Some industries, lobbyists, and Congressmen are so obsessed with protecting the status quo (this is mostly what lobbyists do unless they really feel lucky and then they try to change something in their favor) that they miss the big picture completely.
The Ackerman amendment regarding downer cows didn't need Congress to get through, as the executive branch implemented identical wording by order of the USDA. I bet it costs a LOT less to not use downer cows than it does to lose the Japanese and European beef markets. Too bad they didn't think of that when they were pinching pennies last year.
Dumbest. Article. Ever. The press loves these types of previously X now doing Y articles, especially when X is Democrat and Y is Republican. Just look at Zell Miller. The writer of this article ignores plenty of history in coming to her harebrained conclusion.
For one thing, Carter and Reagan may have ignored (or even partnered with) Muslim extremists because of a little thing called the Cold War. Was the Soviet Union and Communism in general a greater threat to world freedom than terrorism today? Arguable. But in the late '70's and early '80's, I'd say communism with it's grip on the Soviet Republics including Russia and much of Eastern Europe was unquestionably a greater concern.
One of many money quotes:
[Bush] then brought the fight to Iraq at a time when many experts around the world were convinced Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was actively pursuing a nuclear arsenal.
It gets better, or worse, depending on your viewpoint. In the next few paragraphs, she mentions that Saudi Arabia in fact may be overtaken by radical Islamists (how that benefits us in the war on Islamic terror I don't know) sometime in the near future. Good thing we invaded Iraq, or a significant portion of the world's oil supply might be in extremists' hands.
After all, she says it best:
[This] forward-thinking, big picture scenario demanded the US protect itself from enemies gaining control of America's access to oil because oil still controls America.
It's a war for oil and that's a good thing, see! She's one good Democrat, if that Democrat's name is Zell Miller. Nevermind that Iraq's infrastructure might not be able to export significant quantities of oil for some time anyway.
I really wish we could do away with these types of articles. I'm sure at some point Ms. MacKinnon actually was a Democrat, probably working in the Massachussetts legislature and US Congress 20 or so years ago. What a surprise that she worked for Democrats in the Congress, last time I checked Massachussetts doesn't elect a single Republican Congressperson, so you don't have much choice if you want that experience. Look, when I was 14 years old, if I could have voted I probably would have voted for Republicans. I was into guns (though I didn't have any) like many 14 year olds are and so that was pretty much my only issue. I also voted for McCain in the Republican primary in 2000, even though by Super Tuesday it was doubtful he'd win the nomination. May I now write my "This Republican Will Support a Democrat Next Year, ANY Democrat" article? I didn't think so.
UPDATE: At least one of the "differences" "Democrat" Ms. MacKinnon has with Bush is not abortion.
White Men overwhelmingly prefer Bush compared to a generically named Democrat. Still, if you say that White Men and White Women both make up 40% of the population and minorities make up 20%, even if Bush gets 70% of the white male vote (which would be a 40% margin of victory, something so awesome even this article dare not tread near), he'd have to get 20% of the minority vote and 45% of the white female vote just to hit 50%. I bet something like 3/4 of that minority bloc is black voters. Bush will be lucky to get 10% of that vote, which means he'd have to score 50% of the rest of the minority vote -- it's possible he'd get 50% of the Hispanic vote (but not likely outside of South Florida) but it's highly unlikely he'll get 50% of the Arab or Asian vote.
There is one thing that rings somewhat true about this article. Karl Rove has been telling pundits for years that if Bush gets the same percentage with each ethnic group in '04 as he got in 2000, he'll lose. The reason is simple, the only ethnic group he won was white people, and their share of the electorate has decreased percentage wise. So Bush must increase his margins with some or other ethnic group to win. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that try as he might, he probably won't pick up much support from blacks, arabs or hispanics (look how they've written off New Mexico). So the only group left in which you can increase your margins is whites. Democratic margins with minorities probably can't get much higher...so the question is will Bush increase his numbers with whites (specifically males) at a faster rate than the overall minority population is growing? I think he'll try his damndest.
I think the biggest problem with domestic politics is the onference committee. Consider how often the House and Senate both explicitly vote for A in a bill and yet the final bill will not include A but will include B, C, D, etc that neither house voted for in the first place. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D - NY) had an amendment that would have banned cattle that couldn't walk or stand up from entering the food supply. Both houses voted for it, but it was stripped out by Republicans in Conference. When the Agricultural Department spending bill is up for a vote this January in the Senate, the likelihood of the amendment returning to the bill is next to nothing.
