Last Night's Primary Results In Arizona-- Say Bye-By To Quayle's Son

Ben Quayle, last night's biggest loser

“If you know Middle Easterners, a lot of them, they look Mexican or they look, you know, like a lot of people in South America: dark skin, dark hair, brown eyes. And they mix. They mix in. And those people, their only, their only goal in life is to, to cause harm to the United States. So why do we want them here, either legally or illegally?...They have found prayer rugs. They have found copies of the Koran. So that tells you this is not just poor illegals that are trying to come to this country and find work. It's bigger than that."

-Tea Party Republican AZ-03 nominee Gabriela Saucedo Mercer

Arizona had some late primaries yesterday. The most anticipated race was between very wealthy right-wing crackpot Wil Cardon (who spent $6,699,078 on the primary, $6,185,768 from his personal bank account) and right-wing crackpot Jeff Flake (biggest donor this year was Club For Growth- $598,334) to see who would go up against former Bush Surgeon General Richard Carmona (D) for Jon Kyl's open Senate seat. As expected, Flake, a Mormon from Snowflake, won-- but he won way bigger than most people anticipated, just crushing Cardon, 69-21%. Flake had to spend $4,334,556 battling off the annoying Cardon and is left with $1,705,361 (as of August 8). Carmona has $1,754,794 on hand. And neo-Nazi Russell Pierce's political comback was thwarted when he lost the race for a state senate seat (25th district) to Bob Worsley, 56-44%. Hopefully, we won't be hearing from him again.

The House races worth mentioning:

AZ-01- pitted DCCC corporate hack Ann Kirkpatrick against progressive champion Wenona Benally Baldenegro. Undermined by the DCCC and the local Democratic Party, Baldenegro was grievously outspent by Kirkpatrick $626,950 to $101,038. Baldenegro managed to still get 36% of the vote.

AZ-02- ConservaDem Ron Barber, who was elected to full the remainder of Gabby Giffords term a few weeks ago, was given the Democratic nomination, despite having voted with the Republicans to gut a full package of environmental laws... and Eric Holder. He beat state Rep. Matt Heinz, 82-18%, which is what polls suggested. After the votes were counted last night Heinz had a great attitude going forward: “Tonight does not mark the end of my lifelong commitment to public service. I will find ways to continue to stay active in Tucson, and we will return for the 2014 congressional race. We must continue to laying the ground work.”

AZ-03- Corporate interests put up a couple of shills to run against Raúl Grijalva. One, Amanda Aguirre had her campaign directed by a former McCain dirty tricks operative. Raúl beat them both, with two-thirds of the vote. He'll now go up against racist sociopath Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, quoted at the top of this post. When shown the quote Raúl seemed taken aback: "This is reckless hate speech, and I call on everyone who has endorsed Gabriela Mercer to withdraw their support immediately. This is not a he-said/she-said question of interpretation. Her comments are reprehensible and deserve condemnation from every quarter. Anyone who continues to support her campaign should be asked whether they want someone with her views in Congress." Fellow over-the-top racists Jan Brewer and Secretary of State Ken Bennett are sticking with their whack-a-doodle candidate... of course.

AZ-05- In the GOP primary, mainstream conservative, Matt Salmon, beat the far right kook, Kirk Adams, who Sarah Palin has been howling about all week-- 54-46%.

AZ-06- In the incumbent vs incumbent contest pitting Boehner/Cantor kiss ass Ben Quayle against teabagger David Schweikert, the Establishment lost out to the grassroots freak as pathetic ex-pornographer Quayle saw his pretensions of a political career end, 53-47%. Quayle spent $1,537,407 and Schweikert spent $1,289,381. Maybe it was because he was one of the drunk congressmen swimming naked in Lake Tiberias but he had endorsements from almost every GOP hack imaginable-- both McCain and Kyl, Huckabee and cloddish freshmen Sean Duffy (a former soap opera star) and Tim Giffin, a Rove protégé.

