“An avowed Muslim . . . get him out of our government”

More lying in Republican circles in Florida, and some of it probably naive.

Woman in Rick Santorum’s audience just said the president is “an avowed Muslim.” Her question: “why isn’t anything being done to get him out of our government?”

N.b. the MSNBC caption missed/omitted the “our” part.

Pressing on

Santorum, a senator, did not correct her.

Worst of all, perhaps, is that other people in the audience clapped when she said it. Wonder how many of them actually believe it. That anyone could believe it is not a tribute to the press in our time.

YouTube catches the exchange here.

Also here.

This is backwoods politics at its worst. It is heartbreaking that rural Florida, and other places like it, have been left to the tender mercies of the hard right for thirty years now. This is the result.

Not that there haven’t been worse comments, like this one from a hard-liner in Florida calling openly for violence against the president. Fortunately other Jewish leaders swiftly condemned the remarks. If they had been Santorum types, maybe not.

The only bright spot in those remarks caught on video is that the lady referred to the U.S. government as “our government.”

It’s a wonder GOP leaders haven’t already jumped down her throat for that.

2004 Election revisited, part 5: DC games versus democratizing the vote

2004 Election revisited, part 5: DC games versus the grassroots

Dean

The presidential election cycle suffered an odd interlude in winter 2004. Few people remember now, and this kind of topic is not usually revived on cable or network talk shows, but what happened derailed or destroyed the most promising grassroots activity on the Democratic side.

Most politicos remember in some fashion the swift turn downward for Howard Dean’s campaign when CNN jumped on the so-called ‘Dean scream’ nonstop. Few to no politicos mention that the Dean campaign was also on the receiving end of attack by a particularly shadowy 527 organization.

This particular org seems to have been roused to action by some mention of health care in a campaign year. (Danger afoot; the public might like health.) A weird little one-or-two-man ‘group’ called “Americans for Jobs, Healthcare [sic], and Progressive Values” sprang suddenly into action, not to mention into existence.

Any investigation is, of course, history now. However, the trajectory of events looks to be uncomfortably relevant in election 2012, when those 527s are dwarfed by current super-PACs.

Midnight, February 2, 2004, was the deadline for filing IRS form 8872, the comprehensive financial disclosure required of political organizations called 527s.  Form 8872 is another of those ‘regulations’ so hated by GOP presidential candidates. It is important because it reveals who has contributed money to the organizations, which, unlike individual candidates and political parties, do not have to file disclosure statements with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) but only with the Internal Revenue Service.  Federal law requires that the forms be filed electronically, by any 527 organizations that took in or spent more than $50,000 in 2003.

Early the next morning, I checked the IRS web site to see the financial contributors for the elusive group called “Americans for Jobs, Healthcare [sic], and Progressive Values.”  (Slight warning sign:  politicians genuinely concerned about health care can usually spell it.)

The group officially began in November 2003, ran three anti-Howard Dean ads including an especially noxious one picturing Osama bin Laden, and almost immediately went inactive.  Its web site went down or “under construction,” and it listed few contacts. Its second president in two months was insurance executive and former Ohio congressman Edward F. Feighan, but his insurance office in Columbus said that Feighan was no longer connected to “Americans for Jobs etc.” Feighan’s office could provide no current information about the group, its current officers, or whether it had a head. Spokesman Robert Gibbs, a former staffer of John Kerry’s in DC, did not return numerous calls and voice messages.*

There was no form 8872 or other quarterly filing for the group, and no filing beyond the initial form 8871 dated Nov. 14, 2003.

After more attempts, I was able to talk to the group’s treasurer, David W. Jones, a Democratic fundraiser in DC, who informed me that the organization was not dissolving but also stated that he was the group’s sole officer listed at this point. Jones referred me to Kenneth A. Gross, a partner in the large law firm Skadden, Arps, for information regarding Americans for Jobs’ financial filing.

Many attorneys do not even take Election Law in law school. Gross, in Bethesda, Md., has extensive credentials as an election law attorney and served in the FEC for six years under Reagan (1980-1986). Maryland public records show that Gross was a registered Republican but switched to the Democratic party in March 1993. “I’m a man of all trades,” he said affably. “I represent both Democrats and Republicans; I’m one of the few who do.”

