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Who wants immigration reform and who doesn't

Politico reported yesterday that a serious immigration bill is ready to go in the Senate.

Senate negotiators cleared the last major hurdle to reaching a bipartisan immigration reform deal Saturday as labor and business groups signed off on a visa program for future low-skilled workers, according to sources familiar with the talks.

The agreement marks a major breakthrough and significantly improves the odds of passing a larger immigration bill because it brings two powerful Washington interests on board on an issue that contributed to the defeat of past reform efforts. ...Politico

Marco Rubio is pictured as one of the senators in on the deal.  But Rubio wants a delay (and that's putting it politely!).

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is warning Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) not to rush an immigration-reform bill through his committee, calling for extensive hearings on the legislation’s many provisions.

In a letter to Leahy on Saturday, the Tea Party favorite and member of the Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration group cautioned against a “rush to legislate.”

 “I am aware that the Judiciary Committee, both under your leadership and under the leadership of your predecessors, has conducted a number of hearings related to immigration reform,” wrote Rubio in the letter. “But they cannot be a substitute for fresh hearings to consider specific legislation as part of a national conversation.” ...The Hill

Which reminds us that the House could and may well throw a wrench into the progress the Senate has made. Republican strategists/desperados are trying to make this bill a Republican triumph.

We need Speaker Boehner and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to stand up loudly and strongly for immigration reform and to become the poster boys for the change in the Republican Party. They need to proclaim that the GOP welcomes immigrants, thanks those who have come here to help build our economy and wants them to reinvigorate our capitalist, free enterprise, individual entrepreneurialism. They need to stress that Democratic policies of debt and handouts threaten to recreate the situations in their former nations that caused them to flee to the land of opportunity -- America. ...Morris and McGann at Real Clear Politics

 Which raises the question of whether the unswift foxes on the Democratic side are prepared to use any obstruction (Rubio?) of the immigration bill by the tea party against Republicans in the 2014 campaigns -- starting now.

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Ezra Klein goes straight to the issue at the center of the immigration legislation.  Immigration, right?  Maybe not so much.

The overriding fact driving almost everything that happens in American politics right now is that both elections and governance are zero-sum games between the two parties: For one side to win, the other side has to lose. ...Ezra Klein,Wonkblog,WaPo

Need one say more?  Well, yeah.

The sole major exception is immigration reform. On this one issue, both parties — and, importantly, their allied interest groups — see the game as positive sum. They believe they can both win. ...Klein, WaPo

So compromise this time could be win/win.

The deal is a classic political compromise: It splits the difference between the Chamber’s interest in more guest workers and Labor’s interest in keeping wages high. But deals like that have been rare in Washington lately. While split-the-difference compromises are almost always available, they’re rarely taken, as the two sides don’t actually want a compromise. Consider the budget, wherein Democrats would love a deal that includes some taxes and some spending cuts, but where Republicans don’t want a compromise that includes any tax increases at all.

In this case, however, both sides wanted a compromise. The business community needs a better immigration system. Organized labor needs to unionize immigrant workers, and it needs to remove the downward pressure illegal immigration puts on wages. And so, lo and behold, there’s a compromise. ...Klein, WaPo

Klein thinks this bill could -- might just -- make it through the House.

Will the states destroy Obamacare?

The Washington Post looks at the hoops the Affordable Care Act has managed to jump through, from serial efforts on the part of Republicans to destroy it to the Supreme Court decision.  We should be celebrating its survival, if not yet its triumph.  State by state, Republican governors are doing whatever they can to cut it down.  But are they likely to succeed?  The Post looks at two big states:  California and Texas.

In 2010, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California signed into law two bills to establish the online insurance marketplace — “exchanges” — that are at the center of President Obama’s health-care reform. In addition to being the first state to pass legislation implementing Obamacare, California promptly accepted the law’s Medicaid expansion. By this time next year, when the expansion is fully underway, it’s possible that the portion of the state’s uninsured population will have declined from 20 percent to less than five percent.

In Texas, the situation is just the opposite. The Lone Star State isn’t lifting a finger to create an exchange, instead leaving the work to the federal government. Texas is refusing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, too. “The idea that we would expand and put more money and more people into a broken system is not unlike putting another 1,000 people on the Titanic,” Republican Gov. Rick Perry told Forbes. “You know how this is going to turn out. And it’s going to be a disaster.”

