“The Disappointment Must Be Crushing”: ‘He’s Wanted To Be A Historically Significant Speaker’
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who’s unlikely to face a credible opponent when he seeks another term early next year, will soon lead a massive majority. The current House GOP caucus is pretty significant, but thanks to some modest gains in this year’s midterms, Boehner will soon sit atop a party with 247 House seats, the most for Republicans since the Great Depression.
But the New York Times noted the other day that there’s uncertainty lurking behind the numbers.
[W]hat he is able to do with that power will determine whether he is remembered as something more than the House leader during a stretch of frustrating gridlock and deep partisanship.
“He’s never wanted to just be Speaker,” said Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican and a close ally. “He’s wanted to be a historically significant Speaker.”
The quote surprised me a bit. Several years ago, before the Ohio Republican was elevated to his current post, a friend of mine who works on Capitol Hill told me, “John Boehner cares about three things: cutting taxes, playing golf, and smoking cigarettes – and not necessarily in that order.”
Boehner, the argument went, didn’t have grand ambitions about becoming a historically significant figure. He welcomed promotions and leadership posts, but it was widely assumed that he saw the stature and prestige as their own rewards. In this vision of Boehner, we see a guy who didn’t intend to leave an imposing legacy – there would be no buildings named after him following his tenure.
But Tom Cole, one of Boehner’s closest allies, suggests this perception is all wrong. This Speaker actually does care about his place in history and he wants to be seen as a success.
Which in some ways makes the last four years something of a tragedy.
If Boehner set out to be a historically significant Speaker, he succeeded in the worst possible way: Congress, at least since the Civil War, has never been quite this dysfunctional. Congress has never failed quite so spectacularly to complete routine tasks. Congress never, in rapid succession, threatened to trash the full faith and credit of the United States, then repeatedly threatened to shut down the government, following through in one ridiculous case.
The most notable aspect of Boehner’s record is a complete inability to lead his own members and govern effectively. When this Speaker manages to pass spending measures that keep the government’s lights on, much of the country considers it a minor miracle, thanks entirely to the soft bigotry of low expectations.
After four years with the gavel, Boehner’s total of major legislative accomplishments remains stuck at … zero. Simon Maloy noted yesterday, “His record of leadership to date is defined almost entirely by its reflexive opposition to the president, and in the process he’s helped turn Congress into a dysfunctional morass in which elected representatives don’t actually know how to do their jobs.”
It didn’t have to be this way. There have been any number of opportunities for Boehner to tackle real legislative initiatives – up to and including immigration reform, which the Speaker promised to act on before he broke his word – and just as many chances to sit down with President Obama to strike meaningful compromises.
But Boehner, fearful of far-right revolts and members who ignore his attempts at leadership, has generally been loath to even try. If he genuinely “wanted to be a historically significant Speaker,” the disappointment must be crushing.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 2, 2014
“Pain For The Afflicted, Benefits For The Rich”: The Republican Party’s Top Priority Is To Raise Taxes On The Poor. Literally.
Following their convincing victory in the 2014 elections, everyone is wondering what Republicans will do with their new majority in the Senate and House. Well, their policy agenda is becoming clear. It will be unrestrained class warfare against the poor.
This priority was made apparent over the last week during the negotiation of a colossal tax cut package. Senate Democrats and Republicans had been doing some low-key negotiations to renew a slew of tax cuts for corporations and lower- and middle-income Americans, according to reporting from Brian Faler and Rachel Bade at Politico.
Then President Obama announced his executive action on immigration. Enraged Republicans promptly took vengeance on all the goodies for the working poor (as well as for clean energy), cutting them out of the deal and proposing a raft of permanent tax cuts for corporations alone worth $440 billion over 10 years. Cowed Democrats, led by Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), were about ready to go along, prompting a decidedly justified outcry from liberals. Obama then threatened a veto, and the negotiations broke down entirely.
A few takeaways from this. First, it’s yet another reminder that Republicans don’t care about the national debt. Conservative carping about the debt is 100 percent of the time a rhetorical cudgel deployed with utter cynicism against programs they dislike for other reasons. When the topic is food stamps or unemployment insurance, they demand offsets to pay for them. (Because “we’re broke,” as Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) put it in a similar context.) But when it comes to dropping planeloads of money on corporations and rich people, Republicans will casually blow a half-trillion hole in the 10-year budget without blinking.
