I wanna look at things this way, it's just that I don't

Matthew Yglesias »Remembering the Goldwater Campaign

Edmund Andrews writes:

I am tempted to think that the revulsion expressed Crittenden is part of a bigger ferment among Republicans. I’d like to think that there is a group of young Turks or moderates who agree with Frum that the GOP health-care rejectionism will turn out to be the party’s Waterloo. I’d like to think that there is a new generation GOP that is ready to take a chance on constructive engagement.

But my good friend Bruce Bartlett is skeptical. Republican leaders think their strategy since the 2008 election has been a great success. If they win back House and Senate seats this fall — as they almost certainly will — they’ll argue that their strategy has been vindicated. And the truth is, the Young Turks are among the most fervent of the hard-liners — the Jeb Hensarlings, Paul Ryans. The moderates are disappearing faster than ever, and the ones who stay are disdained.

I think that to understand what’s wrong with the conservative movement today, you need to think about Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Presidential campaign. In ‘64, the GOP establishment felt that Goldwater was too radical. They said that nominating a hard-rightist like Goldwater would be counterproductive. But conservative activists worked hard, and they did it. Goldwater got the nod. And, just as the establishment predicted, Goldwater got crushed. And just as the established predicted, it proved to be counterproductive. The 1964 landslide led directly to Medicare, Medicaid, Title I education spending, and the “war on poverty.” In the 45 years since that fateful campaign, the conservative movement managed to gain total control over the Republican Party and to sporadically govern the country. But it’s only very partially rolled back one aspect of the Johnson administration’s domestic policy.

Which is just to say that the conservative movement from 1964-2009 was a giant failure. By nominating Goldwater, it invited a massive progressive win that all the subsequent conservative wins were unable to undue. But the orthodox conservative tradition of ‘64 is that it was a great success that laid the groundwork for the triumphs to come.

Which is to say that it’s not just a movement incapable of thinking seriously about the interests of the country, it can’t think rigorously about its own goals. 2009-2010 has already seen the greatest flowering of progressive policy since 1965-66. No matter how well Republicans do in the 2010 midterms, the right will never fully roll back what the 111th Congress has done. And yet, as Andrews suggests, if they win seats in 2010, conservatives will consider their behavior during 2009-10 to have been very successful.

Getting Tuff Means Puffing Tuff? Major "State of Labor" article in the Major Labor-Liberal Mag

Harold Meyerson writes a big and overdue article about the State of US Labor, 2010 for the American Prospect that's well worth reading whether you are one of the OG's laborite readers, or whether you are the kind of OG reader who feels hopelessly behind on the inner world of trade unionism that we so often evoke herein. Here's a money blurb:

In 2008, unions had worked tirelessly for Obama's election in the hope that a Democratic president backed up by a heavily Democratic Congress could change the law that made organizing American workers so difficult. With the upset victory of Republican Scott Brown in the race for the vacant Senate seat from Massachusetts, however, those hopes were definitively dispelled. The failure to reform labor law almost certainly means that that the half-century decline of unions in America -- from representing nearly 40 percent of private-sector workers at the midpoint of the 20th century to representing just 7 percent today -- will continue apace. It means that the corresponding stagnation -- and periodic decline -- in the incomes of working- and middle-class Americans will likely continue as well.

But the failure of labor-law reform was hardly the only disaster that befell unions in 2009. Amid the greatest economic downturn since the 1930s, many thousands of unionized manufacturing, construction, and public employees lost their jobs, sending the percentage of unionized workers to record lows. Public support for unions also plunged, with both the Gallup and Pew polls showing a decline in public support of between 15 percent and 20 percent over the past several years. (In the Pew poll, those who had a favorable view of unions declined from 58 percent in 2007 to 41 percent in 2010.) Two developments fueled that decline: first, the travails of the Big Three automobile companies, for which one of the most prevalent explanations was the excessive labor costs that the United Auto Workers had inflicted on those companies (an explanation that relied on mislabeling the companies' obligations to their millions of retirees as existing wage costs). The second development, which bodes ill for the future of public-employee unions, is the rising backlash within a largely nonunion private sector against a still substantially unionized public sector, which has managed to retain the kinds of benefits (such as defined-benefit pensions) that were once routine in the private sector but that vanished as private-sector unions declined in size and clout.

Yep. Yep. What is to be done, though? Realistically, what is to be done?

