Year: 2010

The economy is showing signs of revival and the electorate is showing signs of . . . reconsideration.

Sure people are angry and frustrated. There’s a lot to be angry about. How could the last administration have gotten us into such a mess?! How can a single Senator hold up the entire government, and one party filibuster even its own proposals (like the bi-partisan budget deficit commission) once the President comes on board? How can they hold tax cuts for “the bottom 98%” hostage to tax cuts for the best off? Why did we go into Iraq before we had to, and without a plan to succeed? Because “Curveball” told us to???

But anger alone is not enough – and misdirecting it at the current administration is like throwing bottles at the fire department when it arrives to fight the fire someone else set.

Here is conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan last week decrying that cynicism and nihilism, as he calls it. “I have no love for the Democrats,” he says, but . . .

Obama’s speech to Gen44 tonight knocked my socks off. It’s streaming on CSPAN here. If you’ve forgotten why many of you worked your ass off for this guy, and felt hope for the first time in many years, watch it. He deserves criticism when necessary as this blogazine has not shied from at times. But he remains in my judgment the best option this country still has left – and it’s far too easy for the left and far too dangerous for serious conservatives and independents to abandon him now.

What I particularly loved about the speech was his direct attack on the fiscal irresponsibility of the Pledge To America, the $700 billion it means we will have to borrow from China to sustain the unsustainable Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 a year. And what I agreed with was his embrace of government that is lean and efficient, because these are times when the government is necessary to help reverse self-evident decline, mounting fiscal crisis, deeply dangerous enemies, and socially dangerous inequality, exploited at home by ugly demagogues and know-nothing nihilists. Here is his invocation of Lincoln’s core argument about the role of government:

“I believe the government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves.”

Then this passage where he soared like he hasn’t since the campaign:

“I believe in a country that rewards hard work and responsibility, a country where we look after one other, a country that says I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper, I’m going to give a hand up, join hands with folks and try to lift all of us up so we all have a better future, not just some – but all of us. That’s what I believe.”

I do too. I do not believe for a second that the GOP of Palin and Boehner and Beck and DeMint represents anything but more debt, more war, more social division and more denial about the deeply serious problems this country faces and the profound dangers that are metastasizing in the world. I have no love for the Democrats but I do fervently believe that this president’s record is far better than many now fashionably claim, that his inheritance was beyond awful, and I am not giving up on this president’s immense task now, and neither, in my judgment, should any of those who voted for him in 2008.

Know hope; and fight the cynicism and nihilism that is increasingly the alternative.

THE OFA IPHONE APP

Want to help? Download this and start knocking on doors. Don’t wait for the cavalry – you are the cavalry.

INVERTED TEFLON

Tom Anthony: “[With respect to yesterday’s Rolling Stone excerpt] Obama has accomplished a tremendous amount. But he seems to have become an Inverted-Teflon President. He gets no credit for all that he has done.”

☞ Exactly. But that perception may be changing. Summer’s over. Our nation’s future is at stake. People are beginning to focus. Everyone who’s not planning to vote Democrat should at least do his or her due diligence – for the sake of their children – and read the Rolling Stone interview. If, having done so, they conclude Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and John Boehner are the more forward-thinking, responsible leaders, then so be it. We can’t get every vote.

CITIZENS UNITED

John Maclay: “I’ve been reading about how outside groups, buoyed by the Citizens United decision, are flooding Republican congressional candidates with cash even as the Republican National Committee and Republican Congressional Campaign Committee are lagging behind their Democratic counterparts. What can we do to keep subpoena and appropriations power out of John Boehner’s dastardly grip?”

☞ Not sure he’s a dastard, but also not sure many Americans have fully grasped what’s happened here. With a clear minority of the popular vote (even in Florida, but that’s another column) – but a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court – President Bush took over and moved the Court, via Roberts and Alito, further to the right. That 5-4 Bush v. Gore decision, so weak in its underpinnings that even the majority said it should not set precedent, gave us the war in Iraq, trillions in new debt, and, among other things, the Citizens United decision John refers to (which might more aptly be the “Corporations United” decision). Although it did not lift the ban on corporate contributions to candidates, it allowed nearly unlimited – and undisclosed – corporate influence over our elections. (“While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics,” Justice Stevens concluded his dissent.) That is, Exxon can now form a group called “Concerned Environmentalists For Our Children’s Future” – with no members – and secretly fund it with a billion dollars to attack pro-environment Democrats. Or the Koch brothers could fund “Joe Plumbers For Tax Fairness” with a billion dollars to try to elect Republicans who will keep the Kochs’ tax rates low.

