What the "do nothing" Obama is up against

Yes, this black president should"start the re-election campaign in the Gulf" states of MIssissippi, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana... those states whose white voters grew up respecting colour and where the polls show a tendency to continue in that vein.  Of course the liberal can overlook such nasty, offensive statistics, make them go away at the tap of a keyboard.

Tiresome is the constant comparison with FDR...despite the personal and historical differences. FDR had millions of unemployed workers in hand, wanting government solutions.  Raher different today, Palin and her teapartyers.   In the vernacular, get real.  :)

The continuing saga of a nation where tax revolts were institutionalized:

From today's NYTimes:

"If no tax legislation is passed, all the major tax reductions passed under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 will expire, with rates reverting overnight on Dec. 31. The top marginal income tax rate, for example, would go back to 39.6 percent from 35 percent now, with corresponding increases in rates for lower income brackets.

Given the partisan gridlock of recent months, there is a chance that the battle could go down to the last minute, or even - in the face of a stalemate - that the tax cuts could be allowed to expire completely, a development that Republicans are already heralding ominously as the largest tax increase in history and that lawmakers in both parties say could be the worst outcome.

From both political and policy perspectives, the tax issue is dizzyingly complex, and even some of Washington's most grizzled legislative operatives say they cannot predict the outcome.

Some liberals want Mr. Obama to keep his promise to raise taxes on the rich, and the White House's budget forecasts rely heavily on rolling the top income tax rates back to their pre-2001 levels. Some fiscal hawks warn that extending the tax cuts would add more than $2 trillion to the federal budget deficits at a time when the national debt is becoming an economic concern and a political issue. Political economists are fiercely divided.

So are Democrats. In recent days, fiscal conservatives like Senators Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Evan Bayh of Indiana expressed support for extending the tax cuts at all income levels, at least temporarily.

Senior administration officials said there was no interest in such a plan at the White House, which intends to have Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner lead an effort to make the case that continuing tax breaks for the rich will not help lift the economy, but eliminating them will help reduce the deficit."

And back to the loss of the climate bill in congress...Paul Krugman in his NYTimes column today:

"By itself, however, greed wouldn't have triumphed. It needed the aid of cowardice - above all, the cowardice of politicians who know how big a threat global warming poses, who supported action in the past, but who deserted their posts at the crucial moment.

There are a number of such climate cowards, but let me single out one in particular: Senator John McCain.

There was a time when Mr. McCain was considered a friend of the environment. Back in 2003 he burnished his maverick image by co-sponsoring legislation that would have created a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions. He reaffirmed support for such a system during his presidential campaign, and things might look very different now if he had continued to back climate action once his opponent was in the White House. But he didn't - and it's hard to see his switch as anything other than the act of a man willing to sacrifice his principles, and humanity's future, for the sake of a few years added to his political career.

Alas, Mr. McCain wasn't alone; and there will be no climate bill. Greed, aided by cowardice, has triumphed. And the whole world will pay the price."

Back to how FDR would have handled it.

The Democrats are still hoping that the wealthiest 2 or 3 per cent of Americans will have to pay higher taxes when Dubya's 8-year-old tax cut legislation runs out, but Republicans and some Dems say no to the idea:

"WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner pressed the case on Sunday for letting Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire later this year.

In appearances on two television programs, Mr. Geithner said that letting tax cuts expire for those who make $250,000 a year or more would affect 2 percent to 3 percent of all Americans. He dismissed concerns that the move could push a teetering economy back into recession and argued that it would demonstrate America's commitment to addressing its trillion-dollar budget deficit.

On "This Week" on ABC, he said, "We think that's the responsible thing to do because we need to make sure we can show the world" that America is "willing as a country now to start to make some progress bringing down our long-term deficits."

Mr. Geithner added, "I do not believe it will affect growth."

Most Republicans and some Democrats in Congress strongly disagree and have pledged to launch an all-out effort to extend the tax cuts for people of all incomes. The cuts were passed under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003. Supporters of extending the cuts for everyone argue that raising taxes on any group, particularly one considered crucial for creating jobs, could endanger a precarious economic recovery.

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, spoke about the administration's plans in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday."

"The safest thing for America would be to have a provision passed this fall that said no tax increase of any kind for 2011," said Mr. Gingrich, who is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. "I mean the fact is, everywhere I go - and I've been in 10 states in the last 14 days - businesspeople say to me over and over again, 'I will create no new jobs in this environment because the uncertainty is too frightening.' "

In the land of the free, where the pres. is making himself the friend of the high income crowd (by letting their tax rate rise to the pre-Bush figure) that also happens to pull the levers on the major corporations, here's the developing situation, from today's NYTimes:

"Let the Spending Begin

The starter's gun went off last week in the squalid new race for unlimited campaign cash. The Federal Election Commission approved the creation of two "independent" campaign committees, one each from the left and right, expressly designed to take advantage of the new world of no rules.

One committee is being set up by the Club for Growth, the conservative advocate for low taxes and less government. The other will be run by a new group with close ties to the Democrats called Commonsense Ten, which says it will raise money from individuals, corporations and unions. Because both are obviously completely independent and would never dream of coordinating their efforts with those of any political party,(my appreciative ) they will be able to spend unlimited amounts, thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision earlier this year.

Both committees, and others like them, will also be able to collect unlimited checks from their donors. A little-noticed decision in March by the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia said there is no longer any basis for limiting contributions to independent committees, known as 527's. The old contribution limit of $69,900 every two years apparently abridged the free speech rights of well-heeled donors."

From the NYTimes:

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Tuesday refused to take up a bill that would require more disclosure of the role of corporations, unions and other special interests in bankrolling political advertisements, after Democrats failed to persuade even one Republican to support it.

