Good news on the health reform front, where the President announced on Super Bowl Sunday that he plans an open meeting at the White House with Congressional leaders from both parties and cameras from C-SPAN for a conversation about improving and passing the health care bill.
If they want to take a pass on being able to provide input, let them pass. Hold the summit, ask for their ideas, let the President outmatch them once again, and pass the Senate bill and a corrective bill through both chambers, on party lines if need be.
Interesting story in this morning's Missoulian about John Barrrett and Barrett Production's quest to lower airfares in-and-out of Missoula as an economic development bid. It's a great reminder that:
Markets occasionally get into trouble but that internal corrections are possible.
Some of the biggest barriers to growth and development in Montana probably have virtually nothing to do with government.
Identifying and creating opportunities for cost savings in travel budgets is just as important as identifying savings in taxes. In fact, it may be an improvement. While much of government spending (infrastructure, education, and emergency services come to mind) is actually helpful for business, a restructured travel system can be cheaper and equally effective for business.
There's a lot this state could do to strengthen the state's economy. But doing it means some serious conversations that look at all of these factors, as well as tax structures (not just overall revenue levels).
All aboard. Roger Koopman, the former Bozeman-area legislator who left the legislature after his liberty tree was pruned too often, is launching yet another organization aimed at destroying the government (Roger had something like a half dozen PACs operating in 2008).
"Democrats don't negotiate their basic principles, and Republicans, depending on the Republican, often do. The more liberal leaning Republicans do," Koopman, executive director of the new group, said Thursday.
Hahahahahahaha. I think Mark T's head just exploded. Probably Harry Reid's, too, for a different reason.
The questionnaire being circulated by the Alliance is a doozy. 51 litmus test questions. I don't know which one to highlight, but the results of the questionnaire would be absolutely fascinating to read.
Roger Koopman: Building a Smaller Tent
The good news for sane Republicans (which used to number quite a few) is that some people are pushing back. Senator Dave Lewis, who fits into the "conservative but not crazy" corner of the modern GOP matrix, had this to say to the Chronicle:
One potential alliance target, Sen. Dave Lewis, R-Helena, said he threw out the questionnaire shortly after reading it Thursday. He called it "one of those when did you stop beating your wife" questionnaires.
"Look, I work very hard to try to represent six counties, and Roger can take his shot," Lewis said. "I don't believe in tax increases. I balance the budget by cutting spending. I'm pro-life, but I couldn't answer the questionnaire, so I tossed it. If Roger wants to get someone to run against me, go for it, and we'll have a primary. I've got a 10-year voting record in the Legislature. If he has any questions, he can take a look."
Sad that we'd have to come to Dave Lewis's defense. He really is a run of the mill conservative Republican. He's just not looking to move to a government with only one agency comprised of morality police. So he is being targeted for a primary.
Mark my words, though, if Roger Koopman succeeds in destroying the last vestiges of the reasonable conservative movement, the Republican Party is in deep shit. 35% of the population is not enough to win governing majorities in this state.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold...
According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama's nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track. The two programs Shelby wants to move forward or else:
- A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: "Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals."...
- An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: "[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won't build" the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based "at the Army's Redstone Arsenal."
In this case, we're not dealing with a stand on partisanship or ideology or simple political shiv play which I guess can each be respected in their own place. This is more like just a stick up. Gimme my money and I'll give you your Senate back! Worse than a squeegee man and not much better than a bank robber, Shelby is shutting down the president's ability to appoint anyone to anything until he gets his way. In a sense Shelby's gambit is little different from what countless other senators of both parties have done in the past, using the senate rules to get the White House's attention to pry some money free from the federal government. But the scale is unheard and the moment is different. The only mystery about this one is which is more outrageous -- Shelby's hold or the fact that the rest of the senators of both parties allow it.
Perhaps, like so many other times, this will be today's outrage that is the new normal by tomorrow. But this are volatile times. And I wonder if this isn't the live wire in the gasoline.
I hope it is. That a supra-majority is required to pass any legislation is ridiculous, especially has the Republican party has transformed the filibuster into a pure political tool of obstruction. Certainly the Constitution intended no such thing. (But isn't it funny how the "constitutionalists" never talk about the filibuster?) Hopefully this is the story to bring the Senate's quirks front and center into the country's consciousness...
