Corporate Politics

Keeping an eye on corporate political spending - by laverrueJeb Golinkin at the FrumForum thinks the Democrats are making too much of the Citizen's United decision:

Does anyone really think that the CEO of a Fortune 500 is going to be stupid enough to fund campaign advertisements? Think about it logically. It’s hard to imagine a more “Red” corporation than Wal-Mart. But consider the following facts: Each week, about 100 million Americans head to Wal-Mart to shop. A poll in 2004 found that 76% of voters that shop at Wal-Mart once a week voted for Bush. That’s an astonishing margin. But that still means that 24% of Wal-Mart shoppers voted for someone else (23% said they voted for Kerry). If you do the math, if 100 million customers make it to Wal-Mart next week, 23 million might be liberals. If Wal-Mart runs an advertisement supporting a candidate or makes campaign contributions to a candidate, it runs the risk that the New York Times finds out about it, puts a story on the front page, and as a result, 23 million of their customers may take their business elsewhere. Not only that, if they contribute, and then lose, they have pissed off the other party unnecessarily. Tell me, what good does that do?

A major corporation with major spending power would stand to gain very little from attempting to tip the balance of a few House or Senate races.

This logic makes superficial sense, except that the whole point of the legislation currently under discussion is to force corporations to disclose that they funded advertisements.

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Be Human: Don't Let the Politicians Win

Democrat Congressmen who voted for heath care reform have been getting death threats and the natural reaction has been to blame the heated rhetoric of the right in stoking up tea party outrage.  Let's start with the obvious: Congressmen who supported health care reform did it out of a genuine interest in bettering the country, even if you disagree with them threatening violence, or worse doing violence, is deplorable.  The debate got ugly, but all sides should immediately condemn the violence in the strongest terms possible.  That out of the way, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with The Corner.  Victor Davis Hanson:

This week’s talking point is the sudden danger of new right-wing violence, and the inflammatory push-back against health care.  I’m sorry, but all this concern is a day late and a dollar short. The subtext is really one of class — right-wing radio talk-show hosts, Glenn Beck idiots, and crass tea-party yokels are foaming at the mouth and dangerous to progressives. In contrast, write a book in which you muse about killing George Bush, and its Knopf imprint proves it is merely sophisticated literary speculation; do a docudrama about killing George Bush, and it will win a Toronto film prize for its artistic value rather than shock from the liberal community about over-the-top discourse.

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Ending Earmarks: Symbolism, not Solutions

If only lobbyists were so forthcomingThe House Democratic Leadership announced today that it would stop accepting earmarks for private companies.  While public agencies and non-profit companies will still be eligible for earmarked funds, the rules change by the Democratic leadership of the House Appropriations Committee will prevent corporations from lobbying Congressman for no-bid contracts and directed pork.  The change is so unequivocally positive that rather than spin the decision the Republicans attempted to one-up the Democrats by banning earmarks entirely in their caucus.  My support for such a change- and I agree with the Republicans that it should be a blanket ban- stems from my belief that the politics of financial quid pro quo have a deleterious effect on the quality of our Congressmen.  Anything that takes away the ability of Congressmen to graft under the the noise of Congressional business is a positive development.  My deep concern over the federal deficit, however, does not figure into my consideration of this change, because banning earmarks will do almost nothing to shrink the deficit.  According to the Appropriations Committee, if their proposal had been in effect in 2009 it would have saved the federal government $1.7 billion.  In other words, this proposal would have fixed .12% of the deficit ($1.412 trillion last year).  

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Stick the Landing: the State of the Union

With the left disheartened by the Mass-acre last week and health care reform's freshly dismal prospects, the right energized by the apparent success of their intransigence and the need to rally the country amidst difficult circumstance, President Obama was like a gymnast needing to perfectly execute a maneuver of highest degree of difficulty at last night's State of the Union.  No one's surprise, he nailed it.  He rallied weak kneed Democrats with a reminder that they were elected to get things done, not "run for the hills."  He leaned into the Republicans by staking out a variety of center-right positions including nuclear power, off-shore drilling, deficit reduction and small-business tax breaks while chiding them for privledging politics over leadership.  Most importantly, he reminded Americans again and again of the mess he inherited and the steps he had done to fix things.

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Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts special election is such a colossal upset that it will necessarily become a symbol for Republicans to rally around.  However, the fact that his election may likely derail health care reform does not mean that it was anything like a national referendum on that process.  While Democrats will no doubt be even more timid about passing health care reform, they should be more determined than ever to do it anyway.  