Gross’s GOP credentials, however, were substantially more weighty, surprisingly for someone hired by Democrats. Gross’s resume:

Past candidates for whom Ken Gross had worked were either Republicans or, when Democrats, only in the Democrats in primary elections. All in all, an odd choice for any Democratic candidate, or at least for any candidate who wanted Democrats to win in November 2004. You’re running for office and have a hard-fought campaign in a tight election ahead. You hire Bob Dole’s legal counselor?

Ken Gross explained that Americans for Jobs etc had filed the required form with the IRS, the Friday before the deadline, but it had filed by fax, and the IRS did not immediately post the filing online. “It was filed,” he said. “The IRS failed to give us a [sort of] PIN number,” so the group could not file electronically. “They’re not very well equipped,” Gross commented. “It’s totally their fault.  It’s not our fault at all.”

When all else fails, blame the IRS. So, Gross continued, “we worked it out with Ogden, Utah [an IRS office],” and sent it in by fax. “I guess they haven’t scanned it into the system yet.” When I asked to see the filing, or have it faxed to me, Gross turned me back over to Jones, who corroborated the filing by fax.

An IRS spokesman explained that 527s were required to file electronically, but if some glitch prevented their doing so in a timely manner, they could file by fax or on paper to show good faith. Electronic filing was still required when they received their PIN number. Form 8872 is required to disclose all financial information.

Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2004, was the day Democrats held primaries in seven states including South Carolina and Oklahoma. As of that date, Americans for Jobs, Healthcare etc still had a single filing online, its initial electronic filing dated Nov. 14, 2003, posted with its Employer Identification Number (EIN). On Tuesday, Jones offered to fax me the filing.  I returned his call, leaving phone numbers and a fax number. No form arrived. Gross said that the filing was handled in his office, by Mark Ward. I called Ward on Wednesday to request a copy of the form, leaving my mailing address and a fax number with him.  Ward explained nicely that he did not have a copy of the filing, and that he could not get into either the fax machine or the copier without a client number–“This is such a dumb thing to be held up by, you’ll think, what planet did I drop from”–but would try to see what he could do, and suggested that I call Jones again to request a copy.

Later that day I got a call from Melissa Miles, a SkadArps attorney representing Jones.  She explained that “Dave knows he’s legally required to make a copy available” for viewing, within regular business hours, and recommended that I stop by Jones’ office, giving his address at Corporate Visions, Inc., on M Street. I said I could certainly stop by the next day, Thursday, Feb. 5.

Thursday morning I called Corporate Visions, where I happened to get a voice twin of Jones. When I asked whether I was speaking to Mr. Jones, however, the voice said “No, this is Corporate Visions.” Thursday afternoon, after repeated messages, Jones called me, saying that he had just gotten back from New York. When I offered to go to his office to see the filing, he offered instead to overnight it to me, saying at least twice that he had to show me “an original.” He assured me that he would UPS it to my home on Friday. The news that evening was full of a bad weather forecast for Friday, with possible icing; UPS headquarters confirmed that they do hold up deliveries in dangerous weather, but on Friday I received the filing.

The political calendar was loaded. Caucuses were held on Saturday, Feb. 6. Some large-state primaries were held on Tuesday, Feb. 10. On the phone, Jones offered to go over the form with me. He explained at length and repeatedly that the group had purchased three [anti-Dean] ads, totaling about $500,000. Of the total, the two ads referring to Dean’s gun and trade positions cost $485,000. Only $15,000, Jones emphasized, was spent on what he called the “foreign policy ad,” i.e. the one featuring Osama bin Laden. Jones reiterated that that one ad ran only sixteen times in South Carolina and New Hampshire, and never ran in Iowa.

Sounding somewhat harried, Jones also said that the Osama ad (“foreign policy”) got “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of free media attention,” with several major network news programs giving it national air play. As he remarked, that one ad, on which the group spent only $15K, got the most coverage, “national coverage for four or five straight days.” Jones: “You can blame your colleagues in the media for that.”

Numerous news reports linked the Osama ad to the Gephardt campaign. While the ad did not verbally compare Dean to bin Laden, visually it connected bin Laden’s face with Dean’s name, with a dark-aura image hard to shake off. By all accounts, the attack threw the Dean campaign off-message, away from his successful critique of Bush policies.  Negative ads work.

Tthey also boomerang. The smarmy, dark, negative ad ended Gephardt’s candidacy. Jones, formerly a fundraiser for Gephardt among others, reiterated emphatically that the ads were not coordinated in any way with the Kerry campaign or with the Gephardt campaign, describing them as intended to make issues of Dean’s positions.