If nothing else, the experiences of 2009 seem to have taught most unions that the Democratic Party is their good friend during campaigns when the candidates need their help but isn't always there when the time comes to reciprocate -- and that sometimes they need to play hardball with Democrats. That's the lesson of Trumka's meeting with Obama and of the unions' support for Arkansas Lt. Governor Bill Halter's primary challenge to Wal-Mart's own senator, Blanche Lincoln. Unions need a supportive government to help them organize and create a thriving working class. If that requires getting tougher with their allies than they've customarily been -- well, it's about time.

Absolutely, fine. But can "getting tough" -or getting tuff- also mean some form of participation outside of Democratic primary and caucus action? Could we get tuff somewhere besides the District of Columbia? Those who know me know that I have a large crush on the District of Columbia, but not because I think that's where labor needs to be doubling down on its tuffness. D.C. is a good place for Dischord Records to get tuff, but a good place for unions to help pass health care and work in coalition with other folks to advance a progressive course towards economic security that legitimizes social democratic government in the minds of voters. There's gotta be a venue where labor can get tuff - some workplace, say - besides the District of Columbia, and there's gotta be a day besides Election Day when democracy in general, and the workplace democracy of our union movement in particular, is made to matter.

A 2010 Census Message from Karl Rove

Because Karl Rove coming out on behalf of the ACORN-friendly, socialistic (and social scientistic) institution known as the US Census merits OG attention.

[Anybody out there, by the way?]

So. Many. Commas

Heedless to the warnings of wise men like Daniel Webster, since the turn of the century increasing numbers of Americans have been turning their backs on the rational, personal God, and by extension, on the source of their humanity, and of their unalienable rights. Like yesterday's pagans during the declining days of the Greco-Roman civilization, they are today either practical atheists aimlessly wandering in a spiritual desert of nihilism or spellbound, are desperately trying to find meaning and purpose from the mesmerizing ideologies that arose out of the heart of Christendom, during the time of the Renaissance.

Regrets? I'm having some right now.

I, for one, argued early and often that BHO was our best chance to have a Democratic president that might, theoretically break to the left on important issues. I was convinced that Hillary would not do this, given the track record of her husband. That may have been unfair, but it's not like she ran away from her husband's record or said things that made me (or anyone else) think that she would be a liberal president. I also firmly believe that when she decided to run as the racists' Democratic candidate, it was the obligation of all good people in the Democratic party to oppose her.

And yet here we sit today, with a Democratic president that seems determined to be just as center-right as Bill Clinton ever was. To be fair to Barack, he ran as a centrist. Maybe it was too much to hope that a candidate that had achieved little other than getting elected would do anything other than seek to be re-elected. And, unfortunately, a politician gets re-elected by being as timid as possible.

Back in the old days of computing, there was a game that let you be a South American dictator. Your goal was to stay in power until you died. I quickly figured out that the only way to achieve this goal was by caving to whichever pressure group happened to be pressuring you at the time. Teachers on strike? Give 'em a raise. American-backed corporations want a military crackdown on rebels? Crack down. The people want land reform? Nationalize! Landowners want their land back? Denationalize! You get the gist.

After a while it became mindless, but I can see where it might be entertaining to play in real life. How do you stay popular with a populace that simultaneously demands an economic recovery (solution: massive government spending, deficits, tax increases) while demanding less government spending, deficit reduction, and tax cuts? We want health care reform, but not any kind of health care reform that might one day affect what I have right now! Could be fun. Or addictive, anyway.

So here we sit today with a president determined to drive down the middle of the road only dipping to the right every now and again. Here we are, again, with we on the left realizing that it will be another eight years of getting exactly nothing of what we want. We will be told to be grateful it's not worse. That's where we live in American politics, fighting a rear-guard action against things getting worse. We were kings of the world in 1935, it's been mostly downhill since then. Our successes since then - civil rights, women's rights, gay rights - have been hard fought and achieved by the people, with the politics lagging way the hell behind.

Don't mourn, organize!

Yes. Maybe what it will take is for all of us who are looking around for a third party to get out there and get involved. No one hates saying this more than me, as I love my couch and tv, but if I can drag myself out to knock on doors for mainstream, better than the alternative Democratic candidates, then I can certainly do it for someone or some cause that might actually make a fucking difference in this world.

Fuck, looks like I have to actually do something. I'll have to get my pleasure from telling my labor union 'no' when they ask me to go knocking on doors for whatever fuckstick the Democrats nominate.

