“Keystone, Patriotism, And The White Working Class”: That Moment In Which Good Policy And Good Rhetoric Meet
Some time in the next two weeks, President Barack Obama is expected to veto a bill authorizing the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The U.S. House passed a measure last week. A similar bill passed the U.S. Senate the week before. Republicans, and even some Democrats, are calling it the “Keystone jobs bill.”
Activists hope Obama will veto the bill out of concern for an already overheated planet — the refining and consumption of Canadian tar-sands oil results in double the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. But that rationale is unlikely. The president is probably going to argue that Congress exceeded its constitutional authority. In crossing an international boundary, the pipeline is executive-branch turf.
But I wonder if this might be an opportunity, at least a rhetorical opportunity best understood in a somewhat different context. That context is the Democratic Party’s dismal performance among white working-class voters, who generally believe the Republican Party represents their interests even though it doesn’t.
Before I continue, please allow me to disclaim that when it comes to the white working class, I have some authority. My dad long-hauled steel. My mom raised four children in a comfortable trailer home while Dad was on the road. They certainly don’t approve of everything the government does — their anti-military views are exceptional — but right or wrong, America is theirs. And thanks to their rearing, America is mine, too.
To say my parents were conflicted over the role of the federal government in their lives is an understatement, but to say they wanted it out of their lives, as Republicans repeatedly claim on their behalf, is a gross overstatement. There’s nothing wrong with government as long as it serves the people whose biggest asset is their labor, which in their world means everyone not born into so much wealth that they don’t need to work.
Why does the white working class even matter to Democrats? Doesn’t the demographic tide favor them? Yes, but as Andrew Levison has argued, the Democrats still need white working-class voters. Without them, the party will scarcely attain the majoritarian momentum it needs to advance a truly progressive agenda. To be blunt, without them, demographics for the Democratic Party isn’t destiny. It’s doom.
The question is how to reach them. Democratic strategists cyclically scratch their heads in disbelief at white working-class voters acting in contrast to their interests. But such behavior shouldn’t be all that surprising. After all, voting is the result of emotion at least as much as it is the result of tactical decision making. And this is where I think the president’s expected veto of the Keystone bill is connected to the white working class. If there’s one thing white working-class voters respond to, it is emotional appeals to their deep and abiding sense of patriotism (the Republicans long ago mastered the art of such appeals). But Obama has an opportunity to shift the rhetorical landscape in favor of the Democrats by vetoing the Keystone bill in the name of country.
I’m not just favoring good rhetoric over good policy: This is a moment in which good policy and good rhetoric meet.
First, the pipeline isn’t going to help many Americans. Indeed, the Republicans never let a moment go by without reminding us that Obama’s own Department of State estimates that thousands of jobs will emerge from the $8 billion construction of the pipeline. But a majority of those jobs are seasonal. Once the project is completed, about 35 jobs will endure, according to the very same government estimate.
Second, the pipeline is going to help many Canadians. The Keystone is one of five proposed pipelines needed to profit from billions being invested in the extraction of tar-sands crude. This handful of pipelines tops the list of Canada’s national priorities. According to Mark Dowie, in The Washington Spectator, if even one of the pipelines is stymied, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s dream of creating a petro-state will die. So pressure is mounting. Harper, Canada’s oil companies, and their very wealthy investors around the world want to see the Keystone built. In the United States, it will create a flurry of temporary activity, but the long-term rewards will be entirely enjoyed by Canadians.
That matters to white working-class voters. That’s something that can’t be squared with Republican claims that Keystone is simply a jobs bill.
All right. Let’s accept the premise — Keystone is a jobs bill. If so, it’s bad one. As I said, lots of temporary jobs, a few permanent jobs and nothing left for the greater good. All future dividends from billions presently invested will flow north of the border. Indeed, it’s Americans who will suffer detriment in the event of a leak. (Leaks are rare, but when they happen, they are catastrophic to communities, property and natural resources.) A better jobs plan can be found in the president’s fiscal year budget. It calls for federal expenditures on the construction and upkeep of the country’s (literally) crumbling infrastructure. How does Obama hope to pay for all these roads, bridges, tunnels and waterways? By levying a tax on the offshore accounts of the very wealthy.
