Competent Government

Steve Benen has a good report about FEMA working diligently on the ground in Georgia to manage a once in 500 years flood that's ravaged the area. Even Georgia's conservative Senators are praising the emergency management effort. And then there's this nice story from the Veterans Affairs Department:

WASHINGTON - Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki announced the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has authorized checks for up to $3,000 to be given to students who have applied for educational benefits and who have not yet received their government payment. The checks will be distributed to eligible students at VA regional benefits offices across the country starting Oct. 2, 2009.

"Students should be focusing on their studies, not worrying about financial difficulties," Secretary Shinseki said. "Education creates life-expanding opportunities for our Veterans."

Starting Friday, Oct. 2, 2009, students can go to one of VA's 57 regional benefit offices with a photo ID, a course schedule and an eligibility certificate to request advance payment of their housing and book allowance. Because not all these offices are located near students, VA expects to send representatives to schools with large Veteran-student bodies and work with Veteran Service Organizations to help students with transportation needs.

A list of those VA regional offices is available at www.vba.va.gov/VBA/benefits/offices.asp.

We're unused to this kind of government, which manages emergencies effectively and cleans up mistakes with efficiency and speed. This stuff only makes headlines when there's a screw-up, and not when government does its job. But we shouldn't take it for granted, as we saw in the Bush era.

Falling Down On Making The Argument For Good Government

I think this post from John Aravosis is a little bit unfair, but only a little. The White House has soft-pedaled their defense of the stimulus package, but really with the jobs picture as it is, it was always going to be a hard sell to tell people who are losing their job that the stimulus prevented things from getting worse. The problem lay in the lack of job creation in the stimulus itself, rather than job saving. Those who follow these things closely understand that the stimulus really saved us from a deep recession if not a depression. But we also know it didn't go far enough to truly bring about recovery. Those who look at their own lives and don't pay attention to the day-to-day debate only see that they and their colleagues can't find work.

I think the White House will eventually get some credit for the inevitable recovery, but only if it includes jobs. A second stimulus simply won't happen now, and we're basically at the mercy of large firms and when they decide to hire at this point, which isn't likely in the near term if they can increase productivity without bringing anyone back.

That said, when the White House goes out and defends the stimulus, the least they can do is defend the underlying ideology. This AP "fact check" on the stimulus is fairly ridiculous, more a nitpick than a fact check, but assuming they quoted Biden right, this is terrible:

Biden exercised some restraint in his praise for the stimulus' impact. He took a more cautious approach, for example, when asked if his declaration of stimulus success means Americans can now rethink the common view that government is wasteful and inefficient.

"I think it's too early to make that decision, to be very blunt about it," he said.

No, it's not too early to make that decision. The point of stimulus is to get money out quickly and into people's hands. If anything, Biden and his team are being too deliberate about that, to keep away the newspaper headlines of wasteful spending. Pro Publica, for example, needs to blow it out their ass. Anything that creates jobs is stimulus, people. Pro Publica tries to catch Biden in a lie by claiming that money isn't flowing to hard-hit communities, when Biden was clearly talking about increased unemployment benefits and food stamps and help for all low-income Americans. It's hoops like this which modern Presidencies have to jump through that create such a "common view" about inefficient government.

But Biden needs to attack that. The fact of the matter is that public investment creates jobs and saves people's lives. It's OK to state that aggressively. If he doesn't, Republicans certainly won't. And they'll continue to demonize government.

The Administration is in a tough rhetorical spot, considering the jobless recovery. But that's not a time to give ground.

Um, The Stimulus Is Working

Conservatives very smartly conflated the bailout and the stimulus in people's minds, and traded off public anger with one to demonize the other. They're still doing it, too, with Eric Cantor today suggesting to cancel the rest of the stimulus and "pay off the debt." Most of the debt comes from Bush-era policies, so this is nonsense. It's also wrong to state that the stimulus should be cancelled because it's not working. In fact, Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal tells us the opposite today:

The U.S. economy is beginning to show signs of improvement, with many economists asserting the worst is past and data pointing to stronger-than-expected growth. On Tuesday, data showed manufacturing grew in August for the first time in more than a year. "There's a method to the madness. We're getting out of this," said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight.

Much of the stimulus spending is just beginning to trickle through the economy, with spending expected to peak sometime later this year or in early 2010. The government has funneled about $60 billion of the $288 billion in promised tax cuts to U.S. households, while about $84 billion of the $499 billion in spending has been paid. About $200 billion has been promised to certain projects, such as infrastructure and energy projects.

Economists say the money out the door -- combined with the expectation of additional funds flowing soon -- is fueling growth above where it would have been without any government action.

Many forecasters say stimulus spending is adding two to three percentage points to economic growth in the second and third quarters, when measured at an annual rate. The impact in the second quarter, calculated by analyzing how the extra funds flowing into the economy boost consumption, investment and spending, helped slow the rate of decline and will lay the groundwork for positive growth in the third quarter -- something that seemed almost implausible just a few months ago. Some economists say the 1% contraction in the second quarter would have been far worse, possibly as much as 3.2%, if not for the stimulus.

The recovery is still jobless thus far, which means it's not a real recovery yet. And the White House made two mistakes - one, they soft-pedaled the recession, claiming that unemployment would not go above 9% or so, leaving them susceptible to the charge that the stimulus isn't working; and two, they put too much of the stimulus into tax cuts instead of the public investment that would have made it even more successful, particularly on the jobs front.

But without the public investment the stimulus has thus far provided and will continue to provide, we'd be mired in more negative growth and a near-depression. That's the reality.

The President has actually tried to talk up the benefits of the stimulus, but not in a forceful way. As a result, the conservative conflation has led to a souring on government, directly attributable to a lack of leadership and messaging.

Paul Krugman argued recently that Obama hadn't effectively used the bully pulpit to slay "government-is-bad fundamentalism." This is only one poll, but it's fair to ask whether these numbers bear that out.

Obama's poll slide has prompted some to ask whether his presidency might fall short of the transformative moment many expected. I think it's too early to reach a conclusion on this. If Obama pulls out a health care victory, everything will shift again.

