From Media Matters for America -- May 31, 2012:
New Stimulus Report, Same Bogus Cost-Per-Job Analysis From Right-Wing Media
Right-wing media are using a new report from the Congressional Budget Office to claim that the stimulus "may have cost as much as $4.1 million per job." However, simply dividing the amount of money spent by the number of jobs created is, according to an Associated Press fact check, "highly misleading," and economist Paul Krugman has called this math "bogus." Conservative media regularly use similar calculations to attack jobs initiatives.
CBO "Now Estimates That The Total Impact [Of ARRA] Over The 2009-2019 Period Will Amount To About $831 Billion." From a May report from the Congressional Budget Office:
When ARRA was being considered, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that it would increase budget deficits by $787 billion between fiscal years 2009 and 2019. CBO now estimates that the total impact over the 2009-2019 period will amount to about $831 billion. By CBO's estimate, close to half of that impact occurred in fiscal year 2010, and more than 90 percent of ARRA's budgetary impact was realized by the end of March 2012.
Conservative Pundits Respond With Bogus Cost-Per-Jobs Analysis
AEI's Pethokoukis: "Obama Stimulus May Have Cost As Much As $4.1 Million A Job." In a post on the American Enterprise Institute's "The Enterprise Blog", James Pethokoukis excerpted part of the CBO report and wrote:
OK, so without the stimulus, there would be anywhere from 200,000 to 1.5 million fewer people employed right now? That means the current cost-per-job created is somewhere between $4.1 million and $540,000. [The Enterprise Blog, 5/30/12]
Fox Nation: "CBO: Obama Stimulus May Have Cost As Much As $4.1 Million A Job." A May 30 post on Fox Nation linked to Pethokoukis' post under the headline:
Limbaugh: "The Amount Of Money That They Calculate The Stimulus Will Cost And Add To The Deficit Equals $4.1 Million Per Job Created." On the May 31 broadcast of his radio show, Rush Limbaugh said:
LIMBAUGH: When the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was considered -- this is the stimulus bill. By the way, this is a new CBO report. Congressional Budget Office.
The CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the stimulus would increase budget deficits by $787 billion. The CBO now estimates that the total impact from 2009 to 2019 of Obama's stimulus will be $831 billion. So, by the CBO's estimate, close to half of that impact occurred in fiscal year 2010.
The bottom line is this. The amount of money that they calculate the stimulus will cost and add to the deficit equals $4.1 million per job created. That's the efficiency we got from the regime -- $4.1 million per job. And the reason it's $4.1 million per job is because there weren't that many jobs created. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 5/31/12]
Experts Have Called Such Math "Highly Misleading"
AP Calls Cost-Per-Job Analysis "Math" That Is "Satisfyingly Simple But Highly Misleading." In 2009, the Associated Press published a "fact check" reviewing similar claims being made at the time:
Beware the math. Some Republican lawmakers critical of President Barack Obama's stimulus package are using grade-school arithmetic to size up costs and consequences of all that spending. The math is satisfyingly simple but highly misleading.
It goes like this: Divide the stimulus money spent so far by the estimated number of jobs saved or created. That produces a rather frightening figure on how much money taxpayers are spending for each job.
The reality is more complex.
First, the naysayers' calculations ignore the value of the work produced.
Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for material, supplies and that worker's output -- a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid.
Second, critics are counting the total cost of contracts that will fuel work for months or years and dividing that by the number of jobs produced only to date.
A construction project, for one, may only require a few engineers to get going, with the work force to swell as ground is broken and building accelerates.
Hundreds of such projects have been on the books, in which the full value of the contracts is already counted in the spending totals, but few or no jobs have been reported yet because the work is only getting started.
To flip the equation politically, it's as if the 10-year cost of George W. Bush's big tax cuts were compared with the benefits to the economy that only accrued during the first year.
Third, the package approved by Congress is aimed at more than direct job creation, although employment was certainly central to its promotion and purpose.
Its features include money for research, training, plant equipment, extended unemployment benefits, credit assistance for businesses and more -- spending meant to pay off over time but impossible to judge in a short-term job formula.
Nor do the estimates made Friday include indirect employment already created by the package -- difficult if not impossible to measure. [AP, 11/2/09, via Nexis]
Krugman Called Claim That Stimulus Would Cost $275,000 Per Job "Bogus." Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, responded to similar claims in his New York Times column in 2009:
First, there's the bogus talking point that the Obama plan will cost $275,000 per job created. Why is it bogus? Because it involves taking the cost of a plan that will extend over several years, creating millions of jobs each year, and dividing it by the jobs created in just one of those years.
It's as if an opponent of the school lunch program were to take an estimate of the cost of that program over the next five years, then divide it by the number of lunches provided in just one of those years, and assert that the program was hugely wasteful, because it cost $13 per lunch. (The actual cost of a free school lunch, by the way, is $2.57.)
The true cost per job of the Obama plan will probably be closer to $100,000 than $275,000 -- and the net cost will be as little as $60,000 once you take into account the fact that a stronger economy means higher tax receipts.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Meet Mitt Romney -- America's Champion Job Destroyer
From Media Matters for America -- May 31, 2012:
Conservative Pundit Obscures Romney's Jobs Record By Citing MA Unemployment Rate
Conservative pundit Jim Geraghty is deflecting attention from Mitt Romney's weak job creation record as governor of Massachusetts, pointing to overall unemployment trends at the time. But that statistic, which one economist has argued is a "false indicator," doesn't change the fact that during Romney's tenure, Massachusetts ranked 47th out of all states in job creation.
Obama Campaign Criticizes Romney's Jobs Record As Massachusetts Governor
Reuters: Obama Campaign Ad Highlighted Romney "For Failing To Create Jobs As Massachusetts Governor." Reuters reported:
President Barack Obama's campaign attacked Republican rival Mitt Romney on Thursday for failing to create jobs as Massachusetts governor, calling it more evidence of a flawed economic approach that would be disastrous in the White House.
After weeks of criticizing Romney for plundering companies and slashing jobs while leading a private equity firm, Obama's campaign shifted its attacks to Romney's work in Massachusetts and said his experience did not qualify him to lead.
At a raucous appearance outside the Massachusetts statehouse, Obama strategist David Axelrod noted the state ranked 47th in job creation during Romney's four years as governor, while long-term state debt grew. He said Romney also broke a tax-cutting pledge by raising a range of fees that mostly hurt the middle class. [Reuters, 5/31/12]
Conservative Pundit Geraghty Touted MA Unemployment Rate To Obscure Romney's Jobs Record
National Review's Jim Geraghty: "Massachusetts's Unemployment Rate Changed From 5.6 Percent To 4.7 Percent." In a post at National Review Online, contributor Jim Geraghty wrote:
For the Obama campaign and Democrats, it's "Spotlight Romney as Governor" Day.
David Axelrod -- you know, the political strategist who routinely attends national security meetings -- will be in Boston, to hold a press conference in front of the State House in Boston to discuss "Mitt Romney's economic philosophy and his failed economic record in Massachusetts." Axelrod will warn that under Romney, Massachusetts's unemployment rate changed from 5.6 percent to 4.7 percent, and that if elected, Romney would inflict the same pain and suffering to all of America.
But Under Romney, Job Growth In Massachusetts Was Among The Lowest In The Country
PolitiFact: "Massachusetts Was 47th Out Of 50 In The Percentage Of Job Growth." Examining Romney's jobs record as Massachusetts governor, PolitiFact wrote:
We ran the some numbers ourselves using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics. We should note up front that there are a number of ways to slice the data, and the numbers change a bit depending on the parameters of your search. For example, do you look at all nonfarm workers (which includes government workers) or only private workers? We ran the numbers a few different ways, and while the numbers changed slightly, the ranking did not: Massachusetts was 47th out of 50 in the percentage of job growth.
If you look at all nonfarm workers, for example, Massachusetts went from 3,158,800 jobs to 3,198,500, an increase of 1.3 percent. Only Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana were worse. The national average was 5.3 percent.
At our request, the taxpayer-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, which does nonpartisan analysis of the state's financial and economic statistics, ran some numbers as well. They looked at figures from December 2002 (right before Romney took office) to December 2006, so the percentages were slightly different than ours, but they came to the same ranking for Massachusetts.
"Jobs grew, but they grew at an anemic rate compared to the rest of the country," said Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.
The country was coming out of a recession when Romney took office. And it's likely, Widmer said, that Massachusetts emerged more slowly from that recession because its pre-recession numbers were disproportionally inflated by the technology bubble. A lot of those tech jobs never came back.
Widmer warned not to put to much stock in any governors' influence over their states' rate of job growth, or decline. The ability for governors to manage the state economy is vastly overrated, he said. States are tied to larger economic forces, he said, and governors often claim too much credit when things are going well and no blame when things are going poorly.
But when you have Romney running for president as a business person who says he created jobs for the private sector when he was governor, "In that context, the numbers from the DNC are relevant," Widmer said. "They are a relevant and accurate rebuttal." [PolitiFact, 6/22/11]
Reuters: "Romney Presided Over One Of The Puniest Rates Of Employment Growth ... At A Time [When] The Nation's Economy Was Booming." From an April 12, 2011, Reuters report:
Romney stressed his experience as head of private equity firm Bain Capital when he announced on Monday he was forming an exploratory committee on seeking the Republican 2012 nomination to challenge Obama, a Democrat.
He made a fortune wheeling and dealing in companies, some of which endured big job cuts as part of restructuring. Some ultimately went bankrupt.
[A]s Massachusetts governor from January 2003 to January 2007, Romney presided over one of the puniest rates of employment growth among the 50 U.S. states, at a time the nation's economy was booming.
Labor Department figures showed Massachusetts ranked 47th among the states in the rate of jobs growth in those four years -- ahead of only Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana. [Reuters, 4/12/11]
WSJ's Brett Arends: Mass. Job Growth "Badly Lagged Other High-Skill, High-Wage, Knowledge Economy States." According to a February 2010 MarketWatch article by Wall Street Journal columnist Brett Arends:
Romney, who may well be President Barack Obama's opponent in 2012, he had great time last week blaming the president for the current jobs shortage.
Speaking to the CPAC right-wing conference in Washington, D.C., Romney said that the dismal employment situation, a year after Obama took office, showed the president was a "failure" who was "going downhill faster than... Lindsey Vonn."
OK, let's take him at his word. Then what does that say about Romney?
The Republican contender was the governor of Massachusetts from January 2003 to January 2007. And during that time, according to the U.S. Labor Department, the state ranked 47th in the entire country in jobs growth. Fourth from last.
The only ones that did worse? Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana. In other words, two rustbelt states and another that lost its biggest city to a hurricane.
The Massachusetts jobs growth over that period, a pitiful 0.9%, badly lagged other high-skill, high-wage, knowledge economy states like New York (2.7%), California (4.7%) and North Carolina (7.6%).
The national average: More than 5%.
This was after four years. So far Obama has been in office for just one year. How was Romney's performance by his first anniversary?
Fiftieth out of fifty.
That's right. In Romney's first year in charge, Massachusetts ranked dead last in America in jobs growth. [MarketWatch, 2/23/10]
FactCheck.org: "Romney's Job Record Provides Little To Boast About." In January 2008, FactCheck.org examined Romney's claim that Massachusetts gained jobs "every single month" he was governor and concluded:
Payroll jobs in Massachusetts hit their low point in December 2003 at the end of Romney's first year in office. And the number of jobs declined in seven of the remaining 36 months of his term, as measured by total nonfarm employment, seasonally adjusted, which is the standard measure of payroll employment used by economists and journalists. The claim that jobs increased "every single month" is false.
Furthermore, Romney's job record provides little to boast about. By the end of his four years in office, Massachusetts had squeezed out a net gain in payroll jobs of just 1 percent, compared with job growth of 5.3 percent for the nation as a whole. [FactCheck.org, 1/11/08]
Reuters: Wages Also "Stagnated During Romney's Term." From a January 2008 Reuters report:
The former Massachusetts governor issued a statement on Sunday titled "creating jobs" that focuses on 57,600 jobs added to the Massachusetts economy during his single term as governor from 2003 to 2007.
But Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum, who has researched Romney's record, said the state lagged the U.S. average during that period in job creation, economic growth and wage increases.
"As a strict labor market economist looking at the record, Massachusetts did very poorly during the Romney years, he said. "On every measure you've got, the state was a substantial under-performer."
His supporters contend the state's job market was soft long before Romney's term, which ended in January last year, blaming a Democratic-controlled Legislature for the weakness. His spokesman, Kevin Madden, has asserted that Romney brought Massachusetts "back from the brink of financial disaster."
But Northeastern's Sum said that while jobs were created under Romney, the rate was the third-lowest in the nation after Hurricane Katrina-hit Louisiana and Michigan. At the same time, wages in the New England state stagnated during Romney's term.
The average weekly wage of Massachusetts workers, Sum said, rose by just a $1 between 2001 and 2006 after adjusting for inflation, while the state had the third-highest rate of population loss in the nation between July 2002 and July 2006.
Real output of goods and services -- a broad measure of economic performance -- grew 9 percent, below the 13 percent rate for the United States, he added. [Reuters, 1/20/08]
Economist: Massachusetts' Unemployment Rate Drop A "False Indicator"
Sum Contended That "Romney's Frequent Argument That Unemployment Dropped During His Tenure Is A False Indicator." According to The Boston Globe:
By the time Romney left the State House, Massachusetts had generated 24,400 net new jobs, according to an analysis by Moody's Economy.com, an independent research group. The state had only an 0.8 percent increase in employment, giving it the fourth-weakest rate of job growth among all states over that time.
"If you want to say you're about job creation, your record -- at least in our state -- would suggest that's just not true,'' said Andrew Sum, a professor at Northeastern University who has studied Romney's economic record. "That time period was a very weak time period for the state.
"I'm not blaming everything on him, but he didn't turn anything around,'' he added.
Sum did a study that showed that 14 percent of the state's manufacturing jobs were lost during Romney's four years, along with declines in payroll and labor force. In all indicators, Massachusetts was below the national average and was among the lowest-performing states in the country.
Sum also said Romney's frequent argument that unemployment dropped during his tenure is a false indicator. The unemployment rate was dropping nationwide, and much of the improvement in Massachusetts was due not to additional jobs but because people stopped looking for work or moved out of the state, he said. [The Boston Globe, 5/31/12]
Sum: "There Was Not One Measure Where The State Did Well Under His Term In Office." A Washington Post article reported that Sum argued that "the unemployment rate fell only because people were leaving the workforce in droves during Romney's term":
Romney's campaign says he curbed the state's unemployment problem.
"As governor he confronted an economy very similar to Obama's economy: high unemployment and no job creation," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement. "Under his leadership and economic reforms the Massachusetts unemployment rate went from 5.6 percent to 4.7 percent and the state had a positive record of nearly 50,000 new jobs created."
But Andrew Sum, a professor of economics at Northeastern University, says the unemployment rate fell only because people were leaving the workforce in droves during Romney's term. Just one state had a bigger drop in its labor force during the same period, according to Sum -- that was Louisiana, which was hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"There was not one measure where the state did well under his term in office. We were below average and often near the bottom," said Sum, who is also the director of Northeastern's Center for Labor Market Studies.
Other states that never fully recovered from the 2001 downturn were Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, all industrial states that had lost scores of manufacturing jobs. Like those states, Massachusetts has been losing manufacturing jobs for more than a decade. And Romney was unable to stem the tide. At the end of 2002, just before he entered office, there were 338,000 manufacturing jobs in the state. By the time he left, there were 298,000, a drop of 12 percent, according to federal data.
"Under his administration, Massachusetts lost a huge number of blue-collar jobs that provided an opportunity for the middle class," said Sum, the Northeastern economist. [The Washington Post, 2/7/12]
Conservative Pundit Obscures Romney's Jobs Record By Citing MA Unemployment Rate
Conservative pundit Jim Geraghty is deflecting attention from Mitt Romney's weak job creation record as governor of Massachusetts, pointing to overall unemployment trends at the time. But that statistic, which one economist has argued is a "false indicator," doesn't change the fact that during Romney's tenure, Massachusetts ranked 47th out of all states in job creation.
Obama Campaign Criticizes Romney's Jobs Record As Massachusetts Governor
Reuters: Obama Campaign Ad Highlighted Romney "For Failing To Create Jobs As Massachusetts Governor." Reuters reported:
President Barack Obama's campaign attacked Republican rival Mitt Romney on Thursday for failing to create jobs as Massachusetts governor, calling it more evidence of a flawed economic approach that would be disastrous in the White House.
After weeks of criticizing Romney for plundering companies and slashing jobs while leading a private equity firm, Obama's campaign shifted its attacks to Romney's work in Massachusetts and said his experience did not qualify him to lead.
At a raucous appearance outside the Massachusetts statehouse, Obama strategist David Axelrod noted the state ranked 47th in job creation during Romney's four years as governor, while long-term state debt grew. He said Romney also broke a tax-cutting pledge by raising a range of fees that mostly hurt the middle class. [Reuters, 5/31/12]
Conservative Pundit Geraghty Touted MA Unemployment Rate To Obscure Romney's Jobs Record
National Review's Jim Geraghty: "Massachusetts's Unemployment Rate Changed From 5.6 Percent To 4.7 Percent." In a post at National Review Online, contributor Jim Geraghty wrote:
For the Obama campaign and Democrats, it's "Spotlight Romney as Governor" Day.
David Axelrod -- you know, the political strategist who routinely attends national security meetings -- will be in Boston, to hold a press conference in front of the State House in Boston to discuss "Mitt Romney's economic philosophy and his failed economic record in Massachusetts." Axelrod will warn that under Romney, Massachusetts's unemployment rate changed from 5.6 percent to 4.7 percent, and that if elected, Romney would inflict the same pain and suffering to all of America.
But Under Romney, Job Growth In Massachusetts Was Among The Lowest In The Country
PolitiFact: "Massachusetts Was 47th Out Of 50 In The Percentage Of Job Growth." Examining Romney's jobs record as Massachusetts governor, PolitiFact wrote:
We ran the some numbers ourselves using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics. We should note up front that there are a number of ways to slice the data, and the numbers change a bit depending on the parameters of your search. For example, do you look at all nonfarm workers (which includes government workers) or only private workers? We ran the numbers a few different ways, and while the numbers changed slightly, the ranking did not: Massachusetts was 47th out of 50 in the percentage of job growth.
If you look at all nonfarm workers, for example, Massachusetts went from 3,158,800 jobs to 3,198,500, an increase of 1.3 percent. Only Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana were worse. The national average was 5.3 percent.
