Monday, January 19, 2009

Collin County Inaugural Gala

The Dallas Morning News:
Democratic women's big gala in Collin County symbolic of suburban gains
11:11 PM CST on Sunday, January 18, 2009
The Dallas Morning News / By THEODORE KIM


A fledgling Democratic women's group in [Collin] county is hosting what is believed to be the largest Obama inauguration gala in North Texas.

The $15,000 event, to be held at the Plano Centre, is black-tie optional. It will feature live music, a silent auction, a buffet and even a life-size cardboard cutout of Obama. About 400 people are expected.
"Women always get things done," said Barb Walters, president of the Texas Democratic Women of Collin County. The group is hosting the event with the local Obama campaign. "We want this to be a beginning, not an ending."

. . .The event is the latest signal that Dallas' affluent and politically important northern suburbs are becoming more competitive.

. . .Democrats, of course, still have their work cut out for them in Collin County, which for decades now has served as a base of power and resources for the GOP.
Republicans often mislabel the Democratic Party as the Democrat Party to convey their disdainful disrespect for those affiliated with the Democratic Party.

Note the difference in the DMN online headline, "Democratic women's big gala in Collin County symbolic of suburban gains" originally posted at 11:11 PM CST on Sunday, January 18, 2009 verses the headline "Democrat women's big gala in Collin County has symbolic significance" as updated at 12:00 AM CST on Monday, January 19, 2009.

The DMN does not want to be left open to a charge of "liberal media bias."

Voter ID Legislation To Pass Texas Senate In 2009

Updated January 19, 2009 11:00 AM
Republican Joe Straus, who is taking over the Texas House Speaker's Chair from hard right-winger Tom Craddick for the 2009 legislative session with the support of of every Democrat in the Texas House, commented to reporters on Friday, 16 January 2009, that he favors Voter Photo Identification
The Texas Senate on Wednesday, 14 January 2009, voted 18-13, along party lines, to exempt voter identification legislation from the longstanding “Two-Thirds” Rule. This rule requires that 21 senators must support a measure before it can be brought to the floor. Only one Republican, State Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas), broke ranks to join 12 Democrats in the near party-line vote to oppose the change to the two-thirds rule. The other 18 Republicans voted to exempt any bill brought forward in the Texas Senate that would require voters to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls before being allowed to vote.

Republican members of the Senate voted to exempt voter photo ID legislation from the two-thirds rule, similar to the way Congressional Redistricting was exempted by Republicans in 2003, over strong opposition from Democrats. Under the change, voter ID legislation can be brought up for a vote on the Senate floor with the approval of only 16 senators, not the 21 required under the customary two-thirds rule. Democrats could block votes under the usual two-thirds rule — and did so on the voter ID bill two years ago. Debate over voter photo ID in 2007 paralyzed the State Senate for weeks before the bill was rejected.

Wednesday's change to Texas Senate two-thirds rule will only apply to the voter ID bill; redistricting was dropped from the two-thirds exemption resolution before the final vote. Democrats unsuccessfully attempted to amend the voter ID two-thirds rule exemption resolution to also include exemptions on legislation for fully funding child health insurance, improved benefits for veterans, restoring funds to unemployment compensation, insurance rate regulation, foreclosure protection, tuition re-regulation and public education priority — to get the same majority-vote treatment as on voter ID. Republicans, as a block, voted against each program - a fact that that will surely be an issue that Democratic candidates can use against their Republican opponents during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.

With the Texas House made up of 74 Democrats and 76 Republicans, after the 2008 election, the Voter ID bill will face a tougher fight in the Texas House. Republican Joe Straus, who is taking over the Speaker's Chair from hard right-winger Tom Craddick for the 2009 legislative session with the support of of every Democrat in the Texas House, commented to reporters on Friday, 16 January 2009, that he favors Voter Photo Identification:
Straus, who voted for the Voter ID bill in 2007, stated he thinks another examination of whether photo IDs are needed to combat voter fraud is appropriate. He said he does not yet know whether there are sufficient votes in the House to pass a bill.

The Voter ID bill, introduced in the House during the 2007 legislative session, (HB 218) passed by a vote of 76 to 69 when the House was made up of 69 Democrats and 81 Republicans. Two Republicans voted against HR 218. The voter ID bill introduced in the Senate during the 2007 legislative session was successfully blocked from advancing to the floor for a vote by Senate Democrats.
Read on: No Evidence Of Voter Fraud

No Evidence Of Voter Fraud

In Indiana and six other states, unless you have a valid government-issued photo ID, of the type that Texas Republicans seek to make mandatory for would be Texas voters, you can not vote for anything. That’s a lesson a group of Indiana nuns learned in 2008 when they tried to vote in Indiana’s presidential primary.

Ten sisters, all in their 80s and 90s, from the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in South Bend were turned away from their polling place by a fellow sister because they presented outdated passports or had no photo ID at all. A rule requiring a photo ID to vote in Indiana became official following an April 28, 2008 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court deeming it constitutional.

While Texas proponents of voter ID legislation argue that it's needed to combat voter fraud, there is no evidence that the type of fraud that these requirements address has occurred at any point since records have been kept.

Voter Fraud is the claim that large groups of people knowingly and willingly give false information to establish voter eligibility, and knowingly and willingly vote illegally or participate in a conspiracy to encourage illegal voting by others.

Twenty-five states require identification at the polls for all voters and seven states - Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana and Michigan now require or can request a government-issued photo ID. In Arizona voters may present two non-photo documents such as a bank statement and a utility bill in lieu of a photo ID. Arizona's list of alternative IDs is similar to the list of IDs that Texas voters may present in lieu of a voter registration certificate.

Even as additional states seek to pass more restrictive voter ID legislation, mounting evidence suggests that stricter voter ID laws actually do very little to ensure polling-place integrity.

