Repugs on the Run, So Pile On at Your Congress Critter's Town Hall

It's August of 2009 all over again, except this time it's the repugs on the run and the liberals on offense.

First, Paul Ryan demonstrated his corporate cluelessness by ... well, I'll let Down with Tyranny explain:

And his latest stunt-- and hence this request to donate $15 to Rob Zerban's campaign to replace Ryan-- is to refuse to speak to constituents who don't pay for the privilege! No more townhalls-- just chats with voters who pay him! During the current summer vacation, he's charging $15 to take part in his events.

By outsourcing the events to third parties that charge an entry fee to raise money, members of Congress can eliminate most of the riffraff while still-- in some cases-- allowing in reporters and TV cameras for a positive local news story.

...“After Republicans voted to gut Medicare, and other vital programs, while protecting tax breaks for millionaires and corporations, it’s not surprising that they would not want to face their constituents in an open forum,” said MoveOn.org Executive Director Justin Ruben. “There seems to be no limit to how much our government is for sale.”

...Ryan, who had police remove a man who yelled at him about proposed Medicare cuts during an April town hall meeting in Racine, will host telephone town hall meetings but no free events in person during the recess, spokesman Kevin Seifert said.

...Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Graeme Zielinski said Ryan is scared to defend his record before his fellow citizens.

“Paul Ryan has had a hard time going before open crowds, and for good reason,” Zielinski said. “I’m sure Ryan doesn’t want to go before the public to explain while his extreme ideology caused Standard & Poor’s to downgrade U.S. long-term treasury bonds. Beside, Ryan likes smaller settings-the kind where you can cozy up to a hedge fund manager and get a good $350 bottle of wine.”

Even the repug-loving White House jumped on that fat target:

Ryan's staff told Politico they had nothing to do with the admission charge for the event mentioned in the story, which takes place at a Rotary Club event featuring "catered lunch of meat and potatoes the group will provide." And it's worth noting that Democrats have come under fire for holding similar events of their own in the past.

But Democrats say Ryan's staying away from the classic town hall format this recess -- along with more than one of his Republican colleagues -- because he's afraid of the response he'll get from attendees upset with the way the Republicans have played things in Washington over the past few months, up to and including the debt ceiling fight.

"Any Republican who is not charging to enter their town halls is seeing just how fed up their constituents are with the deficit ceiling debate," a White House official told Politico.

One such Republican, Rep. Fred Upton (MI) -- who's a member of the supercommittee created by the debt ceiling deal -- seems to be proving the White House's point. He made a public appearance to take questions in Kalamazoo Monday and was met with a group of protesters demanding to know where the jobs are.

Here's the kind of fun Ryan's avoiding, as reported from the Upton town hall by the Kalamazoo Gazette:

During his 45-minute appearance at the Coover Center, Upton was continually interrupted by people in the audience. Most shouted comments and questions about growing jobs in Michigan and what Upton plans to do.

About 20 people who appeared to be in an organized group sometimes broke into chants. They declined to identify who they were with, with one woman telling a photographer her name is "I am jobs."

As long as Ryan seems to be avoiding Ms. I Am Jobs, he's going to keep getting taking hits from Democrats eager to find another reason to criticize him over his budget plan.

He's not alone; the beating Upton took is emboldening liberal constituents of repugs everywhere.

Steve Benen:

The Washington Post has an interesting piece (Friday) morning on the extent to which Republicans find themselves on the defensive on an issue they considered a strength. The article notes, for example, Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) being badgered by constituents on the need to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

It is a scene that has been repeated at town hall meetings across the country this August as Democrats make a concerted effort to use this month’s congressional recess to change a national narrative on taxes.

For years, it has been Republicans who have wanted to talk about the issue, winning elections promising not to let government take more from voters.

But since the showdown over raising the debt ceiling, Democrats have been unusually eager to embrace tax increases, gambling that voters will see the Republican refusal to consider higher taxes for the wealthy as recalcitrant and out-of-touch.

“Silence has been Democrats’ main political strategy since the mid-’90s on this issue,” said Michael J. Graetz, a professor at Columbia Law School who has studied the tax issue. “What’s happened is people’s consciousness has been raised that cutting spending may mean serious cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
And that has had at least the potential to change the politics of the tax issue.”

What’s especially interesting is that the pressure appears to be getting to Republicans, at least a little. In this case, Hultgren continues to refuse to raise taxes — but if Congress wants to end oil-company subsidies and close tax loopholes, he’s open to it. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), confronted by 200 angry constituents this week, said the same thing.

We heard similar reactions from four far-right House Republicans who participated in a joint town-hall meeting in a very conservative area, when three of the four wouldn’t rule out additional revenue.

Democrats believe this is a debate that works for them. There’s ample evidence they’re right.

If there's an event you can get to, make your voice heard in favor of jobs and higher taxes for the rich. If your repug congress critter is hiding from his constituents, write to your local paper and ask why your representative is such a cowardly worm. One way or another - Go get 'em!

From "Serve and Protect" to "Hide and Sue"

Nobody likes being videotaped without permission, especially if the videographer is capturing stupid, foolish or illegal behavior.

But public servants just have to suck it up: you work for the taxpayers, and if one of them records you in the performance of your duties, that's tough.

From Raw Story, a Springfield, Massachusetts police officer is pressing criminal charges against a woman who recorded another officer beating a black suspect at a traffic stop.

A police officer from Springfield, Massachusetts has filed an application for a criminal complaint against a woman who recorded his fellow officer beating a black suspect while he stood by, according to The Republican.

In November 2009, Tyrisha Greene made a 20-minute recording of now-retired Springfield patrolman Jeffrey M. Asher repeatedly beating Melvin Jones III with a flashlight during a traffic stop. The recording shows a group of other officers standing around Jones without intervening.

Jones was partially blinded in one eye from the attack, and had bones all over his face broken. The officers claimed that Jones grabbed one of their guns as they tried to arrest him and that Asher struck Jones with his flashlight in order to "disorientate him."

But a grand jury rejected that claim, finding no evidence that Jones behaved aggressively towards them.

Michael Sedergren was one of the four officers disciplined for the incident. He was suspended for 45 days. Sedergren claims Greene violated the state's wiretapping laws by recording him without his consent.

This is one of many incidents around the country in which police are operating with impunity and insisting they cannot be held accountable for their actions.

Bon the Geek at Zandar's place back in January:

Two strangers are profiled in a New York Times article. They are both very different people, from different backgrounds. They have nothing in common, really. Except for one small thing:

About the only thing these strangers have in common is the prospect that by spring, they could each be sent to prison for up to 15 years. “That’s one step below attempted murder,” Mr. Drew said of their potential sentences. The crime they are accused of is eavesdropping.

These two individuals recorded the officers who they spoke with, and did not get their permission. There's a few things I think are a little off about this, and the article itself makes many good points. Police don't have to tell us that we are being recorded, and their cars run video and often audio. The article mentions that years ago when these laws were written, it wasn't common for people to have recording devices available. It is completely normal to carry a cell phone, so if the police were to argue that being recorded from the front of a cop car is common knowledge, these two can argue the same case.

Mark Donahue, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said his organization “absolutely supports” the eavesdropping act as is and was relieved that the challenge had failed. Mr. Donahue added that allowing the audio recording of police officers while performing their duty “can affect how an officer does his job on the street.”

That's sort of the point. It's hard to fake video, and this is a new level of accountability. If officers are conducting themselves properly, then the tapes would just reveal that and offer backup for any cops who found themselves on the stand. Because they are public officials, and the fact that their job is often done in public, it stands to reason that they shouldn't have an expectation of privacy.

