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“Highly Situational Principles”: How The Vaccine Controversy Shows The Limits Of GOP Libertarianism

As a demonstration that anything can become political and you never know what issue is going to take over a campaign, every potential presidential candidate is now thinking very carefully about what they should say on the topic of childhood immunizations. Chris Christie kicked things off when he answered a question about a spreading measles outbreak with some comments about parental choice that he sort-of walked back, but the real news came when Rand Paul — a graduate of Duke University medical school, which I’m fairly certain is a real thing — gave an interview to CNBC in which he said, “I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”

Needless to say, this is utterly bogus. What Paul should have noted was that this question has been studied exhaustively, and there is no evidence whatsoever that vaccines cause autism or any other “mental disorder.”

But if you thought that every GOP candidate would be rushing to pander to people’s fears about big government forcing them to stick needles in their kids, you’d be wrong. In fact, the ones we’ve heard from so far have been clearly pro-vaccine. And this shows just where the limits of libertarianism within the Republican Party are.

As the New York Times noted this morning, Mike Huckabee has in the past advocated that vaccines be widely used, and specifically dismissed the debunked connection to autism, while Rick Perry has also touted his administration’s efforts to increase vaccination. You’ll recall that Perry was criticized by his Republican opponents in 2012 for mandating that girls in Texas public schools receive the HPV vaccine (though he eventually reversed himself when he was convinced by other Texas conservatives that giving a 10-year-old girl a shot to prevent her from getting cervical cancer after she becomes an adult would obviously turn her into a sex maniac). Ben Carson also made clear that mandatory vaccination is critical to preventing disease, no matter what religious or philosophical objections people might have. John Boehner too said that every child should be vaccinated.

While there are a few candidates we haven’t yet heard from, it may be surprising that Paul isn’t getting more company; indeed, he’s probably surprised, given how much Republicans have talked about individual liberty in the last few years. Paul doesn’t deny that there are risks to not vaccinating children, but he says that it’s a matter of personal freedom: parents, not the government, should make the choice. However, it turns out that other Republicans don’t agree. In this case they believe that the welfare of the community trumps the individual’s right to decide.

What that tells us is that the broader Republican commitment to libertarian principles is highly situational. Libertarians laud themselves for their philosophical consistency (though Rand Paul is a quasi-libertarian at most), but ordinary conservatives are picking and choosing based on who’s getting what and who’s paying what. In the case of something like guns, where there’s an analogous situation (individuals want to make a choice that potentially endangers others), conservatives see the gun owner getting a benefit, and one many of them enjoy. When they say that companies should be released from environmental regulations, they’re thinking about people and organizations they admire getting the benefit of unconstrained market freedom, and the cost (environmental degradation) is something they’re only marginally concerned about.

But in the case of vaccines, the beneficiaries are a bunch of wackos and conspiracy theorists who are gaining nothing more than the ability to endanger their own children, at the cost of endangering everybody else’s children. And I’m guessing it also matters that a lot of the vaccine truthers who get attention are liberals, the Marin County types who think that because they feed their children organic food that the kids will have super-charged immune systems and therefore can’t become sick. (It should be noted that vaccine trutherism is a non-partisan affliction: liberals are no more likely than conservatives to think vaccines cause autism.)

What’s more, while it’s also true that advocating for vaccines requires conservatives to agree with Science, this issue isn’t like climate change, where many on the right think the entire scientific community is engaged in a vast conspiracy of deception. On climate, people fear that they’ll lose something (like their SUVs) and have to change their lifestyle in order to address the problem; the issue also threatens their traditional allies in the energy industry. There are few such considerations in the vaccine issue.

So the vaccine issue demonstrates that while nearly every Republican agrees with libertarian ideas on some issues, this doesn’t necessarily reflect just an inviolable philosophical commitment to individual liberty. When being a libertarian means getting something they want without having to give up anything they like, they’re happy to wave the anti-government flag. But if it means their kids might get sick because some people are dumb enough to take their medical advice from Jenny McCarthy, the needs of the many begin to look much more pressing than the delusions of the few.

 

By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, February 3, 2015

February 6, 2015 Posted by | Communicable Diseases, GOP, Libertarians | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“A Dangerous Direction”: Corporate Tax Break Scheme Is Gaining A Momentum We Must Stop

There is no real argument over whether the nation needs to do more to improve its infrastructure – its transportation, water, power and information networks. But there is an argument over how best to pay for it all – and that argument is increasingly turning in a dangerous direction.

Financially stressed working-class households who are at best treading water, if not actually sinking, in today’s economy aren’t eager to dig deeper into their own pockets to foot the bill. That’s even more true of the plutocrat class, which has an army of lobbyists at the ready to shut down any suggestion that those who arguably would benefit the most from such things as better roads and public transportation should shoulder the larger share of the load.

