Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy - The Atlantic Politics Channel

Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy - The Atlantic Politics Channel
Thursday's annual Census Bureau report on income, poverty and access to health care-the Bureau's principal report card on the well-being of average Americans-closes the books on the economic record of George W. Bush.

It's not a record many Republicans are likely to point to with pride.

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.

The Census' final report card on Bush's record presents an intriguing backdrop to today's economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama's combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush's two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet.

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Heckling the President

This is intolerable.

A Republican House member shouted "You lie" during President Obama's health care speech to Congress on Wednesday, and members of both parties condemned the heckling.

What has become of the Republican Party? It has obviously been replaced by the Tea Party and its legion of screeching, wild-eyed radical lunatics. How can people even consider putting these mindless imbeciles back in charge of our government?

Finding friends, losing friends

Ever since I signed on to Facebook a few months ago I have been overwhelmed by the number of old friends, past co-workers and distant (geographically) relatives I’ve been able to reconnect with, even if it is just to find out where and what they are doing some 20 to 30 years later.
But an added consequence of finding old friends is that you lose some as well. By that I mean that I have learned that some old friends from long ago have passed away. One person died in a car wreck, another had a heart attack. Although they died years ago, I had been oblivious to their passing until just recently when I reconnected with old friends who had kept up with them better than I had.
But perhaps the most wrenching experience has been the very recent death of Steve Damm, who I hardly knew at all. Steve passed away over the Labor Day weekend from a form of brain cancer.
I knew Steve mostly through his wife, Tyra, when we worked together for a short time at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. They were a young couple without kids and went to the same church that we did. I met Steve maybe half a dozen times at various work-related social functions. Then they moved to Dallas and we moved to San Antonio. End of story.
Except that when I got onto Facebook I hooked back up with a bunch of my old A-J co-workers, including Tyra, and in that way learned of their nearly two-year struggle with Steve’s brain cancer. Tyra is now a columnist with the Dallas Morning News and was documenting their ordeal through her columns, blogs, Twitter and Facebook. It was all quite remarkable. You couldn’t help but be pulled into their daily struggle. And what really hit home the hardest for me was that they now have two young children, nearly the same age as my own - a boy just entering second grade (my son just entered first grade) and a girl in pre-K about age 4 (my daughter is 3).
You can follow and retrace Tyra and Steve’s remarkable journey here.
Funeral services for Steve are set for this Saturday in Dallas.

Czar wars

The things that rightwingers freak out about grows increasingly bizarre everyday.



And here is more on the subject.

Video of the Day

Robert Reich makes the simple, straight forward case on a public health insurance option.

Cartoon of the Day

In light of the ongoing discussion between Mark and Ann in comments, I thought this cartoon was wholly appropriate.

I hate pre-season football

I know lots of people are really football-starved at this time of the year, but I really can't stand all the hype that pre-season football gets right now.
This is BASEBALL SEASON!!! We are getting into the playoffs with the World Series just around the corner. I could care less about these meaningless pre-season football games!!
Yet the news media is sooooo intent on telling me everything about pre-seaon football - even broadcasting entire games as if it mattered -- Heck! Even rebroadcasting replays of meaningless pre-season games -- all to the exclusion of baseball.
Quit pre-empting my baseball games to show me these stupid pre-season football contests and maybe I would be a bit less grumpy. But as it is I want to throw things everytime I see the local sports newscast leading with football stories in the midst of the baseball playoffs.

Blame Republicans for bulk of the deficit

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times had a great piece in the New York Times on Sunday about what makes up the national deficit.
What is most striking about it (as shown in the graph) is how little of it is made up of the extra spending that Obama pushed for in the budget. You can see way at the bottom of the graph are too itty bitty boxes, one for the non-defense discretionary spending and the other for the energy investments that Obama requested.
Republicans screamed to high heaven about this extra spending and acted like it makes up the entire deficit alone.
Not hardly. In fact, when looked at in context, it is almost inconsequential. Furthermore, as the article notes, it is completely paid for and then some by additional revenues and cuts that Obama made in the budget.

So the real fault for the deficit can be summed up in two ways (or maybe three) The fiscally irresponsible tax cuts that Bush & Co. pushed through in 2000 combined with the increased spending on Medicare and Social Security as health costs continued to spiral out of control during eight years of Republican mismanagement; Throw in all the money that Bush & Co. flushed away in Iraq and all the spending that had to be done to bailout the financial industry and the auto industry after Bush and the Republicans ran the nation's economy into the ground and Voila! We have a massive deficit when - under Clinton - we were supposed to have big surpluses.

