“Heightening Inequality To Even More Astronomical Levels”: If Inequality Worries Republicans, Why Do They Keep Making It Worse?
You can tell things have gotten very bad when the issue of economic inequality — a serious national problem mostly ignored for more than three decades — is suddenly in political vogue. And you can be sure things have gotten very, very bad when Republicans — who usually insist that inequality is natural, inevitable, even beneficial — suddenly claim they’re worried about it, too.
As the 2016 contenders officially declare their intentions, all of them seem aware that voters want to restore a vestige of fairness to the American economy. Regardless of personal ideology or political reliance on plutocratic billionaires, every presidential candidate must, at the very least, display concern for working families, single mothers, indebted students, and everyone struggling to achieve or maintain a decent living.
Yet how concerned are they, really? In the video that announced her candidacy, Hillary Clinton spoke briefly but bluntly: “Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion.” The only Democrat in the race so far, Clinton realizes that a populist agenda will be required to excite her party base — and to answer those who regard her as too wealthy and too well connected to empathize with the downtrodden.
That unflattering portrait omits many relevant facts about Clinton’s life, from her own modest origins to her many years of advocacy for the disadvantaged, especially women and children. She spoke out publicly about economic fairness long before doing so became politically fashionable, both as a United States senator and during her last presidential campaign. Now the skeptics can listen and decide for themselves.
But voters should also listen closely to the Republicans who mock Clinton’s populism and assert that they are the true spokesmen for the working class. What do they propose to address inequality? And how “authentic” is their concern?
At least two of the Republican candidates, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), want to institute a so-called flat tax — which would severely exacerbate inequality by reducing tax levies on the wealthy and increasing the burden on everyone else. Such plans would cost the Treasury an annual amount estimated between $700 billion and $1 trillion. Yet Paul and Cruz insist that they will simultaneously slash taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget — and so does Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who proposes his own regressive tax breaks for the rich.
Those promises are mathematically impossible — unless, perhaps, the federal government permanently ended all discretionary spending on student aid, unemployment insurance, health care, veterans benefits, environmental protection, food safety, and dozens of other programs necessary to working- and middle-class families. Somehow they never mention that part.
While decrying economic inequality, Republicans tend not to emphasize their other proposed giveaways that would benefit wealthy donors, such as Paul’s plan to end capital gains taxes, or Rubio’s plan to end not only all taxes on capital gains but on interest and inherited estates, too — leaving only wage earners to be taxed. Schemes like this delight the Koch brothers precisely because they would heighten inequality to an even more astronomical level.
Although Republicans often mention the “right to rise,” as Jeb Bush would put it, they’re hostile to any measure that would actually elevate the incomes of those at the bottom — for example, increasing the minimum wage. Indeed, they tend to be opposed to the very idea of a legislated wage floor because, as Rubio once said, “I don’t think a minimum-wage law works.”
The Florida senator’s economic knowledge is as weak as his budgetary arithmetic. The most recent studies show that in states without a minimum- wage law, inequality is considerably worse than in states with a minimum wage that is at least a dollar above the federal minimum.
But don’t worry, Rubio says he knows a better way to reduce inequality than either higher wages or fairer taxes. Instead, for people languishing in low-wage jobs, government should “incentivize the creation of innovations in education that are accessible.”
So he offers something for everyone: The wealthy get still more big tax cuts; and the not-so-wealthy get a few phrases of incomprehensible, pseudo-wonkish jargon.
By: Joe Conason, Editer in Chief, The National Memo, April 18, 2015
“Hillary Clinton Is Quaking In Her Boots”: Two More Candidates To Begin Doomed Runs For Presidency
What leads a man to look in the mirror and say, “I could be president of the United States”? Anybody can say they should be president, of course—after all, aren’t all your ideas the right ones?—but it takes a remarkably optimistic spirit to think that you can do what it takes to make it to the White House. Can you raise all that money, run that huge organization, out-strategize your opponents, overcome the inevitable stumbles and controversies, have the stamina and fortitude and cleverness to do it all better than anyone else, and convince the American people that you’re the one?
Somebody has to do it, of course. But if you’re a politician who last ran for office thirteen years ago, who had a relatively undistinguished record, who represents a wing of your party that no longer exists, and whom nobody ever accused of being charismatic in the first place, what makes you look in that mirror and say, “Yeah. I’m ready. Let’s do this”?
America, I give you George Elmer Pataki:
Ready to get on that train to Victorytown? No? No matter, Pataki is in New Hampshire, pressing the flesh and winning hearts and minds. And he’s not the only one with visions of electoral glory dancing through his head:
Mike Huckabee, who stepped down from his Fox News Channel show, “Huckabee,” in January, is expected to return to Fox this evening to make his 2016 presidential campaign official. Huckabee said Friday he is “moving toward” announcing a second bid for the White House.
