I haven’t had much bandwidth to blog at all, but have been reading with interest (and a little depression) the hoohah about God and guns that Obama has triggered.
Most of the obvious points have been covered, but I had a thought which I haven’t seen addressed, and it opens an interesting line of argument for me, so I thought I’d toss it out.
Here’s Obama’s original quote:
So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre…I think they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today – kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.
Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).
But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What’s the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is — so, we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide health care for every American. So we’ll go down a series of talking points.
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
A firestorm erupted – predictably – and Obama responded:
“Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois who are bitter,” Obama said Saturday morning at Ball State University. “They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they’re going through.”
“So I said, well you know, when you’re bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country or they get frustrated about you know how things are changing.”
After acknowledging that his previous remarks could have been better phrased, he added:
“The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation those are important. That’s what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don’t feel like they are being listened to.”
“And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream.”
My own take on it is well-covered by Big Tent Democrat:
Personally, I have never seen a pol say what Obama said. Political scientists, bloggers, intellectuals, ME, yes. But pols? Never. See, pols have a different job – get votes. Obama already has trouble getting white working class votes. This statement certainly does not help him. But I think he will ride it out – precisely because of his “Creative class”/Media Darling status.
and Mickey Kaus:
Because Obama’s comments are clearly a Category II Kinsley Gaffe–in which the candidate accidentally says what he really thinks–it will be hard for Obama to explain away.
Here’s another thought: Obama believes that the people he’s discussing – poorer, gun-owning, church-going economic left-behinds in rural America are bitter and negative toward government because it hasn’t delivered.
There’s an alternate hypothesis, which is that they don’t think it’s supposed to. That there are a solid body of Americans who believe – with whatever justification or historical validity – that government’s role is to leave them alone. I’ll bet that people who believe those things tend to migrate away from major cities or never move to them, tend to go to church a lot, believe in guns, and in American culture. They are – wait for it – culturally conservative.
I think liberals can reach them, should reach them, and must reach them. I think they can because I think there are ways to reframe the ‘values’ issues that have divided us, and because I think that there is a key issue to bridge – the perceived value of what those poorer, gun-owning, church-going folks in small towns actually get from the government.
I think that the grandparents of these voters voted solidly Democratic because they remember that they got electricity from a Federal program, and paved roads from a Federal program, and home, business and farm loans guaranteed by Federal programs. They might not have been comfortable with elitist East Coast politicians, but they had some concrete sense of what they got for voting for them.
I’ve asked for a long time what, exactly the Democratic Party has done in the last 20 years for a typical 35-year-old single mother who works as an administrative assistant in a big city. The answer: not a hell of a lot. Not anything I can think of.
To that I’ll add the question of what the Democratic Party has done in the last 20 years for the 35-year-old son of a factory worker who manages to get temp manufacturing jobs, alongside his wife, and tries to support his three kids doing it. He’s getting by because his dad had a great retirement plan and equity in his house. To him, the government wants to close his hunting areas to protect spotted owls, let his 14 year old daughter get an abortion without his consent, and charge him more and more for the priviledge.
So in a way, I’m agreeing with Obama – without the cultural baggage, which may be devastating to his candidacy.
What I hope to hear from Obama – and what will excuse his middle-class raised, Harvard-educated elitism to those folks is a simple statement of what he proposes to do for them. What’s the value they get from voting Democratic.
Because they’ve been ripped off for twenty years by parties in hock to the wealthy, who have tipped the economic tables in favor of capital, and the cultural tables in favor of Cambridge and Marin. A GOP that continues to tip the tables in favor of capital and substitutes Scottsdale and Buckhead certainly isn’t any better.
Actually, it is better AL, by a small but significant margin, and here’s why.
Democrats are basically grievance laden Blacks, other minorities, gays, etc. with San Francisco Billionaires (Obama gave his speech at Getty’s mansion in Billionaire Row). They are united in their desire to “punish” white working/middle class Americans. Who generally know it and tend to vote Republican.
What do Liberal White Billionaires or urban blacks care about white people in PA owning guns? Liberal White Billionaires make gun ownership outside their bodyguards impossible, and urban blacks gun themselves down in stupid feuds over drugs. It’s not the Klan doing it. The reason is the desire to PUNISH the people outside the coalition.
Same with religion. Blacks worship in Rev. God Damn America’s “hate Whitey” church (as we’ve seen with Rev “I Hate Jews” Lee). Billionaire Liberals hate all religion except the Black Nationalist kind. Because they wish to PUNISH working/middle class whites.
On balance, from lack of punishment on guns, religion, home ownership (Richard Florida in today’s WSJ all but calls for outlawing single home ownership and suburbs), “global warming” aka “two squares for you,” illegal immigration (Consuela the maid comes cheaper) and so on the desire is to punish the white working/middle class and push for things that advantage the coalition: promotion if not tolerance of (black) crime, welfare statism, and control by government of ordinary people’s lives to make them more miserable er, controlled by the “natural elite.”
I mean, it could never BE that people hold to a faith because it is their tradition and belief. That it has nothing to do with economic circumstance. That guns are a tradition and means of protecting one’s self (against violent criminals tolerated or promoted by Liberals)? Or that “Kansas” and PA can see clearly that illegal aliens lower wages and crowd them out making English a second class language and white skin a disadvantage? Or that Affirmative Action benefits everyone else at the expense of a shrinking majority who bear an ever-higher cost?
Manufacturing jobs went away because Liberals promoted movement of investment capital abroad and discouraged it at home, they hated the blue collar worker and said so, repeatedly. While turning over industrial cities to Black political machines which turned them into dangerous, crime-ridden pestholes filled with violent gangs. Would any sensible corporation invest in Detroit? Newark? Philly? Chicago? Gary?
Why make anything in America when you can get a cheaper labor force, that is not bound by Affirmative Action, is far less crime ridden (crime increases costs also) and the payoffs to corrupt locals are less? This is an exaggeration but informs the rational responses to Liberal Bad Government.
Crime. Affirmative Action. Corruption. These are all Liberal hallmarks, and have been killing American Jobs since the 1960’s. There is no magic reason why say Buffalo had to lose it’s job core in Kodak and Xerox, except manifestly horrible Liberal governance and mobile capital.
Richard Florida encapsulates the Obama approach, “gay up” a city with “creative class” gays running antique shops, interior design places, let foreigners do that boring old engineering and stuff, see your city prosper. It’s a preference for “cool” upper class yuppies masquerading as economics.
And no, Obama won’t ride this out. He’s going down, hard. He’ll get the nomination. But he’ll lose the General on the order of Mike Dukakis to George McGovern.
[There is no “perfect candidate” — but Dems will always be in bad shape for the Presidency because their “creative class” coalition hates the working/middle class and they know it. Policies not personalities drive Dem losses here.]
Republicans are more likely to embrace what works: better government, including zero tolerance for crime (including Black and Latino criminals), less corruption, dumping Affirmative Action, lower taxes (part of the mix, but not IMHO the central factor). Democrats cannot do this because to give one example, they are completely unable to crack down on Black or Latino crime and criminals.
Let me add that as a “typical white person” I see jobs chasing not lower taxes but better government. The Sunbelt grabbed jobs because the cost of doing business, including crime, corruption, regulation/bribes etc. were lower.
Americans are never going to be the low-wage winners, but productivity with good infrastructure that is RELIABLE, taxes that are relatively low and PREDICTABLE, and a well trained workforce that is more productive, leveraging favorable capital investment environments, with low risk from crime and corruption, allow American workers to compete.
Japan, Korea, Finland, Sweden, and a few other countries follow this model. It’s proven. It’s not “cool” with tons of gays and artists and such running around. But it works.
Nyet, tovarisch! Not good enough by a mile, or even a parsec.
Not to say he can’t fix this – at least well enough to beat Clinton, as your generous assessment proves is possible. But he’s not going to do it with some policy proposal – which will be 90% “hope” and 10% fudgey details. In fact, I don’t think he’ll bother to do it at all.
You’ve noticed that Obama is not running an “issues” campaign. Neither is he running a “values” campaign. Obama is a running an “image” campaign, and a huge part of that image is sheer masculinity. Not machismo exactly, but the masculine image of the black nationalist, which says that you never apologize, you never back down to The Man.
So he doesn’t, and he won’t, because he can’t. Please, please, please note the total lack of responsibility and self-reflection with which he met the Wright affair. He issued denials and excuses that were arrogant in their unbelievability, and he tried to lay the blame for it on whites – singling out Jews in particular.
Anything Obama says, he is stuck with. He cannot be wrong, and anyone who disagrees must be mistaken at best.
I somewhat second Rev. Sensing’s take, as well. Obama’s religious pretensions look deeply bogus at this point. Maybe you don’t agree or don’t care, but many voters will care. People don’t like Elmer Gantrys.
I grew up in PA, for what that’s worth. Philly and Pittsburgh have their own peculiar politics, but in the rest of the state what AL says is probably correct. As I read it, the take is closest to: Obama isn’t from here, so skip the psychoanalysis of us – especially to a outsider California crowd who don’t know the first thing about PA, either – and tell us how you’re going to fix the health care system, since fewer and fewer of us are able to get health insurance every year. Simplify the tax code. Fix the infrastructure. Work on energy independence without driving up the price of gas. Find a workable compromise on immigration to provide cheap labor for farmers without rewarding lawbreaking. You know – domestic issues, which the Democrats are supposed to be better at?
Progressive musings about class consciousness are best left to academia, not the campaign trail.
That would be nice. And do it without yet more and more taxes. But Obama clearly wants to take every dime of my money if he can get away with it. His audience in SF is already rich, and have the finest tax lawyers on the planet at their disposal, so they’ll dodge any taxes he seeks to impose.
And as for much of the upper Midwest, some honest truth would be useful: the factories aren’t coming back without drastic reforms to local and state laws that make it all but impossible to open new, globally competitive businesses. You have to start with right-to-work laws…
You can pander to the unions, or you can grow the economy. You can’t do both.
