Prairie Weather

Coulda been a contenda

OMG.  The range of choice when it comes to Republican presidential potential in 2016 is daunting.  Now we know why Scott Walker is so protective of his image when it comes to racism.  He's a contenda!

We also catch a glimpse of Chris Christie's confidence a day or two after his own defense team exonerated him in the matter of the bridge closure. 

And then there's the reliable Paul Ryan.  He may be lousy at budgetary math, but his  naked, proud corporatism is solid when we're talking about energy. 

Let's leave Jeb Bush out for the moment. What we're dealing with here is not (gulp!) Bush family political moderation and freedom (yeah right!) freedom from ties to big oil.  We're talking solid Koch heads.  Just a couple of days of angry New Jersey commuters idling while waiting to cross over into Manhattan means New Jersey's Governor Christie was responsible for more oil consumption in one day than the entire state of Maine.

Oil consumption is a key plank in the platform of at least one Republican candidate. Check out the report at The Hill.

If last year's budget is any indication, it's safe to say Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) coming budget proposal for fiscal year 2015 will include a number of energy provisions.

It also helps that Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), vice chairman of the Budget Committee, told The Hill to expect energy goodies in the proposal.

Here's what E2-Wire thinks you may want to keep an eye out for ... TheHill

What follows is this:  Enthusiasm for Keystone X;  expansion of off-shore drilling; and a reversal of Obama's climate regulations.  It ends with easing off the renewable fuel standard.  Back to smog, drilling, and happy happy big oil.  Be sure to carry your bronchial inhaler with you at all times; scoop up a few shares of Exxon Mobil.

I don't know about you, but I'm dumping my squeamish little Honda and buying a pleasure palace of a giant SUV.  That way my dog and I can play ball on rainy days in the huge expanse of our Tahoe.

___

The dog has a serious failing that Christie doesn't have.  Duffy sheds.  Christie says he does not.

Suddenly energized by his self-proclaimed innocence, Chris Christie was back to his old tricks at a press conference today. "Why don't you just get to the question and cut the commentary back a little?" the governor said at one point, firing up the long-dormant insult machine. The questions, which he'd avoided since early January, were once again "ridiculous."

"What you get with me is what you get," said Christie to reporters who hadn't seen much of him since Bridgegate. "I cannot shed who I am." ...DailyIntel

And if you're black, get back

...Or if you're brown, white, poor, or appear to be a Democratic voter, Ohio and Wisconsin (swing states) have now enacted laws that put serious barriers between you and the voting booth.  North Carolina is worse, now, than either Ohio or Wisconsin.  Some laws have already kicked in.  Some may not start skewing the vote to the right and far right until the next presidential election.

Don't look to the Supreme Court for justice in voting. 

Last year, the Supreme Court struck down a central provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The decision allowed a number of mostly Southern states to alter their election laws without the prior approval once required from the Justice Department. A few weeks later, free of the mandate and emboldened by a Republican supermajority, North Carolina passed the country’s most sweeping restrictions on voting.

The law did away with same-day voter registration and a popular program to preregister high school students to vote. It cut early voting to 10 days from 17, mandated a strict photo identification requirement that excluded student and state worker IDs and ended straight-ticket party voting, all of them measures that are expected to hurt Democrats, election law analysts said. The Supreme Court decision also cleared the way for Texas to institute its strict photo identification requirements. ...NYT

Meanwhile, Republicans continue to cry "fraud" but, as the Times points out, have never been able to come up with proof.  Democrats are ramping up efforts to modernize the voting process and make voting more accessible to the legitimate voter, filing "a spate of federal and state lawsuits to combat the measures, including Justice Department lawsuits against North Carolina and Texas. A state lawsuit is expected soon in Ohio, where Democrats are also gathering signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot this November that would reverse some of the restrictive voting measures."

___

In Wisconsin, the local Dunn County News reports on some details of Republican Governor Scott Walker's and other Republicans' effort s to exclude minorities from elections.

Clearly Republican legislators don’t need to discourage voting. They have created legislative districts that should assure GOP legislative majorities through 2022. Walker has won two statewide elections under the existing election rules. He has name identification and lots of campaign cash already on hand.

Republicans also have championed legislation to limit the hours and days for absentee balloting, something that also could reduce the overall voter turnout in Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee and Madison. That would also help assure Walker wins a second term as governor.

