“Anti-Government Shindig”: Cliven Bundy Hosts ‘Freedom Celebration’ One Year Later
It’s hard to forget the armed confrontation between federal law enforcement and Cliven Bundy’s well-armed supporters in Nevada. In fact, the standoff, which the Obama administration, in the interest of public safety, chose not to escalate, was exactly one year ago.
The L.A. Times noted that the controversial rancher, who claims not to recognize the legitimacy of the United States government, threw a “shindig” over the weekend – a “freedom celebration” to honor the anniversary.
This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of when federal agents swooped onto the public lands near Bundy’s ranch to round up hundreds of cattle that the 67-year-old had been grazing without permits. The land is administered by the Bureau of Land Management.
The raid didn’t go well: Hundreds of supporters – self-named citizen militiamen, many with semiautomatic weapons – rallied around their new leader, creating at tense standoff between two armed camps. In the end, on last April 12, the federal government backed down, released the cattle agents had corralled and – poof! – vanished.
The underlying dispute has not been resolved. Bundy has still ignored multiple court orders and still owes the United States more than $1 million after he was fined for grazing on protected land.
Bundy’s posture, as a long-term proposition, remains unsustainable – a fact he seems to realize. “It’s hard to tell, but the feds, they’re probably going to do something,” Bundy told the L.A. Times. “[T]hey’re probably just standing back, looking at things.”
He added, however, in reference to the Bureau of Land Management, “They know if they make a move, they’ll upset America. And I don’t think they want to do that.”
It’s an ominous choice of words from a fringe activist who may not enjoy quite as much support as he thinks he has.
Remember, Republicans and conservative media personalities quickly elevated Cliven Bundy to folk-hero status early last year, right up until some of his racist views came to light.
Suddenly, the right was forced to reevaluate whether they were prepared to stand behind a racist lawbreaker who doesn’t recognize the United States and whose supporters pointed high-powered weapons at American law enforcement.
I’m reminded, in particular, of Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) who said last April, “I am very quick in calling American citizens ‘patriots.’ Maybe in this case, too quick.” Around the same time, the Nevada affiliate of the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity started scrubbing their online messages offering praise for Bundy and his radical campaign.
In April 2014, Bundy was a cause celebre for the far-right and anti-government voices. In April 2015, his “freedom celebration” enjoyed less national support. If he’s assuming “America” will be “upset” if there are consequences for his defiance of the rule of law, he’s probably going to be disappointed.
Postscript: ThinkProgress noted a bill in the Nevada legislature, sometimes referred to as the “Bundy Bill,” intended to empower the state to seize federal properties Nevada wants to control. The legislation seems to be a brazenly unconstitutional scheme, but it’s nevertheless working its way through the Republican-led legislature.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 13, 2015
“The Bane Of Political Life In America”: For Conservatives, Government Coercion Is Bad — Except When It’s Not
For conservatives, government coercion is the bane of political life in America. As members of the self-styled anti-government party, they very much are interested in making the case that coercion is inherently illegitimate, whether it is a law requiring you to purchase health care or a law requiring businesses to serve LGBT customers. The problem with this logic is that all laws are coercive — even the ones conservatives like.
Last week, I wrote about the intrinsic coerciveness of all laws in the context of protecting LGBT people from discrimination, which prompted a hilarious yet telling reaction from Sean Davis at The Federalist.
Davis, possibly because he quite obviously did not even read past the first couple paragraphs of my post, is not just wrong, but has missed the entire axis of debate. However, he does inadvertently provide a great example of just why conservatives are ill-advised to admit that all laws are coercive. Because if this is true, then conservatives will have to give up one of their favorite rhetorical tropes — being against coercion in the name of individual liberty — or resort to outright hypocrisy.
The argument was not about LGBT laws in themselves, something Davis failed to grasp. Instead it was about the justification of such laws. My position is that being against government coercion is not legitimate grounds on which to oppose any policy. This applies to liberals, too, though as members of the pro-government faction they generally don’t worry about it much.
But conservatives do. Most of what is referred to as “government” in popular media is liberal stuff like Social Security, Medicare, or food stamps. Labeling those programs as coercion gives conservatives a convenient pro-liberty sheen when they’re talking about slashing poor people’s incomes.
That changes when you bring up things like property. Though ordinary people rarely talk about it in this way, property is underpinned by exactly the same kind of coercion that bolsters civil rights or tax laws, as is the entire superstructure of what we refer to as the free market system — that is, by government coercion.
Therefore, conservatives can’t be principled anti-coercion advocates unless they are willing to throw out private property, which they obviously aren’t. Coercion can’t be bad when it supports things you don’t like and good when it supports things you do — no matter what some conservatives maintain.
Let me emphasize that this line of reasoning doesn’t mean you can’t oppose some civil rights law, just that you can’t oppose it on the grounds of being against coercion in general.
