Winning Progressive

(By NCrissie B)

The good news is that Dean Chambers, who admitted his assumptions about the 2012 electorate were skewed by Rasmussen models and wishful thinking and sort-of-apologized to the New York Times‘ Nate Silver, is at least more self-aware than Karl Rove. Rove’s on-air challenge when Fox News called Ohio and the election for President Obama quickly became comedy gold.

Never one to miss an opportunity to ingest his own toejam, Rove dined on his foot again yesterday:

Karl Rove told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly on Thursday that President Obama won re-election “by suppressing the vote” with negative campaign ads that “turned off” potential voters, citing a victory that carried a smaller percentage of the popular vote compared to that of the 2008 presidential race.

UnSkewed … or UnSuppressed?

Seriously, Karl? After Republicans waged a nationwide campaign to limit voter registration, impose ever-stricter voter ID laws, and reduce early voting periods in what both a Pennsylvania legislator and the former chairman of the Florida Republican Party admitted was a partisan attempt to suppress likely Democratic voters, you accuse President Obama of “suppressing the vote” … by criticizing his opponent in campaign ads?

This is, of course, a classic Rove tactic of accusing your opponent of what you have been or will be accused of doing. And Rove, now having to defend his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS SuperPAC spending to donors wondering aloud how their money was spent, may be flailing around for any gambit to save what remains of his reputation and his lucrative income stream.

Still, Rove’s response highlights a still-untold story about the 2012 election. Romney staffers said he was “shellshocked” by the results Tuesday night, and his lead pollster admitted his internal polling presumed an electorate more like the older, whiter turnout of the 2010 midterms. Were his, Rasmussen’s, and similar models based on a belief that 2008 was a high water mark for women, people of color, and young voters … or on a belief that Republicans’ aggressive voter suppression efforts would succeed?

Demographics and Beyond

Obama advisor David Axelrod said Republicans have “soul searcing to do as to whether they’re going to represent the United States of America as the United States of America is and not based on some 50-year-old model.”

But as Axelrod and Obama pollster Joel Benenson note, the lesson of 2012 is not merely America’s changing demographics:

The president’s victory was a triumph of vision, not of demographics. He won because he articulated a set of values that define an America that the majority of us wish to live in: A nation that makes the investments we need to strengthen and grow the middle class. A nation with a fair tax system, and affordable and excellent education for all its citizens. A nation that believes that we’re most prosperous when we recognize that we are all in it together.

Benenson notes that too many in the media, perhaps spurred by the Romney campaign’s insistence that 2012 would be referendum on President Obama, focused on cherry-picked data like unemployment, consumer confidence, and right/wrong track numbers. But Benenson had deeper data:

Such conventional indicators failed to capture the mind-set of the American people who always had a broader view of the nation’s economic situation and what had happened to their lives. A national survey of 800 voters conducted by our firm – not for the Obama campaign – during the final weekend before Tuesday’s vote, confirmed that a clear majority of Americans viewed this election in the context of the scale of the economic crisis we faced and the deep recession that ensued.

Two key data points illustrate why Americans were always far more open to President Obama’s message and accomplishments than commentators assumed. By a three to one margin (74 percent to 23 percent), voters said that what the country faced since 2008 was an “extraordinary crisis more severe than we’ve seen in decades” as opposed to “a typical recession that the country has every several years.” At the same time, a clear majority, 57 percent, believed that the problems we faced after the crisis were “too severe for anyone to fix in a single term,” while only 4 in 10 voters believed another president would have been able to do more than Mr. Obama to get the economy moving in the past four years.

Simply, American voters were smarter than Republican strategists hoped. Or, if those strategists truly believed their own story of President Obama’s first-term failure, the voters were smarter than the strategists themselves.

“We the People”

Republicans lost the White House and seats in both the Senate and House because their platform of wealth, white, heterosexual, Christian, male privilege – what Fox News‘ Bill O’Reilly called “traditional America” – is out of step with the American electorate.

Exit polls showed a majority of Americans favor tax increases to reduce our deficit and invest in our future. The election was also a banner day for LGBT equality and a backlash against the GOP’s war on women. Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison won a fourth term with 65% of the vote, despite repeated attempts – including those by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) – to smear Ellison’s Muslim faith. In Arkansas, as Politicususa‘s Sarah Jones quipped, “A Neo-Confederate, a slavery apologist and a death penalty for children advocate walk into an election … and lose big.”

The 2012 election was about more than skewed polls and demographic margins. It was about ideas and values, and a majority of American voters chose progressive Democratic ideas and values. As MSNBC’s Martin Bashir put it, “Hate lost.”

If Republicans can unskew themselves from that, we can not only have a more productive political dialogue. We can also create “a more perfect Union” where “We the People” … means all of us.

(Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com))

With Hurricane Sandy walloping New York, New Jersey, and other parts of the East Coast with powerful winds, torrential rains, and a massive storm surge, there is renewed interest in a long running debate regarding the proper role of the federal government in providing relief for areas of our nation hit by natural disasters.

On one side are conservatives who seek to privatize disaster relief or devolve it to the states.  For example, when tornadoes ravaged Joplin, Missouri in May 2011 and the Ohio River Valley in May 2012, Mitt Romney, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Gov. John Kasich (R-OH), and other Republicans attacked the idea of federal disaster relief.  And the GOP has continued to push for cuts in the budgets for Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association despite the critical roles those agencies play in predicting, preparing for, and dealing with the consequences of natural disasters.

On the other side, Democrats believe that the federal government should must take the lead in helping people and communities recover from natural disasters, and in rebuilding infrastructure in the wake of such disasters.  As such, Democrats during both the Clinton and Obama Administrations have worked to rebuild relief agencies such as FEMA that had been decimated by Republican rule.

Below is a post from March 2011 explaining the philosophical differences between the parties on the issue of disaster relief, and how those differences have real world impacts in the lives of millions of Americans who are or will be impacted by natural disasters.  While the post was written approximately 18 months ago, we think it holds true to this day.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“It Ain’t Like Katrina – We’re Getting Help”

Here at Winning Progressive, we define progressivism as the belief that we should use the tools of government to advance important individual and societal goals that individuals cannot reasonably achieve on their own and/or that the free market will not provide. We can and should have debates over whether specific government programs should be reformed, shrunk, expanded, or eliminated, and how we improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the government programs we have, as such debates are critical to ensuring that government serves the need of the public.  Unfortunately, for years now conservatives have focused not on such a debate, but instead have sought to vilify government as an evil entity that needs to largely be eliminated.  Such a philosophy is detached from reality and does little to benefit the American people.

A prime example of the failure of conservative vilification of government can be seen from the contrast between emergency disaster response to the recent tornadoes in the South, which caused more than 300 deaths and untold property damage, and that of the response to disasters like Hurricane Katrina under the George W. Bush Administration.  The response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) to Hurricane Katrina was inexcusably negligent, as we’ve previously described here.    By contrast, FEMA’s response to the disaster created by the tornadoes in the South has been quite efficient and effective, with even Republican local officials praising the job being done by FEMA.    As a local resident was quoted as saying:

“It ain’t like Katrina,” said Darius Rutley, 21, whose house in Alberta was obliterated. “We’re getting help.”

As Kevin Drum has noted at his Mother Jones blog, the difference in FEMA’s effectiveness to the Southern tornadoes versus Katrina is part of a larger pattern of effective emergency responses during Democratic Administrations and ineffective responses during Republican Administrations.  And the reason for that contrast is that one party has focused on making FEMA an effective government agency, while the other has been blinded by an ideological opposition to government that has served to undermine FEMA’s effectiveness.  The contrast can be seen with regards to:

• Appointees: Under President Clinton, FEMA was headed by James Lee Witt, the first FEMA director with emergency planning experience, who turned FEMA into a highly effective agency that successfully handled a number of major disasters. For example, FEMA advance teams were on the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 within five hours and three minutes.  President Bush replaced Witt with Joe Allbaugh.  What were Allbaugh’s qualifications to head FEMA?  He had no emergency relief experience, but he was Bush’s campaign chairman!  In 2003, Allbaugh was replaced by Michael Brown, a longtime friend of Allbaugh who also had no emergency relief experience, but was a big time Republican donor and had previously run the International Arabian Horse Association.  The Obama Administration returned to experience rather than cronyism as the basis for selecting a FEMA head. President Obama’s FEMA is run by W. Craig Fugate, who spent eight years as the Director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management and previously worked as emergency manager for Alachua County, Florida for over a decade.

• Philosophy: In May 2001, Bush’s FEMA Director Allbaugh testified to a Senate subcommittee that:

Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management.  Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.

Similarly, in April 2001, Bush’s budget director, Mitch Daniels, announced the goal of privatizing much of FEMA’s work. As just one example, in June 2004, FEMA turned the task of developing a hurricane disaster plan for New Orleans over to a private consulting firm named Innovative Emergency Management. In light of the response to Katrina, it appears that if they did come up with a plan, it was not innovative and did not involve any management.

By contrast, President Obama’s FEMA Director, Craig Fugate, has focused not on trying to shrink or eliminate FEMA, but rather on making the agency effective in doing its job of responding to emergencies.

• Budgetary Cutbacks: In 2003, FEMA was made part of the Department of Homeland Security.  At the same time, its budget was cut and 500 of its staffers were laid off. In addition, three quarters of the funds that the agency spent on local emergency preparedness and first-responders was shifted to terrorism response rather than natural disasters and accidents.  By contrast, over the past five years, FEMA’s operating budget has increased by nearly $2.5 billion.

