Posted by Mark NC on August 17, 2011 at 11:39 am.
NOComments :
The brand new Congressional Super Committee that is charged with pulling America’s butt out of a fiscal fire is sorely underrepresented by major groups of the American people. In addition to the disturbing associations that members of the committee have with wealthy campaign contributors, they are also notably homogenous in terms of race and gender.
Republicans appointed an entirely white male panel of members. At least the Democrats included one woman, one African-American, and one Hispanic. Still, that ratio is a long way from proportional representation.
When large groups of citizens are excluded from participating in the democratic process, the result is bad policy, uneven playing fields, and a disheartened and/or outraged electorate. Take for example the representation of women in American political life (or rather, lack thereof) that has produced a legislative War on Women:
These inequities are generally unaddressed by the media. Unless that changes there will be continued division and a failure to resolve the most pressing issues of our time. We need to include everyone in the effort to right the nation’s course. And we must not be afraid to embrace the fight for progressivism, civil rights, feminism, and liberty and justice for all.
The so-called Super Committee created by congress to dodge responsibility for …um… I mean to craft legislation for deficit reduction, has not been been particularly well received by anyone.
Newt Gingrich: I think this super-committee is about as dumb an idea as Washington has come up with in my lifetime.
Dennis Kucinich: It’s like, “Honey, I shrunk the Congress.” Congress is now reduced to a majority of seven members on a committee … Everything about this deal is wrong.
They are both right. It’s a dumb idea that puts way too much power in the hands of too small a group. It seems virtually designed to fail. The alleged incentive for the participants to reach an agreement is the threat of draconian cuts to social services and defense. But since the purpose of the committee is to make draconian, unpopular cuts anyway, why wouldn’t the members prefer to decline compromise and let the process take the blame?
What isn’t getting much attention, however, is that the members of the committee have vested interests in the affairs of the programs they are overseeing. In the 2010 election cycle members received combined over $122 million from the very industries and corporations whose budgets they must now slash. Those industries represent the most powerful sectors of the American economy including defense, health care, energy, and banking. The list of the biggest contributors to the committee members tells us a lot about what to expect from their deliberations:
Donor
Amount
Club for Growth
993,394
Microsoft Corp
243,625
Elliott Management
233,704
EMILY’s List
202,656
Squire, Sanders & Dempsey
156,350
New York Life Insurance
139,850
General Electric
138,610
Boeing Co
135,910
JPMorgan Chase & Co
133,399
Amgen Inc
131,150
American Financial Group
125,652
DaVita Inc
118,200
Goldman Sachs
114,700
University of Washington
110,164
Comcast Corp
103,465
Blue Cross/Blue Shield
100,100
Citigroup Inc
95,599
Schering-Plough Corp
91,200
Denny Miller Assoc
90,900
[Source: OpenSecrets.org]
The pressure on these committee members to placate their benefactors will be enormous. And these wealthy special interests will certainly unleash their army of lobbyists to keep the federal funds flowing. With all the focus on just a dozen legislators it actually makes it easier to manipulate the outcome because lobbyists don’t have to spread the wealth, and their time, to the other 523 members of congress.
It’s notable that the conservative, anti-tax, Club for Growth so far outpaces the other heavy hitters on the list. Committee member Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) is their former president, but John Kyl (R-AZ) also got a generous gift. Many of the donors contributed to multiple members of the committee, i.e. Comcast, GE, and hedge fund company, Elliott Management.
There is one ray of hope and that is for the Super Committee members to demonstrate the famous cowardice of American lawmakers. They could actually deliver a balanced bill that makes targeted cuts and raises revenues from the rich and through the elimination of subsidies and loopholes. By doing so they would throw the ball back to the full congress and make them vote on it. After all, why should the super dozen take all the heat?
In any event, it is imperative that we have an accounting of the financial associations between the committee and their big contributors. In pursuit of that, Common Cause has initiated a campaign to support the Super Committee Sunshine Act (S. 1498), a bill requiring that all campaign and PAC contributions to Super Committee members are disclosed within 48 hours. That’s something all sides of this highly charged process should support.