AZ-09- In this new blue-leaning district three Democrats faced off, New Dem Andrei Cherny and two progressive state senators, Kyrsten Sinema and David Schapira. Progressives generally supported Schapira but Sinema had a big push from EMILY's List (which put $100,507 into the race) and the Victory Fund. Sinema spent $592,909. Cherny spent $572,889 and Schapira spent $223,826. Each of the progressive candidates topped Cherny, despite the help he got from Bill Clinton. In the end it was Sinema- 42%, Schapira- 31% and Cherny- 27%.

There was also a runoff for the Oklahoma Blue Dog seat (OK-02), which pitted a right-wing Blue Dog, Rob Wallace, against a crazed religious fanatic, Wayne Herriman. Rob Wallace won, 25,073 (57%) to 18,901 (43%) and is likely to be a contender for Dan Boren's record as the most reactionary, pro-GOP Democrat in the House. Let's see how fast "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel puts him on Red-to-Blue.

UPDATE: So, Can Carmona Win The Arizona Senate Seat?

The DSCC sure says they think so. They were out this morning with a memo outlining exactly why:

Now Congressman Flake faces a much stronger foe – a decorated Special Forces combat veteran who was homeless as a child, went to college and medical school on the GI Bill, and became a trauma surgeon, a deputy sheriff and eventually the Surgeon General of the United States. The most recent public poll showed that the race is tied at 38 percent each.

The primary forced Congressman Flake to spend heavily and exposed his long history as a lobbyist turned career politician.

• Carmona now leads Flake in the money race. Flake spent heavily in the primary and has lost what was once a significant cash advantage. Now Carmona holds a slight cash advantage over Flake-- $1.75 million to $1.71 million.

• Flake was badly damaged by Wil Cardon’s personal attacks. Cardon spent over $9 million in the primary, the majority of which was spent on TV ads attacking Jeff Flake for being an insider and career politician. Polls show the attacks worked and drove up Flake’s negatives significantly. While a PPP survey from May showed Flake with a net favorable rating of +6 (33-27), a July PPP survey showed him with a negative net favorable rating of -7 (30-37). The July survey also showed that despite Carmona’s low name ID, the general election contest was tied at 38.

• To win the primary, Flake staked out policy positions far out of the mainstream. Flake’s foolish calls to repeal the 17th amendment and eliminate the Department of Education will be liabilities in the general election. These positions underscore the extreme nature of Jeff Flake’s views which will turn off independent voters.

Moving forward, this election will be about three key issues-– seniors, women, and veterans-– and the choice could not be any clearer.

• Congressman Flake’s positions on Medicare and Social Security will hurt him with seniors. Flake’s anti-Medicare and anti-Social Security views are well documented. Carmona’s internal polling shows that voters overwhelmingly oppose a candidate who “supported privatizing Medicare” by a large margin-– 50-29. The Republican attacks on Medicare and the looming threat they pose are only amplified with Paul Ryan on the ticket. In 2008, exit polling showed voters over the age of 50 made up 45% of the electorate.

• Congressman Flake has an extreme, anti-woman record that will surprise people. Jeff Flake wants to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, allow employers to deny women contraception coverage from their healthcare plans, and opposes a pay equity law that helps ensure employers pay women the same as men for equal work. When voters learn of Flake’s extreme record 49% of voters are “much less” likely to support him.

• Congressman Flake has repeatedly voted against veterans benefits even while America was fighting two wars. Flake voted for budgets that cut billions from health, education and job training for veterans-- and even voted against bonuses for American soldiers. He even voted against the new post-9/11 GI Bill and opposed job training for veterans. A majority of voters polled (52%) say they are “much less” likely to support Flake once they learn he consistently voted to cut veterans’ benefits.

These are devastating vulnerabilities for any candidate. But Congressman Flake does not face any Democratic candidate; he faces an American hero.

Richard Carmona’s life story sets up an extremely favorable matchup with a career politician and former lobbyist like Congressman Flake. With polling already showing the race tied, the dynamics of this toss-up race clearly favor Rich Carmona heading into the general election.

