Newsweek: Populist Rage

Kazin, an author and professor of history at Georgetown University, writes that as Congress and President Obama rush to balance solidarity with a new wave of populist anger alongside the need for smart policy during a crisis, “they might reflect on how well previous politicians fared at the task. History does not repeat itself. But sometimes it does hum a familiar tune.” Kazin’s essay is one of several that make up the March 30 cover package “The Thinking Man’s Guide to Populist Rage” (on newsstands Monday, March 23). The package examines how populist rage, while it can be cathartic, can also lead to bad decisions. But it can also present opportunity.

Author Rick Perlstein writes that populist anger in America is the anger of dispossession. “That’s how most Americans are thinking now about the bonuses paid to feckless financial engineers,” Perlstein writes, adding that we “do not like to reward those who do not produce.” He writes that the meltdown is complex as is the decision making. But if it happens only in “antiseptic back rooms, government experts negotiating with corporate experts, proud to tune out the public’s righteously simplifying indignation, those policies will fail… Take away taxpayers’ sense of ownership stake in an issue (especially, as with AIG, when taxpayers literally own the company) and their rage will not go away. It festers … And that’s when the ‘bad’ kind of populism — the hateful kind; the violent kind; the demagogic kind — can flourish.”

Newsweek Contributing Editor Robert J. Samuelson writes that great reform waves often proceed from scandals and hard times and that the outcome of the present populist backlash may not be benign. “The parade of big companies to Washington for rescues, as well as the high-profile examples of unvarnished greed, has spawned understandable anger that could veer into a vindictive retribution… If companies need to be rescued from ‘the market,’ then why shouldn’t Washington permanently run the market? That is a dangerous mindset. It justifies punitive taxes, widespread corporate mandates, selective subsidies and more meddling in companies’ everyday operations.”

Author Robert H. Frank writes that anger over the AIG bonuses is spilling onto a broader range of targets. “And unless we’re careful, we’ll shoot ourselves in the foot. Even before AIG’s moment in the spotlight, angry populists had begun calling for executive pay caps at 20 to 25 times the average American worker’s salary. If applied to the financial-industry executives who steered the economy into the ditch, such caps would be defensible.” There are also many executives in other industries whose pay, at least in hindsight, was vastly greater than any reasonable measure of their value added. “Yet any broader effort to cap executive salaries would do more harm than good.”

Chapman University presidential fellow Joel Kotkin writes that populism is far from dead and “represents a force that could shape our political future in unpredictable ways… The critical issue facing the new administration is finding useful ways to channel this disenchantment.” He writes that populist rage creates the political support for taking far bolder steps against Wall Street. “A good first step would be to allow the TARP – backed giant banks to come under some sort of federal control, or bankruptcy process, effectively wiping out the holdings of the financial malefactors and decimating any hopes for future bonuses.”

Former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, writes that “anger-fed populism now is no better a policy compass than libertarianism masquerading as capitalism was during the Bush administration. This may become evident all too quickly as public rage — generated by the catastrophic risk-taking of many Wall Street traders — is fanned by Washington legislators desperate to make up for their own decade of neglect.” He writes that the economic cataclysm we are living through now is the consequence of 30 years of intentional destruction of the rules needed to keep capitalism on track. “Just as democracy needs rules or it descends into anarchy, so capitalism needs rules to guide the behavior that becomes wealth creation. What we should be seeking, and what has not emerged from the cacophony of Washington, is a principled guide to the intersection between government and the market.”

Read all the essays at online at the Newsweek site:

• Michael Kazin essay
• Rick Perlstein essay
• Robert J. Samuelson essay
• Robert H. Frank essay
• Joel Kotkin essay
• Eliot Spitzer essay

• Forget the fact that the US invasion of Iraq reduced its oil exports.
• Forget that our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has introduced far more instability to the energy rich Persian Gulf region than was present when Bill Clinton left the presidency.
• Forget the fact that a 1997 provision in the U.S. tax code (Section 179) provided small businesses with a tax write-off of up to $25,000 for a vehicle weighing more than 6,000 pounds- used 50% of the time for work purposes and only a $7,000 deduction for smaller, more fuel efficient cars.
• Forget that in 2003, the Bush administration proposed increasing the tax deduction to $75,000 but the Republican legislators in Congress responded by expanding it to a whopping $100,000 as part of the $350 million tax cut package.
• Forget that Jimmy Carter warned us 30 years ago that over reliance on foreign sources of energy makes the US economy as a whole subject to market spikes like the one we are all living through now.
• Forget that Vice President Dick Cheney said “conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy” and refused to use his position as head of the President’s Energy Task Force to include conservation and higher efficiency standards as part of the task force’s recommendations.

Its much easier instead to blame OPEC. After all, they are the ones with the oil and we need that oil. Doesn’t that mean they must pump as fast as they can to keep up with the ever growing demand from the US and China and India and Europe and everyone else who wants it? Saudi Arabia did not play a role in the “Green Revolution” in which we turned over vast portions of our food supply chain to industrial farming that is so dependent on petroleum and natural gas that corn wheat, and rice are hitting record highs when oil prices are doing the same.

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez may call our president names, but help expand the “Hummer Loophole” in the US tax code that encouraged Americans to buy the biggest, heaviest, and most inefficient behemoths that Detroit could conceive.

OPEC nations are not huge recipients of non-military US foreign aid. Our “aid” to Saudi Arabia involves congress giving them permission to pay our defense contractors vast sums of money. Knowing all this, why do we feel entitled to dictate how quickly other soveriegn nations sell off a natural resource that is often their only source of wealth?

