At Roll Call, Meredith Shiner’s “Obama Budget Strategy Irks Democrats” quotes a senior administration official” saying that the President’s much criticized budget proposals are “intended as more of an olive branch to Republicans than an outline of Obama’s view of the budget and economy…The president has made clear that he is willing to compromise and do tough things to reduce the deficit, but only in the context of a package like this one that has balance and includes revenues from the wealthiest Americans and that is designed to promote economic growth.”
NYT’s Jackie Calmes clarifies President Obama’s proposed chained c.p.i. reform: “Under the president’s budget, the government would shift in 2015 from the standard Consumer Price Index — used to compute cost-of-living increases for Social Security and other benefits and to set income-tax brackets — to what is called a “chained C.P.I.” The new formulation would slow the increase in benefits and raise income tax revenues by putting some taxpayers into higher brackets sooner, for total savings of $230 billion over 10 years…Even so, he emphasized that his support is contingent on Republicans agreeing to higher taxes from the wealthy and new spending, in areas like infrastructure, to create jobs.”
Greg Sargent notes in his Plum Line post “Obama makes Republicans an offer they will refuse” that “The response from liberals to Obama’s latest offer has been threefold: They have denounced Chained CPI as terrible policy. They argue offering concessions to Republicans up front can only lead to giving up more concessions. And they note that positioning to win over the Very Serious People either won’t work — since the deficit scolds will never acknowledge that one side is more to blame than the other — or won’t politically matter over time.”
Tim Dickenson has “The Five Most Outrageous Facts About Our Broken Voting System” in Rolling Stone. They include: 1. African-American voters wait in line nearly twice as long as white voters; 2. Hispanic voters wait in line one-and-a-half times as long as white voters; 3. True-blue Democrats wait in line 45 percent longer than red-bleeding Republicans; 4. Voting in Florida remains a shitshow – even compared to other big states; and 5. The federal Election Assistance Commission is on its last legs. It is supposed to have four commissioners. It currently has four vacancies. All five of these facts were created by Republicans.
So how popular is same-day voter registration, which the Republicans have been trying to repeal in various states and localities across the country? An editorial at The Cap Times says that “In Maine, after Gov. Paul LePage and his Republican allies in the legislature ended the 38-year-old practice of allowing voters to register on election day, citizens petitioned in 2011 to overturn the governor’s assault on voting rights…Maine voted 60-40 percent to restore same-day registration…In Milwaukee, voters were asked if they wanted to retain election day registration. By a 73-27 percent margin they said “yes.”…In Dane County [WI], they faced the same question. The vote was even more lopsided, with 82 percent voting “yes.”…The Maine referendum was binding. The Wisconsin votes were advisory. But the message is the same.”
Micah Cohen takes stock of “Which Governors Are Most Vulnerable in 2014?” at FiveThirtyEight, and finds that “The two most unpopular governors up for re-election in 2014 are Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, an independent, and Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois, a Democrat. But the remaining eight governors with net negative job approval ratings are Republicans, including four who rode the Tea Party wave to power in blue and purple states in 2010 and now appear to be in some danger: Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, Gov. Paul LePage of Maine and Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan.”
Lois Beckett’s ProPublica report “Voter Information Wars: Will the GOP Team Up With Wal-Mart’s Data Specialist?” provides an interesting update on the Dem-GOP data mining race. Beckett notes, for example, “…The [Obama] campaign used the television-watching data it acquired to figure out exactly what shows the voters they wanted to reach were watching, all of which made for more cost-effective ad placements…The result? The Obama campaign bought more targeted ads, while spending less per television spot than the Romney campaign, according to data collected by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group.”
Cass R. Sunstein, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University, has an interesting review article “Moneyball for Judges: The statistics of judicial behavior” at The New Republic. There are no huge surprises in the data Sunstein presents from ” The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice” by Lee Epstein, William M. Landes and Richard A. Posner. As one passage notes “Justice Scalia is significantly more conservative than Chief Justice Roberts, and Justice Ginsburg is significantly more liberal than Justice Sotomayor…The authors find that a large number of justices change over time. Of the twenty-three justices who served for a minimum of fifteen terms, four drifted to the right, and no fewer than eight drifted to the left. In general, those shifts were not massive–not a wholesale conversion experience, but an unmistakable movement toward a greater degree of moderation.” Yet, as Sunstein concludes, “The good news is that statistical analysis and quantitative measures are enabling us to go far beyond the intuitions and anecdotes that have long dominated academic and public discussions of government’s third branch.”
John Avlon’s CNN.com headline says it well — “GOP’s cowardly gun filibuster threat.” As Avlon says, “Republicans are doubling down on irrational appeals and trying to block debate…That’s another reason this position is infuriatingly stupid — it compounds the number one negative perception about the Republican Party. Namely, that it is “inflexible and unwilling to compromise.”
Yet more evidence that the AFL-CIO needs it’s own television network: At Truthout MIke Ludwig’s “Labor Report: Four Major TV News Networks Ignore Unions” reports “During the years of 2008, 2009 and 2011, less than 0.3 percent of news stories aired on four major news broadcasting networks involved labor unions or labor issues, according to analysis recently released by Federico Subervi, a professor of media markets at Texas State University.”

