Tag Archives: democrats

The TPP Is Dead. Now Let the Scapegoating Begin.

by FreemanHpu Posted on June 12, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The House just voted down fast-track authority for the TPP, handing President Obama a stinging defeat. This happened mainly because too few Democrats voted to support it. But why? Here’s the Washington Post:

Lawmakers said the White House has pushed harder on trade than any legislative issue since the health-care reform effort during his first year. After keeping trade on the back burner, Obama joined forces with business-friendly Republicans after the midterm elections in pursuit of a rare bipartisan deal and launched a fierce effort to win support from his usual Democratic allies over the intense opposition of labor unions.

And here’s the New York Times:

A president who has long kept Congress at arm’s length may have paid a price. Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, said Mr. Obama mustered rousing applause Friday morning as he went through the battles he had fought with fellow Democrats — on labor organizing, health care access and environmental protection. But he could not change minds.

“I wish there had been much better outreach,” Mr. Cuellar lamented.

So either Obama made this his #1 priority or else Obama barely bothered to lobby for it. I assume that eventually one narrative or the other will stick and we’ll all agree on just what Obama did.

UPDATE: Sorry, I jumped the gun. TPP is dead for now, but Obama may get another bite at the apple next week. It all depends on whether he’s able to negotiate a more liberal version of Trade Adjustment Authority to couple to the fast-track bill. The trick is appeasing Democrats sufficiently without losing too many Republican votes. Could be a busy weekend.

Source: 

The TPP Is Dead. Now Let the Scapegoating Begin.

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The TPP Is Dead. Now Let the Scapegoating Begin.

“Streamlining” Government Is a Dubious Campaign Message, Especially For Democrats

by CooperGuajardo Posted on June 10, 2015

Mother Jones

A few days ago I criticized a policy analysis from Stan Greenberg that, among other things, recommended that Democrats run on a commitment to streamlining government. But exactly what concrete proposals would that entail? Today, Mark Schmitt takes a crack at answering:

“Streamlining” government does not have to involve only cutting costs, though that might be a part of it. The tax code, for example, is now as complex for low- and middle-income taxpayers as for the wealthy, littered with credits and deductions, some refundable and some not. Streamlining government could include a strong commitment to making the tax code simpler at the low end and shifting resources to fight fraud at the top end. It could include, for example, efforts to create a single, simple portal to government services ranging from health insurance under the Affordable Care Act to small business assistance—similar to the “no wrong door” initiatives in several states.

Above all, it should include a positive vision of reform of the political process, and the role of money, that does more than reimpose limits on the political influence of the very wealthy, but empowers citizens as donors and participants. And, the most difficult challenge of all, there has to be an effort to restore to the public face of government, the legislative process, a sense of compromise and shared commitment to the public good, despite deep disagreements.

Simplifying the tax code for the middle class is fine, I suppose, though nearly half the population already files either 1040 EZ or short forms. But that single portal sounds to me like something that’s way, way, way harder than it sounds. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But in order to make a difference, not only does this portal have to be a work of genius, so do all the things it leads to. It doesn’t do any good to make it easy to find Obamacare if it’s still a pain in the ass to sign up for it. Honestly—and I say this from at least a little experience—this is the kind of thing that sounds good until you have to put together the interagency committee to actually create it.

I don’t mean to just pooh pooh other people’s ideas. But I think it’s telling that Schmitt had only two or three proposals, and most of them are either really hard or probably not that effective.

Look: the US government is really big. There’s no way around that. And as every large corporation in the world knows, there’s just a limit to how easy you can make things when a bureaucracy gets really big. There’s no magic wand. That said, here’s what I’d like to see: some detailed polling work that digs below the surface of “streamlining” and asks people just what it is about the government that really burns them up. I suspect (but don’t know!) that you’d discover a few things:

A lot of complaints—probably the majority—would be about state and local issues. (Business licenses, building inspections, traffic tickets, etc. etc.)
A lot of the complaints would be unrelated to government complexity: taxes are too high, guns should be unregulated, abortions should be outlawed, and so forth.
When we finally got to the complaints that are (a) about the federal government and (b) truly about the difficulty of getting something done, the griping would be all over the map. The truth is that it’s mostly businesses—especially large ones—that engage frequently with federal regulations. Aside from taxes and Medicare/Social Security, most individuals don’t very often. But when they do, they’re naturally going to believe that their particular circumstance should have been way easier to handle. In some cases they’re right. In most cases, they simply don’t know how many different circumstances the agency in question has to handle.