The bottom line is that, as the contrast between the Katrina and Southern tornadoes responses shows, a belief by our elected officials in competent, effective government can be the difference between our fellow Americans pulling through disasters as quickly as possible or being left victims of forces far beyond their control.  In other words, in the real world beliefs about government matter.

(By The Pragmatic Pundit)

Tax Haven – a country or place which has a low rate of tax so that people choose to live there or register companies there in order to avoid paying higher tax in their own countries.

Middle Class Americans have been waiting all these years for the wealth to trickle down, only to discover that the only thing it has done is stream and gush into tax havens like Switzerland and the Caymans.  Why aren’t people outraged?

On the off-chance there are those who don’t grasp why we should all be enraged, allow me to explain:

Tax havens offer secrecy and other special advantages that attract corrupt dictators, drug cartels, terrorists, corporate heads and the likes of Mitt Romney.   They all share the same political and social dynamics; avoiding and evading their responsibilities to the societies that sustain them.  And they do so with impunity.

Havens allow companies and wealthy individuals to reap the rewards of the onshore benefits of taxes;  like good infrastructure, clean water, education and the rule of law,  (all the stuff they didn’t build) while using the offshore world to escape their responsibilities to pay for it. The rest of us shoulder the burden.  Allowing corporations and the wealthy to escape taxes and regulations increases inequality and poverty, corrodes democracy, distorts markets and curbs economic growth.

The reason Mitt Romney’s business dealings and Bain Capital are important is because he and the company he represented indulged in activities that literally stripped this countries’ financial assets and relocated them to other countries, depriving the United States of jobs, investment capital and desperately needed tax revenues.   As we lose tax revenues, the country becomes more dependent on the loans and interest that helps to increase our debt.  Those liabilities are the public debts of the government that end up shouldered by the Middle Class.  So the next time you want to talk about the debt and the deficit, look towards a tax haven where corporations and the wealthy who have been enriched with U.S. government contracts, loopholes, subsidies and income tax refunds have chosen to pledge their allegiance.

We may not like them, but taxes are the nexus between government and citizen, while tax revenues help to fulfill the social contract.   Tax havens shift the tax burden away from capital and onto labour and the Middle Class creating a dramatic rise in income and wealth inequality. What’s worse is havens like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands are allowed to enjoy wealth by appropriating taxes that should be paid to the United States.

They offer not only low or zero taxes, but allow people and corporations to get around the rules, laws and regulations.  Tax havens and tax dodging are nothing more than forms of corruption.  Companies build secret monopolies by using them to hide their identities in order to  collude and fix prices.  The secrecy fosters criminal activities like insider trading, market rigging, tax evasion, fraud, embezzlement, bribery, the illicit funding of political parties and more.

Perhaps, most offensive is that those who avail themselves to the use of tax havens remove themselves from sharing the costs involved in maintaining a healthy society, while they remain actively involved in the democratic process by lobbying, buying elections and as in Mitt Romney’s case, even running for office.  They distort markets and undermine market competition and they thrive because of secrecy.

Mitt Romney’s tax returns are important because they give us a blueprint of the kind of patriot he really is.  While he bemoans the 47%, what share of taxes has he been allowed to avoid?  More importantly, what kind of person concerns himself with the taxation of someone who earned $20,000 in an entire year, while he ducked, dodged and deferred taxation on $20 million in income?  He is an economic free-rider and traitor.

It should be show-and-tell time.  Romney claims he has paid all taxes due and has done nothing illegal, so what is there to hide?  Where is the media or a few good investigative reporters?  Are they just too lazy or too beholden to corporate interests to seek the truth?  Imagine the response if President Obama had a sheltered account and refused to share the details.

Why isn’t the public raising hell about Romney’s tax returns?  Why aren’t investigative reporters raising the roof?  Why aren’t the Democrats still making demands?  Is it me?  The idea that anyone would cast a vote for Mitt Romney without full disclosure of his tax returns and business dealings is absolutely mind-boggling to me.

 (By The Pragmatic Pundit)

Before the smoke could settle in Benghazi, Mitt Romney was licking his prevaricating pouter…he could finally pierce Obama’s formidable foreign policy veneer.  The House Republicans were so elated at the thought of embarrassing the Obama Administration, the lazy, do-nothing bums called a hearing in the middle of their long recess.  This was big!  It was the October surprise….a cover-up!

The lawmakers ordered a public hearing on a matter that clearly belonged behind closed doors, but they were intent on belittling the President in a public display.

It didn’t quite work out.