If it seems to you that the death of Margaret Thatcher evokes a sense of deja vu, it is because we went through the same MSM myth-mongering routine when President Reagan died. Their supporters pulled out all stops in glorifying these twin reactionaries, who were said to greatly admire each other’s uncanny ability to screw everyone but the wealthy and get away with it.
You have to look around a little bit to set the record straight about Thatcher’s record, because her beatification as a saint of the super-rich is still commanding lots of coverage. But it’s out there for the willing. As Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers write at Counterpunch:

When Mrs. Thatcher took power, 1 in 7 of the England’s children lived in poverty. By the end of her reforms that number had risen to 1 in 3. She polarized the country in a ‘divide & conquer’ strategy that foreshadowed that of Ronald Reagan and more recent American politicians such as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. The effect of her policy was to foreclose on the economic mobility into the middle class that ironically she believed her policies were promoting.
Pundits the world over are chirping about her role in “saving” Britain, not as indebting it – destroyed an economy in order to save it. Her rule was historic mainly by posing the conundrum that has shaped neoliberal politics since 1980: How can governments nurture and endow financial kleptocrats in the context of rule by popular consent?
…Nowhere in the world is banking more short-term than in Britain. Nobody better exemplified this narrow-minded perspective than Lady Thatcher. Her simplistic rhetoric helped inspire an inordinate share of simpletons conflating supposed common sense with wisdom.

Thatcher’s real socio-economic legacy (said to have inspired the term “sado-monetarism”) needs to be outed more honestly, as it undoubtedly will be in the days ahead, at least in the progressive press. But weep not for the Iron Lady — it’s not like she doesn’t have plenty of defenders to whitewash her record. The critics will surely be drowned out in a tsunami of glorification.
Meanwhile, enjoy this performance of “Stand Down Margaret” by the English Beat, flagged by Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly.

