Paul Soglin: Waxing America

T. Wall Drops Out; Feingold Left With Opponents With Even Less Political Experience

It looks like developer Terrence Wall won't chance another political defeat, and is dropping out of the Republican primary race. Ron Johnson, the Great Hope from the "Tea Party" wing of the Wisconsin Republican Party, now looks like the easy winner of the primary, unless Dave Westlake's blaze orange army rises up and bites Johnson's ankles. Last week, of course, Dick Leinenkugel did the right thing by the GOP and dropped out, having been tainted by the Democrat cooties he picked up from his service as Commerce secretary in the Doyle (gasp!) administration.

T. Wall's tax avoidance pumpkin farm could have been a liability in the general election, but probably helped him win the hearts of some of the Republican faithful. However, the piddly 18% he managed to attract at the Wisconsin Republican convention last week probably reminded Wall of the two times his neighbors in Maple Bluff decided others would serve them better on the Village Board, and he came in last. Or the time the Village Board decided (4-1) not to appoint him to an open seat. But at least Wall's actually thought about holding public office, even if voters decided it was not such a good idea.

So we're left with a guy who made lots of money in plastics and has never run for or held public office, but can spend lots of his cash on advertising trying to convince Wisconsin voters not to like Russ Feingold, and a guy who didn't make lots of money and has never run for or held public office, but dresses in a way that reminds voters of deer hunting. 

I still like Russ Feingold, his record, and his chances for re-election. It's good that there won't be two inexperienced rich guys dumping money into absurd Feingold-bashing advertising in the primary; just one will be doing it in the general.

- Barry Orton

Bizarre Positions Taken By Wisconsin Political Candidates (First In a Series)

This campaign season in Wisconsin should be interesting, with the open-seated Governor's race, two wealthy and never-been-elected-to-anything Republican challengers to Senator Russ Feingold, fights for control of both houses of the legislature, and "tea-party" inspired hopefuls for Congressional seats held by Democrats.

One such challenger (probably one with no chance whatsoever) is Jennifer London, running for Representative Gwen Moore's 4th District seat. As is often the case with "tea-party" folks, the candidate's website barely mentions the Republican Party, except for a link to "a great group of ladies I'm involved with," who turn out to be the Suburban Republican Women's Club. The problem for Ms. London is that the Suburban Republican Women's Club candidate page only lists Dan Sebring for the 4th. D'oh!

Bigger problems for Ms. London are her weird positions on issues. Her solution to Social Security/retirement problems: retirement savings accounts run only by private institutions "that must back all savings by gold. Yes, gold....the only sound alternative to Social Security is to protect our futures with something tangible."

OK, that's strange, but London's environmental posture is even odder: she wants to close the St. Lawrence Seaway to keep the Asian carp out of the Great Lakes.

The one area of environmental stewardship that I am passionate about is the Great Lakes. The protection of the Great Lakes is something nearly everyone can agree upon, from the avid sport fisherman to the hippie activist. I will work to strengthen protections of the Great Lakes, including introducing a bill that closes access to the Great Lakes through artificial canals, namely the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Chicago Sanitary Canal. I do not believe the legislation we currently have goes far enough to protect or ecosystem or the industries that rely on the vitality of the lakes.

...The tens of millions taxpayers must pay every year in the clean-up of our waterways and restocking fish populations that are hurt by the invasive species are not balanced by the industries that are serviced by transoceanic ships.

It is important to maintain an active shipping industry in our lakes. To remedy the obvious harm that will be done to Great Lakes ports due to the closure of the St. Lawrence Seaway, I would further propose a transit port at the point of cut-off where ocean-bound ships would transfer their loads to ships that only sail the Great Lakes. I do not believe the livelihoods of port employees need be disregarded in order to achieve a better stewardship of the Great Lakes. We can achieve a balance in the two through my plan, and the investment in a transfer facility would, in the long run, save taxpayers untold billions that we are throwing at what seems in the present to be a losing battle.

