Kamber's Comments

Concealed Carry

2009-09-17T12:44:00.000-05:00

I think the NRA, gun-industry backed Concealed Carry law is supposed to work like this:

John Q. Citizen, concerned about his personal safety, gets a license to carry a concealed gun. One day he’s walking down the street and a bad guy tries to rob him. John Q. Citizen, under the guise of reaching for his wallet, pulls out his gun and disarms, wounds, or maybe even kills the bad guy. Thousands cheer. The world becomes a safer place.

This is the way it actually works:

· Same scenario, except that when John Q. Citizen reaches for his concealed weapon, the bad guy blows John Q’s brains out.
· Same scenario, except that when John Q. Citizen reaches for his concealed weapon, he aims wrong and blows his own brains out.
· Two John Q. Citizens get into an argument about whether their beer tastes better or is less filling. To settle the matter, they pull out their concealed weapons, blow each other’s brains out, and take out a couple of innocent bystanders for good measure.
· John Q. Criminal, who may not yet have been convicted of a felony, gets a license to carry a concealed weapon which he then carries, concealed, to commit his next violent felony.

The vast majority of states now have some form of concealed carry law. Some are responsible. Some are mind-boggingly irresponsible, and they would become the norm if the gun industry has its way.

There are many things in American politics that are myths, things we think are true but aren’t. The notion that making it easier for people to carry concealed weapons makes us safer is not a myth. It is a big bad lie.

In 1987 Florida became the first state to pass a concealed carry law; it is now the most violent state in the country. A 1995 University of Maryland study of three concealed carry states, including Florida found that gun homicides increased by an average of 26 percent, while other types of homicide did not increase.

A study by the Violence Policy Center found that in Texas concealed carry license holders were arrested for weapons-related offenses at a 22 percent higher rate than the general population.

The public opposes concealed carry laws by more than two to one. Police strongly oppose concealed carry laws because they know those laws put them at greater risk. An FBI study of 51 incidents where 54 police officers were killed found that 85percent never fired their gun and 20 percent were killed with their own gun. And the police are far better trained than the public. John Q. Citizen would not have even that good a track record.

Concealed carry laws are good for only two groups of people--the gun industry and criminals. They make life more dangerous for everyone else.

Why they call it the "Party of New Ideas"

2009-06-11T09:07:00.001-05:00

The first 100 days of the Obama Administration were devastating to what remains of the GOP. The Party appeared quaint, outdated and rudderless. Maybe even angry and frazzled.

But the GOP is back! With new ideas.

For instance: while Democrats in Congress fussed with legislation to curb the voracious appetites of the credit card companies, Republicans were conflicted. Sure, it was good to help consumers, but their dwindling base includes: the credit card companies.

That’s when the party’s “new ideas” people came up with a two-fer: an amendment Democrats hate that warms the hearts and holsters of the GOP’s gun lobby constituency. Their amendment to the credit card bill allows loaded weapons in national parks. Now when you pack for Yellowstone, you can really be “packing”. Thanks to the GOP “new ideas”, gun-toting vacationers with frayed nerves can erupt right along with Old Faithful.

That was just a start. The “new ideas” keep bubbling for the GOP.

This week they came up with their own health care reform proposal. What is exciting about their new healthcare system is that it keeps in place the same winners and losers of the old system. And unlike the auto bailout where UAW members must take pay cuts, insurance company executives will continue to make humongous salaries with the usual year-end bonuses for denying coverage for sick people.

The “Patients Choice Act of 2009” was introduced by Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard Burr of North Carolina. It provides a refundable tax credit of $5,710 per family. Okay, so health insurance for a family of four costs $12,700, but no plan is perfect. “This puts Republican ideas in the middle of the fight,” boasted Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a House sponsor of the bill. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee proudly called it “a health care plan worthy of the party of Abraham Lincoln.”

Inside the conference hall the most appreciated “new idea” was for Republicans to quit dwelling on their own weaknesses and begin analyzing what’s wrong with the Democrats. There was a huge sigh of relief and thunderous applause when internal bickering and navel-gazing gave way to renaming the opposition the “Democrat Socialist Movement” or some such. With help from Texas secessionists and Fox News, this little PR stunt could, just possibly, have all the impact of the Tea Bag rebellion.

Perhaps the biggest “new idea” came from GOP Party Chair Michael Steele. Fighting for his job, he came up with a suggestion that left the party faithful gasping: No more pussyfooting around President Obama’s personal popularity--said Steele,“Let’s take him on!”

At this writing, party strategists aren’t quite sure how this will work. Obama is a gifted speaker with an approval rating in the high 70s whose message exudes an optimism and confidence that the American people appear to need.

The Steele plan features a rebuttal lineup of such GOP stalwarts as former Vice President Cheney, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, each with poll numbers in the single digits and sinking. It doesn’t get any better in the Congress where minority leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are known as Gloom and Doom. Even conservatives get suicidal following their many funereal press conferences claiming Obama’s policies will end western civilization as we know it.

That’s the challenge Steele threw at them, and it was so staggering, so unexpected, that it had its desired result: GOP national committee members were so nonplussed they went home without throwing him under the bus.

How to save the GOP

2009-05-18T09:29:00.001-05:00

There is growing concern over the recent loss of such American icons as Circuit City, the Pontiac Firebird and the Republican Party.

Circuit City and the Firebird are gone, done in by a weak economy. The GOP has been done in by much more than the economy, but there are those who believe the party can be saved, perhaps should be saved, if you really believe our country is better off with two political parties even if one of them has spent the past two decades bad-mouthing the federal government it wants to run.

It is not a pretty picture.

Among Republicans, there are 15 million true believers. They listen to Rush Limbaugh every day, believe everything he says and worship the airwaves he unbalances.

Then there are the moderates, thoughtful, hopeful their party will come to grips with problems that trouble average citizens. At last count, there were nine of these (eight, if Rush has his way with Colin Powell).

Even though the numbers favor Rush and the ditto-heads, Republicans on Capitol Hill don’t want to write off the moderates. Losing a “liberal” like Arlen Specter was okay, but those two women Senators up in Maine should be saved if the East Coast is not to be abandoned altogether.

Southern officeholders, those with the safe seats who can and do say the most outrageous things that leave GOP voters elsewhere gasping and changing their registration, are to do what they were taught as children: to be silent and let the adults speak.

The party has to get some new, attractive, young leaders. Newt Gingrich has been around for such a long time people often forget why they don’t like him. Minority whip Eric Cantor is a bright young man who has good ideas but comes across as someone about to foreclose on your house. He and the party also need reminding that while “no” may be a tactic, it is not a policy for rebuilding America.

Above all, the party must put a “cone of silence” over Dick Cheney. They’ve got to get the man to shut up. During his last year in office, Cheney was rarely heard from, and when the economy came apart at the seams he had nothing to say, leaving all the heavy-thinking to W (and we know how that turned out).

When they left the White House, W’s approval ratings were the lowest of any president, ever, but compared to Cheney he was FDR. A tight-lipped W went back to Texas, leaving his legacy to the Ari Fleishers and Fox News. Cheney bounded out of his bunker as if on steroids, appearing on more channels than “Law and Order” re-runs, praising torture and expressing disgust at Republicans like Powell.

