Let's hope the federal government has a more human and far less cruel and heartless plan of fixing its deficit than Texas Republicans Marie Antoinette Rick Perry and Ebenezer Scrooge Warren Chisum whose brilliant solution to meet the state's $23 billion budget short fall is to throw the elderly, children and the poor into the streets.
But hey, this is what Republican politicians have been doing for generations. In Texas the majority of voters seem OK with voting for serial abusers and liars, election after election.
Today's edition of the New York Times reports on an independent study it did on behalf of exploring viable options for decreasing the federal deficit in 2015 and 2030.
The report includes an interactive chart in which readers can attempt to fix the deficit themselves.
Hint: slashing Social Security and Medicare benefits are not entirely necessary. There are other options.
Prediction: the American people will come up with far better solutions than any Republican or Blue Dog Democrat.
Revisiting economic history.
Another article in the New York Times reveals how we became mired in the current trillion dollar deficits.
The mid-terms rewarded the decades old Republican/Corporativists/pseudo-Conservative effort to reshape the baseline political narrative to one in which, we can't trust "Washington". Additionally, the trust in the media as arbitrators of fact is being destroyed, to the benefit of Fox Noise and friends.
Let me explain what I mean by the baseline political narrative. Over the last 2 plus decades running against Washington has become the basic approach for rightwingers. The Tea Party people gladly have added their voices to this chorus, but the meme has been around a long time. Newt Gingrich honed it to a fine point in 1994, but it even predated him. Remember the bumper sticker "Washington , its not your money"? Think "states rights" and the 60's, or even further back in American history. So this cycle the Repubs just thumped the drum a little louder but played the same tune they had been playing. The most recent results are a continuation of a long term trend.
Poll finds trust of federal government runs low According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday, only 26 percent of the public trusts the federal government most of the time or always.
(The ray of hope in this bleak statistic is that the young, under 30, are much more trusting.)
Many of the Republican Wall St. bail out supporters bit the dust in the 2008 primary elections across the nation but many Republicans, including the forthcoming new Speaker of the U.S. House, Mr. Bail Out himself John Boehner will continue to carry the water for his Wall St. puppet masters.
Memories seem to be very, very short in Washington D.C. and across the nation, especially during election cycles.
Earth to Republicans in case you forgot: The 2008 bailout to Wall St. happened on W.'s watch and with the support of John Boehner, Eric Cantor and most Republicans in the U.S. Congress. Tea Publican propagandists Rush Limbaugh and Fox Fixed News may be entitled to their opinions but neither can rewrite history, as hard as they try.
Meanwhile the right wing extremist teabagger Republicans who, after the 2010 election cycle, replaced their more moderate counterparts, along with John Boehner, intend to make slashing Social Security their hot signature TARP program.
In other words, Wall Street's love boy John Boehner and his complicit government hating teabagger Republicans intend to shred and destroy the final safety net for middle and working class Americans.
Middle and working class Americans are mere road kill as far as the old and the new Republican Tea Party is concerned.
A week after Election Day and it feels like the storm surge completely washed away the Texas Democratic Party. While on Election Day nationally Democrats had bright spots and rays of hope, in Texas it was completely dark and there were no rays of sunshine breaking through the clouds. After spending years on electoral strategy and millions of dollars on campaigns, Texas Democrats are probably at their lowest point in since the Civil War. Every single statewide office is held by a Republican, from the Governor's mansion on down. Republicans have a near super majority in the State House of Representatives, and hold more seats than at any time since Reconstruction. While Republicans do not hold a super majority in the State Senate procedural rules give them significant power, and much of the controversial legislation that was blocked by Democrats in the House during the last session was originally passed by the Senate. Make no doubt about it: Republicans are in complete control and there is not a damn thing Democrats can do about it.
There has been a significant amount of analysis of the election, and inquiry into how Republicans where able to make such significant gains and why Democrats where unable to compete. First it must be realized that this election did not happen in a vacuum, and there where several factors at work besides the candidates themselves. National politics played a significant role in the election in Texas, as across the nation Democrats took the brunt of the electorates' dissatisfaction with the economy. Despite the Republican establishment implicit involvement in the collapse of the economy, voters turned against the party in power because of persistently high unemployment. Strait ticket voting for Republicans trickled down the ballot and impacted the outcome of every election in Texas. Governor Rick Perry was also able to effectively determine the terms of the choice in the election, as the 10 year incumbent was able to paint himself as an outsider and paint Bill White as connected to Washington, D.C.