So the "transit port at the point of cut-off where ocean-bound ships would transfer their loads to ships that only sail the Great Lakes" would be where?  Canada near Montreal? Or upstate new York somewhere? Let's ask the folks who work in the Port of Milwaukee how that would work out for them.

Chances of such a plan being ever seriously considered? Zero to none. Chances of Jennifer London replacing the terrific Rep. Gwen Moore? Less than zero.

- Barry Orton (former avid sport fisherman and former hippie activist)

Paul Ryan: When Will You Look At the Facts About the Deficit?

In his crusade to reach the White House, Paul Ryan published another piece of phony history and econoomics last week. The Wisconsin Republican authored Why No One Expects a Strong Recovery:

He and his ultra-conservative cohort, Representative Jeb Hensarling (R - Texas) explain that we have to get back to Reagan's economics and that the Democrats are a disaster for the economy:

Why all the pessimism? The source appears to be a growing fear that the federal government is retreating from the free-market economic principles of the last half-century, and in particular the strong growth policies that began under Ronald Reagan. A review of the economic policies instituted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress lends credibility to this concern...

...Anyone who believes the Democratic Party's recently expressed concern over the deficit should look at the relentless growth of spending on its watch. Total nondefense spending set an all-time record this year—20.2% of GDP—double federal spending as a percentage of GDP during the height of the New Deal in 1934

The problem, Mr. Ryan, is the facts.

As any fifth grader can tell you, the greatest federal budget deficit as a percentage of the GNP since World War II was the Reagan deficit. It was erased by Bill Clinton and then eclipsed by George W. Bush. It usually takes 2-3 years for a President's economic policies to take hold.

Republicans start these problems and Democrats get us out of them. Unfortunately, sometimes the Democrats need more than a year or two to fix a problem the Republicans created in eight years.

Notice that dip before 1980? That was Jimmy Carter's third year. The peak before was the height of Nixon's second term.  

Notice the surplus before and through the year 2000? Yup. That was Bill Clinton.

Representative Ryan: 900 Words of Silence

Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan (WI-Janesville) on the pages of TheJournalTimes.com tells us about Inflation's Looming Shadow.

In this profoundly vapid, scholarly appearing article, Ryan uses charts and references to ominous sources to warn about looming inflation:

 One of my key concerns is on the inflation front...If inflation gets out of hand, the Fed will be forced to hike interest rates and we could end up with the worst possible combination: rising prices, high interest rates, high unemployment and weak growth, or stagflation.

So what else is new? Every economist and first year business major warned us of the specter of inflation when the first solutions to the Bush-Ryan depression loomed 18 months ago. 

Curiously Ryan's article is more noticeable for what he does not say:

• War contributes to inflation. As with Vietnam, when you spend hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq for a military conflict, when those dollars are not used to produce values, housing, roads, educated children, hospital, inflation grows. Given the Bush-Ryan War in Iraq, we might as well tax the public and burn the money.
• Ryan was a principal leader in the effort to deregulate the financial services industry, an action that led to this economic crisis and the outrageous bonuses paid to Wall Street for no productive work, another source of inflation.
• Ryan was a principal leader in spending hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out companies run into the ground by his political contributors. He tells us that this bailout fuels inflation. He is silent as to his own role.
• Jobs were lost all right. They were lost to unregulated, rampant subsidies for American businesses to cease production and import products manufactured overseas by slave labor and under devastating environmental conditions at the expense of Ryan's union constituents. All orchestrated and paid for by Ryan's buddies.
• Ryan said nothing in 2008 when his buddies, the speculators, manipulated the price of oil, sending it from $65 a barrel to over $150 in three short months. Now that is inflationary.

Phooey.

Ryan is only interested in setting up a straw man so that when the inflation creeps into the economy he can say "I told you so," rationalize more cuts to government services, and deflect criticism of his own role in ruining the nation's economy.
 