I’m not saying nothing can be done. I just have a suspicion that complaints about the “incompetence” or “red tape” of the federal government are mostly smokescreens for other things. Those other things are laws that people just don’t like, or fees they just don’t want to pay, or stuff they’ve merely heard from friends or the media.

This isn’t to say that streamlining government is a bad idea. It’s not. It’s a good idea! But I want details backed up by actual research, and even then, I suspect there’s less we can do than we think. As a platform for a campaign, I’m even more skeptical. Maybe a proposal to streamline some specific program that lots of people use and lots of people hate would work. But “streamlining government” as a generic pitch? I doubt it—especially for Democrats. It would be like Republicans wanting to “streamline” taxes for the rich. Would you believe them?

Originally from:

“Streamlining” Government Is a Dubious Campaign Message, Especially For Democrats

Posted in alo, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on “Streamlining” Government Is a Dubious Campaign Message, Especially For Democrats

The Truth About How Obama Has Handled the Pacific Trade Deal

by ScarletJoy Posted on May 20, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to present a post from Daniel Drezner.

One of the enduring memes of the Obama administration has been the notion that the president is a lousy politician. One of the things that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had in common is that they knew how to schmooze. Obama, on the other hand, does not have any close friendships on the international stage, nor is he particularly tight with Republican or Democrat members of Congress. Indeed, this has been a sufficiently common lament for someone to write “A Brief History of President Obama Not Having Any Friends” last year.

So let’s stipulate that the president is a cold fish. What remains contested is whether this matters in terms of getting things done. There are DC insiders who argue that personal relationships and one-on-one politicking really do matter. These are the pundits who tend to bemoan presidential passivity and write “Why won’t Obama lead?” ledes and ask why Barack Obama doesn’t drink more whiskey with Mitch McConnell or play more golf with John Boehner. And then there are structuralists who argue that what really matters are the separation of powers written into the Constitution and the incentive of opposition parties to, you know, oppose the president’s policies.

Last week’s machinations over trade promotion authority (TPA) regarding the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) will not definitively settle this debate, but they did offer a few data points that suggest the relative merits of each side of this debate.

First, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a delightfully blunt interview to the New York Times‘ John Harwood. On TPA/TPP, McConnell and most of the Senate Republicans are working with Obama, which puts him in strange territory. To explain this to Harwood, McConnell flatly debunked the notion that Obama would have accomplished more in the GOP-controlled Congress if only he’d been more sociable with Republican members of Congress:

In the caricature of how Washington works, Mr. McConnell and other congressional Republicans were supposed to bond with Mr. Obama at a so-called bourbon summit meeting, as though a soothing, generous pour would bring them together.

It has never happened—which, as far as Mr. McConnell is concerned, counts for exactly zero.

“It’s all good stuff for you all to write, but it has no effect on policy,” Mr. McConnell said. He dismissed “press talk” that social outreach could bridge the deep ideological and partisan divisions of 21st-century American politics.

“It wouldn’t make any difference,” he concluded. “Look, it’s a business.” (emphasis added)

And that sound you just heard was the combined egos of the “why can’t Obama lead” crowd visibly deflating.

McConnell’s Hyman Roth-like answer would seem to validate the structuralist position of the president’s ability to get legislation passed—at least when it comes to dealing with the opposition party.

When it comes to dealing with his own party, however, I’m not sure that the structuralists can claim victory. One could argue that Democrats are just as constrained on trade as Republicans because of their base’s public opinion, but I don’t think it’s really that simple.

There were a lot of things going on in last Tuesday’s initial failure of TPA to pass the Senate, including genuine policy differences between Obama and elements of the progressive movement. But as Reuters noted, at least part of it was Obama’s alienation of Senate Democrats:

As for Obama, he may have hurt his chances with Democrats by minimizing concerns about trade’s impact on labor, the environment and regulations, and his explicit criticism of the anti-trade stance of leading liberal Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren.

“The president was disrespectful to her,” Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown told reporters. “When he said that a number of us, not just Senator Warren, don’t know what we’re talking about…he shouldn’t have.” Brown opposes the fast-track bill.