After conceding that Margaret Thatcher was a tough adversary for the UK’s progressives, no one should feel any obligation to gloss over the great harm she did as Prime Minister. As Gerry Adams, president of the Irish party Sinn Féin, put it: “Margaret Thatcher did great hurt to the Irish and British people during her time as British prime minister…Working class communities were devastated in Britain because of her policies. Her role in international affairs was equally belligerent …. Here in Ireland her espousal of old draconian militaristic policies prolonged the war and caused great suffering. She embraced censorship, collusion and the killing of citizens by covert operations …. Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and ’81. Her Irish policy failed miserably.” Tony Benn, a 1970s labour minister and Thatcher’s political opponent, added “She did make war on a lot of people in Britain, and I don’t think it helped our society.”
However, there is something important American progressives can learn from Thatcher’s reign, as the late Christopher Hitchens pointed out in his article “Lessons Maggie Taught Me” at The Nation.
A (barely) bipartisan initiative may yet revive a modest proposal for background checks on gun purchases, report Ed O’Keefe and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post.
Bill Scher, executive editor of LiberalOasis.com and the Online Campaign Manager at Campaign for America’s Future, explores “The top 5 issues dividing Democrats ” at The Week. They are Social Security, trade, guns, taxes and climate.
WaPo’s Paul Kane reports on a new pitch for Democratic House candidates: “The best way to defeat the conservative, ideologically driven GOP, Democrats say, is to field non-ideological “problem solvers” who can profit from the fed-up-with-partisanship mood of some suburban areas. These districts will offer some of the few competitive House campaigns in the country.”
Michael Tackett has an extensive Bloomberg update on the campaign to turn Texas into a purple state.
Plum Line’s Greg Sargent calls out the majority leader, and argues that it’s time for Sen. Reid to put up or shut up: “By my count, this is at least the third time a Dem Senate leader has threatened to revisit rules reform. Yet the obstructionism continues with no action on Reid’s part….Reid needs to stop threatening to revisit the filibuster unless he actually means it. Empty threats accomplish nothing. Indeed, they’re counterproductive. They make Dems look weak. They inflate expectations among Dem base voters — and supporters who worked hard to reelect Obama and Dems to Congress — that we may soon enjoy a functional Senate.”
At National Journal’s ‘Hotline on Call.’ Michael Catalini, Naureen Khan and Peter Bell report that the GOP sees it’s top Senate targets as Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan and Mark Begich.
At FiveThirtyEight, Micah Cohen looks at what may be the highest-profile House race and explains “Why Sanford vs. Colbert Busch Could Be Competitive.”
Some say President Obama’s latest Social Security and Medicare proposals are intended more theater than reality. But someone in the white house should nonetheless read Lynn Stuart Parramore’s Alternet post, “7 Chilling Facts About Retirement in America That Should Make Obama Tremble Before Cutting Social Security and Medicare: Obama’s plan would be economically irresponsible, socially disruptive and morally repugnant.”

In their Politico post, ‘Republicans’ Uncivil War,” fellow Republicans Scott Faulkner and Jonathan Riehl lament the transformation of the GOP from a once-competent political party into an circus of bickering ideologues. While the authors view of the glorious GOP past is somewhat overstated to put it charitably, their take on the current predicament of their party includes some insights worth sharing:

The Republican Party is at war with itself and it is losing. For every successful Republican governor, there are Republican state legislators who embrace personally oppressive and interventionist initiatives. For every reasonable Republican member of Congress, there are more who embarrass. Every compelling soundbite from Republican candidates and pundits is overwhelmed by others that repel.
…Bush 43 added his own straw to the political camel’s back by his willingness to allow cronyism to trump competence. By promoting amateurs to bungle the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and allowing the once noble Federal Emergency Management Agency to make an epic mess of Hurricane Katrina relief, Bush eviscerated the longstanding Republican reputation for competent management. The Republican echo chamber remained silent to this dismal record, violating another of the GOP’s core principles — holding power accountable. A Republican world view that was devoid of facts and critical thinking was taking hold. Like Thelma and Louise, Republican politicians and pundits grasped hands and floored the gas peddle into the abyss.
Except for some stellar governors, the Republican movement has been in free fall since late 2005. Like a cancer patient on remission, the tea party-fueled 2010 election blowout offered a fleeting and aberrant reversal of fortune. It remains to be seen if Republicans can heal themselves or whether the Democrats will overreach clearing the way for a GOP comeback by default. Either way, America’s political landscape is denuded when rational thought and competence are edged out of the picture.

And when the Republicans are not likening President Obama to the anti-Christ himself, it seems their preferred fallback similes are Hitler and Stalin, as Lincoln Mitchell notes in his post “Mike Huckabee’s Reductio ad Hitlerum” at HuffPo:

…The Tea Party and right wing penchant for comparing President Obama to Hitler and Stalin is evidence not of any totalitarian tendencies on the part of Obama. Instead it is evidence that right wing contempt for science is now rivaled by contempt for learning anything about history.
Stalin and Hitler are among the most brutal murderers and dictators of the 20th, or any other, century. Most of the world knows this. To the right wing of the Republican Party, apparently, Stalinism is a system of governance where the marginal tax rate exceeds 35 percent, while the Nazi regime, according to Huckabee’s newest insight, was one characterized by gun control.
…Using Communists and Nazis as a way to bludgeon one’s political opponents with powerful, if poorly constructed, political arguments is nothing new, but it is seems much more frequent now, with Obama a much bigger target than any previous president. Most of the more aggressive of these attacks come not from powerful Republican politicians but from media personalities like Huckabee, Tea Party activists or people on the fringes of political life. The failure of Republicans in more senior positions to speak out against this has now become so ordinary that it is rarely remarked upon, but it is still significant.