I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal (and other subscription sights near and dear to Georgia politics) so you don't have to. According to the WSJ Mad Cow FAQ, cows (probably) get mad by eating sheep remains that have the sheep version of the disease. Beef marked USDA Organic hasn't been fed remains of other animals. So even though you're probably 99.999% unlikely to eat meat that has mad cow disease, by sticking with USDA Organic beef you can probably tack on another 9 to that percentage. Happy Holidays!
Don't have too much fun this Christmas. As state Sen. Hugh Gillis (D - Soperton) once told me, if you can't be good be safe!
Good news for city of Atlanta as Perdue and even Johnson (R - Savannah) have come around and decided to help out the city a little. Of course, federal aid is still the big prize but this does get the ball rolling in that direction.
World's Most Expensive Tort Reform. Most of the families suing the airlines aren't interested in airline money, they're interested in the discovery process that suing anyone involved in the 9/11 attacks would bring about. That the federal government, with you and I's tax dollars, is paying families an average of almost $2 million dollars to basically cover-up the worst failure of the federal government to do it's job in the history of the United States should be appalling to conservatives, moderates and liberals.
Conservatives especially: why should the federal government pay $2 million dollars to the family of someone who died in the World Trade Center but not to the family of those who died in the ValuJet crash in Florida, or any other airplane or work-related accident? In the ValuJet crash, lax federal regulations regarding what can and can't be placed on airplanes resulted in a horrific crash and many deaths, why is this different than lax federal regulations allowing terrorists onto planes?
One of the points of this article and others like it that isn't really said but is bubbling underneath is that the Dean campaign is better than the candidate. Which isn't usually the case (see Kerry, Clark, Edwards...). One big fear I have about the Dean campaign, and it is founded in some experience, is that although they claim to be the first truly bottom-up "open source" campaign they will actually turn out to be pretty centrally run.
A good example of this is the confederate flag remark. Dean made it at some DNC function early this year and it apparently got considerable applause. He also made it at the Georgia JJ Dinner in March at which point a number of my associates told his Georgia staff to pass on that that type of talk isn't appropriate and in fact makes Georgia Democrats, who had an historic loss basically due to the flag issue, very uneasy. I know Tim Cairl, Georgia for Dean's leader knows this, and I know he's personally told higher-ups in the campaign this type of stuff. Cairl, in fact, has an almost masterful understanding of state and local politics and has gained this understanding in a very short period of time. There are people like him (but probably not quite as adept) working for the Dean campaign in all 50 states, and I'm just not sure Dean (or his campaign) is actually listening to their local expertise.
It's either that or the Dean campaign hasn't started seriously considering what will need to be done in the general election after the primary is over. But, since the post-Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, especially South Carolina, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arizona are more like general elections (much more moderate and less activist electorate) you begin to wonder exactly how much this national campaign has it together to begin with. Then again I could be wrong. Notice on the left that I've updated my primary standings.
Many Republican state leaders, including Sen. Eric Johnson (Savannah) have all but encouraged the city of Atlanta to raise its taxes as high as possible to pay for its problems before they will even consider helping out with state money. Now that many rural school systems have already done so, do you think Republicans will likely lead the charge for a restructuring of the state tax system to help pay for the rural education that, along with city of Atlanta schools keeps Georgia ranked #51? Count me among the first to predict that state Republican leaders will be against a tax restructuring (especially if it results in poor/a majority of Georgians paying less in taxes overall) when the state's rural school systems sue the state.
Look for Atlanta citycouncil members to continue to balk at raising taxes to placate Republican legislators who actually only dislike high taxes when their donors are paying them.
Get a life, folks. Strom's black daughter Essie Mae Washington-Williams has the right response, though.
Thanks to this awesome TAP article about the when's and where's of primaries, caucuses and delegates to the DNC, I've finally got the data to make my latest and greatest spreadsheet.
I used the delegate count data, as well as the day of the primaries, and the most recent polling data for each state, to award delegates to each candidate based on how well he (or she) is doing in each of the states that have a primary election. My process of awarding delegates also discounts the amount of delegates you get based on how long it is to that primary date. Right now, Georgia's 86 delegates are worth less than Iowa's 45, since the results in Iowa mean a lot more than Georgia's theoretical delegates, especially when you consider that the field should be down to 2 or 3 candidates by March 2nd, not the 9 we currently have.
A candidate needs a 50 (which would equal 50% of the delegates) to win the nomination. Everytime I get new polling data, or we actually conduct a primary or caucus, I'll update the little chart in the left column below my picture. Right now I think my data pretty accurately reflects that 1) Dean has the lead right now and is doing about 2) twice as well as Clark, Lieberman and Gephardt and that 3) all of them have a long way to go before actually getting the nomination.
More Important Than Position on Iraq War.
