I don't care if Obama loses in 2012

America's most powerful conservative

Against my better judgment, I’ve been commenting on stories on Huffington Post lately. Usually my comments are about how Barack Obama has failed both as a president and a liberal. There is little that distinguishes him from George W. Bush, save for some progressive rhetoric that is ultimately unaccompanied by action. Any honest and politically literate progressive knows this. The only supposed liberals who seem to really believe in Obama can be found on MSNBC or on the Washington Post editorial page—centrists posing as liberals, because they have allowed themselves to be dragged rightward by the craven corporate whores in the modern Democratic Party.

Even the liberal commenters on Huffington Post and Daily Kos have given up defending Obama with any degree of fervency. Most of them, anyway. A few die-hards remain, but their minds are impervious to reality, a la that infamous 30% of the population that was still approving of George W. Bush’s performance at the tail end of his second term.

Despite this widespread disappointment, I am frequently criticized for my Election Day 2012 plans, which do not include a trip to the polls, except perhaps to cast a Green for president and maybe a vote for my congressman. I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. I will not vote for him again. That much is certain. Even if I lived in a swing state like Ohio or Pennsylvania, I still would not vote for Obama. And it is here, for many liberals, where my need for “ideological purity” comes under fire. Whether it’s on the threads of HuffPost or when I’m having drinks with liberal friends, the specter of a Rick Perry/Michele Bachmann/Mitt Romney is always raised, as if failing to vote for Obama next year—despite my disappointment with him on almost every major issue—will haunt me until my dying breath.

Liberals insist that liberals must vote for Barack Obama because if we don’t, who knows what whackadoodle could be our next president, as if that outcome would be anyone’s fault but Barack Obama’s.

I for one am not going to allow myself to be scared into the voting booth at the mere mention of Rick Perry, Mitt Romney or anyone else. No doubt, however, that millions of other liberals certainly will. And that’s a problem. It sends a message to the Establishment-oriented Obama, and all other Democrats present and future, that to secure the “base” of the party, one need only frighten those in it with the prospect of a theocratic supply-side dystopia if Republican candidate X wins the election.

And maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s what we need in this country. Apparently, Bush didn’t make things bad enough in order for endless war, permanent tax cuts, and the trampling of the Bill of Rights to be deemed bad ideas by either party. After all, these buffooneries have continued apace into this so-called liberal administration, which has doled out trillions to the financial sector while destroying the savings of the general population, which eagerly awaits a jobs plan that they will no doubt be terribly disappointed by.

If Obama manages to win reelection, it would be a disaster for liberalism rather than a boost. Since Obama is not an actual liberal, his reelection would demonstrate that, electorally, core New Deal Democratic values don’t really matter on a substantive level, only at a very superficial rhetorical one. It would vindicate former press secretary Robert Gibbs’ dismissive assertion that only the “professional left” is disaffected with the president, meaning anyone who gives a shit about protecting America’s working class from corporate marauders, several of which populate the administration itself.

If Obama is defeated in 2012, the pundit class will proffer every explanation possible for the outcome, except for the correct one—that Obama is a centrist whose shamelessly pro-corporate policies failed to effect positive change in the lives of ordinary Americans during the worst financial crisis in 80 years.

- Max

Paul Ryan's proposes neoliberal junta budget

“We’re gonna get ridda your Medicare and you’re gonna like it. Capisce?”

I just finished perusing the Republican budget proposal for fiscal year 2012. It was unveiled at a news conference today by Wall Street bailer-outer Paul Ryan and about fifteen House Republicans; and with the exception of one woman, all were white men over the age of 40.

