Don’t mess with taxes

HuffPo contributor Paul Abrams has some simple advice for Democratic “strategists” who get paid the big bucks to spout off on CNN: “Learn How to Discuss Taxes or Don’t Go on TV.”

He lays out 8 different points that should be brought up over and over and over again.  I wonder whether anyone will listen.  We’ll know when the phrase “They borrow and spend” gets played seven times in a row in one of those cleverly edited Daily Show montages.

Being one who appreciates grand, sweeping statements that are very difficult to disprove, I especially like the idea of hearing this a few times before November:

We had a $5 trillion surplus, they’ve turned into a $4 trillion deficit, a $9 trillion turnaround, the greatest financial mismanagement in the history of the world.

In the HISTORY of the world.  Damn, I wish I could on tv and say things like that.  Public broadcasting tends to frown on such wonder hyperbole.

Service with a grumble

I’ve never thought of a call to national service as illiberal necessarily but Matthew Yglesias seems to think that the spirit of Obama’s service plan is just that:

Because the underlying idea is bad and illiberal, the people proposing national service schemes tend to avoid proposing specific policies that really match the rhetoric. Consequently, the details tend to be some good-to-harmless policy proposals yoked together with some fuzzy talk.

He goes on to characterize two of the more popular service programs - the Peace Corps and Teach for America - as “public sector jobs that are simply structured as to operate outside the normal contours of recruitment and employment.”  Being “outside the normal contours” is the key.  If they were just other public sector jobs, my wife, a former Vista would have made a little more money so that she didn’t have to subsist on ramen noodles and a single light bulb for those two years.

The Caucus has more on Obama’s speech from today:

Mr. Obama said he would set a goal for all middle and high school students across the nation to perform 50 hours of service a year, while college students would be asked to perform 100 hours of service a year. The incentive for college students? An American Opportunity Tax Credit, intended to make the first $4,000 of college education free.

He apparently got a little dig in on the current President whose idea of post-911 service for civilians has been to have them go out and shop to strengthen the economy.

Obama definition of change changing

According to Politico, the change candidate may have realized, much like Robert Redford in The Candidate, that when it looks like you might actually win, caution takes over:

But since securing the Democratic presidential nomination, when confronted with a series of thorny issues the Illinois senator has pursued a conspicuously conventional path, one that falls far short of his soaring rhetoric.

Somehow, I don’t think too many progressives and Democrats are that disappointed.  They’re probably thinking along the same lines as Adrian Balboa when she came out that coma in Rocky II:

Just win.

Thank global warming when you kiss good weather good bye

The debate about the existence of climate change seems to be over especially given that both candidates for president have at least acknowledged it.  Your not going to find too much high-profile opposition to the idea that human activity is profoundly affecting the earth’s atmosphere resulting in global warming.

What may still be at issue, however, is the effect of global warming on… well… the weather.  A lot of folks probably don’t understand the mechanisms by which global warming affects the actual day-to-day behavior of the weather.  Those who believe in global warming can wrap their heads around the idea that over 40 or 50 years, the average temperature of the earth will go up 4 or 5 degrees but what are the implications for the right now?

The Gristmill writes that a lot of the fault lies with… drum roll… the media.  In a post about a report by the multi-agency U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Brad Johnson writes:

The traditional media rarely discusses extreme weather events in the context of global warming. However, as the Wonk Room Global Boiling series has documented, scientists have been warning us for years that climate change will increase catastrophic weather events like the California wildfires, the East Coast heatwave, and the Midwest floods that have been taking lives and causing billions in damage in recent days.

The Midwest floods have attracted a lot of attention - by the media and by candidates Obama and McCain.  Would it possible for either of the two candidates to raise public awareness of the connection between global warming and catastrophic weather events without it coming off as a cheap grab for political points?  I know the first concern has to be for the people who have been affected by the floods and their plight should not be minimized.  But maybe, just maybe, the two of them could get together and make it acceptable to connect certain weather occurrences with global warming - thereby ending the tendency to label as “alarmist” those who do make the connection and increasing the urgency of the issue.

The market also hate nukes

Yglesias points out that despite the fact that nuclear power has gotten a reputation for being cost-efficient, it just ain’t true.

As he points out, the libertarians will tell you the economic truth about nukes:

The reason we hear politicians like John McCain talk so much about the need for the federal government to promote nuclear power is because investors in the private sector take one look at the economics and run screaming for the hills. Investment banks tell utilities who want to borrow money to build these things that not one red cent will be coming their way unless and until the federal taxpayer guarrantees that the entire loan will be repaid in case of default. If nuclear power were such a good economic bet, those taxpayer guarantees would not be necessary.

What I’m wondering… if McCain is such a proponent of letting the market fix things like health care and education, why wouldn’t he listen that invisible hand when it’s slapping the beejesus out of nuclear power?

Obama passes the 1 million mark on Facebook.

From NYT’s The Caucus:

The original “One Million Strong” is just a bit over halfway to its goal. But on Tuesday, Senator Barack Obama’s official profile hit the 1 million-supporter mark.

Kind of puts my paltry 78 Facebook friends to shame.

Health care reform - what would it look like anyway?

