“Feeling A Little Left Out”: The Religious Right Won’t Tolerate Being Ignored
The defining debate within the Republican Party over the last several months has pitted Tea Partiers against the GOP’s Corporate wing. The two contingents have already begun gearing up for some notable primary fights in advance of this year’s midterm elections.
But there’s another wing of the party that’s apparently feeling a little left out.
On a recent snowy day in the Washington suburb of Tyson’s Corner, Va., some of the religious right’s wealthiest backers and top operatives gathered at the Ritz-Carlton to plot their entry into the conservative civil war.
Their plan: take a page out of the playbooks of Karl Rove and the Koch brothers by raising millions of dollars, coordinating their political spending and assiduously courting megadonors…. It’s all geared toward elevating the place of social issues like abortion and gay marriage in conservative politics.
To be sure, all of this makes sense. The religious right, as a political movement, wants to remain relevant with its allies, so it stands to reason that leading social conservatives would begin plotting to defend and expand its influence. It may make intra-party tensions a little more complicated in the coming months, but the religious right probably doesn’t much care.
The trouble, though, is in the assumption that social conservatives have been irrelevant of late.
Indeed, the Politico article stated as fact that social issues have “been largely relegated to the sidelines” in Republican politics, and the GOP’s competing wings have both “steered away from social issues they deem too divisive.”
I can appreciate why this might seem true – after all, it’s not as if John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and Eric Cantor run around prioritizing the culture war above other GOP goals. But the closer one looks, the more these assumptions start to crumble.
For example ,the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit reproductive health research organization, found that “abortion was at the forefront of the state legislative debate during the past three years – so much so that states added more restrictions to the books from 2011-2013 than during the entire preceding decade.”
This isn’t the result of a party steering away from divisive social issues; this is the opposite.
What’s more, as we discussed a few months ago, let’s not forget that Republican leaders lined up to kiss the religious right movement’s ring at the 2013 Values Voter Summit, and GOP officials incorporated their opposition to contraception into the government-shutdown strategy. While Republican governors spent much of the year trying to limit women’s reproductive choices, it’s not limited to state government – just about the only bills House GOP lawmakers find it easy to pass deal with abortion.
The Republican Party’s commitment to the culture war remains alive and well. The religious right is worried about lost relevance, but the movement already has considerable influence over the GOP’s direction.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 3, 2014
“The Cruelty Of Unleashed Capitalism”: Rich Catholic Republicans Threaten Pope Francis, Because He Frightens Them
If anyone wonders whether Pope Francis has irritated wealthy conservatives with his courage and idealism, the latest outburst from Kenneth Langone left little doubt. Sounding both aggressive and whiny, the billionaire investor warned that he and his overprivileged friends might withhold their millions from church and charity unless the pontiff stops preaching against the excesses and cruelty of unleashed capitalism.
According to Langone, such criticism from the Holy See could ultimately hurt the sensitive feelings of the rich so badly that they become “incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.” He also said rich donors are already losing their enthusiasm for the restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan – a very specific threat that he mentioned directly to Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.
Langone is not only a leading fundraiser for church projects but a generous donor to hospitals, universities, and cancer charities (often for programs and buildings named after him, in the style of today’s self-promoting philanthropists). Among the super-rich, he has many friends and associates who may share his excitable temperament.
While his ultimatum seems senseless – would a person of true faith stiff the church and the poor? – it may well be sincere. And Langone spends freely to promote his political and economic views, in the company of the Koch brothers and other Republican plutocrats.
Still, a Pope brave enough to face down the Mafia over his financial reform of the murky Vatican Bank shouldn’t be much fazed by the likes of Langone.
Yet Langone has reason to worry that the Holy Father is in fact asking hard questions about people like him. Indeed, he could serve as a living symbol of the gross and growing economic inequality that disfigures the American system and threatens democracy.
As a leader of the New York Stock Exchange, he was largely responsible for the scandalous overpayment of his friend Richard Grasso, the exchange president who received nearly $190 million in deferred compensation when he stepped down. Although New York’s highest court eventually upheld Grasso’s pay package, it was a perfect example of the unaccountable, self-serving greed of Wall Street’s elite.
Anything but repentant following the revelation and repudiation of the Grasso deal by NYSE executives, Langone told Forbes magazine in 2004: “They got the wrong f—ing guy. I’m nuts, I’m rich, and boy, do I love a fight. I’m going to make them sh-t in their pants. When I get through with these f—ing captains of industry, they’re going to wish they were in a Cuisinart—at high speed.”
He embarked on a furious vendetta against Eliot Spitzer, who had fought to recapture Grasso’s millions as New York attorney general. And when Spitzer was forced to resign as governor in the wake of a prostitution scandal, Langone’s public gloating seemed to indicate that he had played a personal role in exposing his enemy’s indiscretions. He particularly hated Spitzer for attempting to punish and curtail the worst misconduct in the financial industry.