The GOP proposal is like something you’d find being advanced by a 1980s Latin American military junta hoping to win favor with the IMF and World Bank in order to obtain loans. The budget plan calls for $6.2 trillion in cuts over the next ten years, but still wouldn’t lead to a balanced budget until the late 2030s. Part of the reason is its insane call for huge permanent tax cuts for individuals and corporations, including drastically lowering both the top individual and corporate tax rates to 25% from 35%. The proposal would eliminate the 2010 health care reform law. Naturally, the Pentagon’s budget is barely touched, and the GOP proposal has essentially deferred to Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ budgetary recommendations. Most of egregious of all, however, is that the GOP plan eliminates Medicare. Of course, that’s not the word Republicans are using. They’re saying they’re saving Medicare by reforming it, but Republicans want to save Medicare in the same sense that Lieutenant Calley saved My Lai village by ordering it destroyed.

Here’s the crux of the GOP’s plan to eliminate Medicare:

Starting in 2022, new Medicare beneficiaries will be enrolled in the same kind of health care program that members of Congress enjoy. Future Medicare recipients will be able to choose from a list of guaranteed coverage options, and they will be given the ability to choose a plan that works best for them. This is not a voucher program, but rather a premium-support model. A Medicare premium-support payment would be paid, by Medicare, to the plan chosen by the beneficiary, subsidizing its cost.

The premium-support model would operate similar to the way the Medicare prescription-drug benefit program works today. The Medicare premium-support payment would be adjusted so that wealthier beneficiaries would receive a lower subsidy, the sick would receive a higher payment if their conditions worsened, and lower-income seniors would receive additional assistance to cover out-of-pocket costs.

This is interesting considering how similar it is to what Republicans call Obamacare. In the same budget proposal, Republicans are advocating the repeal of the president’s health care law with its sliding scale government subsidies allocated based on personal income levels, while simultaneously calling for the implementation of the same general plan for people who turn 65 after 2021. Even though this is the kind of idea that Republicans find worthy of the “socialist” epithet, they’re pushing this approach because it is much less socialistic than the current single-payer Medicare system.

What is surprising about the GOP’s proposed abolition of Medicare as we know it, is the brazen manner in which it’s being presented. Medicare is a very popular government program, even more so than private health insurance, which is remarkable considering that its only customers are people over 65—a demographic that can sometimes be difficult to please. Furthermore, everyone who is under the age of fifty-five right now would be affected by this change, which will have the surely anticipated effect of increasing out-of-pocket expenses. This is because there is nothing to prevent private health insurance premiums from continuing to rise at a rate that outpaces wage growth or inflation. Will the GOP’s premium-support model contain provisions for adjusting subsidies based on premium increases or will it be subject to a cost of living adjustment scheme that lags behind these hikes? Most likely the latter, since the whole point of “reforming” Medicare is for the government to spend less on it, and for the citizens to spend more. Even if this reality does not explicitly enter the minds of Americans under 55, they are still going to have some serious questions about gutting a program that has done well by their parents and other elderly loved ones. Frankly, I anticipate that the GOP’s Medicare proposal will be rebuked by the electorate with extreme prejudice.

On a related note, Ryan’s budget also contains a long-sought wet dream of the American right, federal tort reform. In this case, tort reform means placing a cap on damages rewarded by juries in medical malpractice lawsuits. By implementing a ceiling on damages, so the argument goes, malpractice insurers won’t have to pay out as much money in lawsuits, meaning the insurers could lower the premiums they charge doctors and hospitals, meaning the doctors and hospitals could lower what they charge to HMOs for providing those HMOs’ customers with care, meaning the HMOs could lower premiums for their customers, i.e., the American people. Notice that the American people are last in this wondrous chain of trickle down tort reform. Of all the entities in this relationship, patients are likely to benefit the least simply by virtue of being the furthest removed from where the reform is being initiated. That is, of course, unless you’ve been the victim of medical malpractice, in which case you’d be right in the thick of it, as you’d be unable to reap the kinds of damages you would have been under various state laws, which brings me to my next point.

Not a day goes by when some prominent Republican doesn’t decry increasing encroachments by the federal government on states’ rights and individual liberty. And yet one of the key proposals in Republican health care reform has been the enactment of a federal tort reform law that would supersede state laws pertaining to medical malpractice. I’m not quite sure how conservatives square that one.