But Obama doesn’t get this truth, or if he does, he dreams about solving it by showering pork on the Midwest with his various “energy workfare” proposals. But that won’t work any better than Murtha’s attempts to porkify his district into prosperity; for a high price, you’ll get a couple thousand jobs and make a few guys rich off of government contracts, but it isn’t enough to actually build an economy.
If Obama’s full message here gets out into the rural communities, Clinton and McCain are toast. Obama is the one establishing a real emotional connection to these voters while Clinton has followed up the Tuzla Follies with the story of how she learned to hunt. Assuming that Obama isn’t killed by a heavily-redacted short version of his speech—and that isn’t so easy in the days of You Tube—he’s locking up the Perot vote. You remember, the crank who pulled 18 percent of the 1992 vote with an appeal to exactly this demographic.
Armed Liberal has to remember that for all but two of the last umpty years (27-plus, I think), at least part of the government has been under the control of a party whose vision was that government was (always!) part of the problem. There’s a direct line from that bromide of Reagan to the utter incompetence of Katrina FEMA—and the CPA in Baghdad, too. Of course, the GOP was happy with some parts of government, distributing pork and privatizing services into some horrid worst-of-both-worlds mess. But the slogan lives on. Witness John McCain endorsing tax cuts that he had the rare good sense, the maverickness, if you will, to oppose when they were superficially more attractive.
During those two years of Democratic control, they, and especially Hillary Clinton, made a stab at something that the working class needs very much: comprehensive health care reform. (And if and when we get it, the party that delivers will have the appreciate of every family where someone falls desperately ill for the next generation.) You’ll recall that William Kristol, later an architect of the Iraq Quagmire, made his bones by recommending that the Republicans kill all health care proposals, including their own, in order to embarrass Bill Clinton and make the Democrats look weak and incompetent going into the 1994 elections. All unfolded exactly as he planned. Lenin would have been proud.
Great Orange Satan Kos has a chapter of his book Crashing the Gates comparing Jeb Bush’s advertising in his re-election run with his opponent. The Democrat had the laundry list of programs (without, one might add, explaining where the money would come from). Jeb ran an emotional ad aimed straight at the immigrant vote, saying they had come from many countries to make Florida their home. Jeb won big. The Democratic media consultant is quoted as how emotional ads don’t work and laundry lists do. Kos demurs.
Obama is getting it. And he wasn’t even my second choice.
[Sorry, too many links, not enough original content spells “linkspam”. And then there’s the shouting. I know we’re supposed to be an echo chamber here, but your post gave me a headache. If you wish, stick around and contribute some original content. But don’t just drive by and spray the walls. –NM]
Jim Rockford:
“Americans are never going to be the low-wage winners, but productivity with good infrastructure that is RELIABLE, taxes that are relatively low and PREDICTABLE, and a well trained workforce that is more productive, leveraging favorable capital investment environments, with low risk from crime and corruption, allow American workers to compete.”
Ah, here it is in a nutshell. Money (usually) goes where money is a good bet to make more money. (The recent sub-prime mortgage fiasco being a good example of when a perfectly good assumption — people won’t risk their homes by f***ing up, would they? — turns out to be tragically wrong.) Money tends to run from things that make an environment less predictable, unless potential Returns on Investments are frickin’ insane.
So Obama needs to show why he’ll simply tweak to make things better, or why he’ll turn water into wine, and make it convincing. Because the bloom is definitely off the rose on the assumptions that he will be able to one or the other. Assumptions kill.
There are probably things the Democrats could do that are honestly Progressive (Armed Liberal gave some great historical precedents) and that are also conducive to a more predictable, and therefore more investable, society.
But no one really thinks about infrastructure these days, do they? It’s easier to look for reparations (or blame-identifications) in all their multitudinous glory.
“link”:http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0408/Obama_on_smalltown_PA_Clinging_religion_guns_xenophobia.html
AL. I really like to read your stuff and I particularly like that you are honest in what you believe and why you believe it. Even though I am a conservative, I appreciate your honesty, that you love America, and that because you are honest we could have an honest debate on the issues. I think in this particular case, even though you have the good sense to understand that some people go to church because, you know, they believe in God, you are still missing some important points
First, PA electoral history is not nearly as solidly democratic as you seem to believe. Even with the varied state voting record (see the link above) I think a county or district historical map (which I couldn’t find) would show that some counties have been steadily Republican from the Civil War to present times. Outside of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and some mining and railroad towns a large part of PA is and has been solidly Republican for a long time.
Second, many of the “grandparents who voted solidly democratic” voted for men like John Kennedy, who was pro-life, pro-American, anti-communist, pro-strong defense, pro-tax cuts, and a veteran who managed to keep his lying, philandering and corruption under wraps. After 1968 my parents never voted for a Democrat for president again although they stayed registered Democrats. The democrat politicians that were similar to Kennedy who didn’t leave the party after 1968 mostly got run out, like the current Senator Casey’s father, or, like the current Senator Casey they became comfortable with the McGovernites and the Clintonistas.
One thing you did get correct is that many Pennsylvanians don’t believe the government is supposed to deliver spoils to them or anyone else. But, you are incorrect in thinking that folks are voting against the democrats because they don’t have a concrete sense of “what they are getting” for voting for them. They have a very concrete sense of what they are getting and they don’t like it.
It just so happens that both my parents were raised by ’35 year old single mothers”. My paternal grandfather died when my Dad was nine and my Mom’s parents both died when she was young and her spinster Aunt raised her and her brother and sister. None of them thought the government should take money away from other people, who had their own problems to deal with, to give to them. While both supported the Civil Rights movement and hated the KKK and other bigots (and experienced a certain amount of mild anti-Catholic and anti-Irish prejudice from those same bigots) they thought racial quotas were unfair too. They did not like being called bigots themselves because they thought welfare and quotas were bad policy. My Dad’s father served in WWI, all of my Mom’s older cousins served in WWII, my Dad and both of his brothers served in the Army but missed Korea and Vietnam. I received my commission in the Army in ’79. You can imagine what we thought of John Kerry and his like accusing all service members of being murders and rapists and burning the flag.
A lot of the folks in those coal and steel towns and a lot of the farmers served in the military or are close to those that did. Some of them worked in industries they believe were destroyed by environmentalism. Some are racist, but a lot are just regular folks that don’t like it that their kids can do well in school but won’t get into good colleges and other kids who didn’t do as well will because their kids are the wrong color. Pennsylvania has had one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the country since the Revolution. When my family lived in Somerset County in the 1960’s opening day of deer season was a school holiday. Some want to keep them because they “no fooling” put meat on the table with them, in season or out. Some want to keep them because outside of the cities the nearest law is a state police trooper who will show up 5 to 12 hours after a crime to take a report. Some want to keep them because their father gave them to them. A lot of them go to church. Some do have good jobs. They work at the colleges or hospitals, they own farms or car dealerships or other small businesses. Some are worried about their job being sent overseas or being taken by an illegal immigrant who will work “under the table”. I disagree with them that protectionism is the solution to that fear. However, they do know that most democratic politicians look down on them as Senator Obama does. They also know that any democrat program will involve higher taxes on them and fewer opportunities.
[Mr Walsh, please do not post bare URLs as plain text. The formatting guidelines are presented in the advisory text shown above the “Post a Comment” fields. Thanks.
Fixed for you, this time. –NM]
bq. …they got electricity from a Federal program, and paved roads from a Federal program, and home, business and farm loans guaranteed by Federal programs.
The key to this quote, and IMHO the value that Progressives bring to the table, is that all of these things are infrastructural. They provide a framework on which individuals can build their own futures by grabbing opportunities themselves.
Progressives used to get this, but they started drinking from the kool-aid of ‘social justice’ and became intoxicated by it. Don’t get me wrong, in small, time limited amounts, ‘social justice’ programs like affirmative action, like welfare, etc. are absolutely necessary to heal the wounds of the worst excesses of our country. But like many good things, it is easy to overdue.
If the Progressives would move their agenda back to building infrastructure (or more importantly right now, repairing and refreshing existing infrastructure) and away from the ‘social justice’ programs, they would find themselves in an incredibly stronger position. One of the major platform pieces that the Republicans have built their popularity on is that they are the party of providing opportunities for individuals to grasp and better themselves *without being dependent on the government*. However, the Republicans have found this difficult to put into practice for the lower middle class and below. That is something classical Progressivism is much better at and where they could excel.
StargazerA5
Stargazer, I wrote about that “four years ago”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/005510.php , and agree completely…
A.L.
What Obama said was a variation of the old root causes explanation. And it ties in with the impression I already had of him as a man with no original thoughts or observations. It’s just standard academic boilerplate and depressingly stupid and dull.
Sorry about the bare url. thanks for fixing.
PS. After I posted, I read Donald Sensing’s post below AL’s. Donald says what I was trying to say, much better.
What about non-white Republicans? What of us?
The reason many Asian-Americans, particularly Indian-Americans, vote Republicans, is that traditional Asian cultures support the same things that White economic/social conservatives do : marriage, entrepreneurship, lower taxes, education in hard sciences.
Most Asians do vote Democrat for the first 10-20 years of life in America, mostly because their opinions are shaped by the television/MSM. After a decade or two, they figure this scam out and discover which party/ideology represents their values.
“Hence, you get Bobby Jindal, far more accomplished than Barack Obama”:http://futurist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/10/bobby-jindal-an.html
On a separate note, “why is no one noticing that Rev. Wright clearly is less than 50% black?”:http://futurist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/04/reverend-jeremi.html He clearly has more white ancestry than black.
At least in the church that I bitterly cling to I haven’t had to listen to idiotic racist ranting from the pulpit for the last 20 years.
Jim Rockford,
“Democrats cannot do this because to give one example, they are completely unable to crack down on Black or Latino crime and criminals.”
Consider the fact that 90% of blacks vote Democrat. The 10% that don’t are either immigrants from the Carribean/Africa, or the rare black conservatives.
