Be careful what you wish for is an adage worth pondering as Wales wakes up to yet another set of extraordinary twists in its 21st Century devolution journey. All along during this election campaign the overriding and tantalising question has been: will the inevitable swing to Labour be enough to push it from 26 Assembly Members to cross the barrier of 30 seats to secure a majority?

At the start of the day Labour was hovering on the edge. However, as the north Wales results came in, with the Conservatives holding Clwyd West and gaining Aberconwy, Labour stuck on 30. Could that lead to Carwyn Jones’ worst nightmare: forced to govern alone without a clear majority? Or will the Liberal Democrats or Plaid Cymru offer him the escape route of a coalition?

Without a coalition Carwyn Jones will be taken out of the comfort zone Labour occupied during the whole of the last term when the One Wales Labour Plaid coalition luxuriated in such a large majority that the whips were made redundant.  During much of the term Karen Sinclair, Labour’s former AM for Clwyd  South, was absent due to illness, and it didn’t matter a jot. But it would in the coming term if Labour opts to run as, in effect, a minority Welsh Government.

And without being ageist, let’s not forget either that Labour will now have two septuagenarians among its ranks – Keith Davies, the new Labour AM for Llanelli, and Gwenda Thomas, who continues as AM for Neath.

In these circumstances it becomes critical whether Government or Opposition provides the Presiding Officer. Labour voices are saying they see no reason why Plaid’s Lord Dafydd Elis Thomas shouldn’t continue in the post. However, Plaid Cymru will not be keen to surrender his vote. In anticipation of the role his deputy in the last term, Newport West Labour AM Rosemary Butler has apparently been busy stocking up on her wardrobe.

Apart from living on a knife edge, without a coalition partner Carwyn Jones will struggle to find the personnel to fill his Cabinet. If Labour does end up governing alone expect a reduction in the size of the Cabinet and a new constellation of portfolios. For example Environment could be merged with Rural Affairs and Housing with Social Justice and Local Government. And, of course, there would be no need for a Deputy First Minister.

However, if Carwyn Jones decides to try governing alone Labour will have little political cover in standing up for Wales against the public spending onslaught about to be unleashed by an unsympathetic Westminster government. In particular, Wales’s financial fortunes will be laid bare when compared with the relative spending deal enjoyed by Alex Salmond’s SNP Government north of the border. With a Scottish independence referendum looming towards the end of the five-year term, the Westminster Government will find all manner of reasons for failing to look for an alternative to the Barnett funding formula which works to Scotland’s benefit but against the interest of Wales.

A couple of weeks after he became the UK Prime Minister a year ago David Cameron visited the National Assembly and said he regarded the nations of the UK as a family that he wanted to keep together, adding, “I don’t want our family to fall out over money.” Expect a good deal of falling out in the next few years, with Carwyn Jones’ Welsh Government becoming more and more frustrated and cross at its inability to wrest any concessions from a London Treasury continuing to pacify the Scots with financial largesse.

Despite all these dilemmas Welsh Labour can at least comfort itself that they are problems of success, the outcome of winning the election. Nonetheless, it will surely be looking for a coalition partner. Before the election Carwyn Jones made it clear he did not wish to lead a minority government. Thirty seats places Labour in the position it found itself in the wake of the 2003 election, living day to day at the mercy of events and negotiating one deal after another with one or the other party.

Not only that, 30 seats puts Labour under potential pressure from any discontented backbencher. This was demonstrated in the term following the 2003 election when the late Peter Law left Labour to form the People’s Voice movement in Blaenau Gwent.

Carwyn Jones will undoubtedly lean in the direction of renewing the One Wales agreement with Plaid Cymru. Although, according to today’s Western Mail, the Liberal Democrats have already made overtures to Labour, they will surely be tainted – in Labour’s eyes – because of their coalition with the Conservatives in the UK government.

Plaid Cymru undoubtedly suffered a severe setback in the election, though in some areas only by a small number of votes. Helen Mary Jones lost Llanelli by just 80 votes. In South West Wales former Plaid AM Dai Lloyd lost his List seat by only 50 votes. A similar margin cost them an extra List seat in North Wales.

Nonetheless, while Plaid Cymru struggled in the campaign to strike a distinctive note, Labour did well in the main because it very successfully presented itself as the antidote to the London Government’s assault on welfare benefits and public sector spending. But it also did well because it emphasised the Welsh dimension of its Labour identity, in the form of the personality of Carwyn Jones and his nationalist slogan ‘standing up for Wales’.

In part this was gifted him by Plaid Cymru which insisted on the referendum for greater powers as the keystone of the coalition One Wales coalition agreement. Plaid then provided the legwork in delivering the commitment while allowing Labour to take the credit and the electoral benefit. Whereas in Scotland the SNP has become the party most clearly identified with defending the nation’s interest, in Wales currently it is Labour.

This is why many in Plaid Cymru will argue that the last thing it needs is an internal argument about whether it should go into coalition again with Labour. Having delivered the referendum, they will say, it now needs a spell in the wilderness to recover its direction, its impetus, and its soul. However, this is a decision that will be made by the Plaid Group in the Assembly. I fancy their judgement, led by Ieuan Wyn Jones, will be to seek a coalition deal from Labour that they can project as being in the interests of Wales.

Constituencies Scoreboard

Party	Seats	+/-	Votes	%	% Change
Labour	28	+4	401,677	42.3	+10.1
Conservative	6	+1	236,916	25	+2.6
Plaid Cymru	5	-2	182,907	19.3	-3.1
Liberal Democrat	1	-2	100,731	10.6	-4.2
Other	0	-1	27,021	2.8	-5.4

After 40 of 40 constituencies declared

Regions Scoreboard

Party	Seats	+/-	Votes	%	+/- %
Conservative	8	+1	213,773	22.5	+1.1
Plaid Cymru	6	-2	169,799	17.9	-3.1
Liberal Democrat	4	+1	76,349	8	-3.7
Labour	2	0	349,935	36.9	+7.2
Other	0	0	139,532	14.7	-1.5
Turnout			949,388	42.2	-1.1

After 5 of 5 regions declared

The immediate problem for the Welsh Conservatives is that in polling relatively well last night, the vagaries of the Additional Member electoral system resulted in the loss of their leader, the former List member for Mid and West Wales, Nick Bourne. In addition, the loss of the Conservative’s Cardiff North AM Jonathan Morgan, who lost his seat to Labour’s Julie Morgan, has removed Nick Bourne’s obvious successor. This presents a more deep-seated problem for the Welsh Conservatives than might at first be appreciated. For between them, Bourne and Morgan have been the major influencers in putting that ‘Welsh’ in front of the party’s name over the past decade. If, for instance, Andrew R. T. Davies, who headed up the party’s List AMs in South Wales Central last night, becomes leader – as seems likely – then the Welsh identity of the Conservative Party in Wales could be blown sideways. To be sure David Melding, another strong Welsh identifier, also made it on the Conservative List in South Wales Central, but he has ruled himself out of the leadership  contest.

The Conservatives have relatively minor problems, again resulting from electoral success, when compared with those facing the Liberal Democrats. It could be said that the Welsh Liberal Democrat vote collapsed in many areas of Wales, and especially in Cardiff, through no fault of their own but because the party at the UK level went into coalition with the Conservatives. That is essentially the case, but what it says is that the Welsh electorate does not distinguish the Welsh Liberal Democrats from those in the rest of the UK. Welsh Liberal Democrats face an existential crisis about their Welsh identity.  What do they stand for that marks them out? After more than a decade of the National Assembly it remains a hard question to answer.

It is paradoxical that much the same problem faces the most distinctive party in Wales, Plaid Cymru, though of course in very different ways. It now has to judge whether it can address the fundamental issues it faces at the same time as being in a coalition government with Welsh Labour that so successfully, in this election at least, has wrapped itself in the Draig Goch. I suspect Ieuan Wyn Jones will judge that he will achieve a greater profile in doing so over the next five years, rather than choosing the alternative, which does not offer him even the position of Leader of the Opposition.

John Osmond is Director of the Institute of Welsh Affairs and a member of Plaid Cymru.

This piece was originally published on ClickOnWales.org.

Nick Clegg appeals to Labour supporters to vote for AV and signals greater distance from Tories after the vote

Nick Clegg has made a last-minute appeal to Labour supporters to set aside their desire to "poke him in the eye" and recognise that the alternative vote is an unambiguously progressive reform.

He has also vowed that his party will be more independent of the Conservatives after the referendum, saying the first phase of unanimity in public had been necessary due to the need to tackle the economic crisis.

In a Guardian interview, Clegg said: "For Labour party supporters thinking about how they should vote, Labour has always been at its best a progressive movement for reform. It always has been and always will be. This is a progressive change, an unambiguously progressive change.

"Yes, I understand people want to poke me in the eye and signal their displeasure. I understand all of that – I do not want to belittle that – but this is a fork of the road for progressives which is much bigger than me. This is not about Nick Clegg or the coalition government, it is about whether you take the progressive fork in the road, or do you stick with the status quo."

With polls showing that only a late swing by Labour voters to AV can rescue the yes campaign, Clegg – who is viewed with intense dislike by some on the left – praised Ed Miliband for the way he has led his party in the issue, contrasting him with the "old warhorses" of John Reid and David Blunkett, opposed to reform.

He also expressed his frustration at what some see as the duplicity of his Tory colleagues in government when they claim they are not responsible for the literature put out by the no campaign attacking his "broken promises".

He said: "I take what people say at face value. I do not try to second guess them, but it seems to be an established fact that this no campaign has transformed itself into a Conservative party campaign in all but name. It was transformed by a commitment from Conservative party high command. It is a pity that old warhorses like John Reid and David Blunkett have turned themselves into mouthpieces for what is in effect a Conservative party campaign.

"To be fair to George Osborne and David Cameron, they have been overt about the fact that they are going to do absolutely everything they can to stop a change that is inimical to their interests."

Echoing business secretary Vince Cable, he said the current electoral system had locked out progressive forces.

"The last century, as Vince has quite rightly said, has been dominated by one party – the Conservative party – on a minority of the vote. That is an incontrovertible fact. The whole Roy Jenkins thesis is that if you look at the last century, the left wing parties did not get a look in because they were splitting the difference."

He admits it is not immutable but argued that the trend has been for Labour and Lib Dems to vote tactically for one another. "Clearly, there has been affinity historically, ideologically between the two progressive parties. I am a progressive politician. I lead a progressive party

I always have and always will do.".

"I cannot for the life of me understand how intelligent, sophisticated folk in the Conservative party think it is defensible in the 21st century to have a system that ends up with hundreds of MPs with jobs for life – and they do not even deign to get 50% of the vote every few years."

Clegg is dismissive of critics who attack his record. "To use the challenges of coalition, compromise politics as a stick to beat us with is turning facts on its head to put it mildly. I don't indulge in anger, I think anger is a slightly useless emotion, but I reject this idea that I wilfully went back on my word. People that accuse me of doing a U-turn think I can behave as if I had won a landslide. I didn't. I will never apologise for the wider benefit of the country making those compromises. I accept that people want to shout me down simply to ignore argument and not to engage in rational debate, but that is the fact."

But he predicts his party from now on will be more independent inside the coalition. "If this referendum campaign, in a slightly gloves-off manner, has dramatised the fact that the Liberal Democrats are the progressive voice of this coalition, then it is not a bad thing in the long run.

"As we chalk up more progressive successes, I think people will see a pattern of progressive advance, and if people look out for that, or it is more obvious, or we are more articulate in explaining it, that would be a good thing. I always felt that the early stages were the most disciplined stages of the coalition because we were grappling with tricky fiscal issues, but inevitably over time you get those differences of identity to re-emerge."

But he urges his party not to think in terms of retreat if the referendum is lost or the local elections go badly. "Do I think it would be sensible for Liberal Democrats to bail out of a five-year plan at the very hardest point after a year? I think it would be an act of spectacular political masochism and it is something I am not going to do."

"Not Satisfied" Edition
*

Felicia Sonmez, WaPo political blogger, via Twitter:

“@sarahpalinusa was at msnbc afterparty... Msnbc's rachel maddow offered to make @sarahpalinusa a drink, & palin asked for a diet coke. Maddow brought 1 over a few mins later...Then both had a v pleasant exchange in which it sounded like r. maddow invited s. palin on the show 1 day and palin responded positively... palin was mobbed once guests realized she was there... Asked whether she's running for potus, palin said a decision's still a few months off and she's still sizing up the field... She said she's not satisfied yet with those who've already announced, but won't make a decision until the summer. Also: family a big factor”

Adrienne Ross at Motivation Truth:

“The story here, of course, was Rachel Maddow -- of all people -- greeting Governor Palin and serving her a diet coke after all the bashing and beating she does of her on the air. It amazes me how differently people react when they encounter the Governor face to face.”

philmon at The Clue Batting Cage:

“The screaming response from the Palin haters is that the Vice President breaks ties in the Senate, and that's it -- as if Sarah Palin got it all wrong... But... so many times Palin says something we're instructed to ridicule and laugh at, and then it turns out she was actually right (but nobody in the MSM does a retraction). So I go grab my handy dandy Constitution. From Article 1, Section 3: ‘The Vice President of the United States shall be the President of the Senate, but shall have no vote unless they be equally divided.’ ‘Shall be the President of the Senate’. Question for you snickerers. What is a President? What is the job of a President? If you are the President of something, aren't you ‘in charge’ of it? ‘pres·i·dent /ˈprɛzɪdənt/ [prez-i-duhnt] –noun... an officer appointed or elected to preside over an organized body of persons...’ Again, Palin ridiculed for giving a supposedly ridiculous answer that turns out to be not so ridiculous.”

Jedediah Bila via Twitter:

“Recall that Levi retracted his negative comments about the Palins, then retracted his retraction. And now he's writing a book. LOL. #joke”

bc3b at Be John Galt:

“While every aspect of Sarah Palin’s life was placed under the microscope down to husband Todd’s former membership in the Alaskan Independence Party, Barack Obama was given a free pass. No major media outlet – including FNC – probed deeply into Obama’s relationship with Tony Rezko, his membership in the New Party, his association with William Ayers and [Bernardine Dohrn] or the mysterious periods in Obama’s life when he was MIA. We know Palin attended five colleges, but we have no idea how Obama, who supposedly was a poor to mediocre student at Occidential, managed to get into Columbia or Harvard or how his college expenses were funded.”

John Nolte at Big Hollywood:

“HBO is producing a multi-million dollar in-kind contribution to the Obama 2012 campaign.”

Matt Lewis at The Daily Caller:

“The Quotable Rogue is set for publication in June. Following are some of the excellent blurbs that will appear in the book... ‘Sarah Palin is one of the most important conservative leaders in America — and Matt Lewis is one of my favorite writers. Every conservative ought to have a copy of the Quotable Rogue in their personal library — if for no other reason than to refute the distortions and lies constantly hurled at Palin by her detractors.’ – Ken Blackwell... ‘For all the accolades heaped on Mr. Obama for his soaring rhetoric and brilliant, professorial oratory, it’s hard to deny that Sarah Palin is one of the most quotable leaders of the 21st century. The Quotable Rogue brings that into stunning clarity. And it’s not because she’s controversial — it’s because she’s usually just right.’ – S.E. Cupp”

I am Coyote at NW Republican:

“I wish Sarah Palin would actually get in the race now. I know a lot of folks might scoff at her but she is the one who has been banging the energy drum the loudest and the longest. And oh would I LOVE to see the moonbats just freak out should Palin defeat ‘the one.’ Heads would be exploding all over the left coast.”

Bernie Quigley at The Hill's Pundits Blog:

“A phrase recently appeared in the MSM: ‘anti-establishment conservatives.’ Brings to mind that well-worn phrase of the Sixties, ‘counter culture.’ But modeled for a new century and for new generations. Sarah Palin first busted out and today conservatism – from Rand Paul and Judge Andrew Napolitano to former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson and Donald Trump - bristles with creativity. It brings a change of paradigm to American politics and culture and suggests a forceful will and intelligence at work in its desire to become real. Commentator Michael Barone compared the change to that of the Sixties. There are now three elements: Democrats, Republicans and the new conservative counter culture which has no real name yet. By 2012 it could well become the new mainstream.”

M. Catharine Evans at American Thinker:

“Could it be that 21st century leftists are descended from a long line of progressive eugenicists? Could it be they are mimicking their ideological forefathers by picking on a Down Syndrome baby?”

Rick Moran at American Thinker Blog:

“In fact, what you will be hearing from Republicans over the next few weeks is that if catastrophe occurs, the fault will lie squarely with Geithner who has it within his power to act on financing our debt in the manner suggested by Palin and others.. If the markets blow up, it will be Geithner's deliberate choice that they do. So the question is: How irresponsible is the Obama administration willing to be on the debt ceiling issue? Given that Obama is already running hard for re-election, the answer is; as irresponsible as he can get away with.”

Phineas at Sister Toldjah:

“It seems to me the woman dismissed as ‘Caribou Barbie’ and a quitter has a better grip on our national interests than the Smartest President in History ever will. Darn her for confusing me by being right when our Cultural Elites insist she’s wrong.”

The Ignorant Fishermen:

“Ever since Sarah Palin entered the national political arena two and a half years ago as the Republican VP nominee, she has caused sheer panic in the hearts and minds of Leftist Liberals and Moderates in America. Accordingly, the Leftist media is hell-bent on doing all they can to discredit Palin’s accomplishments and destroy her character at any cost. Even now, much effort and energy is being expended to deceive the American people regarding her considerable achievements. Her popularity among conservatives is astounding, her books have been flying off of the shelves and many believe that she will get the 2012 endorsement for the presidency.”

Sunny Roseman at The Inconvenient Sunny Roseman Show:

“Have you ever considered hate to be a form of flattery? The harder Sarah Palin’s detractors try to tear her down, the brighter she shines!”

Tim Graham at NewsBusters:

“Rosie O'Donnell... went after Sarah Palin as an ignoramus... But when you start attacking other people as ignorant, it's probably a bad idea to start mangling words and getting things wrong: ‘Sarah Palin has ushered in a whole new level of ignorance as a consumerable quantity.’ Consumerable? If Palin said ‘consumerable,’ how many reporters and comedians would rejoice? (See ‘refudiate.’) Rosie then said ‘When she was running, it was almost like a joke that she would say the things that she did, like I can see Russia from my house. It wasn't ‘almost’ a joke. It was actually a joke by Tina Fey -- and not something Palin actually said.”

- JP

• Chancellor's claims on electoral reform cash are 'bizarre'
• Deputy PM Nick Clegg joins the attack on the no campaign

The former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown has launched an explosive attack on George Osborne, accusing the chancellor of cheap mud-slinging and scaremongering ahead of the alternative vote referendum.

As the AV debate grows increasingly acrimonious, laying bare growing coalition tensions between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, Ashdown takes Osborne to task over his allegations that the Electoral Reform Society stands to profit from a yes vote.

Osborne claimed the society, which gave £1.1m to the yes campaign, would benefit from the adoption of the alternative vote system through its commercial subsidiary, Electoral Reform Services Ltd (ERSL). But in a strikingly personal attack on the chancellor, Ashdown writes in today's Observer that Osborne's approach is a prime example of why British politics needs radical reform.

"The strategy is clear," writes Ashdown. "Throw as much mud as you can, don't let the issue be discussed openly and frighten the public over the next three weeks into voting to preserve the power the present first-past-the-post system gives you. This strategy stinks of the same odour which has surrounded our politics recently.

"For the chancellor of the exchequer – the chancellor of the exchequer – to claim that there is something 'dodgy' about the Electoral Reform Society donating cash to a campaign in favour of electoral reform is bizarre. George Osborne makes the case for change for us. He graphically shows why we need to change our politics. Why we need to clean it up. Why the voting public deserve something better."

Ashdown's aggressive intervention is made as the gloves come off in the increasingly embittered referendum debate. Twelve Tory ministers and cabinet ministers, including key allies of David Cameron, pounded pavements across the country drumming up support for the no vote.

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, condemned the use of smear campaigns during the AV debate and attempted to distance himself from Tory policies. "The no campaign is getting increasingly desperate", the Lib Dem leader said. "That's why they are using ludicrous false claims to try to scare people into keeping things the way they are."

Clegg added: "Working together in the national interest does not mean we agree on everything. And it doesn't mean we shouldn't be taking the fight to the Tories in the local elections, criticising mistakes and wrong priorities wherever they occur."

Meanwhile, the former Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, Lord Oakeshott, said the no campaign was a "Conservative front". He urged Labour party supporters to ignore the no campaign of the former deputy prime minister, Lord Prescott, and vote yes with the Liberal Democrats and Labour leader Ed Miliband, to "stuff the Tories".

Oakeshott said: "The no campaign is a pantomime dinosaur, with Prescott at the front, [BNP leader Nick] Griffin at the back and Cameron firmly on top all the time. The stakes couldn't be higher on 5 May – a yes vote will empower the progressive majority in our country. A no will let the Tories in through the backdoor to dominate the 21st century like the 20th."

Friction between the coalition partners comes amid growing frustration on the part of those closest to Clegg that the no campaign has been used to attack the Lib Dems, and the deputy prime minister in particular. Clegg's image is prominent in the no campaign material.

A senior Lib Dem source told the Observer the personal attacks appeared to have been sanctioned from Downing Street. The source added: "The no campaign has been turned into an avenue through which the Tories can attack Nick, let off some steam. The campaign has been funded heavily by Conservative headquarters and the attacks have become very personal. It is like a pressure valve for the Tories for their frustrations in other policy areas."

The energy secretary, Chris Huhne, has warned that negative campaigning by the Conservative chairwoman, Baroness Warsi, among others, could lead to a breakdown in the coalition, but senior Lib Dems believe that has not been heeded. Ashdown explicitly criticises Warsi, describing Tory tactics as "indefensible" and "tawdry".

"To have Baroness Warsi stand on the site of race riots in the 1930s and say that a yes vote will help the BNP is as tawdry as it is indefensible", he says. "The BNP are campaigning for a no vote. Such extremist parties as have, God help us, been elected in Britain, were elected through first past the post. As a host of independent commentators have commented, AV will diminish their chances, not increase them."

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is in a swivet. This would not, of itself, be newsworthy as they are virtually always in a swivet. That's not a criticism, by the way. We live in swivet-worthy times.

At the moment they are in a swivet because of the recent budget "deal" and their ever-growing sense that the president of the United States is not exclusively their president. There are even stirrings that it is time for a liberal challenger to the president in next year's primaries. These stirrings are not likely to amount to much as, at the moment, Obama looks so strong that even the Republican Party is having a hard time coming up with a credible alternative to the president.  But they are another sign that Democrats in Congress are likely to be more fractious going forward, with Nancy Pelosi's vote against the recent budget compromise exhibit A to that effect.

The liberals are concerned that the approach embraced in the recent deal and some elements hinted at in the president's speech are contrary to core liberal values, specifically that social programs should not be on the chopping block and that if the deficit is to be a priority -- and it's not clear some of them think it should be-the adjustments ought to come from taxing the rich, defense, closing corporate loopholes, etc. They also are worried about the president's recent support for trade deals like those with South Korea or Colombia. And they don't much like the intervention in Libya or the decision to double-down in Afghanistan. And they feel like the president was sold out by advisors who are too close to Wall Street and that's why "reforms" were incomplete. (None of them seem to be much mollified by the fact that the budget deal is a complete sham, saving in real terms more like $350 million than the vaunted $30-plus billion.)

In other words, they feel that Barack Obama is -- gack! -- a centrist.

They take no comfort in the fact that, as reported in today's New York Times, John Boehner is also taking heat from the wingnuts in his party for cutting a deal with Obama. Which begs the question: do these people understand the difference between politics and governing?

Personally, I think Obama is a liberal at heart (his writings and record before becoming president suggest this) who is also profoundly pragmatic. (Just like I think Boehner is a conservative at heart who is also profoundly pragmatic.)

Pragmatism may sound cheap and valueless, but compared to inaction in the face of urgent issues it's not so bad. Many of Obama's policy choices are compromises. Some are between him and the right, some are between him and the hawks in his administration, some are between him and our European allies, some are between him and the left and no doubt many are between him and his conscience or his own aspirations.

This makes idealists crazy because they feel like he should fall on his sword and bleed to death for the purest expression of the most extreme form of his values ... or rather, of their values. It's a crazy expectation. The real question they should be asking is whether Barack Obama is the electable presidential candidate most likely to do the best job advancing their interests. All other possibilities are either fantasies or would produce even greater disappointment.

Personally, Obama drives me nuts. He regularly makes decisions that are a sign of his inexperience or his impulse to premature compromise.  It is inexcusable that America regularly elects presidents with zero foreign policy experience even though it costs us dearly every time. He is nothing like the transformational figure that was advertised. He is a professional politician who has shown a pronounced bias for hiring other pols for top jobs in his administration, even for policy jobs where he would do better with advisors with deeper, different, policy and management experience. He is, in the end, more or less just like all other professional politicians in history, just a 21st century version, more in tune with the moment and, in all likelihood considerably smarter and of considerably better character than all but a tiny handful of the very best professional politicians we've ever elected.

The fear of hawkish critiques led to a wrong decision to deepen in Afghanistan. The desire to compromise led to an extension of the Bush tax cuts that is deeply fiscally damaging. The inexperience led to a mismanagement of the start of the Libya intervention and is likely to lead to big problems from Iran to Gaza to China in the months and years ahead. The healthcare deal was not too weak because it veered to the middle, it was too weak because it was a hopeless muddle. Wall Street has coopted our system of government and the reality is the president is as much a victim and an enabler as any other politician who doesn't stand up for real campaign finance reform.

None of these things make Obama a centrist. True centrists don't just calculate the difference between two extremes and take it. Historically they have picked and chosen, sometimes sticking to principles of the left, sometimes of the right, sometimes choosing an independent course. For example, "new Democrats" focused on striking a balance between fiscal responsibility, strong defense and social conscience. It wasn't big government or small government over-simplifications. It was government should do what only government can do and markets should do what markets do better. (And as one of them, I want to acknowledge that we "new Democrats" gave markets too much latitude back in the 1990s when we were advancing those policies. Markets need strong regulation to serve the interests of the public at large rather than just those of the few. Market Darwinism doesn't produce the social justice which is the highest and correct objective of any society.)

So the liberals need to re-think their critique on several levels. First, Obama is not a centrist, he is a pragmatist. Second, he's their pragmatist-of all the pragmatists in all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, he's pretty close to the best they're going to do right now. Finally and most importantly, a pragmatist in power is much better than an idealist on the sidelines in a swivet.

E.J. Dionne Jr. | Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- Political moderates and on-the-fencers have had it easy up to now on budget issues. They could condemn "both sides," and insist on the need for "courage" in tackling the deficit.

Thanks to Rep. Paul Ryan's budget and the Republicans' maximalist stance in negotiations to avert a government shutdown, the days of straddling are over.

Ryan's truly outrageous proposal, built on heaping sacrifice onto the poor, slashing scholarship aid to college students, and bestowing benefits on the rich, ought to force middle-of-the-roaders to take sides. No one who is even remotely moderate can possibly support what Ryan has in mind.

And please, let's dispense with the idea that Ryan is courageous in offering his design. There is nothing courageous about asking for give-backs from the least advantaged and least powerful in our society. It takes no guts to demand a lot from groups that have little to give, and tend to vote against your party anyway.

And there is nothing daring about a conservative Republican delivering yet more benefits to the wealthiest people in our society, the sort who privately finance the big ad campaigns to elect conservatives to Congress.

Ryan gives the game away by including the repeal of financial reform in his "budget" plan. What does this have to do with fiscal balance? Welcome to the Wall Street Protection Act of 2011.

Oh, yes, and this budget has nothing to do with deficit reduction. Ryan would hack away at expenditures for the poor. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates he gets about two-thirds of his $4.3 trillion in actual cuts from programs for low-income Americans. Note that this $4.3 trillion almost exactly matches the $4.2 trillion he proposes in tax cuts over a decade. Welcome to the Bah Humbug Act of 2011.

But you'd expect a progressive to feel this way. What's striking is that Ryan is pushing moderates to stand up for a government that will have enough money to perform the functions now seen as basic in the 21st century. These notably include helping those who can't afford health insurance to get decent medical care, a goal Ryan would have the government abandon, slowly but surely.

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of the deficit commission and the heroes of the budget-cutting center, put out a statement saying some nice things about the idea of the Ryan budget. They called it "serious, honest, straightforward," even though there is much about its accounting that is none of those.

But then they got to the real point, declaring themselves "concerned that it falls short of the balanced, comprehensive approach" needed for bipartisan accord because it "largely exempts defense spending from reductions and would not apply any of the savings from eliminating or reducing tax expenditures as part of tax reform to deficit reduction."

Ryan, they argued, "relies on much larger reductions in domestic discretionary spending than does the commission proposal, while also calling for savings in some safety net programs -- cuts which would place a disproportionately adverse effect on certain disadvantaged populations."

This is much like what I said, with an added layer of diplomacy. When even deficit hawks begin choking, however politely, on a proposal whose main motivation is ideological, you know there is an opening for a coalition between moderates and progressives on behalf of sane, decent government.

The Republican approach to shutdown talks should reinforce this possibility. Democrats have nearly given away the store to avoid a crackup, yet Republican leaders, under pressure from their right wing, have continued to ask for more and more and more. My word, even President Obama has finally gotten impatient.

However the shutdown saga ends, the negotiating styles of the two sides ought to tell moderates that they can no longer pretend that the two ends of our politics are equally "extreme." No, conservatives are the ones who've been radicalized. The Ryan budget is definitive evidence of this.

It is conservatives who would transform our government from a very modestly compassionate instrument into a machine dedicated to expanding existing privileges while doing as little as possible for the marginalized and the aspiring -- those who, with a little help from government, might find it a bit easier to reach for better lives.

Moderation involves a balance between government and the private sector, between risk and security, between our respect for incentives and our desire for greater fairness. The war against moderation has begun. Will moderates join the battle?

E.J. Dionne's email address is ejdionne@washpost.com.

Earlier today I wrote this diary about the failure of large environmental lobbyist groups and Democrats to speak out about the dangers of climate change because they were told (by Frank "Fricking" Luntz for gawdsake) it wouldn't poll well.

Because the folks who took Luntz's advice looked at polls that said Americans' number one priority was jobs they stopped talking about the reality of the danger we all face from man made climate change. Instead, they talked about "green tech" and how many jobs it would create, and allowed the Republicans and the Kochs and "conservative think tanks" and Fox News to dominate of the debate over the reality of how climate change is devastating our world.

Since adopting that approach in 2009, the number of Americans concerned about climate change has dropped from a high of 2/3 of the population in 2008 to just a smidgen over 51% today.

By the way, that diary of mine at Dkos got 4 comments (three at BT). Four comments, for an issue that represents one of the most serious dangers to our future. But then again, who is talking much about climate among progressives at Dkos, or in Congress today. It's become another issue that has been essentially taken off the table and marginalized, like other issues such as increasing taxes on the wealthy, prosecuting the people who made America the land of torturers, infrastructure spending, etc.

I appreciate the few diaries on climate change or other neglected progressive issues that make the rec list at Dkos all the more because so few do these days. Instead we get constant and redundant diaries about whatever the topic of the day is. We are becoming not much better than old media in that respect.

You don't change the conversation if all you do is respond to the agenda of the other side. We need to start talking about our own agenda.

• Jobs, not deficit cutting.
• Ending our wasteful foreign wars not continuing them into the indefinite future.
• Income equality not income inequality.
• Taxes on the rich, not eliminating the social safety net.
• Climate Change and investment in renewable energy not an Energy policy that calls for more drilling for oil and gas in America and the mining of coal (which btw will never make us free from foreign oil, because we don't have enough reserves no matter how much we drill or where.)
• Regulating the Banks, not letting them off the hook for the experiment in disaster capitalism they foisted on us over the past decade that ended up making them even more powerful and funneling even more government dollars to keep them in business while we wait for the next shoe to drop.
• Promoting the right of privacy instead of government intrusion in all aspects of our lives.
• Defending Public Schools for all not backing hucksters who want to privatize our school systems.
• Making affordable health care a right not a privilege for the few.
• Creating new infrastructure for the 21st century rather than allowing our old infrastructure to crumble around us.

Are these things we can accomplish in this Congress right now? Hell no. But we should be talking about them loudly and consistently every day.

When Democrats did have control of Congress and the Republicans were in the minority they didn't stop pushing their crazed simplistic and divisive agenda. They didn't stop talking about their "issues."

Yet that has what the Democrats have done: given in and given up by reacting to polls and fearing to offend their big money contributors Fox News and the Beltway "opinion makers/pundits." The Dems have degenerated into a party of Hollow Men and Women (and no the few who are not do not make up for the majority who are). They have forgotten that no change comes without hard work. They have forgotten how to lead.

Everyday someone in or outside of the Democratic party should be going on a news show tor holding events or protests to push the progressive agenda and push our issues. Not respond to what the Republicans say. We know what their agenda is, and so does the public. We need instead to be pounding away at what our plan for America is, not reacting to the demeaning and ridiculous and failed vision of the GOP/Tea Party/Big Business/Fundies who now control our political discourse.

It may take years. It may be create frustration and anger, and even despair when the polls don't change immediately in our favor. However, by fighting our battles on a field chosen by the Republicans we will always lose. We can only win if we fight on our turf, for our ideals.

Look what happened in Wisconsin. A true grass roots movement arose to effect change, to say we're not going to take it anymore.

In America there our millions of people out there, many unemployed and in desperate straits, many without health care, many just scraping by, who have been waiting for the national leaders in the Democratic party to arise and fight as hard as the people who protested against Scott Walker. Waiting for someone like the Sheriff of Pima County (Tucson), Clarence Dupnik , who spoke the truth about what has happened in his state and standing up for liberal values. Waiting but not finding them, or not enough of them.

Because the Democratic party's national leadership (with rare exceptions) so often fails fail to try to push for the most rather than accepting the least, Democrats have become the party of "We kept your losses to a minimum (this time)" instead of the party of the working classes, the poor, the oppressed, and progress in the best sense of the word. Right now the Democratic party as a whole is only a vessel to propagate the careers of politicians who have no message other than "We're not as crazy as those guys over there."

Winning elections means nothing is nothing changes. We don't need a party that helps the banks while giving away the rights of the rest of us. We don't need a party that is afraid to stand up for progressive, liberal ideals. We don't need a party whose idea is to compromise before the bargaining even begins. And we sure don;t need a party that refuses to tell the truth about jobs, taxes, climate change, the need for government and so forth because it doesn't poll well.

Once upon a time the Whig Party fell apart because it had no consistent message, because it tried to be all things to all people and ended up being nothing to anyone. That is the path the the current Democrats are following. If the Dems want to be only a center right party doling out slightly less benefits to corporations than the far more extreme right-wing party that is now the Republican Party, what value do they provide? What reason is there for us to vote for them?

If they refuse to speak for the issues we as liberals and progressives care about, what benefit are they to the vast majority of Americans, people who the Republicans are trying to turn into wage slaves and a permanent underclass to be exploited by the Disaster Capitalists on Wall Street, in Big Oil, and in the Defense Industry (among others)?

No benefit. None.

The Democratic Party is at a crossroads. They can fight for us or submit to the power of multinational corporations and accept their place as the least favored child of corporate America. If they choose the latter, their future as a viable political force is doomed. If they choose the former, well, isn't that better than selling out the country you supposedly love? Isn't that why Democratic politicians got into politics in the first place: to make America a better place?

Let's all hope they choose wisely.

Discuss

Top Stories

Census reapportioning is shifting seats West, reports Alexander Burns: "For Democrats and Republicans alike, the U.S. Census data unveiled Tuesday had an unmistakable and familiar political message: Go West. All five of the country’s fastest-growing states -- Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Texas and Utah -- are located in the Sun Belt and Rocky Mountain regions, according to the once-in-a-decade population count...At least in the immediate term, Republicans are expected to have the advantage. In 2008, the Republican presidential ticket won three-quarters of the states gaining seats next year, and because of changes in population, Sen. John McCain would have won six more electoral votes from the post-census map...Over the long run, the picture is less clear. In some Western states, population growth has come as a result of Hispanic immigration and the expansion of suburbs — trends that already have made states like Nevada and Colorado more hospitable to Democrats.

Here's a great interactive graphic charting Census changes over time: http://wapo.st/hUAL1V

The Senate has passed a stopgap budget without money for health-care reform or financial regulation's implementation], reports Felicia Sonmez: "Facing a midnight deadline to avoid a government shutdown, Congress passed a bill Tuesday that will fund the federal government through March 4. The bill, which also will freeze federal salaries for two years, narrowly passed the House, 193 to 165, several hours after it easily cleared the Senate on an 79 to 16 vote. President Obama was standing by at the White House to sign the measure. The last-minute scramble was required after the Senate last week withdrew a $1.2 trillion omnibus appropriations bill that included more than $8 billion in earmarks."

