Making The Court A Priority For Progressives
This week the U.S. Supreme Court opened a new term, for the first time in Barack Obama’s presidency without a new Justice joining the high court. Also this week, two of the Justices testified before Congress in an historic hearing on the role of judges under the U.S. Constitution. A new national conversation about the third branch and the Constitution is gaining the attention of more Americans every day, and it’s one all of us should join.
History shows that nearly every major political issue ends up in the courts. Our nation’s federal courts are where social security appeals are heard, employment cases decided, immigration issues settled, and where Americans vindicate their most cherished Constitutional rights. This year is no different.
This Supreme Court term, lasting through June 2012, promises to be a significant one, with decisions affecting every American. The cases the court will decide this term alone highlight what’s really at stake for all Americans, far beyond any single election or individual term in office.
Consider these important questions the Court is poised to decide: the constitutionality of the Obama Administration’s landmark health care reform legislation; the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance of Americans using GPS tracking devices; the constitutionality of Arizona’s controversial racial profiling immigration law; questions relating to the Family and Medical Leave Act; the constitutionality of religious organizations discriminating in hiring decisions; constitutional questions about the reliability of eyewitness testimony in criminal cases (a key issue in the recent Georgia execution of Troy Davis).
This is a veritable hit parade of issues progressives, independents—indeed all Americans—care deeply about.
Until recently, the courts were generally friendly to progressive public policies. Indeed the federal courts helped to enable the social and economic progress that has made our country stronger and more inclusive over time. Courts were able to do so by adhering to the text and history of the U.S. Constitution and its amendments, and applying the Constitution’s core principles and values to questions of the day.
Conservatives, unhappy with idea that the Constitution guarantees more opportunity all our citizens instead of just for the already privileged few, have in recent years mounted a concerted political effort to remake the federal judiciary in their image: to be more activist and more closely aligned with their political views. Americans used to be able to sleep at night knowing the federal courts were good guardians of our most cherished constitutional principles. Now, the rights many Americans take for granted, like equal access at the voting booth and the ability to challenge discrimination at work, increasingly find a hostile and activist audience in the nation’s courts.
But progressives have a chance to turn the tide. Today, there are a record number of vacancies in our federal courtrooms, as a new Center for American Progress study released this week shows. Unprecedented obstruction by conservative U.S. Senators has led to an abysmal rate of judicial confirmations. This has left a level of empty judgeships not seen at any time under any president in U.S. history. Fully two thirds of the country is living in a jurisdiction without enough judges for the cases that are piling up. It means less access to justice and longer delays in court for the American worker and small business owner.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Progressives need to work together to support making our judiciary more progressive—and to support the confirmation of President Obama’s nominees. It’s time for the judiciary to be a priority for progressives.
The judges progressives want on the bench are judges for all Americans—judges who follow the text and history of the Constitution and apply it faithfully to the questions before them. At a time when the Tea Party is cherry-picking select provisions of the Constitution and discarding others to win short-term political arguments, we need the federal judiciary to be a strong guardian of all of our Constitution’s provisions and amendments for the long-term. With increasingly conservative state legislatures rolling back gains progressives have championed for decades, we need our courts to protect our Constitutional values from the political winds of the moment. These values—liberty, freedom, equality—have driven America’s progress since its founding, and are what make America exceptional around the world today.
Our courts matter for all Americans. And who is on the courts should matter to anyone who cares about the Constitution and the opportunities and protections it promises. It’s time for progressives to unite and support getting more progressive judges on the federal bench. Nothing less than the long term health of our democracy depends on it.
By: Andrew Blotky, Center for American Progress, Originally Published in Huffington Post, October 20, 2011
Why Speak Up When Rush Limbaugh Lies?
Is it useful to object when Rush Limbaugh says something particularly odious on the radio, where he is one of the most successful and influential broadcasters alive? Or does reacting to his screeds have the perverse effect of empowering him? In the past, I’ve ignored him at times, but more often I’ve spoken up. I’ve drawn attention to Limbaugh’s shameful habit of falsely accusing people of racism, the way he compromises his craft to ingratiate himself to powerful Republicans, and his habit of deliberately inflaming the racial anxieties of his audience by lying to them.
