First Secession, Now Contempt: An Ugly Start To Rick Perry’s Campaign
“If This guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.”
Thus spoke Republican Gov. Rick Perry on Monday, referring to Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. You might chalk the remark up to a weak attempt at humor —if you watch the video, you’ll hear a few nervous laughs from the small crowd — but then Mr. Perry went on in an even less appropriate vein.
“Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous, or treasonous, in my opinion,” Mr. Perry said.
“To play politics”? Mr. Bernanke was appointed chairman of the Fed by a Republican president, George W. Bush. He was reappointed by a Democratic president, Barack Obama, in an acknowledgment of how indispensable he had become in a time of crisis. In fall 2008, when global finances threatened to spin out of control, Mr. Bernanke responded with a steeliness that may have saved the country from disaster far worse than the severe downturn it has experienced.
That’s our view; it’s the view, we’d wager, of most economists. Mr. Bernanke’s actions had the support of both Mr. Bush and then-candidate Obama, of Republican Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and future Democratic Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. And in the years since, Mr. Bernanke and his team have done as much as the Fed should do to get the economy moving again.
Now, if Mr. Perry disagrees, that’s fine. The actions of the Fed leading up to, during and after the crisis will be studied and critiqued for decades. Maybe Mr. Perry could have done better; we’ll be interested to hear about his economic program in the days to come.
But there has never been a whisper, let alone any evidence, that Mr. Bernanke’s actions have been motivated by anything but patriotism and determination to see the U.S. economy regain its footing. There was never a whisper, let alone any evidence, that the Republican-appointed Fed chairman sought to help Republican candidate John McCain in 2008, and there is no reason to believe he is playing politics now.
If Mr. Perry has evidence to the contrary, he should present it. If not, he should apologize.
But questioning his opponents’ good faith seems to be part of Mr. Perry’s early playbook. He already has disparaged Mr. Obama for not serving in the military, something that Mr. McCain — with far greater claim on the nation’s gratitude for his military service than Mr. Perry has — never stooped to. And when asked whether Mr. Obama loves his country, Mr. Perry responded, “I dunno, you need to ask him. . . . You’re a good reporter, go ask him.”
When we asked the campaign about these remarks, a spokesman e-mailed, “The Governor never said the President does not love his country.” As to his remarks concerning Mr. Bernanke, “The Governor was expressing his frustration with the current economic situation and the out of control spending that persists in Washington.” But frustration does not excuse accusing people of treason if you don’t like their policies.
In the days after the Jan. 8 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 18 others just outside Tucson, there was widespread revulsion at the nastiness of much political rhetoric and widespread commitment to argue about issues without questioning opponents’ motivations or character. Mr. Perry’s presidential campaign, not yet a week old, suggests he didn’t get the message. We hope he begins to make his case in a way that will reflect better on his own character.
By: Editorial Board Opinion, The Washington Post, August 16, 2011
Former Sen. Phil “Mental Recession” Phil Gramm Endorses His “Protege” Rick Perry
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) yesterday jumped in the 2012 GOP presidential primary, saying that “it is time to get America working again.” “I will work every day to make Washington, DC, as inconsequential in your lives as I can, and free our families, small businesses and states from a burdensome and costly federal government so they can create, innovate and succeed,” he said. And Perry quickly picked up the endorsementof former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX):
Former senator and current banker Phil Gramm of Texas — well-connected to big donors but controversial for his role in preventing tighter regulation of Wall Street — told The Huffington Post yesterday that he is endorsing his former student and political protege, Texas Gov. Rick Perry...”I’m for Rick and I will do what I can to help,” Gramm said in an interview in Detroit. “He has been an effective governor. He is a determined guy from a small town who knows how to get things done.”
In 2008, Gramm, who was advising Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign (and was floated as McCain’s choice for Treasury Secretary) gained notoriety for saying that the country was “a nation of whiners” that was only in a “mental recession.”
But Gramm’s legacy goes much deeper than that. In 2001, he tucked the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into an unrelated, 11,000 page appropriations bill. That act ensured that the huge market in over-the-counter derivatives stayed unregulated, laying the groundwork for the 2008 financial crisis (and the implosions of AIG and Lehman Brothers). He also believes there should be no minimum wage and has derided the working poor by saying, “we’re the only nation in the world where all our poor people are fat.”
