End Welfare For The Wealthy

Excepts from an Op Ed by Tom, Coburn (R-Oklahoma), @ CNN.com.

Every year, politicians on both sides engage in a process of reverse Robin Hood in which they steal $30 billion from low- and middle-income Americans and provide handouts to the rich and famous.

Millionaires receive tax earmarks and deductions crafted by both parties that allow them to write off billions each year. These write-offs include mortgage interest deductions on second homes and luxury yachts, gambling losses, business expenses, electric vehicle credits and even child care tax credits.

Meanwhile, direct handouts for millionaires have included $74 million in unemployment checks, $316 million in farm subsidies, $http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif89 million for preservation of ranches and estates, $9 billion in retirement checks and $7.5 million to compensate for damages caused by emergencies to property that should have been insured. Millionaires have even borrowed $16 million in government-backed education loans to attend college since 2007.

The goal of highlighting these excesses is not to demonize those who are successful. Instead, by highlighting the sheer stupidity of pampering the wealthy with lavish benefits through our safety net and tax code, I hope to make a moral and economic argument for real entitlement and tax reform...

Families are struggling to make ends meet and are making painful economic choices as politicians in Washington borrow billions to provide welfare to the wealthy. Politicians on both sides refuse to fix big problems and defend stupid policies because changing those policies would involve upending a comfortable political status quo.

It's important for taxpayers to understand that these distortions are not accidental loopholes in the law. To the contrary, these provisions are intentional efforts to get all Americans to buy into a system where everyone appears to benefit while the poor and middle class are being robbed.

In the case of entitlements such as Social Security, progressives have argued for decades that a program for poor people will be a poor program. Yet, Warren Buffett hardly needs the same retirement check as his secretary. Ending welfare handouts to millionaires will strengthen, not undermine, the safety net for people who need it most.

Even Canada has adopted means testing in its retirement program by limiting benefits for high-earners. That fact is we can't afford the system we have today. Only by adopting common-sense reforms can we sustain a safety net for those who truly need assistance.

On the tax side, both parties have been reluctant to alter tax earmarks and deductions, such as the mortgage interest deduction. These are considered sacrosanct.

Yet, it's hard to understand how limiting the mortgage interest deductions for yachts will hurt working families. Defending spending in the tax code is not conservative. Providing tax earmarks and deductions to millionaires is a tax increase on everyone who doesn't receive the benefit. The only way we will enact real tax reform, and grow the economy, is by lowering tax rates and broadening the base by scaling back these egregious handouts. This is precisely what President Ronald Reagan did in 1986.

Even though the super committee failed to reach an agreement on broad deficit reduction, there is no reason why the other super committee -- Congress -- should drag its feet. Change in Washington tends to start with small steps. There is no better place to start than scaling back ludicrous handouts to millionaires that expose an entitlement system and tax code that desperately need to be reformed.

Read the complete Op Ed by Tom, Coburn (R-Oklahoma), @ CNN.com.

Religion-Related Lobbying Increase Fivefold

The number of organizations engaged in religious lobbying or religion-related advocacy in Washington, D.C., has increased roughly fivefold in the past four decades, from fewer than 40 in 1970 to more than 200 today.

A new study by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life examines the agendas, strategies, affiliations and structures of 212 religion-related advocacy groups operating in the capital.

As a whole, religious advocacy organizations work on about 300 policy issues. For most of the past century, religious advocacy groups in Washington focused mainly on domestic affairs.

Today, however, roughly as many groups work only on international issues as work only on domestic issues, and nearly two-thirds of the groups work on both.

Read the full report @ Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Frank Luntz: I'm So Scared Of This Anti-Wall Street Effort

The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to network and plan political strategy for 2012. During a plenary session on Wednesday, Republican Governors discussed how to defend GOP talking points against the growing political and economic grievances sited by Occupy Wall Street movement, which 80 percent of Americans also agrees is a problem.

"I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death," said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation's foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."

Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about "income inequality" and "paying your fair share."

Yahoo News sat in on the session, and counted 10 do's and don'ts from Luntz covering how Republicans should fight back by changing the way they discuss the movement:

The GOP's War on Voting Goes to Washington

Republicans in state legislatures across the country have spent the past year mounting an all-out assault on voting rights, pushing a slew of voter ID and redistricting measures that are widely expected to dilute the power of minority and low-income voters in next November's elections. Now that effort has come to Capitol Hill, where the House passed a bill (235-190 on a mostly party-line vote) to eviscerate the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) — the last line of defense against fraud and tampering in electronic voting systems around the country.

The bill doesn't have much of a future since it isn't likely to come up in the Democrat-controlled Senate, and the White House has released a strongly worded statement against it. But that didn't stop the House from spending hours on it anyway -- and it led to Democrats charging Republicans with trying to chip away at voter protections for disenfranchised groups.

Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, "the only reason" anyone would want to eliminate the programs altogether would be to suppress votes among minorities.

"The voters are the same groups who were targeted by Jim Crow laws decades ago," Clay said. "The votes are the same groups who are now targeted by inactive voter lists, and voter ID laws and all of the other new tactics designed for a single goal: voter suppression."

The EAC was created in the wake of 2000's controversial presidential election as a means of improving the quality standards for electronic voting systems. Its four commissioners (two Republicans and two Democrats) are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The commission tests voting equipment for states and localities, distributes grants to help improve voting standards, and offers helpful guidance on proofing ballots to some 4,600 local election jurisdictions. It also collects information on overseas and military voters and tracks the return rate for absentee ballots sent to these voters.

Read the full story @ Mother Jones

NH GOP Speaker Discourages Students From Voting Because They’ll Vote ‘Liberal’

Think Progress

As ThinkProgress has been reporting, the slew of unnecessary voter ID laws passed by Republicans in many states this year are a transparent attempt to disenfranchise core Democratic voters, especially college students, the poor and minorities. But Republicans usually claim these laws are passed for the sake of curbing nonexistent voter fraud — it’s rare to have one admit their intention is to stop Democrats from getting to the polls.

But that’s exactly what New Hampshire Speaker William O’Brien (R) told a Tea Party crowd recently. As the new laws are already stifling students’ efforts to participate politically, O’Brien confessed that he wanted to make it more difficult for students to vote because they “vote their feelings” — i.e. vote as liberals:

A New Hampshire measure that ultimately failed earlier this year stoked Democratic concerns about the law’s true intentions. The law would have ended same-day registration and prohibited most college students from voting from their school addresses.

New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien, a Republican, told a tea party group that allowing people to register and vote on Election Day led to “the kids coming out of the schools and basically doing what I did when I was a kid, which is voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do — they don’t have life experience, and they just vote their feelings.”

New Hampshire’s voter ID bill failed to pass, but illegal signs nevertheless appeared on the door of a polling station in O’Brien’s own district, demanding that voters show ID before they could vote.

Under many state’s voter ID laws, student IDs and even government-issued veterans identification cards are unacceptable for use at polling stations.

Rick Perry Has Three Strikes Against Him

Rick Perry’s already lackluster presidential bid went on a deathwatch after his debate debacle. In talking to the many who have known Perry over the years, fellow Texan Bryan Burrough discovers the surprising reasons behind the campaign’s train wreck and how Perry, with an unbroken string of nine political victories, might yet stage a comeback—despite his shocking backroom dealings with big campaign donors, the rumors about gay affairs and painkiller use, and the nasty bullying tactics he has used to implement a truly radical agenda.

(Pay-to-play cronyism. Roughshod, right-wing politics. And . . . Oops, read on @ Vanity Fair)

Warren Leads Brown For Massachusetts' U.S. Senate Seat

Elizabeth Warren explains the need to hold financial institutions accountable, and responds to accusations that banking regulations are "socialism."