Yes, that Mike Huckabee, the one who reportedly told a gathering at an Ohio pancake breakfast

“Make a list,” said Huckabee, referring to supporters’ family and friends. “Call them and ask them, ‘Are you going to vote on Issue 2 and are you going to vote for it?’ If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don’t go vote. Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done.”

In case you thought he was just joking, it wasn’t the only time. As the Huck told a crowd in Virginia, according to HuffPo:

While campaigning for Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee jokingly made reference to voter suppression. He told supporters that it’s “their job” to keep McDonnell opponents from the polls: “Let the air our of their tires … keep ’em home. Do the Lord’s work.”

In a way, Huckabee was just giving voice to the GOP’s extensive voter suppression project. Whatever criticisms can be fairly leveled at President Obama, he has never displayed anything like the utter contempt for the integrity of American Democracy that distinguishes the modern Republican Party.

Having caught the tail end this morning of some inside-the-beltway pundit snarkage about President Obama doing some (gasp) campaign fund-raising for his own party, I was delighted to stumble upon Alec MacGillis’s post, “The Amusing Alarm Over Obama’s 2014 Fixation” in The New Republic. MacGillis bares the silly hypocrisy of it all in this excerpt:

…Underlying the tut-tutting about Obama’s fundraising is a broader, longstanding confusion in the Washington establishment over what is to be expected of Obama. We scorn him for seeking to hold himself above the fray and then lash him with high dudgeon as soon he deigns to descend into the muck. Never mind that he is following in the footsteps of his two-term predecessors–as the Post noted, “Ronald Reagan participated in 20 fundraisers for Republicans in 1985, and George W. Bush did 14 in 2005…. Bill Clinton, committed to helping the Democratic Party eliminate debt after the 1996 campaign, appeared at a whopping 77 fundraisers in 1997.”

Citing “feinting spells on the right” in response to the “news” that the president is now going to raise some dough for 2014 Democratic candidates, MacGillis continues:

…Can you imagine? A president who passed a lot of stuff when his party held both houses of Congress and has been all but totally stymied since losing the House has decided that it would be in his interest to…win back the House. Next thing you know, he’s going to try to help a Democrat get elected president in 2016 to make sure achievements like the Affordable Care Act are preserved.

MacGillis faults the naivete of those purist souls who believe that A President can use the bully pulpit alone to stop well-funded opponents and quotes David Jones, a former fundraiser for Clinton and Al Gore: “The opponents of his agenda are spending tens of millions of dollars to derail his agenda and he can’t unilaterally disarm. In today’s world it takes resources to get your message out to the public and in order to raise resources you have to have fundraisers and send out emails and make phone calls.”
I would just add the obvious fact that the president is the leader of his party and, as such, is supposed to be its top fund-raiser. I would be joining the outraged reaction if he didn’t help raise funds for the 2014 campaign. In fact, he should be doing more fund-raising if he wants to accomplish anything in 2015-16.
The purist whiners need to get real. No president in U.S. history has had to deal with a more obstructionist or more lavishly-funded opposition, nor one more wholly dedicated to reversing the hard-won gains of the Democratic party over generations. We would all like more bipartisan kumbaya. But the only thing this Republican party understands is defeat and it is President Obama’s duty to do all that he can to open another big can of ass-whupping for them in 2014.

