Republican insiders and donors have, for months, tried to diminish Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele to a mere figurehead. Afters a months of gaffes and other missteps, Republicans like Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie formulated a plan to establish what has been called a “shadow RNC” of Republican attack groups, policy centers, and state outreach organizations to work around the normal RNC. Facing mounting criticism and a drain of resources to the RNC, Steele has harshly rebuked his detractors, declaring again, “I ain’t going anywhere.” But according to property disclosures filed with the D.C. government, the RNC building is still registered to Gillespie, a former RNC chair. View a screenshot below:
While Steele remains the face of the RNC, he is quickly losing power. Not only does Gillespie command control of the “Shadow RNC,” he still technically owns the regular RNC.
In a profile piece on U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue, the Washington Monthly’s James Verini reveals that, despite spending hundreds of millions on right-wing pro-business lobbying campaigns, attack ads, and executive bonuses for its top lobbyists, the Chamber has continually struggled to finance its own operations, and even posted a net asset loss of over $29 million according to its 2008 IRS filings. Verini notes that the Chamber has alleviated part of its financial problem by earning “extra income” through renting its roof to Fox News for the network’s White House news coverage.
Under Donohue’s leadership, the Chamber has forged a tight relationship with the Republican Party, even adopting a de facto “Waterloo” strategy to kill key proposals of President Obama’s agenda to thwart the momentum of progressive reforms overall. But by quietly bringing Fox News into his business strategy, Donohue and the executives at Fox News are blurring the lines between media and lobbying. While it is unclear exactly how long Fox News has been a business partner to the Chamber, Fox News has aggressively defended the Chamber during the Obama presidency:
MORT KONDRAKE: “Now, they’re attacking what they think are, you know, demons — the insurance companies are unpopular, FOX News is right-wing, allegedly, and now the Chamber of Commerce is a big bad big business lobby, but who is next? They look for any enemy everywhere.” [Fox News, 10/20/09]
BILL O’REILLY: “I didn’t even know this. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pro-business organization, obviously, Chamber of Commerce wants commerce. And they say, look, the cap and trade stuff is going to lose jobs. You know, higher taxes on business is going to be crazy. Health care, way too expensive. We don’t need government run health care. Private industry can do it better. So the Obama administration says okay, we’re going to get these guys?” [Fox News, 10/21/09]
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: “Let’s see. The Chamber of Commerce represents enough businesses to employ, correct me if I’m wrong, about 115 million Americans, well more than half the workforce. Question: Why were you guys not invited to the White House today?” [12/3/09]
NEIL CAVUTO: “All right, well, better, but still bad, and American business leader still worried that this health-care thing could be the death of them. Now first on FOX, reaction of the guy whose group represents, get this, 3 million American businesses. Tom Donohue is the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and he joins me right now from the roof of his fine building in Washington, overlooks that thing called the White House.” [9/17/09]
In the last quote, Fox News’ Neil Cavuto introduced Donohue (a frequent guest of his show) by falsely declaring that the Chamber represents 3 million businesses. In reality, about 300,000 businesses have some level of membership to the Chamber.
The main purpose of the Chamber is to launder money from large industries and multinational corporations to affect public policy. For instance, large health insurance companies secretly funneled tens of millions into the Chamber for an aggressive effort to kill health reform in 2009. Big banks and financial services firms — including companies bailed out by taxpayers in 2008 — have quietly funded a campaign through the Chamber to try to block key Wall Street reforms. In a sense, the Chamber already wields an inordinate amount of political power through its stealth lobbying campaigns. By shilling for the Chamber — and refusing to disclose its business partnership — Fox News yet again unethically amplifying the voice of multinational corporations.
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) has been touring his northeast Georgia district as part of the Republican Party’s “America Speaking Out” tour, discussing his ideas with his constituents. During a stop in Athens, Georgia, the congressman revealed some of his more radical ideas about where he wants to take the country. At one point, Broun told a constituent that Teddy Roosvelt and Woodrow Wilson “started this process of socializing America” by passing the 16th and 17th amendments and endorsed repealing both of them:
BROUN: Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson started this process of socializing America, and they did it with the, Woodrow Wilson, particularly, pushes the 16th amendment that taxes income directly, and the 17th amendment that allows the direct elect of US senators, because the US senators intially were supposed to represent the states. [...] I’d like to see the 16th amendment and the 17th amendment to be repealed finally, and that’s going to be a long process.