A new poll by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst finds Warren leading Brown 43 percent to 39 percent -- just within the poll's 4.4 percent margin of error -- in the race for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat.

Scott Brown's approval remains below 50 percent, which usually means difficulty for an incumbent, especially this far out from Election Day.

While Brown leads Warren among independents by 18 points that is likely not enough to make up for the state's overwhelming number of registered Democratic voters.

Warren leads heavily among women and among people earning under $100,000, which the pollsters say is evidence that Warren's appeal to the working and middle class is resonating.

Read the entire survey here.

Newt Is The GOP's Newest Not-Romney Presidential Candidate

As Herman Cain ponders whether he will have to drop his bid for the GOP presidential nomination, and Rick Perry continues to stumble, Newt Gingrich find himself breaking away from the pack.

In the most recent national Quinnipiac University poll of 1,039 Republican primary voters conducted in mid-November Newt Gingrich leads (26 percent) second place Mitt Romney (22 percent), with Herman Cain trailing (14 percent) in third place. The other Republicans found support only in the mid to low single digits.

But in a later question about a hypothetical match-up between Gingrich and Romney, Cain supporters break for Gingrich over Romney by a 49 to 35 percent margin, with 16 percent uncertain, according to results provided to HuffPost by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. Among all Republicans, Gingrich tops Romney on the two-way match-up by a slightly narrower margin, 49 to 39 percent.

A just-released Economist/YouGov online survey of 326 likely Republican primary voters conducted Nov. 26-29 produced similar results.

The initial vote question shows Gingrich leading Romney by a slightly wider margin (25 to 17 percent) than the Quinnipiac University poll, with Cain running third (at 15 percent) and the other candidates receiving single digit support.

But the survey also asks Republicans for their second choices. When the vote preference is recalculated, reassigning Cain's supporters based on their second choices, Gingrich has an even wider lead over Romney (32 percent to 19 percent).

In other words, Cain's departure would increase Gingrich's support by 7 percentage points, but increase Romney's by only 2.

GOP Presidential Candidates Say Anything

Everyone agrees: Newt Gingrich may be polling strong now, but the man has a lot of “baggage.”

But former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the GOP's now leading "not Romney" candidate, and Mitt Romney have a lot of baggage in common.

One of the most common gripes about Mitt Romney — if not the most common one — is that he lacks core values, and chooses positions based on political expediency, not sincere beliefs. A place to keep up with Mitt Romney's flip-flopping.

Mitt Romney Serial Flip Flops



Newt Gingrich Serial Flip Flops

The DNC put out a video (left) with a website MittvMitt.com to tell the Romney story - "two men trapped in one body."

The GOP's anti-Romney candidate, you might expect, would be someone of pronounced non-flip-flopping consistency.

Asked recently by Fox News why conservatives should prefer him over Romney, Gingrich tried to play up that image. "First of all, I have a lifetime record of being a consistent conservative," he said. Except that ... he doesn't.

Through the years, Gingrich has demonstrated a willingness to cravenly flip-flop in ways that might make Romney blush, as the video (left) put out by Ron Paul's campaign illustrates.

And as our own Joan Walsh put it, even his baggage has baggage.

Here are some of the most notable examples of Newt's flip flops:

Baggage-Beset Newt Gingrich

Salon

It’s not just the loony leftists who think the former speaker is baggage-beset. Conservative professor John J. Pitney wrote of Newt Gingrich’s baggage yesterday at the National Review’s The Corner. But there seem to be two very different definitions of what’s Newt’s baggage.

Here’s what Joan Walsh described as his baggage: Newt Gingrich served his first wife with divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery, he left the woman he left his first wife for for another mistress (he then converted to Catholicism in order to ask the church to annul his second marriage), he petulantly shut down the government in 1995 in part because he was upset that President Clinton sat him in the back of Air Force One, he gleefully led the Clinton impeachment drive while cheating on his (second) wife, and he had, for some reason, a $500,000 line of credit at fancy jeweler Tiffany and Co. And he blamed Susan Smith’s horrific murder of her children, and the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres, on Democrats. And he says racist stuff.