Tamara "Tammy" Hall, the ultra-angry, ultra right-winger in Bozeman who pens an occasional column for the Bozeman Chronicle and is supposedly a "motivational speaker" for a living, has written a hater-piece about the Governor this week. She compares him to a rat, calling him arrogant, and using the favorite new accusation of the right wing: that he is a "celebrity" (talk about desperate). It's probably for the best that the column doesn't appear online, as I'd hate to have to link to it.
The interesting part about Hall, and the small handful of angry, downwardly-mobile types that pay any attention to her, is that Schweitzer recently got the endorsement of Newt Gingrich and the Wall Street Journal. I don't care much for Newt or the WSJ's Stephen Moore who wrote the editorial, but Schweitzer did deserve the credit because he made the decision, when the state was flush with cash, to save money rather than spend it.
(And Schweitzer is probably the only politician in the last fifty years to get praise from the WSJ while advocating a Canadian Health System.)
Nevertheless, the continuously manic and angry Hall may have become delusional as well, and should check the label on her medication. Because if she is calling somebody a tax-and-spend politician when they have just gotten praise from Gingcrich and the WSJ for being fiscally responsible, she probably needs to up her dose.
I don't know who originally coined the axiom, "First, do no harm," but that is what the government needs to do in order to get us even close to thinking about an economic recovery. As Congress debates and the President presses for sweeping changes in health care, climate change (cap & trade), card check, different tax rates for investors, different rates for income tax payers, death tax revisions, huge financial and banking reforms, and record deficit spending, my question is this - who would want the risk of hiring new people in a time of record uncertainty? And not just economic uncertainty, but uncertainty largely created by government officials and regulators.
It's not an easy time to be a business owner right now, especially a small business owner. I think most are thinking they are safer just treading water than trying to expand, and it's due in large part to many things being debated in Congress right now. If we want to get our people back to work, we must first understand what's been keeping businesses from hiring new people. Tax credits aren't going to get people back to work in any large numbers.
Jon doesn't come right out and say it, but it's the obvious rationale for the policy of status quo - which means deregulation, corporate subsidies and tax breaks, etc & co. Of course, the kicker is this: the crises that are causing so much instability are the targets of the policies Bennion is singling out. The global financial crisis. Global warming. The health care crisis. All of which are the direct results of the kind of pro-corporate status quo that the Montana Main Street blog is paid to represent.
But Bennion is right. These problems aren't going to be solved with your usual run-of-the-mill tax credits. We need something else that address the roots of the crises that face us.
Which brings me to Cory Pein's profile of economist Samuel Bowles:
"Inequality," she says, "really holds us back."
Bowles offers a key reason why this is so. "Inequality breeds conflict, and conflict breeds wasted resources," he says.
In short, in a very unequal society, the people at the top have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping the lower classes obedient and productive.
Inequality leads to an excess of what Bowles calls "guard labor." In a 2007 paper on the subject, he and co-author Arjun Jayadev, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, make an astonishing claim: Roughly 1 in 4 Americans is employed to keep fellow citizens in line and protect private wealth from would-be Robin Hoods.
The job descriptions of guard labor range from "imposing work discipline"-think of the corporate IT spies who keep desk jockeys from slacking off online-to enforcing laws, like the officers in the Santa Fe Police Department paddy wagon parked outside of Walmart.
The greater the inequalities in a society, the more guard labor it requires, Bowles finds. This holds true among US states, with relatively unequal states like New Mexico employing a greater share of guard labor than relatively egalitarian states like Wisconsin.
The problem, Bowles argues, is that too much guard labor sustains "illegitimate inequalities," creating a drag on the economy. All of the people in guard labor jobs could be doing something more productive with their time-perhaps starting their own businesses or helping to reduce the US trade deficit with China.
And think off all the service workers laboring to justify the inequities of our system. Like the Montana Main Street blog. Why, Fox News, too, is essentially "guard labor," isn't it? Working tirelessly to protect the status quo and its economic inequities, producing nothing of actual value?
