You Can't Negotiate With Idiots

The GOP can't be negotiated with in budget talks. Think I'm wrong? Consider this sample platter of the GOP agenda offered during the last round of talks in 2013:

1. Repeal ACA.

-The CBO projects a reduction of $109 billion from the federal deficit as a result of ACA over the next decade. In addition, Jonathan Gruber has estimated an additional savings of $190 billion from lower than expected premiums over the same time period. That's a grand total of $299 billion saved, or $299 billion added to the deficit, if the bill was repealed.

2. Loosen regulations for oil/gas exploration and sign off on Keystone Pipeline.

-The World Bank released a report detailing how the costs from extreme weather events have swollen to $200 billion per year worldwide. The IPCC is as certain humans are causing climate change as doctors are that tobacco causes cancer. Opening up public land for energy development that contributes to this environmental death spiral would be irresponsible, morally and fiscally. It wouldn't even create enough jobs to justify the damage. A State Department report says approving the Keystone Pipeline would create 42,000 jobs, while another private estimate puts that figure at 67,000. Bottom line: we would add to the deficit in order to reward a small number of people within an already highly profitable industry that receives yearly subsidies totaling more than four billion. Not a good idea. Next.

3. Defund/hack/decimate the EPA

-An OMB report from last year stated that the benefits from EPA regulations in '12 totaled more than $40 billion, or double its budget for that fiscal year. These savings mostly came from lower mortality rates, improvements in health, etc. The GOP believes that this sort of intrusion into the everyday lives of Americans is a threat to the very definition of freedom. So, if you're following along at home, the equation is: billions saved + more babies alive than dead = socialism looking to wreck the American standard of living.

4. Shutdown the CFPB

-In '12, the budget for the CFPB was $343 million. As of January '13, it had a $44 million surplus. I know the GOP hates budget surpluses, but this is ridiculous. This small government agency protects consumers against gangsters with degrees. Already, American Express, Capital One, and Discovery had to pay out $400 million in fines for malicious, fraudulent sales tactics. Given that it's yearly budget is under $350 million, I'd argue the CFPB is one of the most valuable agencies in our government. Of course, this means the GOP wants to defund it.

That's only the sample platter. The entrees of "tax reform", "tort reform", and repealing/delaying/defunding Dodd-Frank are even worse. The GOP can't possibly be negotiated with because their demands are too destructive. The country would welcome a positive, aggressive, progressive agenda, if one were ever offered to it.

President Obama and Democratic Party members need to spend the next few weeks screening Speaker Boehner's calls while presenting a clear contrast in ideas to the American public.

Go left, or go the fuck home, and let Elizabeth Warren run things.

Two Americas: Richistan vs Broadland

In their book, "Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made The Rich Richer -- And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class", authors Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson provide analysis into the groundbreaking research on wealth inequality conducted by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. I recommend the book, but in case you don't read it, I feel that the information is too relevant and useful for progressives for me to sit on.

By now, you're aware that we have a distributional problem in our economic structure. As an example, during the last economic expansion ('02-'07), 53% of all economic gains went to the top 1%. And in the current economic "recovery" over 90% of all economic gains have gone to the top 1%. That covers two administrations, one Republican and one Democratic. Bush and Obama have been in office while inequality skyrocketed. However, the trend precedes them both.

From 1979-2006, real household income rose by 50% overall. How was that income distributed? Laughably unequally. If you include government tax breaks/benefits and employer-sponsored benefits, the bottom fifth saw a 10% gain over those 27 years. But households had to work 400 more hours in 2006 than they did in 1979 in order to keep this meager increase. Without those 400 hours, the bottom fifth would have LOST money. By contrast, the top 1% saw a 260% increase from 1979-2006, up from an average of 337k in 1979 to 1.2 million in 2006.

Hacker & Pierson show what our economic class divisions would look like if the economic gains from 1979-2006 were spread equally across all groups. They broke it into two groups: Richistan & Broadland.

Richistan represents what our current situation is after 30 years of skewed distribution:

-The bottom fifth of households brought home 16k in 2006.

-The second fifth of households brought home 35k.

-The middle fifth of households brought home 52k.

-The third fifth of households brought home 73k.

-The 80-90th percentile of households brought home 100k.

-The 90-95th percentile of households brought home 132k.

-The 95th-99th percentile of households brought home 211k

-The top 1% of households brought home 1.2 million.

Meanwhile, in the lovely hypothetical Broadland, the distribution of household income gains from 1979-2006 would have been far more equal:

-The bottom fifth of households would have brought home 22k in 2006, a gain of 6k.

-The second fifth of households would have brought home 45k, a gain of 10k.

-The middle fifth of households would have brought home 64k, a gain of 12k.

-The 80-90th percentile of households would have brought home 106k, a gain of 6k.

-The 90th-95th percentile of households would have brought home 128k, a LOSS of 3k.

-The 95th-99th percentile of households would have brought home 181k, a LOSS of 30k.

-The top 1% of households would have brought home 506k, a LOSS of 694k.

The numbers are clear- Broadland would be better for 90% of households. Is there anyone reading this that feels 506k isn't enough to live on each year at the top?

So the question for progressives to think about for the next election is this: will our candidate try and turn Richistan into Broadland? Or will she be coming from Richistan with tall tales of entrepreneurs and carrot on a stick opportunities?



What Liberals Once Understood

Liberals once understood that negotiating with morons only emboldens and legitimizes the morons. Team Obama didn't understand that lesson in 2008 and they still don't understand it today. Here's the instructive quote from Rick Perlstein's article in The Nation last year:

"Ironically, liberals of previous generations understood this better than we do now, despite decades more experience watching how the right’s game is played. For a Partisan Review symposium in 1962, Harvard sociologist David Riesman advised that the Kennedy administration “can gain the leeway on the domestic front…only by combatting the radical right rather than seeking itself to move onto rightist ground—an illusory operation since the right can always go still further right and will.”

Read that last part again. The administration “can gain the leeway on the domestic front…ONLY BY COMBATTING THE RADICAL RIGHT, rather than seeking itself to move onto rightist ground—an illusory operation since the RIGHT CAN ALWAYS GO STILL FURTHER RIGHT AND WILL."

And that's where we are now- successive centrist Democratic administrations have sought political support from dittoheads, conspiracy theorists, libertarian ideological sycophants, and Jesus freaks. At what point were these people ever going to vote for high capital gains taxes, abortion rights, and environmental regulations?

The #GOP just keeps drifting to the right, leading us down a path to their version of an economic utopia- austerity, which could never pass without support from misguided Democratic Party members, convinced bipartisanship is the electoral elixir that will keep them in office. It might, until the #GOP decides that individual health care mandates are suddenly socialist and now you're no longer an "independent minded, middle of the road small d."

We can take this country back, but we have to be aggressive in our progressivism to do so.