“His campaign is over.”

Jones took exception to my saying foreign policy experience as an issue usually benefits an incumbent president or vice president, or in the rare case of Richard Nixon, a former vice president. Most people do not connect governors or Congress with foreign policy, regardless of the campaign year. This is an advantage of presidential incumbency. In any case, there can be little doubt about the damage wrought by the Osama bin Laden ad: of the two previously strongest Democratic candidates for president, one (Gephardt) was out of the race, and the other (Dean) dropped behind.

Gephardt

At that point, Howard Dean was still second to John Kerry in delegates won (121 to Kerry’s 260), and the race was still early. Dave Jones, however, vehemently and angrily insisted that Dean was “out”: “His campaign is over.”

Be it noted that Dean’s campaign had sidestepped professional fundraisers, getting its money through a successful Internet drive. This fundraising strategy employed by Dean, and by Ron Paul, was carried forward with even greater success by Obama in 2008 and is going forward for 2012 as well.

A more wide-open race generates more voter interest, by allowing voters more choice and more participation.** The best chance Democrats have to air issues of concern to the public is their primary season, in Democratic primaries and caucuses. Corporate media outlets are often less than eager to devote air time and print space to topics that they have failed embarrassingly to report.

Too bad they knocked Dean out.

Meanwhile, the filing belatedly reviewed showed that Americans for Jobs etc received $663,000 from 26 donors. The “Progressive Values” fell out of the basket. The donors had a strikingly not-progressive profile. Two-thirds of the donations were corporate, with two executives donating $100,000 each and another retired executive donating $50,000. Another $80,000 came from attorneys. The Torricelli for Senate Committee kicked in $50,000. Six labor unions donated $200,000; thus the laborers’ union and Loral corporation gave to the same folks. Expenditures, besides the half-million for television, included $40,000 to Jones’ firm, DWJ Consultants, and $15,000 to Skadden, Arps for legal expenses.

It would be odd if the highly experienced Kenneth Gross, with Americans etc from the beginning, did not foresee the dysfunctional impact of the Osama ad. The GOP, after all, had already used images of bin Laden and Saddam with great effect against Tom Daschle in South Dakota and even against decorated Vietnam veteran Max Cleland in Georgia.

Also, more expeditious filing would have been becoming from such experts. Referring to campaign finance in the Clinton White House, Gross said that all contributions to a party have to be reported and the contributors identified, and that the system falls apart when the parties try to find loopholes in disclosure (MSNBC interview, Oct. 30, 1996). In the same interview, Gross also said the amount of soft money in the system needs to be cut down.

Gross was a go-to speaker on campaign finance reform. Time quoted him as saying that the campaign finance law “doesn’t mean a whole lot,” and that “It’ll affect the process only at the margins.” The New York host committee for the Republican national convention stated an aim of raising $20M for the 2004 convention (which it exceeded handsomely); Gross earlier expressed an opinion that the new law does not limit fundraising for conventions.

When I asked Jones whether he was aware that Gross was representing the GOP convention, he said coldly that he did not get into his attorney’s other clients.

And there, gentlemen and ladies, you have one difference between Republicans and Democrats, in the horse race, in a nutshell: There is very little chance that any GOP candidate or group would naively hire a Democrat.

It must be agreed that the immediate beneficiary of the fall of Gephardt and Dean was John Kerry, whose biggest contributor was coincidentally SkadArps. Even Gross, who donated to Bob Dole in the 1990s, donated (modestly) to Kerry in 2004. Bush, after all, scared a lot of people. But Kerry was not the ultimate beneficiary. Corporatist commentators George F. Will, Charles Krauthammer, and Bill Kristol were openly gleeful over what they called Dean’s “implosion,” although previously they insisted fervently, not looking happy, that the White House was eager to have Dean as an opponent. (Krauthammer, Kristol and Will did not discuss the Osama bin Laden ad.)

As I wrote back then, “If corporate shills for the Bush team in the media were gleeful, it’s a safe bet that the Bush team was, also.”

I should have put money on it. With the twenty-twenty of hindsight, we now know that Kerry was not the most electable, the strongest, the best qualified candidate to oppose the Bush White House and Team Bush. Kerry ran a stronger campaign in 2004 than did Gore in 2000, but Howard Dean could have run an even better one.