There is no other example of race, income bracket, sexual orientation, or geography that is this tied to one party. Even San Franciscans voted 18% for Bush vs. 82% for Kerry. Even self-identified liberals voted 13% for Bush vs. 87% for Kerry.
Exclude the black vote, and the 2004 election was a 55%-44% landslide for Bush. So too for 2000. Traditional ‘blue’ states like Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Wisconsin would all be red.
The 90/10 hold that Democrats have on black votes is the only thing keeping them viable as a party. They cannot afford for it to become even 75/25. A 15-point shift would finish the Democrats as a party.
Due to Obama/Wright and these other issues, the day of reckoning for Democrats is near.
FWIW, you don’t have to be a “poorer,…economic left-behind” to be a “gun-owning, church-going” American. As Obama is soon going to learn.
“_Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare up because I said something that everybody knows is true_”…
LOL! *Bitter*!?!?!
For what reasons are people bitter?
Does this libtard Obama even have a clue?
“*Rev. Wright: Big Oil Attacked Because It’s Black*”:http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=2933
Are people bitter because they *don’t* know what’s mandated in the Constitution of the federal government?
Are people bitter because they keep electing the same _a$$-C!own$_ to Congress that keep making *un*Constitutional promises they can’t keep?
Are people bitter because of what they percieve as news that is foisted off by the *MSM* mafia turns out to be completely *B*ravo *S*ierra but they don’t find out until years later?
You guys are getting close, particularly Stargazer, but are still missing the point. The 1999 Winter issue of _The National Interest_ contained a piece by Walter Russell Mead called “The Jacksonian Tradition”. Mead talks about the “tribes” of Americans, one of whom is The Jacksonians. AL comes very close to identifying that tribe in his piece. These people really are ready for the appeal of the Democrat Party…the one that swept Andrew Jackson into the White House. As long as the Democrat Party looks like the party of the Daily Kos and not a party committed to protecting them not only from Big Business but from a wallet sucking Big Government they will never truly be in the fold.
The “bitter” swath of middle America will gladly give it’s money to programs which show wide spread public good (they don’t have to be limited to infrastructure) but they detest that which rewards the few; be they the perceived undeserving or the political insiders. In short, if Joe Lieberman spoke like Barak Obama he’d win a landslide.
As for whether Sen. Obama can weather this storm a right wing blog asks the question of “What’s left for an October surprise”:http://justbarkingmad.com/?p=2749 . None of the Faux pas of the Obama campaign have really hurt him and I suspect this one won’t either. The question is if the change Sen. Obama calls for is the type that the Jacksonians will buy into or will they want the type of reform that Sen. McCain calls for.
I’m sorry AL but the problem is that some people can add. Promising to do something for them won’t convince them. They can see that you could abolish the Defense Department, repeal the Bush and Reagan tax cuts and confiscate not only the income but the total wealth of every millionaire and you still wouldn’t be able to pay for what Democrats have promised minorities, let alone anyone else. Both Obama and Clinton enthusiastically promise everything under the sun to anyone who will listen. It’s not that Obama hasn’t told people what his government will do for them, it’s that they can see what it will do to them.
Obama and Clinton are Ivy league aristocrats who never learned to add.
A.L.: I think this is a very unfortunate development for the type of liberal politics you advocate. This is the rise of the merlot democrats. Obama will not win any RustBelt state except for his home state. He has a different path to victory available, so he doesn’t need the constituency he has just offended.
Ask the Queen of Soul, it’s about R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Most people do not think a politician will take office to help “people like me,” unless they think that politician respects them.
GK:
_”The 90/10 hold that Democrats have on black votes is the only thing keeping them viable as a party. They cannot afford for it to become even 75/25. A 15-point shift would finish the Democrats as a party.
Due to Obama/Wright and these other issues, the day of reckoning for Democrats is near. “_
I take it that by ‘day of reckoning’ you mean ‘day that blacks no longer vote 90% Democrat’. But I don’t see the “Obama/Wright and these other issues” affecting the 90/10 hold. If anything, I see it enhancing it. Many (most?) of the 90% black vote is animated by the ‘we are owed Affirmative Action, we are owed minority set-aside contracts, we are owed etc..’ mindset. The Obama/Wright kerfluffle plays right into that mindset.
Obama/Dems don’t have to worry about the 90% black vote, they have to worry about the ‘everyone else’ vote.
Still cannot understand why so many are eager for Government to provide health care. Just look at the disaster of Gov’t health care in Canada and England and you will see rationed, poor quality care. Government cannot provide both good quality and availiabity of heath care. I cringe when I read the story of the woman in her 20’s with breast cancer in England. They would not run a diagnostic test on her breast lump because she was in a low risk group, and so they thought it would ‘waste money’. She’s dead now of a very aggresive form of breast cancer. She left a husband and a young daughter. Or how about the 55 year old man who has been refused knee replacement surgery because he smokes. Can’t spend $$ on a smoker. Of course they didn’t mind taking his tax dollars. Or how about the Canadian man with a brain tumour. He was put on a wait list for testing, and then for surgery. His Canadian doctor informed him that he did not have the time to wait – but was unable to move him up on the list. So he came to America and paid for the life-saving surgery out of pocket.
How are we better off if all of American is covered under really BAD health care? Is this the care you want for yourself and the people you care about?
Count me OUT
Don’t forget the Canadian who was in an accident and they sent him home after 3 months w/a fist-sized hole in his skull and after a year later, they finally got him back in to close it.
Say wasn’t that whole Constitution thingy based on leave us alone?
You don’t suppose that it is an integral part of being an American do you?
I think that is the core of the problem. There are not enough Americans in the Democrat party. And I’m not talking illegal aliens either. It is the aliens running the show.
Dr. Lyshenko said:
In short, if Joe Lieberman spoke like Barak Obama he’d win a landslide.
Wow, someone finally said something that I’ve been thinking for a long time. I’ve been a registered Republican since I was able to vote but I would vote for Lieberman over ANY of the candidates left.
I wish the days of personal responsibility and “Ask not what your country can do for you” politicians would return. I fear that I’m hardening my outlook as I age because the Republican party are becoming the huge spenders and the Democrats are not even Democrats anymore. Democrats used to care about regular, everyday people. Today, the only Democrat left in Congress is Lieberman. Everyone else is either Socialist or puppies that follow their Socialist masters. Maybe I’m not seeing the big picture but I think that until Democrats stop pandering to far left whackos including Kos and Republicans stop spending money like it’s going out of style, we’ll not be able to come together with a decent candidate.
JMHO
Sorry for the rant
“I take it that by ‘day of reckoning’ you mean ‘day that blacks no longer vote 90% Democrat’. ”
No, I mean exactly the opposite. I mean that Democrats will lose more and more non-black voters that they previously could depend on, like poorer whites and Hispanics.
I should have clarified.
Let me see if I have this right. Blacks vote 90/10 for Democrats because Dems won’t crack down on black criminals. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that the bigot vote migrated from the Dems to the Reps in the 1970s. (Have you ever looked at how much racist voting advertising was in the South as late as 1968?)
Fine bunch of commenters you have here, AL.
Oh, and Lily, how many Americans died of breast cancer because they didn’t have enough money to see a doctor even once? Every system has its horror stories, but it’s hard to find an aggregated analysis that makes US health care look better than Europe’s or Canada’s.
“It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that the bigot vote migrated from the Dems to the Reps in the 1970s. ”
Wrong. The Democrats still have a KKK Kleagle as their seniormost Senator (Robert Byrd). Whereas the GOP has elevated two blacks to the highest position ever held by an African American – Secretary of State. A black man (Colin Powell) followed by a black woman (Condi Rice).
The GOP also appointed Justice Clarence Thomas to the SCOTUS. He is a Gullah, so blacker than most blacks in the US (despite the fact that left-wingers try to say he is not really black).
All the evidence refutes your claim that the GOP is the more racist party. Clearly, the opposite it true.
I remember reading in Time in the 60s how medical inflation was 5% a year and something had to be done. Now with government involved it is growing at a more reasonable rate of 10% a year.
Drs are leaving the field because every government patient they see costs them $20.
To prevent waste fraud and abuse, reimbursement paperwork takes up 40% of a Drs. time.
You want lower cost health care? Get the government out.
Obama is right: government hasn’t delivered. What he and his fellow liberals fail to see is that it can’t.
If the “bigot vote” migrated to the Reps in the 1970’s, how did Robert Byrd keep getting elected?
Don’t try to pretend that the Republican party has exclusivity rights to bigotry. Racism is not a political platform, it’s based on ignorance and ignorance is rampant on both sides of the aisle.
The bigots in the South still vote D.
One of the purposes of the KKK was to drive the Republicans out of the South.
“It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that the bigot vote migrated from the Dems to the Reps in the 1970s. ”
Hmm.. “The South was solidly Democrat even until 1976”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_1976
1968, in particular, was when George Wallace took the South. He ran again as a Democrat in 1972 and 1976. He, even more than Byrd, is a source of embarassment for the Dems.
As usual, Lazarus does not let historical fact get in the way of keeping a crumbling myth alive. Over the last 40 years, the Dems have a much worse race record than the GOP.
I don’t know how to break this to you, but Rice and Powell do not change who the bigots support for President. What party did Strom Thurmond belong to in 1948? In 1998? And let’s not get started on the quondam frontrunner for the GOP 2008, Macaca Allen.
M. Simon is as good an example as I could ask for about the bogus theory government can only accomplish well those things he still wants it to. How about bringing all the troops home from Iraq, setting up companies for private terrorism insurance, and if the terrorism insurance companies want to invade Iraq (Pakistan, Mali, etc.) let ’em do it with M. Simon’s premiums.
AJL,
FEMA, the Coast Guard and the US Navy were not incompetent.
What was incompetent? Louisiana government. Guess what they voted in an Indian (India) Republican to replace the former gvmt.
Mississippi had the same storm and weathered it fine. Why? A Republican Governor.
BTW Obama is a Chicago Machine Pol. You think he will deliver honest government with friends like Blago and Rezko? I got some Hope and Change I want to sell you. The price is high but the value is beyond belief.