Conversations with a Farmer

In a world that hurts, it's good to laugh and that's why God gave us the Register-Guard letters to the editor.

Gross receipts tax hurts farmers

As Oregonians, we need to make it easier rather than harder for business people to make a profit.

Already I like you. You dispense right away with bullshit about job creation or some half-understood multiplier-effect mumbo-jumbo and go straight to the "it's your job to make sure I make money."

I’m a grass seed farmer; our prices for seed have been cut 40 percent to 60 percent in the last 1½ years. We are not anywhere close to profitability, but we still have to sell some of our seed for cash flow to pay bills. Measure 67 just doesn’t raise corporate fees from $10 to $150, it also taxes my gross receipts.

You're a grass seed farmer - one of God's own laborers - who sells seed to make money to pay your bills. No problems so far, things are tough all over. I mean, I am concerned how long you can run a farm that is nowhere close to profitable. I assume you have money in the bank or you're getting some sort of loan or something. I hope to Jeebus that this is not some sort of government loan.

Farming is a business that deals with a lot of money. A small grass seed farm easily could have $750,000 in sales, and a large farm several million in gross receipts, before bills are paid. Farmers could have a crop that cost them $3 million to grow and then sell everything for $2.75 million; they would lose $250,000 and would have to pay more than $3,000 in taxes.

Now, I am not an economist or anything, but holy hell, you lost a quarter million dollars last year and you're worried about an extra $3000 in taxes? Buddy, you got bigger problems. Or is it at all possible that in some recent years past you were actually making money on this little farm of yours while paying $10 in taxes. Let me see here, grass seed prices have fallen by 50% in the last 1.5 years, so $2.75 million in sales today was $4.125 million two years ago. By your own figures, you made roughly $1.125 million dollars a couple of years ago. I hope that money can help cushion that $3000 blow in the taxes. Oh, I know, you were just making up numbers and you didn't really make $1.125 million a couple of years ago and if you did, by gum, you earned it because if anyone deserves to make $1.125 million in a year it is the hard working grass seed farmer.

That sounds to me like kicking people when they are down, not fairness.

Exactly. Any businessman, small or otherwise, who cannot make a profit should not have to pay any kind of taxes whatsoever. In fact, there should be a government program where he could apply for loans or something to get him through the lean times because, obviously, businessmen can't fail, they can only be failed. By you (well not "you" you, the general you) and me. Oregonians. Also, any business that makes a profit should not have to pay taxes either, because that's just penalizing them for being successful.

I can understand why businesses leave the state; when government will no longer work with businesses, it’s time. Natural resources are the backbone of our state. The healthier we are, the more people we employ. It is private sector jobs, not those in the public sector, that make an economy work.

It's true. Oregon has really seen an exodus of businesses from this state, despite having the 3rd lowest business taxes in the US. Or they haven't left yet, but surely will if we raise their taxes to .01% of sales and have the 5th lowest businesses taxes. Except for natural resource businesses, of course, who can't leave even if they want to. Consider it the price we make you pay for exploiting our natural resources, because, once upon a time, it was actually thought that all the people owned the resources and taxes were the price you paid the people for the right to exploit them and make your $1.125 million. I know, I must be making that up.

Government bureaucracies need to learn how to cut budgets in hard times just as the private sector does. Join me in voting no on Measures 66 and 67.

Two billion dollars in cuts and more on the way. But don't worry, we'll keep making sure that you have all the infrastructure you need to sell your $3 million worth of grass seed all around this great big world, because, in the end, we all exist to make sure you, Eric Bowers, are able to make a profit.

Eric Bowers

Harrisburg

Maybe Everyone Already Figured This Out. Sorry.

I bet that about now there are a good many Democratic Senators saying to their House colleagues "You remember those Tea Party assholes you put up with all summer? You want those cocksuckers to actually win?"

How good might it be to have it turn out that the Tea Partyers actually cause health care reform to happen?

Thoughts After Last Night

So a fine friend of mine has adopted the stance that anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman needs to STFU and let the Senate force a shitty, shitty health care bill down the throat of the House and the country.

He does so under the banner of "GOVERN" which seem to be shorthand for "liberals will never get what they want because Democrats will always have to make compromises to get votes enough to pass actual legislation." Fair enough. But on this particular bill, it seems that a healthy majority of the vote-giving public really, really, really doesn't want this bill.