Here is another good graph that illustrates the same thing:

Universal Health Insurance 101

Reagan still wrong on Medicare

Here is my response to a local blogger The San Antonio Conservative with regards to the ongoing healthcare debate:

This Reagan audio clip from 1961 is being trotted out again just like it is every time we debate changes to our health care system. What I don’t get, however, is why anybody thinks it is relevant?
If anything, what it should demonstrate is the fact that Reagan was clearly wrong back then, just as conservatives are wrong today for opposing universal health insurance.
Reagan was talking about all the awful things that would supposedly occur if the country adopted Medicare and Medicaid. Clearly it did not happen the way he said it would. We did not turn into a “socialized” nation and lose all of our freedoms.
Let’s look for a minute at the results that Medicare has produced:

Since the advent of Medicare, “the health of the elderly population has improved, as measured by both longevity and functional status,” said one study published in the journal Health Affairs. In fact, according to the study, “life expectancy at age 65 increased from 14.3 years in 1960 to 17.8 years in 1998 and the chronically disabled elderly population declined from 24.9 percent in 1982 to 21.3 percent in 1994.” Leaders of the Commonwealth Fund wrote in May that, “compared to people with private insurance, Medicare enrollees have greater access to care [and] fewer problems with medical bills.” The report added that this finding is significant when considering that those Americans on Medicare represent a demographic that is more likely to be in poor health and to have lower incomes. Prior to Medicare, “about one-half of America’s seniors did not have hospital insurance,” more than 25 percent “were estimated to go without medical care due to cost concerns,” and one in three were living in poverty. Today, nearly all seniors have access to affordable health care and only about 14 percent of seniors are below the poverty line.

There is no question that Medicare has been an overwhelming success. If the program has problems today it is because of the out-of-control spiraling healthcare costs and the fiscal mismanagement of Republicans - specifically the Bush administration - over the past eight years. Rather than ignoring this problem the way the Republicans did, the Obama administation is trying to deal with it for the sake of future generations. There is no immediate upside for Obama or for Democrats who are liable to lose seats in the House due to all the fearmongering and stonewalling from Republicans.

But you certainly should not be able to ressurect stale, old fearmongering that is more than 48 years old, which has been so soundly discredited and disproven, and try and use it again today. That is outrageous.

Why (not) get the government out of the way and help let the free market and capitalism solve the problem?

First off, the “free market and capitalism” are never going to “solve the problem” because that is not what they do. Capitalism is an economic system that is designed to maximize profits for private industry. It is not designed to provide social services and health care to the people who are most in need. There is no profit in doing that. In terms of health care, capitalism works to provide services to those who are best able to pay for it. When you look at how our health care system works to serve those with money, it looks great. The best in the world! But when you look at how it works to care for the population as a whole, it is flat-out lousy, which is why we rank something like 37th in the world with the highest costs and among the lowest life expectancy. It’s because the system doesn’t work for such a large segment of the population that is unable to pay for it.
That is why the government has to step in to provide health insurance coverage for those who fall through the cracks. It is what they do in every other civilized country in the world and it is what we need to do here. It doesn’t mean that the government will take over the healt care system, or even take over health insurance. It will just provide an alternative (public option) for those who currently cannot afford a private health insurance plan.
But would that mean that some people already covered by private insurance might switch to a government plan? Maybe, but so what? Isn’t that what the free market is all about? If the government plan is going to be better than what the private insurers are offering then they better get on the ball and offer something better. It’s called competition.

If healthcare was such a right as some on the left claim it is…then why would they be willing to put the government in control of it? We don’t give the government control over our right to free speech or right to free expression of religion.

First, it is the government that protects our rights to free speech and freedom of religion. We would not have these rights if it were not for the government.
Second, we already entrust the government with our most important and vital functions such as national security and emergency services. The U.S. military is a government-run, “Socialized” system. We also have government run police stations, fire departments, judicial system and prisons. If the government is so bad at running things, as conservatives today maintain, then why aren’t they out there right now demanding that we privatize the U.S. military? I thought we had the best and strongest military in the world?
Suffice to say that conservative attacks on the government today are overblown (and I would argue unpatriotic) and hyped to serve a partisan agenda that is detrimental to our nation as a whole and meant only to serve the interests of some very powerful, private interests.

Fighting fire with fire

The prospect of a $9 trillion debt over then next 10 years sounds horrible. But fortunately it is not really as bad as it seems as Paul Krugman makes clear today.

