Category Archives: GOP

budget crisis, Democrats, GOP, safety net, unemployment

An Ugly Deal: 4 Reasons the ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Deal Is Worse Than It Looks

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By Robert Borosage
Beaver County Blue via OurFuture.org

Jan 1, 2013 – Early this morning, the Senate passed the fiscal cliff deal by 89-8, a margin virtually guaranteeing that it will survive in the House.  The deal has some good parts.  It lets the Bush tax cuts expire on the wealthy, raises the estate tax marginally and increases taxes on capital gains and dividends a bit.  Unemployment benefits are extended for a year.  Tax boosts for the low paid workers – the child tax credit, expanded earned income credit, refundable tuition tax credits – are extended, if only for five years.  Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are not touched.

But no one should be fooled.  This is an ugly deal, with foul implications for the coming months.

1.  Setting Up the Next Extortion

The most ominous part of the deal is what was left out.  The deal makes no provision for lifting the debt ceiling.  It postpones the sequester (automatic cuts in domestic and military spending) for only two months.  It is a smaller deficit reduction package than that originally sought by the president.  It therefore sets up the right-wing House zealots to hold the economy hostage once more, while demanding deep cuts in public services (known as cuts in domestic spending), backed by a media frenzy about deficits.  And while Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid escaped unscathed in this deal, they will be the prime targets in the coming debate.

Continue reading An Ugly Deal: 4 Reasons the ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Deal Is Worse Than It Looks →

elections, GOP, Voting Rights

No End to Republican Plans to Rig the Vote

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The GOP’s New Electoral College Scheme Includes Pennsylvania

By Reid Wilson
Beaver County Blue via National Journal

Dec 17, 2012 – Republicans alarmed at the apparent challenges they face in winning the White House are preparing an all-out assault on the Electoral College system in critical states, an initiative that would significantly ease the party’s path to the Oval Office.

Senior Republicans say they will try to leverage their party’s majorities in Democratic-leaning states in an effort to end the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. Instead, bills that will be introduced in several Democratic states would award electoral votes on a proportional basis.

Already, two states — Maine and Nebraska — award an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. The candidate who wins the most votes statewide takes the final two at-large electoral votes. Only once, when President Obama won a congressional district based in Omaha in 2008, has either of those states actually split their vote.

But if more reliably blue states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were to award their electoral votes proportionally, Republicans would be able to eat into what has become a deep Democratic advantage.

Continue reading No End to Republican Plans to Rig the Vote →

2012 Election, GOP, Obama, Racism, Right Wing

White Racial Resentment: The Elephant in the Room

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AP Poll: A Slight Majority of Americans Are Now Expressing Negative View Of Blacks

By Associated Press
October 27, 2012

WASHINGTON — Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not.

Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some people’s more favorable views of blacks.

Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.

In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

“As much as we’d hope the impact of race would decline over time … it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago,” said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.

Continue reading White Racial Resentment: The Elephant in the Room →

2012 Election, GOP, Right Wing, Voting Rights, Women

Deny the GOP It’s Secret Weapon: Progressives Who Are Dispirited and Disengaged

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Three Reasons Why The Race Is So Close – Nine Reasons Why Obama Will Win

By Robert Creamer
Progressive America Rising via HuffPost

Oct 21, 2012 – As Election Day grows closer, some pundits seem almost breathless in their prediction that the Presidential election will be close. Well, of course it will be close. It has been obvious from the campaign’s first day that it would be close. But there is overwhelming evidence that President Obama will win.

Why is the race so close?

1). First and foremost, the Republican’s trickledown, let-Wall-Street-run-wild policies sent the economy into a catastrophic recession just as Obama took office. This was not your run of the mill business cycle recession. It was caused by a financial collapse the likes of which American had not seen since the Great Depression.

The historic evidence is very clear that whenever there is a recession induced by a financial collapse, it take years for an economy to recover. American did not fully recover from the Great Depression itself until World War II – almost twelve years after the stock market collapsed.

Had the Republicans remained in office and responded as Republican President Hoover did in 1929, the same fate could have awaited America once again. But instead, the Obama Administration moved immediately to stimulate the economy and shore up the financial system – and especially to rescue the auto industry – using policies that in most cases the GOP opposed.

Those policies have set the economy on a path toward sustained growth. But the Republicans have been hell bent on stalling growth with the expressed purpose of defeating Obama this fall. They have sabotaged the economy by preventing even a vote on the Americans Jobs Act that most economists believe would create another 1.7 million jobs and would have prevented massive layoffs in state and local governments.

Mitt Romney is like an arsonist who complains that the fire department isn’t putting out his fire fast enough – and then tries to convince America to allow him to take over the effort armed with buckets of gasoline – the same failed policies that caused the fire in the first place.

Continue reading Deny the GOP It’s Secret Weapon: Progressives Who Are Dispirited and Disengaged →

2012 Election, Democrats, GOP, PDA, Voting Rights, Women, Youth and students

Get Out the Vote. Especially Women, Youth and Trade Unionists. It Matters…

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New Poll Puts Presidential Race As A Dead Heat Between President Obama And Mitt Romney

NBC News calls it a 47-47 tie

By Glenn Blain
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Oct 21, 2012 – The race for the White House is a dead heat.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday showed President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney tied at 47% with barely two weeks to go before election day.