I made up those two Astroturf groups, but here are examples of real ones.

If you think this is wrong – that at the very least, the funders of the ads should be disclosed so it’s clear what interests stand to gain – then that’s one more reason to discount the negative ads attacking Democrats and vote D anyway.

If, on the other hand, you think this is the way things should work, then of course you should vote R. As I say, we can’t get every vote.

TTT

The stock is now $7.70. Chris Brown of Aristides Capital, to which I entrust a portion of my meager retirement fund, told us last week he was selling, even though it might certainly go higher. So now I’m out, with $2 worth of KHDHF on its way (one share for every four TTT shares we owned), which I plan to hold: a 20% gain in a month on a low-risk investment. Thanks, Chris.

BOREF

I would certainly not read too much into this, except to say that it suggests the Borealis iron ore interests may not be entirely worthless.

FROM THE COVER OF THE ROLLING STONE

In case you didn’t read it, here’s one piece of the interview with President Obama:

Q: You’ve passed more progressive legislation than any president since Lyndon Johnson. Yet your base does not seem nearly as fired up as the opposition, and you don’t seem to be getting the credit for those legislative victories. There was talk that you were going to mobilize your grass-roots volunteers and use them to pressure Congress, but you decided for whatever reason not to involve the public directly and not to force a filibuster on issues like health care. What do you say to those people who have developed a sense of frustration — your base — who feel that you need to fight harder?

A: . . . When I talk to Democrats around the country, I tell them, “Guys, wake up here. We have accomplished an incredible amount in the most adverse circumstances imaginable.” I came in and had to prevent a Great Depression, restore the financial system so that it functions, and manage two wars. In the midst of all that, I ended one of those wars, at least in terms of combat operations. We passed historic health care legislation, historic financial regulatory reform and a huge number of legislative victories that people don’t even notice. We wrestled away billions of dollars of profit that were going to the banks and middlemen through the student-loan program, and now we have tens of billions of dollars that are going directly to students to help them pay for college. We expanded national service more than we ever have before.

The Recovery Act alone represented the largest investment in research and development in our history, the largest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower, the largest investment in education — and that was combined, by the way, with the kind of education reform that we hadn’t seen in this country in 30 years — and the largest investment in clean energy in our history.

You look at all this, and you say, “Folks, that’s what you elected me to do.” I keep in my pocket a checklist of the promises I made during the campaign, and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we’ve probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do — and by the way, I’ve got two years left to finish the rest of the list, at minimum. So I think that it is very important for Democrats to take pride in what we’ve accomplished.

All that has taken place against a backdrop in which, because of the financial crisis, we’ve seen an increase in poverty, and an increase in unemployment, and people’s wages and incomes have stagnated. So it’s not surprising that a lot of folks out there don’t feel like these victories have had an impact. What is also true is our two biggest pieces of legislation, health care and financial regulatory reform, won’t take effect right away, so ordinary folks won’t see the impact of a lot of these things for another couple of years. It is very important for progressives to understand that just on the domestic side, we’ve accomplished a huge amount.

When you look at what we’ve been able to do internationally — resetting our relations with Russia and potentially having a new START treaty by the end of the year, reinvigorating the Middle East peace talks, ending the combat mission in Iraq, promoting a G-20 structure that has drained away a lot of the sense of north versus south, east versus west, so that now the whole world looks to America for leadership, and changing world opinion in terms of how we operate on issues like human rights and torture around the world — all those things have had an impact as well.

What is true, and this is part of what can frustrate folks, is that over the past 20 months, we made a series of decisions that were focused on governance, and sometimes there was a conflict between governance and politics. So there were some areas where we could have picked a fight with Republicans that might have gotten our base feeling good, but would have resulted in us not getting legislation done.

