“A Tonic For Progressive Economics”: Why Trudeau Matters More Than Gowdy
Which major event last week should have an important impact on the 2016 presidential election?
No, it’s not Hillary Clinton’s nine hours of testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. She walked away with a smile, and for good reason.
Republicans on the committee, led by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), succeeded brilliantly in confirming House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (Calif.) burst of honesty: that the whole exercise always had bringing down Clinton’s poll numbers as one of its central purposes. Only right-wingers already convinced of her perfidy thought otherwise. She emerged stronger than she started by staying calm, cool and confident in the face of repeated provocations.
The consequential event occurred three days earlier. The Liberal Party landslide and the triumph of Justin Trudeau in Canada’s election last Monday was a tonic for progressive economics and a cautionary tale for parties on the center-left lacking the courage of their convictions. Trudeau proved that voters understand the difference between profligacy and necessary public investment.
The outcome also carried a warning for conservative politicians in diverse societies who court a backlash against religious and ethnic minorities. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper played this card (around the issue of whether Muslim women could wear the niqab veil at their swearing-in as citizens), and it backfired badly.
Trudeau is the rare politician who came right out and promised to run deficits. They will be relatively modest — about 10 billion Canadian dollars (about $7.6 billion) annually over three years — with the goal of rebuilding Canada’s infrastructure. The Liberals popularized the term “infrastructure deficit,” and voters — particularly in rapidly growing urban areas — agreed that a time of low interest rates was exactly the moment to invest in the future. The hefty swing the Liberals’ way in Canada’s metropolitan areas helped power their sweep.
Already, conservatives in the United States are making the case that Trudeau will regret abandoning the fiscally cautious policies of the earlier Liberal governments headed by Jean Chrétien and then by Paul Martin. The Chretien-Martin Liberals were a middle-of-the-road lot who dominated Canadian politics from 1993 until 2006. Their budgetary prudence gave Canada nine straight surpluses.
But there’s a problem with this argument: None other than the fiscally responsible Martin himself endorsed the emphasis on investment. “You should be investing to pay for the kinds of things that are going to give your children a better life,” Martin said in defense of Trudeau. “And that’s what infrastructure is, what education is, it’s what research and development is.”
After the election, I spoke with Chrystia Freeland, a Liberal who won overwhelmingly in her Toronto district (and with whom I recently served on a think tank project on economic policy). She made the essential point: “It’s really important that people not approach economic policy as ideology or with quasi-religious convictions,” Freeland said. “Economic policy is about the facts and the circumstances.” A weakening Canadian economy strengthened the case for Trudeau’s approach.
In breaking the ideology of austerity, the Liberals, a traditionally centrist party, boxed in their main competitors for the anti-Harper vote. The New Democrats, known as the NDP, are usually to the Liberals’ left. But like the British Labour Party and social democratic parties elsewhere, the NDP under its leader, Tom Mulcair, felt that abandoning fiscal prudence would make the party look irresponsible to swing voters.
It was the wrong call, and Trudeau, who started the 11-week campaign running third, behind Harper and Mulcair, turned himself into the candidate of “real change,” which the Liberals embraced as their slogan. For good measure, Trudeau was unabashed in offering other proposals to push against growing inequality: a tax plan that would pay for a middle-class tax cut by raising taxes on those earning more than 200,000 Canadian dollars (about $152,000) a year, and a substantial increase in the child benefit for the poorest Canadians.
Paul Wells, one of Canada’s premier political journalists, observed in his post-election wrap-up in Maclean’s magazine that Trudeau “had to go big, or the Canadian voter would send him home.” By going big, Trudeau’s new home will soon be 24 Sussex Drive, the Canadian White House, where he lived when his dad, Pierre, was prime minister.
It’s true that the political and fiscal situations of Canada and the United States are different. But progressive politicians in the United States and elsewhere would do well to learn that if they let orthodoxies paralyze them, they will have little to say to voters who, as Trudeau declared on election night, are tired of the twin ideas that they “should be satisfied with less” and that “better just isn’t possible.”
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 25, 2015
“Grounded In Reality”: Democrats Have Become The Party Of ‘Normal’
Who “won” the Democratic debate? The Democratic Party won. All the presidential candidates, from the most flamboyant to the most contained, talked seriously about issues, even straying from liberal orthodoxy.
Hillary Clinton’s upbeat morning-in-America approach contrasted with Bernie Sanders’ eve-of-destruction — I mean revolution. But both stood grounded in reality, with special kudos to America’s favorite socialist for some refreshing breaths of nuance on polarizing issues.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — not a crazy Republican but one who often talked crazy — once called Democrats “the enemy of normal Americans.” Who’s looking normal now?
Surely not Republican Carly Fiorina, condemning abortion with a gruesome description of a fabricated video she never saw. Not Ben Carson or Rand Paul, who, despite being doctors, didn’t strenuously counter Donald Trump’s contention that vaccinations put children at risk. Trump doesn’t seem normal even when he’s right.