Last Set Of Congressional Primaries-- Next Tuesday In Arizona

In less than a week Arizonans will go to the polls and the parties will pick their candidates for the general election. The most crucial primary is in AZ-03, where Big Business is running a lifelong Republican-- a fake Democrat-- in the hope of defeating Raúl Grijalva. Blue America is supporting Raúl and we have an ActBlue page dedicated to helping him win reelection-- first in next Tuesday's primary and then in the November general election.

There are three other races we're watching closely. In AZ-01, corporate shill Ann Kirkpatrick, who was defeated as part of the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010, is running for her old seat as is progressive champion Wenona Baldenegro. When Kirkpatrick first ran in 2008 for the sprawling open seat that takes up most of the state she took 56%-- 155,791 votes (as opposed to 109,924 for her GOP opponent). She won 6 of the district's 8 counties with the biggest, Yavapai, being a virtual tie-- 45,014 for her and 45,487 for her opponent). Last cycle, her confusing voting record-- she stuck with the Republicans whenever it mattered most-- depressed Democratic turnout and the results were astonishing. Paul Gosar won even more GOP votes than the previous GOP candidate-- 112,816 but over 50,000 of Kirkpatrick's initial supporters evaporated. She only managed to get 99,233 votes, a pathetic result of a pathetic 2 years in Congress. She only won 3 counties of the 8-- and was trounced by Gosar 47,449- 27,179 in Yavapai. The Democratic activists and the base hate her. The DCCC, of course, is pushing Kirkpatrick and she's raised $1,439,151. So far Kirkpatrick has spent $626,950 in the primary. Baldenegro has raised just under $100,000. It's another David vs Goliath race-- with the DCCC and shady corporate interests backing Goliath... as usual.

And then there's the complicated, messy primary in the new 9th CD, pitting 3 people who I know and like, moderate Democrat Andrei Cherny, the DC Establishment face (an Arizona ex-state Democratic Party chair and a former Clinton White House aide; former state Senator Kyrsten Sinema, usually considered to have the best shot (but the choice of untrustworthy Beltway organizations like EMILY's List and the Victory Fund); and progressive champion and state Senate Minority Leader David Schapira, who's been endorsed by DFA, Raúl Grijalva and, oddly, failed conservative ex-Congressman Harry Mitchell.

And then there's the race in the new AZ-02, basically a slightly bluer version of Gabby Gifford's old 8th district seat. Up top you can watch the TV forum with ConservaDem Ron Barber and Blue America-endorsed Matt Heinz. It was as close as Barber would get to a debate. But if you watch closely, aside from seeing him lose his shit when he's confronted about backing a Tea Party bill to gut a package of crucial environmental laws (his first substantive vote in Congress), you see how crafty he is about never answering any questions in a way that gives away how he really stands on anything. The man is a repulsive weasel-- perfect for Steve Israel and Joe Crowley, which explains why they're backing him so heavily. Even after being asked twice if he'd back legislation to restrict high capacity gun magazines, like the one used to wound both Gabby Giffords and himself, he showed his true cowardly, weasely nature by repeatedly ducking the question. He says we "need to talk to law enforcement to find out what they believe are the right answers to these problems and then with their advice and the advice of our community move forward and take whatever action is appropriate." But law enforcement has been begging Congress for years to get assault weapons and high capacity magazines off the streets. Barber is a not just a coward; he's a liar. And then he went on obfuscating with the typical NRA post-tragedy line: "But this is not the time in the emotion of these three shootings, of the two most recent shootings, to engage in this kind of political debate. I think we have to respect the people who were shot and were killed and we have to have a longer and more serious discussion with the people who know about this issue in depth and law enforcement is one of those groups and then we can get to some answers that are important." Hard to imagine anyone who considers themselves a Democrat could vote for this walking pile of turd.

Coverage in the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson's biggest newspaper, didn't refer to Barber as a walking pile of turd... but it would be difficult to read their account without walking away with that impression. They emphasized Matt Heinz's more germane response to the same question:

Mental-health services need to be beefed up, but it's also time to have a serious dialogue about high-capacity magazines, said Heinz, a Tucson doctor and state representative. This discussion would be a way to honor the memories of the victims of the mass shootings.