Of course, framing the discussion in this way powerfully strengthens left-wing arguments. If being anti-coercion is utter nonsense, then the debate moves to which kinds of coercion are best as judged by some other moral framework. Whether that’s utilitarianism, contract theory, or Christian ethics, under such conditions it’s a lot harder to oppose transferring income from rich to poor or social insurance programs.
Thus, when presented with left-wing slogans like “property is violence,” your average conservative, perceiving a trap, will resist. In reality there is no escape.
But what makes Davis such a great example is he genuinely doesn’t seem to understand what the problem is here. He argues in one breath that, duh, of course all laws protecting property depend on coercive violence. Then in the very next paragraph, he writes this:
At their core, however, Kohn and Cooper appear to desperately want to avoid the real question at the heart of the religious freedom debate: should the government force individuals to participate in religious ceremonies against their will? [The Federalist]
Government coercion is good, except when it’s not. That’s the kind of stark hypocrisy conservatives would do well to disguise better.
By: Ryan Cooper, The Week, April 14, 2015
“The Distracting Game Of Mirrors”: How To Survive The Hillary Hype; Liberal Dreams And The Media’s Big Elizabeth Warren Trap
Hillary Clinton is reportedly set to end the biggest non-mystery in American politics today by announcing her presidential candidacy. But even as we learn that she’s running, along with when and how she’ll make the announcement (via social media and video, we’re told, on Sunday afternoon), it seems the only actual mystery about the race will remain unsolved: How does Clinton propose to restart the engines of American opportunity that built a broad middle class after World War II, which began to sputter and fail over the last 30 years?
With neither a grand thematic backdrop for an announcement – Seneca Falls? Ferguson? McAllen, Tex.? Outside a small-city McDonald’s during a fast food workers’ strike? – nor a big address to outline the themes of her campaign, Clinton will leave defining what she stands for to the media for a little while, at least, and that’s risky. So far, journalists only seem able to define Clinton in contrast to a past or future opponent, asking whether she’ll attack President Obama (it’s a dumb media given that she has to), distance herself from her husband, the popular former president, or push back against the economic populism of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, even without Warren in the race.
If that limbo is risky for Clinton, it’s even more dangerous for progressives. As we wait to find out how Clinton will respond to the increasingly populist pulse of her party’s base, we’re beset by substitute, over-personalized storylines, heavy on drama but light on issues: Will Clinton co-opt the Warren wing of the party, or will she stand up to it? Is she going to rebuke Wall Street, a la Warren, or offer succor?
We’ve even got a surrogate battle of Ivy League economists: Is she closer to Harvard’s Raj Chetty, whose studies of upward mobility focus on how to restore it (which is said to be a more optimistic, plutocrat-friendly analysis), or Columbia’s Joseph Stiglitz, who recently wrote, in an essay shared with the Clinton team, that an effective economic policy must go beyond incremental policies like raising the minimum wage and improving education, to include “redistribution” of income – a once-routine assumption of public policy that now sounds like communism to a lot of business-oriented Democrats. (For the record, Clinton has met with both men.)
Without a Clinton challenger – and specifically, without Warren – most of the media struggle to explain what will matter to Democrats in the race. Witness this bizarre exchange between CBS’s Charlie Rose and Warren herself last week. Exasperated at Warren’s failure either to declare her own candidacy or critique Clinton’s, the respected interviewer – the “Charlie Rose” brand has long stood for substance, at least – began to badger the senator for more “specifics” about her agenda – after she’d already talked about reducing student loan interest rates and hiking the minimum wage.
ROSE: It’s hard to get to you be more specific. You talk about the Democratic Party’s a fluid thing and is going here and there and it’s always changing. But we want you to really-
WARREN: I’m sorry, what was nonspecific about let’s reduce the interest rate on student loans to 3.89%?
ROSE: You’ve been saying that in a lot of different–
WARREN: I’m there.
ROSE: I know. You’ve been saying that in a lot of different places and that’s a very specific position.
WARREN: And I have supported our efforts to try to get the minimum wage—
ROSE: And you say, well—
WARREN: I’ve supported it at $10.10. I would support it at a higher number. And I’m willing to sit down and negotiate with those who are willing to raise the minimum wage.
ROSE: What we’re trying to understand is that you represent — you really have become the voice of a wing of the Democratic Party, and maybe all of the party. What we want to know is where does Elizabeth Warren want to see this party go?
WARREN: Oh golly, how could you not know?
ROSE: In terms of minimum wage. In terms of income inequality. In terms of a whole range of things.
WARREN: I’m ready.
ROSE: You’re ready to tell them where you are and where you think the country…And where you differ from former Secretary of State Clinton. Why can’t you tell us that? Why isn’t that interest in the interest of a full debate about the future of the country, the future of the Democratic Party and who the nominee ought to be?