These shameless voter suppression efforts –even for Republicans — in North Carolina may actually reflect an encouraging trend — that the state President Obama lost by the smallest of margins in 2012 is turning blue so fast Republicans are running scared and getting desperate.
Robert Borosage, president of the Institute for America’s Future, has a warning for Democrats at HuffPo: ” The rising American electorate is looking for help: a forward strategy that will rebuild the country, educate the young, put people to work, capture a lead in the green industrial revolution that is sweeping the world, while insuring that the rewards of growth are widely shared. This requires fierce battles with those standing in the way — not simply the Tea Party zealots, but Big Oil and Big Pharma, Wall Street and the global corporate lobby that will spend lavishly to protect their privileges and subsidies. Without that vision and courage, the rising American electorate will continue to sink together. And Democrats will discover that a status quo party has little attraction to voters looking for change.”
I do hope the Organizing for America ‘List’ is as powerful as this conservative e-rag says it is.
At the New York Times Opinionator, Thomas B. Edsall’s assessment of “The GOP’s Digital Makeover” shows why the Republicans’ top-down culture may be a barrier to their achieving digital parity with Dems: “…The biggest obstacle facing the Republican Party may be how to get its leaders, including those in charge of the R.N.C., to accommodate and accept the freewheeling approach to innovation — the invention of invention — that made the digital revolution now transforming American politics possible in the first place.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr. rallies progressives to save background checks from Republican obstruction. “…Gun-control advocates need even more discipline, and they cannot stop organizing after this fight is over. It will take years to build the kind of muscle the gun lobby has. Doing so will create the political space for other measures, including an assault weapons ban.”
If Elizabeth Colbert-Busch can make the word ‘integrity’ the issue, this U.S. House contest should result in a Democratic pick-up. It’s not just Mark Sanford’s philandering and lying about it; it’s his abuse of taxpayer money. As Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand put it in a fund-raising e-blast for the Democrat: “This is the same Mark Sanford who, as governor, disappeared from office and used taxpayer money to visit his mistress.”
Bob Shrum’s Daily Beast post, “Be Afraid, GOP: Hillary Clinton Is Back and She Will Beat You in 2016” has me thinking maybe we should put all this Hillary euphoria to work sooner, rather than later — and send her out to help rally women to elect Dems to congress, like Elizabeth Colbert-Busch.
At The Plum Line, Greg Sargent reports on a new pro-Democratic messaging initiative: “The American Bridge 21st Century Foundation Web site, “C-Quest,” which is “designed to focus attention on how the sequester is impacting actual communities around the country, as a corrective to the Beltway’s emphasis on the sequester as a political story, one that the White House has supposedly botched by over-hyping the sequester’s impact…The Web site is also accompanied by a Web video that collects local news segments from around the country on the sequestration’s cuts, and makes the point that Paul Ryan’s budget cuts would dwarf those of the sequester:”
David Callahan’s “The Right Way to Create Jobs” at Demos ‘Policy Shop’ has an argument every Democratic congressional candidate should be able to articulate, particularly in the 7 states that have an unemployment rate above 9 percent: “…Huge numbers of construction workers lost their jobs when the housing bubble imploded, and many of these people are still unemployed. In fact, construction workers have the highest jobless rate of any group of workers — 15.7 percent, over twice the national rate and three times higher than most white-collar professions. So infrastructure spending would help those workers who are still suffering most from long-term unemployment…We tried a surge in Iraq and another in Afghanistan. How about one at home?”
You go, guys.