When Did The GOP Lose Touch With Reality?

A Commentary by Marc Pitzke

The US Republican race is dominated by ignorance, lies and scandals. The current crop of candidates have shown such a basic lack of knowledge that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein. The Grand Old Party is ruining the entire country's reputation.

Africa is a country. In Libya, the Taliban reigns. Muslims are terrorists; most immigrants are criminal; all Occupy protesters are dirty. And women who feel sexually harassed -- well, they shouldn't make such a big deal about it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns.

For months now, they've been traipsing around the country with their traveling circus, from one debate to the next, one scandal to another, putting themselves forward for what's still the most powerful job in the world.

As it turns out, there are no limits to how far they will stoop.

Texas AFT Survey Shows Destructive Budget Cuts Hitting Students and Teachers Hard

A recent Texas AFT web survey of more than 3,500 teachers, school employees and parents reveals the extent to which our schools are experiencing widespread layoffs, cuts to key programs and services, larger class sizes, and stressful conditions for teaching and learning—all related to the $5.4 billion in state budget cuts enacted this year.

In addition to quantifying some of the impacts, teachers and other school employees consistently commented on significantly lower morale from lack of resources to teach schoolchildren, and from longer work hours, more duties, increased paperwork, bullying by administrators, reduced planning time and lack of learning materials and supplies.

“The numbers reported for layoffs and larger class sizes confirm the direct impact on classroom instruction,” said Linda Bridges, Texas AFT president. “Our teachers are doing their best to mitigate the damage of these cuts, but it’s disturbing to hear comments on how much less time they have—both in giving students the personal attention they need to succeed and in preparing for their classes, grading papers and trying to meet the expectations for achievement on the more rigorous STAAR exam this spring. It’s as if the state gave schools a higher bar to hurdle this year, then dug a deep ditch in front of it.”

Some 92 percent of respondents noted layoffs in their district, with a large percentage reporting loss of teachers (85 percent) and teacher assistants (79 percent).

Democrats Pin Their U.S. Senate Hopes on Women

If you want a sign of the gender gap in American politics, look no further than both parties' Senate recruitment efforts. Democrats have accomplished the rare feat of convincing more women than men to run in leading Senate races next year, include the six women up for reelection.

Democrats believe their A-list of candidates, despite many of their outspoken liberal views, is uniquely positioned to drive the income-inequality message that party strategists believe will be pivotal. However, that bets that biography trumps ideology in 2012.

The video captures Elizabeth Warren passionately refuting the Republication Party's meme that the Democratic policy that everyone should pay their fair share of taxes amounts to “class warfare” against the wealthy.

Of the eight open or Republican-held seats Democrats are aggressively contesting, there's a good chance that a woman will end up as the standard-bearer in at least half.

Democrats' path to holding the Senate winds through Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, Rep. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Rep. Shelley Berkley in Nevada, and, potentially, Rep. Mazie Hirono in Hawaii.

Party officials also are hoping former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp can pull off an upset in Republican-friendly North Dakota.

Republicans have landed prominent women candidates too, with former Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle and former New Mexico Rep. Heather Wilson best positioned for victory next year. But their A-list roster isn't nearly as deep as the Democrats'.

Read the full story @ The Atlantic

Buyer's Remorse For The Tea Party

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press: Since the 2010 midterm elections, the Tea Party has not only lost support nationwide, but also in the congressional districts represented by members of the House Tea Party Caucus. And a year out from the Republican landslide Nov. 2010 election, the image of the Republican Party has declined even more sharply in these Teapublican-controlled districts than across the country at large, according to the latest Pew Research Center survey, conducted Nov. 9-14.

People in those Teapublican districts now agree with the Tea Party by far slimmer margins than they did in 2010 -- just 27 percent to 22 percent.