Watch it:
In addition to his endorsements of eliminating the income tax and ending direct election of U.S. senators, Broun also called for ending birthright citizenship, endorsed making English the official language of the country to stop Georgia from being “invaded,” advocated for completely de-funding the Department of Education, and suggested he’s unsure about whether or not Obama purposely inhibited the government’s response to the oil spill so he could push an “energy tax.” (HT: Georgia Liberal)
Right wing leader Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has built a policy platform on unfounded and radical assertions. On immigration: Deport a liberal. On health care reform: Maybe opponents should secede. On employment discrimination: Stop wearing your sexuality on your sleeve. Despite the outlandishness of his policy solutions, King himself has never had to answer for them in a formal debate since his election in 2003. But his 2010 challenger Matt Campbell (D) called out the incumbent yesterday and invited him to an “issue-oriented debate.” Citing debate as a “lynchpin” of democracy and an “obligation” of elected officials, Campbell says King’s participation is “long overdue”:
King has never formally debated an opponent since he’s been elected, and Campbell says it’s long overdue for King to respect the American democratic process.
“It’s long overdue for King to respect the American democratic process,” Campbell says.
Campbell elaborates, “The 5th District Congressional race should contain issue-oriented debate as a discussion of the issues between candidates is a lynchpin of healthy American democracy. It’s an obligation of those that hold or seek elected office, and Americans expect it.”
“My grandfathers both served in World War II and while they both were Republicans they would find it appalling that King has disrespected the process and not formally debated an opponent since he’s been elected to Congress. This is America, not Russia,” Campbell says.
Campbell has issued a formal debate prospectus to King and requested a response date of August 10th so the debates and venues could be determined.
As ThinkProgress noted earlier today, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) denounced the “demagoguery” that has taken hold of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. “There were no death panels in” the health care reform bill “and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It’s not leadership,” said Inglis.
Unfortunately for Inglis, there are no signs that his fellow conservatives are planning to reform their political approach. In fact, President Obama’s recess appointment of Donald Berwick to head the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services has revived the very demagogic lie that Inglis decried, the phony “death panel” claim. And it’s not just Fox News and radio talkers. On Chris Baker’s radio show yesterday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) agreed with Baker’s reference to Berwick as “the chairman of the Obamacare death panel”:
BACHMANN: He’s the one now who will be in charge of implementing full-scale Obamacare and he’ll be in charge of Medicare and Medicaid.
BAKER: Oh boy. That’s why I’m now referring to him as the chairman of the Obamacare death panel.
BACHMANN: That’s right.
BAKER: That’s my title.
BACHMANN: That’s right because this is his quote, and I have it right in front of me. He said, “the decision is not, whether or not we will ration health care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” Well, it’s with his eyes open. Because he’s going to be the one who is denying people care.
Listen here:
Bachmann’s distorted use of Berwick’s quote acknowledging that rationing inevitably happens in any health care system is ridiculous. As the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein commented, “Only in our highly charged political discourse is” Berwick’s comment “anything but a bland statement of fact.” Klein noted that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has said essentially the same exact thing as Berwick: “Rationing happens today! The question is who will do it?”
Since BP’s oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico began, a common right wing refrain has been that the Jones Act — a 1920 law stipulating that commerce between U.S. ports needs to occur on U.S. ships — has been hindering the cleanup effort by forcing the federal government to reject aid from foreign nations. Conservative lawmakers and pundits have been claiming that the Obama administration is refusing to waive the Jones Act out of deference to the will of labor unions. Earlier this month, McClatchy demolished this meme, but that hasn’t stopped the drumbeat, with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) going so far as to say that aid from 17 countries has been rejected because of the Jones Act. Yesterday, on CNBC, Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute repeated the talking point, but he ran into a host who had done his homework. CNBC’s Mark Haines noted that 68 different offers of foreign cleanup help have been accepted, and then challenged Bader to cite examples of the Jones Act causing a problem:
HAINES: How many rejections under the Jones Act?