We can safely assume that should Republicans win in 2016, they’ll take all the reduction in the budget deficit accomplished over the Obama years (at great cost and for no benefit, but that’s another story) and do the same thing that George W. Bush did: hand it immediately to the rich.
That’s not all, though. Unlike Bush, who gave his eye-wateringly regressive tax cuts a patina of democratic legitimacy by cutting the non-rich in on a small fraction of the spoils, Republicans are now firmly committed to the idea that poor people don’t pay enough in taxes. The Earned Income Tax Credit was originally a conservative alternative to the welfare state, but increasingly only Democrats support it. Republicans are convinced that the EITC is riddled with fraud, and that voting for it means giving welfare to unauthorized immigrants. (In reality, the EITC results in quite a lot of technically improper payments, but mostly as a result of unnecessary complexity.)
Massive transfers of money to the rich are one half of the Republican economic policy agenda; massive transfers of money away from poor are the other half. And the cuts would be cruel indeed:
For example, a single mother with two children working full time in a nursing home for the minimum wage and earning $14,500 would lose her entire [Child Tax Credit] of $1,725 if the CTC provision expires. [CBPP]
Apparently, cutting the income of a poor working single mother by 12 percent is good and proper conservative policymaking in 2014. Because immigration.
Finally, we see that Republicans are still incapable of the basics of political governance. They can’t maintain any sort of agenda outside of being against what Obama is for. Once the president drives them into a frenzy — which is to say, anytime he does anything at all — any negotiations on deck will be blown up as punishment. These days, divided government means constant high-stakes conflict, as everything, including tax credits for working moms, is weaponized in a naked struggle for power.
But should Republicans ever get the run of things, we now have a very good idea of what’s in store: pain for the afflicted, and benefits for the comfortable.
By: Ryan Cooper, The Week, December 3, 2014
“Justice Is Not An Unreasonable Desire”: Eric Holder; Problems Exposed By Ferguson ‘Threaten The Entire Nation’
The problems put on display after the death of Michael Brown in the small St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, in August “are truly national in scope and that threaten the entire nation,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech on Monday.
Holder, speaking at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said the nation needs to confront the broken relationship between many law enforcement agencies and the communities that they are supposed to serve.
“Broadly speaking, without mutual understanding between citizens — whose rights must be respected — and law enforcement officers — who make tremendous and often-unheralded personal sacrifices every day to preserve public safety — there can be no meaningful progress,” Holder said in prepared remarks. “Our police officers cannot be seen as an occupying force disconnected from the communities they serve. Bonds that have been broken must be restored. Bonds that never existed must now be created.”
Holder, who plans to resign as the nation’s top law enforcement official if the Senate confirms U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch as his replacement, visited Ferguson back in August. His Justice Department has launched an investigation into the practices of the Ferguson Police Department, in addition to a separate ongoing federal investigation into the shooting of Brown by former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.
In his speech on Monday, Holder said that the “overall system of justice must be strengthened and made more fair” to ensure faith in the justice system.
“Without that deserved faith, without that reasoned belief, there can be no justice. This is not an unreasonable desire — it is a fundamental American right enshrined in our founding documents,” Holder said.
Calling 18-year-old Brown’s death a “tragedy,” Holder said it “sparked a significant national conversation about the need to ensure confidence in the law enforcement and criminal justice processes” and exposed rifts that “must be addressed — by all Americans — in a constructive manner.”
Holder condemned the looting and destruction that took place around Ferguson last week, saying it was “deeply unfortunate that this vital conversation was interrupted, and this young man’s memory dishonored, by destruction and looting on the part of a relatively small criminal element.”
Holder said that “acts of mindless destruction are not only contrary to the rule of law and the aims of public safety; they threaten to stifle important debate, ‘adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars,'” referencing a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “They actively impede social progress by drowning out the legitimate voices of those attempting to make themselves heard. And they are not consistent with the wishes of Michael Brown’s father, who asked that his son be remembered peacefully.”