WARREN: Charlie, I’ll tell you where I stand on all of the key issues. It’s up to others to say whether they stand there as well or they stand in some different place. I’ll tell you where I stand on minimum wage. I’ll tell you where I stand on equal pay for equal work. I’ll tell you where I stand on expanding—
ROSE: Name me one thing you would like to see — name me one thing that you would like to see Hillary Clinton do and say and commit to that she has not committed to?
In fact, Warren has laid out her agenda in an eight-point plan to restore the middle class, which includes a minimum wage hike, protecting and expanding Social Security, strengthening labor laws, restoring a more progressive tax code, and building infrastructure. Similar ideas are in the “Ready for Boldness” statement the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is organizing around (Senators Harry Reid and Al Franken are among 5,000 Democrats who’ve signed their names to the statement), trying to “incentivize” Clinton to move to the left. PCCC leaders recently met with members of Clinton’s campaign team.
But if journalists can’t frame these ideas in terms of someone “attacking” Hillary Clinton, they’re not interested, and they’ll insist there’s no progressive agenda.
Meanwhile, frustrated in their efforts to gin up a fight between two popular Democratic women, some will find surrogates elsewhere that let them frame the narrative in terms of “centrist” Clinton facing down and “taming” progressive critics – or being tamed by them. Politico gave us an example this week with “Rahm shows Hillary how to tame the left.”
As Elias Isquith explained, however, the piece took itself apart, as it argued that Emanuel won because he co-opted progressive ideas, not because he ran away from them. Still, it was framed as a “lesson” for Clinton to thumb her nose at the party’s base. Let’s hope she’s not listening.
There are real divisions among Democrats – and maybe even within the Clinton camp – over both tone and substance when it comes to economic policy. Personally, I’m with Joseph Stiglitz, who wrote in an essay shared with the Clinton campaign:
The increase in inequality and the decrease in equality of opportunity have reached the point where minor fixes — such as modest increases in the minimum wage and continuing to strive to improve education and educational opportunity — will not suffice. A far more comprehensive approach to the problem is required, entailing redistribution and doing what one can to improve the market distribution of income and to prevent the unfair transmission of advantage across generations.
But we have no evidence that Clinton herself disagrees, and progressives should ignore the distracting game of mirrors the media will continue to play with the Democratic frontrunner and her base. Personally, I’m not seeing Sunday as the kick-off to Clinton’s campaign (though there are reports that her announcement tweets will deal with issues). That will come when she begins to outline her own substantive agenda for closing the widening income and opportunity divide.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, April 12, 2015
“And What Was The Republican Plan For Iraq, Exactly?”: A Remarkable Display Of Ignorance, Poor Judgment And Shamelessness
Moe Lane over at RedState thinks that Reuters and Barack Obama somehow are to blame for the retaliation looting and killings in Tikrit after the routing of ISIS. And that murder and looting shouldn’t really be newsworthy because heck, that’s what happens in war:
Of course the groups sacking the city publicly executed anybody who was, or looked to be, Islamic State. Of course the city got looted. Of course bodies were dragged through the streets. Anybody who knows anything about warfare knows that such things are the default when it comes to a city being captured, or recaptured. It shouldn’t happen. It’s not moral or ethical to let it happen, either. And it will still happen, anyway, unless you are prepared to stamp on it from the start.
Unfortunately for everyone concerned, the military forces that could have prevented Tikrit from being sacked – heck, kept it from being captured by Islamic State death cultists in the first place – were stood down from Iraq by Barack Obama in 2011. With, might I add, the tacit corporate approval and support of Reuters.
It’s one thing to question military strategy and the relative merits of intervention and self-determinacy of nations. But it’s more than a little precious to see the same people who spent the whole Bush Administration cheerleading the illegal and ill-advised invasion of Iraq and calling out as cowards and traitors anyone who opposed it, now blame the press and the Obama Administration for the violence there.
Moe Lane and all his compatriots aided and abetted an invasion conducted for corporate gain under false pretenses that sent the entire region spiraling into conflict, strengthening Iran and precipitating a series of crises that ultimately led to the formation of ISIS due to the oppression of Iraqi Sunnis and the post-Saddam power vaccuum. These same Republicans wanted a more aggressive military operation against Assad in Syria–even though it would have strengthened ISIS. And these same Republicans have been itching like crazy to drop bombs on Iran, undermining our ultimately successful diplomatic efforts, further destabilizing the region and weakening one of our most effective regional allies against ISIS.
So now the folks at RedState, having been wrong not only in absolute moral terms but also from the perspective of sheer realpolitik and national self-interest, see fit to blame the Administration for some the ugliness in Tikrit after ISIS was forced out? Because there weren’t more American troops present?