BADER: I don’t know how many.
HAINES: Excuse me, Senator McCarthy, you can’t tell us how many there are? I want the facts, give us hard facts, give us evidence, not innuendo, not baseless accusations, okay? It’s offensive to intelligence. The fact is sir, you have told us there are examples of rejections and you can not name a single one.
Watch it:
Bader eventually cited one Dutch ship that was supposedly turned back due to the Jones Act. So today, Haines was back on the case, pointing out that the Dutch offer had been made before the federal government even knew there was an oil leak, and the rejection was initiated by the EPA. “It was not because of the Jones act, it was not a conspiracy to protect the unions and sacrifice the environment,” he said.
(HT: ThinkProgress reader Richard)
This past Wednesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) held a town hall in Layton, Utah, to hear the concerns of his constituents. The senator covered issues ranging from immigration to his votes against confirming Supreme Court justices.
During one point of the town hall, Hatch opened up the floor for questions from his constituents. One asked him why, given the reckless and criminal behavior of Wall Street financial elites in the lead up to the financial crisis, there have not been more significant prosecutions of bankers who broke the law. While Hatch quickly agreed that some bankers may have committed crimes and should be investigated, he quickly veered off to attacking Democratic proposals to place new regulations on Wall Street.
The same questioner then followed up, “I don’t think you get it, sir. We’re angry at the bankers, I don’t want to hear all this about the government!” Hatch then changed his tone, put on an angry face, and replied that he thinks some bankers have committed crimes. He attacked Democrats, claiming Wall Street “keeps Democrats in power” and said Republicans “don’t get much help from them”:
QUESTIONER: Clearly the bankers lied to this end, to get tens of billions of dollars in federal money and then celebrated their fraud by giving large bonuses to themselves. They are literally bank robbers. My question to you is, why are you not calling for their arrest [...] and to have them tried and put in jail because of their fraud?
HATCH: Well, I will be calling for it, if we can prove criminal action. I think there are some people who are committing criminal action, no doubt about it. Look I’m not happy with this Wall Street bill [...] it’s just another way of controlling our lives. Do you wanna know what’s good about it? Nothing. Wanna know what’s bad about it? Everything. [...]
QUESTIONER: Senator, I have a follow-up question. I don’t think you get it, sir. We’re angry at the bankers, I don’t want to hear all this about the government, and the difficulty. It’s the criminal activity of the bankers that is destroying our economy, and the world economy, and if you could just stand up to them? [...]
HATCH: [...] If they commit crimes, they oughta go to jail. We are going after that. I’m a member of the Judiciary Committee, I am going after them!
Watch it:
While Hatch mantains that he has called for criminal investigations into Wall Street’s wrongdoing, he has attacked efforts to do so in the past. When the SEC announced that it will be bringing fraud charges against Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs, Hatch immediately appeared on Fox News to slam the effort, saying, “There’s something terribly wrong here and I don’t know what it is, but to do that right at this particular time, you know, the timing is very suspect in my eyes.”
Hatch’s claim that Republicans aren’t funded by Wall Street is also suspect. While it’s true that Democrats took the lion’s share of Wall Street funding in 2008, the recent regulatory reform push by Democrats that will place place tough new regulations on Wall Street has pushed the financial industry’s donors towards the Republicans. The Washington Post reports that there has been a “revolt among big donors on Wall Street is hurting fundraising for the Democrats’ two congressional campaign committees, with contributions from the world’s financial capital down 65 percent from two years ago.” Meanwhile, “commercial banks and high-flying investment firms have shifted their political contributions toward Republicans in recent months.”
Earlier this year, Hatch said that the GOP base is “mad at everybody” and complained that the tea party fails to have an “open mind.” As a result, he has tried to argue that, despite his 30 years in the Senate, he’s not “part of Washington.”