One might observe that the health-care system in Texas, which, has the nation’s highest rate of uninsured residents — 24 percent, or more than six million people — is already a disaster. But the recalcitrance of Perry and Republican state lawmakers has the potential to make it much worse. ...WaPo

Because of Republican intransigence, the federal government is obliged to step in -- to set up the insurance exchanges individual governors refuse to create.  Result? Well, they should be state-administered.  On the other hand, the Post reports, "there are certain economies of scale" when the feds are doing the job for the states.

What Texas governor Rick Perry faces, in his refusal to do the job, is reducing Texas's medical system to one horrific mess when Texas's medical services are already shameful.

The law’s opponents hope this sort of truculence will harm Obamacare — and it probably will. But it will do so primarily by harming the resisting states’ health-care systems. It’s a classic example of cutting off your nose to spite Obama. And because the law can vary so much state-by-state, the dysfunction in states that fight the law will probably stand out compared with states that genuinely work to implement it effectively. Will governors who wreck their state health-care systems to make a political point look better than governors who, in the course of a single year, cut the number of uninsured in their states by perhaps 75 percent?

Or, to put it another way, California might end 2014 with a high-performing, near-universal health-care system. Texas might end it having made an already troubled system even more of a disaster. Will that reflect on Obamacare, which is working just fine in a neighboring state? Or will it reflect on the Republicans who govern Texas? ...WaPo

In fact, this situation has already made it easier for Texas Democrats to stage a comeback.  And you can bet the state's Dems are busy building campaigns based on Perry's gift of medical mayhem.

Obamacrash

Yes, the next big thing is Obamacrash.  Taega Goddard's Political Wire raised my consciousness just now with a post about Art Laffer and Stephen Moore's book predicting an economic crash, any day now, thanks to Obamanomics.

(The poetry of the Obama name is an important part of the culture of the white hierarchy.  The latest complaint -- just preceding Obamacrash -- is about Obamabahama. Obamabahama focuses on the uppity choice of sending Malia and Sasha to the Bahamas for spring break.)

So okay:  Obamacrash.  I checked reviews at Amazon -- they're there even though the book won't be out until mid June -- and find that the Laugher More thesis depends on four key points. 

• Obama is ushering in inflation that rivals 1970s levels
• The Obama Administration and its allies have calculatedly deceived voters about the role of tax cuts and deregulation in the recession
• The EPA’s global warming crusade is little more than another costly tax
• Obamacare will raise health costs, hitting Americans’ wallets when they’re already down for the count
• The “welfare cliff” actually discourages people from finding work because taxes mean they’ll make less than they could on welfare when unemployed

Gosh! How original!  How fresh!  Wow!  Anymore brilliant stuff like that and my head will burst.

How to steal an election

Use a search engine -- Google ...Bing ...whatever -- and skewing an election is a cinch.  In 2014.  Whenever...

“They have a tool far more powerful than an endorsement or a donation to affect the outcome,” [Robert] Epstein said. “You have a tool for shaping government. . . . It’s a huge effect that’s basically undetectable.”

There is no reason to believe that Google would manipulate politically sensitive search results. The company depends on its reputation for presenting fair, useful links, and though that image has taken some hits in recent years with high-profile investigations in the United States and Europe, it would be far worse to get caught trying to distort search results for political ends.

Yet Epstein’s core finding — that a dominant search engine could alter perceptions of candidates in close elections — has substantial support. Given the wealth of information available about Internet users, a search engine could even tailor results for ­­­certain groups, based on location, age, income level, past searches, Web browsing history or other factors.

The voters least tuned in to other sources of information, such as news reports or campaign advertisements, would be most vulnerable. These are the same people who often end up in the crucial middle of American politics as coveted swing voters. ...WaPo

Guns and violence -- in black and white

Charlotte and Harriet Childress are two researchers in social issues who have come up with a startling conclusion or two about who's responsible for gun violence in America. 