But for a time it seemed like shattering the government-is-bad paradigm was distinctly within Obama's reach. General confidence in the government's ability to secure the public's well being seems like pretty good number to keep an eye on when gaming out the potential for transformation of this moment, and of this presidency.

This has mostly resonated in the health care debate, with insurance companies inexplicably getting somewhat higher marks now than government as a health care provider, despite the fact that the groups with the highest satisfaction with their health care are seniors (government-provided single-payer system), and veterans (government-run NHS-style system).

Politics is about storytelling. Obama during his campaign actually started to tell a pretty decent story about government as a guarantor of basic rights, which can equalize opportunity and give everyone a shot. He told a story of community, where we take care of each other and use government as a means to do so.

That's basically gone. And as a result, the public investment program that averted a depression is considered a failure.

Very dangerous.

Freedom Riders

Turns out that the teabaggers at one town hall meeting in Texas weren't from the area:

Last night, Rep. Gene Green (D-TX) hosted a rowdy town hall meeting to discuss health care reform. Fox’s local Houston affiliate reporter, Duarte Geraldino, reported that he talked to the participants and found that “some attendees admit they don’t live in the district.” How did they get there? Geraldino noted “an internet campaign” by far right activists urging their allies to attend and heckle Democratic Representatives. Geraldino then aired a clip showing one participant acting disrespectfully towards Rep. Green. “Pay close attention to the man behind the congressman,” Geraldino says in this clip, “he seems to have forgotten the part about respect.” Watch it:

Here's my favorite part:

During the town hall, one conservative activist turns to his fellow attendees and asks them to raise their hands if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Almost all the hands shot up. Rep Green quickly turned the question on the audience and asked, “How many of you have Medicare?” Nearly half the attendees raised their hands, failing to note the irony.

Decades of conservative message dominance has convinced a healthy portion of the public that a government-run program isn't run by the government. Failure to counteract that message 30 years ago is deeply affecting this debate today. Paul Waldman writes:

After decades of being told that the federal government is a sinister, rapacious beast with nothing but evil intents, the idea that a complex bill might contain a Soylent Green provision isn't too far a stretch. Nonetheless, it remains entirely possible that before long, health reform will no longer be a debate but will become an actual policy, one that will succeed or fail on its own merits. As both sides have understood (the Republicans more so than the Democrats, however), this battle is so critical because the stakes go to the heart of each party's approach to the role of government.

Both parties hope that the successful implementation of their favored policies will lead to a broader acceptance of their ideology. Republicans want to privatize government services not only as an end in itself but to show people that the private sector works better than government. In the same way, Democrats advocate for effective government services not only to solve an immediate problem but to demonstrate that government can in fact do some things very well.

Unfortunately, the successful implementation of a government program doesn't necessarily convince people that government can successfully implement programs. Antipathy toward government even among many who receive both Medicare and Social Security -- two of the most successful government programs in history -- is remarkably strong. In fact, by some measures, the elderly have the most skeptical views of government. For instance, in the latest version of the Pew values survey, 64 percent of those over 65 -- who are either on Medicare and Social Security or know that they will be soon -- said that "when something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful" (see page 34 here). That compares to only 43 percent of those age 18 to 29.

Part of that is just the tribal identity with conservatism (which is stronger in those over 65, based on most surveys) trumping the shared knowledge of government programs like Medicare and Social Security. Because these same people generally really like those programs; they've just convinced themselves, in a supreme case of cognitive dissonance, that government doesn't work well (except for whatever it is they're getting). And mainly, that's because they've heard this repeated from the conservative noise machine for thirty years, virtually unchallenged and sometimes enthusiastically endorsed by Democrats.

Or perhaps there's another answer. The polls are showing that people under 50 support health care reform at much higher levels than people over 50. It's no accident that the strongest smears against the plan have to do with killing grandma or taking things away from Medicare. They like what they have and are wary of extending it to the rest of the population, mainly because of how it might impact them.

But this is a funny type of skepticism. Seniors don't oppose government-run health insurance. They like it too much. Americans over 65 live in a welfare state that most Europeans could only dream about. They have single-payer health care and government-run pensions. Most of their political activity is either an effort to expand those programs or a defense against anything that could in any way harm them. That includes not only direct changes, like cuts to Medicare, but indirect changes, like health-care reform that would focus new resources on the uninsured.

This is a reversal of the normal politics of opposition. Generally speaking, people who oppose health-care reform are worried we're going to end up with something like what Canada has. Not seniors. They have something like what Canada has (Canada, in fact, also calls their health insurance program "Medicare"). And they like it. They report higher rates of satisfaction with their health care than do people in employer-sponsored insurance. They're worried, rather, that they might end up with something like what the rest of America has. And having spent time in both Medicare and private health insurance, they don't want that. They don't want that at all.

The fight to get successful government recognized is an ideological fight. To those who already have evidence of successful government, the fight is somewhat different. They still echo the conservative line of "government is teh suck," but they don't want their government programs tampered with. How do you thread that needle?

Stories Of Government Working

After a minor stumble, the House today passed the Food Safety Enhancement Act, which would bolster the Food and Drug Administration's efforts to ensure food that's not contaminated and vomit-inducing. La Vida Locavore has more. Basically, the bill would properly fund the FDA to carry out their mission, paid for by the food producers, and would enact stringent performance standards for food producers, with mandatory trace-back systems and frequent inspections of facilities. And it would apply the standards for domestic food safety to imported food as well.

Given how pretty much almost everyone in America eats food, and given the high profile of food outbreaks during the age of e.coli conservatism, if this gets through the Senate I would hope that somebody would let the public know. It ain't health care reform, but it's an important measure with a tangible effect on people's lives. I'll give you a couple others. The stimulus package provided $100 million dollars for the nation's food banks to make sure the truly needy could find food this year during these economic struggles. Food assistance is up about 30% this year over last year, and so providing some stimulus funds to feed people has a real human benefit, in addition to allowing the hungry some breathing space to get back on their feet. And the House pumped in some more money for highway and unemployment funds, so that people who are jobless can continue to access benefits and construction projects in the states can continue.