Last night, NBA superstar LeBron James ended months of speculation when he announced he’d decided to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and join the Miami Heat. James, who failed to win an NBA title in his seven years in Cleveland, declared that “joining the Miami Heat gives me the best opportunity to win championships.”
Indeed, James has said for months that his decision would “not [be] about the money. It’s all about winning for me.” Yet the right wing, ever eager to advance its anti-tax crusade, is trying to spin James’ decision into a crass, ideological argument:
– The New York Post declared, “If LeBron James goes to the Miami Heat instead of the Knicks, blame our dysfunctional lawmakers in Albany, who have saddled top-earning New Yorkers with the highest state and city income taxes in the nation.” [7/1/2010]
– The Drudge Report asked “High Taxes Influence Decision?…” [7/9/2010]
– The Washington Examiner argued that James chose Miami over the Chicago Bulls in order to “avoid Illinois taxes.” [7/8/2010]
Needless to say, James joined Miami in order to play on a championship-caliber team. After declaring that his decision was never about money, he backed up this statement by agreeing to “[take] less money” in order to play alongside fellow Olympic gold medalists Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
Nevertheless, the right wing is all too happy to make up new conspiracies to score political points. Even if means putting a spin move on LeBron.
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) essentially accused his own party leadership of hypocrisy yesterday for resisting the elimination of a federally-funded group that McCotter leads, but believes is superfluous. McCotter chairs the House Republican Policy Committee, but argues that its purpose has been absorbed by other Republican leadership offices. He wants to disband the committee and use its $360,000 a year budget to pay down the debt. But Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and others in the GOP leadership have objected.
In a rare “public reflection of a behind-the-scenes battle,” McCotter slammed Cantor on Fox News yesterday, saying he is “absolutely mistaken” and that his position is an example of “the status quo in Washington”:
MCCOTTER: Well I hope it would happen, I think it’s the first step to showing we’re about deeds not words. … How can anybody in the Congressional Republican Caucus in the House come around and talk about making difficult choices in spending for real people if they’re aren’t willing to start with themselves? [...]
HOST: Well not all Republicans on board either. [...]
MCCOTTER: Well, I think Eric’s absolutely mistaken in that assumption. This is all we’ve ever heard out of the status quo in Washington. The reality is all of this can be done through the existing House standing committees. … We spend over a million on the whip’s office; we spend millions on the leader’s office. We can make a small, significant step to return it.
And as for the whip, I would encourage him, especially when he’s got his ‘YouCut’ program up there, to turn it into ‘WeCut’ first.
Watch it:
McCotter denied that the battle reflects a larger rift in the House GOP, but added, “I think it’s an opportunity to just show the people who are relying on us to have learned our lesson to see that we actually have started to prove it.”
Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC), who lost recently in his primary run-off for the Republican nomination to keep his seat in Congress, is speaking out about the influence of hate radio and right-wing fear mongering in the Republican Party. In an interview with the AP, Inglis called out reactionaries like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck for spreading “demagoguery” and hatred in society:
– Noting that Palin had spread the “death panel” smear, Inglis said, “there were no death panels in the bill…and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership.”
– Inglis slammed GOP leaders for following hate radio talkers, rather than leading on principle: “I think we have a lot of leaders that are following those (television and talk radio) personalities and not leading [...] What it takes to lead is to say, ‘You know, that’s just not right.”
– Inglis on the right-wing’s effort to divide America: “It’s a real concern, because I think what we’re doing is dividing the country into partisan camps that really look a lot like Shia and Sunni. It’s very difficult to come together to find solutions.”
– Although Inglis did not hear the racial slurs hurled at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) at a tea party protest on Capitol Hill during the health reform vote, he did see threatening and abusive behavior. “I caught him at the door and said, ‘John, I guess you’ve been here before,’” said Inglis, referring to Lewis’ role in the Civil Rights movement.
Like Inglis, Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) lost his GOP primary, despite a similarly conservative voting record. Bennett later slammed the GOP for being held captive to far right-tea parties and Fox News, noting, “I find plenty of slogans on the Republican side, but not very many ideas.” Inglis, who stood out as one of the only Republican lawmakers to publicly criticize Glenn Beck, warned that voters eventually will discover that the GOP is “preying on their fears” and turn away.