Holder called on “those who seek to lend their voices to important causes and discussions, and who seek to elevate these vital conversations, to do so in ways that respect the gravity of their subject matter.”
“These are the moments that remind us of the values that bind us together as a nation. These are the times — of great challenge and great consequence — that point the way forward in our ongoing pursuit of a more perfect union,” Holder continued. “And these are the lights that will help us beat back the encroaching darkness — and the stars that will guide us, together, out of this storm.”
By: Ryan J. Reilly, The Blog, The Huffington Post, December 1, 2014
“A Tragic And Unacceptable Pattern”: What America’s Police Departments Don’t Want You To Know
Michael Brown’s death was part of a tragic and unacceptable pattern: Police officers in the United States shoot and kill civilians in shockingly high numbers. How many killings are there each year? No one can say for sure, because police departments don’t want us to know.
According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, in 2013 there were 461 “justifiable homicides” by police — defined as “the killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.” In all but three of these reported killings, officers used firearms.
The true number of fatal police shootings is surely much higher, however, because many law enforcement agencies do not report to the FBI database. Attempts by journalists to compile more complete data by collating local news reports have resulted in estimates as high as 1,000 police killings a year. There is no way to know how many victims, like Brown, were unarmed.
By contrast, there were no fatal police shootings in Great Britain last year. Not one. In Germany, there have been eight police killings over the past two years. In Canada — a country with its own frontier ethos and no great aversion to firearms — police shootings average about a dozen a year.
Liberals and conservatives alike should be outraged at the frequency with which police in this country use deadly force. There is no greater power that we entrust to the state than the license to take life. To put it mildly, misuse of this power is at odds with any notion of limited government.
I realize that the great majority of police officers never fire their weapons in the line of duty. Most cops perform capably and honorably in a stressful, dangerous job; 27 were killed in 2013, according to the FBI. Easy availability of guns means that U.S. police officers — unlike their counterparts in Britain, Japan or other countries where there is appropriate gun control — must keep in mind the possibility that almost any suspect might be packing heat.
But any way you look at it, something is wrong. Perhaps the training given officers is inadequate. Perhaps the procedures they follow are wrong. Perhaps an “us vs. them” mentality estranges some police departments from the communities they are sworn to protect.
Whatever the reason, it is hard to escape the conclusion that police in this country are much too quick to shoot. We’ve seen the heartbreaking results most recently in the fatal shooting of 28-year-old Akai Gurley, an unarmed man who was suspected of no crime, in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project, and the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was waving a toy gun around a park in Cleveland.
Which brings me to the issue of race. USA Today analyzed the FBI’s “justifiable homicide” statistics over several years and found that, of roughly 400 reported police killings annually, an average of 96 involved a white police officer killing a black person.
Two years ago, D. Brian Burghart, the editor and publisher of the Reno (Nev.) News & Review, launched FatalEncounters.org, an ambitious attempt to compile a comprehensive crowd-sourced database of fatal police shootings. Reports of the October 2012 killing of a naked, unarmed college student by University of South Alabama police made Burghart wonder how many such shootings there were; the fact that no one knew the answer made him determined to find it.
Burghart recently summed up what he has learned so far: “You know who dies in the most population-dense areas? Black men,” he wrote on Gawker. “You know who dies in the least population-dense areas? Mentally ill men. It’s not to say there aren’t dangerous and desperate criminals killed across the line. But African-Americans and the mentally ill people make up a huge percentage of people killed by police.”
Burghart and others who have attempted to count and analyze police shootings shouldn’t have to do the FBI’s job. All law enforcement agencies should be required to report all uses of deadly force to the bureau, using a standardized format that allows comparisons and analysis. Police departments that have nothing to hide should be eager to cooperate.
The Obama administration has been laudably aggressive in pressing cities with egregiously high rates of police shootings, such as Albuquerque, to reform. But no one can really get a handle on the problem until we know its true scope.