Ever since the Tea Party Downgrade, the stock market has been a roller coaster of wild swings. Triple-digit ups and downs have become routine. And throughout, the media, and partisan politicians and pundits, have fretted over impending doom and the end of civilization.
So just to help us keep things in perspective…..
Neil Cavuto, and others on Fox News, have been relentlessly harping on every scrap of negative news they can find. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have been predicting London-style riots. But we should not buy into the Fox News pessimism.
The market is up more than 50%, and over 3,000 points, since Barack Obama was inaugurated as president. Corporations in many sectors of the economy are reporting record profits. Does that mean we shouldn’t be concerned about the recent gyrations. Of course not. We still have a serious deficiency of jobs and a severely unbalanced income gap. But at least we should recognize the reality of the big picture.
There is much to be hopeful about, and if Washington will do the right thing – i.e. invest in growth and job creation, and make the rich pay their fair share – we can prevail over hard times. To do that we must fight back against the obstructionism of the TeaPublicans whose only agenda is to enrich their wealthy, corporate contributors and defeat Democrats in 2012.
Standard & Poor’s on Friday downgraded the United States Congress. You may have heard media reports that it was the country’s credit rating that was downgraded, but the statement issued by the S&P is unambiguous with regard to their reasons for the downgrade and whom they hold responsible:
[T]he downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges […] The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.
To be sure, the S&P threw in a few references to the outstanding debt and the inadequacy of the remedies contained in last week’s legislation, but their persistent focus on political failings was inescapable. Notwithstanding the challenge from the White House that their math was “fundamentally flawed,” the S&P proceeded with the downgrade because the math isn’t the main driver of their analysis. They made plain that the primary reason for their decision was the bad behavior of the political players and that it is Congress who deserves the downgrade.
Not surprisingly, the American people agree. A new poll from the New York Times/CBS News shows the disapproval rating for Congress at 82%. Breaking that down further reveals bad news for Republicans who were dominated by their tiny Tea Party flank:
All told, 72 percent disapproved of the way Republicans in Congress handled the negotiations, while 66 percent disapproved of the way Democrats in Congress handled negotiations.
Forty-three percent of Americans now think the Tea Party has too much influence on the Republican Party, up from 27 percent in mid-April.
Sixty-three percent of those polled said that they supported raising taxes on households that earn more than $250,000 a year, as Mr. Obama has sought to do — including majorities of Democrats (80 percent), independents (61 percent) and Republicans (52 percent).
Forty-four percent said that the deficit was mostly caused by the Bush administration.
The same poll showed President Obama’s approval rating to be more than twice that of the Tea Party. But that didn’t stop Fox News from posting a link to the poll on their Fox Nation web site with a headline that said the exact opposite.
Perhaps it is not within the jurisdiction of the S&P to rate the performance of Congress, but it is difficult to dispute their conclusion. It would be nice if the media analysis of recent weeks in Washington were this astute. Yet the press continues to treat the Tea Party as if it were a popular expression of the people, rather than an AstroTurf invention of wealthy special interests.
The statement from the S&P effectively declares that, were it not for the intransigent extremism of the Tea Party, the country’s credit rating would still be triple-A. And if the press would stop pretending that the Tea Party has any real significance, the country would be better off in a multitude of ways. So thanks to Tea Party dementia and media madness America can proudly enter the 2nd Dip of its Great Recession.
For the past month our country has been embroiled in a contentious debate over whether to raise the debt ceiling, a routine congressional function that has been done without controversy dozens of times. The farthest right faction of the Republican Party was determined to hold the nation hostage in their yearning to dismantle the social safety net and protect the wealth of billionaires. While that carnival was in progress, Washington and the press missed something else that holds some importance to the American people and the economy:
Despite the GOP’s promise to focus on jobs when they assumed the majority in the House of Representatives, they have not produced a single jobs bill. In fact, they have endeavored to kill legislation that would create new jobs. Just before they left for recess after passing the debt ceiling bill, they left unresolved a bill to fund the operations of the Federal Aviation Administration. As a result, over 90,000 workers will be sidelined until congress returns in September. Not to mention, the Treasury will lose $1.2 billion in fees that will go uncollected.