Finally, Republicans have to get a grip on taxes. Despite everything Grover Norquist has told them, cutting taxes does not solve every problem. The party needs to understand that our government can’t function without taxes. Despite what Rush tells you, taxes are needed for more than just Medicaid and food stamps. Taxes pay for schools and highways and sewer systems. Taxes pay for our military war machine that the GOP leadership can’t have enough of—they keep throwing money (taxpayer money) at new weapons systems the Pentagon says it doesn’t need.

While the GOP picture may look grim now, we Democrats have been there. We know they just might be one obscure community organizer away from turning it around.

At Last

2009-05-07T11:49:00.000-05:00

At last, Republicans have a healthcare plan. Carefully crafted by master spinner Frank Luntz, their plan is how to kill the Democratic healthcare plan.

President Obama has made health care his top legislative issue. He wants a plan that provides affordable health care for every American. Polls show that the American people like that idea and feel it can’t come too soon.

Of course, on an issue where the concerns of average people are at odds with a profit-making industry, the GOP feels compelled to step in and protect the industry.

This is in their tradition. It’s why they fought Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. Often there are repercussions at the polls, but Republicans must be true to their principals, or at least the ones who fund their campaigns.

I, for one, am flabbergasted that Obama and this Congress s are this close to what we’ve been dreaming of and hallucinating about ever since President Truman first proposed universal health care in 1948.

We’re almost there, and it’s kind of scary.

You know how I first knew we might actually win? This week when Karen Ignagni, head honcho of the insurance lobby, practically begged the Congress to slap the industry with new regulations, forcing them to behave. “We have to have a complete overhaul of the rules,” she implored. Stop us before we gouge again! There wasn’t a dry eye among onlookers or the Senate Finance Committee.

Little wonder that Republicans want our dysfunctional healthcare system to stay just the way it is, even though it bankrupts families and leaves 46 million without coverage. America is the only country in the world to use a business model to provide health care. The purpose of business is to make a profit. Billions in profit. Now those profits are at risk.

Enter Frank Luntz, silver-tongued devil who can make “pre-existing condition” sound like you won the lottery. He gave desperate Congressional Republicans a 26-page memo telling them now to stop legislation that everyone wants. Pretend to be “vocally and passionately on the side of reform”, he advises, but then mislead like crazy with arguments like these:

· “It could lead to the government rationing care, making people stand in line.” (46 million people are asking where the line forms so they can get in it).
· “Scare people. Especially about their children.” (I don’t think this involves Bristol Palin, but it might).
· “Leave Obama out of it.” Luntz concedes the President is too popular even for smoke & mirrors to work.
· “It could lead to the government setting standards of care. Do you want a bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor?” Interesting he should ask. With our current system, it’s the insurance company standing between patients and their doctors. In her testimony to the Senate Finance Committee this week, Dr. Margaret Flowers observed that “health insurance administrators are practicing medicine without a medical license.”

What Republicans worry about most is the “public option” that Democrats consider essential to genuine reform. GOP leaders told reporters that government-run coverage would drive private insurers out of business. The government, they complain, could undercut private insurers with lower prices…

That’s their best argument against?

Better get back to the Luntz playbook: “Let’s talk about those long lines in Canada…”

Anyone in Canada want to trade their healthcare system for ours?

Didn’t think so.

Say goodnight, Frank.

Gunds and good health

2009-04-07T16:33:00.001-05:00

The Party of No continues to lose moderates and independents. The GOP alternative budget drew more snickers than votes. But as their base shrinks, two well-heeled supporters-- the National Rifle Association and the health insurance industry--
have nowhere else to go.

These are two of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, and probably the most reviled.

No one knows who kills more in America: guns, or a dysfunctional healthcare system that allows thousands of uninsured to die every year for lack of medical care.

Guns are recession-proof. The worse things are, the more people want guns. The business is booming, literally.

In the past month there have been seven mass shootings. Average people going loony over home foreclosures and lost jobs are more likely to seek assault weapons than counseling.

GOP policies have helped create a society where it is easier to buy an AK 47 than a birth control pill. The party champions 2nd Amendment rights while strident voices on cable TV and talk radio demonize elected leadership and cry for armed rebellion. As someone said, “strong words appeal to weak minds” and that appears to be true with both guns and health care.

Democrats in Congress are trying to solve a healthcare crisis that is not only killing us but bankrupting our economy. President Obama is pushing for the biggest healthcare reform since Lyndon Johnson pushed through Medicare in 1965. LBJ did that with minimal Republican support in Congress and Obama will have to do the same this year.

Republicans appear more concerned about the welfare of the health insurance companies than the health of their constituents. Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is bitterly opposed to Obama’s idea of a public insurance option that would drive down prices and keep private insurers in check.

The good news is that Democratic chairs of five key congressional committees support it and are willing to go the reconciliation route to get it passed.

In opposition, the weakest crutch the GOP leadership has to lean on is a “citizens” campaign headed up by a guy named Rick Scott. As has been reported all over town, Scott is a charlatan. He is the best evidence we have that the health insurance industry needs reform.

Scott headed up Columbia/HCA, the largest health care company in the world, until he was ousted by his own board of directors in 1997 for over-billing state and federal Medicare and Medicaid programs. The company pled guilty and paid $1.7 billion to settle.

Would you buy a healthcare policy from this man? Congressman Mike Burgess, Republican of Texas and a member of the House health subcommittee, just might.

Burgess said in a recent interview that he had invited Scott to meet with him because he liked what he had been saying.

Strong words appeal to weak minds? Stay tuned.

Southern Pork

2009-03-24T15:09:00.000-05:00

Even with the economy reeling, conservatives in Congress are demanding a boost in military spending; confirming once again that the largest special interest group in Washington is the Department of Defense.

Republicans use patriotism and fear to bludgeon Democrats into supporting bigger and bigger defense expenditures. Southern senators –including the Democrat’s Blue Dogs --view military spending as a jobs program.

They want to devote tens of billions of the stimulus package to the military. “If bridges need fixing, so too do the tools with which our military fights,” wrote a military analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

U.S. military spending is close to $1 trillion a year. No other nation spends even one-tenth as much. The costs for our war machine equal the military spending of the globe combined. You could put together the next 13 largest navies and ours would still be larger. Not to mention that 11 of those navies are our allies.

And do we really need military bases all over the world?

Military spending increased 60% since George W took office in 2001, not including the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he kept off the books.

At a press conference earlier this month, President Obama took aim at the Pentagon when he said “we are spending money on things that we don’t need, and we are paying more than we need to pay.”

DOD is legendary for its cost overruns. A 2008 GAO report showed that from 2000-07 the cost of major new defense programs had grown some $300 billion over original estimates. Army Times notes the typical defense system was 26% over budget and 21 months behind schedule, but its Tim Geithner the GOP hawks scream at for wasting taxpayer dollars.

The amount we waste on unnecessary weapons systems would pave miles of highways and build thousands of new classrooms. We’ve spent zillions on missile systems that in tests are successful only 50% of the time even when we know the exact flight path of the missile.

Some make the point that lavish new weapons systems aren’t needed to fight a foe that has relied on box-cutters for its most destructive attack.