I could have had a knock-down, drag-out fight on the public option that might have energized you and The Huffington Post, and we would not have health care legislation now. I could have taken certain positions on aspects of the financial regulatory bill, where we got 90 percent of what we set out to get, and I could have held out for that last 10 percent, and we wouldn’t have a bill. You’ve got to make a set of decisions in terms of “What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to just keep everybody ginned up for the next election, or at some point do you try to win elections because you’re actually trying to govern?” I made a decision early on in my presidency that if I had an opportunity to do things that would make a difference for years to come, I’m going to go ahead and take it.

I just made the announcement about Elizabeth Warren setting up our Consumer Finance Protection Bureau out in the Rose Garden, right before you came in. Here’s an agency that has the potential to save consumers billions of dollars over the next 20 to 30 years — simple stuff like making sure that folks don’t jack up your credit cards without you knowing about it, making sure that mortgage companies don’t steer you to higher-rate mortgages because they’re getting a kickback, making sure that payday loans aren’t preying on poor people in ways that these folks don’t understand. And you know what? That’s what we say we stand for as progressives. If we can’t take pleasure and satisfaction in concretely helping middle-class families and working-class families save money, get a college education, get health care — if that’s not what we’re about, then we shouldn’t be in the business of politics. Then we’re no better than the other side, because all we’re thinking about is whether or not we’re in power. . . .

FORM YOUR OWN EXPLORATORY COMMITTEE

A friend has launched this new game – just today – where you run for office. You start as a candidate for dogcatcher, and if you play your cards right and get enough votes, climb the political ladder. You’re competing to become the leader of the free world, it says. Or at least the Facebook world. Let me know how you (or your kids) do and please pass on any feedback you (or they) have.

ON THE COVER OF THE ROLLING STONE

Seriously. Read the interview. If you’re a discouraged Obama supporter, I think you’ll be encouraged. If you were never a supporter, you just might have second thoughts.

WATCH THE PRESIDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Candidate Obama turned out 21,000 students at the University of Wisconsin in 2008, in the frenzy of his campaign (the 17,000 Rachel mentions, plus an overflow venue of 4,000 more). Well, guess what? He turned out 26,500 on the same campus earlier this week. Watch the clips.

MARCHES ON WASHINGTON

I don’t think the President is speaking at either of these, but these marches themselves could speak volumes. Can you make one or both? This Saturday, One Nation, Working Together (as described here)? And October 30, Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity? Try. Working together, sanely, is just what we need to do.

JOB CREATORS WANT THEIR TAXES RAISED

Nearly two-thirds of those with income above $250,000 favor a tax hike to help get the country back on track, according to a survey I cited yesterday. I neglected to link to the Wall Street Journal story that was my source. It concludes by quoting a venture capitalist unconcerned by the prospect of tax hikes. ‘What will change my investment decisions,’ he says, ‘is if I see an economy doing better, one in which there is demand for the goods and services my investments produce. I am far more likely to invest if I see a country laying the foundation for future growth.‘

Got that, Joe Scarborough?

ADAM COHEN TAKES ON ANTONIN SCALIA

Justice Scalia thinks women are not protected by the 14th Amendment, only blacks and George W. Bush. Read it here, in Time:

Justice Scalia Mouths Off on Sex Discrimination
By ADAM COHEN – Wed Sep 22, 10:10 am ET

Leave it to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to argue that the Constitution does not, in fact, bar sex discrimination.

Even though the court has said for decades that the equal-protection clause protects women (and, for that matter, men) from sex discrimination, the outspoken, controversial Scalia claimed late last week that women’s equality is entirely up to the political branches. “If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex,” he told an audience at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, “you have legislatures.”

To anyone who has followed Justice Scalia’s career, his latest provocative statement shouldn’t come entirely as a surprise. It’s been more than four years since he answered a reporter’s question about his impartiality in religion cases with an under-the-chin hand gesture that some commentators said was a Sicilian obscenity. (A Supreme Court spokeswoman insisted the gesture was “dismissive” but not obscene.) And it’s been about as long since Justice Scalia called his refusal to recuse himself from a case about Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force – after he had just gone on a duck-hunting trip with Cheney – the “proudest thing” he has done on the court.