Indeed, there has been a lot of Democrat grumbling about Obama’s rhetorical jabs at Warren and other anti-TPP Democrats, to the point where Sherrod Brown accused Obama of sexism.

Of course, twenty-four hours later, a deal had been struck for a vote on TPA in the Senate. If Edward Isaac-Dovere and Burgess Everett’s Politico recap is accurate, then Presidential Leadership (TM) played a pivotal role in the process:

The White House named names. And not 24 hours later, President Barack Obama and his aides had a deal to get fast-track back on track…

Obama aides strategically put out word to reporters of the meeting, even before senators had arrived at the White House. Shortly after the meeting ended, they released the list: the seven Democrats who’d voted for fast-track in committee, plus Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.). A few hours before, every Senate Democrat except Tom Carper of Delaware had publicly rebuked his trade effort. Now the White House put on the spot the other nine who had either publicly or privately indicated they would support the underlying fast-track and Trade Adjustment Assistance package, but who voted against opening debate.

In other words, the president had more than enough votes just in the room to get the trade bill moving. According to senators who were there, the president took his time, spending 90 minutes to explain why they needed to get their act together.

Now this does sound like some Old Time-y Presidential leadership, and so maybe, when it comes to managing his own party, there is something to the “Why can’t Obama lead?” meme.

But not a lot. My colleague Greg Sargent’s take suggests that last Tuesday’s vote was more about Reid/McConnell dynamics than anything to do with Obama. And even the close of Politico‘s story:

Then again, some Senate Democrats said this all would have been resolved even without Obama—though maybe not in time for the House to take up the bill in June, keeping it on track to help Obama seal the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 12 Pacific Rim countries.

“This was going to end up there anyway,” Nelson said. “But I would say the meeting with the president accelerated the discussion.”

So, to sum up: Most of the time, the structuralists are mostly right when it comes to presidents exercising leadership in pushing legislation through Congress. But they’re not completely right. On the margins, when dealing with one’s own party, maybe presidential leadership matters just a wee bit.

Follow this link:  

The Truth About How Obama Has Handled the Pacific Trade Deal

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Truth About How Obama Has Handled the Pacific Trade Deal

6 Ways to Fix the Climate While Fighting Economic Inequality

by AlysaNivison Posted on May 18, 2015

Mother Jones

This story originally appeared at Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

At a rally in front of the Capitol in Washington, DC, last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and fellow liberal Democrats such as Rep. Barbara Lee of California unveiled a national agenda for greater economic equality. The 13-point “Progressive Agenda,” which was heavily influenced by Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’s new 100-page report for the Roosevelt Institute on policy solutions to income inequality, is a left-wing wish list meant to echo Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America.

“The Progressive Agenda” includes plenty of popular, and populist, ideas, from raising the minimum wage to mandating paid employee sick leave. The emphasis is on correcting a system that has been rigged for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy, particularly through the tax code, and replacing it with a fairer system that rewards labor rather than just wealth. The agenda would do a lot to help the US catch up to the policies of other developed countries that have more equitable income and wealth distributions.

Notably absent, though, is practically anything to do with the fossil fuel economy, suburban sprawl, and the policies that prop them up, which are bad for both regular Americans and the climate. De Blasio’s agenda contains a token reference to environmental protection, along with labor rights, as something that shouldn’t be sacrificed to global trade deals. Stiglitz makes brief mention of a carbon tax. But many sources of inequality related to the dirty energy economy—and sources of opportunity that arise from a shift to a clean economy—go unmentioned.

Still, just because these concerns weren’t out front on Tuesday doesn’t mean they’ll be neglected. De Blasio’s climate plan for New York City, unveiled last month, is heavily focused on addressing poverty, so he certainly understands how the issues are linked. And a source with knowledge of de Blasio’s plans said that more Progressive Agendas will be forthcoming and they will address other aspects of economic inequality, possibly including environmental issues.

To help progressive leaders develop such a plan, here’s a list of six policies that would help cut carbon pollution, clean up the air, strengthen our cities, and redistribute tax dollars from fossil fuel companies and rich individuals to the poor and middle class.