But you won’t hear that from Republicans in Congress. They prefer to rant and rail about money Democrats want to spend to provide every American with health care. As Rep. Joe Barton of Texas put it before Obama’s healthcare summit: “Not all of the Democrats’ ideas are objectionable. Just nearly all.”

Stuck in their ideology

2009-03-06T15:41:00.000-05:00

With medical bills bankrupting one American every 30 seconds, strangling business and wrecking family budgets, the cry for healthcare reform is heard loud and clear coast to coast.

On the east coast, here is President Obama speaking to a joint session of Congress: “The cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt—healthcare reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.”

On the West Coast, here is an exasperated Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger venting to the world at large: “You’ve got to listen to the people. If the nation is screaming out loud: ‘We need healthcare reform’. ‘We want to have universal care’. ‘We want to have everyone insured’. ‘We want to bring the costs down’. ‘We want everyone to have access.’ I mean, that’s what they want; that’s what you do. So you’ve got to do what the people want you to do rather than getting stuck in your ideology.”

And of course here’s the response from GOP House Minority Leader John (stuck in his ideology) Boehner: “We can’t have a health system run by the government.”

Why not?

That’s what the rest of the industrialized world has and they spend half what we do for health care and they cover everyone while our system leaves nearly 50 million Americans with no coverage and millions more underinsured.

President Obama has made healthcare his top fiscal priority, linking health reform to a strong economy: “There are some people who are making the argument that we can’t do anything about health care because the economy comes first. They don’t understand that health care is the biggest component of our economy and, when it’s broken, that affects everything.”

That view is shared by America’s Agenda: Health Care for All, a non-profit organization of labor and business leaders created to support statewide healthcare reform campaigns. Their efforts over the past several years have produced useful models for national reform legislation.

America’s Agenda is sponsoring a series of “Summit Conversations” designed to highlight the emerging national consensus on key components of a 21st century healthcare system. The first Summit was held Feb. 28 at the University of Miami, hosted by President Donna Shalala. An impressive panel of experts agreed we can’t have economic recovery without reforming health care.

“This will sink the economy permanently if we don’t solve it now,” said Billy Tauzin, CEO of PhRMA.

“We’re going to lose our entire auto industry,” said former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt.

Doug Dority, president of America’s Agenda and former head of the United Food & Commercial Workers, put the issue in perspective for the people he used to argue with across the bargaining table: “No employer can sustain a double-digit growth in healthcare costs year after year after year. The system we have is destined to collapse.”

This week when President Obama invited leaders of both parties to a White House Summit on Health Care, talks of compromise were drowned out by rampant ideology. Obama is proposing a solution that gives Americans the choice of keeping their existing insurance plan or enrolling in a new public option. That’s a no-no for conservatives. The very notion of government competing with private insurers drives them crazy. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he’s willing to work with Democrats but “no public option” was where he drew his ideological line in the sand.

Further roiling the ideological waters is a new multimillion dollar ad campaign against government-run health care launched by Conservatives for Patients Rights. This group is headed by Richard Scott who obviously knows something about the cause of soaring healthcare costs. In 1997 he was forced to resign as CEO of HCA after a federal investigation of Medicare fraud resulted in $1.7 billion in fines.

Among the potential areas of compromise, this could be one:

President Obama put $20 billion in his stimulus package to improve health information technology. Efficiency alone will save money and save lives. If Congress is looking for an IT model, look no further than the Veterans Administration. Veterans who become ill while away from home can go into any VA hospital in the country and doctors electronically can pull up their medical records and know how to treat them.

VA, of course, is government-run.

The 'suits' and their fight for workers

2009-02-20T11:01:00.000-05:00

If laws were made by working men and women who punch time clocks, Right to Work would be a sick joke and unions would prosper. Unions give workers rights on the job, guaranteed in writing. Workers know that without a contract every aspect of their employment can be changed, at any time for any reason, by the boss.

But laws are made by guys in three-piece suits who have no idea what it’s like to work for a living.

Big business is spending millions to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would make it easier for workers to join unions. Tom Donahue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, calls the card-check bill “payback” that unions expect in return for supporting Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Obama sees strong unions not as payback but an essential part of his effort to rebuild the middle class, the chief bulwark of a strong American economy.

Opponents wrap themselves in the flag, shocked, shocked, that card-check would deprive workers of secret ballot elections. Which sounds reasonable except for the fact employers openly violate federal law governing election campaigning.

This is what employers don’t want to give up during the interval before the “secret ballot” elections: The opportunity to intimidate or even fire union supporters and ban organizers from entering the premises or even posting union materials while requiring workers to attend meetings where only the company’s side is presented. The election is held on the employer’s property with workers escorted to the polls by management supervisors.

Obama put it best during the presidential campaign: “If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union. It’s that simple. That’s why I’ve been fighting for it in the Senate and that’s why I’ll make it the law of the land when I’m president of the United States.”

It is uncertain how soon he will push for passage of the bill, knowing the havoc it will wreak with business support of his other legislative goals. But appointing California Rep. Hilda Solis as his Labor Secretary is a good sign. “Unions are vital to the health and strength of our communities, and our workers are the bedrock of our economy,” said Solis, who co-sponsored the card-check bill in the House.

Solis believes in the “American Dream” because she lived it. She is the daughter of immigrants who were blue-collar union workers. She credits unions with securing the wages and benefits that allowed her parents to move their family into the middle class, send their children to college and raise a daughter who was elected to Congress.

As Labor Secretary, she inherits a department that for eight years abandoned its mission to protect workers. A good example is OSHA, where the Bush administration director said “employers, not workers”, were the agency’s real customers.

One thing is clear: our nation will never climb out of the abyss of economic meltdown by pushing harder on its citizens for cheaper wages. Rebuilding our infrastructure begins with rebuilding our middle class. Beating up on auto workers in bailout hearings and demanding they take less pay if their corporations are to survive is a defeatist message.

Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act will revitalize and invigorate not only organized labor but the American economy.

Listening to Rush and the Taliban

2009-02-10T11:48:00.001-05:00

Republicans in Congress keep their ears tuned to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show for marching orders. President Barack Obama may have won an election and world admiration, but to Rush he is “Osama Obama”, a liar, a man with a “perverted mind” who wants to destroy America.

Following Rush’s advice on how to make Obama’s presidency fail, many GOPers are positively giddy with excitement.

“We are far ahead of where we thought we’d be at this time,” said Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, one of the party’s young stars. Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas doesn’t give Rush all the credit—he says the party is learning from the disruptive tactics of the Taliban.

After eight years of creating the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Republicans increasingly feel-- with Rush’s help-- they can block Democrats from solving it.

Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, warned that if a large stimulus plan were not enacted, it would have a “catastrophic” impact on the economy. “It’s in our hands—if we can get this package through, we can turn it around and be back on the road to growth.”

Sen. John McCain told Face the Nation that “I know we’re in trouble. I know America needs a stimulus. But this is not it.” What we need, said McCain, “is tax cuts.”

“Just say no” to big spending after running up record deficits when they were in charge worries some Republicans.

“I’m always concerned when the party takes a negative position on something that should be moving forward,” said Rep. Mike Castle, Republican of Delaware. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania concedes the stimulus bill would save or create 4 million jobs, a welcome message to those 600,000 who lost jobs just last month.