At our request, the taxpayer-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, which does nonpartisan analysis of the state's financial and economic statistics, ran some numbers as well. They looked at figures from December 2002 (right before Romney took office) to December 2006, so the percentages were slightly different than ours, but they came to the same ranking for Massachusetts.
"Jobs grew, but they grew at an anemic rate compared to the rest of the country," said Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.
The country was coming out of a recession when Romney took office. And it's likely, Widmer said, that Massachusetts emerged more slowly from that recession because its pre-recession numbers were disproportionally inflated by the technology bubble. A lot of those tech jobs never came back.
Widmer warned not to put to much stock in any governors' influence over their states' rate of job growth, or decline. The ability for governors to manage the state economy is vastly overrated, he said. States are tied to larger economic forces, he said, and governors often claim too much credit when things are going well and no blame when things are going poorly.
But when you have Romney running for president as a business person who says he created jobs for the private sector when he was governor, "In that context, the numbers from the DNC are relevant," Widmer said. "They are a relevant and accurate rebuttal." [PolitiFact, 6/22/11]
Reuters: "Romney Presided Over One Of The Puniest Rates Of Employment Growth ... At A Time [When] The Nation's Economy Was Booming." From an April 12, 2011, Reuters report:
Romney stressed his experience as head of private equity firm Bain Capital when he announced on Monday he was forming an exploratory committee on seeking the Republican 2012 nomination to challenge Obama, a Democrat.
He made a fortune wheeling and dealing in companies, some of which endured big job cuts as part of restructuring. Some ultimately went bankrupt.
[A]s Massachusetts governor from January 2003 to January 2007, Romney presided over one of the puniest rates of employment growth among the 50 U.S. states, at a time the nation's economy was booming.
Labor Department figures showed Massachusetts ranked 47th among the states in the rate of jobs growth in those four years -- ahead of only Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana. [Reuters, 4/12/11]
WSJ's Brett Arends: Mass. Job Growth "Badly Lagged Other High-Skill, High-Wage, Knowledge Economy States." According to a February 2010 MarketWatch article by Wall Street Journal columnist Brett Arends:
Romney, who may well be President Barack Obama's opponent in 2012, he had great time last week blaming the president for the current jobs shortage.
Speaking to the CPAC right-wing conference in Washington, D.C., Romney said that the dismal employment situation, a year after Obama took office, showed the president was a "failure" who was "going downhill faster than... Lindsey Vonn."
OK, let's take him at his word. Then what does that say about Romney?
The Republican contender was the governor of Massachusetts from January 2003 to January 2007. And during that time, according to the U.S. Labor Department, the state ranked 47th in the entire country in jobs growth. Fourth from last.
The only ones that did worse? Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana. In other words, two rustbelt states and another that lost its biggest city to a hurricane.
The Massachusetts jobs growth over that period, a pitiful 0.9%, badly lagged other high-skill, high-wage, knowledge economy states like New York (2.7%), California (4.7%) and North Carolina (7.6%).
The national average: More than 5%.
This was after four years. So far Obama has been in office for just one year. How was Romney's performance by his first anniversary?
Fiftieth out of fifty.
That's right. In Romney's first year in charge, Massachusetts ranked dead last in America in jobs growth. [MarketWatch, 2/23/10]
FactCheck.org: "Romney's Job Record Provides Little To Boast About." In January 2008, FactCheck.org examined Romney's claim that Massachusetts gained jobs "every single month" he was governor and concluded:
Payroll jobs in Massachusetts hit their low point in December 2003 at the end of Romney's first year in office. And the number of jobs declined in seven of the remaining 36 months of his term, as measured by total nonfarm employment, seasonally adjusted, which is the standard measure of payroll employment used by economists and journalists. The claim that jobs increased "every single month" is false.
Furthermore, Romney's job record provides little to boast about. By the end of his four years in office, Massachusetts had squeezed out a net gain in payroll jobs of just 1 percent, compared with job growth of 5.3 percent for the nation as a whole. [FactCheck.org, 1/11/08]
Reuters: Wages Also "Stagnated During Romney's Term." From a January 2008 Reuters report:
The former Massachusetts governor issued a statement on Sunday titled "creating jobs" that focuses on 57,600 jobs added to the Massachusetts economy during his single term as governor from 2003 to 2007.
But Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum, who has researched Romney's record, said the state lagged the U.S. average during that period in job creation, economic growth and wage increases.
"As a strict labor market economist looking at the record, Massachusetts did very poorly during the Romney years, he said. "On every measure you've got, the state was a substantial under-performer."
His supporters contend the state's job market was soft long before Romney's term, which ended in January last year, blaming a Democratic-controlled Legislature for the weakness. His spokesman, Kevin Madden, has asserted that Romney brought Massachusetts "back from the brink of financial disaster."
But Northeastern's Sum said that while jobs were created under Romney, the rate was the third-lowest in the nation after Hurricane Katrina-hit Louisiana and Michigan. At the same time, wages in the New England state stagnated during Romney's term.
The average weekly wage of Massachusetts workers, Sum said, rose by just a $1 between 2001 and 2006 after adjusting for inflation, while the state had the third-highest rate of population loss in the nation between July 2002 and July 2006.
Real output of goods and services -- a broad measure of economic performance -- grew 9 percent, below the 13 percent rate for the United States, he added. [Reuters, 1/20/08]
Economist: Massachusetts' Unemployment Rate Drop A "False Indicator"
Sum Contended That "Romney's Frequent Argument That Unemployment Dropped During His Tenure Is A False Indicator." According to The Boston Globe:
By the time Romney left the State House, Massachusetts had generated 24,400 net new jobs, according to an analysis by Moody's Economy.com, an independent research group. The state had only an 0.8 percent increase in employment, giving it the fourth-weakest rate of job growth among all states over that time.
"If you want to say you're about job creation, your record -- at least in our state -- would suggest that's just not true,'' said Andrew Sum, a professor at Northeastern University who has studied Romney's economic record. "That time period was a very weak time period for the state.
"I'm not blaming everything on him, but he didn't turn anything around,'' he added.
Sum did a study that showed that 14 percent of the state's manufacturing jobs were lost during Romney's four years, along with declines in payroll and labor force. In all indicators, Massachusetts was below the national average and was among the lowest-performing states in the country.
Sum also said Romney's frequent argument that unemployment dropped during his tenure is a false indicator. The unemployment rate was dropping nationwide, and much of the improvement in Massachusetts was due not to additional jobs but because people stopped looking for work or moved out of the state, he said. [The Boston Globe, 5/31/12]
Sum: "There Was Not One Measure Where The State Did Well Under His Term In Office." A Washington Post article reported that Sum argued that "the unemployment rate fell only because people were leaving the workforce in droves during Romney's term":
Romney's campaign says he curbed the state's unemployment problem.
"As governor he confronted an economy very similar to Obama's economy: high unemployment and no job creation," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement. "Under his leadership and economic reforms the Massachusetts unemployment rate went from 5.6 percent to 4.7 percent and the state had a positive record of nearly 50,000 new jobs created."
But Andrew Sum, a professor of economics at Northeastern University, says the unemployment rate fell only because people were leaving the workforce in droves during Romney's term. Just one state had a bigger drop in its labor force during the same period, according to Sum -- that was Louisiana, which was hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"There was not one measure where the state did well under his term in office. We were below average and often near the bottom," said Sum, who is also the director of Northeastern's Center for Labor Market Studies.
Other states that never fully recovered from the 2001 downturn were Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, all industrial states that had lost scores of manufacturing jobs. Like those states, Massachusetts has been losing manufacturing jobs for more than a decade. And Romney was unable to stem the tide. At the end of 2002, just before he entered office, there were 338,000 manufacturing jobs in the state. By the time he left, there were 298,000, a drop of 12 percent, according to federal data.
"Under his administration, Massachusetts lost a huge number of blue-collar jobs that provided an opportunity for the middle class," said Sum, the Northeastern economist. [The Washington Post, 2/7/12]
The Moronic, Idiotic Republican Attacks on Obamacare
From The Daily Beast -- May 31, 2012:
Michael Tomasky on the Audacity of GOP Dopes on Health Care
After attacking the Affordable Care Act for three years, Republicans now say they’d like to keep its most popular provisions.
How convenient—and how clueless.
In three weeks or so, the Supreme Court will rule on health care. Republicans have been discussing what they might do in the event that poor, beleaguered John Roberts manages to withstand that vicious assault of the liberals and to lead a majority that strikes down the individual mandate. This one is a classic, folks. After spending three years lying their eyes out about the bill and tearing this country apart over it, it now turns out that they may well want to keep several of its provisions. And of course they want to keep the easy and fun stuff and get rid of all that bad-bad-bad stuff, but what they don’t understand—or more likely do understand but refuse to acknowledge—is that the good doesn’t work without the "bad." It’s breathtaking and ignorant—whether breathtakingly ignorant or ignorantly breathtaking I’m not quite sure. Call it the audacity of dopes.
Two weeks ago, John Boehner was insisting that “Obamacare” must be repealed lock, stock, and barrel. Some other Republicans wanted the slightly less radical approach of keeping some aspects of the law. A few days ago, some in the House warmed to this idea. Now, TPM is reporting that Senate Republicans are hopping on the piecemeal train.
The idea is to preserve the language that requires insurers to cover people with preexisting conditions, because everyone likes that; to continue to permit young people up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ insurance, because that’s helpful, especially in a rocky economy; and to press forward with eliminating the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole,” whereby seniors have to pay 100 percent of medication costs within a certain price range.
The last two are fine. But that first one is the gobsmacker. You cannot just make insurance companies cover really sick people. Sick people are expensive people, and insurers’ costs will shoot to the heavens, and those costs of course will be passed along to everyone else. Is there a solution to this problem? Yes. The solution is to get more people in the insurance pool—especially more healthy people, who don’t cost a lot to cover. Then, insurers have more money to use paying for the care of the sick people. But since you can’t just wish for more healthy people to buy insurance, you have to figure out some way to get them to do so. And hence ... the individual mandate. It broadens the pool and brings premiums down. It’s how you manage to pay for all those people who need radiation and chemo and dialysis.
There are alternatives to the mandate, which I needn’t go into now because the mandate is what we have. Without the mandate, you have millions of sick people being added to insurance rolls but no healthy ones. What happens? You develop “high-risk pools,” in the argot, and Harold Pollack, a leading health-care expert from the University of Chicago (who advised the Obama campaign) says that high-risk pools don’t work: “Except as a temporary stopgap measure, the track records of high-risk pools is quite poor. Experience in state programs indicates that high subsidies are required to keep premiums affordable for this (by definition) high-cost group. Many states have ended up capping the program, charging high premiums, or both.”
As it happens, the ACA has started temporary high-risk pools, designed to try to help some people before the law fully takes effect. Pollack studied them and wrote up the results in the Journal of General Internal Medicine last year. He found that the program’s funding didn’t come close to matching the need. In other words, lots of money is required to serve these people properly—money that would come from premiums imposed by the individual mandate.
The Republicans’ “answer” to this is their answer to everything like this, tax-free saving accounts. But health-savings accounts, if they work at all, which is a serious question, work only for healthy people who break a leg tossing the Frisbee. Nobody can sock away $25,000 for an operation or $100,000 for end-of-life care; the very idea is crazy. The GOP would also subsidize care for high-risk people. But Pollack notes that these subsidies would have to be billions of dollars a year. Republicans aren’t throwing that kind of money around at anything. Except at ships the Navy doesn’t want and tax cuts really rich people don’t need.
The GOP proposal to help people buy insurance would cost billions a year. Republicans only spend that kind of money on ships the Navy doesn’t want and tax cuts the rich don’t need.
It’s just a shockingly unserious approach to a very serious problem of roughly 4 million uninsured Americans who have cancer, diabetes, emphysema, and the like. Republicans don’t give a happy crap about any of these people. They have no interest whatsoever in trying to solve a public problem. See, this is the Democrats’ burden, and when you come down it, the true difference between the parties these days. Democrats are actually concerned with trying to address a public-policy problem in a responsible way. You can disagree with their way, but they’re at least trying to do something positive in the country—help those 4 million as best they can. This involves difficulty and choices because nothing meaningful in life doesn’t. It also requires the people to stop being selfish apes for five minutes and look at the larger picture.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are complete nihilists. They don’t care about solving any policy problems. They care about two things. They care about politics—advantage, winning, humiliating Obama. And they care about ideology, their drunken and medieval belief that the market can fix everything. But wait; it’s not even really a belief. They’re dumb, but they are not that dumb. They don’t fully believe it. Like Romney accidentally acknowledging to Mark Halperin that huge budget cuts cause recessions. It’s just the garbage they say because it sounds good. No pain! Nothing is complicated! Be selfish!
There is some question as to whether the Republicans will unite behind the three planks I mentioned. Because only the “moderates,” the sell-outs, really want to do it. “Real” Republicans, the Tea Party people, want to kill every aspect of the bill, strike its name from the very records of history. So we’ll see what they do. And of course it all depends on the Supremes tossing the mandate out, which they might not do.
But if this chain of events unfolds, you can bet on Paul Ryan and others going out there to talk about their “reform” of the high-risk pool problem with all the pious sincerity they can muster. And if, God forbid, the Republicans win the presidency in November? Then they’d enact some patchwork thing with about 1/20th of the money actually required, and millions would remain uninsured. But most Americans would never be the wiser because 4 million people just isn’t that many to begin with.
That’s how the GOP will hope to get away with it. Here’s hoping little Johnny Roberts is as delicate a flower as conservatives fear he is.
Michael Tomasky on the Audacity of GOP Dopes on Health Care
After attacking the Affordable Care Act for three years, Republicans now say they’d like to keep its most popular provisions.
How convenient—and how clueless.
In three weeks or so, the Supreme Court will rule on health care. Republicans have been discussing what they might do in the event that poor, beleaguered John Roberts manages to withstand that vicious assault of the liberals and to lead a majority that strikes down the individual mandate. This one is a classic, folks. After spending three years lying their eyes out about the bill and tearing this country apart over it, it now turns out that they may well want to keep several of its provisions. And of course they want to keep the easy and fun stuff and get rid of all that bad-bad-bad stuff, but what they don’t understand—or more likely do understand but refuse to acknowledge—is that the good doesn’t work without the "bad." It’s breathtaking and ignorant—whether breathtakingly ignorant or ignorantly breathtaking I’m not quite sure. Call it the audacity of dopes.
Two weeks ago, John Boehner was insisting that “Obamacare” must be repealed lock, stock, and barrel. Some other Republicans wanted the slightly less radical approach of keeping some aspects of the law. A few days ago, some in the House warmed to this idea. Now, TPM is reporting that Senate Republicans are hopping on the piecemeal train.
The idea is to preserve the language that requires insurers to cover people with preexisting conditions, because everyone likes that; to continue to permit young people up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ insurance, because that’s helpful, especially in a rocky economy; and to press forward with eliminating the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole,” whereby seniors have to pay 100 percent of medication costs within a certain price range.
The last two are fine. But that first one is the gobsmacker. You cannot just make insurance companies cover really sick people. Sick people are expensive people, and insurers’ costs will shoot to the heavens, and those costs of course will be passed along to everyone else. Is there a solution to this problem? Yes. The solution is to get more people in the insurance pool—especially more healthy people, who don’t cost a lot to cover. Then, insurers have more money to use paying for the care of the sick people. But since you can’t just wish for more healthy people to buy insurance, you have to figure out some way to get them to do so. And hence ... the individual mandate. It broadens the pool and brings premiums down. It’s how you manage to pay for all those people who need radiation and chemo and dialysis.
There are alternatives to the mandate, which I needn’t go into now because the mandate is what we have. Without the mandate, you have millions of sick people being added to insurance rolls but no healthy ones. What happens? You develop “high-risk pools,” in the argot, and Harold Pollack, a leading health-care expert from the University of Chicago (who advised the Obama campaign) says that high-risk pools don’t work: “Except as a temporary stopgap measure, the track records of high-risk pools is quite poor. Experience in state programs indicates that high subsidies are required to keep premiums affordable for this (by definition) high-cost group. Many states have ended up capping the program, charging high premiums, or both.”
As it happens, the ACA has started temporary high-risk pools, designed to try to help some people before the law fully takes effect. Pollack studied them and wrote up the results in the Journal of General Internal Medicine last year. He found that the program’s funding didn’t come close to matching the need. In other words, lots of money is required to serve these people properly—money that would come from premiums imposed by the individual mandate.
The Republicans’ “answer” to this is their answer to everything like this, tax-free saving accounts. But health-savings accounts, if they work at all, which is a serious question, work only for healthy people who break a leg tossing the Frisbee. Nobody can sock away $25,000 for an operation or $100,000 for end-of-life care; the very idea is crazy. The GOP would also subsidize care for high-risk people. But Pollack notes that these subsidies would have to be billions of dollars a year. Republicans aren’t throwing that kind of money around at anything. Except at ships the Navy doesn’t want and tax cuts really rich people don’t need.
The GOP proposal to help people buy insurance would cost billions a year. Republicans only spend that kind of money on ships the Navy doesn’t want and tax cuts the rich don’t need.
It’s just a shockingly unserious approach to a very serious problem of roughly 4 million uninsured Americans who have cancer, diabetes, emphysema, and the like. Republicans don’t give a happy crap about any of these people. They have no interest whatsoever in trying to solve a public problem. See, this is the Democrats’ burden, and when you come down it, the true difference between the parties these days. Democrats are actually concerned with trying to address a public-policy problem in a responsible way. You can disagree with their way, but they’re at least trying to do something positive in the country—help those 4 million as best they can. This involves difficulty and choices because nothing meaningful in life doesn’t. It also requires the people to stop being selfish apes for five minutes and look at the larger picture.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are complete nihilists. They don’t care about solving any policy problems. They care about two things. They care about politics—advantage, winning, humiliating Obama. And they care about ideology, their drunken and medieval belief that the market can fix everything. But wait; it’s not even really a belief. They’re dumb, but they are not that dumb. They don’t fully believe it. Like Romney accidentally acknowledging to Mark Halperin that huge budget cuts cause recessions. It’s just the garbage they say because it sounds good. No pain! Nothing is complicated! Be selfish!
There is some question as to whether the Republicans will unite behind the three planks I mentioned. Because only the “moderates,” the sell-outs, really want to do it. “Real” Republicans, the Tea Party people, want to kill every aspect of the bill, strike its name from the very records of history. So we’ll see what they do. And of course it all depends on the Supremes tossing the mandate out, which they might not do.
But if this chain of events unfolds, you can bet on Paul Ryan and others going out there to talk about their “reform” of the high-risk pool problem with all the pious sincerity they can muster. And if, God forbid, the Republicans win the presidency in November? Then they’d enact some patchwork thing with about 1/20th of the money actually required, and millions would remain uninsured. But most Americans would never be the wiser because 4 million people just isn’t that many to begin with.