We have a problem with the conservative demonization of government, mainly because too few people are out there telling the story of government when it works. It makes it easier to lift the heavy policy objects when you restore a little bit of trust that when government is properly organized and managed it can actually help people.

This is another failure that liberals would be wise to counteract.

UPDATE: The roll call. The food safety bill passed 283-142. A few House liberals voted against it, I'd be interested to hear their thoughts.

UPDATE: The President:

"Today the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, legislation that will raise food safety standards, allow the FDA to issue mandatory recalls of harmful products, and enhance our oversight of imported food.

This action represents a major step forward in modernizing our food safety system and protecting Americans from foodborne illness. Those are the goals of the Food Safety Working Group I convened in March and charged with making recommendations to improve our food safety system. And that is why we announced a new rule to control Salmonella contamination in eggs and are working to reduce the presence of harmful pathogens such as E. coli in meat and produce; strengthen our capacity to trace the source of outbreaks; and update our emergency operations procedures.

I commend the House of Representatives for its action today and look forward to working with the Senate to enact critical food safety legislation."

This stuff matters too.

Food Safety And Its Consequences

It is exceedingly smart for the President to tackle food safety in his weekly address. The Twitterers in Washington will yelp "But how can he take on something ELSE?" But I'm going to go ahead and guess that 100% of Americans eat food. And the e. coli conservatism of the Bush years had a real and profound effect on people. There's a lady on my street who I see walking my dog every now and again, and one of her dogs died from the melamine scandal a couple years back. Here in California, the tainted spinach scare of 2007 cost the state's farmers hundreds of millions of dollars. It's astonishing that we have had to worry for so long about the quality of the food we purchase, and it contributes to this anti-government backlash that they are incompetent and unable to deal with even core functions.

And that was true - under an executive branch that didn't regulate and didn't care about food safety. But this executive branch will. And Obama's opening paragraph of his weekly address signals that government is vital and needs to be treated with seriousness and respect.

I’ve often said that I don’t believe government has the answer to every problem or that it can do all things for all people. We are a nation built on the strength of individual initiative. But there are certain things that we can’t do on our own. There are certain things only a government can do. And one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat, and the medicines we take, are safe and don’t cause us harm. That is the mission of our Food and Drug Administration and it is a mission shared by our Department of Agriculture, and a variety of other agencies and offices at just about every level of government.

In the address Obama announced the appointment of Margaret Hamburg as the new head of the FDA. She has a long record in government, including a stint as New York's health commissioner. Her deputy, Joshua Sharfstein, is the Baltimore Health Commissioner. They are serious people who are not former lobbyists or executives of the industries they will regulate, and they will get the proper staffing and funding to actually carry out the mission of the department.

People have lost faith in our institutions. A more competent and successful FDA may seem small, but it's part of an effort to restore trust in government, as the only entity big enough for numerous tasks. Proven ability in making food safer and more secure can lead to proving that government can administer health care or implement a workable system to fight global warming. With e. coli conservatism demonizing the functions of government for so long, it's vital to see some pushback.

The address is below.



UPDATE: Here's a really good part of this - banning downer cows from the food supply. This is a health initiative, not just public safety.

Giving Away The Tax Argument

During the Presidential race the Obama campaign kept putting out "tax calculators" and emphasizing their tax cut plans for 95% of Americans. Now the DCCC, the Democratic campaign arm in the House, is specifically targeting House Republicans for opposing the stimulus package, foregrounding that they voted against "the largest tax cut in American history". Here's a sample robocall they are putting into these districts:

Hello, I’m calling on behalf of House Democrats with an important message about the economy.

Did you know Congressman Thad McCotter voted against President Obama’s economic recovery plan, endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? McCotter’s empty rhetoric can’t hide that he voted to raise the AMT tax on 22 million middle class Americans and against the largest tax cut in history.

Call McCotter at 734-632-0314 to ask why he voted to raise taxes on middle class families.

Check out www.recoveryforamerica.org to learn more.

Paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, 202-741-1350, not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

It's great that they're engaging in some off-cycle organizing and campaigning. But the message is stupid, short-sighted and reinforcing to conservative frames. First of all, 65% of the stimulus consisted of spending and investment, much of which is wildly popular, and also the only way it will work, through fiscal spending filling in the gaps for decreased private investment and consumer spending and creating more jobs and more demand. Tax cuts aren't only a minor part of the bill, they have less stimulative value. If this works, it won't be because of tax cuts, it will be in spite of them. And, as Brian Beutler notes:

We'll all be better off if as many Americans as possible swap out their tax cut mania for a sense that government can, in fact, meliorate the country's biggest problems. I, personally, would like to keep the number of people who think tax cuts saved the economy to a minimum. The fewer the better--both for progressives and progressivism.

The government's eventually going to have to raise taxes to pay for all this, after all. Democrats will almost certainly be the ones to do this and there's no reason they should be sabotaging public support for those increases years in advance.

The media already highlights the tax side of the equation over spending, dramatically portraying tax increases while relegating spending cuts to paragraph 27. It feeds the tax revolt and distorts the debate. And it's completely irresponsible. And the DCCC is simply enabling this.

Taxes are the price we pay for a functioning society, and America is worth paying for. Joe Biden tried to run with this message once during the campaign and got his head cut off, so now Democrats are turning back. They are trying to take tax cuts "off the table" with rhetoric that accepts the right's frame. When both parties are running on who will cut your taxes the most, it cheapens the value of federal investment in providing for the future, and the ability for government to prove its value as a guarantor of those most basic rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as well as promoting the general welfare.

If we're embarking on a new effort to convince the public that government can work, you don't start by bragging about starving it of resources. You can't win a fight with Republicans about cutting taxes. It's a race to the bottom and the losers are the least of society.

Growing Anger Over The Cone Of Silence

Yesterday I noted the insanity of the Big Five process, which subverts representative democracy and good government.

The Big Five process is absurd. There are ways to decrease the influence of special interests, the biggest being full public financing of all elections. The best practice is NOT to hide from them so that the legislative process is like a team of burglars trying to rob a jewelry store without being detected. And the less people involved in any negotiation, the more possibility for eventual corruption through backroom dealing.