As if these proposals weren’t bad enough, we come to Ryan’s not-so surprising take on the Pentagon’s budget, which defers to the Obama administration’s insistence that the decades-long boondoggle for military contractors is maintained:

Reflects $178 billion in savings identified by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, reinvesting $100 billion in higher military priorities and dedicating the rest to deficit reduction.

Nice try, but that’s not $178 billion in savings. It’s $78 billion in savings. Spending $100 billion on weapons programs X, Y and Z instead of A, B and C because you deemed the latter projects wasteful doesn’t mean you saved $100 billion; it just means you spent that money, but more wisely (you think). Of course, this is the Pentagon we’re talking about, which has seen it appropriate to spend more than the GDP of Australia to build thousands of F-35 fighter jets to fight al Qaeda’s nonexistent air force.

Obviously the Republicans don’t expect all or even most of their ideas to make it into whatever FY 2012 budget finally gets passed. Nonetheless, they are hoping to frame and control the nature of the budget debate. By putting Medicare essentially on the chopping block in their budget, the GOP wants this proposal germinate into something that they hope will soon become “mainstream,” or at least be seen as a viable policy prescription.

As far as the Obama administration’s response to this plan goes, anything short of derisive laughter, mockery, and criticism will not do. When it comes to Medicare and Social Security, the electorate is on the side of the Democrats, who historically have enacted and protected these programs. Whenever the Republicans win an election, they always seem to overreach. Whether it was George W. Bush after the 2004 election proposing the privatization of Social Security, the unpopular gutting of labor unions in Wisconsin, or the proposed elimination of Medicare, Republican economic policy is starkly at odds with what Americans want. Sure, the GOP can cite polls saying people want them to crackdown on wasteful spending or some other vague idea that virtually everyone can get on board with, but once you get into the specifics, once you start asking people if they want their Medicare or Social Security or unemployment benefits messed with, that’s when the GOP hits serious resistance. This budget proposal is no different and is pure folly, and if there is a shutdown of the government, Obama will be able to point to the GOP Medicare proposal and tell Americans that the Republicans are after their Medicare and soon their Social Security.

That’s assuming Obama doesn’t cave once again, but at this point who the hell knows?

- Max

Doesn't anyone care that Obama is bombing Libya without Congressional authorization?

Bye bye, Constitution. It’s been real.

The very first article of the United States Constitution enumerates the powers of Congress. Among these is the power

“To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water…”

Nowhere in the Constitution is the president given the authority to make war unilaterally. It is true that the president is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, but that clause comes with an important qualifier:

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States…”

As specified by Article I, calling the military into service falls under the expressed powers granted to Congress. Several presidents have ignored the Constitution in this regard, with Barack Obama becoming just the latest example with his initiation of military action against Libya (not to mention his predator drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, but we’ll leave this aside for the time being.) For his part, George W. Bush waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but in each case had congressional authorization to carry out military action, however vague that permission was in the case of Iraq. Indeed, many gutless Democrats who in 2002 gave Bush wide-ranging discretion to handle Iraq’s WMD compliance/noncompliance as he saw fit, later claimed that they did not intend to give him the authority to order an invasion.

Establishment liberals can always be counted on to support a war if the justification for it is rife with enough fear-mongering or is couched in lofty rhetoric about human rights. Time magazine’s Joe Klein, for example, never tires of suckling at the teat of executive power. And when a president, whether Bush or Obama or whoever, says we need to send warships to wherever and fire up the fighter jets to bomb another race of brown people, the worst Klein can say about such an operation is that he’s “skeptical” about the mission’s potential for success, despite the occurrence of some “amazing diplomacy.”

