By Alex Seitz-Wald
Reporter, Center for American Progress Action Fund
Just days from a potential default, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) this afternoon rejected Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) plan for raising the debt ceiling, saying he can’t support any plan that doesn’t cut entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. Reid’s plan, just hours old when Boehner aimed to kill it, essentially called the GOP’s bluff, giving them exactly what they have been asking for all along — spending cuts matching the increase in the debt ceiling and no new revenues.
Apparently not. The Reid plan “makes no changes to the biggest drivers of our deficit and our debt and that would be entitlement programs,” Boehner said at a late afternoon press conference, flanked by other GOP leaders. This demand seemed to be a brazen moving of the goal posts, as entitlement cuts never appeared to be red-line demand for Republicans for raising the debt ceiling.
The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) modest, common-sense proposed rule to remove roadblocks for workers who want to vote on whether to form a union has drawn praise from working men and women, political leaders and activists around the country. Here’s a sample of the comments:
Electrical Workers (IBEW) President Edwin Hill:
By eliminating delays, the board is not only bringing some balance. It is also saving money for taxpayers who foot the bill because of unnecessary litigation.
Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Larry Cohen:
Workers at T-Mobile USA and nearly every other company know firsthand how U.S. corporations use delay to keep workers from making a fair choice about union representation. The changes proposed by the National Labor Relations Board are a first and modest step toward ending some of that delay.
AFT President Randi Weingarten:
By cleaning up and modernizing the system, these proposals will help level the playing field for workers, ensuring they have a fair chance to vote….The board’s proposed changes won’t fix all of those problems, but they are a step in the right direction.
United Steelworkers (USW):
The proposal would remove unfair obstacles so that workers who petition for a vote on whether to form a union can have a vote. (more…)
Washington, D.C. — “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” So wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, but consistency, foolish or otherwise, is something that the current Republican Congressional leadership wants very little part of.
This won’t be the week, it turns out, that Congress votes on whether we need to continue giving oil companies and foreign petro-states like Saudi Arabia billions of dollars in tax breaks. Senate Majority Leader Reid says he can’t yet schedule floor time, but the bill will come up soon. But it’s clear that in both the House and the Senate the issue of throwing our money at the richest companies and countries in the world is not going away.
Meanwhile it is amusing to watch the Republicans try to parse the words “deficit reduction” and “fiscal conservatism” to somehow obscure the reality that they are about to choose between their announced principles (and voters) on the one hand and their biggest campaign donors on the other. (Oil companies give 77 percent of their campaign gifts to Republicans.)
Rush Limbaugh doesn’t see why this should be hard for them. When, briefly, House Speaker Boehner announced that he thought Big Oil ought to pay its “fair share” of the nation’s tax bill, Limbaugh grumped, “If I were a political leader and a Republican, and the Democrats were hellbent on ending Big Oil subsidies and raising taxes on Big Oil in circumstances like we are in now …. I would defend Big Oil! Especially now.” (more…)
Five years ago, a 47-year-old Missouri woman began a duplicitous on-line courtship through MySpace with a 13-year-old neighbor who once had been friends with the woman’s daughter.
The adult, Lori Drew, flirted with the 13-year-old, Megan Meier, through the guise of a fictitious, 16-year-old character named Josh Evans. Suddenly, “Josh” broke up with Miss Meier, writing to her, “the world would be a better place without you.” Just hours later, Miss Meier hung herself in her bedroom.
Words have consequences.
Drew wasn’t charged with the child’s death. In fact, a judge reversed her conviction on computer fraud charges, saying the law was intended to deal with hacking, not murder. But for most Americans, there is something deeply disturbing, something morally, if not criminally, wrong with deliberate torment, with predatory viciousness. Drew eluded accountability the same way conservatives are seeking to evade culpability after their irresponsible speech has provoked the delusional to violence.
It’s hard to draw a line directly from Drew’s cruel words to the noose around Miss Meier’s neck. Similarly, it’s difficult to directly link violent political rhetoric like Sarah Palin’s illustration showing gun sight cross hairs on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ Arizona district to the shattering of Giffords’ office door after her vote for health insurance reform last March or Jared L. Loughner’s shooting spree last weekend that left six dead and Giffords and 13 others wounded.