When the RNC met in Washington recently to select a new chair, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky warned they were in danger of becoming “a regional party”. The top Republican in Congress said “every House member from New England is a Democrat.You can walk from Canada to Mexico and from Maine to Arizona without ever leaving a state with a Democratic governor. Not a single Republican senator represents the tens of millions of Americans on the West Coast. And on the East Coast, you can drive from North Carolina to New Hampshire without touching a state in between that has a Republican in the U.S. Senate.”

Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele got off to an embarrassing start as RNC chair when he claimed that “in the history of mankind, government has never created one job.”

Maybe not one job, but how about millions? Since this debate goes back to the Great Depression, there have been lots of reminders of how within the first two months of his presidency FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps created 250,000 jobs and by 1934 other new agencies hired millions more, reducing unemployment from 25% to slightly over 10%.

But Republicans aren’t listening to Steel anyway. Just Rush and the Taliban.

Bipartisan blah

2009-02-04T13:36:00.000-05:00

Give the Republicans credit: they can take any good idea and trash it.

Such as “bipartisanship”.

I liked it election night in his Lincoln Park speech to a wildly cheering crowd that Barack Obama also had comforting words for devastated McCain supporters, telling them that “while I didn’t get your vote, I heard your voices and I’ll be your president too.” I think all America liked that.

In the short time he has been President, Obama has gone the extra miles to encourage bipartisan support for his stimulus package. He has spent more hours with GOP leaders, hearing them out, than W did with Democrats in eight years. I think America liked that too.

So what has it gotten him or his program to revive the economy? Zip.

For Republicans in Congress, there is only one solution to economic recovery, or anything else: tax cuts.

The Bush tax cuts for the very rich is how we got into this mess. Some Republicans never forgave John McCain for voting against the $1.3 trillion measure when it was first introduced. He said it “unduly benefited the wealthy” and was “inappropriate when fighting a war”. He sure had that right (even though as Presidential-candidate McCain he fell in line and vowed to make the cuts permanent).

You probably recall the barrage of op-eds and blogs attacking the President for bucking history in a most un-American way—cutting taxes while waging war.

Ron Brownstein wrote in the Los Angeles Times that “we have always accepted heavier burdens as the price those at home pay to support those under fire at the front.” Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times “our government has asked no sacrifice of civilians other than longer waits at airport security. We’ve even been rewarded with a prize that past generations would have found as jaw-dropping as space travel: a wartime dividend in the form of tax cuts.”

I’ve never understood why the deeper in debt our country gets the more Republicans want to cut taxes. They continue to claim that tax cuts pay for themselves, when every valid study proves they don’t. Both the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s and the Bush tax cuts led to bigger budget deficits.

The Bush legacy is a $10 trillion deficit, but admittedly, rich Americans did very well. According to the IRS, incomes of the top 400 elite doubled to an average of $263 million each annually during the first six years of the Bush term. And gigantic White House tax giveaways allowed these privileged families to pay only 17% tax, down from 23% under Clinton.

How much longer should we expect Obama to wave the olive branch of bipartisanship? His economic remedy creates millions of new jobs and offers middle class tax relief , while Republicans in Congress remain stuck on more tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy who fund their campaigns.

Seems to be that was what the election was all about last November. How did that turn out?

The Growing Republican Headache

2009-01-28T09:47:00.000-05:00

It is pretty much agreed that President Barack Obama has the world’s toughest job. But Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor is a close second. Cantor is the House Republican whip charged with finding a message for his shrunken party.

Kevin Phillips wrote a book back in 1969-- The Emerging Republican Majority--predicting conservative domination of national elections for years to come. President Nixon helped make it come true with his whites-oriented “southern strategy” that turned Dixie into a solid Republican base. Next came wedge issues that had gun lovers and religious fundamentalists flocking to the GOP.

Cantor is a sharp guy. He knows, as did millions around the globe watching the inauguration of a black President, this is a far different America from 1969. The message of God-Guns-Gays that worked so well for Reagan, Bush and Bush now resonates among Democrats only in West Virginia and Alaska.

Over the years the electorate has changed dramatically. Rising numbers of Latinos, Asians, African Americans and gays, all strongly liberal, join young people of all races who follow campaigns on the Internet and vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

In 2002, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority, another book for Eric Cantor to review before grabbing the Excedrin. They described the deep-rooted demographic shifts that are changing American politics. Judis and Teixeira wrote that America’s change from rural life to urban life favors Democrats.

Adding to Cantor’s grief is the observation from Salon.com that educated white-collar professionals have grown steadily and vote Democratic: “They are the new face of America, and for them the GOP’s culture war is both irrelevant and offensive.”

And just before last November’s election, The Atlantic wrote that Democrats were riding “an incredibly diverse coalition, multiracial, well-educated but not especially high-income.” The magazine added: “The good news for Democrats is that their swatches of the American patchwork, although they fit together less well than do the GOP’s, are mostly the swatches that are growing.”

So Cantor and Republicans have a problem. Not only is their base dwindling, but their most popular candidate—Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin—could be poster woman for their discredited God-Guns-Gays style of campaigning.

When Republicans had a similar problem during the FDR years they turned to Madison Avenue’s ad agencies for help. I think that’s how campaign jingles came about. Cantor could look it up.

Solving the Palin Problem

2008-09-30T09:08:00.000-05:00

I don’t have all the details, but I understand angry Republicans are working feverishly to solve their “Palin problem”.

They were ecstatic when Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin first burst onto the scene as Sen. John McCain’s surprise choice to be his running mate. She was gracious, charming and “hot”.

Married to the “first Dude” with three kids named Willow, Trig and Track, the media ate up her life style. On her way to work she could shoot a moose and fire a librarian for not banning books.

In those first giddy days of cheering crowds and words by Teleprompter, no one seemed to worry that her qualifications to be a “heartbeat away from the presidency” rivaled those of Mayberry’s Barney Fife.

It was only after her interviews with Charley Gibson and Katie Couric, hysterically reproduced by Palin look-alike Tiny Fey on Saturday Night Live, that they put her in the Witness Protection Program.

She has become such an embarrassment that many Republicans are demanding she be dropped from the ticket. Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker wrote in National Review Online that if Palin were a man, “we’d all be guffawing.” Parker told how she watches Palin interviews “with held breath” her finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Calling the candidate “clearly out of her league” she wrote “if BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.”

What to do? The fact that Tina Fey is a dead-ringer could be the answer to the GOP dilemma. The idea is to keep her bubbly, charismatic presence on the ticket while not keeping her. Why not replace her with politically-savvy…Tina Fey?

That’s the deal they’re working on.

Republicans have so much as stake in this election they can give Fey just about anything she wants to stand-in for Palin through the election and perhaps the first six months in office.

Palin would replace Fey on 30 Rock but since that’s a scripted show and she’s an accomplished TV performer, NBC might be willing to risk it. Whether the “first Dude” replaces Alex Baldwin is just one of the details to be worked out. As anyone who has ever viewed 30 Rock knows, writers would have no trouble creating roles for Willow, Trig and Track.

Fey, a University of Virginia graduate, is not only a SAG Award-winning writer but a smart businesswoman up to the task of dealing with that burned out building known as the Bush economy. She created and produces 30 Rock that was NBC’s biggest winner in the recent Emmys.