As if more American troops would have prevented the violence. Is Moe Lane unaware of the number of Iraqis killed by American troops in the initial invasion? Has he not seen pictures of Abu Ghraib? Does he not know that not only did American forces not prevent widespread looting in Baghdad, we couldn’t even be bothered to stop Iraq’s most priceless treasures from being looted from its top museums?
But let’s assume for the moment that a stronger American presence in Iraq would have prevented some of the retributive violence in Tikrit. What exactly did Moe Lane believe that a hypothetical President McCain or Romney would have done in Iraq? Keep more troops there? For how long, exactly? Did Republicans plan to simply occupy Iraq for decades? At what point would the nation be considered stable and safe enough to finally withdraw?
Republican foreign policy is a disaster. The existence of ISIS is directly on the heads of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and everyone who supported the invasion of Iraq. And yet those same people have the gall to blame the President (and the press!) for the ugly aftermath of ISIS’ removal from one of its strongholds, apparently because Democrats didn’t put enough American troops in harm’s way for long enough.
It’s a remarkable display of ignorance, poor judgment and shamelessness.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, April 5, 2015
“How The GOP Made Fiscal Responsibility Look Irresponsible”: It’s A Matter Of When, Not If, Republicans Will Cave
It’s a minor miracle: Both houses of the Republican-controlled Congress have passed a budget.
Now, that’s the easy part compared to getting appropriations bills to Obama’s desk that he will actually sign. And notwithstanding the bipartisan lovefest that surrounded the House bill fixing Medicare physician reimbursements (held up for the moment in the Senate over abortion), deep philosophical differences between the parties remain.
So a standoff between congressional Republicans and the White House is inevitable. (Unless you think Obama is going to suddenly want to repeal ObamaCare.) And under both Obama and President Bill Clinton, these stalemates have seldom ended well for the Republicans.
Why? Because even though the Constitution vests the most important taxing and spending powers in Congress, the president has some huge advantages. If the president doesn’t want to sign a given spending bill and Congress doesn’t have the votes to override the veto, lawmakers only have blunt instruments with which to force his hand. And since congressional Republicans tend to end up getting the blame in the media and in the polls, even those tools are of limited utility. The president knows it is a matter of when, not if, Republicans will cave.
Republicans are trying to rein in the spending driving both the long-term debt and the unfunded liabilities of the major entitlement programs the Democrats built. They are trying to be fiscally responsible.
You may not agree with all the cuts Republicans make in their budgets. You may not be convinced their numbers add up. But Paul Ryan and Tom Price have been more transparent about their fiscal vision than most of their detractors.
The president has a different vision, and he isn’t budging. To try and force his hand (if not change his mind), Republicans have relied on a series of high-profile manufactured crises: the fiscal cliff, various debt ceiling standoffs, government shutdowns, near-shutdowns of major Cabinet departments, the threat of across-the-board tax increases, you name it.
And that’s the problem. In the process, they have made fiscal responsibility look downright irresponsible.
As the national debt was careening toward $18 trillion, Republicans insisted there be some limit to the federal government’s borrowing power. But because of the means they used to try to compel the president, it was the Republicans who stood accused of refusing to pay Washington’s bills and letting the government default on its obligations.
In the fiscal cliff debate, Obama likened congressional Republicans to hostage takers when they tried to hold the line on spending and taxes. Fiscally-minded conservatives probably fancy themselves more green eyeshade accountants than hostage takers. But it’s true that the GOP’s weaponized approach made them look like irresponsible bad guys, at least in the mainstream media.
These battles haven’t been a total loss for Republicans. Far more of the Bush tax cuts have survived than once seemed likely. Sequestration has contained spending growth. But because sequestration hits defense spending as well as social programs, a lot of Republicans are as anxious for relief as the Democrats. This in turn annoys the party’s strongest fiscal conservatives. Why trust promises of future spending cuts when the leadership seems willing to roll back the ones already in effect?
Conservative activists are irritated by the fact they have little to show for the last time Republicans held the White House and Congress simultaneously — and probably feel a little guilty they didn’t do more to pressure Republicans at the time. So they have made up for it by pressuring Republicans to do things they don’t have enough power to do. And because the Republican leadership frequently says it will fight next time and then next time doesn’t come, their pleas for patience fall on deaf ears.
That’s true even among members of the House. A key group of fiscal conservatives clearly lacks confidence in the leadership but doesn’t have the votes or a plan to replace them.
While there has been substantial short-term deficit reduction, the fiscal picture over the longer term keeps getting bleaker. All conservative lawmakers can do is vote for bills they correctly see as entirely inadequate to fix the challenges facing the country — or deny leadership the votes to pass anything, except by working with the Democrats.
Thus the party of fiscal discipline often doesn’t seem disciplined at all.
By: W. James Antle, lll, The Week, March 30, 2015
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 