Obama had held a 49-46 lead among likely voters in the most recent previous NBC/WSJ poll, which was conducted before any the presidential debates.

The new poll revealed Obama with a wider lead among all registered voters, 49% to 44% but showed his support weakening in key demographics.

Among women voters, Obama’s lead had slipped to its slimmest margin yet this year, 51% to 43%. Romney leads among men 53%-43%. Mitt Romney lost some ground gained by first debate, according to polls, but still doing strong.

Continue reading Get Out the Vote. Especially Women, Youth and Trade Unionists. It Matters… →

2012 Election, Democrats, GOP, PDA, Right Wing, Wall Street

A Solid Debate between a Progressive Democrat and a Top GOP Rightwinger

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Virginia Democrat Wayne Powell came out swinging Monday and remained on the offensive throughout the first debate in the race for Virginia’s 7th congressional district seat, accusing U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of abdicating his role as a leader of Congress and repeatedly slamming him for his lack of military service, while the visibly agitated six-term incumbent labored to furiously fend off the flurry of attacks.

Mr. Powell’s campaign has vowed to frame Mr. Cantor to both his constituents and the entire country as an unapologetic partisan irrevocably beholden to large corporations and special interest groups — and the former Army colonel wasted no time in lobbing grenades at the Republican incumbent Monday evening in Richmond before a national audience on C-SPAN2.

“He never talks about working people — he only talks about business people,” Mr. Powell said in the hour-long forum hosted by the Virginia Chamber of Commerce. “These people are suffering — I’ve seen them all the time … you’re so far removed from reality, I don’t think you even know what a small business is except for a hedge fund.”

antiwar, GOP, unemployment, Vets

Next Time You Hear ‘Support Our Troops’ from the Right, Remember This:

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GOP Blocks Veteran Jobs Bill

By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Beaver County Peace Links via New York Times

Sept. 19, 2012 – Veterans won’t be getting a new, billion-dollar jobs program, not from this Senate. Republicans on Wednesday afternoon blocked a vote on the Veterans Job Corps Bill after Jeff Sessions of Alabama raised a point of order – he said the bill violated a cap on spending agreed to by Congress last year. The bill’s sponsor, Patty Murray of Washington, said that shouldn’t matter, since the bill’s cost was fully offset by new revenues. She said Mr. Sessions and his party colleagues had been furiously generating excuses to oppose the bill, and were now exploiting a technicality to deny thousands of veterans a shot at getting hired as police officers, firefighters and parks workers, among other things.

The vote was 58-40; the bill needed 60 votes to proceed.

It would be easier to admire the Republicans’ late-breaking fiscal scrupulosity if their motives – denying the Obama administration any kind of victory this year, whatever the cost to jobless vets – weren’t so transparent.  It’s probably useful to remind Republicans like John McCain (a "nay" on the jobs bill) that wounded, jobless and homeless veterans aren’t a fact of nature. They’re a product of the wars that Congress members voted for, the war debt they piled on, and the economy they helped ruin.

"It’s unbelievable that even after more than a decade of war, many Republicans still will not acknowledge that the treatment of our veterans is a cost of war," Ms. Murray said in a statement after the vote.

2012 Election, GOP, Right Wing, Voting Rights

One Step Forward for Voting Rights, One Step Back for the GOP

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Photo: Larry Roberts/Post-Gazette – Monel Walker, left, from Braddock, receives reassurance about her voter identification from Marian Schneider, a local attorney volunteering at the "My Vote, My Right" awareness event held in front of the PennDOT office on Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh today.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court sends Voter ID back to lower court

By Karen Langley
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Sept 18, 2012 HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ordered a lower court to revisit its decision that allowed the new voter ID law to remain in effect for the November elections.

If Commonwealth Court finds the state’s implementation of the law will disenfranchise voters in November, the high court has ordered it to issue an injunction.

In its decision not to stop the law immediately, the high court ruled that Commonwealth Court relied on judgments about how the state would educate voters and provide access to acceptable forms of identification. The justices wrote that lawmakers have made "an ambitious effort" to put the photo identification requirement in place by the upcoming elections but that state agencies face "serious operational constraints" in doing so.

Given that, the justices wrote, they are not satisfied with a decision based on assurances of what the state will do to ensure all voters have acceptable identification.

They ordered Commonwealth Court to issue a new decision by Oct. 2 based on the present availability of identification.

"The court is to consider whether the procedures being used for deployment of the cards comport with the requirement of liberal access which the General Assembly attached to the issuance of PennDOT identification cards," the order says.

"If they do not, or if the Commonwealth Court is not still convinced in its predictive judgment that there will be no voter disenfranchisement arising out of the Commonwealth’s implementation of a voter identification requirement for purposes of the upcoming election, that court is obliged to enter a preliminary injunction."