Today the Internet is once again asking itself, “Has Rush Limbaugh finally gone too far?” It’s a reaction to a statement he made about the Lord’s Resistance Army, “a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity.” President Obama has sent American troops to help stop the outlaws. It’s perfectly defensible to wonder, as I do, whether we ought to be intervening militarily in yet another country. (I’d say no.) But that wasn’t Limbaugh’s controversial objection. Consistent with the item on his website, “Obama Invades Uganda, Targets Christians,” Limbaugh told his substantial audience that the president is sending 100 American troops “to wipe out Christians.”
Predictably, the Obama-is-killing-Christians-on-behalf-of-Muslims meme began to spread among rank-and-file conservatives, until Erick Erickson, the Red State founder, found himself forced to respond:
It is ridiculous that I’m even having to write about this, but I am. In the past 72 hours, I have gotten lots of emails from lots of people who should know better asking me if I’ve heard about Barack Obama sending American troops to Africa to go after the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The people hearing the name assume it is a Christian group fighting radical Islamists in the Sudan or some such. It is no such thing.
What Limbaugh said is odious, irresponsible, offensive — but what are you going to do? The man has long since proved that he has no shame. I’ve corresponded with people who’ve been persuaded, by past posts I’ve written, to stop listening to his show, but they’re an unrepresentative few. Are a miniscule number of converts enough to justify talking about his oeuvre?
Perhaps not, unless there is a larger point to be made than the old news that he says indefensible things. In that spirit, I’d like to conclude this post by remarking on Limbaugh’s corrupting influence. We’ve witnessed more than enough controversies like this, where no one is willing to defend the talk radio host’s words, to know his public character and effect on political discourse. We’re not talking about a couple slip ups for which he’s apologized and should be forgiven. The man willfully traffics in odious commentary and has for years and years.
Shame on him, but that isn’t where it ends. George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush ought to be embarrassed that they invited Limbaugh to the White House. The Claremont Institute, whose work I often respect, ought to be mortified that they sullied their Statesmanship Award by bestowing it upon Limbaugh. Shame on National Review for celebrating one of conservatism’s most controversial figures in a symposium that didn’t even acknowledge his many critics on the right. In it Heather Higgins remarked on “Rush’s long track record of accurate predictions and analyses,” Kathryn Jean Lopez commented on his “graciousness and humility,” Mary Matalin said “he epitomizes what we all aspire to be, both as citizens and individuals,” Andrew McCarthy claims his message is “always” delivered with “optimism, civility, and good humor,” and Jay Nordlinger asserted that “he is almost the antithesis of the modern American, in that he doesn’t whine.” Every last claim is too absurd to satire, let alone defend.
Shame on The Heritage Foundation for sponsoring Limbaugh’s radio show, and on the Media Research Center and Human Events for honoring Limbaugh’s excellence … and the list goes on, including the millions of people who support his radio show because they agree with Limbaugh’s ideology, even though they’d be outraged if a liberal trafficked in similarly poisonous rhetoric.
Many conservatives complain, with good reason, when they’re caricatured as racially insensitive purveyors of white anxiety politics who traffic in absurd, paranoid attacks on their political opponents. Yet many of the most prominent brands in the conservative movement elevate a man guilty of those exact things as a “statesman” whose civility and humility ought to inspire us! In doing so, they’ve created a monster, one who knows that so long as his ratings stay high, he can say literally anything and be feted as an intellectual and moral role model. So the outrages arrive at predictable intervals. And Americans hear about them and think badly of the right. Movement conservatives, if you seek integrity in American life, if you seek civility, if you seek converts, tear down this man’s lies! He hasn’t any integrity or self respect left to lose. But you do.
By: Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, October 18, 2011
Why Democratic Strategists Have Begun To Root For Mitt Romney
It wasn’t long ago that conventional wisdom among Democratic strategists handicapped Mitt Romney as President Obama’s toughest potential Republican challenger. But lately there has been a big shift.
In fact, it is becoming clearer and clearer that Mitt Romney is the very embodiment of the political narrative that will likely define the 2012 Presidential race. Unless there is a miracle, the outcome of next year’s election will likely be determined by whom the public blames for the lousy economy.