Both parties have internalized the lessons of 1994, but only the Republicans have crafted anything coherent from it.  Democrats running away from health care reform should remember that it didn't save the party in 1994 and it will surely doom them now.  The problem with health care reform isn't the bill, it's the process.

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The Democratic Electoral Apocolypse

After a triumphant 2006 and 2008 the Democrats had reason to believe that 2010 would continue the trend of Democratic gains in Congress.  Specifically, the 2004 Senators elected with President Bush's victory over John Kerry would be up for reelection and should have provided ripe opportunity for further Democratic gains.  In Nate Silver's January 2008 Senate Rankings, which list the possibility of a Senate seat changing parties, 10 out of the 13 seats most likely to change parties were Republican.  In his last Senate Rankings, 8 of the top 13, including 5 out of the top 6, are now vulnerable Democratic seats.  The worm has turned.  

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The Language of Politics: Nuance versus Moral Certainty

Along with a change in legislative direction, President Obama has ushered in a new era of political language.  In stark contrast to President Bush's use of moral language and dichotomies, Obama expresses inclusive nuance, even frequently including a mention of the sincerity of those who disagree with him.  While generally this is an improvement, there are important lessons Obama could learn from his Republican counterpart in framing an issue.

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Hope Harry is Hardy

Harry Reid faced an uphill battle to retain his Senate seat even before Game Change revealed his observation that then candidate Obama was a "light-skinned" black man "with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one." The controversy unfolded over a weekend so it remains to be seen if it has legs, but it presented Michael Steele with his first opportunity realized.  He pointed out, rightly, that a double standard exists: a Republican could not have gotten away with it and moreover, Trent Lott resigned from Reid’s current post over a comment that turned into a racial scandal.

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Lieberman's Rock Bottom?

On Sunday night, over 500 protestors gathered in front of Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman's Stamford home and held a candlelight vigil to convince the Senator to rescind his promise to join the Republican filibuster of any healthcare proposals including the "public option."  Among the protestors were leaders of Stamford's Unitarian, Baptist, Muslim, and Jewish faiths, as well as the enterprising Mayor of Stamford, Dan Malloy, who recently announced he is running for Governor.

According to David Gibson at Politics Daily:

Rabbi Ron Fish of Congregation Beth El in Norwalk said he normally avoids political discussions but said Lieberman's stand against health care reform left him no choice.

"I feel passionately about the subject of health care," he explained. "I've avoided entering too closely into the conversation because I fear that when we clergy speak in political terms, we quite often do a disservice to politics and religion. But when Senator Lieberman spoke about his conscience impelling him to stop even a vote on this . . . crucial instance of hope, my conscience could not allow me to be silent."

"The moral imperative for our time is clear. Anyone whose guide in public policy is conscience, anyone who argues that faith and religious traditions should direct our actions, such a person must stand for universal health care in America," Fish said, reading from a letter signed by more than 70 other clergy. "It happens we are all also citizens of Connecticut. That fact leads us to ask you, Senator Lieberman, what is it that you stand for?"

Indeed, what does Senator Lieberman stand for?

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Mid-Midterm Elections

Blowing a Kiss To HoffmanLast night there was a hodgepodge of elections.  None had national significance, but many are symbolically important.  Unfortunately in the maelstrom of hype known as 24 hour cable news, that means that everyone pretends that the Democratic losses in the governor races for Virginia and New Jersey means that Obama has problems nationally or that conservatives have been dealt a serious setback because Doug Hoffman wasn't elected to a one year stint in the House of Representatives.  The real lesson, as always, is that politics are local, whether in New Jersey where John Corzine had a reputation for mismanagement and corruption that sunk him even though 57% of voters approved of Obama or in NY-23 where Bill Owens won a seat held by Republicans since the 19th century after national conservatives, like Sarah Palin, rallied support to Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman

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A Modest Proposal for Medical Malpractice

Tort reform for medical malpractice is an unfortunately under emphasized part of the current debate over health care reform.  The theory goes, doctors have to practice “defensive medicine” to shield themselves from liability.  While the idea that doctors order tests they know to be unnecessary and extraneous in order to shield themselves from liability seems to paint doctors in a bad light, but a more nuanced position would be that many tests are only of marginal importance but doctors have an extra incentive to make sure they don't make any mistakes.  The cost to the healthcare system is difficult to quantify, because there is no way to determine the motivations behind the tests a doctor orders and for that reason, it is often written off as a myth.  However, the CBO released its estimates of the costs and they are definitely non-trivial:

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