The Politics of Voter Fraud Study by Lorraine Minnite PDF
According to Barnard College Professor Loraine Minnite, the available state-level evidence of fraudulent voting, culled from interviews, reviews of newspaper coverage and court proceedings, shows that only 32 people were convicted of or pleaded guilty to illegal voting in the U.S. between 2002 and 2005, an average of eight people a year.

While there is no actual evidence of voter fraud, many studies, such as conducted by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, find that U.S. citizens of Latino, Asian American and African American heritage are less likely to vote as a result of increasingly restrictive voter ID requirements.

The Eagleton study examined the 2004 election and concluded that in states requiring voters to present an ID at the polls, 2.7 percent fewer citizens were likely to vote than in states where voters were merely required to register so that their name and address appears in the voting precinct poll book on election day.

According to the Eagleton study Latinos are 10 percent less likely to vote, Asian-Americans are 8.5 percent less likely to vote and African Americans are 5.7 percent less likely to vote.

Each of the groups listed in the Eagleton study tend to vote for Democratic candidates and are a growing percentage of Texas voters. The success of Democratic voter registration drives among these Texas groups in 2008 threatens to tip the balance of power away from the Republicans. As the tide of Democratic voters continues to grow across Texas, voter ID legislation would be an effective way for Republicans to hold back the tide.

Consequently, the use of baseless "voter fraud" allegations to promote voter ID legislation has become such an urgent priority for Republicans in the 2009 legislative session that Republicans in the Texas Senate felt compelled to change long standing Senate rules to advance the legislation.

The Eagleton Institute research is supported by findings from a November 2006 poll conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

The Brennan Center poll found that as many as 11 percent of American citizens, more than 21 million individuals, do not have a current, government-issued photo ID. Elderly, poor and minority Americans are more likely to lack government-issued ID.

Voting rights advocates say that requiring photo identification threatens to disenfranchise many older Americans, a voting bloc with traditionally strong turnout. Senior citizens are less likely to have driver’s licenses or birth certificates, which are often needed to obtain a government ID.

Brennan Center research suggest six million elderly Americans do not possess a government-issued photo ID. Additionally, 15 percent of voting-age citizens earning under $35,000 a year do not possess such ID and fully 25 percent of voting-age African Americans do not possess this ID.

Further, according to the Brennan Center, as many as 13 million U.S. citizens, or seven percent, do not have ready access to citizenship documents of the type required by most state voter id legislation. This makes the requirement to obtain a government-issued photo ID in order to vote an unduly onerous equivalent of a "Jim Crow" poll tax.

Texans already must request and be granted a voter registration card from their county Election Registrar's office thirty days in advance of an election. New registration applicants must provide their current address and Driver's License number or their Social Security Number on the voter registration application.

The applicant's county Election Registrar along with the Texas Secretary of State are required to authenticate citizenship and all other information given on the voter registration application against Texas motor vehicle records or the U.S. Social Security Administration before approving the application and granting "active" voter registration status.

Further, county Election Registrars and the Texas Secretary of State actively track registered voter change of address and death notices and other official record updates to automatically suspend a voter's registration on any change of status.

There is no evidence of voter fraud in the Lone Star State.
. . .Steve Raborn, elections administrator for Tarrant County, said a two-year investigation by his office of questionable voter registrations in 2004 and 2005 found only three noncitizens on the county voter rolls, and they were later removed.

. . .
The county officials said voter fraud was difficult to carry out in Texas because each applicant must submit a driver's license number or Social Security number, which is entered into a statewide electronic database and checked by the secretary of state's office. Applicants are sent a voting card and officially added to the rolls only if there are no discrepancies and the secretary of state's office approves the application.
There is a long history in America of certain groups using allegations of voter fraud to restrict and shape the electorate.

In the late nineteenth century, when newly freed black Americans were swept into electoral politics to become a voting majority, white Southern Democrats threatened by the loss of power justified the so called "Jim Crow" voting laws by alleging "voter fraud" by black voters.

Many 20th Century "Jim Crow" Southern Democrats switched to the Republican Party after President Franklin Roosevelt, President John Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson championed voters' rights and the elimination of "Jim Crow" type laws.

Cross Posted at DMN Trail Blazers Blog

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Friday, January 16, 2009

A Rush To Fill Hutchison's U.S. Senate Seat

Updated 01/16/09 at 10:00 AM

Talking Points Memo (01/15/09) - GOP Surprisingly Nervous About Texas Senate Seat -
Do Republicans think they could actually lose a seat in Texas, of all places? One Texas Republican source seemed surprisingly concerned, telling Election Central that the state Dems are "going through a bit of a renaissance," and have two decent candidates lined up for the eventual Senate race in Houston Mayor Bill White and former Comptroller John Sharp. "If Sharp and Bill White come back, there will be national Democratic Party money put back in Texas, and I think Republicans are gonna have to be on their A-game," the source said. Another on the record source, Mike Baselice, a local Republican pollster who works for GOP Gov. Rick Perry, told TPM, Democrats would have a low probability of winning a special election for the Senate.
The Hill.com (01/15/09) - Removing some doubt about her intentions to run for governor,
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) has transferred nearly her entire federal campaign account to her gubernatorial exploratory committee. Hutchison’s first filing with Texas elections officials shows that the senator had transferred just shy of $8 million from her Senate account to her statewide account.
Fearful that a special election for U.S. Senate could result in a Democratic victory, Congressional Republicans appear to be pressuring U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison not to resign unless and until she is elected governor. Republican insiders are increasingly indicating Hutchison will not resign at all if she is unsuccessful in her bid for the Governor's office.

Under Texas law, Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, would appoint a short-term replacement for Hutchison until a special election can be held. If Hutchison doesn't resign until shortly before the 2010 election, the special election for her open Senate seat could be held concurrently with the November 2010 general election, ensuring maximum turnout - a likely benefit for any Republican senatorial candidate. A special election would likely be held in November 2009 if Hutchison resigns before September 28, 2009. If she resigns later in 2009, the special election wouldn’t be held until May 2010.
If Hutchison doesn't resign until after the November 2010 general election the special election for her open Senate seat wouldn’t be held until May 2011.