There are two main reasons for the surge in red ink. First, the recession has led both to a sharp drop in tax receipts and to increased spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs. Second, there have been large outlays on financial rescues. These are counted as part of the deficit, although the government is acquiring assets in the process and will eventually get at least part of its money back.

What this tells us is that right now it’s good to run a deficit. Consider what would have happened if the U.S. government and its counterparts around the world had tried to balance their budgets as they did in the early 1930s. It’s a scary thought. If governments had raised taxes or slashed spending in the face of the slump, if they had refused to rescue distressed financial institutions, we could all too easily have seen a full replay of the Great Depression.

As I said, deficits saved the world.

Torture debate

This is just like watching Fox News!

Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

Biden on Kennedy

Honoring Ted Kennedy

With Ted Kennedy’s passing it will become imperative for Democrats to pass health insurance reform in his memory. Republican obstinance and abuse of the filibuster procedure will necessitate that at least part of the bill be passed through the reconciliation process.
Republicans fought for six months to keep Al Franken from taking his rightful place in the Senate. Now they will have another six months during which Democrats will be one vote short of what is needed to break their never-ending filibusters. It will take that long before a special election can be held to fill Kennedy’s seat. State Democratic lawmakers in Massachussetts shot themselves in the foot by passing a short-sighted law a while back to deny then-Gov. Mitt Romney the power to appoint a temporary replacement. Their display of partisan spitefulness will now cost Democrats an important vote for the rest of the year.

Quick Poll

Who is the craziest member of the U.S. Senate?

Tom Coburn

Jim DeMint

Jim Bunning

Jim Inhofe

The Failure of Reaganomics

From Paul Krugman:

Let’s talk for a moment about why the age of Reagan should be over.
First of all, even before the current crisis Reaganomics had failed to deliver what it promised. Remember how lower taxes on high incomes and deregulation that unleashed the “magic of the marketplace” were supposed to lead to dramatically better outcomes for everyone? Well, it didn’t happen.
To be sure, the wealthy benefited enormously: the real incomes of the top .01 percent of Americans rose sevenfold between 1980 and 2007. But the real income of the median family rose only 22 percent, less than a third its growth over the previous 27 years.
Moreover, most of whatever gains ordinary Americans achieved came during the Clinton years. President George W. Bush, who had the distinction of being the first Reaganite president to also have a fully Republican Congress, also had the distinction of presiding over the first administration since Herbert Hoover in which the typical family failed to see any significant income gains.
And then there’s the small matter of the worst recession since the 1930s.
There’s a lot to be said about the financial disaster of the last two years, but the short version is simple: politicians in the thrall of Reaganite ideology dismantled the New Deal regulations that had prevented banking crises for half a century, believing that financial markets could take care of themselves. The effect was to make the financial system vulnerable to a 1930s-style crisis — and the crisis came.
“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. “We know now that it is bad economics.” And last year we learned that lesson all over again.

And yet, as Krugman goes on to note with some dismay, so many people have refused to learn that lesson. They continue to harbor this Reaganite disdain for anything associated with the government and are unwilling to acknowledge that many government programs have worked very well over the years. And worse, they insist on continuing to vote for Republicans for public office! Please stop the insanity!

Liberal pessimism/Conservative obstinance

Did anyone think that getting healthcare reform done was going to be easy?
Yes, I know that Obama came into office with huge approval ratings - especially when compared with the dismally low approval ratings of his immediate predecessor. I know that Democrats have large majorities in the House and Senate. And still we read everyday stories like this one from Salon that practically write the obituary for meaningful healthcare reform.
Liberal pessimism seems to be peaking right at the moment when we need to come together and make the final push on behalf of this vitally important legislation. The Democrats’ big majorities are actually not as big as they seem because of the Republicans’ extreme obstinance and their continued abuse of the filibuster in the Senate. Remember that the Democrats’ “filibuster-proof” 60 votes in the Senate only works if you are counting that backstabbing little weasel Joe Lieberman and a healthy Ted Kennedy. And that is not even mentioning the concessions that would be needed to keep Blue Dogs like Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad and Blanche Lincoln on board.
But if we could get a straigh up-or-down vote it would be a snap to pass health reform. Thus we need to use the reconcilliation process that bypasses Senate rules and gets it done.
The whole big fight up until now has been to see whether or not Democrats will have to go that route. If enough Republicans could be coaxed to cross over - Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Dick Lugar, and so forth - to make up for Lieberman/Nelson/Kennedy, then all would be good.
But if not, then we will have to go forward with the alternative plan - which now appears to be likely -- Is The White House Ready To Ditch Republicans And Turn to Reconciliation?
But in the meantime, we’ve had all this handwringing from Liberals and Democrats bemoaning a Clinton-era loss that will lead to another 12 years of banishment to the political wilderness for the Party. Nonsense! Get a grip, people! Step back, take a deep breath and recognize that the administration could not just plow ahead with reconciliation without first giving the bipartisan approach a try. We needed the Republicans to demonstrate their obstinance before deciding to go the reconciliation route. Otherwise, the reform opponents would have used it to scare people into thinking that a secret plan was being pushed through without adequate review.
Things are not as bad as they seem. It was never going to be easy to get a good reform package passed. There is very little upside in it for Obama or for Democrats. Providing health coverage to a bunch of poor people who still won’t turn out to vote while upsetting lots of well-off people who always do vote is not the smartest thing to do politically. But it was the right thing to do morally and in the long-run it will make our country a better place to live and raise our families.

