womack, California Congressman Buck McKeon and Willard "Mitt" Romney (like McKeon, a Mormon).

Who would defend the Supreme Court's misguided, corporatist and profoundly anti-democratic decision to grant corporations personhood (Citizens United)? Well... Arkansas corporate whore Steve Womack. He likes that floodgate of corporate money perverting democracy. "I believe," wrote Womack, "that the Citizens United decision strengthens the fundamental right to free speech afforded to all Americans by the First Amendment.  In the same way that individual Americans and political groups are able to speak out during election season, corporations should be allowed to have their voices heard. They are now allowed to use the same media outlets that as large political and interest groups are allowed to use…Corporations are comprised of Americans too and it is important that we uphold the Constitution without selectively granting First Amendment rights."

Blue Arkansas Blog admits being stunned by Womack's cluelessness. "I really don’t think any Republican in Congress has ever laid out their support for corporate personhood and the corrupting corporate influence in elections quite like that. For all that lofty talk about the Constitution, what Citizen’s United actually does is give corporations the chance to dump millions or even billions into shaping public opinion."

Womack set the tone for the AR-03 debate from the start. He did that when he made the comment about how he and Ken Aden ran in different circles-- Ken in middle class circles, him with so called high society. Aden has stood solidly with the 99% of Americans while Womack has done the bidding of big business every day of his short congressional career. And while Ken Aden has been getting a lot of donations from ordinary Arkansans who believe in his campaign but can only give a small donation, Womack has just had to sit back and let the corporations he’s been defending hand him the cash in a form of perfectly legal, commonly accepted bribery. The good news for those of us who can’t just cough up a six figure ad buy?  Even a ton of money will only go so far, and the power of ordinary people can still match that of the already powerful.

Buck McKeon was born during the Great Depression of the 1930's. He's utterly out of touch with the modern era and rarely makes any sense. Unfortunately, Boehner made him chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, where he uses his power to push the Mormon agenda of ant-gay bigotry. He's gone as far as threatening to sit on the entire Pentagon budget unless Obama reconsiders implementing Congress' decision to abolish Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Yes, he'd jeopardize the nation's security because he hates gay people so much-- or at least his sick, bizarre, throwback view of gay people! (It looks like he failed again this week.) But that's not the only thing-- nor by a long shot-- that's queer about Buck.

Born into a wealthy Mormon family that he eventually drove into bankruptcy, ole Buck has a strange relationship with money. Widely considered one of the most corrupt Members of Congress in either parties, he's also one of the most hypocritical. The GOP banned earmarks... well, not really. They announced they banned earmarks and then set about with vigor and determination to get around their own ban, McKeon in the lead.

One of the first efforts this year to sidestep the ban came in May, when the House Armed Services Committee crafted the National Defense Authorization Act. Lawmakers added 111 amendments totaling more than $650 million in special projects for their districts. Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) set aside $1 billion in a special fund that was used for member-directed projects. Lawmakers said the projects were not earmarks and promised to create a competitive process for the money.

But 59 of the 111 amendments contained language nearly identical to that used to describe previous earmarks, according to an analysis by the earmark watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste.

McKeon, who illegally uses campaign contributions to enrich his wife and son, won't left a finger to help anyone in his own district other than big campaign contributors. Case in point: there's widespread support in McKeon's southern California district for Sen. Barbara Boxer's proposal to block a giant, environmentally-unsound sand and gravel pit mine in Soledad Canyon for Cemex, a Mexican mining firm. Boxer's bill (S.759), which requires House approval (since it involves land owned by the federal government) would authorize a land swap that would provide Cemex with property near Victorville in exchange for giving up its right to mine in Soledad Canyon. The city of Santa Clarita, where McKeon got his political start as mayor-- and the biggest town in the district-- is leading the charge (mostly based on clean air and heavy truck traffic concerns. Organizations that are behind the swap include:

• Breathe California of Los Angeles County
• Clean Air Now
• Coalition for Clean Air
• Planning & Conservation League
• The Sierra Club
• Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy
• Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment (SCOPE)
• SCV Green
• Endangered Habitats League
• Friends of the Santa Clara River
• Rivers and Mountains Conservancy
• Safe Action for the Environment (SAFE)
• Los Angeles Conservation Corps
• San Fernando Valley Audubon Society
• California Association of Realtors
• Valley Industry and Commerce Association
• Valley Industry Association
• Greater San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce
• Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce
• Simi Valley Chamber of Commerce
• City of Glendale
• City of Palmdale
• City of Bellflower
• City of Santa Clarita
• Castaic Lake Water Agency
• Newhall County Water District
• Los Angeles County Democratic Party
• Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley
• Santa Clarita Valley Congress of Republicans
• Democratic Club of the Santa Clarita Valley
• Santa Clarita Valley Fair Elections Committee
• Santa Clarita Valley Community College District
• William S. Hart Union High School District
• Castaic Union School District
• Newhall School District
• Sulphur Springs School District

Not on that list-- or any list supporting the bill-- is the local congressman, Buck McKeon. In fact, the local paper says McKeon refuses to sponsor the bill, calling it "an earmark." McKeon's Democratic opponent, Lee Rogers, calls it "a questionable excuse from a Congressman who has been a leader in securing earmarks for his special interest friends. In fact, he was voted "Porker of the Month" in July 2011 by Citizen's Against Government Waste for legislation which helps defense special interest groups even during the Republican moratorium on earmarks." This is a big deal in the district and time is ticking-- they have 2 weeks to work this out-- but McKeon refuses to get off the dime. Some speculate that he's waiting for a payoff, although he insists it's because of the earmark ban (which he's ignoring when it involves defense contractors who routinely bribe him and his family members). Rogers hit him again last week-- hard:

McKeon is no stranger to earmarks. Between 2008 and 2010 McKeon requested $78.5 million in earmarks, 76% of which were directed to defense projects, including a $9.6 million payday to the Northrop Grumman Corporation. Additionally, he is responsible for loads of fat in the National Defense Authorization Act, including a $650 million slush fund that earned him the title “Porker of the Month” from Citizens Against Government Waste in July 2011.

As for McKeon's co-religionist... where does one even begin? Another old video of the country's most flip-floppin'-est politician EVAH!



Queer? Not as queer as Jonathan Chait's post $10,000 bet goof-up report on Romney's little rich kid persona in the new New York.

Wealthy though Romney may be, as a committed Mormon who can’t gamble and an equally committed tightwad, he’s the last guy who’s going to run around throwing down high-stakes bets on a whim.

I do think the debate exposed a deeper problem for Romney and the Republican Party. Romney is obviously conscious of his wealth and determined to avoid the stereotype of an out-of-touch rich guy interested only in protecting his own. And yet the party is committed to a policy agenda that involves enriching people in Romney’s tax bracket. This combination renders him an especially poor vehicle for the GOP agenda.

All the presidential candidates, including President Obama, are rich by the standards of the average American. But Romney is especially rich, and not just numerically. He looks and sounds like a paragon of the upper class, with his regal appearance, precise diction, and dignified graying sideburns. This has forced him to defensively cast himself as a middle-class champion, foreswearing at every turn any interest in benefiting the rich.

The most dramatic example concerns his proposal on capital gains. Reducing the tax rate on capital gains is the centerpiece of the Republican domestic agenda. Capital gains represent a huge share of income for the very rich, and the lower rate for capital gains income (as opposed to salary income) largely accounts for the fact that Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. George W. Bush cut the capital gains tax, and most leading Republicans want to eliminate it altogether.