Of course the Republicans will argue that the culprit is the “overreaching,” “innovation-stifling” big government and its leader, President Obama. Their prescription to solve the country’s economic woes: eliminate every regulation in sight, cut taxes for the wealthy and free Wall Street bankers that lead us into the promised land.
Democrats, on the other hand, will pin the blame exactly where it belongs — on the reckless speculation of the big Wall Street banks, their Republican enablers — and the stagnant middle class incomes that have resulted from the top one percent of Americans siphoning off virtually all of the country’s economic growth since 1980. They will fault the “do-nothing Republican Congress” for their insistence on defending the status quo, and their refusal to create jobs.
Earlier this summer — when Republicans had succeeded in making “fiscal responsibility” and “deficit reduction” the touchstone of American political discourse — a businessman like Romney appeared to many to be just the ticket. But the tide has turned.
Once they got the debt ceiling “hostage taking” episode behind them, the administration has used its jobs package — and its own budget proposals — to draw a sharp line in the sand. The President has demanded that Congress take action on jobs and pay for it by raising taxes on millionaires.
Then came the Occupy Wall Street Movement — and the worldwide response — that has tapped into the public’s fundamental understanding, and anger, at the real nature of the economic crisis. The fact is that one of the only people around more unpopular than politicians are Wall Street bankers.
Finally, of course, the economic facts on the ground have made it clearer and clearer that right wing economic theories that blame “bloated entitlements” to seniors who make an average of $14,000 a year — and demand “fiscal austerity” — are just plain stupid. According to the Washington Post, even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — long the world’s leading advocate of deficit reduction and “austerity” — has now warned that “austerity may trigger a new recession and is urging countries to look for ways to boost growth.”
As the national economic dialogue has shifted, the public’s view of Mitt Romney has also come into focus. His out-of-touch “1% moments” proliferated.
On August 11, the blog Think Progress captured the now-famous video of Romney opining, “Corporations are people, my friend.” Of course, given his record of dismembering and bankrupting companies at his old firm, Bain Capital, if “corporations are people,” then Romney is guilty of murder.
On August 29th Romney disputed an account about the expansion of his beach front home. “Romney: Beachfront home is being doubled in size, not quadrupled,” The Hill reported.
Then, just a few days ago, the Center for Responsive Politics reported that Wall Street donors had abandoned President Obama in droves and flocked to Romney.
Finally, an extraordinary photo surfaced from Romney’s days as CEO of Bain Capital, where he made massive profits while five of the companies under his firm’s direction went bankrupt and thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Apparently their difficulties in finding places to stash their profits became a joke among the young hotshots at Bain. They posed for a photograph with money stuffed in their pockets — even their mouths. There at the center of the picture was the grinning CEO, Mitt Romney, with money overflowing from his pockets and his suit jacket.
There he is — posing as the poster child for the 1%.
The picture could be the iconic image of the iconic line from the film Wall Street: “Greed is Good.”
Increasingly, many Democratic strategists have begun to feel that Romney could be the best possible opponent for President Obama next year.
Think about the way swing voters make political decisions. They don’t make their judgments about how to vote based on “policies or programs.” They evaluate the personal qualities of the candidates.
In determining who is on their side and shares their values — do swing voters choose Romney — the poster child for the 1% — or President Obama?
In the coming campaign, who is more likely to appear as an insider defending the status quo that people don’t like — and who will appear to be an outsider trying to bring change? Normally you’d have to say that the consummate “insider” is the guy who is President of the United States. Not necessarily so if his opponent is Wall Street’s own Mitt Romney.
And several factors unique to Romney make his situation even worse:
Voters want leaders with strong core values. That’s not a description of Mitt Romney who has flip-flopped on just about every position he’s ever taken in public life. When Karl Rove ran George Bush’s campaign against John Kerry he said that Kerry’s statement that he voted for the War in Iraq before he voted against it was the gift that kept on giving. Rove took a Senator with strong convictions and convinced swing voters that he had none. If Rove could do that to Kerry, think about the easy time Democrats will have in convincing America that Romney’s values shift with the wind.
