Government Bailout According to South Park

No one does it better. South Park Bailout.

Death of the Card Check

I was pleased to see that Arlen Specter will not support the Employee Free Choice Act which would have made it much easier for laoor unions to form, but at the cost of civil liberties. Essentially, the current law requires a card check process whereby 30% of a given work force must sign a petition, which is then presented to the employer, that they support forming a union to bargain on their behalf. At this a point, a secret election can be held where, if 60% of workers agree, a union will be formed as certified by the National Labor Relations Board.

The Free Choice Act's most important component is the elimination of the secret ballot, creating a circumstance where everyone will know how any given worker voted. Union leaders have argued that the secret ballot grants too much of an advantage to the employer. I guess they are sort of right, as allowing people to vote how they want to does tend to give the advantage to the side that eventually wins (hey, isn't that how elections work?). Essentially, union officials want the added social pressures of voting pro-union which comes from everybody you work with knowing that you just voted against collective bargaining. The only real purpose of this measure is for union officials to coerce the workforce into supporting their cause.

Secret Ballots are one of a democracy's most important features. I do not oppose the creation of unions, but if these bodies are incapable of getting the support necessary without resorting to Tammany Hall tactics, then they have no business setting up a union in the first place.

Reconciliation Not the Answer For Democratic Agenda

In recent days it has been widely discussed that Democrats in Congress may pursue a little used (only a eleven times since 1995) parliamentary tactic to push through their agenda while avoiding the filibuster powers still held by minority Republicans. The move is called reconciliation, and while generally reserved only for budgetary matters, it allows measures to pass the senate with a simple majority, as opposed to the 60 votes usually needed to end debate. Potentially, Democrats could use the move to push health, education, and welfare reforms without as much as a word of input from Republicans.

This is not the post-partisan world we were promised. I doubt that this will happen, or even that Democrats could do it if they wanted to as some moderate Democrats have already balked at the idea. Still, I hope that President Obama knows better than to stoke the fires of partisanship and so carelessly activate a dangerous congressional tactic that could come back to bite Democrats in the rear should Republicans ever recapture Congress.

CBO Report: 9 Trillion In Debt

These numbers will change the entire debate. Say goodbye to the blue dogs.

Special Olympics Comment

Who cares?

The AIG 90% Tax Rate: Populist Move Has Politcal Dangers

When Jay Leno is asking pointed political questions without a hint of sarcasm in his voice, you know something must truly be amiss, but that is exactly what happened last night on the Tonight Show when Jay hosted President Obama. While the talking heads spent most of today covering the non-issue that was Obama's off the cuff (and unfunny) remark about the "Special Olympics", they largely missed a very real and important political point that was made by Mr. Leno. Jay, in a rather jarring moment of seriousness, questioned whether there were inherent dangers in Congress's 90% tax of AIG bonuses designed to retrieve taxpayer money. Leno pondered whether it was good policy for our leaders in Washington to so specifically isolate and target small groups of people with such specialized forms of one-time only taxes. 

Now don't get me wrong, I won't be shedding any tears for the AIG brass, but if we separate the actions of the insurance giant from the political reality of what Congress did, there are evident dangers. Jay's point was about the dangers of an angry Congress drawing on populist anger to target specific citizens. One can see how this will help around election time. Beyond Jay's fears of a tyrannical-majority Congress, there are even more real threats that this action poses. Who in their right mind would trust a government contract if congress can now simply tax the very money they just paid you at a 90% clip (What an amazing budget balancing tool that is!!!).  The fact is this action has put every government contract in question. It also creates the likelihood that banks will start to throw money back at Washington fearing that any deals they strike with the Fed will be subject to later populist reprisals. In short, Congress did a very stupid thing in order to cover their own asses.

Much to his credit, Obama addressed this with his answer to Jay's query. The key, he said, is to address these issues before the "horse gets out of the barnyard". Reactionary reprisals won't do anybody any good, and Obama realizes this.

Nuance? This is going to take some getting used to..

Today, Peggy Noonan wrote an interesting article discussing the strange feeling of lightness surrounding President Obama. Here, I believe Peggy hit the nail on the head. My current view on President Obama is annoyingly contradictory. Obama seems to simultaneously be handling everything and accomplishing nothing. I just can't place it. 

Perhaps it is my own fault for being too used to a president in Bush who asserted authority to a fault and almost never contemplated that an opposing view to his ideas existed (at least in public). For certain, Obama should be commended for the nuance he puts into his addresses. After all, we want enlightened leaders who are able to see both sides of the issue (hell, that's what I am all about). At the same time however, one can only hear "on the other hand" or "well, to be fair" so many times.  At some point we need a leader who makes the call. This is not to say that Obama is not putting his foot down behind the scenes, but sometimes he needs to drop that hammer before the public.

