Why Are Conservatives Willing To Watch The Planet Destruct? Fear And Cash/Cash And Fear

Over the weekend, NY Times reporters Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton traced a metamorphosis inside the upper echelons of the Republican Party. They looked at how GOP dogma went from dealing rationally with Climate Change to obstinate science denialism formerly only embraced by complete crackpots like House Science Committee chairman Lamar Smith of Texas. The are good reasons why the crazy far right fringe was the first part of the GOP to embrace Trump and Trumpism. Lamar Smith, in fact, was the very first Republican in Congress top contribute money to Trump's campaign.

Start by looking at the 30 second spot from McCain's 2008 presidential campaign up top. No, that wasn't put together by Al Gore. That's a mainstream Republican's view of Climate Change less than a decade ago. Today Trumpanzee is widely viewed as an existential threat to the future of the planet. "It is difficult," they wrote, "to reconcile the Republican Party of 2008 with the party of 2017, whose leader, President Trump, has called global warming a hoax, reversed environmental policies that Mr. McCain advocated on his run for the White House, and this past week announced that he would take the nation out of the Paris climate accord, which was to bind the globe in an effort to halt the planet’s warming. The Republican Party’s fast journey from debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist is a story of big political money, Democratic hubris in the Obama years and a partisan chasm that grew over nine years like a crack in the Antarctic shelf, favoring extreme positions and uncompromising rhetoric over cooperation and conciliation."

Not sure what "Democratic hubris" they're talking about but I think NY Times policy is... "both sides"-- even if it can't be backed up-- and there's no more talk of "Democratic hubris" is the article. They quote GOP strategist and Rubio campaign consultant Whit Ayres: "Most Republicans still do not regard climate change as a hoax. But the entire climate change debate has now been caught up in the broader polarization of American politics. In some ways it’s become yet another of the long list of litmus test issues that determine whether or not you’re a good Republican." Maybe they meant Republican hubris.

Since Mr. McCain ran for president on climate credentials that were stronger than his opponent Barack Obama’s, the scientific evidence linking greenhouse gases from fossil fuels to the dangerous warming of the planet has grown stronger. Scientists have for the first time drawn concrete links between the planet’s warming atmosphere and changes that affect Americans’ daily lives and pocketbooks, from tidal flooding in Miami to prolonged water shortages in the Southwest to decreasing snow cover at ski resorts.

That scientific consensus was enough to pull virtually all of the major nations along. Conservative-leaning governments in Britain, France, Germany and Japan all signed on to successive climate change agreements.

Yet when Mr. Trump pulled the United States from the Paris accord, the Senate majority leader, the speaker of the House and every member of the elected Republican leadership were united in their praise.

Paul Ryan's reaction is likely to further erode his own shaky political support back in his Wisconsin congressional district. After Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Accord, Ryan said "The Paris climate agreement was simply a raw deal for America. Signed by President Obama without Senate ratification, it would have driven up the cost of energy, hitting middle-class and low-income Americans the hardest. In order to unleash the power of the American economy, our government must encourage production of American energy. I commend President Trump for fulfilling his commitment to the American people and withdrawing from this bad deal."

His likely opponent in 2018, iron worker and union activist Randy Bryce sees it differently. He told us "Ryan was once again showing that his loyalty is not to the overwhelming majority of hard working people whose very lives depend on a livable environment, but, to the highest bidders who fund his elections. By withdrawing from the Paris Accord, the U.S. now stands against the overwhelming majority of nations on the planet as well. We now stand on the same side as Nicaragua and Syria. (one of those two we reward with bombs) On the other side of the issue stands the rest of the world. Civilized nations have evolved as a result of lessons learned. We have protections in place so that the citizenry is protected by unscrupulous corporations who profit from pillaging our natural resources at the expense of our neighbors’ health. It’s bad enough to sell us out. It’s another thing entirely to hide from us in #WI01. Paul Ryan has plenty of time to jetset from fundraiser to fundraiser, but, has been absent from actually meeting with constituents for more than 600 days. Paul Ryan, after November of 2018, you will no longer need to hide. We will reward you with an extended vacation. It will be the only thing that you have 'earned' since you took office."

Follow the money

Those divisions did not happen by themselves. Republican lawmakers were moved along by a campaign carefully crafted by fossil fuel industry players, most notably Charles D. and David H. Koch, the Kansas-based billionaires who run a chain of refineries (which can process 600,000 barrels of crude oil per day) as well as a subsidiary that owns or operates 4,000 miles of pipelines that move crude oil.