The president wants to tax the money of a very small minority of Americans who don’t want to pay U.S. taxes. He wants to raise revenues to fund the construction, and reconstruction, of the country’s infrastructure. If expenditures reach as high as $1 trillion, as Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has proposed, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of seasonal and permanent jobs, with something to show for all the effort—a lasting investment. (Sanders’ proposal would also probably include a hike in the federal gas tax, which hasn’t gone up since the mid-1990s.) Conversely, the Republicans blindly oppose all tax increases, even on those without enough sense of patriotism to want to pay their due in taxes while everyone else does.
If that appears to be the making of a wedge issue, that’s because it is, and the Democrats need to exploit it. The Keystone reveals a rift between rich Americans who don’t pay taxes and working-class Americans who do; between rich Americans who don’t want to rebuild America, for Americans, and working-class Americans who do.
The bottom line: Courting white working-class voters will take more than appealing to their economic interests. It isn’t enough to do the right thing, and this is where I part ways with others on this subject. I tend to believe the Democrats don’t do enough to drive a wedge between white working-class voters and the Republican Party elites who claim to represent them. The GOP’s hold on the working-class imagination is strong, thanks to years and years of race baiting and fearmongering. So when the rare opportunity arises in which Democrats can illuminate the clear contrasts between the interests of the very, very rich and everyone else, it shouldn’t be wasted.
By: John Stoehr, Managing Editor of The Washington Spectator; The National Memo, February 17, 2015
“Corporations Are Artificial, Too”: Modern Corporate Capitalism Is Anything But Natural
One of the reasons it’s difficult for liberals to easily and effectively win arguments about economics with conservatives is that conservatives have a very simple mantra: let the natural forces of the market do their work. Government is seen as an interloper and distorter of Darwinian forces that would otherwise ultimately let all goods and services achieve their perfect prices with maximum efficiency.
There are a number of gigantic problems with that worldview, of course. The free market refuses to pay for a wide variety of crucial infrastructure items and investments in public health and safety; consumers are at an information and power disadvantage against unscrupulous companies; and human life and dignity are unacceptably cheap on the open market.
But there’s another key lie in the conservative “natural economy” story, which is that modern corporate capitalism is anything but natural. It’s an artificial system encoded arbitrarily into law and interpreted in a specific way that tends to give maximum advantage to executive and shareholders at the expense of society. Kent Greenfield examined right here at Washington Monthly one way in which that is true: the Dodge v. Ford case that explicitly denied corporations the right to engage in more socialistic practices and demanded that they only serve the bottom line for their shareholders. The corporate veil itself another artificial legal construct, as is the notion of corporate personhood.
Our society is built on rules and regulations, all of them socially and legally built out of artifice. That is just as equally true of business as it is of government.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, January 24, 2015
“Time For The GOP To Pitch In”: Passing Bills That Have No Chance Of Ever Becoming Law Is Not Best Advertisement For Effectiveness
With Republican majorities in both houses, the new Congress should begin by focusing on traditional GOP priorities: improving the nation’s sagging infrastructure, reforming an unwieldy tax code and finding ways to boost middle-class opportunity.
When pigs fly, you say? Skepticism is definitely in order. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner have a fundamental choice to make. They can acknowledge the obvious areas of common ground they share with President Obama — thus showing that the Republican Party can participate responsibly in government — or they can throw temper tantrums.
McConnell told The Post that one of his goals, as he takes leadership of the Senate, is to avoid doing anything that would make it harder for the party to elect a president next year. “I don’t want the American people to think that, if they add a Republican president to a Republican Congress, that’s going to be a scary outcome,” he said.
The scariness of the GOP field probably will also depend on Ted Cruz’s apocalyptic rhetoric and Chris Christie’s progress in anger management. But McConnell is right that the whole “Party of No” routine, which he helped orchestrate, is unlikely to yield further political benefit — and may, at this point, inflict more damage on Republicans than on Democrats.
It is perhaps inevitable that the GOP will use its control of Congress to highlight the party’s pet issues — advocacy for the Keystone XL pipeline, for example, and opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Every once in a while, Republicans may even muster the needed 60 votes in the Senate — and force Obama to use his veto. But then what? Passing a bunch of bills that have no chance of ever becoming law is not the best advertisement for effectiveness.
McConnell told The Post he wants voters to see his party as a “responsible, right-of-center, governing majority.” Well, two obvious things such a majority should be doing right now are celebrating the economic recovery and looking for ways to ensure that more of its benefits reach the middle class.