The FCC has passed net neutrality rules, reports Cecilia Kang: "The Federal Communications Commission voted Tuesday to approve its first ever Internet access regulation, which ensures unimpeded access to any legal Web content for home Internet users. The FCC's three Democratic members made up a majority of votes in favor of the so-called net neutrality regulation, which was introduced more than a year ago by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The rules have sparked intense debate and lobbying over whether such legislation is needed, and are likely to face a legal challenge. Genachowski has argued that Internet access rules would protect companies just starting out on the Web, as well as consumers who are increasingly relying on the Internet for news, entertainment and communications."

The House has passed food safety legislation on to Obama, reports Lyndsey Layton: "The House passed a measure to overhaul the nation's food safety laws by a vote of 215 to 144 Tuesday afternoon, and President Obama is expected to sign it into law as soon as Wednesday. The vote marked the final hurdle for a bill that cleared an unusual number of obstacles, despite enjoying bipartisan support and backing from a wide array of groups across the political spectrum, from Consumers Union to the Chamber of Commerce. "This is a big victory for consumers that finally brings food-safety laws into the 21st century," said Jean Halloran of Consumers Union."

Got tips, additions, or comments? E-mail me.

Dirty South interlude: Lil Wayne plays "6 Foot 7 Foot" on Saturday Night Live.

Still to come: The recession is growing the ranks of low-income families; new HHS rules will limit health insurance rate hikes; the FCC has passed new "net neutrality" rules; the EPA is doubling down on climate regulations; and Shaq conducts the Boston Pops.

Economy

The recession is increasing the number of low-income families, reports Michael Fletcher: "The share of working families earning less than double the official poverty threshold - $43,512 for a family of four - increased from 28 to 30 percent between 2007 and 2009, according to a report released Tuesday by the Working Families Project, a nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of the working poor. Overall, the report said, the number of people living in low-income working families increased by 1.7 million to 45 million between 2008 and 2009. In November, the jobless rate rose to 9.8 percent, and has hovered near 10 percent for more than a year. 'Clearly, we are going in the wrong direction,' said Brandon Roberts, a co-author of the report, derived from an analysis of Census Bureau data."

The Federal Reserve is extending swap lines to foreign central banks: http://on.wsj.com/hPmwuU

The Business Roundtable's new leader is a former Republican governor, reports Dan Eggen: "The Business Roundtable, which has served as one of the Obama administration's few allies in the business community in the past, signaled a possible change of course Tuesday by naming a well-known Republican as its president. Former Michigan governor John Engler (R), who has headed the National Association of Manufacturers for the past six years, will begin leading the Business Roundtable in January, officials said. He takes over from John Castellani, who was recently named to head another powerful lobbying group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The roundtable, one of Washington's most influential business groups, has spent more than $18 million on lobbying since the start of the Obama administration."

The National Labor Review Board will require employers to let employees know they can form a union: http://on.wsj.com/hif9dY

Republicans are now opposing conservative economic policies, writes Jonathan Chait: "Of all the strange things that Republicans have freaked out over during the last two years--a federal version of Mitt Romney’s health care plan, a continuation of George W. Bush’s bank bailout, a failed attempt to implement John McCain’s climate bill--perhaps the strangest target is Milton Friedman’s monetary policies. Yet here we are... Inflation-phobia does hold a cherished place in the conservative canon. Inflation is a tax on wealth, while unemployment penalizes labor. Naturally, conservatives cherish price stability. What’s new is the sudden ascendance of radical, hard-money beliefs."

Steven Pearlstein celebrates companies that "give back": http://wapo.st/fY99Ju

Unwrapping interlude: This kid will not stand for receiving books for Christmas.

Health Care

New health care rules will limit rate hikes, reports N.C. Aizenman: "The Obama administration announced proposed rules Tuesday aimed at curbing large, unwarranted rate hikes by health insurers by subjecting them to mandatory public scrutiny. Under the proposed regulation, which spells out the details of a key provision in the new federal health-care law, next year any insurer seeking a rate increase of 10 percent or more for an individual or small group plan would be required to file financial information justifying the raise with federal and state officials. (Beginning in 2012, the percentage rate increase that triggers the review will be adjusted for each state to reflect its particular market trends.) State authorities would then analyze the data submitted by the insurer to determine if the increase is 'unreasonable.'"

House and Senate leaders are still trying to pass medical aid to 9/11 relief workers: http://bit.ly/hpOBML

Democratic Senators want the EPA to investigate a carcinogen in water supplies, reports Noaki Schwartz: "U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein have called on the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the public from hexavalent chromium following a report that found the carcinogen in the tap water of 31 cities across the country...Boxer, who chairs the Senate environment and public works committee, said she plans to introduce legislation with California colleague Feinstein that would set a deadline for the EPA to establish an enforceable standard for the chemical also known as chromium 6. The committee will also hold a hearing on the issue in February. The letter was sent after the release of a study by the Environmental Working Group that analyzed drinking water in 35 cities across the country."

Domestic Policy

Congressional staffer salaries haven't increased in 20 years: http://politi.co/h3ezJm

Obama vows to push for comprehensive immigration reform in the next Congress, reports Carrie Budoff Brown: "President Barack Obama told Congressional Hispanic Caucus members Tuesday that he’ll renew his push for comprehensive immigration reform in 2011 -- even though such an effort would face even longer odds in a Congress where Republicans control the House. Obama made the pledge after the defeat last weekend of a more narrowly tailored reform measure, which cleared the Democratic House by a slim margin but failed in the Senate on Saturday.' It was to reassure us that he wasn't giving up,' Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas), chairman of the caucus, told POLITICO. 'What he said was we would still be looking at reforming the immigration laws and it would be comprehensive.'"

A new study suggests better teachers result in much higher wages for students, writes Catherine Rampell: "A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes. Alternatively, replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion...Unfortunately, we know little about the supply function for teacher quality. Thus, it is not possible to predict what kinds of pay changes would be needed to ensure any given quality of teacher force."

Polymath interlude: Shaq conducts the Boston Pops.

Energy

The EPA is doubling down on climate regulations, reports Robin Bravender: "The Obama administration is expected to roll out a major greenhouse gas policy for power plants and refineries as soon as Wednesday, signaling it won’t back off its push to fight climate change in the face of mounting opposition on Capitol Hill. The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to a schedule for setting greenhouse gas emission limits, known as 'performance standards,' for the nation’s two biggest carbon-emitting industries, POLITICO has learned. Under the schedule agreed to by EPA, states and environmental groups, the agency will issue a draft greenhouse gas performance standard for power plants by July 2011 and a final rule by May 2012."

Harry Reid has given up on passing an omnibus lands bill, reports Andrew Restuccia: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has abandoned plans to pass omnibus lands legislation consisting of more than 110 land and water bills. But Reid is working to pass certain pieces of the bill before the end of the session. Reid spokeswoman Regan Lachapelle blamed the decision on Republicans, who opposed parts of the legislation, the America’s Great Outdoors Act of 2010. She said Reid was working with lawmakers to pass parts of the legislation this year...By packaging the bills together, Reid had hoped to overcome a Republican filibuster."

T. Boone Pickens is abandoning wind energy for natural gas, writes Robert Bryce: "Two years ago, natural gas prices were spiking and Mr. Pickens figured they'd stay high. He placed a $2 billion order for wind turbines with General Electric. Shortly afterward, he began selling the Pickens Plan. The United States, he claimed, is 'the Saudi Arabia of wind,' and wind energy is an essential part of the cure for the curse of imported oil...Alas, market forces ruined the Pickens Plan. Mr. Pickens should have shorted wind. Instead, he went long and now he's stuck holding a slew of turbines he can't use because low natural gas prices have made wind energy uneconomic in the U.S., despite federal subsidies that amount to $6.44 for every 1 million British thermal units (BTUs) produced by wind turbines."

EIA projections suggest catastrophic climate change is coming, writes Brad Johnson: "This pathway would almost certainly commit the world to catastrophic climate change, including rapid sea level rise, extreme famine, desertification, and ecological collapse on land and sea... The impact of existing global warming on oceans, extreme weather, agriculture, polar ice, and ecosystems is at or exceeding the highest range of past projections...As climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows write in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 'the impacts associated with 2°C have been revised upwards, sufficiently so that 2°C now more appropriately represents the threshold between ‘dangerous’ and ‘extremely dangerous’ climate change.'"

Closing credits: Wonkbook is compiled and produced with help from Dylan Matthews, Mike Shepard, and Michelle Williams.

By: Lenny McAllister

There is the familiar theme: "We oppose the president on his latest legislative initiative." There is the familiar rhetoric: "The president is spineless and needs to take a stand." Then there is the face of the opposition: the Republicans on Capitol Hill. But not in this instance. Not with Democrats reversing roles with congressional Republicans in staunchly opposing and -- perhaps controversially -- criticizing Barack Obama.

The explosive expressions of disgust and disunity with the president -- from Sen. Sherrod Brown's (D-Ohio) obvious anguish over Obama's tax-compromise framework to the left's media base calling him spineless -- has been evident since Obama announced the proposal last week to maintain the Bush tax cuts in return for extending unemployment benefits.

The groundswell of opposing voices is a familiar phenomenon for the president as he takes on a tough economy in the midst of geopolitical turbulence. However, the character of the heated debate between Obama and his fellow Democrats has taken on a different tone.

Since the onslaught of the Tea Party movement in 2009, descriptions of much of the conservative opposition to Obama -- of those critiques that fall short of using imagery of a "boy president" or a "witch doctor" but that rip Obama on perceived policy gaffes and international mistakes -- have often ranged from racist to evil. Any arguments that Republicans make about the fundamental differences between themselves and Obama in philosophy and political approach to the economy, the military and society at large are promptly batted away.

Now, however, many are overlooking the disrespectful dynamic coming from the lot of ungrateful Democrats. Imagine if Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had held a major press conference at the same time Obama was having a press conference announcing a breakthrough, bipartisan effort. And what if Sean Hannity went on television and continually called Obama spineless for brokering a deal that brings a sense of economic stability to a wide range of Americans regardless of socioeconomic background, especially during these hard times?

When similar incidents did occur among Republicans, the response of many Americans was that these conservatives constituted the "party of no," a coalition of self-serving politicos out to defeat the first black president of the United States because of their racist tendencies.

Is the same true now that the shoe is on the other (i.e., left) foot? The tone of disagreement on the political left, coupled with their recent practice of distancing themselves from Obama on the campaign trail, is problematic. There's the report that at least one congressional Democrat used the f-word in describing Obama during a closed-door discussion about the tax compromise. Then there's the way Democrats disregarded the president by ignoring his direction to incorporate Republican ideas (e.g., insurance portability) during the health care debate in 2009. Clearly, there has been a growing separation between the far left and Obama.

And although many would state that the divide is merely about policy differences -- the same reasons that keep the hard right and President Obama frosty in their interactions -- more congressional Democrats are showing questionable methodology in criticizing and addressing Obama. From a societal standpoint, it increasingly resembles the sentiment that most Democrats express toward black Republicans: that the power players within the party will use a charismatic and influential African-American politician for selfish gain, but will toss him away once the last ounce of usefulness is gone.

Considering that noted Democrats such as Nevada's Sen. Harry Reid (famed for his "Negro dialect" comment) and former President Bill Clinton (you'll recall his comment to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy about Obama serving coffee) have made rather disrespectful comments about the president in recent times, we should not wonder much about why the level of angst and condescending tone is now rising after key Democrat losses in November and the president's much-needed compromise, particularly since Democrats do not have the votes to pass legislation without Republican cooperation.

Although the 2008 presidential primary is a distant memory, it was not that long ago that key Democratic partisans were unpleasantly surprised by a young, educated black newcomer who came onto the scene to steal a nomination from consensus choice Hillary Clinton and went on to win the White House. Is it that much of a stretch to suggest that those lingering feelings from 2008 -- some racial, some not -- are playing a part in the rhetoric we are hearing from the left today?

And why are we so willing to chalk up Democratic frustration to differences of opinion, even when we have evidence that suggests other factors? If Democrats are capable of having philosophical differences with Obama, then why is it so hard to believe that Republicans can do the same without race being a factor?

Or, perhaps, is race an issue -- at some level -- with both parties? After all, there has never been a black U.S. president before, and since racism knows no boundaries, maybe the underlying frustrations permeate -- and eventually rear their ugly heads on -- both sides of the aisle, even if others are unwilling to admit it.

If this is true, then the racism of "the New Jim Crow" is stronger than some would like to believe in the 21st century, and furthermore, it can supersede even partisan politics. If so, it is a lesson that President Obama is learning the hard way in Washington.

Lenny McAllister is a syndicated political commentator and the host of the morning radio show Launching Chicago With Lenny McAllister on WVON, The Talk of Chicago 1690 AM. He is the author of an upcoming edition of the book The Obama Era, Part I (2008-2010): Diary of a Mad Black PYC (Proud Young Conservative). Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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Think the Republicans lost big in the tax cut deal? Think again.

There is no continuation of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Fund (TANF EF) from the stimulus bill in the tax cut compromise. Regular TANF was created as part of the Clinton-era welfare reform to get people off assistance by getting them back to work. This approach becomes problematic when unemployment is high due to faults in monetary and fiscal policy, not because people choose not to work. In a Great Recession, TANF runs out of both money and conceptual scope very quickly. So this Emergency Fund, at the low cost of five billion dollars distributed to states, allowed locals on the ground to expand and continue TANF to meet the needs of fighting poverty and putting people to work.

Annie Lowrey wrote this Washington Independent story about the expiration of TANF EF near the end of 2010. It’s considered to be one of the most successful parts of the stimulus programs, bringing employment to 250,000 people, and it will not be continued under this deal. Instead, the Democrats are claiming victory over depreciating equipment and R&D tax loopholes.

Who really got what in this deal? You’ve probably seen this graph circulated by the White House on the Hill:

I want to argue the chart should look like this:

This involves moving two items. The first is the Child Tax Credit. In the Republican Pledge To America (pdf), they both take credit for its creation and note the damage that will happen if it isn’t extended: “During the 1990s, a Republican Congress enacted pro-family policies such as marriage penalty relief and the child tax credit. Unless action is taken, a $3.8 trillion tax hike will go into effect on January 1, 2011 that will unravel these policies.” Regardless of whether or not Democrats should support this credit, this is a “get” for the GOP.

The second is more interesting: Should the payroll tax cut be a “get” for the Republican Party?  Republicans are somewhat worried about high unemployment, but they believe it has to do with the need to placate business and focus on supply-side “structural” employment issues, rather than restoring demand to the economy.  To the extent that a moderate GOP member would think of demand problems, something like a payroll tax cut is right up their alley. And I’m going to argue that the payroll tax cut should be considered a GOP “get.”

What They Wanted In the spirit of ‘if you want to know what the GOP wants to get the economy jump-started, ask them,’ by all accounts these kinds of payroll taxes are what the GOP wanted. From whitehouse.gov (h/t Jed Lewison at DailyKos):

Q: So the only reason that the payroll tax holiday will provide more stimulus is because it’s twice as large. Making Work Pay was capped. Why didn’t you preserve Making Work Pay? Is it because, as the President said some months ago, it’s just a kind of invisible tax cut and didn’t provide any political benefit for the White House?

MR. SUMMERS: No, it came out of the process of compromise with the Republicans who were more attracted to the payroll tax holiday concept, and that was a proposal that, as had been coming out of here, we had been giving considerable thought to in the context of the President’s budget.

Weakest Stimulus And that isn’t a mistake. This takes the weakest part of the stimulus, tax cuts, makes it weaker, and puts it in front of the stimulus package. According to Mark Zandi’s estimates, it has a worse multiplier than the anemic Making Work Pay tax credit multiplier it replaces. It turns away from the idea of investing in public goods and infrastructure, laying out the groundwork of the 21st century economy, and instead mails checks to people. That’s the GOP response to any problem — tax cuts! — and now it is branded as the Democratic stimulus response.

Lucky Duckies My audience is mixed, and many of my readers are conservative financial types. I want you to tap into the most conservative parts of your brain and fixate on the lucky duckies of the United States:

Think about them. The liberal government tries to make sure they don’t starve to death in elderly poverty through Social Security. The liberal government tries to provide health care to make sure lucky duckies don’t go bankrupt if they break their legs. But without the threat of going bankrupt, lucky duckies will be out there moral hazarding it up and breaking their limbs for giggles! And so on.

If you think lucky duckies get too good of a deal, then this payroll tax is pretty sweet. Rather than expanding welfare through successful items like the TANF EF, it actually raises taxes on a third of workers. A Social Security payroll tax cut is biased towards middle and upper-middle class workers, as opposed to the Making Work Pay tax cut. As the New York Times points out today in In Tax Benefits to the Middle, Political Lift for Obama, “a hefty portion of the $858 billion tax package will benefit middle- and upper-middle-income Americans.”

No Benefit For Government Workers A quarter of the 20 million state and local workers pay no payroll tax because they don’t get Social Security and instead get a separate pension plan. If you believe that government workers already receive too much money and could stand a decent pay cut, as the GOP and apparently the Obama administration believes, then this payroll tax cut is for you.

Solvency In Question Dean Baker is officially worried about Social Security as a result of this payroll tax. The GOP, from what we can tell from Ryan Grim’s reporting, looks to take advantage of the confusion this payroll tax cut will create and call into question how solid and safe Social Security is. This primes the pump for a debate about how to “fix” Social Security in 2011 and 2012.

Viewed through this lens, this is the Moderate Republican Stimulus Package 2.0. I wonder how it is going to work.

Mike Konczal is a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.

Join the conversation about this story »

Howard Flight who helped to raise millions for Tories, suggested welfare changes would encourage poor to have more children

David Cameron was under pressure tonight to evict a new Tory peer from the party after he suggested that welfare changes would encourage "breeding" among the less well-off.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats denounced the "shameful" remarks by Howard Flight, who was rewarded with a peerage by the prime minister last week after helping to raise millions for the Conservative party in the runup to the election.

Downing Street was forced to distance itself from a second Tory peer in a week after Flight warned that plans to remove child benefit from higher-rate taxpayers would deter the middle classes from having children.

His remarks followed the claim last week by a former Thatcherite cabinet minister that most people were better off in the recession. Lord Young of Graffham was forced to resign as Cameron's enterprise adviser after suggesting that most voters had never had it so good as during the "so-called recession".

Flight told today's London Evening Standard: "We're going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it's jolly expensive … But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that's not very sensible."

This is the second time Flight, a former Tory deputy chairman, has fallen foul of the party leadership. He was barred from standing as a parliamentary candidate by Michael Howard in 2005 after suggesting that Tory spending cuts did not go far enough.

Douglas Alexander, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said of Flight's interview: "These shameful but revealing comments cast serious doubt over David Cameron's judgment in personally appointing Howard Flight to the House of Lords only a few days ago. Last week one of the prime minister's senior advisers told us we'd never had it so good, and now his latest hand-picked peer comes out with these comments. Instead of dithering for hours, as he did with Lord Young, David Cameron should take swift action."

Flight initially claimed that his remarks had been taken out of context. But he later issued an unreserved apology and withdrew them after Downing Street warned him that they were totally unacceptable. "I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused and would like to withdraw the remarks," Flight said in a statement issued by the Conservative party.

Cameron refused to remove Flight from the House of Lords, though some Tories said that would be possible because he has yet to take his seat. "I don't agree with what he said and I am sure that he will want to apologise for what he has said, and I think we can probably leave it at that," the prime minister said at a Downing Street press conference with his Swedish counterpart, Fredrik Reinfeldt.

The remarks by Flight, an outspoken figure popular in Tory circles, echo an infamous warning 36 years ago by the late Sir Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher's intellectual guru. Joseph said in 1974: "The balance of our population, our human stock, is threatened." A recent study, Joseph added, had shown "a high and rising proportion of children are being born to mothers least fitted to bring children into the world and bring them up".

Flight was appointed to the Lords as a reward for his role as president and founder of the Conservative City Circle, which he set up to improve links with the City and to encourage donations to the party. Cameron also thought that Flight was treated unfairly by Michael Howard, who removed the Tory whip from him in the runup to the 2005 general election. This meant that Flight was disqualified from defending his Arundel and South Downs seat as the Tory candidate.

The former shadow Treasury minister was also critical in his Evening Standard interview of the government's plans to raise university tuition fees. The millionaire financier said: "Two of my nieces and nephews, both of them very bright, gave up university halfway through because they didn't want the financial burden."

Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, said: "Howard Flight has shown himself to be an insensitive throwback to the worst of 1980s politics within days of being made a peer by the prime minister."

Bob Russell, the Lib Dem MP, said: "His comments are offensive and unacceptable. They are not appropriate for the 21st century, especially when the gap between rich and poor is growing and when the poorest still have lower life expectancies."

The UK media regulator OFCOM has been asked to rule on whether Rupert Murdoch's company can acquire all of BSkyB. It will accept public submissions through to Friday 18 November and Avaaz have called for those who oppose it to send in their views.

“In the 1930s, we were afraid that the fascists would take over the government and then control the press; in the 21st century, there may be a danger that the fascists will take control of the press and then control the government.” (Lord McNally, 2010)

Vince Cable has now announced his decision to refer News International’s purchase of BSkyB to OFCOM, an acquisition widely perceived to damage the plurality of British media. This is a welcome decision, one of the few patches of light for a party so drained of dignity. But in describing this as the ‘Berlusconi moment’, there is a danger that the existing stranglehold of the Murdoch empire will escape the scrutiny it deserves. In truth, the ‘moment’ has long since passed. This was damage limitation. A wider debate is needed on how to restore some semblance of an open and effective media.

Even without the proposed acquisition, Rupert Murdoch’s grip on British media is substantial: The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and The News of the World make up his portfolio of papers, in addition to a 17.5% holding in ITV and 39.1% of BSkyB. This is the meagre level of plurality currently being defended; a market so distorted that the blessing of one man is now deemed essential to holding political office in Britain.

The ‘light touch’ regulation of media has been almost as costly as it has proved with finance. Though the former may be harder to quantify, its corrosive effects are all too apparent. Not only does Murdoch wield great power through the fear he strikes into Parliament, but in the debasement of popular sentiment he has few peers. His introduction of Page 3 in 1970 set the tone for his approach to ‘news’ – it is simply what sells, however grubby or inflammatory.

But the media is not finance; the damage caused by its structural failings is of a very different nature. The media is a crucial component of the democratic state and a serious power bloc in its own right. In its decisions over what to report, and equally what not to report, it both dictates what is news and manufactures the boundaries and centre ground of the ideological spectrum. The absurd ‘Red Ed’ treatment meted out to Miliband in the Labour leadership race was a prime example of the media’s power to distort the political landscape, constantly pushing the ‘centre’ rightwards.

To see Murdoch’s power at work, the events of the past few years paint a vivid picture. In September 2009, timed to coincide with the Labour party conference for maximum damage, Murdoch effectively announced his switch of allegiance to the Conservatives via The Sun. What was the price of this support?

In April 2008, James Murdoch delivered a major speech in which he attacked OFCOM, one of the few remaining obstructions to his expansion in Britain. In July the following year, David Cameron announced that under a Conservative government OFCOM would “cease to exist”. A month later, Murdoch Jnr was outlining further demands in his MacTaggart lecture. This time, it was his main competitor who needed cutting down to size: the BBC. Not only was the scope of the BBC “chilling”, but he also criticised the “abysmal record” of the BBC Trust. The Conservatives dutifully responded just two months later when Jeremy Hunt announced that under a Tory government the BBC Trust would be abolished. As for the scope of the BBC, the Conservative-led Coalition has just announced a 16% cut to BBC budgets. The obedient Cameron couldn’t hide his delight, describing the cuts as “delicious”.

After such brazen displays, Cameron is understandably keen to keep private the details of his meetings with the Murdochs. That he has been ‘stalling’ over publishing the dates of these visits is unsurprising, they show Rupert Murdoch was the first senior figure to visit him as Prime Minister; they shared a ‘general meeting’ within twenty four hours of Cameron taking office.

The impartiality requirement on British news broadcasters is another area Murdoch is pushing to have repealed. Anyone familiar with the activities of Fox News in the US should well understand the dangers such a move would represent. Murdoch further cemented his allegiance in American politics with a million dollar donation to the Republican party. But our current impartiality laws still appear to have some room for manoeuvre, allowing us at least a glimpse of what a biased media may look like.

In the 2010 election, the surprise story of the campaign was the surge in popularity achieved by Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats following the first televised debate. A Lib-Lab coalition, or even a Liberal victory at times, began to look plausible. For the right-wing press this was unacceptable; after meeting with Cameron’s team , the “forces of hell” were unleashed. That was the press. Broadcasters, we are told, must remain impartial.

Moving onto the third election debate, hosted by Sky (naturally), once again it was Clegg singled out for treatment from the host, Adam Boulton. Breaking explicit rules on impartiality for the debate, Boulton at one point heckled Clegg over recent newspaper reports. In a separate incident, Boulton almost came to blows with Alistair Campbell in an interview for Sky News after being accused by Campbell of bias. The preceding discussion and Boulton’s extreme reaction to the charge make for interesting viewing.

As the haggling over the formation of a coalition continued, it was Sky’s Kay Burley who gave the next example of ‘impartial’ coverage. Interviewing David Babbs, an organiser behind the protest for electoral reform, Burley carried out one of the most aggressive and extreme interviews of recent times. At one point, Burley asked, “why don’t you just go home?”. If Murdoch’s views can be gauged by his newspapers, he is, unsurprisingly, a strong supporter of the current first-past-the-post electoral system. This, then, is Murdoch’s media operating under a requirement of “impartiality”.

More alarming still are the recent events concerning the News of the World and the phone hacking allegations. It has now been suggested that the original police report in 2006 “pulled its punches” in the interests of maintaining its relationship with Murdoch’s media empire.

[The police]  sought to limit the allegations to tapping the phones of some members of the royal family, and failed to follow leads implicating Andy Coulson, then the NoW editor, currently David Cameron's director of communications… The alarming picture that is emerging suggests a burgeoning media-political-policing complex.” (Guardian, Sep 2010)

Coulson has recently been interviewed by police over the allegations. It is hard to overstate the dangers such a relationship would pose to any state with democratic pretensions. The relationship between media and government is already worryingly close, as the former Sun editor, David Yelland, argues:

“Over the years the relationships between the media elite and the two main political parties have become closer and closer to the point where, now, one is indistinguishable from the other.” (Guardian, 2010,)

What would the police stand to gain from a close relationship with Murdoch’s media? Considering some of the antics of the police in recent years, a friendly media voice would be highly prized. As pure speculation goes, a guest post at Liberal Conspiracy puts forward a compelling case. In a number of botched operations, it has been News International finding angles that could be said to spare police blushes, even if they turn out to be completely baseless - which they often do.

The broader picture is that of an American citizen with substantial influence on British policy, who has the leverage to mould our domestic media market to his commercial advantage: and now allegations have emerged that even the police are not immune to his power. Lance Price, a press adviser in Downing St under New Labour, described Murdoch as,

“the twenty-fourth member of the Cabinet… No big decision could ever be made inside No 10 without taking account of the likely reaction of three men - Gordon Brown, John Prescott and Rupert Murdoch.” (Guardian, 2006,)

As with Italy, it is not just the failure to maintain public standards that damages the nation. More damaging still is the impression that we don’t even have standards; a foreign media tycoon wields staggering power and control over British politics and yet, bar the occasional scandal, this barely raises an eyebrow. So shabby has public life become that even the pretence of integrity seems too much effort for the political class to muster.

Nor is the situation beyond the power of Parliament to resolve. Britain has some of the most liberal laws on media ownership in the world; most developed nations simply don’t tolerate such naked concentrations of power. In his recent Margaret Thatcher lecture , Murdoch claimed, “it would certainly serve the interests of the powerful if professional journalists were muted”. In reality, media is ‘the powerful’, and nowhere is it more clearly personified than in Murdoch himself. The lecture’s call for a small state, low tax, business friendly environment highlights precisely the real interests served by too much of the modern media.

A requirement on media ownership to be restricted to British citizens would be a welcome first step to reversing this decay. It was similar laws in the US which caused the Australian-born Murdoch to take American citizenship. Secondly, much tighter restrictions must be placed on the upper limits of market share afforded to any one owner. More so than any other industry, media plurality is fundamental to the democratic state; political liberty, in the positive sense, is incompatible with this level of unchecked media power. It is debatable how much genuine change the complete takeover of BSkyB would represent, but as Anthony Barnett recently argued - there is an important symbolic element to the refusal: if the tide is to be turned, the expansion must first be halted somewhere. Cable’s referral is to be cheered, but the more important debate must focus on how to repair the damage already done. 

Divisions are evident here in the United States. Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama lagged in appealing to white middle- and working-class voters who supported Hillary — and former President Bill — Clinton. Now, these voters, according to recent polls, are increasingly alienated from the Obama administration. Reasons include slow economic growth, high unemployment among blue- and white-collar workers and a persistent credit crunch for small businesses. These factors could cause serious losses for Democrats this fall — and beyond. - Politico

As an instructor for a male character building class one of the sessions we cover is how important specificity is in goal setting. One of the common goals I get from my students is I want to make a lot of money. The problem with this goal is that it lacks an actual completion point or destination. How do you know when you have accomplished it or if you need to reevaluate it? I mention this because this is where the Dems find themselves today. They have no specific principles to guide their goals. What they have are a lot of warmed over “Great Society” rhetoric such as we support the middle-class. What does that even mean? To me it is similar to the “We support the troops” argument of the last administration as if anyone would say, “we don’t support the troops”.

The time has come for Dems to develop their 21st century manifesto, a pledge to America, or whatever you want to call it. This would include not only the principles for the party but also the overall vision of where they want to lead this country. The people in America are looking for answers but what they are getting is bumper stickers and disillusionment. The new direction of politics is whatever you do don’t offer any specific plans or ideas-stay flexible. This may serve the short-term campaign but it does nothing for long-term governance. Over and over the American people are saying we don’t want flexible we want solutions. What the mid-term election stated loud and clear is that this was not a ringing endorsement of the Republicans, but a frustration vote against the Democrats. The reason the teabaggers made so much noise was because they were the “none of the above” selection. The problem with having only two parties is that people keep going back and forth when they get frustrated and feel like they are not being heard.

The teabaggers presented themselves as an alternative for that frustration, but the truth is that they were not what they claimed to be. Many of them were recycled and repackaged wing-nut cultural warriors. Does anyone believe that the American public in two short years has forgotten the mess the Republicans created? If that were in fact the case their approval rating might be a little higher than 30%. When you only have two choices and you feel like neither is listening to you then you can keep going back and forth like most people or you just give up.

The Republicans govern like it is a dictatorship and the Democrats like it’s a social democracy. The Republicans demand and get party unity to their core set of principles; they do it through their party system. You do not get to represent the Republican flag if you don’t hold to those principles. The Dems on the other hand have a different philosophy. They are a loose coalition that shares some common elements (we are not Republicans) but for the most part have no overarching principles. It is because of this that Republicans can so easily undermine those coalitions and stagnate any Democratic majority. The Democratic leadership knows this (but the rank and file doesn’t seem to get it) and so they are constantly afraid of the breakdown of this fragile coalition by wing-nut scare tactics. Because of this loose coalition we are not offering the American public an alternative governing philosophy. Instead of progressive versus conservative we are offering them conservative versus conservative lite.

A perfect example would be the healthcare process and subsequent bill. How this should have been handled was in the following manner. Candidate Obama should have met with Democratic Congressional leaders and said if we win we plan to tackle healthcare. What we have to decide is if we believe that healthcare in America is a right of all Americans. Is this one of our principles? If it is then we have to present this to the American people and tell them how we plan to accomplish this goal. First, we will pass comprehensive healthcare reform so that all Americans can have affordable health-care without the restrictions on pre-existing conditions, caps or limits on coverage, or the fear that the insurance company will drop them when they get sick. In subsequent sessions we will continue to refine and improve this bill as we have done in the past with social security, Medicare, and etc.

By following this simple formula for not just healthcare but any “Democratic principle” you do two important things. The first is that you provide the public and your members with a cohesive and comprehensive message. You are not debating with yourself publicly. Here is our program and here is our message. The second thing you do is define the wing-nuts so when they start talking about “death panels” and socialism you can state that this is one of our principles and we have outlined our plan. The wing-nuts have no plan to address this issue and so this is about a choice between our plan and their rhetoric. It is a choice between those who want to provide healthcare and those who don’t. A choice between those who believe it is a right and those who don’t. In order to maintain control of the message you have to keep it simple. It is always a choice between right and wrong or good and evil. The wing-nuts have mastered this strategy. Remember in the run up to the war in Iraq, it wasn’t about agreeing or disagree with policy; it was about loyalty or treason.

Americans are simple people for the most part, they don’t want complex or nuanced explanations. What the American people are looking for is simplicity: black or white, cake or pie, friend or foe. If our goal is to provide the majority of Americans with a better life then we had better learn how to govern and that begins before you become the majority. You have to craft what you stand for and what you are willing to fight for. President Obama needs to call in all of the Democratic leaders from all over the country into a weekend retreat lock the doors and let them know there is a new sheriff in town and we are going to start standing for something. We are not leaving here until we come up with some core principles and issues we all agree to support and fight for. And anyone who wants to run as a Democrat must be willing to sign on to these principles. You see it does you no good to have a majority if you can’t accomplish what you believe in or have nothing you believe in. There is no majority if you are too weak or too afraid to govern.

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” - Marianne Williamson

The Disputed Truth

Real reform was needed. But this coalition fudge on tuition fees will leave our medieval institutions unruffled by change

There are three sorts of conservative: a conservative, a fanatical conservative, and a university. Change nothing, it cries. I am poor but perfect. I am special. I am the future. Just give me the money.

The coalition proposals on university tuition fees published by the business secretary, Vince Cable, this week should just about rescue most English universities from the horror of a 40% cut in teaching grant over five years. But that is all they will do. They keep institutions that should be made more autonomous firmly under the thumb of the government and, as if to compensate, they relieve them of the need to look inside themselves and see the spreading rot.

The retention of a "soft cap" at £6,000 and a hard one at £9,000, conditional on "meeting targets for access", is a quangocratic sop to the pledge to oppose higher fees made by some Liberal Democrats before the election. It never occurred to them they might have to honour, or dishonour, this vote-grabbing gesture. It was the sort of promise every candidate makes and then breaks. Labour MPs did not agonise over their pledge "to end child poverty" or "not return to boom and bust" or allow a referendum on the Lisbon treaty.

The cap plays into the hands of Whitehall hardliners who regard universities as an intellectual playground for Labour's social engineers. The institutions will therefore remain subject to quotas, targets, teaching and research controls and access conditions. They will be banned from competing for students and fined for failing to meet some norm of social deprivation among students. Demanding that universities devalue merit as an entry criterion to compensate for bad secondary schools both lets those schools off the hook and insults the status of a university.

The National Union of Students, Britain's home-grown Tea Party, has always screamed for subsidies for middle-class families and sees the tuition fee rise as "an unprecedented ideological move" against its members. Yet Cable's plan increases the amount of money available for maintenance. It increases the state first-year bursary scheme. It extends aid to part-time students that did not exist before. It raises the salary threshold for repayment to £21,000. And it penalises richer graduates who try to pay their debt off earlier – though it is hard to see why.

The new fees will see students accumulating £30,000-40,000 of debt, but the burden will be more like a time-limited graduate super-tax than a loan repayment. It may be irksome for poor students to see rich ones having their fees paid off by parents, but the rich are always different. What matters is that the poor should not be financially disadvantaged. By taxing them only when they themselves become (relatively) rich, the regime is as fair as makes sense.

What is doubly sad is the lost opportunity in this reform. The government has funked what it seemed to hint at last July, when Cable mooted the biggest shake-up in higher education in a century. He suggested shorter university courses, less emphasis on residential and full-time courses, more private universities, and a return to the "binary" structure of liberal arts versus technical colleges. We glimpsed a man ready to think the unthinkable, to set universities free to enter the 21st century world market in higher education. Instead he has let the control freaks from the old education department win the day.

Universities, and not just British ones, are astonishing. They are the revenge of the heirs of the medieval monasteries for the trauma of reformation. They spend huge amounts of time, talent and money on faux scholarship and publication. They occupy underused buildings. They pretend that teaching a degree requires three or four years of withdrawal from the labour market during the most energetic and potentially productive part of a young adult's life.

Ask any student's parent, indeed ask any honest student. Except at the very best universities, they all have horror stories to tell, of teaching confined to September to Easter, near zero personal contact, two or three poorly marked essays a term, teachers absent on trips and sabbaticals, days spent doing nothing much and almost half a year on holiday, much of it trying to earn money to pay for the nothing much. Universities take extraordinary amounts of time off, basing their teaching on the medieval calendar, observing harvest-time and holidays for religious observance.

Any other organisation that ran itself like this would be bankrupted or closed down. Much non-vocational higher education has degenerated into a three-year break for students living a life of impecunious leisure at parental or state expense. The idea that this is in the national interest is grotesque special pleading. It is rather a total waste of national resources.

Will the government do anything about this? Apparently not. There is no evidence that students need long holidays to endure the strains of university teaching, nor that they or their teachers benefit from inordinate amounts of effort put into research. There is no evidence that higher fees have deterred poorer students, despite categorical assertions from one and all to this effect. Come to that, there is no evidence that a large university sector benefits the economy as an "investment". It is chiefly a consumption good. Given that most degrees are non-vocational, universities are probably as wasteful of valuable labour as military conscription.