Government rules intended to slow climate change are “making people’s lives worse rather than better,” Charles Koch explained in a rare interview last year with Fortune, arguing that despite the costs, these efforts would make “very little difference in the future on what the temperature or the weather will be.”

Republican leadership has also been dominated by lawmakers whose constituents were genuinely threatened by policies that would raise the cost of burning fossil fuels, especially coal. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, always sensitive to the coal fields in his state, rose through the ranks to become majority leader. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming also climbed into leadership, then the chairmanship of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, as a champion of his coal state.

Mr. Trump has staffed his White House and cabinet with officials who have denied, or at least questioned, the existence of global warming. And he has adopted the Koch language, almost to the word. On Thursday, as Mr. Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal, he at once claimed that the Paris accord would cost the nation millions of jobs and that it would do next to nothing for the climate.

Beyond the White House, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, chairman of the House Science Committee, held a hearing this spring aimed at debunking climate science, calling the global scientific consensus “exaggerations, personal agendas and questionable predictions.”

A small core of Republican lawmakers-- most of whom are from swing districts and are at risk of losing their seats next year-- are taking modest steps like introducing a nonbinding resolution in the House in March urging Congress to accept the risks presented by climate change.

Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), for example, isn't on the same page as Trump on Climate Change denialism. ""With forty percent of Florida’s population at risk from sea-level rise, my state is on the front lines of climate change. South Florida residents are already beginning to feel the effects of climate change in their daily lives-- from chronic flooding to coral bleaching to threats to our freshwater supply in the Everglades.  We cannot ignore these challenges and every Member of Congress has a responsibility to our constituents and future generations to support market-based solutions, investments, and innovations that could alleviate the effects of climate change and make our nation more resilient." The only Florida Republicans who joined him in the Climate Solutions Caucus are Miami Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who's retiring next year and Brian Mast, from a purple district with a habit of ditching conservative Republicans for conservative Democrats every few years. But, as Davenport and Lipton pointed out, "in Republican political circles, speaking out on the issue, let alone pushing climate policy, is politically dangerous. So for the most part, these moderate Republicans are biding their time, until it once again becomes safe for Republicans to talk more forcefully about climate change. The question is how long that will take." For now, the Koch Brothers completely control the Climate agenda of the Republican Party. They have a pledge Republicans are forced to sign to get Koch cash: "I will oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue." First on board was far right extremist loon Jim Jordan (R-OH).

Conservative activists saw the [2009 cap-and-trade] legislative effort as an opportunity to transform the climate debate.

With the help of a small army of oil-industry-funded academics like Wei-Hock Soon of Harvard Smithsonian and think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, they had been working to discredit academics and government climate change scientists. The lawyer and conservative activist Chris Horner, whose legal clients have included the coal industry, gathered documents through the Freedom of Information Act to try to embarrass and further undermine the climate change research.

Myron Ebell, a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, worked behind the scenes to make sure Republican offices in Congress knew about Mr. Horner’s work-- although at the time, many viewed Mr. Ebell skeptically, as an extremist pushing out-of-touch views... As Congress moved toward actually passing climate change legislation, a fringe issue had become a part of the political mainstream.

“That was the turning point,” Mr. Horner said.

The House passed the cap-and-trade bill by seven votes, but it went nowhere in the Senate-- Mr. Obama’s first major legislative defeat.

Unshackled by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and other related rulings, which ended corporate campaign finance restrictions, Koch Industries and Americans for Prosperity started an all-fronts campaign with television advertising, social media and cross-country events aimed at electing lawmakers who would ensure that the fossil fuel industry would not have to worry about new pollution regulations.

Their first target: unseating Democratic lawmakers such as Representatives Rick Boucher and Tom Perriello of Virginia, who had voted for the House cap-and-trade bill, and replacing them with Republicans who were seen as more in step with struggling Appalachia, and who pledged never to push climate change measures.

But Americans for Prosperity also wanted to send a message to Republicans.

Until 2010, some Republicans ran ads in House and Senate races showing their support for green energy.

“After that, it disappeared from Republican ads,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity. “Part of that was the polling, and part of it was the visceral example of what happened to their colleagues who had done that.”

What happened was clear. Republicans who asserted support for climate change legislation or the seriousness of the climate threat saw their money dry up or, worse, a primary challenger arise.

“It told Republicans that we were serious,” Mr. Phillips said, “that we would spend some serious money against them.”

By the time Election Day 2010 arrived, 165 congressional members and candidates had signed Americans for Prosperity’s “No Climate Tax” pledge.

Most were victorious.

“The midterm election was a clear rejection of policies like the cap-and-trade energy taxes that threaten our still-fragile economy,” said James Valvo, then Americans for Prosperity’s government affairs director, in a statement issued the day after the November 2010 election. Eighty-three of the 92 new members of Congress had signed the pledge.

