Tag Archives: GOP

It Depends And It’s More Complicated Than That

As I like to tell my students, I consider my Law and Policy class effective if, after taking it, they use two phrases more frequently than they did before they enrolled: “it depends” and “it’s more complicated than that.”

That measure of effectiveness would undoubtedly be incomprehensible to the voters who  installed as President of the United States a man who had neither experience with nor even a rudimentary understanding of government. Evidently, people who would agree that doctors need to attend medical school and serve a residency in order to treat the complexities of the human body think managing an organizational behemoth responsible for the common lives of over 350 million people can be handled by anyone able to fog a mirror and regurgitate talking points.

Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles disabuse readers of that idiocy in the book they recently co-authored: “The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality.” In it, they deconstruct the mindless mantra of “deregulation.”

When Republicans look at what they’ve gotten out of their current moment of unified government, they can point to cutting corporate taxes, some judicial appointments and … not much else. Beyond that, they claim that they’ve teed up the economy for explosive growth through the magic of “deregulation.” But deregulation is a term that should be banned from the nation’s policy lexicon, mixing as it does equal parts wholesome and foul — in this administration, almost exclusively foul.

As they proceed to explain, whether rolling back a given regulation will be helpful or damaging depends on the nature  and purpose of the regulation. It’s more complicated–much more complicated– than the one-size-fits-all “get government out of the way” zealotry that has increasingly characterized the GOP.

The wholesome justification for deregulation arises when government uses its power in ways that gum up the dynamic power of markets. In the long run, our nation’s wealth and the opportunity it provides for improving quality of life depend on the forces of creative destruction. In competitive, open markets, incumbent actors cannot prevent challenges from more nimble competitors, armed with new products or more efficient ways of organizing the production process.

The authors identify a number of regulations that do “gum up” markets, and agree that eliminating or relaxing them would be healthy for the economy and likely to reduce the growing gap between the rich and the rest.

They also note that those aren’t the regulations being eviscerated.

Unfortunately, this is not the kind of regulation that the Trump administration has been attacking. Instead, it has been sharpening its knives for precisely the kinds of regulation that, far from distorting markets, help to improve them. In particular, regulation is often necessary to a properly functioning market when, in its absence, businesses can make a profit by pushing costs onto others, in effect forcing others to subsidize their bottom line. In two areas, the environment and finance, these are exactly the sorts of market-improving regulation that the administration has put in its cross hairs, with the effect of increasing profits via freeloading.

In an article in the New York Times, Lindsey and Teles make the point that there is a critical difference between regulations that operate to protect dominant business interests and regulations that legitimately, if often imperfectly, address real problems of market failure.

Effective deregulation requires knowing the difference.

For that matter, effective government requires public managers who respect evidence, are committed to the common good, and understand how our complicated government works. The looters who are currently in control of all the levers of the state don’t come close to meeting those criteria.

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Faith-Based Politics

Among former Republicans of a certain age, “what the hell happened” is a popular topic of conversation. What turned a major political party composed of people with a reasonable range of respectable views into a cult imposing extremist litmus tests? What accounts for the rejection of evidence, disdain for science and rigid refusal to compromise even the most extreme positions?

When did the Grand Old Party go nuts?

In a new book, The Party’s Over: How Republicans Went Crazy ,Democrats Became Useless and the Middle Class Got Shafted former GOP strategist Mike Lofgrin blames religion.

Having observed politics up close and personal for most of my adult lifetime, I have come to the conclusion that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes—at least in the minds of its followers—all three of the GOP’s main tenets: wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.

In retrospect, Lofgren sees Pat Robertson’s strong showing as a Presidential candidate in 1988 as the warning sign for what was already underway: the capture of one of the country’s major political parties by religious fundamentalists and fanatics.

The results of this takeover are all around us: If the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth, it is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party, and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary beliefs. All around us now is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science. Politicized religion is the sheet anchor of the dreary forty-year-old culture wars.

Lofgren takes aim at a theory that I have held for some time–the theory that the differences between what we used to call the “country club” wing of the GOP and the religious zealot wing would eventually cause a split. It seemed reasonable to assume that the socioeconomic and philosophical gulf separating the party’s business wing from the religious right would make for instability.

I’ve been predicting this split for at least twenty years, and I’m still waiting, so he may be right when he suggests that there really isn’t a basic disagreement between these factions on the direction  the country should go– just a quibble about how far.

The plutocrats would drag us back to the Gilded Age; the theocrats to the Salem witch trials. If anything, the two groups are increasingly beginning to resemble each other. Many televangelists have espoused what has come to be known as the prosperity gospel—the health-and- wealth/name-it-and-claim-it gospel of economic entitlement. If you are wealthy, it is a sign of God’s favor. If not, too bad! This rationale may explain why some poor voters will defend the prerogatives of billionaires. In any case, at the beginning of the 2012 presidential cycle, those consummate plutocrats the Koch brothers pumped money into Bachmann’s campaign, so one should probably not make too much of a potential plutocrat-theocrat split.