While Langone passionately defended the outlandish grasping of the super-rich like his friend Grasso, however, he has displayed far less indulgence toward workers, especially those struggling to support their families on poverty wages. Until just last year, he was a director of Yum! Brands, the global fast-food conglomerate that includes Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken among its holdings – and that spends millions annually to hold down the minimum wage and prevent unionization of its ill-paid employees and farmworkers.
What all this adds up to is hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable compensation for financial cronies, but not a dime more for low-income workers. It is exactly the kind of skewed outcome that the Pope means when he speaks about today’s capitalists, “the powerful feeding upon the powerless,” and the need for renewed state regulation to bring their burgeoning tyranny under control. He is talking about Langone, the Kochs, and an entire gang of right-wing financiers.
“How I would love a church that is poor and for the poor,” Francis said not long after his election to the papacy. That could be what he gets – and that might not be so bad, for the poor and for all of us, Catholic or not, who love justice.
By: Joe Conason, Featured Post, The National Memo, January 3, 2014
“Fast And Loose With The Facts”: Lying About Obamacare Continues As Campaign Season Begins
You may want to sit down before reading this: Republicans aren’t being totally truthful about the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As the 2014 midterm elections approach, conservative groups are beginning to hit the airwaves with spots targeting vulnerable Democrats and their support for the health law — and the ads are playing fast and loose with the facts.
Americans for Prosperity, the tax-exempt conservative action group created by brothers Charles and David Koch, took out two ads against vulnerable Democrats: Rick Nolan of Minnesota’s 8th District and Ann Kuster of New Hampshire’s 2nd District. Both focus on the health-care law, and they are important to dissect because they are the first trickles of what is sure to be a torrent of anti-ACA advertising.
The ad against Nolan features a middle-aged Minnesota resident named Randy Westby, who [http://youtu.be/-VVwc60M8zg]says he lost his health care plan because it no longer qualified for purchase in the exchanges. “I’ve had three heart attacks in the last six years. Health care is something that’s essential, and my life depends on it,” he continues.
The ad leans heavily on Politifact’s “Lie of the Year” designation for President Obama’s “if you like your plan, you can keep it” claim, and gives the strong impression that sick people are much worse off under Obamacare.
But was Westby able to find another plan? Four million to five million people probably had their plan canceled because of updated coverage requirements, but the administration believes fewer than 500,000 of those people are still looking for another plan. The ad doesn’t tell us if Westby is one of those people.
Nor does it note that he can’t be disqualified from any of the plans on the exchanges because of his preexisting condition — and three heart attacks in six years is one heck of a preexisting condition. Are the plans available to him cheaper than what he had before? How much better is the coverage? We don’t know, although given Westby’s medical history and apparent age, it seems he is exactly the type of person most likely to benefit from how the new individual market is structured.
The New Hampshire ad is more general and features an actress, but it relies on the same central and shaky claim that “millions of people” are losing coverage. Both ads hit the Democrats in question for voting to keep the ACA in place. (Aside from firing up the conservative grass roots, there was a good political reason for all those repeal votes in the House: to get vulnerable Democrats on the record, again and again.)
A focus on horror stories like these is the likely new Republican approach to Obamacare, as the New York Times outlines today. “It’s no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told the times. “There’s something there. We have to recognize that reality. We have to deal with the people that are currently covered under Obamacare.”
But Westby may well be one of these people. And he may be getting better coverage. These will be the battle lines for the upcoming year: Republicans are gearing up to tell the horror stories, and Democrats will have to respond with stories of their own — the eight million to 10 million people who will be getting coverage under Obamacare by the end of March.
By: George Zornick, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, December 27, 2013
“Merry Christmas From The GOP”: On December 28th Unemployment Benefits End For 1.3 Million Families
Three days after Christmas, unemployment benefits end for 1.3 million people who have exhausted their state unemployment benefits, but still can’t find a job.
To be eligible for unemployment benefits, you have to be actively looking for a job. Virtually all of these people would rather work, but can’t find a job in today’s economy where there are three applicants for every job available.
But when the budget deal was negotiated in Congress over the last several weeks, Republican negotiators refused to agree to continue those unemployment benefits. And at the same time, they demanded the continuation of tax breaks for big oil companies and loopholes for Wall Street billionaires who get their income from hedge funds.
Merry Christmas from the GOP.
Of course this kind of Christmas cheer comes from the same gang that routinely drags out the well-worn charge that progressives and Democrats are engaging in a “war on Christmas”. Maybe someone should force Republican Members of Congress to sit through a showing of “A Christmas Carol” and then explain why they think Ebenezer Scrooge is the hero.
Over the last decade the far right, that now dominates the GOP, has conducted a real war on the values that we celebrate at Christmas.
In case they missed it, Christmas is about giving, and sharing and loving your neighbor. It’s about family. Christmas has nothing to do with greed or selfishness or paying people poverty level wages so you can maximize your bottom line.
The Christmas spirit is not about cutting off an economic lifeline for over a million people so the wealthiest in the land can continue to prosper beyond imagining. And remember many of those same wealthy people who are doing so well are personally responsible for the recklessness that caused the Great Recession and cost the jobs of those whose unemployment benefits they now believe we can “no longer afford”.