And make no mistake, this is a crappy piece of legislation. The basic deal seems to be that, in exchange for dropping pre-existing conditions requirements and the ability to deny care, health insurance companies get a provision that requires every citizen in the US to buy health insurance. Now, poor people won't be able to afford it, so the government will help them out. The government will get this money by taxing the health care benefits of people who have decent insurance now. So there will be a massive shift of dollars from the working middle class and the rich to insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors. Joy. Oh, and people with decent health coverage now will see it get worse. Double joy.

I'd also like to point out that we liberals are making nary a peep about our party passing really crappy legislation that will almost certainly come back to haunt us at the polls, the anti-abortion Dems will certainly be making hay and getting all kinds of goodies from the leadership. I'm sure our subservience will be rewarded in Heaven.

Now that we have 59 seats in the Senate and our year of a "filibuster-proof majority" has been revealed to be the joke that it is, can we please, please, please not keep the dream alive by shopping around for Republican votes to try to buy? It's over. How about we write bills that actually reflect Democratic values and have the Republicans (and Lieberman) vote "No" to every single bill? Let's schedule a vote-a-day and have them vote "No" on these things. Then we can go to the American people and say "This is what we stand for. This is what the Republicans stand against." Instead, we stand for compromise above else. We specialize in the art of the (unsuccessful) deal. We will sell out anything for a vote. We stand in the middle of the road and wonder why we keep getting run over.

The Democratic leadership sold out most of everything the liberal base believes in to get a deal and it didn't work. Now we have to go out and run on the "we tried to pass a muddled piece of shit that would likely have been a colossal failure, but we tried!" platform.

Lieberman needs to lose his chairmanships now. Reid is obviously incompetent as Senate President. We still have a large majority of the House and Senate and we can build on that, but we need to build from a solid base that reflects the parties values, not from a place where we will compromise on everything to win a few votes.

If it is our duty to govern, then we need to govern from our principles. We need to show the American people that we have ideas that appeal to them. We need show them that it is the Republicans that block good things from happening. We are going to lose the mid-term elections in a big way unless we give the American people something to vote for that they actually want. They do not want this health care bill. We will not lose the mid-term because we failed to pass an unpopular health care bill, we will lose the mid-terms if we make it the only thing that the Democrats stand for.

On The Brink - Vote YES on Measures 66 and 67

for balance: A "Vote Yes" ad.

The unbearable whiteness of this video can be chalked up, prolly, to the unbearable whiteness of Oregon....But, there're still a lotta assumptions going on when the message "keep our state functioning" is delivered as "keep heterosexual, suburban families snuggling with each other on forest paths."

It's Your Ox They'll gore

Nice anti-tax mashup work here, between 4-tracked Ovation acoustic gtr and an "anti-tax" statement by President Obama.

What fascinates me is how the "vote no" folks wanna use Obama's admonition about taxes to aid their cause, but how they (and their base) hate Obama so much that they cannot help but resort to weird racialized gags around the use of his image within the video portion.

Oh well, I can imagine talk radio fans cueing this thing up during Hannity commerical breaks.

Please Remit

Not only are public employees overpaid liabilities upon the benighted taxpayer... they are also effeminate and pedantic!

Happy New Year! and *SOLIS the ENFORCER*

Just got back from SF further shows. We had a great time and the shows were excellent (but weird with the guy doing the jerry impression... the other guys sounded and looked just like phil and bobby)

Anyway in labor news...looks like Solis is kickin some ass and takin some names...I hope she keeps it up.

Soon after she became the nation's labor secretary, Hilda Solis warned corporate America there was "a new sheriff in town." Less than a year into her tenure, that figurative badge of authority is unmistakable.

Her aggressive moves to boost enforcement and crack down on businesses that violate workplace safety rules have sent employers scrambling to make sure they are following the rules.

The changes are a departure from the policies of Solis' predecessor, Elaine Chao. They follow through on President Barack Obama's campaign promise to boost funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, increase enforcement and safeguard workers in dangerous industries.

This is where the D's need to learn from Reagan, meaning they need to be more aggressive and proactive with appointments. If you want to undermine an agency you can do it by appointing nincompoops and if you want an agency to function you appoint competent people and back their decisions.

Sumoftha Books (NonFic) I Read in 2009

Listen - I dunno how much time you want me to spend on explaining how this year's reading list was overdetermined by external events, my dissertation, etc., so just lemme say this: I did a lot less actual book-reading this year than I have in the four, five, six years previous. If anything, I hope this underwhelming list (of neither "high" nor "low" lights) will inspire some of our distinguished bloggers, commenters, etc., so that they'll use the occasion to reminisce on books they read and liked this year. It's a good excuse for looking back on shit - even non-book shit - you know?