That’s the GOP’s commitment to working families and reducing the deficit. In other words, it’s a hoax. And the media is their accomplice. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that 52% of news stories last week were related to the debt ceiling debate. Notwithstanding the fact that polls show that the American people are more concerned about jobs than debt, the media virtually ignored the issue of job creation and unemployment.
Now that the debt ceiling debate is at least temporarily resolved, it will be interesting to see what issue dominates news coverage next week. Jobs or the Obama’s dining at a fast food restaurant?
What is so hard about this? Congress is struggling to fashion a compromise agreement on a bill to raise the debt ceiling. The Republicans are insisting on attaching unrelated provisions to the bill to satisfy the tantrums of Tea Party-affiliated members who are demanding deficit reduction that imposes severe spending cuts but permits no revenue raising through tax reform and the elimination of loopholes.
But who is being represented by the advocates of spending cuts, which include cuts to critical programs like Medicaid? Who is being represented by the opponents of increased revenues achieved by asking corporations and the rich to share in the sacrifice required to bring our nation back to economic health?
The truth is that no one but a few extremist right-wingers are represented by the positions to which the GOP has lashed itself. Here’s the proof:
It is almost unheard of to get 72% of Americans to agree on any politically contentious issue. Yet here we have 72% of the country agreeing that the rich are not presently paying their fair share, and that Medicaid should not be cut. And isn’t just a bunch of socialist lefties. This includes majorities of both Independents and Republicans. Let the significance of that sink in. It is not just a fair number of Republicans, it is a MAJORITY of Republicans.
So for whom is House Speaker Boehner fighting? For whom is Senate Minority Leader McConnell fighting? It obviously is not their GOP constituents. In fact, they are betraying their constituents and putting the whole nation at risk in order to pacify a cabal of small-minded, short-sighted, ill-informed, intransigent malcontents known as the Tea Party.
Of course, there is really no such thing as the Tea Party. There are no Tea Party candidates; no Tea Party policies; no registered Tea Party voters. It is nothing more than a radical faction of the GOP that has canonized the Founding Fathers and debased the Constitution with simplistic misinterpretations and ritual recital.
With poll results like those above, it is unfathomable that Republicans in congress give such a wide berth to their tea-besotted cousins. And the same goes for the media. When news networks placate TeaPublicans by employing them to provide commentary and analysis for that point of view, they are, in effect, giving ultra-conservative Republicans an additional voice that they do not provide to progressive Democrats.
It is clear that the Tea Baggers are wildly out of touch with the mainstream of America and they should not be afforded the special treatment they receive. They are merely an annoyingly squeaky wheel with no popular support. They degrade the debate with their stubborn attachment to dubious dogma. Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page declared that“Republicans are not looking like adults to whom voters can entrust the government.” Actually, they aren’t even looking like children:
Regardless of how the debt ceiling debate shakes out, the media, as well as our congressional representatives, need to recognize that the Tea Party is unworthy of the outsized consideration they receive. They haven’t earned it and they don’t deserve. And catering to their hysterics is counterproductive and worse, destructive. With the abundance of evidence that they are a poorly attended party that is located far beyond the boundaries of common sense, the question remains…..
The political pugilism over the debt ceiling debate is raging on in Congress and the media as John Boehner’s rightwardly-revised legislation passed in the House on a party-line vote but failed in a more bipartisan fashion in the Senate. This leaves the nation right where it was before these votes took place – on the precipice of a fiscal calamity.
Many observers were perplexed that Boehner, upon failing to hold the GOP caucus in line, added a provision to the bill calling for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. That provision may have swayed a few intransigent House members, but it doomed the bill in the Senate.
In pursuit of some insight as to why the Speaker would deliberately make the bill less likely to ever become law, an intrepid reporter infiltrated the secret negotiations that took place in the Speaker’s chambers prior to the vote. Here is what was discovered:
Amongst other things, this revealing photo is evidence that Speaker Boehner is not really in charge of House legislative activities. His leadership is subservient to the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party, or the TeaPublicans. This explains why, after admonishing his caucus to “Get your ass in line,” he was still unable to schedule a vote for fear that it would fail. It further explains why he was forced to make revisions that pushed the bill farther to the right and weakened it’s prospects for passage.