OPEC is not the US’s biggest source of oil. For that we need to look to our parters in NAFTA. Despite the vilification of OPEC in the news, they are not our biggest supplier. The problem right now is that NON-OPEC oil exporting nations are going to fail to keep supplies up with demand for the foreseable future as noted in the Financial Times story below.

Non-Opec producers face stalling output

By Carola Hoyos in Madrid and Javier Blas in London
Published: Jul 02, 2008

Countries outside the Opec oil cartel will barely be able to increase their production of crude oil over the next five years for the first time in the industry’s history, the western countries’ energy watchdog warned yesterday.

The International Energy Agency’s dim forecast to 2013 suggested record oil prices have yet to balance sluggish supply with relatively robust demand.

“Structural demand growth in developing countries and ongoing supply constraints continue to paint a tight market picture over the medium term,” the IEA said in its Medium-Term Oil Market Report.

Despite billions of dollars of investment, the challenge of pumping ever more oil out of ageing fields is proving so great that non-Opec countries will, in the next five year, have to rely on bio-fuels, such as corn-based ethanol, for 50 per cent of their growth in overall fuels.

The IEA said annual non-Opec supply growth, including biofuels, would slow to 0.5 per cent between 2008 and 2013. But demand, supported by rising incomes in developing countries such as China, would grow by 1.6 per cent a year.

Analysts warned the new forecast meant the world economy would rely more on Opec and oil prices were likely to remain elevated.

“Poor supply-side performance . . . in the face of strong demand pressures from developing countries has forced oil prices up sharply to curb demand,” said the IEA.

Crude oil prices moved more than $3 higher to $143.33 a barrel as the market digested the forecast. The IEA said that current prices, which hit a record high this week of $143.67 a barrel, were “justified by fundamentals”.

The fast decline of fields – especially in the North Sea and Mexico, where production is shrinking by more than 20 per cent each year – means that 14.8m of the 16m barrels of new supply from non-Opec countries over the next five years will only go to make up for losses from old fields producing less each year. Stagnant oil output in Russia is another key factor in lower non-Opec supply growth.

Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the IEA, said in an interview: “In non-Opec countries we want to see more access to resources and more transparency of the legal system because we believe that . . . the underground resource is still there; the problem is above ground.”

Opec, meanwhile, is also struggling, with project delays constraining its ability to add new capacity. The IEA substantially downgraded its expectations for Opec crude capacity from 2008-2013, cutting earlier forecasts by 1.2m b/d.

The IEA said it believed Saudi Arabia was having bigger problems than the kingdom, the world’s largest exporter, was willing to admit to.

These fluctuations in oil supply come as demand growth is continuing, especially in the developing countries, whose oil needs are expected to have almost caught up with those of the rich world by 2013.

Mr. Rezko is not in the same league as Republican lobbyist and Tom Delay’s pal Jack Abramoff, but when the Republican National Committee can’t find anything good to say about their candidate they have to take what they can get.

Unlike Abramoff’s patrons who are under investigation or indictment, Barak Obama is NOT under investigation or being charged with anything related to the Rezko crimes.

This new RNC site contains a YouTube hosted video with lots one lovely photoshopped picture of Rezko & Obama and a second mashup of two different photos designed to make it look like they are pals.

The photos have been masked to remove any possible context from the picture and are used to zoom around the screen and make the two look joined at the hip as well as a little news feed to keep you up to date on the latest “Headlines” about Rezko. In this context Headlines refers to RNC press releases as opposed to … ya know.. NEWS headlines.

The whole aim is to cast doubts on Obama’s judgement and fitness to serve in office. The fun part of all this is that it took less than five minutes over on OpenSecrets.org to discover that Mr. Rezko was an equal opportunity donor.

He donated money to over two dozen candidates and issue groups over the period for which there are electronic, searchable records. Those candidates are of both parties, but one two time recipient of Mr. Rezko’s largess jumped out at me.

To the best of my recollection, George W. Bush was running for President in October of 1999 and December of 2003. During those campaigns Mr. Rezko donated $5,000 to Mr. Bush.

This is the same George W. Bush who, according to the RNC’s Party Leadership page, heads the very organization that has created and promoted RezkoJudgement.com. Now that takes REAL balls.

When I see such stunning hypocrisy right there out in the open I can understand why Blanca DeBree loves her Republicans. If the National Democratic party tried something like this they’d be flayed alive on Fox News and the rest of the TV news channels, but the thing is, the RNC will get away with it.

And of course, it wouldn’t be a proper Republican “viral” ad without the requisite “Angry Black Man” shot included for good measure.

These publications are regularly update as social, environmental, and govermental factors change in these nations. Most follow a basic format that includes statistical sections on:

• Geography
  • Area
  • Cities
  • Terrain
  • Climate
• People
  • Nationality
  • Population
  • Population Growth Rate
  • Religions
  • Languages
  • Education
  • Health
• Government
  • Type
  • Date of Independence
  • Creation Date for Constitution
  • Branches of Government
  • Political Subdivisions
  • Suffrage (Voting Rights guidelines)
• Economy
  • Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
  • GDP Growth
  • GDP per Capita
  • Natural Resources
  • Agriculture
  • Industry
  • Services
  • Trade
  • Currency

After the statistical information, the rest of each Background Note reads much like an encyclopedia entry. Unlike an encyclopedia, however, these electronic documents are kept up to date with changes included as often as several countries per day in tumultuous periods. These are primarily designed to brief government officials and the press, but anyone interested in the world can benefit from reading them.

The bulk of each entry contains narrative on the nation’s People, History, Government and Political Conditions, Economy, Foreign Relations, Relations with the USA, and Travel and Business Information.