But Justice Scalia’s attack on the constitutional rights of women – and of gays, whom he also brushed off – is not just his usual mouthing off. One of his colleagues on the nation’s highest court, Justice Stephen Breyer, has just come out with a book called Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View, which rightly argues that the Constitution is a living document – one that the founders intended to grow over time, to keep up with new events. Justice Scalia is roaring back in defense of “originalism,” his view that the Constitution is stuck in the meaning it had when it was written in the 18th century.

Indeed, Justice Scalia likes to present his views as highly principled – he’s not against equal rights for women or anyone else; he’s just giving the Constitution the strict interpretation it must be given. He focuses on the fact that the 14th Amendment was drafted after the Civil War to help lift up freed slaves to equality. “Nobody thought it was directed against sex discrimination,” he told his audience.

Yet, the idea that women are protected by the equal-protection clause is hardly new – or controversial. In 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that they were protected, in an opinion by the conservative then Chief Justice Warren Burger. It is no small thing to talk about writing women out of equal protection – or Jews, or Latinos or other groups who would lose their protection by the same logic. It is nice to think that legislatures would protect these minorities from oppression by the majority, but we have a very different country when the Constitution guarantees that it is so.

And the fact that we have a very different country now from the days of the Founding Fathers is why Justice Scalia is on the wrong side of this debate. The drafters could have written the Constitution as a list of specific rules and said, “That’s all, folks!” Instead, they wrote a document full of broadly written guarantees: “due process,” “freedom of speech” and yes, “equal protection.” As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes explained almost a century ago, the Constitution’s framers created an “organism” that was meant to grow – and to be interpreted “in the light of our whole national experience,” not based on “what was said a hundred years ago.”

The Constitution would be a poor set of rights if it were locked in the 1780s. The Eighth Amendment would protect us against only the sort of punishment that was deemed cruel and unusual back then. As Justice Breyer has said, “Flogging as a punishment might have been fine in the 18th century. That doesn’t mean that it would be OK … today.” And how could we say that the Fourth Amendment limits government wiretapping – when the founders could not have conceived of a telephone, much less a tap?

Justice Scalia doesn’t even have consistency on his side. After all, he has been happy to interpret the equal-protection clause broadly when it fits his purposes. In Bush v. Gore, he joined the majority that stopped the vote recount in Florida in 2000 – because they said equal protection required it. Is there really any reason to believe that the drafters – who, after all, were trying to help black people achieve equality – intended to protect President Bush’s right to have the same procedures for a vote recount in Broward County as he had in Miami-Dade? (If Justice Scalia had been an equal-protection originalist in that case, he would have focused on the many black Floridians whose votes were not counted – not on the white President who wanted to stop counting votes.)

Even worse, while Justice Scalia argues for writing women out of the Constitution, there is another group he has been working hard to write in: corporations. The word “corporation” does not appear in the Constitution, and there is considerable evidence that the founders were worried about corporate influence. But in a landmark ruling earlier this year, Justice Scalia joined a narrow majority in striking down longstanding limits on corporate spending in federal elections, insisting that they violated the First Amendment.

It is a strange view of the Constitution to say that when it says every “person” must have “equal protection,” it does not protect women, but that freedom of “speech” – something only humans were capable of in 1787 and today – guarantees corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.

Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board. Case Study, his legal column for TIME.com, appears every Wednesday

Tomorrow: Kiwifruit – and Something Positively Thrilling

ON THE COVER OF THE ROLLING STONE

My favorite part of the interview:

ROLLING STONE: What do you think the Republican Party stands for today?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, on the economic front, their only agenda seems to be tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. If you ask their leadership what their agenda will be going into next year to bring about growth and improve the job numbers out there, what they will say is, “We just want these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which will cost us $700 billion and which we’re not going to pay for.”

