GET::REAL with Jay DeDapper » Boehner

Cows, Farts, and the GOP

Jay — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:55:16 +0000

Who Me?

It’s a recurring theme of Get Real but only because Republicans keep doing things that prove the point. The Pity Party seems absolutely bent on self-destruction by following all the old rules for the old game that they can’t stop playing.

Take John Boehner, leader of the House Republican minority. Sunday George Stephanopoulos had him on to talk about the Republican alternatives to Barack Obama’s proposals including on global warming:

…the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.

There he goes again. Boehner, like so many other Republicans wishing Ronald Reagan could be brought back to life (and the White House), still thinks like this is an era when politicians can get away with saying trees cause air pollution. And ketchup is a vegetable.

Actually Boehner’s scientific analysis of cow farts wasn’t the funniest part of his interview. After trying, to no avail, to get Boehner to say anything about a Republican energy plan, Stephanopoulos threw out one last question to wrap up the segment:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you are committed to coming up with a plan?

BOEHNER: I think you’ll see a plan from us. Just like you’ve seen a plan from us on the stimulus bill and a better plan on the budget.

And we know how much voters liked those plans.

The GOP is living in some kind of wonderland where conservatives believe the same ideas that lost them the last two elections will somehow work now. They voted unanimously against Obama’s budget and stimulus bills (actually 3 GOP Senators voted for the stimulus but have been vilified by their rank-and-file for doing so). They lined up behind Rush Limbaugh’s old-timey ranting like soldiers on review. And those tea parties.

Fox News showed it’s true colors with it’s slavish coverage of the tea parties it helped sponsor last week. But almost everyone else treated it like a joke. Or worse — like a big gathering of your crazy uncle and his friends. These coast-to-coast gatherings were in many cases the wing-nut conservatives’ version of a wing-nut liberal conference on impeaching then-President Bush. Wackos to the left of me, wackos to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle….

The problem for Republicans is many of the people who showed don’t represent a majority and seem far more likely to vote for Ron Paul than a mainstream GOP candidate. Tying the Republican brand to a fringe anti-tax message is probably not the way Madison Avenue would have gone about it but what the heck? Nothing else it working.

Actually that message seems to finally be seeping through the cracks in the Republicans coalition. As Get Real has repeatedly pointed out, Republicans are losing everyone but their aging, male, white, Southern base and hence, any chance at winning elections. The majority of voters now do not remember socialism. Do not have the visceral reaction to the term ‘facism’ (which has been stripped of all meaning lately). Do not buy into the tax-cuts-at-all-costs ideal. Are not impressed with the tried-and-true Republican talking points they have heard their entire lives.

Meagan McCain, John’s daughter, is getting the most play in this, mainly from liberal bloggers who love her in the same way conservatives loved Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman — as apparent apostates. Saturday she spoke at the Log Cabin Republican National Convention (insert joke here about oxymorons) and laid it on pretty thick after mentioning that she had gone after Ann Coulter in column and paid the price:

People in our country have much more important issues to deal with on a daily basis. But the experience did reinforce what I learned on the campaign trail in some major ways.

I’ll summarize them in three points:

Most of our nation wants our nation to succeed.

Most people are ready to move on to the future, not live in the past.

Most of the old school Republicans are scared shitless of that future.

McCain went on:

I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes. There are those who think we can win the White House and Congress back by being “more” conservative. Worse, there are those who think we can win by changing nothing at all about what our party has become. They just want to wait for the other side to be perceived as worse than us. I think we’re seeing a war brewing in the Republican party, but it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past. I believe most people are ready to move on to that future.

Her most damning line followed shortly thereafter:

Simply embracing technology isn’t going to fix our problem either. Republicans using Twitter and Facebook isn’t going to miraculously make people think we’re cool again. Breaking free from obsolete positions and providing real solutions that don’t divide our nation further will. That’s why some in our party are scared. They sense the world around them is changing and they are unable to take the risk to jump free of what’s keeping our party down.

Republicans ought to be listening to people like Megan McCain. Sure she’s not as popular as Rush or Sean or the certifiable Glenn Beck but that begs the question: Are the people those blowhards are popular with the solution to what ills Republicans or are they the disease?

Youth isn’t the answer to everything and experience counts for a lot. But we’re not talking about kids when we say thata good size majority of American voters don’t much like Republican positions on so many issues. McCain and other (older) Republicans recognize the problem but the party’s Stalinist-style loyalty demands will keep them marginalized until someone new and fresh can begin to draw moderates, suburbanites, and immigrants back into the GOP.

It will happen. But in whose generation?

Say That With a Straight Face…I Dare You

Jay — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:08:10 +0000

The Other End of Wall Street

At first blush it may seem a bit un-American but the news that the Obama Administration will cap the salary of top executives at any firm receiving Federal bailout money at $500,000 was met with applause on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill (a rare feat of late).

Obama said the measure was aimed at curbing excess. “We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success. And we believe that success should be rewarded. But what gets people upset — and rightfully so — are executives being rewarded for failure. Especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.”

The Republican House leader John Boehner concurred. “If anyone is looking for the taxpayer to help bail their company out these types of executive pay caps are appropriate.”

But surprise surprise, some on Wall Street think this idea will create a big problem. The NY Times quoted Alan Johnson who runs his own Wall Street pay consulting firm (companies need to pay someone to tell them how much to pay someone? I want that job!).

The Times writes Johnson “said the new restrictions could make it harder for the government to resuscitate ailing firms by making it harder for them to retain and recruit talented executives.”