AJL,
Your faith is touching. What color coffin do you want your party buried in? A fine Mahogany? How about a flashy Polished Aluminum Silver? Perhaps a Gold Plated model?
BTW AJ which party was the anti-slavery party? Which party was the Jim Crow party?
Republican anti-Racism runs deep, back to the founding. It is historical.
When Democrats controlled Congress which Party provided the margin of victory for the voting Rights act? What % of Ds voted for it? What percentage of Rs?
“And let’s not get started on the quondam frontrunner for the GOP 2008, Macaca Allen.”
I am an Indian American (and Republican). That S. Sidarth fool was by no means an innocent, and arguably got what he deserved.
BTW, George Allen is not longer the Senate. Whereas both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have said disparaging things about Indian Americans in recent years, and are still in the Senate. Clinton and Biden have more than offset Allen’s misdeed.
Thus, bringing up the ‘macaca’ incident proves my point, and demolishes yours.
And I see that you shamefully avoided addressing the poins on Byrd and Wallace (infinitely more vile than anything the GOP has done), because they know they expose you.
Also, Bobby Jindal is a conservative governor of Louisiana, as M. Simon points out. Democrats would never allow an Indian to rise that high in their party. This is why I will never vote Democrat.
Sorry, Lazarus, your flimsy knowledge of history combined with extreme selectivity in fact-choosing exposes you to be even worse than what my impression of you 30 minutes ago was.
“One more embarassment for Lazarus : Strom Thurmond was not in the GOP until 1964. “:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_thurmond#Senate_career Thus, his segregationist platform was while he was a Democrat. As he changed his views on race, he decided to leave the Democratic Party.
Lazarus has collapsed into shambolic humiliation. A summary of points :
So the Democrats are the party of Segregationist Strom Thurmond, KKK Kleagle Robert Byrd, George Wallace, etc.
Republicans are the party of Abe Lincoln, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and Bobby Jindal (and the reformed Strom Thurmond).
The worst example of racism by the GOP was from George Allen, which itself is less than the offenses by Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden against Indian Americans. The GOP even has the only Indian in a high position in the party – Bobby Jindal.
Stick a fork in Lazarus, he is done (as are the Democrats)…..
You go into some these salons on the Upper West Side, and like a lot campuses on both coasts, the sense that society is listening to the intellectual elite has been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced it. And their influence fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these academics and intellectuals are gonna be looked up to and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to stereotypes of ordinary Americans or socialism or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-war sentiment or anti-Republican sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
I didn’t say it as well as I could have.
I remember reading in Time in the 60s how medical inflation was 5% a year and something had to be done. Now with government involved it is growing at a more reasonable rate of 10% a year.
Drs are leaving the field because every government patient they see costs them $20.
To prevent waste fraud and abuse, reimbursement paperwork takes up 40% of a Drs. time.
You want lower cost health care? Get the government out.
Obama is right: government hasn’t delivered. What he and his fellow liberals fail to see is that it can’t.
Actually, you are correct. I laugh pretty hard when politicos and such blame the rising cost of medical care on anything but the over regulation and price fixing scheme that is modern American health care created by government interference.
Any politician that tells you he or she is going to stop that rising cost or turn it into some bastion of supreme care for everyone within our borders
Funny, the Democrats have been talking about “rebuilding America’s infrastructure” for over 30 years, while building nothing except pork palaces.
Yet Obama talks about it for five minutes, and there’s this wild surge of hope. Assuming that’s what he’s even talking about, which is very far from certain.
Obama looks more and more like Brian the Messiah from Life of Brian. He has given us – a shoe! Let us, like him, hold up one shoe and let the other be upon our foot, for this is His sign …
It’s hilarious. Does the government ever deliver?
Outside of US military adventures and the space program (albeit with massive waste involved) the government is incapable of delivering much with any efficiency.
Yet, Obama and the Democrats continue to champion the methods and organizations that support feed the slothful government buerocracies and departments that have repeatedly failed to deliver much to rural America….let alone the inner cites.
We spend more per capita on education that most countries combined; how’s our eductaion system doing?
You can blame the current administration but this has been spiraling down for decades.
Social Secruity and Medicare? The 2 biggest threats to our national fiscal health and what’s being proposed?
When Congressional investigators discovered the poor VA health system at Walter Reed, the geniuses in Congress who were supposedly overseeing the system throughout multiple administrations simply bitch, moaned and feigned surprise…..yet Obama and Company now want a national helath care system run by the same schmucks?
Both parties are a mess and no one has the balls or the creativity to admit that government is incapable of delivering jack without bankrupting this country.
How bout something new?
Notice the deafening silence from Lazarus, after he was utterly dismantled.
I am torn on whether I want Obama to win or not. Sure, if he loses, we get McCain, who I support.
But if Obama wins, he will be such a disaster that another generation of GOP dominance will start in 2012. 2008 would be like 1976, and 2012 like 1980.
Remember that after the shambolic Carter, Democrats never again won 50% of the popular vote in SEVEN attempts. The GOP did this 4 times (1980, 84, 88, 2000).
The elections themselves are running 5-2. Carter did more to ensure GOP dominance than Reagan, Gingrich, Limbaugh, and Rove ever did.
Obama might be even more effective than Carter at ensuring GOP dominance. Thus, 4 years of pain may yield 25+ years of happiness.
Thus, I am torn between whether I want Obama to win or not.
I’ve seen what the Obamaites have delivered for the white middle class in America.
-Government subsidized “art” featuring nude queers or dung smeared picttures of Christ.
-Affirmative action.
-Ever higher taxes on anything.
-An education system that indoctrinates but doesn’t prepare students for the real world.
-The heavy hand of government regulation making corporation’s long for the sanity of places like Mexico and Ireland. Jobs go overseas not because of cheap labor otherwise Haiti would be home of US business but because of taxation and regulation.
-Endless class warfare that pits class against class but leaves guys like Wright in 10,000 sq foot homes and Obama in a 2 million dollar mansion. While the average working guy has to understand why the dhimmies say “the people have too much and we’re going to take it away for the benefit of society. Guess that explains how the Clintons earned 120 million in 7 years.
-How a non entity like the Hildabeast and Osama are now candiates for president whille infinitely more talented and capable people will not run because of the tactics of the Left.
-How healthcare costs have skyrocketed because the Left has mandated that hospitals must treat everyone regardless. Comforting to see 60% of the births along the border are to non Americans who aren’t legally in the country. Just how does the middle class benefit from this?
-I guess the Left will reach out to the middle class by mocking their religions; their freedoms, their culture icons and anchors.
-I wonder how many people wonder if the equal time doctrine would surface again in the media if Osama or his opponent Hildabeast were elected? Think about it people. Don’t you feel comforted knowing the Left is commited to insuring you’re right to get as many sources of information as possible given their long history of tolerance.
-Don’t you feel comforted knowing that the Left is more concerned with outcomes than opportunities? That the middle class is viewed as something to be despised as demionstrated during the Left’s candid moments.
Only the Left views Castro’s Cuba as an economic model and North Korea as a political model.
If God was just he’d have kept the Hildabeast and Osama in Chicago.
It is a nice, sunny day, and I had something better to do than sit over my keyboard. Sorry for you, guys.
So, explain to me the significance of Thurmond moving to the GOP in 1964. Was that because he wanted to repent of his earlier bigotry, or because he thought the GOP might be more congenial for his ongoing bigotry? Who was the one Republican Senator to vote against the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Why, Strom Thurmond. So I guess that answers the question of whether it was Strom or the GOP that was changing faster!
There isn’t any dispute about what Robert Byrd (how did you leave out Hugo Black, also in the KKK), George Wallace, Lester Maddux, et al thought in the 1960s, and to which political party they belonged. The question is where people who thought as Robert Byrd did in 1950 and George Wallace did in 1980 have their political home today. Mostly in the Republican Party (David Duke, anyone?). And that’s why there isn’t a single black Republican congressman. That’s why black Republican delegates at the convention get mistaken for bellhops, because other than a handful of picked counterexamples like Powell and Rice sitting in the front row, the GOP convention is lily-white. Talking about 1960s Democrats (and 1860s Republicans!), in this context, is like basing an analysis of European politics on 1930s Germany.
I’m not familiar with Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton on Indian-Americans. Can GK give me an example?
Aside to Hugh: Walter Reed is not in the VA health system. It’s run by the Army. But why let the facts get in the way of a good polemic? [I love how conservatives are both too ignorant and too lazy to Google.] I notice no one dares suggest privatizing the army. That’s probably because an army as expensive and ineffective as our health care system scares you, as well it should.
You know, maybe I should mention that the allegedly Democratic South voted heavily for Barry Goldwater in 1964. Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, etc., while LBJ had championed them. That’s when Strom re-registered? All a coincidence, I suppose.
Andrew – I’d be hard-pressed to believe that anyone on this thread doesn’t believe there are significant differences between the parties on race, or that Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’ wasn’t based on welcoming the aggrieved whites from the South and industrial states.
I’m reading this as a ‘clean hands’ argument in which the point is very real that the Democrats have some nasty stuff in their closets as well, and that there is room for a legitimate difference on how to deal with the matters of race in the 21st Century without waving the Stars and Bars.
Just a thought…
A.L.
“What I hope to hear from Obama – and what will excuse his middle-class raised, Harvard-educated elitism to those folks is a simple statement of what he proposes to do for them. What’s the value they get from voting Democratic.”
I read this, and I thought “This guy lives in an afluent area somewhere on the coasts. Probably California.”
I always find it fascinating when some guy from Manhattan Beach, CA has the audacity to tell those of us in flyover country how we should think.
So, what’s your point–AL has the audacity you speak of, and is thus reprehensible, while Obama is…. …what?
Seriously: AL’s comment rubbed you the wrong way. He got it wrong. Great. Got more to contribute? What do you think? What do you want, apart from not being misinterpreted by the likes of AL?
