Politics, US and Wisconsin-style — A Big, Fat Mess

Tonight’s post is about what’s been going on in politics — but as time is of a premium, let me sum it up for you in four words: a big, fat mess.

Look at the national political scene, for example.  Yesterday Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) said that the House “would not pass” the two-month extension to the payroll tax holiday (something that saves the average worker $40 per paycheck, as was Tweeted ad nauseum with the hash-tag #40bucks).  Boehner stood firm after this Wall Street Journal staff editorial saying the deal was a no-brainer; as the editorial said:

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest.

The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play.

Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he’s spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.

As the editorial goes on to state, the House had voted to kill the payroll tax “holiday” on Tuesday — the exact, same bill that the Senate had passed on a bipartisan basis with an 89-10 vote — by a 229-193 highly partisan vote (meaning the Rs were mostly against; the Dems were largely for it).  Speaker Boehner was standing firm, so he said, because he felt the Democrats hadn’t negotiated in good faith, but the Republican leadership (at least, anyone who isn’t currently sitting in the United States House of Representatives) en masse told Boehner he was wrong.

For example, here’s what George W. Bush’s main advisor, Karl Rove, had to say last evening (via this TalkingPointsMemo article, which quotes Rove from an appearance on the Fox News Channel yesterday — that is, Wednesday, December 21, 2011):

“I think the Wall Street journal editorial today hit it on the nail,” Rove said Wednesday on Fox News.

So today, Thursday, December 22, 2011, Speaker Boehner had to give in.  He did so as graciously as he possibly could, but facts are facts; Boehner got his hat handed to him, and he’s likely to end up resigning as Speaker soon because he’s totally lost control of his caucus.  And in so doing, he’s hurt his party, he’s hurt his party’s chances for winning the 2012 elections (from the Presidency on down), and he’s definitely hurt himself; these things are what tends to make a current Speaker a former Speaker, in short order, one way or another — and it’s far easier to resign than to be removed in disgrace.  (And if you resign, you get the lovely “perks” that come with being a former Speaker — I’m not sure if you do if you are replaced, though it’s likely you still would.  But it would still look better for Boehner if he just got out ASAP, and it probably would be a great deal better for his physical health.  He truly did not look well today in his press conference.)

Tomorrow, the House will meet and attempt to pass the two-month extension of the payroll tax “holiday” by unanimous acclamation.  If that doesn’t happen, I haven’t a clue what will happen next.

But I do know that the American public doesn’t like stalemates like this when political theatre threatens to interfere with real people’s lives, and they tend to hold the party who instigated such a thing responsible.  In 2009, the Dems had several highly partisan fights, mostly over health care, and in 2010, they paid for it at the ballot box; now, it’s 2011, and the Rs have had several highly partisan fights, mostly over the payroll tax and the debt ceiling issues . . . my guess is that unless they get their collective house in order, fast, they, too, are likely to pay for it at the ballot box.

Now to Wisconsin’s recent political news.  We continue the fight to recall our Governor, Scott Walker (R), our Lieutenant Governor, Rebecca Kleefisch (R), and four state Senators, including my very own Van Wanggaard (R-Racine).   It was reported about a week ago that there are nearly enough signatures to recall Scott Walker, as 507,000 valid signatures (by real Wisconsin voters, no signatures of “Mickey Mouse” or “Adolf Hitler” as has been alleged by some Republican leaders, including state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), himself a target of a well-funded recall election).  

Note that 507,000 valid signatures have been gathered in one month; those of us working on the recall effort (including me) have another full month left in which to get signatures.  And the efforts to recall Kleefisch, Wanggaard, and Fitzgerald (among others) continue unabated; it looks good that all six Republicans targeted for recall will indeed have to face the voters in 2012 for this option: will they be retained, or will they instead be replaced?

