The Citizens

Bell Curve

The Law Talking Guy

Raised by Republicans

U.S. West

Well, he's kind of had it in for me ever since I accidentally ran over his dog. Actually, replace "accidentally" with "repeatedly," and replace "dog" with "son."

Sunday, September 07, 2008

No Free Lunch On VP Pick for McCain

When ever a politician, party or campaign makes a decision, adopts a new policy or appoints a new person to a leadership position they hope they will gain more votes than they scare off. By picking, Sarah Palin, a religious extremist with populist rhetoric, McCain hoped he would shore up his weak support with the Guns, Gays and God crowd while simultaneously appealing to independents with Palin's "maverick tax cutter" image.

But as soon as he appointed a religious fundamentalist with minimal experience with policy making, I suspected he would further alienate the Ron Paul/Libertarian wing of the party. Evidence of cracks have already appeared. First, several anti-war activists, one of whom I heard on the radio was a Ron Paul delegate, disrupted McCain's speech at the RNC on Thursday. Then there is this story in the Wall Street Journal about Sarah Palin's disastrous "legacy" as mayor of Wasilla. And this report from the CATO institute about similar offenses against Libertarian ideology/preferences by Palin when she was governor. And there is this complaint about Palin's flip, partisan populism regarding community service and civil liberties from a blogger at American Conservative quoting activists who supported Ron Paul in the primaries.

None of these stories are new. The liberal blogasphere has been hammering away on these issues for days. The big deal here is the that these stories are being reported - with obvious disapproval - by two bastions of the fiscally conservative/libertarian wing of the Republican Party and a conservative blogger talking to alienated Paulistas. I don't know any Republicans with a college degree who don't read the Wall Street Journal regularly. The CATO institute is the guardian of libertarian orthodoxy. American Conservative can hardly be equated with Daily Kos.

Are these indications of a brooding split in the Republican party? It is possible that McCain has alienated the suburban Republicans for the sake of pandering to the rural and exurban ones. We'll see how this plays out but this would be like the New York Times, the NAACP, and Daily Kos going after Biden for some offense against a deeply held tenant of Democratic Party self image.

Militarized Keynesianism

Since 1980, the Republican Party has advocated a peculiar variation on an old economic model. While they shout loudly about shrinking government and the free market, in practice both the Reagan and Bush administrations have ballooned the deficit and increased government spending, particularly on the military. Both Reagan and Bush bragged about cutting taxes. This combination of increased spending and decreased tax collection resulted in the rising deficits. It's also very similar to the active, counter cyclical fiscal policies John Meynard Keynes proposed. The idea is that by engaging in deficit spending and active fiscal policies, governments can stimulate sluggish economies.

Traditional Keynesian political economy would say that you tax to build up surplus revenue when times are good and engage in deficit spending when the economy is a downturn. The spending traditional Keynesians advocate would be on worker retraining, unemployment insurance, education, health care, and subsidies for protected industries. After decades of this western economies stalled in the 1970s. Deficits and debts caused a series of currency crises around the world - including in Europe and the US.

The Republican variant is keep taxes low all the time - even when times are good - and engage in deficit spending all the time. Republicans spend that money mainly on the military and subsidies for protected industries. In effect, they have a militarized version of Keynesian economics that is even more prone to deficit and debt problems that hamstring the economy in the medium and long term. The declining dollar, global credit crunch and related mortgage crisis are symptoms.

Subsidizing protected industries is always a bad idea. So both the traditional Keynesians and the Militarized Keynesians in the GOP are wrong there. But when it comes to the other spending priorities, worker training and unemployment insurance are better stimulus strategies than military spending. The first group of strategies spend money on things that build things for the future (especially those related to education). Military spending ends up being destroyed and the only way it results in knock on stimulus effects is if the government commits to replace destroyed material and through technological developments that trickle down to the civilian economy.