Invisible Hands: The Businessman's Crusade Against the New Deal
by Kim Phillips-Fein
A major motif of my academic-ish readings in 2009 was a dip out of academic social and political theory, into a) more "applied" political science writing and b) the necessarily more "empirical"/"historicist" realm of the history of conservatism (both Perlstein's Nixonland and Wilentz The Age of Reagan deserve mention, too.) Check out Phillips'-Fein's Nation Review Article posing the question, what can the histories of conservatism tell us about the current configuration feat. Tea Parties and various fledgling populisms.

From Marxism to Post-Marxism
by Goran Therborn
I will revisit this work, no doubt, in making the argument that my dissertation "methodology" is """ marxism, """ but in the longer run, I fear I find it a little middling, and appropriate only for a grad-level Marxism seminar I'm increasingly less likely to ever one day teach.

Fat Man in a Middle Seat
by Jack Germond
You remember Germond [pic. below, Right] as the "fat man" from the McLaughlin Group, and his memoir is a weird, newsy, drunk, dry, drab denunciation of the (Clinton-era) political culture. I blame my unfortunate dependence on cable news for situating me such that this kind of well-meaning, liberalist batinage tastes like a grilled cheese sandwich to me after a long day "working."
The Eliminationists
by David Weinert
Domestic terror was on the brain, for obvious reasons. Which side is allowed to call the other one "fascist," again?

Plunder and Blunder
by Dean Baker
Have I ever mentioned this guy before? I am thinking about forcing this, if not The United States Since 1980 on some anthropology undergraduates this Summer who are doubtlessly expecting something about female genital cutting instead. It is the best explanation of the "current crisis" that I've read.

The Family
by Jeff Sharlet (who has a blog, I am thrilled to know.)

“Un-American theocrats can only fool patriotic American democrats when there aren’t critics like Jeff Sharlet around -- careful scholars and soulful writers who understand both the majesty of faith and the evil of its abuses. A remarkable accomplishment in the annals of writing about religion.”
--Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

Now, what the crap non-fiction did you read?

Chasepack Where Are They Now: Crying for Rudy edition

Report: Rudy out

The Daily News, which recently suggested Rudy Giuliani was on the verge of a Senate bid, reports that he'll declare tomorrow he's not running.

The lede: "So long, Rudy."

via Ben Smith 07:02 PM

Senate Late Night Postarama (or more likely snoozefest)

Not sure what I can add...anybody going to watch???
Why do Nelson(d-hahA) and Lieber (I-diot) get to have their demands met but not Sanders(S-ocialist) or Brown(D-oh)???

I say pass whatever you can in the senate, then nudge the thing left in conference...(if there is one...I have no knowledge of any precedent for forgoing conf. but have heard talk that they might "waive it")

Sissy's Song

Greatest song ever?

For Dave3544 - former OG blogger

Via right here.

"Used in a Cynical Way" by the BHO admin

Inspired by a day spent stewing on EZ's previous query:

1. From a trade unionist point of view, was it worth tabling EFCA for the Senate version of health care reform?
2. Or, knowing what we know about the White House after this debacle, were we insane to thing we'd get any real "support" on EFCA in the first place?
3. Would EFCA help more people, at this point, than the existing Senate health care bill?

Extra Credit: Is it disingenuous to talk about the "Senate bill" at this point, given that we've still got a lotta empirical questions about what, exactly, is in the Senate bill.

Will labor be the wrench?

Anybody heard about this?

Two of the country's largest labor groups, the SEIU and the AFL-CIO, are each holding emergency executive meetings today to discuss whether they should support the latest round of health care compromises made by Senate Democrats.

Though there's no official word yet, early indications based on talks with various officials are that the groups will either formally oppose the legislation or, less dramatically, just not fight very hard to ensure its passage.

I would like them to push against the "watered down" bill...

I wish we had gone the 51-vote route, but I am notoriously confrontational for no reason...

2009 Dec 7 - Maddow: I Guess I'm a Racist

I know! You loved the "I Guess I'm a Racist" spot, and now you want the "I Guess I'm a Racist" platter, featuring an entertaining overview of the spot's antecedents, and some intelligent attempts to make sense of a) who it's interpellating, b) and how/why it could possibly be effective at so doing.

Well, you're in luck. This is worth all 480+ seconds of your time.