Tempers remain high in Wisconsin.  We’re frustrated by a weak economy, months of negative job “growth” (in other words, we have big, big job losses here and little actual growth going on), five or six people going for every one job, and more.  Then, we have a Governor who’d rather cause trouble than govern — which is why he’s going to be recalled and replaced — we have Senators who didn’t have the sense they were born with (including my own, Van Wanggaard), and voted for something they should’ve stayed far, far away from (the whole vote on Senate Bill 10 — that is, when they voted to repeal collective bargaining for most public employees, which has caused all sorts of trouble in the state, economically and otherwise).  And we have a Lieutenant Governor in Kleefisch who is either too weak to affect policy in any way so she has to parrot whatever Scott Walker tells her to say, or really, honestly believes what she’s saying — and I’m not sure which is worse.

Look.  I have friends of all political stripes and I am in agreement with some of my R friends in other states when they say spending is out of control and the government should make absolutely certain every nickel is spent wisely and well.  But I am against nonsensical stuff like what Walker, Kleefisch, Fitzgerald and his brother, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (also an R), my Senator, Van Wanggaard, etc., have said and done because there was no reason for it except to do one thing: bust unions, and make it harder to get Walker, et. al., on out of there.

But I have news; we will oust Scott Walker.  We will oust Rebecca Kleefisch.  We will oust Senators Fitzgerald and Wanggaard, all by our quite legal recall method — by getting 1/4 of the total voters in the last, highly-charged election.  We must oust these people in order to restore some sense of fairness and bipartisanship to Wisconsin.  

Wisconsin is not a red state, nor is it a blue state; instead, it is a truly purple state.  That’s why what the radical Rs, led by Scott Walker, have done here is so blatantly offensive to the vast majority of Wisconsinites I’ve talked with — including many, many Rs and Indys — and it’s why I fully expect to see Scott Walker and Van Wanggaard, among others, hitting the unemployment line ASAP.

Debt Ceiling Action — Write your Senators and Reps Today

Folks, it is obviously up to us to tell our elected representatives what we want, because they need some guidance up there in Washington, DC.  (What is it about the air of that place that makes people lose their minds?)

Here’s my letter to my Republican Senator, Ron Johnson, as an example:

Dear Senator Johnson,

When you ran for office, you promised to work on behalf of all Wisconsinites, not just those who voted for you.  I write to you now as one who didn’t vote for you but needs your help, as do all Americans.

Refusing to raise the debt ceiling now is wrong.  All the debt ceiling does is say to our creditors, “We will pay you what is owed.”  There is no reason whatsoever not to do so, so I do not understand your opposition in this matter.

While there is an argument that we as a country shouldn’t be spending so much — something I fully agree with — the fight for a Balanced Budget Amendment shouldn’t be hitched to this particular wagon.

At this point, we are on the brink of utter disaster.  If the debt ceiling is not raised, consequences could be catastrophic.  I really doubt you wish to do something that is so harmful to every single aspect of our economy, from the highest to the lowest, so please reconsider your opposition to raising the debt ceiling.

Sincerely,

Barb Caffrey

To find your Senators, go here:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm 

Here’s an example of how to write to your elected Representative, my letter to my duly elected Rep, Paul Ryan:

Dear Representative Ryan,

I know you are philosophically opposed to raising the debt ceiling without massive spending cuts as you are what’s known as a “deficit hawk.”  Still, you are sworn to do the people’s business, and right now, raising the debt ceiling is the right thing to do.

You have been in Congress for many years now, and you know full well that most of the time, raising the debt ceiling is a bloodless move that no one frets about.  I don’t understand why it’s different this time for you or for the Republican Reps. in the House, but I do know that if you don’t do it, the consequences will likely be catastrophic.

I am much more concerned about the economy, why we still have over 14% reportable unemployment in Racine, WI, and why no one’s talking about the jobs issue.  If more people were working, the deficit wouldn’t be as bad as it is because more tax revenue would be coming in.

Further, I am disgusted and incensed that the Republicans in the House refused to even consider closing tax loopholes that enrich big business and the wealthy while talking about cuts to “entitlement programs” that the middle class and below need every day — Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.  It seems to me that a disproportionate amount of the burden has been placed on the middle class and below; why is it that the wealthy are exempt from sacrifice?  And why on Earth do we still need to subsidize oil companies, the wealthiest corporations in the history of the world?

I applaud you for being willing to at least discuss the issue, Rep. Ryan, but I do not appreciate that there is no “sharing” in this sacrifice.