The mid-terms are now history but the pontificating has only started. So, I will throw in my 2 cents.
For those who don't like long blogs, let me give you the brightlines upfront. I will deal with point 1 today, more later.
1. The mid-terms were a tsunami fueled by both the current economic and policy environment and the long term skew between older and younger voters, adn a flip in the independent voter totals.
2. Building on this , the mid-terms rewarded the decades old Republican/Corporativists/pseudo-Conservative effort to reshape the baseline political narrative to one in which, we can't trust "Washington". Additionally, the trust in the media as arbitrators of fact is being destroyed, to the benefit of Fox Noise and friends.
3. Locally, the outreach to surge voters may payoff longer term, but didn't help us much short term.
4. The elections seem to validate the straegy going back to Nixon's Southern strategy of feeding the fears of significant older, portions of the electorate that "they" are out to get over on "us" . Read they as "blacks", illegals, immigrants, Moslems,
5. The way forward is not clear. If we cannot compete locally, nationally, in the shaping of the baseline political narrative, what the average , non-activist , believes about government action and the existence of real "facts" we are doomed to a long period of painful public policies that undermine both our democracy and our society.
6. Additionally, our ground game must maintain and improve upon what we did in these mid-terms. My impression locally at least is that the ground game was aggressive and intensive. I cannot afford to fall off in 2012.
7. What you and I can do. Hold the Repubs accountable. They must now govern, locally and nationally. They will try to duck the burden and divert attention form their inevitable backtracking, lies and failings. We must work hard to make this the center of the narrative going forward. It won't be easy. See point 2.
Governor Rick Perry intends to slash and burn all economic safety nets available to the people of Texas. Appearing on the CNN Kathleen Parker and Eliot Spitzer show Rick Perry also dodged questions about his ambitions to run as a Tea Publican candidate for President in 2012.
Appearing on television Thursday, Texas Governor Rick Perry, a potential contender for the Republican nomination in 2012, said that he wants states to be able to opt-out of Social Security.
On CNN's Parker/Spitzer, hosted by Democrat and former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and political columnist Kathleen Parker, Perry compared Social Security to a ponzi scheme and said that Americans want Washington to stop spending so much money.
The more things change the more they stay the same, at least where the Republican Party is concerned. Except this time around we have a far more extremist right running the Republican Party platform.
The new Republican plan.
Despite the fact that the Bush tax cuts did little to create new jobs, as we all painfully recall, the new Republican leadership's only solution to cut spending so far is to give more tax cuts to the rich.
The Bush tax cuts did not create new jobs because the wealthy did not invest their tax savings. They saved it for themselves. I wonder what makes the Republicans think the outcome will be any different this time around?
According to newly elected Senator Rand Paul(R-KY) we all either work for rich people or sell stuff to rich people.
There is certainly nothing wrong with being rich. But the wealthy should also have to pay its fair share of the tax burden just like 98% of Americans do. Of course the newly elected Senator Paul did not explain to the American people how further tax cuts to the rich would increase the deficit by $700 billion.
The historical accomplishments of the black dude in the White House and the Democratic Party over the past two years.
If the recent polls are correct and we end up with a Republican controlled U.S. House of Representatives get ready for gridlock, acrimony and a boatload of ginned up witch hunts and hearings. The American people, in the meantime, will continue to suffer as Washington goes back to Republican dysfunctional, incompetent and corrupted government. All on behalf of their sugar daddy donors.
I look forward to finding out how many Republican puppets Koch Industries, Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, BP, the health insurance industry and other corporate power brokers will be able to buy.
GOTV. It is not over until the polls close at 7:00 p.m. The day is young.
Not that it ever left. But that is the narrative the corporate mainstream media in concert with the right wing power brokers have been spinning for the past 18 months.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held a Restore Sanity and/or fear yesterday in which 215,000 attended. Unlike the Glenn Beck rally at which thousands of mostly older white folks attended, a throng of very diverse young adults and middle aged people flocked to the Sanity rally.