As with any material of this sort, you need to keep in mind that this material is specifically crafted to help US interests and maintain the United States view of history.  There will be many cases where the US version of events does not jibe with the views held by the citizens of the nation being written about.  However, if you keep that aspect of the document in mind, it can be very informative of what the US State Department wants the world to believe.

For example, here is the section on U.S. – Afghan Relations from a Background Note last updated in December of 2007.

The first extensive American contact with Afghanistan was made by Josiah Harlan, an adventurer from Pennsylvania who was an adviser in Afghan politics in the 1830s and reputedly inspired Rudyard Kipling’s story “The Man Who Would be King.” After the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1934, the U.S. policy of helping developing nations raise their standard of living was an important factor in maintaining and improving U.S.-Afghan ties. From 1950 to 1979, U.S. foreign assistance provided Afghanistan with more than $500 million in loans, grants, and surplus agricultural commodities to develop transportation facilities, increase agricultural production, expand the educational system, stimulate industry, and improve government administration.

In the 1950s, the U.S. declined Afghanistan’s request for defense cooperation but extended an economic assistance program focused on the development of Afghanistan’s physical infrastructure–roads, dams, and power plants. Later, U.S. aid shifted from infrastructure projects to technical assistance programs to help develop the skills needed to build a modern economy. The Peace Corps was active in Afghanistan between 1962 and 1979.

After the April 1978 coup, relations deteriorated. In February 1979, U.S. Ambassador Adolph “Spike” Dubs was murdered in Kabul after Afghan security forces burst in on his kidnapers. The U.S. then reduced bilateral assistance and terminated a small military training program. All remaining assistance agreements were ended after the December 1979 Soviet invasion.

Following the Soviet invasion, the United States supported diplomatic efforts to achieve a Soviet withdrawal. U.S. contributions to the refugee program in Pakistan played a major part in efforts to assist Afghans in need. This cross-border humanitarian assistance program aimed to increase Afghan self-sufficiency and help Afghans resist Soviet attempts to drive civilians out of the rebel-dominated countryside. During the period of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the U.S. provided about $3 billion in military and economic assistance to Afghans and the resistance movement.

The U.S. supported the emergence of a broad-based government, representative of all Afghans, and actively encouraged a UN role in the national reconciliation process in Afghanistan. Today, the U.S. is assisting the Afghan people as they rebuild their country and establish a representative government that contributes to regional stability, is market friendly, and respects human rights. In May 2005, President Bush and President Karzai concluded a strategic partnership agreement committing both nations to a long-term relationship.

Note that only the last two sentences address US – Afghan relations since the invasion that unseated the Taliban in 2001.

In addition to the textual information, each Note includes a map of the country’s with major cities and its capital noted along with the names and locations of bordering nations.  Usually the Dept. of State includes a photograph meant to capture some element of the nations culture.  In the case of Afghanistan the photo includes a broom seller in a marker in Herat.

A full list of the Background Notes can be found at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn.  For real junkies like me, you can sign up for Email updates so you will know when when updates are published.

This Act is designed to address the problems faced by workers of both sexes when pay discrimination is ongoing and incremental. Lilly Ledbetter’s lawsuit against Goodyear Tire & Rubber was ruled in favor of Goodyear by the US Supreme Court (by a 5 to 4 decision) because Ms. Ledbetter did not file suit within 180 days of when the discriminatory pay rate was initiated. The fact that Ledbetter did not know that she was being paid less for the same work was irrelevant to the court’s majority.

The minority statement from the court contends that unlike a firing when timing is easy to establish, pay discrimination re-occurs each time the company in question cuts a new paycheck and therefore pay discrimination lawsuits must be filed within 180 days of the most recent paycheck and not 180 days from when the discrimination first began.

The bill is summarized as:

To amend title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to clarify that a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice that is unlawful under such Acts occurs each time compensation is paid pursuant to the discriminatory compensation decision or other practice, and for other purposes.

In opposing this legislation, Senator John McCain said that if women want better-paying jobs, they just need more “education and training.” Then, he didn’t even show up for the vote.

Explaining his position, McCain said:

“They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else, and it’s hard for them to leave their families when they don’t have somebody to take care of them.”

Last time I looked, women in management and supervisory roles tend to have at least as good of an education and training as their male counterparts. Perhaps his statement would have made sense even 15 or 20 years ago. The graph on the right, based on U.S. Census Bureau data, shows that since 1991, the proportion of young women enrolled in college has exceeded the enrollment rate for young men, and the gap has widened over time.

“Since 1991, the proportion of young women enrolled in college has exceeded the enrollment rate for young men, and the gap has widened over time. In 2005, about 43 percent of women ages 18 to 24 were enrolled in college, compared with 35 percent of young men. This represents a major shift in the gender balance at U.S. colleges and universities. Between 1970 and 2005, the gender composition has shifted to the extent that women now make up the majority – 54 percent – of the 10.8 million young adults enrolled in college.” – The Crossover in Female-Male College Enrollment Rates by Mark Mather and Dia Adams.

Lilly Ledbetter’s Case’s Background. “In 1979 Lilly Ledbetter, the plaintiff, began work at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in its Gadsden, Alabama location. During her years at the factory, raises were given and denied based on evaluations and recommendations regarding worker performance. In March 1998, Ledbetter inquired into the possible sexual discrimination of the Goodyear Tire Company. In July she filed formal charges with the EEOC. In November 1998, after early retirement, Ledbetter sued claiming pay discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963.”

I know the campaign season is a busy time for the remaining candidates, but both Obama and Clinton managed to get their votes in to allow this Act to proceed to a vote by the full Senate. Sen. McCain and fellow Republican Senator Hagel of Nebraska were the only two Senators to not vote Yay or Nay on this Act.

