Open Thread

by Deacon Blues

Some random observations:

Note how much play last week's Gallup poll got that showed a 10-point GOP generic ballot advantage. Note how little this week's Gallup poll got which showed the generic ballot jumping back into a dead heat once Obama engaged and went after the GOP for having nothing.

Isn't Obama's latest effort to get a multi-year infrastructure investment of $50 billion a year 1) DOA with this Congress; and 2) proof positive that the first stimulus was a flop for being too timid?

After watching the GOP suck the oxygen out of the August congressional recess media vacuum with the "Ground Zero Mosque" misdirection campaign, why aren't Democrats forcing the GOP leadership and GOP candidates to declare whether they support the crazy Florida "Koran-burning" preacher or our troops? It's very simple: do you support General David Petraeus and our troops, or are you tethered to the far right crazies in the GOP?

OK, take it away.

After Labor Day: Let the Politics Begin

by CA Pol Junkie

There being a great oversupply of political punditry in America, we've heard alot about the 2010 elections ever since the end of the 2008 elections. None of it mattered until now. Labor Day is when voters who don't happen to be political junkies start paying attention and campaigns kick into high gear. This is when polls really start meaning something.

Of course, that means things look very ugly for Democrats right now. CNN, ABC, and NBC polls all paint a similar picture: among all voters Republicans have a very slight edge, but among likely voters Republicans have a big advantage. The political math is pretty simple and favors the Republicans in three ways. First, Democrats have done very well the last two cycles, so political gravity is pulling the other way. Second, Democrats are in power so Republicans are desperate to vote and get some power back. Last, it's the economy, stupid: Democrats are in charge and the economy stinks, therefore voters favor the other party.

Continue reading "After Labor Day: Let the Politics Begin"

Looking the Other Way While Being Looted

by Deacon Blues

As certain as the sun comes up every morning, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in California will rant against waste, fraud, and abuse in state government and claim that eliminating it will largely deal with the state's structural budget deficit. And whatever deficit is left can be dealt with by bashing and eliminating public employee unions. That's the campaign message by Wall Street Meg Whitman, who has already put forward a misinformed policy prescription on funding higher education through a redirection of CalWORKS monies that cannot be done.

The phrase "waste, fraud, and abuse" is the spell that GOP candidates sprinkle over their sheeple every election. It dates back to Reagan's lies about welfare queens in the 1980's, and allows GOP candidates to get a two-fer by ranting against government programs and employees at the same time, with a dose of racism thrown in for good measure. The GOP can lump government workers and minorities into the same bag as fraudsters with such a message, which plays to their base effortlessly. Schwarzenegger did in when he ran against Davis in 2003, claiming billions in waste that he has yet to prove in seven years. Now Whitman has come along and repeated the message, and actually wants to set up a new state bureaucracy to root it out.

Whitman is basing her assertions about rampant fraud in government programs upon the work done by the business-funded California Taxpayers Association, which itself could only document $600 million in waste/fraud/abuse (WFA) at all levels of California government in 2009. Whitman, who is being bankrolled by Wall Street in this election, is telling California voters that WFA and public employee unions are largely responsible for the state's fiscal irresponsibility, but neither she, Carly Fiorina, or the CTA ever mention the billions in unpaid state taxes owed by the state's businesses and unaccountable corporate subsidies, a figure that dwarfs the potential WFA by at least a factor of ten.

But I'll make Meg a deal: she can have her grand jury to go after WFA and find the $600 million and claim credit for it, as soon as she commits herself as governor to chasing down and getting the billions of unpaid business taxes that her buddies owe the state each and every year.

And isn't it laughable to be lectured on fiscal responsibility by anyone with close ties to Wall Street?

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

by Oly Mike

Thanks to Bob for a good line. One of many. How about that for a question: what is your favorite Bob Dylan line?

Dahr Jamail has a piece on the threat of global warming on Truthout. Erika Blumenfeld is the photographer for the Jamail piece and has done a great job of capturing the devastation of the BP gusher in the Gulf. Here is a link to a sample of Blumenfeld photography called The Polar Project.

That's a Blumenfeld photo to the right of an iceberg calved from Antarctica.