This state of affairs has come about largely because politicians expanded student numbers faster than they could either afford or reform universities to handle. They turned a university education into merely a cheap badge of family and personal status. Real spending per student has fallen in 10 years by over a half, with lecturers now seriously underpaid. Yet the cult of research continued. Peter Mandelson, during his brief reign as universities minister last year, cut the teaching grant by 1% while increasing research by 7%. Why, he never explained. Yet still teaching was spun out over three years of barely eight months' teaching a time.

Universities should be blown apart. Some should offer to operate full time to prepared students who want to win a degree in a year or two, but can't afford three years of leisure. There is not an arts course invented that could not be completed in 18 months, and probably not a science one. As for most postgraduate degrees and doctorates, they are plain indulgences.

In his attack on the Victorian educationist Arnold of Rugby, Lytton Strachey pointed out that Arnold's achievement was not to reform the English public school but to make its appeal irresistible to the new middle classes. To this end he deliberately left its structure and curriculum unreformed and medieval, to preserve its elitist appeal. English schools and English industries were soon to be overtaken by German ones.

Cable and his universities minister, David Willetts, are the Arnolds of our day. They have kept the universities in funds and on a state leash to appeal to the middle-class electorate. But they are to be allowed neither sight nor sound of the 21st century. There will be no murmur of change in the groves of academe under this coalition.

There's been quite a bit of buzz over the last few days about a TNR article by Sara Robinson of Campaign for America's Future that argues progressives need to emulate conservative "brand-building" through professional marketing techniques and institution-building.

It's not exactly a new argument. At TPM Cafe, Todd Gitlin, who strongly agrees with Robinson, notes:

I mean no disrespect when I say that some version of this piece has appeared during every election cycle of the 21st century, and a lot of good books have sounded the theme.

Sometimes, of course, arguments for "branding" or "promoting frames" for progressives are less about using savvy marketing techniques or paying attention to basic values and themes, and more about insisting that the Democratic Party enforce the kind of ideological consistency that has made "branding" a more mechanical undertaking for Republicans, at least since Reagan. Robinson acknowledges that progressives don't have the sort of level of consensus as conservatives, but argues that disagreements must be submerged in the interest of projecting a clear message.

Personally, I'm all for using smart techniques in politics, and have spent a good chunk of my own career in training sessions aimed at helping Democrats unravel and articulate their values, policy goals, and proposals in a way that promotes both party unity and effective communications.

But it's important to understand that conservatives have an advantage in "branding" that I don't think progressives can or should match. The best explication of this advantage was by Jonathan Chait in a justly famous 2005 article (also for TNR) entitled "Fact Finders," which argued that conservatives, unlike progressives have little regard for empirical evidence in developing their "brand," and thus can maintain a level of simplicity and consistency in political communications that eludes the more reality-minded. Here Chait makes the key distinction:

We're accustomed to thinking of liberalism and conservatism as parallel ideologies, with conservatives preferring less government and liberals preferring more. The equivalency breaks down, though, when you consider that liberals never claim that increasing the size of government is an end in itself. Liberals only support larger government if they have some reason to believe that it will lead to material improvement in people's lives. Conservatives also want material improvement in people's lives, of course, but proving that their policies can produce such an outcome is a luxury, not a necessity.

Thus conservatives are entirely capable of arguing that deficits don't matter if they are promoting tax cuts, while deficits matter more than anything if they are trying to cut social spending; that tax cuts and deregulation are essential if the economy's good, and tax cuts and deregulation are essential if the economy's bad; and that particular totems like, say, missile defense, should be a top national priority both during and after the Cold War. Their agenda rarely changes, no matter how much the world changes, or how little evidence there is that their policy prescriptions work. The continued adherence of most conservatives to supply-side economics, that most thoroughly discredited concept, is a particularly important case in point.

As Chait notes, the refusal of progressives to ignore reality creates a real obstacle to consistency (and by inference, "branding"):

[I]ncoherence is simply the natural byproduct of a philosophy rooted in experimentation and the rejection of ideological certainty. In an open letter to Roosevelt, John Maynard Keynes called him "the Trustee for those in every country who seek to mend the evils of our condition by reasoned experiment within the framework of the existing social system. If you fail, rational change will be gravely prejudiced throughout the world, leaving orthodoxy and revolution to fight it out." Note how Keynes defined his and Roosevelt's shared ideology as "reasoned experiment" and "rational change" and contrasted it with orthodoxy (meaning the conservative dogma that market economics were self-correcting) and revolution.

What progressives gain in exchange for this sacrifice of the opportunity to pound in a simple message and agenda for decades is pretty important: the chance when in power to promote policies that actually work. And of all the "brands" that are desirable for the party of public-sector activism, competence is surely the best. Indeed, the most ironically perilous thing about the current political environment is that Democrats are paying a high price for the consequences of ideologically-driven incompetence--not to mention very deliberate efforts to destabilize the planet and promote economic inequality and social divisions--attributable to the last era of conservative control of the federal government.

The best news for progressives right now is that conservatives are engaged in another, and even more ideologically-driven, effort to promote their "brand" at the expense of reality. Indeed, one way to understand the Tea Party Movement is as a fierce battle to deny Republicans any leeway from the remorseless logic that will soon lead them to propose deeply unpopular steps to reduce the size and scope of government, while also insisting on policies virtually guaranteed to make today's bad economy even worse, certainly for middle-class Americans. I'm willing to grant conservatives a "branding" advantage and keep my own political family grounded in the messy uncertainties of the real world.

http://www.lockergnome.com/greaterworld/2010/10/11/climate-science-rejected-by-the-republican-party/

As I was looking through a few items on Reddit, I came across the interesting read that the Republicans, almost in complete lockstep, have decided that climate change is not occurring, though there are enough indicators to show it is to keep a librarian fact checking for a month.

I am frankly amazed by anyone that lives in this nation and does not believe it, because, for every place I have used as a place to check, the last years of last century, and the first ones of the current one have been the warmest on record. The weather patterns are different, and the changes are so extreme as to be as though places in the temperate zones on Earth are all sliding toward the tropics.

For us in California, the last few years have shown that the once in a great while concept of “Indian summer”, days of high heat well into the last days of October or early November, is no longer a once in a while occasion. It is happening every year. We essentially have two seasons in Southern California. Any place that is not highly elevated, has summer, roughly from February 1 to December 15, and fall for the remainder of the calendar year. The only tip of the hat to spring is that the pollen becomes painful to those affected by it, and that lets us know that it is supposed to be spring. [However, in the last 3 years, even those signs have failed to remain constant, with pollen storms occurring earlier or later than predicted.]

I know of other regions that are getting cooler, slightly, but they are few, and frankly far between. The overall trends is up, and by looking back at recorded temps for a long time, it is clear that the long term trend is up.

There are places where claims of a new Maunder minimum are given; they must be rejected flatly as having bad data, for the astute reader can look for himself, and verify the trends up, putting a stop to any theories of a new miniature ice age occurring in this century.

[alter net]

Ron Brownstein notes in a terrific new National Journal column just how striking it is to see a major American political party decide, all at once, to reject climate science in its entirety. (via Jay Rosen)

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, a prominent conservative leader in the U.K., was in the U.S. last week, and described climate change as perhaps the 21st century’s biggest foreign-policy challenge,” He added, “An effective response to climate change underpins our security and prosperity.”

His strong words make it easier to recognize that Republicans in this country are coalescing around a uniquely dismissive position on climate change. The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones. [...]

Just for the record, when the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences last reviewed the data this spring, it concluded: “A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.” Not only William Hague but such other prominent European conservatives as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have embraced that widespread scientific conviction and supported vigorous action.

Indeed, it is difficult to identify another major political party in any democracy as thoroughly dismissive of climate science as is the GOP here. Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, says that although other parties may contain pockets of climate skepticism, there is “no party-wide view like this anywhere in the world that I am aware of.”

And in case this isn’t clear, unanimous Republican opposition to any meaningful efforts to combat global warming makes any kind of coordinated international effort impossible.

What’s more, as the climate crisis intensifies, and the need for swift action becomes even more painfully obvious, the GOP line is getting worse, not better. How many Republican U.S. Senate candidates on the ballot this year support efforts to address global warming? None.

This is also true of any of the candidates self-identifying as Tea Party members. The numbers of people denying science are very disturbing; it is almost as if an entirely new chapter of the Flat Earth Society had been started.

I realize that part of the problem here is that Republicans reject the science because they oppose the solutions. If they acknowledged reality, GOP officials would no doubt have a harder time explaining why they don’t want to deal with a climate crisis that has the potential to wreak havoc on the planet in dramatically dangerous ways.

This is exactly the problem. If the Republicans acknowledge the problem, then they must come up with a plan to deal with it – and pay for it. That leaves much less cash to return in tax rebates.

It would be simple to identify these people as stupid, but they are not simply stupid; if anything, they are stupid in a complex way, for they show the same lack of thought as when they refuse to fund the education for their children, and give reasons that seem acceptable to those in agreement with their idea that the choice is a solid one. No regard for the consequences of the unabated change in weather is given, the same as the lack of regard for when the poorly educated children of the nation come of age and take their place as leaders.

But the result is the same. The combination of deliberate Republican ignorance and the Republican scheme to break the United States Senate makes the crisis even more serious, with little hope on the horizon. It also speaks to a larger truth — because there’s no commonly shared reality among Democratic and Republican policymakers, the prospects for compromise are effectively non-existent.

Sen. Susan Collins (R) of Maine this morning noted, “I don’t know who first described politics as the ‘art of compromise,’ but that maxim, to which I have always subscribed, seems woefully unfashionable today.”

Yeah, I wonder why that is.

The thing is, for every one of the Republicans running for a place in Congress, there is another person who is of another leaning, who would be a better player in the mix, simply because they have a mind that is open, and is not denying what is fact. Stating that the sky is purple with green polka dots every 3 degrees of arc does not make it so, though we might like it to be.

In every case in California, and everywhere I am looking across the nation, the choice is simple. It is one that makes it clear that for our progeny, life is not increasingly worse than it was for us. That choice is to remove all those of the political bent that says no, which means that Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, Libertarians, and anyone identifying as anything else, that think that standing still and doing nothing is a good thing must go … like yesterdays trash.

§

 

Quote of the day:
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.

- Walt Kelly

…if we begin every day with that on our minds, how can we go wrong?

®

by Glenn Hurowitz.

In a response to my call here at Grist for environmentalists to explore, after the midterms, a primary challenger to President Obama, the usually sage David Roberts wonders:

Should environmentalists run a purely vindictive campaign the only “success” of which could be to unseat a president who has achieved more for progressives in the past two years than any president since Nixon?

Tell that to progressives. My original post was entitled “Environmentalists need a new president,” but could easily have been “Workers need a new president,” “Gays need a new president,” and on and on. Obama’s stimulus didn’t create enough jobs (h/t Paul Krugman), he failed to push Congress protect workers’ right to form a union, and he continues to refuse to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, dealing a serious blow to progressive efforts for equality.

Meanwhile, as Jane Hamsher writes, major progressive donors like George Soros and Peter Lewis are closing their wallets to Democrats, frustrated by the White House’s attacks on the “professional left” (i.e. the ones who fund and volunteer on their campaigns) and their consistent adoption of the conservative meta-narrative:

So, let’s see if I have this straight. After the unions put hundreds of millions into getting Obama elected, and they get played on EFCA, the Democrats lay the blame off on ConservaDem Senators like Blanche Lincoln. So the unions spend $10 million trying to send a message to Lincoln, working within the Democratic party to support a primary opponent.

When Lincoln wins, “senior White House officials” are instantly calling journalists to taunt the unions as “absolute idiots” who “just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise.”

Rather than building up a progressive movement and progressive America, Obama has demoralized his friends and emboldened his enemies.

Or as Arianna Huffington put it this week on her appearance with Rachel Maddow:

Maybe progressives and the middle class need to sort of face up to the fact that the president is not that much into them, that he would rather hang out with Larry Summers, or flirt with Olympia Snowe, or play wargames late into the night with General Petraeus.

Of course, Obama apologists respond by citing some of Obama’s accomplishments—without questioning if they were adequate or if they are even remotely close to what Obama could have achieved had he not been so wary of taking on the Republicans. We must always remember that politics is the art of the possible—and it’s hard to contend that Obama has achieved anything close to what was possible with enormous Democratic majorities and having entered office facing a discredited opposition and with enormous enthusiasm at his back.

But David raises a deeper challenge to the movement, asking if saving the planet shouldn’t be subordinated to other goals. In other words, what do an oil spill and a baking planet matter if you pass a big health care bill and other items on the White House agenda?

To me, it’s a false choice (as David himself suggests toward the end of his post). No matter how many health care bills are passed or how many economic stimulus programs implemented, it will be impossible to create an America in which people are healthy, well-educated, and there’s broadly shared prosperity if we don’t save a planet in peril and create a truly green economy.

The health care bill is one example. Although it’s likely to deliver health benefits, those will be limited compared to the reduced deaths that come from switching away from polluting sources of energy that kill 24,000 people a year from lung cancer, heart attacks, and other causes. In Doctor Planet, an article I co-authored with Dr. Rahul Rajkumar, a leading health policy thinker, we wrote:

Lack of access to health care is a moral imperative—but inadequate health care is responsible for only a small fraction of the unnecessary loss of life that occurs every year in this country. If the goal is to make Americans live longer, healthier lives while reducing the burden out-of-control health care costs impose on families tight budgets, we need to realize that Mother Nature may be the best doctor of all. In some ways, the real health bill now working its way through Congress is the energy and climate bill. It could bring cleaner air and water—and reduce our reliance on oil and other fossil fuels.

Beyond the health benefits, America faces the real risk of being left behind in the 21st Century if we don’t seriously ramp up efforts to create the green economy. That’s why unions like the AFL-CIO, United Steelworkers, SEIU, Communications Workers, Laborers International, United Autoworkers, American Federation of Teachers, Transit Union, as well as civil rights groups like the NAACP have pushed so hard alongside environmentalists for strong clean energy and climate legislation.

Protecting the environment can also bring peace to America and the world: With our energy produced at home, we won’t have to spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives defending our faraway oil supply—or contend with the destabilization causes by millions of environmental refugees. As Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement has shown, simple green acts like planting trees can be a powerful force for the empowerment and education of women.

Finally, clean energy can create a fundamental political shift, stopping the flow of hard earned American dollars into the hands of oil billionaires like the Koch brothers, who turn around and use that cash to corrupt our political system and fight the broad progressive agenda.

It’s for all these reasons that so many progressives have embraced the fight for a safe climate and a green economy. Indeed, the environment is probably the ultimate progressive issue, uniting progressives more than any other—exactly because it makes the just, peaceful, and prosperous America progressives believe in possible.

Related Links:

The New Yorker on how the Senate & White House missed their best chance to deal with climate change

Obama rallies to the defense of what little remains of clean energy policy

Will Pete Rouse, Obama’s new chief of staff, push for climate action?

Five times as much to be spent than in presidential race of 2008, as Democrats look set for mauling at polls

The US midterm elections are on course to become the most expensive in history, estimated at well over $5bn (£3.15bn) – an indication of how much is riding on the outcome of the biggest test of US public opinion since the 2008 White House race.

With the Democrats facing electoral disaster next month and Barack Obama battling to save his presidency, the Republicans are resurgent, their campaign chests bursting, much of it from big corporations whose spending power has been unleashed by a supreme court ruling earlier this year, that provides anonymity for donors.

The estimated $5bn dwarves the $1bn spent on the White House race.

Public Citizen, a non-profit oganisation that tracks corporate spending on elections and lobbying, said today that Republicans received cash from the corporations at a ratio of 6-1 over the Democrats last month, and this could rise to 10-1 this month. It identifies much of the cash as coming from Wall Street, banking, and the health and pharmaceuticals industry.

"We are going to see record amounts. This is the first year in which all limits are removed. The supreme court ruling reverses a century of political tradition in the US in which corporations are not supposed to get involved," said Craig Holman, who is Public Citizen's representative on Capitol Hill.

At stake on 2 November are 37 of the 100 US Senate seats, all 435 House seats, 37 of the 50 governorships and a raft of state legislative places. Early voting has already begun in seven states. Polls suggest the Democrats face their biggest drubbing since 1994, and will lose control of the House to the Republicans, and see their nine-seat majority in the Senate reduced to about two or three, with an outside chance of losing it altogether.

An indication of the historical scale of the looming defeat is a House seat in the south that has not been Republican since 1875 that is now neck-and-neck.

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's centre for politics, is writing a book about these midterms and is so confident about the outcome he already has the title: The Pendulum Swings.

"These elections will determine how much freedom of movement President Obama has in the second half of his term. That is what it is about," Sabato said. "There are only two possibilities. He is going to have modest freedom or no freedom."

With the House in Republican hands, US politics will become even more polarised, and will likely dash Obama's hopes of getting any legislation through on climate change, immigration reform or even another economic stimulus package, let alone the money needed to close Guantánamo Bay. The Republicans would also try to unpick his health reform legislation.

Some of the biggest individual groups channelling money to the Republicans are American Crossroads, run by George W Bush's former political strategist Karl Rove, and Americans for Job Security. Under the supreme court ruling, these organisations do not have to disclose who is giving.

On the left, organisations such as Move.On, are only able to match the funding they provided for the 2006 midterm elections and, while the trade unions have raised a bit more, they have not been able to even remotely match the big corporations.

David Levinthal, a spokesman for the Washington-based Centre for Responsive Politics, which monitors spending only of congressional elections, predicted the 2012 ones will set a new record. "We fully expect that the federal elections will cost at least $3.7bn and, quite possibly, could well exceed $4bn given the amount of activity we are seeing right now.". The corresponding figure in the 2006 Congressional elections was $2.8bn.

The Montana-based National Institute on Money in State Politics, which monitors the governors' races and state legislators, records $1.4bn in donations so far, most of it in the last six months.

That, along with the Centre for Responsive Politics figure, puts the estimate for the elections at $5.1bn , equivalent to the annual running costs of a small US city. The National Institute on Money in State Politics only records donations made so far and there is still a month to go, one which normally sees the heaviest level of donations and spending.

One record for a gubernatorial election has already been broken by Meg Whitman, the former eBay chief and Republican candidate in the governor's race to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, who has so far spent $119m , $10m more than Michael Bloomberg in his re-election campaign for mayor of New York last year.

Change in midterm elections is almost a reflex action for Americans, who appear not to like one party having control, as the Democrats currently do, of the White House, Senate and House. Professor Mark Blyth, who teaches politics at Brown University, said the US system of checks and balance is a romantic 18th century notion that is not appropriate to the 21st century. "It is like giving the Starship Enterprise the steering apparatus of the Titanic. You end up with gridlock," said Blyth.

But Professor Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, sees something more momentous happening this year than just a reflex response. "These elections are potentially revolutionary, not in the sense that they will resonate a century later but in the sense of having an impact over the next decade," said Baker.

At issue is not only the fate of the Obama presidency but the impact of the grassroots conservative Tea Party movement on the Republicans.

"It is very rare for a third party to succeed. What typically happens is that a faction takes over an established party. In 1896, the populists took over the Democrats and in 1972 the pacifist wing took over the Democrats. What we are seeing is another of these historic captures. I think that is what is happening in the Republican party," Baker said.

Even if some of the Tea Party activists who produced surprises during the primary elections, such as Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, fail to make it to the Senate, polls suggest a hard core of Tea Party-backed candidates will, such as Rand Paul in Kentucky, Marco Rubio in Florida and Joe Miller in Alaska, all of whom are unlikely to co-operate with Obama but equally could be a headache for the Republican establishment.

The Democratic pitch in the campaign is to portray the Republicans as, in the words of the vice-president, Joe Biden, "too extreme to lead", and to cite the policy positions of canidates such as O'Donnell.

Tad Devine, a long-term Democratic strategist who is advising candidates in several races and is producing ads, is unashamed about going negative. "The ads have gone negative quickly," he said, adding: "Obama was campaigning on hope. This current election is about hope and fear. Obama is running the spectre of what will happen if the Republicans take over. Our side is beginning to kick in."

Such is Obama's level of unpopularity, down from 70% after his inauguration in January last year to under 50% now, many Democratic candidates are distancing themselves from him in their campaign literature.

Chet Edwards, a Democratic congressman from Texas who is reported to have been considered by Obama as his vice-presidential running-mate, has an ad running that could have been written for a Republican, boasting of how he had stood up to Obama and Pelosi and voted against the healthcare bill, illustrating just what desperate days these are for the Democrats.

Living as I do in the heart of Washington, D.C., big rallies are as common as rush-hour traffic jams.

But the run-up to a rally on the National Mall last Saturday caught my attention. The organizers were some of our country's oldest and largest progressive organizations, and they'd joined under the banner of One Nation Working Together. I thought to myself, Wouldn't that be nice for a change?

So off I went to the Lincoln Memorial, the site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech and, more recently, Glenn Beck's purportedly apolitical religious revival for Tea Party-types.

It was a beautiful sunny day to listen to some rousing speeches and a lot of cheering by a crowd estimated in the tens of thousands. (This is an estimate commonly used for large crowds because Congress has prohibited the National Park Service, which ought to know, from providing official estimates.)

One Nation Working Together has a policy agenda based on a core idea I think we'd all agree with: "Everyone in America deserves a fair chance to achieve the American dream."

It's got a large number of specific causes — a reflection of the more than 400 diverse organizations that signed on as endorsers.

It's also got a limited number of what it calls core principles that speak to three big themes — jobs, justice and education. Each is spelled out in "policy ideals" that will move our economy forward toward one that works for everybody. These are actually to-do's for Congress and the administration.

Calls for action include:

• Create jobs for every sector so that everyone in our country who wants to work can find a job.
• Provide immediate relief for those who are currently unemployed.
• Take immediate action, i.e., provide federal funding, to stimulate job growth and retention and consumer demand.
• Rebuild the U.S. economy for the 21st century.
• Enhance, strengthen and preserve voting rights for all Americans.
• End discriminatory practices within the criminal justice system.
• Preserve and honor our history as a nation that is inclusive of immigrants and maintain respect for the rule of law.
• Strengthen the safety net and create opportunity for all, e.g., in the housing market and implementation of the new federal health care reform act.
• Provide quality public education for all.

This would be a formidable agenda even for a Congress wholly committed to the One Nation vision. But it's good to have these major policy objectives and related specific measures pulled together anyway. We need frameworks and, if you will, scorecards.

However, One Nation also has something more immediate in view. Last Saturday was exactly one month before the elections. And the rally was clearly aimed at firing up progressive voters. In fact, several of the major union backers and their local councils linked the event to get-out-the-vote home visits and phone banks.

We read that Republicans are much more enthusiastic about voting next month than either Democrats or Independents. The same "enthusiasm gap" is found between those who identify themselves as conservatives and self-identified liberals and moderates.

The explanation isn't surprising. The Republicans in Congress are, by and large, a very conservative bunch. So are many of the Republicans running against Democratic incumbents. Those who believe the federal government should confine itself to defense, immigration control and a few other "non-intrusive" functions see an opportunity to get their way.

We who want the federal government to play an active role in shaping the economy, advancing equality and protecting us and our fellow citizens from destitution and other dangers, e.g., food poisoning, environmental contamination, collapsing bridges, are depressed and discouraged.

We voted for change, and we haven't seen what we hoped for. We or people we care about are out of work or waiting for the ax to fall. Our nest eggs have shrunk. Our living costs are rising, but our wages or publicly-funded benefits aren't. And no one's turned the situation around.

Instead, we see a Congress bickering over procedures and pay-fors. And Democrats splintering on important issues like the Bush tax cut extensions, food stamp benefits and the "don't tell, don't ask" policy in the military.

So it's a real temptation to sit out the November elections. We've already got more than enough to do without going to the polls. Besides, we're told our votes won't matter because the Republicans are going to gain enough seats in Congress to push their agenda through or at least block anything else.

That'll surely happen if we don't feel energized enough, by hope or fear, to do something as central to the American dream as vote. So if you feel in need of some inspiration, try watching the replay of One Nation's rally.

Graphic credit: One Nation Working Together

[more than a hat tip to Heather at VideoCafe -->many thanks for the video and the tip]

Meet Lawrence A. Hunter, the executive director of the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity, senior fellow at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) and the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). He might sound more familiar to you as the director of the Social Security Alliance, a 501(c)(4) group with the following mission statement (from their 2008 990 filing):

Working to promote the retirement security of today's seniors and the seniors of tomorrow. SSI's top policy priorities are to stop the raid on Social Security trust funds, prevent cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits, and protect seniors from health care rationing and other limitations on their access to health care.

SSI was a recycle of an organization originally launched in 2004 at the time of the Great Social Security Privatization Debate. That organization was also known as the "Alliance for Retirement Prosperity", and was spun off by Jack Kemp and Dick Armey from Citizens for a Sound Economy, known today as FreedomWorks, and Kemp's Empower America. The IPI That organization's stated purpose was as follows:

Advocacy and lobbying activities aimed at reforming Social Security by dedicating a substantial portion of the payroll tax to large personal accounts.

The newest incarnation of the "Alliance for Retirement Prosperity" is a bit different, as Hunter indicates in the video. For starters, it's a for-profit group, purporting to be a "true alternative to the AARP". To that end, it offers members the opportunity to "ensure a prosperous, enriched and secure retirement" for the low, low price of $60 per year for the premium membership, and just $16 for an individual membership.

Hunter was quite adept at sidestepping the question of who put up the $5 million for marketing, organization and launch, but it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Possibilities include the US Chamber of Commerce's newly-launched small business branch, the Koch brothers, the John Birch society, or other branches of the labyrinthine conservative think tank set. Hunter's reach is far and wide. He was prominent in the Reagan administration, was a policy maker under Bush, and was one of the leading voices against health care reform.

The Business
Health care reform is where the trail gets interesting, particularly in the intersection with this newly-remodeled organization. Part of the service package for members includes -- you guessed it -- insurance products. According to their site, you can buy Medicare supplemental insurance, personal health insurance products, and even get your very own advisors right there on the site, while shopping for travel discounts.

In California, the insurance products are marketed by Seabury & Smith Insurance Program Management. Seabury & Smith is a subsidiary of Marsh. Here's an excerpt from their Consumer Operations description:

The Affinity/Program businesses sell and administer insurance products and services on a program basis, typically working with a sponsoring organization client to leverage the affinity relationship that client has with its constituencies (e.g., employees, members, franchisees, or customers, as the case may be).

[...]

Affinity Program Solutions: markets and administers standardized and customized insurance programs, selling and servicing group/master and individual policies for many life & health and property & casualty lines of insurance business as well as certain other non-insurance products and services. Clients generally include associations, employers, unions, fraternal organizations, franchisors, and other consumer-focused "brand" companies, including large multinational financial institutions and automobile manufacturers.

If you haven't figured it out by now, those "small businesses" referred to in the video are likely to be insurance industry groups looking for a new group of shoppers. But wait! There's more. The ARP website has nifty tools and widgets for someone planning a business or starting a business. No surprise there, either. They're created by Marsh for affinity marketing.

If you browse the Personal Insurance/Products links, they'll all require personal information and a membership so an agent can harass contact you.

In other words, this site is really nothing more than a front to sell insurance from allied providers, unless you're interested in travel. If that's your gig, well, they've got it covered. Resort vacations, hotel rewards, cruises, you name it. All at your fingertips.

Philosophy

Let's start with Mr. Hunter. He appears to be a "tenther", and has written articles for the Tenth Amendment Center affirming that philosophy. Projects for tenthers include a big "nullification tour" to encourage states to just say no to those pesky federal laws they don't want. He assisted Eric Odom's American Liberty Alliance with strategies last year to fight passage, especially the "stand firm and just vote no" obstructionism of the Republican party.

Oh, I should also probably add that John Birchers are also nullification freaks.

Hunter is absolutely committed to the privatization of Social Security and Medicare. Of all the marketing material on these sites along with his CSPAN presentation, his contention that he is fighting for retirement security or to preserve the Social Security trust fund is possibly the biggest, most bald-faced lie I've heard out of a Republican this week. He wants at least half of everyone's Social Security taxes to go to Wall Street, plain and simple. Not content to stop there, he is fully entrenched in the "save Medicare Advantage" group, or what I like to call the "insurance agents' retirement plan".

As President of the original Alliance for Retirement Prosperity, he partnered with the 60 Plus Association, Club for Growth, Leadership Institute and United Seniors Association -- all Republican astroturf front groups created to prey on senior citizens' fears and concerns about their future. He is also associated with Lewis K. Uhler, head of the National Tax Limitation Committee and fellow board member of the Social Security Institute.

But more than all of that, you need to know this about Hunter and his organization: He is deeply entrenched in the insurance industry and has been for years. He is the champion of insurance deregulation, and has written issue briefs for the IPI about the dangers of insurance and federal regulation. Here's his thesis from his paper entitled "Trapped in Amber: Bringing Insurance Regulation into the 21st Century"

The entire edifice of insurance regulation by state governments is a leftover from the New Deal. Since World War II, in virtually every industry other than insurance, this type of regulatory control has been replaced by more realistic, market-based mechanisms. The recent attempts by the state of Florida to regulate insurance prices demonstrate the compelling need to modernize today's dysfunctional state insurance regulatory system.

This was written in February, 2008. Shortly thereafter Wall Street collapsed, and along with it, AIG. But of course, that doesn't matter to a guy like Hunter, who is entrenched head-to-toe with the insurers and their agents.

You know who else sports a lot of insurance agents on their membership rolls? The John Birch Society. They seem to crawl out from under their secret rocks and rings when they run for office.

Oh, the irony...

There's more than a small amount of irony in the claim that the AARP lives in Democrats' pocket. Strangely, I remember vowing never to renew or forgive them for supporting Medicare Part D legislation, particularly Medicare Advantage. Seems to me they act in the interest of their members, though not necessarily their best interests. On the other hand, I've never perceived AARP as particularly partisan in nature.

However, it's difficult to accept Hunter's contention that this new competitor - ARP - is purely a non-partisan alternative to the AARP. One look at their politics page tells the tale. Fred Thompson's smiling face is looking back on one tab, while a pretty Hispanic lady underscores "The Obamacare Reality".

Non-partisan? Hardly. This is the Republican Party, dressed up as a group that gives a damn about senior citizens. It's a front group for insurance agents and tenthers, preying on seniors and stoking fear and loathing. All hail John Birch. It has re-invented itself with a new name: Republicans.

The coalition government of centre-right Conservatives and more centre-left Liberal Democrats that emerged from Britain’s general election on 6 May 2010 soon pledged itself both to severe cuts in public expenditure and a major review of the country’s defence posture. Now, four months after the election, both issues are colliding with a vengeance.

The outcome of the “strategic defence and security review”, announced by the ministry of defence in July 2009 and now well underway, promises to be very painful for the country’s armed forces. But how does the immediate political concern with money-saving relate to the larger security questions that are at stake in considering Britain’s long-term future as a country and as part of a global community?

Before the election, both the then Labour government and the Conservative Party sought to address the United Kingdom's long-term security concerns in respective “green papers”; each document reflected current thinking by addressing climate change and related issues. Labour’s paper went further in its global analysis (see "Britain, let's talk about security", 9 May 2010); but there was a shared acceptance that the world was entering a more fragile and uncertain era where global warming and the exclusion of many millions of people from sustainable economic life were becoming drivers of insecurity (see "A world on the margin", 20 May 2010).

The conclusion drawn from this welcome awareness, however, was that keeping Britain secure in such circumstances could best be guaranteed by consolidated military projects (and sustaining alliances such as Nato); a real focus on preventing or containing the problems in the first place was absent.

A turf war

The post-election environment creates new challenges for the architects and service-personnel of British defence policy. The predicament the defence ministry faces is accentuated by the fact that it already, even before the proposed reductions, faces serious economic constraints. The huge cost overruns in existing projects, such as the Nimrod MR4A maritime-reconnaissance plane and the new Astute-class of nuclear-attack submarines, contribute to a shortfall estimated at £32 billion. This cannot be met from current budgets.

There are further expensive current commitments. The Trident nuclear-missile replacement programme will consume up to £100 billion over a forty-year-plus lifespan, much of which comes early in its life; it frontloaded, the two huge new aircraft-carriers and their planes will cost more than £15 billion; the renewal of military-transport aircraft and the replacement of huge amounts of equipment worn out by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will also require billions.

The three branches of the armed forces have become intent on fighting for their own interests. The army persistently highlights the financial and personal costs of fighting in Afghanistan, and works hard to maintain the popular profile of its soldiers even amid persistent doubts over and criticism of the war itself.

The Royal Air Force for its part highlights the occasional forays by Russian long-range aircraft close to United Kingdom airspace, in the process raising cold-war echoes and memories (notwithstanding Russia is far less potent than the intensely militarised Soviet Union). The Royal Navy, meanwhile, emphasises a Russian Akula-class boat’s tracking of Trident missile submarines (though again, the Russian navy has barely a handful of boats with such a capacity). So far there is in London none of the “yellow-peril” talk of Chinese military expansionism that plays so well in Washington, but that will doubtless come.

An equal misery

The services’ concerns, amplified as they may be for protective purposes, are exacerbated by a report from the lower house of parliament’s cross-party defence select committee, which says that the defence review is being rushed. They are also articulated in the context of an exceptionally powerful and well-organised lobby representing the defence (military equipment and weapons) industry, which has serious worries about future profits.

At the same time, the new coalition government - at least its dominant Conservative element - remains absolutely committed to implementing sharp overall spending cuts, and to doing so quickly. The axe-wielding instinct here reflects an ideological affinity with the early years of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership (1979-90), creating palpable unease among the government’s Liberal Democrat junior coalition partners. LibDem activists away from Westminster in particular are increasingly dismayed at their leadership’s acceptance of the Conservative agenda, and fear serious losses in local elections in spring 2011.

The Conservatives’ determination to cut broadly and deeply suggests that the defence review really is driven by financial concerns rather than strategic thinking. The probability is that the defence review will recommend a series of cuts across the armed forces as a whole - a sort of “equal misery” approach. This could involve substantial project-cancellations, including one or even both of the aircraft-carriers§§. But the savings involved will not be combined with a genuine rethink of fundamentals. In that case, the hope for a different kind of analysis of Britain's long-term security challenges - forensic, integrated and radical rather than driven by ideological fixation and political calculation - will not be met.

A cathartic moment

A question then arises about the influence of the idea of “sustainable security”. Will the urgent need for a rapid transition to a low-carbon and a more equitable global economy as a fundamental matter of security be dismissed or just ignored? (see The Great Transition, New Economics Foundation, 19 October 2009).

In the short-term the answer is probably “yes”, meaning that another great opportunity for new thinking will be missed. But in the medium term, this may change. For major cuts of Britain’s armed forces, amid the effort to maintain around 10,000 troops in Afghanistan, will explode the pretense that Britain can play at being a mini-superpower. The need for a fundamental rethink will become unavoidable. Therein lies the opportunity for a proper, realistic assessment of the challenges that face the country - with sustainable security at its heart (see "A world in need: the case for sustainable security", 10 September 2009)

Britain's comforting attachment to past glories will still get in the way - and will need to be countered by an ability to adapt quickly and with imagination. But in this fluid and pressured situation for the country and its armed forces, the very shock of sharp cuts may be the catharsis that makes serious new thinking possible.

Sideboxes

'Read On' Sidebox: 

Paul Rogers, Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010)

Department of peace studies, Bradford University

The Strategic Defence and Security Review, first report of 2010-11 (House of Commons, defence committee, 15 September 2010)

sustainablesecurity.org

Paul Rogers, "Big Boats and Bigger Skimmers: Determining Britain's Role in the Long War " (International Affairs, July 2006)

"Defence in the downturn", Finanancial Times series

Jane's Defence Weekly

"Building UK's Future Aircraft Carriers" (Defence Professionals, 18 March 2010)

Shared Responsibilities: A national security strategy for the UK (IPPR, 30 June 2009)

Sidebox: 

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's international-security editor, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 26 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010)

His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010)

Related stories: 

Britain, let’s talk about security

Beyond "liddism": towards real global security

Afghanistan: wind of change

The politics of security: beyond militarism

Climate science: a peace-studies lesson

After war, security

A new security paradigm: the military-climate link

Global security: a vision for change

A world in need: the case for sustainable security

A tale of two paradigms

British sea power: a 21st-century question

Gordon Brown's white elephants

Britain's nuclear-weapons fix

Even more than Glenn Beck, Haley Barbour has a vested interest in rewriting the history of the civil rights struggle, since he was on the wrong side, inflaming racial resentment as an operative in Nixon's notorious "Southern Strategy" to bring racist whites into the GOP in 1968--a legacy he needs to spin into its opposite as he positions himself for a potential run against Barack Obama in 2012. His strategy has been to portray Southern Republicans of his generation as the exact opposite of what they were--as post-racial progressives in contract to the older generation of Democrats.

The reality, of course, is that his main mission was getting those older Democrats to vote for Nixon, regardless how they were registered.  But that overwhelming historical fact is not what's causing him headaches right now.  The GOP has long since mastered the art of the big lie.  It's the little things that are tripping up, as he tries to reinvent his own personal history as someone who lived in a 21st Century post-racial bubble in the midst of the bloody racial violence of 1960s Mississippi.