Perry was a student of Gramm’s at Texas A&M, and when Perry became governor “Gramm and his bank pushed a controversial proposal to allow the company to take out insurance polices on teachers and other workers, even though the workers themselves would not benefit.” If Gramm’s support is any indication, Perry’s zeal for financial deregulation will know no bounds.
By: Pat Garofalo, Think Progress, August 14, 2011
Protest Needed To Enforce Full Employment Laws
Marjorie Cohn, immediate past president of the National Lawyers Guild, has a post up at Op-Ed News, “Lost in the Debt Ceiling Debate: The Legal Duty to Create Jobs” addressing the federal government’s failure to comply with existing job-creation legislation.
Cohn focuses primarily on The Employment Act of 1946 and the Humphrey-Hawkins Act of 1978, noting also mandates for job-creation in 1977 reforms requiring the Federal Reserve to leverage monetary policy to promote maximum employment. She ads that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets a global standard of employment as an important right, which, not incidentally, some major industrialized nations have actually tried to honor.
Cohn’s review of the two jobs acts provides a timely reminder of the moral imperative that faces every great democracy, the responsibility to take action to help insure that every family has at least one breadwinner who earns a living wage:
The first full employment law in the United States was passed in 1946. It required the country to make its goal one of full employment…With the Keynesian consensus that government spending was necessary to stimulate the economy and the depression still fresh in the nation’s mind, this legislation contained a firm statement that full employment was the policy of the country.As originally written, the bill required the federal government do everything in its authority to achieve full employment, which was established as a right guaranteed to the American people. Pushback by conservative business interests, however, watered down the bill. While it created the Council of Economic Advisers to the President and the Joint Economic Committee as a Congressional standing committee to advise the government on economic policy, the guarantee of full employment was removed from the bill.
In the aftermath of the rise in unemployment which followed the “oil crisis” of 1975, Congress addressed the weaknesses of the 1946 act through the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978. The purpose of this bill as described in its title is:
“An Act to translate into practical reality the right of all Americans who are able, willing, and seeking to work to full opportunity for useful paid employment at fair rates of compensation; to assert the responsibility of the Federal Government to use all practicable programs and policies to promote full employment, production, and real income, balanced growth, adequate productivity growth, proper attention to national priorities.”
The Act sets goals for the President. By 1983, unemployment rates should be not more than 3% for persons age 20 or over and not more than 4% for persons age 16 or over, and inflation rates should not be over 4%. By 1988, inflation rates should be 0%. The Act allows Congress to revise these goals over time.
If private enterprise appears not to be meeting these goals, the Act expressly calls for the government to create a “reservoir of public employment.” These jobs are required to be in the lower ranges of skill and pay to minimize competition with the private sector.
The Act directly prohibits discrimination on account of gender, religion, race, age or national origin in any program created under the Act. Humphey-Hawkins has not been repealed. Both the language and the spirit of this law require the government to bring unemployment down to 3% from over 9%…
This legislation only requires the federal government to take action. The private sector, which employs 85+ percent of the labor force, would be indirectly influenced by monetary policy, but would not be required to do any hiring. Still, full enforcement of existing legislation could substantially reduce unemployment by putting millions of jobless Americans to work in public service projects rebuilding our tattered infrastructure.
The ’46 and ’78 full employment laws have been winked at and shrugged off by elected officials for decades as merely symbolic statutes, despite the fact that they actually do require the President, Congress and the Fed to do specific things to create jobs.
Cohn points out that Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has introduced “The Humphrey-Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act” (HR 870), to fund job-training and job-creation programs, funded by taxes on financial transactions. But the bill has no chance as long as Republicans control the House.
Cohn urges President Obama to demand that the Fed “…use all the tools relating to controlling the money supply…to create the funds called for by HR 870, and to start putting people back to work through direct funding of a reservoir of public jobs as Humphrey-Hawkins mandates.” Imagine the political donnybrook that would ensue following such action, legal though it apparently would be. It’s an interesting scenario that needs some fleshing out.
The best hope for full employment remains electing strong Democratic majorities to both houses of congress, while retaining the presidency. Under this scenario, full enforcement of the ’46 and ’78 employment acts is certainly doable. But it’s a very tough challenge, given the Republican edge in Senate races next year.
There are signs that the public is tiring of the tea party obstruction of government, and therefore hope that at least some Republicans may have to move toward the center to survive. It’s possible they could be influenced by energetic protest and lobbying campaigns by their constituents.