Please vote to raise the debt ceiling forthwith, without any such nonsense as “Cut, Cap and Balance,” as you know that will never pass the Senate.  Stop this nonsense, and let’s get on with the people’s business, all right?

Sincerely,

Barb Caffrey

To find your Representatives, go here:

http://www.house.gov/representatives/

And to write to President Obama, go here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Good luck in talking sense to these people; I pray that they will listen to us before it’s too late.  (Why they insist on playing petty partisan games until the last possible second, I will never know.  Perhaps that’s why I’m not a politician.)

More Back Pain, Exacerbated by Politics

Onto day six of current back problems; every day I get a little teensy bit better in one way or another, but it’s still not fun.  Continuing to take my medication, and try to get rest, and doing all the proactive things possible in order to move around a little bit.

Back problems get worse with stress, and right now, along with everyone else I have unavoidable stress that’s worsened by watching what has to be the biggest farce ever seen in Washington, DC — the whole foofaraw over the debt ceiling.

So while I wait for the latest vote in the House of Representatives, which won’t do anything at all to curb international panic over the lack of progress toward raising the debt ceiling for the United States, I thought I’d sit down and write a blog.  (What else did you expect, hm?)

My back seems intertwined with these politics, somehow.  Whether it’s the Wisconsin Republicans refusing to pass an unemployment extension until one week before six of them run in recall elections, or it’s the national Republicans in the House of Reps refusing to understand what the debt ceiling is — that it’s acknowledging that the Congress has spent such and such an amount, and that money will be appropriated while debts will be honored (that, in essence, is what raising the debt ceiling means) — and grandstanding about how awful the National Debt is, my back continues to hurt badly because the real issues are not being faced.

The real issues for most people have to do with these three words:  jobs, jobs, jobs.  Not all this nonsensical posturing by Speaker Boehner.  Not all this nonsensical posturing by the Tea Party Republicans, who believe that tax increases are bad, but don’t seem to understand that refusing to raise the debt ceiling will amount to the biggest tax increase in history that’s passed on to everyone, including the incredibly wealthy people they’ve been working for and protecting all along.

Once again, I ask the question of Boehner:  “Where are the jobs?”  Because I surely haven’t seen any action in the House at all regarding jobs; I haven’t seen any leadership from Boehner, either, because what he needs to do at this point is speak with Nancy Pelosi, current House minority leader, and say, “I have this many votes to raise the debt ceiling; what do you need from me to get your caucus to help me out?  Because you know that not raising the debt ceiling is bad, right?”

This, truly, is Boehner’s only option right now, and he’s refusing to take it.  Sad, even shocking . . . he’d rather pass on doing his own job, no matter how distasteful, which means to me that he’d best plan on retiring at the end of his current term because he’ll never be re-elected if he allows the US to default on its debt, or to lose the US’s AAA credit rating.   (That last is a very real possibility due to all the posturing, pandering, and ridiculousness that’s been going on in DC for the past week and a half minimum.  The world doesn’t like seeing that we’d rather screw around than meet our obligations as a country, which has made a credit downgrade much more likely than not.)

President Obama will also have problems in this regard, true.  But he’s been seen trying hard to work with the Republicans.  He just doesn’t seem to realize that these Rs will not listen — they’re like the Rs in Wisconsin, who also will not listen.  They insist that they’re right even when public opinion is strongly against; they insist they’re right even when people call and write and protest against them.  Then, when bad things happen, they continue to insist that they’re right and the rest of us are plain, flat wrong.

This is a new brand of Republican, folks — a type of person who refuses to listen to anyone, at all, and is inflexible to the point of extreme rigidity.  And this is a type of person we do not need, either in the state Legislature, or in DC.

These people would rather drive the whole country right off a cliff than do their jobs, as politics requires something none of them seem to know anything about: compromise.  Otherwise known as “the art of the possible.”

Pitiable, really.  But it does make my back hurt to realize we have so many people of this ilk in government at this time.

It’s NOT a Mandate, Folks; Rather, a Repudiation.