Romney proposes only to eliminate capital gains taxes on income under $200,000 a year. That would cover just a tiny portion of capital gains, making it essentially a symbolic measure. A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal editorial page railed against Romney’s plan. The problem, the editorial noted, was not just that Romney wasn’t offering any new tax breaks for the rich. It was that the retreat “suggests that he's afraid of Mr. Obama's class warfare rhetoric”-- that, in general, he will shrink from the task of advocating for policies that increase income inequality.

Any conservatives liable to worry about this would be positively alarmed after hearing Romney defend his position on Saturday night. During one portion of the debate, Romney mentioned that he, unlike Newt Gingrich, would restrict his capital gains tax cut to those under the $200,000 annual threshold. Gingrich replied, accurately, that households under that ceiling have barely any capital gains. Romney replied:

And-- and in my view, the place that we could spend our precious tax dollars for a tax cut is on the middle class, that's been most hurt by the Obama economy. That's where I wanna eliminate taxes on interest dividends and capital gains.

“Spend our precious tax dollars”-- that is a phrase to strike terror in right-wing hearts. For twenty years, the basis for Republican budgeting has been to refuse to acknowledge any tradeoff between cutting taxes for the rich and other governmental priorities. The Democratic position is to insist that tax cuts for the rich be measured against other possible choices-- lower taxes for the rich mean higher taxes for the middle class, or lower social spending, or higher deficits. Here, Romney is actually employing the Democratic formulation.

Indeed, he is doing it in the way most prone to enraging conservatives-- by describing the choice to cut taxes as a form of spending-- a formulation that for several decades has prompted the conservative auto-response that this phrasing presumes all taxpayer dollars belong to the government.

Every additional episode that highlights Romney’s wealth merely increases the pressure he surely feels to avoid the vulnerabilities associated with championing the rich. Republicans have usually sought to avoid this problem by nominating candidates who can at least sell themselves as authentic representatives of the middle class. George W. Bush may have been handed enormous wealth by his patrician family, but he crafted an image of himself as a kind of Texas dirt farmer, with his modest “ranch” serving as the background. Nominating Romney, stripped of any such cover, raises the risk for Republicans that he may be a pacifist in the class war.

This is one screwed up party. They need a rest-- a nice long one, out of governance entirely. Are you registered to vote?

Planned Obsolescence-- Is Caveat Emptor All We Got?

Lately, there's no end to Boehner and his House cronies inveighing against the regulatory system. A constant thread is that regulations kill jobs and that particular lie predates Boehner by many decades. The GOP has always been the party of caveat emptor-- let the buyer beware. The breezy Marketplace look at planned obsolescence barely scratches the surface. Key word there is "barely." Is it only former GOP Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert among Republicans who sees the dangers and the folly in this extremism against consumer and environmental protection?

The House is moving forward with three bills that would cripple the regulatory system.  The bills are not going to become law this Congress, but they show how far a party in thrall to its right-most wing is willing to veer from what has long been the mainstream. The critical question is whether and when more moderate voices-- centrist Republicans in Congress, sensible business leaders and the largely centrist American public-- will recognize the damage being done and raise their voices to call it to a halt. Clearly, that’s not going to happen in the House itself.
           
...[T]he bills before the House would prevent the system from working: they are a recipe for failure. The bills are sometimes described with the mild term “regulatory reform” but these measures have as much to do with reform as Communist re-education camps had to do with education.  

In the case of the REINS Act, in particular, the analogy is all too apt: “reform” is simply a euphemism for an effort to break the system and remake it according to ideological prescription that will leave it permanently hobbled.

When the Geoff Davis' deranged REINS Act came up for a vote on December 7, it passed 241-184, not only every single Republican-- including those who pose as "mainstream conservatives"-- voting AYE, but 4 of the most virulently right-wing Democrats joining in as well (corrupt and fanatic anti-consumer Blue Dogs John Barrow, Dan Boren, Mike McIntyre, and Collin Peterson).

When I was 12 I had dinner with Vance Packard, author of The Waste Makers and the friend of a friend's father. I read his book at the time and I'm re-reading it now in light of all that's happened in the intervening 4 decades. A lot has happened, some of it in direct response to Packard's powerful exposé of "the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals." The Federal Trade Commission and some states have moved in against some forms of deceptive practices by manufacturers-- but I was actually shocked to see how thin the protections are.

A review of Packard's book says it was the first "to probe the increasing commercialization of American life—the development of consumption for consumption's sake. Packard outlines the ways manufacturers and advertisers persuade consumers to buy things they don't need and didn't know they wanted, including the two-of-a-kind of everything syndrome-- 'two refrigerators in every home'-- and appeals to purchase something because it is more expensive, or because it is painted in a new color. The book also brought attention to the concept of planned obsolescence, in which a 'death date' is built into products so that they wear out quickly and need to be replaced. By manipulating the public into mindless consumerism, Packard believed that business was making us 'more wasteful, imprudent, and carefree in our consuming habits,' which was using up our natural resources at an alarming rate." The examples go on and on and some still seem shocking while others are so ingrained into American society that they are barely noticeable today. Last night I was making notes as I read and I want to share a few paragraphs that inspired me to send letters to a few Members of Congress asking if these situations have ever been addressed legislatively.

The ideal of a "lifetime" product, which once was the shining goal of makers of a wide range of home products, was reduced for most to a memory. When we asked Mrs. Brady [editorial director] of Consumers Union for a list of the products still designed to last a lifetime, she responded: "I can think of only one-- the piano... There is no doubt whatsoever that until recently very good rugs have lasted from generation to generation. Today, ten years is the commercially promised life for a good wool rug."

...A part of the trouble with modern carpeting was that the manufacturers had downgraded quality and fought off quality standards. Another problem was the introduction of tufted carpets, which could be made much faster and cheaper than woven carpets. The makers of woven carpets reduced the quality of their rugs in order to compete more effectively with the tufted rugs. Another reason for the deterioration was that much of the carpeting was being bought by big housing developers who tended to install the cheapest floor covering they could in order to increase profit margins.

... An official of the Automobile Finance Association in testifying at a Senate subcommittee hearing told of a survey he had conducted with association members on the state of the automobile industry. He quoted one member as responding: "The quality of today's automobiles does not compare favorably with past years... The price of the product continues to go up and the quality continues to go down.

...Sale of automobile parts soared year after year... because "manufacturers are building them so they'll get to the junk pile faster [according to a V.P. of a Long Island ignition parts manufacturing firm... There was a] reluctance of many of the manufacturers to make a car that would hold the affection of its owner for more than a very few years."

...Automobile mufflers in 1958 had only one half the life expectancy of mufflers bought a decade earlier. Design Sense, published by Lippincott & Marguiles, the industrial-design firm, took note of the shorted life span of mufflers in calling on industry to take advantage of new technologies to give longer life to products. "To take just one example," it said, "a major steel company has had available for some time-- with no takers-- a lead-coated steel which, for just eight cents more per auto muffler, would give a product that would last the life of the car. Instead automakers are still installing mufflers that must be replaced on an average of once every two years at a cost to the customer of $18 to $27 per muffler."