Politicians of both parties in Washington are therefore increasingly relying on one of the schemes in the voodoo economics toolbox: give corporations hoarding money overseas to avoid taxation a form of tax holiday in exchange for increased corporate funding for infrastructure.

The Bond Buyer financial news site reports that Sen. Rand Paul (R-TX) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) are close to agreeing on a plan that would give multinationals a deep tax reduction on money they currently have stashed overseas if they bring the money back into the United States, also known as repatriation. Money collected would be deposited into the Highway Trust Fund, which is dedicated to paying for federal transportation projects.

Paul’s promoting of this idea is not new; he had a bill last year that would have permanently cut the tax rate on profits corporations hold overseas, with the funds going into an emergency fund for what it considered high-priority highway projects. But his collaboration with Boxer is likely to give the idea more political momentum.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), told the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week that raising the gasoline tax to pay for transportation improvements – the most logical near-term solution since that tax hasn’t been raised in almost 22 years – is off the table in his committee. Instead, “the number one source that’s being talked about is this repatriation of funds,” he said, according to The Hill newspaper.

Rep. John Delaney (D-MD) is a leading proponent of a repatriation-for-transportation-funding scheme. In December he filed a bill expected to be reintroduced this year that would allow multinational corporations to bring back overseas profits at a tax rate of 8.75 percent instead of the current statutory tax rate of 35 percent. The revenue collected would be placed in the Highway Trust Fund and in a $50 billion America Infrastructure Fund, which would be used to leverage up to $750 billion worth of state, local and private funding for infrastructure projects around the country.

With the White House giving its tacit blessing to such schemes while refusing to support proposals to raise funding in other ways, tapping profits now held overseas at a deeply discounted tax rate is becoming the default position for how to begin covering a more-than-$1 trillion infrastructure investment deficit.

But is rewarding tax avoidance really the way to fund our public infrastructure needs?

The biggest problem with the Delaney proposal, and the similar proposal from Paul, is that “it would allow companies such as Apple and Microsoft, which have parked hundreds of billions of dollars of US profits in offshore tax havens, to pay a US tax rate of no more than of 8.75 percent, instead of the more than 30 percent tax they should pay on these profits,” says an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice.

These profits – more than $2 trillion – are usually laundered through foreign subsidiaries in low-tax or no-tax countries in ways designed to avoid US taxes. That can be done as simply as having that online purchase you think you are making through an American-based company actually handled by a Swiss or Irish subsidiary, or by transferring a patent to an overseas subsidiary so that revenues on licensing that patent flow through the subsidiary. Sometimes, the money isn’t even actually overseas, but is deposited in US banks and is being used for domestic purposes. In any event, regardless of where the money ends up being deposited, it is not “trapped overseas,” as corporate lobbyists and their supporters in Congress often say; it’s just that they don’t want to pay a higher tax on that money.

The last time corporations got a repatriation tax holiday in exchange for the promise to use the profits in job-creating investments, in 2004, corporations instead ended up using the money brought back into the country to boost shareholder dividends and buy back stock (which drives up stock prices and, often, the compensation of CEOs). There is little reason to believe that the same thing wouldn’t happen again in 2015.

Setting a bargain-basement tax rate for profits booked through foreign subsidiaries serves as nothing more than an incentive for corporations to escalate the schemes – or a wedge to convince lawmakers that if an ultra-low corporate tax rate is good for profits repatriated from overseas, perhaps all corporate profits should be taxed at that rate.

In any event, it is the rest of us who end up being the losers. When multinational corporations don’t pay their fair share in taxes, the rest of us have to make up the difference – or suffer the inability to pay for the things that we need, like good roads and public transportation. That includes businesses who don’t have the capacity to set up the fancy tax dodges that their competitors use.

What we need is honest tax reform that makes corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share, closing the door for good on the loopholes and schemes they use to avoid paying taxes. We also need an honest and equitable way to pay for the infrastructure improvements we need. Both are possible, but not without considerable heat from an aroused public. Congress will have to decide this year how it will pay for a multiyear transportation bill. We can’t let the default option be coins from the table of corporate tax avoidance.

 

By: Isaiah J. Poole, Campaign For America’s Future, January 26, 2015

January 28, 2015 Posted by | Corporate Welfare, Multinational Corporations, Tax Loopholes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Plutocrat Politburo”: The Koch Brothers Don’t Care If You Care About Their Plans To Buy 2016 Election

The Koch brothers are done being shy. That’s the conclusion one would have to draw from the fact that they just announced that they hope to spend $889 million on the 2016 election, an unprecedented amount of outside money. It won’t all be theirs — they’re assembling a kind of Plutocrat Politburo, a group of billionaires and zillionaires who will contribute to the cause — but with a combined worth of over $80 billion, they’ll surely be the ones opening their ample wallets the widest and determining the strategy and the agenda.