Bowles' suggestion is a one-time sum of $250,000 for every American when they turn 18, allowing them to go to college or start a business and break individuals out of the rut of poverty. Not sure if I'd go there, but a nice alternative would be to give generous tax breaks to those in the lower strata of tax brackets while levying higher taxes on those that earn more.
Hot damn. I missed Tyler Gernant's announcement because I was traveling but just picked up the coverage from yesterday's papers. The contender is swinging and he lands a few punches:
Gernant said he wouldn't be running if the country was in the same shape it was in 2000, with a $200 billion budget surplus and a booming economy with increasing numbers of jobs.
[...]
While Rehberg claims that fiscal responsibility is at the core of his being, Gernant said he voted for "a massive tax cut for the wealthy that completely eliminates our budget surplus and returns us to deficits." Gernant said Rehberg voted to put two wars on the country's credit cards and voted for a pharmaceutical drug plan that lets the big pharmaceutical drug companies charge the U.S. government whatever they want.
Good for Tyler -- on point, honest, and educational about just what policies our Congressman pursues.
Once again the Chamber of Commerce shows that it will go to any length to put the interests of Wall Street and big banks ahead of Main Street Montana.
We've already seen the Chamber funnel millions of dollars from the insurance industry into misleading anti-health reform advertisements.
Now, rather than pushing for rules that will end the deceptive financial practices that have shuttered businesses throughout Montana and put hundreds of residents out of work, the Chamber wants to maintain the status quo -- putting us at risk for future economic calamities.
In a shrill press release issued this week, the Chamber targets the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), insisting it will hurt the very people the agency is meant to help.
Disappointingly, the Billings Chamber of Commerce/Convention and Business Industry signed on to the statement.
The greedy, reckless behavior of big banks and Wall Street nearly brought on a second Great Depression. Montana is suffering as a result of their actions. State agencies and city governments are struggling with deficits. Small businesses are fighting to stay afloat. And working people are more fearful than ever about losing their jobs.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs contemplates giving its CEO and other high-ranking employees $100 million in bonuses.
We need rules that will reign in reckless behavior on Wall Street and help protect Montana consumers and small businesses.
It would be nice if the Montana Chamber took our side instead of Wall Street's.
Roger Koopman and his friends are up to their usual tricks, this time circulating a purity test:
In a repeat of 2008, former Bozeman Rep. Roger Koopman has set his sights on state Republicans who he accuses of being too liberal, or RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). Koopman, the chairman of the newly formed Montana Conservative Alliance, says his group is mailing questionnaires to every GOP candidate and, based on their results, will identify who will be supported and who will be targeted.
In the last legislative election, Koopman and his cronies dislodged three moderate Republicans in primaries.
I know there are leftys out there who would apply the same Koopman-esque tactics to the Democratic party - and certainly I heartily support running good progressive candidates against bad candidates - but Koopman's style demands strict ideological adherence to a narrow set of simplistic "principles" under all conditions. What you get from that kind of process is a pack of simplistic, narrow-minded legislators applying simplistic cookie-cutter policies to complex problems with monomaniacal fury.
That's not a good thing.
I will say that pundits and media outlets have an irrational love of "independents." There's a romanticized vision out there that an "independent" is somehow a fierce, pragmatic thinker free from the pull and tug of mindless partisanship, bravely inhabiting the small strip of no-man's land between the two political parties. But in reality, independent voters are anything but a homogenous bloc. Maoist lefties and white supremacist righties both consider themselves "independent." Others are independent because of a single issue. Abortion, for example, may push a economic progressive, say, to vote for a rightwing pro-life Republican. Others are partisan, but call themselves independent to foil pollsters or because they like the idea of being independent. Others are partisan, but switch their vote to punish a politician for not upholding her party's values - like in the case of the recent Massachusetts special Senatorial election.
That's a long way of saying that "moderates" don't really represent "independent" voters. But a moderate politician does make sure that constituents from both sides of the political divide are represented - which isn't a bad thing. (In the national health care debate, for example, Blue Dog Democrats did bring legitimate concerns about the effects health care legislation would have on state budgets and small businesses.)
In the case of the Montana Republican party, that's crucial. That's because efforts of folks like Koopman have transformed the state Republican party into a truly radical political movement that seeks to advance the interests of a tiny faction of the state's voters.