If you would like to let Senator McCain know how you feel on this issue, you can take action here.

Yesterday however, I ended up writing a very lengthy comment in response to Will Taft’s blog post Why Obama Might Be Our Next President over at Healthy Living For People and Planet Earth. The comment was so lengthy that Will, with my permission has posted the comment as a guest post.

I took a rather contrary and bearish position in regards to his main premise that the media is making the economy sound worse off than it is in order to stir up opposition to another Republican president. I took the position that the economy is actually in far worse shape than the mainstream media portrays it. The guest post turned out to be very pessimistic and doesn’t offer anything in the way of ideas for a solution or even a way to mitigate the worst of the problems.

I did, of course, make reference to my pet theory that the GOP wants to throw this election and my reasons for believing that.

If you’d like to read the post, it can be found at Is The Media Downplaying Economic Trouble?.

Since then a couple more people have added to the thread so I finally put in my two cents worth. With a few minor edits, this is it:

I’m not sure I even believe in a political center anymore. The US population is basically conservative – in the APOLITICAL sense of the world. Unless something seems severely broken, we generally don’t want to touch it. Thats why Bush’s second term attempt at reforming Social Security went nowhere. Thats also why Clinton’s attempt at healthcare reform went nowhere in the 90′s. Neither situation was bad enough to justify major changes to the system in the minds of the general public. (This was something I hadn’t thought about until I read Paul Krugman’s “Conscience of a Liberal”.)

For most of my adult life politicians – with the help of the 24 hours news media – have dumbed down and severely abbreviated the political news coverage to the point where much of the population sees each party’s platform as this beast of a wall, cobbled together with bricks made up of wedge issues, separating people. If you are pro-choice or in favor of tighter gun control laws, a big part of the Republican party leadership is ready to write you off. If you are in favor of a long term US troop presence in Iraq there are Democrats that will do the same.

However, I DO think that we are reaching a tipping point where people feel that the Federal government as a whole is broken and that makes them ready for major change. People are approaching that tipping point from many different directions. For some it’s all about the politicization of judicial appointments. For others its the war in Iraq’s bad planning. For still others it’s corruption scandals, or too much influence by lobbyists in Congress, or the dawning realization that deregulation and the lack of regulation of commercial banks helped bring about the current economic conditions.

When this many people are ready for change I think we will see real political action on the part of voters this fall. It may be a one time thing and the huge numbers of newly registered voters may fade back into the woodwork after November, but I don’t think we are going to see a close race like we did in 2004.

If there is a center now, its made up of positions on issues that wind their way around the immaterial wedge issues that are NEVER going to be “fixed” by a President. No single President is going to fix the “abortion issue”, or trade policy, or immigration. However, if a candidate of either party can skirt those types of issues and keep people focused on those big tipping point issues, he or she will bring out voters from across the political landscape.

#848292 

<@lysol> is tubgirl a republican?
<jbroome> lysol: yeah, she believes in the trickle down theory

        (If you get that one, I’m very very sorry.)

#847598

<Amul Muzz> Why do I get the feeling that this is really a mob, just waiting for someone to say something they do not agree with?
<chrismjr> That’s the best description for the internet I’ve ever heard

#846801

<fugi> when mccain wins the election and invades iran, do we get to yell "Monopoly!" and put hotels across iraq, iran and afghanistan?

And more classic Bash stuff:

#849884

< FurnaceBoy> this is a waste of time
< FurnaceBoy> all he has to do is type what we told him
< Tonren> bluecake: When you run a command in a Linux terminal, it searches your path for the command.  type "echo $PATH" to see where Linux will look for commands you type.
< FurnaceBoy> stop trying to educate, Tonren. this is irc.
< FurnaceBoy> we yell at people

#847733 

l70uke: network connections says it cant find an IP address
dbbolton: open a web browser and type 192.168.1.1 in the address bar
dbbolton: what happens
l70uke: "please enter disk into drive a"
dbbolton: what the FUCK

About the Patchwork Nation project

Nearly 305 million people live in the United States, according to the US Census Bureau. Yet in recent elections it’s all been about fitting into two categories: red states that vote Republican and blue states that vote Democratic. But this red/blue breakdown of political opinion doesn’t explain what underpins the voters’ decisions.

That’s what this effort, funded by the Knight Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization based in Miami, explores in real time during the 2008 presidential campaign.

We’ve identified 11 places across the US that represent distinct types of voter communities. They are Monied ’Burbs, Minority Central, Evangelical Epicenters, Tractor Country, Campus and Careers, Immigration Nation, Industrial Metropolis, Boom Towns, Service Worker Centers, Emptying Nests, and Military Bastions. For example, Sioux Center, Iowa, typifies Tractor Country.

The project is headed by Dante Chinni and James G. Gimpel.   Dante Chinni is based in Washington, D.C. where he has been covering politics and the media for more than 10 years. He has worked as a reporter-researcher at Newsweek and a senior associate at the Project for Excellence in Journalism.  James G. Gimpel is a professor of government at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he has been on the faculty since January 1992. His recent research and teaching interests include American politics, political geography, voting and elections, state politics, US immigration policy, and public opinion.

They have taken the eleven "types" of places in the United States and selected individual towns and cities to act as proxy representatives for those voter communities.  The list below contains the types, the representative location, and a brief summary of each type of community.