Margaret Talev of McClatchy reports:

Haley Barbour, race, Ole Miss - from black perspective

WASHINGTON - It's hard to believe that Haley Barbour and Verna Bailey attended the same University of Mississippi in 1965, and even sat next to each other in a class.

Barbour, who's now the governor of Mississippi and a possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, recalls that time - when Ole Miss was being forced to integrate - as "a very pleasant experience."

Bailey does not. At times, she said, "I thought my life was going to end."

He's white. She was the first black female to attend.

Their seats were assigned alphabetically, and he said they developed a friendly rapport. She let him copy her notes when he skipped class.

"I still love her," he quipped.

He remembers her name almost as if it were yesterday, though he'd recalled her middle name as Lee. It's Ann.

She knows Barbour as a prominent politician who attended her alma mater. Until a reporter called, she said, she didn't realize they'd met.

Their vastly different impressions of that time expose the challenges that any Southern conservative faces when trying to recast the experience of the civil rights era. They could prove especially sensitive for this white Republican governor of the blackest state in the union if he mounts a challenge to the nation's first black president.

Race isn't the only thing for Barbour to deal with, the story notes, but...

Still, the story of race in Mississippi is an inescapable undercurrent in weighing Barbour's prospects. Nowhere was the civil rights era of Barbour's adolescence more violent than it was in Mississippi. When James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at Ole Miss in 1962, there were threats that he'd be lynched. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent U.S. marshals to protect Meredith as he arrived on campus. Ensuing riots wounded more than 100 marshals and left two bystanders dead.

Barbour's a veteran political operative who worked on Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign, which designed a Republican path to power known as the "Southern strategy." As he recently began testing the presidential waters, Barbour, 62, has been contending that his generation of white, Southern Republicans has been characterized unfairly as anti-civil rights.

In an interview last month with the conservative magazine and website Human Events, Barbour said it was "my generation who went to integrated schools. I went to an integrated college, never thought twice about it."

It was the old Democrats who clung to segregation, he said. "By my time people realized that was the past, that was indefensible, wasn't going to be that way anymore." He said that "the people who really changed the South from Democrat to Republican (were) a different generation from those who fought integration."

Of course, there are photographs, even videotapes that directly contradict Barbour's lies.  Young men are always prime candidates for acting out group-oriented violence, and 1960s white Mississippi was anything but an exception to this rule.

The article continues:

That interview set off a backlash from black commentators, who accused Barbour of everything from being clueless to pushing revisionist history.

Barbour defended those comments Wednesday at a Washington reporters' breakfast.

"When I became a Republican in the late '60s, in my state and probably some other Southern states the hard right were all Democrats," he said. "They didn't want to have Republicans because, in their words, 'It split the white vote.' And young people were more likely to be Republicans than our grandparents."

That last statement, of course, was true. Older white racists found it unthinkable to re-register as Republicans.  Which was fine with Nixon.  All he wanted was their votes.  He didn't give a damn how they registered.  Of course, the opposite was also true: young blacks were more likely to register as Democrats.  Moving on:

That's when he brought up Bailey.

He said she was "a very nice girl" who "happened to be an African-American, and, God bless her, she let me copy her notes the whole time. And since I was not prone to go to class every day, I considered it a great - it was a great thing, it was just - there was nothing to it. If she remembers it, I would be surprised. She was just another student. I was the student next to her."

Bailey, reached by phone, reacted to Barbour's story with surprise that bordered on confusion.

"I don't remember him at all, no, because during that time that certainly wasn't a pleasant experience for me," she said. "My interactions with white people were very, very limited. Very, very few reached out at all."

Bailey is now the principal of an elementary school in Beaverton, Ore. While she may have seemed like just another student to Barbour, history hasn't viewed her that way. For her role in the civil rights movement, she was inducted into the Ole Miss Alumni Hall of Fame and has a scholarship named after her.

She's sometimes asked to speak to groups about her experience. Her recollections are filled with details of pain, humiliation, isolation and courage.

So, in short, Barbour's recollections are either totally bogus, or he was utterly clueless at the time, or--more probably--both.

Their experiences were dramatically different:

Barbour left Ole Miss before he finished his bachelor's degree to work for the Nixon campaign, then came back to earn his law degree. Bailey said she finished her undergraduate degree in three years, not because she was a great student, but because she wanted to get out of Oxford, Miss., as fast as she could.

She recalled dancing in Oxford Square once with another black student at a school celebration when a crowd of whites began pelting them with coins and beer. "It was just an awful experience. I just saw this mass of anger; anger and hostility. I thought my life was going to end."

A campus minister, one of the only whites she remembers showing her kindness, took her by the hand and led her to safety. She said the minister was ostracized.

During her undergraduate days, she was inundated with intimidating phone calls to her dorm from white men. "The calls were so constant," she said. "Vulgar, all sexual connotations, saying nigger bitches needed to go back to the cotton field and things of that nature." She'd complain, have the phone number changed. Then the calls would start again. Funeral wreaths with what appeared to be animal blood on them were found outside her dorm.

In one science class in a lecture hall, no one would sit near her. The only class in which she remembers alphabetized seating was a Spanish class where the teacher seemed empathetic to her. Bailey figured that was because the teacher was from South America, not Mississippi.

Barbour said they had a literature class together. Bailey remembers taking a literature class, but nothing about it. "It wouldn't surprise me if I allowed someone to copy my notes because that's just someone I am," she said. "I did that as an undergraduate student, as a graduate student."

As for the notion that Republicans were promoting a civil rights agenda during her college years, she said, "I guess I just don't see that." As for today, "I cannot see Republicans moving that agenda along."

Indeed, if Republicans had done that, then how could they possibly explain any of the subsequent political developments in the South since then?  The White Southern GOP was their great champion, but it ended up being an almost all-white organization?  How'd that happen?

One can also look at how racial attitudes within the parties have shifted over time.  A measure of how white's attribute responsibility for black's lower economic level finds that since the 1970s Southern Republicans have always been more likely to blame blacks themselves.  The margin was relatively slight in the 1970s, just 2.65%, rising to 16.84% in the 1980s, 15.72% in the 1990s, and 11.63% in the 2000s.  Considering that presidential voting shifted in the South long before party ID did, there can be no doubt that the GOP's "winning of hearts and minds" didn't depend on Haley Barbour's fantasy.  It relied on  Verna Bailey's reality, as accurately reflected in the history books that Haley Barbour is anxious to rewrite.

The $50 billion in federal money that President Obama announced on Labor Day he wants to spend on transportation-related infrastructure projects would be but a few small drops in a very big bucket. No matter. The chances of these drops getting past all the obstacles in Congress before election day hover at zero. Republican obstructionists and conservative Democrats stand against the proposal, of course. But even some members whose views fall more in the middle of the Democratic spectrum oppose it. Sen. Michael Bennett of Colorado rejected the idea before the warm applause greeting Obama in Milwaukee had worn off, and House Democratic leaders essentially said no way. So, at best, we're looking at 2011.

Like so much else that plagues the U.S. economy, decay of the U.S. infrastructure has been building for decades. That's in part because policymakers at the local, state and federal levels have been more interested in building new stuff than in keeping the old stuff in good repair. It's also a product of the magical thinking known as out-of-sight, out-of-mind, or in budget-writers' parlance, deferred maintenance.

Bridges don't fall down when the first rivet rusts through. Roads don't become unusable when the first pothole appears. A rotting rail bed merely slows trains down; it doesn't stop freight or passengers from moving altogether. But deterioration from deferred maintenance is cumulative. What starts out as an easily fixed, relatively cheap repair becomes a gigantic, hugely expensive rebuild, often sparked by a killer catastrophe that spurs a duh moment for the media and many citizens, who inquire: how could this have happened? There is, obviously, the short-sightedness of politicians and other civic leaders, but the anti-tax attitude that has permeated so much of the populace plays a large part. Examples of this myopia abound. Americans shudder at that poor education so many of our children receive, but the desire to get them out of schools that can only be described as ramshackle frequently collides with the attitude that no taxes should be raised to change the situation.

The United States seriously needs new infrastructure. For instance, we need a nationwide, clean-energy smart grid. The current dilapidated, obsolete grid, into which a few billions of federal stimulus money have been placed over the past 18 months, is not up to the tasks required of it in the 21st Century. For one thing, transmission lines don't exist where they will be needed if we are going to build green electricity-generating plants in remote regions. Even if we decentralize much of our energy production, which we ought to do, the grid will continue to play an important role in distributing electricity for many decades. Likewise, we need high-speed rail. And expanded urban mass transit.

But the old infrastructure requires attention, too. Repair and restoration of what already exists cannot continue to be delayed.

How bad is the situation? For 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation's whole infrastructure a grade point average of D. Here are the individual grades:

Aviation D
Bridges C
Dams D
Drinking Water D-
Energy D+
Hazardous Waste D
Inland Waterways D-
Levees D-
Public Parks and Recreation C-
Rail C-
Roads D-
Schools D
Solid Waste C+
Transit D
Wastewater D-

Europe, the ASCE says, puts 5 percent of its gross domestic product into infrastructure spending and China 9 percent. In the United States, it's only 2.4 percent. Nearly two years ago, the ASCE estimated the five-year investment needed for infrastructure at $2.2 trillion.

That's the proper way to think about the creation of a first-rate, modern infrastructure, as an investment. Not just in the future, but in the urgent now when we need to generate millions of jobs. Not make-work jobs, but real ones, with real results that provide benefits today, tomorrow and for generations.

Done right, one way to avoid some of the pork-barrel aspects that sets people against government-funded infrastructure projects has been lumbering around Congress for many years. It's the national infrastructure bank mentioned by the President in his Milwaukee speech. This would leverage private, local and state funds for performance-based projects that a non-partisan panel of experts would determine to be most valuable. Combine this with an elimination of congressional earmarks and a good deal of pork-barrel projects would be done away with. Of course, we'd be kidding ourselves to think that politics can be completely scrubbed out of which projects get chosen, but the bank offers the potential for at least a partial clean-up.

There are several state examples. The California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, which is the country’s largest, has been in operation for a decade. Seeded with $181 million, it has financed $220 billion in projects so far.

But before we have a national bank, before we have more than a comparative trickle of dollars for infrastructure projects, attitudes will have to change. And in Washington that will require a change of personnel. We'll no doubt have some in less than two months. Unfortunately, most of it will be in the wrong direction.

Last week, Laura Tyson laid out what everyone knows is needed to get the economy properly on track: a second stimulus package:

The conventional wisdom about the stimulus package is wrong: it has not failed. It is working as intended. Its spending increases and tax cuts have boosted demand and added about three million more jobs than the economy otherwise would have. Without it, the unemployment rate would be about 11.5 percent. Because about 36 percent of the money remains to be spent, more jobs will be created — about 500,000 by the end of the year.

But by next year, the stimulus will end, and the flip from fiscal support to fiscal contraction could shave one to two percentage points off the growth rate at a time when the unemployment rate is still well above 9 percent. Under these circumstances, the economic case for additional government spending and tax relief is compelling. Sadly, polls indicate that the political case is not.

Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO says the same thing. And he's far from alone. Everyone with a bare understanding of Keynesian economics knows we need a second stimulus -- and real leadership would make it happen.

Unfortunately, that's one thing we won't find with the Obama White House:

"There have been a lot of reports and rumors on different options being considered -- many of which are incorrect," said White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage.

"The options under consideration build on measures the president has previously proposed, and we are not considering a second stimulus package. The president and his team are discussing several options, as they have been for months, and no final decisions have been made," she said.

Great, that's just swell. As Susie observes, these kinds of half-assed measures are only going to ensure continued unemployment and economic malaise -- which also means there's going to be a lot of Democratic seats lost this November unless someone begins taking bold action now to reassure voters that jobs really are their highest priority.

Already, the DCCC seems to be treating this as a kind of eventuality. But it doesn't have to be that way.

This is about defending progressive policies because we know they work. Just because President Obama isn't willing to expend any political capital to make a difference in the coming elections doesn't mean the rest of us have to sit still.

Indeed, there is hope -- in boldness. Every progressive Democrat needs to read Drew Westen's analysis of the situation and take heart -- and heed:

The question today is whether Democrats can channel the populist anger we are seeing around the country this late in the game. The answer is that we'd better try. Having recently tested messages on economics and jobs, including how to talk about deficits and taxes -- widely assumed to be Democrats' Achilles Heel, particularly now -- there is little question that if Democrats and progressives from center to left simply say what they believe in ways that are evocative, values-driven, and speak to people's worries and anger, many stand a good chance of surviving November, particularly when their opponents have nothing to say other than warmed-over rhetoric about cutting taxes to millionaires and multinationals and fiscal restraint except where it cuts into profits of their campaign contributors. Even the most evocative boilerplate conservative messages fall flat against honest messages that speak to the need to get Americans working again. And on issue after issue, no message is more resonant right now than one that sides with working and middle class Americans and small business owners against special interests, big business, and their lobbyists.

....

On every one of these issues, a strong populist message trounces anything the other side can say. But Democrats need to play offense. They need to take up-or-down votes on bill after bill, including those they expect the other side to block, knowing that every one of those votes has the leverage of a campaign ad behind it. They need to change the narrative from what sounds to the average American like a whiny and impotent one -- "the Republicans won't let us do it" -- to a narrative of strength in numbers shared with their constituents. And they need to make every election a choice between two well-articulated approaches to governance -- and to offer their articulation of both sides' positions and values.

That leads to a final point. What Democrats have needed to offer the American people is a clear narrative about what and who led our country to the mess in which we find ourselves today and a clear vision of what and who will lead us out. That narrative would have laid a roadmap for our elected officials and voters alike, rather than making each legislative issue a seemingly discrete turn onto a dirt road. That narrative might have included -- and should include today -- some key elements: that if the economy is tumbling, it's the role of leadership and government to stop the free-fall; that if Wall Street is gambling with our financial security, our homes, and our jobs, true leaders do not sit back helplessly and wax eloquent about the free market, they take away the dice; that if the private sector can't create jobs for people who want to work, then we'll put Americans back to work rebuilding our roads, bridges, and schools; that if Big Oil is preventing us from competing with China's wind and solar energy programs, then we'll eliminate the tax breaks that lead to dysfunctional investments in 19th century fuels and have a public-private partnership with companies that will create the clean, safe fuels of the 21st century and the millions of good American jobs that will follow.

There are smart and powerful progressives in Congress who can champion this kind of stimulus package. Yes, they face an uphill battle, thanks to the Fox News/right-wing propaganda machine. But they face that anyway. Better to turn and face the fight than just timidly give in and surrender. Too much is at stake.

Drew Westen's ideas about Democratic strategy are always worth consideration, as are his thoughts from his latest post at HuffPo, "What Created the Populist Explosion and How Democrats Can Avoid the Shrapnel in November." Westen provides an extensive and, in places, painful diagnosis of the Dems' current political predicament, which is worth a read, if only so we don't repeat some of the more costly miscalculations. Then Dr. Westen offers this prescription:

...Having recently tested messages on economics and jobs, including how to talk about deficits and taxes -- widely assumed to be Democrats' Achilles Heel, particularly now -- there is little question that if Democrats and progressives from center to left simply say what they believe in ways that are evocative, values-driven, and speak to people's worries and anger, many stand a good chance of surviving November, particularly when their opponents have nothing to say other than warmed-over rhetoric about cutting taxes to millionaires and multinationals and fiscal restraint except where it cuts into profits of their campaign contributors. Even the most evocative boilerplate conservative messages fall flat against honest messages that speak to the need to get Americans working again. And on issue after issue, no message is more resonant right now than one that sides with working and middle class Americans and small business owners against special interests, big business, and their lobbyists.

As for specifics, Westen advises:

...It may be too late for the kind of jobs bill we should have seen a year and a half ago, but it isn't too late for Democrats to go on the offensive against the Republicans -- virtually all of them -- who opposed extending unemployment insurance to millions of Americans who were thrown out of work by the Republicans' corporate sponsors. It isn't too late for Democrats to contrast their support for the highly popular aid to state and local governments that just saved the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters, and police all over the country with Republicans' desire to throw them out onto the street. It isn't too late to make a voting issue out of the bill the Republicans are stalling that would give small businesses a fighting chance in an economy stacked against them, and to make clear that one party stands for small businesses, which create 75 percent of the new jobs in this country, and the other party stands for big businesses that outsource American jobs and offshore their profits to avoid paying their fair share of American taxes. It's not too late to pass a bill that would limit credit card interest rates to a reasonable percent above the rate at which credit is made available to credit card companies. It's not too late to pass the first badly need "fix" to the health care reform act to demonstrate to Americans that Democrats mean it when they say this was just the first step, namely a law that stops insurance companies from increasing their premiums by 40 percent while cutting the size of their networks by 50-75 percent, which violates the principles of affordability and choice that were so essential to efforts to sell health care reform to the public. It's not too late to vow to change the rules of the Senate to prevent the use of the filibuster to give every special interest veto power over every important piece of legislation. It's not too late to introduce legislation that's been on hold in both the House and Senate to guarantee fair elections, so that the voice of everyday Americans is heard over the voice of the special interests that finance political campaigns.

On every one of these issues, a strong populist message trounces anything the other side can say. But Democrats need to play offense. They need to take up-or-down votes on bill after bill, including those they expect the other side to block, knowing that every one of those votes has the leverage of a campaign ad behind it. They need to change the narrative from what sounds to the average American like a whiny and impotent one -- "the Republicans won't let us do it" -- to a narrative of strength in numbers shared with their constituents. And they need to make every election a choice between two well-articulated approaches to governance -- and to offer their articulation of both sides' positions and values.

Westen's point about the kind of tone Dems should project resonates especially well at this political moment. Then he gets down to particulars:

...What Democrats have needed to offer the American people is a clear narrative about what and who led our country to the mess in which we find ourselves today and a clear vision of what and who will lead us out...That narrative might have included -- and should include today -- some key elements: that if the economy is tumbling, it's the role of leadership and government to stop the free-fall; that if Wall Street is gambling with our financial security, our homes, and our jobs, true leaders do not sit back helplessly and wax eloquent about the free market, they take away the dice; that if the private sector can't create jobs for people who want to work, then we'll put Americans back to work rebuilding our roads, bridges, and schools; that if Big Oil is preventing us from competing with China's wind and solar energy programs, then we'll eliminate the tax breaks that lead to dysfunctional investments in 19th century fuels and have a public-private partnership with companies that will create the clean, safe fuels of the 21st century and the millions of good American jobs that will follow.

That's what Democrats stand for. It's time they said it.

Westen's challenge may seem ambitious this late in the midterm game, and a couple of readers' responses after his article argue that he has overstated the Democratic reluctance to attack. There is no question in my mind, however, that our attack could be stronger and more focused along the lines Westen advocates. There is still time to implement some of Westen's suggestions to good effect -- not only for the midterms, but for 2012 and the long haul.

Unfortunately, I was unable to make it to the California Republican Party convention this weekend in San Diego. I'm sure it was a blast for all involved.  The conservative, the right-wingers, the Tea partiers, and the over the top offensively backward.  A raucous good time, I'm sure.

Fortunately, the good folks at CalBuzz were able to make it.  I suggest you go read their 10 insights, but I'll just pull out one, perhaps off-hand comment:

The convention's biggest surprise came when a thickly muscled bouncer demanded that your Calbuzz correspondents (combined age: 122) produce I.D. to gain admittance to some second-rate pizza-joint-with-a-full-bar in the Gaslamp Quarter which they stumbled upon in the pre-dawn hours. The move by Thor (not his real name) reflected not only his apparent legal blindness, but also some CYA concerns he clearly felt in noting we were two decades younger than the average GOP convention worthy swarming the streets.

Of course, California Democrats have the same issue.  The party infrastructures of both parties are dismissive of the youth, and vice versa.  Of course, it comes down to a chicken and the egg type situation at some point, but if California is to become a truly 21st Century state, we need more young leaders willing to get involved in all segments of the state's politics.

I suppose that I should mention here that I was just elected as the regional director of the state Democratic party for San Francisco and the northern half of San Mateo county.  So, I suppose I'll say not just to my fellow Democrats, but to those of all political persuasions, that the way we make change is to get involved.  We must insist that California plans for the long-term instead of playing games with the present.

Democrats have a leg up in this area.  Young voters are overwhelmingly Democratic voters, but we must make sure that this stays true, and the so-called "millenials" continue to stay engaged beyond a one-off election.  Sure, it will be good for Democrats, but it will also be good for (small-d) democracy.

Does anyone out there remember the glee from the Left when Tony Abbott was raised to the Liberal Party leadership just nine months ago? Let's have a little reminder.

'Veteran pollster Rod Cameron says simply of Tony Abbott that he is “unelectable”. “This is a description I reserve for a very small group of politicians,” he adds.' (The Sydney Institute)

"But this will not be enough. Abbott’s aggressive, pugilistic public persona, his deep social conservatism, and his tacit support of WorkChoices and of climate change denialism, will most likely make him unelectable. The 2010 election won’t be particularly meaningful; there is no viable alternative." (Online Opinion)

"Roll on the DD (double dissolution). If Rudd can’t smell blood now there is no hope for any of us. The only way to get a credible 21st century alternative party is to destroy the Liberal Party. Roll on the elections." (Blogger from larvatusprodeo.net)

 "Abbott 'humbled and daunted' by the task of leading the Liberal party to its next electoral humiliation." (Larvatus Prodeo)

 

 “I think that Abbott is in a strong position. Except for that whole being Tony Abbott thing." (Larvatus Prodeo)

 

"Of course a lot of people will vote for him…The rusted ons. The question is, will enough people vote for him. The answer is simple. No." (Larvatus Prodeo)

"Abbott? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I can’t fracking believe it. This has got to be a new low. Even for the Liberals."  (Larvatus Prodeo)

"If Joe Hockey does the decent thing, and doesn’t run against Turnbull, it now seems quite likely that Turnbull would prevail against the unelectable Abbott."  (John Quiggin)

"Tony Abbott is unpalatable to the Australian electorate. He is unelectable, as he carries too much baggage from the Howard era, and his right-wing, conservative views are distasteful to the majority. The Liberal Party has just taken a shift to the extreme right…He is an oaf, an absolute fool. Rudd is assured of an increased majority at the next election. There is NO WAY Abbott is going to win the hearts and minds of the Aussie electorate." (Herald Sun)

"In making Tony Abbott their leader, the Liberal Party have declared themselves unelectable and destroyed their future." (Dinkum Democrats)

 

"December 1^st, it would seem, was the day that will be forever remembered as the day the Liberal Party decided to extend their stay as opposition party by an extra term by electing eminently unelectable piece of slime Tony Abbott leader of the party." (Young Aus Skeptics)

"It is just not credible that Abbott will lead the Liberals to the next election should Parliament run its full term. He is simply unelectable and the fact that the Liberals have had to reach so far in to their reserves for a leader and can only come up with Abbott says all that needs to be said about Howard's ultimate legacy." (The Age)

"Yay. Labor for sure at the next election - thanks Libs, you might as well stay at home until you elect the next leader - Abbott's unelectable." (Brisbane Times)

"Does Tony look manly with his shirt off? His anti-abortion, pro-Workchoices, climate-change denier stance make the Liberal’s unelectable." (New Matilda)

"The political laugh of 2009 comes from Mark Latham writing in today’s Australian Financial Review. Latham observes that Tony Abbot is 'unelectable'!" (Working Papers)

"Tony Abbott is a real believer" so what he is also a real goose! Oh and unelectable as a PM, make sure you tell him that will you?" (Blogger from Sydney Morning Herald)

"Bronwyn Bishop, Wilson Tuckey, John Robb, Kevin Andrews, Eric Abetz, Barnaby Joyce, and Warren Truss remain, and are seven more reasons why Tony Abbott is unelectable to the middle margins." (Comment on ABC.net)

...

Anytime there's an effort to promote progressive, sustainable policies for California's future, Joel Kotkin is right there to argue why it's a terrible idea and we should just continue with the same 20th century policies that have brought us the Great Recession.

But his latest screed tops everything else he's written. In a remarkable article titled The Golden State's War On Itself, he acknowledges the death of the California Dream - and then proceeds to blame progressives for killing the dream, despite the fact that it's been conservative Republicans who have governed California for the last three decades and who have had the most success implementing their policies:

What went so wrong? The answer lies in a change in the nature of progressive politics in California. During the second half of the twentieth century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the way the Huns viewed a city-as something to be sacked and plundered. The result is two separate California realities: a lucrative one for the wealthy and for government workers, who are largely insulated from economic decline; and a grim one for the private-sector middle and working classes, who are fleeing the state.

This is a taste of the overall thrust of the article. It is as wrong as the day is long - but this "blame the victim" argument, designed to let conservatives off the hook for the damage they have wrought in California, has to be pushed back against strongly.

More below.
Kotkin's overall concept is of an "older progressivism" that was unfailingly pro-business - which, if you had even the slightest knowledge of Hiram Johnson, Upton Sinclair, or Culbert Olson you'd know wasn't remotely true, they were anti-corporate crusaders who aroused the strong ire of business - which at some point was replaced by an anti-business progressivism that has driven jobs out of the state.

None of this is true. While early 20th century progressives fought big business tooth and nail, people like Pat Brown instead focused on using government to provide economic growth, security, and prosperity. That emphasis has never changed for progressives.

But what did happen was that in the 1970s, conservatives used an economic crisis to begin destroying the Pat Brown California which had done such a good job of spurring innovation and job creation.

Nowhere in Kotkin's essay will you find ANY mention of Proposition 13 or the right-wing assault on state government. Nowhere will you find any discussion of three decades of state government policy designed to give business exactly what Kotkin says it deserves - less regulation and less taxes.

Kotkin also tries to blame public sector unions for the crisis - it's a grab bag of conservative bogeymen, strung together with flawed history and flawed facts.

Let's look at some examples. Here's Kotkin on the crucial turning point of Jerry Brown's first governorship:

The decline of progressivism continued under the next governor: Pat Brown's son, Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr., who took office in 1975. Brown scuttled infrastructure spending, in large part because of his opposition to growth and concern for the environment. Encouraged by "reforms" backed by Brown-such as the 1978 Dill Act, which legalized collective bargaining for them-the public-employee unions became the best-organized political force in California and currently dominate Democrats in the legislature (see "The Beholden State," Spring 2010). According to the unions, public funds should be spent on inflating workers' salaries and pensions-or else on expanding social services, often provided by public employees-and not on infrastructure or higher education, which is why Brown famously opposed new freeway construction and water projects and even tried to rein in the state's university system.

In other words, Kotkin says Brown slashed spending on infrastructure in order to please the unions.

This just isn't true. As I explained in my recent article on the Brown governorship in California Northern Magazine Brown had actually alienated his progressive base, including unions, with his austerity budgets.

Brown didn't slash spending in response to union demands. He did it in response to the 1974 recession, as one of his first acts in office. By 1977 the surplus he'd hoarded had generated outraged calls from liberals for using that spending for property tax relief to targeted homeowners as well as on social spending. In 1978, as a result of Prop 13, Brown called for and implemented further austerity, including cuts to state worker pay, benefits, and jobs.

Contrary to Kotkin's claims, Brown wasn't hostile to infrastructure. He just didn't think it made a lot of sense to spend money on 1950s infrastructure, and subsequent events have proved him right. Brown played a key role in getting solar and wind energy projects approved - the wind farms you see at the Altamont, Tehachapi, Pacheco, and San Gorgonio passes were all built with help from Governor Brown. And Brown established the state's first high speed rail project in 1982.

I've criticized Brown's tendency toward austerity in the past, and I'll surely do so again. But that tendency wasn't there in order to channel money to unions. It was there because that's who Brown is. Look at these news reports of Governor Brown from the mid-1970s. He famously responded to liberal complaints by saying "it's not because I'm conservative - it's because I'm cheap."

Kotkin also ascribes to progressives beliefs actually held by Republicans:

The new progressives were as unenthusiastic about welcoming business as about building infrastructure. Fundamentally indifferent or even hostile to the existing private sector, they embraced two peculiar notions about what could sustain California's economy in its place. The first of these was California's inherent creativity-a delusion held not only by liberal Democrats. David Crane, Governor Schwarzenegger's top economic advisor, once told me that California could easily afford to give up blue-collar jobs in warehousing, manufacturing, or even business services because the state's vaunted "creative economy" would find ways to replace the lost employment and income. California would always come out ahead, he said, because it represented "ground zero for creative destruction."

Just so we're clear, Kotkin is quoting David Crane - a libertarian devotee of Milton Friedman and Arnold Schwarzenegger's "top economic adviser" - as being a "progressive." Once again we see Kotkin misstating the facts and distorting the truth.

Kotkin spends some time slamming AB 32, despite the fact that it has indeed led to the creation of thousands of new jobs in California, acting as one of the few bright spots amidst the wreckage of the Great Recession.

Then he shifts to making discredited claims about high taxes and regulations driving jobs out of California:

The regulatory restraints, high taxes, and onerous rules enacted by the new progressives lead to high housing prices, making much of California too expensive for middle- and working-class employees and encouraging their employers to move elsewhere.

Silicon Valley, for instance-despite the celebrated success of Google and Apple-has 130,000 fewer jobs now than it had a decade ago, with office vacancy above 20 percent. In Los Angeles, garment factories and aerospace companies alike are shutting down. Toyota has abandoned its Fremont plant. California lost nearly 400,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2007, according to a report by the Milken Institute-even as industrial employment grew in Texas and Arizona. A sign of the times: transferring factory equipment from the Bay Area to other locales has become a thriving business, notes Tom Abate of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Sounds bad - but if you look more closely you see that Kotkin's point here is inaccurate, flawed and contradictory.

Inaccurate: Jed Kolko of the Public Policy Institute of California looked at the stats, and concluded that claims of mass job emigration out of California were untrue:

Rhetoric aside, California loses very few jobs to other states. Businesses rarely move either out of or into California and, on balance, the state loses only 11,000 jobs annually as a result of relocation-that's just 0.06 percent of California's 18 million jobs. Far more jobs are created and destroyed as a result of business expansion, contraction, formation, and closure than because of relocation. Business relocations, although highly visible, are a misleading guide to the overall performance of the California economy. The employment growth rate, which takes into account job creation and destruction for all reasons-not just relocation-is a much better measure of the state's economy.

Flawed: It wasn't high taxes and regulations that caused Toyota to close NUMMI. Kotkin assumes people don't know about the Great Recession or its impact on Toyota's NUMMI partner, GM, which pulled out of NUMMI when it went bankrupt. Toyota, facing its own financial problems, claimed it couldn't afford to keep that plant open even though it had been profitable - not because of California costs and regulations but because of global economic conditions. And Kotkin further doesn't tell you that the NUMMI plant is going to reopen to make Tesla electric cars - the very kind of green jobs Kotkin claims don't exist.

Contradictory: How could Apple and Silicon Valley have sprouted up and thrived over these last 30 years if Kotkin was right that during that same time, California was suffering under the yoke of progressive anti-business tyranny?

Kotkin then decides to totally misrepresent my own views:

Under the new progressives, it's always hoi polloi who need to lower their expectations. More than four out of five Californians favor single-family homes, for example, but progressive thinkers like Robert Cruickshank, writing in California Progress Report, want to replace "the late 20th century suburban model of the California Dream" with "an urban, sustainable model that is backed by a strong public sector." Of course, this new urban model will apply not to the wealthy progressives who own spacious homes in the suburbs but to the next generation, largely Latino and Asian. Robert Eyler, chair of the economics department at Sonoma State University, points out that wealthy aging yuppies in Sonoma County have little interest in reviving growth in the local economy, where office vacancy rates are close to those in Detroit. Instead, they favor policies, such as "smart growth" and an insistence on "renewable" energy sources, that would make the area look like a gated community-a green one, naturally.

This is where Kotkin's virulent defense of suburban sprawl comes into play. As I've written about many times, Californians are already shifting away from that model. Those Californians who insist on defending it are, in fact, the elitists who are building what I've called a homeowner aristocracy by preventing greater urban density and the transportation services needed to sustain density. If someone wants to live in a detached suburban home, that's their right, but people should also have the option of living in an affordable, walkable, dense community if they wish. Many Californians currently want that option but are denied it by policies Kotkin defends which make suburban sprawl virtually the only choice for people looking for housing.

As to the question of "wealthy aging yuppies," I have railed against those folks when they become NIMBYs, denouncing folks in Palo Alto and Berkeley who fight mass transit (for example) or criticizing LA homeowners who fight density.

Kotkin then concludes by saying that California should, instead of coddling unions, we should attack unions, slash taxes, drill for more oil, and spend billions more on new freeways.

As we know, that is exactly what California has been doing for 30 years. And it has produced the Great Recession that is causing so much suffering across California through our costly dependence on oil, our lack of funding for the public services such as schools, health care, and mass transit that are required to produce economic prosperity in the 21st century.

Kotkin basically thinks California should double down on these failed policies, and justifies it by lying to his readers about who is responsible for the current crisis, setting up a "progressive" straw man to draw attention away from conservative policies he pretends never existed, from conservative governors he pretends California never had (the names George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson do not once appear in Kotkin's article).

We've always known Kotkin is motivated by a desire to fight progressives and preserve the failed policies of the mid-20th century. But in this article he showed that such a defense is no longer possible using intellectually honest arguments, and so he has to instead construct a false version of history in a desperate bid to prevent Californians from holding conservatives and their policies accountable for causing this crisis.

Let's hope Californians don't fall for Kotkin's latest bit of nonsense.

Gay rights activists cheered as a California judge announced that same-sex couples might enjoy the tedium of wedded-bliss as early as Wednesday. The professional left -- long eager for the destruction of marriage so it could marry 5 dogs and an emu -- needed the pick-me-up after Dennis Kucinich explicitly stated he will not make a White House bid in 2012. Stay tuned tomorrow for more news on Elizabeth Warren's White House visit and whether we all have drowned in this never-ending rainstorm . Stay dry, Washington, this is HUFFPOST HILL for Thursday, August 12th, 2010:

BREAKING: ELIZABETH WARREN IN WHITE HOUSE MEETING TODAY - The government's top TARP overseer and the professional left's top choice to run the forthcoming consumer protection bureau was spotted by MSNBC's Savannah Guthrie leaving the White House. Her visit was later confirmed by HuffPost's Sam Stein.

"The President believes that Elizabeth Warren is a champion for middle class families and consumers and she, among others, is a strong contender for this position. The President has not yet made a decision and no announcement is imminent," White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage told HuffPost Hill in a statement. Warren met with staff, not the president.

Even if Elizabeth Warren gets nominated, we'll still be living in a world where antibiotics will soon be a pretty nice thing that people had in the 20th Century. Guardian: http://bit.ly/9AExza

And the climate will still be going to hell. HuffPo: http://huff.to/csrRsT

JUDGE SAYS CALIFORNIA GAY MARRIAGE BAN WILL EXPIRE ON AUGUST 18TH...MAYBE - "A federal judge put gay marriages on hold for at least another six days in California, disappointing dozens of gay couples who lined up outside City Hall hoping to tie the knot Thursday. Judge Vaughn Walker gave opponents of same-sex weddings until Aug. 18 at 5 p.m. to get a ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on whether gay marriage should resume. Gay marriages could happen at that point or be put off indefinitely depending on how the court rules." http://huff.to/d96i9w

Judge Walker: "The evidence presented at trial and the position of the representatives of the State of California show that an injunction against enforcement of Proposition 8 is in the public's interest. Accordingly, the court concludes that the public interest counsels against entry of the stay proponents seek."

The order: http://bit.ly/9HbHGk

@PEliottAP: WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Defense Department says that only about a quarter of the troops sent a survey on gays in the military have responded.

HUFFPOST EXCLUSIVE: PAT TILLMAN'S FATHER'S ANGRY LETTER TO THE ARMY - A documentary on Pat Tillman, the former NFL star whose death by friendly fire in Afghanistan lead to an alleged cover-up, will soon be released by the Weinstein Company. The film studio provided the Huffington Post with two letters from Tillman's father, Pat Senior, to Brigadier General Gary M. Jones -- who spearheaded the investigation of Tillman's death -- and the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sam Stein: "'You are a General,' Tillman's father writes Jones after being presented with a briefing book of his findings...'I thought your rank disservice it and anticipated something different from the new and improved investigation. I won't act so hypocritically if we meet again...In sum: F*ck you... and yours.'" http://huff.to/chopw7

L'ETAT, C'EST MOI CHUCK SCHUMER AND BEN CARDIN: SENATE PASSES $600 MILLION BORDER SECURITY MEASURE - All by their lonesome, the two lawmakers passed the border bill and a resolution honoring the life of Ted Stevens, the ex-Alaska senator who perished in a plane crash this week. "The border security measure would fund the hiring of 1,000 new Border Patrol agents to be deployed at critical areas along the border, 250 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and 250 more Customs and Border Protection officers. It provides for new communications equipment and greater use of unmanned surveillance drones...The bill is paid for by raising fees on foreign-based personnel companies that use U.S. visa programs, including the popular H-1B program, to bring skilled workers to the United States." http://huff.to/dzcvGi

House Dems Hit Geithner For Going After Underwater Homeowners - John Conyers and Marcy Kaptur are gathering signatures for a letter pushing back against a proposed administration policy to go after people who walk away from their mortgages. "This opaque, flawed proposed policy would be a poor use of taxpayer dollars, does nothing to help keep individuals in their homes, and will likely result in the targeting of individuals who default on their mortgages through no fault of their own," they write.

