“Repeating Bad Ideas”: The Competitive Advantage Of Deficit Hacks
As I mentioned earlier, economist and blogger Duncan Black has written that Social Security should be expanded, instead of cut. He has written this multiple times, making essentially the same argument in consecutive USA Today opinion columns. That is a good thing, because it is an argument that is frequently absent from discussions of “entitlements” on cable news and in the political press.
But Black will have to write the exact same column hundreds and hundreds more times in order to have made this argument anywhere near as often as deficit fear-mongers make their arguments.
Paul Krugman today blogged about various “zombie ideas” that he thought he had debunked years ago still being repeated. And, duh, “no one listens to Paul Krugman” is basically the history of the United States since Y2K. Since the Bush era, Krugman has really just written the same five or six columns, over and over again. But they are good, useful, correct columns! And still, the rest of the media lavish praise on “deficit hawks” and beg for “entitlement cuts” Americans do not actually want, at all.
I think a lot about contemporary political debates makes a great deal more sense when you realize that hacks, especially hacks shilling for awful ideas, have a competitive advantage over non-hacks: They do not care if they constantly repeat themselves, even if what they are constantly repeating is wrong.
For a writer or pundit who actually feels some sort of responsibility to inform and/or entertain his or her readers, writing the same damn thing over and over again seems wrong (it is also boring). But bad ideas are constantly being repeated by people who feel absolutely no shame about saying the same things over and over and over again. Indeed, “shamelessness” is in general a defining characteristic of hacks. Also, frequently, people are being paid to repeat the same awful ideas over and over again, and unfortunately usually there’s more money to be made repeating bad ideas than good ones. (Hence: Lanny Davis.)
Arguably, American conservatives are better at sticking to their pet causes in general, as liberals move from fight to fight. Look at how contraception “suddenly” became a matter of national public debate last year, years after liberals thought it a well-settled question. Or look at how long the movement spent trying to roll back the majority of the New Deal, a project that continues to this day!
And on the question of the deficit and the “grand bargain,” Pete Peterson and a few others have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and decades of their lives making the exact same argument, and setting up organizations that pay others to make the exact same argument, until a majority of Beltway centrists internalized the argument and began making it themselves, over and over again. When it comes to centrist pundits, the unsophisticated brainwashing technique that has utterly failed to move the public at large over the last 25 years has worked perfectly. (Because centrist pundits are simple, credulous people, by and large, and also because they will not rely on “entitlements” to survive, when they retire from their very well-compensated jobs.)
So liberal and left-wing thinkers should probably strive to be more Krugman-esque, and hammer home the same causes and arguments no matter how boring it gets, because that is what Joe Scarborough is doing every morning.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, March 11, 2013
“What Might Have Been”: Republicans Continue To Ignore Results Of 2012 Elections
Greg Sargent had a good post this morning positing this counterfactual: Suppose Mitt Romney and his tax- and spending-cut agenda had won a decisive victory over President Obama last November and in reaction Senate Democrats (still controlling their chamber) had doubled down on a progressive agenda with calls for social safety net expansion, tax-hike-only deficit reduction, stimulus spending, and then had crowned that agenda with admonishments that President Romney had “failed to sincerely try to find common ground with them.”
This is, of course, the track Republicans have followed in the wake of their side’s 2012 loss: Steady on, refuse to adjust their policy course, and claim the other guy is being unreasonable and won’t compromise. But given the howls of outrage from the right at President Obama’s pursuing a liberal course after campaigning on it and winning, it’s not hard to imagine the what-might-have-been reaction to unabashed progressivism in the face of a Romney-Ryan administration. I don’t think that it’s a stretch to say that Obama’s victory was the main difference between the right declaring 2012 a clarion mandate election and a … uh … well, whatever they think the 2012 election was.
The fact is that if the old adage goes that “elections have consequences,” it might have to be rewritten thusly to take into account the modern GOP: “Primary elections have consequences.” For House Republicans (the group that is currently driving the party and its agenda) the past and future national elections hold less import than their 2012 and 2014 primary elections; the broad will of the voters—who by a solid margin re-elected a progressive president who campaigned on securing the safety net and increasing taxes—is less important than the desires of the GOP voters and activists in their carefully drawn congressional districts.
That’s why so many conservatives talk about responding to the 2012 elections with a more pronounced version of the same.