• Boom Towns – Eagle, CO - Midsize cities and smaller towns with well-balanced economies of affluence, education, and professional employment; growing ethnic diversity, some retired elderly with high incomes.
• Military Bastions – Hopkinsville, KY - High levels of employment in military or related government employment; often adjacent to major military installations, private military contractors, or have a history of military-dependent economies; middle income, transient, younger populations, with some trade and service workers in the local economy.
• Campus and Careers – Ann Arbor, MI – High percentage of the population between 18-34, few retirees or elderly; includes university/college towns and locations with high employment in education and educational services; high levels of formal education; religious diversity, secularism.
• Minority Central – Baton Rouge, LA – Lower-income counties with large proportions of African-Americans and native Americans on Indian reservations; low population growth or steady population losses, high unemployment and poverty; low-end housing stock, including trailer parks; African-American locales are concentrated within the deep South.
• Emptying Nests – Clermont, FL – Middle-income, retirement age; and baby-boom populations; presence of evangelical and mainline Protestants, fewer Catholics, stable but not booming economies.
• Monied ‘Burbs – Los Alamos, NM – High-income counties, with high professional employment and formal education; high expenditures by consumers on new vehicles, luxury goods, property taxes, and charitable giving; midsize in terms of population and population density, primarily within metro areas; family age populations, low density; predominantly white, but with some Asian-American presence.
• Evangelical Epicenters – Nixa, MO – Briskly growing small and midsize towns with family age populations; middle income with some affluent and poor; low incidence of mainline Protestant and Catholic churchgoers, higher incidence of evangelical adherents, particularly in the South and border states; Mormons in the West; some minority presence, chiefly blacks (in the South) and Latinos (in the West).
• Service Worker Centers – Lincoln City, OR – Midsize cities and smaller towns with very high percentages employed in trade and service businesses but not manufacturing or agriculture; many new residents, growing Latino populations; more Catholics and fewer Evangelicals or mainline Protestants.
• Immigration Nation – El Mirage, AZ – High percentages of Latinos and Asians; immigrants living in midsize to larger cities; moderately high levels of unemployment; Roman Catholic with sprinkling of religious diversity; lower income with moderate to high percentage in poverty.
• Tractor Country – Sioux Center, IA – Predominantly white, smaller towns and more remote counties outside of metropolitan areas; low level of manufacturing employment, high levels of self-employment, employment in agriculture, as well as small-town retail and wholesale trade; Lutheran Reformed, and mainline Protestant adherents predominate in the upper Midwest.
• Industrial Metropolis – Philadelphia, PA – Older Northeastern and Midwestern cities once dependent on manufacturing; diverse populations, including significant Jewish populations; some high-end residents in established historically wealthy neighborhoods, mixed with lower income populations.

This technique takes things beyond the popular idea expressed in The Great Divide: Metro vs. Retro from back around the time of the 2004 presidential election.  Understanding WHY groups of people with similar backgrounds vote the way they do is going to be very important for any presidential candidate who wants to bring people back together on a national and regional level. 

Some of these community types may seem easy to ignore for some candidates.  There is always going to be the feeling that the "Evangelical Epicenters" and "Tractor Country", for example, are going to go Republican regardless of what each candidate says and does.  Blind acceptance of that kind of thinking played a large part in creating the divides that currently exist.

Following the rest of the election cycle through the Patchwork Nation site promises to be interesting.  The Christian Science Monitor has lined up bloggers from each of the representative communities to act as eyes and ears within their communities.   They have also created MessageBoards where you can register and discuss the issues with people from all over the country and the world. 

Another cool feature at the site is the ability to track candidates based on their appearances at each of the 11 types communities.  From there you can see which candidates are spreading out across different community types and which are limiting their appearances to onlya  few main areas.  You can also take the "How Do You Fit In?" survey to find out how well you fit in with others in your county.   My town, Philadelphia, happens to be the selected community used to represent the Industrial Metropolis community type and my survey results put me at 100% match with my community.

Maybe Blanca DeBree is right, and the Republican Party as we know it is dying.  There sure seems to be a lack of excitement on the Republican side this year.  Maybe its just fatigue from  Iraq – SubPrime – Abramoff – USAttorneyFirings – HalliburtonNoBid – KBRFuelOverchargin – DeLay – Armstrong Williams – PlameGate and other Republican scandals.  When you look at the numbers from yesterday in graph form you can really see the sea change we are experiencing this year.

I made these graphs based on the primary election results as reported by NPR at http://www.npr.org/election2008 (using Open Office Spreadsheet – Yay for Free Software!)

The first thing to look at is the voter turn out by party in the four states that held primaries yesterday. 

Yesterday 5,326,405 Democratic primary voters turned out while the Republicans only turned out 2,248,679 voters for their primaries.  The fact that the Democratic primaries drew over twice as many voters has got to mean something when November gets here.

Ohio

The actual numbers for Ohio are:

• Clinton – 1,207,806
• Obama – 979,025
• McCain – 636,256
• Huckabee – 325,581

A quick glance shows that if you take ALL of McCain’s votes and ALL of Huckabee’s votes combined you fall short of Obama’s total…. and Obama came in second place!  Ohio was the state that put Bush over the top in the 2004 general election.  It sure looks to me like many people there have changed their minds about Republican rule being good for the citizens of Ohio.

 Rhode Island

Rhode Island Results by candidate:

• Clinton – 106,471
• Obama – 73,609
• McCain – 17,342
• Huckabee – 5,766

Its even more striking in Rhode Island.  The two Republican candidates combined brought out less than a third of the voters that second place Obama took and Hillary Clinton drew more than four times the voters of both Republicans. 

Texas 

As everyone expected, Texas as a Republican stronghold, turned out the most Republican voters as a percentage of the primary turn out.

Texas Results:

• Clinton – 1,453,139
• Obama – 1,354,672
• McCain – 707,622
• Huckabee – 521,951

Even in Texas, both Democratic candidates – individually – attracted more voters than both McCain and Huckabee combined.