Growth is accelerating, inflation is virtually nonexistent, stocks had a great year, unemployment is down and the U.S. economy is the envy of the developed world. That all of this has happened under the leadership of a Democratic president may be inconvenient for GOP leaders, but it’s the reality. Sourpuss grousing about how Obama is somehow “killing jobs” sounds ridiculous and out of touch. It seems to me that a “responsible” majority ought to be able to bring itself to say, “Nice job, Mr. President.” Even if it hurts.
Such a majority then should recognize that present economic conditions offer the opportunity to address big structural problems — and that addressing these problems can, in turn, broaden and deepen the recovery.
Infrastructure is perhaps the most obvious place to begin. Our airports are getting old. Many of our seaports cannot handle the newest generation of container ships. Thousands of our bridges need to be repaired or replaced. Century-old municipal water systems are breaking down. The electrical grid needs to be more robust and secure. And while we invented the Internet, citizens of other countries enjoy networks with faster speeds and lower costs.
Republicans used to agree with Democrats that good economic times offer the opportunity to invest in infrastructure — which creates jobs, both now and in the future. Deficits are falling rapidly and interest rates are at historic lows. What are we waiting for? Shouldn’t a “responsible” Congress have a bill on Obama’s desk by the end of the month?
Another subject on which Obama and the Republicans in Congress agree, at least in principle, is the need for corporate tax reform. Obama has acknowledged, and Republicans have long contended, that the current top corporate rate of nearly 40 percent is too high — and that the strategies corporations use to avoid paying those taxes, such as moving their headquarters overseas, are detrimental to the national interest. There is a larger debate to be had about overall tax policy, but couldn’t we just start by lowering the corporate rate and closing the loopholes?
Finally, a “responsible” party that’s prepared to govern would have some ideas about how to boost economic mobility, which is what we really mean when we talk about “opportunity.” If Republicans think the American Dream means the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, then no, they’re not remotely ready for prime time.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 5, 2015
“Still With Worrisome Fundamental Beliefs”: It Says A Lot That A Strong Economy Is Bad News For Mitt Romney in 2016
Nothing says democracy like a private-equity-manager-turned-governor whose dad ran for president facing off against a governor-turned-private-equity-manager whose dad was president over, you guessed it, the presidency.
That’s what we might get, though, if Mitt Romney, who’s “considering” a run in 2016, and Jeb Bush, who’s already formed a political action committee, end up duking it out over the Republican nomination. (Romney started out in private equity before becoming a governor, for those keeping score at home, while Bush was a governor before getting into private equity). But before we, well, get too far into the horserace, we should remember that Romney, at least, lost in no small way because he didn’t have anything approximating a policy agenda.
Think about that. Romney was a professional presidential candidate for almost five years by the time Election Day rolled around in 2012, and he still didn’t have a coherent strategy for the economy by then. His tax plan was a mathematical impossibility: he would have had to either abandon his tax cuts for the rich, raise taxes on the middle class, or run much bigger deficits to make it work.
And his economic plan, well, we’re still waiting for it. Romney told his donors that “if it looks like I’m going to win, the markets will be happy” and “we’ll see capital come back, and we’ll see—without actually doing anything—we’ll actually get a boost to the economy.” And that was it.
Romney really thought President Obama was scaring away a recovery, so all he had to do was win and then do nothing. Now, to be fair, doing nothing has actually worked out okay for Obama since he got re-elected, though not by choice, as the combination of more monetary stimulus, less fiscal austerity, and time have healed the economy enough that unemployment has started falling fast.
In fact, joblessness is already lower after two years, at 5.6 percent, than Romney said he’d get it in four. But, as you might have noticed, the recession put us in such a deep hole that there are still plenty of problems that need fixing. Romney, though, didn’t have a plan to take advantage of can’t-go-any-lower interest rates to rebuild our infrastructure. Or to help underwater homeowners refinance their mortgages. Or, more on this in a minute, to increase worker wages.
Romney, in other words, just ran against the economy, and hoped that would be enough. It wasn’t. And it shouldn’t even be an option in 2016, when unemployment could be as low as 4 percent. The question then won’t be how to get jobs, but rather how to get good ones with good pay.
Now, Romney is ideologically flexible. But he seems to have some worrisome fundamental beliefs that would hurt him if he runs in 2016.