You can do the math. The behavior is clearly sociopathic-- but protected by Republican judicial rulings that favor corporations (including, of course, the big one, Citizens United) and now Boehner and his caucus are making a big push to "cripple the regulatory system"-- in Sherwood Boehlert's words. I don't know if any of them read Packard or not, but he went on to explain that "there was specific indication that evidence of quality obsolescence was not unconnected with the drive to increase replacement sales and to point out a column in Home Furnishings Daily that "noted uneasily in the late fifties that many appliance manufacturers were rushing to get into the field of servicing their equipment. He asked: 'Why all the rush to get into the servicing angle? Is it because the appliance won't stay in A-1 working order too many days after it is installed in the home?'." Louis Cheskin of the Color Research Institute went on the blame the public for this kind of behavior-- as did industry spokesmen in every field. Cheskin:

"Why make the handles on cups so that they won't break off? Who wants to pay ten percent more for dishes so that the dishes will last a lifetime? Most housewives want or welcome an excuse to buy a new set of dishes every year or so. Who wants furniture to last forever? The large American middle classes do not. They want furniture to be in style, not outdated... Furniture, clothes, dishes can all be made to last longer at very little additional cost but neither the maker nor the consumer is interested in this."

Mr Cheskin could have changed his name and reinvented himself, ever so slightly, as any number of anti-consumer fanatics from Don Young (R-AK), Bill Young (R-FL), Jerry Lewis (R-CA) or Buck McKeon (R-CA) to Cliff Stearns (R-FL) or Ralph Hall (R-TX), each of whom was in college when Packard's book was a widely discussed best-seller. And if you're wondering how strong Republicans oppose protecting consumers and to what lengths they're willing to go to give corporations the leeway to cheat and abuse customers (i.e., their own cosntituents) let's look back at the last major Federal Trade Commission bill, Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act. It passed the House on May 23, 2007 284-141. Only one slimy corporate whore of a Blue Dog crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP that day, Collin Peterson (MN) but 56 Republicans crossed in the other direction and voted with the Democrats. Who voted against consumer protection? 140 of them and I bet DWT readers will recognize these names:

Michele Bachmann (R-MN)
Oily Joe Barton (R-TX)
John Boehner (R-OH)
Eric Cantor (R-VA)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Darrell Issa (R-CA)
Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
Buck McKeon (R-CA)
Mike Pence (R-IN)
Denny Rehberg (R-MT)
Paul Ryan (R-WI)
Fred Upton (R-MI)

You get the picture... the whole freaking GOP Clown Car-- all their then up-and-comers who diligently serve the interests of the one percent.

Romney Is Turning Out To Be A Real Bain In The Ass For The GOP

Mitt can't say DWT hasn't warned him over and over. That whole Bain thing-- on which he's basically trying to base his whole appeal as the "non-politician" Mr.-Fixit-Businessman-- is just plain TOXIC. I know from personal experience because Bain worked its magic on Warner Bros Records after AOL dragged the company down the road to ruin. Bain did everything wrong and left the once great company gasping for air like a dead dolphin on the beach. There's basically nothing else other than a great name and a catalogue that long ago stopped growing. Now it's like a money-laundering operation for the Russian mafia and a bond-selling ponzi scheme. And now even Newt Gingrich is using his Bain days against him: "If Governor Romney," the Newtster snidely told the press earlier this week, "would like to give back all the money he's earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain, then I would be glad to then listen to him. And I will bet you $10, not $10,000, that he won't take the offer."

Expect plenty more like that-- and not just from Gingrich (who has basically been in a nasty cat fight with Romney for almost two decades). God only knows what Obama's Chicago team has in store for the hapless Romney. But, right now it is Republicans who are most concerned about the disastrous Bain business model-- buying up and "restructuring" distressed companies-- and how the public is likely to view it as it gets explained to them... over and over and over. Wait 'til people start fixating of what "restructuring" really means. Until now the "GOP’s investor-friendly ethos has made rivals hesitant to use it against him." But that was then, and aside from the cutting Gingrich slam above, Huntsman’s been hinting at Romney’s investment capital years as well, albeit more subtly, making extensive use of a now infamous photo of Bain-era Romney awash in dollar bills in his new website 10kbet.com and an accompanying web video.

Why is the issue coming up all of a sudden? Despite the Tea Party’s anti-bailout streak, it isn’t because Republicans have suddenly decided they hate investors-- Gingrich, for example, got pilloried in the conservative press as anti-capitalist over his “layoffs” line and conspicuously rededicated himself to a “positive” campaign the very next day.

The real subtext is electability. President Obama has made it absolutely clear that this race is going to be about the 99% vs. the 1% on taxes, entitlements, and regulation. Sure we think Bain Capital is a paragon of free market values, Romney’s Republican critics argue, but what about those swing voters who are all too easily swayed the first time they see an ad featuring workers Romney laid off?

“If you can make the argument either directly or indirectly that this makes him unelectable, then you have fundamentally undermined the rationale of his candidacy,” one unaligned Republican strategist skeptical of Romney told TPM.

Behind the scenes, Republicans opposed to Romney have long whispered that Bain is the candidate’s glass jaw, that it killed his Senate campaign in 1994, that he’s shown no sign he’s learned to handle the issue on a national stage because it’s not a big factor in the Republican primaries.

“A main argument Romney has made to Republicans has been that they should hold their noses and vote for him because he has the best chance of beating Obama,” one Republican operative at a rival campaign told TPM. “But a lot of Republicans who have thought through how his record at Bain could be used against him, especially in nasty campaign ads in economically depressed parts of swing states, think Bain is a huge liability and that Democrats will bludgeon him with it. Expect to see a lot more scrutiny of Romney’s record in business, and of Bain, in the next month.”

Influential RedState blogger (and Romney detractor) Erick Erickson has brought up the Bain days in exactly that context, warning voters that “if you are foolish, given that the President intends to campaign on a moral case against success and a lot of people are receptive to it, you might want to put up a candidate who made his money doing leveraged buy outs, laying off people, and restructuring companies.”

Erickson is certainly right that Democrats are waiting to pounce on Romney’s business record. Perhaps the biggest sign of how much oomph Democratic strategists ascribe to the Bain Capital angle, is that they’ve barely used it at all. Even while the DNC and Obama campaign frequently bring up Romney’s wealth (see: bet, $10,000), Bain’s layoffs almost never come up. That’s not an oversight: they’re keeping the powder dry for the general.

...FactCheck.org notably took issue with an ad by pro-Romney independent group Restore Our Future claiming the candidate created “thousands of jobs,” saying they couldn’t find a solid number to back it up and noting examples in which layoffs ultimately led to profits.

“I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation,” Marc Walpow, a managing partner who worked with Romney at Bain, told the Los Angeles Times for a story last month. “The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.”

Is it Bobby Jindal time again? OK, ok, I know... But don't worry, Bill Kristol says it's still not too late for Paul Ryan to jump in:

What Will The Mormons Do...

...if the Confederate yahoos they've thrown their lot in with actually nominate Newt Gingrich? Delaware sociopath Christine "I'm not a witch" O'Donnell endorsed Romney yesterday but, no, it isn't any more far-fetched that Newt be nominated-- and become president-- than it was for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan or even George W. Bush. Those were also impossible candidates who, liberals hoped would get nominated because they were so utterly implausible. As Rick Perry would say, "Oops!" Now Rick Perry, that's implausible. Or Bachmann or Santorum. But The Newtster? He may seem like a thoroughly repugnant figure to normal people but we're talking about a series of Republican primaries and caucuses-- in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. Do you see what kind of freaks are participating in these events? The only thing that's implausible is that Gingrich not win. He's almost exactly their vision of a leader-- as Alan Grayson put it a few weeks ago, a stupid person's idea of a smart person. It's fine for Democrats to smirk about Newt that "the higher a monkey climbs... the more you can see his butt," but that doesn't mean that Gingrich isn't the next-- albeit not very likable-- Ronald Reagan (although, personally, I never liked him either). Which brings us back to the Mormons.