Connecting the Dots...No Public Option...Big Insurance...Bailout...Teabaggers

There is something about the entire national health insurance debate that does not sit quite right. I am not much of a conspiracy buff but the fanatical, irrational opposition to public option with the 'death panels' is driven by more than Americans fearing the specter of big government.

Given the right-wing demand for competition, the fear of a relatively small portion of the American people voluntarily choosing a public option for health care is somewhat nonsensical.

First we have the big insurance companies, the same companies that under the classification of 'financial services' companies support major portions of the health insurance reforms. That is because so long as they can deny claims, they welcome any new revenue source that leads to increased sales. It does not trouble these health insurance companies that the new policies will in part be subsidized by the federal government.

Taking their cues from the pharmaceutical industry the health insurers know full well that the federal government is a great customer, especially when it refuses to use its buying power to reduce unit prices. Not suprisingly, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association supports the legislation.

The key for the insurance/financial service companies is that they not be saddled with the public option. The public option does introduce competition and can force them to not only  lower premiums, but also increase the quality of the service to the insured.

So while the teabaggers and libertarians pack the town halls, the insurance companies are smiling and wringing their hands in glee.

Now all we need to know is if bailout money from the stimulus package that went to insurance companies as well as banks are funding the front organizations funded by the industry groups and the United States Chamber of Commerce who are paying to organize the protests.

FACT CHECK: Health overhaul myths taking root

The judgment is harsh in a new poll that finds Americans worried about the government taking over health insurance, cutting off treatment to the elderly and giving coverage to illegal immigrants. Harsh, but not based on facts.

From the New York Times: For Many Consumers, Few Insurance Choices 

As a general rule, the larger, more densely populated states have the most choice ...there are nine states where a single insurer covers 70 percent or more of the people. In Hawaii, one insurer covers 78 percent. In Alabama, it’s 83 percent. And in at least 17 other states one insurer covers at least half the population...

...“For many Americans, the idea that they have a choice of health plans is about as mythical as unicorns,” said Jacob Hacker, professor of political science at Yale University.

 ...if you work for a small employer, your choice is likely to be limited to a single plan, if that. And if you’re an individual with a pre-existing condition, the options may be closer to zero...

...As critics see it, part of the problem is consolidation in the insurance industry. According to the American Medical Association, there have been 400 corporate mergers among insurance providers in the last dozen years. WellPoint alone covers 34.2 million people, according to the company’s second-quarter earnings report. UnitedHealth Group covers 29.5 million, according to its second-quarter statement.

“The largest seven insurers cover more than 100 million people, a third of the market,” said Mr. Potter, who bases his figures on federal securities filings.

In a capitalist economy, the drive to consolidate should come as no surprise...

It Is Not About Health Care, Stupid

As the right-wing attacks on health care reform drone on, it is becoming obvious that is not the real issue.

Heath care is simply the mechanism the far right leadership is using to mobilize a frustrated and angry constituency that refuse to accept the results of the 2008 presidential election, and the fact that Sarah Palin will never hold an elected office outside of Alaska.

Coddled by Ronald Reagan, humored by the first George Bush, and courted by the second, the social conservatives find that when they destroyed the Republican Party over the past six years, they lost.

As the New York Times reported on the town hall meeting in Pennsylvania held by Senator Arlen Specter, Senator Goes Face to Face With Dissent

They got up before dawn in large numbers with angry signs and American flag T-shirts, and many were seething with frustration at issues that went far beyond overhauling health care...This isn’t just about health care,” said Carolyn Doric of Harrisburg, “it’s about political power and a means to regain political power.”

This makes life difficult for Democrats, but it makes life miserable for the moderates within the Republican Party.

The right wing, the social conservatives, have no more regard for the well-being of the economy than many of my friends on the left who believe that if something is good for the business community, it must be bad for everyone else.

The concept of a stimulus package to save the economy was not a Democratic plan but a Republican plan introduced by the economic advisers to President George W. Bush and supported by most Republican members of Congress. Just ask Paul Ryan.

Bailouts, whether they be for the financial services industry or the automobile industry, are difficult to stomach.