Imagine if African American men and boys were committing mass shootings month after month, year after year. Articles and interviews would flood the media, and we’d have political debates demanding that African Americans be “held accountable.” Then, if an atrocity such as the Newtown, Conn., shootings took place and African American male leaders held a news conference to offer solutions, their credibility would be questionable. The public would tell these leaders that they need to focus on problems in their own culture and communities.

But when the criminals and leaders are white men, race and gender become the elephant in the room. ...WaPo

And white men in America -- who are "not used to being singled out"! -- will surely indicate that this attention is making them uneasy.

Each of us is programmed from childhood to believe that the top group of our hierarchies — and in the U.S. culture, that’s white men — represents everyone, so it can feel awkward, even ridiculous, when we try to call attention to those people as a distinct group and hold them accountable. ...WaPo

But there it is.  They are being made accountable.  As the Childress researchers point out, the protests from the NRA and the tea party are, effectively, protests from two organizations dominated by white males.  In fact, it's quite reasonable to see the NRA as a modern-day off-shoot (!) of the Klan.

Get all indignant at the suggestion, but white males need to answer to all of us.

If life were equitable, white male gun-rights advocates would face some serious questions to assess their degree of credibility and objectivity. We would expect them to explain:

What facets of white male culture create so many mass shootings?

Why are so many white men and boys producing and entertaining themselves with violent video games and other media?

Why do white men buy, sell and manufacture guns for profit; attend gun shows; and demonstrate for unrestricted gun access disproportionately more than people of other ethnicities or races?

Why are white male congressmen leading the fight against gun control?

If Americans ask the right questions on gun issues, we will get the right answers. ...WaPo

Chances of Republicans taking the Senate in 2014

Republicans need to pick up six seats to retake the majority they lost in 2006, and recent history suggests that the task is doable, if difficult. More concerning for Republicans, however, is whether they will again have to endure nasty primaries that produce either triumphant insurgents with limited appeal or establishment survivors who underperform with conservative voters in the general election. ...WaPo

A big passel of Dems are resigning.  Republicans may be universally unloved, but they have a nice (for them) electoral advantage next year.  Trouble is, they've got candidates in places like Iowa, Michigan, and Louisiana they see as "less than desirable."  Certainly Steve King of Iowa fits that category, a real junker.

In  contrast, look at the Dems.

...For Democrats, playing defense will be nothing new.

In November, they had to defend 23 of the 33 Senate seats up for grabs in 2012. They could afford to lose only four seats to maintain a majority, and several of their veterans retired after long runs representing conservative states.

But instead of losing ground, Democrats gained seats —which seemed unthinkable in March 2011 — by holding all 23 and picking off two from Republicans.

Moreover, in the past four elections, just two Democrats lost reelection bids, while 12 GOP incumbents fell. ...WaPo

And Mitch McConnell, who'd love to be majority leader,  is in trouble in his home state.  He's "running hard." Which could make a fall even more painful.  But is it possible?

...The much anticipated Democratic candidacy of actress Ashley Judd fizzled as she abandoned the race before it started. With Judd out, Democrats are turning to Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, 34, whose father was state Democratic chairman and a friend of former president Bill Clinton. ...WaPo

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NPR had an interesting report this morning on DOMA and what its appearance in the Supreme Court is doing to Republicans.  The Defense of Marriage Act is, of course, the the offspring of Republicans in Congress, specifically Republicans in the House.  Not only is their counsel before the Court presenting a very weak, not to say embarrassing, case, but Republicans in the House are out-to-lunch or out-of-town 0r not-available when it comes to commenting on the Court case, much less when it comes to defending DOMA.  

Fact is, Republicans need all the support they can to win in 2014 and suddenly the tide has turned against DOMA.  Codgers over 70 and raging evangelicals just aren't enough to guarantee a Republican win.  So the silence is deafening.

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Actually, forget "ragin' evangelicals"!  Turns out evangelicals -- some notable ragers, anyway -- are calming down and perhaps changing their minds.  Or are simply tired of being out-of-step with most of America.  Check out the developments at Liberty University.

... In the last six or seven years, opposition to gay marriage has gone from a unifying ideology on Liberty's campus to an issue that is tiptoed around by students and faculty members, and that no longer forms a major plank of the worldview shared by many young evangelical Christians. ...Daily Intel