The election is over, but the bloviating goes on.  Today on WTMJ Radio (AM 620 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin), both Governor-elect Scott Walker (Republican) and Senator-elect Ron Johnson (R) used the word “mandate” while presumably wearing a straight face.

Yes, what happened last night is a slap-down for the people presently in power, the Obama Administration and many Democratic Senators and Representatives who followed their lead — along with some who didn’t, but were Democratic incumbents, and got washed out with the tide.

But it’s not — repeat, not — a mandate.  Rather, this is an exercise in the Republicans framing the narrative: they’re doing their level best to show voter rage at not being listened to as a “mandate” for themselves, which shows them to be completely ignorant of recent history.

So I’m going to educate them.  Starting right now.

What happened in this election is what my friends among the Hillary Clinton Democrats (some also under the name PUMA Democrats, with PUMA meaning either “People United Means Action” or “Party Unity My A**”) have been predicting since Barack Obama was named the Democratic nominee over Mrs. Clinton — and that is, many Democrats who were shut out by the Democratic National Committee on 5/31/2008 at their Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting were angry, and joined with the angry Republicans and angry Independents who didn’t feel they were being listened to — and that’s why we have an incoming Republican Speaker of the House (presumably John Boehner from Ohio, though it’s remotely possible the Republicans may select someone else) and a Senate that’s only nominally Democratically-controlled after the election results were known.

What people need to understand is that the Democratic Party fissured as of that moment, 5/31/2008, between those who felt what happened on that day — Barack Obama getting delegates he didn’t earn from Michigan, where he wasn’t on the ballot, and Mrs. Clinton having delegates she fairly earned (because she was on the ballot, and very popular in Michigan) taken away — was OK, and those who felt it was absolutely reprehensible.  Also be reminded that on 5/31/08,  Floridians were told to be happy that their representatives to the Democratic National Convention would only get 1/2 a vote, each — both of those things set badly with over half of the Democratic Party, including many who liked Obama and had voted for him, but could not get behind such blatantly slanted and non-voter-representative tactics.

You see, the DNC (most especially member-and-CNN-analyst Donna Brazile) believed “rules are rules,” and they didn’t care that the voters went out to vote and believed their votes would be respected.  They hid behind fig-leafs such as Florida supposedly voting “too early” when several other states moved up their primary dates as well but no one said word-one to them (most of those were states Obama won handily in), or saying from the beginning, “Oh, that primary doesn’t count because they moved it up without our approval,”  even while Michigan residents were voting in record numbers in their January primary.

Excuse me, DNC, but the voters voted.  They did what they were supposed to do: they voted, and in record numbers.  And they did not care about your rules.  They were told to vote, and they did.  They clearly expressed a preference, one you definitely didn’t like, for Hillary Clinton — and thus, you managed to mute the impact of her historic primary victories.  (Mrs. Clinton was the first woman to ever win a primary in the United States, much less a whole bunch of them.  And she won the most votes from primaries, too; we know that.  Mr. Obama won most of his victories in the caucuses, where many vote totals were disputed; please see Gigi Gaston’s excellent documentary “We Will Not be Silenced” for further details.  Here’s a link:  www.wewillnotbesilenced2008.com — this should help.  I know the movie, in four parts, is available on YouTube.)

The ill-feeling the DNC caused by refusing to listen has not dissipated in the last two years; instead, it’s simmered and boiled over in many cases.  I know that I am still angry and will always be angry at what happened at that meeting, because it showed that the DNC — the governing board of the Democratic Party, more or less — did not care one whit about the voter’s intentions or the voters themselves.  Instead, the DNC decided they knew better than we did, than what the polls were telling them — than what their own common sense should’ve told them if it hadn’t been taking a coffee break.

I know that while many Hillary Dems did what I did — vote for competent, qualified people wherever possible, including Democrats — some were so angry due to what happened on 5/31/08 (where we were told that we did not count, that our votes did not matter, and when our massed voices crying out for justice went unheard) that they voted a straight Republican ticket.