Now what they’ll also say is, “We’re going to control spending.” But of course, when you say you’re going to borrow $700 billion to give an average $100,000-a-year tax break to people making a million dollars a year, or more, and you’re not going to pay for it; when Mitch McConnell’s overall tax package that he just announced recently was priced at about $4 trillion; when you, as a caucus, reject a bipartisan idea for a fiscal commission that originated from Judd Gregg, Republican budget chair, and Kent Conrad, Democratic budget chair, so that I had to end up putting the thing together administratively because we couldn’t get any support – you don’t get a sense that they’re actually serious on the deficit side.

☞ There it is, folks. And the irony is, at least one survey showed nearly two-thirds of the folks who make more than $250,000 a year think they should pay more to help meet the nation’s crisis. It’s called responsible citizenship. Or, perhaps, ‘love of country.’

THE RICH GET RICHER – ESPECIALLY AFTER TAX

In 1979, high-income folks were certainly doing better than the rest of Americans – which is exactly how it should be. A society where achievers and risk takers and savers don’t fare better than slackers and squanderers is a society that can’t possibly thrive. But just how much better should the high-income folks live? (And whom should we paying the high income to: mortgage brokers or master teachers?) You can say ‘the free market will make these decisions best if left to its own devices’ – look how well it functioned in setting the right prices for residential real estate and rewarding those who packaged sub-prime mortgages – but whatever your view, it’s still interesting to consider the facts.

According to this from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, there has been a big shift in favor of the best-off since 1979.

. . . the average middle-income American family had about $9,000 less after-tax income in 2007, and an average household in the top 1 percent had $741,000 more, than they would have had if the 1979 income distribution had remained.

. . . Fully two-thirds of the income gains in the last economic expansion (2001-2007) flowed to just the top 1 percent. This is not a healthy sign for a society. As Professor Thaler urges, we need to decide whether we want to promote still-greater inequality (by extending the high-income tax cuts) or lean against this trend. Each year the average millionaire gets about $125,000 from the Bush tax cuts, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Now seems to be a good time to say enough is enough.

Should we conclude that the top 25 hedge fund managers – who collectively earned $25.3 billion in 2009 – are producing so much value for society that we shouldn’t tax them back at the old Clinton/Gore rates?

Coming: Kiwifruit and Something Positively Thrilling

TTT

Chris Brown: ‘I’m a seller of TTT on today’s merger announcement. After 24% in 19 days, it is no longer the exceptional value that it was. May still be on the cheap side, and the formal announcement of a regular cash dividend will probably help the stock when it comes, but nonetheless, I’m a seller. Company may continue to do well long-term, especially if CEO executes well, but most likely scenario near-term is sideways.’

☞ Chris sent this email yesterday morning when the stock was closer to $7.50 that the $7.16 at which it closed. So if you sell, you might put your order in a little higher, ‘good ’til canceled.’ And remember, it only seems lower than the $7.90 or so we paid to buy it, because (whether you sell or not) you’ll shortly get the dividend worth $1.90 as described Friday.

DA/DT

The White House remains determined to repeal ‘Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell’ this year, in line with the goal set by the President in his State of the Union. I think it will happen. The President has a good record of taking on very difficult things and getting them done in the face of unprecedented partisan opposition.

To wit . . .

PIPEDREAMS COME TRUE

. . . this from the Washington Post:

The Obama administration’s pipe dreams
By Ezra Klein

The White House held a conference call [Sept 17] for Elizabeth Warren and various bloggers and writers. Most of it was what you’d expect, but Warren did mention that Rep. Barney Frank once told her that getting a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a “pipe dream.”

I think some people will see that as a mark against Frank, but he was right, at least judging by Washington’s record over the previous 20 or 30 years. In fact, a lot of the Obama administration’s accomplishments were [seen as] pipe dreams.

A near-universal health-care system? Why would Obama and the Democrats succeed when Truman, Nixon, Carter, and Clinton had all failed, and politicians as adept as FDR and LBJ refused to even make the attempt? They’ve seen the numbers, right? The health-care industry is bigger now, and richer, and there are no more liberal Republicans. There’s no way.