There are now six people in the race for Kay Bailey Hutchison's U.S. Senate seat with at least five (or six) more believed to be considering throwing their hat in the ring too. And, speculation on U.S. Senator John Cornyn's comments in Roll Call suggests Attorney General Greg Abbott, one of the next five, may be throwing his hat in sooner rather than later.

Candidates: (Left to right) Houston Mayor Bill White (D), former State Comptroller John Sharp (D), Railroad Commission Chairman Michael Williams (R), State Sen. Florence Shapiro (R), former Secretary of State Roger Williams (R) and Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones (R)
Bill white senate John sharp senate 2 Michael williams senate
Florence shapiro
Roger williams senate Elizabeth ames jones senate

Potential Candidates: (Left to right) Rep. Kay Granger (R), Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R), US Rep. Joe Barton (R), Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R), Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) and TX State Senator Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio)
Kay granger senate
David dewhurst senate Joe barton senate
Jeb hensarling
Greg abbott senate

Pictures from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan

ADP Employer Services has just completed their jobs survey for December of 2008. They are predicting that when the Federal Jobs Report comes out in a couple of days that it will show a loss of 693,000 in the month of December alone.

Add that number to the 533,000 jobs lost in November and that adds up to 1,226,000 jobs lost since election day 2008 and 11,026,000 jobs lost in all of 2008. Let that enormous number sink in for a minute. Job losses were large and widespread across every major industry sector in 2008. (Chart 1 - U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The US unemployment rate, now at 6.7 percent, is forecast by many economists to rise above 8 percent, or even higher, by the end of 2009. IHS Global Insight, a Waltham, MA forecasting firm, projects the jobless rate will hit 9.4 percent by the end of 2009, a level not seen since 1982, when unemployment hit a post-World War II high of nearly 11 percent.

President elect Obama is calling for "swift and bold" bipartisan action on his "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan" to stop the hemorrhaging of the economy. Politico.com reports he is looking for as many as 80 votes in the Senate, requiring that more than twenty Republicans support his recovery program. He's not only invited congressional Republicans to offer their ideas, he is including tax breaks into his plan so that Republicans will find it easier to support.

But waiting for Republicans to support the recovery program insures only one thing -- delay. We now know that Republican members of the 111th Congress are planning to place ideology above action for the American people. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner have already dismissed the need for "swift and bold" action, with both McConnell and Boehner calling for drawn-out "hearings in the appropriate committees." This is unacceptable!

How many more millions of American workers will lose their jobs before the Democratic majorities in both houses of congress overcome Republican foot-dragging and McConnell's threat to filibuster the Senate?

This is not the time for the Congress to be conducting business as usual. If you have never called or written your representatives in the U.S. House and Senate, now is the time to start. Write, call or email both U.S. Senators for Texas, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, and your Representative in U.S. House and tell them this is a very real crisis for the American people and they must support President Obama's "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan."

You can find the contact information for your representatives in the U.S. House and Senate at the following links:
U.S. Senate U.S. House
There are two congressional districts in Collin County: Map

For a little more to think about read: The Price of Consensus: Obama and Congressional Republicans

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

State Senator Seeks To End Straight Ticket Voting

Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN — Republican Tx state senator Jeff Wentworth from San Antonio has said he will introduce a bill to eliminate the straight-ticket voting option, even after Texans hit a 10-year high in the percentage of ballots sticking entirely with one party. Wentworth introduced the same bill in 2007, but the bill died without advancement.

Texas Democratic Party spokesman Hector Nieto said straight-ticket voting was “a good thing for both parties” and accused Republicans of trying to disrupt the inroads Democrats have made in urban counties, notably Harris and Dallas counties.

“It’s clear Republicans have seen Democrats organizing in a better manner and using straight-ticket voting to our advantage,” Nieto said. “Instead of competing, they just want to do away with it.”

Full Story

A Blue Collin Co.

The Democratic Party of Collin County need only look at how the Harris County Democrats organized to elect a long slate of Democrats in a county long dominated by Republicans. Like Harris County, Collin County Can Turn Blue With Smart Leadership.

The Texas Progressive Alliance selected the Harris County Democratic Coordinated Campaign as its “Texan of the Year” for 2008:
The Harris County Democratic Coordinated Campaign faced a daunting task in 2008: Take Texas' largest county, which hadn't elected a Democrat to any county wide office in over a decade and which went for George Bush by ten points in 2004, and turn it blue. And they had to do it amid the high expectations that followed Dallas' fabled blue sweep in 2006, with the Harris County GOP knowing they were being targeted. And they had to start from scratch, since there hadn't been any kind of effort like it in anyone's memory. Oh, and in the middle of it all they had to abandon their headquarters and move to a new location thanks to the damage that Hurricane Ike wrought [and creation of a campaign'08 website].

The key was strong leadership, starting with the vision of people like Party Chairman Gerry Birnberg and Dave Mathieeson, the operational know-how of Executive Director Jamaal Smith and Bill Kelly, and the coordination and hard work of many, many people. They developed a plan, matched it with a budget and coordinated with all the candidates. They opened branch offices all around the county and drew on the energy of Democrats new and old. They knocked on doors, made calls, sent mail, and spread the message of Democratic change everywhere.

And in the end, they succeeded, with Democrats winning 27 of 34 county wide races. They boosted turnout in the traditional Democratic areas, and improved performance all across the county. They relentlessly pushed an early-vote message, which translated into leads of 50,000 votes or more for most candidates going into Election Day. They stressed the importance of voting Democratic all the way down the ballot, which minimized under voting in the lower-profile races. They brought in new voters and brought back those who had given up hope, and got them all on the same page.

