Moses Kagan's Aurora Borealis

David Brooks is shocked (shocked!) that "..the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide... All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward."

Listening to conservatives, it's as if the past eight years never happened. They begin their argument from the position that the current balance of tax burdens is somehow right or fair, then call Obama a socialist for trying to re-adjust the balance.

But we've just had eight years where the rich disproportionately benefited from changes to the tax code. Inequality is up to levels last witnessed in the 1920's, in large part as a result of the richest Americans paying a far lower share of their income in taxes than has been the case for most of the preceding 50-100 years.

Here's an interesting anecdote from Warren Buffett: His marginal tax rate is lower than his secretary's, because his income comes from dividends and capital gains, and her income is from salary. That's just not fair.

For a while now, we've lived under an increasingly regressive tax code imposed by a Republican president and congress. Obama is just restoring the balance.

Labels: Obama, politics, tax

Paul Krugman's piece in the Times today argues that the Republican Party is "the party of stupid". By this, he means that:

"... know-nothingism - the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there's something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise - has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party's de facto slogan has become: 'Real men don't think things through.'"

Krugman's wrong, and what's going on is worse than stupid.

The election and governing strategies of Bush the Younger were / are predicated on a simple, stunning insight into American politics: The great mass of people are so uninformed that it is possible to lie to them without being caught.

By "caught", I don't mean that lies go undiscovered. The media, the mainstream and the blogs, do a pretty good job of ferreting out the truth in most cases. They dutifully report that, for example, offshore drilling won't affect gas prices, or that Iraq was not connected in any meaningful way to Al Qaeda. But their reporting doesn't matter. Why?

The media is fragmented, so that there is no one media institution capable of reaching a truly mass audience. We are functionally illiterate, reading fewer newspapers (with in-depth commentary) and playing more video-games and watching more movies, etc. The right wing has embarked on a long and successful campaign to discredit the media by arguing that it is biased in favor of the left. The list of theories goes on and on.

Whatever the reason, the media is no longer an effective watchdog. It can scream and yell about lies politicians tell, but we aren't listening. Maybe it has been like this all along, maybe not. But it seems to me that there was a tacit agreement for a long time among politicians of both parties to refrain from telling direct lies to the people. You could fib or stretch the truth, but you didn't lie about big things.

George Bush changed all of that. He rejected the tacit bargain and lied and got away with it. McCain and the rest of the Republicans have learned the lesson. Politics isn't a debate contest. The public isn't a tenure review committee or the editorial board of a scientific publication.

The American public is effectively asleep at the switch. Lying to us, unfortunately, seems to work. It's a sad, sad state of affairs. But, again unfortunately, we get the politics we deserve.

Labels: lying, politics, Republicans

From Politico:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Wow.

Labels: Clinton, politics

...comes from Newt Gingrich, of all people. He was talking about the midterm congressional elections in 2006. For the Dems, he suggested a slogan which I think would work for either Clinton or Obama against McCain.

Feeling the pain of the country as it bore grim witness to the orgy of sloth, idiocy, corruption and dishonesty that, objectively speaking, occurred under eight years of Republican rule, Gingrich (of all people) suggested two words:

"Had enough?"

Labels: Gingrich, politics, slogan

Let's get this out of the way first: I think McCain is a decent human being, which makes him some kind of moral superman compared to most politicians.

McCain is undeniably physically courageous. He mostly behaves with an admirable level of personal integrity (at least, excluding the Keating Five scandal and his recently exposed relationships with, respectively, a female lobbyist and an Arizona property developer). He is very pro-Israel, which I think most Jews appreciate.

Despite all of the above, I think his administration would be awful for America, and here's why: Just because McCain is decent and moral and willing to buck the (occasionally insane) orthodoxy of his party doesn't mean his staffers will be.

Let me give you an example that makes me worry. I worked on one of Gov. George Pataki's reelection campaigns in New York some years ago. As most will remember, Pataki was (is?) a moderate, at least as far as Republicans go. So you'd think that Pataki's staffers would be middle-of-the-road, New England, moderate Republicans.

Not so. One of them, having moved to New York from the Upper Midwest to work on the campaign, actually advised his wife not to leave the apartment. He also made sure to bring his and her pistols when he moved east of the Hudson River. You can imagine his views on things like abortion, etc.

What does this have to do with McCain? A lot.

A McCain Administration would be staffed by Republicans. Most of them would, of course, be alumni of the Bush Administration. The Deputy Under-Secretary for Housing and Urban Development under Bush would probably be the Under-Secretary under McCain, and so on up and down the line.

Why is this a problem? Because the Bush Administration has broken all previous records for managerial incompetence and corruption. In every department, from Homeland Security (remember FEMA during Katrina?) to Justice (waterboarding, anybody?) to, wait for it, Housing and Urban Development (the secretary just resigned in disgrace), the Bushies have combined ideological extremism with managerial mediocrity or worse.

So you may think that, in voting for McCain, you'd get a nice, center-right administration. But you'd likely be getting the same kind of losers, morons, and crooks who staff the present, soon-to-be-not-widely-missed Bush Administration.

Labels: Bush, McCain, politics

Here's why I think Mitt Romney is the worst of the Republican candidates running for president right now:

The conventional take on Romney is that he's a flip-flopper. Romney used to be reliably moderate on social issues - reliable enough that he was elected governor of Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the country. Then, when he decided to run for president as a Republican, he flip-flopped, undergoing an instant conversion to a right wing orthodoxy that denies women's right to choose, gay people's right to marry, etc. So good so far...

But here's what I want to know: Given that Romney is an observant Mormon, and given Mormonism's general hostility both to women's rights and gay rights, how did Romney come to his "original", moderate positions. To put it another way, do we even believe that Romney was a moderate in the first place?

I would argue that Romney's original "flip-flop" was the one he made in order to position himself to run for governor of Massachusetts. So, this most recent ideological back-track is really the second one in his relatively brief political career.

I can live with politicians who use questionable tactics to reach admirable goals (like FDR). I can even live with, though not support, politicians who fervently hold beliefs that I find objectionable (Mike Huckabee). I can't live with Mitt Romney, a politician who doesn't really have any personal beliefs, just positions that change based on the electorate to which he happens to be pandering at any particular point in time.

Labels: Mitt Romney, politics