Others have piled on. Greg Lucas has penned an open letter to the budget negotiators, all five of them.

Do none of you find it troubling that the decisions you are making regarding the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars are largely made in private and then announced deus ex machina to us, the public, whose money it is you are allocating.

Seems like there should be some public hearings on what’s happening to the public’s money. There used to be hearings like that. Of course, there used to be conference committees and compromise too [...]

Better choices might be found if some testimony were taken from the 1 million or so aged, blind and disabled poor who not only will not receive a cost of living increase this year but will see their checks rolled back to 2008 levels in order to save $177 million this year and $500 million the next [...]

Sure, it’s a representative government and you’re supposed to represent us but most of you were around last year when a record for tardiness was set for passing an alleged budget that was both irresponsible and out of balance in 15, maybe 16, seconds. So, with respect, looks like you can use some help.

Finally, while the Legislature is not subject to the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act – a drafting error, no doubt – at a minimum some sunlight should be shone on the most important public policy act the state takes: putting together its annual spending plan.

And Jean Ross at the California Budget Project laments what she dubs the cone of silence.

Secrecy in budget negotiations is nothing new. However, the level of secrecy around budget negotiations that reached a new high last summer has been far surpassed by the lack of information in the current negotiations. While rumors fly daily - often several times a day - as to when a vote on a budget deal may occur, these rumors are neither confirmed nor denied by those truly in the know.

The one safe bet seems to be that there will be no public hearings and no opportunity for public input on major decisions that will shape California for years, if not decades, to come. The taxes and spending cuts that are likely to be included will no doubt be drawn from some combination of the Governor’s proposals and plans supported by Legislative Democrats in late 2008. However, there are increasing signs that additional measures, such as a “hard” spending cap and sizeable tax cuts for the state’s largest corporations, may also be part of the package. The cone of silence has been particularly airtight with respect to “add ons” such as these. No details have been made available to rank and file lawmakers or the public that would enable a critical assessment of the impact they might have on current and future budgets.

This is just not a way to run a government that purports to be a democracy and not an oligrachy. It's our money. Open the doors.

The Hidden Budget Process

Everything that is corrosive and broken about California politics can be seen in this incredible article by Kevin Yamamura. In it, he explains that negotiations on the budget are being held by the Assembly and Senate leadership in secret, so as not to upset the critical balance needed to pass it.

Five Californians are trying to solve the state's budget crisis, in part by keeping the other 38 million residents in the dark.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the four legislative leaders have continued their negotiations behind closed doors for weeks, bypassing open legislative committees and offering the outside world few details as a precondition of their talks.

See, what happens is that the population of 38 million elects 120 representatives to go to Sacramento, and they vest all their power in the hands of four leaders, and they go off to run the state by themselves. It's such a brilliant program, not subject to personal ambitions or petty jealousies. Not at all.

Among the people the Big Five are hiding from are their own fellow legislators, and lobbyists:

They fear special interests will mobilize on every proposal they hear about, ramp up pressure on lawmakers and prevent any possibility of reaching a deal that could secure enough votes.

"Whether it's education or labor or any of the other groups, when we get wind of something that has significant jeopardy for us, we fight against it," said Kevin Gordon, a lobbyist for hundreds of California school districts. "It's a (lobbying) system set up to defeat the latest idea that's been hatched, which makes it that much harder to get a solution."

When they do reach a deal, legislative leaders intend to hide it as long as they can until a floor vote, for fear that lobbyists may undermine the agreement by persuading key legislators to vote against it.

Wow, there's an honest lobbyist.

So let's get this straight: budget negotiations are happening in secret, because if they were even remotely public, special interests would scuttle the deal. And when an agreement is reached, they're going to SNEAK IT ONTO THE FLOOR so no wayward lawmaker gets in his silly little head that he wants to read it.

The increased secrecy behind this year's "Big Five" leadership negotiations has made interest groups nervous and has alarmed open-government proponents.

"The thought that to be able to solve this you have to ram it down members' throats just to lock something up before a constituency finds it outrageous is evidence of how bad the process has gotten," said Terry Francke of Californians Aware, an open-government advocacy group.

Yep. Keep in mind that there has not been one Budget Committee hearing this year. When a deal is reached, that committee will probably meet in the middle of the night and rubber-stamp the deal, moving to the floor as fast as possible to outflank the special interests who clearly run the state.

The Big Five process is absurd. There are ways to decrease the influence of special interests, the biggest being full public financing of all elections. The best practice is NOT to hide from them so that the legislative process is like a team of burglars trying to rob a jewelry store without being detected. And the less people involved in any negotiation, the more possibility for eventual corruption through backroom dealing.

The entire brief for a Constitutional convention can now be "Read A-1 of the Sac Bee on February 4, 2009."

Greetings From The Failed State

Open Left's Paul Rosenberg summarized Calitics over the past week by musing that California is a failed state. It's hard to argue with that. We have a political system governed in exactly the opposite direction of the will of the people. Despite 63% majorities in the Assembly and the Senate, in Sacramento the Yacht Party rules.

California is bleeding Republican red as the state's minority party tries to squeeze a spending cap and pro-business policies from fiscal chaos.

Badly outnumbered and often ignored by the Democratic-dominated Legislature, the GOP is not getting sand kicked in its face these days.

California is hurtling toward a financial abyss, projecting a $40 billion shortfall by July 2010, and no deal can be struck without at least three Republican votes in both the Assembly and Senate.

GOP officials clutch that trump card with relish as the state braces to pull the plug on $5 billion in public works projects and warns it won't be able to pay all its bills by February or March.

Kind of amusing that the Treasurer thought he was making a threat to Yacht Party regulars when he vowed to shut down infrastructure projects without a budget deal. To the GOP, that's a GOAL. All the posturing and tut-tutting at the lack of compromise, along with the horror stories spun out as a consequence of doing nothing, simply bolster the Yacht Party argument. If you haven't been paying attention, they want to do nothing. They want to end government. In a way they are the ultimate anarchists.