The entire series of events drew less press coverage in 2004 than it should have drawn—like the efforts at vote suppression and intimidation. The New York Times reported the story only as an intramural fight among Dems. The Washington Post barely touched it. (The Post fought against Dean like a wounded wolverine, running a front-page story about a younger female aide in Dean’s inner circle. The Post facilitated GWBush’s reelection as it had facilitated his election, again with the corporate incentive of Bush education policies—standardized testing front and center)

*Gibbs went on to become press secretary for the Obama White House. Howard Dean, who should have been appointed head of Health and Human Services, was not. This is not to knock Kathleen Sebelius. The new Obama administration wisely took on board its former competitors, making a good choice in Hillary Clinton for State among others. But the White House went overboard in taking in Rahm Emanuel and leaving out Howard Dean.

Speaking of public health and public safety issues, it will be little short of a miracle if Emanuel as mayor of Chicago does anything to make the Chicago region less of a safe haven for rapists. Remember which archdiocese has had little to no successful prosecution of clergy abuse?

**I took this view in both 2004 and 2008. More commentators now discuss the same point.

There Was Never Going to Be ‘Bipartisanship’

There Was Never Going to Be ‘Bipartisanship’

 

President Obama delivers the State of the Union address

President Obama is receiving credit, rightly, for being considerably more polite and decent to his strident opponents—neocon media personalities, the GOP in Congress, former Republican candidates for office—than George W. Bush and his cohorts ever were to Democrats. He didn’t even wear garlic, going to dine with George Will, Bill Kristol and a host of other neocons in a house presumably free of mirrors. But it’s a good thing the news cycle moves so quickly nowadays. Otherwise, that quick set-up by the GOP in DC, to make ‘lack of bipartisanship’ the putative hallmark of presidential failure, might not have been so quickly seen through–and shot down.

The simple truth, to coin a phrase, is that there was never going to be bipartisanship from Republicans in Congress and/or angling for office. That’s not what they’re there for. They’re there to protect the interests they have always protected, at least at the highest party echelons.

Hence the rapidity and the blind rigidity with which the GOP already attempts to represent every fiscal move by the new administration in the old tax-and-spend light, ‘positioning’ Republicans in Congress as in favor of ‘cuts’ and Democrats as the reverse. Disregarding budget-busting amendments to the stimulus offered by the GOP, some media outlets have gone along with this line.

Predictably, one of the biggest differences between the House version of the stimulus package and the Senate version, the latter more affected by GOP demands, was that the Senate version included more, and more regressive, ‘tax cuts’. Thus the ‘cut spending’ line—actually, a rise in deficits—melds neatly with the ‘cut taxes’ line.

 

It’s a neat formulation but an Orwellian distortion.

 

When the GOP, which recently brought about the biggest wave of government spending in U.S. history and capped it off with a Wall Street bailout for some of the biggest beneficiaries of that spending, talks about ‘cutting taxes,’ in practice the ‘cuts’ boil down to two policies:

1)      Shifting the tax burden from the wealthy and corporations to the middle class; and

2)      Shifting the burden of raising taxes from the federal government to states and localities.

Both of these shifts are in practice regressive, bearing down hardest on those least able to bear any further financial strain. Over-all, what happens to ordinary taxpayers—especially hardworking, non-indigent individuals who have to watch every dime—when the Grover Norquist types go to work drowning the government in the bathtub?

We are seeing the answer right now, most prominently in Schwarzenegger’s California. In general, taxes imposed by state and local governments tend to burden ordinary individuals more than they do the affluent or corporations (which often operate above the aegis of state law). As today’s Washington Post sums it up, the new cuts being passed in California fit the typical pattern:

 “The budget measure would trim spending by $15 billion, including $8.6 billion from funding for public schools. It would raise $14 billion in taxes by increasing the sales tax by 1 percent and the gasoline tax by 12 cents a gallon, by doubling vehicle registration fees and by levying a 2.5 percent surcharge on income taxes. The rest would come from new borrowing.”

It’s like reward-the-billionaire pinball. Of all forms of broad taxation, the most regressive is the sales tax. Such sales taxes as gasoline tax and fuel tax hit individuals and businesses dependent in transportation and housing particularly hard. Vehicle registration fees and other so-called ‘user’s fees’ are generally just a form of sales tax under another name, and btw not doing much to enhance the health of our automobile industry or our transportation sector generally. After all, the only way to avoid paying more in these sectors is to do without a car or to keep your old one. (And if you do without, you are still paying more, lately, for mass transit. See below.)