A $787 billion stimulus? Yes, it was too small. But everything Washington does is always too small. And within the confines of that stimulus, the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress managed to make a host of long-term investments that would’ve been considered huge accomplishments in any other context, but are largely unknown inside this one. Huge investments in green energy, in health information technology, in high-speed rail, in universal broadband, in medical research, in infrastructure. The Making Work Pay tax cut. The Race to the Top education reform program. No recent president has invested in the country on anything like that level.

The fact of financial reform is less impressive given the fact of the financial crisis, and readers know that I’m skeptical about the final design of the bill. But the consumer protection agency really is an important addition that might not have been included if the White House was occupied by a different team.

There are the smaller items that, in any other administration, would be seen as achievements. Menu labeling in chain restaurants. The Independent Payment Advisory Board to bring down Medicare costs. Ted Kennedy’s SERVE America Act. [Tobacco regulation! Credit card reform! Lilly Ledbetter!]

And then there’s what didn’t happen: The financial system didn’t collapse. Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and George W. Bush deserve some of the credit for that — though they also deserve some of the blame for not preventing the crisis in the first place. But as Ben Smith says, TARP, which was begun by Bush and implemented by Obama, is probably one of the most successful policies in American history — and it’s also one of the least popular.

The Obama administration is also unpopular, though still more popular than the Democrats or Republicans in Congress. Many of its achievements — notably health-care reform and the stimulus — are similarly unpopular. That makes it difficult for the administration to run the midterm campaign that would’ve been the natural extension of this record: We have fulfilled almost all of the major promises we made in the 2008 election, and we’re the most accomplished White House in a generation.

Those things are true, of course. And I think that the labor market will eventually recover, and the health-care reform plan will cover 32 million people and make the system better and more secure for a lot of people beyond that, and Obama, like Reagan before him, will be considered an extremely successful president despite struggling with his popularity in the early years of his first term. But for now, that kind of popularity is, well, a pipe dream. And the Obama administration is left running on exactly the record it hoped and promised to have in 2008, but without the level of economic recovery and thus popularity that would’ve helped convince the American people to deliver a favorable initial review.

MARCHES ON WASHINGTON

Can you make one or both of these? This coming Saturday, One Nation, Working Together (as described here)? And October 30, Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity? Try. Working together, sanely, is just what we need to do.

“THE JOB CREATORS”

Answer me this, my billionaire friends: If tax cuts for the best off are so great for the economy, why did we create no new net jobs since enacting them?

We’ve had these wonderfully low rates for a long time now. They don’t seem to have created jobs.

Conversely, if the higher Clinton-era rates on income above $250,000 were such job killers, how did we manage to create 22 million net new jobs after they were enacted?

Give . . .

me . . .

a . . .

break!

And stop talking about the struggling small businesses and family farms that won’t be able to hire new workers.

In the first place, how many small businesses or family famers do you know these days making more than $250,000?

In the second place, if you do know some, please note that the new tax rates will take just a little of their income above $250,000. Most of the excess, quite rightly, they get to keep.

But in the third and main place, why on earth would a small business or family farmer not hire a needed worker to help meet demand? Meeting demand makes you money. Failing to meet demand costs you money.

And what about demand?

The guy making $500,000 a year or $10 million a year is not likely to cut back on consumption if his income taxes taxes go up. And he’s certainly not going to stop investing for fear of having to pay 20% on his capital gain instead of today’s 15% – what, and put his money in a 1% savings account instead? Or in 3% Treasuries that are then taxed at the 39.6% rate?

Should we really keep trying the “trickle down” thing, figuring that if we can just build enough yachts and mansions – rather than give average homeowners a tax-credit for weatherizing their homes – our economy will start to hum again?

In a sense, we are talking butlers versus teachers. And sure, let me stipulate that this is an oversimplification to make the point, but still. One way, you have some more tax revenue to help states keep teachers in the classroom; the other way, you fire the teachers so that the most fortunate among us might have the added funds to hire (or not have to fire) a butler. Either one is a job, but which better serves the broader interest?

And will someone please tell me why Eisenhower is not branded a communist for the 90% top federal tax rate he felt was needed to begin shrinking the National Debt relative to the size of the economy as a whole? Kennedy lowered it to 70%, but were Nixon and Ford communists for keeping it there?