Lydia Saad reports at Gallup Politics on the leading criticism of Republicans: “…Rank-and-file Republicans, independents, and Democrats voice the same primary criticism of the GOP: it is “too inflexible” or “unwilling to compromise.” When asked to say what they most dislike about the Republican Party, 26% of Republicans, 17% of independents, and 22% of Democrats offer this critique — leading all other mentions.” Only 8 percent said the same about Democrats. The second-ranking concern of respondents (12 percent) was that the GOP is “for the rich/protecting the wealthy, not the middle class.”
The Center for American Progress has a revealing forum on “What the Public Really Thinks About Guns,” featuring contributions by Margie Omero, Michael Bocian, Bob Carpenter, Linda DiVall, Diane T. Feldman, Celinda Lake, Douglas E. Schoen, Al Quinlan, Joshua Ulibarri, and Arkadi Gerney.
The National Journal’s Michael Catalini’s “To Hold Senate Majority, Democrats Target the Most Conservative States in the Country” reveals an innovative strategy: “…the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s plans to compete in the most inhospitable territory for Democrats — for open seats in Georgia, South Dakota, West Virginia, and possibly, even in Kentucky against the powerful and well-funded Senate minority leader. Facing a challenging political landscape in 2014, the party is close to landing credible candidates in all of those states….Already the committee is boasting that Georgia is their best pickup opportunity; the field of Republican candidates there for the seat of retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss currently looks underwhelming.”
Jamelle Bouie posts at The Plum Line on “The next big target for liberals: State legislatures,” observing “It’s hard to overstate how smart a way this is for liberal groups to invest their time and money…Winning control of governorships and state legislatures is key if Democrats want to build political strength, advance key goals and priorities, and secure their policy gains over the long term. Howard Dean’s new plan is a small — but important — step in the right direction.”
At The Nation, Ari Berman explains why “New Voter Suppression Efforts Prove the Voting Rights Act Is Still Needed.” Notes Berman: “According to a report by Project Vote, fifty-five new voting restrictions have been introduced in thirty states so far this year….By my count, 235 new voting restrictions have been introduced in forty-four states over the past three years.”
Meanwhile President Obama has issued an executive order setting up “the Presidential Commission of Election Administration.,” charged with “…making recommendations that will “promote the efficient administration of elections in order to ensure that all eligible voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots without undue delay…and to improve the experience of voters facing other obstacles in casting their ballots, such as members of the military, overseas voters, voters with disabilities, and voters with limited English proficiency.”
GOP efforts to raise the cap on high-skilled worker visas is shaping up as an important issue for Democrats, as Jennifer Martinez reports at The Hill. Labor is calling on Dems to provide leadership to oppose “off-shoring jobs abroad or businesses that seek to bypass hiring American workers.”
Socialism in North Dakota? So says Alternet’s Les Leopold in “Why Is Socialism Doing So Well in Deep-Red North Dakota?,” in which he reports (via TruthDig)on “one of America’s best-kept secrets,” the “state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND), a socialist relic that exists nowhere else in America.” Leopold observes “Since the crash, the financial community has largely managed to wriggle off the hook…After all, the big banks seem to own Washington, as too-big-to-fail banks are permitted to grow even larger and more invulnerable to prosecution and control…But this new public banking movement could have legs, especially if it teams up with those fighting for a financial transaction tax…The state-owned and operated Bank of North Dakota proves that it doesn’t have to be that way. This is the time to fight for public state banking in a big way.”
One still hears the occasional “mistakes were made” lame apology, but there are better ways. Politico explores the art of the political apology in this video.
At The Daily Beast ‘Politics Beast,’ Lloyd Green writes that “the once-Republican Solid South is starting to look like a blue-and-red checkerboard, with Democrats now owning some of the biggest squares.”

If you thought outright partisan political hackery was beneath the dignity of the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, you would be wrong.
Geoffrey Skelley, Political Analyst at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball crunches the numbers and concludes. “…Unlike the proposal to award electoral votes by congressional district — a plan that the Crystal Ball’s Alan Abramowitz found would have elected Mitt Romney in 2012 even though President Obama won the national popular vote by about 5 million votes — a proportional allocation system, used nationally, might track more closely to the national vote than the current system.” Scant comfort, that. Why not direct popular election?
Also at Crystal Ball, Kyle Kondik argues that the South Dakota and West Virginia Senate races are the ones to watch in assessing whether or not Dems can hold the senate in 2014. If these races are polling close a month or two before election day, then Dems have a good chance of holding their Senate majority.
Matthew Dowd’s argument here that Dem 2016 front-runners are a little long-in-the-tooth compared to the GOP presidential field lacks demographic analysis of the 2016 electorate.
Good to see that a coalition has turned the heat on VA Gov. McDonnell to restore voting rights of at least some ex-felons who have served their time. Felon disenfranchisement is one of the more effective methods of politically-motivated voter suppression. But making Republicans defend it on camera for those who have served their time is a good way to expose the petty partisanship and moral equivocation of GOP office-holders.
Anyone still harboring doubts that the Bush-Cheney administration was the worst ever, should watch this CSPAN video featuring Linda J. Bilmes, author of “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.” Bilmes now projects the actual cost to hit $5 trill when all the bills are finally paid.
This story has another disturbing statistic, “less than five minutes” — the length of time it took to massacre 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which should haunt the hearts those who opposed the ban on assault weapons and hopefully encourage them to do the right thing next time.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, author of four books on immigration, race and politics, has a L.A. Times op-ed explaining why the U.S. Supreme Court could create a major mess if they decide in Lepak vs. City of Irving that it’s ok not to count non-citizens in drawing political districts.
I nominate “angry at Washington” (and it’s equally-mindless kin, “blame Washington” and “disappointed/unhappy with Washington”) to be the lamest, most vapid false equivalency meme parroted by journalists and pollsters since the dawn of The Republic. IMHO, those who promote it merit placement in one or more of three categories — stupid, lazy or corrupt.
If there is a better ‘toon than this one about the High Court’s DOMA deliberations, I’d like to see it.