AL, there is something, well, Liebermanesque in your (over) charitable interpretation of conservative Republicans’ comments. I bring to your attention this remark from comment 33:
That is not a clean hands argument, which would have historical accuracy if no particular salience. That is a flat-out denial of the very phenomenon you find indisputable above. Nor is GK the only commenter to deny what you find undeniable. M. Simon wrote
Now, this may be true in isolated instances, but if the Democrats had retained most of the bigot vote and in addition got 90 percent of the newly-enfranchised black vote, they would be winning the South in landslides.
To you, my point may seem obvious. After all there were a lot of Southern white bigots voting for Goldwater in 1964. There were a lot of Southern white bigots voting for (independent Democrat) George Wallace in 1968. Presumably they were still voting in 1972 and ’76 and ’80 and so on, and during that period the Southern GOP started winning Congressional and Senate seats. Logic is not, however, a strong point for many conservatives here, and I wonder why you create sensible arguments for them instead of looking at the plain meaning of what they actually wrote.
I’m not GK, but you might want to search a few key phrases for some easy examples. Try “Hillary Clinton Ghandi gas station”. From the first CNN story:
Also try “Joe Biden Indian Accent”. From the MSNBC link:
As a bonus, you might also want to search on “Howard Dean hotel staff” to remind yourself about the DNC chair’s opinion on people of color.
Yes, clearly it’s conservatives that are too ignorant or lazy to use Google.
Andrew:
Why were they bigots when they voted for Goldwater in 1964, but not when they voted for Kennedy in 1960 and Stevenson in 1956? Was bigotry invented in the early 60s? Or do you mean to say there are a lot of Southern white bigots voting down there all the time, and always for whatever party they think is the most racist? Funny that they went for an Irish Catholic and then a Jew; they must be stupid, too.
Why don’t you just start in on NASCAR and get all of that bitterness out of your system?
Andrew, I missed that one which kinda dents my argument a bit…
A.L.
Actually, Other Steve, I live in Torrance – a less tony neighborhood of the South Bay, and one with a substantial blue-collar population and that has gone relatively R for quite some time.
I moved here from Venice Beach, so I have a foot pretty squarely in each culture.
And I’ll let my real writings about the folks in ‘flyover country’ stand.
A.L.
Yes, Glen, they were bigots when they voted for Kennedy. The fact they were willing to vote for a Catholic doesn’t change their unwillingness to enfranchise the Negroes. Total non sequitur. And, yes, I think that their racist prejudice outweighed whatever antipathy they felt towards a Catholic and an out-converted Jew. You’re free to provide an alternative explanation to civil rights legislation for the switch from Johnson to Goldwater. Good luck.
Biden’s 7-11 remark is indeed racist. Clinton’s might have made sense in context?!
I don’t understand the argument that only the GOP would let an Indian-American (one who emphasized he had become a Christian) run for governor. Am I to conclude that only the Democrats would let a Chinese-American become a governor so the Republicans are racists against Chinese? (No, I think another non sequitur is in play here.)
#54 – I hope you won’t be terribly upset, if this middle American prefers it if I speak for myself instead of you assuming you can speak for people you have no knowledge about.
TO Steve – I think you’re making a lot of presumptions about me that are factually wrong and unfair, but that’s irrelevant; the reality is that’s why we have real elections and everyone gets to vote.
I’m suggesting a solution to what I (and a bunch of other people) see as a problem in my party; you may or may not like the solution, in which case you are welcome to criticize it and/or present alternatives.
A.L.
Some of us see it as a problem with your party, Marc. That seemingly irrepressible urge to do something, with someone else’s money, of course. There’s a lot of us out here that don’t care so much about cost/benefit analyses, but think the funds would be better left in the hands of those that earned them, who might have something to say about how the money is used themselves. And it appears to be all too short a distance between doing something to constraining others behavior – nannyism – and onward to disdain and intolerance for those who don’t think or want to do the same things. Obama is the logical end product of his party’s logic.
[spam, bye.]
Those of you who are so sure about the wisdom of universal health care need to ask yourselves a question: When doctors are public employees, are you going to support their right to strike, denying health care to all except the elites who can go elsewhere or afford expensive private arrangements?
Unless you answered YES, instinctively and without hesitation, you’re not a real Obama supporter. You’re a poser. Maybe even a talk-big-do-nothing Clintonite.
Great! I’ll take a refund on my share of the Iraq War.
Oh, you mean this only counts for programs you don’t like? Never mind.
Glen, public employees do not get the right to strike. Ask the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. Or is your assumption that supporting Obama means both universal health care and full strike privileges?
bq. To that I’ll add the question of what the Democratic Party has done in the last 20 years for the 35-year-old son of a factory worker who manages to get temp manufacturing jobs, alongside his wife, and tries to support his three kids doing it.
I would ask how many Americans fit this profile. In an economy with over 130 million jobs, how many people work in manufacturing on a temp basis and how many of them are the heads of households. We hear about the job losses in the rust belt, but how many people have actually lost jobs and why haven’t they been able to find work in other areas or industries? The current unemployment rate has just moved _up_ to “5.1%”:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/business/04cnd-econ.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin/ I have worked in a factory and it is soul and mind numbing. Why doesn’t Obama talk about how the government can help people transition into the modern economy.
[Formatting corrected. Thanks for trying –NM]
Tim – if the counterweight to the Democratic Party was a real ‘small government’ Republican (a la the original Republicans back in the Founders times or Tom McClintock) you might have a stronger argument; the reality is that we’re presented with a choice of how our tax dollars will be wasted; corporate or personal welfare. And of what kind of meddling we want to have; morality police or PC police.
I don’t disagree with your formulation, it’s just that it isn’t a useful one in this case because it doesn’t exclusively apply to the Democrats.
A.L.
To my mind there are two schools of thought on the liberal view of taxation (im sure there are more, and this excludes the Marxists property is theft school):
1. The wealthy couldnt have gained their wealth without the hidden utility provided by the masses of the lower class. This is the explotation argument, that taxation should be confiscatory in order to give back portions of wealth the lower classes earned but havent realized.
2.That the lower classes are the responsibility of the government to take care of, and that the government is justified in taking whatever portion of anyone’s wealth to fufill that goal. This is the utility argument. It has less to do with who ‘deserves’ what and everything to do with the government being able to split the pie more effieciently than the market.
Both of these honestly have some sense to them (it takes a real big L libertarian to argue that Bill Gates doesnt need highways and bridges or that orphans should starve in the gutter if it is their lot in life). As much as liberalism is demonized (rightly, in its current manifestation) it took a long time for these ideas to be recognized and indeed become so fundamental that we rarely talk about them anymore.
But we should talk about them, because neither is an absolute and both have severe points of diminishing returns that both liberals and conservatives should argue about.
In my mind, the conservative, mildly libertarian argument can only exist in opposition to these two ideas. IE- the government should be involved in only those areas it can prove to be effective, and limit its taxation to the absolute minimum to achieve the best results. The modern liberal argument abhors this, because A.it _requires_ government to perform and actually eliminate problems its tasked to solve (this is exremely difficult for institutional reasons, people dont work very hard to eliminate their own jobs) and B.somehow modern liberalism views confiscatory taxation of the wealthy as a good thing _in and of itself._ In my opinion B is the single biggest difference between serious liberals and conservatives there is.
Yes.
“Obama wants to give public employees the right to strike”:http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2007/12/sweet_column_obamas_2003_iviip.html so this is no assumption on my part.
Note that this version of the questionnaire gives his answer as “Yes – unless it would directly affect public health or safety.” “The original form”:http://www.politico.com/static/PPM41_obamaquestionaire2.html shows an unqualified Yes. Again I’m reminded of Monty Python – “When I’m wearing the hard hat, I’m talking to the unions. When I take the hat off, I’m talking to everybody else.”
And I don’t need to ask PATCO anything, because everybody knows what happened to them. They went on strike and dared Reagan to bust them, and he did. A good example of talking sh-t in the wrong bar. I’d like to see Obama face down a public employee union. In fact, I’d like to see him take on a dead trial lawyer who’s been staked down to the ground.
Touché, Marc, it’s true there are plenty of would-be nannies and spendaholics with an ‘R’ after their name. But I think Huckabee showed us the high water mark of the theocratic faction, and I’m not hearing any hopeful talk about raising taxes from that side of the aisle. The argument that there isn’t a difference doesn’t wash. Even if you crossed Huck’s moralizing with McCain’s RINO spending habits you wouldn’t have someone so far gone in state worship as Obama or Hillary.
_”Even if you crossed Huck’s moralizing with McCain’s RINO spending habits you wouldn’t have someone so far gone in state worship as Obama or Hillary.”_
I find that people who make that argument _vastly_ underestimate what people like Obama and Clinton really intend (or at least wish) to do compared to what they claim during election cycles.
The most liberal republican you can possibly imagine doesnt aspire to half the Big Government tax/spend schemes Obama or HRC does. We are too far removed from the 70%+ tax bracket of the Carter years to know just how far these folks want to go.
Mark B., that’s a very good comment 65, and I’ll try to reply later. Day job calls.
Um no Marc, we’re not. The Republican nominee is going to be John McCain who has one of the most consistent anti-corporate welfare records of any elected official alive today. The two likely Democratic nominees are both pro-subsidy whether it is transfer payments to individuals or subsidies for business – which ought not to surprise anyone because when you try to regulate the economy to the extent that they both want, subsidies are just another tool of industrial policy.
So for those of us who actually do believe in cutting federal spending for all transfer payments versus those who don’t care how much money is spent on welfare so long as they get theirs, there couldn’t be a clearer choice.
Tim, could you clarify please what you mean by “McCain’s RINO spending habitsâ€? I can understand the criticism that many on the right have for his vote against Bush’s tax cuts but it seems to me that he’s been pretty consistent in favor of spending cuts and voted against things like Medicare Part D, both of the most recent Farm Bills, the pork-infested energy and transportation bills, expanding SCHIPS to cover kids and adults already covered by private health insurance, earmarks, etc.