President Obama said yesterday that the economy is “headed in the right direction,” and challenged Republicans to work with him, instead of trying to obstruct his efforts. Republicans are “peddling that same snake oil that they’ve been peddling for years,” Obama said in Missouri. “It’s a little odd getting lectures on sobriety from folks who spent like drunken sailors for the last decade,” he added.
“The White House has launched a coordinated campaign to push back against” the perception that “President Barack Obama is promoting an anti-business agenda,” which is taking hold in corporate America and on Wall Street. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told Politico that “rather than recoiling against Obama, business leaders should be grateful for his support on at least a half-dozen counts.”
Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, Obama’s new pick to take over U.S. Central Command, “earned a stern rebuke” for saying “that it was ‘fun to shoot some people’” and “that some Afghans deserved to die” in 2005. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates assured reporters that “appropriate action was taken against Mattis” at the time.
The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals yesterday “turned down the Obama administration’s effort to enforce a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.” A three judge panel — a majority of whom have attended oil-funded junkets — ruled shortly after a hearing in a lawsuit filed by companies that claim they are being financially crippled by the suspension of drilling” after BP’s oil spill.
An investigation by the New York Times finds that the biggest mortgage defaulters tend to be wealthier Americans. “More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent,” and only “one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.”
Today, a Federal District Court in Boston ruled that Section 3 of Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) — the section of the 1996 law which denies federal benefits to legally married same sex couples — is unconstitutional, stating that it interferes with the traditional state right to define marriage and forces the state to “violate the equal protection rights of its citizens.” [Read the decision HERE.]
The decision is composed of two separate challenges, one brought by the state of Massachusetts and the other by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) “on behalf of eight married couples and three surviving spouses from Massachusetts” who have been denied federal benefits available to heterosexual married couples.
In his decision, U.S. district court Judge Joseph Tauro concluded that “there is a historically entrenched tradition of federal reliance on state marital status determination,” and found that DOMA not only violates the tenth amendment but also “induces the Commonwealth to violate the equal protection rights of its citizens” embodied in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
“DOMA plainly conditions the receipt of federal funding on the denial of marriage-based benefits to same-sex married couples, though the same benefits are provided to similarly-situated heterosexual couples,” the Court ruled:
As irrational prejudice plainly never constitutes a legitimate government interest, this court must hold Section 3 of DOMA as applied to Plaintiffs violates the equal protection principles embodied in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The decision is a milestone, but is expected to be appealed by the Justice Department. In the case, the federal government maintained that it “has the right to set eligibility requirements for federal benefits — including requiring that those benefits only go to couples in marriages between a man and a woman.”
“The next step in the case is for the federal government to decide whether it will appeal Judge Tauro’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. That decision should come within the next 60 days,” GLAD said in a press release.
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
In her campaign to capture the Nevada Senate seat from Harry Reid (D), Tea Party maven Sharron Angle (R) has maintained a hardline view on abortion. Earlier this year, Angle insisted that women should not have control over their reproductive rights in cases of rape or incest, because it would “interfere with God’s ‘plan’ for them.” In a more recent interview obtained by the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, Angle refused to back down from her “pro-life sensibilities” and offered a more jarring take on rape victims. On the right-wing Alan Stock Show in June, Angle suggested that “a young girl raped by her father” deal with the “horrific situation” by making lemons into lemonade:
STOCK: What do you say then to a young girl, I am going to place it as he said it, when a young girl is raped by her father, let’s say, and she is pregnant. How do you explain this to her in terms of wanting her to go through the process of having the baby?
ANGLE: I think that two wrongs don’t make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade. Well one girl in particular moved in with the adoptive parents of her child, and they both were adopted. Both of them grew up, one graduated from high school, the other had parents that loved her and she also graduated from high school. And I’ll tell you the little girl who was born from that very poor situation came to me when she was 13 and said ‘I know what you did thank you for saving my life.’ So it is meaningful to me to err on the side of life.