Regardless of which way you fall on the topic, it majavascript:void(0)kes sense that expectations of privacy should be redefined. However, it shouldn't be redefined by law enforcement. I'm a little afraid of how it would go down, but at least we would know where we stand.

Liberals know that the more authority we give to law enforcement, the more we must hold them to account for their actions. Public servants are just that - those who serve the public.

Serfing USA

I take it back. Wall Street and the repugs are not trying to create a lords-and-serfs economy. They've already succeeded.

Tina Dupuy at Crooks and Liars:

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

Making Sen$e correspondent Paul Solman reports on the extreme inequality in the U.S. It's now on par with African dictatorships. In a telling moment after interviewing a recent immigrant from Haiti, where she says the American Dream isn't something she feels she'll ever have, Solman says, "The U.S. looks unequal to a Haitian?"

He then looks into a recent study about wealth in the U.S. "The first constant finding," Solman says. "Most Americans don't realize how unequal our country really is."

Yay for non-profit media.

Read Down with Tyranny on how austerity is driving riots worldwide.

Building Political Muscle

If you're discouraged by a victory that fell somewhat short of the complete repug-killing you were hoping for, then you should just drop out of political activism right now, because you don't have the stamina it takes to win the Long Fight.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

TPM Reader EA writes in ...

I can certainly understand how the actions of Scott Walker and his allies in the Wisconsin Senate rankled working Wisconsinites and the larger union community around the country. I'm certainly glad that it activated what seemed like it had become a quite complacent movement. But was the recall movement worth it? More specifically, was it worth the incredible investment from outside non-union progressive groups? I swear I received an ungodly amount of email about Wisconsin but none about other states with threatening union-busting legislation that matter to me more, like PA or NJ.

Forgive me but it sort of seems like a lot of these groups decided to jump on the wave only to realize to late that a giant recall movement would be more time and money intensive than they had bargained for, that the country would move on, and that the whole thing was a giant distraction from what I think most progressive groups say they want to work on - namely, building a broad-based national popular movement organized around progressive policy goals.

Was Wisconsin really the critical front it has been made out to be or did it morph into something of a distraction?

TPM Reader EA is one of our most insightful readers. But in this case I think he has it wrong. There are different ways to see what happened last night. Legislative recalls are extremely, extremely uncommon in the United States. Winning two of them last night was a big victory. Both senators won in 2010 and in the big Obama year of 2008. And the Democrats came very close to knocking off two more. Still, let's be honest: they wanted to steal away the GOP's unitary hold on the state government. And they didn't. They came up short. And there's a lot of very real and merited disappointment over that.

But it's wrong to see political energy and resources as finite and something to be marshaled. It's not a zero sum game. This kind of effort doesn't take away from something else. It adds to it. It builds organizational muscle. In fact, it's like muscle. You build it by exercising it. I don't lose part of my allotment of muscle by doing some bench presses. I build it up. And the exercise itself demonstrates that a political movement can bite back.

In the recent budget and debt battle I saw numerous readers write in to say, Hey, how'd this Norquist guy get all this power? Or, Why is it that every time they can get every last member of their caucus to toe the line? Yes, Norquist's got tons of cash from various moneyed interests. But his power is based on working this issue for literally decades in out of the way races across the country. Again, building muscle through the exercise of muscle. How do Republicans enforce such crazy amounts of party discipline? Because they have a record of primarying people. And over time people get that message. So yes, the Dems and the unions in Wisconsin came up short.

But two Republican senators already lost their jobs over this. And people will remember that.

Politics ain't bean bag and it also ain't easy. It takes time. It would be a mistake to see this as a distraction, a big mistake.

Every single potential liberal you manage to get out to attend a county commission meeting, or a campaign event, or to vote, is a victory. Learn from it, put it in the win column, and get back out there to get another one.

Freakazoids Trying to Steal Public Hospital

Some American Catholics like to pretend they are the reasonable faction of the freakazoids. They're educated and even liberal supporters of the social safety net, not like those mouth-breathing fundamentalists.

But when it comes to treating women like sub-human wombs-for-sale, Catholics lap the field. As I wrote last month, Catholics attempting to merge with the University of Louisville hospital let it slip that once they took over, women would no longer receive tubal ligations at the university's public, taxpayer-supported hospital.

To Kentucky's credit, this caused a huge uproar, inspiring both the Democratic governor and the Democratic attorney general to announce the merger would not go through unless the Catholics guaranteed full services to everyone.

But instead of backing down, Catholics and the University of Louisville - to the university's everlasting shame - doubled down. Kentucky's elected officials can't tell them what to do, they claimed, because University Hospital - which receives millions of taxpayer dollars every year - is not a public institution.

Superb analysis from the Courier:

It’s the main teaching hospital for the University of Louisville, and faculty doctors of that state university treat the patients there. It gets millions of dollars from state and local governments to treat the poor, and its facility was built and is owned by the state.

But in the midst of community debate over plans to merge University Hospital into a new statewide Catholic health care system, U of L officials insist the hospital isn’t a public institution. They say it is a private facility because it is managed by the nonprofit University Medical Center Inc., not by a government agency.

“University Hospital is NOT a public hospital,” U of L asserted recently on a website defending the controversial proposed merger with Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s HealthCare and St. Joseph Health System of Lexington.

The distinction could be important to winning acceptance for the merger, given the protests of Kentucky legislators, advocates for the poor and others who maintain that Louisville’s “public hospital” shouldn’t be subject to Catholic directives against sterilization and birth control, as it would be under the merger.

That issue has prompted widespread calls to rethink the deal, in large part because of resistance to making low-income women who rely on University Hospital be subject to one religion’s rules on reproductive care.

The hospitals involved in the Kentucky merger have agreed to follow Catholic policies because Denver-based Catholic Health Initiatives, the owner of St. Joseph, will own 70 percent of the new venture. Louisville Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, who must sign off on the merger because the still-unnamed new system will be a considered a ministry of the Catholic Church, has said he will approve the deal only if all participating hospitals keep their pledge to honor the church’s health care directives.

The local debate is somewhat unusual nationally. Although mergers between Catholic and secular hospital systems are common, they have almost always involved clearly private hospitals, not ones like University Hospital, with such strong government ties.

Amid the debate, Gov. Steve Beshear and Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway have said they consider University Hospital a public institution by virtue of its real-estate ownership, state contracts, and its long history as the area’s safety-net hospital.

I have a solution. Cut the University of Louisville loose. You love the Catholic freakazoids so much, you greedy, lying motherfuckers, then the Catholic freakazoids can support your fat ass from now on. Not another fucking taxpayer dime for you, U of L.

Not. Another. Fucking. Dime.

Obama Care Saving Lives, Saving Money

The one hope I have that health care reform will survive the corporatist, repug Supreme Court is that by the time the case gets there, ACA will have been so successful in saving both lives and money that Anthony Kennedy will not be able to vote to destroy it.

Rick Ungar at the Washington Monthly:

Recent data published by both the Standard & Poor’s Healthcare Economic Composite Index and the Congressional Budget Office reveal some unusually good news on the Medicare spending front.

The rapid growth in annual government spending on Medicare is slowing down - and is doing so in rather dramatic fashion.

This despite the fact that "Obamacare" - the Affordable Care Act - is making life-saving procedures affordable for thousands of Americans.