Add it all up, and the new year will bring new Democratic judges, a new Sheriff, a new County Attorney, a new District Clerk, and two new County Department of Education trustees. For that, and for the promise that 2010 will bring even more success and help pave the way towards turning all of Texas blue, the Texas Progressive Alliance is proud to name the Harris County Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign its Texan of the Year for 2008.
Locating good Democratic candidates to run in Collin County is a only half the battle to turn the county blue. As in Harris County, Collin County candidates need a Democratic support infrastructure built and managed by the local Democratic Party to support the candidates and help get them elected.

Democratic candidates need more than the support of just their own circle of friends and supporters. Candidates need competently orchestrated local party support, as provided in Harris County for the 2008 election cycle, to overcome the advantage that Republicans now enjoy in the county.

As a starting point, Collin County Democrats should be closely analyzing the 2008 election data and gathering other voter information to prepare for the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. Democratic candidates need the same advantages that Republican candidates now enjoy in the county.

Micro-target marketing applied to political organizing and Get Out The Vote is a big part of how the Republicans turned Texas, Collin County and most of the U.S. so red over the last 20 years. They pulled info from official voting records and various commercial marketing data sources on who subscribed to what magazines, who were members of what organizations, church affiliations and so forth to populate their equivalent to VAN.
Micro-targeting direct marketing data-mining techniques and predictive market segmentation (cluster analysis) is use by Republicans to identify and target voters, both committed and potential.

That means not just looking at voting history, but finding out about their lifestyles, buying habits, and even how they spend their free time. In the words, "It's not where they live, it's how they live.”

Republicans have stockpiled millions of names, phone numbers and addresses with consumer preferences, voting histories and other demographic information.

The information allows Republican campaigns to target individual households with various means of communication including direct mail, phone calls, home visits, television, radio, web advertising, email, text messaging, etc. The targeted communications convey messages tailored to issues the resident is believed to care about to build support for fundraising, campaign events, volunteering, and eventually to turn them out to the polls on election day.

Micro-targeting tactics rely on transmitting a tailored message to a targeted subgroup of the electorate determined by the unique information data-mined about individuals of that special interest subgroup.
The Democratic Party of Collin County should be attempting to answering a few basic questions about the 2008 general election as the first step to building its own micro-targeted Collin County voter database.

On election day 2008 there were 424,821 registered voters in Collin County out of an eligible voting age population of approximately 540,000. So, there were up to 115,179 people of voting age that never registered to vote. Of the 424,821 registered voter number, 56,968 were in "suspend" status leaving 367,853 active voters. 298,647 people voted in the 2008 election in Collin County which means that 69,206 active voters did not vote.

So, adding the total of 126,174 active and inactive voters who did not vote to the 115,179 eligible voters who have never registered to vote, we have a "non-participating voter" population of 241,353 people in the county. Plus, between election day 2008 and election day 2010 some 2,500 teens will mature beyond the voting age threshold and additional eligible voters will move into the county.

It is among these "non-participating voters" that Democrats will likely find the margin of extra votes to turn Collin County blue in future elections. The problem before us is to figure out how to identify progressive-leaning non-participating voters and then motivate those voters to contribute money and vote for Democratic candidates. Some of the questions that must be answered to begin to qualify these "non-participating voters" as Democratic supporters include:
  • Who are the 56,968 registered voters in "suspend" status and what will it take to make them not only active voters again, but active Democrats?
  • Who are the 69,206 active voters did not vote this year and why didn't they vote? Are they disaffected Republicans? What issues might motivate them to vote in 2010 and what kind of Democratic candidate might they find attractive?
  • Why didn't 115,179 people of voting age register to vote this year - who are they?
  • Who are the 108,208 (36.6%) people who voted for Obama.
  • Who are the teen agers in 2008 non-voting age segment of the population that will turn 18 by election day 2010 and 2012 and how can the DPCC start to pull them into organizing events asap?
If Democrats can successfully answer just some of these questions about the 2008 general election voters and "non-participating voters," Democratic candidates have a much better chance of winning the county in 2010 and most particularly in 2012.

It might be easier for the Democratic Party to attract full slates of high caliber Democratic candidates to run in Collin County if potential candidates know they can count on fully orchestrated local party support, such as the Harris County Democratic Party provided in 2008.

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Monday, January 5, 2009

FDR's New Deal

A new book, "Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America" by Adam Cohen, describes how FDR's New Deal was crafted through a process of rigorous argument within the president's innermost circle during FDR's First Hundred Days in office.

Cohen, a member of the New York Times editorial board, "delivers an exemplary and remarkably timely narrative of FDR's famous first Hundred Days as president," according to Publishers Weekly.
"Providing a new perspective on an oft-told story, Cohen zeroes in on the five Roosevelt aides-de-camp whom he rightly sees as having been the most influential in developing FDR's wave of extraordinary actions. These were agriculture secretary Henry Wallace, presidential aide Raymond Moley, budget director Lewis Douglas, labor secretary Frances Perkins and Civil Works Administration director Harry Hopkins. This group, Cohen emphasizes, did not work in concert. The liberal Perkins, Wallace and Hopkins often clashed with Douglas, one of the few free-marketers in FDR's court. Moley hovered somewhere in between the two camps. As Cohen shows, the liberals generally prevailed in debates. However, the vital foundation for FDR's New Deal was crafted through a process of rigorous argument within the president's innermost circle rather than ideological consensus. Cohen's exhaustively researched and eloquently argued book provides a vital new level of insight into Roosevelt's sweeping expansion of the federal government's role in our national life."
Right Wing efforts to re-write history will accelerate as they try to oppose Obama's policies by attacking FDR's legacy and blaming the Great Depression on FDR's policies - notwithstanding the fact that the Great Depression was well under way when FDR took office in 1933. Many FDR bashers quote skewed and factually misinterpreted data presented in a book by libertarian author Jim Powell, "FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression." Richard Nixon biographer Conrad Black writes a piece in The Daily Beast about “Why The Right Should Leave FDR Alone:”
Hoover had made the worst possible selection of policy options - higher taxes and tariffs and a shrunken money supply. The unemployment rate was approximately 33%, about five times what it is now, and there was no direct relief for the unemployed. They could beg, steal, or starve, though Hoover claimed that they prospered selling apples.