I agree with AJL – #65 is about as good a comment as I’ve yet seen from the conservative side on these issues, and deserves a reasonable response:
bq. But we should talk about [the justifications presented in #65], because neither is an absolute and both have severe points of diminishing returns that both liberals and conservatives should argue about.
I agree with this, and I’ll point out that relatively few liberals would describe their reasoning in the absolutist terms you used in your post.
The term “exploitation” isn’t really applicable, for example, because guys like Bill Gates aren’t exploiting their (mostly very well-paid) work forces. Rather, they were simply smart enough, talented enough, and lucky enough to cobble businesses together out of clever ideas, available manpower and existing infrastructure. They deserve to be rewarded for that (as many CEOs and entrepreneurs are, and have been) but insofar as these businesses are built, at least in part, on infrastructure and business regulation that the government provided, it’s not unreasonable that the government gets a cut.
Likewise, this formulation isn’t exactly right:
bq. It has less to do with who ‘deserves’ what and everything to do with the government being able to split the pie more effieciently than the market.
I don’t think the government can split the pie in an absolute sense better than the market does – but that’s not what we’re talking about. Outside of the Marxist property-is-theft school, nobody’s arguing that ALL profit get tossed in a common pot and doled out according to the wisdom of the federales – what we’re seeing instead is mostly the market dictates at work (CEOs get millions, burger flippers get squat) with the government shaving off some here and adding a bit there. It’s guiding distribution, not directing it in a command-and-control manner.
Now, as you say, these aren’t absolutes, and I can understand why people would have problems with the idea that the government could EVER have a light enough hand to do any real good, relative to just leaving things be in the first place. I disagree, and most liberals disagree, but I think most liberals and conservatives are in agreement that there are diminishing returns on either side, and that we’re basically arguing about what amounts to fine tuning a few knobs towards the optimal range.
bq. In my mind, the conservative, mildly libertarian argument can only exist in opposition to these two ideas. IE- the government should be involved in only those areas it can prove to be effective, and limit its taxation to the absolute minimum to achieve the best results. The modern liberal argument abhors this, because A.it requires government to perform and actually eliminate problems its tasked to solve (this is exremely difficult for institutional reasons, people dont work very hard to eliminate their own jobs) and B.somehow modern liberalism views confiscatory taxation of the wealthy as a good thing in and of itself. In my opinion B is the single biggest difference between serious liberals and conservatives there is.
I think “abhors” is too strong a word here – I think it’s mostly a disagreement about assumptions. As to point A, I’d argue that many of the problems the government gets involved in are by nature ongoing – pollution isn’t going away, for example, no matter what anybody does, and neither is the need for health and safety regulation. You do have a point that bureaucracies tend to ossify and grow to a point where they can strangle healthy competition, and I think many conservatives have done good work in pointing out where that’s occurred. But again, we’re not talking about absolutes here – no regulation vs. regulating everything – we’re talking about where the best intermediate set-point is for society.
And as to point B, I don’t think it is the case – and don’t think most liberals think – that taxation is a good thing in and of itself. Or at least, I don’t think it’s possible to really tell what liberals really want at this point, because any and all taxation has been sufficiently demonized by the modern Republican party that the debate has merely been about _paying for existing spending_ rather than adding new spending. The liberal/conservative debate of the past seven years has merely been about the wisdom of taking on long term national debt for short term tax cuts – if and when we get back to a balanced budget, then we can start seeing who’s really talking about taxes-for-taxes-sake.
It’s also worth mentioning your post #68 here, Mark – namely that because we _are_ sufficiently removed from the Carter years, it’s not necessarily the case that what Democrats wanted back then, financially is what Democrats want _now_. 30-odd years is a long, long time in politics. There are many 30-something suburban, affluent Ds out there who probably aren’t even aware of what the top rates were under Carter, and would be horrified if they found out – they certainly wouldn’t support reinstating them under Clinton or Obama.
Thanks for the excellent reply Chris. I had thoughts on a few points:
_”I don’t think the government can split the pie in an absolute sense better than the market does”_
I definately don’t think the government can, however I would argue that this is one of the holy grails of modern liberalism (see below)
_”As to point A, I’d argue that many of the problems the government gets involved in are by nature ongoing”_
Thats certainly true, and i think government tends to do its best work here, perhaps _because_ it is acknowledged to be a relative matter and hence there is much political back and forth (ie- what does clean air and water mean from one generation to the next). But on the other hand there are issue that _do_ have market or local solutions that government tends to grab hold of and justify increasing its scope and power by its own progressive failures (education for instance). I think current liberal orthodoxy rejects holding government to objective results as a matter of principle (or politics)… Conservatives do this with equal fervor with military spending and pork (like ag subsidies) I should mention.
_”And as to point B, I don’t think it is the case – and don’t think most liberals think – that taxation is a good thing in and of itself.”_
I think perhaps ‘most liberals’ do not… but i absolutely think that the leading liberals including the vast majority of the political class DO believe this, and in many cases they state it outright. The fear of accumulating capital in a few hands is real, but the class warfare rhetoric and politics, basically of jealousy I think are very real as well. I find this strange… if it made for clever populist politics I could understand it, but at least lately its been a political loser that liberal candidates stick to. That makes me think it is something quite more deeply held to. I find this odd because while there has never in history been more absolute wealth accumulated by so few, there has also never been a lower class so well off and gaining. Moreover the trip up and down the ladder is indesputably more active than ever (check out the number of the richest in the USA that were self made or 1st generation). And the final nail in that coffin (i think) is the robber barons that were feared a century ago have ended up being some of the most effective and important philanthropic forces in the world today. Yet despite all that evidence there ARE powerful forces at work desperate to divest the ‘superrich’ of all they possibly can.
Mark B:
The way it was taught to me, at good old Georgi Plekhanov Grade School, is that all wealth is “social product” that can only be rightfully claimed by the entire society, not by any group or individual. The direct and indirect contributions that all members of society make in the creation of wealth cannot be disentangled, nor should anyone try. The government, as the representative of society, is entitled to take as much wealth as practical means allow. Individual claims to property are usurpation – i.e., theft.
Anyone who thinks that this line of reasoning is limited to avowed Marxists is kidding themselves more than a bit.
This formulation of it, however, is somewhat obsolete. It’s intended to appeal to a traditional working class that leftists no longer have much affection for. Besides, the sense of entitlement has reached such Europe-like proportions that it is no longer necessary to explain why you want other people to give you their money.
AL
Your reverse argument that people want to be left alone ignores a couple of crucial facts. After 1800 little of the movement from the east coast west was done without the help of the federal government. Whether it was the trails, the railroads, the forts et al Manifest Destiny was pushed by the federal government and not without debate. So the idea of being left alone by the goveernment is ridiculous.
Two, roads go to small towns, water systems, school districts and police forces exist there too. By definition that is government; the monopoly taxation and violence.
Three, as to the limits of being left alone what do you think of Gov Jon Corzine attempt to have government units merge in NJ. It is clear you have no problem with the economic forces that force mergers in industry.
Four, being left alone is an discarded isolantionist point of view. The attempts of the many wingnuts on this site to live somewhere and be only interconnected by the internet is folly. It is why discourse on the internet always has an echo chamber quality to it. You never question your assumptions or look at what policy does in an historical context. The open racism and classism tha opens this comment series is point in case.
To refute this look at economic and social history in this country immediately after WWII to the mid 70’sFactories(working class jobs) moved out of the cities of the NE, Rust Belt and SF and LA on the West Coast in the US because the FED in the 50’s redlined the cities to promote suburban growth. This meant the GOVERMENT set a subsidy to move. With the advent of air conditioning the South and Southwest became viable place to live and work. The education of the work force was a direct result of the GI bill which upscaled the force in terms of what it was now capable of and its was not available to many AfricanAmericans because of JIm Crow. With the Viet Nam war came a need to supply arms across the pacific ocean. We were no longer the only capitalist economy capable of providing resources and doing this but Europe, having recovered w/ the Marshall Plan was even further away from Viet Nam. National policy was to build up Asian economies to defeat communism and this was done by setting up workshops and infrastructure to fix war machinery. Because knowledge is fungible(schools are part of infrastructure) it was easy to do.
The result of all of this was to disenfranchise economically huge areas of America. Given that Jim Crow and its policies were just ending, it was devasting to have the opportunity to move up disappear because of out and out prior racism and economic policy. Further the white working class was now in competetion with these newly non restricted workers for a smaller pie of jobs. Away from the large manufacturing cities the decline was slower because the scale was smaller.
_”The result of all of this was to disenfranchise economically huge areas of America.”_
Apologies, but this seems like a total nonsequitar. Providing arms and weapons manufacturing to Asia disenfrachised huge swaths of America? I’d like to see some evidence that the manufacturing prowess of Japan, SK, and Taiwan had anything to do with that policy.
_”Given that Jim Crow and its policies were just ending, it was devasting to have the opportunity to move up disappear because of out and out prior racism and economic policy.”_
Thats absurd. More Americans have ‘moved up’ since Jim Crow than ever did before. The period you are talking about witnessed the explosion of the middle class. The idea that America’s lower classes had more opportunity (much less absolute wealth!) pre-WW2 is silly on its face. In the 30s a large chunk of this nation literally didnt know where their next meal was coming from. Today a big problem with the lower class is they are too fat.
Wingnut indeed. The sad part is that this type of fantasy is all too common in leftist circles, which makes legitimate argument difficult. You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts (as your own Daniel Moynahan famously coined).
Mark-
bq. But on the other hand there are issue that do have market or local solutions that government tends to grab hold of and justify increasing its scope and power by its own progressive failures (education for instance). I think current liberal orthodoxy rejects holding government to objective results as a matter of principle (or politics)… Conservatives do this with equal fervor with military spending and pork (like ag subsidies) I should mention.