Glen Beck's rally Restore "Honor" drew 87,000 attendees. The One Nation rally (labor unions, NAACP, ColorofChange.org, MSNBC Ed Schultz and others) had 125,000.
News Corpse and Faux News sure have made a big fuss over so very few.
Restore Sanity was not a political rally. And yet, at the same time it was deeply political because Stewart and Colbert used an inverse dog whistle methodology.
Restore Sanity was both a show and a statement about the role of the media in its 24/7 amplified coverage of national politics. That said, it was partisan in that Stewart and Colbert mocked those who think they own a monopoly on patriotism and other American ideals. They skewered those who loudly and self-righteously proclaim the one true God ideology. The talented liberal satirists also cleverly hammered extremists on all sides.
Stewart and Colbert gave medals to Jacob Isom who snatched a Koran out of the hands of a would be burner and Velma Hart who respectfully told the President that though she supported him, she is exhausted defending him and is disappointed because her family is suffering financially. In a very clever and hilarious fashion Stewart and Colbert embraced inclusiveness and diversity.
Its Halloween and there are scary things out there then small ghosts and ghoulies to worry about.
From an article on the NEW empirical approach to election campaigns comes this intelligence on Rick Perry's campaign strategy:
Nudge the Vote Democrats have not been alone in experimenting with data-driven politics. As Dave Carney, once George H. W. Bush's White House political director, prepared to guide the 2006 re-election campaign of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, he invited Gerber and Green to conduct their experiments from within the campaign's war room. Perry had spent more than $25 million to win a full term in 2002, much of it on broadcast advertising, and Carney thought a rigorous experimental regime could help "assure donors that we're using their money as best as possible - spend it different, spend less of it." Gerber and Green asked two political scientists who had informally advised George W. Bush's 2004 re-election, James Gimpel and Daron Shaw, to collaborate on the project. Carney invited the quartet he called "our four eggheads" to impose experimental controls on nearly every aspect of campaign operations.
Perry won easy re-election in 2006, and their findings profoundly altered his 2010 tactics. Perry's primary campaign this year sent out no direct voter-contact mail, made no paid phone calls, printed no lawn signs, visited no editorial boards and purchased no newspaper ads. His broadcast advertising strategy was informed by a 2006 experiment that isolated 18 TV media markets and 80 radio stations and randomly assigned each a different start date and volume for ad buys from a $2 million budget earmarked for the experiment. Public-opinion changes from the ads were then monitored with tracking polls. Carney estimates that the research saved Perry $3 million in this year's primary campaign, and he still beat Kay Bailey Hutchison by 20 points. On Tuesday, the value of Perry's unusually empirical approach to electioneering will be tested again, this time in a tough race against the Democratic nominee, Bill White, the former mayor of Houston.
Let's connect some dots. If this strategy actually works, it will amplify the importance of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission. enormously. It is not an accident that Perry avoided editorial boards and debates. They run the risk of exposing him for the poseur that he is. By overwhelming your opponent with key media buys in key markets, you are more likely to control your public persona and make it hard for your opponent to gain critical traction against you. Clearly TV ads have long played a large role in campaigns, but this new approach ratchets the negatives of this fact to new levels.
Texas gazillionaires and other outside deep pocketed fat cats have ponied up freighter sized loads of money in order to keep their favorite puppet in power. In fact, Rick Perry has been such a pliable puppet that he's made himself and his fat cat puppet masters richer than ever. But Perry the Puppet and his sugar daddies are so consumed by money that there is never enough of it to keep them happy or content. All perpetually lust for more and more. And more. Rick Perry and his crony/donors are bottomless pits of greed.
Now that the tea party faction of the GOP has taken the Party to the extreme right we are witnessing an appalling and unimaginable level of hatred, racism, misogyny and intolerance in the 2010 midterm election cycle. A vile four headed snake raised its ugly heads last summer with the politically ginned up town hall rage fests that espoused violence and extremism because of a "socialist" health care reform bill. As we know by now this "grassroots" tea party movement and its orchestrated hate fests had been secretly funded by David and Charles Koch and promoted by former lobbyist and U.S. House Speaker Dick Armey.