One of the mysteries of modern politics is the public’s high tolerance for the crappy treatment veterans have been getting when they get back home. Ask just about any American how he or she feels about veterans having to wait 600 days to get their claims addressed, as they do in a number of states, and she or he will tell you it’s an outrage. But somehow it’s never much of a factor on election day. But if something isn’t done to address this issue very soon, that could change on election day 2014 and 2016.
One reason it could change is that Vets now have an eloquent, energetic and committed advocate in Paul Rieckhoff of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, who is now making the rounds to just about every talk show on television (see here for example). American Vets now have an advocate who knows how to work the media.
Republicans, of course, will be quick to blame the Democrats, since it has gotten worse in recent years, owing mostly to the backlog build-up and inadequate budgeting for veterans’ programs when they come home. VA head General Shinseki is talking about reducing the backlog by 2015, which does not sound acceptable, even though it may be a prudent answer, given his short-staffed resources. To paraphrase the Democratic strategist Bob Strauss, “that dog won’t hunt,” as the VA backlog becomes more of an issue, as now seems likely.
It’s pretty bad when today’s veterans describe their benefits system as “Delay, Deny, Wait till I die,” as was reported recently on the Rachel Maddow show. Joe Klein’s Time magazine article about the wait times was entitled “Shinseki Stonewall.” Klein argues that, at the very least, claims should be processed according to severity. “Why should an Army Ranger who suffered a 100% debilitating traumatic brain injury in Konar Province three years ago still be waiting for his disability check? Why should that Ranger have to wait behind a Vietnam veteran, who is filing a 3rd time claim to get his disability for post-traumatic stress raised from 50% to 60%?”
As a kid, I can remember getting medical care at local military hospitals, which everyone seemed to agree were the best. Our family shopped at the military commissary for groceries and saved about 20 percent over a comparable tab at the supermarket. There was veterans support for home loans, college education and other life expenses. We even used the swimming pool at one military installation. I never heard any complaints about wait times for anything. All of this because my father was a WWII vet, even though it was 12 or so years after the war ended. Today, most of these benefits have been shredded or reduced.
Of course, back then the income tax rates for the wealthy were significantly higher. There is no question in my mind that the tax cuts and austerity policies that accelerated during the Reagan era and after have hurt veterans badly. The political questions that remain include: Will President Obama be getting increasingly bad press for the wait times, or will he be able to speed things up very soon? Will he take the opportunity to explain to the public how Republican obstruction of the budget process has hurt veterans benefits and wait times?
These are tough questions. But better to address them now, than let them become a big issue that could hurt Dems in the next elections.