The Rude Pundit explains the most well-known case:

A Tale for the One-Year Anniversary of the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Affordable Care Act:

So Dallas Wiens was working when it happened in 2008. He was standing in a cherry picker, painting a Fort Worth church. That detail seems kind of important, considering. His head hit a high-voltage power line, and it pretty much incinerated his entire face off. A series of miraculous operations got Wiens to a point where he had skin on his face, but no nose or lips. He went blind in one eye, and a skin graft covered the other eye. He pretty quickly started seeking out how to go about getting a face transplant just so, as he says, he could smile and feel his now 4 year-old daughter's touch on his face. Also, so he doesn't look so godawfully disfigured (let's be brutally honest here).

Now here's where we veer into the lesson: Medicaid paid for his hospital care and other expenses until his disability payments got too high for him to qualify. His parents set up a fund to take contributions for the incredibly expensive operation and recovery (not to mention the six months of being in Boston for treatment). But in two years, the guy who had his face burned off while painting a church did not collect enough money for the operation from people who might, you know, follow the teachings of one church or another (or, truly, from any of us).

And that might be the end of the story, except for one thing. See, the president when Wiens got injured was George W. Bush, and George W. Bush couldn't have given a jolly rat fuck about anyone's medical care unless it involved bizarre pharmaceutical donuts. However, Barack Obama became president, and that situation changed.

Now, you can say what you want about the Affordable Care Act on its one-year anniversary, which happens to be today, and virtually all of your criticism from the left would be correct. It is a massive giveaway to private insurance companies. It doesn't do enough to rein in costs. It doesn't guarantee 100% of Americans will be covered. And on and on, in so very many ways a massive disappointment (and not, as the nutzoid conservatives would have you believe, a government takeover of anything or a violation of the Constitution).

But here's the deal: Dallas Wiens got a face transplant because of it, not because good, conservative, church-going folk stepped up and had cookie sales, not because the myriad organizations that have "family" in their name gave a goddamn. No, Wiens received the first full face transplant in U.S. history because of the government. The operation itself was paid for by a grant from the Defense Department, which is looking for ways to help soldiers who get horrible scars from combat. And the $1300-$2000 a month in drugs that he will need to take for the rest of his life to prevent his body from rejecting the transplant will be paid for by his father's insurance. That's because Wiens is 25. And that inhuman law mockingly called "Obamacare" raised the age that a child can stay on a parent's insurance to 26. Wiens will turn 26 in May. In June, again, because of changes in the law, he will qualify for Medicare as a disabled person.

Yeah, the left should be trying to improve the act, constantly, until we actually get universal health care (or "single payer," if you want). And, of course, the douchebag right, led by d-bag kings John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, will continue their Neanderthal drumbeat of repeal because, really, they have nothing else to talk about except how to harm and repress people (how's that jobs bill coming, eh, motherfuckers?).

But at the end of the day, there's a fuck of a lot of people, in cases not nearly as extreme as Dallas Wiens, who have been helped. It's at least a baby step on the road to a compassionate, sane future. Would that we take more instead of veering off the path as quickly as possible.

Weins' case also illustrates the extreme danger of repealing Obamacare now that doctors, hospitals and patients have relied on it for more than a year.

TPM:

But if the Republican Party's crusade against the health care reform law is successful -- if they somehow manage to repeal it, or if the Supreme Court voids it entirely -- other transplant patients will find themselves in a similarly perilous situation: with a new organ but unable to afford the critical life-saving drugs that make transplants viable.

In the year since the law passed, patients and their doctors have been making treatment decisions based on current benefits, according to health care experts and providers interviewed by TPM, including the prohibition on discrimination against children with pre-existing health conditions, a "Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan" for adults, and the "Young Invincibles" provision that allowed Wiens to get his transplant.

Like Wiens, other patients will get transplants and life-saving treatments, thanks to these new benefits. But, also like Wiens, these same patients will require lifetimes of expensive care and medication, without which they'll reject their new organs and die, according to the experts and providers we talked to. The consequences of the care they received thanks to the health care reform law, will leave them holding the bag, if Congress or the Court abolishes it. That means bankrupting out of pocket costs, a scramble for care and medication, and possibly death.

Read the whole thing.

Liberals know that what repugs, freakazoids and conservatards hate most about liberalism is that liberal solutions - even imperfect half-measure liberal solutions - work.

Beshear and Repugs Dead Wrong on Coal Regulation

One of the factors behind Steve Beshear's 24-point lead over repug David Williams in the gubernatorial race is Beshear's shameless pandering to Big Coal by bashing EPA. Not that Williams is any slouch on EPA-bashing; it just makes a bigger impression coming from a Democratic official who knows better.

That wold be the same EPA that is the only reason Kentuckians aren't dying from poisoned air and water sources any faster than we are.

Now Kevin Drum brings us more proof that Beshear and Big Coal are motherfucking liars:

From the Congressional Research Service, in a report on the cost of new EPA regulations that will shut down some of the worst polluting coal plants in the country:

The costs of the rules may be large, but, in most cases, the benefits are larger.

The full report is here. Brad Plumer has the user-friendly summary here. Bottom line: The cost of the new EPA regs is almost certainly being hugely overestimated by the power industry (surprise!), and the benefits in public health will almost certainly be far greater than the price tag for replacing our most antiquated coal plants — which are mostly near the end of their life anyway — by more efficient combined cycle natural gas plants.

Liberals know that regulation works to make life less lethal and business more reliable.

What We Have to Overcome

This is not to discourage you, but to make sure we fight the liberal fight with our eyes open, fully aware of the damage repug obstruction and democratic capitulation has done to the last vestiges of the Liberal Prosperity.

David Atkins "thereisnospoon" at Hullabaloo:

Even if Democrats do hold onto the White House and put the Speaker's gavel back in Pelosi's hands, the damage will already have been done. Austerity is the name of the game in Washington, and social security and Medicare are irrevocably on the negotiating block in a way that would have been unthinkable just five years ago. And the Super Committee is likely to make things even worse.

The point of politics is not to win elections for their own sake, or to prevent the other team from doing damage. The point of politics is to advance one's preferred legislative agenda. What bipartisan compromise advocates on the left seem not to understand is that the Tea Party agenda will not have failed, even if Democrats do win victories in 2012. It will have succeeded in marvelous fashion.

Conservatives understand that they won't win every election. They understand that politics is an ebb and flow. They also understand that when you do win, you have to make hay while the sun shines, and advance your legislative agenda as far as possible while you have power. They understand that you have to do everything in your power to stop the other side from doing likewise when you're in the minority.

Sports metaphors are overused in political reporting from an electoral standpoint, but if anything underused from a public policy standpoint. Due to the two-party system in America, public policy looks very much like a game of American football: whether the question is taxes, regulation, environment or social policy, governance is essentially a zero-sum battle for field position on the gridiron, issue by issue.

Republicans know they won't always have the ball. They'll toss a few long passes, and sometimes their playbook will fail. Sometimes the American people will get fed up and force them to punt. But their objective is to tilt the playing field as much as possible in their favor, injure and batter as many members of the opposing team as possible, score as many points as possible and drive the ball as far down the field as possible until they have to give it up. (The analogy fails only in the sense that in football, a team has to give up the ball after they score. Not so in politics. But that's a minor point.)

Democrats, meanwhile, rejoice whenever it looks like they're about to get the ball back because Republicans went for too much ground, too fast. And when they do get the ball, they "learn from Republican mistakes", and run careful plays along the ground to pick up a yard here and there. Nothing too fancy. Nothing too aggressive. Nothing too dangerous. Maybe we score a field goal here and there, particularly on social issues.

But, of course, eventually the GOP will get the ball back again. It's a two-party system. Nobody stays in power forever. And when they do, they'll again advance their agenda far more aggressively than Democrats and put more points up on the board.