I don't understand (for one simple reason) why pundits on the right love to try and bait Hillary Clinton into getting into the Presidential race. That reason? Hillary seems to be far and away the strongest candidate for President, with the possible exception of Al Gore. Hillary walks the walk the base of the Democratic Party loves, and talks the talk that moderates love. She's a big hawk on Iraq and Afghanistan, plus she would be the only candidate in the race from a state that was actually hit on 9/11. Sure, her unfavorable ratings are in the 40's, but her name ID is 100%. Those unfavorables probably wouldn't get any higher. George W. Bush has unfavorable ratings in the 40's, and no one thinks he'll be a weak Presidential candidate. Just don't make sense to me, this desire for Hillary to run.
The order of the Presidential primaries is the subject of many blog posts here and elsewhere. I understand why South Carolina is moved so far up (to annoint at the same time a more conservative Dem and also one who can appeal to black voters). However, as nice as it is to let a state like South Carolina "moderate" the process, it ignores the fact that no Democrat has won South Carolina in over 20 years, and I doubt one will win in the next 20 years. Why not give states like Ohio, West Virginia and Arkansas, culturally conservative states where Democrats actually win sometimes, the duty of picking a candidate. Hell, even California and New York, reliable providers of electoral college votes that they are, deserve a chance to shake up the process every once in a while.
It's not as if the Republicans focus on the Hawaii primary to thin out their race, and for good reason.
Reinhold Messner, accused of abandoning his own brother atop a mountain 30 years ago, will return next year to search for his remains in a glacier 26,000 feet above sea level. If he finds him there, it will clear his name. Fascinating stuff, to those of you with WSJ subscriptions.
There is no doubt that if I had to pick the best campaign for 2004, it would be Dean's. The people he's brought into politics work hard, care about their world, country and community, and, in the best possible way, don't know the meaning of the word "no" or can't, or whatever.
That said, Dean, while one of my favorite candidates, is not my ideal candidate. A big reason for this is his tax-cut stance. Making the debate between keep the Bush tax cuts or get rid of them, "keep them" will probably win with at least 60% of voters. Partially, you can blame Congressional Democrats who added many lower-middle class tax cut amendments that weren't initially in the bill. Who to blame is irrelevent though.
Dean, or any candidate, should make the tax debate "keep the tax code" vs "redo the tax code." Make a relatively simple plan for individuals, promise to crack down on corporate loopholes, put up a calculator that shows what you'd pay under Bush's plan and under Dean's, etc.
$300 (about the average savings from the tax plan) doesn't sound like a lot of money, and if your local or state taxes have gone up, that $300 might actually constitute a net-loss, but it means something to many voters. Go ahead and raise taxes on people making over $200K, the ones who care about lower taxes aren't going to vote for the Democrat anyway. And big government types would rather their big government be paid for by the wealthier, anyway, so it seems like a win-win situation.
That said, tax reform should be something any candidate regardless of party should be for. Even Bush is for tax reform. Only his vision is so unpopular that it will take years of piecemeal reform that initially disguises the end product and, eventually, when it's inevitable, it will be too late to stop it. Democrats can legitimately make this a winning issue, so why haven't they?
No doubt lots of good stuff, from firing a cruel boss who locked up workers in a closet all the way up to ousting Saddam Hussein is happening in Iraq. There shouldn't be any contradiction in the fact that majorites of Iraqis both favor the ouster of Hussein and are opposed to the occupying forces that continue to occupy their country.
Overall, the problem our forces face in Iraq is that given the opportunity to perform good deeds on a small scale, they go above and beyond the call of duty. However, all the good deeds in the world won't make a difference if the overall theme of the occupation is one of suspicion of US motives. News today that the US will keep out corporations with a history of working with Iraqis from countries like France and Russia only heighten those suspicions.
All the controversy over the BCS rankings overshadows the fact that the Atlanta Falcons, with Michael Vick back at the helm and a 3-10 record, will not be going to the playoffs while the Carolina Panthers, 8-5, will not only go to the playoffs but will likely win their division. I watched the game last night and would say it's fair to conclude that the Falcons (w/Vick) are at least as good as the Panthers.
It's not just steel jobs that are going overseas. In many instances, when the local plant closes down, it's disassembled, put on a boat, and put back together in either Russia or China. (link $ub req)
I don't make a habit of reading the Nation, partly for articles like this one about Wesley Clark. However, this article about the Green party and Ralph Nader's threatened rerun for the White House is informative and for the most part dead-on.