Climate Progress has this piece: Newark Star Ledger Editorial Board - Face facts: Climate change is unfolding as predicted. It's worth a couple of minutes to read.

Finally, we have Bill McKibben calling for direct action. Grist has that piece.

Here are some facts from the Dahr Jamail piece. And noting that Jamail is reporting on the work of Derrick Jensen.

Read'em and weep.

Krugman on Economy, Klein on Social Security

by Oly Mike

Thinking about Mary's post on Krugman and his take on things. I continue to be completely convinced that Obama should have made Paul Krugman the Economic Czar (thanks, anonny, typing too fast)for a two year project to right the economy back in January 2009.

Nope, Obama had to go with Goldman Sachs guys like Geithner, Bernanke. Similarly, Obama seems to think that Alan Simpson is the guy who knows how to fix Social Security. Hm.. how about checking in with Ezra Klein first?

Ezra Klein makes the cut for the big look at Social Security and his article in the Washington Post.

Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (that's a hyperlink graph to the left for the wonks who want words to go with picture) has extensive analysis of the economic benefits of Social Security, the costs of keeping the fund solvent (assuming we could keep Congress from robbing the fund to invade Iran, Venezuela, or Grenada again).

This is really not a matter of economics, it is a matter of priorities. Do we want to continue the shift of wealth and income to the top 1 to 5% of the population or do we want to shift the wealth and income of the country back into the hands of folks with no trust funds or banker bonuses in their futures?

So, we make Social Security healthy by simply trading that cost for letting the tax cuts for the rich expire. Sounds fine to me.

That simple change fixes Social Security.

The next step to really fix the economy of this country would be to reinstate a steeply progressive tax rate model in the near future.

And remember, when the trolls say that a steeply progressive tax rate will stifle the economy and cost jobs, that all we have to do is to direct their attention to the Eisenhower era. Here is a decidely wonky analysis from Santa Cruz wannabe Steve Kangas. Steve is looking for help getting out of Vegas, VEGAS, BABY!, and back to more left coasterly environs.

It ain't rocket science. Higher top rates spur investment in infrastructure. Infrastructure is good for communities.

Open Thread

by Mary

Krugman notes that those who created the economic disaster appear ready to take the reins again.

And it’s slightly sickening to realize that the big winners in the midterm elections are likely to be the very people who first got us into this mess, then did everything in their power to block action to get us out.

But always remember: this slump can be cured.

I find it more than slightly sickening that they are going to have a chance to drive us into the abyss. It's true that this situation is curable, but not when you have the wrong-way gang in charge.

The Electoral Politics of Pakistan

by eriposte

This is a companion piece to my post on the Ethnic/Linguistic Demographics of Pakistan. Pakistan is a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic society with a long history of internal strife and terrorism, despite the overwhelming Muslim majority population. The dominance of the military-bureaucratic complex in Pakistan - whose origins can be traced to ethnic/linguistic suppression rather than anything much to do with the religion of Islam - has always been a challenge to constitutional democracy, regularly raising questions about the significance or stability of Pakistan's historically unpredictable electoral and democratic processes. Additionally, high levels of corruption and vote fraud or voting irregularities associated with a on-and-off electoral process make it challenging to read too much into detailed electoral statistics. That said, given the ethnic/linguistic demographics of Pakistan, there are some broad political trends in Pakistan that can be inferred from looking at electoral data - based on the most recent national elections in 2008 as well as data on prior elections in the late 1990s. In this post, I examine some of that data to extract key takeaways about Pakistan's political parties and their bases. I have also included some commentary on the MMA political party given its close ties to the Taliban. I intend to use some of these observations to comment in my next post on possible trajectories in Pakistan in the aftermath of the ongoing, massive flood disaster.