And, as I argued last week, to the extent that they acknowledge the 2012 elections, they seem to view it as an illegitimate expression of the national will: Too many city voters cast ballots, so it can be discounted.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, March 11, 2013
“The Obamacare Referendum”: Paul Ryan Is Using Shorthand Again In Selling Changes To Medicare
Did you know that on November 6, 2012, in conjunction with the national election, the United States also had a referendum on Obamacare that Republicans won? No, I didn’t, either, until Paul Ryan informed me of this, via this Think Progress report:
On Sunday morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) stopped by Fox News Sunday to preview his new budget, which will be released in full on Tuesday. As it had the past two years, this year’s version will call for massive cuts to social service programs, including food stamps, job training, Medicaid, and Medicare. Host Chris Wallace challenged Ryan on the viability of his plan, pointing out that he wants to repeal and replace Obamacare, and, “that’s not going to happen.”
Still, Ryan insisted that he and then-running mate Mitt Romney won the election on this issue because they “won the senior vote.”
Now I think we all understand that Ryan is using some shorthand here: many Democrats hoped, and Republicans feared, that Ryan’s budget, by proposing to change Medicare from an entitlement to publicly-provided health insurance into a premium-support system, would make his party vulnerable to losses it could not manage in its old-white-folks electoral base. Instead, by a variety of means (including over two years of insanely mendacious “death-panel” demagoguery about the impact of Obamacare on Medicare, and the systematic “grandfathering” of seniors from Ryan’s proposed Medicare changes), the GOP ticket managed to promote a health care message that nicely meshed with its overall pitch to old white folks that those people along with their atheist hippie allies were threatening to take away everything good virtuous retirees had worked so hard to secure for themselves, including Medicare (which they tend to regard as an earned benefit as opposed to Obamacare’s “welfare”).
I suppose it’s understandable that Ryan would view any success in selling big changes in Medicare to old folks would represent a political ten-strike, even if he’s now having to incorporate into his budget the same Medicare savings he implicitly attacked during the campaign as a token of Obamacare’s ultimate goal of sending seniors off to euthanasia camps. But it’s still bizarre that he’s touting an incumbent president’s re-election victory as a repudiation of his most important legislative accomplishment. It’s enough to give Dick Morris hope he can come back from ridicule and disgrace and claim he was right all along in predicting a big Romney-Ryan win.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 11, 2013
“A Direct Correlation”: Stricter Gun Laws Mean Fewer Fatalities
A study released last week by JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association): Internal Medicine shows a direct correlation between gun laws and gun-related fatalities. While the study is mainly based on the number of gun laws, not the type (it doesn’t, for example, specify which particular laws are the most effective), it confirms that generally speaking, stricter gun laws result in fewer deaths.
The report, entitled “Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States,” developed a method for rating states depending on the degree of the gun laws in place. How far state laws go to control gun trafficking, effectiveness of a background-check system, focus on child safety, restriction on military-style assault weapons, and whether state laws allow individuals to carry guns in public places were all considered when ranking each state.
The states that come in at the top of the list for strong gun laws are Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, Connecticut and New York. Aside from California, which is closer to the median, these states also have the lowest average of firearms deaths per year. The states on the other end of the list—those with the most lenient gun laws—include Alaska, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Utah, all of which have among the highest percentage of deaths per year.
The authors conclude from their data that just owning a gun puts individuals at risk, and the federal government should focus on limiting gun ownership entirely. “One way that firearm legislation may act to reduce firearm fatalities is through reducing firearm prevalence. Studies have shown a strong connection between gun ownership and firearm suicide and firearm homicide,” says the report. “A cross-sectional study of all 50 states from 2001 to 2003 found that higher rates of household firearm ownership were associated with significantly higher rates of homicide.”
The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre has stood adamantly against the implementation of new federal gun laws, citing these measures as an all-out attack on responsible gun owners with a view to taking away their guns, and a complete waste of time since the government fails to enforce laws already in place. LaPierre has completely ignored and opposed proposals that include universal background checks, banning military-style weapons, and outlawing high-capacity magazines. During an interview, the NRA CEO tried to shift blame for growing gun violence when he said, “Look, a gun is a tool. The problem is the criminal.”
At the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), LaPierre said, “Across the board, violent crime in jurisdictions that recognize the right to carry is lower than in areas that prevent it.” During a January Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) repeated this statement nearly verbatim. The problem with this logic is that there are far too many exceptions when piecing together a direct connection between any one lax gun law and a decrease in gun-related violence—other factors in society can trigger an increase or decrease.
The JAMA study focuses on gun-related fatalities, as opposed to gun-related violence. It also doesn’t delve into the specificity of each law, but instead measures the efficacy of all gun laws in each respective state by assigning one point for every law passed, all while taking into consideration the magnitude of the laws and the state’s demographic data.
Read the results of the study here.
A 2004 study by The National Academies Press called “Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review” shows that since the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban (which expired in 2004) was passed, total murder rates and handgun murder rates have declined considerably.