Writing political satire as Fey has done for the past 10 years requires knowledge and understanding of the issues—something that totally eludes Palin. Bringing that quality to the McCain campaign would allow Kathleen Parker and other worried Republicans to loosen the grip on their TV remotes and view with pride, not horror, as their candidate responds to media interviews.

Like I say, they’re still working out the details.

Hillary Voters Know that Palin is a WINO

2008-09-10T08:55:00.001-05:00

The religious right-wing extremists who run the GOP have never liked Sen. John McCain—they consider him a RINO (Republican in Name Only).

So putting party ahead of country, McCain named an unknown, unqualified, self-described “hockey mom” with a Barney Fife resume to be a “heartbeat away from the presidency”.

As a Pentecostal who supports teaching creationism in the schools, Palin is from the farthest fringe of the fundamentalist wing of the GOP.

She has the religious right ecstatic. James Dobson, head of the radio-based ministry Focus on the Family, said he never could vote for McCain but Palin has changed all that. “I’ve not been so excited about a political candidate since Ronald Reagan.”

The cynical McCain not only expects Gov. Sarah Palin to rouse sleeping evangelicals, but to attract “disenchanted” Hillary Clinton supporters.

Hillary’s 18 million voters are a lot smarter than that.

Just as McCain is a RINO to his Republican base, Hillary voters know that on all the issues important to women, Sarah Palin is a WINO (Woman in Name Only).

Palin is dead wrong on every issue important to women, such as equal pay, health care, guns, choice, judicial appointments, stem-cell research, the war and protecting our environment, to mention a few.

From a wealthy rural state, Palin is totally out of touch with the issues that vex the American mainstream.

McCain boasts that Palin has “balanced budgets”. Big deal. Unlike governors in the lower 48 states where the failed Bush economy has forced them to make painful cuts in critical public services, balancing a budget in resources-rich Alaska means sending every resident a dividend check.

Palin charmed the media with her gun-shooting exploits. She once shot a moose, probably on the quiet streets of “downtown” Wasilla where she served as a part-time mayor. Wasilla doesn’t have too many Bloods or Crips or concern over assault weapons that full-time mayors must deal with in places like New York and Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

Striving for a better, fairer America and appealing to the best that is in us, Hillary voters made history when they put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling.

The McCain campaign is counting on a WINO to give us four more years of Bush.

Time for Tuck

2008-07-09T11:42:00.000-05:00

One of John McCain’s Arizona constituents is Dick Tuck.

Remember him? Tuck is the guy who made negative campaigning fun. His favorite victim was President Nixon. During one of Tricky Dick’s “whistle-stop” train tours, Tuck wore a brakeman’s uniform and signaled the engineer to start moving the train in the middle of Nixon’s speech. At a Nixon rally in L.A.’s Chinatown, Tuck put up a “Welcome Nixon” banner that in Chinese read “What about the Hughes loan?”, a reference to a scandalous loan Howard Hughes had made to Nixon’s brother. None of Nixon’s staff could read Chinese so the banner stayed up as a backdrop throughout Nixon’s speech. At Nixon campaign indoor events, Tuck posing as a fire marshal would offer reporters a miniscule count for attendance.

Before it was over Nixon and GOP strategists were muttering oaths and looking anxiously over their shoulders and around corners for the next Tuck attack on their carefully orchestrated campaign.

While Tuck could be worrisome and infuriating, he wasn’t lethal or malicious. Even Nixon supporters found themselves smiling at his antics. Later, Tuck’s roguish rapier wit gave way to the far more effective bludgeoning style of negative campaigning. When the Willie Horton ad appeared in 1988, it spelled the end for both Dukakis and Tuck.

Bur now, with John McCain as the Republican candidate, maybe it’s time for Tuck to come back. Who better than Tuck – now living in Tucson--to prick the hypocrisy of the “Straight Talk Express”? Who better than Tuck to get under McCain’s thin-skin, to bring to the boiling point that legendary McCain temper?

Admittedly, there are problems. Tuck’s demented schemes that tormented Nixon were raucously reported because the media didn’t like Nixon. Today’s mainstream press adores McCain. Also, today’s political skullduggery is conducted more on the Internet than at campaign events.

In the 1960s after the day’s political rally, reporters gathered in the most prominent local hotel bar to regale each other with Tuck’s latest escapade. Reporters don’t drink anymore. No longer is there a Jack Germond holding court with his midnight musings of candidate foibles and consultant mischief that helped educate us all.

Now we have the no-accountability of 527 “swift-boating” campaigns that tarnish the reputation of a decorated Vietnam War hero and convince a wide swath of gullible voters that Barack Obama is the Muslim Manchuria candidate.

No sensible campaign can deal with that.

Which is why we need Tuck.

Wake me when it is over

2008-06-16T08:11:00.000-05:00

Even as his approval rating sinks toward single digits, President Bush insists that future historians will have a more positive view. I wouldn’t count on it. One thing that may cloud their thinking is the fiscal as well as emotional hangover of the Bush war in Iraq. Evidence shows that Bush not only misled the country into an unnecessary war but put the enormous cost of the war on a credit card for future generations to pay—which includes those historians who will be evaluating his two disastrous terms in the Oval Office.

On thing sure to puzzle those historians is how in the Congress impeached a President for lying about sex and failed to impeach Bush who violated our Constitution so many times in so many ways that even the Supremes that put him in office are rebuking him.

We should all be grateful that former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich had the guts to put on the record seven years of Bush deceptions and skullduggery and call for his impeachment. In a five-hour floor speech, Dennis let it all hang out. As the Indianapolis Star reported, “you cannot find a more complete and compelling indictment of the Bush administration.”

In all, Kucinich laid out 35 articles of impeachment, ranging from Article III: “Misleading the American people and members of Congress to believe Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, so as to manufacture a false case for war” to Article XVI that gives sordid details of Iraq contracting, how the Bush administration “recklessly wasted public funds on contracts awarded to close associates, including companies guilty of defrauding the government in the past, contracts awarded without competitive bidding, ‘cost-plus’ contracts designed to encourage cost overruns and contracts not requiring satisfactory completion of the work.” Oh yeah—those chosen to oversee the contracts, said Kucinich, were “their business partners.”

Kucinich based his indictment of the Bush record on the government’s own documentation of wrongdoing.

Naturally, neither the Congress nor the news media paid much attention to Kucinich, causing even Fox News to wonder why. Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley says that America’s founders “would have been astonished by the absolute passivity, if not the collusion, of the Democrats in protecting President Bush from impeachment.

Leaving that for future historians to mull over, what about this:

I can understand it when the airlines start charging passengers for each pretzel and bag because we know they’re going bankrupt. But when you see gas prices racing toward 5 bucks a gallon, how do you square that with the oil companies making billions in profits? If we didn’t have two oil men in the White House, the thought of “nationalization” of the industry might occur so that the government could ease the pain at the pump and even have a few bucks left over to repair potholes in the Interstates.

Winning the Working Class Vote

2008-05-27T14:57:00.001-05:00

Democratic primaries in Kentucky and West Virginia have pundits punditing that Barack Obama can’t win the working class vote. But that’s when his opponent is Hillary Clinton. What if he’s taking on John McCain?