It's easy to play the Keynesian game too long. At some point you have to balance the budget or at least make a reasonable attempt at it. If you don't the government starts soaking up higher and higher percentages of the available capital at the same time that the dollar starts to weaken. If you combine this with some external shock - like sharp increases in oil prices as we saw in the 1970s and see again today - the result can be stagflation. Stagflation is about the worst economic situation you can imagine short of a depression and that is exactly what we will see if Republican political economy continues.

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Ouch

Direct hit.

Friday, September 05, 2008

Stress relief

Why? Because it's Friday, that's why. Enjoy.

Post RNC Update

Here is Tom Ridge talking about his "good friend" the Republican nominee for the Presidency. Oops! He called him "John Bush." As Joe Biden would say, "Freudian slip."

All the speeches are done and I think that the new Republican strategy is to energize their base and appeal to the middle only through McCain's biography. Palin will go from church to church telling everyone that the Religious Right will have a de facto veto on everything that goes on in the White House if McCain wins. McCain will go to Ohio and give speech after speech that is a "noun, a verb and 'Hanoi Hilton.'"

The polls right before end of the Republican convention show that Obama has a 60% to 34% advantage on the "knows and cares about the needs of people like me" question. In an environment when 80% of respondents think the country is on the wrong track and 70% think that things are going badly in this country, that's a big deal. We'll see if McCain's VP pick and biography tour will shift that.

In the next few days we'll see if McCain got any bounce from the convention. If I had to bet, I'd say that he put it right back to a dead heat - erasing most of Obama's bounce from last week. But I am very optimistic about the debates. McCain's complete lack of substance will be exposed there.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

John McCain's Big Night

Hi Everybody,

So the video tribute preceding McCain's speech made the new strategy clear. John McCain is now going to be a Noun, a Verb and "Hanoi Hilton." For all his protests that he doesn't like to exploit his POW experiences for political gain, he's pretty much going into full bore exploit mode now. But let's be honest. John McCain was a POW and he was hero for not accepting early release. For that we owe him our thanks, our respect and an appropriate pension. We DO NOT owe him the Presidency!

Here goes the speech. Oh boy, he's doing the "hey I know you" fake point in the audience thing. Huge American flag on the giant TV behind him.

Uh oh, there's a protester in the balcony with a sign saying "You can't win an occupation." The TV cameras didn't show him for very long. The protestor is still up there. He's got tattoos all over his arms and he has a T-shirt that says "Iraq Veterans Against the War." He's standing up in the audience holding his hands up in two peace signs.

OK, we're a half an hour into the speech now and McCain's speech has been disrupted several times by anti-war protesters. Two women where muscled off the floor by the security goons. But not before an angry male Republican was caught on camera yanking away one woman's sign, crumpling it up and throwing it to the ground with a look like he was about to kill her. Every time one of the protesters started to shout, the crowd would start chanting "USA USA USA."

The substance of the speech - such as it was - was all about cutting taxes but with no specific taxes mentioned. Most of the speech was your standard Republican cliches about "culture of life" and "activist judges" and "personal responsibility." Then there was the "let's distort the other guy's policies" phase. He accused Obama of wanting to raise taxes and eliminate free trade. Basically, they're upset that they aren't running against Kucinich so they're just pretending they are.

They've got these obviously fake signs like "Environmentalists for McCain." But then the speech is about "Drill Baby Drill." It's all BS. I really can't see a genuine independent buying any of this. Aw screw it, I'm going to switch over to the Daily Show.

Alaska's Largesse

After RBR posted about Alaska's lack of state taxes and the largess they get from the feds, I decided to poke around. Alaskans received about $13,000 per capita making it the third largest recipient of federal funds after hurricane ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi. California and New York got less than $8000 per capita.

This is from the Census Bureau's FY 2006 Consolidated Federal Funds Report released in April 2008.

That said, according to the Federal Tax Administration's 2007 report Alaska had by far the highest tax revenue per capita. But this doesn't tell us if what Alaskans themselves actually paid back in Federal taxes.

If you go to this link you will see the source of Alaska's tax revenue. You will find that it looks something like this:

FROM LTG By way of comparison, here is a chart showing California's revenue sources.