But unlike some previous reporting on Charles and David’s political efforts, this revelation — which comes from a gathering in beautiful Rancho Mirage of Freedom Partners, the organization through which the Kochs and their allies will distribute all these millions — didn’t require any secret meetings with anonymous sources to unearth. They just told everyone. Here’s the Post’s story on it, here’s the New York Times’ story on it, and here’s Politico’s story on it, all complete with ample details and on-the-record quotes. Reporters may not have been invited into the private meetings at the gathering, but they were allowed to hang around and talk to the participants. And no fewer than four potential GOP presidential candidates (Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz) showed up as well, obviously unconcerned about any charge that they’re kowtowing to the uber-rich.

So the Kochs appear to have concluded that the efforts by Democrats (especially Harry Reid) to turn the Koch name into a symbol of everything that’s wrong in American politics have failed. No longer must they cower in their mansions and take pains to conceal their political spending, fearful of the piercing barbs aimed by liberal politicians and commentators, when all they want is for Americans to fully appreciate the majesty of laissez-faire economics. Free at last, free at last, thank Citizens United, they’re free at last.

If you were expecting journalists to express much consternation at the idea that a group of the super-wealthy are openly announcing their intention to buy the next election, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, the news is being reported more like that of a record-breaking contract for a professional athlete: wonder at the sums involved, but precious little moral outrage. That’s mostly because political reporters tend to believe that election campaigns are already nothing but a parade of deception and manipulation, an enterprise that’s inherently corrupt. So what’s a little more corruption?

There’s no doubt that the behind-the-scenes machinations are fascinating to anyone interested in politics. By putting themselves on par with or even above the parties, the Kochs will make the conflict within the Republican Party even more complex, and potentially vicious, than it already was. Ken Vogel of Politico described the move as “a show of dominance to rival factions on the right, including the Republican National Committee.” What happens when the insurgents are even better funded than what we’ve taken to calling the establishment? It will certainly be interesting to find out.

In any case, the Kochs are probably right that they have little to lose by being public about their plans. Yes, they’ll have to absorb some stern editorials, and maybe even some ads from the DNC criticizing Republican politicians for associating with them. But weighed against what they have to gain by putting nearly a billion dollars into the next presidential campaign — more than the two parties spent, combined, in 2012 — that’s a price so small it’s barely worth worrying about.

In his 2003 novel Jennifer Government, Max Barry imagines a future in which the penetration of capitalism and marketing has become so total that people take the names of their corporate employers as their own last names; characters are called things like John Nike, Nathaniel ExxonMobil, and Calvin McDonalds.

We may not have gotten quite that far yet, but the next Republican president — whether that person is elected in 2016 or after — will have been sponsored, supported, elevated, and outfitted by the Koch brothers and their friends. Should a Republican candidate they don’t like show promise in the primaries, he will surely be crushed by the awesome machine they’re building. The winner may not take their name (Scott Walker-Koch, perhaps?), but he or she will be in their debt to a degree we have not previously contemplated. And the consensus will be that that’s just how things work now.

 

By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, January 27, 2015

January 28, 2015 Posted by | Democracy, Election 2016, Koch Brothers | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“There Are Things You Simply Don’t Do”: Boehner Willing To Partner With A Foreign Government To Undermine American Foreign Policy

On the record, President Obama and his team have said very little about congressional Republicans partnering with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to derail international nuclear talks with Iran. Administration officials said the president will not meet with Netanyahu during his March trip, but that’s only to prevent the appearance of interference with the Israeli election to be held two weeks later.

Behind the scenes, however, it seems the White House isn’t pleased.

“Senior American official” as quoted by Haaretz: “We thought we’ve seen everything. But Bibi managed to surprise even us. There are things you simply don’t do. He spat in our face publicly and that’s no way to behave. Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price.”

Josh Marshall added that even American Jewish groups “who seldom allow any daylight between themselves and the Israeli government appear shocked by Netanyahu’s move and are having difficulty defending it.”

There are things you simply don’t do.

I’ve been thinking about why this story strikes me as so important, and I realize that on the surface, it may not seem shocking to everyone. Republicans oppose the diplomacy with Iran; Netanyahu opposes the diplomacy with Iran. Perhaps their partnership was predictable?

Sure, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) ignored U.S. protocol by circumventing the administration and reaching out to a foreign leader on his own, but given the degree to which Republicans have abandoned traditional norms in the Obama era, maybe this isn’t that startling, either.

The problem, however, which I fear has been largely overlooked, is that it’s genuinely dangerous for the federal government to try to operate this way.