Vermont

The Vermont results:

• Obama – 91,829
• Clinton - 59,854
• McCain – 28,554
• Huckabee – 5,607

This was Obama’s only win yesterday, but looking at Clinton’s second place position at 59,854 is almost twice McCain and Huckabee combined.

Summary

I was trying to wrap up this post with the Vermont data but nothing came to mind.  So to kill time I decided to make one more graph.  The following graph is based on all the primary voters from the 29 states that have held their primaries so far. 

Total votes by the top four candidates as as of March 4th, 2008.

• Clinton – 13,084,696
• Obama – 12,838,892
• McCain – 7,286,234
• Huckabee – 3,866,460

Looking at the results from Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Ohio, Maryland, Illinois, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Washington, Wisconsin, District of Columbia, Virginia, Louisiana, Arizona, California, Utah, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Florida, South Carolina, Michigan, and New Hampshire we can see that the Republicans who are interested in having a say in the selection of a candidate for the general election barely exist.

Christine, who commented on the original thread

"Ideas DO matter. Also CONTEXT matters! My question is, how do you force a culture who is trained to think in black and white, rich and poor, good and bad to look beyond shallow attributes of a candidate. I get seriously tired of how the media exploits the minor, shallow details to sway popular opinion and leaves the devil’s dirty details until it is too late… but what is the remedy to this???????!!??? Can you make a country nursed on Saturday morning cartoons, barbie dolls, spiderman and cocoa puffs give a rat’s ass about the details… the ideas? Am I just being cynical today? perhaps. Seriously… how do you make people truly listen and care???"

She later added: 

"Is it possible, as a politician, to be clear and comprehensible? Don’t politicians take a vow of vagueness? Marketing and manufacturing skin deep reactions and ideas seems to be where it is at."

Alan,  who commented only over on BC said:
"dismantling of the education system + dismantling of the media = pliable electorate

therefore, in terms of who ends up winning and where they take the country and its government, marketing and image matter more than Ideas."

Will commented on the post as well with:

"Seriously though, even if a speech like this speaks to us as individuals and even if we agree with the premises in it, the politics of implementing grand plans almost always prevents that implementation.  I know I am more cynical than many about our government’s ability to do even 10% of what really should be done, but even a President with the best of intentions is prevented from putting most of their ideas into practice."

I can’t argue with any of these statements since they are all valid.  However, I can say with conviction, that we, the American people, have the power in our hands to change these things.  Christine and Alan both point to cultural problems inherent in getting citizens to pay attention to anything beyond the length of a sound bite.  Almost anyone watching CNN or Fox News would recognize this problem and its impact on the news media.

I think this is simply laziness on the part of the news media and complacence on the part of the viewing audience.  Major news sources in the US are profit driven.  If people will accept a five minute discussion of Barack Obama’s choice to wear or not wear an American flag lapel pin or five minutes on the cost of John Edward’s haircut in lieu of five minutes dedicated to their positions on a bill under consideration in the Senate then that is what the news channel will provide. 

It is cheaper and easier and safer to talk about emotional issues that do not have a solid right or wrong answer than it is to discuss a complex piece of legislation where there is honest to goodness pros and cons associated with the bill’s passage.

Recent years have shown that if presented well, people will sit and watch hour and a half long documentaries on  on climate science, US gun laws, fundamentalist Christian summer camps, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Trade Policy and Globalization, Arab Language Journalism, and the nitty gritty of War in Iraq.  People are open to learning about the world in depth when given the opportunity. 

Historically, journalism has been a mix of telling consumers what they need to hear at least as often as what they want to hear.  It was this role that led to the founders including freedom for the press in the First Amendment.  There are still press agencies that do a decent job at presenting meaningful news coverage with context that makes the information they provide both meaningful and useful.  There are lots of people who are grateful enough to cough up cash when their local NPR radio station runs a pledge drive.  Mother Jones, The Nation, The Independent Media Center and other news sources online often provide coverage that is well researched and in-depth enough that after ten minutes reading you are prepared to evaluate a candidate’s positions or at least ask intelligent questions about those positions.

Will’s point about elected officials experiencing a great deal of trouble getting their policies implemented is also very valid.  That was well illustrated by the speech I used in I.M. 1  That speech by Carter and the subsequent policies introduced did have an effect.  We have never seen anything in the US like the energy crisis we experienced during those years.  Carter was a Washington D.C. outsider and had trouble getting all of his ideas put into law.  Eventually the oil embargoes ended and the price of petroleum dropped and people went back to thinking unlimited energy was forever.  If Carter’s policies had been implemented, the US would be a stronger, cleaner, and wealthier nation today.

This implementation problem is linked to the first problem.  Prior to now, its been hard to keep on top of whats happening in the Legislative branch of the US government.  It was doubly challenging to follow "process issues" and the less sexy bills that don’t make the news papers or TV news.  And there are a lot of these "below the radar" activities happening whenever Congress is in session. 

Presidents do not make laws.  They can suggest and they can veto, but it takes the Legislative folks to get things done.  This basic fifth grade Civics lesson has been less obvious under the current administration. Bush’s signing statements, verbal attacks on legislators who question his policies, and funding requests for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made the executive branch appear very powerful.   It takes the leadership of a president working hand in hand with Congress to get anything accomplished.  With site’s like the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation’ joint project, OpenCongress.org it is now easier than ever before to find out if your Senators and House members are voting for or against policies that matter to you.  We can expect to see more transparency through the work of The Open House Project.

There is plenty of blame to go around for how we allowed our government to get into it’s current disreputable state but we have the tools we need to fix it.  Attention span is always going to be an issue because its always easier to give your free time over to entertainment instead of policy information, but if enough people make it very clear to their legislators and keep in contact with their offices, we can make progress towards a better, more responsive, federal governement.