"I'm not saying there needs necessarily to be a ban, but that should be on the table," said Heinz, pointing out that many of the mass shooters have used high-capacity magazines.

Heinz acknowledged it's impossible to stop all disturbed people from going on rampages, but he argued that having fewer bullets may reduce the number of people killed. Having fewer bullets in each magazine would have lessened the bloodshed in the Tucson shooting, he said.

"If he had to stop for five or 10 seconds and fumble around, and reload, and get tackled at that point, 20 fewer bullets would have left his gun," Heinz said.

Heinz, who's found voters in the district most concerned about Barber's support for GOP plans to gut environmental legislation explained the differences between the two to his supporters and the media right after the forum ended.

“My opponent wrongfully alleges that I did not read the Arizona Desert Wilderness Act of 1990. He also erroneously claims that the Act clearly includes an exemption for border patrol and border security operations.

“Since casting his vote for H.R. 2578, a bill that included provisions to waive conservation and environmental protections, it is clear that my opponent continues to misunderstands what he voted to waive. I encourage my opponent and his staff to read Title III, section 301, clause (g) of Mo Udall’s Act. The Act does not allow for a blanket exemption, otherwise it would not have been included in the Tea Party backed bill that he voted for.

“I agree with Barber’s statement: ‘when you go into a body like the Congress, you don’t get to vote maybe. You get to vote yes or no.' He voted no on an amendment that would have struck the 100 mile exemption from the bill, but yet he still calls 100 miles excessive. He says he advocates for a reduction of the exemption to 25 miles, but he failed to introduce an amendment that reflected his supposed opposition.

“My opponent’s inexperience is disconcerting. An experienced legislator knows how to stand up for Arizona’s beautiful Sonora Desert while enhancing border security. Interagency cooperation must be supported, not ignored. Top managers for border security and land management agencies testified interagency cooperation works and that exemption from environmental regulations does not enhance border security.

“It has been my opponent’s political strategy to ignore the primary election so he can avoid public accountability. It is a shame that this candidate forum occurred late in the cycle because so many concerns and questions continue to go unanswered. If my opponent is selected to run in the general election, I hope he can better defend his record.”

Andrei Cherny And The Steve Jobs Act

I'm guessing most people who know who Andrei Cherny is know him as an author (The Next Deal: The Future of Public Life in the Information Age), or as the youngest ever White House speech writer or, more recently, as a prolific writer for a wide range of publications from the Washington Post and NY Times to the Huffington Post and The Atlantic. Almost incongruously, for the past 9 months he also been the chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party. And now this former Arizona Assistant Attorney General is rumored to be about to announce his candidacy for a new blue-leaning congressional seat in Phoenix.

This week, Eric Cantor, ran like a mangy cur with his tail between his legs when he realized his speech at the University of Pennsylvania was open to the public. That didn't keep his undelivered speech on income disparity from being widely panned. Cantor then announced he is about to unveil what he's calling "The Steve Jobs Act," coincidentally the exact name of the widely acclaimed article on jobs creation by Andrei last week: The Steve Jobs Act: Why It's Time to Invest in Entrepreneurs. Cantor's proposal, little more than a shrewdly crafted partisan hit piece to attack President Obama, doesn't stack up well to Andrei's serious look at how to move forward now that the Republican Party has killed the American Jobs Act.

Americans struggling to put food on the table and pay the mortgage are not looking for grand notions; they need the kind of immediate relief Obama's proposals would provide. However, an America struggling to find its way in a bewildering, humbling world needs something more-- a sense of larger purpose and direction.

The eulogies and encomiums delivered to Apple founder Steve Jobs seemed to capture some of this longing. They were celebrations of greatness and vision in a middling, small moment. At the end of a decade that saw Iraq, Katrina, and Lehman Brothers become watchwords of American weakness, they were paeans to someone who believed, with Thomas Paine, that we had it "in our power to begin the world over again." But, perhaps most of all, in a floundering economy, they spoke to a sense that it is entrepreneurs and innovators-- and not merely infrastructure spending and payroll tax cuts-- that are needed to rebuild the engine of economic growth.

