Steve's Politics Blog

The Daily Kos has the article Majority of House Democrats back the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ People’s Budget.

The article has the link to the roll call vote.  My representative Richard Neal voted no. So here is the question for him.

96 House Democrats—a majority—voted “yes” on the People’s Budget, why were you one of the 86 House Democrats to vote against it? As your constituent, I would like an explanation.

I was upset that the People’s budget paid homage to the Republican myth that the deficit must be reduced.  The only two methods that the myth recognizes is either cutting spending in other areas to offset increased spending in the areas of the people’s budget, or raise tax revenues.

If promulgation of this myth was your reason for voting against the people’s budget, I could understand that.

Who would like to attend the Sturbridge Democratic Town Committee brunch honoring Rep. Neal to ask this question?  The date of the brunch is April 12th at 11AM.  It will be at the Publick House in Sturbridge.

NPR has the story Payday Loans — And Endless Cycles Of Debt — Targeted By Federal Watchdog.

For millions of cash-strapped consumers, short-term loans offer the means to cover purchases or pressing needs. But these deals, typically called payday loans, also pack triple-digit interest rates — and critics say that borrowers often end up trapped in a cycle of high-cost debt as a result.

On Facebook, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon posted the link to the above article. Merkley said the following:

Now we’re getting somewhere! This week the CFPB announced new rules to crack down on the abusive cycle of payday debt.

There is one thing missing from the discussion. What would these people do if they did not have access to payday loans? To complete the story and make it even more credible to the most cynical, we need at least one story that compares the situation of the victim after the payday loan to where they would have been had they not received the loan.

The payday lenders are claiming that they are performing a service. We need a direct refutation that proves that the victims are not better off than they would have been had they not received the “service”.

I want to put a nail in the coffin of this business that cannot be unnailed.

The Washington Post has the article What if you could replace performance evaluations with four simple questions?

Everyone loves to hate performance evaluations, and with good reason: Research has shown them to be ineffective, unreliable and unsatisfactory for seemingly everyone involved. They consume way too much time, leave most workers deflated and feel increasingly out of step with reality.

I have been railing against performance reviews for many years.  I had many deficiencies and problems with being a manager, but what really drove me out of the ranks of management was the need to do performance reviews.  I even got myself into a position where my manager wrote performance reviews that I had to deliver to employees.  I once asked this manager whether or not he thought performance reviews were intended to demotivate employees?  The review he had just prepared would certainly do that to its intended target.  Even the toned down review that I had to deliver motivated this valued employee right out the door of the company.  I certainly couldn’t soften the blow to the employee by telling him, “You should have seen this review before I had it toned down.”

Politico Magazine has the article The GOP’s Playing Dangerous Politics with Israel by  Rep. Steve Israel.

I have seen dirty politics, but never before have I seen the ugly politics that I am witnessing now over the relationship between the United States and Israel. A game dangerously manipulated as partisan by the cynical, and easily fallen into by the clueless.

This seems to be my theme of the day.  Elite Republican politicians, in this case, who show disdain for “ordinary” morals.  The ordinary moral in this case is the one that says you shouldn’t play politics when millions of lives are at stake.

Elizabeth Warren has the Facebook post The GOP budget would gut Wall Street regulation.

The Republican budget resolution we’ll vote on tonight would weaken the rules on Wall Street and raises the risk of another financial crisis – all so the big banks can rake in more money. My message to the Republicans and their Wall Street friends is this: We know what you’re up to. We’re watching. And we’re ready to fight.

The video in that post is also available from YouTube as shown below.

Senator Elizabeth Warren joined Senators Jeff Merkley and Al Franken to discuss the GOP’s budget resolution, which would weaken the Dodd-Frank financial regulations and gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In the YouTube comments on the video, there is one person who is so sure of her misconceptions about money in the US, that it is just laughable. (Several more comments have appeared since I wrote the previous sentence. Many are equally laughable.)

One of the most important things I like about Elizabeth Warren is her demonstration of her belief in the idea that “ordinary” morals apply in the political sphere. In fact, recognizing when a policy is wrong, comes from recognizing its deviation from “ordinary” morals. Too many of this country’s worst policies come from “elite” people and “elite” politicians not recognizing this simple truth, Hillary.

The Slate blog has the brief post Hillary Clinton Calls Henry Kissinger a Friend, Praises His Commitment to Democracy. Here is a quote in the post from Hillary Clinton

Kissinger is a friend, and I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state.

I knew there was something horribly wrong with some of the bellicose stands that Clinton took when she was Secretary of State.  I should have headlined this story, Hillary Provides Incontrovertible Proof That She Should Not Be President.

I am almost feeling prophetic.  Only four days ago I posted U.S. should rethink U.N. funding if Palestinian resolution approved: senator. In that post, I had  the following image from the book Ethics, Liberalism and Realism in International Relations:

I consider this idea that Kissinger had disdain for ordinary moral constraints as the most damaging aspect of Kissinger’s public life.  This disdain was exhibited by many of the people described in the book The Best And The Brightest.

The Best and the Brightest (1972) is an account by journalist David Halberstam of the origins of the Vietnam War published by Random House. The focus of the book is on the erroneous foreign policy crafted by the academics and intellectuals who were in John F. Kennedy’s administration, and the disastrous consequences of those policies in Vietnam. The title referred to Kennedy’s “whiz kids”—leaders of industry and academia brought into the Kennedy administration—whom Halberstam characterized as arrogantly insisting on “brilliant policies that defied common sense” in Vietnam, often against the advice of career U.S. Department of State employees.