What is clear, however, is that vile and threatening communication that becomes so repetitive that it’s routine has the effect of sanctioning an atmosphere of violence.
Conservatives are yammering that they’re not the only ones who engage in brutal rhetoric. That’s true. But in a contest for production of violent words and images, Republicans would, to use their words, “kill” the Democrats.
The Department of Homeland Security concluded in an April 2009 internal report that right-wing extremism, with a growing potential for violence, was on the rise. That was followed last spring by Capitol security officials reporting a tripling of threats against members of Congress – almost all from opponents of health care reform – in other words, from Republicans, right-wingers or people influenced by GOP TV and radio front men like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, who personally profit from the hostile climate they generate.
They didn’t stop though they had fair warning about the consequences. Consider the case of Byron Williams. He launched a 12-minute shoot out with California Highway Patrol officers last July after they stopped him for erratic driving. A police affidavit filed the following day said Williams intended to “start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at The Tides Foundation and the ACLU.”
The Right has for decades slammed the ACLU, whose sole purpose is to protect constitutional rights, but Glenn Beck had made the Tides Foundation, once an obscure progressive organization, famous by attacking it repeatedly – at least 29 times between January and the July shoot out last year, including two tirades the week before Williams began his assassination mission.
Williams, who was armed during the shootout with a handgun, shotgun, rifle and body armor, said he watched FOX News to see Beck, who blew his mind, and who he viewed as a “schoolteacher.”
Still Beck, expressed no remorse and tried to squirm out of any responsibility for inciting Williams, saying on his show:
“I am the only one that has mentioned the Tides Foundation. . . So that’s what they’re using. This guy couldn’t have found this out on his own; it had to come from me. . .America, if you don’t think that they will use anything, they will. They absolutely will.”
Words do have consequences, Mr. Beck, no matter how many times you cravenly shout denials.
The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives insisted on reading the U.S. Constitution on the opening day of the new Congressional session. It was, however, nothing but political theatre because conservatives disassociate the rights it grants from the incumbent responsibilities. Right-wing leaders like Beck disavow responsibility altogether.
When it was Arizona Rep. Giffords’s turn to read, the chamber had come upon the First Amendment, which guarantees, among other things, the right to free speech. It even guarantees Republican Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl the right to go on television the day after the shootings and contend that Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Dupnik didn’t have the right to speak about the complicity in the crime of vile, hateful and threatening political speech.
The courts have established the “crowded theater” test to determine when free speech ends and responsibility begins. Americans are responsible to refrain from yelling “fire” in a crowded theater when, in fact, there are no flames. The freedom to yell ends at the point when it endangers others.
Republicans are recklessly yelling. During the fall campaign, Arizona Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle suggested her supporters consider their Second Amendment rights if Sen. Harry Reid were re-elected. Florida radio host Joyce Kaufman said at a Tea Party rally on July 4, “If ballots don’t work, bullets will,” and then was hired by new GOP Congressman Allen West to serve as chief of staff. Tea Party contender Jesse Kelly held a fund raiser in June asking his supporters to “get on target to . . . remove Gabrielle Giffords from office” by shooting a “fully automatic M16” with him.
Republicans bear responsibility for the consequences of this kind of brutal discourse – a political atmosphere charged with violence. Just like Glenn Beck, though, Republicans guard their rights, but shirk the concomitant responsibilities.
***
Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute. He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.
Posted
December 2, 2010 at 8:00 am,
in
From the News
Michael Winship
By Michael Winship
Senior writer at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS
Bees in Brooklyn are producing honey that’s bright red in color. Or, as The New York Times described it, “an alarming shade of Robitussin.”
No, it’s not a sign of the Apocalypse. Apparently, the insects have been sipping nectar on the wrong side of town. The theory is that they’ve been imbibing runoff filled with Red Dye No. 40 and corn syrup from a factory that processes maraschino cherries for desserts and mixed drinks. I’m not kidding.
Maraschino cherries could just be the start; soon the bees may be dining on cocktail onions and flying with those little paper umbrellas bartenders stick in mai-tai’s. Or worse, drunkenly singing karaoke. Okay, now I’m kidding. But the real bottom line? Like so many other Americans, even though nearby farmland is filled with fresh fruit and vegetables, rich in nectar, pollen and other healthy stuff, the bees prefer junk food.