Impose a carbon tax and redistribute the revenue to citizens. Currently, polluters pay nothing when they spew CO2 into the air, despite the massive costs that the emissions impose on society by worsening climate change. Discouraging emissions through taxation of big polluters would help get climate change under control—and it could also generate huge amounts of revenue. That money could be spent in any number of ways; one of the more progressive would be to rebate some of it to low-income taxpayers and use some of it for social programs. Even simply cutting carbon pollution is progressive, since the worst effects of climate change will fall disproportionately on the poor. And by getting our country off of coal and oil burning, we would also reduce the particulate pollution that plagues low-income, minority, and inner-city neighborhoods.

Eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction. While de Blasio’s agenda calls for some relatively small-bore tax reforms, this would be the big kahuna, saving at least $70 billion every year. Since homeowners tend to be richer than renters, we’re currently subsidizing housing for the rich more than for the poor. And since renters are more likely to live in cities and homeowners in suburbs, we’re taxing cities to subsidize suburbia and encouraging sprawl. Instead of increasing home ownership, the mortgage interest deduction just helps people buy bigger homes. It’s all a waste of resources: chopping down forests to build new subdivisions and paving new roads ever farther away from city centers, where commutes are longer and the average resident’s carbon footprint is higher. We’re also, by favoring spending on homeownership over other forms of spending or investment, increasing spending on, and therefore the cost of, housing.

Invest in affordable rental housing. In thriving metropolitan regions, the cost of housing is high, rising, and a growing burden on the non-rich. The cost of housing plus transportation is outpacing income growth. The federal government spends far less on affordable rental housing than it does on subsidizing home ownership for the affluent. As the mortgage interest deduction is phased out, some of that money could be spent on programs to support affordable housing that is well integrated into the community, such as Section 8 housing vouchers. Housing subsidies should particularly favor developments that are close to mass transit, giving residents greater access to jobs, education, and services.

Raise the gasoline tax to fund mass transit. Stiglitz’s paper calls for increased investment in mass transit (while de Blasio’s plan, remarkably, does not). It’s a good idea that would connect low-income workers to jobs while reducing carbon emissions. But Stiglitz doesn’t specify where the money would come from. Currently, federal mass transit spending is supported by the gasoline tax, which hasn’t been raised in more than 20 years and so has lost one-third of its value to inflation. We need to raise the gas tax substantially and peg it to inflation. Ideally, we’d raise it by even more than we need for mass transit investment, and then use the extra money to fund an income tax rebate to people with lower incomes. That would make the gas tax, which is regressive, much fairer to poor people. It would also increase the incentive to shift away from driving or choose more efficient cars, especially if we coupled it with rule changes that steered more transportation spending to mass transit instead of highways.

Eliminate subsidies for fossil fuel development. While social programs are starved in the name of balanced budgets, the federal government forgoes huge piles of revenue through tax subsidies and loopholes for oil, gas, and coal companies. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) have proposed a bill, the “End Polluter Welfare Act of 2015,” that would get rid of many of these giveaways to climate polluters; they estimate it would save more than $135 billion over 10 years.

Reform federal fossil fuel leasing programs. Here’s another way the federal government could bring in much-needed revenue that could be used for social programs, and at the same time discourage the burning of fossil fuels. Currently, we sell leases to drill for oil and gas and mine for coal on federal land or offshore for below-market prices, never mind accounting for the social cost of all that carbon pollution. Sanders and Ellison’s bill would raise those rates to reflect current market prices, adding billions of dollars to the federal Treasury every year. But we should raise the prices even further to reflect the full costs to society of conventional and climate pollution from burning the fossil fuels extracted from our public land. That would increase revenue by tens of billions per year, or lead to less fossil fuel leasing.

As mayor of the nation’s biggest city, a coastal metropolis that faces some of the worst threats from climate change, de Blasio should use his national profile to promote climate action as much as anything else. That isn’t a distraction from his commitment to reducing inequality; it can be a core part of it.