If your point here is that both parties have blind spots where their approaches aren’t working as well as expected, I essentially agree. However, I think the specific cases you cite are generally not as open-and-shut as you’re suggesting – there’s more than a little research out there, for example, that suggests charter and private schools don’t really have an advantage over public systems.
bq. I think perhaps ‘most liberals’ do not [believe that taxation is a good thing in and of itself]… but i absolutely think that the leading liberals including the vast majority of the political class DO believe this, and in many cases they state it outright.
Cites, please? Particularly from, say, the current congressional leadership and/or people involved with the Clinton or Obama campaigns, preferably within the last five years or so?
bq. The fear of accumulating capital in a few hands is real, but the class warfare rhetoric and politics, basically of jealousy I think are very real as well. I find this strange… if it made for clever populist politics I could understand it, but at least lately its been a political loser that liberal candidates stick to. That makes me think it is something quite more deeply held to. I find this odd because while there has never in history been more absolute wealth accumulated by so few, there has also never been a lower class so well off and gaining. Moreover the trip up and down the ladder is indesputably more active than ever (check out the number of the richest in the USA that were self made or 1st generation). And the final nail in that coffin (i think) is the robber barons that were feared a century ago have ended up being some of the most effective and important philanthropic forces in the world today. Yet despite all that evidence there ARE powerful forces at work desperate to divest the ‘superrich’ of all they possibly can.
Respectfully, Mark, I think you’re somewhat veering away from even-handed analysis towards rant territory here. But let me pose a brief counter by saying that, while it is true that there are many individual success stories of people who’ve gained great wealth, there are also systemic problems with social mobility developing in this country.
It’s also the case that “divesting the superrich of all they possibly can” is somewhat overheated, considering that most of the tax proposals we’ve been arguing about over the past decade have boiled down to the estate tax and a handful of percentage points for high-end earners.
Lastly, while Bill Gates certainly has become an important philanthropic force, it’s worth noting that A) he only did so, for the most part, _after_ the Clinton administration started pushing monopoly charges on the guy, and B) philanthropy was not unheard of even among the _original_ robber barons – Carnegie, etc. Their occasional largess did not, however, excuse the way they earned their money, or the laissez-faire economic system they existed in.
Robert M (#75) – You’ve got to read what I actually write, as opposed to what you expect me to write. Here are my words:
and
So yeah, the Federal government has been embedded in American life pretty much since the Founding; you’ll get no argument on that from me. But – that embedding has been limited and constrained in complex ways, and our self-understanding as a nation is very much about those limitations – as much as about what has been accomplished around them.
A.L.
_”there’s more than a little research out there, for example, that suggests charter and private schools don’t really have an advantage over public systems.”_
Perhaps so, perhaps not. But that doesnt change whether the federal government is having a positive impact on the situation or not. In my opinion federal funding (and the various hoops you have to jump through to get/maintain it) creates a ton more paperwork and bureacracy at the lower levels, and even worse creates an air of dependency on the government. I’ve got a lot of connections in school funding and the amount of time, effort, and often excuses that are directed at the Feds is exausting. Tons of times vital changes simply arent made because the districts are frozen waiting for the government to either do something, or in fear that it will affect their funding.
_”Cites, please? Particularly from, say, the current congressional leadership and/or people involved with the Clinton or Obama campaigns, preferably within the last five years or so?”_
I don’t have much time at the moment but i’ll give you two quick examples: death tax and CEO salaries. Neither makes any sense unless the wealth condensation argument is employed.
The inadviseability of the concentration of wealth is an underpinning of liberal philosophy. One major problem at the moment is that both candidates are running so hard away from the liberal beliefs there is no way to hear what they raelly think on the matter. CEO’s are making too much money is an argument in itself at the moment, instead of exploring why this is a bad thing when actors or ball players or lawyers making those amounts isnt. But if you listen to the policy wonks like Robert Reich he will talk about the concentration of wealth fear.
I’ll try to find some cites later if i get a chance.
_”Their occasional largess did not, however, excuse the way they earned their money, or the laissez-faire economic system they existed in.”_
True enough, but the laws have now changes and if you break the laws you will go to jail or pay heavy fines.
Those guys amassed their wealth, and _now_ their fortunes are the cornerstones of some of the greatest philanthropy in the world. To me this is a powerful arguement against the divestment of wealth, even generational fortunes. I suspect the Carnegies to this day do a lot more for people than government could dream with the same amount of dollars.
bq. The inadviseability of the concentration of wealth is an underpinning of liberal philosophy. One major problem at the moment is that both candidates are running so hard away from the liberal beliefs there is no way to hear what they raelly think on the matter. CEO’s are making too much money is an argument in itself at the moment, instead of exploring why this is a bad thing when actors or ball players or lawyers making those amounts isnt. But if you listen to the policy wonks like Robert Reich he will talk about the concentration of wealth fear.
Ok, so I’m seeing two problems with this paragraph. One is that you’re implying that both candidates are “running hard away from” what they _really_ believe, as in, “we can’t trust what they’re actually _doing_, we have to act as if they’re secretly planning to spring some horrible ultra-leftist plot on us once in office.”
I’ll point out that conservatives have rightly had a problem in the past with arguments along the lines of “sure, Bush _sounds_ like a “compassionate conservative” _now_, but he’ll take dictatorial powers the moment he’s in office!” That being the case, it’s only fair to ask that the Democrats be judged on the merits of what they’re actually saying and doing _now_, as opposed to what you’re afraid they _might_ do, based on a definition of liberalism you can’t actually prove a the moment.
(I’ll also point out that A) Democrats are actually sounding _more_ liberal this year than they have in the past, going after big-ticket items like universal health care that they’ve previously avoided, and B) the rhetoric and actions of both candidates is liable to get substantially _more_ centrist once we get out of the primary phase of the campaign, and especially once they get into office and start dealing with an actual Congress, as opposed to presenting pie-in-the-sky plans about what they’d _like_ to do.)
Second, I’ll suggest that academics like Robert Reich, although definitely concerned with an over-concentration of wealth, are concerned with CEO salaries primarily because of what it says about the health of _industry_, and not because of what it says about the state of society. As I’ve seen his arguments, Reich seems primarily concerned that, rather than corporations being used as wealth-generating mechanisms for their stockholders, customers, and employees, corporations are currently being run by self-serving boards of directors who enrich high-ranking officers and themselves through short-sighted actions, such as outrageously over-inflated salaries.
Now, you can argue whether this is really something to get worried about in the first place – as Megan McCardle does – or you can argue that insofar as it is a problem, it’s something that ought to be addressed by the private sector, in the form of increased stockholder activism, rather than by the government. But I don’t see that Reich’s concern with CEO salaries necessarily translates into a simplistic “we can’t let people get rich!” argument.
bq. Those guys amassed their wealth, and now their fortunes are the cornerstones of some of the greatest philanthropy in the world. To me this is a powerful arguement against the divestment of wealth, even generational fortunes. I suspect the Carnegies to this day do a lot more for people than government could dream with the same amount of dollars.
Mark, sure, but I haven’t argued – and haven’t seen anybody arguing – that government should take all the money in the Carnegie or Gates foundations because it can do a better job with it. In fact, government _encourages_ the creation of such foundations _through_ the estate tax, since creating independent philanthropic organizations is one way to ensure your money benefits society the way _you_ want it to do, rather than getting sucked up by the government when you die.
_”I’ll point out that conservatives have rightly had a problem in the past with arguments along the lines of “sure, Bush sounds like a “compassionate conservative” now, but he’ll take dictatorial powers the moment he’s in office!” That being the case, it’s only fair to ask that the Democrats be judged on the merits of what they’re actually saying and doing now, as opposed to what you’re afraid they might do, based on a definition of liberalism you can’t actually prove a the moment.”_
Fair point- but i would argue that Clinton and Obama have legislative records that don’t seem particularly similar to what they now claim (or at least they are avoiding specifics pretty hard).
We _know_ what HRC believes on universal healthcare, and its far more Socialist and command economy than anything she is willing to go into specific about now, for example. Obama is rated as the most liberal senator in this congress. And does anybody seriously believe either Clinton or Obama are pro-gun? HRC has a nifty game of claiming to be pro-gun, but never mentioning self defense, defense against tyranny, or the 2nd amendment, instead making vague references to hunters and collectors. Just about right for someone that may want to limit weapons to hunters or collectors as the UK does (is that a tinfoil hatist possibility? I think its argueable).
I guess following up on my own point- whats reasonable and whats unreasonable is a matter of degree, not of kind. How much are the candidates willing to raise taxes and on whom (I worry about ‘rich’ being considered the 70k-120k families), who much spending and on what? What about regulation. For instance interfering in mortgages to the point of freezing forclosures as HRC wants to do (recipe for unintended consequences), how does that reflect how she might feel about price controls?
I need specifics, and judging by their records and the totality of their belief systems, yeh i’d have to say these two have some serious aspirations to increase the size of government and inject government into some big new arenas. And that worries me. If they would lay out their detailed plans it might assuage me somewhat.
_”But I don’t see that Reich’s concern with CEO salaries necessarily translates into a simplistic “we can’t let people get rich!” argument.”_
I don’t think its to that point (certainly all these guys are rich themselves), but i do think there is a strong impetus to _decide_ who gets to be rich, and how rich, and that to me is a big problem. The day i hear about how super-rich lawyers (ahem, John Edwards) are endangering the economy i might take Reich et al at their words (you can make a strong argument that lawyers and lawfirms are the only real winners in tort law which certainly impacts the market far more than what a few CEOs make). I think this is more about power.
bq. Fair point- but i would argue that Clinton and Obama have legislative records that don’t seem particularly similar to what they now claim (or at least they are avoiding specifics pretty hard).
Actually, I don’t see that there’s a huge amount of difference in the legislative records and what they’re now claiming. You jump on the issue of gun control, but I’ll point out that’s pretty far afield from tax issues – you certainly may not _like_ HRC’s position on gun control, but it doesn’t really advance the earlier argument that she wants to take us back to 70% marginal rates.
bq. I need specifics, and judging by their records and the totality of their belief systems, yeh i’d have to say these two have some serious aspirations to increase the size of government and inject government into some big new arenas. And that worries me. If they would lay out their detailed plans it might assuage me somewhat.