Ditto for all the ‘recordation fees’ and other fees so beloved of states and localities, imposed on you—“They’re gonna nick you every way they can,” an older guy around here commented—when you go to record your will or the deed to your house, or get a driver’s license or become a notary public, or buy a boat or hunt or fish, etc. For all the talk about a ‘death tax’—actually a very lenient estate tax—tax policy proposed by every Republican administration in memory is much like a tax on everyday living.

Property taxes are only somewhat less regressive—and they are pinned to a ‘market’ that may be nonexistent and is skewed to start with. Full discussion of the way the term ‘markets’ is used is far beyond the scope of this article, but just try to imagine what would happen to housing prices in your neighborhood if—here’s the paradox—your neighborhood became the most ideally stable in the country, with everybody paying off the mortgage and nobody moving. The effect: Since the most recent house sales, on a totally-paid-up block, would be years in the past, house prices as set by the ‘market,’ without correcting for lack of indebtedness, would be destructively low.

Be it noted that ‘small business,’ which we sometimes hear about a lot from GOP lawmakers, who have recently emphasized the talking point about reducing the tax burden on small business, is also hit hard by the most regressive taxes. As with individuals of modest means, genuine small businesses struggle the most with higher fuel prices, more recording and other user’s fees. They also have the hardest time maintaining adequate paperwork for ever-increasing sales taxes, which can also eat into their sales.

Then there’s the steadily rising cost of getting to the store or other place of business. Unsurprisingly, customers are numerous for delivery businesses–UPS, FedEx—and for online shopping centers—eBay, Amazon. That rise, good news in a commercial sense for some buyers and sellers, is directly related to transportation costs (as well as to the desire to save time and effort).

As I have noticed before, the subway and train station near my home illustrate the effects of federal ‘tax cuts’ connected to reduced federal transportation subsidies. Parking at the nearest Metro station, while limited, used to cost $1.75 per day, and you could get out for free if you left before 3:00 p.m.  Now, the price has more than doubled and stays the same regardless of what time you leave.

A small item, by itself. But multiply $1.75 by 5, and you get a weekly increase of $8.75; multiply that by 4, and you get a monthly increase of $35.00; multiply that by 12, and you get a yearly increase of $420.00, give or take a little for either vacations or overtime.  Meanwhile, both train fares and subway fares have also gone up, partly because of the pressure of fuel costs and maintenance costs.

Obviously, increases in the cost of transportation hit those people hardest who can least afford to pay. They hit the middle class, the going-to-work-class, much harder than the wealthy. But the nation’s counties, cities, towns and states have to levy such increases to pay for services. We have a growing population that requires transportation, and a shrinking proportion of the over-all percentage of taxes paid by the wealthy and by corporations.

NOTE

Below is a partial list, which used to be passed around by email, of taxes-by-any-other-name. None of these taxes have gone down in any state or locale:

Accounts Receivable Tax                  Building Permit Tax
CDL
license Tax                                Cigarette Tax
Court Fines (indirect taxes)               Dog License 
Fishing License                                  Food License 
Fuel permit tax                                   Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon [dated])
Hunting License Tax                                     Liquor Tax
Local Income Tax                              Luxury Taxes
Marriage License                              Medicare Tax
Property Tax                                      Real Estate Tax

Septic Permit                                      Service Charge Taxes
Road Usage Taxes (Truckers)                      Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax                  Road Toll Booths
School Tax                                          State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)    Telephone federal excise tax
Telephone federal universal service fee tax
Telephone federal, state and local surcharge taxes
Telephone minimum usage surcharge tax
Telephone recurring and non-recurring charges tax
Telephone state and local tax                       Telephone usage charge tax
Toll Bridges                                        Toll Tunnels
Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)        Trailer registration tax
Utility Taxes                                       Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax                              Watercraft registration Tax

Well Permit Tax

This partial list does not include every ‘recordation fee,’ mentioned above, for everyday official documents like deeds and wills, or the raft of ‘license fees’ levied on entrance to most occupations or professions, or the extra sales taxes levied on airport parking and airplane tickets. Again, all these measures become more essential to small governments when they can count on neither federal support nor general economic prosperity.

Soaking the middle class, of course, goes much farther even than fees and indirect taxes, as everyone knows who has faced rising college tuition and rising health care costs. If people are now hoping fervently that President Obama will be a new FDR, it is in large part because President Bush implemented the unstated platform of reversing everything positive accomplished by FDR’s New Deal.