Tax disconnect
Daily Kos: Taxes lowest in 60 years.
When 98% of the country’s families got tax cuts, and taxes are the lowest they’ve been in 60 years, it makes one wonder about the origins of the protestations of ‘communist’ and ‘socialist.’
Who’s a conservative?
A review of Karl Rove’s book asserts that Karl Rove is no conservative, as his memoir shows. Of course, by extension, since the policies mentioned are all Bush’s, Bush was no conservative, if by conservative we mean ‘small-government, fiscal responsibility’ conservatism. Between No-Child-Left-Behind, Department of Homeland Security, warrantless wiretapping, Medicare extensions, deficits, Patriot Act, bank bailouts and takeovers, optional war in Iraq and more, Rove and Bush acted less like traditional conservatives and more like authoritarian reactionaries.
Interesting that todays self-proclaimed tea party ‘conservatives’ are up in arms now, when they were not over the last 8 years.
Especially considering that many on the left see OBAMA as the conservative, decrying the private health insurance plan, offshore drilling and more. Obama, though I would not label a “conservative,” is arguably in many ways more “conservative” in the traditional sense than Bush/Rove/Cheney, less authoritarian, more pragmatic.
All part of the plan
Yep, it looks like I was right as this hill staffer suggests:
Obama preempts the other side’s most resonant arguments, which forces them to come up with more and more extreme claims in order to differentiate themselves…
…At the same time, the policy is a tailored, measured version of what the Republicans have urged — so, yes, the headline is, ‘Obama Allows New Offshore Drilling/Presses For Energy Independence,’ but at the same time, California/Oregon/Washington where opposition is strongest isn’t included, and there are environmentally-friendly changes to Alaska leasing policy announced at the same time. And again, as we’ve seen before, Republicans are sort of forced to twist and parse, and even to oppose things they have long supported, just because the Administration hasn’t gone far enough.
As I said yesterday, Obama is playing chess and all his opponents and supporters are playing a bad game of checkers. Of course the purity progressives do their part, as do the Republicans through Boehner.
Obama: Drill, Baby, Drill, and save, nuke, shine and blow
Weaning our nation off of oil and fossil fuels like coal as our main energy source is a four-fer:
1. National security. It will eliminate our reliance on totalitarian, oppressive states that breed terrorists for a necessary commodity.
2. Economy. If you accept peak oil as a future concern, and many serious people now do.. it’s when, not if, then it will help prepare us for a future of tightening supplies and rising costs.
3. Air Quality. It will increase our air quality. No matter how clean we make oil and coal, they will always dirty the air.
4. Climate Change. We just keep spewing carbon into the air, and just keep increasing our chances of major problems. Cutting that down is necessary.
Whether one is Republican or Democrat, conservative, liberal or somewhere else in the spectrum, at least 1 or 2 of these goals should be considered quite worthy of our attention. I believe all four are extremely important, and in fact are quite intertwined.
But how to go about it? As a nation, practically, it seems to me we need to take a multi-faceted, and serious, approach. We need to find market-based incentives to conserve (save) energy use, we need to create market-based incentives to increase our use of alternative sources of energy like nuclear, solar and wind. We need to do these now.
President Obama just recently announced that they will be opening up offshore areas to exploration and drilling.
Is this a solution? As I’ve written before, it is not. Increased oil production will perhaps be 3% in the next 10-20 years. Not near enough to wean us of foreign sources, help the economy or the environment. I also am leery what effect it will have on our coasts.
But, perhaps there are several benefits to this, in conjunction with a huge push for alternative energy sources. One benefit in helping us with the first two points above, the other benefits are political. I still don’t think it’s a great idea, but perhaps there are other calculations in play:
1. Let’s say that we decrease our fossil fuel consumption by 50%, then the 3% increase in production becomes a more substantial portion. Perhaps enough to make a bigger difference in our dependence on foreign oil.
2. It gives ground to Republican and conservative calls for drilling (from McCain and Palin to Bush and others), perhaps both being a political bargaining chip/peace offering to get them on board for pushes for other ways to decrease our dependence on oil.
3. If the Republican and conservative leaders reject the other proposals for renewable energy, or like with healthcare completely stay out of the discussion, then they will, as they did with healthcare, appear unreasonable and uncompromising.
4. Once the areas are opened up, and it is shown that they don’t produce near what we need, the argument is also won.
Like with healthcare, Obama is using Republican and market-based proposals and offering bipartisanship. And I think, as with healthcare, the Republicans and conservative “Tea Party” will reject their own proposals out of hand.
And they will continue to dig their own political graves as a movement.
Andrew Sullivan posted about this today, and linked to several people who were wondering why he didn’t hold this in reserve as a bargaining chip. And then posts another link to someone who thought this was political (as in rising summer gas costs), but, as I wrote an email, this is not just or even much about this summer or holding bargaining chips….
…don’t’ they see it? Are they missing it yet again? Obama is playing the long game. He’s preemptively accepting the Republican approach, then asking the Republicans to come on board for the discussion and legislation. Just like the healthcare debate. And just like the healthcare debate, they will refuse, scream, shout and throw a tantrum. A larger, comprehensive bill that is indistinguishable from moderate Republican solutions from the past will be passed and Republicans will again appear extremist and unreasonable. Then nation will win with a solution, and Obama will win politically. The only losers will again be the Republicans.
Obama Was Right: A Response to Hatch and Others
Senator Orrin Hatch published an opinion piece at politico.com on February 3rd.
In it, he makes assertions that have become regular talking points regarding Obama’s State of the Union address and his characterization of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC. Obama was, according to Hatch, “flat wrong.”
Here’s Obama’s statement: “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections…. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.”
In trying to demonstrate that Obama was wrong with his statement, Hatch first mis-characterizes it, implying that Obama was making an assertion about political contributions: “This case had nothing to do with contributions by anyone to political campaigns.”
What the Citizens United case did do was allow corporations to use general treasury funds as they wished in “electioneering communications,” that is, to run ads specifically advocating for or against a particular candidate for national office in the days leading up to an election. That is what Obama was addressing, and he was right. The ruling potentially turns federal elections –and soon state and local elections, because of the ruling’s impact on some state’s laws– into a corporate free-for-all.