I’m reminded of an incident from August, near the height of the crisis involving Central American children reaching the U.S. border, when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) traveled to Guatemala. While there, the senator met with leading Guatemalan officials, including their president, and told them that the problem was Obama’s problem, not theirs.

In other words, an American senator visited with foreign leaders on foreign soil, denounced the American president, and undermined American foreign policy. During the Bush/Cheney era, Republicans used to characterize such moves as borderline treasonous.

Five months later, the GOP en masse is working to cut off American-led international talks at the knees.

The point, of course, is that in the Obama era, Republicans have no use for the maxim about politics stopping “at the water’s edge.” For many GOP lawmakers, there is no American foreign policy – there’s the president’s foreign policy and there’s a Republican foreign policy. If the latter is at odds with the former, GOP officials are comfortable taking deliberate steps to undermine the White House.

There is no real precedent for this in the American tradition. The U.S. system just isn’t supposed to work this way – because it can’t. Max Fisher’s take on this rings true:

To be very clear, this is not just a breach of protocol: it’s a very real problem for American foreign policy. The Supreme Court has codified into law the idea that only the president is allowed to make foreign policy, and not Congress, because if there are two branches of government setting foreign policy then America effectively has two foreign policies.

The idea is that the US government needs to be a single unified entity on the world stage in order to conduct effective foreign policy. Letting the president and Congress independently set their own foreign policies would lead to chaos. It would be extremely confusing for foreign leaders, and foreign publics, who don’t always understand how domestic American politics work, and could very easily misread which of the two branches is actually setting the agenda.

All of which leads us back to this week. The United States and our allies have reached a delicate stage of diplomacy on a key issue, but as far as congressional Republicans are concerned, the United States isn’t really at the negotiating table at all – the Obama administration is. GOP lawmakers not only disapprove of the process, and they not only have no qualms about trying to sabotage the international talks, they’re even willing to partner with a foreign government to undermine American foreign policy.

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I honestly don’t think this has ever happened before, at least not in our country. In effect, Boehner has invited Netanyahu to play the legislative branch of the U.S. government against the executive branch of the U.S. government, and the Israeli prime minister is happy to accept that invitation.

Cynicism about our politics is easy, but this isn’t just the latest outrage of the week. We’re talking about the ability of the United States to conduct foreign policy.

There are things you simply don’t do – and right now, Republicans are doing them.

 

By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 23, 2015

January 25, 2015 Posted by | Foreign Policy, Israel, John Boehner | , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Latest Hostage”: Fact-Checking Republicans On Social Security Disability

We’re going to be hearing a lot about the Social Security Disability program over the next few months. That’s because it is the latest “hostage” the Republicans have decided to use as leverage to get President Obama and Democrats to give them what they want. You can read more about all that here, but it comes down to this:

The largely overlooked change puts a new restriction on the routine transfer of tax revenues between the traditional Social Security retirement trust fund and the Social Security disability program. The transfers, known as reallocation, had historically been routine…

The House GOP’s rule change would still allow for a reallocation from the retirement fund to shore up the disability fund — but only if an accompanying proposal “improves the overall financial health of the combined Social Security Trust Funds,” per the rule…While that language is vague, experts say it would likely mean any reallocation would have to be balanced by new revenues or benefit cuts.

As you can see, its simply the GOP’s latest version of, “give us what we want, or else…”

In order to prime the pump, Republicans are already attempting to take on the “slackers” who rely on the disability program. Exhibit A: Sen. Rand Paul.

The first thing I’d like to point out is that – from these remarks – it appears as though Sen. Paul assumes that only those disabilities that are visible physically are real disabilities. We all know that is not true.

But PolitiFact did a thorough job of fact-checking Sen. Paul’s statements. And in so doing, provided us with a lot of information that is going to come in very handy as this whole hostage situation unfolds. On the overall accusations of wide-spread fraud, waste and abuse, here are the facts:

After an audit of disability insurance in 2013, the Government Accountability Office estimated that in fiscal year 2011, the Social Security Administration made $1.29 billion in potential cash benefit overpayments to about 36,000 individuals who were working and making more than $1,100 a month (the limit to receive disability benefits).

The 36,000 people receiving improper payments, while a lot on paper, represent about 0.4 percent of all beneficiaries, the report said.

There are other ways Social Security gives out benefits to those not deserving, but paying people already working is about 72 percent of the problem, according to the Social Security Administration. Factoring that in, the GAO estimates overpayments equaled $1.62 billion, or 1.27 percent of all disability benefits, in 2011. It’s a lot of money, but the disability program is a $128 billion program.

Got that? The level of fraud we’re talking about is 1.27% of benefits paid. As a friend of mine would say, “Now run and tell that!”

 

By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, January 17, 2015

January 19, 2015 Posted by | Republicans, Social Security, Social Security Disability Fund | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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