DCCC CHAIR: RETIREMENT AGE WILL STAY AT 65 - On the same week Democrats are set to host 100 town halls focused on the entitlement program, Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen discussed the initiative in an interview with HuffPost's Sam Stein. "All of the information I've seen, and I've seen some of the national polling data and some in local districts as well, show that people are... extremely nervous about privatizing Social Security," he said. "And they are worried that that's what Republicans intend to do. They tried it once... and it is a major plank in the road map that was set forth by their point person on the budget committee, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.)." http://huff.to/aYFp5T

Republican Candidate Apologizes For Crazy Tweet - A Republican congressional candidate and RNC committee member has personally apologized for a tweet his campaign sent out promoting an article that called his opponent a "turban topper" who "could be a muslim, a hindu, a buddhist etc who knows." Republican Mike Pompeo, who is running for a congressional seat in Kansas fourth district, called State Rep. Raj Goyle on Thursday to offer his regrets for the offending post, Goyle told Sam Stein. The apology was accepted.

DFA Raises Big Against Bachmann, Campbell - Democracy For America showed off some serious professional leftism today, raising more money in 24 hours with an email ask than they ever had before. The secret to pulling down the $50,000 was raising against Michele Bachmann and John Campbell on behalf of Democrats Tarryl Clark and Beth Krom.

That's a little bit more than Alan Grayson raised by going after Politico, indicating it takes two despised Republicans to equal one Politico.

First Read, via Kos: "The GOP has a HUGE generic-ballot edge in the South (52%-31%), but it doesn't lead anywhere else. In the Northeast, Dems have a 55%-30% edge; in the Midwest, they lead 49%-38%; and in the West, it's 44%-43%." http://bit.ly/9PsgBr

Don't be bashful: Send tips/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to huffposthill@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter - @HuffPostHill

CHARLIE RANGEL ONCE AGAIN DEFENDS HIMSELF AGAINST ETHICS CHARGES - The embattled New York congressman, who just days earlier made a defiant speech on the House floor, reiterated his innocence at a campaign rally in New York today. "I should not have to encourage the Fourth Estate to take a look at the law, that should help," he said. "No paper can deny anybody, even a Charlie Rangel, the opportunity to a fair, equitable and just hearing." The Hill: http://bit.ly/bt5GX2

Ragnel's press conference was somehow overshadowed by a totally remarkable incident last night in which a New Yorker yelled something offensive and a local politician responded by doing something brash. NY Times: "About 5:45 p.m. Wednesday, as guests began strolling into the Plaza Hotel to celebrate Representative Charles B. Rangel's 80th birthday, former Mayor David N. Dinkins turned to confront a heckler."You know you are attending a party for a crook," the man yelled. At that, Mr. Dinkins, a paragon of statesmanship and dignity, raised his middle finger at the man, displaying it for all to see, according to witnesses, whose accounts were confirmed by the former mayor. http://nyti.ms/bbSZYY

Rangel dancing at said birthday party: http://bit.ly/aV401C

DENNIS KUCINICH TAKES A BREAK FROM HOT-BOXING HIS CANADIAN HEALTH CLINIC WITH THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT TO SAY HE WON'T RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2012 - The de facto leader of the nation's kombucha and freecycle set responded to Robert Gibbs' broadside against the liberal establishment. AP: "Rep. Dennis Kucinich tells ABC's 'Good Morning America' that press secretary Robert Gibbs shouldn't have attacked the 'professional left.' Gibbs had said liberals were too hard to please and that they wouldn't be content even with Kucinich, a renowned progressive, as president. The Ohio Democrat said, 'Those of us who call ourselves liberal say we're not going to rest until we get back to a full employment economy.' Asked if he would challenge Obama for the party's nomination in 2012, Kucinich, who ran in 2008, replied, 'No.'" http://huff.to/b2PIyn

Demonstrating once and for all that she is not a San Francisco elitist, Nancy Pelosi appeared on Bravo's Top Chef DC last night and picked the "blue" team. Politico Click has a a summary with video: http://politi.co/9EciiF

WAVE OF DEPARTURES FROM THE WHITE HOUSE - With the thrill going up their legs subsiding and the "professional left" taking a break from cocooning itself in Burt's Bees products to relentlessly attack their accomplishments, White House staffers are making like a banana and splitting. NYT: "Eighteen months into President Obama's term, some of the first-generation team that arrived with him at the White House are moving on...In the last two weeks, Peter R. Orszag, the White House budget director, clocked his final day; Christina Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, announced plans to return to California; and Camille Johnston, the first lady's communications director, accepted a high-level corporate job. They follow nearly a dozen others who have left since the inauguration." http://nyti.ms/cBcbns

MIKE HUCKABEE VOICES OPPOSITION TO 14TH AMENDMENT OVERHAUL - The move once again proves that he's just your dime-a-dozen, friendly neighborhood Joe who believes the 10 Commandments should be displayed in public schools and that homosexuality is comparable to incest. Sam Stein: "Asked specifically whether he would favor repealing parts of the 14th Amendment, Huckabee replied [on NPR]: 'I don't think that's even possible.' 'Would you favor it?' pressed NPR's host Tom Ashbrook. 'No,' said Huckabee. 'Let me tell you what I would favor. I would favor having controlled borders... but that's where the federal government has miserably and hopelessly failed us.'' http://huff.to/bEBr6G

A new PPP survey finds Ron Paul playing spoiler if he makes a third party bid in 2012. "PPP's monthly look ahead to the 2012 Presidential race finds that Ron Paul could play a major role as a third party candidate. He gets 13% in a hypothetical three way contest with Barack Obama getting 42% and Mitt Romney 36%...In a direct head to head between Obama and Romney the President leads 45-42 so Paul as a third party candidate could be worth roughly 3 points to Obama's margin of victory."

GROUND ZERO MOSQUE IMAM WORKED WITH W - Proving once and for all that he really does want to see America kick the bucket, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has reportedly teamed up with President Bush in the past. Christian Science Monitor: "'His work on tolerance and religious diversity is well-known and he brings a moderate perspective to foreign audiences on what it's like to be a practicing Muslim in the United States,' State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley said Tuesday. He added that the department's public-diplomacy offices 'have a long-term relationship with' Rauf - including during the past Bush administration, when the religious leader undertook a similar speaking tour [to promote abroad Muslim life in America]." Via TPM: http://bit.ly/bDtAp0

Today in The Times They Are A-Changin': "Temporary housing used in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is showing up in western North Dakota's oil patch, where a boom in activity has created a housing crunch. Morey Bang of Medora bought seven cottages and 17 campers at an auction conducted by the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and moved them into Belfield. Bang also has purchased a motel and a former church in Killdeer, and is renting both facilities to oil field workers." AP: http://bit.ly/b9h2A7

TEXAS GUBERNATORIAL CONTEST GETTING RACE-Y - You have to be impressed with the speed in which Bill White transitions from placating a liberal audience to a conservative one. Dallas Morning News: "Rick Perry called on Bill White today to apologize for telling an African-American audience that he would be a 'servant' as governor while Perry wants to be a 'master.' 'Injecting that type of language into the race is not appropriate,' Perry said. White fired back, saying Perry 'is just trying to play racial politics.' White said that if anybody was offended, he apologizes. But he added that his remarks stand: 'I do think the government should be the servant and not the master. It's a deeply conservative philosophy.'" http://bit.ly/dmzalq

Speaking of race-y, we're going to go ahead and cry racist on this new David Vitter ad, which takes the "illegals are scary" thing just a bit too far by equating "you" with "white" and "them" with "nefarious Mexican day laborers." Just remember, America, next time you see a Mexican dude in work clothes, he's probably breaking the law: http://bit.ly/aZVHiI

SUPREME COURT TO CONSIDER ORLY TAITZ CASE - Everyone's favorite dentist/lawyer might be headed to the highest court in the land. God bless America. "A request to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito by 'birther' attorney Orly Taitz asking that $20,000 in sanctions against her be reversed was referred on Tuesday to the entire court...Taitz appealed the sanctions to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. That court upheld the sanctions in March, and Taitz sent an application for stay to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on July 8. Thomas denied it a week later. Taitz then refiled it with Alito on Aug. 4. That request was referred on Tuesday to the entire nine-member court, the Supreme Court's website states.'He circulated it to the other eight justices and said, 'Does anybody else want to do something with this?'' Columbus attorney William Mason said." Ledger-Enquirer. http://bit.ly/cg6Wsm

DC is trying to return to its swampy roots... don't let it. From a city government alert: "The Department of Public Works is making sandbags available to residents between 3 pm and midnight Thursday, August 12, 2010, to help prevent their homes from flooding in light of additional storms predicted for later today. The sandbags can be picked up from the rolloff box at the DPW site at New Jersey Avenue and K Street, SE (on the New Jersey Avenue side on the back lower level). The bags weigh approximately 40 lbs. to 50 lbs., but DPW will not be able to provide assistance with loading them into residents' vehicles. DPW does ask people to take no more than four bags per household."

JEREMY THE INTERN'S WEATHER REPORT - Tonight: The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm watch for most of the area through 9 p.m. We at the HPH storm center believe there will be storms later -- we're right along a front's edge and it won't pass over us -- but will err more towards the 7-9 p.m. time frame. We've seen tornado warnings in Fredrick, MD and Fredricksburg, VA, already, so please be alert to warnings/watches coming up. The atmospheric conditions are favorable for that. Should there be a warning issued for your county, go to your basement and stay under a bed or desk. If you don't have a basement, go to the lowest floor and stay in a windowless room with something protecting you from falling debris. Better safe than sorry. Tomorrow: The front looks pretty stationary, so you can expect a washout with storms popping up.

COMFORT FOOD

- A blog that documents the best (and worst) in bathroom wall graffiti. http://bit.ly/9F1DxH

- The 50 best fictional bands. http://bit.ly/dmaHN4

- File this under "Never Again:" A beer pong rap. http://bit.ly/cS9RbE

- A turtle trying to squeeze through a doggie door. http://bit.ly/aUkpam

- A Communist rendition of Michael Jackson's "Beat It." http://bit.ly/91d6VY

- The most ridiculous Vladimir Putin headlines ever. http://huff.to/cjXHOd

- If there was an XFL for soccer, this would be it. http://bit.ly/a5YJF5

TWITTERAMA

@delrayser: Today's storm an excellent reminder that the primary purpose of Twitter is so ppl in DC can tell you about our weather.

@GregMitch: Ben Quayle: Porn to Run? Porn Under a Bad Sign? Porn With a Silver Spoon in His Mouth?

@michaelianblack: Has a study been done to determine which is worse for marriage: gay people or the fact that nobody has a job?

THE TUBE

TONIGHT: Someone alert Arthur Delaney, Michael Danielson, an unemployed 99er, was on Ratigan. Joe Solmonese and anchor-to-be Lawrence O'Donnell were on Hardball. HuffPost's Roy Sekoff is on the Ed Show. Arizona AG and gubernatorial candidate Terry Goddard stops by the Rachel Maddow show.

ON TAP

TONIGHT

5:00 pm: Phillips After 5 rolls on featuring a scavenger hunt, jazz from Federico Pena and Friends and a cash bar [The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street NW].

8:30 pm: Black Cat hosts a free screening of two of history's greatest second fiddle rock-movies Help! and Quadrophenia [Black Cat, 1811 14th St NW].

TOMORROW

5:00 pm - 8:30 pm: It wouldn't be Friday in DC without Jazz in the Garden. This week, the Carsten Boe Trio performs its brand of "Django jazz from Oslo, Norway." All right [Smithsonian Sculpture Garden, 700 Constitution Avenue NW].
All Evening: The grand opening of Sweetspot, a new Dupont dance spot [Sweetspot, 1140 19th St NW].

Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com), Ryan Grim (ryan@huffingtonpost.com) or Nico Pitney (nico@huffingtonpost.com). Follow us on Twitter @HuffPostHill (twitter.com/HuffPostHill). Sign up here: http://huff.to/an2k2e

With a comprehensive energy bill unlikely this session, environmental groups are moving their resources from advocating cap and trade to defending existing emissions regulations and, in particular, the EPA. But just to show that hope springs eternal, Carol Browner is still saying some sort of carbon cap might appear in a lame-duck session of Congress -- a comment that will surely give the GOP more ammunition against the lame-duck session.

Meanwhile, unemployment is extremely high, but we're also seeing a build-up in open jobs positions; Republicans map out their strategy for defunding health care reform, which might require shutting down the government; Ben Bernanke doesn't seem very impressed with the advice he once gave Japan; and for a purportedly anti-business president, Obama has sure run a business-friendly recovery.

Welcome to Wonkbook.

Top Stories

Green groups are moving cap and trade to the back burner, reports Darren Samuelsohn: "The National Wildlife Federation, the country’s largest environmental group with 4 million members and supporters, considers it 'Job No. 1' to defend EPA against lawsuits in the federal appeals court from a broad coalition of industry and conservative state leaders, including the attorneys general in Virginia and Texas."

Ezra Klein writes that Obama's recovery has seen business recover first, and best: http://bit.ly/9FNmRq

Even as unemployment stays high, some firms are finding it hard to get employees, reports Mark Whitehouse: "Matching people with available jobs is always difficult after a recession as the economy remakes itself. But Labor Department data suggest the disconnect is particularly acute this time around. Since the economy bottomed out in mid-2009, the number of job openings has risen more than twice as fast as actual hires, a gap that didn't appear until much later in the last recovery. The disparity is most notable in manufacturing, which has had among the biggest increases in openings."

Philip Klein previews Republican strategies for defunding the Affordable Care Act: "'It's possible to defund sections of it. It would be more likely that some of those things that were done as special provisions to capture one or two votes are more vulnerable than others.' For instance, he noted the 'Louisiana Purchase' of $300 million in Medicaid money, inserted as Democrats were courting Sen. Mary Landrieu to vote for the Senate bill. Another example is the increased funding for Internal Revenue Service agents to audit businesses and individuals to enforce mandates."

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Ben Bernanke is going against his own advice from the Japanese economic crisis of the 1990s, reports Jon Hilsenrath: "When Japan fell into deflation in the 1990s, Mr. Bernanke, then a Princeton professor, urged the Bank of Japan to set an objective of 3% to 4% inflation. The reason: With interest rates pinned at zero, rising inflation would mean that the real cost of borrowing, which is nominal interest rates minus inflation, would be falling. In theory that would spur demand. As Fed chairman, Mr. Bernanke has rejected that idea, in part because the U.S. doesn't have deflation now. But if deflation does set in, calls for inflation above the Fed's informal goal of 1.5% to 2% could become louder."

Late night rock interlude: Titus Andronicus play "A More Perfect Union" on Jimmy Fallon.

Still to come: The tax code encourages corporate debt; Obama's head energy advisor says a lame duck climate bill is possible; new legislation would return Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter to the Supreme Court; and pictures of dogs wearing goggles.

Economy/FinReg

America's private debt problem has been egged on by the tax code, reports David Cho: "The combined impact of those two deductions can be tremendous, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Together, they can free a company from paying tax on any income produced by projects financed with debt. But that's not all. The combined deduction can be so large that a company may also be able to apply some of it to its other income, reducing the overall tax bill even further."

Nelson Schwartz reports on academics' belief that this level of unemployment may be the "new normal": http://nyti.ms/d6YD8D

Identity confusion is causing debt collectors to hurt innocent peoples' credit scores, reports Sonja Ryst: "In the uncertain economy, people are especially sensitive to anything that can hurt their credit rating. The FTC said it recognizes that third-party collectors contact millions of people each year, and it receives more complaints about the debt-collection industry than about any other. In its 2010 annual report on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the FTC said it received 119,364 complaints about third-party and in-house debt collectors in 2009, up from 104,766 the previous year."

The FDIC is preparing the first round of credit rating regulations: http://bit.ly/bJX9XN

Robert Frank argues that extending the Bush tax cuts makes for poor stimulus: "Because most poor and middle-income families consume their entire income, higher tax rates for those families would indeed deprive the economy of much-needed short-run stimulus. But extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest families would be one of the worst possible ways to stimulate spending. These families typically consume much less than their income. Instead of trying to use up all their savings before they die, most prefer to leave substantial bequests. Letting their tax cuts expire might reduce those bequests, but it will not reduce their current consumption significantly."

James Suroweicki wants to soak the super-rich: http://bit.ly/cbVtQj

Former NEC director Keith Hennessey explains how the White House economic staff works in the wake of Christina Romer's departure: "NEC does economic policy and decision-making, and CEA does economics. They’re different. CEA staff apply economic theories and data to economic policy, while NEC staff operate at the intersection of economics, policy design, the law, communications, politics, strategy, and the practical aspects and constraints of legislating and managing a bureaucracy."

Bruce Bartlett thinks the NEC is unnecessary: http://bit.ly/dlD9Ac

Photograph interlude: America in full color, from 1939 to 1943.

Energy

Carol Browner says a climate bill is "possible" in Congress' lame duck session, reports Manu Raju: "Browner said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' that President Barack Obama is still committed to pushing the bill through the Senate, and that there was 'potential' for the bill to come up in a post-election, lame-duck session of Congress. Browner's remarks will almost certainly give ammunition to Republicans who say Democrats are plotting to do mischief in a lame-duck session -- even though top congressional Democrats have thrown cold water on an overly ambitious lame-duck agenda."

Krissah Thompson and David Fahrenthold detail Gulf residents' concerns as the oil spill recovery winds down: http://bit.ly/adIWn1

Recent fires are waking Russia up to climate change, reports John Collins Rudolf: "The heat-induced disaster may come as little surprise to Russian climate scientists, who have warned for years that the country is experiencing rapid warming that will only accelerate over the course of the 21st century. Drawing on the work of leading climate researchers, a 2008 report compiled by Russia’s state environmental agency concluded that Russia was warming twice as fast as the rest of the world and experienced an average temperature increase of about 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of the 20th century."

Thad Allen gives BP mixed scores on the spill cleanup effort: http://politi.co/aVrN5w

Julie Makinen writes that insurance companies are embracing green tech: "They are advising companies on how best to incorporate renewable energy systems into their factory operations and offering property insurance that will pay not just to rebuild a structure in the event of a loss like fire but reconstruct it in a more environmentally friendly and energy-efficient way. They are even offering coverage to carbon traders. So, if you are a European utility engaged in an emissions offset program in China and a devastating earthquake damages your partner power plant in Sichuan, you have some peace of mind."

Adorable animals on Flickr interlude: Dogs wearing goggles.

Domestic Policy

A bill from Pat Leahy could call back retired Supreme Court justices when current ones recuse themselves, reports Robert Barnes: "In her first term, which concluded in June, Sotomayor recused herself from six cases, for instance, and did not take part in a greater number that the court was considering whether to review. Elena Kagan, the newest justice, will be absent from the court's mahogany bench for more than that. She already has identified a dozen cases she worked on as solicitor general that she will not hear as a justice, and more are likely as the court accepts new cases for the term that begins in October."

House liberals will try to restore food stamp funding in the state aid bill, reports Walter Alarkon: "DeLauro oversees annual spending on the food stamps program as chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee for Agriculture. Asked if she would try to restore the food stamps money in future legislation, DeLauro said, 'Yes, absolutely, I will be fighting for these funds.'"

Matthew Yglesias argues economic downturns foster xenophobia: http://bit.ly/aRecwn

Immigration rights groups are bashing the Democrats over the new border spending bill, reports Carrie Budoff Brown: "'If the Democrats try to feed the beast of enforcement that Republicans seem to be fixated on, they are never going to satiate that appetite,' said Angela Kelley, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at the Center for American Progress. 'I don’t know if Schumer thinks this is the candy that coaxes them back to the table, but it’s sort of like my fourth grader -- there is never enough candy in the world to make her happy.'"

Robert Samuelson argues the tax code punishes parenthood: http://bit.ly/bEBEFv

Paul Krugman sees America's infrastructure crumbling in the face of the recession: "The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud -- to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole."

James Fallows proposes term limits for Supreme Court justices: http://bit.ly/agB5SG

Closing credits: Wonkbook compiled with the help of Dylan Matthews and Mike Shepard.

United States - Sandra Day O'Connor - National Wildlife Federation - Internal Revenue Service - Carol Browner

Republicans have done a fantastic job of playing up expectations for this fall's election. They've likened this fall's election to the Revolutionary War. They've predicted that they will retake either one or both houses of Congress. They've said that the rise of the Tea Party movement is going to be the deciding factor in their quest to take back the country from socialism. They're fundraising with talk of "Speaker Boehner." They seem, publically at least, certain of victory.

What if things don't turn as expected? What will the Republican say about themselves should they fail to retake either house of Congress?

I'm of one mind. The Republican Party's position on why they failed will be simple: They weren't conservative enough. They will also lay blame elsewhere, of course. They'll say that their candidates weren't experienced enough. They'll allege voter fraud by the NAACP or La Raza. They'll blame Obama. But mainly, they'll retreat further and further into wignut land. They'll demand even more conservatism. They'll say not enough emphasis was placed on social issues like abortion and gay marriage. They'll say that terrorism was not fought with enough vigor. They'll retreat, even further, into a base that is exclusively white, overwhelmingly male, rural, and old. And, of course, they'll make a pilgrimage to the grave of Ronald Reagan to beseech his ghost for advice.

What of the Democrats?

Will Democrats read their loss of seats as a cautionary tale? A warning of sorts? Will they continue to be led by the nose by an opposition that is extreme and out of touch? Will they reach the counter-intuitive conclusion that the reason they lost seats was some sort of signal that they went too far, did too much? Will they interpret the election as a referendum on themselves? Will they conclude that the election was a rejection of clean energy legislation, immigration reform, and further deficit spending to keep the economy from spiraling into depression?

It is the wrong way to read victory.

What Washington Democrats need to know is this: they will lose seats, but they will not lose the majority of the American people. It is for this reason that they must read the midterm election, should they keep both houses of Congress, as the American people giving them another shot at the job. The American people took a look at what the Republicans offered, and decided that the alternative was much worse than what they've already got. But that does not mean they are pleased with what they have gotten so far, as the right track/wrong track numbers consistently indicate. Should they come of this election with their Congressional majority intact, the simple way to interpret it is: this time, get it right.

The Democrats have enacted legislation that is taking the country in the right direction, but is not strong enough to clear the effectiveness hurdle. That is what people want: an effective government that gets the right things done. Therefore, the Democratic majority of the 112th Congress should look as opportunity to pass better legislation and not just more of it. They do not want to continue the ineffective results of bipartisanship or else they would have given the GOP the majority.

Using the election mandate to gut Social Security would be a mistake. Using the mandate to pass pithy energy legislation that fails to solve the fossil fuel problem would be a mistake. Passing another ineffective tax cut to create jobs would be mistake. Failing to reform the rules of the Senate would be a devastating mistake.

If Democrats come through this election with their majority intact, this will be the time for Democrats to stand up and be real, bona-fide Democrats. Take the opportunity to pass strong measures that make a real difference for the American people. Wind down the wars and the war machine that goes with it. Invest in this nation's future and in its people. Do it in a way that has an immediate impact on the vast majority of everyday people.

That is the way Democrats will make 2006, 2008, and 2010 not only elections where the people rejected the extremism of Republicans, but elections that realigned politics for the 21st century.

Listen to the Audio

Columnists Mark Shields and David Brooks speak with Jim Lehrer about how voters will view the Democratic Party headed into this fall's midterm elections and what impact the ethics charges against Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York could have.

JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Mark, are all hands going to be on deck for the Democrats?

MARK SHIELDS: No, I think Judy's piece really identified what the problem is for Democrats across the board, Jim.

The Democratic Party is a coalition. Its strength and its weakness is, it's a coalition of interest groups, caucuses. It's a lot less homogeneous than the Republican Party, where people tend to believe the same things and oftentimes look alike.

And it was probably best put by P.J. O'Rourke, the conservative satirist, who said, the Democratic Party believes that government will make you taller, smarter, richer and cure your crabgrass of your lawn as well, while the Republican Party just believes government doesn't work, and then gets elected and proves it.

Well, the Democrats do have...

JIM LEHRER: This is what P.J. O'Rourke said?

MARK SHIELDS: P.J. O'Rourke said.

JIM LEHRER: OK.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: Again, and the -- but the Democrats have this high level of expectation of what government can do.

And it's been -- remember, it's been a generation since there was a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress at the same time. You have to go all the way back to 1992 and Bill Clinton. So, the hopes were high, and Barack Obama, as we listened to those speeches, hope and change are great themes. And you can read a lot into it. You know, when you're sitting there in the audience and cheering, you say, well, he's obviously talking about the kind of change I want.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: But I don't think there's any question. E.J. Dionne, I thought, put -- pointed out, if unemployment were at 6 percent or 7 percent right now, or 5 percent right now, there wouldn't be that sense of malaise and dissension in the ranks, I mean, given the rather remarkable legislative achievements that Obama has accomplished already.

JIM LEHRER: How do you read this thing?

DAVID BROOKS: I mean, still -- we all look alike. I'm thinking about that. I mean, Ann Coulter and I look alike. But, aside from that -- no, I'm mystified by it.

You have a country...

JIM LEHRER: Mystified?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, by the disappointment.

You have a country that is 20 percent liberal, 40 percent conservative. You have a country where maybe 22 percent have faith in government. If you're a liberal, it's just going to be tough. And you should just expect that. And it's tough for people on the right, too, because they don't get what they want either if you're, say, a libertarian.

So, you have got the country sort of against you. And, nevertheless, you have a president...

JIM LEHRER: So, you're always working against a majority that is against you? That's what you're saying?

DAVID BROOKS: There's the basic mathematics.

JIM LEHRER: OK. OK.

DAVID BROOKS: Look at the numbers, 20 percent liberal, 40 percent conservative, the rest moderate. So, it's going to be tough.

JIM LEHRER: All right.

DAVID BROOKS: And, nevertheless, you get a president who passes the $800 billion stimulus act, money going through the state. You get, you know, the nationalization of health care, whatever you want to call it, health care reform.

JIM LEHRER: Oh, health care reform.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. You get the nationalization of the means of production. I think you have the Trotskyist agenda. No.

DAVID BROOKS: No, you get a pretty -- a pretty -- you get financial regulatory reform. You get a lot of stuff.

I think, from any perspective, that is a pretty good step from the left. And, by the way, it's such an aggressive expansion of government, you have scared the middle. And so the middle is now swinging over to the Republicans. So, it seems to me that the Obama administration, from a liberal perspective, has moved about as fast as humanly possible and achieved as much as humanly possible in a year-and-a-half.

And I understand you're disappointed about -- because your issues were not on the top. Immigration got pushed behind. But wide-scale disappointment, I just don't understand it.

JIM LEHRER: How serious is all this, Mark? I mean, does it -- does the -- the progressive community, as it's called, if it doesn't rally, does it really mean serious losses for the Democrats?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, it does, Jim.

And I would remind David that Barack Obama did get a higher percentage of the vote than anybody has in this country in 20 years. I mean, it was a resounding victory. I mean, whether his core constituency was 20 percent or what, his electoral constituency, which is how we measure elections, was 53 percent, which was, you know, historically high, the highest of any Democrat, other than Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, so, which is...

JIM LEHRER: But how bad is this for them?

MARK SHIELDS: But this is -- it's bad in this sense, Jim.

All about midterm elections is turnouts. And turnout is measured by enthusiasm, intensity, how interested are people. And President Obama -- candidate Obama had it on his side in 2008. The Democrats had it on their side in 2006. The enthusiasm, the intensity, the passion was all on their side.

Right now, by a measurable gulf, a gap of sometimes 18 to 20 points, it's on the Republican side. So, you have got to get your people out. And if they're indifferent, if they're cranky, if they feel neglected...

JIM LEHRER: For whatever reason, yes.

MARK SHIELDS: And there is some criticism, let's be honest about it, legitimate criticism. They don't feel that the administration has gone the distance, whether it was on the public option on health care, whether they waited too long on pushing the Senate on climate change.

Time and again, there was a sense that they didn't give that sense of urgency.

DAVID BROOKS: Visit Ohio. Visit Indiana. I mean, if you're in Berkeley, maybe the public option seems like an easy thing to do. But if you're trying to govern a whole country, it's actually kind of a hard thing to do.

I mean, Barack Obama won such a big electoral mandate because a lot of people thought he was -- transcended partisan and ideological barriers and was going to put aside the old debates. So, he was able to get a lot of moderates and a lot of independents. And so those are the people who are now disappointed, because they see him as too far to the left.

The number of people who say the Democratic Party is too liberal has risen by 22 percentage points. And so that's the key fact of the electorate. And if you are thinking about this election, well, they are not going to lose House seats in Berkeley or Austin, Texas. They're going to lose House seats in Ohio, in Central Pennsylvania, in Indiana, and places like that. And that's -- to me, that's where the focus would be.

JIM LEHRER: All right, let's be specific for a moment.

The death of -- the declaration of the death of the energy bill by the Senate, what happened? What caused that to happen? How does that fit in to all of this?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, this was always going to be a tough fight. I think we have talked about this before.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

DAVID BROOKS: You had the Republicans who didn't want to raise energy taxes, as they perceived it. And you had a lot of coal state Democrats, from the Midwest, places like that, who didn't want to punish coal producers.

So, it was always going to be a very tough fight. And I guess the one thing that sort of frustrates me is that we have had a lot of information about global warming from Al Gore and many others. And, yet, while that has happened...

JIM LEHRER: And an oil spill.

DAVID BROOKS: Right, and an oil spill.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: But while the -- all that has happened, support for a response to global warming has gone down in the American public.

And that's because a lot of the global warming information, including by Al Gore, was very partisan. So, it drift -- it pushed people away who are not liberal Democrats. And, to me, that was a mistake. That's been a mistake for 15 years. They should have made a much less partisan global warming campaign. And I think -- I'm not sure you would have got people in the near term, but you would have had more public support behind this legislation.

MARK SHIELDS: I'm sorry, I mean, I just -- I have to dissent here.

We have -- we have gone through David's own paper, this -- documented it this week, the first decade of the 21st century, the hottest we have ever had. We have had -- living through the hottest summer. We have not only an enormous oil spill in the Gulf. We have an enormous oil spill in China.

Now...

JIM LEHRER: Yes, we reported that in the news summary. It's extraordinary.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. And I don't care how many overtures you make. There wasn't a single Republican in the Senate who moved on it. I mean, you know, do you have to pass everything with nothing but Democratic votes?

I mean, do Republicans not breathe the same air? I mean, do they not worry about their children's lungs as much? I mean, this has become a partisan issue. And it's so obvious. I mean, it has to be. We're in Washington, D.C., right now. It was 101 on my car thermometer as I drove over here today.

That isn't what it was 20 years ago. I mean, this is a serious problem. And this was a serious effort to do something about it. The House did act on it. Now, I don't think, quite honestly, given the political climate at this point, that the -- it would be tough to pass it in the House today.

But, Jim, the -- I don't know what the atmospherics are going to be necessary to finally get the Senate to move on climate change.

DAVID BROOKS:Well, let's separate the broad global warming.

JIM LEHRER: OK.

DAVID BROOKS: I agree. I think it's real. I supported this bill, the Kerry-Lieberman bill, to do something about it.

But there are two ways to push legislation. There's what I think of as a way Al Gore did it, which was sort of a partisan way. And then there's the way Bono, for example, has pushed some of his foreign aid legislation.

And he says, if I'm going to meet a Democrat, I'm going to meet a Republican. If I'm going to talk to a liberal Democrat, I will make friends with Jesse Helms. And Bono has made friends with Jesse Helms -- or did while he was alive -- made friends with Jesse Helms. He made sure it was totally nonpartisan. And he took an issue that was kind of partisan and made it a lot less partisan.

That's just, to me, a much better way to pass legislation. And if we're going to get global warming in the long term -- and it's going to be a long-term thing -- to me, that's what you have got to do.

MARK SHIELDS: Al Gore has not been involved in this fight. I mean, with all due respect, in recognition of his work, a Nobel Prize and everything else, this hasn't been his fight. This has been the administration's fight.

DAVID BROOKS: We are sort of cross-talking.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: I'm talking about the global -- the big debate and why there's much less support for global warming in general.

JIM LEHRER: Two final things.

What's your reading of the impact, if any, on the midterm elections to the ethics problems of Charlie Rangel?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, it's just one more sign. Public appreciation for Congress hit a historic low this week, 11 percent support. And this will be just another sign. People don't see it as Democratic or Republican. They will just see another guy taking advantage of privileges to maybe hide a little money, do other things. So, it's just another corrosion of trust in the institution.

JIM LEHRER: Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: The reality is that the ethics record of this Congress surpasses any in my lifetime. I mean, there's a...

JIM LEHRER: You mean in a positive way or a negative way?

MARK SHIELDS: Positive. The first time we have an outside ethics panel, against overt Republican opposition, over many Democrats' opposition. No lobbyist travel -- can pay for travel for any members or gifts any longer.

In addition to that, we have, every earmark, you have to put your name on it, legislative earmark, no more profit. And -- but I agree that this is -- this hurts.

I mean, Charlie Rangel -- and I will be very up-front about it -- I like him. I have always liked him. I think he's been a good public servant. And it's an American tragedy, because it's a great American story. He was an 18-year-old high school dropout on Lenox Avenue in Harlem, was about to be drafted. He joined the Army, went to Korea, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, came back a staff sergeant, went to high school, college, and law school on the G.I. Bill, became a reformer, and beat a man who was there who was in trouble because of the hubris and because of his own sense of grandeur.

And, ultimately, ironically, 40 years later, those are the charges against Charlie.

JIM LEHRER: OK. I wanted to ask you also about the Shirley Sherrod thing, but we only have about 10 seconds left.

Do you have something you could say in five?

DAVID BROOKS: You have got to be loyal to people beneath you. Be more loyal when...

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, loyalty goes up and down, and the Obama administration did not demonstrate that this week at all -- and the shame, shame, shame on the new media, or whatever the hell they call it.

DAVID BROOKS: I agree.

JIM LEHRER: Time's up. Thank you both.

Democratic senators have been frustrated to see splits between Democrats on Capitol Hill and the administration emerge during some legislative debates.

"We discussed a need to better coordinate our message, to simplify our message and to repeat it as much as we can," said one Democratic senator who was at the meeting.

A senior Democratic aide said the discussion was about "getting on the same page so there's no more situations like we've had."

The aide pointed to legislation passed by the Democrat-controlled House, which on July 1 approved a measure to fund teaching jobs by slicing $800 million from three of the administration's education initiatives. That has drawn a veto threat from Obama.

During the debate over healthcare reform earlier this year, Democrats in both houses of Congress pushed single-payer healthcare proposals without administration support.

"It's about syncing up the administration and congressional messages to make them a little tighter," the aide said. "When something isn't echoed by the White House, it has less effect. It's about reinforcement."

You see, the problem isn't that Democrats aren't living up to their campaign promises or that they aren't passing legislation needed to get Americans back into jobs and to get the economy functioning again (as well as getting the country into the 21st century on a long list of other issues). It's that some of those dirty hippies that got elected from completely unserious, borderline Communist districts keep on pretending like they have any power at all. If they tighten their message, then the unwashed masses would, naturally, have less hope for the future and therefore place fewer annoying and unseemly demands on their overlords.

But, seriously, though, these folks think the problem is messaging, not that the economy is still doing terribly as there aren't enough jobs, not enough benefits for the unemployed, and the jobs that do exist are paying less and giving fewer benefits, not to mention all the other groups of people who bought into the idea that the Democrats, while not perfect, were at least sane and were going to pass legislation while they were in power to make the country function in a fashion that's just a little more fair. When "messaging" isn't a motivation anymore (like when the extension on unemployment benefits runs out again and the next election is two years away), they won't feel the need to do much else.

That's how people who aren't Washington insiders or crazy tea baggers see the situation. So this isn't surprising:

Senators acknowledge that once members return from recess on Sept. 13, little legislating will be possible before the election. That leaves Senate Democrats with four crucial weeks to build a legislative message to voters.

Actually, they had two years, not four weeks. But what's the difference? It's all for show anyway.

After 12 years of conservative Republican rule, followed by eight years of triangulation, and then eight years of "I can't believe he just said that" Republican rule, I think that we all forgot just what kind of people modern Democrats were, especially those of us who are two young to really have an understanding of what it was like back in the day when Democrats controlled the House and the White House and were holding many of the cards.

People got their hopes up, some more than others, and the Democrats had to kick them in the teeth these past two years to make sure that that doesn't happen again. At least they have enough humility to pass more funding for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan off to the side, not as part of their core message before the midterms. It shows that not all is lost yet.

* More funds should be directed at housing improvements in three Leeds wards, say Tories and Lib Dems - but Labour hit out at 'school yard politics'
* Full report from yesterday's full council meeting

Calls for Leeds Labour to spend an additional £900,000 on housing repairs to three small city estates sparked a row involving the major political parties.

