September 3, 2005 PERMALINK
GOP Response To Katrina: More Tax Cuts
(posted Sept. 2 6:15 PM ET)
Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, called on Senators not to delay next week’s planned vote on repealing the estate tax (also known as the Paris Hilton Tax Cut), despite the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
Reportedly, Sen. Frist has obliged, and a vote is planned for Tuesday.
Senate Dem leader Harry Reid released a statement, accusing GOPers of “insensitivity” and that “there are issues that are of much greater importance both to the people directly affected by the hurricane as well as the nation as a whole than estate tax repeal.”
Reid’s response is not quite right.
Reid is essentially saying the GOP’s priorities are out of whack. That’s not the worst message in the world, but he is ducking something very fundamental.
As many have learned in the past few days, flood control funds for the New Orleans area were seriously cut under Bush.
That’s the direct consequence of the GOP's tax cuts.
Unless you have a whole lot of fat in your budget, less tax revenue means less services, less ability to fund crucial projects.
Dems need to make that connection again, the connection between unfair, inadequate taxation and the quality of our government.
They have been afraid to do so since Walter Mondale pledged to raise taxes in his losing 1984 campaign.
But the reality is we won’t get our fiscal house in order and be able to provide needed services – not the least being disaster preparedness and first responders – unless taxes are raised.
And the next Dem in the White House is going to have to do it.
So the party better start making a compelling case why such a step is necessary.
Otherwise, running on such a platform will continue to be political suicide, and no one will ever win the presidency with a mandate to do what needs to done.
The Republicans should get blistering criticism from Reid and other Dems for pushing forth with another tax cut for the wealthy, but not because it’s “insensitive” or badly timed.
Republicans should be criticized for failing to learn one of the lessons of Katrina:
More tax cuts while we are saddled with massive debt and suffering major budget pressures is the continuation of a reckless policy that has made our nation more vulnerable.
September 1, 2005 PERMALINK
Take Responsibility, Mr. Bush
(posted Sept. 1 2:15 AM ET)
If there was ever a time for Bush to cop to a mistake, it was yesterday, in his comments to the nation about the Katrina disaster.
It is increasingly evident that warnings about New Orleans’ ability to withstand a hurricane were not heeded, and the week’s TV images portray a disturbingly sluggish emergency response.
When the facts and the images are so unfavorable, any attempt to ignore them is a recipe for a loss of credibility.
Yet Bush, in typical form, did not acknowledge any failings in his address yesterday.
Instead, he defensively recited stat after stat – 11,000 Guardsmen on state active duty, 5.4 million Meals Ready to Eat, 144 generators – numbers that seemed meaningless when juxtaposed with the pictures of helplessness on the ground.
Some conservatives sensed the speech was missing the mark.
Here’s some of the reviews from contributors and readers of The National Review blog The Corner (link via War and Piece and Political Animal):
-- “tone-deaf”
-- “lousy speech”
-- “miserable laundry-list speech”
-- “This is an EXTREMELY disappointing speech”
-- “as canned and unrealistic as if it had been phoned in from Mars”
-- “Bush blew this first one big time”
-- “a pathetic performance”
Other Corner contributors and readers criticized the critics, saying they had no interest in seeing Bush “emote” or get “weepy.” “Action” was all they wanted.
Those folks have a bit of a point too.
Poor style points in the end don’t mean anything if the substantive response is a good one.
And strong style points won’t make up for weak substantive response.
But the reason why Bush’s speech fell short has to do with substance, not style.
It’s not that he didn’t feel their pain. It’s that he didn’t face up to their reality.
He wasn’t willing to acknowledge that the “action” taken so far by his Administration isn’t what it should have been.
Sure, the emergency response will likely get its bearings soon and things will improve.
But with such a high death toll expected, an improved emergency response won’t quiet criticism of warnings ignored.
If Bush doesn’t candidly answer the questions about what his Administration did and didn’t do in advance of this disaster, the questions will keep coming, and his ability to lead will continue to suffer.
August 31, 2005 PERMALINK
Real Questions For Roberts
(posted Aug. 31 1:45 AM ET)
It has been 782 days since Karl Rove violated his obligations under Standard Form 312 without the White House taking “corrective action.”
What’s missing from this Reuters report on the John Roberts nomination?
Progress for America, a conservative organization, unveiled a $400,000, nationwide television ad campaign, set to begin on Wednesday, in support of U.S. President George W. Bush's nomination of Roberts, while the liberal Alliance for Justice announced its opposition.
Give up? There’s no ad campaign by the Alliance For Justice mentioned.
That’s because there isn’t any.
At the AFJ news conference yesterday (available in the C-Span archives), president Nan Aron said about an ad buy, “If the need arises, we will do it. We don’t think it’s necessary at this point.”
Right. The opposition effort is going so well so far, who needs ads?!
Everyone knows that the media looks at financial commitments to gauge how serious a fight is being waged. (Four reporters pressed Aron about ads, or lack thereof, in her press conference.)
Sure, it’s a silly barometer, but that’s not the point.
The media are the ones shaping perceptions. If they don’t think there’s a real fight happening, that’s going to be reflected in their coverage.
And AFJ isn’t clueless. They know full well the PR impact of their decision.
It’s not just AFJ of course. Few liberal groups have bought ads. Pro-Roberts forces are outspending us 8 to 1.
Liberal groups felt they had to wait until more documents became available before they could announce opposition, lest they seem knee-jerk.
Instead, they ceded the playing field for six weeks, allowed confirmation to be seen as inevitable, and now, their announcements are seen as knee-jerk and irrelevant.
Dem Senators made a similar misguided calculation, though their decision was to largely hold fire until next week’s hearings.
In effect, all the chips have been placed on the hearings, on the hopes that maybe they can make Roberts slip up.