Capturing the government-- and the White House in particular-- is practically part of their religion! And they're serious about it. There are 6 Mormons in the Senate, including the Majority Leader (Harry Reid) and the most senior Republican (Orrin Hatch), as well as Mike Lee (R-UT), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Dean Heller (R-NV) and Tom Udall (D-NM). And there are 8 Mormons in the House-- Rob Bishop, R-UT), Jason Chaffetz, R-UT), Jim Matheson, Blue Dog-UT), Buck McKeon (R-CA), Wally Herger (R-CA), Raul Labrador (R-ID), Mike Simpson (R-ID) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), currently favored to win an open Senate seat.

You may not be aware that soon after Joseph Smith made up the religion, he started imagining himself in the White House. Even today, Mormons revere him as a prophet instead of a bank swindler and charlatan who was nearly executed for treason. In 1842 Smith wrote into his cult that it would one day rule all of the Western Hemisphere as a Mormon theocracy. After running for president in 1844 Smith had himself declared "prophet, priest and king" of a millennial monarchy and was assassinated while in jail... before the election. Here's what Presidnet James Buchanan had to say about the next Mormon prophet in his first State of the Union (1857):

"The people of Utah almost exclusively belong to this [the Mormon] church, and believing with a fanatical spirit that he [Brigham Young] is governor of the Territory by divine appointment, they obey his commands as if these were direct revelations from Heaven. If, therefore, he chooses that his government shall come into collision with the Government of the United States, the members of the Mormon Church will yield implicit obedience to his will. Unfortunately, existing facts leave but little doubt that such is his determination. Without entering upon a minute history of occurrences, it is sufficient to say that all the officers of the United States, judicial and executive, with the single exception of two Indian agents, have found it necessary for their own personal safety to withdraw from the Territory, and there no longer remains any government in Utah but the despotism of Brigham Young. This being the condition of affairs in the Territory, I could not mistake the path of duty. As Chief Executive Magistrate I was bound to restore the supremacy of the Constitution and laws within its limits. In order to effect this purpose, I appointed a new governor and other Federal officers for Utah and sent with them a military force for their protection and to aid as a posse comitatus in case of need in the execution of the laws."

Presidents Hayes, Garfield, Cleveland and Arthur all had similar public problems with the Mormons, much of it centered around polygamy, theocracy and intolerance towards non-Mormons. Today the states with significant Mormon populations, enough to effect election outcomes, are:

Utah- 1,884,377 (68.2%)
California- 757,895 (2.03%)
Idaho- 410,757 (26.2%)
Arizona- 381,235 (5.96%)
Texas- 286,902 (1.14%)
Washington- 263,004 (3.91%)
Nevada- 174,662 (6.47%)
Oregon- 146,617 (3.83%)
Colorado- 139,887 (2.78%)
New Mexico- 66,178 (3.21%)
Wyoming- 62,411 (11.1%)
Montana- 45,893 (4.64%)

How pissed off will Mormons be if Newt Gingrich winds up as the GOP nominee instead of Bishop Romney? Not pissed off enough to vote for Obama-- but pissed off enough to not vote for Gingrich. Will it matter in Utah? No, there are too many Republicans. Will it matter in California? No, there aren't enough Republicans. But where it can matter-- in terms of throwing states' electoral votes-- are Arizona, Nevada and, possibly, Colorado. These are all swing states with big Mormon voting populations that help Republicans win. If they-- or their Elders-- are angry enough that Romney was denied the opportunity to fulfill Joseph Smith's plan... well, it would be hard for the Newtster to win without Arizona, Nevada and Colorado.

Is this ditz the only one who finds your Chon Day cartoon sexist and offensive? There's a simpler answer, Bob

The 1946 Chon Day cartoon nominated by New Yorker
cartoon editor Bob Mankoff as "the perfect cartoon"

by Ken

And that simpler answer, Bob, is: One can only hope.

You may recall that we tagged along on New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff's quest for "the perfect cartoon," which came to rest on the one we see again at the top of this post.

I admitted that I had one technical problem with the cartoon: Until I was prompted, I didn't realize it was a gun that the put-upon shoe salesman was harboring in the shoebox. I thought he was just taking out yet another shoe in another surely-vain attempt to satisfy this clearly unsatisfiable customer, which made for only the most modest of jokes.

Once I was clued in, I thought the idea was pretty darned hilarious. But as Bob himself explained, a crucial component of the fun of the cartoon is the way it leads the viewer to its payoff.

Our gaze drops down from the face of the dowager, then to the right, first onto the form of a black shoe, then a second, and then a gun. The two black shoes delay, ever so slightly, our perception of the gun as a gun, thereby heightening the surprise. On the level of human dynamics and the psychology of perception, this is a perfect cartoon.

If you have to have the thing explained to you, it doesn't pack quite the same punch, and while it could be that I'm just a defective cartoon-viewer, nevertheless there you are. I guess it's maybe not my perfect cartoon. But then, I never set out in search of one.

Speaking of defective cartoon-viewers, Bob introduces us to a doozy in his latest e-newsletter/blogpost, "Perfect, or Perfectly Appalling?."

One reader took exception to my choice of the perfect cartoon. On Tumblr, she asked, “Am I the only one who sees this as sexist and incredibly offensive?”

To which the simple answer, it seems to me, is: What are you, lady, nuts?

Let's simplify the question to: Is this cartoon sexist? And the answer is: On a scale of zero to a kajillion, no way, José.

Inescapably, I think of the TV Jerry Seinfeld's beclouded Uncle Leo, who behind every slight and disappointment in his life the raging menace of anti-Semitism. The point, obviously (I hope!), wasn't that there's no such thing as anti-Semitism. Manifestly, there is. But its true poisonousness is rendered trivial if not nonexistent by people too clueless to know what it is -- and what it isn't.

In the cartoon, the beleaguered salesman isn't contemplating shooting the customer because she's a woman. He's been pushed to the brink by the session he's had with her, and one presumes by the endless succession of such sessions he's had with customer like her since he entered the business.

No, this doesn't mean that every female shoe-buyer is a living nightmare. But if the reader who was so incredibly offended by the cartoon doesn't recognize this all-too-real-world situation, you have to wonder if she's ever bought shoes, or maybe even wears them. Is she aware that the men's and women's shoe businesses are totally different enterprises? That the manufacture and sale of ladies' shoes has been designed to produce exactly this situation, and for some reason women have gone along with it.

Bob offers as backup "this disparity in the number of choices on Zappos":


Forget that I don't know what Zappos is. Really, I don't think this is necessary -- and if anything it understates the difference between the two fundamentally different shoe industries. We all know this, don't we? I think it's changed astonishingly little between 1946 and 2011.

Now, Bob characteristically offers a much more nuanced answer. He points out, first, that Day didn't depict the salesman in smirking triumph after unleashing the literally smoking gun on the old harridan. (In fact, he's rejiggered the original cartoon to show this possibility.)