Link to article – 

6 Ways to Fix the Climate While Fighting Economic Inequality

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 6 Ways to Fix the Climate While Fighting Economic Inequality

Weird Tales and Trade Treaties

by MeganChelmsford Posted on May 15, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Watching the political fight over the TPP trade treaty has been kind of interesting. FWIW, two things strike me as a little odd:

Historically, it’s been Republicans who bitch and moan about how treaties are invasions of American sovereignty. And of course they are. If you sign a treaty with another country, there has to be some kind of neutral mediator that can decide if the treaty has been breached, and this is ipso facto an infringement of sovereignty for both countries. Democrats usually laugh this off, since it’s an obvious feature of any treaty (would you sign a treaty with Pakistan where Pakistan unilaterally gets to resolve all disputes?). This time, however, the worm has turned and it’s Democrats who are loudly objecting to something called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement, which sets up a special tribunal to adjudicate disputes brought by corporations against rules that they think violate the TPP. Republicans don’t care much.

I don’t have any big point to make here. It’s just kind of interesting to see the two sides switch.

I’m a little puzzled about why Republicans are so gung-ho to get TPP passed in the first place. Sure, they’re generally in favor of trade treaties, but it’s not exactly one of their hot button issues. And yet, they seem to be going out of their way to help President Obama get it passed. Given their recent track record, I’d expect them to yawn and tell Obama he’s on his own to whip the votes he needs. Is there some deeper strategy here that I’m not getting? Do they truly think this is going to rip the Democratic Party to shreds with months of vicious infighting? Or what?

Anyway, it looks to me like TPP is going to pass. These things nearly always do after a bit grandstanding followed by some face-saving compromises. It might be close, but it will pass.

View article: 

Weird Tales and Trade Treaties

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Weird Tales and Trade Treaties

West Virginia Democrats’ Best Hope Might Be This Billionaire Coal Magnate

by SuzetteVGB Posted on May 11, 2015

Mother Jones

Over the last six years, West Virginia Democrats have seen their grip on state politics slip away in no small part due to their alleged collaboration with President Barack Obama’s “War on Coal.” The solution: put a coal kingpin on the ballot.

On Monday, Jim Justice, owner of Southern Coal Corp., announced he would run for governor as a Democrat in 2016, to replace the retiring incumbent Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. Justice, the state’s richest citizen with an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion, is a political novice but a state icon. In 2009, he purchased the Greenbrier, a historic mountain resort that had fallen on hard times, and restored it into a first-class resort. During his gubernatorial campaign kickoff event, Justice drew a parallel between his state’s lackluster reputation, and the derelict condition of the White Sulphur Springs retreat. “Times were tough at the Greenbrier, too,” he said.

In Justice, Democrats have found a walking counterpoint to the war-on-coal attacks. (The attacks are also largely unfounded—under Tomblin the state has rolled back mine safety regulations.) In contrast to, say, frequent Greenbrier guest Don Blankenship, who as CEO of Massey Energy famously re-designed his property so he wouldn’t have to use his town’s polluted drinking water and is currently awaiting trial on conspiracy to violate mine-safety laws, Justice has always styled himself as a man of the people. A 2011 Washington Post profile began with a surprise sighting of Justice at an Applebee’s near his hometown. The richest man in the state, it turned out, was grabbing a late snack after coaching his hometown’s high school girls basketball team.

But Southern Coal Corp. isn’t without its issues. An NPR investigation last fall found that the company owed nearly $2 million in delinquent fines for federal mine safety violations. (After the report was published, Justice agreed to work out a payment plan.) And he may not have the Democratic field to himself, either; senate minority leader Jeff Kessler (D) filed his pre-candidacy papers in March. No Republicans have thrown their hats into the ring yet.

Source article: 

West Virginia Democrats’ Best Hope Might Be This Billionaire Coal Magnate

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on West Virginia Democrats’ Best Hope Might Be This Billionaire Coal Magnate

Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support the Renewable Fuel Standard

by Posted on April 29, 2015

back

Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support the Renewable Fuel Standard

Posted 29 April 2015 in

National

A new poll conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of the Renewable Fuels Association shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans support the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). In the poll of 2,047 registered voters conducted at the beginning of April, 62% of respondents indicated they support the successful policy.

Some of the key findings from the survey include:

Support for the Renewable Fuel Standard Is Strong Across the Political Spectrum
Nearly two out of every three registered voters (62%) support the RFS. The policy receives broad, bipartisan support from Democrats (65%), Republicans (57%), and Independents (61%).
 