Proposals by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would have seen the money - which would have been found by using surplus funds in the housing reserves - used for improvements to the Woodbridge Estate in Kirkstall, the Waterloo Estate in Pudsey, and the Stonecliffe Estate in Farnley & Wortley ward.

But at yesterday's full council meeting, Labour dismissed opposition councillors' claims as 'playground politics' and condemned the disruption caused when a 10-minute recess was called at the meeting becaue some opposition councillors said they were unsure about what they were voting for under Labour's motion.

A report to the full council yesterday afternoon set out proposals for spending £4.6 million from the council's Housing Revenue Account (HRA), including enhanced funding for adaptations, fire safety and security work at multi-storey blocks, as well as support for key regeneration schemes.

Conservative councillor Les Carter suggested an extra £900,000 should go to improvements on three estates, but his amendment was not supported by the Labour Group and Green Group councillors who hold the balance of power in Leeds.

Adel and Wharfedale ward councillor Carter said:

"Unlike the last government I'm pleased to say we were able to leave the new ouncil administration enough funds to carry out this work. I really think that we could have directed more funding towards improving housing in these areas.

"The £900,000 comes from HRA reserves and is over and above the £4.6 million pot of funding which is the subject of the proposals in the council report. This £900,000 could be used to great effect, and it would still leave the Council with the largest amount of HRA reserves we have had in the last five years.

"Unfortunately the administration - backed by the Green Group - opted not to support my proposal for extra investment in these areas, which I think is a great shame for the people living on those estates."

Liberal Democrat Headingley councillor Martin Hamilton, who is shadow spokesman for neighbourhoods and housing, said:

"This is a missed opportunity for the council that will condemn families living in substandard accommodation for at least another year."

Executive member for housing, Labour councillor Peter Gruen, said:

"I am extremely disappointed that the opposition chose such an important debate to try and disrupt council. What the Labour administration did was to refuse to consider the opposition's reckless proposal to eat into reserves held in the housing account at a time of great political uncertainty.

"We have, however, made the provision to spend in areas of greatest need on repairs that are overdue, after being so shamelessly neglected by the previous Tory/Lib Dem admninistration.

"The display was no more than school yard politics and it is shameful that the opposition felt the unnecessary need to take it so far. This is not the sort of behaviour we in the Labour Group expect to see in the council chamber and we hope there will be no such repetition at future debates."

German Christmas Market to continue

Leeds's popular annual German Christmas Market will continue - as long as it continues to make a profit.

Beeston and Holbeck Labour councillor Adam Ogilvie, who is executive board member for leisure, said:

"The government is making huge cuts across all areas of the public sector and this is going to have a marked effect on finances here in Leeds.

"We, as a new administration will be looking at where savings can be made and there may have to be some difficult decisions taken. However, for as long as the German Market continues to make a profit, it will remain a major part of the range of events put on by the council."

Wetherby Conservative councillor John Procter had launched a campaign to save the market after it was revealed the event, which attracts 250,000 people a year, was one of the areas the council could have been looking at as it seeks to cut costs.

Holt Park Wellbeing Centre

Labour Kirkstall councillor Lucinda Yeadon condemned the government's decision to suspend funding of the multi-million pound Holt Park Wellbeing Centre, just weeks before work was due to start.

Yeadon said the decision was hurting some of the most vulnerable people in the city, including the disabled and elderly:

"It's a real cutting-edge project that brings 21st century services to this part of Leeds. It is a nonsense to axe a service that will ultimately be more efficient than what we've currently got on multiple sites."

Barbecues in Leeds parks - more enforcement?

Gipton and Harehills Liberal Democrat councillor Alan Taylor said that given the enforcement of a no barbecue area on Woodhouse Moor, people were expecting similar enforcement at parks including Roundhay, Otley Chevin, Kirkstall Abbey, Golden Acre, Meanwood and Woodhouse Ridge.

He said enforcement would cost £20,000 per park if the council were to have a consistent policy.

Labour's Adam Ogilvie criticised the previous administration's handling of the proposed barbecue are on Woodhouse Moor.

Durban tree planting

Lib Dem Horsforth councillor Brian Cleasby's call on the council to formally congratulate Leeds' twin city, Durban, on the success of their World Cup Fruit tree planting scheme was passed without opposition. Cleasby, as Lord Mayor of Leeds in 2007/08, promoted links between the two cities and planted the first tree in the project.

What do you think? Have your say in the comments section below.

After running across this piece in the Economist today, I was reminded of that timeless adage "You'll attract more flies with honey than with vinegar." That's a woefully good reminder for the Right as Election Day draws nearer.

Plenty of noise has been made in the past few weeks about the abrupt resignation/firing of Dave Weigel from the Washington Post blog "Right Now." I have been a defender of Weigel's, in large part because I think people's expectations of Weigel were too high - and that's not to disparage Weigel at all, whose work I have followed for a couple of years. The problem was, in my view, that lots of activists expected him to counter Ezra Klein's "Wonk Book" with an editorial style, using his platform at the Post to propel the Tea Party to the revery where so many believed it belonged. Another part of the problem is that, as Dan Gainor at the Media Research Center notes, the Post was never clear about why it had hired Weigel in the first place. Reporting? Check. Opinion? Maybe? I still think Weigel does a good job of reporting, and if he's guilty of anything, it's a preoccupation with man-bites-dog narratives. Aside from all that, I don't have much to add to the gallons of punditry sloshing around the Internet about Weigel-gate.

The reason I bring Weigel's short-lived stint at the Post back up for discussion is that the reaction from the activist community to Weigel's resignation - particularly on Twitter - was pretty vicious, with lots of "Good riddance" and "we told you so." Then came the announcement that Weigel would be a paid MSNBC contributor on Countdown with Keith Olbermann - and activists were once again a-Twitter with disgust. Thankfully there was an equivalent outpouring of support for Weigel. I disagree with Keith Olbermann frequently, particularly when it comes to his sneering punditry and progressive worldview. I appreciate that he was the first (and for a long time only) mainstream media personality to cover the devastating flooding in my hometown of Nashville earlier this year, and he and I share in New York Yankees fan-dom. But why the Weigel witch-hunt on the Right?

And then it hit me: the Right and center-right are still obsessed with (plagued by?) litmus tests that, unchecked, can be impossible to pass. And not normal litmus tests either - sure, nobody wants to see another John McCain presidential campaign - I mean the conservative base is so energized right now that it has become bloodthirsty, and it's beginning to feed on itself. Long-time allies to conservatives - the libertarians - have begun to take notice.

I urge everyone to check out this written exchange between Cato Institute's Brink Lindsey, AEI/National Review Online's Jonah Goldberg, and FreedomWorks' Matt Kibbe, a debate on where libertarians belong on the 21st century ideological spectrum, and how they can, should, and might play in the activist/political component of the Tea Party movement. Romantic libertarians like yours truly hope wistfully one day to inform a more rigorous social policy agenda - one that actually gets government out of people's lives, including their marriages and sex lives - to complement existing tenets of economic freedom upon which, for the most part, everyone right-of-center seems to reaching consensus. But because of these purity tests, many libertarians worry that the emergence of centrist rhetoric at Tea Party rallies is nothing more than a ruse to grab handfuls of votes on Election Day 2010 and 2012, and then Big Government conservatism does us all in - again.

I am sympathetic to Brink Lindsey's point in this respect. Libertarians - who often sacrifice opportunities to "get involved" in lieu of safeguarding transcendent philosophical values for the sake of practical virtue - should not compromise their core beliefs just because Sarah Palin said we need less government and more personal responsibility. But I also think Matt Kibbe makes great points - the Tea Party movement is as fascinating a paradigm shift in American politics as I will likely ever see in my lifetime. It has unbundled the Left almost completely, who has tried to use every tool at its disposal - from race-baiting in formal media outlets to unscientific opinion polling - to couch the Tea Party movement as garden-variety Republican, and quintessentially racist, xenophobic, and homophobic. Kibbe insists that many Tea Partiers don't know where to place themselves on an ideological scale, and notes that many have never been involved in political discourse before now. This groundswell provides libertarians with that romantic opportunity to inform the policy debate - especially issues like gay marriage, which Tea Party groups support, and like Kibbe, I think it's hasty to accept Lindsey's premise with open arms. So Lindsey's libertarian protectionism can be just as dangerous and self-defeating as the Gainor conservative witch-hunts.

The Tea Party movement is still today very fragile, despite the noise the movement has made and the support it has drummed up. If libertarians and conservatives can agree about anything, it's opposition to power-drunk Democrats; it's probably best that everyone focus on that for now, instead of running reckless with purity tests, and when Republicans win, it will be up to them to follow through on promises they're making to people getting involved for the first time. Those people don't know where they lie on the ideological spectrum, but they know that the government is screwing them.

 

There is only three more days to give your input on the U.S. review of UNDRIP. If you have not signed, "UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous "UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples," now is the time, before this Thursday, July 15th.

Cross Posted at Daily Kos

Welcome to News from Native American Netroots, a Monday evening series focused on indigenous tribes primarily in the United States and Canada but inclusive of international peoples also.

A special thanks to our team for contributing the links that have been compiled here. Please provide your news links in the comments below.

UPDATED: Flooded Rocky Boy's Reservation seeks disaster status. IHS sends $1 million in aid. Yankton Reservation also suffering.

Both the Chippewa Cree Tribe in northern Montana and Sioux on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota were hit hard by floods late last month. Apparently the state of Montana won't be able to provide help to the Rocky Boy's Reservation, so now they're hoping for a federal disaster declaration. Here are stories from the Associated Press on the situation at both reservations, as well as word of help to Rocky Boy's from the from the Indian Health Service:

Federal program credited with cutting diabetes among Indians

A government program aimed at curbing the disproportionately high rate of diabetes among Native Americans has only one year left, and supporters are urging its renewal.

"The rate of those suffering from diabetes is alarming, and we need to continue to build on our efforts to combat it," said Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D. "We made some strides in improving health in Indian Country earlier this year with the passage of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act as part of comprehensive health care reform, but there is still a lot of work to do."

US Rule Could Keep Iroquois From Lacrosse Tourney

The teams participating in the World Lacrosse Championships in England represent 30 nations, from Argentina to Latvia to South Korea to Iroquois.

The Iroquois helped invent lacrosse and, in a rare example of international recognition of American Indian sovereignty, they participate at every tournament as a separate nation. But they might not be at this year's world championship tournament because of a dispute over the validity of their passports.

The 23 players have passports issued by the Iroquois Confederacy, a group of six Indian nations overseeing land that stretches from upstate New York into Ontario, Canada.

Mark Trahant: Indian health caught in middle of budget debate

"Democrats are leaving Washington for the July 4 recess without passing key parts of their health care agenda," writes Andrew Villegas for Kaiser Health News. "...with states hit hard by the recession, an extension of extra Medicaid funds also seemed likely." But because of a "contentious debate, with conservative Democrats and Republicans opposing programs that could add to the deficit." The result, Villegas writes, is "the Medicaid and COBRA subsidies are still in limbo."

Many American Indian and Alaska Native patients in the Indian health system are in a precarious spot because of this battle. Some of the increased spending for Indian Health Service depends on increasing Medicaid rolls. This is important because Medicaid, unlike the IHS budget, is an entitlement. Once a person is eligible, the money is supposed to be there (in contrast to a straight budget line that runs out of money once its spent). This problem should be simple: States don't have to pay for patients in the Indian health system because the federal government eventually picks up the cost. But the problem is each state will define eligibility and a tightening of state rules will mean that patients that should be eligible for Medicaid, won't qualify.

It would be easy to dismiss states as uncaring. But the problem is there are fewer dollars available from tax collections during the recession. State budgets are wrecked by too many promises, ranging from pension obligations to constitutional promises to always balance the budget.

8th Circuit backs Meskwaki jurisdiction over non-Indian business

The Meskwaki Nation of Iowa can assert jurisdiction over a non-Indian business, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday.

Generally, tribes lack jurisdiction over non-Indians. But the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Montana v. US sets out two exceptions to the rule.

In a unanimous decision, the 8th Circuit said the tribe satisfied one of the exceptions. The court said the conduct of Attorney's Process and Investigation Services, a security company, directly "threatened" the health, welfare and economic security of the tribe.

API was hired by Alex Walker, a former tribal chairman, to take control of the tribal headquarters and the casino from a group of challengers, the court said. "Its apparent purpose in raiding the tribe's facilities was to seize control of the tribal government and economy by force," the 8th Circuit said.

Conn. land dug up for items from Indian war

Artifacts of a battle between a Native American tribe and English settlers, a confrontation that helped shape early American history, have sat for years below manicured lawns and children's swing sets in a Connecticut neighborhood.

A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries. It's also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, particularly the Mystic hilltop where at least 400 Pequot Indians died in a 1637 massacre by English settlers.

Historians say the attack was a turning point in English warfare with native tribes. It nearly wiped out the powerful Pequots and showed other tribes that the colonists wouldn't hesitate to use methods that some consider genocide.

Navajo potter continues her art, shows at 95

Navajo potter Rose Williams continues her art at age 95, and will appear in Santa Fe at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian to provide pottery demonstrations.

Williams was to attend the museum's annual show of pueblo and Navajo folk art, which ran July 9 through 11th. She was doing onsite demonstrations of her art each day at the Case Trading Post.

Another sentenced in Four Corners artifacts case

Nicholas K. Laws has maintained he never collected ancient American Indian artifacts for sale, but when he was offered money by a federal informant the father of three desperately needed it.

"For my client, this was not a living," Laws' attorney, Randy S. Ludlow, said in federal court Monday. "He was never doing it to make a fast buck."

U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart sentenced Laws to two years of probation for the sale of a ceremonial twin effigy doll, waiving guidelines that called for six months to a year in prison.

American Indian culture celebrated at Ruscombmanor festival

Nearly 1,000 people spent Saturday learning more about the culture of American Indians at the ninth annual Native American Festival.

Held at Hobby Horse Ranch, 428 Hartz Road, Ruscombmanor Township, the three-day event has something for people of all ages, festival President Jim Convry said.

Cherokee, Mohicans, Osage, Lenape, Seneca and others come from all over the country to participate, he said.

Patricia Whitefoot named to National Advisory Council on Indian Education

Patricia L. Whitefoot, Yakama/Din?, has been appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Advisory Council on Indian Education.

The 15-member council advises and makes recommendations to the U.S. Secretary of Education, and submits a yearly report to Congress on issues pertaining to Indian education.

"Patricia has been a committed and effective leader over the course of 40 years of Indian education experience," Sen. Patty Murray said. "She has demonstrated vast knowledge of the issues through her management of Indian education programs ranging from early childhood to higher education, as well as through her role as a tribal leader on the Yakama Tribal Council. ... I am confident that she will be a powerful voice for Indian education in Washington state and across the country."

Bartlesville Indian Summer announces 'Elder of the Year'

Oklahoma Indian Summer and Executive Director Dee Ketchum are proud to honor Dolores "Dee" Theis, longtime community and Oklahoma Indian Summer volunteer, as OIS's 2010 Elder of the Year.
"l was very humbled and honored," Dee said of the decision which will be in celebration of the 23rd season of the Native American festival.
While, Dee accepts the honor with deep pride she says she is most thankful she was able to be present for the first planning meeting for Oklahoma Indian Summer in 1988.
"I was at the very first meeting," she says.
"Just to be a part of such a thing is humbling, but for Bartlesville to have this and to have it grow has been quite an experience."

Navajo Partnership for Housing still bringing mortgages to Navajos

The Navajo Partnership for Housing continues to bring mortgage financing to members of the Navajo Nation on or near its reservation, which sprawls across New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, despite the housing depression.

And, according to executive director Lanalle Smith, the Native CDFI (community development financial institution) has ambitious plans to branch out into housing project development on or near the reservation to go along with its scattered-site financings.

To date, NPH has arranged or provided 435 loans and grants to 334 families to help tribal members buy, build or rehabilitate a home. Total financing comes to $36.3 million to date.

President's Recovery Act Announcement

Today, President Obama announced investment in sixty-six new Recovery Act broadband projects nationwide that, according to the grantees, will not only directly create approximately 5,000 jobs up front, but will also help spur economic development in some of the nation's hardest-hit communities, helping create jobs for years to come.  In total, tens of millions of Americans and over 685,000 businesses, 900 health care facilities and 2,400 schools in all fifty states stand to benefit from the awards.  The $795 million in grants and loans through the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture have been matched by over $200million in outside investment, for a total public-private investment of more than $1 billion in bringing broadband service to these communities,most of which currently have little or no access, to help them better compete and do business in the global marketplace.

The grants and loans are part of an overall $7.2 billion investment the Recovery Act makes in expanding broadband access nationwide - $4.7billion through the Commerce Department and $2.5 billion funded through the Department of Agriculture.  With the awards being announced tomorrow, more than $2.7 billion in Recovery Act broadband grants and loans will have been awarded to more than 260 projects across the country since December 2009.  Overall, the Recovery Act is making a $100billion investment in science, innovation and technology that is no tonly creating jobs today, but laying a foundation for economic growth for years to come.

A cornerstone for better child support services

When Sarah Colleen Sotomish was a student at University of Washington, her brother and sister had already served on the Quinault Nation Business Council, continuing a tradition of service as descendants of treaty signers and members of one of Quinault's traditional leadership families.

Sotomish visited her grandmother - the wise family matriarch, well past 100 in years - and asked her what she thought her role was going to be.

"My grandmother told me, 'You're not going to live in one culture or the other. You are going to have your feet in both cultures. You are going to be a bridge, you are going to learn both cultures and bring the two together.'"

Her grandmother was prophetic.

Healing, sharing and competition at Fort Washakie powwow

It was between him and the drums.

He didn't think about the men around him, dancing, swaying, moving with chants. He didn't think about what he would do later, or the precision of his movements.

He entered the arena, paused, waited for the drum group to begin. He ignored the chaos of a festival around him.

Singing started. It was slow and traditional, his favorite.

He started moving, arms waved up, down, his feet stomped and tapped back and forth to the beat. He swung his fan of eagle feathers. He bent down, swayed to the side, back up again.

Red Cloud Indian School receives largest grant in organization's history

The students of Red Cloud Indian School will be the beneficiaries of a five-year, $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education that will go toward funding the reservation school's comprehensive after-school and summer program. The 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant is the largest award to be given to Red Cloud in the institution's 120-year history.

The federal grant award was announced by M. Michael Rounds, governor of South Dakota, in May. Funds will be distributed over a five-year period as Red Cloud realizes program goals and successes.

"We are very grateful to the Department of Education for recognizing in our students, teachers and families the important work that after-school and summer programs offer the Lakota students we educate each year," said Robert Brave Heart Sr., superintendent of schools. "The co-curricular programs at Red Cloud play an instrumental role in ensuring that each student who leaves our doors at graduation is poised for a successful, meaningful life."

A Choctaw Indian finds himself on the Emerald Isle

Gary White Deer has spent a lifetime wrestling with his identity, his history, his sense of belonging.

Artist, teacher, medicine man, he has roamed the country - visiting elders, soaking up old stories and songs. He married a Kiowa woman whose family practiced traditional ways. He formed a native dance troupe, prayed at the sacred mound of Nanih Waiya in Mississippi, immersed himself in historic preservation groups, taught tribal history. Still, he has always wondered: What does being a Choctaw mean in an age when it seems anyone with a drop of tribal blood could declare themselves Indian?

In the end, he found answers, but not on the reservations or anywhere he might have expected.

Navajo Department of Justice: Ranch program under investigation

An investigation into allegations of illegal and unethical behavior by Navajo Nation government employees has been expanded to include the tribal ranch program, a Navajo justice official said.

The Navajo Nation leases more than two dozen tribal ranches on about 1.5 million acres that are divided into range units, most of which lie in New Mexico. Henry Howe, assistant attorney general for the Navajo Nation Department of Justice, said the department petitioned a special panel of judges to add the tribal ranch program to the investigation after allegations of improprieties in awarding ranch leases surfaced. "We received sufficient credible evidence that convinced the attorney general that further investigation was warranted," he said.

A special investigator already is looking into the tribe's contractual relationship with a Utah-based satellite Internet company, a tribal loan guarantee to a Shiprock, N.M., manufacturing company and discretionary funding doled out by Tribal Council delegates.

11:12 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Thank you.  Thank you.  (Applause.)  Everyone please have a seat.  Thank you very much.  Let me thank Pastor Hybels from near my hometown in Chicago, who took time off his vacation to be here today.  We are blessed to have him.

I want to thank President Neil Kerwin and our hosts here at American University; acknowledge my outstanding Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, and members of my administration; all the members of Congress -- Hilda deserves applause.  (Applause.)  To all the members of Congress, the elected officials, faith and law enforcement, labor, business leaders and immigration advocates who are here today -- thank you for your presence.

I want to thank American University for welcoming me to the campus once again.  Some may recall that the last time I was here I was joined by a dear friend, and a giant of American politics, Senator Edward Kennedy.  (Applause.)  Teddy’s not here right now, but his legacy of civil rights and health care and worker protections is still with us.

I was a candidate for President that day, and some may recall I argued that our country had reached a tipping point; that after years in which we had deferred our most pressing problems, and too often yielded to the politics of the moment, we now faced a choice:  We could squarely confront our challenges with honesty and determination, or we could consign ourselves and our children to a future less prosperous and less secure. 

I believed that then and I believe it now.  And that’s why, even as we’ve tackled the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, even as we’ve wound down the war in Iraq and refocused our efforts in Afghanistan, my administration has refused to ignore some of the fundamental challenges facing this generation.

We launched the most aggressive education reforms in decades, so that our children can gain the knowledge and skills they need to compete in a 21st century global economy.

We have finally delivered on the promise of health reform -– reform that will bring greater security to every American, and that will rein in the skyrocketing costs that threaten families, businesses and the prosperity of our nation.

We’re on the verge of reforming an outdated and ineffective set of rules governing Wall Street -– to give greater power to consumers and prevent the reckless financial speculation that led to this severe recession.

And we’re accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy by significantly raising the fuel-efficiency standards of cars and trucks, and by doubling our use of renewable energies like wind and solar power -- steps that have the potential to create whole new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs in America. 

So, despite the forces of the status quo, despite the polarization and the frequent pettiness of our politics, we are confronting the great challenges of our times.  And while this work isn’t easy, and the changes we seek won’t always happen overnight, what we’ve made clear is that this administration will not just kick the can down the road. 

Immigration reform is no exception.  In recent days, the issue of immigration has become once more a source of fresh contention in our country, with the passage of a controversial law in Arizona and the heated reactions we’ve seen across America.  Some have rallied behind this new policy.  Others have protested and launched boycotts of the state.  And everywhere, people have expressed frustration with a system that seems fundamentally broken. 

Of course, the tensions around immigration are not new.  On the one hand, we’ve always defined ourselves as a nation of immigrants -- a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America’s precepts.  Indeed, it is this constant flow of immigrants that helped to make America what it is.  The scientific breakthroughs of Albert Einstein, the inventions of Nikola Tesla, the great ventures of Andrew Carnegie’s U.S. Steel and Sergey Brin’s Google, Inc. -– all this was possible because of immigrants.

And then there are the countless names and the quiet acts that never made the history books but were no less consequential in building this country -- the generations who braved hardship and great risk to reach our shores in search of a better life for themselves and their families; the millions of people, ancestors to most of us, who believed that there was a place where they could be, at long last, free to work and worship and live their lives in peace. 

So this steady stream of hardworking and talented people has made America the engine of the global economy and a beacon of hope around the world.  And it’s allowed us to adapt and thrive in the face of technological and societal change.  To this day, America reaps incredible economic rewards because we remain a magnet for the best and brightest from across the globe.  Folks travel here in the hopes of being a part of a culture of entrepreneurship and ingenuity, and by doing so they strengthen and enrich that culture.  Immigration also means we have a younger workforce -– and a faster-growing economy -- than many of our competitors.  And in an increasingly interconnected world, the diversity of our country is a powerful advantage in global competition. 

Just a few weeks ago, we had an event of small business owners at the White House.  And one business owner was a woman named Prachee Devadas who came to this country, became a citizen, and opened up a successful technology services company.  When she started, she had just one employee.  Today, she employs more than a hundred people.  This past April, we held a naturalization ceremony at the White House for members of our armed forces.  Even though they were not yet citizens, they had enlisted.  One of them was a woman named Perla Ramos -- born and raised in Mexico, came to the United States shortly after 9/11, and she eventually joined the Navy.  And she said, “I take pride in our flag and the history that forged this great nation and the history we write day by day.”

These women, and men and women across this country like them, remind us that immigrants have always helped to build and defend this country -– and that being an American is not a matter of blood or birth.  It’s a matter of faith.  It’s a matter of fidelity to the shared values that we all hold so dear.  That’s what makes us unique.  That’s what makes us strong.  Anybody can help us write the next great chapter in our history. 

Now, we can’t forget that this process of immigration and eventual inclusion has often been painful.  Each new wave of immigrants has generated fear and resentments towards newcomers, particularly in times of economic upheaval.  Our founding was rooted in the notion that America was unique as a place of refuge and freedom for, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “oppressed humanity.”  But the ink on our Constitution was barely dry when, amidst conflict, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which placed harsh restrictions of those suspected of having foreign allegiances.  A century ago, immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Poland, other European countries were routinely subjected to rank discrimination and ugly stereotypes.  Chinese immigrants were held in detention and deported from Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay.  They didn’t even get to come in.

So the politics of who is and who is not allowed to enter this country, and on what terms, has always been contentious.  And that remains true today.  And it’s made worse by a failure of those of us in Washington to fix a broken immigration system. 

To begin with, our borders have been porous for decades.  Obviously, the problem is greatest along our Southern border, but it’s not restricted to that part of the country.  In fact, because we don’t do a very good job of tracking who comes in and out of the country as visitors, large numbers avoid immigration laws simply by overstaying their visas.

The result is an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.  The overwhelming majority of these men and women are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their children.  Many settle in low-wage sectors of the economy; they work hard, they save, they stay out of trouble.  But because they live in the shadows, they’re vulnerable to unscrupulous businesses who pay them less than the minimum wage or violate worker safety rules -– thereby putting companies who follow those rules, and Americans who rightly demand the minimum wage or overtime, at an unfair [dis]advantage.  Crimes go unreported as victims and witnesses fear coming forward.  And this makes it harder for the police to catch violent criminals and keep neighborhoods safe.  And billions in tax revenue are lost each year because many undocumented workers are paid under the table.

     More fundamentally, the presence of so many illegal immigrants makes a mockery of all those who are going through the process of immigrating legally.  Indeed, after years of patchwork fixes and ill-conceived revisions, the legal immigration system is as broken as the borders.  Backlogs and bureaucracy means the process can take years.  While an applicant waits for approval, he or she is often forbidden from visiting the United States –- which means even husbands and wives may be forced to spend many years apart.  High fees and the need for lawyers may exclude worthy applicants.  And while we provide students from around the world visas to get engineering and computer science degrees at our top universities, our laws discourage them from using those skills to start a business or power a new industry right here in the United States.  Instead of training entrepreneurs to create jobs on our shores, we train our competition.

In sum, the system is broken.  And everybody knows it.  Unfortunately, reform has been held hostage to political posturing and special-interest wrangling -– and to the pervasive sentiment in Washington that tackling such a thorny and emotional issue is inherently bad politics. 

Just a few years ago, when I was a senator, we forged a bipartisan coalition in favor of comprehensive reform.  Under the leadership of Senator Kennedy, who had been a longtime champion of immigration reform, and Senator John McCain, we worked across the aisle to help pass a bipartisan bill through the Senate.  But that effort eventually came apart.  And now, under the pressures of partisanship and election-year politics, many of the 11 Republican senators who voted for reform in the past have now backed away from their previous support. 

Into this breach, states like Arizona have decided to take matters into their own hands.  Given the levels of frustration across the country, this is understandable.  But it is also ill conceived.  And it’s not just that the law Arizona passed is divisive -– although it has fanned the flames of an already contentious debate.  Laws like Arizona’s put huge pressures on local law enforcement to enforce rules that ultimately are unenforceable.  It puts pressure on already hard-strapped state and local budgets.  It makes it difficult for people here illegally to report crimes -– driving a wedge between communities and law enforcement, making our streets more dangerous and the jobs of our police officers more difficult. 

And you don’t have to take my word for this.  You can speak to the police chiefs and others from law enforcement here today who will tell you the same thing. 

These laws also have the potential of violating the rights of innocent American citizens and legal residents, making them subject to possible stops or questioning because of what they look like or how they sound.  And as other states and localities go their own ways, we face the prospect that different rules for immigration will apply in different parts of the country -– a patchwork of local immigration rules where we all know one clear national standard is needed. 

Our task then is to make our national laws actually work -– to shape a system that reflects our values as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.  And that means being honest about the problem, and getting past the false debates that divide the country rather than bring it together.

For example, there are those in the immigrants’ rights community who have argued passionately that we should simply provide those who are [here] illegally with legal status, or at least ignore the laws on the books and put an end to deportation until we have better laws.  And often this argument is framed in moral terms:  Why should we punish people who are just trying to earn a living? 

I recognize the sense of compassion that drives this argument, but I believe such an indiscriminate approach would be both unwise and unfair.  It would suggest to those thinking about coming here illegally that there will be no repercussions for such a decision.  And this could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration.  And it would also ignore the millions of people around the world who are waiting in line to come here legally. 

Ultimately, our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship.  And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable.

Now, if the majority of Americans are skeptical of a blanket amnesty, they are also skeptical that it is possible to round up and deport 11 million people.  They know it’s not possible.  Such an effort would be logistically impossible and wildly expensive.  Moreover, it would tear at the very fabric of this nation -– because immigrants who are here illegally are now intricately woven into that fabric.  Many have children who are American citizens.  Some are children themselves, brought here by their parents at a very young age, growing up as American kids, only to discover their illegal status when they apply for college or a job.  Migrant workers -– mostly here illegally -– have been the labor force of our farmers and agricultural producers for generations.  So even if it was possible, a program of mass deportations would disrupt our economy and communities in ways that most Americans would find intolerable. 

Now, once we get past the two poles of this debate, it becomes possible to shape a practical, common-sense approach that reflects our heritage and our values.  Such an approach demands accountability from everybody -– from government, from businesses and from individuals. 

Government has a threshold responsibility to secure our borders.  That’s why I directed my Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano -- a former border governor -- to improve our enforcement policy without having to wait for a new law. 

Today, we have more boots on the ground near the Southwest border than at any time in our history.  Let me repeat that:  We have more boots on the ground on the Southwest border than at any time in our history.  We doubled the personnel assigned to Border Enforcement Security Task Forces.  We tripled the number of intelligence analysts along the border.  For the first time, we’ve begun screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments.  And as a result, we’re seizing more illegal guns, cash and drugs than in years past.  Contrary to some of the reports that you see, crime along the border is down.  And statistics collected by Customs and Border Protection reflect a significant reduction in the number of people trying to cross the border illegally. 

So the bottom line is this:  The southern border is more secure today than at any time in the past 20 years.  That doesn’t mean we don’t have more work to do.  We have to do that work, but it’s important that we acknowledge the facts.  Even as we are committed to doing what’s necessary to secure our borders, even without passage of the new law, there are those who argue that we should not move forward with any other elements of reform until we have fully sealed our borders.  But our borders are just too vast for us to be able to solve the problem only with fences and border patrols.  It won’t work.  Our borders will not be secure as long as our limited resources are devoted to not only stopping gangs and potential terrorists, but also the hundreds of thousands who attempt to cross each year simply to find work. 
 
That’s why businesses must be held accountable if they break the law by deliberately hiring and exploiting undocumented workers.  We’ve already begun to step up enforcement against the worst workplace offenders.  And we’re implementing and improving a system to give employers a reliable way to verify that their employees are here legally.  But we need to do more.  We cannot continue just to look the other way as a significant portion of our economy operates outside the law.  It breeds abuse and bad practices.  It punishes employers who act responsibly and undercuts American workers.  And ultimately, if the demand for undocumented workers falls, the incentive for people to come here illegally will decline as well.   

Finally, we have to demand responsibility from people living here illegally.  They must be required to admit that they broke the law.  They should be required to register, pay their taxes, pay a fine, and learn English.  They must get right with the law before they can get in line and earn their citizenship -- not just because it is fair, not just because it will make clear to those who might wish to come to America they must do so inside the bounds of the law, but because this is how we demonstrate that being -- what being an American means.  Being a citizen of this country comes not only with rights but also with certain fundamental responsibilities.  We can create a pathway for legal status that is fair, reflective of our values, and works.

     Now, stopping illegal immigration must go hand in hand with reforming our creaky system of legal immigration.  We’ve begun to do that, by eliminating a backlog in background checks that at one point stretched back almost a year.  That’s just for the background check.  People can now track the status of their immigration applications by email or text message.  We’ve improved accountability and safety in the detention system.  And we’ve stemmed the increases in naturalization fees.  But here, too, we need to do more.  We should make it easier for the best and the brightest to come to start businesses and develop products and create jobs. 

Our laws should respect families following the rules -– instead of splitting them apart.  We need to provide farms a legal way to hire the workers they rely on, and a path for those workers to earn legal status.  And we should stop punishing innocent young people for the actions of their parents by denying them the chance to stay here and earn an education and contribute their talents to build the country where they’ve grown up.  The DREAM Act would do this, and that’s why I supported this bill as a state legislator and as a U.S. senator -- and why I continue to support it as president.
                          
So these are the essential elements of comprehensive immigration reform.  The question now is whether we will have the courage and the political will to pass a bill through Congress, to finally get it done.  Last summer, I held a meeting with leaders of both parties, including many of the Republicans who had supported reform in the past -- and some who hadn’t.  I was pleased to see a bipartisan framework proposed in the Senate by Senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer, with whom I met to discuss this issue.  I’ve spoken with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to plot the way forward and meet -- and then I met with them earlier this week. 

And I’ve spoken with representatives from a growing coalition of labor unions and business groups, immigrant advocates and community organizations, law enforcement, local government -– all who recognize the importance of immigration reform.  And I’ve met with leaders from America’s religious communities, like Pastor Hybels -- people of different faiths and beliefs, some liberal, some conservative, who nonetheless share a sense of urgency; who understand that fixing our broken immigration system is not only a political issue, not just an economic issue, but a moral imperative as well. 

So we’ve made progress.  I’m ready to move forward; the majority of Democrats are ready to move forward; and I believe the majority of Americans are ready to move forward.  But the fact is, without bipartisan support, as we had just a few years ago, we cannot solve this problem.  Reform that brings accountability to our immigration system cannot pass without Republican votes.  That is the political and mathematical reality.  The only way to reduce the risk that this effort will again falter because of politics is if members of both parties are willing to take responsibility for solving this problem once and for all. 

And, yes, this is an emotional question, and one that lends itself to demagoguery.  Time and again, this issue has been used to divide and inflame -– and to demonize people.  And so the understandable, the natural impulse among those who run for office is to turn away and defer this question for another day, or another year, or another administration.  Despite the courageous leadership in the past shown by many Democrats and some Republicans -- including, by the way, my predecessor, President Bush -– this has been the custom.  That is why a broken and dangerous system that offends our most basic American values is still in place.

But I believe we can put politics aside and finally have an immigration system that’s accountable.  I believe we can appeal not to people’s fears but to their hopes, to their highest ideals, because that’s who we are as Americans.  It’s been inscribed on our nation’s seal since we declared our independence.  “E pluribus unum.”  Out of many, one.  That is what has drawn the persecuted and impoverished to our shores.  That’s what led the innovators and risk-takers from around the world to take a chance here in the land of opportunity.  That’s what has led people to endure untold hardships to reach this place called America. 

     One of the largest waves of immigration in our history took place little more than a century ago.  At the time, Jewish people were being driven out of Eastern Europe, often escaping to the sounds of gunfire and the light from their villages burning to the ground.  The journey could take months, as families crossed rivers in the dead of night, traveled miles by foot, endured a rough and dangerous passage over the North Atlantic.  Once here, many made their homes in a teeming and bustling Lower Manhattan. 

It was at this time that a young woman named Emma Lazarus, whose own family fled persecution from Europe generations earlier, took up the cause of these new immigrants.  Although she was a poet, she spent much of her time advocating for better health care and housing for the newcomers.  And inspired by what she saw and heard, she wrote down her thoughts and donated a piece of work to help pay for the construction of a new statue -- the Statue of Liberty -- which actually was funded in part by small donations from people across America. 

Years before the statue was built -- years before it would be seen by throngs of immigrants craning their necks skyward at the end of long and brutal voyage, years before it would come to symbolize everything that we cherish -- she imagined what it could mean.  She imagined the sight of a giant statue at the entry point of a great nation -– but unlike the great monuments of the past, this would not signal an empire.  Instead, it would signal one’s arrival to a place of opportunity and refuge and freedom. 

“Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand,” she wrote,

A mighty woman with a torch…
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome…
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!”…
“Give me your tired, and your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to be free…
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Let us remember these words.  For it falls on each generation to ensure that that lamp -– that beacon -– continues to shine as a source of hope around the world, and a source of our prosperity here at home. 