Palin is a Fundamentalist Nationalist

Look at this speech by Governor Palin to her church. In it you will here repeated references to God's will for our military. She actually thinks her interpretation of scripture is a justification for war. This is exactly the way Bin Laden thinks. The only difference is he worships a different invisible war monger in the sky.

Here is what her church's pastor said afterwords. At about minute 1:44 he says that in the "end times" we down here in the lower 48 will have to take "refuge" in Alaska. These people are bat shit crazy! And John McCain picked her to be his running mate!!!!!

Sarah Palin is like the head counselor at Jesus Camp! I'm surprised she didn't start speaking in tongues to a cardboard cut out of George Bush.

Alaska Politics and Sarah Palin

Hi Everybody,

Since John McCain is pushing Governor Palin forward as the Margaret Thatcher of the North, let's take a look at what Sarah Palin's role in Alaska politics is like.

First of all, I've already posted a couple of times about how, because of the lack of significant state taxes and the dominance of the oil permanent fund and federal hand outs for state government revenue, Alaskan politicians don't face the same kinds of political constraints on fiscal issues that politicians in the rest of the country do. This alone calls into question Palin's claim that she's got executive experience and has made "tough choices" and "protected tax payers" etc.

Second, there is her record of being a politician who uses petty personal attacks as a political tool. This isn't surprising. Since your position on taxes and spending really isn't relevant to Alaskan politics as much as it is in a state with actual taxes, the best way to distinguish yourself from your opponents is with personal attacks and "culture" issues like abortion and gay marriage etc. Palin is rather expert at this. When she ran for Mayor of Tiny Town (aka Wasilla, AK), she savaged her opponent over cultural issues like these even though small town mayors have no control over cultural policies such as abortion. Her opponent's yard signs were spray painted with "baby killer" for example. Then there is the incident involving Lyda Green the Republican President of the Alaska Senate (who is one of the leaders of a bipartisan coalition of Moderate Republicans and Democrats in that body) and a radio program on KWHL. The host called Green, who is a cancer survivor, a "cancer" who was "jealous" of Sarah Palin. He also made fun of Green's weight, called Green a "bitch" and questioned Green's parenting of her children. All the while Palin laughed at the attacks.

But there's strong evidence Palin did condone Lester's name-calling. At the end of Lester making fun of Green as a mother, calling her a cancer, twice, and saying she has to go; after calling the senator a b----, making fun of her weight, and accusing Green of being jealous and hateful; after all of that, Lester ends the conversation offering to visit Palin.
How does Palin respond? "I'd be honored to have you."

Third, patronage and pork. In a political environment where all you do is hand out cash from heaven (or oil companies), issues are less important. So patronage and pork becomes a big deal. Palin loves to play the pork game. Both as a mayor and as a governor, Palin likes push the bounds of believability when it comes to earmark requests. Her requests frequently amount to hundreds of dollars per resident she represents. Compared to Obama who's total earmark requests amounted to $24 per resident of Illinois (one of the most populated states in the country with hundreds of miles of federal roads crossing it). She's no stranger to the patronage game either. After being elected mayor she fired the police chief for endorsing her opponent. After being elected governor she fired Walt Monegan, the Public Safety director, for resisting her pressures to fire her estranged brother-in-law. Then she appointed a replacement, Chuck Kopp (did she pick him because he was named "Kopp?"), who had to resign after just two weeks because he was hit with a sexual harassment scandal. If you want to know why Palin hired Kopp in the first place, his resignation announcement may be a clue...

"While I have been portrayed in a negative light, my personal worth is found in the person of Jesus Christ, and not on the one who accepts or rejects me."

You'll notice that none of these criticisms have anything to do with either Sarah Palin as a woman, a mother or soon to be grandmother. They have everything to do with her character and her experience and her record.

It's the Economy, Sarah!

Back in the day, the old fashioned Republicans (the kind that I grew up with) had people like William F. Buckley. Now they have Ben Stein. OK, so he's an actor and a game show host (on cable even). But he's also a conservative law school professor (at Peperdine) and former speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Ford.