Well, whenever you’ve got somebody directly campaigning for universal health care, yes, they’re definitely hoping to “increase the size of government and inject government into some big new areas.” That’s very different, however, from your assertion that liberals think taxation is good in and of itself.
As for specifics, I thought Obama’s plan (PDF) was pretty detailed.
bq. I don’t think its to that point (certainly all these guys are rich themselves), but i do think there is a strong impetus to decide who gets to be rich, and how rich, and that to me is a big problem. The day i hear about how super-rich lawyers (ahem, John Edwards) are endangering the economy i might take Reich et al at their words (you can make a strong argument that lawyers and lawfirms are the only real winners in tort law which certainly impacts the market far more than what a few CEOs make). I think this is more about power.
I think we’re going around in circles here – I agree that liberal policy, to some extent, is to guide distribution, and said as much in #72. But I also specifically said that I disagree that liberals are trying to decide _who_ gets rich. Even Reich isn’t saying CEOs shouldn’t be rich, just that they’re getting wealthy way out of proportion to what they actually do.
I’ve also made previous arguments, especially in #81, as to why there’s more concern about CEOs than trial lawyers. You can address those arguments if you like, or not, but simply repeating your dislike for trial lawyers over and over isn’t debate, it’s propaganda.
AJL,
The white vote in the South is not totally bigoted. Do you suppose that it was the non-bigots (largely) who voted for Goldwater? Goldwater was anti-racist and totally dismissive of the theocons in the party. You should read about him some time. A fascinating guy.
I lived in the South in the 50s. What I remember is that most of the folks there were friendly and non-bigoted. It was the democrat power structure that held bigotry in place with the help of hot heads and loud mouths and the police.
As I was growing up in the South I had one incident that I recall of being called a Jew boy. Other than that I was welcomed into the homes of our neighbors and the very well to do.
The cover is off the elitist attitudes of the D party. Our betters. And Andrew, it looks like you are of that mindset as well. It does not sit well with most of the electorate. It is an attitude of dismissiveness. What you wind up doing is dismissing the votes you need to win. Fine by me.
_”But I also specifically said that I disagree that liberals are trying to decide who gets rich. Even Reich isn’t saying CEOs shouldn’t be rich, just that they’re getting wealthy way out of proportion to what they actually do.”_
Isnt the government deciding what proportion of wealth is ‘appropriate’ deciding who gets how rich? This is the market in its purest form after all. If GE thinks Jack Welsch is too expensive and gets Joe Blow, they will pay for it. If somebody else overpays some loser, they will pay for it. My point is I dont understand where the government should come into play here and why, unless they really believe government has a place helping to determine wealth.
As far as your #81 response, my counterargument was that I don’t buy that the CEOs of certain industies salaries have that unique impact. Realistically the CEOs salary just isnt going to make any real difference in a multinational bottom line… but what you pay your lawyers sure can (ask the medical industry). My point is why stick your nose into industries traditionally unfriendly to dems while saying nothing about those that are? The movie industry is in trouble but i dont hear anyone calling for Rob Reiner or Alec Baldwin to cut their rates. Do movie houses spend too much on bombs? All the time. Who is looking out for their shareholders?
I think this is a value judgement about who deserves to be superrich compared to just regular rich.
I guess the proof is in the pudding taxwise- no politician is going to come out and say they intend to truly soak the rich to Carteresque levels. But how do they intend to pay for the new programs they want like healthcare otherwise?
bq. Isnt the government deciding what proportion of wealth is ‘appropriate’ deciding who gets how rich? This is the market in its purest form after all. If GE thinks Jack Welsch is too expensive and gets Joe Blow, they will pay for it. If somebody else overpays some loser, they will pay for it. My point is I dont understand where the government should come into play here and why, unless they really believe government has a place helping to determine wealth.
Mark, it’s worth pointing out that there’s a big difference between saying _ALL_ rich people should be taxed at a higher rate than they currently are (and the income generated spent on programs to help the poor), and saying that some specific people, or occupations, should be taxed more than others because of their wealth. The moment Bob Reich proposes – and a Democratic Congress and President approve – a law to tax CEO incomes at 90%, then I’m bang there with you as far as the government deciding who’s ‘appropriately’ getting rich. But right now all I’m seeing is the Democrats calling for everybody in the top income bracket – so, above $150k/yr, if not higher – to have their marginal rates raised to 39% or so. It’s changing the distribution, sure, as even you said was reasonable in your comment #65, but it’s not penalizing just Jack Welch and not John Edwards.
bq. As far as your #81 response, my counterargument was that I don’t buy that the CEOs of certain industies salaries have that unique impact. Realistically the CEOs salary just isnt going to make any real difference in a multinational bottom line… but what you pay your lawyers sure can (ask the medical industry). My point is why stick your nose into industries traditionally unfriendly to dems while saying nothing about those that are? The movie industry is in trouble but i dont hear anyone calling for Rob Reiner or Alec Baldwin to cut their rates. Do movie houses spend too much on bombs? All the time. Who is looking out for their shareholders?
I disagree with you – and agree with Reich – that CEO pay does matter to the bottom line, not only in the priorities it implies for the company, but in the games CEOs play to juke their stock options and bonuses, rather than settling on long-term growth.
As for lawyer pay, I agree that _legal expenses_ can be damaging to a company’s bottom line. However, that’s a problem with the entire legal system, and not just trial lawyers like John Edwards, which seem to be the only types of lawyers that many conservatives have a real problem. You want to reform the legal system, go nuts, but I don’t think there’s a substantive argument to be made that, say, Edwards (or Alec Baldwin) making millions represents just as much of an economic dysfunction as Ken Lay running his company into the ground.
bq. I guess the proof is in the pudding taxwise- no politician is going to come out and say they intend to truly soak the rich to Carteresque levels. But how do they intend to pay for the new programs they want like healthcare otherwise?
The liberal answer is that our current system is _so_ inefficient (huge amounts of money spent of administrative fees, the government picking up the tab for outrageously priced emergency room visits by the poor, rather than subsidizing far cheaper primary care for the poor) that switching to universal healthcare won’t cost significantly more than we’re currently paying for stuff like Medicare and Medicaid. (See Ezra Klein, among others.) You don’t have to believe that answer of course – although I do – but it’s certainly not inevitable that Democratic health care policies mean massive top-end rates, either.
In my pick for most fatuous statement of the week, M. Simon wrote
Are you, perhaps, white? Black people—even a white man pretending to be black—didn’t always see it that way.
Pity it’s one of the token left-liberals who has to point out idiocy like this.
AL
The idea that government policy was designed to be benign is ridiculous. As rebuttal IMO you leave out the consequences of legal action by the Supreme court. You ignore things like Plessy vs Feerguson, US vs Cruikshank or actions by the Congress such as the Bacon-Davis Act.
The reason to many commentaters on this site do not understand racism is you look at history to selectively. You always want to argue policy consequences about anything but race. That is called institutional racism. It is the only way you can even attempt to argue government policy is benign.
I’m a long way to agreeing with Armed Liberal here. Government is necessary, and it is as easy to have too little of it as it is to have too much of it. Running for office on a promise to raise a lot of tax money but spend it productively is a good way to go.
But when you spend this money it’s important to remember that sewers, electricity generation plants and preventive maintenance on things like dams and bridges are productive and have something like natural limits. Subsidies for things like ethnic divisiveness are unproductive and tend to expand exponentially as the professional finger-pointers and grievance-mongers make more work for themselves.
Investing productively in the common good and in national solidarity means first going back to a model of society where a common identity and common interests are asserted in official speech from education from the very young on, and shoving right to the curb a competing model of society as a mash-up of ethnic, gender etc. interest groups locked in unfair, unfree and unending conflict.
Frightened as I am to find myself in agreement with AJL, M. Simon apparently didn’t live in the part of the South I grew up in in the 1960s and 70s (southern Louisiana near New Orleans). My best friend had a job on a survey crew in 1979 and in some of the more rural areas surrounding our hometown, his crew actually ate in restaurants that forced blacks to enter through the back door and sit separately from whites. In 1977, I got in a fight for saying something about the nuts in the Ku Klux Klan. But that all seems like a distraction from the main topic.
Thank you, Fred. And to turn to the main topic as outlined in 65.
There are liberals who seem to fund programs with too little concern for efficient outcome. Some (not all) of the anti-poverty programs appear to have existed more out of guilt offering than any measured effectiveness. I think that has to be conceded. It also has to be stated that the current generation of Democratic executives include liberals who showed a proper respect for the public’s money. Bill Clinton as president and Howard Dean as governor come to mind. (Of those still in office, let’s try Schweitzer in Montana.)
(I don’t, by the way, find the tax-and-spend liberals as bad as borrow-and-spend Republicans, whose bad economics damage the future as well as the present. Nor am I impressed with conservatives’ sense of responsibility with public money, taking as an example the rathole of Iraq reconstruction.)
So I don’t think there are many liberals who want to confiscate money just for the experience. But it’s also true that Big-L Libertarianism often makes the error of separating the accretion of wealth from the governing framework. For example, a great many fortunes were made by mortgage brokers over the past few years selling weird instruments which perhaps should not have been legal. Then these instruments became the foundation of securitization that has allowed financial institutions to leverage themselves to the hilt. Government could have prevented or restricted this type of leverage, especially since it will be asked to clean up the mess while any number of executives walk away with seven, eight, and even ten digits of profit or salary.
There’s also a serious social cost when the top’s standard of living improves and the median doesn’t. Ask Louis XVI. As it stands now, various hidden government policies tend to encourage this spread, which reverses the narrowing of the classes during The Great Compression. Government is not some neutral bystander in this process; its laws and policy actively foster it currently. (I recall Armed Liberal was very negative on the new bankruptcy bill. What was that wretched law except another way top bank executives could enhance their bonuses?) I think that is unwise in the extreme.