There's supposed to be some kind of "cuts only" package released by Republican leaders today, by the way:

The GOP is scheduled to unveil its own proposal Monday, with no tax hike. The plan is expected to identify about $11 billion in budget cuts and, among other things, propose asking voters to redirect money designated for mental health programs and preschool programs and services.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, characterized the high-stakes showdown between legislative Democrats and Republicans as political "chicken," with each party expecting the other to blink.

"I think they're going to run off a cliff," Lockyer said.

Incidentally, Bass and Steinberg are willing to come together on good government reforms, which we shouldn't oppose in a knee-jerk fashion. Liberals support reforming government and making it effective because they believe in it. Republicans, under the guise of "reform," mean to destroy government. I don't think there's anything wrong with a performance review that looks at duplication or ineffective programs and seeks to mend them. That's what oversight is all about, and it's a core function of the legislature. What I do take issue with is the idea that reform is a "magic bullet" that will end all budgetary worries without anyone having to feel the pain. That's irrational and ridiculous, especially in this moment of crisis.

Neo-Hooverism Quashed

Barack Obama was pretty unequivocal last night making the case for Keynesian deficit spending to lift us out of the recession.

STEVE KROFT: Where is all the money going to come from to do all of these things? And is there a point where just going to the Treasury Department and printing more of it ceases to be an option?

PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: Well, look, I think what's interesting about the time that we're in right now is that you actually have a consensus among conservative Republican-leaning economists and liberal left-leaning economists.

And the consensus is this:

That we have to do whatever it takes to get this economy moving again. That we're gonna have to spend money now to stimulate the economy. And that we shouldn't worry about the deficit next year or even the year after. That, short term, the most important thing is that we avoid a deepening recession.

Very good news. It doesn't mean that journalists like Kroft are going to stop asking these know-nothing types of questions, or that the Beltway chattering class isn't going to rend their garments over it. But Obama has the right perspective. Government is the spender of last resort in an economic downturn.

And good on Paul Krugman for knocking down the revisionist nonsense that George Will was spewing on ABC's This Week.



In essence, private investment was already bottomed out before FDR came into power. He didn't discourage it at all. After the New Deal was working well for a few years, he tried to go back to balancing budgets and the economy was too fragile to take it. FDR's problem, then, was that he was TOO CONSERVATIVE at a time that led to a new recession. This chart is instructive.



I think there's a subset of official Washington that believes the economy runs like their checkbook, and that in a downturn you have to cut back, but I think the public is waiting to be sold on that idea, and what they're really looking for is effective government. Should they get that with the new Administration, they'd be immune to Republican fearmongering.

The exception is that moderates remain far more skeptical about government -- and government spending -- than liberals do. Conservative misrule has given them every reason to believe that large portions of their taxes are wasted. Not surprisingly, Republicans and conservatives have already been trying to paint Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal, while bemoaning the fact that Bush ran up deficits at the same time he increased spending across the board.

But progressives needn't be defensive about the majority that is dubious about government spending. Making government work effectively is at the heart, not the capillaries of the progressive agenda. This test doesn't distract; it focuses us on our task. No progressive majority can ever be consolidated for long if it doesn't demonstrate that government can be an effective ally for everyone.

And that is all moderates are looking for. They aren't skeptical about the need for government. By large margins, they think regulation does more good than harm. They want investments made in education and training. They favor a concerted government-led drive for energy independence. They far prefer a health-care plan with a choice between their current insurance and a public plan like Medicare, rather than one that would give them a tax credit to negotiate with insurance companies on their own. Their concern is less that government will do too much and more that government will fail to do what it must and waste their money in the process.

Obama has a moment to change that conversation and show how government can effectively respond to challenges. It may only be a moment, but it's better than nothing.

The 5 Stages of McCain Grief

As McCain fantasy turns inexorably to McCain reality, media figures are truly struggling with how to deal with it. There's a definite 5-stages-of-grief feel to it. With denial and depression we have Joke Line, who knows that McCain's statements on Iraq are reductive and stupid, but can't imagine that, you know, he really believes that:

They'd be taking a country? Last time I checked, Iraq has a Shi'ite majority. McCain thinks the Shi'ites--the Mahdi Army, the Badr Corps (and yes, the Iranians)--would allow a small group of Sunni extremists to take over? In fact, as noted above, the vast majority of indigenous Iraqi Sunnis aren't too thrilled about the AQI presence in their country, either. (The usual caveats apply: AQI is barbaric, dastardly and intent on violating the Qu'ran by engaging in the annihilation of innocents. We can't get rid of them fast enough.)

The sadness here is that McCain knows better. He knows the complexities of the world, and the region. But I suspect he's overplaying his Iraq hand in order to win favor with the wingnuts in his party. That is extremely unfortunate: As McCain should know better than anyone, it is extremely dishonorable for politicians to play bloody-shirt games when the nation is at war.

Giving us the bargaining is Democracy 21's Fred Wertheimer, a McCain ally in the campaign finance reform fight who reacts to the obvious illegality in McCain's gaming the public financing system by trying to direct the issue elsewhere:

The shut down of the Federal Election Commission has taken center stage because there is no functioning agency to deal with the issue of whether bank loans taken out by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and the collateral provided for those bank loans, means that Senator McCain cannot withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system and is bound by its spending limits for the rest of his primary campaign.

The Washington Post has noted in an article (February 27, 2008), "the dispute centers on the most esoteric aspects of campaign finance law." It also involves interpretations of the loan agreement between McCain and the bank, and the question of what constitutes "collateral" for the loan.

The dispute, which could have enormous consequences for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, is further complicated by the fact that the complex legal questions involved here are being raised in the intense heat of the battle for the presidency.

The unprecedented legal issues involved in this dispute raise questions of both campaign finance and commercial banking law, and are issues that have to be resolved by the FEC and potentially the federal courts.

Democracy 21 does not have the answers to the legal questions that have been raised. There are novel and close questions.

In other words, McCain is a saint and somebody else can figure out if using the public system to get a bank loan and eliminate ballot access fees is, you know, a violation of the spirit of the law.

And producing acceptance is George Will. There's a bit of sleight-of-hand in the op-ed, with Will subtly blaming Barack Obama for holding up the FEC on the McCain matter when it's clearly the fault of Mitch McConnell packaging all these FEC commissioner's confirmations together. But generally this is solid.