Here is what Professor Stein says about Sarah Palin's speech. She talked about a lot of stuff. Mainly deriding the value of the community organizing that Obama did back before he was a law school professor and state assembly rep (where he actually did make decisions about tough choices involving tax payers - I mean real tax payers in a state with actual state taxes). But she never talked about the economy. This mystified Professor Stein.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Question of the Night

Seventh Sister would like to ask: What character from Northern Exposure would make the best candidate for Vice President and why?

Sarah Palin's Big Lie

Sarah Palin's speech tonight said, "I found a few things in the governor's office that I didn't think that the tax payers should have to pay for...I've protected the tax payers..."

But here's the thing. There are no tax payers in Alaska. Alaska has no state sales tax and no state income tax. 87% of the non-earmarked revenue in the Alaskan budget comes from taxes on oil companies. Another $2 Billion comes from federal earmarks and subsidies.

For a governor of Alaska to brag about balancing the state budget and "protecting" tax payers is obscene! All they have to do is collect money from big oil and sign checks to the citizens of Alaskans who wait for their free handouts from the state like hungry little birds.

McCain: The Decider Part II

It's official. We're now getting confirmation from the Washington Post that the McCain campaign did almost no vetting of Sarah Palin. While Palin was on the long 20 person list, she was not vetted nearly as intensively as the people on the "short list." After reading the Washington Post article, I'm more convinced than ever that Palin's nomination was a snap judgement at the last minute. They did investigate the trooper-gate thing on their own. But there were only two meetings with Palin both the day before she was offered the job. It was in those two last minute interviews that Palin's daughter's - ahem - condition was revealed. But by then, McCain had decided it was down to either Palin or Pawlenty (interestingly, the co-chair of the GOP accidently referred to the "the next vice President of the United States, Governor Sarah Pawlenty"). As I write this, I've got Joe Scarborough on the TV in the background and the consensus on that show is that the McCain campaign is very defensive about the vetting.

The other thing that is coming out here is that Sarah Palin is so popular among the conservatives that she is overshadowing McCain. Given that McCain's main strength as a candidate is "Hero-he-man-in-charge" this is not good for him. The polls are already showing that McCain has lost the lead to Obama in regards to questions like "Strong and decisive leader." This Palin thing can't win for him. Either people decide that he made a rash, poorly thought out decision and picked an unqualified and scandal ridden running mate or they love Palin and think she's better than McCain on ideological stuff and more dynamic than he is. My guess is that this will energize the religious right somewhat but they'll be thinking the ticket is upside down. And the rest of the country will just think "WTF?"

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

He's Like an Itch You Just Can't Scratch

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) spoke to the Republican National Convention today. Despite repeated promises that he would not attack Obama directly, Lieberman did just that. The former Democratic Vice-Presidential Nominee (2000) said Obama had done nothing as a Senator. Worse still, Lieberman lied and said Obama had voted to cut off funding for our soldiers on the ground.

Lieberman has gone beyond anything loyalty to an old friend might have required (although I have not actually heard that he and McCain are old friends). But at least Lieberman managed to add a little diversity to the GOP convention: After listening to all those cookie-cutter bigots, it was refreshing to hear at least one proud hypocrite.

All of which leads one to wonder: what is Lieberman's game? It seems all but certain that the Democrats will control the Senate after the next election whether Lieberman continues to caucus with them or not. When the next Congress convenes in four months' time, surely Lieberman will be stripped of his seniority and expelled from the Democratic caucus. And if Lieberman thinks the enemy camp will welcome him with open arms, he will soon learn that a proven turncoat is never trusted again.

It may be that Lieberman is angling for a prominent cabinet position with the McCain administration, if that ever comes to pass. Perhaps Lieberman just loves the limelight and will do whatever it takes to keep the cameras trained on him: no one ever accused politicians of having modest egos. But since Lieberman's career is nearly finished one way or the other, I suspect this is all just about getting a little extra cash before he retires. Bet you anything Lieberman is writing a book.