On Inauguration Day, 1933 (then March 4), there were machine gun nests at the corners of the great government buildings in Washington, for the only time since the Civil War. All banks in 32 states had been closed. Six other states had closed almost all their banks. In the other ten states and D.C., withdrawals were limited to 5 percent of deposits, and in Texas to $10 per day. The New York Stock Exchange and Chicago commodity exchanges had also been closed, indefinitely. The financial system had effectively collapsed, and was threatening to take the life savings of millions of people and what was left of the world’s financial system with it.

In a fever of activity, Roosevelt guaranteed bank deposits, made the federal government a temporary non-voting preferred shareholder in thousands of suddenly under-capitalized banks—more than half the banks in the country—refinanced millions of residential and farm mortgages, tolerated cartels and collective bargaining to raise prices and wages, increased the money supply, effectively departed the gold standard, repealed Prohibition of alcoholic beverages (wrenching one of the nation’s largest industries out of the hands of the underworld), and legislated reduced working hours and improved working conditions for the whole work force. In the next two years, he set up the Securities and Exchange Commission, created the Social Security system, and broadened the powers of the Federal Reserve to equal those of other national central banks, in what became known as the Second New Deal.

Unemployment declined from about 33 percent when Roosevelt entered office to half of one percent when he died in office 12 years and 39 days later, and had been at that point for four and a half years, since several months before Pearl Harbor. The average per capita income doubled under Roosevelt, and was more equitably distributed, as the United States led the Allies to victory over the Nazis and Japanese imperialists, and the admission or restoration of Japan, Germany, France, and Italy to the democratic and civilized Western Alliance.

Roosevelt won four consecutive presidential elections with an average of more than 56 percent of the vote, and his party, while he led it, won seven consecutive elections of both houses of Congress. These are not the usual rewards for prolongation of economic distress. FDR had his faults, but he was a great leader at a time when America and the Western world had to have a great leader in the White House, and the American loony right should aim their spitballs elsewhere. There is no shortage of deserving targets.
University of California historian Eric Rauchway says:
The most important thing to know about Roosevelt's economics is that, despite claims to the contrary, the economy recovered during the New Deal. During Roosevelt's first two terms, the U.S. economy grew at average annual growth rates of 9 percent to 10 percent, with the exception of the recession year of 1937-1938...

Excepting 1937-1938, unemployment fell each year of Roosevelt's first two terms. In part, the jobs came from Washington, which directly employed as many as 3.6 million people to build roads, bridges, ports, airports, stadiums, and schools -- as well as, of course, to paint murals and stage plays. But new jobs also came from the private sector, where manufacturing work increased apace.

This basic fact is clear -- unless you quote only the unemployment rate for the recession year 1938 and count government employees hired under the New Deal as unemployed, which conservative commentators have taken to doing.
1937-1938 was the period Roosevelt dialed back the New Deal in the name of conservative budget principles. By 1937 things were a lot better than they were in 1933. FDR himself actually subscribed to conservative budget principles and in 1937 he was persuaded to balance the budget, or try to. When FDR cut New Deal spending, to balance the budget, the economy went back down again. What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous fiscal stimulus program known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.

Aside from Krugman there has been few in the media to respond to conservative revisionists who try to indirectly attack Obama's proposals by attacking FDR's New Deal. In the coming months and years Right Wing efforts to re-write history will accelerate as they try to oppose Obama's policies by attacking FDR's legacy. Democrats must be prepared to aggressively respond to such retroactive propaganda efforts.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

The Economy Crumbled

Salon.com
By Andrew Leonard
Jan. 2, 2009


Of all the economic earthquakes that racked the global economy in 2008, one temblor ranks supreme. Alan Greenspan's declaration to Congress on Oct. 23: "I made a mistake."

In those four words can be heard the crumbling of at least three decades of ideological dominance. Technically speaking, Greenspan was acknowledging that he had misjudged the private sector's ability to manage risk in a largely deregulated environment.

In 2008, we witnessed a market failure of epic proportions. Whatever moral authority the [unfettered free market] deregulators thought they might have had -- that sense of superiority that came from the calm confidence that their interpretation of how the world works is the correct one -- is gone.

The story of how a particular kind of mortgage loan proved to be the undoing of Wall Street and the catalyst for the end of a period of sustained global economic growth is at once insanely complex and, by now, almost too familiar. We now know that dereliction of duty ran rampant at every step of the chain. Mortgage borrowers lied about their income. Mortgage lenders failed to check the credit-worthiness of borrowers. Banks restructured loans into derivative instruments that obscured the underlying liabilities. Credit rating agencies -- dependent on fees from the very institutions whose products they were supposed to be judging -- gave the newfangled securities gold-plated ratings. Government regulators looked the other way. We now know that the incentives built into the system encouraged every individual actor to act in defiance of economic rationality.

We now know, in other words, that left to themselves, economic actors do not pursue rational, sustainable courses of action. Greed and self-interest will steer you into the ditch every time.

How did we get here?

Monday, December 29, 2008

For the GOP It's 1933 Déjà vu All Over Again

As if the economic news weren't bad enough and getting worse at the moment, with analysis of the near future looking grim, unemployment numbers rising and consumer spending tanking, you'd think a little common sense might kick in somewhere in the GOP. Maybe restoring government regulation and enforcement to combat fraud, deceit and outright bilking and a economic stimulus package might make sense. Right?