First, the Times muddied, with unsubstantiated sexual innuendo about a female lobbyist, a story about McCain's flights on jets owned by corporations with business before the Senate Commerce Committee, and his meeting with a broadcaster (McCain at first denied it happened; the broadcaster insists it did, and McCain now agrees) who sought and received McCain's help in pressuring the Federal Communications Commission. Perhaps McCain did nothing corrupt, but he promiscuously accuses others of corruption, or the "appearance" thereof. And he insists that the appearance of corruption justifies laws criminalizing political behavior -- e.g., broadcasting an electioneering communication that "refers to" a federal candidate during the McCain-Feingold blackout period close to an election.

McCain should thank the Times also because its semi-steamy story distracted attention from an unsavory story about McCain's dexterity in gaming the system for taxpayer financing of campaigns. Last summer, when his mismanagement of his campaign left it destitute, he applied for public funding, which entails spending limits. He seemed to promise to use tax dollars as partial collateral for a bank loan [...]

In 2001, McCain, a situational ethicist regarding "big money" in politics, founded the Reform Institute to lobby for his agenda of campaign restrictions. It accepted large contributions, some of six figures, from corporations with business before the Commerce Committee (e.g., Echosphere, DISH Network, Cablevision Systems Corp., a charity funded by the head of Univision). The Reform Institute's leadership included Potter and two others who are senior advisers in McCain's campaign, Rick Davis and Carla Eudy.

Although his campaign is run by lobbyists; and although his dealings with lobbyists have generated what he, when judging the behavior of others, calls corrupt appearances; and although he has profited from his manipulation of the taxpayer-funding system that is celebrated by reformers -- still, he probably is innocent of insincerity. Such is his towering moral vanity, he seems sincerely to consider it theoretically impossible for him to commit the offenses of appearances that he incessantly ascribes to others.

It's still unclear exactly who will join Will in the acceptance stage. But they're clearly finding an answer for their grief at their soiled Maverick.

The Honor Of John McCain

Man, this election is going to be like going up against a Klingon, with all of the recitations of honor. Only the man they're describing is in no way honorable.

First, the campaign finance update. The New York Times and the Washington Post move along the story today. The Times focuses on the fact that McCain benefited from the public system by having his ballot access fees in Ohio waived. This is pretty unequivocal and a clear instance of using public money to benefit himself, then dropping out when it didn't. The Post goes after the issue of the bank loan.

Sen. John McCain's campaign and a Bethesda bank strongly defended $4 million in loans yesterday, as Democrats questioned their legality and said that the way they were secured requires the Arizona Republican to abide by federal spending restrictions.

On Monday, the Democratic National Committee filed a complaint with the FEC arguing that the way the loans were structured -- by using the promise of federal matching funds as collateral -- requires McCain to remain in the system. McCain "secured a $4 million line of credit to keep his campaign afloat by using public financing as collateral. He should follow the law," said Howard Dean, the DNC chairman.

The reform organizations who you'd think would have a particular interest in this issue - I mean, this sets a horrible precedent that you can use the public system to your benefit and then drop out whenever you want, leaving taxpayers holding the bag - are still silent, and many campaign finance experts are saddened by this turn of events.

It goes too far to say that a number of these reform outfits are favoring the McCain Presidential candidacy. They are more, more than anything else, protecting themselves. To a fault, they have invested heavily in the McCain asset base: he has fought their fights, introduced their bills, promoted their regulatory agendas, helped them secure good press for this all. After so great a dependence on him, the costs of his diminished luster on reform issues are also theirs to pay.

It appears that these organizations are calculating that, by keeping their own counsel in the McCain matter, they will limit their costs. Saying nothing now, on the Presidential bank loan (and Gold raises other recent questions), serves to reduce visibility of the charges and, conceivably, to contain them, raising the chance that they will more simmer in the back pages than blaze, red-hot, on the front page.

The self-preservation from these good government groups, letting their publicity magnet get in the way of their reading of the law, is infuriating. But they rely on McCain's "honor".

In fact, McCain is so honorable that he's got a man indicted on 35 counts of fraud and money laundering on his leadership team. Indeed, McCain believes that Rick Renzi, who has vowed to remain in Congress while this transpires, should stay on with the campaign as well - or at least that it "doesn't matter" if he stays. The presumption of innocence notwithstanding, you'd think that whole "honor" thing would come into play when discussing someone with that many black marks against him.

In fact, McCain doesn't have much honor himself when it comes to these issues; he withheld documents while chairing a Senate Indian Affairs Committee investigation into the Abramoff mess, shielding powerful Republicans from the prospect of having their corrupt activities burst into the open.

And then there's the honorable man who warmed up the crowd for him yesterday in Cincinnati, a right-wing radio nut named Bill Cunningham. He went on a tirade with all sorts of smears against Barack Obama, which McCain "distanced himself from". Only he's been all aboard the smear train at several points in his public life, including in this campaign, where he's laughed at questions like "How do we beat the bitch," in reference to Hillary Clinton. Not only that, McCain claimed to have never met Cunningham, but Cunningham says otherwise, and while he's not really to be believed, there's a history of lying on all sides here.



So the "honor" talk around McCain is really execrable, and hollow, and almost totally meaningless. Not that it'll stop.

UPDATE: There is, of course, a lot of honor in being America's worst Senator for children.

CDF ranked members on 10 votes affecting children:

1. Increase minimum wage (H.R. 2)
2. Increase funding for children with disabilities (S. Con. Res. 21)
3. Protect children from unsafe medications (S. 1082)
4. 2008 Budget resolution (S. Con. Res. 21)
5. SCHIP Reauthorization (H.R. 976)
6. College Cost Reduction and Access Act (H.R. 2669)
7. SCHIP (H.R. 976 - motion to concur)
8. DREAM Act (S. 2205)
9. Funding child health and education (H.R. 3043)
10. Improving Head Start programs (H.R. 1429)

McCain has missed 57 percent of Senate votes this session, being absent or voting “present” for 8 out of 10 children-related votes. McCain voted “yes” to increase the minimum wage; his only other vote was voting “no” on SCHIP reauthorization on Aug. 2, 2007.