Like other groups across the political spectrum, we progressives are very good at blaming elected officials when they don’t follow through on their reform promises. But too many progressive Dems fail to realize that finger-pointing, while necessary, is only part of our responsibility. If we really want to see significant progressive change, especially full employment, we simply must escalate our protest activities to compel our elected and government officials to act.
At a white house meeting, FDR reportedly told the great African American labor leader A. Philip Randolph “Make me do it” in response to Randolph’s appeal for racial justice and economic reform. Roosevelt was not being a smart ass; He was underscoring an important law of politics, that elected officials need protest to galvanize them to act, and progressive politicians welcome it because it provides cover, as well as encouragement.
Regarding protest leadership, we have a great role model, whose 30+ foot stone image will be unveiled not far from the Lincoln, Jefferson and FDR Memorials on the National Mall in the capitol August 28th. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial will not only honor the historic contributions of a great African American leader; It will also inspire — and challenge — coming generations of all races to emulate his strategy of militant but dignified nonviolent protest to achieve social and economic justice.
Let’s not forget that the Great March on Washington MLK and Randolph lead in 1963 was not only about racial justice. The twin goals were “Jobs and Freedom,” a challenge that echoes with prophetic relevance for our times. It was FDR who said “make me do it,” and MLK showed us the way, not only with one demonstration, but with a sustained commitment to mass protest. Now let’s make them do it.
By: J. P. Green, The Democratic Strategist, August 13, 2011
Iowa Straw Poll: Let The Fight For The Right Begin
Technically, the margin of victory for Michele Bachmann at Saturday’s Iowa straw poll was slight, with second-place finisher Ron Paul falling just 152 votes (or 0.9 percentage points) short of her tally.
But everyone knows that Paul is a niche candidate. The 27.65 percent that he earned on Saturday is impressive, in that it speaks to the sizable and devoted following he has built, but it’s also probably the same share he would have received if there’d only been two candidates on the ballot, instead of nine.
Bachmann’s real competition was Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who had poured massive time and energy into the straw poll, hoping to post a breakthrough victory — and to stave off an early elimination from the GOP race. As the stakes had crystallized for Pawlenty in the days leading up to the straw poll, he’d even gone on the attack against Bachmann in a desperate effort to peel support from her. Saturday’s results demonstrated forcefully just how futile Pawlenty’s strategy was: He finished a very distant third, with just 13.57 percent, winning fewer than half as many votes as Bachmann.
In other words, this was a very big win for Bachmann. She crushed her biggest mainstream competitor and she avoided the indignity of finishing behind Paul. In the run-up to the straw poll, there was talk that she might be a victim of her own early success — that by making so much noise this spring and summer and moving up so quickly in polling she had set the bar too high for herself. Finishing behind Pawlenty (and Paul, for that matter) would have encouraged this view, raising questions about whether Bachmann really had the staying power and organization to win the Iowa caucuses this winter. But now she’ll leave Ames with the political world taking her more seriously, not less.
And her victory was doubly significant in light of the day’s other major political development: Rick Perry’s formal entry into the GOP race. The Texas governor made his long-expected announcement early in the afternoon at a conservative blogger conference in South Carolina. Perry is a heavyweight candidate, to be sure, and enters with considerable momentum. But he would have even more momentum right now if his announcement had been followed hours later by news of an unexpectedly weak straw poll showing for Bachmann — a development that would have created the immediate possibility of defections of Bachmann supporters to Perry’s side. Perry, after all, is supposedly Bachmann’s worst nightmare — someone who appeals to the same rigidly conservative base she does, but who is far more acceptable to the party’s establishment. Perry may yet end up taking the wind out of Bachmann’s sails, but the straw poll outcome suggests that she’ll put up a whale of a fight.
Thus, the stage is a set for a fascinating battle for the loyalties of the “purist” wing of the party between Perry and Bachmann. Which is very good news for the other major candidate in the race, Mitt Romney, who has also stood to lose by Perry’s emergence. The threat to Romney is that Perry might marginalize Bachmann and gobble up most of her support and that the GOP establishment will then rally around him, judging him to be a safe enough choice and more acceptable to the base than Romney. So the longer Perry is tied down in a fight with Bachmann for the true believer vote, the better Romney has to feel.