Thanks to the Supreme Court ruling on Citizen's United, corporations now have the same rights as individuals. They can pour unlimited amounts of money to support political candidates of their choice. As a result, the United States of America can now be bought by the highest bidders. David Koch, Dick Armey and a plethora of powerful corporate entities such as Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical, Chevron Texaco, Netherlands based Aegon and others are the potential purchasers and puppets masters that seek to control the financial and ideological strings of the Republican Party. Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie's American Crossroads syndicate comprised of Texas billionaires is among the highest bidders to buy democracy as we know it.
I would love to see this repeated by every party chair in Texas.
Except, of course, those who actually thing Fox giving a million dollars to the Republican Governors Association means they don't have a dog in the hunt for the Texas Governor's race...
(Pretty much speaks for itself, so just read, and add comments if you got 'em. Thanks, FC. - promoted by boadicea)
Stories begat other stories, or at least they do for me; this two-part conversation came from a comment that was made after I posted a story suggesting that voting matters this time, especially if you don't want environmental disasters like the recent Hungarian "toxic lake" that burst from its containment and polluted the Danube River happening in your neighborhood.
Long story short, we are going to be moving on to ask what, for some, is a more fundamental question: if you're an LBGT voter, and the Democratic Party hasn't, to put it charitably, "been all they could be" when it comes to issues like repealing "don't ask, don't tell" or the Federal Defense of Marriage Act...what should you do?
Now normally I would be the one trying to develop an answer to the question, but instead, we're going to be posing the question to a group of experts, and we'll be letting them give the answers.
And just because you, The Valued Reader, deserve the extra effort, for Part Two we've trying to get you a "Special Bonus Expert" to add some input to the conversation: a Democratic Member of Congress who represents a large LBGT community.
What's Up With the Gallup Model? Latinos, Asians, Native Americans...basically our non-white/non-black population...are going to vote for the Republicans in this election by a 52%-42% margin
Well, that's what Gallup is reporting in its most recent poll and therein lies a tale.
Dems have been getting hammered in the national polling. I think this reflects real trouble for them in November, but...
I have a sense this is not a "normal" midterm election, and maybe the standard polling procedures aren't up to giving us a clear picture of what is going on with the electorate. This polling result reinforces that belief. These results are not credible given the Republican scapegoating of Hispanics in this election cycle. Hell, they are even telling them to stay home and NOT vote this time. While it is true that one should never say never, this is may be an exception to that rule.
Further compounding my doubts about the polling of this mid-term is this result from a recent Pew Research Study. (h/t to AW )
If the Republican Party's message during the midterm elections could be distilled into one word it that it has been campaigning against it would be: spending. The Republicans have been campaigning against spending without identifying any particular spending they would actually like to reduce. Except there is one particular program that they have been campaigning against: the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Otherwise known as the stimulus.
In February of 2009 Congress passed the Recovery Act and President Obama signed it, with the intent to prevent the Great Recession from turning into the Great Depression 2.0. While Republicans have criticized the Recovery Act for being ineffective, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report that stated that the stimulus raised the gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7% and 4.5%, lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7% and 1.8%, and increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million. Not exactly as ineffective as the Republicans claim. However, over the last year and a half the Republicans have consistently criticized the stimulus as ineffective, and the economy's achingly slow recovery coupled with persistently high unemployment has contributed to the public's overall negative view of the stimulus.
But, while the Republicans openly opposed the Recovery Act in Congress and criticized it in public, many of them worked behind the scenes to secure funds from the stimulus for their own districts. The Center for Public Integrity reported this week about a expansive letter writing campaign, where Congressional Republicans who voted against the stimulus sent letters to federal agencies requesting stimulus funds for projects in their districts. The Texas Observer reports that of the 22 Congressional Republicans from Texas, at least 16 officially requested stimulus funds from federal agencies.
A consortium of billionaires, Wall St. banks, big oil, health insurance companies, Republican politicians, FOX cable TV media tycoons, two Supreme Court justices and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce developed a strategy in which it could purchase the 2010 and future elections. The syndicate's collective goal is to advance its own ultra conservative and libertarian agendas. At the expense of the American people.