Coincidentally, news of this ruby-hued dietary phenomenon came on the same day that the United States Senate, that hive of rancid rhetoric and inertia, actually passed something nutritional — the food safety bill. While far from perfect, the legislation represents the most sweeping overhaul of regulations in seven decades and will, as The Washington Post observed, “require food manufacturers and farmers to use scientific techniques to prevent contaminated food… delivering a revamped safety system that would confer vast new authority on the Food and Drug Administration, accelerate the government’s response to outbreaks and set the first safety standards for imported food.” (more…)
The White House deficit commission is expected to vote in two days — on Wednesday, Dec. 1 — on a final report of recommendations. And it will likely not be much different than the draft released by its co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson.
Bowles said last week: “We aren’t going to make it softer than it is today. It’s going to be a tough report. If we get 14 votes, great. If we don’t, then by God, we’ll put it out there.” (14 out of 18 is needed to trigger an agreement with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to vote on the recommendations.)
Though today’s Washington Post reports: “Bowles and Simpson are rewriting their plan to accommodate the concerns of commission members, though the two insist, in Simpson’s words, that it will not be watered down to ‘mush’ for the sake of winning votes.”
By Robert Creamer
Political organizer, strategist and author
President Obama has proposed to eliminate the massive deficit-busting Bush tax breaks for the top 2 percent of Americans — while maintaining tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans. He is spot on.
The Bush tax breaks are set to expire at year’s end, so there is real pressure on Congress to act. Congress should maintain the cuts for individuals earning $200,000 or less, and families earning $250,000 or less. And it should restore the Clinton-era tax rates to the very rich.
It is the right thing to do economically, politically and morally.
First the economics. When it comes to creating jobs, the last people who need more money in their hands are the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.
The Republicans charge that eliminating these tax breaks on the rich — and returning them to Clinton-era levels — would be a “job-killing tax hike in the midst of a recession.” Let’s recall that while the Clinton-era tax rates applied to the rich in the 1990′s, the economy created more than 22.5 million jobs in less than eight years — the most jobs ever created under a single administration. Moreover, the Federal deficit had turned into a surplus for as long as the eye could see. The number of private sector jobs created during the Bush years: zero. The Republican position amounts to nothing more than baseless pandering to the greed of their many wealthy donors.
To create more jobs, our economy needs more economic demand. We need people who are willing to go out and buy products and services. Our economic problem is not that we lack enough people who will go out and work to create the products and services we need to have better lives. Our problem is that there is not enough demand to entice businesses to increase their work forces or buy new plants and equipment. (more…)
Dear Senate Majority Leader, you are letting the public down. We, the People need you to get things done but everything is being blocked by a minority. The public doesn’t understand that everything is being filibustered, so they are not applying the pressure that could break the tactic. That is your fault, not theirs: you have to show them. You owe it to the public, in the name of democracy, to let them know what is going on. There is a clear way to do that: Roll out the cots!
The country has so many things wrong that need fixing. A majority of the Congress, elected to make changes, is trying to get things moving for the people, but a corporate-sponsored minority is blocking almost everything. Their strategy is to frustrate the public and they count on misinformation to confuse people as to who is responsible for the logjam. As a result the public doesn’t see that there is a strategy of pure obstruction at work here.
The obstructionists have help in spreading the confusion. Newspaper stories rarely use the word “filibuster.” Many in the media tell the public that Senate rules require 60 votes to pass bills. Other stories blame “partisan bickering” for the lack of progress. So the public blames “both sides” because they don’t know what is really going on.
But you are helping spread the confusion too. You are not drawing a clear contrast and repeating it. You are not telling a simple story in a clear, understandable way. It is not getting through to the public that the hated filibuster is being used over and over. You need to put on a show that breaks through the haze and informs the public. There is a way to do that: roll out the cots! The public gets that. They associate cots with filibusters. It is theater but the public needs to have the information and without the theater – yes, the circus – of rolling out the cots again and again and again, the public is, in effect, having that information withheld from them. (more…)
The financial reform bill that passed both houses of Congress was far less than we needed. But it was a start — enough of a start that the bankers have spent tens of millions trying to kill it. And now, with the House-Senate conference version of the bill coming back to Senate for final approval, the reform is in jeopardy yet again.