After he lost the presidential race, Romney blamed his loss on Obama giving “gifts” to minorities and women, and warned that “this is really serious” since “we’re following the path of every other great nation, which is we’re following greater government, tax the rich people, promise more stuff to everybody, borrow until you go over a cliff.”
Does that sound like somebody who would try to boost stagnant wages—which should be the issue of 2016—by, say, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (and the ranks of the “47 43 percent“) like a lot of conservative wonks want to?
By: Matt O’Brien, The Wonk Blog, The Washington Post, January 12, 2015
“Hey, America… All Of You, C’mon Down”: Hurry On Down To Florida Before South Beach Is Underwater
“I have a message today to the people of New York, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania and others: Move to Florida!”
Such was the sunny welcome put forth by Gov. Rick Scott at his second inaugural last week in Tallahassee, FL.
Quit your jobs, pack up your families and get down here as fast as you can. Twenty million people aren’t enough — Florida needs more!
I was thinking the same thing the other day on I-95, when I glanced in the rearview mirror and actually saw about eight feet of air between my bumper and the tanker truck behind me.
The first thing that sprang to mind was: Hey, another car could fit in there!
Not a regular-sized car, true, but maybe one of those adorable little Smart cars that you sometimes see on the streets of Manhattan or Chicago. It was a revelation.
Probably 99 out of 100 drivers in Florida would say our traffic already sucks, with a little imagination and no concern for the quality of life, there’s always room for more.
So you go, Gov. Scott! Keep on spreading the word.
The thought again popped into my head as I passed a middle school where every classroom has about 30 students, which most teachers will tell you are too many.
Know what? That school didn’t seem so crowded, at least from the outside.
The county had trucked in rows of windowless portable classrooms and painted them the same earthtone color as the main school building, so they looked hardly anything like warehouse storage.
Also, there was plenty of space for more portables at the east end of the soccer field.
So, everybody, listen to Gov. Scott! Bring your kids down to Florida and, by God, we’ll find a way to shoehorn the little imps into one of our schools.
And don’t be spooked by the fact that we spend less per pupil on education than 47 other states, because we make up for it in so many other ways.
Low taxes, for example. The governor loves to brag about Florida’s low taxes.
You might think it’s a sore subject among Floridians, this being the time of year when many of us are staring at our property-tax bills and wondering why they keep going up, up, up.
It’s because irresponsibly jamming so many humans together requires somebody (and it’s never the developers!) to pay for the roads, bridges, sewers, fire stations, extra police officers and so on. That somebody who pays is us.
So what’s Gov. Scott really talking about when he says our state has low taxes?
Get ready, future Floridans! Here’s the big celebrated tax break that the governor and the Legislature gave to all residents last year:
They cut the cost of our vehicle license tags by an average of $25. That’s not a typo, folks. Twenty-five whole buckeroos.
I still haven’t figured out what to do with all of it. Treasury bonds? High-cap stocks?
If a double-digit cut in auto-tag fees isn’t enough to bring caravans of U-Hauls streaming into the Sunshine State, then I don’t know what will.
The other morning I was driving through the Everglades thinking: Isn’t this swamp water finally clean enough? Really, how much urban runoff could a few million more people possibly dump?
We’ve probably got enough fish, wildlife and wading birds to last one more generation. What we really need are more subdivisions full of humans flushing toilets.
Aside from water shortages, saltwater intrusion, sink holes, red tides and the ludicrous cost of windstorm insurance, one thing that might keep newcomers away is fear.
Please don’t judge by what you read in the papers or see on TV, or by the latest FBI stats, which show Florida has more violent crimes per capita than New York, Illinois, California or Pennsylvania — all the places Gov. Scott is urging people to flee.
True, all types of criminals love it down here because of the climate. But while our prisons have been wretchedly overcrowded, additional cell space has become available under Scott’s administration due to a surge of untimely (and unexplained) inmate deaths.
So don’t be scared of Florida. Hurry on down before South Beach is underwater. We’re desperate for more people. We love sitting in traffic. We love standing in line.
Promised the governor: “Over the next four years, I will be traveling to your states personally, to recruit you here.”
Go get ‘em, you crazy Martian goofball!
Lie all you want about low taxes, and don’t say a word about the pythons.
By: Carl Hiaasen, Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, January 13, 2015
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