The point of politics isn't just to hold power, any more than a team wins a football game by having a longer time of possession than your opponent. The GOP has run up the score, and backed the Democrats up to their own economic 10-yard-line because of the Democrats' soft defense.

The fact that we may yet get the ball back should hardly be cause for celebration, or an endorsement of the brilliance of our coaching staff. Over the last 30 years, we're way behind on the scoreboard, and the other guys still have all the momentum.

This war will be fought and won in a million local battles, re-building the liberal consensus one neighbor, one county meeting, one legislative election at a time. Only you can make more liberals, and the time to start is now.

"The refusal by some in Congress to put country ahead of party"

Name names, Mr. President. At least identify them as republicans. Otherwise we might think you are referring to the Democrats who refuse to put country ahead of their Wall Street cronies and campaign contributors.



Full transcript here.

What "Radical Environmentalism" Will Get You

Digby:

Here's the latest on the EPA's reign of terror, or Britain's version of it anyway:



Once nearly extinct in England, otters have now returned to every county, indicating that rivers are at their healthiest in decades. Conservationists had predicted that it would be another 10 years before the otters reached this level of repopulation, so it's a real triumph for the little dudes. Not to mention an overwhelming stroke of good fortune for Brits, who can now watch otters pay from the comfort of their homes, the lucky bastards.

Otters have reappeared in places where they have not been seen since the industrial revolution, including Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester, and even on the Thames and the Lea in north London. A recent survey on the river Ribble, in Lancashire, showed a 44% increase in otter numbers since 2008.

Read on for the details of how those environmentalist bastards encroached on Englishmen's most basic human freedoms by making them stop hunting otters into extinction and insisting on cleaning up all the toxic industrial waste we humans are entitled to create. Oh, the humanity.

Liberals know that environmental protection is about protecting the world humans need and enjoy.

"These anti-union folks have amnesia"

It would be nice if this were backed up with some strong legislative proposals (force the repug fuckers to vote it down), but I can't remember the last president who spoke this strongly in favor of unions.

Steve Benen:

This may be familiar ground, but I was glad to see President Obama deliver an impassioned, impromptu defense of labor unions in Iowa.

A retired high school teacher noted that union benefits have increasingly been under attack. The president agreed.

“[L]et’s make one thing clear. The right of workers to come together and join a union is part of what built America’s middle class. It’s the reason why we’ve got a minimum wage. It’s the reason why folks have weekends. It’s the reason why you have basic protections on the job from an abusive employer.

“There are a whole range of things that people take for granted, even if they’re not in a union, that they wouldn’t have had if it had not been for collective bargaining. So I think it is very important, whether you are in a union or not — and I speak particularly to young people, because you’ve grown up at a time when in a lot of circles ‘union’ somehow is a dirty word — to understand all this is is people joining together so they’ve got a little more leverage; so they’ve got better working conditions, better wages; they can better support their family.

“And a lot of us entered into the middle class because our parent or a grandparent was in a union. Remember that. When I hear this kind of anti-union rhetoric and anti-union assaults, I’m thinking these folks have amnesia. They don’t remember that that helped build our middle class and strengthen our economy.”

The president added that much of the trouble when it comes to assaults on collective bargaining are happening at the state level, where the administration’s influence is limited, but Obama noted the recent FAA dispute with House Republicans. “[W]e’re fighting back,” he said, “pushing back against these efforts to diminish the capacity to exercise their basic freedoms and their basic rights.”

Like I said, this isn’t exactly new, but labor too often gets the short shrift in the larger political discussion. Hearing the president offer a full-throated defense of unions as part of his Midwest tour was heartening.

The Importance of the Verizon Strike

Last week, Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money expressed cautious hope about the revitalized union movement:

There’s been a surprising number of union victories of late. I discuss several of them in my new piece at Alternet and consider their possible implications.

With all of this pretty good to great news all of a sudden, one wonders, is this coincidence? Or is it a sign of a rejuvenated labor movement ready to take on aggressive corporate attempts to destroy worker organizations in order to promote an increased profit line? It’s important not to overstate the impact of the labor-led protests in Madison against Scott Walker’s anti-union bill. Lowell Peterson noted, “What we witnessed in Wisconsin was very inspiring but the voting at nonfiction basic cable production companies was mostly done before the Wisconsin gov started slinging his six-gun. Organizing requires hard, patient work, and folks have to believe the union can make a difference in their lives. I think we have made that case to folks.”

That’s absolutely true, but at the same time the climate of unionization is important. Workers have historically joined unions when the media reports positively about them and when the government plays a neutral role in union elections rather than openly supporting employers. The Republican overreach in Wisconsin, Ohio and other traditionally pro-union states led to a great deal of attention for unions. Obama’s NLRB is making a real difference in working people’s lives.

But while these factors are important, the real credit goes to the people bravely risking their jobs to improve their lot and that of all workers. Workers may have tough employment prospects if they lose their jobs through union organizing, but the increasingly desperate economy has also helped many understand that employers will not take care of them and that their best chance for a respectable paycheck lies in uniting with their fellow employees. We must work to build off these recent victories to make the labor movement a force in America again. The survival of middle-class America depends on it.

Then Verizon went on strike.

Kenneth Quinnell at Crooks and Liars:

More than 40,000 workers -- members of the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers -- went on strike (last) week after Verizon refused to even begin to bargain fairly with the workers. The workers on strike include "telephone field technicians, call center workers and cable installers from Massachusetts to Virginia."

Verizon has canceled multiple bargaining sessions and refuses to back down from any of their original concession requests, something that flies in the face of the basic idea of negotiating. Workers say they are prepared to return to work as soon as management shows a willingness to sit down and work out a fair agreement.

There is no need for Verizon to pursue the level of cuts to compensation for their workers that they are after. Verizon had a $6 billion profit last year (on revenues of $108 billion) and just paid a $10 billion dividend. Over the last four years, the company has a total of more than $19 billion in profits. Verizon's profits not only make them one of the richest and most successful companies in the country, they are outperforming the overall communications industry. The company's chair, Ivan Seidenberg makes more than 300 times what the average Verizon worker makes. The top five executives have been paid more than $250 million in the past four years. On top of all this, it turns out Verizon not only paid $0 in federal taxes last year, they also received $1 billion in subsidies.

Verizon is looking for $1 billion in concessions, an average of $20,000 per family that is supported by a Verizon worker, and will not back down from any of their demands. The workers, on the other hand, have shown a willingness to make concessions, particularly when it comes to health care benefits.

The extreme concessions Verizon is seeking include:

- Continued contracting out of work to low-wage contractors, which means more outsourcing of good jobs overseas.
- Eliminating disability benefits for workers injured while on the job.
- Elimination of all job security provisions.
- Eliminating paid sick days for new hires and limiting them to no more than five for any workers.
- Freezing pensions for current workers and eliminating them for future employees.
- Replacing the current high-quality health care plan with a high-deductible plan requiring up to $6,800 in additional costs.

Verizon's attack on its workers is not new. In recent years, it has cut is percentage of unionized jobs nearly in half. The company has also outsourced more than 25,000 jobs. Verizon's cell phone division is mostly non-union.

The assault on Verizon's workers is part of a larger battle taking place across the country, where conservatives in government and business are blaming unions and working families for larger problems that unions either have nothing to do with or the alleged problems don't even exist. Corporate profits are at the highest proportion of the national income that has ever been recorded, and they continue to increase. At the same time, the percentage of national income that makes up wages has slipped below 50 percent of the overall total for the first time in recorded history, and the decline goes on. Not surprisingly, Verizon is an active member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the same organization behind the assaults on unions in numerous states.