A reassuring map

If you're worried for whatever reason about Obama's chances, maybe this map can reassure you. I don't consider this by any means Obama's floor, but these are all eminently winnable states.

Of these states I have in blue, I'd say the ones that are the most in trouble are (in this order) Colorado, New Hampshire, and Michigan. Of the states I have in red, the ones Obama is most likely to steal away are (in this order) Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Florida, and North Carolina. He can easily get to 300 electoral votes, while I have a hard time seeing McCain get above 280.

... doesn't mean McCain can't win, however.

If it was good enough for the founding fathers...

Gov. Sarah Palin filled out a questionnaire when she ran for the post in 2006. She opposes providing any spousal benefits to same-sex couples and believes that parents should be able to prevent their children from learning anything in school that they disagree with. But my favorite was Palin's response when asked whether she approved of having the words "under god" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Wrote Palin,

Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its
good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

I gasped when I read that. She clearly has no grasp of what the founding fathers stood for, and of course she apparently has no idea that the pledge is a 20th century invention and "under god" was added by the McCarthyites in the 1950s during the Red Scare. I wonder if Palin also thinks the Bible was originally written in English? (She also does not understand when to use apostrophes, but that is nit-picking.)

One Minute Per Year In Office

So here I am watching the Republican national convention. Laura Bush is on right now. She's going to introduce President Bush who will speak via video because he's using the hurricane to not show up to his own party's convention. Think about this. The man was their hero for 8 years. They nominated him twice and rigged a couple of elections to get him in office. And tonight he'll speak, via video, for a scheduled 8 minutes. I'll pause now to listen... He started speaking at 9:54 pm EST. He wrapped up right on time at 10:02 pm EST.

He led with a reference to his missing the convention because of Gustav and public service announcement about listening to local authorities in the aftermath of the storm. I'm really annoyed by one thing Bush said: "If the Hanoi Hilton cannot break John McCain's resolve ... you can bet that the angry left never will." I think this is exactly why Obama has such appeal. People are sick of politicians identifying their opponents in elections as "the enemy."

8 years in office and all his party gave him was 8 minutes that weren't even aired live on the three major networks.

Off limits?

Hi Everybody!

So the media is going after Bristol Palin's pregnancy like sharks to a chum basket. Some on the right are pointing out that there is a tradition of the media leaving children of candidates alone. Barack Obama has come out and said the same and said that if he finds anyone in his campaign acting as provocateurs in this story, he'll fire them.

So here are my questions:

Do we think that such a tradition actually exists?

Does taking strident, ideological positions on family decisions (like abortion and teen sex education etc) open candidates up to criticism about their personal lives and their family crisis - including the behavior of their own children?

Monday, September 01, 2008

Some More On Sarah Palin

Hi Everyone,

So while the Republicans prepare to convince people that they care about storm victims by attacking Barack Obma for four days, let's get to know VP candidate Sarah Palin some more.

First some polls. You may remember that when we talked about Obama's pick of Joe Biden, that some disagreement among our little group about the quality of the pick. Pollingreport.com is now reporting polls that show that if the race were between Biden and Palin, Biden would win 54% to 41%. Now, Obama has been consistently ahead of McCain in the polls (albeit narrowly) so McCain can only be thinking that the benefit to picking Palin is not Palin herself but what his picking her says about him. The only way this works for McCain is if people change their minds about HIM based on this pick. So what are those polls saying? Pollingreport.com has these polls that say that picking Palin makes 22% of respondents more likely to vote for McCain. But it makes 20% of respondents less likely to vote for McCain. That's pretty close for the kind of surveys we're talking about here. It could very easily be that McCain is realizing net loss in support over this. In contrast, similar polls about Biden showed that picking Biden made 15% of respondents more likely to vote for Obama and 11% of them to be less likely to vote for Obama. First, it looks more likely that Biden helped Obama than Palin helps McCain. Second, Obama's support is a lot more stable than McCain's. Realistically, this pick is looking like a wash for McCain. In a week or so we may see some new numbers about enthusiasm and I would guess that McCain will see some improvement there. And that could be the big pay off to McCain.

