Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. (AP/Scott) Applewhite)

Paul Ryan portrays his budget as an earnest attempt to reduce the deficit– a Herculean task to be sure.  But earnest practice isn’t equivalent to honest practice, and Ryan’s allegiance to the GOP core shines through quite clearly. I’m not certain how you manage to reduce the deficit simply by slashing spending programs, while significantly cutting taxes.

How does this prevent the deficit from ballooning again in the future?  The funds collected from your spending cut rampage are piled back into the kitty in order to pay for tax cuts–leaving you bare on the revenue side.  So in a few years you would have repeated the cycle of ballooning deficits you tried to tame in the first place.

I don’t have an issue with the idea behind the plan.  We are in dire financial straits, and most Americans are unaware of just how serious our deficit problems are.  Will there be pain and sacrifice in alleviating this debt?  Undoubtedly.  All of us will feel some measure of pain.  And this is where the reality does not meet the rhetoric for Ryan and the GOP.

In Ryan’s plan,  the devil is most certainly in the details. Where is the real sacrifice on the part of Ryan and conservatives?  This plan is littered with tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations.  Why are they exempt?  What are they willing to give?  Why doesn’t Ryan match the draconian spending cuts he advocates with tax increases?  If we all must pay a price, I see no reason why the wealthy should be spared.  Ryan’s plan gets more than two trillion dollars from poor and middle class folks.  Where is the balance?  How is this shared sacrifice? Give us a fair, non-partisan attempt at a deficit solution congressman. Then I will call you brave.   But for now, this plan falls short, and it’s just another in a long line of partisan attempts to remake policy that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

And now Mr. President, the ball is in your court.  Articulating a message to the American people about the pain we all must share in order to reduce our deficit, will short circuit Ryan’s short sighted, heavily slanted approach.  It is not enough to cut discretionary spending.  Not only is it implausible, it’s reckless policy–and it’s one of the reasons we’re faced with our current situation.  We’ve lived on the precipice of fiscal irresponsibility for so long, we must pay the price sooner or later.  I see no reason why that price should be borne solely on the backs of Americans with little or no means.  That is morally not an option in this case.  Not this time.

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The GOP-controlled house has managed to successfully repeal the health care bill.  The repeal, rooted in symbolic political pandering, does nothing to advance any real attempt at crafting an alternative–or remedying specific aspects of the bill.  But it’s not shocking that the GOP’s leadership is rooted in partisan preening.

To further complicate things, republicans are now pushing the democrats are obstructionists meme, by claiming the democratically controlled senate’s push to kill debate on the newly repealed bill is tantamount to obstruction–unworthy of our debate.  The irony here is rich of course, and it presupposes the American electorate is brain dead.  Wasn’t this the modus operandi of the  republican party the last two years?

Here’s the crux of the problem:  Partisans on both sides of the debate (but mainly on the right)  have minimized the importance of actual issues, causing our political debate to wither.  Sanctimony, pettiness, and overreach have all crept into the discourse–made all the more potent by the toxic blend of fear-mongering and faux nationalism.

This is where the president must show a deft touch.  He realizes the limitations that occur trying to implement a legislative agenda during times of political change– and he must comport himself with the dignity and patience the office requires of him.  It is not his role to denigrate and abuse the opposing party–even when that party has done nothing but vilify his intentions, refute his citizenship status,and distort his record.  He cannot be a rubber stamp for a progressive agenda, which ignores the realities of today’s electorate.

President’s Obama‘s style is not fire and brimstone, and it’s not about confrontation.  It’s a dynamic pragmatism, cultivated from years of his own experience.

It’s only two weeks into this divided government experiment, but so far the cool of presidential leadership seems to be the steadying hand most of us thought it would be.

The next two years should be fun.

Photo courtesy of Jessica Rinaldi, Reuters

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H/T: ThinkProgress

What could possibly be the rationale behind blocking this bill?  Other than sticking your chest out to prove you can, I don’t see what conservatives have to gain by this.  Shockingly sad–especially for the party that considers themselves patriots.