Two-thirds of Voters Support Federal Tax Incentives for Cellulosic Ethanol Expansion
The survey shows that 65% of voters support federal tax incentives to assist the emerging cellulosic ethanol industry, which produces the world’s cleanest motor fuel.
 
Fifty-one Percent of Voters Oppose Tax Incentives for Oil Companies
A majority of voters oppose the federal government providing tax incentives to oil companies.

With the RFS opening up the market to new fuel sources, the renewable fuel industry has delivered significant economic, national security, and environmental benefits for our nation.

President Obama and the EPA should join the majority of voters in supporting a strong Renewable Fuel Standard.

Learn more about the survey and view key data.

Fuels America News & Stories

Fuels
Original source – 

Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support the Renewable Fuel Standard

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support the Renewable Fuel Standard

Never Mind the Doubters: The Iran Deal Is Good Enough

by Shella17Xguiwno Posted on April 11, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to have Cheryl Rofer, who for 35 years worked as a chemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. If you don’t follow her already, be sure to check out her writing on national security, women’s issues, science, and nuclear power and weapons at Nuclear Diner.

When I started blogging in November 2004, Kevin was already defining the field with short, topical posts and Friday Cat Blogging. The internet was a smaller place then, and most of us knew all the others, or at least knew of them. We argued. We linked to each other, hoping to boost our SEO. We shared each others’ successes and mourned when Inkblot disappeared. Kevin has been a good companion over the years. His broad coverage of topics and to-the-point style are touchstones, even as I stray into the wonkier corners of the news.

Recently, I’ve been writing a lot about the recent negotiations with Iran. A few days past a deadline that had nuclear wonks on the edge of their seats, the talks between Tehran and officials from six other nations brought forth a plan for a plan.

That’s not nothing, although it sounds vague. Some vagueness is necessary to keep all sides happy—and that means that any description of the deal will sound vague. The United States and its partners in the P5+1 would like a neatly written-down to-do list (which they have sorta provided), and Iran’s Supreme Leader has decreed that all must be written down just once—exactly when isn’t yet clear. The results of negotiations must be spun by the sides to their very different bases.

In America, two consensuses are building. Most in the arms control community and a wide swath of foreign policy experts, including some conservatives, feel that the deal as described in that fact sheet is better than expected and should keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon for the next decade or more. Not bad.

The more hawkish consensus ranges from bombing Iran now to leaving the talks in hopes of a better deal, which amounts to bombing Iran later. Why not, when you’re confident it would take only a few days of air strikes? They say the deal is no good because it does not guarantee Iranian compliance for perpetuity and does not totally destroy Iran’s enrichment and other nuclear capabilities. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is apoplectic, but what else is new?

The same hawks also assured us back in 2003 that the invasion of Iraq would be a cakewalk. Their arguments this time around are just as boneheaded. According to the fact sheet, Iran would enter into agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; that would be, as much in perpetuity as any international deal can be. Under that treaty, Iran is entitled to peaceful nuclear energy, and, like any other country with smart scientists, can figure out how to make nuclear weapons. Bombs can’t change that.

The final deal remains to be negotiated. The fact sheet is only an outline, and some issues will be easier to solve than others. Still to be worked out: Sanctions, particularly the schedule on which they are to be lifted. A list of research and development activities that Iran is allowed to pursue may or may not have been drawn up in Lausanne. Details on how Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile will be reduced and the redesign of the Arak reactor are missing.

The extent of Iran’s past activity on nuclear weapons was relegated to the IAEA by the P5+1 throughout the negotiations, and is a lesser provision in the fact sheet. Do we have to know all Iran’s dirty secrets to police a future agreement? Probably not.

The Supreme Leader issued a tweet stream that seems to give his blessing for a deal to go forward, but his words were unclear enough that domestic hardliners could seize on them in an attempt to scuttle the deal. Iran’s President Rouhani has voiced his support. In Israel, even the general who bombed the Osirak reactor thinks it’s a good deal.

Stateside, President Obama is doing what he can to move the agreement along, talking to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the author of the bill most likely to throw a wrench in the machinery. Democrats who once supported that bill are now reconsidering that stance. The President has given major interviews to Tom Friedman and NPR. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, who was part of the negotiations, is talking to the press.

Yes, if the sanctions are lifted, Iran might be able to make other sorts of trouble in the Middle East. But it’s doing that anyway. We won’t know for some time whether an agreement can mellow Iran by opening it to the world and better economic conditions.