By featuring our inner demons, rather than the better angels of our nature, humor helps those demons remain inside. And of all the arts, humor is most reliant on the demons to produce its effects. That’s why it’s hard to find cartoons about faithful spouses, kind bosses, diligent employees, honest accountants, competent doctors, or generous bankers, even though, in real life, all those are the rule, not the exception—except, of course, for bankers:

"And we will absolutely start lending again as
soon as we finish building our debtors' prison."

Did you laugh at that? Then, at least for a moment, you bought into the stereotype of the uncaring, greedy banker. Does this mean that you believe that bankers are callous and greedy? Perhaps—but that isn’t necessary to get the joke. Likewise, you needn’t believe lawyers are a mendacious lot to think that this is funny:

I confess I found both the banker and the lawyer cartoons hilarious. I guess somewhere there are people who are incredibly offended -- and in these cases I guess I can understand. But in the case of the Chon Day cartoon, no. Sorry, lady.

#

New Poll: Paul Ryan's Approval Numbers Have Dropped Precipitously

Blue America has been insisting for years that Paul Ryan is vulnerable to a serious electoral challenge. This week Democratic political strategists inside the Beltway are getting the same message from one of their own, pollster Paul Maslin. Maslin agrees that Rob Zerban is in position to give Ryan the reelection battle of his career. Or will the DCCC sabotage the efforts... again?

There is literally no better example of a corporate sell-out than would-be Medicare killer and Ayn Rand cultist Paul Ryan. The DCCC has always treated him-- for reasons they refuse to disclose-- as untouchable, even though the district routinely votes for local Democrats and Obama won the district 51-48%. The DCCC involvement in WI-1 has always been to prevent a viable candidate from winning a primary and fighting hard, if stealthily, for a Democrat with no chance whatsoever. Last year it was John Heckenlively, a self-described "historical consultant" who lives in his parents' basement and who managed to raise $12,066 at a time that Ryan raked in $3,922,760. Ryan's margin of victory was 38 points-- 179,819 (68%) to 79,363 (30%).

That's a long established pattern for the DCCC in this district. This cycle the DCCC slipped up and Rob Zerban, a credible Kenosha County supervisor, managed to lay claim to the candidacy. The poll shows him having already cut down that 38 point difference to 6 points, slightly over the margin of error. Taking down Ryan would be one of the biggest political stories of the year-- and it could happen, despite the DCCC's noncommittal attitude. They've absolutely refused to put Zerban on their Red to Blue list and, aside from using Ryan and his deranged plans to kill Medicare as a bugaboo nationally, they are steadfastly ignoring him as an electoral target.

Ryan is considered "serious" and "an idea guy" by the Beltway media, although he has the intellect of an adolescent who just had her life profoundly changed by a quick reading of The Fountainhead. Wall Street marked him as an up-and-comer early on and-- along with the Insurance Industry-- has financed his political career and his rise to power inside the GOP House caucus. As Paul Krugman has pointed out on numerous occasions, Ryan "don't know much about economics." Krugman's analysis of Ryan's proposals over the last year and a half are classic and make a complete mockery of Beltway conventional wisdom that the 42 year old Budget Chairman is going places. Wall Street would like to see him in the Senate or White House one day. They've given him more in contributions than any other Wisconsin politician in history-- $2,600,622 so far.

As of September 30, Ryan's campaign was sitting on $4,276,222, almost $2 million of it raised this year. And so far this year Ryan's two top donors are PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Goldman Sachs. Zerban, who's getting no financial help from the DCCC whatsoever (and, obviously, none from the big Wall Street predators who are financing Ryan), had raised $276,917 as of September 30. It isn't enough-- which is why Blue America keeps urging you to contribute, even if just $5 or $10 to Rob's campaign. The poll was completed early in November and it's clear that Ryan can be defeated if a serious effort is made.

[T]he worst rating in the poll goes to the U.S. Congress, which receives only a 19% approval mark, with 74% disapproving, (See Figure 2) nearly mirroring the national right direction/wrong track finding of 18% vs. 70%.

All of this background has weakened incumbent Paul Ryan, who used to enjoy electoral and image majorities well over 60%. Ryan’s favorable rating has declined to 54% positive, his job rating is 55% and his reelect is 54%-- all this before the beginning of an active campaign against Ryan. When voters hear positive information about Rob Zerban and Paul Ryan, Ryan’s support weakens further to 52%. Rob Zerban’s description receives a better than 3 to 1 positive reaction.

And, after respondents hear one additional paragraph description linking Ryan to the Republican leadership in Congress and describing his authorship of the House budget plan, his support falls below 50% and his favorable rating becomes like Obama’s and Walker’s-- dead even at 46% positive and 46% negative. And... Rob Zerban trails Ryan by only six points after this very brief exposition of Ryan’s signature idea, 49-43%, with undecideds holding nearly unanimously negative views of Congress in general and more than 80% saying they have either a negative or neutral feeling toward Ryan at the end of the poll.

Instead of recruiting right-wing, conservative Democrats, which is all Steve Israel concerns himself with, he should be working with Rob Zerban to defeat one of the gravest dangers America faces: Paul Ryan. In lieu of that, can you pitch in and do the clueless Israel's job for him? Or maybe Israel's worse than clueless. I'm trying to get to the bottom of it. Meanwhile, the Blue Dogs, still chortling with self-satisfaction over Dennis Cardoza's smear of President Obama, are working with Israel to elect 5 conservative Democrats-- Leonard Bembry (FL-2), Clark Hall (AR-1), Brendan Mullen (IN-2), Ted Vick (SC-7) and Rob Wallace (OK-2). Instead of concentrating on getting rid of Paul Ryan, Steve Israel is concentrating on electing conservative with Republican values. Cardoza, co-chair of the Blue Dog PAC-- riding high after slamming Obama, brayed: "That’s who the Blue Dogs are, and that’s why these candidates actively sought our endorsement. They know what the Blue Dog brand represents and wanted to share in it." We do too.

Dennis Cardoza, Über-Corrupt California Blue Dog, Savagely Attacks President Obama

Blue Dog and corporate shill Dennis Cardoza is retiring-- but not before taking a vicious swipe at President Obama, something as bad as you'd expect from any Republican. And-- let's be real-- what is a Blue Dog anyway, if not a Republican who organizes with the Democrats and then votes with the GOP on the crucial issues? Cardoza, in fact, has been one of the worse, particularly considering he isn't from Alabama or Mississippi or Texas, but from northern California. Career-long, Cardoza has been a middle-of-the-pack Blue Dog, voting just over half the time with the Democrats on crucial issues and just under 50% of the time with Republicans. This past year, however, he went for a walk on the wild side, making him one of Boehner's and Cantor's go-to-Blue Dogs, someone they could almost always depend on to cross the aisle and vote with the GOP. So far this session, Cardoza, who no longer has to worry about reelection (he's finally retiring to K Street), has voted with the Republicans 62% in crucial roll calls. That score is worse than some of the most reactionary Democrats' in Congress-- worse than Heath Shuler's, Mike McIntyre's and Jim Cooper's. In fact, more right-wing than Republican Walter Jones'! (One of the few Democrats with a worse score than Cardoza's is is best bud's Jim Costa, the one he made the deal with to stay in the House while Cardoza goes off to lobbyist land. Costa has voted with the GOP just under 75% of the time this year.)

These two are examples of why Blue America started our BadDogs page. Last year we helped rid the House of Alabama Blue Dog Bobby Bright, the Democrat who voted most frequently with the GOP-- and who was campaigning on a platform of voting against Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. This year Cardoza and Costa were both on our consideration list, although, with Cardoza going off the K Street, Costa is even more likely to get the Bobby Bright treatment.