It should never be set that high again. But for the Republicans to make their central idea protecting the top 2% from the eminently successful Clinton/Gore era tax rates – this is the core of their pledge! – is so jaw-droppingly irresponsible and economically wrong-headed one can even hold out hope that the “bottom 98%” might finally say, “enough” and vote Democrat.

CALLING OUT BEN STEIN

I am actually something of a Ben Stein fan. And Steve Schwarzman and I have been friends for 40 years. But when Schwarzman likens Obama’s tax proposal to the Nazis invading Poland, or Ben Stein goes on national TV to say he feels as though he’s being unfairly punished – well, it’s a bit much, don’t you think? Take a minute to watch Linda McGibney call him out on this week’s CBS Sunday Morning. And pass it on.

THE PLEDGE

The main thing is that it pledges to go backwards. Who would want more of the Bush years? Who wants to be trapped in a job for fear of losing his health insurance? (And who cares where the Guantanamo prisoners are imprisoned? It’s all about playing to fears, as if no U.S. prison is secure enough to hold them.)

So I hesitate even to detour through the weeds, because even if it were accurate, the Pledge would be a terrible prescription for America.

Still, it may be worth noting, as factcheck.org has, the Pledge is misleading:

The Republican “Pledge to America,” released Sept. 23 . . .

• declares that “the only parts of the economy expanding are government and our national debt.” Not true. So far this year government employment has declined slightly, while private sector employment has increased by 763,000 jobs.

• says that “jobless claims continue to soar,” when in fact they are down eight percent from their worst levels.

• repeats a bogus assertion that the Internal Revenue Service may need to expand by 16,500 positions, an inflated estimate based on false assumptions and guesswork.

• says Obama’s tax proposals would raise taxes on “roughly half the small business income in America,” an exaggeration. Much of the income the GOP is counting actually comes from big businesses making over $50 million a year. [Like multi-billion-dollar hedge funds with just a few employees. – A.T.]

For details on these and other examples please read on to the Analysis section. . . .

Coming This Week: We WILL Repeal DA/DT … Kiwifruit … and Something Positively Thrilling!

THE REPUBLICAN PLEDGE TO AMERICA

We pledge to borrow yet more hundreds of billions of dollars from the Chinese to continue the tax cuts on income over $250,000.

We pledge to halt infrastructure spending, because the best way to put people back to work is to leave them unemployed as our bridges collapse.

We pledge to be as much like Herbert Hoover – and as little like FDR – as we can.

The way to inspire confidence in our future is go deeper into debt, let our infrastructure decay, lay off teachers, police and fire fighters.

More to follow.

THE BIG LIE: “I WANT YOUR MONEY”

This is a movie that the right wing will be inflicting on the nation shortly. It is designed to shift even more wealth and power to the already exceptionally wealthy and powerful.

David Durst: “You know what the funniest part of that trailer is? The counter on top showing ‘our ever growing national debt.’ When Ronald Reagan entered the White House our national debt was 0.9 trillion dollars. That’s right: LESS than 1 trillion. Between 1980 and 1992 the Republicans (Reagan and Bush) ramped up ‘our ever growing national debt’ from less than $1, to $4.5 TRILLION dollars. Almost a 500% increase. I don’t remember a single Republican saying a word about our national debt then? Do you?? Then we had 8 years of a Democrat (Clinton) and the national debt increased from $4.5 trillion to $5.9 trillion [but shrank relative to the size of the economy as a whole). That’s a 31% increase in 8 years for the Democrats vs. a 500% increase in 12 years for the Republicans. Next we had good old GWB for 8 years and guess what happened? The debt more than DOUBLED again — from $5.9 trillion to $12.3 trillion. So once again, a Republican President with Republican Senate and House of Reps exploded our national debt. And now we have a Democrat back in the White House – and all of a sudden, the Republicans are SCREAMING bloody murder about the debt. They ran up the National Debt from less than 1 to more than 12 trillion dollars AND they left us with an economy that’s almost as bad as the great depression. And NOW they are worried about the debt?”

☞ This movie is designed to misinform and manipulate the man on the street struggling to make ends meet. It aims to persuade him to vote against his own interests. Boy, is it slick.