Which brings me to my next point: after a unilateral decision has been made by a US president to bomb somewhere, the media has the awful tendency of examining the action’s efficacy, and not its legality or its morality for that matter. Talking heads on television delve into whether the war is worth the cost in terms of blood and treasure. Even decades later wars are discussed in such terms, as the case of Vietnam illustrates. The problem with that war, so Establishment wisdom goes, that the war simply was not worth the American lives and money. Never mind the fact that two million East Asians were mercilessly subjected to a holocaust of indiscriminate bombing by three successive presidential administrations, or the fact that the US essentially had to wage war on the South Vietnamese people so it could “defend” them from their own National Liberation Front. No, the problem with Vietnam was that policymakers didn’t have the foresight to know that half a million US soldiers and all the munitions tonnage the US could drop would not be sufficient for victory. Meanwhile the legality and altruistic intentions of US foreign policy are always taken for granted. And if someone like a Kucinich or a Paul gets out of line—as one surely will—pundits from the Right and the Left will be happy to impugn his patriotism and accusing him of not “supporting the troops.”

But what about the War Powers Resolution of 1973? That gives the president the authority to deploy the military as he sees fit, so long as he notifies Congress within 48 hours, and doesn’t keep forces committed for more than 60 days, 90 days counting the troop drawdown process. I’m no ConLaw expert, but I fail to see how Congress can just abdicate its constitutional war-making responsibilities. Every person who’s taken AP Government or History is familiar with the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, in which the Marshall Court struck down a provision in the 1789 Judiciary Act that expanded the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction beyond the scope of its constitutional authority. In providing a precedent for the vital concept of judicial review, Marshall wrote,

“Certainly all those who have framed written Constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be that an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void.”

Congress’ war-making powers have been usurped by the executive with such frequency that most people seem desensitized to the phenomenon. Indeed, some Obama apologists on Huffington Post (scroll down to the comments for attacks on Kucinich from Obama worshipers) and elsewhere have cited as evidence of the Libya operation’s legitimacy, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, passed 10-0 (with five abstentions), that authorized the implementation of a no-fly zone if Moammar Gaddafi did not agree to cease military operations against the rebels. No doubt the UNSC resolution has the force of international law, but the question here isn’t whether Obama’s/Sarkozy’s/Cameron’s war on Libya is legal under international law, but whether Obama’s decision to enter into the agreement and carry out its provisions is allowable under US law. Be advised that this has nothing to do with international law trumping domestic law, since international law is often a product of decisions made with domestic considerations, such as public opinion, and checks and balances in mind. Before ordering his ambassador, Susan Rice, to vote “yes” at the UN, and indeed, before he decided to commit American military resources to a bombing campaign in Libya, he could have, and should have, sought authorization from Congress. Besides, there was nothing preventing the Obama administration from approving UNSC Resolution 1973, while telling its allies that for the US to take part in instituting a no-fly zone, that Congress would first have to give its blessing.

Anyone who thinks that the Framers intended for the President to have sole discretion to engage the military in hostilities with no authorization is free to attempt to find evidence for this in Madison’s Notes on the Debates of the Federal Convention, the Federalist Papers, or other correspondence from the Framers. The truth, however, is that here the preponderance of evidence shows a disdain for unilateral executive war-making authority—a prospect that calls to mind the worst facets of monarchy. Via Glenn Greenwald at Salon, then future Supreme Court Justice John Jay made the case against such a scheme in Federalist No. 4:

“It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.”

Barack Obama cares no more for the Constitution or rule of law than George W. Bush did. And the longer his administration goes on, the more I become convinced of a near-seamless continuity between the two.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com

Haley Barbour's Mississippi Problem

I’m really intrigued all the buzz about a possible Haley Barbour candidacy for president in 2012. He’s the affable baby-faced Governor of Mississippi, former tobacco, pharmaceutical, and utility company lobbyist who was elected to the state’s highest office partly on a platform to preserve the Stars and Bars on the state flag. Barbour recently made waves by commenting that he didn’t remember racism in Mississippi in the 1960s “as being that bad.” During his campaign for governor in 2003, he spoke at a fundraiser held by an officially racist organization called the Council of Conservative Citizens, whose Statement of Principles reads in part, “We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind.”