Second, Sarah Palin and "executive experience." Being governor of Alaska isn't like being governor of most states. It's A LOT easier. The state has no income tax because it gets 87% of its unrestricted revenue from oil revenues. In terms of the total revenue, Alaska takes in $12.3 billion. Of that, $5.2 billion comes from the taxes on oil revenues. They get another $2 billion from the Federal government. The rest of the revenue comes from investments from the oil revenues and other endowments. Alaska does not collect either a state sales tax or a state income tax. That makes it pretty easy politically. The only distributive issues are how high to set the tax on the oil companies. Furthermore, you'll notice from the document linked above that Alaska's revenue office is very concerned about the declining oil output from the north slope. The problem is that as reserves up there dry up, revenue to the state dries up too. So when Alaska politicians say they support drilling in ANWR, they're motivated by a desire to keep a revenue stream with zero political costs flowing. It has nothing to do with the long term well being of the country as a whole or with anything resembling a long term energy policy.

Finally, on Sarah Palin and good governance. The only time Palin was actually in charge of a budget that took some serious effort and hard choices to balance, she blew it. When she was mayor of the village of Wasilla (population 5,469), she cut property taxes by 60% then botched a development deal for a new town rec center. By the way, her botched scheme also include some pretty agressive uses of eminent domain that resulted in a law suit. The whole mess ended up costing the tiny town about $1.7 million. The town is now wallowing in debt.

Oh yeah, and Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant and is planning to keep the baby (of course) and marry the father. The news did not specify if the wedding will take place before or after the birth or before or after Bristol graduates from high school. That's Republican family values for you. IF your teenage daughter gets knocked up you make sure she keeps the baby. This is opposed to Democratic family values. WHEN your teenage daughter starts going out with boys you make sure she knows about BIRTH CONTROL!

Hurricane Gustav Hits St. Paul, Minnesota

This may be the first tropical cyclone to make it to the Land of 10,000 Lakes. After being totally unprepared for Katrina, the Bush administration, the McCain campaign, and the RNC are totally panicking over Gustav. Two million people have evacuated their homes. Nobody knows what is going to become of the GOP convention.

I am reminded that Focus on the Family (run by rightwing nutjob James Dobson) actually urged its supporters to pray for rain during Obama's outdoor speech. They later said it was a 'joke.' These people don't joke. Dobson used to ask them to pray for the death of Supreme Court justices too. Well, the GOP got rain. Lots of rain. If you really believe in a God that would interfere in weather systems (and kill people in the Caribbean) to make a petty political point, this cannot be comforting.

I cannot believe how politically dumb the GOP is being. Millions of people are trapped indoors, or in hotel rooms, probably more than willing to listen to what the Republicans would say about them at the convention. Millions more are at least curious how the GOP will handle this. We keep hearing that the convention doesn't want to be celebrating while the hurricane hits. So don't celebrate! Be somber. Nobody in the GOP wants to celebrate McCain anyway.

Now there is a chance that McCain will travel to the Gulf to make his acceptance speech. Are you f**king serious? Can you
imagine the outcry if Obama had grandstanded like that? Does McCain really think he will be thought of differently? Does he want to have to show up with Republican Louisiana Senator David Vitter who is supposedly no longer using prostitutes in DC? To use the hurricane as a *backdrop* for a political speech at this point in time? Stupid, stupid. All this weekend talk about uncertainty over what the Republicans will do at their convention makes them look weak, disorganized, and incompetent.

Advice to GOP: Get a plan. Get a grip. Try not to let your party's incompetence in every policy field spread to something as simple as holding a political convention. Stay in Minnesota and have numerous prayer moments for the victims of Gustav. Compare it to 9/11 and the country coming together. It's the sort of sanctimonious bullshit your party's base loves.

Just one other thing, guys: while Gustav is knocking out oil platforms and refineries, be careful about praising offshore drilling as the best long-term bet. Uh, no. Too bad oil drilling is about all Sarah Palin apparently can talk about...

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