Want to help? Quinnell has what you need:

For those who are following along with the Verizon strike and want to do what you can do to get involved, there are a bunch of ways for you to get directly involved or show your solidarity. Forty-five thousand Verizon workers are on strike because the massively profitable company, which pays no taxes, is demanding major cuts in employee compensation and refuses to negotiate fairly with workers. The Communications Workers of America filed a unfair labor practice grievance again Verizon on Friday.

One creative way to get involved is the "What Verizon's Name Means" contest sponsored by the CWA. The union is asking creative supporters to come up with a translation that reveals what Verizon's name really means.

If you are in the area, you can use this tool to find a picket line anywhere from Virginia to New York. If you are joining the strike, you can print leaflets before you go.

You can also send a letter to Verizon asking them to negotiate fairly.

Daily Kos also has a petition in support of the striking workers. Organizations interested in supporting the strike should contact CWA directly.

Other ways to keep up with the latest on the strike is to sign up for text messages from CWA, support the strike on Facebook, and by changing your Facebook and Twitter status to show your solidarity.

Meanwhile, Verizon is honoring the 150-year-old tradition of owners punishing striking workers:

Laura Clawson at Daily Kos reports:

Members recently received letters from Verizon announcing that it is canceling group benefit plans for striking workers. This is an action which employers often take in strike situations to try unsettle the resolve of the strikers.

At CWA, we have faced this issue many times in the past and always protected our members and their families so that no one is harmed as a result of management’s ruthless act. This will be true for this strike as well.

Rather than attempting to negotiate a fair settlement with the workers, Verizon has decided to go the punitive route, trying to break the striking workers. Verizon has never attempted to approach this situation in good faith and this is another example of that. The Communications Workers of America say they are familiar with the tactic, though, and that they will make sure to take care of the working families affected by this move.

Why should you care?

Loomis again:

Mark Engler has an excellent discussion of why the Verizon strike is so important, or as he puts it, the next Wisconsin:

The parallel to Wisconsin is apt for several reasons. First, like the Republican elected officials in their attacks on unionized schoolteachers and other public employees, Verizon is taking aim at one of the last bastions of the American middle class. As a main strategy in its public relations, the company is trying to stoke resentment about the fact that the CWA and IBEW workers actually have living-wage jobs. It is hoping that “I don’t have a pension, why should they” logic will carry the day.

Accordingly, on Wednesday Verizon took out a full-page ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer suggesting that a typical employee makes $80,600 in annual pay and $42,000 in benefits. The union disputes this claim, contending that salaries are generally in the $60,000 to $77,000 range, and that benefits are less costly than the company would suggest. But, regardless, the debate over numbers misses some critical questions: What’s wrong with workers sharing in the profits of a healthy corporation? Isn’t that the way our economy is supposed to work?

(On a side note, it’s always a treat when companies plead poverty at the negotiating table and then turn around and spend big bucks on media spots, anti-union consultants, and pricey PR firms—but that’s another story.)

The fate of 45,000 middle-class jobs is a big deal for all of America. Last month, the entire U.S. economy had a net gain of only 117,000 jobs. Not only is that for the whole country, it represents a pretty decent month given the numbers from the past year. Furthermore, almost all of the new jobs now being created are low-wage. Given these realities—and the fact that concentrating all wealth in the hands of the rich is a very bad strategy for creating the kind of demand the economy needs to rebound—what happens to the Verizon workers is a matter of broad public concern.

If the assault on the middle class isn’t halted here, there will be another battle and another and another until every right working people have gained over the past century is eliminated.

Liberals support unions because unions are the strongest protection workers have against the greed and corruption of corporate owners.

"Government is what protects us"

We'll see if this turns out to be too little, too late, to save his presidency, but a key to growing more liberals is recognizing when Democratic leaders promote liberal values. So celebrate this.

Steve Benen:

President Obama held a town-hall-style event in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, Tuesday, and the change of scenery seemed to do him some good. Jonathan Cohn noted, “It looks like President Obama really has found his inner Harry Truman,” and if so, it comes not a moment too soon.

The video of the event is online and worth watching, but a few things jumped out at me. It was encouraging, for example, to see the president continue to press the line that our politics is broken, while laying out specific measures — payroll tax break, infrastructure investment, etc. — that would help the economy. I’d prefer a more ambitious approach, but at least this shows Obama’s focus is where it should be.

When the discussion turned to health care, the president played a little rhetorical game I hadn’t heard before. In discussing the Affordable Care Act, he noted that some call it “Obamacare,” adding, “Let me tell you, I have no problem with folks saying ‘Obama cares.’ I do care. If the other side wants to be the folks who don’t care, that’s fine with me.”

He also slammed his GOP presidential rivals for rejecting a 10-to-1 deal on debt reduction, suggested Mitt Romney has a case of “amnesia” when it comes to health care, and said, “[O]ne of the most effective ways that we could help the economy is making sure that we’re not seeing more teacher layoffs.” Congress disagrees, but Obama’s right.

But what struck me as especially important is when the president took the time to defend government itself.

“You’ll hear a lot of folks, by the way, say that government is broken. Well, government and politics are two different things. Government is our troops who are fighting on our behalf in Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s government. Government are also those FEMA folks when there’s a flood or a drought or some emergency who come out and are helping people out. That’s government. Government is Social Security. Government are teachers in the classroom. Government are our firefighters and our police officers, and the folks who keep our water clean and our air clean to breathe, and our agricultural workers. And when you go to a national park, and those folks in the hats — that’s government.

“So don’t be confused — as frustrated as you are about politics, don’t buy into this notion that somehow government is what’s holding us back…. [D]on’t buy into this whole notion that somehow government doesn’t do us any good; government is what protects us. The government is what built the Interstate Highway System. Government is what sent a man to the Moon. It’s what invested in the research and development that created innovations all across this country.”

For all the talk about President Obama’s reluctance to establish progressive “stories,” this is a fundamentally liberal message, identifying government activism as a force of social good and national progress. It’s the core of the Democratic Party’s message, and Obama appeared only too pleased to state it explicitly.

Before opening the floor to questions, the president explained, “I want everybody to understand that I’m not here just to enjoy the nice weather. I’m here to enlist you in a fight. We are fighting for the future of our country. And that is a fight that we are going to win. That is a promise that I make with your help.”

The more Obama makes appearances like this one, the more likely it is he’ll see supporters eager to join that fight.

"The Robber Barons are stealing the post office from the American people"

The plan by the independent agency that runs the U.S. Postal Service to kill 120,000 jobs and eliminate universal mail service for thousands of rural communities is not a simple cut-costs equation; it's a massive attack on benefits and union rights for millions of public workers.

Zandar:

... the US Post Office wanting to lay of 120,000 workers is a huge story, possibly the biggest story of the year so far as jobs and the labor movement are concerned. Jobs and unemployment, being the number one issue with voters time and time again, are critical in order to get our total economy back on its feet, and you can't do that well if the Post Office wants to get rid of a hundred thousand plus jobs over four years. The true tale of employment carnage is much, much worse.

The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is proposing to cut its workforce by 20 percent and to withdraw from the federal health and retirement plans because it believes it could provide benefits at a lower cost.

The layoffs would be achieved in part by breaking labor agreements, a proposal that drew swift fire from postal unions. The plan would require congressional approval but, if successful, could be precedent-setting, with possible ripple effects throughout government. It would also deliver a major blow to the nation’s labor movement.

In a notice informing employees of its proposals — with the headline “Financial crisis calls for significant actions” — the Postal Service said, “We will be insolvent next month due to significant declines in mail volume and retiree health benefit pre-funding costs imposed by Congress.”