The voter suppression is different than when Tommy Thompson was the Republican governor. Then there was a bipartisan consensus that government should encourage voting.

Is there more to the Republican efforts than just trying to put a thumb on the scales of democracy before the November election?

Talk-show remarks by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, hinted at racially insensitive attitudes among conservatives. He said that there’s a “tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working or learning the value and the culture of work.”

That touched off a firestorm of criticism, and Ryan retreated saying he was “not implicating the culture of one community.” ...DunnCountyNews

___

The same racism turns up throughout Republican efforts to prevent Democrats from voting.  Dave Weigel, at Slate, reports on Wisconsin's Republican governor, Scott Walker, to exclude minorities from polling places. 

The 2012 election went incredibly smoothly in Wisconsin. Starting on Oct. 21, two weeks before the end of the election, voters could show up to early-voting sites and be done with their annual civic duty. Not registered? You could do that in person. Busy all week? Show up on Saturday or Sunday. The ease of the thing helped push Wisconsin turnout to 73.2 percent of eligible voters, up from 72.4 percent in 2008, the second-highest in the country. (Damn your eyes, Minnesota!)

This was clearly a problem, and it had to be fixed.

You bet.  And, with the help of a friendly legislature, it was fixed.

Wisconsin's Republican legislature, which was strengthened by a 2011 gerrymander, has played a useful game with Walker. It's proposed balloting restrictions that go further than he likes, such as a ban on same-day registration. But when he's met them halfway, he's rolled back voting access beyond what's recommended by the Presidential Commission, and recommended by experience. ...Slate

Oh, right.  The gerrymander.

___

But then there's the effort to nail the clear racism in North Carolina's efforts to restrict voting.

Any race-related emails that North Carolina Republicans may have sent in connection with the voter restrictions they passed last summer could soon be public, thanks to a ruling by a federal judge.

Before the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act, simply demonstrating a discriminatory impact could be enough to overturn a discriminatory law. Now, in order to have North Carolina's voting law struck down, civil rights groups and the Justice Department have to demonstrate that state lawmakers deliberately engaged in racial discrimination against voters.

The sweeping law requires voters to show certain forms of photo identification, eliminates same-day registration and reduces early voting -- all measures which voting rights advocates say are intended to make it harder for Democratic-leaning minorities to vote.

The emails sent by legislators are crucial to proving racial motivations played some role in the legislation.

North Carolina wanted to keep legislator emails secret. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Joi Elizabeth Peake ruled Thursday that the state couldn't withhold all the emails. She did, however, say that North Carolina might be able to argue that emails only between legislators and their staffers could be kept private.

Of course, if legislators have nothing to hide about the motivations for passing the restrictive laws, they can individually waive their legislative immunity, as Peake noted. ...HuffPo

Republicans and dementia

Democrats remember pretty well. 

The tendency to fall victim to one of the several forms of dementia seems to be a Republican problem.  Whether nature or nurture is responsible hasn't been determined.  I'd say nature. 

Even leaving aside Reagan's struggle with Alzheimers, we are left with myriad examples.  Bush and Cheney both had the "don't remember" habit.  Bush was notable for the disconnected look in his eyes as he set "My Pet Goat" aside for a moment to ponder where he was and what he should be doing.  Scooter Libby's memory losses, very pronounced during his trial, touched off a Harvard study (Kassam Gilbert et al.) of MTR (motivation to remember).

The Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, is yet another disrememberer.  Maybe just being Republican has something to do with it.  Perhaps his position in the party "elite" is a determinant for dementia.  Having a loyal aide to carry the heavy load of blame does seem to play a role in Christie's MTR.

In any event, the Guardian logs Christie's "failures" to remember. 

The New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, may have been told about politically motivated lane closures on a key bridge linking his state with New York as they were happening, a report by lawyers he hired to conduct an investigation into the incident concluded on Thursday.

However, Christie insists that he does not remember being informed about the traffic realignment at the George Washington bridge, which inflicted gridlock on the town of Fort Lee, New Jersey, whose mayor is a political foe of Christie’s, last September.