It would be nice if this little stat became just as ubiquitous as the "Obama is the most liberal member of the Senate" blurb. John "Worst Senator for Children" McCain ought to be his name. Democrats who find their way onto television, take note.

Big-Spendin' McCain Update

So the DNC's complaint to the FEC is clearly getting under John McCain's skin. Leading to this ludicrous framing: that ripping off American taxpayers is a civil rights issue:

...Potter said the Supreme Court concluded that public financing for campaigns is constitutional because it is voluntary. "As a result, candidates have a constitutional right to withdraw from the program."

Of course, the problem is they've already USED the program. They used the money to get ballot access in Ohio and Delaware (Here's the relevant proof from Ohio, and the one from Delaware). They used the money in the public system to get a bank loan. There is no known Constitutional right that I know of for using public money and then pretending you didn't.

So in addition to the "Because I said so" defense, McCain is going to have to get an FEC ruling. Only the FEC only has two commissioners on it, due to a jam caused by Hans von Spakovsky's nomination and the unwillingness by Senate Republicans to decouple his confirmation from the other three broadly acceptable commissioners-in-waiting. Keep in mind that the DNC could actually file suit to force compliance on this. So John McCain may have to rely on Mitch McConnell to save his Presidential campaign. Which puts McConnell, who has been public enemy #1 on campaign finance issues, in a unique position.

This puts the Dems in a strong position--by denying the FEC a quorum, they can deny McCain the ability to get out of matching funds. They don't have to do anything except continue to refuse to consider all four nominated commissioners a hearing together; so long as they continue to insist that von Spakovsky receive his own hearing, things won't move forward.

Unless Mitch McConnell budges on his insistence that all the commissioners receive a hearing together.

But here 's the thing. Mitch McConnell (whom I'd include among those GOP bigwigs whose support Mitt would get before threatening to un-suspend his campaign) hates John McCain. Absolutely hates him.

In fact, I'd say that McConnell is one of the most likely sources for the Iseman story in the first place. After all, the first piece of evidence to counter McCain's denials was McCain's deposition in McConnell's suit against the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law (BCRA is one of the reasons McConnell hates McCain so much). The deposition was given to McConnell's attorney in that suit, Floyd Abrams. While the deposition is publicly available, it is likely that someone pointed Isikoff to it. If so, I'm guessing that someone is rather closer to McConnell than he is to McCain.

Meanwhile, the good government reform groups have taken a complete pass on McCain's dirty effort to rip off taxpayers. Public Citizen (the group founded by Ralph Nader) is even offering testimony on McCain's behalf. This is nuts.

I've alluded to this with subtle jabs, but it's time to come out and say it clearly: There are a set of groups in Washington identified with the cause of campaign finance reform that seem to sit up at night staring at a picture of John McCain and waiting for the phone to ring. The four-year affair that ended with passage of the McCain-Feingold legislation banning soft money was the high point of their lives (to their credit, it was quite a political achievement -- still the only piece of legislation enacted over the objections of a majority of Republicans and the misgivings of Bush) but at this point, especially after the (entirely predictable) Supreme Court decision striking down its restrictions on television ads, McCain-Feingold doesn't amount to more than a memory.

This unrequited loyalty not only apparently gives McCain a free pass on abuses such as the loan; it has allowed him to essentially dominate the field, without lifting a finger. McCain's monopoly, as the only Republican interested in reform, gave him incredible power over the agenda (pushing purely restrictive policies, such as the proposed restrictions on political bloggers in 2005, and on non-profits the previous year) and leverage over the organizations, whose support from foundations depends on being bipartisan. This "McCain Wing" of the campaign finance reform movement is led by Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center, both generally admirable and adept organizations, with small staffs and significant influence on the Hill and with reporters and editorial writers. The largest campaign finance organization, and the only one with real members, Common Cause, has been gradually moving beyond the cramped, restrictive view of reform represented by the McCain wing toward a more open approach, with great internal angst -- a longer story than can be told in a blog post!

Matt Stoller has more on Common Cause's legacy of failure. These so-called Democratic allies simply have not properly understood the current political climate and have hampered efforts at progressive change over and over. The single-issue groups have to adapt to remain relevant. And part of that is recognizing the big picture rather than keeping loyalty to Republicans who offer little more than lip service to them.

UPDATE: I forgot: McCain's other defense of his actions was to whine "B-But Howard Dean did it too," always my favorite Republican excuse for lawbreaking - "but it was widespread lawbreaking!" And in this case, it's not true, and Dean has the primary evidence. The bottom line is that Dean didn't take out a loan with public money used as collateral, and he didn't use the public system to save millions in ballot access fees.

But He's A Maverick!

Marc Schmitt:

And, speaking of reform groups, have you seen the press release from Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Public Citizen, the League of Women Voters and U.S. PIRG urging Senator McCain to keep his commitment to public financing and stop manipulating the matching funds system for the primaries? No? Me neither. I'm sure it's coming any. day. now.

Cindy McCain is starting to hit Michelle Obama today over some rhetorical flourish. This would be an excellent way to fight back. Really, the major candidates could get a lot out of this. John McCain essentially tried to hold up the public financing system for personal welfare payments while talking about how committed he was to campaign finance reform. That's RIPE for an attack.

Also, this shows the failure of these good government groups, which find themselves as resistant to looking at reality instead of conventional narratives as the traditional media.

A New Generation of Progressive Leadership

Democrats and particularly bloggers like to take the piss out of Barack Obama and John Edwards and the rest of our slate of Democratic Presidential candidates a lot; I've joined them. But it's undeniable that we're seeing a completely different dynamic in 2007 that we saw in 2003 leading up to the primaries. Then, centrist pro-gun fiscally conservative Howard Dean was seen as a wild-eyed liberal just to the left of Karl Marx. The range of topics was extremely narrow, and the solutions expressed even narrower. Today, we see a broad progressive agenda espoused by everyone - even Hillary Clinton - and practically everyone in this race has pitched their message in a more progressive way than even Dean. (OK, not Biden, but he represents the past)

The candidates' liberal chorus about the war in Iraq, gay rights, healthcare and labor issues was a testament to the Democratic left wing's growing strength since the Republican rout in the 2006 midterm election.