Let that sink in. The Post Office wants to not only break its contract with labor unions to put 120,000 people out of work, it wants to kick nearly all of its employees out of the federal employees health care plan and pension plan and replace them with something less. Republicans like Darrel Issa want to know more about the plan and apparently have no problem with setting a precedent that will allow government to simply eliminate union contracts whenever it feels like it.

The fact of the matter is the USPS has already gotten rid of 200,000 plus jobs over the last ten years. Under the new proposals anyone with less than six years of service would be subject to losing their job, period. Postal unions are already vowing to fight these proposals, but you'd better believe the battle to weaken government unions and to demonize government employees at the state level was in preparation to gut the Post Office and eliminate all government employee unions as well.

I'll be keeping an eye on this one. The Constitution mandates a national post office. Imagine what Republicans would do to it if they got full control in 2012.

TPM has more detail of what's really going on:

One point that came up repeatedly in our discussion last night about the crisis in the postal service is that the USPS is apparently subject to a regulation that requires it to pre-pay pension and health care obligations 75 years in advance, something that is required of no other government agency. And a substantial amount of their budget shortfall is tied to that regulation.

TPM Reader SM notes these points ...

As a union organizer for SEIU, I have a distinctly labor perspective on the USPS crisis; and, I think that there are two HUGE pieces of information that are often left out of the "The USPS is an aging dinosaur" narrative often perpetuated by the mainstream media.

Firstly, the USPS is subject to a regulation forcing them to pre-pay retiree health benefits for 75 years in the future. This means that they are paying for health benefits for postal carriers who haven't yet been born. The cost of this regulation (a regulation not required of any other government or private entity) was about 5.5 billion dollars in FY 2011 and was even higher in previous years.

Secondly, the Postal Service has overfunded their pension system by about $75 billion dollars in recent years. Thus, there is money in a separate account that could more than handle the current shortfall in postal revenue ($0 of which comes from tax dollars).

Meanwhile TPM Reader DW notes the structural difficulties faced by the postal service since the USPS is mandated by law to service various localities and facets of the postal market that can't be done at a profit ...

I am a recent retiree of the USPS and have some thoughts on the Postal Service. The news blurb you read has to be viewed in the context of upcoming union contract negotiations. USPS management always makes it seem like the sky is falling right before they negotiate the contracts. That is not to say there are no problems at the post office. The truth is there is no profit to be made delivering mail when all the easily made profits are siphoned off by other package carriers. FedEx and UPS take the cream off the top, leaving the unprofitable business to the postal service which is legally obligated to deliver to every address six days a week. If anyone thinks FedEx or UPS wants to deliver packages to every house every day, they are mistaken. They do not want to waste their time driving to unprofitable rural areas or stopping at every house in a neighborhood. If the USPS disappears, I feel sorry for anyone living any distance from a large city who expects mail at an affordable rate. A lot of people don't realize that the postal service currently delivers some packages for FedEx and UPS that would be unprofitable otherwise.

There has been a slow "privatization" of the postal service over the last few decades. I've always assumed it was based on a back handed way to slowly get rid of union postal workers until there are so few of them they are no longer a political force. I could give many, but one example of what I mean by "privatization" is the discount large mailers receive for presorting their mail. The postal service gives a discount of what it would cost the USPS to process that mail using union postal labor. The businesses hire a mailing firm (or do it in house) to presort their mail with labor that is paid close to minimum wage, pocketing the difference between what the postal worker makes and what the minimum wage worker makes. It's just an example of another decent paying job being given to a lower wage non-union worker so that large businesses can pad their bottom lines at the expense of labor. An additional bonus for business and Republicans is that union postal workers eventually lose their jobs and their clout with Congress.

When an article like the one you referenced appears I am always amazed at the comment sections. The American public is always ready to jump in and say the most uninformed things about situations about which they know nothing. It always makes me realize that maybe I don't have a complete picture or understand everything about the businesses, customs, situations, etc. that I read about and maybe I should do more research before I jump in and comment.

As a final thought, I look at the neighborhoods in my town and see 4 or 5 different trucks delivering mail and packages to each neighborhood every day. The thought of all these different trucks driving around burning fuel to go to the same houses seems ridiculously wasteful and energy inefficient to me. The USPS goes to every address in the U.S. every delivery day. Why can't FedEX, UPS etc. handle getting the packages and mail to the cities and then have one delivery truck (USPS) make the final delivery. I can't even begin to calculate the fuel the U.S. would save daily. I guess I'm just a pragmatic dreamer.

John Nichols at The Nation:

Next to credit rating downgrades and stock market collapses, the threat by the US Postal Service to shutter at least 3,653 post offices (perhaps as many as 4,300) may not seem like a disaster in the making. But if the USPS goes forward with the plan, it will deal a blow to communities from coast to coast and further diminish one of America’s oldest public institutions.

In addition to providing employment—with an admirable record of hiring women, people of color and people with disabilities, and investing them with real authority—the USPS has kept reliable public facilities in small towns and city neighborhoods that have often been abandoned by chain stores and restaurants. Like public schools, post offices are sources of identity for communities that are otherwise neglected by big government and multinational corporations.

This is a benefit that’s hard to calculate. For decades there has been pressure to cut and privatize the Postal Service, which generally pays for itself but doesn’t return huge profits. In the current period of economic instability, the USPS has been losing money, in part because federal officials have pressured it to make huge advance payments to cover future pension costs. But its shortfalls—$3.1 billion in the most recent quarter—are negligible compared with Pentagon overages and bank bailout excesses. Rather than outsourcing work to private carriers like FedEx, the USPS should be allowed to compete with them. Postal unions are pushing back. So is a new website, savethepostoffice.com, which declares, “The Robber Barons are stealing the post office from the American people.” With smart pension reforms and an end to unnecessary outsourcing, thousands of post offices can be saved.

Liberal Victory in New Hampshire

If the national political landscape looks bleak for liberals, the picture at the local level is far more promising. In conservative New Hampshire, Bob Perry showed how it's done.

Carol Shea-Porter at Down with Tyranny:

Bob Perry is a well informed activist who always attends political events, respectfully asks politicians tough and honest questions, and volunteers on campaigns. In 2006, he decided to run for New Hampshire state Rep because he was so concerned about what was happening to the middle class. He served for four years, and was absolutely devoted to campaign finance reform, clean elections, and to supporting legislation that held corporations accountable and helped the middle class.

Bob lost in the 2010 anti-Democrats wave. He knew though that the right wing Republicans would try to push legislation that hurt regular citizens, so he did something extraordinary. He kept going to hearings at the State House, so he could be a witness and then educate others about the plans. Bob never faltered or gave up. When one of the new state reps resigned, Bob answered the call to public service again. He first had to win a primary, and then he took on a free stater who had support from many right wing groups. He just did his job, going door to door in the hot summer sun, talking to people about his plans to help the middle class "rise again," as he puts it. He's a true public servant who never gave up on politics. He often uses this quote at the end of his email: "People often say with pride 'I'm not interested in politics.' They might as well say 'I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future ...'
If we mean to keep control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics." Sometimes the good guys do win! Martha Gellhorn (1909-1998), American travel writer, novelist, and journalist.)

SNIP

Bob Perry won the Republican seat Tuesday with 58% of the votes. He won 5 of the 6 towns in the district and only lost the 6th one, the smallest, by 9 votes. Carol attended the victory party and heard him say that "I will advocate on behalf of working men and women. I look forward to sustaining the governor's veto on the Photo I.D. bill, which is contrary to New Hampshire's tradition of trusting voters." New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley:

"In a historically Republican district, New Hampshire voters turned out in the middle of summer to send a loud and clear message to the out of control Republican majority. Its relentless attempts to make cigarettes cheaper but college more expensive, slash women's health care, and kill jobs by taxing hospitals must stop immediately. Tonight's special election is a clear rejection of the out of touch GOP agenda that puts corporations first and Granite Staters last."