A year ago, in the wake of the sweeping GOP gains in the midterm elections, the balance of opinion was just the opposite: 27% agreed and 22% disagreed with the Tea Party. At both points, more than half offered no opinion.

Throughout the 2010 election cycle, agreement with the Tea Party far outweighed disagreement in the 60 House districts represented by members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus. But as is the case nationwide, support has now decreased significantly over the past year; now about as many people living in Tea Party districts disagree (23%) as agree (25%) with the Tea Party.

Gallup: Democrats More Liberal, Less White Than In 2008

In many respects, the demographic profile of Democrats nationwide is similar to what it was in 2008, according to a new Gallup poll, although Democrats have become somewhat less white and more liberal than the party that nominated Barack Obama as its presidential candidate that year.

As a group, Democrats are more likely than average to be women, less likely to be religious or married, much less likely to be conservative, and much more likely to be liberal than the U.S. population as a whole. Democrats remain decidedly more female on average than the national population, with little significant change in this pattern over the last three years. This contrasts with the male skew in the Republican Party rank-and-file.

Perhaps the most significant change in the composition of Democrats between 2008 and today is the two-point increase, from 35% to 37%, in the percentage describing their political views as "liberal."

Women - Married And Single - Key Democratic Voters In 2012

The Voter Participation Center

One year out from the 2012 election and new quantitative and qualitative research makes it very clear – next year will be very different from 2008, when Democrats captured the White House, gained seven U.S. Senate seats and the majority, and expanded their control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Today, key progressive supporters are disengaged and unenthusiastic. The results of focus groups conducted by The Voter Participation Center (VPC), Democracy Corps and Finding Common Ground to explore common values among people of color, youth, affluent suburban voters and unmarried women, confirm the wide enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats found in recent surveys. According to Gallup, 39 percent of Republicans describe themselves as “extremely enthusiastic” about the 2012 elections; just 18 percent of Democrats do.

A just-released memo drilling down on the attitudes of the unmarried women who participated in the common values focus groups, Re-Energizing Unmarried Women explains, “Unmarried women – who make up more than a quarter of America’s voting-eligible population – today feel disengaged and alienated from politics and that threatens their participation in the next election. The perceived failure of the new president to fulfill a key campaign promise — to change Washington — leaves these unmarried women detached from both parties and politics in general.”

According to the memo, “These women stand by the President for the most part, but are in a far different place than they were in 2008. As one woman memorably noted, she will vote for the President, but will not put his bumper sticker back on her car this year.”

The Texas Democratic Party Needs A New Direction

State Rep. Aaron Peña, from Hidalgo County in South Texas, after serving five terms in the Texas House, announced last last week that he's not seeking re-election to a sixth term.

Peña, who had been a long time conservative Democrat, switched to the Republican party last November, just weeks after being re-elected to office as a Democrat. Peña's switch gave the GOP a super majority of 101 members in the 150-member House for the 2011 legislative session. As a thank you from the Republican controlled legislature, Peña's district was gerrymandered redistricted to include a majority of Republican-friendly voters.

But after the panel of three federal judges in San Antonio on Wednesday ordered un-gerrymandered election maps for the 2012 election, Pena said he just couldn't win in his district running as a Republican. Peña is the 23rd incumbent in the House to decide not to seek another term of office. (Mean Rachel has an interesting blog post on Peña's withdrawal)

Peña is not first and probably not the last in a long line of erstwhile conservative Democrats to abandon the Democratic Party for the Republican Party. Rick Perry switched affiliation from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party more than 20 years ago. Millions of erstwhile conservative Democrats - politicos and voters alike - have switched party allegiance to become Republicans over the past 20 years.