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Here’s a great piece from Essential Presence, about the true nature of President Barack Obama’s politics.  The money shot:

During the 2008 presidential primaries the GOP went to the usual political tactic of stirring up the base through fear as they declared Barack Obama as the most liberal Senator in Congress. It was to Obama’s benefit to let that “most liberal” tag stick because, after all, he was in a heated battle with Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. But some liberals bought something Obama himself wasn’t selling…the GOP was.

Barack Obama was never this ultra-progressive knight in ebon-skin.  Never. Despite how some tried to paint him that way, he’s always been pragmatic, prudent, and measured in his politics.

The fact that liberals are bursting at the seems, because they feel duped due to some over night political conversion on his part is foolish.  He is what he’s always been.  This point–once progressives figure it out–will help the party immeasurably, especially since the electorate repudiated their brand of leadership.

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Preach Sullivan:

My view is that the McConnell-Biden deal – for that’s who negotiated it – is great for Obama. Why? Because it will greatly add to economic growth in the next two years, the sine qua non of survival in this economic climate; because, once the Democrats had failed to pass a budget before the election, this was the best Obama could possibly get; and because Obama – especially in his riveting press conference yesterday – took the angry and beleaguered position of doing the post-partisan best for the American people, rather than trying to score one against the GOP or for the Dems.

(Emphasis is mine.) I’m so riveted by this dynamic, I’ll be focusing more on this in the next few days

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A confederacy of dunces indeed

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” - Senator Mitch McConnell.

“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”  -Jonathan Swift

Surely the leader of the senate in the GOP has more important objectives than this right?  I mean, would it not seem the most important thing is delivering the American people from the yoke of institutional oppression–borne from years of unregulated companies and industries that have run amok.  Wouldn’t it be making sure Americans have access to affordable health care?  Wouldn’t it be reining in the ballooning deficit?

So here we have the opposition–  champions of Constitutional rights who, invariably, know next to nothing about what is actually in the Constitution–but are proud to extol the virtues of limiting government overreach, using the constitution as validation.

And why would they have to?  When the electorate in this country is so upside down.  When the voting public answers the same question in two different ways, why would this new breed of populist public servant feel they need to be nuanced and litereate on pertinenet issues? Example:

What to make of the findings of the latest NYT poll? I have to say it makes me scratch my head. It portends a big Republican wave election, buoyed by a new conviction that people want smaller government that does less rather (55 percent) than a bigger one with more services (36 percent). At the same time, 71 percent oppose reducing social security benefits for future retirees; 54 percent oppose raising the retirement age (42 percent support it); 57 percent oppose not giving social security recipients a raise in benefits this year; and a small majority 45 – 41 do not want the health insurance reform bill repealed.

It’s no wonder Americans aren’t batting an eye at the sheer lunacy of some of the political fringe.  They’ve fed off manufactured packaged outrage for the last two years.  Thus we are left with mass political confusion.

Clearly what we’re dealing with is the absence of ideas– there is no clear cut methodology as to how their goals get achieved.  The loudest voices in the Tea Party have become the moving fog, sucking oxygen from the improbable mixture of a bad economy, misplaced fear, and right-wing fundamentalist theology.  But what happens when the party of nihilist protest achieves power, and comes to find that wielding it means putting away their pitchforks?  Without a plan–other than cutting taxes–what is to prevent them from doing far more damage to an already depressed economy than they ever imagined?

Herein lies the problem:  Can one of these new wave politicians articulate a policy–any policy that significantly reduces the deficit, or cuts entitlement programs?  What government waste are they interested in cutting that is not a social program aimed at alleviating hardships of middle class and poor Americans?  Are they only interested in abolishing tax hikes forever and repealing government sponsored health care?  The answers to the former is nothing, and the latter is yes.