It's less than 15 months to the 2012 elections. Start working now to make liberal victories happen where you live.

Kentucky Kids Worse Off

Sliding closer to Mississippi every day.

From the Courier:

The number of children living in poverty continues to increase in Kentucky and Indiana, according to the latest Kids Count, an annual survey of child well-being.

Kentucky dropped into the bottom 10 states in the survey’s overall ranking of child health and welfare. It ranked 41st this year compared to 40th in last year’s report. Indiana improved slightly, to 31st from 33rd last year.

Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said Kentucky’s latest ranking is discouraging but not unexpected, since child well-being is tied to poverty.

“We dropped one notch,” he said. “We now officially are a bottom-10 state when it comes to the overall wellness of kids.”

In Kentucky, 26 percent of children live at or below the federal poverty level — $22,350 in yearly income for a family of four — compared to 23 percent in last year’s report.

View the full Kids Count Report here.

Liberals know that children are a society's canary in the coal mine: increasing child poverty means our economy is out of whack and headed downhill.

Mom Jailed for Sending Kids to Good School

How dare a mother from the projects send her whelps to a school for regular children? Off with her head!

Nicole Belle:

I figured it was cheaper in the long run to look for a home in the right school district than it was to pay for private schooling later on. Sadly, not every parent has that luxury.

Kelley Williams-Bolar didn't. And now she's paying an unbelievable price for her mama lion instincts to protect her children and give them a better life. From Change.org:

"An Ohio mother of two was sentenced to 10 days in jail and placed on three years probation after sending her kids to a school district in which they did not live. Kelley Williams-Bolar was sentenced by Judge Patricia Cosgrove on Tuesday and will begin serving her sentence immediately. The jury deliberated for seven hours and the courtroom was packed as the sentence was handed down. She was convicted on two counts of tampering with court records after registering her two girls as living with Williams Bolar's father when they actually lived with her. The family lived in the housing projects in Akron, Ohio, and the father’s address was in nearby Copley Township. Additionally, Williams-Bolar’s father, Edward L. Williams, was charged with a fourth-degree felony of grand theft, in which he and his daughter are charged with defrauding the school system for two years of educational services for their girls. The court determined that sending their children to the wrong school was worth $30,500 in tuition. - Dr. Boyce Watkins

Williams-Bolar has almost completed her degree in education with the intention of becoming a teacher. With a felony on her record, she would be legally prohibited from pursuing that goal, just adding to the difficulties this single mother who was just trying to keep her children safe.

Change.org has already gathered over 100,000 signatures to petition the parole board to recommend to Governor John Kasich to pardon Kelley Williams-Bolar. Kasich is probably unlikely to be swayed by the petition directly, but may defer to the recommendations of the parole board. Williams-Bolar's attorneys are prepping an appeal as well.

Will you please sign the petition to show your support of Kelley Williams-Bolar?

Liberals know public schools that bring children from all backgrounds together is one of the foundations of American democracy. Parents who go out of their way to ensure a good education for their children are to be celebrated and emulated, not jailed. And school officials who demand law enforcement prevent poor and non-white children from contaminating their precious suburban academy should be taken out and shot.

The Liberal America Conservatards Long For

I can't stand to be around conservatards. It's not the stupidity that gets me the most; it's not the god-bothering, it's not even the hippie-punching.

It's the fake nostalgia for a "conservative" America that in actual fact was a liberal accomplishment.

Steve Benen:

I’ve read Joe Scarborough’s latest Politico column a couple of times, trying to wrap my head around it. The gist of it has something to do with the America the MSNBC host grew up in and the way in which he fears the American dream may be slipping away.

SNIP

Scarborough talked about his family’s can-do spirit in the 1960s and 1970s, and their “faith in America.” He contrasts this with the problems he perceives plaguing the nation today: concentrated wealth and income disparity, a jobs crisis, a squeezed middle class, excessive corporate salaries and bonuses, and stagnant middle-class wages.

Yes, Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman and conservative media personality, apparently wrote a column that could be endorsed by Bernie Sanders.
And what does Scarborough suggest we do to address these systemic economic problems? Well, he never quite gets around suggesting any policies or solutions in his column, but he nevertheless notes his father “would ask what became of the America that he knew, where working hard and playing by the rules always paid off.”

I suppose it’s heartening that Scarborough is at least acknowledging real economic crises that are usually only identified by the left.

But let’s go a step further with this — which is to say, let’s actually explore what became of the America Scarborough’s dad once knew.

Let’s put aside, at least for a moment, what the good ol’ days were like for women and minority groups, because the discrimination was a national disgrace. Instead, let’s just focus for now on economics.

What’s striking is to realize how extraordinarily liberal the country was, economically, when Scarborough’s father was a young man. In the 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was 90% (nearly triple today’s figure); union membership was 30% (more than quadruple today’s figure); the Republican Party, which still had plenty of liberals, endorsed all kinds of progressive ideas (spending projects, living wage); and the economy was heavily regulated — airlines didn’t even set their own prices.

Harold Meyerson explored this in even more detail last fall, emphasizing conservative activists’ misguided understanding of what it is they think has gone wrong.

When the Tea Partyers get around to identifying how America has changed and to whose benefit, however, they get it almost all wrong. In the worldview of the American right — and the polling shows conclusively that that’s who the Tea Party is — the nation, misled by President Obama, has gone down the path to socialism. In fact, far from venturing down that road, we’ve been stuck on the road to hyper-capitalism for three decades now.

The Tea Partyers are right to be wary of income redistribution, but if they had even the slightest openness to empiricism, they’d see that the redistribution of the past 30 years has all been upward — radically upward. From 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent of Americans — effectively, all but the rich — increased from 64 percent to 65 percent, according to an analysis of tax data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Because the nation’s economy was growing handsomely, that means that the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent was growing, too — from $17,719 in 1950 to $30,941 in 1980 — a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.

Since 1980, it’s been a very different story. The economy has continued to grow handsomely, but for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, it’s been a time of stagnation and loss. Since 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent has declined from 65 percent to 52 percent. In actual dollars, the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent flat-lined — going from the $30,941 of 1980 to $31,244 in 2008.

In short, the economic life and prospects for Americans since the Reagan Revolution have grown dim, while the lives of the rich — the super-rich in particular — have never been brighter. The share of income accruing to America’s wealthiest 1 percent rose from 9 percent in 1974 to a tidy 23.5 percent in 2007.

If Scarborough wants to reverse the trend, it will require a rather dramatic shift in his political ideology. The era he remembers was one in which New Deal policies created “economic security and opportunity” that were “widely shared,” thanks in part to high marginal top rates and wages that nearly kept pace with the cost of living.

Scarborough may want to go back, but it’ll require a pretty sharp left-hand turn.

Like I keep sayin', everything good in America - even everything the conservatards say is good - was brought to you by liberals.

"Human Beings Have Limits"

Blue Girl posted this yesterday at They Gave Us A Republic. It cannot be improved upon, so I am posting it in its entirety:

As the wars grind on, it gets harder and harder to come to grips with what is being asked of the 1% who serve, and the families they leave behind when they deploy. It would be hard anyway because I know what service entails and what it requires -- but it's compounded by the fact that my nephew is about to deploy for his third deployment to a war zone.