The facts back up this assumption. Research from the Kauffman Foundation has demonstrated that new and young companies, those under the age of five, are responsible for all net job creation over the past generation. It is the entrepreneurs who start these businesses-- and not the business tycoons courted by both parties-- that are the true "job creators." But while Republicans focus on tax cuts and regulatory relief for large corporations and Democrats look to keep teachers and police officers in their jobs, it is these entrepreneurs-- the next generation's Steve Jobses-- who are being overlooked.

This has real consequences. At the heart of our jobs crisis is an ongoing entrepreneurial recession. Over the past three years, the number of new business being started has fallen by a quarter. The number of new companies with employees in 2009 was at its lowest level since 1992. Since the year 2000, the number of jobs created by startups has been sliding consistently to the point that in 2010 there were about half the number of jobs created by these new companies as there were a decade earlier.

While no set of government programs can create the revolutionary zeal needed to launch and lead a company such as Apple, we do need a set of policies to encourage and aid innovators as they turn their ideas into new, high-growth, job-creating companies -- the "Steve Jobs Act." In a Washington that worked, these ideas would be embraced by both parties. Such a measure would include elements from President Obama's plan such as aid to small businesses and reform of the unemployment insurance system to allow for more flexibility for potential entrepreneurs. And it would build on the emerging bipartisan consensus that certain regulations such as the accounting requirements in the Sarbanes-Oxley reforms have a disproportionate impact on young firms ill-equipped to handle the onerous burdens.

Yet the "Steve Jobs Act" would go much further. It would make healthcare and retirement benefits more universal, personalized, affordable and portable so that entrepreneurs have a greater ability to strike out on their own. With the knowledge that companies such as Nike, Intel, FedEx, and, yes, Apple Computers all started out with the benefit of government loans, it would create a National Innovation Bank to invest in companies with a potentially high rate of return in job creation. It would open the doors of legal immigration to hard-charging, determined new Americans like those who came through Ellis Island a century ago and like the Syrian immigrant who was Steve Jobs' biological father. And it would make sure our public schools put a greater emphasis not only on science and mathematics, but on the creative problem solving skills that are at the heart of the entrepreneurial drive.

As much as anything else, the "Steve Jobs Act" would give Americans a sense of direction about our economy. Despite the rhetoric out of Washington, America's economic future lies neither in competing with off-shore tax havens over the lowest corporate tax rates nor with authoritarian dictatorships such as China to produce high-speed bullet trains. It lies in doubling down on what has historically made America an exceptional economy: an entrepreneurial culture, a willingness to dare greatly, an openness to new ideas, the ability to tap talent that other countries' castes would overlook. If we want to create jobs and recreate a strong American economy, this is where we should focus our energies. It might not mean an iPod in every pot, but it would help innovators get their tinkers out of their garages and into our lives.

Will Obama Ever Figure Out That Americans Want Him To Be More Like FDR And Less Like George W Bush?

I'm hearing from more and more candidates lately who are telling me that they want to make sure voters know that, unlike Barack Obama, they're from the New Deal, progressive end of the Democratic Party. People thought Nick Ruiz, the central Florida candidate-- an ex-Green running as a Democrat against deranged teabagger Sandy Adams-- was radical when he was one of the first to take this tack. Now even more establishment Democrats are making it clear that they may wish Obama well and they may think he's a better choice than Romney or Perry but his corporatist policies are not what's behind their own campaigns. And yesterday I heard something similar from an unlikely source, the chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party, Andrei Cherny!

Cherny a former White House speech writer, author of The Next Deal: The Future of Public Life in the Information Age and a former Arizona Assistant Attorney General, sent me an OpEd he wrote for the Washington Post last week, FDR's Lessons For Obama. It's a lesson Obama apparently doesn't want to hear-- and that the corporatist hacks around him are warning him against-- but it's a message of hope.

It has become a universally acknowledged truth in coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign, one repeated with increased fervor with each dismal jobs report, that no president has won reelection with an unemployment rate above 7.2 percent. But always there is the caveat: .?.?. since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.