Some health-related issues going on in my immediate family have made me acutely aware of some of the limitations of this country’s health care system.  I happen to have some pretty decent coverage as does the rest of my family.  Even with good coverage, however, the obstacles to delivery of the actual care add to the stress of an already difficult situation.  There seems to be little premium given on speed.

Tests take days or weeks to schedule and then receiving the results of those tests takes just as long.

Treatment has to wait until after an actual diagnosis.

Meanwhile, the family and friends of the afflicted, not to mention the patients themselves, are left in limbo, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  We occupy a space somewhere between hope and realism.  Not wanting even to think that things will be ok for fear of having our world pulled out from under us when the inevitable bad news comes.

My hope for our system of health care delivery is that we can figure out a way not just to make sure everyone has access but that from the time of a suspected illness to diagnosis to beginning of treatment is cut down to no longer than one week.  If that means we need more doctors, nurses, technicians, offices, hospitals, machines etc.  then so be it.  Any plan that ignores these shortages ignores the stress that even the most well-covered people experience.

Anyway, this is all a way to throw a link towards HuffPo’s Art Levine who asks, “Can Electing Obama Get Us Real Health care Reform?”

Democratic pundits are falling into line

As much as I wanted to link to this post by Paul Krugman to emphasize the actual point that he’s making, I also wanted to bask in the fact that the planets are back in the right alignment.

No longer is a pundit like Krugman put in the position of having to criticize the Democratic nominee that he’s not supporting.  No longer is an activist like Atrios forced to sit on the sidelines and hold back on saying anything about the Democratic nominee because he doesn’t want to force himself into choice.

Now, the conservative commentators and supporters are behind their guy and the liberal ones are lined up behind their guy.  Let the battle begin.

Unfortunately, the press is doing their best (or worst), as Krugman points out, in misrepresenting where the candidates themselves are on the liberal-conservative spectrum:

As a numbers guy, I’m particularly upset that the piece contains this assertion:

With a Republican president experiencing some of the worst approval ratings ever, it’s no shock that the party opted for an unusually centrist candidate.

So where are the candidates on this spectrum?  As per Krugman’s suggestion:

…we can turn to the Poole-Rosenthal-McCarty analysis, which is based on a systematic, no fiddling technique using rollcall votes.

And they tell us that, based on his voting record, McCain is the eighth most conservative member of the current Senate. That’s right: he’s been voting on the right wing of the Republican party.

But has he just moved right to curry favor with the GOP base? No: he was the second most conservative member of the previous Senate.

Add: Barack Obama, by contrast, while more liberal than the average Democrat, is considerably closer to the center than McCain.

Unfortunately, press seems like it’s already figured out the storyline of Republicans go with a centrist to get out from under the boulder that is the “conservative” Bush legacy.   Having chosen that storyline, they’ll conveniently ignore any facts that don’t reinforce it.

They are forgetting, of course, that it was press themselves that called Bush a centrist the first time around.

Another reason no one talks about “issues”

Atrios offers a great explanation for why issues and policy have a hard time entering the electoral conversation:

Due to the various constraints from tax and campaign finance law, you have a lot of organizations that are unable to take the step of linking outcomes to politics.

So the press avoids talking about issues because they don’t want to take a chance that they’ll have to agree that one candidate’s policy on an issue is better than the other and violate their sacred objectivity.  And the folks doing most of the research on these issues can tell you which candidate would be better because they might lose their tax-exempt status.

What kind of general election coverage can we expect?

A few days ago, the inestimable Dr. Krugman built a time machine to take us back to those halcyon days of 2000 when it seemed like the only difference between the Democratic and Republican candidates was the way they were caricatured on Saturday Night Live (of course, Ferrell’s Bush killed Hammond’s Gore).

Admittedly, 2000 was right before my great awakening to all things politics which occurred when I went from zero to 100 by jumping on a campaign in 2003 without ever having voted before. My memories of the 2000 presidential race fit right along with this snippet that Dr. Krugman revisited:

Here’s a sample from the time:

George W. Bush and Al Gore have been campaigning for months, spotlighting the differences they offer voters. But when it comes to the policies they believe will keep Americans employed and the nation prosperous, they could just as well be running on the same ticket.

…

‘’This election reminds me of the elections in the late 19th century when nobody remembers who those candidates were and who those presidents were, when the parties looked more alike than they were different,’’ says presidential historian Robert Dallek, author of Hail to the Chief: The Making and Unmaking of American Presidents. ‘’Of course, it’s vastly different given the kind of global involvements the United States has and the enormous power of this country. But for all that, there are echoes of that time.’’

Face it.  We were all fat and happy after a decade of growth and an internet economy that promised to make recessions a thing of the past.  Terrorists were crazy guys in the mountains of some unpronounceable territory who could never get close to us and the Russians were our bitter rivals turned hard luck friends.  Without much to get us or our crack corps of professional journalists riled up and with little or no blogosphere to speak of, it was easy for us to see the election as a couple of middle aged, boring white guys with no ideas other than “don’t screw this up.”

And we elected the guy who screwed it up.  It essentially came down to a coin toss for a lot of voters and the coin came up Bush just a few too many times.

I promise to vote this time around.  Can you all promise that we won’t elect the one who will screw it up more?