That’s how the GOP will hope to get away with it. Here’s hoping little Johnny Roberts is as delicate a flower as conservatives fear he is.
Conservatives Have Wrecked Wisconsin and are Ready to Destroy America
From The Washington Post -- May 30, 2012:
Wisconsin reaches for the last resort
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Recalls and impeachments are a remedy of last resort. Most of the time, voters who don’t like an incumbent choose to live with the offending politician until the next election, on the sensible theory that fixed terms of office and regular elections are adequate checks on abuses of power and extreme policies.
The question facing Wisconsin’s citizens is whether Republican Gov. Scott Walker engaged in such extraordinary behavior that setting aside his election is both justified and necessary.
Voters don’t have to get to this large question. Walker’s opponents forced next Tuesday’s recall vote by using the state’s laws in an entirely legitimate way. They gathered far more petition signatures than they needed, signaling that discontent in the state was widespread.
The result has been a fairly conventional campaign in which Walker once again confronts his 2010 opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D). At this point, preferring Barrett, an affable, moderate liberal, to the conservative firebrand Walker is reason enough to vote the incumbent out, but the broader case for recall is important.
Walker is being challenged not because he pursued conservative policies but because Wisconsin has become the most glaring example of a new and genuinely alarming approach to politics on the right. It seeks to use incumbency to alter the rules and tilt the legal and electoral playing field decisively toward the interests of those in power.
The most obvious way of gaming the system is to keep your opponents from voting in the next election. Rigging the electorate is a surefire way of holding on to office. That is exactly what has happened in state after state — Wisconsin is one of them — where GOP legislatures passed new laws on voter identification and registration. They are plainly aimed at making it much more difficult for poorer, younger and minority voters to get or stay on the voter rolls and to cast ballots when Election Day comes.
Rationalized by claims of extensive voter fraud that are invented out of whole cloth, these measures are discriminatory in their effect and partisan in their purpose. On their own, they are sufficient cause for the electorate to rise up and cry, “Stop!”
But Walker and his allies did more than this in Wisconsin. They also sought to undermine one of the Democratic Party’s main sources of organization. They sharply curtailed collective bargaining by most public employee unions and made it harder for these organizations to maintain themselves over time, notably by requiring an almost endless series of union elections.
The attack on unions was carried out in the name of saving state and local government money. But there is a big difference between, on the one hand, bargaining hard with the unions and demanding more reasonable pension agreements, and, on the other, trying to undercut the labor movement altogether. In the wake of the recession, mayors and governors of both parties have had to demand a lot from their unions. For Democrats, this often involved unions that helped elect them to office.
That is one of the reasons the party is well-represented in the recall by Barrett: He has been a tough negotiator in Milwaukee, to the consternation of some of its public employees. In the Democratic primary, unions spent heavily on behalf of Barrett’s main opponent, former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk. Although labor is now fully behind Barrett, Walker simply cannot cast his opponent as a captive of the movement. No wonder the Republican is closing his campaign with a demagogic ad on crime in Milwaukee. Walker knows he can’t win the last swing votes he needs on the basis of his record and his stand on collective bargaining.
The paradox of Wisconsin is that, although recalling a governor would be unusual, Barrett is the candidate of regular order, of consensual politics, Wisconsin-style. Wisconsin has had successful conservative governors before, Republican Tommy Thompson prominent among them. They enacted conservative policies without turning the state upside down. They sought to win over their opponents rather than to inhibit their capacity to oppose.
Walker seems to enjoy a slight advantage in the polls, having vastly outspent his foes up to now. Barrett, however, should have enough money to level the competition in the final days. This recall should not have had to happen. But its root cause was not the orneriness of Walker’s opponents but a polarizing brand of conservative politics that most Americans, including many conservatives, have good reason to reject.
Wisconsin reaches for the last resort
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Recalls and impeachments are a remedy of last resort. Most of the time, voters who don’t like an incumbent choose to live with the offending politician until the next election, on the sensible theory that fixed terms of office and regular elections are adequate checks on abuses of power and extreme policies.
The question facing Wisconsin’s citizens is whether Republican Gov. Scott Walker engaged in such extraordinary behavior that setting aside his election is both justified and necessary.
Voters don’t have to get to this large question. Walker’s opponents forced next Tuesday’s recall vote by using the state’s laws in an entirely legitimate way. They gathered far more petition signatures than they needed, signaling that discontent in the state was widespread.
The result has been a fairly conventional campaign in which Walker once again confronts his 2010 opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D). At this point, preferring Barrett, an affable, moderate liberal, to the conservative firebrand Walker is reason enough to vote the incumbent out, but the broader case for recall is important.
Walker is being challenged not because he pursued conservative policies but because Wisconsin has become the most glaring example of a new and genuinely alarming approach to politics on the right. It seeks to use incumbency to alter the rules and tilt the legal and electoral playing field decisively toward the interests of those in power.
The most obvious way of gaming the system is to keep your opponents from voting in the next election. Rigging the electorate is a surefire way of holding on to office. That is exactly what has happened in state after state — Wisconsin is one of them — where GOP legislatures passed new laws on voter identification and registration. They are plainly aimed at making it much more difficult for poorer, younger and minority voters to get or stay on the voter rolls and to cast ballots when Election Day comes.
Rationalized by claims of extensive voter fraud that are invented out of whole cloth, these measures are discriminatory in their effect and partisan in their purpose. On their own, they are sufficient cause for the electorate to rise up and cry, “Stop!”
But Walker and his allies did more than this in Wisconsin. They also sought to undermine one of the Democratic Party’s main sources of organization. They sharply curtailed collective bargaining by most public employee unions and made it harder for these organizations to maintain themselves over time, notably by requiring an almost endless series of union elections.
The attack on unions was carried out in the name of saving state and local government money. But there is a big difference between, on the one hand, bargaining hard with the unions and demanding more reasonable pension agreements, and, on the other, trying to undercut the labor movement altogether. In the wake of the recession, mayors and governors of both parties have had to demand a lot from their unions. For Democrats, this often involved unions that helped elect them to office.
That is one of the reasons the party is well-represented in the recall by Barrett: He has been a tough negotiator in Milwaukee, to the consternation of some of its public employees. In the Democratic primary, unions spent heavily on behalf of Barrett’s main opponent, former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk. Although labor is now fully behind Barrett, Walker simply cannot cast his opponent as a captive of the movement. No wonder the Republican is closing his campaign with a demagogic ad on crime in Milwaukee. Walker knows he can’t win the last swing votes he needs on the basis of his record and his stand on collective bargaining.
The paradox of Wisconsin is that, although recalling a governor would be unusual, Barrett is the candidate of regular order, of consensual politics, Wisconsin-style. Wisconsin has had successful conservative governors before, Republican Tommy Thompson prominent among them. They enacted conservative policies without turning the state upside down. They sought to win over their opponents rather than to inhibit their capacity to oppose.
Walker seems to enjoy a slight advantage in the polls, having vastly outspent his foes up to now. Barrett, however, should have enough money to level the competition in the final days. This recall should not have had to happen. But its root cause was not the orneriness of Walker’s opponents but a polarizing brand of conservative politics that most Americans, including many conservatives, have good reason to reject.
Market Watch Discredits Phony Right-Wing Theory That There Has Been a Government Spending Boom Under Obama
From Media Matters for America -- May 30, 2012:
MarketWatch Column On Obama's Spending Restraint Stands Up To Attacks
In response to a MarketWatch column about federal spending slowing under President Obama, the right-wing media have tried to discredit the column with false or misleading attacks. But none of them contradict the central premise of the column: that there has been no boom in federal spending under Obama.
Nutting: "Obama Spending Binge Never Happened"
MarketWatch's Nutting: In Bush's Last Fiscal Year, Spending Rose By 17.9 Percent. From Rex Nutting's MarketWatch column, headlined "Obama spending binge never happened":
Here are the facts, according to the official government statistics:
In the 2009 fiscal year -- the last of George W. Bush's presidency -- federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.
In fiscal 2010 -- the first budget under Obama -- spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.
In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.
In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office's estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.
Finally in fiscal 2013 -- the final budget of Obama's term -- spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO's latest budget outlook. [MarketWatch, 5/22/12]
MarketWatch Chart: Under Obama, "Spending Growth Has Been Relatively Flat." From Nutting's column:
CLAIM: Nutting Credited Stimulus Spending To Bush
Limbaugh: Nutting Claims "All The Spending In 2009, Which Would Include The Stimulus, Was Bush's." From Rush Limbaugh's radio show:
LIMBAUGH: The way [Nutting] does it is to say all the spending in 2009, which would include the stimulus, was Bush's because the budget for 2009 was Bush's, done in September of 2008. So Obama's first year is actually Bush's last budget. But Bush didn't budget the porkulus. Bush didn't budget the second porkulus. It's a trillion dollars of spending that this guy Nutting lops onto Bush and doesn't give to Obama. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 5/24/12]
Coulter: Nutting Put Stimulus Bill In "Bush's Column." From Ann Coulter's May 23 column:
It turns out Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obama's entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush.
That's not a joke.
That means, for example, the $825 billion stimulus bill, proposed, lobbied for, signed and spent by Obama, goes in ... Bush's column. (And if we attribute all of Bush's spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and No Child Left Behind to William Howard Taft, Bush didn't spend much either.) [AnnCoulter.com, 5/23/12, emphasis in original]
REALITY: Entire Stimulus Wasn't Allocated In 2009; Nutting Accounted For It
CBO: Stimulus Spending Was $114 Billion In 2009. From a Congressional Budget Office report on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the stimulus:
Through September 2011, 78 percent of the expected total spending through 2019 has been recorded. As CBO expected, spending started relatively slowly in fiscal year 2009, with $114 billion in outlays stemming from ARRA that year. The peak effect of the legislation was in 2010, when outlays totaled $235 billion; about $145 billion was spent in 2011. [Congressional Budget Office, 1/5/12]
Nutting Attributed $140 Billion In 2009 To Obama Policies, Including Stimulus. From Nutting's MarketWatch column:
When Obama took the oath of office, the $789 billion bank bailout had already been approved. Federal spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicare was already surging to meet the dire unemployment crisis that was well underway. See the CBO's January 2009 budget outlook.
Obama is not responsible for that increase, though he is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill, from the expansion of the children's health-care program and from other appropriations bills passed in the spring of 2009. [MarketWatch, 5/22/12]
CLAIM: Bush Didn't Sign A Budget For FY 2009
Big Government: "Bush Left No Budget." From a Big Government article by Vincent Giandurco:
Finally, the new President pushed through the Stimulus in Feb. 2009. This was $800+ Billion added to the regular budget, which in itself was increased by $425 Billion year-over-year by Reid, Pelosi, et al. Again, this being 2009, it falls to reason that this was Bush's spending, But as we saw, Bush left no budget and of course had no hand in the Stimulus. [Big Government, 5/24/12]
Limbaugh: "Bush Didn't Sign The 2009 Budget." From Limbaugh's radio show:
LIMBAUGH: I just got a note reminding me that Bush did not even sign the 2009 budget. Bush didn't sign the 2009 budget, and the Democrats held it over for Obama to sign, and then Obama refused a photo op because it was filled with earmarks. The 2009 budget, a lot of earmarks. Bush didn't sign it, Obama didn't sign it, but still it was there. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 5/24/12]
REALITY: Bush Approved Or Planned To Spend Trillions Of Dollars In 2009
Fiscal Year 2009 Was More Than One-Fourth Over Before Obama Even Took Office. The federal government's fiscal year begins on October 1, ends on September 30, and is designated by the year in which it ends. Therefore, the 2009 fiscal year began on October 1, 2008, more than three months before Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009. [U.S. Senate, accessed 5/25/12]
Bush Signed A Fiscal Year 2009 Appropriations Bill That Included More Than $600 Billion In Spending. In September 2008, Bush signed H.R. 2638, a bill that consolidated three of the 12 annual appropriations bills and provided more than $600 billion in spending, including $487.7 billion for the Defense Department, $40 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, and $72.9 billion for military construction and Veterans Affairs. [H.R. 2638, 9/30/08]
Bush Signed Appropriations For The Rest Of The Government That Covered Almost Half Of The 2009 Fiscal Year. H.R. 2638 included appropriations for the rest of the federal government from October 1, 2008, through March 6, 2009, more than five months of the 2009 fiscal year. [H.R. 2638, 9/30/08]
Without Counting TARP, Other Bailouts, And Other Emergency Spending, Bush Had Proposed To Spend $3.1 Trillion In 2009. From the Ludwig von Mises Institute:
The federal fiscal year lasts from October 1 to September 30 (It ended on June 30 prior to 1976). So, the 2009 fiscal year ended in September of 2009, eight months after Bush left office. When Obama was sworn into office, Bush had already submitted his 3.1 trillion dollar 2009 budget almost a year earlier. He then signed the stack of resulting appropriations bills submitted to him by Congress throughout 2008 which authorized the federal spending that would take place once the 2009 FY actually began in October. Then, in the fall of 2008, Bush supported and signed additional spending bills providing for various bailouts and stimulus programs that marked the end of his presidency, and which would show up as spending in 2009. Needless to say, the already-enormous 2009 budget that Bush had submitted in early 2008 was not totally reflective of the full impact of the huge spending increases that would eventually be authorized by Bush. Bush's original budget was $3.1 trillion, but once one adds in all the bailouts and stimulus spending also supported by Bush, the number is actually much larger, and this is the number that shows up in the spending figures now being attributed to Obama for FY2009. [Ludwig von Mises Institute, 3/21/11]
Bush's FY 2009 Budget Also Did Not Include Funding For the Afghanistan And Iraq Wars. Bush's budget requested only $70 billion for "activities related to the Global War on Terror." Rather than include a number for Afghanistan and Iraq, the budget stated: "The Administration will request additional funding once the specific needs of our troops are better known." [White House FY 2009 Department of Defense budget, 2/4/08]
Based On Policies Enacted Before Obama Came Into Office, CBO Had Already Projected A $1.2 Trillion Deficit For 2009. In a budget report released on January 7, 2009, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated, "The ongoing turmoil in the housing and financial markets has taken a major toll on the federal budget. CBO currently projects that the deficit this year will total $1.2 trillion, or 8.3 percent of GDP." CBO further stated, "A drop in tax revenues and increased federal spending (much of it related to the government's actions to address the crisis in the housing and financial markets) both contribute to the robust growth in this year's deficit. Compared with receipts last year, collections from corporate income taxes are anticipated to decline by 27 percent and individual income taxes by 8 percent; in normal economic conditions, they would both grow by several percentage points. In addition, the estimated deficit includes outlays of more than $180 billion to reflect the cost of transactions of the TARP." [Congressional Budget Office, 1/7/09]
MarketWatch Column On Obama's Spending Restraint Stands Up To Attacks
In response to a MarketWatch column about federal spending slowing under President Obama, the right-wing media have tried to discredit the column with false or misleading attacks. But none of them contradict the central premise of the column: that there has been no boom in federal spending under Obama.
Nutting: "Obama Spending Binge Never Happened"
MarketWatch's Nutting: In Bush's Last Fiscal Year, Spending Rose By 17.9 Percent. From Rex Nutting's MarketWatch column, headlined "Obama spending binge never happened":
Here are the facts, according to the official government statistics:
In the 2009 fiscal year -- the last of George W. Bush's presidency -- federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.
In fiscal 2010 -- the first budget under Obama -- spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.
In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.
In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office's estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.
Finally in fiscal 2013 -- the final budget of Obama's term -- spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO's latest budget outlook. [MarketWatch, 5/22/12]
MarketWatch Chart: Under Obama, "Spending Growth Has Been Relatively Flat." From Nutting's column:
CLAIM: Nutting Credited Stimulus Spending To Bush
Limbaugh: Nutting Claims "All The Spending In 2009, Which Would Include The Stimulus, Was Bush's." From Rush Limbaugh's radio show:
LIMBAUGH: The way [Nutting] does it is to say all the spending in 2009, which would include the stimulus, was Bush's because the budget for 2009 was Bush's, done in September of 2008. So Obama's first year is actually Bush's last budget. But Bush didn't budget the porkulus. Bush didn't budget the second porkulus. It's a trillion dollars of spending that this guy Nutting lops onto Bush and doesn't give to Obama. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 5/24/12]
Coulter: Nutting Put Stimulus Bill In "Bush's Column." From Ann Coulter's May 23 column:
It turns out Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obama's entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush.
That's not a joke.
That means, for example, the $825 billion stimulus bill, proposed, lobbied for, signed and spent by Obama, goes in ... Bush's column. (And if we attribute all of Bush's spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and No Child Left Behind to William Howard Taft, Bush didn't spend much either.) [AnnCoulter.com, 5/23/12, emphasis in original]
REALITY: Entire Stimulus Wasn't Allocated In 2009; Nutting Accounted For It
CBO: Stimulus Spending Was $114 Billion In 2009. From a Congressional Budget Office report on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the stimulus:
Through September 2011, 78 percent of the expected total spending through 2019 has been recorded. As CBO expected, spending started relatively slowly in fiscal year 2009, with $114 billion in outlays stemming from ARRA that year. The peak effect of the legislation was in 2010, when outlays totaled $235 billion; about $145 billion was spent in 2011. [Congressional Budget Office, 1/5/12]
Nutting Attributed $140 Billion In 2009 To Obama Policies, Including Stimulus. From Nutting's MarketWatch column:
When Obama took the oath of office, the $789 billion bank bailout had already been approved. Federal spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicare was already surging to meet the dire unemployment crisis that was well underway. See the CBO's January 2009 budget outlook.