There was was a surprising amount of self-congratulatory bullshit considering how very little there is for him to take pride in at this point.  Even his claim of success for educational reforms he championed early in his tenure failed to acknowledge many realities. 

Bush noted that African-American and Hispanic students posted all-time high scores. What he did not say is that the "achievement gap" between whites and minorities remains very large. For Hispanics in particular, that gap has not decreased during the period covered by No Child Left Behind initiatives. 

I’m not surprised that he failed to mention the many state and regional education programs that are working around the NCLB system.

The part of his speech that realy made me go digging for a transcipt while picking my chin up off the floor was the section on "earmarks". 

President Bush said:

"Next, there’s the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour, when not even C-SPAN is watching.

In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of the earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and the Senate; they’re dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk.

You didn’t vote them into law. I didn’t sign them into law. Yet they are treated as if they have the force of law.

The time has come to end this practice.

So let us work together to reform the budget process, expose every earmark to the light of day and to a vote in Congress, and cut the number and cost of earmarks at least in half by the end of this session."

Ok,  this all sounds good in theory but it does a huge disservice to the work already being done by the Democratic leadership, particularly the House leadership.  Bush is correct that earmarks have gotten out of hand, but asking the Democratic controlled Congress to do what they are already doing is a bit disingenuous and is aimed to make Bush specifically look good if they succeed and Republicans in general look good if they fail.

Lets look at another quote: 

"The status quo has permitted some members of Congress, with no transparency and accountability, to provide favors to special friends through earmarked special projects — putting special interests ahead of the public interest. The American people deserve to know who is sponsoring earmarks to begin to stop the cases of flagrant abuse of earmarks."   (Source: Democratic party materials used by press to cover the early reforms enacted when the Democratic majority took the reins in January 2007 as reported by Fox News)

In the early days of the current Congress, Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi helped to push through reforms to:

• Cut earmarks in half,
• Force representatives to put their names on earmarks
• Force representatives to defend the purpose of the earmark
• Force the representative to declare that they and their spouses have no financial stake project receiving the earmark. 

These reforms were not pulled out of thin air.  They specifically chosen to address abuses that became rampant under the twelve years of Republican party Congressional leadership.  Keep in mind that it was earmarks like these that landed both Abramoff and California Congressman Randy Cunningham in jail. Jack Abramoff, indicted super-lobbyist and close associate with former House Whip Tom Delay, called  the Appropriations Committee under Republican Chair Lewis a "favor factory."  He was not joking.  Earmarks really took off under Republican Chair Lewis.  

This was true of  Congress as a whole under Republican rule. By 2004 earmarks had climbed to 14,211, worth $52.69 billion dollars after ten years of Republicans in charge. 

The Washington Post produced this graphic to make it perfectly clear:

Two years after the "Contract With America" hoopla all memory of Republican fiscal responsibility went out the window.  From that 1996 low, special earmarks increased in both number and value under the Republican led Congress under both Clinton and G.W. Bush.  The "Bridge to Nowhere" and more recently the "Railroad to Nowhere" are just the most famous of these Republican abuses of the system.  This system of corruption and money for special projects, often projects favored by campaign donors, was so much a part of the way Republicans ran Congress that it became a non-issue for the House Republican leadership. 

Contempt for the minority party and for the American people is best summed up by Rep. Don Young’s (R-Alaska) response to a reporter who approached him near the House Floor to ask him about an earmark giving money that would help a  Florida real estate investor and a Young campaign contributor. 

Mr. Young answered the reporter with an obscene gesture.

Two organization allow citizens to track earmarks and hold their representives accountable.  Taxpayers for Common Sense is a congressional watchdog group that creates a database for all earmarks as soon as bill is introduced. The group then analyzes the information, paying particular attention to signs of earmark abuse.  

Sunlight Foundation has a website with some nifty interactive graphs that help visitors zero in on earmarks and track them back to their source.

Ms. Ryan Alexander, President of Taxpayers for Common Sense issued a statement yesterday saying (emphasis is mine):

“By not including this year’s spending bills, the President is passing the buck on reigning in earmarks. As a lame duck, it’s unlikely that the President will even see any of the spending bills that he wants to fix before he leaves the Oval Office. So, the promise to veto FY09 spending bills that don’t cut earmarks in half from FY08 levels becomes little more than an empty threat because Congress can just run out the clock on him. More importantly, by not including the 2008 spending bills, the Executive Order gives Congress months to finagle their way around these changes.”

“The fact is we have made progress on reforming earmarks. Projects are down and the system is more transparent that it has ever been. Rather than leave the decision to future administrations, the President needs to tell taxpayers the next concrete steps this administration will take to build on the changes made this year and further restrict earmarks this year and in the future.”

I hope Bush gets what he asked for in terms of spending reforms but I also hope he admits to himself, deep down inside, that his State of the Union address, at least in part, is as honest as a downloaded term paper.

At Issue: US states must make at least 15% of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal, by the year 2020.

FIFTEEN Friggin’ percent people!

If we assumed that every state was starting at 0% now (which would be a faulty assumption), it’s only 15 PERCENT in thirteen years.

read more

For a majority of likely voters, meaningless bullshit will be the most important factor in deciding who they will vote for in 2008.

This year, Congress passed and Bush signed into law the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. This law was introduced by Harry Reid and cosponsored by a veritable Who’s Who of the Senate, including Trent Lott.  The law includes a change that will affect Congress members post-Office employment opportunities.