The voter ID requirement passed the Legislature with Republican support and was signed into law in March by Gov. Tom Corbett. It requires voters to show one of several forms of photo identification at the polls.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and other groups filed suit, claiming the law violates the state Constitution and would disenfranchise many Pennsylvania voters. After a week of testimony, the Commonwealth Court in August declined to stop the law.

Supreme Court Justices Seamus McCaffery and Debra McCloskey Todd filed dissenting statements.

Justice Todd wrote that she would reverse the lower court’s decision, not return the matter for further consideration. She wrote of an "impending near-certain loss of voting rights" and said the court was allowing the state to essentially ignore the short timeline before the election.

"The eyes of the nation are upon us, and this Court has chosen to punt rather than to act," she wrote.

Justice McCaffery concluded in another dissent that the evolving efforts by state agencies to implement the law "are a tacit admission that (the law) is simply not ready for the prime time" of the November election. He wrote that further hearings are unnecessary and that the high court should order the lower court to issue an injunction.

Karen Langley: klangley@post-gazette.com or 717-787-2141 .

2012 Election, GOP, Organizing, PDA

Standing Firm: PDA Organizing at Charlotte Convention

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Stage being set up for PDA’s Progressive Central’ forum near the Democratic Convention in North Carolina

2012 Convention: Pulling Democrats’ Platform to the Left

By Martin Wisckol
Beaver County Blue via Orange County Register

Sept 5, 2012 – Proudly liberal activist Tim Carpenter, who toiled in Orange County for more than 20 years before resettling in Massachusetts and co-founding Progressive Democrats of America, has made a career of standing staunchly to the left of mainstream Democrats, relentlessly beckoning and cajoling others to come a little closer.

His 8-year-old PDA group was at it again Tuesday, with a “People’s Convention” at a Charlotte church and soup kitchen that featured the Rev. Jesse Jackson, former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, a couple Congress members, several Congressional hopefuls – including Paul Ryan‘s Democratic opponent – and a host of progressive leaders.

“The country would have been a lot better if Jesse Jackson was elected and, if not, Michael Dukakis,” said Carpenter, recalling the 1988 presidential field from which George H.W. Bush emerged victorious.“We wouldn’t have had Bush I and maybe not Bush II. But (Jackson and Dukakis) are still engaged. And they’re coming here instead of parading around the convention.”

As usual, Carpenter is pushing an agenda beyond which most Democratic lawmakers are ready to support.  But before outlining the list, Carpenter took a moment to celebrate a Tuesday victory: At the Democratic convention, delegates approved a platform backing marriage rights for gays – a clear distinction from Republicans.

“This election is not simply a choice between two candidates or two political parties,” the platform summarizes, “but between two fundamentally different paths for our country and families.”

The specific support for gay marriage comes after President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law and, until recently, Barack Obama opposed gay marriage.

“That’s a victory that’s been a struggle for a long time,” Carpenter said.

Among the 240 people who paid registration dues for the Tuesday event were 92 convention delegates, rallying around eight central issues including:

A single-payer, “Medicare for all” health-care system that, unlike the Affordable Care Act, would leave no American without health insurance. A series of initiatives to diminish corporate influence over the political system. “Main Street, not Wall Street,” Carpenter said. A carbon tax and other measures to address global warming. Immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. A diplomatic solution to the brewing conflict with Iran. “We’ve got to stop the saber rattling,” Carpenter said.

While it’s trying to pull Obama more toward these positions, PDA supports the incumbent’s reelection as far preferable to a Mitt Romney presidency.

And Carpenter remains as positive and optimistic as ever on a number of fronts. Take, for instance, Rob Zerban, the PDA member challenging vice presidential candidate Ryan in his other race, reelection to Congress.

“Now we get to beat Paul Ryan twice,” he quipped.

2012 Election, GOP, Right Wing, Voting Rights

If We Can Shoot It Down in Texas, Why Not in Pennsylvania?

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Texas Loses Latest Voter ID Battle after Judges Strike Down ‘Retrogressive’ Law

Judges find that law requiring voters to present photo ID at the ballot box placed ‘unforgiving burdens on the poor’

By Chris McGreal
Beaver County Blue via The Guardian, UK

August 30, 2012 – The court said that the law was ‘likely to have a retrogressive effect’ by limiting access to the ballot box. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty

A federal court has struck down a Texas law requiring voters to present photo identification at the ballot box in the second ruling this week to effectively accuse the state of racial discrimination and attempting to manipulate elections.

In an escalating legal battle between mostly Republican-controlled states and the Obama administration over voter ID and other election laws, a panel of three judges in Washington DC found that the Texas legislation imposed "strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor" because of the cost and process involved in obtaining identification.

The US justice department told the court that voters would have to pay for birth certificates and travel up to 250 miles to obtain ID cards. The court said this imposed a "heavy burden" on any voter and would be "especially daunting for the working poor" who are more likely to be racial minorities.

The court concluded that if the law was implemented it "will likely have a retrogressive effect" by limiting access to the ballot box. It said that evidence submitted by Texas in support of its claim that the law was not discriminatory – and was necessary to combat voter fraud – was "unpersuasive, invalid, or both".

Continue reading If We Can Shoot It Down in Texas, Why Not in Pennsylvania? →