Yesterday's startling OpEd by Cardoza in The Hill must have had President Obama wondering why he bothered to coddle the Blue Dogs for the past 3 years-- even announcing that in his heart he is a Blue Dog. Cardoza, a typically treacherous Blue Dog:

After observing President Obama for the last three years, it has become obvious to me that the president might prefer to be a university professor rather than do the job he holds today. While he might not realize that he feels this way, the evidence is very clear to those who work with or watch him closely. 

Let me be clear-- I’m not trying to disparage professors. But anyone who wonders why the president is not crushing the weak Republican field only needs to examine how President Obama has behaved more like Professor Obama: 

In the president’s first year in office, his administration suffered from what I call “idea disease.” Every week, and sometimes almost every day, the administration rolled out a new program for the country. There was no obvious prioritization and, after the rollout, very little effort to actually pass the latest idea/imperative/plan/edict. Instead, the new programs just kept coming, with the new proposals constantly stepping on the previous day’s message. This rampant “idea disease” squandered the tremendous goodwill generated by the Obama campaign’s message of “hope,” tainting the president’s personal appeal. As Democrats in Congress, we often felt like we were drinking water out of a fire hose, trying to simultaneously deal with past failures of the Bush administration and the avalanche of new initiatives from Obama. This lack of focus also made it easy for congressional Republicans to stall and foil many of President Obama’s best initiatives-- which they did with relish!

Early in his administration, President/Professor Obama repeatedly referred to “teaching moments.” He would admonish staff, members of Congress and the public, in speeches and in private, about what they could learn from him. Rather than the ideological or corrupt “I’m above the law” attitudes of some past administrations, President Obama projected an arrogant “I’m right, you’re wrong” demeanor that alienated many potential allies. Furthermore, the president concentrated power within the White House, leaving Cabinet members with no other option but to dutifully carry out policies with which they had limited input in crafting and might very well disagree. From my experience, this was especially true in the environmental, resources, housing and employment areas. Not by coincidence, these areas have also been responsible for much of the president’s harshest critiques.

One former administration official told me directly that the people in the White House “NEVER TALK TO REAL PEOPLE.” Another former Obama staffer confided to me that it was clear to him that the president didn’t mind giving speeches (lectures), but really avoided personal contact with members of Congress and folks outside the Beltway. “He doesn’t seem to derive energy from spending time with regular people the way Clinton did. He rallies to give speeches for the big crowds, but avoids individual contact,” the former staffer recalled. This “arms-length” attitude extends to top decision-makers in the president’s administration. A senior housing official recently told me that, despite the fact that he was responsible for crafting policies to stem the foreclosure crisis, he had personally never met with a homeowner who had been foreclosed on. 

The president’s disinterest in input from those outside his inner circle is costing him many wasted opportunities. Recently, a senator told me Obama went to his/her state, but issued an invitation for the senator to attend the event only the day before. “I represent a must-win state and lead the president in approval ratings by nearly 20 points. He was totally off-message for what my people wanted to hear. Doesn’t the White House get it? I don’t need him, he needs ME!”  

Many on the Democratic side wish Hillary Clinton, Gov. Jerry Brown (Calif.), Gov. Martin O’Malley (Md.) or Gov. Andrew Cuomo (N.Y.) were running instead, but the president still has time to learn a thing or two from these skilled politicians. I’ll still take Professor Obama over the “goat rodeo clowns” the Republican field offers, but I fear the overall student body-- American voters-- will give him a failing grade next November if he doesn’t improve his performance.

Again, the Bad Dogs page is all about Blue Dog extinction. I don't know which K Street firm Cardoza will wind up at, but I bet it will be "bipartisan" and I bet his Blue Dog buddies will be very receptive to his suggestions, especially Costa. Are these people as bad and as corrupt as Republicans? 100% (which is more than 99.9%).

Ever Wonder What Medical Doctors Have To Say About Airport X-Ray Body Scanners?

Dr. Lee Rogers is the Simi Valley surgeon running for the L.A.-area House seat which GOP fossil Buck McKeon is still clinging to. Although his campaign has focused like a laser beam on the economy, jobs and housing, it's always fascinating when he gets into topics that sit at the intersection of politics and medicine. This week his campaign called for a ban on airport body scans.

"Currently, there are about 250 body scanners that use X-rays placed in American airports by the Transportation Security Administration which have screened millions of passengers. Last year, a report by the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety, which includes the European Commission, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Nuclear Energy Agency, and the World Health Organization, concluded that pregnant women and children should not be subject to the scanning, even though the radiation dose from body scanners is small. The Committee also stated that governments must justify the additional risk posed to passengers and should consider other technologies to achieve the same end without the use of radiation. Recently, the European Commission banned the use of X-ray body scanners in all European Union airports, citing the health and safety concerns.”

“The TSA’s use of these devises violates an important principle in radiation safety: humans should not be radiated unless there is some possible medical benefit. The devices used for security screening are not subject to FDA regulations for safety, unlike X-ray machines in a doctor’s office. Additionally, TSA officers are prohibited from wearing radiation dosimeter badges, as worn by healthcare workers to track their radiation exposure.”
 
“It is obvious that the use of this risky X-ray technology is the result of the culture in Washington. The manufacturer of the X-ray device is a California company called Rapiscan Systems which has more than tripled their lobbying cash in the past 5 years. The health and well being of our citizens should not be for sale.”

“As Congressman, I would work to stop the use of radiating devices for human screening that serve no medical benefit and I call on others in Congress to do the same. I would ensure that any future research on X-ray screening devices for humans meets the same ethical and safety standards that are required of medical devices emitting radiation. I would also fight to allow workers who operate X-ray machinery for baggage screening to wear radiation detector badges for their safety.”

Karl Rove And Newt Gingrich Are Attacking Everyone Who Wants A Level Playing Field

Elizabeth Warren's video speaks for itself-- elegantly and effectively. Syracuse congressional candidate Brianne Murphy is less well-known and doesn't have the resources yet for web ads like the one above. Instead, she wrote a letter to the editor of the Syracuse Post-Standard. Elizabeth responded to the vicious attack directed at her personally by Karl Rove and his secretive, Wall Street-financed super-PAC. Brianne, who has to face a conservative Democrat and then a brain dead teabagger, is addressing Newt Gingrich's desire to end child labor laws. What follows is the unedited version of Give poor students a book, not a broom!

Newt Gingrich is in the news this week for saying: “really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.”

While Gingrich’s sound-bite may rally Tea Party champions to sound their drums of personal responsibility, it highlights just how dangerously out of touch our Washington career candidates are with the real struggles of many Americans today.

Not only is this sentiment inaccurate, offensive and classist; Gingrich’s proposed solution (to repeal child-labor laws and train really poor children to be janitors) suggests that offering poor children positions in manual labor, rather than education is his answer to addressing the widening gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans.

When I attended Fowler High School in the 1990s; the Post Standard ran an article titled: Two Schools, One Question What Makes Westhill and Fowler Differ? (Post Standard, March 16, 1997, Paul Riede) analyzing the link in Syracuse between poverty and performance. In his research for the article, Mr. Riede interviewed 17 students in the Class of2000, nine at Fowler and eight at Westhill. According to Riede, “in separate group interviews, members of the Class of 2000 at Fowler and Westhill high schools described radically different life experiences, but similar aspirations.” While all expected to go to college, and most were hopeful that with hard work they'd be able to land professional careers; their different realities were stark. In 1997 at Westhill High School, only 2 percent of students were from low-income families, and 94 percent were white; compared with 55 percent low-income and over 50 percent minority at Fowler.