Today, the Texas Democratic Party finds itself in a state of near disarray - deserted by erstwhile conservative Democrats, unable to field new candidates who can win elections, and unable to attract donations to fund party operations. Both houses of the state legislature have large majorities of Republican, and there hasn't been a Democrat elected to a statewide office for the last 18 years. It's not because members of the Republican Party of Texas vastly outnumber members of the Texas Democratic Party (TDP) in the state -- they don't. The parties have roughly equal membership.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a time when many Americans pause to be grateful for all we have. In the current economic downturn when the gap between rich and poor is at the highest level since the Great Depression, millions of our neighbors, including many families with children, are struggling hard to count their blessings.

Last year, 17.2 million households in the United States were food insecure, the highest level on record, as the Great Recession continued to wreak havoc on families across the country. Of those 17.2 million households, 3.9 million included children. On Thanksgiving Day, here’s a look at hunger in America, as millions of Americans struggle to get enough to eat in the wake of the economic crisis.

Hunger in Texas is a growing problem, even as Republicans clamor to scrap federal programs such as Social Security and food stamps that have helped keep food insecurity from becoming worse. Over the past three years, an average of 18.8 percent of Texas households couldn't get enough food to meet their needs, at least at times, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's latest review, released Wednesday. That was the second-highest percentage of any state, with only Mississippi, at 19.4 percent, looking worse.

Dallas County has about 450,000 people who have unsteady access to food, or 19 percent of its population. In Collin County, there are about 100,000 such folks (and a rate of 14 percent), while in Denton County, the 15-percent rate equates to about 90,000 people. Gov. Perry has recently been highly critical of the very food stamp program that has helped his state’s poorest residents get enough to eat. Perry calls the size of the food stamp program a “testament to widespread misery” — instead of an essential aid that’s keeping Texan families alive.

While Gov. Rick Perry touts his "Texas Miracle" record as he seeks the GOP presidential nomination, he ignores the fact that Texas has the second-highest number of households in the U.S. that are do not have enough food to put on the table - on Thanksgiving Day, or any other day of the year.

Why Is Congress So Dysfunctional?

by Lois Beckett - ProPublica, Nov. 23, 2011

Congress’ approval ratings are abysmal, and the failure of the congressional “super committee” to find a compromise on reducing the national debt has set off a new round of recriminations.

One senator on the super committee, Democrat Max Baucus of Montana, told the Washington Post, “We’re at a time in American history where everybody's afraid — afraid of losing their job — to move toward the center. A deadline is insufficient. You’ve got to have people who are willing to move.”

Decrying partisanship is almost as old as the republic itself. But long-time observers of Congress say that Congress has actually taken a turn for the worse—more gridlock, more grandstanding, less compromise to get things done.

Old rules are being used in newly aggressive, partisan ways, and routine Congressional activities have become politicized—most notably, the vote to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. Once a nonissue, the debt ceiling vote brought the nation to the brink of default.

Read the full story @ ProPublica

GOP Forced To Defend Bush Tax Cuts And Massive Military Spending In 2012

Pres. Obama Makes a Statement about the Supercommittee
Nov 21, 2011

The so-called "supercommittee," a bipartisan group of legislators, that was supposed to reach an agreement on how to reduce future deficits has failed.

This failure thrusts the much-contested Bush tax cuts and U.S. military spending, which has almost doubled to roughly $700 billion since 2001, into the forefront of next year’s presidential campaign.

Why was the supercommittee doomed to fail? Mainly because the gulf between the Democratic and Republican parties is so wide.

Republicans believe that the $2.5 trillion in tax cuts Pres. Bush enacted from 2001-2007 aren't enough. Republicans believe additional tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, further slashing to all government spending, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and further increases to military spending will reduce the federal deficit and create jobs. The negotiating position of Republicans on the supercommittee was that Democrats must agree to privatize Medicare, or there could be no budget deal.

Democrats see that the trillions of dollars of tax cuts already given to corporations and the wealthy, plus the increase of annual military spending from $379 billion to roughly $700 billion over the past decade has created the massive federal deficit and it's time to abandon that failed Republican ideology.