Counting the votes, seeing the forest

There is much rejoicing that not all of the House Republicans voted for the budget measure. But this isn't a proof that Boehner didn't have the votes; after all some House Democrats voted for it.

Let us look at the forest—the political consensus—rather than the trees—individual politicians. The vote shows that a bipartisan coalition of conservative Democrats and non-Tea Party Republicans is the governing consensus of the USA. Which was already pretty obvious.

Now…will this coalition address unemployment? Nope? The housing crisis? Only on technical issues. The banking disaster? Nope.

...and global climate change and other international environmental issues?

Houston, we have a problem.

Croak!

On the Deficit Speech

Obama is campaigning, at least that's my take on it. And, as with all of Obama's campaign speeches, it's important to listen to what is not there. I like Thoma's remarks on the speech; he quotes Krugman and Delong and adds "this proposal turns its back on those who are still unemployed." And also the people who are being thrown out of their homes and the people who want a trustworthy banking system.

This will become the leftmost marker of Congressional debate, with the rightmost being very far right: the Ryan plan. So what we get will likely be worse than this in significant ways. Obama may be hoping that, like Reagan, he can use his popularity to pressure Congress. With high unemployment and people losing their homes every day, I don't see how. Half the public, maybe, is convinced that cutting social programs will somehow magically restore their jobs, and none of our elected leaders have even tried to kill that zombie idea: maybe it has eaten their brains.

Hard times, no leadership.

A Brief Note on Uncritical Support of Obama

Personal loyalty to rulers is not a democratic virtue.

"Serious People"

When I hear people talking about how a plan is "serious" about the US budget, when I hear talk of "necessary" pain, I know that that the pain is unnecessary and the plan is junk. A person who has made bad mistakes, and who needs to do hard things in their life to set them as right as possible, may talk like this. But that's not where this is at. This about making the elderly and poor suffer, and further impoverishing the majority of the USA.

And that is what it takes to be "serious" in the politics of these times: making your "inferiors" suffer. Because, if the Serious People couldn't do this, they might have to undertake some austerity in their own lives.

What the Democrats Might Do

John Cole, complaining about criticism of Obama and the Democratic Party leadership.

I honestly don’t know what exactly the Dems are supposed to do.

He goes on to say “raise more money, volunteer more time, and walk more precincts in 2012”—to work even harder for a party and a leadership that has consistently failed and often betrayed him. I don't agree, so instead I offer this answer, slightly edited from comments.

• Get out there & start talking up Keynsianism. Remind people how of Hoover’s failure in 1930, and FDR’s budget balancing in 1937. Criticize the investment banks for gross malfeasance, the mortgage banks for fraud, and the health insurance companies for price-gouging.
• Get out there & start talking environmentalism. Start talking science. Start talking jobs. Start talking union. Start talking women’s rights. Start talking freedom and equality—remember those?
• Investigate the Koch Brothers. Investigate ALEC.
• Stop lying to the public. Stop telling people it’s really OK when no way it is. Stop making deals with the devil.

Without these things—without some positive program and the will to advocate it—“raise more money, volunteer more time, and walk more precincts in 2012” will at best keep matters as they are, and matters as they are are pretty grim. I don’t believe the Tea Party Republicans can sustain their fever pitch of madness, even with ALEC/Koch funding. They are losing credibility with the public, and they will not regain it. But without some realistic, compassionate alternative there will be no change, except from the currents of history.

On Intervention in the Middle East

Comment from an FDL discussion of the ethics of the military intervention in Libya (Jane Hamsher is against it):

But I’m wondering what the smart folks here think the U.S. response to all these rebellious and seemingly democratic movements in the M.E. and Africa ought to be? (RFShunt, ***)

My general take on this is that peaceful support of freedom and democracy is always both ethical and, in the long term, most likely to produce the best results for the USA and the world, in many different ways.

Violence is a much harder question. I do not think it wise for the world to sit by while mass murder is done, but the why and how of military intervention troubles me. In theory, the United Nations exists partly to prevent exactly what the UN has so far prevented Qaddafi from doing. For this to end well though, military intervention has to be undertaken in the right way, and it is probably best it is undertaken for the right reasons. Right reasons we can fairly say we don’t have here: none of the leaders of this intervention have clean hands, though it is possible that Obama and Clinton are motivated by a genuine desire to see justice done. Obama does have his moments, and this may be one of them. Based on her history, I think Hilary Clinton is also motivated by humanitarian concerns. However, they can only get support for this because the US hawks are also interested in intervention, and their reasons are far less savory. As to the right way, the UN would have to provide disinterested support for freedom and democracy in Libya, and the support would have to be enough and last long enough for the rebels to win. Disinterested support for freedom and democracy isn’t in the picture, and enough support for enough time also may not be–wars are expensive.

So it’s going to depend. This is not badly begun, but I do not, personally, have much hope that it will end well.

Well, what do you expect from a raven?

Croak!

When you stare into ALEC, ALEC stares back into you

University of Wisconsin professor of history William Cronon, staring into ALEC:

After watching the sudden and impressively well-organized wave of legislation being introduced into state legislatures that all seem to be pursuing parallel goals only tangentially related to current fiscal challenges–ending collective bargaining rights for public employees, requiring photo IDs at the ballot box, rolling back environmental protections, privileging property rights over civil rights, and so on–I’ve found myself wondering where all of this legislation is coming from.

And ALEC staring back.

Here’s the headline: the Wisconsin Republican Party has issued an Open Records Law request for access to my emails since January 1 in response to a blog entry I posted on March 15 concerning the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in influencing recent legislation in this state and across the country. I find this a disturbing development, and hope readers will bear with me as I explain the strange circumstances in which I find myself as a result.

Via Josh Marshall at TPM. Personally, I think ALEC could do with some attention from the police, or at least Anonymous and Wikileaks.