You hear a lot from the right wing about having to make “tough choices” because some things “we just can’t afford”. Ironically those “things we cannot afford” never include the things that benefit the very wealthy.
In fact, as surprising as it may seem to many Americans, there is more bounty in the land this Christmas, than at any time in our nation’s history. Our income per capita – and our productivity per person – has increased by 80% over the last 30 years. But over those same 30 years, average incomes for most Americans were stagnant – and virtually all of that increased income and wealth went to the top 1%.
That is bad enough. But then to insist that our country “can’t afford” to continue paying unemployment benefits to people who can’t find a job – and by the way – cut off their benefits three days after Christmas – that is an outrage.
Many on the right are so out of touch with ordinary Americans that they argue that providing unemployment benefits makes people “dependent”. This of course completely ignores the fact that to qualify you have to have been working and lost your job for no fault of your own; you have to be actively looking for work; and the maximum benefits in many states are very low.
Ask the Koch brothers to support a family on the $258 per week maximum benefit in Louisiana, or the $275 per week maximum benefit in Florida – or even the $524 per week maximum benefit in Ohio.
People don’t want to stay on unemployment benefits. They want to find a job that provides them with income and benefits that allow them to give a better life to their families and their kids. They want to make a contribution and feel that they do worthwhile work. Most Americans want to be proud of what they do for a living – they don’t want to be “dependent” on anyone.
You have to be from another planet to believe that most people will become “dependent” on a total income of $275 per week.
Unemployment benefits provide workers and their families with an economic shot in the arm to get them through being laid off in an economy when jobs are still hard to come by.
And let’s be real clear why jobs are so hard to come by. Jobs are still hard to come by because of the policies of those very same right wing politicians who refused to reign in the orgy of reckless speculation on Wall Street that resulted in a ruinous financial collapse from which the economy is still recovering.
Jobs would be a lot easier to come by if the GOP did not do everything it could to block President Obama’s American’s Jobs Act that would create millions of jobs in both the public and private sectors by investing in teachers, and infrastructure.
Jobs would be a lot easier to come by if the GOP were not fixated on cutting government investment at a time when virtually all economists – including the Federal Reserve Chairman – believe we need more fiscal stimulus and that the policy’s of the Republicans in Congress continue to be a major drag on economic growth.
In fact the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that failing to continue federal unemployment benefits will cost the economy 240,000 jobs and slow the growth of the overall economy by .2%.
Those who receive unemployment benefits spend virtually every dime on the goods and services they need to live. That spending provides jobs to thousands of other Americans. So cutting federal unemployment benefits will actually create a quarter million more people who are unemployed. Great work GOP.
So here is the bottom line. It turns out that a society that reflects the spirit of Christmas – one where we have each other’s back – where we care about each other and not just ourselves – a society like that is better for everyone.
In fact, it turns out that the “moral” thing to do – the “right” thing to do – is also the “smart” thing to do.
It turns out that progressive values like loving your neighbor as your self – are the most precious possessions of humanity because they are the values that will allow us and our children to prosper and survive.
And that’s why the spirit of Christmas doesn’t just belong to Christians – or Catholics or Baptists or Episcopalians – or anyone. The Christmas spirit belongs to everyone on our small fragile planet. And that spirit embodies exactly the set of values that we must use to chart our course not just on Christmas Day but 365 days each year – including December 28th when over a million families will lose the economic lifeline that provides them a bridge to a better life.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post Blog, December 23, 2013
“Boehner’s New Enemies”: Tea Folk Are Largely Unaffected By Attacks From The Speaker And Other “Establishment” Republicans
I’ve spent quite a bit of time mocking the extraordinary Beltway joy over House Speaker John Boehner’s rebuke to “outside” conservative groups, as representing the millionth decisive setback for the Right in the so-called “civil war’ in the GOP.
But how’s about the grassroots membership of the “outside” groups? Are they in disarray?
Doesn’t much look that way, based on Stephanie McCrumman’s profile of Americans for Prosperity members meeting for dinner in Greenville, SC. If the Kochs continue to provide the money, activists seem to have the time. Here’s my favorite passage:
Dean Allen, who is writing a book called “Rattlesnake Revolution: The Tea Party Strikes!,” said it was people like him who are the future of the party.
“You’ve got to have people in this room excited,” he said, waving a biscuit. “It’s who will open their checkbook, who will put the signs on the road… When we are demoralized we get crap like Obama in the White House.”
Reading this piece, you get the sense that Tea Folk are largely unaffected by attacks from Boehner and other “Establishment” Republicans because they view themselves as perpetually being abused by GOP leaders even as they continue to provide most of the people power and much of the money essential for Republican electoral efforts. They’ll keep on keeping on, despite the general disbelief among political journalists that it’s possible to constantly launch primary purges against elected officials you plan to support loyally in general elections.
All Boehner’s outburst probably means is that grassroots wngnuts will feel invested in the next conservative challenge to the Orange Man’s leadership. And if he does indeed retire at the end of next year, his remarks about conservatives last week won’t represent much of anything at all other than a temporary speed bump in the rightward movement of the Republican Party.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 18, 2013
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