Instead of uncovering some sinister plot of deception, they exposed the CIA to the whole world and ended up looking like a horses ass, not unlike Mitt Romney had during the debate.  In an attempt to overshadow their foolishness, Thug Issa released Libyan cables that contained sensitive information; this time exposing and endangering the lives of Libyans who work with the U.S.

When the horror of 9/11 occurred, the country stood united in our resolve.  We were neither Democrats nor Republicans, we were Americans.  Today’s Republicans disgrace everything America stands for.  They are willing to put everything and everyone at risk in order to win.

But they got punked!

Several news accounts now verify that the explanation given by UN Ambassador Susan Rice was the statement issued by the CIA.  Republicans called her incompetent and asked for her resignation.  Do you suppose they’ll apologize?
Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid.  Common sense dictates the lack of an attempted cover-up.  What would be the purpose?  Since he knew the truth would come out, what would be the sense in lying?  He knows he has many, many detractors and  he knows it’s October.  Clearly, if Congress thought it had something, it would still be in session beating that dead horse.

Hearings have been canceled until after the election.

 (By Brian Frederking of the Toward the Common Good blog)

Dear undecided voters,

You are not really deciding whether to vote for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. You are deciding whether or not to vote for the Republican Party.

Please do not reward the Republican Party. They have lost their way. They do not deserve your vote.

Republicans are systematically trying to prevent the poor, the elderly, and racial minorities from voting in key swing states. There is one documented case of widespread voter fraud this year – committed by a Republican group.

Republicans have fueled the birther movement with routine references to birth certificates, including the presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Not one Republican leader has publicly criticized this obviously racist movement.

Republicans are lying about the Obama administration changing welfare rules in order to stoke white racial resentment.

Republicans have an explicitly racial strategy to win the election – deny voting rights to minorities and make racist appeals to whites.

Please do not reward the Republican Party. They have lost their way. They do not deserve your vote.

Republicans have shattered all the records for filibusters in the Senate. They say no to everything, even to their own ideas when they are embraced by the president. They are more interested in denying the president any political victories than they are in solving the country’s problems. Republicans have killed numerous jobs bills, including one for returning veterans.

Republicans in Congress have the most conservative voting record in the history of the party. Repealing Obamacare is only the start. They want to roll back much legislation passed in the 20th century. House Republicans have passed bills that would outlaw abortion and contraception. They are against equal pay for equal work. They are against enforcing the Voting Rights Act. They want to privatize Social Security, voucherize Medicare, and pulverize Medicaid. Say goodbye to student loans, consumer protection laws, and food safety.

Republicans have turned the word ‘freedom’ to mean that everyone is on their own. Congratulations – you are free! Now try and find some affordable health insurance.

Please do not reward the Republican Party. They have lost their way. They do not deserve your vote.

Republicans peddle an ideology that is completely in the economic interests of the 1%. But that ideology does nothing to solve our everyday problems. Limited government does not lead to a better education for our children. Limited government does not lead to energy independence; or deal with climate change; or prevent the next financial crisis; or make sure everyone has access to medicine; or prevent jobs from going overseas. It simply enables the rich to get richer. It enables corporations to pay more in CEO compensation than taxes.

Please consider the last 20 years. Where were we when Bill Clinton left office? Where were we when George W. Bush left office? Obama is offering us Clinton policies, and Romney is offering us Bush policies. It is as simple as that.

Please do not reward the Republican Party. They have lost their way. They do not deserve your vote.

(Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com))

For this weekend’s reading list, we have articles about how Mitt Romney would be a servant of the right wing if he were to become President, how Romney’s “jobs” plan would destroy jobs, the cost of Romney’s plan to abolish Medicare, the flimsiness of Republican’s Benghazi criticisms, and why progressives should not cast a third-party “protest” vote.

Mitt Romney, Servant of the Right – a good overview of just how reactionary the agenda that Mitt Romney is running on is, which disproves the fantasy that Romney would somehow be a moderate if he were to become President.

Party Animals - recent history shows that were Romney to become President, his Administration would be run by the same right-wing Republican insiders that ran the George W. Bush White House.

Mitt Romney Has No Real Jobs Plan - an in-depth report on how Romney’s “jobs” plan relies on failed economic theories and would actually cost jobs, rather than creating them.

The Benghazi Controversy, Explained – an accounting of the Benghazi attacks that shows just how flimsy are the Republican criticisms of the Obama Administration’s response to the attacks.

Transforming Medicare Into a Premium Support System – an independent analysis finding that Mitt Romney’s plan to end Medicare as a guaranteed universal insurance program for seniors and replace it with vouchers would increase costs for the majority of seniors.

The Case Against Protest Voting - an argument that the importance of who gets lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary is a sufficiently compelling reason for any progressive to resist calls from some on the left that they should vote for a third party as a “protest” against President Obama