Obama is not responsible for that increase, though he is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill, from the expansion of the children's health-care program and from other appropriations bills passed in the spring of 2009. [MarketWatch, 5/22/12]
CLAIM: Bush Didn't Sign A Budget For FY 2009
Big Government: "Bush Left No Budget." From a Big Government article by Vincent Giandurco:
Finally, the new President pushed through the Stimulus in Feb. 2009. This was $800+ Billion added to the regular budget, which in itself was increased by $425 Billion year-over-year by Reid, Pelosi, et al. Again, this being 2009, it falls to reason that this was Bush's spending, But as we saw, Bush left no budget and of course had no hand in the Stimulus. [Big Government, 5/24/12]
Limbaugh: "Bush Didn't Sign The 2009 Budget." From Limbaugh's radio show:
LIMBAUGH: I just got a note reminding me that Bush did not even sign the 2009 budget. Bush didn't sign the 2009 budget, and the Democrats held it over for Obama to sign, and then Obama refused a photo op because it was filled with earmarks. The 2009 budget, a lot of earmarks. Bush didn't sign it, Obama didn't sign it, but still it was there. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 5/24/12]
REALITY: Bush Approved Or Planned To Spend Trillions Of Dollars In 2009
Fiscal Year 2009 Was More Than One-Fourth Over Before Obama Even Took Office. The federal government's fiscal year begins on October 1, ends on September 30, and is designated by the year in which it ends. Therefore, the 2009 fiscal year began on October 1, 2008, more than three months before Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009. [U.S. Senate, accessed 5/25/12]
Bush Signed A Fiscal Year 2009 Appropriations Bill That Included More Than $600 Billion In Spending. In September 2008, Bush signed H.R. 2638, a bill that consolidated three of the 12 annual appropriations bills and provided more than $600 billion in spending, including $487.7 billion for the Defense Department, $40 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, and $72.9 billion for military construction and Veterans Affairs. [H.R. 2638, 9/30/08]
Bush Signed Appropriations For The Rest Of The Government That Covered Almost Half Of The 2009 Fiscal Year. H.R. 2638 included appropriations for the rest of the federal government from October 1, 2008, through March 6, 2009, more than five months of the 2009 fiscal year. [H.R. 2638, 9/30/08]
Without Counting TARP, Other Bailouts, And Other Emergency Spending, Bush Had Proposed To Spend $3.1 Trillion In 2009. From the Ludwig von Mises Institute:
The federal fiscal year lasts from October 1 to September 30 (It ended on June 30 prior to 1976). So, the 2009 fiscal year ended in September of 2009, eight months after Bush left office. When Obama was sworn into office, Bush had already submitted his 3.1 trillion dollar 2009 budget almost a year earlier. He then signed the stack of resulting appropriations bills submitted to him by Congress throughout 2008 which authorized the federal spending that would take place once the 2009 FY actually began in October. Then, in the fall of 2008, Bush supported and signed additional spending bills providing for various bailouts and stimulus programs that marked the end of his presidency, and which would show up as spending in 2009. Needless to say, the already-enormous 2009 budget that Bush had submitted in early 2008 was not totally reflective of the full impact of the huge spending increases that would eventually be authorized by Bush. Bush's original budget was $3.1 trillion, but once one adds in all the bailouts and stimulus spending also supported by Bush, the number is actually much larger, and this is the number that shows up in the spending figures now being attributed to Obama for FY2009. [Ludwig von Mises Institute, 3/21/11]
Bush's FY 2009 Budget Also Did Not Include Funding For the Afghanistan And Iraq Wars. Bush's budget requested only $70 billion for "activities related to the Global War on Terror." Rather than include a number for Afghanistan and Iraq, the budget stated: "The Administration will request additional funding once the specific needs of our troops are better known." [White House FY 2009 Department of Defense budget, 2/4/08]
Based On Policies Enacted Before Obama Came Into Office, CBO Had Already Projected A $1.2 Trillion Deficit For 2009. In a budget report released on January 7, 2009, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated, "The ongoing turmoil in the housing and financial markets has taken a major toll on the federal budget. CBO currently projects that the deficit this year will total $1.2 trillion, or 8.3 percent of GDP." CBO further stated, "A drop in tax revenues and increased federal spending (much of it related to the government's actions to address the crisis in the housing and financial markets) both contribute to the robust growth in this year's deficit. Compared with receipts last year, collections from corporate income taxes are anticipated to decline by 27 percent and individual income taxes by 8 percent; in normal economic conditions, they would both grow by several percentage points. In addition, the estimated deficit includes outlays of more than $180 billion to reflect the cost of transactions of the TARP." [Congressional Budget Office, 1/7/09]
Rush Limbaugh Supports Discriminatory Voter ID Laws Which Bar Many African-Americans from Voting
From Media Matters for America -- May 30, 2012:
Fox, Limbaugh Attack Holder For Speaking To Black Leaders About Voter ID Laws
Attorney General Eric Holder spoke to attendees at a summit of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Conference of National Black Churches about the importance of voting as well as the significance of new voter ID laws, which disproportionately affect minorities. The summit was designed, in part, to help black leaders learn about the new laws -- yet Rush Limbaugh and a Fox News contributor attacked Holder's appearance as "reprehensible" and "unseemly."
Holder Speaks To Black Leaders About Importance Of Voting, New Voting Laws At CBC Summit
C-SPAN: "Attorney General Eric Holder Delivers The Keynote Address At A Meeting Of The Congressional Black Caucus And The Conference Of National Black Churches." From C-SPAN.org:
Attorney General Eric Holder delivered the keynote address at a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Conference of National Black Churches.
The day also features panels on the state of voting rights, protecting a church's non-profit status, and energizing constituents and congregants to vote.
The Attorney General has announced that he will vigorously defend the Voting Rights Act of 1965, including the Section 5 provision that Southern states or those that have historically disenfranchised black voters must clear any changes to voting law or electoral systems with the Justice Department. [C-SPAN.org, 5/30/12]
McClatchy: Summit Was Planned To "Discuss The New Laws, Their Potential Impact On African-American Voters And How Churches Can Educate Parishioners." From McClatchy:
African-American churches, historically at the forefront of the nation's civil and voting rights efforts, are grappling this election year with how to navigate through the wave of new voting-access laws approved in many Republican-controlled states, laws that many African-Americans believe were implemented to suppress the votes of minorities and others.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus and several hundred clergy leaders from the Conference of National Black Churches are scheduled to hold a summit Wednesday in Washington to discuss the new laws, their potential impact on African-American voters and how churches can educate parishioners, help them register and help get them to the polls on Election Day to prevent any significant drop-off from 2008.
"We will have attorneys there who are well-equipped to provide the guidance to the clergy members," said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., the Congressional Black Caucus chair and a United Methodist pastor. "They will understand, before they leave, about some of the new laws in certain states designed -- as we interpret them -- to reduce the turnout. The day is over when they could just stand in the pulpit and say 'Go vote. It's your duty.' They've got to now be equipped with some sophisticated information to help inspire a turnout and protect parishioners from some of the schemes that are out there." [McClatchy, 5/28/12]
At Summit, Holder Addresses "Fears" About Recent "State-Level Voting Law Changes," Says DOJ Making "Efforts To Expand Access To, And Prevent Discrimination In, Our Election Systems." In his remarks at the summit, Holder addressed "recent fears and frustrations about some of the state-level voting law changes we've seen this legislative season" and said, "For today's Department of Justice, our commitment to strengthening -- and to fulfilling -- our nation's promise of equal opportunity and equal justice has never been stronger." From Holder's remarks:
Like many of you, I would argue that -- of all the freedoms we enjoy today -- none is more important, or more sacred, than the right to vote. And I'm hardly the first to make such an assessment. In July of 1965, when President Johnson signed the landmark Voting Rights Act into law, he proclaimed that, "the right to vote is the basic right, without which all others are meaningless."
[D]espite our nation's long tradition of extending voting rights - to non-property owners and women, to people of color and Native Americans, and to younger Americans - today, a growing number of our fellow citizens are worried about the same disparities, divisions, and problems that - nearly five decades ago - so many fought to address. In my travels across this country, I've heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who - often for the first time in their lives - now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation's most noble ideals; and that some of the achievements that defined the civil rights movement now hang in the balance.
Congressman John Lewis may have described the reason for these concerns best, in a speech on the House floor last summer, when pointing out that the voting rights he worked throughout his life -- and nearly gave his life -- to ensure are, "under attack... [by] a deliberate and systematic attempt to prevent millions of elderly voters, young voters, students, [and] minority and low-income voters from exercising their constitutional right to engage in the democratic process." Not only was he referring to the all-too-common deceptive practices we've been fighting for years. He was echoing more recent fears and frustrations about some of the state-level voting law changes we've seen this legislative season.
Let me assure you: for today's Department of Justice, our commitment to strengthening -- and to fulfilling -- our nation's promise of equal opportunity and equal justice has never been stronger.
As you know -- and have worked to draw attention to -- the past two years have brought nearly two dozen new state laws and executive orders, from more than a dozen states, that could make it significantly harder for many eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012. In response to some of these changes -- in areas covered by Section 5 [of the 1965 Voting Rights Act] - the Justice Department has initiated careful, thorough, and independent reviews. We're now examining a number of redistricting plans in covered jurisdictions, as well as other types of changes to our election systems and processes - including changes to the procedures governing third-party voter registration organizations, to early voting procedures, and to photo identification requirements - to ensure that there is no discriminatory purpose or effect. If a state passes a new voting law and meets its burden of showing that the law is not discriminatory, we will follow the law and app rove the change. And, as we have demonstrated repeatedly, when a jurisdiction fails to meet its burden of proving that a proposed voting change would not have a racially discriminatory effect - we will object, as we have in 15 separate cases since last September. [Justice.gov, 5/30/12]
Indeed, Voter ID Laws Disproportionately Affect Minorities ...
DOJ Rejected South Carolina Voter ID Law For Potentially Discriminating Against Minority Voters. From a December 21, 2011, Washington Post article:
The Obama administration entered the fierce national debate over voting rights, rejecting South Carolina's new law requiring photo identification at the polls and saying it discriminated against minority voters.
Friday's decision by the Justice Department could heighten political tensions over eight state voter ID statutes passed this year, which critics say could hurt turnout among minorities and others who helped elect President Obama in 2008. Conservatives and other supporters say the tighter laws are needed to combat voter fraud.
In its first decision on the laws, Justice's Civil Rights Division said South Carolina's statute is discriminatory because its registered minority voters are nearly 20 percent more likely than whites to lack a state-issued photo ID. Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, South Carolina is one of a number of states that are required to receive federal "pre-clearance" on voting changes to ensure that they don't hurt minorities' political power.
"The absolute number of minority citizens whose exercise of the franchise could be adversely affected by the proposed requirements runs into the tens of thousands," Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said in a letter to South Carolina officials. [The Washington Post, 12/21/11, emphasis added]
DOJ Blocked Texas Voter ID Law For Disproportionately Impacting Hispanics. From a March 12 Bloomberg article:
The Obama administration blocked Texas's new law requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification at the polls, escalating a partisan dispute over voting restrictions.
The U.S. Justice Department used its power under the Voting Rights Act to halt the Texas law, saying in a letter to the state today that the measure may disproportionately harm Hispanics. The department in December blocked a similar law in South Carolina.
The photo ID law would disproportionately affect poor and minority voters, who are least likely to have any of the required forms of identification or the documentation needed to obtain one, said Luis Figueroa, a San Antonio, Texas-based legislative staff attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. It also would hurt students because college or university IDs would not be accepted, Figueroa said.
The photo ID requirement could suppress minority turnout by three percent to five percent in Harris County, where Houston is located, and give Republicans an edge in local elections, said Carroll Robinson, a professor at Texas Southern University in Houston and a former city council member. [Bloomberg, 3/12/12, emphasis added]
The Nation: Under Proposed ID Law, "As Many As 14 Percent Of Latinos And 24 Percent Of African Americans In Texas Have IDs That Won't Qualify Them To Vote." From a March 21 post on The Nation:
The Department of Justice gave plenty of such data in their letter to Texas and much of it mirrored the findings of Sanchez, Nuno and Barreto whose report a year ago found that there were substantial differences between white and minority populations when it comes to having ID that would pass muster under various states' photo voter ID laws.
While that report dealt with multiple states (including Texas and Florida) where large populations of voters of color reside, today's Latino Decisions blog extrapolates the data of Texas to show just what the discrepancies are between black, Latino and white likely voters and their IDs in that state alone. When asked if the names on their photo IDs match names on Texas' voter rolls, just 88 percent of Latino Texans and 84 percent of black Texans said their IDs did. Asked the same about matching addresses between IDs and voter rolls, 86 percent of Latino Texans and 76 percent of black Texans said their IDs would qualify. This means that as many as 14 percent of Latinos and 24 percent of African Americans in Texas have IDs that won't qualify them to vote.
Brennan Center For Justice Estimates "More Than Five Million Voters Could Be Affected By The New Laws" That Restrict Voting. New York University's Brennan Center for Justice issued a report estimating that newly enacted restrictions on voting, including implementing photo ID laws, "could make it significantly harder for more than 5 million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012." From the Brennan Center for Justice:
1. 3.2 million voters affected by new photo ID laws. New photo ID laws for voting will be in effect for the 2012 election in five states (Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin), which have a combined citizen voting age population of just under 29 million. 3.2 million (11 percent) of those potential voters do not have state-issued photo ID. Rhode Island voters are excluded from this count, because Rhode Island's new law's requirements are significantly less onerous than those in the other states.
2. 240,000 additional citizens and potential voters affected by new proof of citizenship laws. New proof of citizenship laws will be in effect in three states (Alabama, Kansas, Tennessee), two of which will also have new photo ID laws. Assuming conservatively that those without proof of citizenship overlap substantially with those without state-issued photo ID, we excluded those two states. The citizen voting age population in the remaining state (Alabama) is 3.43 million; 240,000 (7 percent) of those potential voters do not have documentary proof of citizenship.
3. 202,000 voters registered in 2008 through voter registration drives that have now been made extremely difficult or impossible under new laws. Two states (Florida and Texas) passed laws restricting voter registration drives, causing all or most of those drives to stop. In 2008, 2.13 million voters registered in Florida and, very conservatively, at least 8.24 percent or 176,000 of them did so through drives. At least 501,000 voters registered in Texas, and at least 5.13 percent or 26,000 of them did so via drives.
4. 60,000 voters registered in 2008 through Election Day voter registration where it has now been repealed. Maine abolished Election Day registration. In 2008, 60,000 Maine citizens registered and voted on Election Day.
5. One to two million voters who voted in 2008 on days eliminated under new laws rolling back early voting. The early voting period was cut by half or more in three states (Florida, Georgia and Ohio). In 2008, nearly 8 million Americans voted early in these states. An estimated 1 to 2 million voted on days eliminated by these new laws.
6. At least 100,000 disenfranchised citizens who might have regained voting rights by 2012. Two states (Florida and Iowa) made it substantially more difficult or impossible for people with past felony convictions to get their voting rights restored. Up to one million people in Florida could have benefited from the prior practice; based on the rates of restoration in Florida under the prior policy, 100,000 citizens likely would have gotten their rights restored by 2012. Other voting restrictions passed this year that are not included in this estimate. [Voting Law Changes In 2012, Brennan Center for Justice, October 2011; Brennan Center for Justice, 10/3/11, emphasis original]
... And Voter ID Laws Have Already Blocked Eligible Voters From Voting
LA Times: Indiana Voter ID Law "Ke[pt] Nuns, Students From Polls. The Los Angeles Times reported in a May 7, 2008 article: "A dozen nuns and an unknown number of students were turned away from polls Tuesday in the first use of Indiana's stringent voter ID law since it was upheld last week by the U.S. Supreme Court." From the LA Times article, headlined "ID law keeps nuns, students from polls":
A dozen nuns and an unknown number of students were turned away from polls Tuesday in the first use of Indiana's stringent voter ID law since it was upheld last week by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The nuns, all residents of a retirement home at Saint Mary's Convent near Notre Dame University, were denied ballots by a fellow sister and poll worker because the women, in their 80s and 90s, did not have valid Indiana photo ID cards.
Though state officials reported no significant problems, advocates monitoring polling places said there was occasional confusion.
"We were at one polling place for a few hours and picked up three or four different stories of people being turned away," said Gary Kalman of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in Washington. "I don't have numbers about how widespread it is."
"It's the law, and it makes it hard," said Sister Julie McGuire, who was working at the polling place and had to explain to the nuns that they could not vote. "Some don't understand why."
Indiana requires voters who come to the polls show a photo ID issued by the state or the federal government. The law was pressed by Republicans citing voter fraud and opposed by Democrats and the ACLU, who argued that it would disenfranchise voters. [Los Angeles Times, 5/7/08]
NY Times: In One Indiana County, 32 "Voters Had Their Ballots Thrown Out" Because Of Voter ID Laws. From a January 7, 2008, New York Times article:
After Ms. [Valerie] Williams grabbed her cane that day and walked into the polling station in the lobby of her retirement home to vote, as she has done in at least the last two elections, she was barred from doing so.
The election officials at the polling place, whom she had known for years, told her she could not cast a regular ballot. They said the forms of identification she had always used -- a telephone bill, a Social Security letter with her address on it and an expired Indiana driver's license -- were no longer valid under the voter ID law, which required a current state-issued photo identification card.
"Of course I threw a fit," said Ms. Williams, 61, who was made to cast a provisional ballot instead, which, according to voting records, was never counted. Ms. Williams -- who has difficulty walking -- said she was not able to get a ride to the voting office to prove her identity within 10 days as required under the law, and her ballot was discarded.
Mary-Jo Criswell, 71, who -- like Ms. Williams -- an Indiana voter cited in the case before the Supreme Court, had her vote thrown out in November after she was told the identification she had used in previous elections -- a bank card with a photograph, a utility bill and a phone bill -- no longer sufficed. [The New York Times, 1/7/08]
Yet Fox, Limbaugh Attack Holder As "Reprehensible" For Speaking About Potentially Discriminatory Laws
Fox Contributor Goldberg Finds It "Inappropriate," "Unseemly" For Holder To Address CBC On Voter ID Laws. On the May 30 edition of Fox News' America Live, host Megyn Kelly invited on National Review Online editor-at-large and Fox News contributor Jonah Goldberg to discuss Holder's appearance at the Congressional Black Caucus summit. Kelly said the summit "could be viewed as a get out the vote effort," while Goldberg called Holder's address on voter ID laws "inappropriate" and suggested Holder could be seen as "part of the hack operation of a political campaign":
KELLY: From the campaign trail today, we're hearing reports that Attorney General Eric Holder is among a group of government officials reportedly meeting with hundreds of African-American ministers to explain how they can best participate in the presidential elections. According to the chairman of the Black Congressional Caucus, the government delegation will also include the IRS -- members thereof -- and the ACLU. And they're going to give these pastors guidance on how to rally their congregations and on what they can and cannot say in church in order to protect their tax-exempt status while nonetheless making political comments.
Attorney General Eric Holder is, of course, head of the Justice Department, and his possible role in what could be viewed as a get-out-the-vote effort is getting a closer look today.
KELLY: Eric Holder goes in and gives this speech today to these African-American church leaders and says that the, quote, sacred right to vote is under assault nationwide. And he is referring to these voter ID laws, these voter ID laws that have been upheld in some instances by the U.S. Supreme Court, but his message is that the sacred right to vote is under assault by these laws. He goes in there, he takes along a representative of the IRS, and the taxpayers are basically funding this message. Is this kosher? Is this allowed?