This season’s political climate is a reflection not on the seriousness of counter policies–as evidenced by the quote above from Mitch McConnell–but about broad euphemistic falsehoods, rooted in fear and obstruction.  The seething treatment of elite strategy seems to be a cover for inflated deficiencies in both policy knowledge and intellectuality.  It’s working perfectly, because not one media outlet is choosing to expose it.  The media is culpable for acquiescing to the tea party mythos because it entertains and it draws in viewers.  The strategy of the dunce has sapped the life from the progressive movement.  Welcome to the new political reality, controlled by a confederacy of dunces.

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Math has always been fuzzy for the McConnell crowd. If we can’t afford all this spending, we can’t afford 700 billion dollars in tax cuts can we?

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Image courtesy of Hyscience

I’m my discussions with folks about politics, one of the questions that usually comes up is how many black republicans do you know? Some of the answers generally go  something like this:  Black people should never be republicans.  What have republicans done for black people?  You may think this naive and simplistic– but right or wrong– it is the prevailing thought throughout much of the black community.  The republican party has done much to alienate and agitate blacks, never bothering to rationalize how their indirect hostility contributes to much of the black community’s one-sided affair with the democratic party.  But how did the GOP get to this point?

First, let’s examine RNC chairman Michael Steele’s commnets last month.  He was asked why blacks should vote republican:

“You really don’t have a reason to, to be honest — we haven’t done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True,” Republican National Chairman Michael Steele told 200 DePaul University students Tuesday night. “

As a black progressive, I can’t help but marvel–not at the veracity of the statement–but at the fact that Michael Steele said it.  It would be much too easy and typical, for me to chide conservatives on their ambivalence and disdain toward the black community.  It would be much more logical and intellecually honest for me to cede this argument to Coby Dillard, and his very astute, thought provoking take on the matter.  Mr. Dillard’s theory on the GOP and blacks put quite simply:

(sic).. we don’t carry our message to the black community, and when we try, it doesn’t relate to the issues and realities they face daily..

Blacks mistrust of the republican party extends far beyond current political and socio-economic structures.  Mistrust was cultivated by years of historical psychological warfare, designed to preserve conservative electoral bases.  Republicans initiated several policies designed to galvanize white voters in the south and in working class rural areas–all the while alienating those in black and brown neighborhoods.  One such policy was the Southern Strategy.

Here’s more Dillard:

The “Southern strategy”-a concerted effort to appeal to the GOP’s newest converts in the southern states-played to these voters by making issues such as public school busing and state’s rights integral to their campaigns in the south. Opposition to these platforms cast Republicans in a negative light within black communities, and-coupled with the Democratic Party’s use of civil rights to attract more black voters-marked the final actions in the black vote’s shift from Republican to Democrat (which began with FDR’s passage and implementation of the New Deal). With this shift, Republican campaign strategy shifted to holding the (then) few black votes they could get, while targeting their campaign efforts more toward voters that were more sympathetic.

The Southern Strategy has been widely condemned by liberals and conservatives alike, yet its roots are indelibly planted into the subconscious of those black Americans affected by its tainted reach.  Scores of blacks regard the republican party as the antithesis of tolerance and civil rights, and its no wonder  what passes for community outreach by the party has yielded no results.

So what is the answer?  It is incumbent upon republicans–black republicans especially–to confront the past and honestly assess the message being sent to black Americans.  There are strong elements of conservatism bubbling under the surface in most black communities.  Michael Steele’s bluntness was a good starting point.  The work should be invested, but the reward would significantly merit the effort.

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The independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is now public enemy number one in the eyes of conservatives.  Some of them have apparently loaded up on crazy pills.  Exhibit A:

The real culprit in this high-stakes drama is the GOP– their weak-kneed leadership and their lame health care proposal– put forth only because they felt compelled to do so.  They never had any intention of reforming the health care system–as evidenced by their recent years in control of both chambers when they did nothing–and their lack of movement on the subject in, oh 100 years.  Such false indignation.  Now conservatives care about reform? All of a sudden they care about the deficit and deficit reduction– when they never seemed to care in the past?  Was it a concern when we were spending trillions of dollars (actually, it was 750 billion) on the war in Iraq?   Was there one mention of deficit control then?