In the aftermath of Thursday night’s presidential address on jobs, that caveat should be more than an afterthought. FDR’s victory three-quarters of a century ago has important parallels to the situation in which President Obama finds himself and provides vital lessons if he is to be similarly successful.

While Roosevelt had been elected in 1932 during a period of economic collapse, four years later the economy was still struggling. Unemployment in 1936 was 16.6 percent. The moment of national unity that marked Roosevelt’s first hundred days had petered out, leaving behind a general dissatisfaction with large-scale, inefficient government bureaucracies and their stratospheric levels of federal spending and debt. Newspapers had coined the term “boondoggle” to describe the high-end dog shelters, city zoo monkey houses, safety pin studies and other New Deal projects that attempted to stimulate the economy. New entitlement programs such as Social Security had been passed, over strong opposition, but had yet to take effect.

While Obama might confront the propaganda machine of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, Roosevelt faced off against a relatively more powerful William Randolph Hearst and his newspaper empire. In 1936 two-thirds of Americans read newspapers, which were vociferously anti-New Deal. Today, the Tea Party and a network of organizations funded by the Koch family and others focus their attacks on Obama. In 1936, charges of creeping socialism and the savaging of the Constitution were launched by the Liberty League and its affiliated groups, funded by a flood of money from the du Pont family and major corporations.

And yet when Election Day arrived, Roosevelt won by a landslide of historic proportions.

The differences between Roosevelt’s era and Obama’s are too numerous to list. Nevertheless, Obama and his advisers have much to learn from Roosevelt’s triumph.

First, Roosevelt constantly underscored the contrast between his plan and his opponents’ fealty to the policies and ideas that, in the decade before his election, had led directly to the Great Depression.

Second, Roosevelt made clear to the American people where the battle lines had been drawn. After the first two years of his administration, in which he attempted to work in concert with the business community, Roosevelt shifted gears in the summer of 1935. He sought to pick a fight with the richest men in the country, moving to significantly raise their taxes in the Revenue Act of 1935. In terms of government operations, the legislation was ultimately insignificant — it produced an additional $250 million in federal accounts, the equivalent then of running the government for 10 days. But revenue was not the goal. “This is a hell raiser, not a revenue raiser,” as one congressman put it. Harper’s Magazine wrote in June 1936 that the tax hike caused “more resentment against the President than any other act of his administration.” Roosevelt did not shy away from that resentment from the wealthy elite. Indeed, when he asserted “I welcome their hatred” in the climactic speech of his 1936 campaign, it was because it worked to his political benefit. [See video above.]

Most important, in that summer of ’35, Roosevelt had the courage to rebuild his presidency almost from scratch. When the set of national planning programs that made up the first New Deal-- in particular, the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration-- proved ineffective and ultimately were ruled unconstitutional, Roosevelt changed course. His second New Deal instead emphasized putting Americans to work in the Works Progress Administration, building up the strength of unions and expanding the safety net with Social Security.

The policies of 1935 do not necessarily fit the America of 2011, but there are instructive political and policy lessons in the crinkling newspapers and crackling radio broadcasts of that era. The choice Obama confronts is not the one repeated ad nauseam by pundits in recent weeks: “Go big” and double down on stimulus policies to make a political point, or “go small” and seek to pass tiny, ineffective tinkers. Rather, it is one that Roosevelt faced in a similar moment: Offer new ideas or more of the same. As Obama moves from Thursday’s speech to laying out an agenda for a second term, it is that decision that will define the rest of his presidency.

Cherny's new book is a history of Roosevelt's battle with the deadly Big Business enemies of the New Deal. And this year those self-same Big Business enemies of working families and of American democracy itself, have an ugly cast of characters vying for a chance to take on the weak, conflicted, corporate-leaning Obama whose hope always seemed to be to come across as not as bad as the extremist Republicans. It didn't help last November when rank-and-file Democrats sat on their hands while Obama's House majority evaporated and it doesn't seem to be working in the special elections in NV-2 or NY-9 today. Is Rick Perry a monster? Sure. But a surprising number of progressives are willing to play chicken and tell Obama they will not come to his aid if he doesn't act-- not just talk, but act-- like a New Deal Democrat. As Robert Reich pointed out at the link directly above, voters don't always vote for the best financial interests.