The consensus said that Clinton walked off with it. She did, but it was an ensemble performance. Sanders struck the high note by mocking the overblown controversy over Clinton’s use of private emails as secretary of state.
“The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” Sanders said. “Let’s talk about the real issues facing America.”
And the Democrats generally dived under the surface of today’s public debates. Clinton chided Sanders for his skepticism on some gun control measures, but Sanders had it exactly right.
He explained that his state, Vermont, has a rural hunting culture that doesn’t see guns as always evil. Sanders backed a ban on assault rifles but opposed letting gun shops be sued if a gun they sell legally is used in a crime. Common sense all around.
The immigration discussion offered a welcome balance between the need to deal humanely with people here illegally and the need for controls. Sanders defended his attack on an immigration plan that would have admitted huge numbers of “guest workers” to compete with low-wage Americans. If only more Democrats would talk that way.
Former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia spoke up for struggling poor whites, another welcome reference in a party that too often frames policy in racial or ethnic terms. And thank you, Jim Webb, for saying, “No country is a country without defining its borders.”
All in all, though, it was Clinton’s show. Responding to Sanders’ declaration of love for Scandinavian socialism, Clinton firmly replied: “We are the United States of America. And it’s our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so that it doesn’t run amok and doesn’t cause the kind of inequities that we’re seeing in our economic system.”
The consensus erred in naming Webb the evening’s “loser.” The former Navy secretary did great in his seething, quiet way. He steered the debate away from cloying political correctness. This very smart son of Appalachia would make a great vice presidential candidate.
Few noticed that Webb provided the wittiest remark of the evening. That came when he dryly informed Sanders that he doesn’t “think the revolution’s going to come.”
The most unintentionally funny line was from CNN moderator Anderson Cooper.
“In all candor,” Cooper said to Clinton, “you and your husband are part of the 1 percent. How can you credibly represent the views of the middle class?”
To borrow from the MasterCard ad, being questioned about losing credibility on matters of class because you’ve become rich: $2.03. Being so questioned by the son of a Vanderbilt: priceless.
Clinton is clearly moving on from intraparty debate to general election mode. The other candidates seemed to genuinely respect that pivot and gave her space.
How gratifying to hear a leading presidential candidate sound like a normal American and not get punished for it.
By: Froma Harrop, The National Memo, October 15, 2015
“So Many GOP Options”: Anybody Can Grow Up To Be Speaker Of The House!
I suppose it’s as good a time as any to recall that under the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Speaker does not have to be a Member. And so, you get this entirely non-humorous tweet from a Washington Examiner reporter:
.@newtgingrich says he’d consider interim speakership http://t.co/Zx27iR8qSH pic.twitter.com/sLxKzOSeZd
— Al Weaver (@alweaver22) October 8, 2015
He wouldn’t need any OJT, and all the rumors about his infidelities have long been confirmed, right?
But if you’re going to think “outside the box” for a House Speaker, there are other options, too:
Soeaker Carly Fiorina. would finally have that missing item on her resume–you know, remotely relevant qualifications for the presidency–and could symbolize the fact that just because the House GOP is trying to shut down Planned Parenthood and opposes pay equity is no reason to assume there’s any “war on women” going on.
Speaker Bobby Jindal could draw on his past House experience, and he’d have an excuse to leave Louisiana for good!
Speaker Sean Hannity could cut out the middle-men in Fox News/GOP message communications.
Speaker David Koch could cut out the middle-men, period.
So many options! Who else can you think of, dear readers?
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, October 8, 2015
“A Flagrant Liar For President?”: Darling Fiorina Is Not Only A Relentless Self-Promoter, But Also A Remorseless Liar
We’ve got a new darling in the GOP presidential race: Carly Fiorina!
Being the darling du jour, however, can be dicey — just ask Rick Perry and Scott Walker, two former darlings who are now out of the race, having turned into ugly ducklings by saying stupid things. But Fiorina is smart, sharp witted, and successful. We know this because she and her PR agents constantly tell us it’s so. Be careful about believing anything she says, though, for Darling Fiorina is not only a relentless self-promoter, but also a remorseless liar.
Take her widely hailed performance in the second debate among Republican wannabes, where she touched many viewers with her impassioned and vivid attack on Planned Parenthood. With barely contained outrage, Fiorina described a video that, she said, shows the women’s health organization in a depraved act of peddling body parts of an aborted fetus. “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking,” said a stone-faced Fiorina, looking straight into the camera, “while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’”
Oh, the horror, the monstrosity of Planned Parenthood! And how moving it was to see and feel the fury of this candidate for president!
Only … it’s not true. Although she dared the audience, President Obama and Hillary Clinton to go watch it, turns out that there is no such video — no fetus with kicking legs and no demonic Planned Parenthood official luridly preparing to harvest a brain.