“I remain a Republican,” Pete Peterson said, “but the Republicans have become a far more theological, faith-directed party, not troubling with evidence.”

The above statement is the fundamental problem with conservatives, and their leadership.  It’s far more insidious to govern based upon emotion and faith, than actual evidence.  Armed with an arsenal of fear and demagoguery, they look to beat down the public with uncertainty–not alert them to real, tangible information.

When their health care reform proposal was made public and scored by the CBO in November, the GOP’s main argument was that their bill does not touch Medicare, while Nancy Pelosi’s legislation cuts 500 billion dollars from the program.  That boast in and of itself was so disingenuously ludicrous, given the fact that medicare is the biggest entitlement program in need of the most reform.  You know, since it’s slowly bankrupting the country.  Be proud in your ignorance GOP.  Continue to stay oblivious to the fact that hard choices must be made.  Be heartened by the fact that you all are too cowardly to make them.

The Congressional Budget Office is not the enemy, nor are they the enemy of the republican party.  Ignorance and fear remain the enemy of progress, and that is what passes for republican leadership today.

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Senator Jim Bunning, R-(KY):

Last week, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., asked to pass a 30-day extensions bill for unemployment insurance and other federal programs. Earlier in February, those extensions were included in a broader bipartisan bill that was paid for but did not meet Sen. Reid’s approval, and he nixed the deal. When I saw the Democrats in Congress were going to vote on the extensions bill without paying for it and not following their own Pay-Go rules, I said enough is enough.

Many people asked me, “Why now?” My answer is, “Why not now?” Why can’t a non-controversial measure in the Senate that would help those in need be paid for? If the Senate cannot find $10 billion to pay for a measure we all support, we will never pay for anything.

Hmm.  Jim Bunning, after years of being fiscally irresponsible, has decided to push the restraint button.  Too bad it’s a toothless, arrogant, and disingenuous act.  Too bad his new position on fiscal responsibility wasn’t reached during our Iraq war years– where the cost is approaching 3 trillion dollars– and it still isn’t paid for.  Bunning is right.  Enough is enough.  Here is why Bunning and his ilk have no clue as to what Americans really want:

1)  Supporters of Bunning on the right actually believe he is sticking to his principles.  He has no principles.  He is a retiring senator, not beholden to anyone or anything.  The principled stand would have been him enacting this arcane senate procedural move when he had a skin in the game, so to speak.  Here’s the response from a conservative blogger on RedState:

“Last night, while most Americans were watching the Olympics, Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) was standing strong for the American people on the floor of the United States Senate. Oh, it won’t be portrayed as such — believe me.” The post further stated: “Bunning took to the floor to object to a unanimous consent request to call up and pass the House-passed extension of a number of expiring so-called ‘stimulus’ and other benefit programs, because Bunning dared to ask the simple question of how these extensions would be paid for.”

2) Do these people firmly believe that people would rather stay home and collect 297 dollars, rather than work?  Think about this:  would you be comfortable making so much money a week– knowing that you had a mortgage payment, a car payment, expensive cobra payments?  Nothing says security like expiring benefits.  I know of no one happy to accept unemployment insurance.  The fact of the matter is that have to accept it, or risk drowning in a sea of uncertain fiscal devastation.  If your idea of “motivation,” is to wean honest, hard-working Americans off of the one avenue enabling them to survive in this hellish economy– then you are intellectually lacking, and morally bankrupt.  Congratulations.

3) I think one of the roles of government that most people can can agree upon is that in times of crisis; war, natural disasters, economic downturns– the government can and should provide the blanket protection the country needs.  In these times, responsive leadership is not only necessary, but essential.  While the politics of a jobs bill, or expansion of unemployment insurance can be debated, they should not be.  The objective is to provide the people with the services necessary to survive when they need them most.

The example of unemployment is just anpther illustration of what ails the party in its attempts to connect with the American people.

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