I remember how I reacted a few years ago when I heard about people preparing for their third and fourth tours of duty. I was livid, and started screaming that it is obvious that we need a draft.

That has never been more clear to me than it is after seeing this:

A soldier's widow says his fellow Army Rangers wouldn't do anything to help him before he took his own life - after eight deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army found Staff Sgt. Jared Hagemann's body at a training area of Joint Base Lewis McChord a few weeks ago.

A spokesman for the base tells KOMO News that the nature of the death is still undetermined. But Staff Sgt. Hagemann's widow says her husband took his own life - and it didn't need to happen.

"It was just horrible. And he would just cry," says Ashley Hagemann.

Ashley says her husband Jared tried to come to grips with what he'd seen and done on his eight deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"And there's no way that any God would forgive him - that he was going to hell," says Ashley. "He couldn't live with that any more."

Ashley says her Army Ranger husband wanted out of the military.

"He just wanted to know what it felt like to be normal again," she says.

Staff Sgt. Hagemann had orders to return to Afghanistan this month for a ninth tour of duty.

Instead, on June 28, Ashley says her husband took a gun and shot himself in the head on base. She claims the Rangers never took his pleas for help seriously.

"There's no way that they should not have been able to pick up on it," Ashley says. "When he's telling them, he's reaching out ...." [emphasis added]

Jared Hagemann was born on November 5, 1985. He wasn't even 26 years old, but he had done eight tours of duty. He had literally been at war his entire adult life. He had no idea what "normal" is for a young man his age. His death was most certainly service-related and if his widow has to fight for benefits, the outcry should be long, loud and sustained until she is treated right and taken care of, because her husband absolutely died in the line of duty.

I am an atheist. I don't believe in magic sky wizards or the existence of hell or that there is any sort of life after death. But there is a part of me that hopes I'm wrong, because it there is anyone who deserves an eternity in hell, it's the bastards who send young men off for nine fucking deployments without giving it a second thought, while their own children stay safely out of harm's way.

I want to see limits placed on the number of combat tours any one American Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine can serve. Since the different branches deploy for different lengths of time, I think 24 months, total, is reasonable. If you look at the PTSD data, you can see that the risk ramps up with every deployment. Eight tours of duty for a man not yet 26 is just insane. There is no way in hell he was getting the support he needed to reintegrate into American life, hell he wasn't even getting adequate dwell-time at home. The math just doesn't work.

Until we give up on this "all volunteer force" -notion- nonsense that works only in peacetime (and then it should be classified for what it really is: a federal jobs program for the less-well-off and rural kids with few prospects after high school) and limit the amount of time our troops spend in war zones, every suicide prevention program the Army tries will fail. Because human beings have limits. And when they hit the wall, they stop. One way or another.

How Liberals Got So Close in Wisconsin, and Why They Fell Short

Liberal Prosperity didn't disappear overnight, and we won't restore it overnight, either. But each battle gets us closer, and teaches us lessons for the fight.

Kenneth Quinnell at Crooks and Liars:

While we didn't win everything we wanted in Wisconsin, we scored a significant victory. Of the Republicans the left tried to recall in the state, three of the seven were successful. That's a pretty powerful message, since there were only four recall elections prior to that in the state's history. There are a number of important things we learned last night, or at least, a number of things we should learn...

1. The grassroots can overcome Citizens United-inspired massive spending: Between $20-$40 million was spent by the right on this recall. The results of that were two losses and several narrow victories in strongly Republican districts. This is very encouraging.

2. Money still talks, although the influence is less than it used to be: Alberta Darling is still a state senator because $8 million was spent on her campaign. That's the only reason. Similarly, Rick Scott is governor of Florida because he spent $72 million. Without these large sums of money, these candidates couldn't have won. They have nothing else going for them.

3. Left-wing GOTV methods are inadequate: Looking at the narrow margins in these races (and many other races in recent years) it is obvious that better GOTV could have swung a lot races, particularly in the 2010 midterms. I think it's time to completely, and scientifically, re-examine left-wing GOTV efforts. Learn what works and doesn't work and abandon the traditional methods that don't work. And there are probably a lot of them. Then we need a coordinated and well-funded effort to train everyone on the left nationwide how to do things the right way.

4. Republican districts, everywhere, are mostly just districts where people with good values just don't show up to vote: Can anyone honestly say that there weren't a few thousand more leftists in each of these losing districts last night that couldn't have voted? There is a mountain of evidence that our issue positions are the majority positions across the nation. How do we get that majority to show up to the polls? In every election? If we figure that out, the right is doomed for generations.

5. Left-wing messaging is still inadequate: This is less about last night than it is about the left in general. Democrats did pretty well last night because there was a clear message -- Scott Walker and his cronies are hurting the state and hurting you. That drove turnout pretty well and Democrats picked up traditionally Republican seats. The problem is that message won't work twice. It never does. Shilling and King have to get rid of the crony part of the message now and focus on Walker. But what happens when they have no boogeyman/men to go after? What happens to Democratic incumbents? If they don't have good messaging, they'll be on the wrong side of the anger that is growing with the public.

6. The right-wing agenda is toxic when the public knows about it and understands it: Democrats didn't do well last night because they outspent the other side. And there's ample evidence that the other side was very active in the grassroots, too. So how did Democrats do so well? Because the Republican agenda sucks. And when people know that, anyone who isn't a right-wing ideologue votes against that agenda.

7. Left-wing infrastructure is still inadequate: Last night showed that there has been major improvement in our infrastructure in recent years. Tons of groups helped out in Wisconsin and it made a difference. But what happens when that infrastructure has to focus on 50 states at the same time? The right has good infrastructure in almost every city. They are constantly training the next generation of activists and candidates and funding them to make sure they don't leave the movement. We're nowhere near anything like that. This might be our most pressing need, though.

8. Democrats still don't know how to fight: Why would anyone concede a close election where there are potential shenanigans with the clerk counting the votes? Recounts are not about overturning close elections, they are about ensuring the integrity of the vote. Don't give up until you know that you've lost. Don't assume it because that's the way it looks. Stand up and fight. Even if you lose this battle, people will remember you as a fighter and will support you next time. Quit worrying about what the media and Republicans are going to say about you -- they're going to say that anyway. Get over it. Assume it's going to happen (it always does) and do the right thing.

9. Things are changing because the people want change: The process is slow and very painful. It could be going more quickly and many people who could be doing better should be doing better (yes, I'm talking to you Mr. President). But things are moving in the right direction. They are far from perfect and we are losing some battles in the short run. Wisconsin is a great example of this. Things moved in the right direction last night and now there is a legitimate chance (with a crossover Republican vote) of stopping the most extreme things Scott Walker wants to do. That's progress. And it's happening because more and more people are growing tired of the same old nonsense. Now, our job is to capitalize on that and to increase the pace of that change.

10. The media isn't on our side, but that doesn't really matter: Every election cycle, the mainstream media become less and less important in determining the outcome of elections. People already use the Internet for their information on candidates and use DVR and other technology to skip campaign commercials. And, really, who gets their voting advice from TV pundits? I'm sure some do, but that influence is decreasing.

I'm sure there are other things we should be discussing about Tuesday night, but we certainly shouldn't be upset about the results. We should be encouraged that we were able to take out three Republican districts in very short order and against a tide of money and right-wing activism. There is something going on in America and if we pay attention and approach it the right way, we can achieve the bigger change we want. It isn't going to be easy and it isn't going to be quick, but we can make it happen. Wisconsin showed us that.

Learn from both victory and defeat; apply the lessons of Wisconsin to your precinct, your district, your state.