Wrong - The fact is, facts simply aren't relevant to Republicans, whose unquestioning adherence to dogma, unyielding opposition to FDR's "New Deal" reforms and veneration of conservative icons such as Ronald Reagan are more appropriate to religious faith than intellectual rigor.

Rather than accept responsibility for the many catastrophes conservative governance and the repeal of FDR's "New Deal" reforms, have foisted upon the nation, Republicans seek to deny blame; President Bush says the Wall Street meltdown isn't his fault, as he tells Charles Gibson,
"I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made took place over a decade or so, before I arrived."
Well, to be completely accurate, Bush's conservative legacy of failure directly follows from the conservative prime ideological directive, so well articulated by Ronald Reagan upon his inauguration on January 20, 1981, that "Government is not the solution; government is the problem." What has happened over the last eight years links up to what has been happening over the last twenty-eight years, since Ronald Reagan's inaugural call to dismantle government.

By the time Ronald Reagan was elected president conservative Republicans had spent 50 years unsuccessfully trying to sell Americans on the idea that conservative governance in the 1920's had nothing to do with the economic crisis of the 1930's and that the U.S. economy—whether in recession or booming—was laboring under the shackles of the burdensome taxation and misguided regulation placed upon it by FDR's enduring New Deal legislation.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. writes about FDR's challenges to rescue America through a "new deal" approach to government in his book, "Crisis of the Old Order,"
"The economy FDR inherited in March 1933, delivered to him by 12 years of Republican laissez-faire rule, was a shambles. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 90 percent from its 1929 peak. and gross domestic product fell by more than a quarter between 1929 and 1933. One out of every four American workers lacked a job, hunger marchers, pinched and bitter, were parading cold streets in New York and Chicago, only a small percentage of the unemployed received relief. Americans suffered a degree of long-term financial distress that is almost unimaginable, but Republicans denied that [the conservative philosophy of] laissez-faire [no government regulation or intervention] governance during the 1920's was in any way responsible for the economic crisis."
From the first days of Roosevelt's Administration in 1933 conservative Republicans have viewed FDR's New Deal programs to regulate banking and Wall Street and protect and empower working class citizens as an extreme threat to their interests. Republicans hated FDR's ideas for financial system regulatory oversight, the Social Security Adminstration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Triborough Bridge program and the Work Projects Administration (WPA) programs.

In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt's 'First 100 Days,' America's richest businessmen were in a panic. It was clear that Roosevelt intended to push massive "New Deal" economic recovery legislation through congress that would regulate the Banking System and Wall Street and protect and empower working class citizens. Conservatives felt that Roosevelt had to be stopped at all costs and their answer was a political coup, along the lines of the recently successful coups of Adolf Hitler in Germany and Benito Mussolini in Italy. (Hear BBC audio report The White House Coup)

In 1934, Marine Major General Smedley Butler told Congress that a group of wealthy industrialists had approached him to lead a coup to take over the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was to be secretly financed and organized by leading officers of the Morgan and Du Pont empires and included some of America's richest and most famous conservative republicans of the time.

Butler pretended to go along with the plot and met other members of the conspiracy, but in November 1934 Butler exposed the plot in secret testimony to the congressional Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the McCormack-Dickstein Committee) that was investigating Nazi and certain other propaganda activities. Butler claimed that the American Liberty League was the main organization behind the plot. He added the main backers were the Du Pont family, as well as leaders of U.S. Steel, General Motors, Standard Oil, Chase National Bank, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Butler also named Prescott Bush, President G.W. Bush's grandfather, as one of the conspirators.

The plot to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt failed when Butler exposed the coup plot, but conservatives have never ceased their effort to overthrow Roosevelt's New Deal regulation of banking and Wall Street and other protections for working class citizens.

In Reagan, conservatives had finally found someone who could successfully sell the conservative "free market" argument against FDR's New Deal philosophy that Government Safety Net Programs and Regulatory Oversight are required to protect working class citizens against catastrophic financial system boom/bust cycles.

During the twenty-eight years following Reagan's inauguration conservatives relentlessly pushed to eliminate government safety net and oversight programs in every corner of America under the canard that "unfettered free markets work best." It was conservatives, both Republican and blue dog Democrat, who pushed repeal and elimination of any and all government safety net and regulatory oversight legislation, following Reagan's inaugural pronouncement.

So, President Bush is correct to say that, "a lot of the decisions were made before I arrived." Yet, it is an ultimate act of denial for Bush to deny that his Blind Conservative Faith In Unregulated Banking And Markets and his directives to oversight agencies that they must not enforce regulations congress had not yet repealed, did in fact stoked our economic crisis.

President Bush is not alone in his denial that the conservative philosophy of governance is the root cause behind the desperate circumstances Americans face today. In their denial many conservatives say that President Bush betrayed conservatism or that President Bush and the Republican leadership in congress were not conservative enough or they lost focus of the "true" core conservative values articulated by President Reagan.

The truth is, President Bush and the Republican leadership in congress faithfully executed both the Republican party’s divisive tactics of political leadership and its governing philosophy. Together they implemented the vision President Reagan articulated in his inauguration speech 28 years ago. And that vision was the repeal of the FDR's New Deal government protections for working class America.

In James K. Galbraith’s book, "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too" Galbraith makes the case that,
America is in the grip of an economic orthodoxy defined by Ronald Reagan and embraced ardently by George W. Bush. This orthodoxy rests on four pillars: 1) Cut taxes on the wealthy, 2) Reduce regulation, 3) Fear inflation above all else, and 4) Insist on free-floating currency rates. Yet mainstream economists have spent much of the past decade examining the results, and declaring them false; Supply-side stimulation is a mirage. In plain English, Galbraith shows that the Republican Party has been hijacked by political leaders who long since stopped caring if their message conforms to reality.
Obama's ambitious plans to repair the American economy have drawn comparison to the massive New Deal reforms and programs pioneered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Conservative Republicans, unable to intellectually accept or unwilling to honestly admit that conservative governance has led to financial calamity twice in a period of 70 years, are signaling that they are as opposed to President Obama's new "New Deal" legislation as their conservative forefathers were to FDR's New Deal legislation.