The White House hopefuls called for broad healthcare reform. All embraced allowing gays to serve in the military, a step to the left of President Clinton's policy of "don't ask, don't tell."

The rival candidates also paid homage to their party's deep antiwar sentiment by competing for the mantle of being the most strongly opposed to the war in Iraq [...]

At a time when many Republicans are dissatisfied with their presidential candidates, the mood at the twin forums illustrated the energy and high hopes coursing through liberal ranks.

"There's enthusiasm and optimism that someone in this room will be elected president," said Wayne Holland Jr., head of the Utah Democratic Party who attended the conference of liberal activists organized by the Campaign for America's Future. "There's a confidence I've never seen."

We begged, pleaded, and cajoled Democrats to emphasize a true politics of contrast in 2004 and 2006. We urged them to be bold and not passive or cautious. Now we're just starting to see the fruits of that, at least on the campaign trail (in Congress is another story, though I think they're beginning to get the message as well). People in this country are starving for change and leadership; that's why they're so disgusted with Congress right now, because it appears unwilling or unable to challenge George Bush.

But candidates on the stump ARE offering a leadership agenda. Barack Obama offered one of the boldest good government proposals in recent memory today, and he framed it in terms of a regrettable American past that we are slipping into again.

As factories multiplied and profits grew, the winnings of the new economy became more and more concentrated in the hands of a few robber barons, railroad tycoons and oil magnates.

It was known as the Gilded Age, and it was made possible by a government that played along. From the politicians in Washington to the big city machines, a vast system of payoffs and patronage, scandal and corruption kept power in the hands of the few while the workers who streamed into the new factories found it harder and harder to earn a decent wage or work in a safe environment or get a day off once in awhile.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. Preventing and even discouraging partipation in the political system are important tools of the entrenched interests in society. If people can't or won't change the system, the system becomes a tool for preserving injustice instead of eradicating it [...]

From Jack Abramoff to Tom Delay, from briberies to indictments, the scandals that have plagued Washington over the last few years have been too numerous to recall.

But their most troubling aspect goes far beyond the headlines that focus on the culprits and their crimes. It's an entire culture in Washington – some of it legal, some of it not – that allows this to happen. Because what's most outrageous is not the morally offensive conduct on behalf of these lobbyists and legislators, but the morally offensive laws and decisions that get made as a result.

The specific policies are numerous, but they include banning political appointees from working on anything related to their prior employer, ending no-bid contracting abuse, banning gifts to executive branch employees, enforcing the Hatch Act which bans government officials from engaging in partisan activities, ELMINATING SIGNING STATEMENTS, allowing for public comment on all bills before signage, conducting regulatory business and federal earmarking in public, and more. Obama is a candidate with a message of changing our politics, and all of these proposals, many of which he advocated before coming to Washington, all get at a drastic change from the tarnished legacy of the Bush era and a restoration of the principles of good government and respect for the Constitution. Even Ralph Nader's old group gave it a thumbs-up. You can see the speech he gave here.

We have another Presidential candidate, John Edwards, who is the first since Lyndon Johnson, really, to talk about the shame of poverty in America and advocate for those voiceless poor who have no access to the levers of power. Because he happens to be wealthy and wants to be President so he can do something about this issue, he takes a lot of heat from a clueless media, like this story today in the New York Times, alleging that Edwards' anti-poverty nonprofit was somehow used for nefarious purposes. Never mind the fact that The Times never bothered to talk to any poor people that were helped by Edwards' nonprofit. If you just look at what the Paper of Record thinks is dastardly - going abroad to talk with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and criss-crossing the country helping build unions and talking about poverty - it doesn't seem all that untoward. In fact, it seems pretty impressive:

Indeed, this all seems like an extremely successful venture. Edwards raised some money to fight poverty. He used a certain amount of that money to finance his own pre-presidential campaigning, which was entirely focused on poverty reduction. During that campaigning, he spent an enormous amount of time...talking about poverty, and restoring its place in the national political discussion. Given that the sum of money we're talking about is $1.3 million, how has this not been an extraordinarily effective anti-poverty center? Granted, among its methods were to enable a national politician to continually raise the issue's profile through his personal advocacy, but isn't that what folks donating to a John Edwards poverty center were expecting? And hasn't Edwards -- who still brings up poverty in his speeches, just released a book on the subject, and whose efforts spurred Matt Bai to write a New York Times Magazine cover story on the reemergence of the issue in the national political discourse -- proven very, very effective? If you care about poverty, this seems like $1.3 million well spent.

It's clear to me from these examples that we have a new generation of progressive leadership, one that is understanding that in a dangerous world, in the aftermath of a disastrous Presidency, we cannot be timid, we cannot be cowed, we must be strong and principled and tell the nation exactly how we can change this country and make an impact on people's lives. I'll leave the last word to E.J. Dionne, who wrote this admirable piece today:

cliches die hard, so you hear such 20-year-old questions as: "Are Democrats moving too far to the left?" or "Will Democrats abandon the center?"

This approach is about abstractions, not concrete political problems, and it misses the dynamic in American public life, which is the move away from the right and a discrediting of the conservative era. The political "center" of today is not where the "center" was even five years ago.

That's why every leading Democratic candidate for president chose to appear at this week's "Take Back America" conference organized by the Campaign for America's Future, the leading group on the party's progressive end [...]

None of this means that the country would replace the fiercely ideological politics of the right with strident leftism. On the contrary, the reaction against conservatism is being fed by two streams -- a move left by one part of the electorate, and a frustration with ideological politics altogether by another part.

It's why New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, flirting with an independent run for the presidency while denying he's doing so, hit a responsive chord when he declared this week that "good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology."

But the "good ideas" that voters are demanding mostly have to do with problems that have been framed by the left, not the right: the need to disengage from Iraq, to create health security, to ease economic inequalities. It's time to update our sense of where the political center lies and to adjust our view of "the left" accordingly.

The local Air America station has a new tagline: "Progressive, the new mainstream." I'm beginning to think that they're right.