Category Archives: Middle Class

Progressives and Tea Partiers, Unite

I’ve already noted how bizarre the 2016 contest could be in terms of foreign/defense policy in that we might have a serious GOP candidate (Rand Paul) running to the left of the Dems.  Already there’s talk of neo-cons like Robert Kagan supporting Hillary.

But we might also see some strange turns in domestic policy as well.  A lot of attention is being paid to Hillary’s attitude toward, and relationship with, Wall Street, particularly compared to Elizabeth Warren.  However Hillary runs, you can be sure she’d govern as a friend of Wall Street, as she and Bill have consistently been.

We may well see a “populist” GOP candidate or two in the primary running to the left of Hillary on domestic policy.

What I find especially interesting is the conviction that populist rhetoric should be encouraged among Republicans, combined with a certainty that it would be the kiss of death for the Dems to nominate that “scary” Elizabeth Warren.  Candidates are judged not on the content of their character, but on the red or blue color of their party.

While I know that Warren would be turned into George McGovern, the truth is that if Tea Party voters could listen to her in a “blind taste test” setting, a lot of them would feel that she understands their frustration and speaks for them.  While she’d be painted as anti-capitalist, the more subtle truth is that she is against crony capitalism, and so is the Tea Party.

Both parties represent crony capitalism, and that’s something the Progressive wing of the Democratic party and the Tea Party wing of the GOP agree on.  The Dems are for the rich and the poor, the Republicans are for the rich, but really nobody is for the middle class.  That’s why they have to woo middle-class voters and get us wee wee’d up about issues like abortion and immigration and climate change.

All the 2016 candidates will talk about the middle class, but those most likely to mean it either won’t get nominated or would get painted as a hippie Commie freak in the general.

I don’t know who our next president will be, but I’m certain he or she will be someone Wall Street won’t have to worry its pretty little head about.

Quote of the Day

“The darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be [Hillary] Clinton, a familiar face on Wall Street following her tenure as a New York senator with relatively moderate views on taxation and financial regulation.”

If Hillary in the WH is good for the Hamptons oceanfront crowd, why would those of us in the Holiday Inn crowd want her?  Bill Clinton’s deregulation policies bear as much blame for the financial meltdown as do Bush 43’s.

“Thank God for Obamacare”

I suspect — and fervently hope — these stories, unlike the BS in the Koch Brothers ads, are going to become more common between now and the mid-terms in November.

So Republican Scott Brown, who used to be a senator from Massachusetts and is trying to become a senator from New Hampshire because he just really, really likes being a senator, went to visit Herb Richardson, a GOP state legislator, hoping to win his endorsement.

Richardson used to own a 12-room house, but after getting injured on the job, he lives on workman’s comp, lost his house, and lives in a trailer.

Workman’s comp pays him $2,000 a month, and Richardson would have had to pay $1,000 of that just to keep his health insurance under COBRA.

But because of Obamacare, Richardson and his wife get health insurance for only $136 a month.   That’s very different, as Emily Litella would say.

So when Brown, I guess oblivious to the fact that he was visiting a guy in a trailer, called Obamacare a “monstrosity,” Richardson said, au contraire, it was a “financial lifesaver.”  To which Mrs. Richardson added, “Thank God for Obamacare.”

According to the local reporter present, Brown had no response.

 

Raise the Minimum Wage? What Are You, a Nazi?

“Because if you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany.  You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.”

Ken Langone, billionaire founder of Home Depot and huge Republican donor, on income inequality.

So if you hate carried interest and want to raise the minimum wage and extend unemployment benefits, well, heil to you, you despicable Nazi.

We’re going to give the Senate back to these people in November?  Really?  But of course they’re emboldened — they brought down our whole economy and no one went to jail.

Have/Have Not = Alive/Dead

If you live in the Washington, DC suburb of Fairfax, Virginia, home to lawyers and lobbyists, you can expect to live to be 82 if you’re a man and 85 if you’re a woman.*

But if you live 350 miles away, in McDowell County, West Virginia,  where people shovel coal, not bullshit, for a living, you can expect to live to be 64 if you’re a man and 73 if you’re a woman.  That’s about what life expectancy is in Iraq!

Rich people don’t just have more stuff, they get to enjoy it far longer.

* “Income Gap, Meet the Longevity Gap,” Annie Lowrey, NYT

Quote of the Day

“But it is both a relief and a disappointment that the new [job] numbers offer some assurance that the long-reliable pattern of adding a bit more than two million jobs a year continues apace.  The 175,000 net jobs added in February extrapolate to a pace of 2.1 million jobs a year…. The jobs recovery in the United States is astonishingly consistent, astonishingly resilient and astonishingly underwhelming.”

Neil Irwin, NYT

Unemployment Extension, RIP

The Senate defeated two proposals to extend unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed in states with high unemployment rates.

A plan to extend benefits through November, paid for by extending the sequester, lost 52-48.

Another plan to extend benefits for just three months, without paying for it, lost 55-45.

It’s not just heartless, it’s makes no sense economically.  Aside from the families most directly affected, the whole country will suffer from reduced GDP and fewer jobs created this year.

With the need for 60 votes, the GOP might as well control the Senate as well as the House.

Don’t Give a Shit? There’s a GOP Talking Point for That.

GOP House leadership has given their rank and file talking points to try to justify their opposition to extending unemployment benefits without sounding dickish.

The talking points cite the “success” of ending emergency benefits in North Carolina last July, where the unemployment rate did, in fact, drop.  But that’s because people just gave up and stopped looking for work.  The labor participation rate in NC is the lowest it’s been in 37 years.

NC is actually a great talking point for Dems.

They Got the Votes!

Six Republican senators joined with the Democrats to break a filibuster for a three-month extension of the unemployment benefits that expired on December 28.  The vote was 60-37 (Dem Mark Begich of Alaska couldn’t get there).

Thank you to these “good” Republicans — Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Dan Coats of Indiana, Dean Heller of Nevada, and Rob Portman of Ohio — for doing the right thing — at least procedurally — for both our long-term unemployed and our economy.

But now they move to the substantive vote — and they still have to find a way to pay for the thing, so it’s far from done.

Then, of course, it would take a miracle to get it through the House, where 207 of the GOP seats are considered safe, so no incentive to rock the boat there .

GOP Wants to Weaken Economy

I agree with Brian Beutler at Salon that the GOP is opposing an extension of unemployment benefits because they don’t want to do anything to help the economy — besides helping the affected families, an extension would create jobs and raise GDP.

From  “GOP’s ulterior motive on unemployment:  Economic sabotage?”:

“Congress has never cut off these benefits when unemployment has been as high as it is right now, and the long-term unemployed and chronically poor aren’t equivalent populations.  So there’s got to be more going on than just conservative indifference.

“Some Republicans would claim the deficit is too high to renew benefits, but we know that’s not true because the deficit is shrinking fast, and there are myriad, painless ways to defray the cost….

“Unemployment benefits make people’s lives better and buoy a fragile, but possibly accelerating recovery.  Some Republicans are apparently reluctant to give Democrats and the economy a shot in the arm right now.”

There are no principles involved here,  just pure politics.  From now on, it’s going to be all about the GOP retaking the Senate, and after the mid-terms, it’s going to all about the GOP retaking the White House.  No governing, just campaigning.