At The Nation Rick Perlstein gives the old “demography is destiny” cliche a proper shredding, arguing that, while demographics favor Democrats at the moment, any talk about inevitability is foolish chatter, especially since “a more immigrant-friendly Republican Party” by 2016 is a possibility, which could cut just enough into the edge Dems currently have with Latinos.
Perlstein has another good post at The Nation, “Right and Left in Democratic Politics: The Long View,” in which he urges his fellow progressives to get real and acknowledge the conservative/moderate flank of the party as a continuing reality: “…Study them–take them seriously. Don’t let them play the underdog; that just advantages them, too. We’re in a fight here–always have been. They think they are the party–just as confidently as we believe we’re the party. The only way to make our vision of this party a reality is to work for it–and not to act surprised when their side works for it, too.”
For those who would like to see some solid data that verifies what you have suspected for months, Andrew Kohut, former president of both the Pew Research Center and the Gallup Organization has an opinion piece up at the Washington Post, “The numbers prove it: The GOP is estranged from America.”
Do read Rebecca Dana’s story at The New Republic, “Slyer Than Fox The wild inside story of how MSNBC became the voice of the left”
Democrats have a chance, at least, to pick up a senate seat in GA, where Saxby Chambliss is retiring and the Republicans are looking at a divisive primary, which is well-described in Russell Berman’s post “Tight-knit Georgia Republican delegation starts to fray over Senate race” at The Hill. President Obama got 46.9 percent of the vote in Georgia in November. Unfortunately, however, Dems don’t have much in the way of charismatic alternatives, with Rep. John Barrow mentioned most often as a possibility.
Good to see the DNC getting involved in fighting back against the Republican scheme to award electoral votes “based on their percentage of the popular vote, instead of the current winner-take-all system. Two electoral votes would be awarded to the statewide winner.”
At Salon.com Michael Lind has a few thoughts on “Defeating useless rich people: Taming wealthy, unproductive “moochers” will require a populist campaign to stop them. Here’s how we can do it.” Says Lind: “…we need an Anti-Rentier campaign that would unite unlikely groups: owners of productive businesses as well as workers, populist conservatives and liberal reformers. An Anti-Rentier movement would distinguish businesses that make profits by providing worthwhile goods or services in innovative ways from rentier interests that passively extract exorbitant tolls and fees from the economy without adding any value…The Anti-Rentier tax agenda would seek to raise capital gains taxes on rentiers while lowering the tax burden on American workers and the profits of productive businesses.”
Here’s a switch. Joseph M. Schwartz Dissent article, “Social Democracy for Centrists” observes, “The Economist, long identified with libertarian economic ideals, lauded the “Nordic model” in a cover story last month as a “centrist” economic path for global capitalism. Long hostile to “tax-and-spend” social democracy, the publication’s change in tack arises from its recognition that austerity policies are deepening the economic crisis and that the inequality and declining social mobility of “free-market,” Anglo-American capitalism threatens the very legitimacy of the capitalist system that the Economist holds dear…The magazine praises Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway for accomplishments often touted by social democrats–low poverty rates, egalitarian distribution, and efficient public services. But the magazine argues that these are now “centrist” societies because they balance their budgets, allow for consumer “choice” within their public services, and nurture risk-taking entrepreneurs. The Economist sheepishly admits that these countries funnel over 50 percent of their GDP through the public sector (versus a meager 30 percent in the United States and 36 percent in Great Britain)…”
Ronald Brownstein’s “The Man Who Could Turn Texas Blue: Rick Perry” explains “…Gov. Rick Perry, back from his stumbles in the 2012 GOP presidential race, has insisted that Texas will not accept the federal money provided by President Obama’s health care law to expand Medicaid coverage….Texas Democrats are too weak to much affect the Medicaid debate. But if state Republicans reject federal money that could insure 1 million or more Hispanics, they could provide Democrats with an unprecedented opportunity to energize those voters–the key to the party’s long-term revival. With rejection, says Democratic state Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas, Republicans “would dig themselves into an even deeper hole with the Hispanic community.””
Heather K. Gerken of Yale Law School has an interesting proposal at Scholars Strategy Network: “The United States would benefit from a new Democracy Index that makes our shortfalls visible for all by ranking states and localities based on how well they run their elections…This index would function as the rough equivalent of annual rankings of colleges and universities in the U.S. News and World Report. It would focus on the concrete issues that matter to all voters -How long did you spend in line? How many ballots got discarded? How well is the registration process working? The Index would also include regular, objective measures of the election process.”