I have no love for banks that charge outrageous interest rates and fee after fee for virtually every service that costs them fifty cents or less. In many ways the American automobile industry got what it had coming. Going back to the 1970's it failed to respond to foreign competition and refused to market rational vehicles.

Supporting a bailout for industries lead by  morons and thieves is not easy. It was a matter of balancing values - saving industries run by thugs or letting the economy worsen.

Do we sit and do nothing and allow the economy to further unravel sending the U.S. and probably the world into a depression worse than the 1930's, or do we adopt a rational plan that will correct the problem, which in many instances is also 'rewarding' some of the worst of the villains?

The Obama Administration will survive this chaos and go on to lead a strong America. In the meantime the Republican Party will continue to self-destruct as the moderates lack the muscle and the numbers and the extreme right is more concerned about their indignation than contributing to the discussion.

Notice that the Neocons are absent from the discussion.

"Manufactured Anger" At Kagen's Town Hall Meeting?

It looks like the TeaBaggers and the astroturf groups that created them are at it again in Wisconsin.  Taking a cue from the events in Texas and elsewhere, a big crowd disrupted Rep. Steve Kagen's town meeting in Green Bay last night, and will no doubt turn out again in big numbers in Appleton tonight to shout down any semblance of civilized discourse. Fox Valley blogger Jeremy Shown has a useful three part eyewitness post on the Green Bay event here.

Regardless of what the questions were, almost every one was greeted with shouts of derision. If the question itself was particularly negative, cheering would often begin before Kagen had finished reading it, drowning out his voice.

I could closely survey at least one quarter of the auditorium and from what I could see there were only two people in that area that were willing to clap or shout in support of Kagen. The rest were clearly against anything that Kagen had to say. Many of these felt no reluctance to shout during both the questions and answers. Sometimes the outbursts included pleas to leave health care alone or to read the bill, sometimes they would accuse Kagen of lying outright.

While Shown's account portrays the anger as spontaneous, there are signs that point to national organizations connected to the insurance industry and the Republican Party. Greg Sargent tracks the efforts to the astroturf group Conservatives for Patients' Rights:

CPR is the group headed by controversial former hospitals exec Rick Scott that’s spending millions on ads attacking reform in all sorts of lurid ways, a campaign that’s being handled by the same P.R. mavens behind the Swift Boat Vets.

In response to my questions, a spokesman for the group confirmed that it has undertaken a concerted effort to get people out to the town hall meetings to protest reform. The spokesperson, Brian Burgess, confirmed that CPR is emailing out “town hall alert” flyers, and schedules of town hall meetings, to its mailing list.

These efforts — combined with CPR’s effort to enlist Tea Party-ers, as reported yesterday by TPM — provide a glimpse into the ways anti-reform groups are trying to create a sense of public momentum in their favor.

CPR spokesman Burgess confirmed that the group had set up a list serv designed to reach out to “third party groups” involved in the health care fight, including the Tea Party activists. And in a statement emailed to me, Scott, who was ousted as a health-care exec amid a 1990s fraud probe, took credit for the town hall showings.

“We have invested a lot of time, energy and resources into educating Americans over the past several months about the dangers of government-run health care and I think we’re seeing some of the fruits of that campaign,” Scott said, though he claimed outrage was spontaneous.

Talking Points Memo also has a note from a "Republican pal under deep cover:

I'm surprised that it's your Republican pal that has to make this point: The precedent on the anti-health care protests isn't Bush's Social Security town hall meetings. The real precedent is the "Brooks Brothers riot" during the 2000 recount. The point is to create disorder, but get the media to cast blame on the underlying issue and NOT the protesters. (emphasis Waxing America)

That's what happened during Florida: The "blame" was on the "chaos" created by the "unfair" counting methods brought on by Al Gore's call for "selective" counting. No blame was focused on the young GOP activists upsetting the process.

THAT seems to me to be the comparison that Obama supporters should be on the lookout for this summer.