GOLDBERG: I think it's allowed. I think it is unseemly. I mean, typically attorneys general are supposed to seem apolitical, for obvious reasons. The they're the chief law enforcement officer of the land. They oversee the legal arm of the government. They shouldn't be seen as sort of part of the hack operation of a political campaign. And these talking points -- obviously, there's a serious disagreement, and reasonable people can disagree about the validity of voter ID laws, but this argument that it's all about voter suppression and it's aimed at black people, it's aimed at minorities -- this is an argument the Democrats bring up every year there's a national election as a way to, to gin up and build up enthusiasm among the black vote and turn it into this matter of national honor that black vote get out as much as possible.
That is what he's feeding into here. The courts are not on his side that this is a racial thing. He is feeding into these talking points and making it seem like a racial thing, and it's just not his role to be doing that sort of stuff. [Fox News, America Live, 5/30/12]
Limbaugh: "It's Reprehensible What Holder Is Doing Here. ... Where Is This Movement That's Designed To Get People To Stop Voting?" On the May 30 broadcast of his show, Rush Limbaugh said it was "reprehensible" that Holder addressed the Congressional Black Caucus summit. From his show:
LIMBAUGH: It's really -- folks, it's irresponsible. It's much -- in fact, let's just go right to him, 24 and 25. This is irresponsible. It's worse than irresponsible. This is -- it's reprehensible what Holder is doing here. This was this morning in Washington, it was a Congressional Black Caucus faith leaders summit on voting rights.
LIMBAUGH: Now keep in mind, this is the attorney general of the United States. This is not some rabid pundit on the left on MSNBC. This is not some say-anything-to-get-noticed, rabble-rousing media person. It's not some kooky left-wing communist member of Congress. This is the attorney general of the United States, who is supposed to look at this country in a nonpartisan way and enforce this laws of this country. The number-one law enforcement officer of this country. And his job is to protect and guarantee freedom, along with everybody else who takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. But this, this is just -- what he's doing here in these two sound bites is reprehensible.
HOLDER [audio clip]: Of all the freedoms we enjoy today - none is more important, or more sacred, than the right to vote. [edit] I've heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who -- often for the first time in their lives -- now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation's most noble ideals, and that some of the achievements that defined the civil rights movement now hang --
LIMBAUGH: All right. All right. Stop this. Stop this. I really don't know the word to properly describe what this is. "I've heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who -- often for the first time in their lives -- now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to the most noble ideal, the right to vote." Where is this happening? I want to know who in this country feels threatened. Who feels like somebody's trying to keep them from voting?
And don't pop this voter I.D. thing at me. If you look at polling data, you will find a majority of African-Americans favor a photo ID African-Americans are human beings. They have the same concerns as anybody else. They don't want an electoral system that's filled with fraud and deceit. They don't want to be taken advantage of. They don't want to have their vote not count, or to count 25 times. A majority of them favor a photo I.D.
But where is this movement that's designed to get people to stop voting? Who's behind it? I want some names. Holder ought to name names. He ought to name the organizations. He ought to produce the evidence. Who is it in 2012 that has a stated effort to deny anybody -- I don't care who it is -- the right to vote?
And these people that Holder says are hearing a consistent drumbeat of concern for the first time in their lives, they have reason to believe that people don't want them to vote -- who are these people that have this fear, and why do they have this fear? Could it be that they've been told a pack of lies by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton or other civil rights leaders? Who is it that's scaring them? [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 5/30/12]
Fox, Limbaugh Attack Holder For Speaking To Black Leaders About Voter ID Laws
Attorney General Eric Holder spoke to attendees at a summit of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Conference of National Black Churches about the importance of voting as well as the significance of new voter ID laws, which disproportionately affect minorities. The summit was designed, in part, to help black leaders learn about the new laws -- yet Rush Limbaugh and a Fox News contributor attacked Holder's appearance as "reprehensible" and "unseemly."
Holder Speaks To Black Leaders About Importance Of Voting, New Voting Laws At CBC Summit
C-SPAN: "Attorney General Eric Holder Delivers The Keynote Address At A Meeting Of The Congressional Black Caucus And The Conference Of National Black Churches." From C-SPAN.org:
Attorney General Eric Holder delivered the keynote address at a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Conference of National Black Churches.
The day also features panels on the state of voting rights, protecting a church's non-profit status, and energizing constituents and congregants to vote.
The Attorney General has announced that he will vigorously defend the Voting Rights Act of 1965, including the Section 5 provision that Southern states or those that have historically disenfranchised black voters must clear any changes to voting law or electoral systems with the Justice Department. [C-SPAN.org, 5/30/12]
McClatchy: Summit Was Planned To "Discuss The New Laws, Their Potential Impact On African-American Voters And How Churches Can Educate Parishioners." From McClatchy:
African-American churches, historically at the forefront of the nation's civil and voting rights efforts, are grappling this election year with how to navigate through the wave of new voting-access laws approved in many Republican-controlled states, laws that many African-Americans believe were implemented to suppress the votes of minorities and others.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus and several hundred clergy leaders from the Conference of National Black Churches are scheduled to hold a summit Wednesday in Washington to discuss the new laws, their potential impact on African-American voters and how churches can educate parishioners, help them register and help get them to the polls on Election Day to prevent any significant drop-off from 2008.
"We will have attorneys there who are well-equipped to provide the guidance to the clergy members," said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., the Congressional Black Caucus chair and a United Methodist pastor. "They will understand, before they leave, about some of the new laws in certain states designed -- as we interpret them -- to reduce the turnout. The day is over when they could just stand in the pulpit and say 'Go vote. It's your duty.' They've got to now be equipped with some sophisticated information to help inspire a turnout and protect parishioners from some of the schemes that are out there." [McClatchy, 5/28/12]
At Summit, Holder Addresses "Fears" About Recent "State-Level Voting Law Changes," Says DOJ Making "Efforts To Expand Access To, And Prevent Discrimination In, Our Election Systems." In his remarks at the summit, Holder addressed "recent fears and frustrations about some of the state-level voting law changes we've seen this legislative season" and said, "For today's Department of Justice, our commitment to strengthening -- and to fulfilling -- our nation's promise of equal opportunity and equal justice has never been stronger." From Holder's remarks:
Like many of you, I would argue that -- of all the freedoms we enjoy today -- none is more important, or more sacred, than the right to vote. And I'm hardly the first to make such an assessment. In July of 1965, when President Johnson signed the landmark Voting Rights Act into law, he proclaimed that, "the right to vote is the basic right, without which all others are meaningless."
[D]espite our nation's long tradition of extending voting rights - to non-property owners and women, to people of color and Native Americans, and to younger Americans - today, a growing number of our fellow citizens are worried about the same disparities, divisions, and problems that - nearly five decades ago - so many fought to address. In my travels across this country, I've heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who - often for the first time in their lives - now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation's most noble ideals; and that some of the achievements that defined the civil rights movement now hang in the balance.
Congressman John Lewis may have described the reason for these concerns best, in a speech on the House floor last summer, when pointing out that the voting rights he worked throughout his life -- and nearly gave his life -- to ensure are, "under attack... [by] a deliberate and systematic attempt to prevent millions of elderly voters, young voters, students, [and] minority and low-income voters from exercising their constitutional right to engage in the democratic process." Not only was he referring to the all-too-common deceptive practices we've been fighting for years. He was echoing more recent fears and frustrations about some of the state-level voting law changes we've seen this legislative season.
Let me assure you: for today's Department of Justice, our commitment to strengthening -- and to fulfilling -- our nation's promise of equal opportunity and equal justice has never been stronger.
As you know -- and have worked to draw attention to -- the past two years have brought nearly two dozen new state laws and executive orders, from more than a dozen states, that could make it significantly harder for many eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012. In response to some of these changes -- in areas covered by Section 5 [of the 1965 Voting Rights Act] - the Justice Department has initiated careful, thorough, and independent reviews. We're now examining a number of redistricting plans in covered jurisdictions, as well as other types of changes to our election systems and processes - including changes to the procedures governing third-party voter registration organizations, to early voting procedures, and to photo identification requirements - to ensure that there is no discriminatory purpose or effect. If a state passes a new voting law and meets its burden of showing that the law is not discriminatory, we will follow the law and app rove the change. And, as we have demonstrated repeatedly, when a jurisdiction fails to meet its burden of proving that a proposed voting change would not have a racially discriminatory effect - we will object, as we have in 15 separate cases since last September. [Justice.gov, 5/30/12]
Indeed, Voter ID Laws Disproportionately Affect Minorities ...
DOJ Rejected South Carolina Voter ID Law For Potentially Discriminating Against Minority Voters. From a December 21, 2011, Washington Post article:
The Obama administration entered the fierce national debate over voting rights, rejecting South Carolina's new law requiring photo identification at the polls and saying it discriminated against minority voters.
Friday's decision by the Justice Department could heighten political tensions over eight state voter ID statutes passed this year, which critics say could hurt turnout among minorities and others who helped elect President Obama in 2008. Conservatives and other supporters say the tighter laws are needed to combat voter fraud.
In its first decision on the laws, Justice's Civil Rights Division said South Carolina's statute is discriminatory because its registered minority voters are nearly 20 percent more likely than whites to lack a state-issued photo ID. Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, South Carolina is one of a number of states that are required to receive federal "pre-clearance" on voting changes to ensure that they don't hurt minorities' political power.
"The absolute number of minority citizens whose exercise of the franchise could be adversely affected by the proposed requirements runs into the tens of thousands," Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said in a letter to South Carolina officials. [The Washington Post, 12/21/11, emphasis added]
DOJ Blocked Texas Voter ID Law For Disproportionately Impacting Hispanics. From a March 12 Bloomberg article:
The Obama administration blocked Texas's new law requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification at the polls, escalating a partisan dispute over voting restrictions.
The U.S. Justice Department used its power under the Voting Rights Act to halt the Texas law, saying in a letter to the state today that the measure may disproportionately harm Hispanics. The department in December blocked a similar law in South Carolina.
The photo ID law would disproportionately affect poor and minority voters, who are least likely to have any of the required forms of identification or the documentation needed to obtain one, said Luis Figueroa, a San Antonio, Texas-based legislative staff attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. It also would hurt students because college or university IDs would not be accepted, Figueroa said.
The photo ID requirement could suppress minority turnout by three percent to five percent in Harris County, where Houston is located, and give Republicans an edge in local elections, said Carroll Robinson, a professor at Texas Southern University in Houston and a former city council member. [Bloomberg, 3/12/12, emphasis added]
The Nation: Under Proposed ID Law, "As Many As 14 Percent Of Latinos And 24 Percent Of African Americans In Texas Have IDs That Won't Qualify Them To Vote." From a March 21 post on The Nation:
The Department of Justice gave plenty of such data in their letter to Texas and much of it mirrored the findings of Sanchez, Nuno and Barreto whose report a year ago found that there were substantial differences between white and minority populations when it comes to having ID that would pass muster under various states' photo voter ID laws.
While that report dealt with multiple states (including Texas and Florida) where large populations of voters of color reside, today's Latino Decisions blog extrapolates the data of Texas to show just what the discrepancies are between black, Latino and white likely voters and their IDs in that state alone. When asked if the names on their photo IDs match names on Texas' voter rolls, just 88 percent of Latino Texans and 84 percent of black Texans said their IDs did. Asked the same about matching addresses between IDs and voter rolls, 86 percent of Latino Texans and 76 percent of black Texans said their IDs would qualify. This means that as many as 14 percent of Latinos and 24 percent of African Americans in Texas have IDs that won't qualify them to vote.
Brennan Center For Justice Estimates "More Than Five Million Voters Could Be Affected By The New Laws" That Restrict Voting. New York University's Brennan Center for Justice issued a report estimating that newly enacted restrictions on voting, including implementing photo ID laws, "could make it significantly harder for more than 5 million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012." From the Brennan Center for Justice:
1. 3.2 million voters affected by new photo ID laws. New photo ID laws for voting will be in effect for the 2012 election in five states (Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin), which have a combined citizen voting age population of just under 29 million. 3.2 million (11 percent) of those potential voters do not have state-issued photo ID. Rhode Island voters are excluded from this count, because Rhode Island's new law's requirements are significantly less onerous than those in the other states.
2. 240,000 additional citizens and potential voters affected by new proof of citizenship laws. New proof of citizenship laws will be in effect in three states (Alabama, Kansas, Tennessee), two of which will also have new photo ID laws. Assuming conservatively that those without proof of citizenship overlap substantially with those without state-issued photo ID, we excluded those two states. The citizen voting age population in the remaining state (Alabama) is 3.43 million; 240,000 (7 percent) of those potential voters do not have documentary proof of citizenship.
3. 202,000 voters registered in 2008 through voter registration drives that have now been made extremely difficult or impossible under new laws. Two states (Florida and Texas) passed laws restricting voter registration drives, causing all or most of those drives to stop. In 2008, 2.13 million voters registered in Florida and, very conservatively, at least 8.24 percent or 176,000 of them did so through drives. At least 501,000 voters registered in Texas, and at least 5.13 percent or 26,000 of them did so via drives.
4. 60,000 voters registered in 2008 through Election Day voter registration where it has now been repealed. Maine abolished Election Day registration. In 2008, 60,000 Maine citizens registered and voted on Election Day.
5. One to two million voters who voted in 2008 on days eliminated under new laws rolling back early voting. The early voting period was cut by half or more in three states (Florida, Georgia and Ohio). In 2008, nearly 8 million Americans voted early in these states. An estimated 1 to 2 million voted on days eliminated by these new laws.
6. At least 100,000 disenfranchised citizens who might have regained voting rights by 2012. Two states (Florida and Iowa) made it substantially more difficult or impossible for people with past felony convictions to get their voting rights restored. Up to one million people in Florida could have benefited from the prior practice; based on the rates of restoration in Florida under the prior policy, 100,000 citizens likely would have gotten their rights restored by 2012. Other voting restrictions passed this year that are not included in this estimate. [Voting Law Changes In 2012, Brennan Center for Justice, October 2011; Brennan Center for Justice, 10/3/11, emphasis original]
... And Voter ID Laws Have Already Blocked Eligible Voters From Voting
LA Times: Indiana Voter ID Law "Ke[pt] Nuns, Students From Polls. The Los Angeles Times reported in a May 7, 2008 article: "A dozen nuns and an unknown number of students were turned away from polls Tuesday in the first use of Indiana's stringent voter ID law since it was upheld last week by the U.S. Supreme Court." From the LA Times article, headlined "ID law keeps nuns, students from polls":
A dozen nuns and an unknown number of students were turned away from polls Tuesday in the first use of Indiana's stringent voter ID law since it was upheld last week by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The nuns, all residents of a retirement home at Saint Mary's Convent near Notre Dame University, were denied ballots by a fellow sister and poll worker because the women, in their 80s and 90s, did not have valid Indiana photo ID cards.
Though state officials reported no significant problems, advocates monitoring polling places said there was occasional confusion.
"We were at one polling place for a few hours and picked up three or four different stories of people being turned away," said Gary Kalman of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in Washington. "I don't have numbers about how widespread it is."
"It's the law, and it makes it hard," said Sister Julie McGuire, who was working at the polling place and had to explain to the nuns that they could not vote. "Some don't understand why."
Indiana requires voters who come to the polls show a photo ID issued by the state or the federal government. The law was pressed by Republicans citing voter fraud and opposed by Democrats and the ACLU, who argued that it would disenfranchise voters. [Los Angeles Times, 5/7/08]
NY Times: In One Indiana County, 32 "Voters Had Their Ballots Thrown Out" Because Of Voter ID Laws. From a January 7, 2008, New York Times article:
After Ms. [Valerie] Williams grabbed her cane that day and walked into the polling station in the lobby of her retirement home to vote, as she has done in at least the last two elections, she was barred from doing so.
The election officials at the polling place, whom she had known for years, told her she could not cast a regular ballot. They said the forms of identification she had always used -- a telephone bill, a Social Security letter with her address on it and an expired Indiana driver's license -- were no longer valid under the voter ID law, which required a current state-issued photo identification card.
"Of course I threw a fit," said Ms. Williams, 61, who was made to cast a provisional ballot instead, which, according to voting records, was never counted. Ms. Williams -- who has difficulty walking -- said she was not able to get a ride to the voting office to prove her identity within 10 days as required under the law, and her ballot was discarded.
Mary-Jo Criswell, 71, who -- like Ms. Williams -- an Indiana voter cited in the case before the Supreme Court, had her vote thrown out in November after she was told the identification she had used in previous elections -- a bank card with a photograph, a utility bill and a phone bill -- no longer sufficed. [The New York Times, 1/7/08]
Yet Fox, Limbaugh Attack Holder As "Reprehensible" For Speaking About Potentially Discriminatory Laws
Fox Contributor Goldberg Finds It "Inappropriate," "Unseemly" For Holder To Address CBC On Voter ID Laws. On the May 30 edition of Fox News' America Live, host Megyn Kelly invited on National Review Online editor-at-large and Fox News contributor Jonah Goldberg to discuss Holder's appearance at the Congressional Black Caucus summit. Kelly said the summit "could be viewed as a get out the vote effort," while Goldberg called Holder's address on voter ID laws "inappropriate" and suggested Holder could be seen as "part of the hack operation of a political campaign":
KELLY: From the campaign trail today, we're hearing reports that Attorney General Eric Holder is among a group of government officials reportedly meeting with hundreds of African-American ministers to explain how they can best participate in the presidential elections. According to the chairman of the Black Congressional Caucus, the government delegation will also include the IRS -- members thereof -- and the ACLU. And they're going to give these pastors guidance on how to rally their congregations and on what they can and cannot say in church in order to protect their tax-exempt status while nonetheless making political comments.
Attorney General Eric Holder is, of course, head of the Justice Department, and his possible role in what could be viewed as a get-out-the-vote effort is getting a closer look today.
KELLY: Eric Holder goes in and gives this speech today to these African-American church leaders and says that the, quote, sacred right to vote is under assault nationwide. And he is referring to these voter ID laws, these voter ID laws that have been upheld in some instances by the U.S. Supreme Court, but his message is that the sacred right to vote is under assault by these laws. He goes in there, he takes along a representative of the IRS, and the taxpayers are basically funding this message. Is this kosher? Is this allowed?
GOLDBERG: I think it's allowed. I think it is unseemly. I mean, typically attorneys general are supposed to seem apolitical, for obvious reasons. The they're the chief law enforcement officer of the land. They oversee the legal arm of the government. They shouldn't be seen as sort of part of the hack operation of a political campaign. And these talking points -- obviously, there's a serious disagreement, and reasonable people can disagree about the validity of voter ID laws, but this argument that it's all about voter suppression and it's aimed at black people, it's aimed at minorities -- this is an argument the Democrats bring up every year there's a national election as a way to, to gin up and build up enthusiasm among the black vote and turn it into this matter of national honor that black vote get out as much as possible.