In recent weeks conservative media figures on TV and radio and conservative Republican lawmakers have attempted to counter media comparisons of Barack Obama to Franklin Roosevelt or assertions in the media that a "New Deal level of government intervention" is necessary to resolve the current economic crisis, by falsely asserting that Roosevelt's New Deal reforms and programs caused the 1930's economy depression. Assertions that the New Deal rather than Republican conservative governance during the 1920's caused the 1930's depression is flatly rejected by economists and historians. New York Times economic writer Daniel Gross debunks these false assertions writing:
It was only with the passage of New Deal efforts--the SEC, the FDIC, the FSLIC--that the mechanisms of private capital began to kick back into gear. Don't take it from me. Take it from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who wrote the following in Essays on the Great Depression: "Only with the New Deal's rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression."...

The argument that the New Deal's efforts "perhaps had prolonged, the Depression," is a canard. One would be very hard-pressed to find a serious professional historian--I mean a serious historian, not a think-tank wanker, not an economist, not a journalist--who believes that the New Deal prolonged the Depression.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the most powerful conservative Republican in Washington, has said he intends to delay Obama's proposed economic stimulus legislation of $1 trillion in spending and tax cuts by demanding that the Democratically controlled Senate hold lengthy committee hearings. McConnell has the ability to use his 41 Republican Senator cloture vote filibuster to block Obama's legislation, should Democrats not acquiesce to his stall tactics.

GOP House of Representatives minority leader John Boehner is also looking for ways to delay Obama's legislation with lengthy House committee meetings. Boehner is using his website to solicit opposition to Obama's new New Deal saying, "if there are any credentialed economists who are willing to say negative things about stimulus plans, please contact me."

Conservatives in the RNC are also working to exert their influence against Obama's new New Deal with a resolution circulated during the last week of December: (PDF of the resolution.)

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman says, "The New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run as it was in the long run. And the reason for FDR’s limited short-run success, which almost undid his whole program, was the fact that his economic policies were too cautious." FDR listened too much to conservatives of his day telling him to ease up on the reforms and safety-net programs.

The Republicans have begun their national introspection over the real causes of their electoral wipe out on Nov. 4, with party "leaders" debating how far right - or left - the party needs to go to regain respectable, if not winning, status. Perhaps the fastest path to respectability is for Republicans to accept responsibility for the current economic problems and join Obama in a true bipartisan venture to rebuild America.

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Reconstituting Conservative Ideology As Good Governance

Bush's conservative legacy of failure follows from a single utterance from Ronald Reagan upon his inauguration on January 20, 1981; "Government is not the solution; government is the problem." What has happened over the last eight years links up to what has been happening over the last twenty-eight years, since Ronald Reagan was elected president.

In the long run, historians will have a very easy time characterizing the failures of the Bush presidency - Bush is a conservative Republican ascending to office with a Congress controlled by conservative Republicans, alongside a judiciary more or less controlled by conservative Republicans, all set in motion by President Reagan.

In the short run, it appears very, very clear that's not stopping conservatives from rewriting history.
NYTimes.com
A President Forgotten but Not Gone
By FRANK RICH
Published: January 3, 2009


[An] elaborate example of legacy spin was placed on the Bush White House Web site before he left office on January 20, 2009: a booklet (PDF) recounting “highlights” of the administration’s “accomplishments and results.” With big type, much white space, children’s-book-like trivia boxes titled “Did You Know?” and lots of color photos of the Bushes posing with blacks and troops, its 52 pages require a reading level closer to “My Pet Goat” than “The Stranger.”

This document is the literary correlative to “Mission Accomplished.” Bush kept America safe (provided his presidency began Sept. 12, 2001). He gave America record economic growth (provided his presidency ended December 2007). He vanquished all the leading Qaeda terrorists (if you don’t count the leaders bin Laden and al-Zawahri). He gave Afghanistan a thriving “market economy” (if you count its skyrocketing opium trade) and a “democratically elected president” (presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt governments). He supported elections in Pakistan (after propping up Pervez Musharraf past the point of no return). He “led the world in providing food aid and natural disaster relief” (if you leave out Brownie and Katrina).

If this is the best case that even Bush and his handlers can make for his achievements, you wonder why they bothered. Desperate for padding, they devote four risible pages to portraying our dear leader as a zealous environmentalist.

But the brazenness of Bush’s alternative-reality history is itself revelatory. The audacity of its hype helps clear up the mystery of how someone so slight could inflict so much damage. So do his many print and television exit interviews.

Asked (by Charles Gibson) if he feels any responsibility for the economic meltdown, Bush says, “People will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived.”

“The attacks of September the 11th came out of nowhere,” he said in another interview, as if he hadn’t ignored frantic intelligence warnings that summer of a Qaeda attack. But it was an “intelligence failure,” not his relentless invocation of patently fictitious “mushroom clouds,” that sped us into Iraq.
The last NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Bush’s presidency found that 79 percent of Americans will not miss him after he leaves the White House. He is being forgotten already, but it is important to remember how vast the wreckage stretches.
HuffingtonPost.com
by Brad Woodhouse
Posted December 23, 2008


The Bush legacy should be remembered as a grand and failed experiment of what happens when conservatives are in complete control of the government. Conservative ideology rails against government, argues that government is the problem, not the solution. So when a government run by conservatives so utterly fails to promote and protect the common good for all citizens, is it any wonder?

And now the same folks that brought us the needless $3 trillion war in Iraq have the mother of all swan songs left in store: redefining the Bush legacy as something other than a failure. Weekly Standard senior writer and GOP insider Stephen Hayes let slip earlier this month that an unofficial White House PR campaign is afoot - which Hayes dubbed the "Bush Legacy project" -- with the mission of highlighting what they believe are the President's accomplishments and shirking responsibility for the more numerous and far more consequential failures.