The bill was drafted in response to a Supreme Court decision in January allowing unlimited campaign spending by corporations and interest groups.

President Obama and Democratic leaders have been seeking to use the Republicans' opposition to the bill to portray them as beholden to corporate interests. Republicans, in turn, say the Democrats drafted the legislation in an effort to gain an advantage in this year's midterm elections.

But the bottom line was that the court's decision now stands, helping define the November election and, perhaps, campaigns in years ahead. Democrats pledged to try again in September, but the bill's chances seemed dim.

The official tally was 57 in favor to 41 against, with Democrats falling short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a Republican filibuster. But the Democrats were actually just one vote shy.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who caucuses with the Democrats and expressed support for taking up the bill, was absent to attend a funeral.

Paul Krugman in NYTimes today:

"The point is that a large part of Congress - large enough to block any action on jobs - cares a lot about taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population, but very little about the plight of Americans who can't find work.

Well, if Congress won't act, what about the Federal Reserve? The Fed, after all, is supposed to pursue two goals: full employment and price stability, usually defined in practice as an inflation rate of about 2 percent. Since unemployment is very high and inflation well below target, you might expect the Fed to be taking aggressive action to boost the economy. But it isn't.

It's true that the Fed has already pushed one pedal to the metal: short-term interest rates, its usual policy tool, are near zero. Still, Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, has assured us that he has other options, like holding more mortgage-backed securities and promising to keep short-term rates low. And a large body of research suggests that the Fed could boost the economy by committing to an inflation target higher than 2 percent.

But the Fed hasn't done any of these things. Instead, some officials are defining success down.

For example, last week Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, argued that the Fed bears no responsibility for the economy's weakness, which he attributed to business uncertainty about future regulations - a view that's popular in conservative circles, but completely at odds with all the actual evidence. In effect, he responded to the Fed's failure to achieve one of its two main goals by taking down the goalpost.

He then moved the other goalpost, defining the Fed's aim not as roughly 2 percent inflation, but rather as that of "keeping inflation extremely low and stable."

In short, it's all good. And I predict - having seen this movie before, in Japan - that if and when prices start falling, when below-target inflation becomes deflation, some Fed officials will explain that that's O.K., too.

What lies down this path? Here's what I consider all too likely: Two years from now unemployment will still be extremely high, quite possibly higher than it is now. But instead of taking responsibility for fixing the situation, politicians and Fed officials alike will declare that high unemployment is structural, beyond their control. And as I said, over time these excuses may turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the long-term unemployed lose their skills and their connections with the work force, and become unemployable.

I'd like to imagine that public outrage will prevent this outcome. But while Americans are indeed angry, their anger is unfocused. And so I worry that our governing elite, which just isn't all that into the unemployed, will allow the jobs slump to go on and on and on."

That's the Times' Nobel prize-winning economist stating his concern for workers' future and laying the blame on Congress.

And he didn't once have difficulty in expressing himself and having to resort to the vernacular of the monosyllabic set.

Bad bunch for sure.

Amy Greene, grandaughter and daughter of Tennessee ministers tells NYTimes readers what it's like there today:

"Some of my first memories are of sitting in my grandfather's church, a little cinder-block building tucked in a thicket, listening to his voice ringing in the rafters. After my grandfather died, my dad took over as pastor. I never heard either of them mention politics from the pulpit, even though at home, in a family that has been divided between Democrats and Republicans going all the way back to the Civil War, there were some heated discussions. My dad always said that it was biblical to pray for our leaders, but not to campaign for them in a house of worship.

As an adult, I visited other churches in the valleys and hollows of my community. One in particular stands out in my mind, because it reminded me so much of my grandfather's church. It was nestled in a copse of shade trees beside a creek, its frosted windows shining. Going into the vestibule was like coming home. I knew the words to every hymn the congregation sang.

But this was in 2008, with the presidential election around the corner; when the preacher took the pulpit, he admonished his flock to remember their Christian values and vote Republican. I haven't gone back since, but I keep encountering the same kind of religious lobbying. Not surprisingly, the only enthusiasm I've seen for the primary is a lone Zach Wamp sign sunk into the weedy lawn of a church near the highway.

This is the opposite of what my grandfather and my dad and Appalachian preachers of their ilk tried to teach - a devotion that is as much a part of our mountain heritage as the land, that can't be reduced to campaign propaganda, that shouldn't be exploited for one vote or one issue. It's way too big for that. I just wish politicians and pastors would stop making it so small."

Amy Greene is the author of "Bloodroot," a novel.

You should read Gregory Baum's Catholics and Canadian Socialism: Political Thought in the Thirties and Forties, al-Q.  Or maybe you did and don't want to set your own experience in historical context. :)

Anyway, U.S. southerners are now Republicans on the side of God, apparently.  And the colour of the pres's skin will likely come to be seen as a factor, y'all hear now.

A Democrat describes the political environment in Washington...sounding much like the Copnservative obstruction in Canada's Parliament:

"Instead of engaging in a real debate about how to address the challenges we face, Republicans have turned to obstruction, no matter the issue, and then cry foul after the fact. They claim to want an open legislative process with more consultation and debate, but the truth is they simply don't want to pass anything.

Meanwhile, conservative television and talk radio programs are full of false anger, intended to scare Americans. I think some genuine frustration at this misleading tactic is overdue.

That's why I got mad last week. That's also why I'm going to fight for this bill when we come back in session in September. I'm still angry. Playing politics on important issues is never right. But on health care for 9/11 responders, it's an outrage."

Anthony Weiner is a member of the House of Representatives from Queens and Brooklyn.

And like the president, he can't call those media out for the business-controlled, populist, devious purveyors of lies that they are. The gormless MSM, of course, must remain beyond reproach for anyone seriously attempting to gain elected office, there in the land of the free, or here.