I'd wager that Nader's star has fallen considerably since 2000 and would only crash into earth if he ran again in '04. For one thing, the image of Gore as a pandering poll driven "conservative" has been shattered by his recent MoveOn speeches. As more leftists read books by Al Franken and Eric Alterman, it's increasingly clear that that image of Gore was painted solely by the big media that they distrust so.
Similarly, the other-half of the "Gush-Bore" syndrome, the acceptance of Bush as a "compassionate conservative," more or less equal to Gore, while still generally agreed upon by moderate voters, is thoroughly discredited by leftists. Even if they still consider Gore (or Liebermann, Clark, Dean or Edwards) too close to the center-right of the spectrum, there will still be a stark contrast between the eventual nominee and the President. With four years of Bush behind them and, potentially, four more ahead, the lesser of two evils never sounded so good.
It's clear from the article that many of the grownups in the Green party have a good understanding of local and national politics (many also started their careers as Democrats) and that the Naderites are living in a fantasyworld. If Greens started costing more Democrats elections, many Democrats would come around to instant runoff voting. This is a common theme among the Naderites of the party. Unfortunately, the Republicans who will be winning those elections aren't likely to vote for a "solution" that will send them out of office unless, and this is a big if, a libertarian like party starts doing the same to them.
Finally, if you're hawking instant runoff voting as a panacea to elect more Democrats to office from progressive areas, it would make a lot more sense just not to run or to switch party affiliation and run as a progressive in the Democratic primary.
Unlike some people, I don't mind the new "I'm XXX and I authorized this ad" taglines that the McCain-Feingold reforms require at the end of campaign ads. Dean, among others, uses it as a good way to get in one final jibe, "...I authorized this ad because I want to [insert here]."
Clark, notably, is one candidate who should rejigger his ads, as he merely ends with "I authorized this advertisement." Watching the RNC flight-suit ad is also a little awkward, what with Ed Gillepsie "authorizing" an ad that is clearly the work of the Bush White House.
You can see all the new ads over at C-Span's website.
Looks like the next stop in the war on terror is the moon. Look people, either we're serious about the war on terror, or we're serious about getting re-elected. I don't think it can be both. If the war on terror is really the all important event that the administration says it is, then why even bother with going to the moon, curing cancer or cleaning up the trash on the nation's freeways until the war is over?
Regardless of what you think of steel tariffs, the difference between Democrats like Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D - WV) who support them and President Bush is that Rockefeller is elected to represent the admittedly narrow interests of one state, while Bush is supposed to be above regional interests since he is president of the entire country, overseer of the whole economy, etc.
Some of the babblings of the current Democratic candidates for President aren't exactly pro-trade. I'd argue, however, that any random Democratic president would be less likely to impose a tariff like the steel tariffs for two reasons. One is that, given a similar situation, it makes more sense to bail out the retired steelworkers health and retirement packages than to impose tariffs to try and save a dying industry. Somehow, conservative economists consider this "more" of an anti-market solution than tariffs, but you really shouldn't listen to economists who argue in favor of market economics and then squirm to explain away a partisan decision with clarifiers like "more anti-market" when clearly both solutions are equally anti-market.
The second reason I think a Democrat would be less likely to impose regional tariffs such as the steel tariffs is that (for some unknown reason) Democrats don't get the benefit of the doubt re: free markets that Republicans do and are always extra-careful so as not to get tagged as some sort of socialist.
Finally, a look at this county map of the 2000 election results shows that Democratic presidential candidates will have their base located in the economically vibrant commerce centers that least need protectionism to survive, while Bush and the Republicans increasingly represent areas whose industry or even entire way of life is dying out, making them most desperate for protectionist measures cloacked in traditional conservative way of life rhetoric.
This long New Yorker article on redistricting is today's must read. Political junkies probably won't find much new, but it is interesting. I would argue that Georgia, while gerrymandering, does buck a few trends: The "majority party" that redistricted (the Democrats) sees a smaller share of Congressional representatives (38%) than they saw in the last statewide elections (46%+). Compare that to Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, which turn (in Colorado's example) a small statewide voting majority into a supermajority in it's delegation, and Pennsylvania and Michigan, who arguably have more Democrats statewide but have Republicans overwhelmingly control both state's delegations. Another area Georgia bucked the trend in: our Congressional primaries threw out partisans for moderates (McKinney and Barr). Who knew?
What kind of fantasyland does Jim Wooten live in where everyday people like you and I need to become price concious self-regulators, buying directly the medical services [we think we] actually need? America's heath-care industry has a lot of problems, but I don't think people splurging on unnecessary operations at Uncle Sam's expense is one of them. Maybe if it were easier to get services from the government, this would be the case, but I'll worry about that problem when there actually is a government funded health provider we all have easy access too.