Voters want to connect emotionally with their leaders. Ask Al Gore how important it is for candidates to “connect” with the voters. Romney has the personality of a statue. He just doesn’t make emotional contact.
Much of the Republican smart money is going to Romney because it thinks he is increasingly likely to be the nominee. I can understand why the Wall Street money is going to Romney — they want their guy to be President.
But I’m guessing that if he gets the nomination, by this time next year, Wall Street’s investment in Romney will look about as “smart” as all that money they put into sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps four years ago.
If Only Sen Snowe’s Actions Met Her Misplaced Rhetoric
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner talked to the Senate Small Business Committee, urging its members to approve jobs measures proposed by the White House. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), ostensibly Congress’ most moderate Republican and the member most likely to listen to reason, went on quite a tirade.
“Your primary mission is to craft the economic policy of this country, and at this point, it simply isn’t working,” she told Geithner. “Something’s gone terribly wrong, and what I hear over and over again is that there is no tempo, a tempo of urgency.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking to…but you need to talk to the average person,” she said later in a testy back and forth with Geithner. “Rome is burning.”
I’m delighted Snowe is pretending to care about the economy. I’m also delighted she thinks she’s in touch with what “average” people want, and would like to see policymakers to act with “urgency.”
But if Olympia Snowe thinks her actions are consistent with her rhetoric, she’s sadly mistaken.
We are, after all, talking about the alleged moderate from Maine who, just last week, voted with right-wing senators to refuse a debate on the popular and effective American Jobs Act. She’s the same senator who’s refused to endorse any of the provisions in the bill, no matter how much they’d help. What was that she was saying about “urgency”?
Snowe thinks Geithner is responsible for crafting the nation’s economic policy? Here’s a radical idea: maybe if Snowe could bring herself to stop filibustering worthwhile economic legislation, Geithner might have more success.
“Rome is burning”? And who, exactly, does Snowe believe is responsible? The party with good economic ideas that can’t overcome Republican obstructionism, or the party engaged in the obstructionist tactics, offering ideas that would make the economy worse, and by some accounts, holding back the nation deliberately?
Snowe seems to believe the status quo isn’t working. On this, she’s correct. But it’s not working because Republicans are getting their way.
In what universe does it make sense for Snowe to blame Geithner? Snowe and Republicans got the tax cuts they demanded; Snowe and Republicans saw the stimulus spending evaporate, just as they wanted; Snowe and Republicans are watching the public sector lay off hundreds of thousands of workers, just as GOP policy dictates; and Snowe and Republicans have forced the White House to accept massive spending cuts, which takes money out of the economy on purpose.
And now she’s complaining? Why, because her party is getting what it wants and she doesn’t like the results?
Arguably one of the most dramatic Democratic dilemmas of 2011 and 2012 is overcoming the realization that Republicans are getting their way on economic policy and then denying any responsibility for the results. Indeed, it’s a rather extraordinary con: GOP officials see much of their agenda implemented, then see it fail, and then blame Obama when their policies don’t work.
The nation is reading from the Republicans’ economic playbook, and thanks in part to Snowe’s filibusters, that’s not likely to change anytime soon. When the GOP agenda fails, Republicans should be prepared to accept responsibility for the consequences, instead of pretending they’re not getting their way.
By: Steve Benen, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 18, 2011
Herman Cain Riding High: Dial 9-9-9 For Nonsense
Herman Cain is riding high in the polls. Among other things, his ascent is based upon a charming sense of humour, rousing oratorical skills, a story of moderate achievement in business, zero experience in elected office, which has allowed him to mould a perfectly zeitgest-matching conservative platform untainted by a record of no-longer zeitgest-matching political decisions, and, finally, the bold, clear proposition of the 9-9-9 tax plan. Now that Mr Cain is having a moment in the sun, what had seemed a gimmicky ploy is undergoing serious scrutiny, and we can expect Mr Cain to get hammered on the details of the 9-9-9 plan in tomorrow night’s Republican debate.