As for the supposedly libertarian Tea Partiers, Lofgren cites academic studies that identify them as authoritarian rather than libertarian. Over half of Tea Party members self-identified as members of the religious right and 55 percent insisted that “America has always been and is currently a Christian nation”—a higher percentage than non-Tea Party  Christian conservatives.

If Lofgren is right, it explains how we got here, and why government is broken. You can reason with someone who holds a political or policy position. You can negotiate a compromise– a “win-win” with someone whose ultimate goal is different from your own.

When a political position is held with religious fervor, however, it becomes immune to logic and evidence.

Did you all hear about the Republican Representative who attributed the ocean’s rise to the fact that rocks fell into it?

I rest my case.

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Living In The Real World

Indiana, among other states, has just come through primary election season. Citizens who have chosen to exercise their franchise and vote–a minority of those who could or should have–have decided what choices we voters will face in November.

In no case of which I am aware will those voters get to pick between God and Mammon–or even between an ideal candidate and  one who is less desirable. For that matter, in no state of which I am aware do citizens of either major party all agree on the characteristics of an ideal candidate.

This being the way of the real world, different people will react to this inescapable situation differently.

Purists and cynics, whose ranks have swelled, will assume a “pox on all their houses” posture. Some will vote, but many will not. In cases where the non-voters’ lack of participation results in the election of a person who will pursue destructive or inhumane policies, they will use that result to justify their belief that the entire system is beyond redemption, and that opting out confirms their moral superiority.

Needless to say, this is not an approach that improves the political landscape.

Those of us who do vote are equally aware of the systemic deficits and corruption of American governance, but we also understand that we live in the real world. There are no ideal or perfect candidates. There are no political parties able to high-mindedly ignore the importance of political fundraising or the contending claims and anxieties of relevant voting constituencies.

There are no political “saviors” whose election will magically bring about the sort of bipartisan agreements necessary for sweeping policy change. Even candidates with whom we agree will have limited ability to move America forward.

Lasting improvements to large-scale systems are overwhelmingly incremental; revolutions just tend to generate counter-revolutions. Recognizing this requires that we must often choose between very imperfect options–and unfortunately, in the real world, refusing to make a choice isn’t possible, because failing to vote is also a choice.

In my view, rational people will recognize that a choice between imperfect options is not the same thing as a choice without consequences.Some imperfect candidates and parties are considerably better than others.

In November, American voters will decide between continued control of our government by a Republican Party that has devolved into a White Nationalist cult, and a Democratic Party that–despite plenty of problems and deficiencies– is far more likely to support policies that will benefit most Americans.

In the real world, support for GOP candidates and/or refusal to cast a ballot are both a vote for that White Nationalist cult and its appalling and unAmerican President. It is a message that the individual is not sufficiently dissatisfied with the status quo to signal that dissatisfaction at the ballot box.

The real world is messy and imperfect. That doesn’t mean that some imperfect choices aren’t better–much better–than others.

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Pay For Play

Note: For anyone who is interested, I’ll be conducting a blogging workshop next Thursday at the Indiana Writers’ Center. Here’s the information.

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I’m hesitant to attribute it to candor–it’s more likely a belief that they are untouchable–but members of the Trump Administration have evidently given up trying to hide their unethical behaviors. A recent example: Mick Mulvaney, the current director of OMB (whose second job is overseeing/dismantling Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) publicly admitted that the only people he willingly met with as a member of Congress were constituents and donors.

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mulvaney said, according to a New York Times report this week. At the top of the hierarchy were his constituents, he explained, adding, “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.

According to the Daily Beast, Mulvaney no longer has constituents, so now he’s just taking meetings with lobbyists and companies who financed his past political campaigns.

Pay-for-play Mulvaney is right at home in today’s shameless GOP.

Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson is a millionaire. He recently told a group of high school students that healthcare and food are a privilege, not a right according to MSNBC, and quoted Rand Paul to the effect that if health care were a right, then doctors and other health providers would be “forced” to provide people with that right. (Sort of like slavery…)

And if you’ve wondered why so many Congressional Republicans have been downplaying Russia’s obvious influence on Trump, there’s this:

A close look at public campaign finance reports reveals a network of Russian oligarchs increasingly contributing to top Republican leadership in recent years, according to the Dallas News. And thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Citizens United in 2010, the donations are perfectly legal.

I’m sure you’ll be shocked to know that McConnell is identified as one of those benefitting from Russian largesse.

Needless to say, these paragons of public service don’t take kindly to admonitions about their obligations to the “least of us.” Despite their near-constant insistence that they are pious Christians, and despite their efforts to impose their particular brand of Christianity on the rest of us, they sure get prickly when a genuine Christian engages in even the mildest biblical truth-telling.