On May 29, the bill passed the Senate, 59-39, just enough to block a filibuster. Four Republicans voted in support and two progressive Democrats voted no to protest its weaknesses. But the banking lobby has used the Congressional recess to work the four Senate Republicans.
And, sure enough, three of the four Republican supporters have gone wobbly. Olympia Snowe of Maine voted for the Senate bill, but is now making equivocal noises about whether she’ll support the conference bill (which is weaker in some respects than the Senate’s version.) Likewise Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
The always wily Scott Brown of Massachusetts threatened to withhold his vote until the House and Senate leaders agreed to scrap a $19 billion tax on large banks. He voted for the senate bill, but now Brown is warning that he may vote against the final bill anyway. Apparently there is no honor among thieves. The financial industry was the largest donor to Brown’s Senate campaign.
Among Republicans, only Susan Collins of Maine is standing firm in her support. The fewer Republicans who are still officially committed to the bill, the easier it is for the banking lobby and the GOP leadership to intimidate or seduce others. (more…)
The financial reform bill now pending in the Senate could be a huge win– for both restraining the excesses of Wall Street and for Democratic progressives — or Senator Chris Dodd could snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. The risk is a replay of the endgame of the healthcare battle, but in reverse: instead of Democrats hanging together and passing a bill with the president belatedly leading, we could see a hollow bipartisanship and a feeble bill.
On Thursday, there was an uncharacteristically fractious meeting of the Senate Democratic Caucus. On one side, leading progressives such as Maria Cantwell, Ted Kauffman, Dick Durbin, Byron Dorgan, and Jeff Merkley, argued that this was a moment to put forward floor amendments that would both strengthen the bill and force Republicans to take difficult votes either backing reforms or identifying themselves with Wall Street.
But the Banking Committee Chairman, Chris Dodd, was more inclined to try and strike deal over the weekend with his Republican counterpart, Richard Shelby, for a bipartisan bill. The price of this would be weaker provisions on derivatives, consumer protection, and on resolving failed large banks. The political price would be that progressives don’t get to offer floor amendments. Under Dodd’s scheme, which is favored by Obama’s legislative and economic advisers, the Senate would immediately vote to take up the bill, and would then vote cloture by a wide bipartisan margin. The bill — still a shell with details to be filled in later — would go directly to the House, where the House-passed bill would become the vehicle for the final measure.
This course would be an appalling abdication, and it would be stupid politics. The protestations by the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, that the Democrats are proposing a pro-Wall Street bill, have been ringing increasingly hollow. It’s Republicans who have been working hand in glove with Wall Street lobbyists. The problem is that so have several Democrats, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
Dodd’s response to the progressives was that he was not sure that he could count on fifty Democrats to back tough reform. That’s right — and one of the unreliable Democrats is Dodd himself. But the solution to that problem is to whip the wavering Democrats, as Obama belatedly did on health reform, not to cave in. And while Obama gave a fairly tough speech on Wall Street, he is not yet walking the walk when it comes to personally weighing in with Senate Democrats to hang tough. Having prevailed as a partisan on health reform, Obama is back in touch with his softer, bipartisan side. Not good news.
If the bipartisan strategy is adopted, both parties will declare victory and go home. Some of Obama’s advisers think this is smart politics because it gets financial reform off the table, and presumably gets it off talk radio because the Republicans will have been enlisted as partners. But think again. Anything that Mitch McConnell can support is not worth having. And if Obama’s tactical advisers think that passing a feeble bill will make the anti-Wall Street popular sentiment disappear, they are kidding themselves. Regular Americans will just see both parties as sellouts, and the tea parties will get new recruits.
What stands in the way of this bipartisan deal is the resolve of the Senate progressives and the personal dilemma of the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid. Senator Reid faces a very difficult re-election in Nevada this November. He needs to present himself as a fighter for the common American, not as an agent of Wall Street. If Reid weighs in hard on Dodd, and if Obama gets personally engaged, he can still head off a deal with Shelby and the Republicans for a backroom deal and a weakened bill.
It would be nice if somebody whose phone calls Obama still takes — Reid, Dick Durbin, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi–broke through the wall that Rahm Emanuel has put up and got the president to play a personal role. Otherwise, this could be one of those dreadful lost moments of reform and progressive triumph.