So did Fiorina make up this big, nasty lie herself, or did her PR team concoct it as a bit of showbiz drama to burnish her right-wing credentials and advance her political ambition? Or maybe she’s just spreading a malicious lie she was told by some vicious haters of Planned Parenthood. Either way, there’s nothing darling about it, much less presidential.
I remember back in 1992 when the third-party candidate Ross Perot chose Admiral James Stockdale, a complete unknown, to be his presidential running mate. In his first debate, the vice presidential candidate began by asking a question: “Who am I? Why am I here?”
We should be asking the same about Carly, as she has recently surged in the polls of GOP primary voters. Her campaign is positioning her as a no-nonsense, successful corporate chieftain who can run government with businesslike efficiency. During the debate, Fiorina rattled off a list of her accomplishments as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the high-tech conglomerate: “We doubled the size of the company, we quadrupled its topline growth rate, we quadrupled its cash flow, we tripled its rate of innovation,” she declared in PowerPoint style.
Statistics, however, can be a sophisticated way of lying. In fact, the growth she bragged about was mostly the result of her buying Compaq, another computer giant in a merger that proved to be disastrous — in fact, Hewlett-Packard’s profits declined 40 percent in her six years, its stock prices plummeted and she fired 30,000 workers, even saying publicly that their jobs should be shipped overseas. Finally, she was fired.
Before we accept her claim that “running government like a business” would be a positive, note that the narcissistic corporate culture richly rewarded Fiorina for failure. Yes, she was fired, but unlike the thousands of HP employees she dumped, a golden parachute was provided to let her land in luxury — counting severance pay, stock options, and pension, she was given $42 million to go away.
But here she comes again, lacking even one iota of humility. Fiorina is throwing out a blizzard of lies, not only about Planned Parenthood, but also about who she is. She’s the personification of corporate greed and economic inequality, and she’s trying to bamboozle Republicans into thinking she belongs in the White House.
By: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, October 7, 2015
“The Human Society Has Begun To Work Against Itself”: If Republicans Cared About Families, They’d Stop Blocking Paid Leave
Several participants at the Republican debate last week spoke fervently about putting Rosa Parks’ image on the $10 bill. They also spoke fervently in support of a decision by Congress to defund Planned Parenthood—an organization that counted Rosa Parks among the members of its national board.
The contradiction would have been obvious and painful to Ms. Parks. Like many of us, she’d have been bewildered by the priorities of candidates who have held vote after vote on shutting down vital health services for women, but won’t even schedule a hearing on the FAMILY Act, a bill to provide affordable family and medical leave. It’s impossible to care about families and leave communities bereft of services for contraception, mammograms and other cancer screenings, and dozens more critical health services for women. It’s also impossible to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose a badly-needed, common sense program to make family and medical leave affordable to care for a new child or a seriously ill family member.
In 1993, the Family and Medical Leave Act passed Congress with bipartisan support. The FMLA provided up to 12 weeks unpaid leave for care of a new child or a serious personal illness or that of a child, spouse or parent. Republicans as well as Democrats saw that valuing family meant making sure people could care for family members without losing their jobs or health insurance. Many of the state and local campaigns within Family Values @ Work’s national network have leaders from both parties—including the numerous Republicans leading the charge for the Family Care Act in Georgia.
So what’s the problem in the nation’s capital today?
The FMLA is now 22 years old. While it constituted a major breakthrough and established the principle that having a family shouldn’t cost you your job, the leave remains out of reach for millions—some because they’re not covered by its protections (two-fifths of the nation’s workforce), and many who are eligible because they cannot afford to take unpaid leave. According to a study done for the Department of Labor (DOL), nearly one in four employed mothers who are pregnant go back to work within two weeks of giving birth—with disastrous results for maternal and infant health. Others who take the time they need to heal and bond with a child often face financial hardship.
A new report from the DOL highlights the high cost of doing nothing—lost family income, lower earnings and weaker job security for women, more stress and worse health, worse outcomes for children and seniors, and fewer men taking leave. Businesses also sustain losses in replacing experienced and skilled staff. Our nation suffers in comparison to all our economic competitors.
The lack of paid leave adds to the growing inequality in our nation. A mere 5 percent of low-wage and part-time workers have any pay during leave. And, as the report points out, there are costs harder to calculate: “We are compromising the needs of our children and our parents. We are sacrificing the fundamental value of spending time with one’s family.”
Pope Francis called the family “a great test bench” for how we organize work. “When the organization of work holds it hostage or, in fact, places obstacles in its way, then we are certain that the human society has begun to work against itself!”
If elected officials are serious about promoting family values, they need to stop wasting time on frivolous bills that are a detriment to women and their families and pass the FAMILY Act, a bill that actually helps families everywhere.
By: Ellen Bravo, Director of Family Values @ Work; The New Republic, September 24, 2015
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