The Charleston Gazette tells about a “preposterous statement” McCain made when he traveled to one of the poorest areas of east Kentucky in April. Standing where Lyndon Johnson announced the War on Poverty in 1964, McCain declared poverty programs “do not work.” That surprised the people of Martin County where between 1969 and 1979 the poverty rate dropped from 56% to less than 25%.

The Gazette also noted that on the day McCain was in Kentucky, he said he opposed a Senate bill to give equal pay to women.

It’s clear that if elected McCain will continue the economic policies of George W. Bush, with more tax breaks for the wealthy and the back of his hand to everyone else. His tax cutting proposals for corporations would cost about $400 billion a year. To make up for the lost revenue, he plans to reduce the growth of Medicare.

This is McSame, staying the course.

When Bush took office in 2001, budget surpluses of $5.6 trillion were projected over the coming decade. Stan Collender, author of The Guide to the Federal Budget, writes that Bush pledged “to eliminate the national debt by the end of the decade because that’s what Bill Clinton did as his term was ending. The new Bush administration had to look at least as fiscally conservative as the Democratic White House it was succeeding.”

What we got instead was a misguided, unnecessary, never-ending war in Iraq sucking money out of every other government need. After Bush leaves office the debt held by the public will be close to $6 trillion, an 80% increase over what it was when he first became president.

Collender notes that the biggest problem will be that the federal government will be committed to paying about $200 billion a year in interest on the debt!

That’s money that would have been available to help fund Medicare, repair our crumbling infrastructure and create jobs that working people so desperately need.

So much for McCain winning the working class vote in November.

Can't Anybody Here Play this Game?

2008-05-16T13:52:00.000-05:00

Our hearts go out to the distraught Republican leadership after losing three in a row special elections that were held in GOP strongholds. How the mighty have fallen. It wasn’t too long ago that Karl Rove was crowing about a permanent Republican majority. In the ashes of recent losses, their elderly statesmen compare the party label to dog food that people won’t buy.

Just how bad is the GOP image? Party pollster Fran Luntz tells the Weekly Standard: “It used to be that Republicans won on economic and values and foreign policy issues. Democrats won on quality of life. Now Democrats are winning on everything.”

The Democratic primaries are generating millions of new voters while a stream of defectors cause more anguish for the GOP. Not since 1932 has the party been in such trouble.

What to do? In a fit of desperation, party leaders put their battered heads together and came up with a new slogan, fittingly copied from a drug maker’s anti-depressant pill. That probably won’t do the trick.

I feel so badly for these poor folks that I have a suggestion that might help. Why don’t they play on voters’ compassion? When I see the mighty reduced to rubble this way, I think of how Casey Stengel went from the all-winning New York Yankees to manager of the deplorable New York Mets. As terrible as the expansion Mets were, fans packed the old Polo Grounds to see them play. Thanks to the way Casey presented his team to the media, the Mets won the hearts of New York and were heralded everywhere as “lovable losers”.

Pay attention, John Boehner, here’s how Casey did it:

First, you’ve got a Presidential nominee who is the oldest in our history and while Democrats will be too polite to draw voter attention to it voters are sure to notice. Shortly after Casey Stengel led the New York Yankees to five straight World Series titles, he was fired because he was believed to be too old to manage. When he came out of retirement to manage the Mets, he made light of his age: “It’s a great honor to be joining the Knickerbockers”, a New York baseball team that last played around the time of the Civil War.

After losing Denny Hastert’s seat and should-be “locks” in Louisiana and Mississippi, GOP brass put the blame on “bad” candidates. That’s not how Casey would have explained it. Here is his positive spin: “I’ve been in this game a hundred years, but I see new ways to lose I never knew existed before.” As for “bad” candidates, Casey told reporters about two of his rookies: “See that fellow over there? He’s 20 years old. In 10 years he has a chance to be a star. Now, that fellow over there, he’s 20 too. In 10 years he has a chance to be 30.”

Ready for the Fall

2008-05-02T09:14:00.000-05:00

The greatest myth perpetrated this election cycle is that the nasty, bitter Democratic presidential campaign will leave the party divided this fall. Sure, supporters of the losing candidate will be angry and disappointed and may sulk a bit, but any notion they will go for Sen. John McCain in November is Republican fantasyland.

When the Democrats leave Denver in August, their presidential nominee will have a double-digit lead and the “battle” over lapel pins and Bosnian snipers won’t even be a blip on the voter radar honed in on Iraq, the economy and eight years of Republicans Gone Wild.

No matter how many times McCain says “my friends,” he will have few of them among general election voters when they give unbridled attention to his position on issues they care about.

Soaring gas prices, stagnant wages and the housing collapse have our economy in tatters, and McCain concedes this isn’t his strong suit even though “I’ve got Greenspan’s book.” Our failing economy is one of the casualties of the Iraq War that McCain continues to strongly support. At long last, the media are beginning to ask some hard questions about the cost of the war.

Ron Brownstein of National Journal poses this question for McCain: “If the war really is crucial to America’s security, shouldn’t today’s taxpayers finance it?” As has been pointed out numerous times, Iraq is the first major war that this country has fought by transferring the entire cost to future generations through government debt. President
Bush never proposed raising taxes to pay for the war. Worse, in 2003 he substantially cut taxes, unprecedented in war time.

Expect more of the same from a McCain administration. McCain has already endorsed tax cuts that would cost more than $300 billion a year, including reduction of the corporate income tax from 34% to 25%. And, of course, he wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, another $110 billion.

A constant worry to families across America is our deteriorating health care system where rising costs leave nearly 50 million with no insurance coverage and millions more underinsured. The current system cherry-picks the healthy and tells those with chronic diseases to get lost. When a journalist asked if the Senator’s skin cancer might make him sympathetic to the idea of requiring that insurance companies offer policies to those with such conditions, McCain responded: ‘That would be mandating what the free enterprise system does.” (He is referring of course to a system that does indeed allow insurance companies to choose the healthiest people and refuse coverage to those who are sick.)

McCain told the Boston Globe he would give people with preexisting conditions “an extra tax credit” to help pay for insurance funded by savings in the Medicaid program. The Columbia Journalism Review made this observation: Where does McCain think the Medicaid savings will come from? Does he mean cutting benefits to poor people who depend on Medicaid for health care? Or from middle-class families who rely on Medicaid to pay for nursing home care?

Real issues like these keep people awake at night, and only the Democrats offer real solutions. I think I’m really going to enjoy the fall campaign.

That nutty, greedy 19%

2008-04-10T11:32:00.001-05:00

No one could be surprised at recent polls showing 81% of the American people believe the country is going to hell in a hand-basket. We know who those people are, because we are those people. But I’m more interested in that 19% who think everything in peachy.

You begin, of course, with Bush Administration political appointees, the oil companies and defense contractors.

Next come those who subscribe to the Weekly Standard and Wall Street Journal, listeners to right-wing radio, and viewers of Fox News.

Then you go to all those lenders and speculators who guessed wrong on the housing market, lost billions, but were bailed out by a federal government that never fails to feel corporate pain.

But the really big chunk of the nutty, greedy 19% is found in the healthcare industry. For the nation’s HMOs and PPOs and their drug company co-conspirators, is this a wonderful country or not? They ride herd on the most wasteful, dysfunctional health care system in the western world and rack up obscene profits. As insurance premiums soar and millions more are priced out of coverage, they simply hire more people to deny claims, knowing that “value” is in the paper-work, not the patients.