Thank you.  God bless you.  And may God bless the United States of America.  Thank you.  (Applause.) 

END
11:47 A.M. EDT

Phillip Calvin, left, and partner Tuyen Huynh are shown at a rally outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco on Wednesday, before closing arguments in court proceedings challenging the Proposition 8 initiative.

He'll boycott Sacramento

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): Thanks to the Sacramento City Council for voting against Arizona, I'm now going to Arizona to spend lots of money I would have otherwise spent here in Sacramento.

– Tom Adcock, Sacramento

City Council oversteps its bounds

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): It appears the Sacramento City Council is filled with Supreme Court justices. Without waiting to see if the Supreme Court will even rule on the Arizona law, the Sacramento City Council has already decided it is unconstitutional.

– Gayl Morse, Sacramento

Focus on local problems first

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): As someone who has a Mexican American mother, I am sympathetic toward the issues many people have with the law being proposed in Arizona. But at the same time, I think Councilman Robbie Waters makes a good point: We should be worrying about the problems we have in our own city.

I live in Rancho Cordova but I get what he's saying – especially in Sacramento. Another $50 million deficit, a governance structure with no accountability? Who is Sacramento to point out the splinter in someone else, when the city has a plank in its own?

The council needs to start with this step: Give Sacramentans the right to vote on the strong-mayor proposal so they can get rid of the people who don't want to focus on the stuff that actually matters.

– Sam Reed, Rancho Cordova

Target Mexican illiteracy, poverty

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): A suggestion for the Sacramento City Council if it wants to show brotherly love: Support some public schools in rural Mexico where illiteracy and poverty are the greatest problem.

– Margie Koldinger, Sacramento

U.S. needs to grow up

There's an interesting little sociological moment happening right in front of our, well most of our, eyes.

Somebody needs to ask the anti-immigration people if they support the billions of entitlements that the oil industry gets every year.

Or is this just another anti-liberal stance that shows up every single time a Democrat gets elected president?

Billions are given out to oil, coal and gas companies every year. But these people don't complain about that. They complain about services going to actual people. What a joke. Xenophobia is sooooo yesterday (nod to Carly Fiorina).

And when are we going to hear these people complain about the northern border, or the seaboards?

The people of Mexican, Indian, Chinese and African descent contributed the labor that built this country. And yet, we still have people kicking them. Did we ever actually accept these people as part of society, white society?

It's time America grew up. … Not just the 4-year-old Republicans in the Senate.

– Bob Jones, Fair Oaks

Hold Big Money accountable, too

Re "BP agrees to $20 billion fund, apologizes for spill" (Page A1, June 17): A simple question for you folks in Congress and the federal government. Why are we holding BP financially accountable for the financial damage they have created, but not holding the financial institutions accountable for the much larger financial damage they caused during the financial meltdown?

Not only are we not holding them accountable, taxpayers loaned them hundreds of billions of dollars to bail them out, which they have used to make billions more in profits. Millions of people were financially hurt by both situations.

It seems to me that financial accountability is due from both.

– Don Perera, Rocklin

Oil spill: Better now than before

Re "BP agrees to $20 billion fund, apologizes for spill" (Page A1, June 17): Congratulations to the president for extracting BP's promise to set aside what may not be enough in the long run, but is a good start toward remediating the horror along the Gulf Coast.

We should be grateful that the disaster occurred on his watch. Had this happened under the previous administration, Vice President Dick Cheney would have handed over $20 billion to BP, and President George W. Bush would have awarded CEO Tony Hayward the Medal of Freedom.

– Gary F. Mullins, Fair Oaks

What have British done for us?

In the 18th century, the British sought to tax us unfairly. When Americans protested, they invaded and declared George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, et al., to be traitors. In the 19th century, the British invaded Washington, D.C., and burned the White House and the Capitol. In the 20th century, Americans twice went to Europe and saved the British from the Germans. In the 21st century, the British have given us the greatest oil pollution in history. What have the British ever done for us?

– Boyd Hughes, Rocklin

City attorney, start writing

Re "Unions balk at strong mayor plan" (Our Region, June 14): I note with interest labor leader Bill Camp can't wait to see the legal language for the new strong-mayor charter package proposed by Mayor Kevin Johnson.

Good for Camp. The Sacramento City Council should not waste any more time and immediately direct the city attorney to draft the charter change language so we can vote on it in November.

– Chris Hintz, Sacramento

'Hate material' is divisive

Re Matt Bors' editorial cartoon (Opinion, June 18): In my opinion, Bors' cartoon is very offensive. The cartoon starts with a white guy complaining about President Obama. Then later this white person calls our president "Uppity." Here is the hidden message (not hidden very well at all): All conservatives are racists.

All of this divisive "hate material" that is put out there makes matters worse. It merely divides our population to the point where we cannot agree on anything. I also disagree with ultra-conservatives who distort facts to further their right-wing agenda, like Rush Limbaugh.

Let's start publishing things that are accurate and productive – not this divisive, hate-filled trash.

– David Klein, Citrus Heights

Too much love for Democrats

Re "eBay sources say Whitman settled claim of shoving" (Page A1, June 15): Congratulations on stooping to a new low toward your support of the Democratic Party.

Editors at The Bee deemed the story about Meg Whitman shoving an eBay employee three years ago such an important story that it was worthy of front-page coverage.

The distinguished gentlemen from North Carolina who is also known as U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, a Democrat, is caught on camera assaulting a student journalist by grabbing the young man's wrist, his neck and his shoulder, and Bee editors deem this story only important enough to receive a paltry five paragraphs on Page A6 ("Congressman apologizes after dust-up video airs").

I guess if Etheridge was not one of your beloved Democrats, he too would have been deemed worthy of front-page news.

Keep up the unbiased coverage, Sacramento Bee, it is always good for a laugh!

– Kent Lewis, Rocklin

Majority has spoken on Prop. 8

Re "Prop. 8 now up to the judge" (Capitol & California, June 17): Californians voted to pass Proposition 22 in 2000, which defined marriage in the state of California as a union between a man and a woman. How absurd was it that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the city clerk to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004? Did Newsom break California law?

Californians voted again in November 2008, passing Proposition 8, which places into the state constitution the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. How absurd is it now that a judge can possibly be able to trump the voices of more than 7 million Californians?

We have the right to preserve and protect the definition of marriage. We did so, twice. We have voted. Judge Vaughn Walker should uphold our vote and not be swayed by the unhappy minority. Judges are to interpret the law, not make the law. Again, the majority has voted. Uphold the vote and be done with it. Quit listening to the minority of California.

– Sylvia Fuller, Placerville

Whitman worked to earn her fortune

Re "Race will be painted as epic class struggle" (Dan Morain, Forum, June 13): Democrats complain about Meg Whitman's money and how she spends it. They like to compare her to Jerry Brown, who flies Southwest Airlines, is conservative with his money and has a lifetime in public office. However, they don't question where or how he managed to save his money.

Meg Whitman in contrast worked many long hours climbing the ladder of success in the private sector. The money she is spending is a lot, but it's hers. I'm not a big fan of Whitman, but I would rather have someone spend their own money and not be a puppet of the unions.

What is the difference between Whitman spending her own money and the Democrats selling their votes to the unions?

– Leslie H. Brown, Sacramento

Thankfully, a respite from political ads

Re "Can Whitman and ticket reverse the GOP's slide?" (Forum, June 13): How do you spell relief from all those brain-draining political commercials where candidates babble about another candidate being more liberal than Washington, Lincoln or Hitler? Enjoy the pause while you can, because they will be back with more of the same formula ads: pejoratives, tax cuts to solve deficits and a final solution.

– Craig Wood, Rocklin

Who pays the Democrats' way?

Re Rex Babin's cartoon (Opinion, June 13): Good grief! Since when did it become a crime to use one's own resources to run for political office? It certainly wasn't a problem for the Kennedys or John Kerry, the Clintons, Al Gore, John Edwards, and a little closer to home, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.

Seems that many of The Bee's readers prefer the quid-pro-quo option used by many candidates, regardless of party, who pander to the unions, environmental groups and other special interest groups, for their financial backing.

Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina deserve to be judged by their proposals and plans for representing California and its people – not by their checkbooks. As the Aussies say, "good on ya, ladies" for putting your money where your mouth is.

– Sharon Gill, Sacramento

Wealth isn't a qualification, either

"Wealth isn't a disqualification" (Letters, June 12): The measure of a person's success simply cannot be judged by the size of their bank account. The letter-writer should know that before eBay, Meg Whitman ran FTD but failed to make a profit and she quit. During that time, FTD was charged with federal antitrust violations and she was sued for age discrimination. Whitman joined eBay and made it profitable, but her last few years were marred by mistakes. She resigned in 2008.

While at HP, Carly Fiorina engineered a poor merger with Compaq, which reduced HP's stock value. Wages were cut and jobs lost under her. She was fired and sent packing with $21 million – well compensated, but hardly successful.

Wealthy candidates who use their fortunes to campaign give the appearance of trying to buy an elected office, and this is troubling to voters. If you look past their wealth, you will find zero experience in governing and political leadership, and this makes them the least qualified candidates.

– Stephen Farr, Sacramento

Meg Whitman, center, attended a party with other Republican nominees.

Phillip Calvin, left, and partner Tuyen Huynh are shown at a rally outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco on Wednesday, before closing arguments in court proceedings challenging the Proposition 8 initiative.

He'll boycott Sacramento

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): Thanks to the Sacramento City Council for voting against Arizona, I'm now going to Arizona to spend lots of money I would have otherwise spent here in Sacramento.

– Tom Adcock, Sacramento

City Council oversteps its bounds

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): It appears the Sacramento City Council is filled with Supreme Court justices. Without waiting to see if the Supreme Court will even rule on the Arizona law, the Sacramento City Council has already decided it is unconstitutional.

– Gayl Morse, Sacramento

Focus on local problems first

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): As someone who has a Mexican American mother, I am sympathetic toward the issues many people have with the law being proposed in Arizona. But at the same time, I think Councilman Robbie Waters makes a good point: We should be worrying about the problems we have in our own city.

I live in Rancho Cordova but I get what he's saying – especially in Sacramento. Another $50 million deficit, a governance structure with no accountability? Who is Sacramento to point out the splinter in someone else, when the city has a plank in its own?

The council needs to start with this step: Give Sacramentans the right to vote on the strong-mayor proposal so they can get rid of the people who don't want to focus on the stuff that actually matters.

– Sam Reed, Rancho Cordova

Target Mexican illiteracy, poverty

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): A suggestion for the Sacramento City Council if it wants to show brotherly love: Support some public schools in rural Mexico where illiteracy and poverty are the greatest problem.

– Margie Koldinger, Sacramento

U.S. needs to grow up

There's an interesting little sociological moment happening right in front of our, well most of our, eyes.

Somebody needs to ask the anti-immigration people if they support the billions of entitlements that the oil industry gets every year.

Or is this just another anti-liberal stance that shows up every single time a Democrat gets elected president?

Billions are given out to oil, coal and gas companies every year. But these people don't complain about that. They complain about services going to actual people. What a joke. Xenophobia is sooooo yesterday (nod to Carly Fiorina).

And when are we going to hear these people complain about the northern border, or the seaboards?

The people of Mexican, Indian, Chinese and African descent contributed the labor that built this country. And yet, we still have people kicking them. Did we ever actually accept these people as part of society, white society?

It's time America grew up. … Not just the 4-year-old Republicans in the Senate.

– Bob Jones, Fair Oaks

Hold Big Money accountable, too

Re "BP agrees to $20 billion fund, apologizes for spill" (Page A1, June 17): A simple question for you folks in Congress and the federal government. Why are we holding BP financially accountable for the financial damage they have created, but not holding the financial institutions accountable for the much larger financial damage they caused during the financial meltdown?

Not only are we not holding them accountable, taxpayers loaned them hundreds of billions of dollars to bail them out, which they have used to make billions more in profits. Millions of people were financially hurt by both situations.

It seems to me that financial accountability is due from both.

– Don Perera, Rocklin

Oil spill: Better now than before

Re "BP agrees to $20 billion fund, apologizes for spill" (Page A1, June 17): Congratulations to the president for extracting BP's promise to set aside what may not be enough in the long run, but is a good start toward remediating the horror along the Gulf Coast.

We should be grateful that the disaster occurred on his watch. Had this happened under the previous administration, Vice President Dick Cheney would have handed over $20 billion to BP, and President George W. Bush would have awarded CEO Tony Hayward the Medal of Freedom.

– Gary F. Mullins, Fair Oaks

What have British done for us?

In the 18th century, the British sought to tax us unfairly. When Americans protested, they invaded and declared George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, et al., to be traitors. In the 19th century, the British invaded Washington, D.C., and burned the White House and the Capitol. In the 20th century, Americans twice went to Europe and saved the British from the Germans. In the 21st century, the British have given us the greatest oil pollution in history. What have the British ever done for us?

– Boyd Hughes, Rocklin

City attorney, start writing

Re "Unions balk at strong mayor plan" (Our Region, June 14): I note with interest labor leader Bill Camp can't wait to see the legal language for the new strong-mayor charter package proposed by Mayor Kevin Johnson.

Good for Camp. The Sacramento City Council should not waste any more time and immediately direct the city attorney to draft the charter change language so we can vote on it in November.

– Chris Hintz, Sacramento

'Hate material' is divisive

Re Matt Bors' editorial cartoon (Opinion, June 18): In my opinion, Bors' cartoon is very offensive. The cartoon starts with a white guy complaining about President Obama. Then later this white person calls our president "Uppity." Here is the hidden message (not hidden very well at all): All conservatives are racists.

All of this divisive "hate material" that is put out there makes matters worse. It merely divides our population to the point where we cannot agree on anything. I also disagree with ultra-conservatives who distort facts to further their right-wing agenda, like Rush Limbaugh.

Let's start publishing things that are accurate and productive – not this divisive, hate-filled trash.

– David Klein, Citrus Heights

Too much love for Democrats

Re "eBay sources say Whitman settled claim of shoving" (Page A1, June 15): Congratulations on stooping to a new low toward your support of the Democratic Party.

Editors at The Bee deemed the story about Meg Whitman shoving an eBay employee three years ago such an important story that it was worthy of front-page coverage.

The distinguished gentlemen from North Carolina who is also known as U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, a Democrat, is caught on camera assaulting a student journalist by grabbing the young man's wrist, his neck and his shoulder, and Bee editors deem this story only important enough to receive a paltry five paragraphs on Page A6 ("Congressman apologizes after dust-up video airs").

I guess if Etheridge was not one of your beloved Democrats, he too would have been deemed worthy of front-page news.

Keep up the unbiased coverage, Sacramento Bee, it is always good for a laugh!

– Kent Lewis, Rocklin

Majority has spoken on Prop. 8

Re "Prop. 8 now up to the judge" (Capitol & California, June 17): Californians voted to pass Proposition 22 in 2000, which defined marriage in the state of California as a union between a man and a woman. How absurd was it that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the city clerk to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004? Did Newsom break California law?

Californians voted again in November 2008, passing Proposition 8, which places into the state constitution the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. How absurd is it now that a judge can possibly be able to trump the voices of more than 7 million Californians?

We have the right to preserve and protect the definition of marriage. We did so, twice. We have voted. Judge Vaughn Walker should uphold our vote and not be swayed by the unhappy minority. Judges are to interpret the law, not make the law. Again, the majority has voted. Uphold the vote and be done with it. Quit listening to the minority of California.

– Sylvia Fuller, Placerville

Whitman worked to earn her fortune

Re "Race will be painted as epic class struggle" (Dan Morain, Forum, June 13): Democrats complain about Meg Whitman's money and how she spends it. They like to compare her to Jerry Brown, who flies Southwest Airlines, is conservative with his money and has a lifetime in public office. However, they don't question where or how he managed to save his money.

Meg Whitman in contrast worked many long hours climbing the ladder of success in the private sector. The money she is spending is a lot, but it's hers. I'm not a big fan of Whitman, but I would rather have someone spend their own money and not be a puppet of the unions.

What is the difference between Whitman spending her own money and the Democrats selling their votes to the unions?

– Leslie H. Brown, Sacramento

Thankfully, a respite from political ads

Re "Can Whitman and ticket reverse the GOP's slide?" (Forum, June 13): How do you spell relief from all those brain-draining political commercials where candidates babble about another candidate being more liberal than Washington, Lincoln or Hitler? Enjoy the pause while you can, because they will be back with more of the same formula ads: pejoratives, tax cuts to solve deficits and a final solution.

– Craig Wood, Rocklin

Who pays the Democrats' way?

Re Rex Babin's cartoon (Opinion, June 13): Good grief! Since when did it become a crime to use one's own resources to run for political office? It certainly wasn't a problem for the Kennedys or John Kerry, the Clintons, Al Gore, John Edwards, and a little closer to home, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.

Seems that many of The Bee's readers prefer the quid-pro-quo option used by many candidates, regardless of party, who pander to the unions, environmental groups and other special interest groups, for their financial backing.

Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina deserve to be judged by their proposals and plans for representing California and its people – not by their checkbooks. As the Aussies say, "good on ya, ladies" for putting your money where your mouth is.

– Sharon Gill, Sacramento

Wealth isn't a qualification, either

"Wealth isn't a disqualification" (Letters, June 12): The measure of a person's success simply cannot be judged by the size of their bank account. The letter-writer should know that before eBay, Meg Whitman ran FTD but failed to make a profit and she quit. During that time, FTD was charged with federal antitrust violations and she was sued for age discrimination. Whitman joined eBay and made it profitable, but her last few years were marred by mistakes. She resigned in 2008.

While at HP, Carly Fiorina engineered a poor merger with Compaq, which reduced HP's stock value. Wages were cut and jobs lost under her. She was fired and sent packing with $21 million – well compensated, but hardly successful.

Wealthy candidates who use their fortunes to campaign give the appearance of trying to buy an elected office, and this is troubling to voters. If you look past their wealth, you will find zero experience in governing and political leadership, and this makes them the least qualified candidates.

– Stephen Farr, Sacramento

Meg Whitman, center, attended a party with other Republican nominees.

Phillip Calvin, left, and partner Tuyen Huynh are shown at a rally outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco on Wednesday, before closing arguments in court proceedings challenging the Proposition 8 initiative.

He'll boycott Sacramento

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): Thanks to the Sacramento City Council for voting against Arizona, I'm now going to Arizona to spend lots of money I would have otherwise spent here in Sacramento.

– Tom Adcock, Sacramento

City Council oversteps its bounds

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): It appears the Sacramento City Council is filled with Supreme Court justices. Without waiting to see if the Supreme Court will even rule on the Arizona law, the Sacramento City Council has already decided it is unconstitutional.

– Gayl Morse, Sacramento

Focus on local problems first

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): As someone who has a Mexican American mother, I am sympathetic toward the issues many people have with the law being proposed in Arizona. But at the same time, I think Councilman Robbie Waters makes a good point: We should be worrying about the problems we have in our own city.

I live in Rancho Cordova but I get what he's saying – especially in Sacramento. Another $50 million deficit, a governance structure with no accountability? Who is Sacramento to point out the splinter in someone else, when the city has a plank in its own?

The council needs to start with this step: Give Sacramentans the right to vote on the strong-mayor proposal so they can get rid of the people who don't want to focus on the stuff that actually matters.

– Sam Reed, Rancho Cordova

Target Mexican illiteracy, poverty

Re "City Council OKs economic sanctions against Arizona" (Our Region, June 16): A suggestion for the Sacramento City Council if it wants to show brotherly love: Support some public schools in rural Mexico where illiteracy and poverty are the greatest problem.

– Margie Koldinger, Sacramento

U.S. needs to grow up

There's an interesting little sociological moment happening right in front of our, well most of our, eyes.

Somebody needs to ask the anti-immigration people if they support the billions of entitlements that the oil industry gets every year.

Or is this just another anti-liberal stance that shows up every single time a Democrat gets elected president?

Billions are given out to oil, coal and gas companies every year. But these people don't complain about that. They complain about services going to actual people. What a joke. Xenophobia is sooooo yesterday (nod to Carly Fiorina).

And when are we going to hear these people complain about the northern border, or the seaboards?

The people of Mexican, Indian, Chinese and African descent contributed the labor that built this country. And yet, we still have people kicking them. Did we ever actually accept these people as part of society, white society?

It's time America grew up. … Not just the 4-year-old Republicans in the Senate.

– Bob Jones, Fair Oaks

Hold Big Money accountable, too

Re "BP agrees to $20 billion fund, apologizes for spill" (Page A1, June 17): A simple question for you folks in Congress and the federal government. Why are we holding BP financially accountable for the financial damage they have created, but not holding the financial institutions accountable for the much larger financial damage they caused during the financial meltdown?

Not only are we not holding them accountable, taxpayers loaned them hundreds of billions of dollars to bail them out, which they have used to make billions more in profits. Millions of people were financially hurt by both situations.

It seems to me that financial accountability is due from both.

– Don Perera, Rocklin

Oil spill: Better now than before

Re "BP agrees to $20 billion fund, apologizes for spill" (Page A1, June 17): Congratulations to the president for extracting BP's promise to set aside what may not be enough in the long run, but is a good start toward remediating the horror along the Gulf Coast.

We should be grateful that the disaster occurred on his watch. Had this happened under the previous administration, Vice President Dick Cheney would have handed over $20 billion to BP, and President George W. Bush would have awarded CEO Tony Hayward the Medal of Freedom.

– Gary F. Mullins, Fair Oaks

What have British done for us?

In the 18th century, the British sought to tax us unfairly. When Americans protested, they invaded and declared George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, et al., to be traitors. In the 19th century, the British invaded Washington, D.C., and burned the White House and the Capitol. In the 20th century, Americans twice went to Europe and saved the British from the Germans. In the 21st century, the British have given us the greatest oil pollution in history. What have the British ever done for us?

– Boyd Hughes, Rocklin

City attorney, start writing

Re "Unions balk at strong mayor plan" (Our Region, June 14): I note with interest labor leader Bill Camp can't wait to see the legal language for the new strong-mayor charter package proposed by Mayor Kevin Johnson.

Good for Camp. The Sacramento City Council should not waste any more time and immediately direct the city attorney to draft the charter change language so we can vote on it in November.

– Chris Hintz, Sacramento

'Hate material' is divisive

Re Matt Bors' editorial cartoon (Opinion, June 18): In my opinion, Bors' cartoon is very offensive. The cartoon starts with a white guy complaining about President Obama. Then later this white person calls our president "Uppity." Here is the hidden message (not hidden very well at all): All conservatives are racists.

All of this divisive "hate material" that is put out there makes matters worse. It merely divides our population to the point where we cannot agree on anything. I also disagree with ultra-conservatives who distort facts to further their right-wing agenda, like Rush Limbaugh.

Let's start publishing things that are accurate and productive – not this divisive, hate-filled trash.

– David Klein, Citrus Heights

Too much love for Democrats

Re "eBay sources say Whitman settled claim of shoving" (Page A1, June 15): Congratulations on stooping to a new low toward your support of the Democratic Party.

Editors at The Bee deemed the story about Meg Whitman shoving an eBay employee three years ago such an important story that it was worthy of front-page coverage.

The distinguished gentlemen from North Carolina who is also known as U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, a Democrat, is caught on camera assaulting a student journalist by grabbing the young man's wrist, his neck and his shoulder, and Bee editors deem this story only important enough to receive a paltry five paragraphs on Page A6 ("Congressman apologizes after dust-up video airs").

I guess if Etheridge was not one of your beloved Democrats, he too would have been deemed worthy of front-page news.

Keep up the unbiased coverage, Sacramento Bee, it is always good for a laugh!

– Kent Lewis, Rocklin

Majority has spoken on Prop. 8

Re "Prop. 8 now up to the judge" (Capitol & California, June 17): Californians voted to pass Proposition 22 in 2000, which defined marriage in the state of California as a union between a man and a woman. How absurd was it that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the city clerk to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004? Did Newsom break California law?

Californians voted again in November 2008, passing Proposition 8, which places into the state constitution the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. How absurd is it now that a judge can possibly be able to trump the voices of more than 7 million Californians?

We have the right to preserve and protect the definition of marriage. We did so, twice. We have voted. Judge Vaughn Walker should uphold our vote and not be swayed by the unhappy minority. Judges are to interpret the law, not make the law. Again, the majority has voted. Uphold the vote and be done with it. Quit listening to the minority of California.

– Sylvia Fuller, Placerville

Whitman worked to earn her fortune

Re "Race will be painted as epic class struggle" (Dan Morain, Forum, June 13): Democrats complain about Meg Whitman's money and how she spends it. They like to compare her to Jerry Brown, who flies Southwest Airlines, is conservative with his money and has a lifetime in public office. However, they don't question where or how he managed to save his money.

Meg Whitman in contrast worked many long hours climbing the ladder of success in the private sector. The money she is spending is a lot, but it's hers. I'm not a big fan of Whitman, but I would rather have someone spend their own money and not be a puppet of the unions.

What is the difference between Whitman spending her own money and the Democrats selling their votes to the unions?

– Leslie H. Brown, Sacramento

Thankfully, a respite from political ads

Re "Can Whitman and ticket reverse the GOP's slide?" (Forum, June 13): How do you spell relief from all those brain-draining political commercials where candidates babble about another candidate being more liberal than Washington, Lincoln or Hitler? Enjoy the pause while you can, because they will be back with more of the same formula ads: pejoratives, tax cuts to solve deficits and a final solution.

– Craig Wood, Rocklin

Who pays the Democrats' way?

Re Rex Babin's cartoon (Opinion, June 13): Good grief! Since when did it become a crime to use one's own resources to run for political office? It certainly wasn't a problem for the Kennedys or John Kerry, the Clintons, Al Gore, John Edwards, and a little closer to home, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.

Seems that many of The Bee's readers prefer the quid-pro-quo option used by many candidates, regardless of party, who pander to the unions, environmental groups and other special interest groups, for their financial backing.

Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina deserve to be judged by their proposals and plans for representing California and its people – not by their checkbooks. As the Aussies say, "good on ya, ladies" for putting your money where your mouth is.

– Sharon Gill, Sacramento

Wealth isn't a qualification, either

"Wealth isn't a disqualification" (Letters, June 12): The measure of a person's success simply cannot be judged by the size of their bank account. The letter-writer should know that before eBay, Meg Whitman ran FTD but failed to make a profit and she quit. During that time, FTD was charged with federal antitrust violations and she was sued for age discrimination. Whitman joined eBay and made it profitable, but her last few years were marred by mistakes. She resigned in 2008.

While at HP, Carly Fiorina engineered a poor merger with Compaq, which reduced HP's stock value. Wages were cut and jobs lost under her. She was fired and sent packing with $21 million – well compensated, but hardly successful.

Wealthy candidates who use their fortunes to campaign give the appearance of trying to buy an elected office, and this is troubling to voters. If you look past their wealth, you will find zero experience in governing and political leadership, and this makes them the least qualified candidates.

– Stephen Farr, Sacramento

Meg Whitman, center, attended a party with other Republican nominees.

At Human Events, I have an editorial today on the multi-million dollar gamble organized labor made on Bill Halter’s ill-fated primary challenge to Blue Dog Senator Blanche Lincoln:

For Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Tuesday’s victory was bittersweet: She narrowly secured her party’s nomination, though head-to-head polls indicate she will lose six of every ten general election voters to her Republican challenger in November. But for organized labor, who invested upwards of $10 million backing Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s ill-fated primary challenge of Lincoln, it is all bitter.

From the outset of Halter’s bid, public employee unions and progressive groups rallied at the prospect of defeating Lincoln, whose opposition to labor mainstays like the Employee Free Choice Act and the public health insurance option were observed as mortal sins. The White House and Democratic establishment—most notably Arkansas’ favorite son, former President Bill Clinton—instead endorsed Lincoln.

The divergent paths of the White House and labor groups in the Arkansas nominating contest is symptomatic of a long-developing schism in the Democratic Party-organized labor coalition. For all the talk of a Tea Party-induced conservative schism, the movement has, largely, coalesced behind the Republican Party. The case is not so with frustrated labor organizers, as even loyal Democrats have difficulty swallowing the 21st Century union agenda.

But Republicans–and even moderate Democrats who stand in opposition to the union agenda–should not rest on their laurels. Unions organizers are, if anything, innovative agitators:

They tried securing establishment goodwill by subsidizing a presidential bid; they sought to establish their own party; and they attempted infiltrating another. It should be no secret now—labor is an agile beast. And as union organizers’ previous moves show, Halter’s defeat was only a minor obstacle in their greater campaign.

What is most disconcerting here, though, is the labor movement’s dynamic, imaginative tactics. We won’t know just what they’re planning next until we’ve already been broadsided.

Read the article in its entirety at Human Events.

Follow James on Twitter.

• CT-Sen: After three polls show Dick Blumenthal leading Linda McMahon from anywhere between 15 and 28 points, Charlie Cook reluctantly moves the race from "tossup" to "lean D". But he expects it to be back into the "tossup" category before this thing is over.

  It won't. McMahon will never close within single digits of Blumenthal.

• 2010 will very different from 1994.

  [T]he United States is a much different country demographically than it was in 1994. A decade and a half ago, over three quarters of Americans were white. That number has dropped to just over 60% now and is on the way to falling below 50% by the midcentury. In particular, the percentage of Latinos in the U.S. population has nearly doubled (from about 9% to 16%) over the same period. In addition, half of a new generation-Millennials (born 1982-2003), the largest and most diverse generation in American history-has joined the electorate.

  All of these changes have worked to the advantage of the Democratic Party and are should continue to do so in the future. In NDN's February survey of the 21st century American electorate, Millennials identified as Democrats over Republicans by a 2:1 margin (42% vs. 21%) and non-Caucasians did so by over 4:1 (57% vs. 14%). Women also strongly identified as Democrats (44% vs. 24% Republicans). By the way, the other half of the Millennial Generation, all those now under 18, already live in a world where whites are in the minority, promising an even larger Democratic edge in the future.

  At least in part as a result of these major demographic changes, the Democratic Party now holds a clear lead among voters in party identification, something it did not have in 1994. In the most recent Pew national survey (pdf) released earlier this week, the Democrats enjoy a nine-percentage edge over the Republicans in party ID (45% vs. 36%). In 1994, the two parties were tied at 44% each and in 1995, the year after the GOP won control of Congress, more Americans identified with or leaned to the Republican Party than the Democrats (46% vs. 43%).

  Oh, and voters still hate Republicans.

• Rasmussen claims he didn't poll the recent primaries because they weren't interesting. Or something.

  And apparently, he also didn't poll to the eve of the Massachusetts Senate special election in January either, because of something or other, instead releasing a poll showing that nationally, "interest" in the race was high.

  Fact is, it's too early for him to get the results right. He's in "narrative setting" mode. He can't much that up by blowing election calls this early in the cycle.

• Sen. Scott Brown voted against DADT repeal, and against 77 percent of his constituents.
• Why is the FTC so obsessed with saving dead-tree media?

  And tangentially related, here's a 1981 KRON-TV report on online newspapers.

• Al and Tipper Gore to separate.
• Conservative Bruce Bartlett:

  Republicans primarily concerned about national security ought to be in the forefront of efforts to raise revenues to reduce deficits, free up domestic saving for domestic investment, and reduce the importation of foreign saving and the trade deficit. But so far they are not. They remain loyal to the Republican obsession with tax cuts and a refusal to raise taxes in any way for any reason. However, I think my national security-minded friends are soon going to discover that massive defense budget cuts will necessarily be a big part of the price that will be paid for not raising revenues.

  Right now, the US spends as much on national defense as every other nation in the world combined.

• A bill sponsored by Orin Hatch to punish Dick Blumenthal for his Vietnam screwup wouldmagically not apply to Mark Kirk because ... well, apparently because Kirk is a Republican.

While Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has deemed the Sestak no-pay-for-no-play non-scandal an "illegal quid pro quo" and "Obama's Watergate," the overwhelming consensus of legal opinion had concluded otherwise. While Bush White House ethics officer Richard Painter told his fellow Republicans to "move on," Steve Bunnell of the firm O'Melveny & Myers announced, "There is nothing inherently bad about it unless you think politics and democracy are bad."

But for over a generation, it has been the Republicans and their conservative amen corner who have tried to brush off charges of their own corruption and lawlessness as "criminalizing politics." And from Iran-Contra, Plamegate and Tom Delay to the U.S. attorneys purge to detainee torture, Republicans survived their endless scandals by instead successfully politicizing crime.

Ironically, it was President Bush's father who introduced the criminalization of politics defense into the Republican strategic lexicon. In justifying his Iran-Contra pardons, President George H.W. Bush used the talking point that would come to define the discourse of his son's 21st century water carriers. Much like his son's defenders, Bush 41 sought to recast rampant Republican White House criminality as mere political disagreement:

Mr. Bush said today that the Walsh prosecution reflected "a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of policy differences."

The "criminalizing politics" canard has been part of the Republican scandal survival kit ever since.

Take, for example, the imbroglio surrounding the politically motivated firings of U.S attorneys in 2006. On PBS Newhour in May 2007, Republican California Congressman Dan Lundgren was only too happy to offer the criminalization of politics ruse for Monica Goodling and Alberto Gonzales alike. Just moments after acknowledging Goodling's admission of violating civil rules and Hatch Act prohibitions ("she did admit that she made mistakes in that regard"), Lundgren returned the script:

"Let me just say this -- and I think it's an important point -- there is too much of a tendency in this environment to try and criminalize political disputes. That's been the effort here. They have found no basis for criminality, so the suggestion is now a vote of no confidence. Who knows what is next?"

But it was Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) who beat Lundgren to the punch, defending Goodling in the opening moments of her testimony. Pence, who famously compared his March 2007 visit to a Baghdad market to shopping in his home state of Indiana, trotted out the tired GOP talking point for her:

"I'm listening very intently. I'm studying this case. And I want to explore this issue of illegal behavior with you. Because it seems to me so much of this -- and even something of what we've heard today in this otherwise cordial hearing -- is about the criminalization of politics. In a very real sense, it seems to be aabout the attempted criminalization of things that are vital to our constitutional system of government, namely the taking into consideration of politics in the appointment of political officials within the government."

Later that morning, of course, Monica Goodling admitted her own lawbreaking and suggested that Attorney General Gonzales may have obstructed justice in trying to coach her. Acknowledging that "I believe I crossed the line, but I didn't mean to", Goodling clarified for all why she sought immunity in the first place:

"I do acknowledge that I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions, and I regret those mistakes."

(As it turned out, the DOJ's own inspector general later rejected Goodling's criminalization of politics maneuver.)

GonzoGate, however, is far from the first 21st century use of the "criminalizing politics" defense by Team GOP and its echo chamber. Consider the case of Tom Delay. As early as April 2005, a furious Delay declared of the ethic charges swirling around him, "Democrats have made clear that their only agenda is the politics of personal destruction and the criminalization of politics." Amazingly, that comment came before Delay's own October 2005 indictment in Texas for money laundering in association with his Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC).

Unsurprisingly, the conservative echo chamber rushed to Delay's defense and magnified his talking point. Days after Delay's indictment by District Attorney Ronnie Earle, Robert Novak penned a column titled "Criminalizing Politics", concluding:

'Democrats are ecstatic. The criminalization of politics may work, even if the case against DeLay is as threadbare as it looks."

No discussion of Robert Novak and the Republican redefinition of GOP crime as everyday political disagreements could be complete without a look the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. While neither Karl Rove nor others were ever charged with the technical and narrowly defined offense of revealing the identity of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak and others, Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby was convicted by jury on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. But for the familiar goose-steppers of the conservative ascendancy, Libby the felon too was a victim of the criminalization of politics.

The usual cavalcade of apologists for Republican law-breaking swarmed to Libby's defense. With his looming indictment in the fall of 2005, Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison compared Libby to Martha Stewart, and offered a new variant of the Delay sound bite, the "perjury technicality." Hutchison said she hoped that:

"That if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

Hutchison, of course, had plenty of company in offering the criminalization of politics canard in the CIA leak case. On October 14, 2005, Bill Kristol complained, "I am worried about what happens to the administration if Rove is indicted," adding, "I think it's the criminalization of politics that's really gotten totally out of hand." In succeeding days, Kristol's Fox News colleagues Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Stuart Varney and Chris Wallace joined the chorus singing from the RNC's criminalization of politics hymnal. On October 24th, Kristol took to the pages of the Weekly Standard to denounce a supposed Democratic strategy of "criminalizing conservatives." When Libby was later convicted, the Wall Street Journal editorial page called for a pardon. The WSJ cited grave dangers if the Libby verdict were to stand: "perhaps the worst precedent would be normalizing the criminalization of policy differences."

Sadly, two years later, President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder were complicit in aiding and abetting the Republican criminalization of politics defense. This time, the misdeeds concerned the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture.

During his confirmation hearings in January 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder reassured Republican torture enthusiasts in the Senate when he declared "we don't want to criminalize policy differences that might exist" with the outgoing Bush White House. But with prosecution of the Bush torture team back on the table after the release of the OLC memos and reports from the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees, the Republican echo chamber is quickly circling the wagons in defense of the indefensible.