The data used for this post comes primarily from the following sources:

• Support Bases: Through the Labyrinth of Ethnicity, Urbanity and Wealth (2008) by Ali Cheema, Haris Gazdar, Mohammad Farooq Naseer and Asad Sayeed
• Representation: What is Their Mandate All About (2008) by Ali Cheema, Haris Gazdar, Mohammad Farooq Naseer and Asad Sayeed
• Health of the Federation (2008) by Haris Gazdar
• 2008 Provincial Assembly Election Results (Pakistan Election Commission)
• 2008 National Assembly Election Results (Pakistan Election Commission)
• The Taliban and the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, Volume 5, No. 3 (2007) p. 61, by Magnus Norell

I. SUMMARY

Continue reading "The Electoral Politics of Pakistan"

Robert Reich says the problem is wage inequality

by Oly Mike

Reich would like to up the minimum wage. I would like to instate a maximum wage through a steeply progressive tax rate with a top rate that is essentially confiscatory. If a really wealthy person know they are going to pay 85 cents per dollar in taxes once they are collecting their second or third million dollars in taxable income in the year, they will invest in infrastructure instead of a third or fourth home in a gated community. Infrastructure means industry, jobs, prosperity even for folks who don't live in gated communities. Click on the graphic below for the story from the Economist:

I am not sure how we persuade the CEOs to take less and pay better wages to more employees without a tax axe over their heads, but if you think it can be done, weigh in. How's that going to happen? That rising tide lifting the yachts of the bankers and CEOs? Is it translating into any widespread prosperity? If concentrating wealth in the hands of the few was going to create lots of jobs, wouldn't that have worked by now?

Reich says the problem is structural. Consumers no longer have the ability to power an economy. They first tried shifting to two incomes per household, women left the kitchen and went to work, then families tried putting in more hours, then they shifted to debt, stripping imaginary equity out of the family home and maxing out the credit cards, but the air went out of that scheme when the real estate bubble burst, and now here we are. That's a pretty professorial, historical evaluation of our situation, but it fails to recognize that the real cause of our economic woes are the illegal immigrants who are taking our jobs and beheading us.

Hmm... pick'em.

Ethnic/Linguistic Demographics of Pakistan

by eriposte

In my series of posts on South Asia last year, I discussed the roots of Pakistan's overall failure as a state - especially authoritarianism and Islamization, tied integrally to the suppression of linguistic identities. Recently, someone asked about my thoughts on the impact of Pakistan's terrible floods and how that might impact Pakistan's future social, economic and political trajectory. I'm going to write a bit on that topic hopefully by next week, but to facilitate that discussion, I believe it is important to first understand Pakistan's linguistic and electoral demographics at the national and provincial level. It is easy to talk about the people of Pakistan as if they constitute a homogenous population - the reality is Pakistan is fairly complex (as I've discussed before) and we need to have a basic understanding of that complexity to be able to make any kind of informed judgments on Pakistan's future. In this post, I'm going to briefly discuss the linguistic demographics of Pakistan. In my next post I'll discuss some electoral data and then I'll use the data in these two posts to comment on Pakistan's possible trajectories.

The source of the raw data used for this post is this undated data set from the Government of Pakistan's website. It is unclear which year this data was assembled (I'm assuming it is recent) but since the objective of this post is to illustrate overall differences and general trends, the precise numbers are less important than the relative comparison across linguistic groups and provinces in Pakistan. The most important takeaway from the data shown in this post is that Punjabis and Mohajirs, who dominate Pakistan's power structure and governing elite, generally tend to be over-represented in the urban areas of the provinces they live in, whereas Sindhis, Balochis and Saraikis, who have long been suppressed linguistic groups in Pakistan, tend to be over-represented in the rural areas of the provinces they are most concentrated in. Pashtuns fall somewhere in between. While all groups tend to have meaningful representation in urban and rural areas in several provinces, flood impact tends to be higher in rural areas and those groups that happen to be concentrated more in rural areas are therefore likely to see more impact.

Before we dive into the data, it is worth recalling what I pointed out in previous posts [emphasis mine]:

Continue reading "Ethnic/Linguistic Demographics of Pakistan"

TGIF - Open thread?

by Oly Mike

"History is replete with examples of empires
mounting impressive military campaigns on the
cusp of their impending economic collapse."
-- Eric Alterman

"Fascism will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible."
-- Sinclair Lewis
(1885-1951)

"Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all."
-- Michael Rivero
(1952- ) Composer, production engineer