That is what he's feeding into here. The courts are not on his side that this is a racial thing. He is feeding into these talking points and making it seem like a racial thing, and it's just not his role to be doing that sort of stuff. [Fox News, America Live, 5/30/12]
Limbaugh: "It's Reprehensible What Holder Is Doing Here. ... Where Is This Movement That's Designed To Get People To Stop Voting?" On the May 30 broadcast of his show, Rush Limbaugh said it was "reprehensible" that Holder addressed the Congressional Black Caucus summit. From his show:
LIMBAUGH: It's really -- folks, it's irresponsible. It's much -- in fact, let's just go right to him, 24 and 25. This is irresponsible. It's worse than irresponsible. This is -- it's reprehensible what Holder is doing here. This was this morning in Washington, it was a Congressional Black Caucus faith leaders summit on voting rights.
LIMBAUGH: Now keep in mind, this is the attorney general of the United States. This is not some rabid pundit on the left on MSNBC. This is not some say-anything-to-get-noticed, rabble-rousing media person. It's not some kooky left-wing communist member of Congress. This is the attorney general of the United States, who is supposed to look at this country in a nonpartisan way and enforce this laws of this country. The number-one law enforcement officer of this country. And his job is to protect and guarantee freedom, along with everybody else who takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. But this, this is just -- what he's doing here in these two sound bites is reprehensible.
HOLDER [audio clip]: Of all the freedoms we enjoy today - none is more important, or more sacred, than the right to vote. [edit] I've heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who -- often for the first time in their lives -- now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation's most noble ideals, and that some of the achievements that defined the civil rights movement now hang --
LIMBAUGH: All right. All right. Stop this. Stop this. I really don't know the word to properly describe what this is. "I've heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who -- often for the first time in their lives -- now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to the most noble ideal, the right to vote." Where is this happening? I want to know who in this country feels threatened. Who feels like somebody's trying to keep them from voting?
And don't pop this voter I.D. thing at me. If you look at polling data, you will find a majority of African-Americans favor a photo ID African-Americans are human beings. They have the same concerns as anybody else. They don't want an electoral system that's filled with fraud and deceit. They don't want to be taken advantage of. They don't want to have their vote not count, or to count 25 times. A majority of them favor a photo I.D.
But where is this movement that's designed to get people to stop voting? Who's behind it? I want some names. Holder ought to name names. He ought to name the organizations. He ought to produce the evidence. Who is it in 2012 that has a stated effort to deny anybody -- I don't care who it is -- the right to vote?
And these people that Holder says are hearing a consistent drumbeat of concern for the first time in their lives, they have reason to believe that people don't want them to vote -- who are these people that have this fear, and why do they have this fear? Could it be that they've been told a pack of lies by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton or other civil rights leaders? Who is it that's scaring them? [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 5/30/12]
Bring On The Global Wars of Neo-Conservative Mitt Romney
From The New York Times -- May 30, 2012:
Some G.O.P. Foreign Policy Experts Are Tepid on Romney
By Sam Hodgson
Mitt Romney and John McCain attended a Memorial Day tribute in San Diego. Mr. Romney has struggled to gain the support Mr. McCain had of the Republican foreign policy establishment in 2008.
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
Henry A. Kissinger gave his endorsement to John McCain more than a year and a half before the last presidential election, explaining in April 2007 that Mr. McCain’s “record, character and belief that America’s best days lie ahead” made him the “the right leader for these times.”
But with the next election barely five months away and Mitt Romney gearing up for a tough battle with President Obama, Mr. Kissinger, a former Republican secretary of state, remains on the sidelines. The reason, according to several Republicans familiar with the matter: concerns about Mr. Romney’s aggressive statements on trade policy toward China, a keen issue for Mr. Kissinger, who helped reopen relations with China and who later, as a consultant, has had clients with significant interests there.
As Republican leaders fell in behind Mr. Romney this spring, many members of the party’s foreign policy establishment have been more muted. Reluctance by this group to come forward for Mr. Romney more quickly reflects an unease over some of his positions, including his hard line on Russia and opposition to a new missile treaty.
Mr. Romney will soon get a boost, however: Condoleezza Rice is expected to endorse him formally on Wednesday night when she headlines a fund-raiser for him near San Francisco, according to one of her aides and a Romney aide.
She would join Frank C. Carlucci, a defense secretary under President Ronald Reagan, and Stephen J. Hadley, a national security adviser under President George W. Bush, in officially backing Mr. Romney. Other Republican foreign policy stalwarts are likely to endorse him once they get a chance to discuss their differences with him directly.
But some nevertheless believe that Mr. Romney has taken approaches too confrontational or too hawkish, or worry that harsh campaign-trail statements could hurt later diplomatic efforts and may signal a drift toward neoconservative passions as the party seeks to take back the White House, say Republicans familiar with the discussions.
Some longtime deans of the Republican establishment, like Brent Scowcroft, the two-time national security adviser, believe the party as a whole has drifted rightward. Mr. Scowcroft declined a request for an interview, but he has recently voiced opinions at odds with Mr. Romney’s.
For example, a seeming eagerness to follow the cues of Israeli leaders has at times left Mr. Romney with what appears to be a dim view of the need to press Israelis and Palestinians toward a settlement, which many old-line Republican experts see as crucial to stability in the Middle East and cultivating ties with the Arab world. “I don’t think America should play the role of the leader of the peace process; instead we should stand by our ally,” he told an Israeli newspaper last year, referring to Israel.
A month ago, Mr. Scowcroft criticized the Obama administration and Republicans alike as failing to push for a comprehensive Mideast settlement. In an appearance on CNN, he was asked then by Fareed Zakaria, the host, whether he was comfortable with the Republican Party. Mr. Scowcroft looked down and paused before observing that “many parts of the party” now call him a “Republican in name only.”
“I don’t think I’ve changed my views at all,” he added. “I think the party has moved.”
Colin L. Powell, who preceded Ms. Rice as Mr. Bush’s secretary of state but backed Mr. Obama in 2008, has expressed concerns about neoconservative sway within the Romney camp. Some foreign policy advisers for Mr. Romney, he said, “are quite far to the right.” He has also taken strong issue with Mr. Romney’s statement that Russia is our “No. 1 geopolitical foe.”
“Come on, Mitt — think. It isn’t the case,” Mr. Powell said last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” adding that Mr. Romney’s remarks had caught “a lot of heck from the more regular G.O.P. foreign affairs community.”
James M. Lindsay, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, says the Romney team “seems to be tilted more toward the neoconservative wing of the foreign policy establishment.”
But he cautions not to extrapolate too much. “It matters much less who’s giving advice to the candidate and a lot more who the candidate is actually listening to.” Mr. Lindsay added, “Most people in foreign policy circles recognize that some of what is said on the campaign trail is not going to survive the transition to office.”
The Romney campaign bristles at the “neoconservative” description, and says its advisers have a range of backgrounds, including some who worked for Mr. Reagan, President George Bush, Mr. Powell and Mr. Scowcroft. And they say Mr. Romney enjoys hearing dissenting views.
Mr. Kissinger and another Republican secretary of state who has not made an endorsement, George P. Shultz, were unavailable for interviews. They backed Mr. McCain in April 2007.
Some G.O.P. Foreign Policy Experts Are Tepid on Romney
By Sam Hodgson
Mitt Romney and John McCain attended a Memorial Day tribute in San Diego. Mr. Romney has struggled to gain the support Mr. McCain had of the Republican foreign policy establishment in 2008.
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
Henry A. Kissinger gave his endorsement to John McCain more than a year and a half before the last presidential election, explaining in April 2007 that Mr. McCain’s “record, character and belief that America’s best days lie ahead” made him the “the right leader for these times.”
But with the next election barely five months away and Mitt Romney gearing up for a tough battle with President Obama, Mr. Kissinger, a former Republican secretary of state, remains on the sidelines. The reason, according to several Republicans familiar with the matter: concerns about Mr. Romney’s aggressive statements on trade policy toward China, a keen issue for Mr. Kissinger, who helped reopen relations with China and who later, as a consultant, has had clients with significant interests there.
As Republican leaders fell in behind Mr. Romney this spring, many members of the party’s foreign policy establishment have been more muted. Reluctance by this group to come forward for Mr. Romney more quickly reflects an unease over some of his positions, including his hard line on Russia and opposition to a new missile treaty.
Mr. Romney will soon get a boost, however: Condoleezza Rice is expected to endorse him formally on Wednesday night when she headlines a fund-raiser for him near San Francisco, according to one of her aides and a Romney aide.
She would join Frank C. Carlucci, a defense secretary under President Ronald Reagan, and Stephen J. Hadley, a national security adviser under President George W. Bush, in officially backing Mr. Romney. Other Republican foreign policy stalwarts are likely to endorse him once they get a chance to discuss their differences with him directly.
But some nevertheless believe that Mr. Romney has taken approaches too confrontational or too hawkish, or worry that harsh campaign-trail statements could hurt later diplomatic efforts and may signal a drift toward neoconservative passions as the party seeks to take back the White House, say Republicans familiar with the discussions.
Some longtime deans of the Republican establishment, like Brent Scowcroft, the two-time national security adviser, believe the party as a whole has drifted rightward. Mr. Scowcroft declined a request for an interview, but he has recently voiced opinions at odds with Mr. Romney’s.
For example, a seeming eagerness to follow the cues of Israeli leaders has at times left Mr. Romney with what appears to be a dim view of the need to press Israelis and Palestinians toward a settlement, which many old-line Republican experts see as crucial to stability in the Middle East and cultivating ties with the Arab world. “I don’t think America should play the role of the leader of the peace process; instead we should stand by our ally,” he told an Israeli newspaper last year, referring to Israel.
A month ago, Mr. Scowcroft criticized the Obama administration and Republicans alike as failing to push for a comprehensive Mideast settlement. In an appearance on CNN, he was asked then by Fareed Zakaria, the host, whether he was comfortable with the Republican Party. Mr. Scowcroft looked down and paused before observing that “many parts of the party” now call him a “Republican in name only.”
“I don’t think I’ve changed my views at all,” he added. “I think the party has moved.”
Colin L. Powell, who preceded Ms. Rice as Mr. Bush’s secretary of state but backed Mr. Obama in 2008, has expressed concerns about neoconservative sway within the Romney camp. Some foreign policy advisers for Mr. Romney, he said, “are quite far to the right.” He has also taken strong issue with Mr. Romney’s statement that Russia is our “No. 1 geopolitical foe.”
“Come on, Mitt — think. It isn’t the case,” Mr. Powell said last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” adding that Mr. Romney’s remarks had caught “a lot of heck from the more regular G.O.P. foreign affairs community.”
James M. Lindsay, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, says the Romney team “seems to be tilted more toward the neoconservative wing of the foreign policy establishment.”
But he cautions not to extrapolate too much. “It matters much less who’s giving advice to the candidate and a lot more who the candidate is actually listening to.” Mr. Lindsay added, “Most people in foreign policy circles recognize that some of what is said on the campaign trail is not going to survive the transition to office.”
The Romney campaign bristles at the “neoconservative” description, and says its advisers have a range of backgrounds, including some who worked for Mr. Reagan, President George Bush, Mr. Powell and Mr. Scowcroft. And they say Mr. Romney enjoys hearing dissenting views.
Mr. Kissinger and another Republican secretary of state who has not made an endorsement, George P. Shultz, were unavailable for interviews. They backed Mr. McCain in April 2007.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Mitt Romney -- The Far Right Tea Party's Unprincipled New Puppet Candidate
From The Daily Beast -- May 30, 2012:
Mitt Romney’s Stockholm Syndrome Behavior
By John Avlon May 30, 2012
Now that he’s finally won the GOP presidential nomination, Romney should be moving toward moderation, but he’s still captivated by extremists like birther Donald Trump—and acting as if his captors are his friends.
Mitt Romney’s long slog through the Republicans’ reality-show primary is over.
After the party auditioned a cast of unlikely and occasionally unstable contenders ranging from Michele Bachmann to Herman Cain to a resurgent Rick Santorum, the most responsible man won.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney greets supporters after speaking at a campaign event in Las Vegas, May 29, 2012. (Mary Altaffer / AP Photo)
It is a remarkable achievement—the first non-Protestant to capture the evangelical party’s nomination and a formerly moderate governor of Massachusetts whose signature achievement was health-care reform will lead the Tea Party insurgency of 2010 into a presidential election.
But having finally outlasted the fringe festival, Mitt Romney seems reluctant to put the reality show behind him. He spent the night of his nomination victory in Las Vegas with Donald Trump, the last big-name bloviating birther.
With friends like these, the etch-a-sketch moment that campaign manager Eric Fehrnstrom infamously promised may be a long time coming. You can take the candidate out of the primary—but can you take the primary out of the candidate?
Romney won this race without ever letting daylight come between him and the far right. Unlike George W. Bush, who warned Republicans in Congress not to “balance the budget on the backs of the poor” when he was running for president—or John McCain, whose principled independence alienated evangelicals and the talk-radio crowd—Mitt Romney has spent the better part of the past year trying a “me too” approach when confronted with conservative criticism. He presented himself as a “severe conservative” at CPAC, refused to condemn Rush Limbaugh for calling Sandra Fluke a slut, and embraced essentially all the social-conservative litmus tests required to win the nomination. The best that can be said is that he did these things without much enthusiasm, reflecting the pragmatism of a salesman who knows he must say or do whatever is necessary to hit his target number.
It is worth noting, however, that it took Romney two and a half months longer to reach the magic number than it did George W. Bush or John McCain, both of whom clinched in March. And while the extended primary calendar and proportional delegate system had a lot to do with this dynamic, Romney struggled against a significantly weaker field aided by a big-money advantage, routinely outspending opponents 5 to 1. In the wake of Rick Santorum’s surrender six weeks ago, Romney has marched toward the nomination with no active opposition, but he still struggled to exceed 70 percent of the vote in successive primaries. The lesson is at least as old as The Beatles: “Can’t Buy Me Love.”
Team Romney seems devoted to the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach to politics.
Now that Romney has made his sale, it can be expected that his moderation will emerge—after all, it was always the unspoken essence of his vaunted “electability.” Romney has real assets in this election, as Democrats are belatedly realizing. He can convincingly sell himself to swing voters as a professional problem-solver—a turnaround expert, not a typical politician—a man whose entire career has been devoted to improving the economic competitiveness of once-proud organizations.
To top it off, Mitt Romney is a man of deep faith and impeccable personal morals, at least as an adult. But perhaps in a nod to rendering “unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” is ample evidence of a gap between the candidate’s personal and political values. Tone comes from the top, and Team Romney seems devoted to the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach to politics. They have forgotten the homespun wisdom of W: “You can’t take the high horse and then claim the low road.”
Which brings us back to the unfortunate but entirely predictable timing of a fundraiser with Donald Trump in Sin City on the night of the Texas primary. The Donald’s unhinged call into CNN’s Situation Room, where he continued to insist that President Obama was not born in the United States, could not have been designed by the Obama campaign any better if Trump were a political double agent. Romney’s persistent public embrace of the reality-show star turned clownish conspiracy theorist only compounded their problems. What’s worse, it follows a pattern that someone in the Boston HQ ought to have noticed by now: Romney always loses the news cycle when extreme voices from his own party hijack the conversation, whether on birtherism or talk about holding the country hostage to another debt-ceiling game of chicken. Extremes are always ultimately their own side’s worst enemy.
The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza pointed out via Twitter that this June marks the 20th anniversary of Bill Clinton’s Sister Souljah moment. Bubba was behind in the polls at the time, losing to both Ross Perot and George H.W. Bush. But when the rapper known as Sister Souljah called for a month for black people to kill white people—as a respite from epidemic black-on-black violence—Clinton seized the opportunity to condemn an extremist on his side of the aisle at a Rainbow Coalition convention. Jesse Jackson howled at what he regarded as a “Machiavellian maneuver,” but Clinton’s declaration of independence from the far left sent a signal about his capacity for real leadership that could recenter his party and realign politics.
Romney’s repeated reluctance to take such a stand speaks to the extent to which he is still being held hostage by the right-wing reality-show primaries. It reeks of Stockholm syndrome—Romney seems to think his captors are his friends. If the lure of big money isn’t enough to cause him to break the birther embrace, what will? Where is the red line that Romney won’t cross in his pursuit of political gold?
The fact that his long-fought-for nomination victory is being overshadowed by this radioactive distraction ought to be wakeup call enough. Romney is now the leader of the Republican Party, and it’s his responsibility to stand tall and set a tone that shows a capacity to be president of the United States. Failure to confront and condemn ignorance and hate indicates precisely the opposite.
Mitt Romney’s Stockholm Syndrome Behavior
By John Avlon May 30, 2012
Now that he’s finally won the GOP presidential nomination, Romney should be moving toward moderation, but he’s still captivated by extremists like birther Donald Trump—and acting as if his captors are his friends.
Mitt Romney’s long slog through the Republicans’ reality-show primary is over.
After the party auditioned a cast of unlikely and occasionally unstable contenders ranging from Michele Bachmann to Herman Cain to a resurgent Rick Santorum, the most responsible man won.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney greets supporters after speaking at a campaign event in Las Vegas, May 29, 2012. (Mary Altaffer / AP Photo)
It is a remarkable achievement—the first non-Protestant to capture the evangelical party’s nomination and a formerly moderate governor of Massachusetts whose signature achievement was health-care reform will lead the Tea Party insurgency of 2010 into a presidential election.
But having finally outlasted the fringe festival, Mitt Romney seems reluctant to put the reality show behind him. He spent the night of his nomination victory in Las Vegas with Donald Trump, the last big-name bloviating birther.
With friends like these, the etch-a-sketch moment that campaign manager Eric Fehrnstrom infamously promised may be a long time coming. You can take the candidate out of the primary—but can you take the primary out of the candidate?
Romney won this race without ever letting daylight come between him and the far right. Unlike George W. Bush, who warned Republicans in Congress not to “balance the budget on the backs of the poor” when he was running for president—or John McCain, whose principled independence alienated evangelicals and the talk-radio crowd—Mitt Romney has spent the better part of the past year trying a “me too” approach when confronted with conservative criticism. He presented himself as a “severe conservative” at CPAC, refused to condemn Rush Limbaugh for calling Sandra Fluke a slut, and embraced essentially all the social-conservative litmus tests required to win the nomination. The best that can be said is that he did these things without much enthusiasm, reflecting the pragmatism of a salesman who knows he must say or do whatever is necessary to hit his target number.