Huckabee told reporters in Washington this morning he would make a little news on “Special Report with Bret Baier,” which airs on FNC at 6 p.m. ET.
Huckabee’s bid is, if equally destined for failure, at least a little easier to understand. Unlike Pataki, Huckabee isn’t a walking Ambien, and he’s kept in touch with the Republican electorate since his last run in 2008 by being a ubiquitous presence on radio and television. But he’s also a con artist who seems to spend most of his time devising ways to separate gullible conservatives from their money. Not only is that likely to be raised by his opponents should he actually gain any momentum in the primaries, running for president isn’t a good way to make money, at least in the short term. He already had what I assume is a lucrative career. So he must really believe he can win. After all, Huckabee is a man of fervent and sincere faith.
Maybe it’s the imperfections of the announced candidates that lead people like Pataki and Huckabee to give it a shot. After all, Jeb Bush is a Bush, Marco Rubio is a whipper-snapper, Scott Walker is untested nationally—if you were motivated enough, you could come up with a scenario in which everyone else falls and you’re left as the obvious choice. But these guys? I’m sure Hillary Clinton is quaking in her boots.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect,April 17, 2015
“Asking For A Bail Out Of His Self-Made Crisis”: Cut Taxes Or Expand Medicaid?; Florida Governor Rick Scott Is In Quite A Pickle
The Florida state government has been a hotbed of opposition to Obamacare, and has succeeded in resisting the law’s Medicaid expansion, in large part because of the state’s Low Income Pool: a multi-billion dollar, 10-year-old pilot program through which, right now, the federal government subsidizes health care providers who treat the poor.
Also right now, in Florida, Governor Rick Scott wants to enact hundreds of millions of dollars in annual tax cuts.
The budget room for those tax cuts, in other words, exists because the federal government is spending money—money that comes with no guarantee—in a way that bolsters Florida’s resistance to Obamacare.
Not keen on financing opposition to itself, the Obama administration is leaning toward ending this sweet arrangement, and phasing out the Low Income Pool, which has in any case grown obsolete in a world where Florida can adopt the Medicaid expansion and provide insurance to nearly a million of its poor citizens.
All of which is to say that if Scott and Florida Republicans want their tax cuts, they will have to use expanded Medicaid to fill the budget hole where the Low Income Pool used to be. But rather than push against that open door, Scott announced Thursday that he will sue the federal government. Specifically, he’s arguing that by rescinding the Low Income Pool, the Obama administration is coercing Florida into participating in Obamacare, so the Low Income Pool must continue. Put another way, he’s asking the courts to force the feds to bail out his tax cut.
This is all playing out against the backdrop of King v. Burwell, in which conservatives have asked the Supreme Court to rescind billions of dollars in Affordable Care Act subsidies in their own states—money they claim is contingent upon them establishing their own exchanges. Like most Republican governors, Rick Scott didn’t establish an exchange, but for some reason he isn’t sounding the coercion alarm over King.
Scott’s argument is transparently frivolous, but it underscores the extent to which the GOP’s deranged resistance to Obamacare is boomeranging on itself. As Greg Sargent notes at the Washington Post, “Scott’s lawsuit is designed to get the administration to fork over federal money for health care—but only if it isn’t part of Obamacare.” Without that money, Scott probably won’t get his tax cuts. Which means that in Florida, the GOP’s commitment to tax cuts is running up against its Massive Resistance to Obamacare. And the tax cuts might lose.
This adamant opposition to the Medicaid expansion is a relatively recent development. Scott claims his opposition stems from the administration’s coolness to the Low Income Pool. If the federal government can just end that program, how can Floridians trust them to commit to their end of the Medicaid expansion? But that doesn’t wash. The Low Income Pool was scheduled to expire, whereas the federal government is obligated by law to fund 90 percent of the Medicaid expansion in perpetuity.
Florida’s Senate president—a Republican—thinks Scott is being ridiculous. He released a statement that refutes Scott’s objection to the Medicaid expansion and undermines the lawsuit:
The federal government has no obligation to provide LIP funding, or to work within our timeframe. While we respect Governor Scott’s authority to protect the state’s interests in the way he sees fit, we have a constitutional responsibility to pass a balanced budget by a specific deadline. From where I sit, it is difficult to understand how suing [the federal government] on day 45 of a 60 day session regarding an issue the state has been aware of for the last 12 months will yield a timely resolution to the critical health care challenges facing our state. The Senate budget anticipated the potential reduction or elimination of LIP funding and included solutions to provide Floridians access to health care services and coverage. We remain hopeful CMS will approve the Senate proposal.