Mr Cain touts the simplicity of the 9-9-9 plan, but it is anything but simple. Even after reading about it on Mr Cain’s campaign site, I’m still not sure I understand it. I thought I knew that the plan proposed 9% income, sales, and corporate tax rates. But the corporate tax is not a simple reduction in the corporate tax rate, as I had thought, but a value-added-tax on “Gross income less all purchases from other U.S. located businesses, all capital investment, and net exports.” Anyway, the 9-9-9 plan is not what Mr Cain ultimately has in mind for American tax policy. It is but the first step of a two-step process to replace most federal taxes with a 30% national sales tax, a version of the so-called “Fair Tax”. Why not go directly to the Fair Tax, then? Why the transitional step? Mr Cain’s statement doesn’t really say, though it does seem to imply that the Fair Tax is at present too unpopular to implement. “Amidst a backdrop of the economic renewal created by the 9-9-9 Plan,” Mr Cain says “I will begin the process of educating the American people on the benefits of continuing the next step to the Fair Tax.”
Mike Huckabee, a Fox News presenter and former governor of Arkansas, plumped for the Fair Tax during the 2008 race for the Republican nomination and the plan came in for a lot of abuse by economists and commentators across the ideological continuum. Perhaps Mr Huckabee’s failure to get far with the Fair Tax explains Mr Cain’s choice to campaign on an altogether different tax plan. Perhaps the idea is that he can capture the allegiance of the Fair Tax’s many conservative fans while ducking the criticisms of the Fair Tax by pushing a fresh plan with a catchy name implying super-low rates. But this can only work if (a) the media and Mr Cain’s competition let him get away with advocating the Fair Tax while running on his transitional plan, and (b) the transitional plan stands up to scrutiny better than the Fair Tax has. And this seems unlikely.
The National Review today ran a blistering critique of Mr Cain’s 9-9-9 plan. A selection:
This tripartite scheme makes for a succinct slogan but has little else to recommend it. In particular Cain’s inability to choose between a sales tax and a VAT is puzzling. The two are very similar in their economic effects. The chief advantage of the sales tax over a VAT is that the latter is considered easier for governments to raise, because it is hidden. The chief advantage of the VAT over the sales tax is that it is easier to enforce without stimulating black markets. (Another is that it reduces the risk of taxing business-to-business purchases.) Opting for both as a transitional step means courting the danger of a VAT with none of its rewards: In the first stage, the government would get a new money machine, and in the second it would supposedly destroy that machine and opt for something hard to enforce.
The two-stage scheme is self-defeating in another respect as well. The 30 percent national sales tax, whatever its other merits, would be significantly softer on the poor than the 9-9-9 transitional step, since the larger sales tax includes a “prebate” check to all Americans to exempt the basic necessities of life from being taxed, while 9-9-9 includes no similar provision. Leaving aside whether a major tax increase on people at the bottom of the income scale is a good idea, what is the point of first raising their taxes and then cutting them?
In the last debate, only Rick Santorum noted that Mr Cain’s plan involves the danger of even temporarily handing the government “a new money machine”, a point one would expect to resonate with conservative voters. I expect we’ll hear a lot more of this line of argument in upcoming debates. More generally, the fact that Mr Cain apparently believes it is politically feasible to wipe out the entire status-quo federal tax system in order to move to the 9-9-9 scheme, and then wipe out the entire 9-9-9 scheme in order move to a 30% national sales tax seems to me to draw attention to Mr Cain’s policy inexperience and dazzling political naivete.
That the 9-9-9 plan would cut taxes on the rich while raising them on the poor led Bruce Bartlett to call the proposal “a distributional monstrosity”, a phrase you could imagine Barack Obama using to good effect in a general election. Why would you propose to raise taxes on the poor, making yourself vulnerable to charges of monstrous callousness, when, as the NR editors note, your ultimate plan would only cut them later? Well, you wouldn’t, if you knew what you were doing. It requires only superficial examination to see that Mr Cain’s 9-9-9/Fair Tax scheme is more an ill-considered, hand-waving improvisation than a serious plan from a serious policymaker. He’s winging it, which I supposed makes it all the more impressive that he’s been able to wing it all the way to preeminence in a few polls. But now he’s made himself a target, and an easy one at that, so I doubt Mr Cain will wing it all the way to the nomination.
By: Will Wilkerson, Democracy in America, October 17, 2011
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