So the Republicans — including those in Wisconsin, where they won control of both the Assembly (the lower house) and the Senate (upper house) — are wrong when they think they have received a “mandate” to do anything.  What they received was the gift of many Democrats who are angry at how Obama was selected in the first place, along with many who were flat-out frustrated at the policies of Harry Reid (who, inexplicably, held his seat in Nevada) and Nancy Pelosi (easily re-elected, but almost assuredly to retire as former Speakers rarely stay in the House after they lose their Speakership).

So if the Republicans think this is a mandate, they are wrong.

What this was, instead, was a repudiation of the tactics of the DNC on 5/31/08, along with a repudiation of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the entirety of the Obama Administration in particular.

If the Republicans take the wrong message from this, and start cutting unemployment benefits, start cutting health care benefits that are already extant, and mess with Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, or any of the “social safety net” programs that are so vitally needed with the country as a whole having over 9% reportable unemployment (and more like 17% functional unemployment throughout the USA, with some areas having far more), they will be voted out in turn.

Personally, I am disgusted that Wisconsin voted out Russ Feingold, an 18-year veteran of the Senate.  Feingold is an honest, ethical and principled politician; the only thing he’d ever done that I fully disagreed with was backing Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008 (though he did not like what the DNC did on 5/31/08 any better than anyone else — such was the impression I received).   I voted for Mrs. Clinton in the Wisconsin Primary, and am as disgusted as anyone I know — and enraged, too — about what the DNC did on 5/31/08, but I cast my vote anyway for Feingold because unlike many politicians, he actually explains himself and has taken it upon himself to visit every county in Wisconsin every single year.  (Plus I looked at it this way, as a HRC supporter: Hillary Clinton is a centrist/pragmatist.  She’d want Wisconsin to have the best possible person representing the state, who in my opinion was Russ Feingold, whether or not she gets along with him.)

What we have now in Ron Johnson, the Republican Senator-elect, is a man who is independently wealthy, has no compassion whatsoever (or at least has evinced none), and believes in TANSTAAFL — an abbreviation for what Robert A. Heinlein called “There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.”  Which in general is a maxim worth living by — and is one of the most Libertarian philosophies around — but at a time where there’s 17% “real” unemployment in the country and where employers are not adding jobs, so many are getting by with unemployment checks while praying for a miracle (including myself), TANSTAAFL has to be modified, or a whole lot of people are going to end up dead on the streets as if the US of A had become a Third World country overnight.

Now, is that what Ron Johnson wants?  Probably not, but he hasn’t examined his beliefs too closely, either, by all objective analysis — his only two stated “platforms” were to cut taxes (whatever question he was asked, he’d say he’d cut taxes, even if it was something about Medicaid or getting our troops out of Iraq or Afghanistan) and to repeal Obama’s health care overhaul.  And while many in Wisconsin are very nervous about the Obama health care plan because of Ms. Pelosi’s blithe “we won’t know what’s in the bill until we pass it” comment (one of the worst things a sitting Speaker of the House has ever said, and definitely a factor in this election), that doesn’t mean all of it is bad.

Simply put, the main reason businesses go overseas is because of our health care costs — Ron Johnson is right about that.  But sometimes they go to Europe, which has nationalized health care, or China, which has something similar, or Canada, which definitely has nationalized health care, and that’s because the state is paying for the health care — the business is not.  That’s what Obama was trying — and fumbling — to say, and why he seems to feel that an overhaul is necessary because way too many people are falling through the cracks now, and it’ll just get worse if the businesses like HMOs or PPOs keep running healthcare as a for-profit business.

Perhaps Barack Obama’s idea (which may as well be called Nancy Pelosi’s idea) wasn’t the best one.  I definitely think it wasn’t.  But it was at least a small step in the direction our country needs to go in, though to my mind encouraging more low-income clinics to be built and forgiving new-doctor debt if they work in those for a few years seems to be a far better option all the way around.

People are suffering in this country.  I am one of those afflicted, and I am telling you right now that if the Republicans believe this was a “mandate” for anything, they are as wrong today as Barack Obama was wrong in 2008 after he was elected President of the US that his election was a “mandate” for anything whatsoever, except the mandate “we don’t like who we have, so we want someone else, and pray for a miracle.”  But I don’t think that counts.