And no doubt Perry himself would much rather focus his attention on Romney, whose ideological credentials have long been in doubt and who would be relatively easy to run against from the right. But trying to convince Bachmann supporters to abandon her is far trickier — especially now that the straw poll results have lifted their spirits to the stratosphere.
So if you’re keeping score at home, Saturday was a very good day for Bachmann, and a decent one for Romney. And it wasn’t bad for Perry, either, although he would have preferred to see Bachmann lose the straw poll. It was, however, a dreadful day for Pawlenty, who’s now pretty much run out of time to demonstrate that a candidacy that makes sense on paper is remotely interesting to Republican activists.
By: Steve Kornacki, Salon War Room, August 13, 2011
CEO’s And Teapartiers, Shut Up And Pay Your Taxes: Starving The Government Is Not Patriotic
As I sit here in Germany’s financial capital, a few hours by train from where my forbearers set out for the United States a century ago, I’m remembering what antitax Americans are forgetting: Living in a stable and free society that supports economic initiative isn’t a given.
Those who think that U.S. corporations and wealthy individuals already pay too much in taxes and get too little in return are taking for granted social order and economic opportunity. Keeping the peace costs money, and paying police, fire and other emergency personnel requires tax revenue. Just ask U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, whose plan to make substantial cuts in London’s Metropolitan Police budget now looks ill-timed, amid pictures of looters making off with stolen goods.
U.S. corporations benefit every day from operating in an environment where bricks aren’t flying through windows and gunshots aren’t going off in parking lots. Civil unrest can be expensive, as executives at Sony Corp learned this week after its London warehouse went up in flames.
It also costs money to educate a workforce, something that also seems glossed over by those who want to slash money for federal education grants.
When I first arrived in Germany, people asked me whether the news they saw on TV is true, that “everyone in the United States is lining up for food stamps,” as one Frankfurter put it. Their questions were a reminder that even though Germany’s tax burden is higher than that in the United States, its economy weathered the global recession of 2008-09 better than America’s did, and its unemployment rate today, at 7%, is significantly lower than ours at 9.1%.
People like Grover Norquist, who claim that high taxes are the root of all our economic problems, have no answer for facts like these.
Those who want to lower business taxes often say that the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35% is higher than the 25% average of the world’s developing economies. But that argument ignores the long list of tax loopholes that allow U.S. companies to pay much lower rates in actuality.
Go down the list of second-quarter earnings reports for companies in the S&P 500 Index and stop when you get to one that paid 35% of earnings. That might take a while.
What the United States needs isn’t more tax cuts, but tax reform to eliminate the many loopholes that create an uneven playing field.
Tax corporate cash
Given the sluggish pace of U.S. economic growth, perhaps such reform could include a tax on the enormous amounts of cash that American companies now have sitting on their balance sheets.
Non-financial companies in the S&P 500 are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash right now — an absurd amount given that many of those same companies are laying off workers. Some estimates put the total closer to $2 trillion.
Forcing corporations to spend that money, either by hiring workers or paying investor dividends, would go a long way toward spurring growth.
When I hear Norquist — along with the candidates active in the tea-party movement that are too weak to resist signing his so-called loyalty oath — complain about actually having to pay for government services, I think we’ve come to take those services for granted.
I also think such whining is the exact opposite of the can-do attitude of the waves of immigrants who helped build the U.S. economy and continue to do so today. I’d like to introduce them to some of the start-up CEOs that I interview every week in Silicon Valley.
During the past few months, I’ve been writing a series of profiles on tech entrepreneurs for the site Entrepreneur.com. Neither I nor my editors planned it this way, but given that recent immigrants tend to be among the hardest-working Americans, perhaps it’s no surprise that none of the first four that I’ve written about are native to the United States.
These executives are people who, like generations of immigrants before them, came to the States and put their energy into building companies, rather than sitting around complaining how terrible a place this is to do business. They also, by the way, create jobs.
They come from across the globe: Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard of Wildfire Interactive grew up in New Zealand and Switzerland, respectively; Mikkel Svane and his Zendesk co-founders hail from Denmark; Rahim Fazal of Involver is from Vancouver, B.C.
Yet all of them came to the United States to build their businesses. Why would they do that if it’s so hostile to their efforts, as the antitax extremists claim the country to be?
The answer is it’s not. On the contrary, America’s still the most attractive country for entrepreneurs. Keeping it that way costs money — something that tax haters seem to forget.
By: John Shinal, MarketWatch, August 12, 2011
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