It is worth noting, however, that it took Romney two and a half months longer to reach the magic number than it did George W. Bush or John McCain, both of whom clinched in March. And while the extended primary calendar and proportional delegate system had a lot to do with this dynamic, Romney struggled against a significantly weaker field aided by a big-money advantage, routinely outspending opponents 5 to 1. In the wake of Rick Santorum’s surrender six weeks ago, Romney has marched toward the nomination with no active opposition, but he still struggled to exceed 70 percent of the vote in successive primaries. The lesson is at least as old as The Beatles: “Can’t Buy Me Love.”
Team Romney seems devoted to the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach to politics.
Now that Romney has made his sale, it can be expected that his moderation will emerge—after all, it was always the unspoken essence of his vaunted “electability.” Romney has real assets in this election, as Democrats are belatedly realizing. He can convincingly sell himself to swing voters as a professional problem-solver—a turnaround expert, not a typical politician—a man whose entire career has been devoted to improving the economic competitiveness of once-proud organizations.
To top it off, Mitt Romney is a man of deep faith and impeccable personal morals, at least as an adult. But perhaps in a nod to rendering “unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” is ample evidence of a gap between the candidate’s personal and political values. Tone comes from the top, and Team Romney seems devoted to the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach to politics. They have forgotten the homespun wisdom of W: “You can’t take the high horse and then claim the low road.”
Which brings us back to the unfortunate but entirely predictable timing of a fundraiser with Donald Trump in Sin City on the night of the Texas primary. The Donald’s unhinged call into CNN’s Situation Room, where he continued to insist that President Obama was not born in the United States, could not have been designed by the Obama campaign any better if Trump were a political double agent. Romney’s persistent public embrace of the reality-show star turned clownish conspiracy theorist only compounded their problems. What’s worse, it follows a pattern that someone in the Boston HQ ought to have noticed by now: Romney always loses the news cycle when extreme voices from his own party hijack the conversation, whether on birtherism or talk about holding the country hostage to another debt-ceiling game of chicken. Extremes are always ultimately their own side’s worst enemy.
The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza pointed out via Twitter that this June marks the 20th anniversary of Bill Clinton’s Sister Souljah moment. Bubba was behind in the polls at the time, losing to both Ross Perot and George H.W. Bush. But when the rapper known as Sister Souljah called for a month for black people to kill white people—as a respite from epidemic black-on-black violence—Clinton seized the opportunity to condemn an extremist on his side of the aisle at a Rainbow Coalition convention. Jesse Jackson howled at what he regarded as a “Machiavellian maneuver,” but Clinton’s declaration of independence from the far left sent a signal about his capacity for real leadership that could recenter his party and realign politics.
Romney’s repeated reluctance to take such a stand speaks to the extent to which he is still being held hostage by the right-wing reality-show primaries. It reeks of Stockholm syndrome—Romney seems to think his captors are his friends. If the lure of big money isn’t enough to cause him to break the birther embrace, what will? Where is the red line that Romney won’t cross in his pursuit of political gold?
The fact that his long-fought-for nomination victory is being overshadowed by this radioactive distraction ought to be wakeup call enough. Romney is now the leader of the Republican Party, and it’s his responsibility to stand tall and set a tone that shows a capacity to be president of the United States. Failure to confront and condemn ignorance and hate indicates precisely the opposite.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
President Obama Is a Staunch and Steadfast Friend and Ally of Israel
From The Huffington Post -- May 29, 2012:
By MENACHEM ROSENSAFT
President Obama Is a Friend of Israel
The Obama administration's actual record is far more instructive than its critics' politically inspired rhetoric in providing guidance in this year's presidential election campaign to those of us who care about US-Israel relations. It is clear that under President Obama's leadership, as he has repeatedly reassured both Israelis and Americans, the United States has consistently had and "will always have Israel's back."
The Obama administration has just allocated an additional $70 million to fund Israel's Iron Dome defense system that has helped protect Israelis from rocket attacks launched against them from Gaza. According to US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta,
My goal is to ensure Israel has the funding it needs each year to produce these batteries that can protect its citizens. That is why going forward over the next three years, we intend to request additional funding for Iron Dome, based on an annual assessment of Israeli security requirements against an evolving threat. This is part of our rock solid commitment to Israel's security and comes on top of approximately $3 billion in annual security assistance for Israel.
"The U.S. has already provided $205 million in assistance for that system," Secretary Panetta continued, "and operational batteries have already proven effective in defending against rocket attacks on Israel earlier this year. Iron Dome has already saved the lives of Israeli citizens, and it can help prevent escalation in the future."
President Obama emphasized the strong US-Israel relationship when he said in his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo on June 29, 2009 that, "America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable."
US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice recently told a Florida audience that, "America remains deeply and permanently committed to the peace and security of the state of Israel. That commitment starts with President Obama and it is shared by us all. It is not negotiable and it never will be."
The facts support Ambassador Rice's contention. Despite occasional tensions between Washington and Jerusalem regarding such controversial issues as the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, US-Israeli military and defense cooperation and coordination have never been stronger or closer.
"Four years ago," President Obama said at the March 2012 policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, "I stood before you and said that, 'Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable.' That belief has guided my actions as president."
The fact is my administration's commitment to Israel's security has been unprecedented. Our military and intelligence cooperation has never been closer. Our joint exercises and training have never been more robust. Despite a tough budget environment, our security assistance has increased every single year. We are investing in new capabilities. We're providing Israel with more advanced technology -- the types of products and systems that only go to our closest friends and allies. And make no mistake: We will do what it takes to preserve Israel's qualitative military edge -- because Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.
"No president since Harry Truman has done more for Israel's physical security than Barack Obama," Vice President Joe Biden said at the international conference of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly in Atlanta earlier this month. Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak, himself a former Prime Minister and Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, agrees with this assessment of the Israel-US relationship. "I can hardly remember a better period of support, American support and backing and cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around us than what we have right now," he said in an interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News last August.
In fairness, Governor Romney is also an outspoken supporter of Israel. While there are stark contrasts between him and President Obama on a host of economic, domestic and social issues, any differences in their respective positions on Israel are far more a matter of nuance than substance.
President Obama has steadfastly sought to achieve a viable and durable Israeli-Palestinian peace. Addressing the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2011, he reiterated an unwavering commitment to Israel's "legitimacy and its right to exist in peace and security," while acknowledging the "legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians."
The "greatest price" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he reminded the international community on that occasion, "is not paid by us. It's not paid by politicians. It's paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the middle of the night. It's paid for by the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own. These are all God's children. And after all the politics and all the posturing, this is about the right of every human being to live with dignity and security. That is a lesson embedded in the three great faiths that call one small slice of Earth the Holy Land. And that is why, even though there will be setbacks and false starts and tough days, I will not waver in my pursuit of peace."
As former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said publicly several weeks ago, President Obama is truly "a friend of Israel." Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, for one, is similarly convinced "of the president's firm commitment to the security of the State of Israel."
If past is prologue, Americans -- both Jews and non-Jews -- devoted to and concerned about Israel can vote to reelect President Obama in November with an absolutely clear conscience.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft teaches about the law of genocide and World War II war crimes trials at the law schools of Columbia, Cornell and Syracuse universities
By MENACHEM ROSENSAFT
President Obama Is a Friend of Israel
The Obama administration's actual record is far more instructive than its critics' politically inspired rhetoric in providing guidance in this year's presidential election campaign to those of us who care about US-Israel relations. It is clear that under President Obama's leadership, as he has repeatedly reassured both Israelis and Americans, the United States has consistently had and "will always have Israel's back."
The Obama administration has just allocated an additional $70 million to fund Israel's Iron Dome defense system that has helped protect Israelis from rocket attacks launched against them from Gaza. According to US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta,
My goal is to ensure Israel has the funding it needs each year to produce these batteries that can protect its citizens. That is why going forward over the next three years, we intend to request additional funding for Iron Dome, based on an annual assessment of Israeli security requirements against an evolving threat. This is part of our rock solid commitment to Israel's security and comes on top of approximately $3 billion in annual security assistance for Israel.
"The U.S. has already provided $205 million in assistance for that system," Secretary Panetta continued, "and operational batteries have already proven effective in defending against rocket attacks on Israel earlier this year. Iron Dome has already saved the lives of Israeli citizens, and it can help prevent escalation in the future."
President Obama emphasized the strong US-Israel relationship when he said in his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo on June 29, 2009 that, "America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable."
US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice recently told a Florida audience that, "America remains deeply and permanently committed to the peace and security of the state of Israel. That commitment starts with President Obama and it is shared by us all. It is not negotiable and it never will be."
The facts support Ambassador Rice's contention. Despite occasional tensions between Washington and Jerusalem regarding such controversial issues as the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, US-Israeli military and defense cooperation and coordination have never been stronger or closer.
"Four years ago," President Obama said at the March 2012 policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, "I stood before you and said that, 'Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable.' That belief has guided my actions as president."
The fact is my administration's commitment to Israel's security has been unprecedented. Our military and intelligence cooperation has never been closer. Our joint exercises and training have never been more robust. Despite a tough budget environment, our security assistance has increased every single year. We are investing in new capabilities. We're providing Israel with more advanced technology -- the types of products and systems that only go to our closest friends and allies. And make no mistake: We will do what it takes to preserve Israel's qualitative military edge -- because Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.
"No president since Harry Truman has done more for Israel's physical security than Barack Obama," Vice President Joe Biden said at the international conference of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly in Atlanta earlier this month. Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak, himself a former Prime Minister and Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, agrees with this assessment of the Israel-US relationship. "I can hardly remember a better period of support, American support and backing and cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around us than what we have right now," he said in an interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News last August.
In fairness, Governor Romney is also an outspoken supporter of Israel. While there are stark contrasts between him and President Obama on a host of economic, domestic and social issues, any differences in their respective positions on Israel are far more a matter of nuance than substance.
President Obama has steadfastly sought to achieve a viable and durable Israeli-Palestinian peace. Addressing the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2011, he reiterated an unwavering commitment to Israel's "legitimacy and its right to exist in peace and security," while acknowledging the "legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians."
The "greatest price" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he reminded the international community on that occasion, "is not paid by us. It's not paid by politicians. It's paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the middle of the night. It's paid for by the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own. These are all God's children. And after all the politics and all the posturing, this is about the right of every human being to live with dignity and security. That is a lesson embedded in the three great faiths that call one small slice of Earth the Holy Land. And that is why, even though there will be setbacks and false starts and tough days, I will not waver in my pursuit of peace."
As former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said publicly several weeks ago, President Obama is truly "a friend of Israel." Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, for one, is similarly convinced "of the president's firm commitment to the security of the State of Israel."
If past is prologue, Americans -- both Jews and non-Jews -- devoted to and concerned about Israel can vote to reelect President Obama in November with an absolutely clear conscience.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft teaches about the law of genocide and World War II war crimes trials at the law schools of Columbia, Cornell and Syracuse universities
Saturday, May 26, 2012
The Enemy Within -- The Un-American Ultra-Rich of America
From Common Dreams -- May 21, 2012
How the Ultra-Rich Betray America
By Paul Buchheit
The betrayals come in many forms. Here are a few of the more outrageous, and destructive, examples:
Evasion: Corporations suddenly stopped meeting their tax responsibilities.
While corporate profits have doubled to $1.9 trillion in less than ten years, the corporate income tax rate, which for thirty years hovered around the 20-25% level, suddenly dropped to 10% after the recession. It has remained there for three years.
We are seeing a manifestation of the Shock Doctrine. Corporations are using the national emergency of the financial collapse to make a statement about taxes, and a traumatized nation is too preoccupied to do anything about it.
Delusion: Technology companies won't admit that much of their 'innovation' is due to public assistance.
According to the report Funding a Revolution, government provided almost half of basic research funds into the 1980s. Federal funding still accounted for half of research in the communications industry as late as 1990. Even today, the federal government supports about 60 percent of the research performed at universities.
Apple's first computer was introduced in the late 1970s. Apple still does most of its product and research development in the United States, with US-educated engineers and computer scientists.
Google's business is based on the Internet, which started as ARPANET, the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency computer network from the 1960s. The National Science Foundation funded the Digital Library Initiative research at Stanford University that was adopted as the Google model.
Apple got its tax bill down to 9.8% last year. About 2/3 of its profits remain overseas for tax avoidance purposes. Google, like Apple, avoids taxes by moving most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda. Both Apple and Google, along with Microsoft and Cisco, are lobbying for a repatriation tax holiday to allow billions of overseas dollars to come home at a greatly reduced tax rate.
An Apple executive said: "We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems." That may be true, but they do have an obligation to pay the taxes that help America solve its problems.
Desertion: The people who benefit most from government are renouncing their citizenships to avoid taxes
Perhaps the ultimate insult to America is to just quit on your country after making a fortune off of it. In 2011 almost 1,800 Americans gave up their citizenship to avoid taxes.
The wealthy benefit disproportionately from property and inheritance laws, contracts, stock exchanges, favorable SEC regulations, the Small Business Administration, patent and copyright and intellectual property laws, estate planning, trust funds, Internet marketing, communications infrastructure, highway maintenance, air traffic control, local and national security, and 60 years of research in technology and other industries.
A recent outrageous example is Facebook part-owner Eduardo Saverin, whose family came to America from Brazil partly for safety reasons, and who happened to land Mark Zuckerberg as a roommate at Harvard. Now after falling into billions, he's decided to renounce his U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes.
Denial: Traders feel it's inappropriate to pay even a tiny tax on a quadrillion dollars in sales
A quadrillion dollars sounds like a fake amount. But it's all too real. That's a thousand trillion dollars of derivatives transactions which, along with the high-frequency computer-generated transactions (5,000 per second) that make up over half of U.S. stock trades, contributed to a financial meltdown and a $3 trillion bailout for reckless trading.
But there's no tax on these transactions.
While average Americans pay a 10% sales tax on necessities, millionaire investors pay just a .00002% SEC fee (2 cents for every thousand dollars) for a financial instrument. And their supporters claim, inexplicably after the disastrous trading frenzy in 2008, that a tax would increase volatility.
Illusion: The media leads us to believe we should all be cheering when the stock market is booming
Conservatives insultingly assure us that the "democratization of stock ownership" is gradually making America more equal, as evidenced by the flattening of wealth ownership among the richest 1% in recent years. So we should all be excited about a rising stock market.
Here are the facts. Data from Edward Wolff confirms that from 1983 to 2007 the percentages of net worth and financial wealth for the top 1% remained steady. But the percentages for the rest of the richest 5% increased by almost 20%, while the percentages for the lowest 80% of the population DECREASED by almost 20%.
In other words, the share of wealth owned by the top 1% leveled off because the "democratization of stock ownership" spread the wealth among just 5% of the population, those earning an average of $500,000 per year. A few people -- 5 out of 100 -- got very rich, but everyone else lost ground.
How the Ultra-Rich Betray America
By Paul Buchheit
The betrayals come in many forms. Here are a few of the more outrageous, and destructive, examples:
Evasion: Corporations suddenly stopped meeting their tax responsibilities.
While corporate profits have doubled to $1.9 trillion in less than ten years, the corporate income tax rate, which for thirty years hovered around the 20-25% level, suddenly dropped to 10% after the recession. It has remained there for three years.
We are seeing a manifestation of the Shock Doctrine. Corporations are using the national emergency of the financial collapse to make a statement about taxes, and a traumatized nation is too preoccupied to do anything about it.
Delusion: Technology companies won't admit that much of their 'innovation' is due to public assistance.
According to the report Funding a Revolution, government provided almost half of basic research funds into the 1980s. Federal funding still accounted for half of research in the communications industry as late as 1990. Even today, the federal government supports about 60 percent of the research performed at universities.
Apple's first computer was introduced in the late 1970s. Apple still does most of its product and research development in the United States, with US-educated engineers and computer scientists.
Google's business is based on the Internet, which started as ARPANET, the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency computer network from the 1960s. The National Science Foundation funded the Digital Library Initiative research at Stanford University that was adopted as the Google model.
Apple got its tax bill down to 9.8% last year. About 2/3 of its profits remain overseas for tax avoidance purposes. Google, like Apple, avoids taxes by moving most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda. Both Apple and Google, along with Microsoft and Cisco, are lobbying for a repatriation tax holiday to allow billions of overseas dollars to come home at a greatly reduced tax rate.
An Apple executive said: "We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems." That may be true, but they do have an obligation to pay the taxes that help America solve its problems.
Desertion: The people who benefit most from government are renouncing their citizenships to avoid taxes
Perhaps the ultimate insult to America is to just quit on your country after making a fortune off of it. In 2011 almost 1,800 Americans gave up their citizenship to avoid taxes.
The wealthy benefit disproportionately from property and inheritance laws, contracts, stock exchanges, favorable SEC regulations, the Small Business Administration, patent and copyright and intellectual property laws, estate planning, trust funds, Internet marketing, communications infrastructure, highway maintenance, air traffic control, local and national security, and 60 years of research in technology and other industries.
A recent outrageous example is Facebook part-owner Eduardo Saverin, whose family came to America from Brazil partly for safety reasons, and who happened to land Mark Zuckerberg as a roommate at Harvard. Now after falling into billions, he's decided to renounce his U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes.
Denial: Traders feel it's inappropriate to pay even a tiny tax on a quadrillion dollars in sales
A quadrillion dollars sounds like a fake amount. But it's all too real. That's a thousand trillion dollars of derivatives transactions which, along with the high-frequency computer-generated transactions (5,000 per second) that make up over half of U.S. stock trades, contributed to a financial meltdown and a $3 trillion bailout for reckless trading.
But there's no tax on these transactions.
While average Americans pay a 10% sales tax on necessities, millionaire investors pay just a .00002% SEC fee (2 cents for every thousand dollars) for a financial instrument. And their supporters claim, inexplicably after the disastrous trading frenzy in 2008, that a tax would increase volatility.
Illusion: The media leads us to believe we should all be cheering when the stock market is booming
Conservatives insultingly assure us that the "democratization of stock ownership" is gradually making America more equal, as evidenced by the flattening of wealth ownership among the richest 1% in recent years. So we should all be excited about a rising stock market.
Here are the facts. Data from Edward Wolff confirms that from 1983 to 2007 the percentages of net worth and financial wealth for the top 1% remained steady. But the percentages for the rest of the richest 5% increased by almost 20%, while the percentages for the lowest 80% of the population DECREASED by almost 20%.
In other words, the share of wealth owned by the top 1% leveled off because the "democratization of stock ownership" spread the wealth among just 5% of the population, those earning an average of $500,000 per year. A few people -- 5 out of 100 -- got very rich, but everyone else lost ground.