If an agreement can be negotiated to completion, Iran can’t get the bomb for a decade or more. That’s enough for now.

Original article: 

Never Mind the Doubters: The Iran Deal Is Good Enough

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Never Mind the Doubters: The Iran Deal Is Good Enough

The GOP’s Campaign to Make You Hate The IRS Is Kind of Genius

by ChristaWrigley Posted on April 8, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

People hate the IRS. Of course they do! When Pew Research asked people earlier this year how they feel about various parts of the government, every agency received positive marks—except the IRS. And last month, Rasmussen found that a scant 31 percent of voters trust the tax agency to fairly enforce the law. Let’s face it: the agency tasked with taking money out of paychecks is never going to be popular.

But people have even more reason to despise encounters with the agency these days, thanks to a concerted effort by Republicans in Congress to slash the tax collector’s budget. From the front page of today’s Washington Post:

Since 2010, Republicans on Capitol Hill have slashed the IRS budget by $1.2 billion, or about 17 percent, adjusting for inflation. Just this fiscal year, $346 million was cut.

By contrast, cuts across the rest of the government have been far more modest and concentrated. Between 2012 and 2014, automatic spending reductions shrank non-defense spending, as adjusted for inflation, by 1.3 percent, while IRS spending was chopped 5.6 percent, according to Scott Lilly, a budget expert at the Center for American Progress.

Those budget cuts have made dealing with the IRS this tax season a true pain in the ass. As the Washington Post details, just four in ten callers to the IRS’s help line are actually able to get assistance from a real human, while the number of unintentional hang-ups from an overworked phone system have ballooned. And the cuts are actually costing the government: thanks to a 5,000-person reduction in the agency’s staff over the past four years, tax cheats can more easily skate by.

Attacking the IRS is one of the simplest lines a politician can roll out. It’s a favorite rhetorical turn for presidential candidate and senator Ted Cruz, who’s said he’d like to “abolish the IRS, take all 125,000 IRS agents and put them on our southern border,” to applause at this year’s CPAC.

Meanwhile, Democrats are wary about offering an equally vocal defense of the IRS, hesitant to be tarred as just typical tax-and-spenders. Sure, President Obama has included increases for the agency in his congressional budget requests, but it’s never been a major issue that he’d consider wielding his veto pen over. But without a more robust defense, the IRS could wither away and replace the DMV as a punch line for why government doesn’t work.

More here – 

The GOP’s Campaign to Make You Hate The IRS Is Kind of Genius

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The GOP’s Campaign to Make You Hate The IRS Is Kind of Genius

Yes, Education Matters. But It’s Not the Answer to Growing Income Inequality.

by GloriaSeeley Posted on March 9, 2015

Mother Jones

David Brooks has a bit of an odd column today:

For many years, Democratic efforts to reduce inequality and lift middle-class wages were based on the theory that the key is to improve the skills of workers. Expand early education. Make college cheaper. Invest in worker training. Above all, increase the productivity of workers so they can compete.

But a growing number of populist progressives have been arguing that inequality is not mainly about education levels. They argue that trying to lift wages by improving skills is an “evasion.” It’s “whistling past the graveyard.”

….Focusing on human capital is not whistling past the graveyard. Worker productivity is the main arena. No redistributionist measure will have the same long-term effect as good early-childhood education and better community colleges, or increasing the share of men capable of joining the labor force.

I don’t quite get who Brooks is arguing against here. Larry Summers is the obvious target, but Summers has been clear that he thinks education is important, both individually and for the economy as a whole. He just doesn’t think that improved education is likely to have much impact on growing income inequality, which is driven by other factors.

But Brooks never even pretends to address this. I don’t think there are any prominent Democrats arguing that education isn’t important. Pretty much all of them are on board with good early-childhood education and better community colleges, among other things. That will help individuals and make the American economy stronger.

But will it rein in growing income inequality? As long as inequality is driven primarily by the gains of the top 1 percent—which it is—then it won’t. To address that particular problem, we have to look elsewhere.

Originally from:

Yes, Education Matters. But It’s Not the Answer to Growing Income Inequality.

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yes, Education Matters. But It’s Not the Answer to Growing Income Inequality.