Things have gotten so bad that just the other day a new survey revealed that 59% of doctors now support universal health care. “As doctors, we find that our patients suffer because of increasing deductibles, co-payments, and restrictions on patient care,” said Dr. Ronald Ackermann. “More and more, physicians are turning to national health insurance as a solution to this problem.”

The conventional political wisdom is that won’t happen. The health insurance lobby is so powerful on Capitol Hill that even with doctors on board, “Medicare for all” doesn’t have a prayer. Medicare itself is under fire by the Bush Administration that keeps urging funding cuts to help pay for the war in Iraq.

To see how times have changed, one of Medicare’s staunchest defenders is the American Medical Association. Dr. Nancy Nielsen, AMA’s president-elect, has asked Congress “to preserve access to healthcare for the millions of senior and disabled Americans who rely on Medicare.” This July, payments to physicians caring for Medicare patients will be slashed. “These real cuts have serious consequences as physicians will be forced to limit the new Medicare patients they can treat this year,” said Nielsen.

When President Lyndon Johnson pushed for Medicare legislation in 1965, AMA was bitterly opposed. Their lobbyists thought they had LBJ in a corner when they told him his Medicare bill was flawed, that it wouldn’t even cover the most vulnerable Americans—those under 65 who were poor. LBJ slapped his big hand on his desk and said, in effect, “by golly, you guys are right. How could I have overlooked that?” A week later, he introduced Medicaid legislation. Congress made history by approving both Medicare and Medicaid, easing the medical suffering for millions of poor and elderly Americans.

With AMA and an overwhelming percentage of the American people in support, why can’t the next Congress face down the trillion-dollar insurance and drugs lobbies and pass universal health care?

In any crime scene, the advice is “follow the money”. And with this crime, it isn’t just that nutty, greedy 19% that is the problem.

5 Years and Counting

2008-03-31T13:06:00.000-05:00

The Iraq War is five years old. What can you say? It has been a dreadful, depressing, costly misadventure, the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history.

Trust me: this war is such an albatross around the neck of the Republican party that even if fractious and disorganized Democrats muddle until November 3 before they decide upon a candidate for President, he or she will still win the election.

It is apparent President Bush knew very little going into Iraq, and after five horrendous years with nearly 4,000 lives lost and 60,000 injured, he has learned nothing. How else do you explain the celebratory mood from those who launched the war?

In a Pentagon address marking the anniversary of the Iraq invasion, President Bush was optimistic. He said “the surge” had turned the situation around in Iraq and that the “high cost of lives and treasure” has been worthwhile.

Veep Cheney, fresh from a Baghdad weekend, agreed the war has been “a successful endeavor” and “well worth the effort.”

Republican Presidential nominee John McCain, with loyal Democratic sidekick Joe Lieberman whispering factual corrections in his ear, claims “America and our allies” (whose numbers are dropping faster than the value of the dollar) “stand on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism.”

Also popping the bubbly are America’s military contractors. They not only have made a fortune off the Iraq War but aided and abetted by the Bush Administration have devised ways to avoid paying taxes. Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, has hauled in more than $16 billion in federal funds, but with a mailing address in the Cayman Islands managed to avoid at least $500 million in U.S. taxes.

To escape government scrutiny, both Halliburton and KBR moved their headquarters to Dubai. Justice Department lawyers have proposed a new rule that would provide for Congressional oversight of U.S. contractors, but the White House slipped in language that would exempt contractors who work overseas. Vermont Rep. Peter Welch is demanding an investigation.

After five years, the war has cost more than $522 billion. That’s a figure we can’t even contemplate. That’s why I’m grateful to Sen. Mary Landrieu for putting “billion” into perspective: “A billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive. A billion days ago, nobody walked on the Earth on two feet.”

Somewhere I read that a Nobel Prize-winning economist estimates the total cost of the Iraq War could top $3 trillion.

Help me out here Mary. A trillion days ago…

What to do? Enjoy!

2008-03-26T13:51:00.003-05:00

As the train wreck known as the Democratic Presidential primaries rattles into Pennsylvania, practically the entire party establishment is looking at Chairman Howard Dean and muttering as Oliver Hardy would to Stan Laurel, “this is a fine mess you’ve got us into…”

Fine mess indeed. This could be such a triumph that I have to think Howard planned it this way. Instead of the unforgettable shriek he let loose after the Iowa primary results were in, I expect he is rubbing his hands and chuckling the way leaders do when a great plan comes together.

Everyone knows this is an election where the only way Republicans can win is for Democrats to find a way to lose.

The independent vote that GOP nominee John McCain once attracted is bitterly opposed to a disastrous war that he would pursue for another hundred years. If that weren’t enough, there’s the declining dollar and 4-buck a gallon gas. And it is a given that no incumbent party ever won an election when the economy went into recession on their watch.

So how can Democrats possibly lose? Well, there are problem areas, such as the nasty name-calling that has another two months to run, what to do about Michigan and Florida, and those up-for-grabs super-delegates.

Some Democrats worry that week after week of bitter primaries just might hurt their chances. Real Democrats know this back-and-forth bloodletting generates continuing interest among voters and media while conditioning the eventual winner to withstand whatever muck the GOP swift-boaters throw in the fall.

While it is true that voters like both Obama and Clinton, it is also true that the candidates themselves and their top staff people detest each other (anyone ever involved in a political campaign knows this is true). So forget the “dream ticket” scenario—the eventual nominee is more likely to select Eliot Spitzer as a running mate.

Lots of nasty things have been said about each candidate, mostly by surrogates, but nothing Democrats haven’t heard before. Because of race and gender, epithets are riskier than usual, allowing pundits to find affronts that often don’t exist.

There are Nervous Nellies like Democratic strategist Matt Bennett who is concerned that these attacks “could make our nominee the New York Mets of politics—winning in the spring only to lose in the fall.”

Others fear that with Democrats fighting on and on with no end in sight, while the GOP contest is over, gives McCain a tactical advantage. He has time to relax and shore up his vulnerabilities. Not to worry. His first act was to traipse over to the White House, where he received a toxic embrace from President Bush, providing Democrats with a photo-op that will be featured on millions of “McSame” campaign posters in the fall.

Democrats should be proud of their much-ridiculed party rules. When Howard Dean invalidated nearly two million Democratic votes in Michigan and Florida, he was playing by the rules. Even after all the primaries and caucuses, neither of their extraordinary candidates is likely to have enough pledged delegates to claim the nomination. What saves the day are party rules, enlisting the aid of super-delegates who have been waiting since the1982 DNC convention for the opportunity to exercise their judgment and “do the right thing.” (Those who worry about a “backroom elite” ignoring the wishes of the majority need to understand that super-delegates are savvy, lifelong Democrats who didn’t get where they are by disappointing people.)

Play by the rules. The American Dream is built on the notion that if you play by the rules you’ll get ahead. That hasn’t been true for several years, but that’s why “change” is the dominant theme of this election season.

Only the fighting Democrats are on the media radar these days. The anointed but unloved Republican nominee simply grows older. By November voters may see his name on the ballot and ask: “Who knew?”

