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In America, Spending Cuts Are Driven by the Rich

by AntoniettaRyrie Posted on April 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Over at the Monkey Cage, Larry Bartels presents the remarkable chart on the right. Its message is simple: In most affluent countries, there’s net support for government spending cuts, but it doesn’t depend much on income. Not only is the level of support modest, but it’s the same among rich and poor.

But not in America. Here, demand for spending cuts is driven almost entirely by the well-off:

What accounts for the remarkable enthusiasm for government budget-cutting among affluent Americans? Presumably not the sheer magnitude of redistribution in the United States, which is modest by world standards. And presumably not a traditional aversion to government in American political culture, since less affluent Americans are exposed to the same political culture as those who are more prosperous. A more likely suspect is the entanglement of class and race in America, which magnifies aversion to redistribution among many affluent white Americans.

….The U.S. tax system is also quite different from most affluent countries’ in its heavy reliance on progressive income taxes. The political implications of this difference are magnified by the remarkable salience of income taxes in Americans’ thinking about taxes and government….Income taxes seem to dominate public discussion of taxes and tax policy. For example, years of dramatic political confrontation culminated in a grudging agreement to shave a few percentage points off the Bush tax cuts for incomes over $400,000 per year; meanwhile, a major reduction in the payroll taxes paid by millions of ordinary working Americans expired with barely a whimper.

It’s no surprise that spending cuts are popular in other countries: most of them spend a lot of money, and they fund it with high tax rates on just about everyone. But that’s decidedly not the case in the United States. Our government spending is relatively low and so are our tax rates. But none of that matters. Rich Americans don’t like paying taxes, and as we know from multiple lines of research—in addition to plain old common sense—the opinions of the rich are what drive public policy in America. Add in longstanding grievances against providing benefits to people with darker skins, and you’ve got a big chunk of the middle class on your side too. This works great for the rich. For the rest of us, not so much.

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In America, Spending Cuts Are Driven by the Rich

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Poll: More Than Half of America Doesn’t Believe in the Big Bang

by TaylorGriffith Posted on April 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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According to a new poll, 51 percent of Americans do not believe in the Big Bang. Fifty-one percent of Americans are wrong.

Forty-two percent of Americans are not falling for this “evolution” mumbo jumbo. They too are wrong.

Thirty-seven percent of Americans are not convinced that humans are causing global warming. Wrong.

Thirty-six percent of Americans are not buying this whole “the Earth is 4.5 billion years old” thing. Wrong wrong.

Fifteen percent of Americans are unsure that vaccinations are safe and effective. Wrong wrong wrong.

Have a nice day.

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Poll: More Than Half of America Doesn’t Believe in the Big Bang

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Most Senators Overseeing the Comcast-Time Warner Deal Have Taken Money From Both

by ElisabethFulker Posted on April 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Today the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from Comcast and Time Warner executives about their extraordinarily controversial merger proposal. A recent poll found that 52 percent of respondents believed mergers like it lead to reduced competition and poorer service for consumers.

At today’s hearing, a number of the senators expressed concern about the deal which, if approved, would result in a single company serving slightly less than 30 percent of the US paid television market and up to 40 percent of American broadband subscribers. Chairman Leahy (D-Vt.) started the proceedings, saying that “thousands of Americans have flooded the FCC Federal Communications Commission in recent weeks with comments supporting the restoration of open-internet rules. Their voices on this issue should be heard.”

But Leahy and most of his colleagues have already “heard” from both Comcast and Time Warner—in the form of generous campaign contributions. Out of the committee’s 18 members, 15 have accepted donations from at least one of the two media giants since the 2010 election cycle; 12 have received money from both. The average contribution over that time: $16,285. Democrats were the biggest recipients, taking an average of $18,531 from the two cable and internet giants, nearly twice as much as their Republican counterparts. Here’s the breakdown:

Senator
Comcast
Time Warner

Chris Coons (D-Del.)
$57,200
$10,200

Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)
$41,600
$21,300

Orin Hatch (R-Utah)
$36,750
$6,000

Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)
$28,373
$23,575

Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)
$22,500
$62,650

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)
$21,831
$20,275

Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)
$20,600
$0

Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)
$17,000
$2,333

Al Franken (D-Minn.)
$14,750
$11,600

Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)
$13,000
$4,000

Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.)
$12,025
$25,780

Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii)
$8,500
$5,000

Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
$7,500
$0

John Cornyn (R-Texas)
$6,000
$3,500

Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
$0
$3,000

Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)
$0
$0

Mike Lee (R-Utah)
$0
$0

Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)
$0
$0

Source: Center for Responsive Politics

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Most Senators Overseeing the Comcast-Time Warner Deal Have Taken Money From Both

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This GOP House Candidate Proposed Eliminating the Weekend

by AdelePlatz Posted on April 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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Wisconites tired of relaxing on weekends and staying home on federal holidays are in luck: On Thursday, GOP state Sen. Glenn Grothman announced his challenge to 13-term moderate Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.). In a conservative district that went to Mitt Romney by seven points in 2012, Grothman hopes to channel dissatisfaction with Republicans in Congress whom he believes haven’t done enough to slow down the Obama administration’s policy agenda. But he comes with some baggage of his own.