Case in point: Ostentatiously Catholic Paul Ryan abruptly dismissed the Catholic House Chaplain–a job that James Madison didn’t think should exist–after the chaplain offered a prayer that offended Ryan during the tax “reform” debate.

The sudden resignation of the chaplain, the Rev. Patrick J. Conroy, shocked members of both parties. He had served in the role since he was nominated in 2011 by Speaker John A. Boehner, a fellow Catholic. In an interview, Father Conroy was categorical: His departure was not voluntary.

“I was asked to resign, that is clear,” Father Conroy said. As for why, he added, “that is unclear.”…Father Conroy said he received the news from Mr. Ryan’s chief of staff. “The speaker would like your resignation,” Father Conroy recalled being told. He complied.

Father Conroy’s prayer had included a line asking that legislators be mindful of the ways their actions might affect the poor–a despicable display of compassion that evidently incurred the wrath of Ayn Rand’s most devoted disciple.

Commenters to this blog frequently remind others to “follow the money.” It’s good advice when the question at hand requires determining why such-and-such happened, or why so-and-so is taking a particular position.

Today’s GOP makes it unnecessary to follow the money. It isn’t just Trump. These plutocrats and would-be plutocrats are utterly transparent about the role money plays in their deliberations, their policies and their behaviors.

It’s what they really worship.

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The Flim-Flam Party

David Leonhardt had an interesting column on fiscal responsibility recently in the  New York Times.

“Fiscal responsibility” is one of those terms the applicability of which depends upon its definition. (I define “fiscally responsible’ as paying as you go, so putting a new government program or a war on the national credit card in order to keep current tax rates low wouldn’t qualify.) Conventional wisdom is that Republican administrations have been more fiscally-responsible than Democratic ones. Leonhardt questions–and debunks–that belief.

By now, nobody should be surprised when the Republican Party violates its claims of fiscal rectitude. Increasing the deficit — through big tax cuts, mostly for the rich — has been the defining feature of the party’s economic policy for decades. When Paul Ryan and other Republicans call themselves fiscal conservatives, they’re basically doing a version of the old Marx Brothers bit: “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

Ever so slowly, conventional wisdom has started to recognize this reality. After Ryan’s retirement announcement last week, only a few headlines called him a deficit hawk. People are catching on to the con.

But there is still a major way that the conventional wisdom is wrong: It doesn’t give the Democratic Party enough credit for its actual fiscal conservatism.

Aided by charts illustrating his thesis, Leonhardt points out that, at least for the last several decades, Democratic administrations have reduced the deficit, while Republican administrations have grown them. Democrats have done that by raising taxes, by cutting military spending and by reducing corporate welfare.

Some of them have even tried to hold down the cost of cherished social programs. Obamacare, for example, included enough cost controls and tax increases that it’s cut the deficit on net….Get this: Since 1977, the three presidential administrations that have overseen the deficit increases are the three Republican ones. President Trump’s tax cut is virtually assured to make him the fourth of four. And the three administrations that have overseen deficit reductions are the three Democratic ones, including a small decline under Barack Obama. If you want to know whether a post-1976 president increased or reduced the deficit, the only thing you need to know is his party.

So why is it that the “conventional wisdom” does not reflect this reality? Leonhardt faults  journalists’ devotion to the idea of “balance,” and their ingrained belief in (false) equivalence. There is a hard-to-dislodge conviction that–whatever the misbehavior–both parties must be equally guilty.

I’ve spent 25 years as a journalist and have repeatedly seen the discomfort that journalists feel about proclaiming one political party to be more successful than the other on virtually any substantive issue. We journalists are much more comfortable holding up the imperfections of each and casting ourselves as the sophisticated skeptic.

As he concludes,

The caveat, of course, is that presidents must work with Congress. Some of the most important deficit-reduction packages have been bipartisan. The elder George Bush, in particular, deserves credit for his courage to raise taxes. Some of the biggest deficit-ballooning laws, like George W. Bush’s Medicare expansion, have also been bipartisan. In fact, the Democrats’ biggest recent deficit sins have come when they are in the minority, and have enough power only to make an already expensive Republican bill more so. The budget Trump signed last month is the latest example.

So it would certainly be false to claim that Democrats are perfect fiscal stewards and that Republicans are all profligates. Yet it’s just as false to claim that the parties aren’t fundamentally different. One party has now spent almost 40 years cutting taxes and expanding government programs without paying for them. The other party has raised taxes and usually been careful to pay for its new programs.

It’s a fascinating story — all the more so because it does not fit preconceptions. I understand why the story makes many people uncomfortable. It makes me a little uncomfortable. But it’s the truth.

Truth, of course, hasn’t been faring so well in our post-fact, “fake news” world….

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