A likelier explanation for Scott’s change of heart is a combination of anti-Medicaid spending by the Koch-backed advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, and entrenched Obamacare opposition in the Florida House. Sensing that the Medicaid expansion might be in danger, Scott flipped, rather than be caught on the losing side of it.
But Scott could have solved this problem a long time ago if he’d ever fought for Medicaid expansion earnestly, and could solve it now by teaming up with the Senate to stare down the House.
Instead Scott is suing the federal government to bail him out of a self-made crisis. This isn’t an anomaly, but a pattern. Across the country, Republican governors are coping with the consequences of their own Obamacare intransigence—staring into a future where their insurance markets get destroyed by virtue of their refusal to help implement Obamacare and their unwillingness to take on the right as it pursued litigation.
It was inevitable that as Obamacare became more entrenched, Republicans would see their opposition to the law come into tension with their other core interests. This is exactly what’s happened, and to some extent it has exposed weaknesses in the resistance strategy. But that resistance—to the idea of providing health insurance to the poor—remains very strong. Stronger, perhaps, than the allure of tax cuts.
By: Brian Beutler, The New Republic, April 17, 2017
“Ted Cruz’s Frightening Gun Fanaticism”: When A Presidential Contender Encourages Armed Insurrection
As incredible as it sounds, there’s an argument going on right now between two Republican senators (and, potentially, two Republican candidates for the presidency) over whether the American citizenry should be ready to fight a war against the federal government. The two senators in question are Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, and they can’t seem to agree whether the Second Amendment serves as bulwark against government “tyranny.”
It all started with a fundraising email Cruz sent making the case that “The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution isn’t for just protecting hunting rights, and it’s not only to safeguard your right to target practice. It is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family, your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny — for the protection of liberty.” TPM’s Sahil Kapur asked Graham what he thought of his Texan colleague’s view of the Second Amendment, and the South Carolina senator was not impressed. He even invoked the Civil War, which should make Cruz’s people plenty upset. “Well, we tried that once in South Carolina,” Graham said. “I wouldn’t go down that road again.”
This view of gun rights that casts personal firearm ownership as a check on the abuses of government doesn’t make a great deal of practical sense, and it betrays a lack of faith in our democratic institutions. But it’s become increasingly popular among high-level Republican officials who quite literally scare up votes by telling voters they’re right to keep their Glocks cocked just in case the feds come for them. Iowa’s new Republican senator Joni Ernst famously remarked that she supports the right to carry firearms to defend against “the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.”
The obvious question raised by statements like those from Cruz and Ernst is: when does the shooting start? What is the minimum threshold for government “tyranny” that justifies an armed response from the citizenry? In 2014, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy was ready to start a shooting war with the feds to defend his illegal grazing practices, and he garnered the support of top-level Republican officials (they only abandoned him after he started wondering aloud whether black people would be better off as slaves).
It’s an important question because Republicans and conservatives – Ted Cruz included – tend to throw around terms like “tyranny” sort of haphazardly when criticizing policies and politicians they disagree with.
In May 2013, Cruz spoke at a press conference arranged by then-Rep. Michele Bachmann (remember her?) to vent rage at the IRS over its targeting of Tea Party-aligned non-profit groups. Cruz quoted Thomas Jefferson to suggest that the IRS scandal (along with Benghazi and Obamacare and other stuff) was a harbinger of “tyranny” from the federal government: http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4534673/cruz-tyranny .
Last January, Cruz said Barack Obama was running the country like a dictator because of his executive orders on immigration and the administration’s delay of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate. “There are countries on this globe where that is how the law works,” Cruz said. “You look at corrupt countries where the rule of law is meaningless, where dictators are in power and they have things they call law. But what does law mean?”
Later that same month he wrote a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed suggesting that Obama’s “lawlessness” was a threat to personal liberty:
That would be wrong—and it is the Obama precedent that is opening the door for future lawlessness. As Montesquieu knew, an imperial presidency threatens the liberty of every citizen. Because when a president can pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore, he is no longer a president.
I don’t doubt that Cruz would argue strongly against an armed response to Obama’s immigration orders and tweaks to Obamacare. But at the same time, he’s the one bringing up government “tyranny” and “lawlessness,” and he’s the one bringing up the need to arm oneself in order to preserve one’s liberty. So he should be the one to explain where those two concepts intersect, and when an armed citizen would be justified in committing violence against the government.
By: Simon Maloy, Political Writer, Salon, April 17, 2015
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 