Then there’s this unnamed wise guy from a “boutique investment firm” as quoted in the Washington Post: “I understand why the government is doing this; I think a lot of people are outraged on Main Street, but “we don’t want to be a penny-wise and a pound foolish. We need to attract smart people. My fear is that we may not attract the necessary talent we need to see us through this type of crisis. $500,000 might be too low of an incentive to sign on.”

Really? Did you really say that Mr. Boutique Banker? Let me help you guys with a little math. New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli estimated in November that New York would lose 55,000 financial services jobs by the end of 2009. A source in the office says that number is now believed to be substantially too low.

So with 55,000 well-trained financial services workers out of work and no jobs to be found, Wall Streeters believe capping executive pay at a measly half million will leave these huge companies starved for qualified applicants? And what makes someone qualified, having destroyed a trillion dollars in wealth? That is, after all, what the incredibly well-compensated executives who ran our economy off the rails did.

So I propose a little test. Post the top 5 jobs at Citibank or BofA on Monster.com and see how many qualified applicants you can get for $500,000 a piece. I volunteer to be the first to send in my resume. My qualifications? I can balance my checkbook and I haven’t run a bank into the ground.

Another Spineless Sunday: The Economics of Tax Cut v. Spend

Jay — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:26:38 +0000

This Sunday morning’s chatterfest was filled with deep and informed discussions about the relative merits of cutting taxes versus spending tax money as a way to get the economy on track.

OK I’m lying. From one gasbag to the next politicians and their economic enablers were allowed to make rather grand statements without worry of being confronted with any facts about what history has shown to be most effective.

On Fox News Sunday Senator John McCain said, “We need to make tax cuts permanent, and we need to make a commitment that there’ll be no new taxes. We need to cut payroll taxes. We need to cut business taxes.” Host Chris Wallace moved on.

The idea that tax cuts (especially the ones on the high-income Americans that Bush got through early in his first term and are set to expire shortly) will stimulate the economy as well or better than direct government spending has been refuted by a wide range of economists from the liberal to conservative end of the spectrum.

That being said we’re the first to admit economics is obviously not a science and one can find a tenured economist to support virtually any whacky idea one might want to espouse.

Still how hard would it have been for Wallace to at least push back a little on this bit of conventional Republican wisdom that is simply not true? Maybe he didn’t see one of the most important, simple, and telling charts any publication has created in years.

If you missed the Business section of the NYTimes on Friday you missed the kind of clear demonstration of facts that all the economists in the world spewing all their mumbo jumbo can’t cloud. In two of the only really important measurements of the economy — growth and job growth (because otherwise what’s the point of having an economy, right?) — the last eight years have been the worst since Dwight David Eisenhower was sworn into office in 1953.

Did the huge tax cuts President Bush pushed through at the beginning of his term cause this? If economics was that simple they wouldn’t give out Nobel Prizes for it.

Indeed there are many explanations given — 9/11, tech bubble bursting, expensive war spending — but compare how the US economy has grown and how many jobs were created in the last 8 years with the same stats for other eight year periods and then look at what was happening with taxes during those eight years. This helpful chart shows the Federal tax burden as a share of the Gross Domestic Product (it’s the bright blue line).

Here’s what history shows (leaving Eisenhower out of this since tax rates were adjusted frequently in the belief that that was a good way to fine-tune the economy): When the relative tax burden decreases by a modest amount (Reagan, Kennedy) the economy has done well. When the relative tax burden has increased the economy has done well (Clinton, Carter). But when the relative tax burden has been substantially cut (Nixon, GW Bush) the economy has underperformed.

Why can’t we ever look at past experience as a guide to how our actions will effect the future?

The Sunday Washington Post seems to have skipped history class as well and David Gregory was no tougher on Meet the Press with his guest Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner who stuck to the same theme and then attacked the idea of sending Federal money to the states: “But providing $300 billion of this package to states–$166 billion in direct aid to the states, another $140 billion in education funding–this is not going to do anything, anything to stimulate our economy, to help the–our ailing economy. And so at the end of the day, it has to be targeted. It’s about preserving jobs and creating new jobs.”

That stunner went unquestioned by Gregory. Here are some helpful facts: The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports 45 states are now facing budget shortfalls meaning either program cuts or tax hikes. Cuts would mean further layoffs. Tax hikes would, according to many of the same economists unhappy with the stimulus package proposal, further hurt the economy. Both Republican and Democratic governors have said Federal help is necessary to prevent these outcomes.

So when Boehner says in one sentence the state aid won’t do anything to help “our ailing economy” and in the very next breath says the stimulus has to be about “preserving jobs” Gregory lets him get away with complete head-spinning hypocracy.

Of course it’s also worth asking why Democrats are intent on telling the states exactly how to spend the money (if Albany wants to spend money on family planning and Birmingham doesn’t isn’t that their business?) and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos had the chance to do just that in his “exculsive” interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy. Food stamps, unemployment insurance, some of the initiatives you just mentioned. what the economists have told us from right to left. There is more bang for the buck, a term they use, by investing in food stamps and in unemployment insurance than in any tax cut. Nonetheless, we are committed to the tax cuts because they do have a positive impact on the economy even though not as big as the investments.

No apologies? George, this isn’t a Nirvana songfest. Why not at least ask her, if economists “right and left” say spending is more effective than tax cuts, why Democrats have shifted the stimulus package to be nearly 40% tax cuts? Obviously it’s to get Republican and blue dog Dem support but make her say that.

Where’s Russert when we need him?