But as a lobbyist, Barbour also pushed causes which he will surely have to explain away if he is to have any hope of securing the GOP’s presidential nomination. In 2001, the Mexican government retained his firm, BGR Group, to lobby Congress and the White House to advocate for amnesty lite, whereby illegal immigrants could pay a fee for being undocumented, but be placed on a fast-tracked path to citizenship.

Based on what I know about Barbour, I’m pretty sure he’s not a racist. As with all politicians, he is first and foremost an opportunist. He spoke at a fundraiser held by a group that opposes “all efforts to mix the races” because he knows that there is not an insubstantial chunk of the Mississippi electorate that agrees with such sentiments. On the other hand, he lobbied for liberal immigration reforms because the Mexican government was paying him handsomely to do so. While it’s true that Barbour has previously taken a softer stance on illegal immigration than some in his party, that position is likely to harden out of necessity if he throws his hat in the presidential ring. During the race for the GOP nomination set to begin this year, we can expect the yet-to-be-determined candidates to try to out-Southern Strategy one another, as they jockey for the support of the party’s white base.

Nonetheless, Barbour has been learning the hard way that the national political scene is quite different from Mississippi politics. Praising the defunct White Citizens’ Councils of the 1960s might not ruffle any feathers in Yazoo City, but when you’re pondering a run for president, lauding pro-segregation groups can have consequences. But Barbour is an adept politician, so I’m sure he won’t have too much trouble making the transition to a national Republican figure from his origins in what Gallup just declared is the country’s most conservative state, which brings me to my next point about a possible Barbour run.

For more than seven years, Haley Barbour has been governor of a state that ranks at or near the very bottom in just about every single quality of life category humanly imaginable. No doubt Mississippi’s problems far predate Barbour’s governorship, but I’m having a difficult time fathoming just how it is that a man in charge of a state with such a low standard of living relative to the rest of the Union can be considered a serious contender for the nation’s highest office.

Let’s take a moment to review some rankings from various sources on Mississippi relative to other 49 states:

Median household income: Worst

Poverty rate: Worst

Internet access: Worst

Overall health: Worst

Obesity: Worst

Children’s Well Being: Worst

Infant mortality: Worst

K thru 12 education performance: 5th worst

Traffic fatalities: 5th worst

Percentage of population over 25 with a bachelor’s degree: 3rd worst

Convicted public officials per capita: 7th most

You get the idea, if one state had to be deemed the asscrack of America, it would be Mississippi. But there is one area that Mississippi—this most conservative of conservative states—ranks high in. That’s federal aid per capita, in which it ranks fourth, and rate of earmarks, where it comes in second. For a state filled with people who decry the big bad federal gubmint, they sure as shit have no qualms about receiving handouts from Uncle Sam.

Haley Barbour is not the reason Mississippi is in such bad shape relative to the rest of the country, but he hasn’t exactly done a whole lot in seven years to reverse his state’s fortunes. During his first year in office, Barbour succeeded in making medical malpractice reform—a frequent wet dream of Republicans—a reality. Barbour and a few other conservatives have touted Mississippi as a model in health care, even though as seen above, it is the unhealthiest state in the Union. Furthermore, health insurance premiums in the state have risen 89% since 2000, which is a common theme across the country. (I looked in vain for data on premiums since Barbour’s tort reform took effect.)

If it seems like I’m trashing Mississippi here, it’s because I am. But this is not my principal object, but rather to ask just how it is that a chief executive of state mired in a standard of living that is markedly lower than the rest of the country can be considered a serious contender in a race for president. Because I’ll be damned if I know the answer.

ps: Mississippi is also the most religious state in the country, and I must confess, I find the inverse correlation between the state’s conservatism/religiosity and it’s quality of life rankings endlessly amusing.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com