In a scathing April 2009 editorial titled, "Presidential Poison," the Wall Street Journal went on the attack using the GOP's tried and untrue criminalizing politics canard:

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret...

Above all, the exercise will only embitter Republicans, including the moderates and national-security hawks Mr. Obama may need in the next four years. As patriotic officials who acted in good faith are indicted, smeared, impeached from judgeships or stripped of their academic tenure, the partisan anger and backlash will grow...

Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, due in part to his personal charm and his seeming goodwill. By indulging his party's desire to criminalize policy advice, he has unleashed furies that will haunt his Presidency.

Of course, those furies were unleashed long before Barack Obama took the oath of office. But just in case Americans needed a reminder, former "blog of the year" Power Line lashed out in a piece called "Criminalizing Conservatism." Rather than advising conservatives to try the novel approach to governing which excludes committing crimes, John Hinderaker warned that his persecuted right-wing partisans are rapidly becoming an endangered species:

"Many liberals don't just want to defeat conservatives at the polls, they want to send them to jail. Toward that end, they have sometimes tried to criminalize what are essentially policy differences...

"President Obama and his party may achieve another objective by publicly making this kind of threat: deterring Republicans from serving in public life. For many Republicans considering whether to accept an appointment to government office, the prospect that they may be subjected to criminal prosecution if the next administration is Democratic could well tip the balance in favor of remaining in private life."

Columnist and Fox News regular Fred Barnes has been making that same bogus case for years. Whether the scandal involved Plamegate, federal prosecutors or even public broadcasting, Barnes played the same "criminalizing politics" card. And with the prospect of torture prosecutions, he's sounding like a broken record:

"Pat Leahy, the senator from Vermont, is one of the most partisan people in the history of politics, and certainly in Congress today. And what he wants is to criminalize policy differences...I think that's exactly the wrong thing to do."

Regrettably, Barnes was seconded by David Broder, the supposed dean of the Washington press corps, who declared of the potential prosecution of the Bush torture team in April 2009:

"It would set the precedent for turning all future policy disagreements into political or criminal vendettas"

Predictably, Senators Kit Bond and John McCain among others faithfully reproduced the GOP talking point about potential torture prosecution constituting a "banana republic," Following the script, Bond insisted, "We don't criminally prosecute people we disagree with when we change office."

Not that is, when a Republican administration is replaced by Democrats in the White House. Republicans had no issue when Ronald Reagan dangled a job to Senator S.I. Hayakawa to lure him of out of the 1982 Republican primary in California or when, as Richard Painter noted, "President Bush occasionally intervened in Republican primaries (including on behalf of Senator Specter in 2004)." And Issa and his colleagues were silent when President Obama offered Judd Gregg the post of Commerce Secretary along with a promise to keep his New Hampshire Senate seat in Republican hands.

So much for crying foul over the criminalization of politics.

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives/a>.)

By

Mark Featherstone

At the end of March the new Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled the Conservative Party plan for a ‘Big Society’ to tackle the problem of ‘Broken Britain’. Although these media friendly terms faded from view somewhat during the subsequent election, and have been overtaken by events that have taken place since, my sense is that the idea of the Big Society functions as a kind of exemplar of Conservative thought in the UK and also illustrates the essential bi-polarity of politics in Britain that the Liberal Democrats sought to overcome, but have ended up reinforcing in the days after the election when they were effectively forced to choose between Cameron and Brown, Miliband, or whoever else New Labour thought could form a government. However, it is not yet clear what the result of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition will be, impotent compromise, deadlock, or the emergence of some new third form.

I think we must remain suspicious of the third option after New Labour and Anthony Giddens’ theory of the third way, which effectively jettisoned Labour’s socialist roots in favour of a limited view of a social state supporting a strong form of individualism and capitalistic entrepreneurialism. As we now know the result of this compromise formation was unfortunately the emergence of a strong bureaucratic state, a left over from Labour’s socialist past, without a commitment to real equality, and a rampant form of individualism in the higher echelons of the class structure, which eventually led to economic collapse, since in many respects the New Labour agenda represented a kind of ‘neo-liberal capitalism with a human face’. In this respect New Labour’s nod to equality was to ensure that Britain was not Brazil, Dubai, or even America, but that was about it.

Unfortunately, history teaches us that the Conservatives have no such commitment to even a minimum level of social justice. At this point I must confess my own bias, as a child of Thatcherism who happened to grow up in city that was wrecked by de-industrialism and became a Marxist Sociologist as a result. But at the same time I want to emphasise that I have no commitment to old style working class parochialism because this leads to closed communities, closed minds, and social, economic, political, and cultural stagnation. Instead, I believe that the evolution of any society requires raising the level of its most disadvantaged members as an absolute priority and that the economic success of those in the higher echelons of that society should be made subordinate to this goal through the imposition of progressive taxation.

This was, of course, the original objective of the Labour Party, before Thatcherite ideology shattered the working class as what Marxists would call ‘a class for itself’, a class aware of itself, since there is no doubt that a subordinate class still exists today, although it is clearly not conscious of itself as such. The turn to New Labour was, therefore, an attempt to catch the attention of the new Thatcherite middle class of aspiring consumers who bought their class identity on borrowed money, and created the problem of spiralling debt now facing Cameron and Clegg.

Thatcher told us that ‘there is no society’ and that the truth is every man and woman for themselves. New Labour adapted this idea, sustained a basic social state, and began to tell us that society was now a meritocracy, where anybody could make it so long as they had good credit. In the process they advanced the cause of the Thatcherite anti-society based on what the American sociologist Robert Merton long ago termed the success theme – that is to say that economic success is everything and that the good life is reliant on money. Merton’s point was, of course, that this creates enormous strain in society, because not everybody can achieve the aim of economic success through legitimate means, and therefore we start to see the emergence of criminal cultures of alternative means and pockets of alienated people who have simply fallen out of the bottom of the success-society. Today we call this class of people the underclass.

Although the Conservatives confronted a problem of law and order in the 1980s, I would suggest this was largely an effect of class and race war. The problem that faced New Labour in the last decade of the 20th century and first decade of the 21st century was very different. They were confronted by the problems of alienation, anomie, disenchantment, exclusion, and criminal adaptation from a money-society that could never include everybody because as sociology undergraduates learn capitalism must have its winners and losers.

Even in the good years, when the economy was buoyant, Tony Blair was unable to solve the problem of what David Cameron came to call Broken Britain. His Respect Agenda, which in many respects preceded the notion of the Big Society, failed because civic responsibility never emerged and what remained was a punitive state that was completely unable to cope with the scale of social breakdown occurring in neo-liberal Britain. This is the problem facing Cameron today – how to manage anomic Britain in the face of an economic crisis that is only likely to exacerbate the original problem of social meltdown? The Big Society is Cameron’s answer, but what is the Big Society and is it likely to work?

The first point to note about Cameron’s idea of the Big Society may be discerned from the front page of the Big Society paper which contrasts the idea of the Big Society to the notion of Big Government, which is associated with New Labour statism and bureaucracy throughout the report. This aspect of New Labour policy, which was a left over from its socialist past, was rooted in the idea that the state management of society was necessary to enable freedom. In this respect New Labour, Labour before them, and socialism in general was always premised on the idea of positive freedom, the idea of ‘freedom to’, the idea that the state should enable us to pursue our life choices.

Against this theory of positive freedom, which in contemporary Britain has been tainted by a state that has become overly restrictive of individual freedom to choose another route through life, the Conservative mode of thought relies on a conception of a minimal state, and a rejection of big government, in the name of negative freedom, the freedom to not be interfered with by government authority. The negativity of the Conservative theory of freedom, that it has no positive content of its own, is represented on the front page of Cameron’s paper – there is no theory of the Big Society without a critique of Big Government that defined the problem of the restriction of freedom under New Labour.

But what can we take this from point – the negativity of the Conservative theory of freedom? This theory is not problematic in itself because it simply leaves the individual to make choices and to make their own way in life. However, I think that it becomes deeply problematic in relation to Cameron’s overall programme, which locates the notion of freedom from state intervention within a theory of a Big Society, which will limit, restrict, and police individual behaviour through the imposition of a form of personal, professional, civic, and corporate responsibility. Against Thatcher’s theory of the non-existent society, where there was no limit on individual freedom, it turns out that Cameron’s Big Society is the new brake on self-expression, achievement, or selfishness, depending on how one wants to view the pursuit of self interest.

At this point we should note that the Big Society paper holds America up as an example of a Big Society, characterised by activism and community spirit, noting that Obama is a product of this mode of social integration. Unfortunately, what the paper fails to note is that America is also a deeply divided society, beset by enormous social problems, and that where community has emerged it has emerged largely as a result of the failure of the state to manage the economy in the name of the public good. Here community emerges as a form of damage limitation or catastrophe management to make up for the lack of government intervention in problems that can only really be solved by political action in the economic sphere. The problem occurs, of course, when this will to modify the economy is not there, when the government does not want to interfere with economy because it is committed to upholding the right to make money at the cost of others. But this is, of course, the American way, where the idea of negative freedom dominates social and political theory.

However, even though Cameron’s Big Society idea is problematic, in that it seems to undermine the idea of negative freedom by replacing one limit of individual freedom, the state, with another, society, thus creating a situation where the individual would be limited by something as unenlightened as common sense or public opinion, it is understandable why the Conservatives thought it necessary to move away from the Thatcherite idea of the non-existent society in the context of the anomic state of Broken Britain. Unfortunately though I think that what really undermines and ultimately defeats the idea of the Big Society as a useful theory resides in what the idea excludes or remains silent about. What the idea of the Big Society excludes or screens out by expanding the idea of society is first a consideration of politics, and government responsibility to make positive change at a structural level, and second economics, where this may be related to a consideration of jobs, welfare provision, and public sector funding. The Big Society remains silent on both politics and economics, apart from suggesting that the role of government should be to enable the Big Society and help communities to somehow combat their own anomic condition.

The core problem of this approach is, of course, that economy and politics are central to social conditions. There can be no Big Society without economic change through political intervention. This is what is required today. Unfortunately, the Conservative’s failure to understand the relationship between society, economy, and politics is not in my view a conscious ideological trick, since New Labour where similarly unable to understand why it is not possible to have a social state and a rampant capitalist economy. A classical sociologist would tell you that this is an either or choice, but in our post-modern times characterised by hybridity, bricolage, and the end of ideology nobody believes in contradiction any more.

Beyond the Big Society programme, this problem of the failure to understand the reality of contradiction is rooted in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat agreement on policy objectives for the coalition government. This hastily thrown together document tells us that the new government will reduce the national deficit, but fund disadvantaged schools. Where will the money come from to fund these schools, since we know public funding will suffer in the next round of savage cuts? The answer is a turn to new education providers, who will ensure a new freedom of curriculum. But the problem with this approach is that it refers to a new stage of privatisations, which as we know results in uneven provision, new inequalities, and the creation of an education system characterised by the very advantage and disadvantage the policy set out to combat in the first place. We find the same contradictory thinking in the new government’s vague declarations about higher education. We will apparently see an increase in spending and improved quality in teaching and research. Nobody would disagree that this is desirable, but the problem is that higher education is currently under attack and likely to suffer massive budgetary cuts over the course of next five years.

Apart from this problematic vision of education, it is interesting that the security state is entirely missing from Conservative-Liberal Democrat thinking as a support to freedom. It is almost as though the war on terror ended with New Labour. There is no mention of Afghanistan, the Taleban, or Al Qaeda in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat document. Instead, where the idea of the security state appears it is as a restriction on personal liberty. Here the war on terror and the security state is constructed as an example of New Labour paternalism and the problem of the punitive state. Of course nobody would want to defend the New Labour model, which saw the emergence of a controlling bureaucratic state without the pay off of social and economic equality, but the Conservative model is no better because what it is delivers is freedom from bureaucracy and state control without any kind of attempt to level the playing field, enable individual freedom across the board, or brake on the mass production of inequality.

We should conclude then that the third way may be dead, recognising that it was never realistic to combine the social state and capitalism, but point out that the Conservative plan to jettison state intervention and replace it with the Big Society is unlikely to solve the problem of Broken Britain. What is the solution then? My view is that what is required is a modification of economic power relations and an assault on the root causes of inequality through progressive taxation policy because only this will save anomic Britain from social decay. In other words, I think that what is required is a new social contract based on a political modification of economic power relations, rather than an attempt to use the social, and the concept of the Big Society, to screen economic power relations from view and somehow expect our communities to rebuild themselves in the context of a society characterised by economic ruin, massive inequality, economic insecurity, and failing social mobility.

As the Mark Souder scandal shows, clinging to antiquated views on sex only makes a mockery of Republicans' preachings

If he wants forgiveness, Republican congressman Mark Souder had better hope God digs irony.

The "family values" Christian lawmaker from Indiana, who has a long history of bashing extramarital sex, was revealed on Tuesday to have had an affair with a staffer.

In the next of many layers of irony to this story, Souder filmed a video with his mistress six months ago singing the virtues of abstinence. The Washington Post reports that the "affair began after [the aide Tracy] Jackson was hired in 2004" – which means he was more than likely having sex with her at the time.

The congressman, married and a father of three, in 2004 lectured former CDC official Jonathan Zenilman about the perils of extramarital sex, comparing it to date rape and sexual harassment, reported Zenilman's son Avi Zenilman in Vanity Fair.

It's the kind of story that even the most imaginative fiction writers would have a hard time coming up with, and it illuminates the supreme absurdities of the social conservative movement that underlies the GOP.

For this is no isolated incident. Souder is the latest in a long line of values-clutching Republican lawmakers and luminaries to unveil their breathtaking hypocrisy by demanding on camera that we all live puritanical lives while privately doing the exact opposite. Those who immediately come to mind are Mark Sanford, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, John Ensign and Newt Gingrich.

As the Guardian's Richard Adams put it: "On the scale of newsworthy events, 'Republican in sex scandal' sits somewhere alongside 'Pope is Catholic' in terms of predictability." But on the ironic scale, this probably surpasses Bristol Palin's speaking tour promoting abstinence after getting pregnant at the age of 17 and publicly calling abstinence "not realistic at all".

Of course, Democrats are no strangers to sex scandals, but they don't invoke the same grandiose pretences about morals and values that Republicans habitually do, so it's a little less embarrassing for them. These matters, while serving as enticing fodder for social conservatives, are simply irrelevant to the political debate and governance of the country.

Nevertheless, the irony in this story still isn't up yet. Souder, who literally cried for "forgiveness" over having "sinned against God" in his resignation announcement Tuesday, has throughout his career been unforgiving in his quest to strip college aid from students convicted of the victimless crime of drug possession.

The significance of this episode is only partly about Republicans clinging to antiquated and counterproductive views on sex – ie continuing to promote abstinence in the 21st century – while actually making a mockery of their own preachings. It's also about how these lawmakers have systematically worked to sharpen the national microscope on the private lives of public figures, in effect setting the traps that derail their own and others' careers down the road.

Souder, in his resignation speech, lamented the "poisonous environment of Washington, DC" politics, where "any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain." Adultery is always wrong but, ethics violations aside, it's because of people like Souder that his – and other politicians' – personal escapades are such a prominent feature of the national discourse, and are more accurate determinants of political survival than actions that actually affect people's lives.

The determined Republican witch-hunt in the late 1990s against President Bill Clinton over his sex life – and its resulting national obsession – was the stuff of legend. And, since the theme of this article is irony, it's hard to forget that the moral policeman leading that charge was GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who admitted he was cheating on his wife at the time, and is currently sporting his third marriage.

It's not unexpected, then, that the reddest states, which tend to be the stuffiest about moral and family values, also have higher rates of divorce and teen pregnancy than the blue states. The moral of this story, if you will, is that those who place the strongest emphasis on imposing morality on others often tend to have the hardest time imposing it on themselves.

The establishment is back at the heart of government. It's as if the last 100 years had never happened

As exhausted Labour ministers embraced opposition with an emotion close to relief, the party's equally exhausted staff assumed they could relax. Instead of being allowed to recuperate, however, they were overwhelmed by thousands of angry men and women clamouring to join. The sight of Nick Clegg and David Cameron joshing in the grounds of Downing Street had rammed home a truth about Britain that all the talk of "inclusion" and "diversity" obscures. We live in the most class-ridden society in western Europe, and it is becoming more sclerotic and more hierarchical by the year.

Despite the admirable attempts to combat sexism, racism and homophobia, the life-defining issue for children is not their skin colour, gender or sexuality, still less their intrinsic talent, but how much their parents are prepared to spend on their education, and what friendships they can exploit and contacts they can manipulate on their little darlings' behalf thereafter.

Look at our new government. Satirists caricature Liberals – and I think we can now stop calling them "Liberal Democrats" as their alliance with the right has sundered their links with the social democratic tradition – as muesli-munching, Observer-reading, real-ale-drinking members of the progressive middle class. The events of last week have smashed that caricature into 1,000 pieces. Instead of going with Labour, the leaders of middle-class liberalism went into David Cameron's coalition. Far from adding grit to an administration dominated by the children of the rich, they toffed it up and raised the average cabinet member's net worth by tens of thousands of pounds.

As so often, foreign journalists see Britain more clearly than we do. During the campaign, a puzzled Susanne Gelhard, London correspondent for German radio station ZDF, noticed that the British media talked incessantly about Cameron's privileged background, but never added that Clegg's was no different. "How does he do it?" she asked. "I think he must have very good PR management."

So he does. When you look at his history, you discover that his parents, who now live in some style in a chateau in the south of France, sent him to Westminster, a private school that has never seen itself as second best to Eton. On leaving Cambridge, he behaved in a manner any young Tory on the make would recognise by accepting the patronage of Lord Carrington and Lord Brittan. He married well. His Spanish wife Miriam is not only a successful lawyer bringing in a six-figure salary, but is also a Catholic. Her belief in the supernatural has the advantage of allowing the atheist Clegg to avoid the worst of the state education system and send his children to a faith school.

Chris Huhne is another Westminster old boy. He made his fortune in the City before moving into journalism and politics. He also owns seven homes. Maybe I'm being chippy, but that strikes me as at least five homes too many. I could go on – David Laws is another public school boy who did well in the City – but the point to keep in mind is that whenever the powerful tell you that class politics are over in Britain, you can be sure that the class politics of the wealthy will be back with a vengeance.

Lord Adonis, one of Labour's negotiators in the frantic talks, hints strongly that a freemasonry of the privileged determined the fate of the country. "The Liberals are pretending there was no alternative," he told me. "But they could have formed an alliance with Labour. Nick Clegg went to the Tories not because he had to but because he chose to."

Labour and the Liberals will contest the history of the 2010 election for years, and accusations of betrayal will accompany each version, but when the BBC's usually impartial political editor agrees with Adonis that Clegg and Cameron discovered that they were more united by class than divided by politics it is worth taking notice. Only the miserable Vince Cable is out of place in the new government. A good social democrat who threw in his lot with the Tories, he looks like a man with a mortal sin on his conscience.

In an analysis of the new political class it will release tomorrow, the Sutton Trust, a charity that is trying to loosen the bonds of British society, will point out that it is not enough to say that the elite is increasingly drawn from the 7% of the population educated at private schools. At the pinnacle of politics and many other professions the best jobs are going to old boys not of private schools but of the top 1% of private schools – Eton, Westminster, St Paul's, Radley and Rugby, whose annual fees of £25,000 or more are beyond the means of all but the richest.

You cannot blame our new leaders for their birth or their education, but you can blame them for their refusal to expand their horizons. Robert Yates, the author of a forthcoming book on class in Britain, makes a nice comparison between Cameron, Clegg and Barack Obama. In many ways, Obama followed the standard career path of an American politician. He did well at Harvard and ingratiated himself with Democratic party establishment. But for three years he chose to work as a community organiser in the slums of Chicago. Republicans deride him for it, but the experience of walking in other men's shoes has made him a more rounded and convincing politician. Contrast him with David Laws. As Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury he will have to impose cuts that will cause destitution if they fall on the wrong people. Yet he made no effort in his progress from private school to Oxbridge to the City to the cabinet to explore or understand his own country.

I am not surprised that the sight of rejoicing public school boys is causing leftists to shake themselves because nothing could have been more unexpected 50 years ago. When the then Conservative establishment made Sir Alec Douglas-Home our last Etonian prime minister in 1963, comedians ridiculed him to within an inch of his life. He was an establishment relic stopping a supposedly meritocratic country realising its potential.

Now Fleet Street and BBC editors, who once looked for street-wise crime reporters or war correspondents who could file under fire, are scrambling to hire Old Etonians so they can cover the social order of the 21st century. They are often the editors' old chums, for as Sutton Trust has shown, no business is as dominated by public school boys as the media.

The left cannot be too preachy, however, and it must accept its responsibility for once. Since Labour began the abolition of the grammar schools, a politically correct bodyguard of pseudo-egalitarians has protected the rise of the new ruling class. Former ministers told me how when they tried to introduce programmes to allow the clever children of the working and middle classes to thrive, teaching unions and Department for Education civil servants, who ministers knew sent their own children to private and grammar schools, damned them for their "elitism". It was as if the headmaster of Eton had bribed leftish educationalists to nobble the competition.

The result of rich parents' drive for advantage and the idiotic left's determination to help them can be seen in the faces missing from the cabinet. The struggles of the working-class movement of the 1900s are not represented at all. The rage of the suffragettes in the 1910s and the second wave of feminists in the 1970s has declined to a whimper, and succeeded merely in propelling the docile figure of Theresa May to high office. The children of the new Commonwealth immigrants of the 1950s feature not at all among the cabinet's elected members. Meanwhile, the Thatcherite revolt of the 1980s is now so infirm it could not bring David Davis, the only senior Tory left who can speak the language of the lower-middle class, back into Cameron's circle.

Look hard at a picture of our new government, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the 20th century never happened.

This document sets out agreements reached between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on a range of issues. These are the issues that needed to be resolved between us in order for us to work together as a strong and stable government. It will be followed in due course by a final coalition agreement, covering the full range of policy and including foreign, defence and domestic policy issues not cove

1 Deficit Reduction

The parties agree that deficit reduction and continuing to ensure economic recovery is the most urgent issue facing Britain. We have therefore agreed that there will need to be:

•A significantly accelerated reduction in the structural deficit over the course of a parliament, with the main burden of deficit reduction borne by reduced spending rather than increased taxes;

•Arrangements that will protect those on low incomes from the effect of public sector pay constraint and other spending constraints;

•And protection of jobs by stopping Labour's proposed jobs tax.

The parties agree that a plan for deficit reduction should be set out in an emergency budget within 50 days of the signing of any agreement; the parties note that the credibility of a plan on deficit reduction depends on its long-term deliverability, not just the depth of immediate cuts. New forecasts of growth and borrowing should be made by an independent Office for Budget Responsibility for this emergency budget.

The parties agree that modest cuts of £6bn to non-frontline services can be made within the financial year 2010-11, subject to advice from the Treasury and the Bank of England on their feasibility and advisability. Some proportion of these savings can be used to support jobs, for example through the cancelling of some backdated demands for business rates. Other policies upon which we are agreed will further support job creation and green investment, such as work programmes for the unemployed and a green deal for energy efficiency investment.

The parties agree that reductions can be made to the child trust fund and tax credits for higher earners.

2 Spending review – NHS, schools and a fairer society

The parties agree that a full spending review should be held, reporting this autumn, following a fully consultative process involving all tiers of government and the private sector.

The parties agree that funding for the NHS should increase in real terms in each year of the parliament, while recognising the impact this decision would have on other departments. The target of spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid will also remain in place.

We will fund a significant premium for disadvantaged pupils from outside the schools budget by reductions in spending elsewhere.

The parties commit to holding a full strategic security and defence review alongside the spending review with strong involvement of the Treasury.

The government will be committed to the maintenance of Britain's nuclear deterrent, and have agreed that the renewal of Trident should be scrutinised to ensure value for money. Liberal Democrats will continue to make the case for alternatives. We will immediately play a strong role in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference and press for continued progress on multilateral disarmament.

The parties commit to establishing an independent commission to review the long-term affordability of public sector pensions, while protecting accrued rights.

We will restore the earnings link for the basic state pension from April 2011 with a "triple guarantee" that pensions are raised by the higher of earnings, prices or 2.5%, as proposed by the Liberal Democrats.

3 Tax measures

The parties agree that the personal allowance for income tax should be increased in order to help lower and middle-income earners. We agree to announce in the first budget a substantial increase in the personal allowance from April 2011, with the benefits focused on those with lower and middle incomes. This will be funded with the money that would have been used to pay for the increase in employee national insurance thresholds proposed by the Conservatives, as well as revenues from increases in capital gains tax rates for non-business assets as described below.

The increase in employer national insurance thresholds proposed by the Conservatives will go ahead in order to stop Labour's jobs tax. We also agree to a longer-term policy objective of further increasing the personal allowance to £10,000, making further real-terms steps each year towards this objective.

We agree that this should take priority over other tax cuts, including cuts to inheritance tax. We also agree that provision will be made for Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain on budget resolutions to introduce transferable tax allowances for married couples without prejudice to this coalition agreement.

The parties agree that a switch should be made to a per-plane rather than per-passenger duty; a proportion of any increased revenues over time will be used to help fund increases in the personal allowance.

We further agree to seek a detailed agreement on taxing non-business capital gains at rates similar or close to those applied to income, with generous exemptions for entrepreneurial business activities.

The parties agree that tackling tax avoidance is essential for the new government, and that all efforts will be made to do so, including detailed development of Liberal Democrat proposals.

4 Banking Reform

The parties agree that reform to the banking system is essential to avoid a repeat of Labour's financial crisis, to promote a competitive economy, to sustain the recovery and to protect and sustain jobs.

We agree that a banking levy will be introduced. We will seek a detailed agreement on implementation.

We agree to bring forward detailed proposals for robust action to tackle unacceptable bonuses in the financial services sector; in developing these proposals we will ensure they are effective in reducing risk.

We agree to bring forward detailed proposals to foster diversity, promote mutuals and create a more competitive banking industry.

We agree that ensuring the flow of credit to viable SMEs [small and medium enterprises] is essential for supporting growth and should be a core priority for a new government, and we will work together to develop effective proposals to do so. This will include consideration of both a major loan guarantee scheme and the use of net lending targets for the nationalised banks.

The parties wish to reduce systemic risk in the banking system and will establish an independent commission to investigate the complex issue of separating retail and investment banking in a sustainable way; while recognising that this would take time to get right, the commission will be given an initial time frame of one year to report.

The parties agree that the regulatory system needs reform to avoid a repeat of Labour's financial crisis. We agree to bring forward proposals to give the Bank of England control of macro-prudential regulation and oversight of micro-prudential regulation.

The parties also agree to rule out joining the European single currency during the duration of this agreement.

5 Immigration

We have agreed that there should be an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK to live and work. We will consider jointly the mechanism for implementing the limit.

We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes.

6 Political Reform

The parties agree to the establishment of five-year fixed-term parliaments. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will put a binding motion before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015.

Following this motion, legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed-term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.

The parties will bring forward a referendum bill on electoral reform, which includes provision for the introduction of the alternative vote in the event of a positive result in the referendum, as well as for the creation of fewer and more equal sized constituencies.

Both parties will whip their parliamentary parties in both houses to support a simple majority referendum on the alternative vote, without prejudice to the positions parties will take during such a referendum.

The parties will bring forward early legislation to introduce a power of recall, allowing voters to force a byelection where an MP was found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing and having had a petition calling for a byelection signed by 10% of his or her constituents.

We agree to establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation. The committee will come forward with draft motions by December 2010. It is likely that this bill will advocate single long terms of office. It is also likely there will be a grandfathering system for current peers. In the interim, lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.

The parties will bring forward the proposals of the Wright committee for reform to the House of Commons in full – starting with the proposed committee for management of programmed business and including government business within its scope by the third year of the parliament.

The parties agree to reduce electoral fraud by speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration.

We have agreed to establish a commission to consider the "West Lothian question".

The parties agree to the implementation of the Calman commission proposals and the offer of a referendum on further Welsh devolution.

The parties will tackle lobbying through introducing a statutory register of lobbyists. We also agree to pursue a detailed agreement on limiting donations and reforming party funding in order to remove big money from politics.

The parties will promote the radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups. This will include a full review of local government finance.

7 Pensions and welfare

The parties agree to phase out the default retirement age and hold a review to set the date at which the state pension age starts to rise to 66, although it will not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women. We agree to end the rules requiring compulsory annuitisation at 75.

We agree to implement the parliamentary and health ombudsman's recommendation to make fair and transparent payments to Equitable Life policyholders, through an independent payment scheme, for their relative loss as a consequence of regulatory failure.

The parties agree to end all existing welfare-to-work programmes and to create a single welfare-to-work programme to help all unemployed people get back into work.

We agree that jobseeker's allowance claimants facing the most significant barriers to work should be referred to the aforementioned newly created welfare-to-work programme immediately, not after 12 months as is currently the case. We agree that jobseeker's allowance claimants aged under 25 should be referred to the programme after a maximum of six months.

The parties agree to realign contracts with welfare-to-work service providers to reflect more closely the results they achieve in getting people back into work.

We agree that the funding mechanism used by government to finance welfare-to-work programmes should be reformed to reflect the fact that initial investment delivers later savings in lower benefit expenditure.

We agree that receipt of benefits for those able to work should be conditional on the willingness to work.

8 Education

Schools

We agree to promote the reform of schools in order to ensure:

•That new providers can enter the state school system in response to parental demand;

•That all schools have greater freedom over curriculum, and that all schools are held properly accountable.

Higher education

We await Lord Browne's final report into higher education funding and will judge its proposals against the need to:

•Increase social mobility;

•Take into account the impact on student debt;

•Ensure a properly funded university sector;

•Improve the quality of teaching, advance scholarship, and attract a higher proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

If the response of the government to Lord Browne's report is one that Liberal Democrats cannot accept, then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain in any vote.

9 Relations with the EU

We agree that the British government will be a positive participant in the European Union, playing a strong and positive role with our partners, with the goal of ensuring that all the nations of Europe are equipped to face the challenges of the 21st century: global competitiveness, global warming and global poverty.

We agree that there should be no further transfer of sovereignty or powers over the course of the next parliament. We will examine the balance of the EU's existing competences and will, in particular, work to limit the application of the working time directive in the United Kingdom.

We agree that we will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that any proposed future treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would be subject to a referendum on that treaty – a "referendum lock". We will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that the use of any passerelle would require primary legislation.

We will examine the case for a United Kingdom sovereignty bill to make it clear that ultimate authority remains with parliament.

We agree that Britain will not join or prepare to join the euro in this parliament.

We agree that we will strongly defend the UK's national interests in the forthcoming EU budget negotiations and that the EU budget should only focus on those areas where the EU can add value.

We agree that we will press for the European parliament only to have one seat, in Brussels.

We agree that we will approach forthcoming legislation in the area of criminal justice on a case-by-case basis, with a view to maximising our country's security, protecting Britain's civil liberties and preserving the integrity of our criminal justice system. Britain will not participate in the establishment of any European public prosecutor.

10 Civil liberties

The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour government and roll back state intrusion.

This will include:

•A freedom or great repeal bill;

•The scrapping of the ID card scheme, the national identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point database;

•Outlawing the fingerprinting of children at school without parental permission;

•The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency;

•Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database;

•The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury;

•The restoration of rights to non-violent protest;

•The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech;

•Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation;

•Further regulation of CCTV;

•Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason;

•A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

11 Environment

The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to fulfil our joint ambitions for a low carbon and eco-friendly economy, including:

•The establishment of a smart grid and the roll-out of smart meters;

•The full establishment of feed-in tariff systems in electricity – as well as the maintenance of banded ROCs;

•Measures to promote a huge increase in energy from waste through anaerobic digestion;

•The creation of a green investment bank;

•The provision of home energy improvement paid for by the savings from lower energy bills;

•Retention of energy performance certificates while scrapping HIPs;

•Measures to encourage marine energy;

•The establishment of an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient CCS to meet the emissions performance standard;

•The establishment of a high-speed rail network;

•The cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow;

•The refusal of additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted;

•The replacement of the air passenger duty with a per-flight duty;

•The provision of a floor price for carbon, as well as efforts to persuade the EU to move towards full auctioning of ETS permits;

•Measures to make the import or possession of illegal timber a criminal offence;

•Measures to promote green spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of habitats and restore biodiversity;

•Mandating a national recharging network for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles;

•Continuation of the present government's proposals for public sector investment in CCS technology for four coal-fired power stations; and a specific commitment to reduce central government carbon emissions by 10% within 12 months.

We are agreed that we would seek to increase the target for energy from renewable sources, subject to the advice of the climate change committee.

Liberal Democrats have long opposed any new nuclear construction. Conservatives, by contrast, are committed to allowing the replacement of existing nuclear power stations provided they are subject to the normal planning process for major projects (under a new national planning statement) and provided also that they receive no public subsidy.

We have agreed a process that will allow Liberal Democrats to maintain their opposition to nuclear power while permitting the government to bring forward the national planning statement for ratification by parliament so that new nuclear construction becomes possible.

This process will involve:

•The government completing the drafting of a national planning statement and putting it before parliament;

•Specific agreement that a Liberal Democrat spokesman will speak against the planning statement, but that Liberal Democrat MPs will abstain; and clarity that this will not be regarded as an issue of confidence.

• Cash may go to institutions set up by parent groups
• Move would be devastating blow, teaching union says

The government has put a £55bn school rebuilding programme under review, freezing plans for hundreds of new secondaries in England.

Schools and local authorities were urgently seeking guarantees tonight as news of the review was made public. The Department for Education insisted that no decision had been taken, but sources close to the project said there would be a concerted drive to make savings from the £8.5bn annual budget for new schools, redirecting some of that money to help start the Swedish-style free schools the Conservatives have promised.

Secondary schools in authorities that have been approved to enter the Building Schools for the Future project but have not yet named their contractors may now lose their funding. The scheme includes more than £480m allocated in the last weeks of the Labour government.

A Whitehall source said: "It's about school-led improvement and getting local authorities out of the picture. It's school-led, whether that's academies or about free schools set up by parent groups."

Today it emerged that Treasury officials are considering cuts of up to 15% from every department apart from health and international development, and that a move to reduce child benefit payments for middle class families is among the measures being considered. The government is planning £6bn cuts this year and further measures in a budget in June to bring the £164bn deficit down.

In opposition, Michael Gove, now the education secretary, had promised a review of Building Schools for the Future – which had been subject to extensive reforms after a slow and expensive start – but the Liberal Democrats opposed the move. David Laws, who was the Lib Dem schools spokesman, is now chief secretary to the Treasury in the coalition largely responsible for the government's cuts and savings agenda.

Gove has made the new "free" schools a priority. Private organisations, parent and teacher groups would be allowed to start a new school in a bid to build up a market in schools that would compete and drive up standards.

In March, the previous schools secretary, Ed Balls, announced £420m in funding for new and refurbished secondary schools in Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Gateshead, Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire and Sutton. In April, a £61.5m project for Cumbria was also approved. However, those projects, along with schools in 45 other local authorities that have not yet named a preferred bidder for the projects, have been frozen pending the outcome of the review.

Ian Smith, the headteacher at Millom School in south Cumbria, said he was seeking reassurances that the scheme is still on the table.

Other Labour policies that have been scrapped in the first days of the new government include ID cards, the new biometric passport, Heathrow's third runway and home information packs.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said of the review: "This comes as no surprise to me but it will be a devastating blow to the schools on the list because many of those will be in urgent need of refurbishment. This is putting on hold the 21st century school. You have to ask yourselves, if the economic climate is as the Conservatives describe, wouldn't it be logical to do what you can to get the current schools stock fit for purpose instead of starting a completely new initiative?"

Christine Blower, general secretary of the NUT, said: "There have been some significant problems with Building Schools for the Future. It's fair to say there has been some money which hasn't been well spent and some odd buildings built and money spent on consultants. Reviewing BSF is not a bad idea. But redirecting public money away from the building of schools which should be properly accountable … is not a good idea."

A statement issued by Partnership for Schools and the Department for Education said: "Ministers are considering spending priorities which include school capital funding. No decisions have been taken on Building Schools for the Future and other capital projects."

David Cameron also faces further pressure from Tory MPs over his plans to require a vote of 55% of MPs before a five-year fixed-term parliament can be dissolved. Previously a simple majority was required, but after requests from the Liberal Democrats in the coalition negotiations this was raised to 55%, to ensure that the Conservatives cannot end the coalition unilaterally.

Veteran Tory Richard Ottaway, who is one of the frontrunners for the chairmanship of the Conservatives' 1922 Committee of backbenchers, said it would "undermine the primacy of parliament". "It's constitutionally incoherent. Unless it can be clarified, it's not acceptable," he said. Other Conservative MPs, including Christopher Chope and Charles Walker, also criticised the moves.

Cameron said today that the controversial measure is still open for discussion. "I'm the first prime minister in British history to give up the right unilaterally to ask the Queen for a dissolution of parliament. This is a huge change in our system, it is a big giving up of power.

"Obviously that is a mechanism that can be debated in the House of Commons, but I believe that it is a good arrangement to give us strong and stable government."