Section 531 says…
`(A) SENATORS- Any person who is a Senator and who, within 2 years after that person leaves office, knowingly makes, with the intent to influence, any communication to or appearance before any Member, officer, or employee of either House of Congress or any employee of any other legislative office of the Congress, on behalf of any other person (except the United States) in connection with any matter on which such former Senator seeks action by a Member, officer, or employee of either House of Congress, in his or her official capacity, shall be punished as provided in section 216 of this title.

House members have a similar waiting period of one year in the new bill.  Interestingly, I can’t find section 216 with the penalties for breaking this law.

Section 215 says… 
Except as otherwise provided in sections 203, 204, 206, 211, 212, and 213, the amendments made by this title shall apply with respect to registrations under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 having an effective date of January 1, 2008, or later and with respect to quarterly reports under that Act covering calendar quarters beginning on or after January 1, 2008.

Knowing this law takes effect on January first, does anyone have any doubts as to why Sen. Trent Lott, intends to resign by the end of the year?  Under that is in effect until December 31st, Lott will only need to wait one year before lobbying his former colleagues.

Edit:  With the current news about his resignation there have been plenty of updates to the {en:Trent Lott} Wikipedia page.

From WHAT HAPPENED – Inside the Bush White House and What’s Wrong with Washington:

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the President himself.

 PublicAffairsbooks.com has this to say about the upcoming book:

With unprecedented candor, one of George W. Bush’s closest aides takes readers behind the scenes of the Bush presidency, and what exactly happened to take it off course

---

Scott McClellan was one of a few Bush loyalists from Texas who became part of his inner circle of trusted advisers, and remained so during one of the most challenging and contentious periods of recent history. Drawn to Bush by his commitment to compassionate conservatism and strong bipartisan leadership, McClellan served the president for more than seven years, and witnessed day-to-day exactly how the presidency veered off course.

In this refreshingly clear-eyed book, written with no agenda other than to record his experiences and insights for the benefit of history, McClellan provides unique perspective on what happened and why it happened the way it did, including the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, Washington’s bitter partisanship, and two hotly contested presidential campaigns. He gives readers a candid look into who George W. Bush is and what he believes, and into the personalities, strengths, and liabilities of his top aides. Finally, McClellan looks to the future, exploring the lessons this presidency offers the American people as we prepare to elect a new leader.

Scott McClellan served as White House press secretary from 2003 to 2006. before that he served as the principal deputy White House press secretary and as traveling press secretary for the bush-Cheney 2000 campaign. Earlier in his career, Mr. McClellan served as deputy communications director in the Texas governor’s office and campaign manager for three successful statewide campaigns. He is now a senior adviser to a global technology firm and communications strategist. Born in Austin, Texas, he now lives near Washington, D.C.

Media Matters – Ignoring own history of smearing Gore, Matthews claimed "Gore got himself in those problem areas" and repeated smears:

On the November 19 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, New Republic senior editor Michael Crowley asserted that Democrats "believe, fundamentally, process is the reason that [former Vice President Al] Gore and [Sen. John] Kerry [D-MA] lost in 2000 and 2004, that they got slimed. There was the Swift Boats smear that the press turned on Gore in 2000." In response, host Chris Matthews asserted that "there’s a big difference between what happened to Al Gore and what happened to Bob — John Kerry." After stating that Kerry "got hit unfairly by the Swift Boat, attacking his service to his country," Matthews claimed that Gore brought his trouble upon himself, saying: "Al Gore, he’s the one who said he created the Internet. He’s the one who put out the word that he was the subject or the role model for Love Story, that he pointed the country’s attention to Love Canal. He stuck himself into that story." Matthews concluded: "Gore got himself in those problem areas by vanity and showing off and trying to make himself cool." Matthews’ comments echoed several old smears and falsehoods characterizing Gore as a "liar" or "exaggerator" that were spread by him and many others in the media during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Contrary to Matthews’ characterization, Gore did not say he "created the Internet," nor did he claim, as Matthews has previously asserted, that he "invented the Internet." As Media Matters for America has documented, during the March 9, 1999, interview on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, that gave rise to the myth, Gore said: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Following that interview, numerous media outlets reported that Gore had asserted that he had "invented the Internet" — a falsehood they continue to cite to this day. Matthews himself repeatedly mentioned this myth during his coverage of the 2000 presidential election. As Media Matters noted, in a September 22, 2000, article, the Los Angeles Times reported: "Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and a Republican who is no friend of the Gore campaign, said earlier this month, ‘Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.’ "

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert bid his colleagues farewell in a final speech Thursday, expressing worry about the "breakdown of civility" in politics.

Hastert, 65, became the longest-serving Republican speaker of the House in history after taking the post in January 1999. The Illinois lawmaker stepped down as the top House Republican leader after Democrats won a majority in the 2006 midterm elections, ending 12 years of GOP control.

During his farewell address, the former high school history teacher and wrestling coach offered one bit of analysis about his tenure in Congress. "I continue to worry about the breakdown of civility in our political discourse," Hastert said. "I tried my best, but I wish I had been more successful."

 

Although he did not announce the date of his House departure, an aide to Hastert says the former speaker will retire by the end of the year.

 

Hastert, who forged a reputation for his ability to form compromises, said lawmakers "have a responsibility to be civil, open-minded and fair — to listen to one another and work in good faith to find solutions to the challenges facing our nation."

 

Under former Democratic President Bill Clinton, {en:Dennis Hastert} said the two were "able to find common ground" despite differences on some issues.

Read the rest….

The U.S. populace, which has participated in every national election since 1789, said that while the decision to abandon next year’s race was difficult, recent events, such as disappointing victories by both Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani in regional straw polls, left them with no real choice.

I love The Onion.