In the 1990s, Congress voted to reduce funding for the Centers for Disease Control, a leading research source on gun control. Before the funding was cut, the CDC found that having a gun in the home put families at a far higher risk for suicide and homicide. President Obama signed an executive order that provides funding to the CDC for this type of research, which is telling of the president’s commitment to passing effective, sensible legislation.
LaPierre, Sen. Cruz, and other opponents of stricter gun laws can make claims that more lenient gun laws lead to a decrease in gun violence, but the data to support those claims is plainly non-existent. The JAMA study reiterates what a recent Quinnipiac University poll points out: A majority of Americans support stricter gun laws despite opposition from the NRA and NRA-funded Republicans—and it’s in the people’s best interests to do so.
By: Allison Brito, The National Memo, March 10, 2013
GOP Meltdown: Paul Ryan Doubles Down On His Losing Southern Strategy
After years of drifting apart, the jobs report and the stock market aligned this week, at least momentarily, as unemployment fell to the lowest level in over four years while the Dow and the S&P 500 continued to climb. We’re hardly out of the woods— the workforce participation rate remains stuck in neutral, overall growth remains sluggish, and worker income is still lagging behind the stock market gains—but there are signs of hope.
Yet some things don’t change. As the sputtering economy tries to get into gear, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan keeps talking about depriving hard working-taxpaying Americans of their retirement benefits, while offering nothing in return. This is the strategy that failed Mitt Romney and Ryan in November, and that alienates not just senior citizens, but voters over 45 — one of the few groups that’s so far remained reliably right-leaning as Asians, Hispanics, upscale Episcopalians, graduate degree holders and others have abandoned the shrinking GOP tent.
If the President’s electoral playbook called for uniting the rich and poor and treating the middle class as an afterthought, the Congressman has a more direct, if less palatable, approach: he simply attacks the middle class, by trying to gut their earned entitlement programs.
Harping on social issues and bashing the 47 percent, along with Mitt Romney’s antipathy on the auto bailout, is why Republicans got their clocks cleaned in the industrial Midwest last November, eking out just a 5-point plurality among non-college grad white voters in the Great Lakes (a group they won by 19 points nationally).
Apparently, the failed vice presidential candidate has not internalized these lessons. Instead, Ryan & Co. seems to be doubling down on 2012’s failed bet, and treating working Americans as little more than moochers. A year ago, Candidate Ryan called for voucher care instead of Medicare for Americans who were then 55 and under. Now, he is pressing the idea of setting the cut-off at 56 in an effort to force more Americans off of Medicare.
Polling data consistently show that voters disapprove of vouchers for seniors, and Ryan’s gambit may have even cost the Republicans Florida.
It’s no surprise, then, that the few standing members of the ever-dwindling cohort of centrist House Republicans are furious with Ryan’s latest suggestion.
Tenaciously, Ryan continues to press ahead. As an unidentified member told The Hill, the “big problem was that a lot of people have been telling people that it’s 55 and that’s the number . . . And if you change it, it’s going to make us look like [liars].”
The sole source of income for most Americans now turning 65 is their monthly Social Security check, which averages a little more than $1,200 and that is before paying $100 a month for Medicare Plan B.
The origins of Ryanism trace back to John C. Calhoun’s South and Herbert Hoover’s America—and that is a losing coalition. Indeed, for a southern-based party like the current iteration of the Republican Party to regain traction, it must reach out to and make inroads with the Northern working class. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and both Bushes demonstrated that this task was doable. And yet, the current crop of Republicans just does not seem to get it. When the party of the South decides to go it alone, it fails.
Single women now rival white evangelicals as a voting bloc, and the former – which preferred Obama to Romney by a staggering two-to-one margin—is just not cottoning to the Republicans’ message on personal autonomy or anything else. With childrearing and marriage increasingly distinct and recent studies showing that the life expectancies of subgroups of women are declining regionally, even as life expectancy on the whole is rising, a call to replace a long-established safety net with faux personal responsibility is not a winning message.
Religion also has lost traction at the lower end of the income spectrum, particularly outside of the South. Rather, regular worship is now the province of married upper-income Americans, be they Republicans or Democrats. SMU families and their Scarsdale counterparts have more in common than either may realize.
If the Republicans stay on their present course, the fate of the old Democratic Party awaits them.
Between 1860 and 1932, the Democrats were a Southern-based party that managed to elect only two presidents in 18 elections.
And in fact, Ryan the Midwesterner does seem to look to the South. He supported relief for the victims of Katrina, but opposed aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. At least on disaster funding, the Congressman can whistle Dixie. The question for the Republican Party is whether it has the will to change. After losing five straight elections to FDR’s New Deal Coalition, the Republicans got their act together. Will history repeat itself?
One thing is for sure: Alienating your base when you need every vote that you can get is not smart politics.
By: Lloyd Green, The Daily Beast, March 10, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 