Myths and falsehoods about health care reform

Myths and falsehoods about health care reform

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Spinning history

The Express-News has a story today about the State Board of Education coming out with a first draft for standards for history books.
The big news is that the conservative board members are pushing to include key moments in the history of wingnuttopia - specifically the founding of the Moral Majority by Jerry Falwell; Phyllis Schafley’s Eagle Forum and successful campaign to villify and defeat the Equal Rights Amendment and the rise of Newt Gingrich and his Contract On America that led to the 1994 takeover of the government by Republicans.
I don’t have a particular problem with any of this except that the story implies that they also want to eliminate references to “liberal” groups and figures in history. The story does not explain this very well so I’m not sure what or if anything has been proposed yet.
I’ve seen student textbooks that talked about the ERA campaign and would think that Schafly’s involvement in its defeat should be included. And the whole Moral Majority/Christian Coalition movement is definitely worthy of putting into context in the history books. But so is the downfall of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker and the whole PTL scandal.
The 1994 election and the “Republican Revolution” certainly warrants coverage in the history books, but so does the abject failure of the Republican ideology as the bone-headed supply side economics program led to massive increases in the federal debt and the replacement of “Tax and Spend” with “Borrow and Spend”.
As long as we are being more inclusive and not less so, I can’t complain too much. But the real question will be how much emphasis to place on each section and the positive or negative spin that these rightwing idealogues on the board will try to impose on the textbook manufacturers.

Kay vs. Rick

I can’t help but feel just a little sorry for Kay Bailey Hutchison right now. But only a little.
This gubernatorial election looked early on like it would be a cakewalk for her. The triumphant U.S. Senator coming home after a successful stint in Washington to take the crown in Austin as the new governor of the Lone Star State. Incumbent Gov. Rick Perry was unpopular and had outstayed his welcome having already served longer than any Texas governor in recent history.
But now, at the formal outset of her campaign, the landscape suddenly looks much different. Down in the polls and facing a surprisingly aggressive campaign from Perry, Hutchison no longer looks like the heir apparent. Her campaign kick-off event in her home town of LaMarque was poorly attended and featured a major screw-up by one of her campaign workers who repeatedly mispronounced the name of the high school hosting the event - the one where Hutchison used to be a cheerleader. It’s pronounced “LaMark”, not “LaMarkee”.
The Perry campaign has set up a website from which to launch attacks and lampoon Hutchison throughout the campaign. They are also trying to use her service in Washington against her by referring to her as “Washington Kay.” In addition, they are having a large truck follow her around with the name “Kay Bailout Express” which attempts to tie her to the federal stimulus package.
Apparently, in Republican circles these days, actually trying to DO something to fix, resolve or at least lessen the impact from the Republican-induced recession is bad, bad, bad. I suppose this is because it would somehow be seen as an acknowledgement that Republican economic ideas failed and were in part to blame for the economic crisis currently plauging the country. Better then to just ignore the problem and do nothing. Better yet, blame the people who are trying to fix the problem with having caused it.
This is precisely what Rick Perry is now doing. I do not envy Kay Bailey having to run against Perry in the Republican primary. He has been working hard recently to ingratiate himself with the far-right loons who infect the core of the Republican Party today by talking about secession, threatening to refuse badly needed stimulus funding for the state and appointing far-right lunatics to the State Board of Education and elsewhere.
Are there enough sane people left in the Texas Republican Party to turn Perry out in a GOP primary? I have my doubts.
And it doesn’t look at this point as if Kay Bailey Hutchison is going to be up to the challenge.