Nice going Howard. This time when the results are in, a simple yell of victory will suffice.

Why a tax rebate?

2008-02-28T10:17:00.001-05:00

With the economy tanking, our government is doing what it does best to solve the problem (and what got us into this mess in the first place): write a check. To everybody. Your check may already be in the mail.

I’m disappointed by both the Obama and Clinton campaigns. Why didn’t one of them seize upon this crisis to strongly recommend a public works program that puts money in people’s pockets and into our economy while rebuilding and repairing our deteriorating infrastructure? Was such an idea even debated in the Congress or among the candidates in the primaries and caucuses? If so, I missed it.

Both Democratic presidential campaigns have staffs of extraordinary smarts. That’s why I can’t imagine how they missed the boat on an issue that so energizes the Democratic base: rebuilding our economy while rebuilding America.

All across the country, our infrastructure is collapsing due to insufficient funding. Our bridges, roads, tunnels and waste treatment systems are old and in disrepair. Crumbling infrastructure jeopardizes our prosperity and the quality of our daily lives.

I’m particularly surprised that the Clinton people have been remiss in recognizing this is a campaign-turning issue. She chairs a National Commission on Infrastructure aimed at finding comprehensive answers to our nation’s current and future infrastructure needs.

Hillary’s new slogan is “Solutions for America” and what better solution for America’s economic woes than a federal program that helps relieve our infrastructure crisis at the same time it re-enforces our middle class?

Hillary has based her campaign on the importance of experience over rhetoric. But for this one, she needs to go beyond husband Bill, beyond JFK, for a tested solution to today’s problem. She has to go all the way back to FDR.

I recommend to Hillary and her staff a new book on FDR’s Works Progress Administration. Author Nick Taylor opines that a jobs program would give more bang for the buck than a tax rebate.

Taylor observes that the WPA was created “both to repair a broken infrastructure and to relieve the suffering that came with widespread joblessness.” He noted that from an economic standpoint, the WPA was a model of Keynesian thought. “The people who had these jobs put their money back into the economy immediately, buying food and badly needed clothing.”

Taylor suggests that the already-enacted tax rebates is “found money” for most people. “It may go back into the economy, but it is just as likely to be used to pay off back debts, since the whole reason for the economy sinking is that people are over-extended.”
Not only may the tax rebate fail to revive the economy, but what are the consequences of ignoring our infrastructure crisis? We know the answer to that: falling bridges, exploding steam pipes, crumbling levees, traffic jams and power outages.

If not an “amen” can I at least have a “yes, we can”?

Right (far right) on the Issues

2008-02-06T12:02:00.000-05:00

The Presidential debates have served us well, I think. Voters know pretty much where the candidates and parties stand on issues important to them. Democrats, their impressive field now winnowed to two, aren’t that far apart but have argued vociferously on the two biggest domestic and foreign policy issues that worry the American people: how to provide affordable health care for all, and how to end the Iraq war.

By contrast, the Republican presidential debates have given short-shrift to voter concern over how to survive the world’s most costly and dysfunctional health care system. The response has been “let the market work” which translates: “you’re on your own—don’t expect any help from us”. As for the misguided, unnecessary, unwanted war in Iraq, leading candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney quarrel endlessly over who would keep our troops there longer. (Mike Huckabee chimes in that he still believes if we stay there long enough we may find those weapons of mass destruction).

While it is true that presidential candidates in both parties appeal to their base in primary elections, it is obvious to almost everyone that the Democrats can take their primary fight straight to the general election and not change a note. Over at the RNC, they know it’s a far different story. Almost every week there is a Republican incumbent in Congress who gauges public reaction to the debates and opts not to run for re-election.

Leave it up to Karl Rove to get it all wrong. He says Republicans are carrying out a “serious debate about serious ideas” and chides Democrats for “running a nasty race that has as its subtext race and gender.”

Hey Karl—what you call a “race and gender” subtext is the Democratic party making history. Either an African-American or a woman will be their Presidential nominee and the prospect has voters bubbling with anticipation. (Even the Republican Weekly Standard concedes: “Democratic primary turnout has doubled from 2004, reflecting a level of enthusiasm among Democrats that hasn’t been seen for decades.”)

Just for the heck of it, let’s examine those issues GOP candidates have been wrangling about and see how they might make sense to the majority of voters this fall. The two “biggies” have been supporters of the war in Iraq and making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Every poll tells us where most voters are on the Iraq war—they want it over. As for the treasury-draining Bush tax cuts, the idea of making them permanent is almost as big a loser as being pro-war. McCain voted against it twice because it “unduly benefits the wealthy.” Now that he’s a Republican presidential candidate, he’s for it
While McCain and Romney squabble over who supports the war more and the tax cuts not to pay for the war, they do agree on how to pick up the $15 billion monthly tab the war is costing us: cut spending for entitlements. That’s the fraying safety net for the sick, retired and disabled: make tax cuts permanent for the rich while forcing grandma out of her nursing home. Sure, that will play well in November.

Send a Check

2008-01-24T09:41:00.000-05:00

It should be scary that Freedom Watch, a conservative political advocacy group formed by Bush aides, has more than $200 million to attack Democrats in the fall election. But then you read how these wing nuts plan to spend their money and you want to send them a check.

Freedom Watch spent $15 million last summer for an ad campaign defending the Iraq war. Last fall it took out full-page newspaper ads attacking Democrats in Congress for their anti-war votes.

With all that money, don’t these guys have a few bucks for a poll or focus group that might tell them where voters are on this issue?

I have written a book on negative advertising and I can tell you there are worse things than voter backlash. What’s worse is spending money to dig deeper the hole you’re in. That’s where the Republican fringe is and why John McCain as the “pro war” candidate is their presidential frontrunner.

Ari Fleischer, former White House mouthpiece for President Bush, is a Freedom Watch founder. I really thought Ari was smarter than that. Turns out he wasn’t just doing what he was paid to do when he peddled all those lies about the war—he was a believer. (A recent study by two non-profit journalism organizations counted 935 false statements by Bush and administration officials that “led the nation to war under false pretenses.”)

And at what a cost! Nearly 4,000 American troops have been killed, 20,000 more have been maimed. A new congressional study finds that total Iraq costs may approach $3 trillion. We’re fighting the war on borrowed money – Bush not only refused to raise taxes to pay for it but cut taxes on the richest Americans. Costs of the war go beyond the budget numbers. If the president’s 2008 funding request is approved, the full economic cost of the war—including the economic impact of deficit financing, the future care of our wounded veterans, and disruption in oil markets—will total $1.3 trillion by the end of this year.

New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney said the numbers are too huge to grasp. “The burden of war handed down to our children is real. The lost opportunities to invest here at home in jobs, productivity, roads, health care and education are real. This year alone, the president asked Congress to spend more on the Iraq war than the nation does annually on the entire American road and highway system.”

Meanwhile, all those folks at the Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute prattle on about democracy’s “success” in Iraq. And Freedom Watch raises more money to tell voters about it this fall.

Like I say, send a check.

2008-01-11T14:54:00.000-05:00

Vic Kamber sizes up how the Pelosi Congress did in its first year with CNBC’s Melissa Francis
Victor Kamber on CNBC