You can say this came from a Republican friend -- but not by name. ;-)

The White House got the memo also.  From this morning's presser:

Q: Are you concerned at what appears to be well-orchestrated protesting of health care reform at town halls as derailing your message?
GIBBS: NO, I get asked every day about the myriad of things that could be derailing our message. I would point out that I don't know what all those guys were doing, what were they called, the Brooks Brothers Brigade in Florida in 2000, appear to have rented a similar bus and are appearing together at town hall meetings throughout the country...

Well, you know, look, I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the Astro Turf nature of so-called grassroots lobbying ...
Q: The grassroots what?
GIBBS: The Astro Turf nature of grassroots lobbying, which is largely the term for, you know, this is manufactured anger.

- Barry Orton

Who Is Paul Ryan and Why Is He Saying TheseThings?

Paul Ryan is the congenial representative from Wisconsin's first congressional district. The district was badly hit by the implosion of the automobile industry, with scheduled closures of automobile production in both Janesville and Kenosha leaving thousands of workers and their families in dire straits.

Now Ryan is joining with Democratic colleagues to try and save the Kenosha plant. Wis. lawmakers to meet with top Chrysler exec

MILWAUKEE - The future of the Chrysler engine plant in Kenosha is on the minds of Wisconsin lawmakers scheduled to meet with a top executive of the automaker.

U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl's office said Kohl, Sen. Russ Feingold and Reps. Paul Ryanof Janesville and Gwen Moore of Milwaukee plan to meet with Chrysler Group LLC Deputy CEO Jim Press at Kohl's office in Washington Thursday afternoon. Ryan is a Republican and the others are Democrats.

This is the same Paul Ryan who characterized President Obama's budget plan and fiscal rescue plans as "European Socialism."

This is the same Paul Ryan who was the featured speaker at the April 15, 2009 "Tea Party" attacking opposing tax hikes.

Ryan says frustration is running high among many of his constituents. 

"I think the message is people are fed up with this notion of chasing ever-higher spending with ever-higher taxes.  There's a limit to how much you can soak the taxpayer."

This is the same Paul Ryan who voted for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 - The Bailout.

Who is Paul Ryan and why is he saying these things?

Paul Ryan Has Some Explaining To Do - To The Right. Ask Ozzy Osbourne

It is time to invite Ozzy Osbourne as the featured speaker at a evangelical teen rally for celibacy and saying 'no' to drugs.

It is amazing that highly touted Republican talking head Paul Ryan from Wisconsin's First Congressional District, was invited to be the poster boy for the April 15th Tea Party.

Paul "No European Socialism Here" Ryan was the darling of the crowd of 5,237 on the Capitol Steps in Madison. This was a boisterous crowd clamoring for the heads of those who spent taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. The purpose of the rally was to protest government spending and the use of their tax dollars for the bailout.

Paul Ryan was one of ninety-one Republicans who voted for the Emergency Economic stabilization Act of 2008 - The Bailout.

As one talking head on Fox would say, "What you say Charlie Sykes, Mark Belling, Americans for Prosperity, the MacIver Institute, and All Children Matter?"

Right-wing Teaparty Subverts the Very Fabric of the Nation

The  Boston Tea Party, December 16, 1773, was a significant date on the road to democracy and independence.

There was a simple premise that motivated the colonials who threw the tea overboard.

There should be no taxation without representation.

That patriotic ideal stemmed from the social compact - that free people gathered together and made decisions through equal participation in representative government.

The very act of declaring independence and forming this nation in the next decade recognized that decisions were made for the common good, as noted in the preamble of the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility provide for the common defecne promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

If people are unhappy with legislation adopted by a properly elected body of delegates, they can protest, they can vote, and they can even request an 'activist' court to overturn the acts of the legislature.

The Boston Tea Party was organized to support an elected representative government, not subvert it. This government has every right to impose taxes, adopt helmet laws, regulate banks, set air and water pollution standards, control handguns, and give a woman the right to control her body.