In January, Grothman introduced legislation to eliminate a state requirement that workers get at least one day off per week. “Right now in Wisconsin, you’re not supposed to work seven days in a row, which is a little ridiculous because all sorts of people want to work seven days a week,” he told the Huffington Post. Eliminating days off is a long-running campaign from Grothman. Three years earlier, he argued that public employees should have to work on Martin Luther King Day. “Let’s be honest, giving government employees off has nothing to do with honoring Martin Luther King Day and it’s just about giving state employees another day off,” he told the Wisconsin State Journal. It would be one thing if people were using their day off to do something productive, but Grothman said he would be “shocked if you can find anybody doing service.”

MLK Day and “Saturday” aren’t the only holidays Grothman opposes. At a town hall in 2013, he took on Kwanzaa, which he said “almost no black people today care about” and was being propped up by “white left-wingers who try to shove this down black people’s throats in an effort to divide Americans.”

When he’s not advocating for people to spend more time working, Grothman has gotten in trouble for advocating that (some) people be paid less. “You could argue that money is more important for men,” he told the Daily Beast’s Michelle Goldberg, after pushing through a repeal of the state’s equal pay bill. And he has pushed to pare back a program that provided free birth control, while floating a bill that would have labeled single parenthood, “a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.” Grothman justified the bill by contending that women choose to become single mothers and call their pregnancies “unplanned” only because it’s what people want to hear. “I think people are trained to say that ‘this is a surprise to me,’ because there’s still enough of a stigma that they’re supposed to say this,” he said in 2012.

Enjoy the weekend.

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This GOP House Candidate Proposed Eliminating the Weekend

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5 Things You Need to Know About Obama’s NSA Proposal

by Neal75Njqh Posted on March 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, the White House released its proposal to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection program, which hoovers up the phone records of millions of Americans. Currently, the NSA stores Americans’ phone metadata (which doesn’t include the content of calls) for five years. Under the President’s new proposal, phone companies will instead be tasked with holding onto this data, which will they will store for 18 months. Additionally, the government would only be allowed to query these records if it gets approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, though the president’s plan includes an exemption for as-yet-unspecified “emergency” situations. Here are five more things you need to know about the President’s proposal:

1. It only addresses the bulk collection of phone records.

The collection of telephone records has gotten a lot of attention from Congress—but documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have revealed many other controversial surveillance programs. Last October, for instance, the Washington Post reported that the NSA had broken Google and Yahoo’s encryption and was siphoning millions of their users records into the agency’s data centers. In a press call on Thursday with civil liberties groups, privacy experts argued that President Obama should make additional reforms that address these other alleged surveillance programs. “Our phone records are sensitive, but so are our financial records, Internet information, email data,” said Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s legislative counsel. “It reveals who we know, where we go, what we do, what we think and what we believe, and those sorts of records need just as much protection.”

2. Phone companies aren’t too psyched about Obama’s plan, so the administration might compensate them.

On Thursday, Verizon announced that it opposes aspects of the plan. “If Verizon receives a valid request for business records, we will respond in a timely way, but companies should not be required to create, analyze or retain records for reasons other than business purposes,” Randal Milch, Verizon’s general counsel and executive vice president for public policy, said in a statement. In a call with reporters on Thurday, White House officials emphasized that the administration has been meeting with phone companies to come up with a workable solution, which could potentially include compensating them for their efforts. “I certainly would envision, consistent with what the government does today with respect to compensating phone companies and others for their production of records in response to lawful court process, I think we would see a similar approach,” said a senior administration official.

3. The plan is still missing a lot of key details.

According to a press release issued by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York School of Law on Thursday, the Obama administration has yet to “identify the standard that the government must meet to obtain a court order, beyond a vague reference to ‘national security concerns.’ Nor does the fact sheet identify any limits on the government’s ability to keep and search the records it obtains, which will necessarily include large amounts of information about innocent Americans.” In the White House press, a reporter asked senior administration officials how long the NSA could keep querying data once it had obtained a court order. An official responded: “I’m not going to presuppose what that time period would be right now.”