The review heaps blame for the scandal on Bridget Anne Kelly, the governor’s then deputy chief of staff, who was fired after the extent of her involvement came to light. It concludes: “Governor Christie did not know of the lane realignment beforehand and had no involvement in the decision to realign the lanes.” ...TheGuardian

But:

... The 360-page report does not rule out the possibility that Christie was told about the closures in Fort Lee while they were ongoing by David Wildstein, the Christie appointee on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who orchestrated the closures for Kelly. Wildstein has claimed that he informed the governor about what was happening during an event to mark the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. ...TheGuardian

Democrats will not soon forget that the 360-page report was authored by Christie's defense lawyers. Defense lawyers are past masters in the legal implications of MTR.  In the end they are left with empty buckets of whitewash but very full pockets.

The report was produced by attorneys with Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, a law firm that has significant ties to the Christie administration and other Republicans. The inquiry was led by Randy Mastro, one of the firm’s senior attorneys, who served as chief of staff and deputy mayor to former Republican New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Several Christie aides have previously worked for Giuliani. Another of the lawyers who conducted the inquiry, former US attorney Debra Yang, has publicly described Christie as a "very dear friend" and received a lucrative contract from him when he was the US attorney for New Jersey. John Wisniewski, the Democratic assemblyman leading a separate inquiry into the George Washington bridge scandal in the state legislature, said previously that Yang's involvement raised "serious questions" about the credibility of the internal review.

The inquiry is estimated to have cost New Jersey taxpayers at least $1m in legal fees. ...TheGuardian

Governor Christie apparently doesn't see any problem with suffering from the psychological abnormality, MTR,  while also being a Republican contender, a possible president and a world leader.  There is, after all, a tradition.

Putin is awful. But so are we.

Take off that flag pin and get a little honest.  We are a pot calling the kettle black.  Already there are perfectly sensible experts on Russia and Eastern Europe saying, "Calm down!  Crimea was Russian.  Crimeans want to return to Russia." 

So make sure the rest of Ukraine is safe from Putinization but get off the high horse when it comes to Crimea.

... The United States would do well to tone down its sanctimony. Putin’s annexation of Crimea violated international law. But so did the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the NATO intervention to protect Kosovo, even if the latter was, to many, including me, a legitimate violation. Insisting that this is a new era because Moscow is bent on violating international law may indeed propel the world into a new era. But that would be a choice of our making, not Russia’s.

Moreover, that choice would strengthen Putin and undercut the democratic movement in Russia. Just because members of the band Pussy Riot were imprisoned and Alexei Navalny was not elected mayor of Moscow and the size of protests against Putin’s government ebb and flow does not mean that this spirit has been crushed. On the contrary, these protests are like an aspen grove; fueled by social media, they spread in ways we cannot see until the next opportunity for their flowering emerges. Meanwhile, elevating Russia to global enemy No. 1 feeds the hard-liner narrative in Moscow just as it does in Iran. A better strategy would be to tone down the rhetoric and let Europe take the lead, while making clear that a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine would be met with the strongest possible economic response. ...Anne-MarieSlaughter,WaPo

___

This is a good place to recommend a book that, among other goodies, presents a clear, often gripping, description of America's war/antiwar politics during the late 1930's.  Yes, it will remind you of --and elucidate -- the politics of today. See Lynne Olson's Those Angry Days.

___

I'm with Juan Cole.  He describes Obama's tussle with Armchair Warrior Mitt Romney and writes:

Obama was asked about the Ukraine, and replied from across the Atlantic to Mitt Romney’s “Face the Nation” critique, in which Romney posed as prescient about the dangers of Russia as America’s chief geopolitical adversary and slammed Obama as naive about Moscow. ...

...Obama denied the premises of Romney’s perspective. Russia, he said, is a narrow Eastern European issue, not a globe-straddling one.

In this regard Obama is certainly correct. Romney and other hawks appear to want to resurrect the Cold War. But that was a truly global struggle in which two ideologies, capitalism and socialism, competed for every country in the entire world. The US cared about politics in places like Senegal and Laos during the Cold War because it was competing with Soviet socialism as a way of organizing society in those places. The Soviet Union even had civil society allies like the Communist Party in Western countries such as France.