Angle is not shy in making glib remarks about Nevadans enduring hardship. In another interview last month, Angle determined that those without jobs are “spoiled” and that she is “not in the business of creating jobs.” Incidentally, June was also the month Nevada became “the new no.1” in the U.S. for unemployment.
With the country facing unsustainable long-term structural deficits in the coming years, more and more lawmakers have been willing to broach the once untouchable subject of cutting defense spending to save money. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said a few weeks ago that “any conversation about the deficit that leaves out defense spending is seriously flawed before it begins.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) added that “there are billions of dollars of waste you can get out of the Pentagon, lots of procurement waste. We’re buying some weapons systems I would argue you don’t need anymore.”
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) tried to sing the right notes yesterday, saying with regard to defense spending that “there are savings everywhere. We should be looking, as a Congress, toward finding savings.” However, Isakson that bristled at the notion that a program the Pentagon has repeatedly said it doesn’t want should be cut:
One expenditure, the second engine for the F-35 program, did receive Isakson’s support. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has recommended President Obama veto any defense spending bill that includes funding of the second engine. “The second engine makes sense from a standpoint of having a redundant system to protect the aircraft,” he said.
Gates has called the second engine “costly and unnecessary,” while U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley has referred to it as “another rock” on top of the F-35 program.
Isakson is hardly alone in paying lip service to cutting defense spending while opposing actual cuts in weapons systems that no one wants. Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) has said “if we are going to put our fiscal house in order, everything has to be on the table. We have to be willing to look at domestic spending, we have to be able to look at entitlements, and we have to look at defense.” But Pence also supports the second engine.
And then there is conservative darling Sarah Palin, who said in a speech last month that “no government agency should be immune from budget scrutiny,” but then proceeded to say that we absolutely must purchase all the weapons Gates says we don’t need. “[Gates] said we have to ask whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 [billion] to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers,” Palin said. “Well, my answer is pretty simple: Yes, we can and yes, we do.”
In the last 10 years, the defense budget has almost doubled to $549 billion, and in real terms baseline defense spending “is now higher than at the height of the Reagan buildup, and total defense spending now exceeds what we spent any time since World War II.” As Ryan has said, “you know the current Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, he’s going a pretty good job of identifying obsolete weapons systems that are costing tens of billions of dollars that aren’t needed.” Now if only he could get Congress to go along.
Last week, ThinkProgress reported that Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) effort to sign up members to his discharge petition — a legislative maneuver to force a vote on repealing health reform — appeared to be gaining steam. Many right-wing House Republicans quickly signed the petition, followed by more moderate members, like Rep. Charles Djou (R-HI).
But King’s petition seems to have lost momentum. No new members have signed onto the petition in the last week, and members who have wavered on repeal, like Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA), still have yet to sign on. At a town hall in Mayville, Wisconsin on Tuesday, Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI) told ThinkProgress that he would not be interested in joining King’s repeal crusade, preferring rather to make changes to the law later:
TP: Do you support the proposals floated by people like Steve King who say, ‘we’ve got to repeal health reform.’ He has a discharge petition but he says he’ll file another piece of legislation after the midterms as well. Would you support that type of effort?
PETRI: I think we need to redo health reform and change a lot of it. I’m not in favor of repealing every last thing in it. I’m sure out of those two thousand pages, there are one or two things that make a lot of sense. I thought, frankly, the effort to try to help people who did not have health reform coverage because of preexisting coverage and the like was worth making.
Watch it:
While Petri at least values some aspects of health reform, King and his cohorts have explicitly said they want to repeal every last part of the law, including the ban on preexisting coverage discrimination. King has repeatedly called out his fellow Republicans who only want to repeal “the most egregious” parts of health reform, arguing that true conservatives should favor a “100% repeal.”