In my opinion, their policies defied common sense because of their disdain for ordinary moral constraints.  Could we stand to have another one of those leading our government?

Talking Points Memo has the article The Huge Boehner-Pelosi Deal That Could Change Medicare Forever.

WASHINGTON — The House’s top two leaders are on the verge of securing a sweeping deal to permanently fix a gaping hole in Medicare that has haunted Congress for more than a decade while also securing significant long-term savings in the program.WASHINGTON — The House’s top two leaders are on the verge of securing a sweeping deal to permanently fix a gaping hole in Medicare that has haunted Congress for more than a decade while also securing significant long-term savings in the program.

Warning, progressives, the devil is in the details.  I fear the devil in the “significant long-term savings in the program”.

However, putting that aside, the article goes on to discuss the support for the plan among Republicans.

“So far as it goes, I think it’s good. We need some of the structural entitlement reform. That’s a good thing. I support extending S-CHIP. That’s a good thing. What’s not good is right now it’s not paid for,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), a long-serving conservative who went on to say, “I know how hard this is. Our seniors are having more and more difficulty getting doctors because Medicare doesn’t reimburse, and doctors are dropping Medicare.”

You see that there it is again, the ugly myth that increases in one part of the budget have to be “paid for”  somehow.  As I have pointed out on numerous occasions on this blog and most recently in the post  Sanders budget measure fails, but Senate Democrats had his back, progressives will rue all the occasions they paid homage to this myth just to mollify the Republicans.  See my previous post for one of my many explanations of why this myth is completely untrue and also very harmful to the goal of a healthy economy that is good for all the people in this country.

I didn’t know it when I made the prediction in the previous post, but the day for ruing was already upon us (no surprise really).  I had been ignoring this Medicare deal story, because I was so skeptical of the devil in the details.  For a while I just preferred not to know.  But ignorance is not really bliss.

March 26, 2015

I may be slow on the uptake. I just got the sarcasm of the words in the title “Huge Boehner”.

The Daily Kos has the article Sanders budget measure fails, but Senate Democrats had his back.  They have some very wise things to say about the reason the unanimous support of Democrats was important.

More votes like today’s in the Senate is good, because it proves that ideas like eliminating tax loopholes to rebuild our infrastructure are popular. But roll-call votes where many Democrats defect and join Republicans only make it harder for us to build progressive political power.

If you read this blog, then you know the first sentence in the quote has problems.  The problem in the quote is even more explicit in a caption to a picture in the article:

Senator Bernie Sanders got all Democrats voting today to support a budget amendment that would fix our crumbling infrastructure by cutting absurd tax breaks for the wealthy.

You probably know what’s coming next.  I posted a comment on this article Can We Please Tell The Truth About The Deficit?

I applaud Bernie Sanders and The Daily Kos for their efforts.  In fact I am already a supporter of Sanders For President.

However, I have asked a favor from Sanders, and now I ask it of The Daily Kos.  Please stop selling the myth of the oligarchs (and their Republican flunkies) that increased government spending in one area must be offset by either raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere.

The U.S. federal government makes the only official money of this country.  It is a fiat money, which means it is mostly created by a few computer keystrokes at the Fed.  There is no possible way for the federal government to run out of its own money.

We need to make Federal government budgets and programs that promote the health and welfare of the economy and all the citizens.  If we meet this goal, the deficit and debt are irrelevant.  Whatever the debt and deficit may be, the primary measure is the health of the economy and the financial health of all its citizens.  Low to zero deficit and a sick economy is nothing to strive for.

The real reason to have high marginal tax rates on the wealthy is to keep them from accumulating wealth to such a degree that all they can do with it is to inflate economic bubbles, whose inevitable bursting drowns the middle and lower classes.  This accumulation is exactly the cause of the economic crash of 2009.  The necessary changes not having been made since then, another bubble and bust is brewing right now.  This is what we need to take action to prevent.

What we need to promote is investing in this country’s future.  We need to maintain the infrastructure that makes us economically productive.  We need to invest in Government research that makes most of the private innovation possible.  We need to educate our citizens so that they can be the workers that will keep this economy strong, and so that they will be able to run a democracy.

Progressive’s promoting the oligarch’s myths may serve some short-term, progressive political goal, but, in the long term, we will rue the day we weren’t honest about how things actually work.

We may rue the day in some unforeseen way for not telling the truth, but more importantly, the truth is a more powerful explanation of why we need to do the things we progressives are promoting.  The truth cuts the knees out from under the Republicans’ rebuttals.

I thought people were being silly to question Raphael Edward (Ted) Cruz’s eligibility to be President.  One of his parents was a U.S. citizen, so obviously this confers U.S. citizenship on him from birth.

Well!! The Daily Kos has the article Canadian-born Ted Cruz getting birther meds from left and right.  The article has a link to the U.S. State department advisory,  Acquisition of U.S. Citizenship by a Child Born Abroad, and a quote from a U.S. Statute:

A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) of the INA provided the U.S. citizen parent was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child’s birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen, is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen, is required for physical presence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.) The U.S. citizen parent must be the genetic or the gestational parent and the legal parent of the child under local law at the time and place of the child’s birth to transmit U.S. citizenship.

Who knew that there were legal restrictions on automatically conferring US citizenship at birth?

The Daily Kos article goes on to discuss and quote from the Salon article Ted Cruz’s ironic birther predicament.  This discussion gives details of why one might not be so sure that Cruz is actually eligible to run for President because he might not be a natural born US citizen under the legal definition.