Here’s the problem with that: Roberts ain’t gonna slip up.
Obviously, there are three reasons why Roberts was picked in the first place.
1) He’s a conservative. 2) There’s limited paper evidence of his conservatism. 3) He’s pretty, polished and prepared.
And because of #3, he’s sure to give good hearing.
But we are where we are. The hearing is it. What can be done about it?
The Judiciary Cmte senators must not treat this in their typical fashion: windy opening statements followed by arcane legalistic questioning.
They must recognize that for the public to see what Roberts is really all about, they cannot sit back and expect Roberts to tell them.
He can only be counted on to give empty and/or disingenuous answers full of legalese.
The only way for the public hear the truth about Roberts is for the senators to tell it.
But telling it in long opening statements is not going to get on the TV news. You need sparks, fireworks, sharp exchanges.
And you need to strike first in your questions. They must be pointed. They must put Roberts on the defensive.
Let your question reveal the real Roberts with clear language. Let Roberts defend himself with legalese.
The kinds of questions suggested by People For The American Way – “What is your view of the Commerce Clause and how philosophically would you approach the questions that deal with it?” – won’t cut it.
Roberts is expecting all those types of questions and knows exactly how he’ll talk around them. Meanwhile, the public won’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
You got to make sure your questions speak to the public, while getting under Robert’s skin. Here are a few suggestions:
1. You previously dismissed the Supreme Court’s conclusion that our Constitution protects our right to privacy by calling it a “so-called right to privacy.”
Since you were a younger man at the time, I suppose it’s possible your view of the Constitution has matured since then.
Have you disavowed your earlier negative attitude towards our cherished right to privacy?
2. In an Endangered Species Act case, you wrote an opinion, rejected by your appeals court colleagues, claiming that our Constitution somehow handcuffs our government from acting on behalf of the public.
Your approach would appear to gut popular environmental laws like those that protect endangered species, as well as keep our air and water clean.
Why do you believe that our Constitution denies the public the right to have their Congress pass laws to protect their environment and have their President vigorously enforce those laws?
3. You once suggested to the Supreme Court that in order to reduce its workload, it should refuse to hear more death penalty appeals.
What does such a glib, cavalier approach to the possible taking of an innocent life say about your judicial temperament?
4. You seem to have a hard time admitting when there are inequalities in our society. For example, you once spoke of a “purported gender gap” and “the canard that women are discriminated against because they receive $0.59 to every $1.00 earned by men.”
How can the public be assured you will uphold equality on the bench?
August 29, 2005 PERMALINK
The Sunday Talkshow Breakdown
A weekly feature of LiberalOasis
(posted Aug. 29 1 AM ET)
It has been 780 days since Karl Rove violated his obligations under Standard Form 312 without the White House taking “corrective action.”
With the draft permanent Iraqi constitution failing to attract Sunni support and failing to protect equality for women, there would be no “purple finger” moment for GOPers to milk.
So Dubya and the GOP had to spin the outcome to avoid sending already weak domestic support for the war into the abyss.
One of their main talking points was: this is just like America’s glorious constitutional process! Let’s rejoice!
On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Mitch McConnell said:
We are talking about a constitution here that's going to be, by Middle Eastern standards, extraordinary enlightened, that is going to be approved in all likelihood in October...
...that will be less than three years since the downfall of Saddam.
It took us in this country 11 years to get from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution.
Over at ABC’s This Week, Sen. John Thune similarly said:
It took us 15 years from independence to where we got to the Bill of Rights. It really is an arduous, difficult, sometimes painful, process to go through.
But trying to involve all those different groups and elements and factions in Iraq is going to be a challenging process. But I think that we are making some headway.
Then later in the afternoon, Dubya delivered the talking point in his own special way, with a misleading historical reference:
I want our folks to remember our own constitution was not unanimously received.
Some delegates at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 refused to sign it, and the draft was vigorously debated in every state, and the outcome was not assured until all the votes were counted.
Prof. Juan Cole corrects the record on that:
Delegates representing twenty percent of the population did not refuse to sign (a number of the delegates who did not sign had just drifted away for business or other reasons, not because of opposition).
And a handful who did explicitly refuse, including Elbridge Gerry and George Mason, did so to protest the lack of a Bill of Rights. Their stance was vindicated when one was added later. (I.e. even they were ultimately brought on board).
Having said that, there is one way this Iraqi constitutional process may resemble our own.
Our constitution is an amazing document, written by true visionaries.
It laid down principles that have endured for centuries while also proving adaptable to our growth and progress as a people.
But that does not mean it was free of imperfections.
One of them was its implicit acceptance of slavery, deeming people who were “not free” to count for three-fifths of a person.
This was understood to be a flaw not just in retrospect, but at the time of its signing, at least by those Founding Fathers who were also abolitionists.
(Though it was not considered a serious enough flaw by those Founders to prevent the constitution’s passage.)
By not representing all Americans, our constitution laid the seeds for own “arduous, difficult ... painful process” – our own civil war.
It didn’t happen immediately. It took many decades of continued oppression for this lack of representation to boil over into bloody conflict.
But it still happened. It killed more than 600,000 people and left a scar on the nation that lasts to this day.
Such is the risk a nation takes when it does not fully represent all of its people from the beginning.
If the Bush Administration was sincerely interested in spreading democracy, it would seek to have other nations learn from our nation’s young mistakes.
Instead, the Bushies have shown that, in order to advance their own shortsighted interests, they’re willing to help negotiate and promote an Iraqi constitution that fails to represent all of its people.
Because the Bushies’ actual agenda – exerting unilateral influence in the Middle East through permanent military bases -- does not fundamentally rest on standing up a representative government, but standing up a government willing to act as a client state.