While many conservatives have called for tax cuts aimed at benefiting corporations and multimillionaires, economist Arthur Laffer — a former member of President Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board — went a step further today. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Laffer argued that the best way to stimulate the economy is to have “no federal taxes at all.” Here is what Laffer proposed to eliminate:
No income tax, no corporate profits tax, no capital gains tax, no estate tax, no payroll tax (FICA) either employee or employer, no Medicare or Medicaid taxes, no federal excise taxes, no tariffs, no federal taxes at all, which would have reduced federal revenues by $2.4 trillion annually. Can you imagine where employment would be today? How does a 2.5% unemployment rate sound?
For over a month, Republican-led filibusters have successfully blocked unemployment benefits legislation because it would add $33 billion to the deficit. Laffer’s $2.4 trillion revenue cut would increase the deficit by nearly 100 times that amount. After Laffer suspends all federal taxes, only $1.2 trillion would remain, the equivalent of what would be needed to pay for Social Security and Medicare. But because Laffer is eliminating the FICA tax, Social Security and Medicare would be cut. Funds would be greatly restricted for anything else, from national defense to veterans’ benefits to crime-fighting and prevention. But not to worry, says Laffer, defunding the government would magically cause unemployment to plummet to 2.5 percent.
Yesterday, Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (R) vetoed legislation extending civil unions to both same- and opposite-sex couples. In her announcement, she said that civil rights should be subjected to the “collective wisdom” of majority rule. As Igor Volsky pointed out, Lingle conflated civil unions with same-sex marriage. “Unlike marriage, civil unions are only recognized in the state in which they are performed and couples do not carry the benefits of civil unions across state lines,” he wrote.
In her first radio appearance after her veto, Good As You noted that Lingle continued to pretend that the legislation would undermine traditional marriage. She also claimed that if people believe marriage equality for same-sex couples is a “civil rights issue,” they should also be concerned that close relatives can’t marry either:
LINGLE: For those people who want to makes this into a civil rights issue, and of course those in favor of the bill, they see it as a civil rights issue. And I understand them drawing that conclusion. But people on the other side would point out, well, we don’t allow other people to marry even — it’s not a civil right for them. First cousins couldn’t marry, or a brother and a sister and that sort of thing. So there are restrictions, not to put it in the exact same category. But the bottom line is, it really can’t be a civil right if we are restricting it in other cases, and it’s been found to be legal in those other cases, that the restrictions.
Later in the segment, “Joe from Silver Spring, Maryland” called in and pointed out that in Hawaii, first cousins actually can get married. Lingle said that she had no idea whether or not that was true in the state she governs:
JOE: And the second point is, Gov. Lingle, you talked about restrictions on marriage. I have a first cousin named Kate, and I’m looking on the Department of Health website for Hawaii, and I could marry my cousin Kate in Hawaii, but I cannot marry the love of my life in Hawaii, so — or in terms of a civil union with him. So, I hope you will take that into consideration. [...]
LINGLE: Whether or not a first cousin can marry in Hawaii, I’ll have to go back and check. I don’t know that that’s untrue, but let me go back and check on that.
Lingle also claimed that “almost everyone I know” has friends who are “gay and involved in committed relationships,” but she stressed that same-sex marriage and civil unions are “not about a decision for individual couples. It’s about the impact that it has on society.” Listen here:
Lingle’s argument is popular with conservatives. Recently, former Arkansas governor and current Fox News personality Mike Huckabee said that legalizing marriage equality would “be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”
However, these statements are just a “dodge” to “distract people from the injustice of denying same-sex couples the same opportunity to marry that different-sex couples want to preserve for themselves,” as Jon Davidson of Lambda Legal has written:
The problem with “slippery slope” arguments…is that they assume that society and the law can’t make distinctions between situations that are different from one another. But we can tell apples from oranges. For example, that women got the right to vote does not mean that infants are next.
Davidson also notes that while there may be “compelling reasons to ban incestuous and polygamous marriages, including genetic concerns about the children of incestuous marriages, the importance of preventing coercion and abuse within families, and concerns about how young girls and women have fared under polygamy,” there are no such reasons to ban same-sex marriage.