In reality, more than a few people formerly in his administration have come forward as witnesses to a serious failure of leadership.

In 1987, President Reagan's job approval rating plummeted to 42 percent during the height of the Iran-Contra scandal. However, in the remaining months of his presidency, Reagan went largely unchecked and managed to leave office with a 63 percent approval rating -- allowing his conservative disciples to redefine his presidency as an example of successful conservative governance. A remarkable feat, to be sure, for a legacy of unhinged deficit spending, draconian cuts in federal assistance to local governments, a homelessness boom, and a refusal to acknowledge the fledgling AIDS epidemic. Reagan got away with repairing his legacy on the way out the door; George W. cannot be allowed to do the same.
In truth, the failures of the last eight years cannot be chalked up to one man. The war in Iraq, the floundering economy, the tragedy that befell New Orleans, were the failures of conservative ideology. The failures are owned by every conservative in Congress who championed and happily rubber-stamped conservative legislation and the conservative philosophy of governing.

The truly compelling story of this decade is one that conservatives do not want told – the rapid and dramatic failure of conservative government. America has learned what life is like under a true conservative government. With near absolute power, conservatives have pursued their agenda with little compromise or input from progressives. In a position of virtually unchecked power conservatives have failed quickly and utterly at the most basic responsibilities of governing, leaving our nation weaker and our people less prosperous, less safe and less free. The Bush years may have been years of political and legislative victories for conservatives, but those years of political and legislative victories have resulted in disastrous conservative governance.

Conservatives in Washington have taken the country on a reckless sharp right turn, offering an economic strategy ill-suited for the challenges we face in the 21st century, a foreign policy too belligerent and too ineffective, and a style of governing too arrogant and corrupt for our proud democracy. Their approach has not only failed to yield the results they've promised, but has endangered America's leadership in the world and broad-based prosperity at home in ways that will take many years to repair.

Conservative leadership in Washington, DC:
  • Misled the American people into an endless war in Iraq that has made the United States less safe, has resulted in the death and injury of thousands of American troops and Iraqis, has cost American taxpayers as much as one trillion dollars, has strained our military to the breaking point, and has prevented us from finishing the job in Afghanistan.
  • Stood idly by while thousands of Americans lost everything during Hurricane Katrina – and still haven’t taken leadership to rebuild the Gulf Coast and help people return home.
  • Allowed trickle-down, laissez-faire (deregulation, anti-regulation, no government regulation or even oversight on anything for any reason, ever, period) economics to help the rich get richer, while regular Americans struggle with soaring gas and food prices, a meltdown in the housing market, and exploding debt during today’s economic recession.
  • Turned control of our country’s health care system over to insurance and pharmaceutical companies, leaving millions of Americans incapable of paying for the rising costs of health benefits and turning emergency rooms into primary care physicians.
  • Broke their promise to America’s children, failing to fund early education programs and No Child Left Behind.
  • Ignored the scientific reality of climate change, obstructing efforts to make our air and water cleaner so oil and gas companies and big business could achieve record profits.
  • Turned their backs on America’s workers, assaulting workers’ rights and impeding regular Americans’ efforts to form unions and bargain for better pay and working conditions.
  • Conservatives have methodical pursued a campaign to politicize, ignore, twist or undermine science on the effects of smoking and of air pollution, the feasibility and benefits of energy savings through increased energy efficiency standards, the feasibility on deploying alternative energy technologies, stem cell research, educational standards, sex education and contraceptives and the drug abuse, all the way to a campaign aimed at teaching "alternatives to evolution" in the classroom.
We cannot let the conservative version of the past eight years, à la the "Bush Legacy Project," go down in history as the truth. Democrats cannot allow conservatives to reconstitute conservative ideology, as they did for Reagan's presidency, as an approach to government that will ever do more than utterly fail the American people.
"I'm absolutely positive history will be kind to this president, who made the right decisions in a difficult time for this nation," Bush Strategist Karl Rove, 5/7/08

Beware the conservative propaganda machine!
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Sunday, December 28, 2008

Politics Is No Longer Local - It's Viral

WashingtonPost.com
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Sunday, December 28, 2008


It was through news clips posted on YouTube -- and through Obama's YouTube channel, which lists more than 1,800 videos -- that groups [of people] learned about the Illinois senator's policies and positions.

And it was mostly on the Internet, in one of those ubiquitous, inescapable Web ads -- the campaign spent $8 million on online advertising -- that they heard about Obama's text-messaging program. "I only get texts from my friends," Andy Green, a 20-year-old sophomore, told me. "Let me correct that: I only get texts from my friends and from Obama."

In the past, we've thought of politics as something over there -- isolated, separate from our daily lives, as if on a stage upon which journalists, consultants, pollsters and candidates spun and dictated and acted out the process. Now, because of technology in general and the Internet in particular, politics has become something tangible. Politics is right here. You touch it; it's in your laptop and on your cellphone. You control it, by forwarding an e-mail about a candidate, donating money or creating a group. Politics is personal. Politics is viral. Politics is individual.

And we're just getting started.

Obama's unprecedented online success guarantees that there's not a single campaign in 2012, Democratic or Republican, that won't place the Web at the core of its operation. The floodgates are open. This doesn't mean just hiring Web developers, bloggers, videographers -- the works. It also means using the Internet to invite people into the process, giving them something to work for, offering them a stake in victory or defeat. More than any other medium in our history, the Web is by the people, for the people. Starting with Howard Dean, continuing with Obama and stretching out into the future, this new dynamic will transform the way campaigns are run -- and, beyond that, the way the winning candidate governs. Fundamentally, all of this is redefining our relationship with our politics.

Read the full story at the WashingtonPost.com

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