4. Obama could end the program now if he wanted to, but he’s waiting for Congress to act.

President Obama could end the NSA’s bulk collection program without congressional approval, but he’s choosing not to. A senior White House official said on Thursday, “The President believes the government should no longer collect and hold the bulk telephone metadata. He’s also got a responsibility as commander-in-chief to ensure that we maintain the capabilities of this program, and he wants to see it done in a way that also responds to the concerns that have been identified and to create a program and have a discussion about it, and have legislation that would promote confidence in our intelligence-gathering activities.”

5. There are competing bills to end the program. Privacy advocates hate one of them.

On Thursday, privacy advocates took issue with the NSA reform bill introduced this week by members of the House intelligence committee. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), ends the bulk collection program, but doesn’t require strict judicial review before the NSA queries phone companies for their customers’ records. President Obama’s proposal, in contrast, does require this review. The ACLU’s Richardson notes that the Rogers-Ruppersberger plan would allow the FBI and other agencies to directly demand information from companies. “It’s not a fix, it’s not even a half-measure,” she said. Privacy advocates support the USA Freedom Act, introduced by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), which includes more civil liberties protections.

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5 Things You Need to Know About Obama’s NSA Proposal

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Progressive Groups Take Obama to Task for Violating Voting Rights Law

by JanisBurrell Posted on March 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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After months of quiet lobbying, civil rights groups and progressive organizations are now coming out publicly against the Obama administration for failing to enforce a voting rights law that applies to the Obamacare health insurance exchanges.

The 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), commonly known as the “Motor Voter” law, requires DMVs and other state agencies that provide public assistance to also help voters register. The Obama administration has acknowledged that Obamacare exchanges are covered by the law. But the federally-run exchange, which serves residents of states whose Republican governors refused to establish their own insurance marketplaces, isn’t doing much to fulfill its Motor Voter obligations, beyond embedding a link to the federal voter registration site in the online insurance application.

The law requires covered agencies to go much further and treat voter registration the same as the application process for other services. In the case of Obamacare, this means the navigators hired by HHS to walk uninsured Americans through the insurance sign-up process should also offer to guide applicants through the voter registration process. But Republicans have decried plans to apply the Motor Voter law to exchanges, saying it would create a “permanent, undefeatable, always-funded Democrat majority,” since the uninsured are disproportionately low-income people and minorities—groups that tend to vote Democratic. Following the outcry by the GOP, the Obama administration decided last year to hold off on full implementation of the Motor Voter provision. But now 32 progressive organizations and unions—including the NAACP, United Auto Workers, and the National Council of La Raza—are calling on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to start requiring navigators to help register voters immediately.

“There is no question that the ACA the Affordable Care Act must meet the requirements of the NVRA, as your administration has acknowledged,” the groups said in a letter to the HHS last week. “As staunch supporters of voting rights, we believe that it is critical for the ACA to meet these legal requirements now and offer voter registration to the millions of Americans who will be shopping for insurance on the exchanges in the coming months and years.”

The letter comes on the heels of a public campaign in January led by the voting rights organizations Demos and Project Vote to get HHS to fall in line with Motor Voter.

The 24 million mostly low-income and minority Americans who are expected to buy insurance through the exchanges by 2017 are far less likely than other citizens to be registered to vote, although Motor Voter has helped lessen the disparity. Some 140 million people have registered to vote through the program since it was enacted. Lawrence Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, told Mother Jones in January that the reason HHS “has really dropped the ball” on the Motor Voter issue is likely quite simple. “This looks like the administration is running from a political fight,” he says.

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Progressive Groups Take Obama to Task for Violating Voting Rights Law

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"Bloody Sunday" Was 49 Years Ago Today

by MahaliaSpangler Posted on March 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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On February 18, 1965, a young man named Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot and killed by a member of the Alabama State Police during a non-violent civil rights demonstration in Selma, Alabama.

Seventeen days later, 525 civil rights activists marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in protest of that killing. They were attacked by state and local police armed with billy clubs, whips, and tear gas. (You can read the New York Times‘ entire horrifying account here.) That day—March 7, 1965—would come to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”

Here is President Obama’s statement marking the 49th anniversary:

Forty-nine years ago, a determined group of Americans marched into history, facing down grave danger in the name of justice and equality—walking to protest the continued discrimination and violence against African Americans. On a day that became known as “Bloody Sunday”, these brave men and women met billy-clubs and tear gas with courage and resolution. Their actions helped set an example for a generation to stand up for the fundamental freedoms due to all people. We recognize those who marched that day—and the millions more who have done their part throughout our nation’s history to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.

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"Bloody Sunday" Was 49 Years Ago Today

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CBO Gives Flunking Grade to Republican Plan on Obamacare Mandate

by AlisonEnticknap Posted on February 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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“Ouchy ouchy,” says Ed Kilgore today. “No conservative love for CBO this week, I suspect.”