Transcript: More »
Ernest J. Pagels Jr. is a long shot contender for the Wisconsin GOP Senate primary, vying for the opportunity to run against Sen. Russ Feingold (D) this September. And perhaps there’s a reason. Pagels recently ran an ad on a local Milwaukee television station outlining what he plans fight for as one of Wisconsin’s two U.S. senators:
PAGELS: Hi my name is Ernest J. Pagels Jr., I’m a born again Christian, a U.S. veteran and a very conservative Republican. I’m running for U.S. Senate from the state of Wisconsin and if elected I will initiate a bill to outlaw homosexuality, abortion, and all forms of pornography. I think these are three ills that are plaguing our nation and bringing it down. And if elected, I will also initiate a bill for a Constitutional amendment which prohibits Congress and the President from spending more money than they bring in. My name is Ernest J. Pagels, Jr. and I hope you vote for me on September 14.
Watch it:
Wonkette notes that Pagels tried to sue some people because their children allegedly vandalized his car.
The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in January. President Obama has expressed a desire to preserve the cuts for the middle class while letting tax rates for the wealthy reset to where they were during the Clinton administration. Conservative lawmakers and pundits have been fearmongering that allowing the tax cuts for the wealthy to expire will kill job creation and small businesses (despite the fact that fewer than 2 percent of small business owners will be affected). Last night on CNBC, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore went so far as to say that he can’t “see the sense” of allowing cuts for the rich to expire, and then advocated that taxes be raised on the poorest Americans in order to finance more tax cuts for the rich:
I just don’t see the sense of this. In fact, if I could have my ‘druthers, I’d raise the ten percent tax rate to fifteen percent and lower the [top] rates.
Watch it:
Adopting such a plan would only exacerbate income inequality that is already the worst it has been since the 1920’s. According to the latest data, “the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007.” The top 1 percent of families now receive nearly 25 percent of the country’s income, after earning less than 10 percent in the 1970s. This year the Bush tax cuts will give millionaires more in tax breaks than 90 percent of Americans will make in total income.
Many conservatives have been criticizing the Obama administration for what they regard as a harsh treatment of BP in the wake of its Gulf oil spill. Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul called the White House pressure on BP “un-American.” Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) apologized to BP (and later apologized and then unapologized for the apology) for what he called a White House “shakedown” of the oil giant after BP agreed to create a $20 billion escrow account to compensate claims resulting from the spill.
Greg Sargent reports that yesterday on a local Nevada radio show, the state’s GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle joined in, calling the BP escrow account a “slush-fund”:
CALLER I wanted to know what she thought of the $20 billion slush fund and whether or not government should be able to do that to a private company.
ANGLE: Well, the short answer is no, government shouldn’t be doing that to a private company. And, I think you named it clearly, it’s a slush fund. … But everyone in the petroleum industry shouldn’t be penalized for one bad person’s actions. It would be like throwing us all in prison because one person committed murder. And that’s exactly what’s going on here is it’s an overreaction by government for not the right reasons.
Angle contends that the White House is following “Saul Alinky’s rule for radicals. They are using this crisis now to get in cap-and-trade and every fine and penalty and slush fund.” Listen here:
As Sargent noted, Angle’s comments are particularly egregious “since such funds imply corruption and are often illegal.” Of course, the escrow is not a “slush fund” considering there is no bribery involved, and BP’s money is allotted for a specific purpose: helping victims of the disastrous oil spill which resulted from BP’s negligence. Moreover, BP agreed to set it up and in comments after BP made the deal to set up the account, CEO Tony Hayward took full responsibility and called the escrow account “the right thing“:
“From the outset we have said that we fully accepted our obligations as a responsible party. This agreement reaffirms our commitment to do the right thing. The President made it clear and we agree that our top priority is to contain the spill, clean up the oil and mitigate the damage to the Gulf coast community. We will not rest until the job is done.”
Having had some time to think about it, the caller and I shouldn't have used the term "slush fund"; that was incorrect." My position is that the creation of this fund to compensate victims was an important first step-- BP caused this disaster and they should pay for it. But there are multiple parties at fault here and there should be a thorough investigation. We need to look into the actions, (or inactions) of the Administration and why the regulatory agency in charge of oversight was asleep at the wheel while BP was cutting corners. Every party involved should be held fully accountable.
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