In 1996, 71 percent of Westhill's graduates received Regents diplomas, one of the highest rates in the state; compared with 7 percent at Fowler, one of the lowest in the state. And contrary to Mr. Gingrich's "facts": four of the Fowler students held down jobs after school; while none of the Westhill students interviewed did.

While correlation between poverty and low achievement is nothing new, in order to address the widening gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans and revitalize the American Dream policy makers need to understand the cyclical nature of poverty, the challenges facing our poorest students and acknowledge the struggles of our working poor.

At a time when more Americans are unemployed and underemployed; free school lunch lines are increasing and the number of Americans hurting are soaring; the elitist premise of Mr. Gingrich’s sentiment hits home for me on a very personal level. Central New Yorkers on either side of the aisle may disagree on how to address the issue of reducing poverty, improving the economy and creating jobs; nonetheless many of us see the struggle facing the working poor: parents faced with a choice between working late for overtime or helping their children with homework; juggling debt, choosing between groceries and heat; and barely making it paycheck to paycheck. Our working poor, and most vulnerable members of society, our poorest children, cannot remain invisible to the Washington elite.

Education, not manual labor, is the only way to break the cycle of poverty. Investing in education, offering students assistance and supporting programs like “Say Yes to Education” will create a more educated work force and level the playing field, just a little bit, for poor kids like me that want to do better than their parents. As a child of limited means, I was able to work my way through the George Washington University and Brooklyn Law School, with the help of federal programs and hard work. As a server at Morton’s Steakhouse in Georgetown, every day was a choice between working and studying; and my need to pay rent often outweighed the importance of grades. Many nights I waited on my more affluent classmates. During college, I spent a year living on a friend’s couch and I graduated in three and a half years to save money. It was not easy, but it was worth it.

So to Mr. Gingrich, I would say-- poor kids work harder; their very survival often depends on it.

Our children are not simply a source of cheap labor and method of cost-cutting for corporations; they are the future of this country. Instead of a broom give them a book.

Brianne Murphy

Is it possible that Newt might NOT crash and burn? If so, Hendrik Hertzberg of "The New Yorker" thinks he knows why

"Gingrich's sudden rise and special appeal to the emotions of "the base," one suspects, stem less from his vaunted 'big ideas' than from his long-cultivated, unparalleled talent for contempt."

-- Hendrik Hertzberg, in a "Comment" piece, "Alt-Newt,"
in the December 19 & 26 New Yorker

by Ken

I didn't intend to be writing about Newt again so soon, really and truly. For all I knew, or at least hoped, he might soon slither back into whatever primordial slime he oozed out of and never be seen or heard from again. But I've got a loose end from my post last night troubling me, and it happens to segue naturally into Hendrik Hertzberg's current New Yorker "Comment" piece on the subject.

Before clicking "publish" on my post last night I lingered over the title, "When Newt crashes and burns, will the GOP be sending out for a new batch of "front-runners"?" I did wonder whether that shouldn't be "if Newt crashes and burns." After all, while I did "offer the observation that ol' Newt's front-runner status may be no more long-lasting than that of any of the front-runners who've preceded him in this campaign cycle," I preceded this observation with the qualification: "Far be it from me to predict what's going to come out of a process with such heavy input from the Republican 'base.' "

At the time of writing I hadn't yet read Hendrik Hertzberg's "Comment" piece on Newt in this week's New Yorker, "Alt-Newt." But when I got home yesterday, there in the mailbox, now that I've gotten used to Tuesday (or even Wednesday or, like last week, Thursday) delivery, there in the mailbox, on a Monday, just like in oldent times, was the new issue!

As I pointed out recently, Paul Krugman in his December 4 NYT column, "Send in the Clueless," offered one theory of why Newt "may not implode like his predecessors" as GOP front-runner. After delivering one of my very favorite lines about the pustule, "He is by no means the deep thinker he imagines himself to be," and qualifying that with the observation that "he's a glib speaker, even when he has no idea what he's talking about," he added: "[M]y sense is that he's also very good at doublethink -- that even when he knows what he's saying isn't true, he manages to believe it while he's saying it." This certainly rings true to me.

Hertzberg offers a simpler -- and uglier -- thought, namely the one I quoted at the top of this post: "Gingrich's sudden rise and special appeal to the emotions of "the base," one suspects, stem less from his vaunted 'big ideas' than from his long-cultivated, unparalleled talent for contempt."

HH takes us through the necessarily squalid journey of Newt Gingrich through the particular cesspool of American politics that he's made his own, using as a reference point the phony history professor's own fondness for, and actual practice -- however grotestquely inept -- of the genre of "alt-history," which is to say alternative versions of history imagined with "counterfactual" switches in circumstances in that history. (Strangely, HH doesn't mention that his magazine just published an extensive Critic at Large piece on the subject by an actual practitioner, Thomas Mallon, "Never Happened," of which only an abstract is available free online.) And then as he takes us through the high/low points of the Newtly CV, he repeatedly asks us to "imagine" such surely imaginary historical circumstances, all of which are of course not counterfactual but shockingly factual.

Eventually HH comes to this (boldface emphasis added):

Gingrich's sudden rise and special appeal to the emotions of "the base," one suspects, stem less from his vaunted "big ideas" than from his long-cultivated, unparalleled talent for contempt. In 1990, when he was not yet Speaker, he pressed a memo on Republican candidates for office, instructing them to use certain words when talking about the Democratic enemy: "betray," "bizarre," "decay," "anti-flag," "anti-family," "pathetic," "lie," "cheat," "radical," "sick," "traitors," and more. His own vocabulary of contempt has grown only more poisonously flowery. President Obama's actions cannot be understood except as an expression of "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior." Liberals constitute a "secular-socialist machine" that is "as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union." There is "a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us" and "is prepared to use violence." In this campaign, Gingrich's performances in televised debates have been widely deemed effective. But what has won him his most visceral cheers from the audiences in the halls -- audiences shaped and coarsened by years of listening to talk radio and watching Fox News -- is his sneering attacks on moderators, especially those representing the hated "liberal" media.

In March, at the Cornerstone Church, in San Antonio, Gingrich declared, "I am convinced that, if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America," his grandchildren will live "in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American." Last spring, this was a kind of right-wing performance art. Now it is the language of the man leading in the Republican polls, a man who -- in the real world, not the alt-world -- could, not inconceivably, become President of the United States. Imagine that.

I can understand two perfectly logical responses to the reappearance of the Newtster in public, as a candidate for attention, let alone public office: violent nausea, or engulfing rage. Any other response confounds me totally. Perhaps there's at least a partial explanation in the lovely line I quoted last night from a blogpost of Paul Krugman's yesterday:

"Truly, it is amazing how our political landscape continues to be dominated by people who have been wrong about everything for years."

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Ann Coulter Changed Her Mind-- Mitt's The Man

OK, it's understandable why Trump is all negative on Romney these days. It wouldn't matter if Bachmann and a couple of the other clowns didn't show up for the Trump freak show, but there can't be a credible freak show without the leading freak... and Mitt gave the silliness a big thumbs down. Trump strikes back (via Fox): "His [Romney's] numbers have gone down very substantially since he said 'no', and a lot people think it's because it showed a lack of decisiveness or a lack of courage in going into this debate. And you look at what happened with Newt. Newt has gone up like a rocket ship." It's always all about Trump.