That kind of geopolitical competition no longer exists. Russia is just another capitalist country, but its reach into global markets is limited because it mainly has hydrocarbons to offer them, not so many factory-made goods. In some ways, Russia is a bit like Saudi Arabia, an oil and gas rentier state. ... JuanCole,InformedComment

Latest poll shows a tie

As Political Wire reports, yesterday GWU poll shows Democrats in good shape for the November 2014 elections, a tie at 43% each.  The data show the hard results of the poll, but the analyses of the poll done by each of the two parties' political analysts are perhaps more telling in their grasp of reality.

The Republicans tend to tiptoe around the data, focusing instead on Obama's rating of 43% and the President's apparent pessimism about the November outcome.  But the President isn't running.  Members of Congress -- who are detested pretty much across the board by now -- are the guys with their necks on the chopping block now.

... As we began to comb over the detailed crosstabs Friday morning, the data seemed to match up with the headlines from President Obama’s speech the night before, quoting the President as saying that Democrats tend to “get clobbered” in midterm elections. Certainly there was a lot in the data that would confirm that that may well be the case in the 2014 Midterm elections. Vote intensity of self-identified Republican voters is back up to a seven-point lead over Democratic voters (the lead is 11-points with behavioral Republican voters), by a 64% to 28% margin voters say the direction of the country is off on the wrong track (“strongly” off on the wrong track now runs over 4 to 1 negative), both the President’s image and job approval continue to be upside down, his job approval continuing to run at a historically high 1.7 to 1 ratio on strongly disapprove to strongly approve, and the generic Congressional ballot running even. In addition, among the 60% of the respondents who say they are extremely likely to vote, Republicans lead on the generic Congressional ballot by five points (45% to 40%). ...

Call me a librul dreamer, but the Democratic response seems more to the point.

... With the 2014 elections just over six months away, the midterms remain very tightly matched. In this most recent Battleground poll, Democrats have closed January’s 2‐point deficit on the generic congressional ballot, and are now running neck and neck with Republican candidates nationally (43% Republican, 43% Democrat, 14% undecided). This dynamic, among other factors, substantiates the argument that the Democrats are competitively positioned for 2014, despite the gloomy conventional wisdom about the Party’s chances. The Democrats enjoy double‐digit advantages on key issues, including standing up for the middle class, representing middle class values, Social Security, and Medicare. Voters also see the Democrats as better when it comes to solving problems and the Party remains competitive on jobs, the economy, and even taxes. The data also reinforce the notion that congressional Democrats are making progress shifting out of a defensive posture on health care, both as the White House goes on an aggressive—and so far successful—full court press to encourage new signups, and as Americans increasingly come to see through the Obamacare spin and understand the benefits of the new law. Moreover, we see in this study evidence that Democrats’ efforts to define the elections around populist economic issues—raising the minimum wage, ensuring equal pay for working women, and strengthening the safety net of Social Security and Medicare—are finding traction among the 2014 electorate. ...

The Dems made a poor showing, at least here in Texas, when it came to voting in the primaries a couple of weeks ago.  But it may not be merely optimistic to believe that increasing security in the matter of health insurance will act as a game-changer for many voters as the opportunities of Obamacare become more familiar to voters seven months from now.

___

Here's a chart showing an improvement in the perceptions of Obamacare.

The reality of inequality is even worse than we thought

... Even those upset by trends in US inequality are living in the past. They still think Gordon Gekko is the problem — but if you look at my first chart, you see that things have moved on a lot since 1987, when Wall Street came out. Back then scrappy self-made predators ruled; now we’re much more likely to be talking about their children and heirs. ...PaulKrugman,blog

It's not about greedy Wall Street bankers now.  It's about very very very rich people who didn't make the money themselves.  They aren't "job creators."  No siree.  The people who own the future (and own the government) are the heirs of the fortune makers.  We're living in a rerun of the Gilded Age, says Paul Krugman. 

Patrimonial capitalism is already here, to a much greater extent than people realize. ...Krugman, blogging on new studies of wealth in America.

You could say -- I'm saying -- that our future is dominated by people not by the middle class but by a new group of heirs who are as far from reality as any in our population.

That growing sector of the wealthiest didn't have to make it themselves.  Many have never had the experience of living in the economy that determines most Americans' lives.  The rest of us are left with, well, not much. Our political power has diminished. Or -- and this is probably closer to the truth -- we have given away our power. Either way, we no longer have the ability to determine the direction of the nation.  

"Everyone below the 99th percentile has actually been left behind," Krugman writes.