There was plenty of conservative love for the CBO last week, of course, because they estimated that an increase in the minimum wage might reduce employment. This week, however, the subject is a conservative plan to eliminate the Obamacare requirement that employers with health plans cover everyone working more than 30 hours a week. Republicans have been bellyaching forever that this is going to cause employers to reduce hours in order to get workers just under the 30-hour minimum, thus causing enormous pain to hardworking real Americans throughout the country. There’s not much evidence that this is actually happening, but whatever. They want to get rid of the 30-hour mandate anyway.

Sadly, the CBO’s opinion of a Republican bill to do this was not good. The bill would reduce the number of workers covered by employer healthcare by about a million people; increase use of Medicaid and CHIP; and increase the budget deficit by about $74 billion over ten years.

That’s some bill. I think Kilgore is right that Republicans aren’t going to be giving the CBO a lot of love this week.

UPDATE: And while we’re on the subject, Republican attacks on Obamacare just generally don’t seem to be doing well lately. In the latest Kaiser survey asking Americans if they want to keep Obamacare or repeal it, the keepers are ahead by a margin of 56-31 percent. That’s up from last year, when they were up by only 47-37 percent. Greg Sargent has the deets here.

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CBO Gives Flunking Grade to Republican Plan on Obamacare Mandate

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Why Are Americans Always Predicting Their Own Impending Doom?

by kx93z6g Posted on February 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Wherever we Americans look, the threat of apocalypse stares back at us.

Two clouds of genuine doom still darken our world: nuclear extermination and environmental extinction. If they got the urgent action they deserve, they would be at the top of our political priority list.

But they have a hard time holding our attention, crowded out as they are by a host of new perils also labeled “apocalyptic”: mounting federal debt, the government’s plan to take away our guns, corporate control of the Internet, the Comcast-Time Warner mergerocalypse, Beijing’s pollution airpocalypse, the American snowpocalypse, not to speak of earthquakes and plagues. The list of topics, thrown at us with abandon from the political right, left, and center, just keeps growing.

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Why Are Americans Always Predicting Their Own Impending Doom?

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VIDEO: Elizabeth Warren Calls for Closing Loopholes for the Rich to Cut Student Loan Debt

by ReinaldoKirklin Posted on February 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on her colleagues in the Senate to reduce interest rates for Americans crushed by student loan debt, and pay for it by closing tax loopholes for the rich.

Last summer, after a rancorous debate, Congress passed a law setting interest rates for new student loans for undergrads at 3.86 percent for the coming year. (Rates were set to double to 6.8 percent.) However, the legislation did not cut interest rates for those who took out the same type of loan before July 1 of last year. Americans who financed their education earlier than that are paying off debt with interest rates of 7, 8, or 9 percent. On Wednesday, Warren joined Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in a speech on the Senate floor to highlight her plan to introduce legislation that would allow Americans with high-interest student loan debt to refinance their loans at the new rates being offered to first-time borrowers this year.

“Refinancing those old loans would lower interest rates to 3.86 percent for undergraduate loans,” Warren said. “This is real money back in the pockets of people who invested in their education. Real money that will help young people find a little more financial stability as they work hard to build their futures. Real money that says that America invests in those who work to get an education.”

Warren proposed that the rate cut be paid for by closing tax loopholes for the rich. “Right now, this country essentially taxes students—by charging high interest rates that bring money into the government—while at the same time we give away far more money through a tax code riddled with loopholes and let the wealthiest individuals and corporations avoid paying a fair share,” Senator Warren said. “We can close those loopholes and put the money directly into refinancing student loans.”

The senator said the Buffet Rule—part of a tax plan proposed by President Barack Obama that would eliminate tax loopholes for the wealthy to ensure that billionaires pay at least as much in taxes as their secretaries—would be a good place to start. Many of the wealthy end up paying a lower tax rate because they earn income through investments, for example, which is taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent. Meanwhile, an average head of household who makes $50,000 pays about 25 percent of her income in taxes. The Buffet Rule would require millionaires to pay an effective tax rate of at least 30 percent of their gross income.

Last year, during the debate over what to do with skyrocketing student loan rates, Warren introduced her own bill that would have cut need-based undergrad loan interest rates to the same low 0.75 percent interest rate that banks pay to the Federal Reserve for short-term loans. The bill was never brought up for a vote. Warren voted against the compromise plan that Obama signed into law in August, which allows interest rates on undergrad loans to fluctuate all the way up to 8.25 percent.

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VIDEO: Elizabeth Warren Calls for Closing Loopholes for the Rich to Cut Student Loan Debt

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