But Coulter? Is it always all about her too? She used to be so insanely anti-Romney. She predicted the Republicans would not just lose their chance to oust Obama if Romney was nominated; she said they would lose Congress too. Apparently she thinks Newt is an even worse alternative. At CPAC last February she told the drooling throngs that “if we don’t run Chris Christie, Romney will be the nominee and we’ll lose.” Now she's flip-floppin' as much as her man Mitt-- and doing paid endorsements for him for Iowa teabaggers! (And, yes, she endorsed Ron Paul too-- although he isn't bragging about it to Iowa voters.)

Newt's already using DNC talking points that Romney's time at vulture capital firm, Bain was a disaster for the companies and the employees of the companies he took over. "If Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he's earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain, then I would be glad to then listen to him. And I will bet you $10, not $10,000, that he won't take the offer."



What a party! But there's worse than just internecine bickering between right-wing rivals. I mean, let's face it... when it comes down to the important stuff, they all agree on everything. Like the lie, Boehner, Cantor and their cronies keep repeating, that wrecking the regulatory system will somehow, magically create jobs-- since giving tax breaks to millionaires never did.

Economists have debunked the myth that environment regulations stall job growth again and again. Even as Mitt Romney calls to “tear down the vast edifice of regulations the Obama administration has imposed,” data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show regulations haven’t hurt the economy. In 2010, only 0.3 percent of layoffs were due to higher costs from government regulations/intervention. By comparison, lower business demand caused 25 percent of layoffs.

Past studies also confirm that regulations have virtually no impact on jobs. Richard Morgenstern’s landmark study found that over a decade of regulations on heavily polluting industries didn’t cause “a significant change” in employment:

According to the study, when jobs were lost, they were often made up elsewhere in the same industry. For every $1 million companies spent, as many as 11 / 2 net jobs were added to the economy.

Overall, the research shows that the GOP field’s hyperbolic calls to eliminate regulation would have minimal impact on the unemployment rate.

Homophobes In The House!!

Yesterday, the so-called "moderate" or quasi-"mainstream" candidate from the Republican Clown Car, Willard, told a crowd in Manchester, New Hampshire, he favored repealing that state's marriage equality law. He told a 63-year old gay Vietnam vet-- remember, Romney was a draft-dodger who fled to Paris to preach Mormonism during the war-- that “Actually, I think at the time the Constitution was written marriage was between a man and a woman and I don’t believe the Supreme Court has changed that.”

A few days ago, in researching Heath Shuler's record we stumbled onto the only 5 Democrats to score "perfect" ZEROES on the ProgressivePunch ranking of House Members on issues involving LGBT equality this year. Shuler was one and the other 4 were Mike McIntyre and Larry Kissell, his conservative compadres from North Carolina, plus Mark Critz (PA) and Mike Ross (AR).

I don't want the disgrace of those 5 Democrats to get lost in the fact that dozens and dozens of Republicans also scored a ZERO this year on LGBT equality. In fact, only 13 Republicans scored better than that-- a combination of conservatives who represent heavily gay districts, like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Miami/Key West) and Mary Bono Mack (Palm Springs)-- each with a mind-boggling low 14.29%-- or libertarian types like Ron Paul (28.57%).

ProgressivePunch scored every Member of Congress on 30 roll calls this past year, many of them having to do with the GOP attempts to prevent the abolition of Don't Ask Don't Tell from being implemented. One deranged Republican, Buck McKeon (R-CA), is so extreme in his Mormon-based homophobia that he is threatening to use his power as House Budget chair to block any kind of Pentagon budget this year unless Obama alters plans for implementation.

One might expect right-wing Republican fanatics who have built their careers on bigotry, hatred and tearing people apart-- the Michele Bachmanns, Virginia Foxxes, Steve Kings and Paul Brouns of the world-- to always automatically vote against anything to do with equality for anyone. And they do... along with most of their colleagues. But what about Republicans who go out of their way to try to claim that they're not radical hatemongers and that they represent mainstream conservative thought? If they're correct, mainstream conservative thought has moved so far right that it's no longer distinguishable from fascism-- at least not when it comes to LGBT equality. New Hampshire may have passed marriage equality but both the so-called "mainstream conservatives" who represent the state in the House, Charlie Bass and Frank Guinta, vote in lockstep with hatemongers like Bachmann and Foxx. Bob Dold represents a very moderate suburban district just north of Chicago and he claims, at every opportunity, that he's a moderate himself. But he managed to score the same ZERO that every anti-gay fanatic in the Republican delegations from Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina scored. Same story for Michael Fitzpatrick and Jim Gerlach, who represent moderate suburbs of Philly, Charlie Dent, just north of their, from the Lehigh Valley, Leonard Lance (rumored to be a bit of a closet case himself) and Chris Smith from the central New Jersey suburbs, Michael Grimm (Staten Island and Brooklyn), Dana Rohrabacher (suburbs south of L.A.), Brian Bilbray (suburbs north of San Diego), and Fred Upton (moderate western Michigan). Mainstream? Not any more. The progressive, pro-equality Democrat opposing Dold's reelection, Ilya Sheyman, wasn't surprised. "Rep. Dold's right-wing voting record on LGBT equality shows once again that his moderate rhetoric doesn't match up to the party line votes he casts in Washington, D.C. On issue after issue, Bob Dold says one thing in the District and then votes the other way in Congress."

And then there are the confirmed closet cases-- not just hysterical homophobes like Trent Franks (AZ), Patrick McHenry (NC) and Adrian Smith (NE), but the so-called "mainstream conservatives" who wink and nod about their own homosexuality, in certain circles, like David Dreier (CA) and Aaron Schock (IL)-- who vote against equality because it helps keep them in their dark, miserable closets. One of the Blue America candidates, Ed Potosnak, is openly gay and running against Leonard Lance, mostly on economic issues, like jobs and the environment. But he wasn't shy about discussing Lance's reprehensible record on LGBT equality. And he found the same kind of mindset in Lance that Ilya Sheyman found in Dold.

My opponent, Congressman Leonard Lance, has changed since going to Washington. On issues he had shown tendencies to be good on, like the environment and job creation, he has turned bad. On issues he had mediocre positions, like gay rights, he has been awful. But what is worse, is that back home in NJ he speaks to our neighbors and pretends he is on the right side. It is sickening. Recently, Lance was the first Republican to record an "It Gets Better Video" with other Members of the NJ Congressional Delegation. It is great that he sit in front of camera and speak against bullying. Unfortunately, when it really matters and he is voting on the House Floor he makes it worse for LGBTQ youth. Voting to continue the discriminatory DADT policy that institutionalizes bigotry and hatred and forces our military to lie about who they love.

In Congress, I will fight to make life better for every American and ensure all families are recognized and receive the same protections. Lance had his chance to make it better for LGBTQ Americans and failed. I've had enough of his hypocrisy.

Blue America has a relatively new page dedicated entirely to replacing Congress' worst homophobes, regardless of political party. Heath Shuler's primary opponent is on there-- and so are pro-equality candidates running against homophobes like Steve King (R-IA), Buck McKeon (R-CA) and Sandy Adams (R-FL). Please consider giving us a hand with this one and keep in mind we'll be adding more congressional hate-mongers in January. Suggestions welcome.