From Common Dreams -- May 21, 2012
How the Ultra-Rich Betray America
By Paul Buchheit
The betrayals come in many forms. Here are a few of the more outrageous, and destructive, examples:
Evasion: Corporations suddenly stopped meeting their tax responsibilities
While corporate profits have doubled to $1.9 trillion in less than ten years, the corporate income tax rate, which for thirty years hovered around the 20-25% level, suddenly dropped to 10% after the recession. It has remained there for three years.
We are seeing a manifestation of the Shock Doctrine. Corporations are using the national emergency of the financial collapse to make a statement about taxes, and a traumatized nation is too preoccupied to do anything about it.
Delusion: Technology companies won't admit that much of their 'innovation' is due to public assistance
According to the report Funding a Revolution, government provided almost half of basic research funds into the 1980s. Federal funding still accounted for half of research in the communications industry as late as 1990. Even today, the federal government supports about 60 percent of the research performed at universities.
Apple's first computer was introduced in the late 1970s. Apple still does most of its product and research development in the United States, with US-educated engineers and computer scientists.
Google's business is based on the Internet, which started as ARPANET, the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency computer network from the 1960s. The National Science Foundation funded the Digital Library Initiative research at Stanford University that was adopted as the Google model.
Apple got its tax bill down to 9.8% last year. About 2/3 of its profits remain overseas for tax avoidance purposes. Google, like Apple, avoids taxes by moving most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda. Both Apple and Google, along with Microsoft and Cisco, are lobbying for a repatriation tax holiday to allow billions of overseas dollars to come home at a greatly reduced tax rate.
An Apple executive said: "We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems." That may be true, but they do have an obligation to pay the taxes that help America solve its problems.
Desertion: The people who benefit most from government are renouncing their citizenships to avoid taxes
Perhaps the ultimate insult to America is to just quit on your country after making a fortune off of it. In 2011 almost 1,800 Americans gave up their citizenship to avoid taxes.
The wealthy benefit disproportionately from property and inheritance laws, contracts, stock exchanges, favorable SEC regulations, the Small Business Administration, patent and copyright and intellectual property laws, estate planning, trust funds, Internet marketing, communications infrastructure, highway maintenance, air traffic control, local and national security, and 60 years of research in technology and other industries.
A recent outrageous example is Facebook part-owner Eduardo Saverin, whose family came to America from Brazil partly for safety reasons, and who happened to land Mark Zuckerberg as a roommate at Harvard. Now after falling into billions, he's decided to renounce his U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes.
Denial: Traders feel it's inappropriate to pay even a tiny tax on a quadrillion dollars in sales
A quadrillion dollars sounds like a fake amount. But it's all too real. That's a thousand trillion dollars of derivatives transactions which, along with the high-frequency computer-generated transactions (5,000 per second) that make up over half of U.S. stock trades, contributed to a financial meltdown and a $3 trillion bailout for reckless trading.
But there's no tax on these transactions.
While average Americans pay a 10% sales tax on necessities, millionaire investors pay just a .00002% SEC fee (2 cents for every thousand dollars) for a financial instrument. And their supporters claim, inexplicably after the disastrous trading frenzy in 2008, that a tax would increase volatility.
Illusion: The media leads us to believe we should all be cheering when the stock market is booming
Conservatives insultingly assure us that the "democratization of stock ownership" is gradually making America more equal, as evidenced by the flattening of wealth ownership among the richest 1% in recent years. So we should all be excited about a rising stock market.
Here are the facts. Data from Edward Wolff confirms that from 1983 to 2007 the percentages of net worth and financial wealth for the top 1% remained steady. But the percentages for the rest of the richest 5% increased by almost 20%, while the percentages for the lowest 80% of the population DECREASED by almost 20%.
In other words, the share of wealth owned by the top 1% leveled off because the "democratization of stock ownership" spread the wealth among just 5% of the population, those earning an average of $500,000 per year. A few people -- 5 out of 100 -- got very rich, but everyone else lost ground.
How the Ultra-Rich Betray America
By Paul Buchheit
The betrayals come in many forms. Here are a few of the more outrageous, and destructive, examples:
Evasion: Corporations suddenly stopped meeting their tax responsibilities
While corporate profits have doubled to $1.9 trillion in less than ten years, the corporate income tax rate, which for thirty years hovered around the 20-25% level, suddenly dropped to 10% after the recession. It has remained there for three years.
We are seeing a manifestation of the Shock Doctrine. Corporations are using the national emergency of the financial collapse to make a statement about taxes, and a traumatized nation is too preoccupied to do anything about it.
Delusion: Technology companies won't admit that much of their 'innovation' is due to public assistance
According to the report Funding a Revolution, government provided almost half of basic research funds into the 1980s. Federal funding still accounted for half of research in the communications industry as late as 1990. Even today, the federal government supports about 60 percent of the research performed at universities.
Apple's first computer was introduced in the late 1970s. Apple still does most of its product and research development in the United States, with US-educated engineers and computer scientists.
Google's business is based on the Internet, which started as ARPANET, the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency computer network from the 1960s. The National Science Foundation funded the Digital Library Initiative research at Stanford University that was adopted as the Google model.
Apple got its tax bill down to 9.8% last year. About 2/3 of its profits remain overseas for tax avoidance purposes. Google, like Apple, avoids taxes by moving most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda. Both Apple and Google, along with Microsoft and Cisco, are lobbying for a repatriation tax holiday to allow billions of overseas dollars to come home at a greatly reduced tax rate.
An Apple executive said: "We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems." That may be true, but they do have an obligation to pay the taxes that help America solve its problems.
Desertion: The people who benefit most from government are renouncing their citizenships to avoid taxes
Perhaps the ultimate insult to America is to just quit on your country after making a fortune off of it. In 2011 almost 1,800 Americans gave up their citizenship to avoid taxes.
The wealthy benefit disproportionately from property and inheritance laws, contracts, stock exchanges, favorable SEC regulations, the Small Business Administration, patent and copyright and intellectual property laws, estate planning, trust funds, Internet marketing, communications infrastructure, highway maintenance, air traffic control, local and national security, and 60 years of research in technology and other industries.
A recent outrageous example is Facebook part-owner Eduardo Saverin, whose family came to America from Brazil partly for safety reasons, and who happened to land Mark Zuckerberg as a roommate at Harvard. Now after falling into billions, he's decided to renounce his U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes.
Denial: Traders feel it's inappropriate to pay even a tiny tax on a quadrillion dollars in sales
A quadrillion dollars sounds like a fake amount. But it's all too real. That's a thousand trillion dollars of derivatives transactions which, along with the high-frequency computer-generated transactions (5,000 per second) that make up over half of U.S. stock trades, contributed to a financial meltdown and a $3 trillion bailout for reckless trading.
But there's no tax on these transactions.
While average Americans pay a 10% sales tax on necessities, millionaire investors pay just a .00002% SEC fee (2 cents for every thousand dollars) for a financial instrument. And their supporters claim, inexplicably after the disastrous trading frenzy in 2008, that a tax would increase volatility.
Illusion: The media leads us to believe we should all be cheering when the stock market is booming
Conservatives insultingly assure us that the "democratization of stock ownership" is gradually making America more equal, as evidenced by the flattening of wealth ownership among the richest 1% in recent years. So we should all be excited about a rising stock market.
Here are the facts. Data from Edward Wolff confirms that from 1983 to 2007 the percentages of net worth and financial wealth for the top 1% remained steady. But the percentages for the rest of the richest 5% increased by almost 20%, while the percentages for the lowest 80% of the population DECREASED by almost 20%.
In other words, the share of wealth owned by the top 1% leveled off because the "democratization of stock ownership" spread the wealth among just 5% of the population, those earning an average of $500,000 per year. A few people -- 5 out of 100 -- got very rich, but everyone else lost ground.
Once Again, the Right-Wing Media Tries to Swift-Boat Americans with its Phony Elizabeth Warren Witch-Hunt
From The Daily Beast -- May 26, 2012:
The Media’s Foolish Elizabeth Warren Witch Hunt
By Michael Tomasky
The press is obsessed with Elizabeth Warren’s Cherokee heritage. Too bad it’s the biggest media-manufactured story since the Lewinsky scandal nearly brought down a president.
So now Elizabeth Warren has to prove that she’s 1/32nd Cherokee? The temperature on the story is rising. There was a huge article in the Boston Globe on Friday written to raise a number of questions and suggest that Warren used the minority designation to get her job, or get ahead—exactly at the same time that a poll was released (PDF) showing that 69 percent of Bay State voters don’t consider her heritage to be a “significant” story. It reminds me of nothing so much as Monica Lewinsky, and of the media’s need sometimes to get a grip.
In this May 2, 2012 photo, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Warren, speaks to reporters during a news conference while campaigning at Liberty Bay Credit Union headquarters in Braintree, Mass. Warren addressed questions on her claim of Native American heritag (Steven Senne / AP Photo)
Why Lewinsky? The situations are in fact almost precisely the same. You had then a press pack that had decided that whether Bill Clinton was telling the truth about Monica was a question on which the fate of the republic hinged. The press became self-righteously consumed with its search for The Truth. Meanwhile, outside the Beltway, and outside of Wingnuttia (it existed then, just at about half of its current GDP), nobody cared what the truth was. The media kept producing revelations; surely, now, swore Maureen Dowd and Michael Kelly, America will see this man for the reprobate he is! America looked, yawned, told the press to start acting like grownups, and continued to approve of the job Clinton was doing as president at rates near 70 percent and to oppose impeachment at similar levels.
The appearance Thursday morning of this Suffolk University poll (linked to above) made me think: Well, this story line is about to wrap up. If more than two-thirds of voters don’t care, then that’s that. But no—still going strong! And now it’s not the loopy, right-wing, and pro-Brown Herald, which pushed the story first, but the Globe trying to play catch up. Yes, yes, it’s all in the public interest. What, you say, the public says it isn’t interested? Well, we’ll teach them what’s in their interest!
This is close to embarrassing. True, Warren’s story is a little cheesy. No let’s back up even further. It’s hard to see why someone who is 1/32nd anything can be called that thing. But those are the Cherokees’ rules, and the United States of America for all moral and legal purposes accepts them as the rules. As you may have read when this story broke, the current head of the Cherokee nation, Bill John Baker, is also just 1/32nd Cherokee. He is also, by appearance, completely white. You could mistake him for a Tea-Party Congressman.
So if Warren’s mother told her there was Cherokee blood, and if one little rivulet of Cherokee blood going back generations makes one a Cherokee, which legally it does, then she’s Cherokee, at least as far she knows. Now she has to prove this? You have to go back five generations to get to 1/32nd. It’s entirely possible that such a thing can’t even be proven.
As it happens, I just recently underwent a slightly jarring heritage-related experience myself. I grew up being told I was Serbian on my father’s side. Croatians, naturally, were the fiendish enemy, second only to the Turks. But lo and behold, said my uncle at a dinner last year, it seems that my father’s father, who died before my bouncing arrival on the orb, might have been Croatian. Historically speaking, I’d guess I’d rather be a Serb, although Milosevic’s service to mankind has rendered that a far closer call than it would have been before he hit the scene. At the end of the day, I don’t care much one way or the other. But my point is: Proving it? I wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to start.
What does this matter anyway? It’s a “character” issue? Oh please. Elizabeth Warren’s character is pretty well established. She was the daughter of an Oklahoma janitor, for God’s sakes, who started working as a pre-teenager when her father had a heart attack. She has children and grandchildren and has taught Sunday school. She’s served on a number of prestigious boards. She got her law degree from Rutgers—a very good school, but the outpost of someone scratching her way up the mountain on her own, without legacy or connections.
She became a professor at Harvard Law. No one doubts that she earned that, whether as a Cherokee or a whitey or anything else. She is one of America’s leading experts in her field. She chaired congressional oversight of TARP. She came up with the idea for a new agency, the most important consumer-protection agency created in this country in decades (note: she first espoused this idea in the journal I edit, but she did so before I worked there, so I don’t really know her; I interviewed her once, last year). She has simultaneously fended off Tim Geithner, who hated her diligence on the TARP question, and Republicans, who went banshee about her precisely because she was effective and unassailable. They never laid a glove on her (and boy, they tried). If doing all that after growing up poor in the Dust Bowl doesn’t convey character about someone, then nothing does.
This is a “character” issue? Please. Warren’s the daughter of an Oklahoma janitor who became a prof at Harvard Law. She has children and grandchildren and has taught Sunday school.
The people of Massachusetts have perspective on this. (As does Boston Mayor Tom Menino, who hasn’t endorsed Warren but who stated on Friday that the issue is “not relevant at all” to the campaign. Right.) She may or may not win. The poll had her and Scott Brown tied. It’s hard to beat an incumbent, and Brown has positioned himself pretty shrewdly. She’ll have to swim through this muck largely under her own steam. She will have to, as they say, “put this behind her.” I’ll grant that this is a character issue to the extent that she has to have the character to put this in its proper context and change the story in the crucible of a hard-fought race. That’s within the rules of politics, and they certainly apply to her no less than to anyone, and she hasn’t managed to do that at all so far.
But this is a media story as much as it’s a Warren story. We’re sticklers about getting the little things right in our business. But the big things—how important Lewinsky was, whether George Bush’s case for war in Iraq was honest—we (well, not me) almost always get wrong. Count it among the many lessons in life that will never be learned.
The Media’s Foolish Elizabeth Warren Witch Hunt
By Michael Tomasky
The press is obsessed with Elizabeth Warren’s Cherokee heritage. Too bad it’s the biggest media-manufactured story since the Lewinsky scandal nearly brought down a president.
So now Elizabeth Warren has to prove that she’s 1/32nd Cherokee? The temperature on the story is rising. There was a huge article in the Boston Globe on Friday written to raise a number of questions and suggest that Warren used the minority designation to get her job, or get ahead—exactly at the same time that a poll was released (PDF) showing that 69 percent of Bay State voters don’t consider her heritage to be a “significant” story. It reminds me of nothing so much as Monica Lewinsky, and of the media’s need sometimes to get a grip.
In this May 2, 2012 photo, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Warren, speaks to reporters during a news conference while campaigning at Liberty Bay Credit Union headquarters in Braintree, Mass. Warren addressed questions on her claim of Native American heritag (Steven Senne / AP Photo)
Why Lewinsky? The situations are in fact almost precisely the same. You had then a press pack that had decided that whether Bill Clinton was telling the truth about Monica was a question on which the fate of the republic hinged. The press became self-righteously consumed with its search for The Truth. Meanwhile, outside the Beltway, and outside of Wingnuttia (it existed then, just at about half of its current GDP), nobody cared what the truth was. The media kept producing revelations; surely, now, swore Maureen Dowd and Michael Kelly, America will see this man for the reprobate he is! America looked, yawned, told the press to start acting like grownups, and continued to approve of the job Clinton was doing as president at rates near 70 percent and to oppose impeachment at similar levels.
The appearance Thursday morning of this Suffolk University poll (linked to above) made me think: Well, this story line is about to wrap up. If more than two-thirds of voters don’t care, then that’s that. But no—still going strong! And now it’s not the loopy, right-wing, and pro-Brown Herald, which pushed the story first, but the Globe trying to play catch up. Yes, yes, it’s all in the public interest. What, you say, the public says it isn’t interested? Well, we’ll teach them what’s in their interest!
This is close to embarrassing. True, Warren’s story is a little cheesy. No let’s back up even further. It’s hard to see why someone who is 1/32nd anything can be called that thing. But those are the Cherokees’ rules, and the United States of America for all moral and legal purposes accepts them as the rules. As you may have read when this story broke, the current head of the Cherokee nation, Bill John Baker, is also just 1/32nd Cherokee. He is also, by appearance, completely white. You could mistake him for a Tea-Party Congressman.
So if Warren’s mother told her there was Cherokee blood, and if one little rivulet of Cherokee blood going back generations makes one a Cherokee, which legally it does, then she’s Cherokee, at least as far she knows. Now she has to prove this? You have to go back five generations to get to 1/32nd. It’s entirely possible that such a thing can’t even be proven.
As it happens, I just recently underwent a slightly jarring heritage-related experience myself. I grew up being told I was Serbian on my father’s side. Croatians, naturally, were the fiendish enemy, second only to the Turks. But lo and behold, said my uncle at a dinner last year, it seems that my father’s father, who died before my bouncing arrival on the orb, might have been Croatian. Historically speaking, I’d guess I’d rather be a Serb, although Milosevic’s service to mankind has rendered that a far closer call than it would have been before he hit the scene. At the end of the day, I don’t care much one way or the other. But my point is: Proving it? I wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to start.
What does this matter anyway? It’s a “character” issue? Oh please. Elizabeth Warren’s character is pretty well established. She was the daughter of an Oklahoma janitor, for God’s sakes, who started working as a pre-teenager when her father had a heart attack. She has children and grandchildren and has taught Sunday school. She’s served on a number of prestigious boards. She got her law degree from Rutgers—a very good school, but the outpost of someone scratching her way up the mountain on her own, without legacy or connections.
She became a professor at Harvard Law. No one doubts that she earned that, whether as a Cherokee or a whitey or anything else. She is one of America’s leading experts in her field. She chaired congressional oversight of TARP. She came up with the idea for a new agency, the most important consumer-protection agency created in this country in decades (note: she first espoused this idea in the journal I edit, but she did so before I worked there, so I don’t really know her; I interviewed her once, last year). She has simultaneously fended off Tim Geithner, who hated her diligence on the TARP question, and Republicans, who went banshee about her precisely because she was effective and unassailable. They never laid a glove on her (and boy, they tried). If doing all that after growing up poor in the Dust Bowl doesn’t convey character about someone, then nothing does.
This is a “character” issue? Please. Warren’s the daughter of an Oklahoma janitor who became a prof at Harvard Law. She has children and grandchildren and has taught Sunday school.
The people of Massachusetts have perspective on this. (As does Boston Mayor Tom Menino, who hasn’t endorsed Warren but who stated on Friday that the issue is “not relevant at all” to the campaign. Right.) She may or may not win. The poll had her and Scott Brown tied. It’s hard to beat an incumbent, and Brown has positioned himself pretty shrewdly. She’ll have to swim through this muck largely under her own steam. She will have to, as they say, “put this behind her.” I’ll grant that this is a character issue to the extent that she has to have the character to put this in its proper context and change the story in the crucible of a hard-fought race. That’s within the rules of politics, and they certainly apply to her no less than to anyone, and she hasn’t managed to do that at all so far.
But this is a media story as much as it’s a Warren story. We’re sticklers about getting the little things right in our business. But the big things—how important Lewinsky was, whether George Bush’s case for war in Iraq was honest—we (well, not me) almost always get wrong. Count it among the many lessons in life that will never be learned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