Of all the nonsense Texas Gov. Rick Perry spews about states' rights and the 10th Amendment, his dumbest is the notion that states should go it alone. "We've got a great Union," he said at a Tea Party rally in Austin in April 2009. "There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that."

The core of his message isn't outright secession, though. It's that the locus of governmental action ought to be at the state rather than the federal level. "It is essential to our liberty," he writes in his book, "Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington," "that we be allowed to live as we see fit through the democratic process at the local and state level."

Perry doesn't like the Federal Reserve Board. He hates the Internal Revenue Service even more. He's even against federal income taxes. If he had his way, taxpayers would pay states rather than the federal government for all the services and transfer payments they get.

This might be a good deal for Texas. According to the most recent data from the Tax Foundation, the citizens of Texas receive only 94 cents from the federal government for every tax dollar they send to Washington.

But it would be a bad deal for most other so-called red states. On average, citizens of states with strong Republican majorities get back more from the federal government than they pay in.

Kentucky receives $1.51 from Washington for every dollar its citizens pay in federal taxes. Alabama gets back $1.66. Louisiana receives $1.78. Alaska, $1.84. Mississippi, $2.02. Arizona, $1.19. Idaho, $1.21. South Carolina, $1.35. Oklahoma, $1.36. Arkansas, $1.41. Montana, $1.47. Nebraska, $1.10. Wyoming, $1.11. Kansas, $1.12.

On the other hand, fiscal secession would be a boon to most blue states, those with strong Democratic majorities. The citizens of California-- hit harder by the recession than most-- receive from Washington only 78 cents for every tax dollar they send to Washington. New Yorkers get back only 79 cents on every tax dollar they send in. Massachusetts, 82 cents. Oregon, 98 cents.

In other words, blue states are subsidizing red states. The federal government is like a giant sump pump-- pulling dollars out of liberal enclaves like California, New York, Massachusetts and Oregon and sending them to conservative places like Montana, Idaho, Oklahoma, Arizona, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska and the Old South.

As a practical matter, then, Rick Perry's fight to save America from Washington would actually save blue states from red states. So is Perry a closet liberal?

Hardly. Perry's approach would also pit each state against another. That's already happening when it comes to competition for jobs. As a result, state money that might otherwise be spent on schools or infrastructure has been funneled to corporations.

As governor, Perry has so far doled out $440 million of Texas' tax dollars to companies that relocate to the state. His office says the cash subsidies have attracted almost 59,000 jobs so far.

This may be good for Texas but not for the states that lose the jobs lured there. Such handouts just rob Peter to pay Paul. Corporations are enriched by the state tax dollars that bribe them to relocate, but America as a whole doesn't gain new jobs. It's just a giant zero-sum game.

Worse yet, the tax dollars used in these kinds of bidding wars can turn into political slush funds for governors. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Dallas Morning News reported in October that more than $16 million of Perry's handouts had gone to companies with substantial links to some of his biggest campaign backers.

How responsibilities should be divided up among different levels of government is an important question. America has been struggling with it since our founding.

But one of the main reasons we rely on the federal government-- and don't pay attention to how much the citizens of our own state get back for every tax dollar we send to Washington - is the idea that we're all in this together. E Pluribus Unum.

Making states rather than the federal government the locus of public action would pull us apart. The only beneficiaries of such zero-sum games would be the biggest companies that can play one state off against the other.

Put more directly, House Republicans don't want to pass President Obama's new jobs proposal because they're "worried about giving Obama any victories-- even on issues the GOP has supported in the past."

And despite public declarations about finding common ground with Obama, some Republicans are privately grumbling that their leaders are being too accommodating with the president.

“Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win?” said one senior House Republican aide who requested anonymity to discuss the matter freely. “I just don’t want to co-own the economy by having to tout that we passed a jobs bill that won’t work or at least won’t do enough.”

Even with the presence of so many GOP-friendly provisions in Obama’s plan-- like trade agreements and small-business tax relief-- some senior lawmakers are pulling back...