Recent polls seem to illustrate this same phenomenon across the country. Despite having high popularity marks at around 60%, confidence in Obama's ability to solve the current situation rest around 10-15% lower than his approval numbers. What are these 15% or so of Americans saying then? Well, either that the crisis is simply too tough for anyone to handle, or that this particular President, a nice guy trying his best, simply doesn't have what it takes to tackle the problems.

 For me, Obama feels like a chief advisor dishing out insightful opinions and much needed words of wisdom. When he speaks on the issues, he demonstrates that he is probably the smartest guy in the room. Yet, I continue to watch his press conferences expecting some idealistic strong-man to walk up behind him saying "we'll take that under advisement", push the President aside, and then tell us exactly what we are going to be doing to address the problems.

I like to think that nuance is good, and that the American people will have the patience and attention spans to think a little deeper than the black and white we've spent 8 years dealing with.  I am a bit doubtful about that though, because even for someone who follows politics as closely as I do, this is going to take some getting used to.

The Strange Familiarity of the "Post-Partisan" World

In early 2009, the campaign for the presidency of the United States ended with the historic image of a second generation American standing atop the capital steps. A man whose name and skin color alone would have disqualified him from the office as little as thirty years ago, Barrack Obama now stood before the country that elected him as the new embodiment of the American Dream. He had become the paradigm of everything we like to tell ourselves is possible in America. That anybody can make it. In this historic moment, President Obama used his pulpit to triumph his long standing campaign call for a new Washington, one devoid of the "childish things" that had for so long corrupted our politics. He would rise above the fray, and through bipartisanship, forge a new working era of politics that would create both consensus as well as progress. 

Since that moment, we have dealt with Republican charges of socialism directed at the administration, Democratic charges of apathy and obstruction towards Republicans, a conservative campaign to undermine Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner, an apparent concerted effort led by Democratic strategist James Carville and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to paint Rush Limbaugh as the head of the Republican party, and a Press Secretary in Robert Gibbs who spends more time throwing rocks at the conservative "cabal" then he does providing substantive answers. So much for bipartisanship.

Of course, this lack of cooperation can't be blamed on Obama (except perhaps his own naivety for believing it could be achieved), nor on the Republicans who oppose his agenda. In Washington, consensus is the myth. Usually for it to exist, either a terrible event has to have occurred, as with 9/11, or some foreign threat must hang over our country as it did with the Soviet Union during the 50's and 60's in the supposed golden age of consensus. Even under these circumstances, consensus is temporary and hardly across the board. Under normal circumstances in Washington, bipartisanship is trying to force the other guy to accept your ideas, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. Competition among the parties, not universal concurrence, is what breeds constructive compromise. We should be thankful that our system is not so threatened that dissenting ideas have disappeared. If we are ever all of us in agreement, odds are we're in trouble.

But while consensus may be the myth, moderation is not. When I say moderation, I don't mean those holding one or two views that stand in opposition to the party you call home. For those who pat themselves on the back and love to discuss these issues where they can demonstrate their "independent streak", don't get too excited. That's not called moderation, that's called the ability to have rational thought (Though I suppose such an act is commendable in this day and age). True moderation is the  removing of the partisan glasses through which so many of us see the world. For all this country's talk of being independents (according to polls, around 35-40%), less than ten percent of Americans vote a split ticket. 

That is a troubling statistic no matter your party ID. In America, we have only two parties, and so those parties are forced to cast very wide tents in order to incorporate everyone. On a given ticket, the variance WITHIN a party can be astounding. Comparing only the Democrats on a ballot, you'll find social progressives, tax cutters, pacifists, hawks, atheists, religious moralists, fiscal conservatives, and maybe even a socialist or two. And yet, despite this variance, 90% of voters cast straight tickets. The danger in this country is not the politicians who compete so viciously for control, it is the voters who treat politics like a football game, mindlessly cheering their team to victory. How often have you found yourself defending the almost indefensible, even when you didn't agree with your own arguments, just to protect your team. This is the danger in America. 

This true moderation can be achieved, however daunting it may seem. We exist. We are out there. We are what everyone claims to be, but no one actually is. We don't need to be slaves to parties. We can watch the news and read the paper without keeping score. We can use both parties as instruments of change depending on the particular issue we care about. I don't know what Post-Partisanship in Washington means, and it seems like a pipe dream at the aggregate level. But for the individual, for you and me and everyone like us, there is no reason we can't be post-partisan. No reason we can't "rise above the fray." There is probably no national movement to be had in the way Obama talked about, but there can be a movement within ourselves.