Now that we know who’s in charge of the GOP, perhaps Democrats will fashion a strategy to resolve these issues that takes this reality into account. The extreme right of the Republican Party is fixated on an agenda based on ignorance, faith, and Randian fiction. The only path to resolution is to ignore the TeaPublicans, shame any GOP members who still retain some measure of reason, and alert the public to the dilemma created by the delusional wing of the GOP and Fox’s phony version of “news.”
[Editor’s Note:] In view of recent incidents involving journalists acquiring scandalous information improperly, rest assured that no cell phones were hacked in the development of this story.
Republicans in congress have been holding the American people hostage for weeks now. Despite the fact that nearly every credible analyst – economists, politicians, academics, etc. – agree that a default by the United States would bring about an economic calamity, the GOP is still threatening to submit the nation to that fate if Democrats do not capitulate to the Tea Party platform of austerity for average Americans and opulent prosperity for the richest one percent.
Make no mistake, the Republicans know exactly what their threat entails. They know that default would be catastrophic. We know because they’ve said so. And we know because we have their voting record to prove it. Between the years 2002 and 2008 Republicans voted repeatedly to raise the debt ceiling while George W. Bush was in the White House. So what changed?
Oh yeah — that.
The Republican’s are playing “Chicken” with our economy. They don’t care about the deficit. They don’t care about taxes. They certainly don’t care about the elderly or the poor or you or me. They only care about their wealthy benefactors, the billionaires and corporations who bankroll their campaigns. And, of course, their obsession with defeating President Obama next year. They know that a bad economy makes things more difficult for incumbents to get reelected, so they are endeavoring to produce such an outcome to achieve their political goals – at the expense of everyone else and multiple future generations.
Thanks GOP. And thanks Corporate Media for failing to report this in context.
The debate over whether to increase the debt ceiling has included relentless assertions as to who is responsible for the nation’s debt having skyrocketed to its present state. The media has utterly failed in presenting the issue objectively. So here it is (pdf) from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office:
The Republicans have increased the national debt far more than Democrats in the last five administrations, including that of the sainted Ronald Reagan. If the Tea Party were to honestly observe the reality of the nation’s economic history they would all be voting Democratic. Unfortunately, the Tea Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the the Republican Party and Americans for Prosperity and is unlikely to alter their support for the GOP. However, that shouldn’t stop the press from accurately reporting the truth about the debt.
Neil Cavuto opened his program today by chastising the President and Congress for taking the holiday weekend off in the midst of a looming and unsolved debt crisis. He was appalled that these people could be so cavalier under such desperate circumstances. Then he interviewed some toady he found under a Tea Party toadstool who agreed with everything he had just said.
For the record, the Washington set was scheduled to be out of town for all of next week until President Obama shamed them into changing their plans. Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, declared that the Senate would be open for business Tuesday, and for the remainder of the week. It was on the President’s initiative that Congress was called back into service immediately after the Independence Day hiatus.
So Congress will not be taking their customary holiday to celebrate the Fourth of July. They will simply be off for the weekend and the fourth to be with their families and constituents, then right back to work on Tuesday. And this has gotten Cavuto’s knickers in a knot.
What came next made this already asinine whining ever more stupefying. Cavuto introduced the panel of business commentators that he would normally be hosting tomorrow morning on Saturday’s “The Cost of Freedom” program on Fox News. The reason he hosted this panel today is because the program is being preempted tomorrow to make way for special coverage of the Casey Anthony murder trial.
So Cavuto rails against the President for allegedly neglecting our nation’s economic emergency (even though Obama was responsible for pressuring everyone to come back to work early), while Cavuto and Fox News cast the crisis aside in favor of tabloid coverage of a trial that will have no effect whatsoever on the economy or anything else of national importance.
What a revealing demonstration of twisted priorities and hypocrisy. What a callous and insufferable clown.
(Source for job loss data: 
Neil Cavuto opened his program today by chastising the President and Congress for taking the holiday weekend off in the midst of a looming and unsolved debt crisis. He was appalled that these people could be so cavalier under such desperate circumstances. Then he interviewed some toady he found under a Tea Party toadstool who agreed with everything he had just said.