The Michael Brown case presents issues that go beyond race. An unarmed teenager was shot to death. Whatever his color, that’s just not right.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 1, 2014
“The Cycle Of Republican Radicalization”: The Particularly Intense Loathing Republicans At All Levels Have For Obama Feeds The Cycle
Yesterday, the Washington Post reported on a Quinnipiac poll from a week ago showing a striking change in public opinion on immigration. The question was whether undocumented immigrants should be deported or should be able to get on a path to citizenship. Clear majorities of the public have long favored a path to citizenship (especially if you provide details of what that path would entail, which this poll didn’t). But that has changed, because Republicans have changed. As the Post described the Quinnipiac results, “Although [Republicans] supported citizenship over deportation 43 to 38 percent in November 2013, today they support deportation/involuntary departure over citizenship, 54 to 27 percent.”
That’s an enormous shift, and it provides an object lesson in a dynamic that has repeated itself many times during the Obama presidency. We’ve talked a lot about how the GOP in Congress has moved steadily to the right in recent years, but we haven’t paid as much attention to the movement of Republican voters. But the two feed off each other in a cycle.
Immigration is a perfect example. Before this latest immigration controversy, Republican voters were at least favorably inclined toward a path to citizenship. But then Barack Obama moves to grant temporary legal status to some undocumented people (and by the way, nothing he’s doing creates a path to citizenship for anyone, but that’s another story). It becomes a huge, headline-dominating story, in which every single prominent Republican denounces the move as one of the most vile offenses to which the Constitution has ever been subjected. Conservative media light up with condemnations. And because voters take cues from the elites on their own side, Republicans are naturally going to think the order was wrong while Democrats are going to think it was right.
But what the Quinnipiac poll suggests — and granted, this is only one poll and we won’t know for sure until we get more evidence — this process also ends up shifting people’s underlying beliefs about the issue. In this case, the controversy makes Republicans more conservative.
Let’s take another example. People like me have mocked Republican officeholders for the way they shifted on the wisdom of health insurance reform that involves establishing a marketplace where people can buy private insurance, providing subsidies so those with modest incomes can afford it, and imposing an individual mandate to ensure a wide risk pool. When Mitt Romney passed a plan on that model in 2006, Republicans thought it was an innovative, market-based solution to the problem of health insecurity and the uninsured, but when Barack Obama passed a similar plan in 2010, they decided it was a freedom-murdering socialist nightmare.
But it’s safe to say that the average Republican voter didn’t have much of an opinion on that particular kind of health care reform prior to Barack Obama becoming president. They did, however, have opinions on the underlying question of whether it’s the responsibility of the government to make sure that everyone has health coverage. You’d expect most Republicans to say no, since they believe in the free market and aren’t favorably inclined toward the safety net. And most did — in Gallup polls, the number of Republicans answering no to this question has consistently been over 50 percent. In 2006, for instance, it was 57 percent. But since then the rejection of government having this responsibility has gone from a majority position among Republicans to near-unanimity. In 2013, it reached 86 percent.
So it isn’t just that Republican voters were convinced that the Affordable Care Act is a bad thing. As a group they moved to the right, with the minority of them who believed in a government responsibility for health care either changing their minds or changing their party affiliation.
This movement hasn’t happened on every issue; for instance, you might be surprised to learn that substantial numbers of Republican voters appreciate the reality of global warming and favor taking steps to address it; in some cases, even a majority of them do, depending on what specific question is being asked (see here for some examples). My guess is that there are two reasons we haven’t seen a similar movement to the right on climate. First, there is some diversity of opinion within the GOP elite, from outright climate denialism on one end to acknowledgement of reality on the other (without, it should be said, accepting that anything ought to be done about it). Second, and perhaps more important, the issue has never been at the top of the news agenda for an extended period in recent years, particularly in a conflict that pits all Republicans against Barack Obama.
But when an issue like immigration or health care does meet those criteria, you get a particular cycle. Elite Republicans take their place in the fight against Obama; then rank-and-file Republicans follow along; then pushed by their constituencies, the officeholders harden their positions, which in turn pulls their voters farther to the right, and on it goes. The particularly intense loathing Republicans at all levels have for Obama feeds the cycle, pushing them toward not just disagreeing with him on particular courses of policy but rejecting the underlying principles he holds.
Is this cycle going to continue after Obama leaves office? If Hillary Clinton wins in 2016, it probably will.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, December 2, 2014
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