Even for congressional veterans, that message was not missed. Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who once called climate change “a serious problem” and co-sponsored a bill to promote energy-efficient light bulbs, tacked right after the 2010 elections as he battled to be chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee against Joe Barton, a Texan who mocked human-caused climate change.

Mr. Upton deleted references to climate change from his website. “If you look, the last year was the warmest year on record, the warmest decade on record. I accept that,” he offered that fall. “I do not say that it’s man-made.”

Mr. Upton, who has received more than $2 million in campaign donations from oil and gas companies and electric utilities over the course of his career, won the chairmanship and has coasted comfortably to re-election since.

Two years later, conservative “super PACs” took aim at Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, a senior Republican who publicly voiced climate concerns, backed the creation of a Midwestern cap-and-trade program and drove a Prius. After six Senate terms, Mr. Lugar lost his primary to a Tea Party challenger, Richard E. Mourdock. Although Mr. Lugar says other reasons contributed, he and his opponents say his public views on climate change played a crucial role.

“In my own campaign, there were people who felt strongly enough about my views on climate change to use it to help defeat me, and other Republicans are very sensitive to that possibility,” Mr. Lugar said in an interview. “So even if they privately believe we ought to do something about it, they’re reticent, especially with the Republican president taking the views he is now taking.”

After winning re-election in 2012, Mr. Obama understood his second-term agenda would have to rely on executive authority, not legislation that would go nowhere in the Republican-majority Congress. And climate change was the great unfinished business of his first term.

To finish it, he would deploy a rarely used provision in the Clean Air Act of 1970, which gave the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to issue regulations on carbon dioxide.

“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” he declared in his 2013 State of the Union address.

The result was the Clean Power Plan, which would significantly cut planet-warming emissions by forcing the closing of hundreds of heavy-polluting coal-fired power plants.

The Koch Brothers lost their shit over it and even Republicans who had supported the climate change agenda began to defect. I haven't heard any of those Republicans so upset about Obama's executive orders going around Congress complaining about the most executive-order-addicted president in history going nuts using them now. Have you?

Starting in early 2014, the opponents of the rule-- including powerful lawyers and lobbyists representing many of America’s largest manufacturing and industrial interests-- regularly gathered in a large conference room at the national headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, overlooking the White House. They drafted a long-game legal strategy to undermine Mr. Obama’s climate regulations in a coordinated campaign that brought together 28 state attorneys general and major corporations to form an argument that they expected to eventually take to the Supreme Court.

They presented it not as an environmental fight but an economic one, against a government that was trying to vastly and illegally expand its authority.

“This is the most significant wholesale regulation of energy that the United States has ever seen, by any agency,” Roger R. Martella Jr., a former E.P.A. lawyer who then represented energy companies, said at a gathering of industry advocates, making an assertion that has not been tested.

Republican attorneys general gathered at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia in August 2015 for their annual summer retreat, with some special guests: four executives from Murray Energy, one of the nation’s largest coal mining companies.

Murray was struggling to avoid bankruptcy-- a fate that had befallen several other coal mining companies already, given the slump in demand for their product and the rise of natural gas, solar and wind energy.

The coal industry came to discuss a new part of the campaign to reverse the country’s course on climate change. Litigation was going to be needed, the industry executives and the Republican attorneys general agreed, to block the Obama administration’s climate agenda — at least until a new president could be elected.

West Virginia’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, led the session, “The Dangerous Consequences of the Clean Power Plan & Other E.P.A. Rules,” which included, according to the agenda, Scott Pruitt, then the attorney general of Oklahoma; Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general; and Geoffrey Barnes, a corporate lawyer for Murray, which had donated $250,000 to the Republican attorneys general political group.

That same day, Mr. Morrissey would step outside the hotel to announce that he and other attorneys general would sue in federal court to try to stop the Clean Power Plan, which he called “the most far-reaching energy regulation in this nation’s history, drawn up by radical bureaucrats.”

Mr. Pruitt quickly became a national point person for industry-backed groups and a magnet for millions of dollars of campaign contributions, as the fossil fuel lobby looked for a fresh face with conservative credentials and ties to the evangelical community.

“Pruitt was instrumental-- he and A.G. Morrisey,” said Thomas Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries, an adviser to Mr. Trump’s transition team and the president of a pro-fossil fuel Washington research organization, the Institute for Energy Research. “They led the charge and made it easier for other states to get involved. Some states were keeping their powder dry, but Pruitt was very out front and aggressive.”

After the litigation was filed-- by Mr. Morrissey and Mr. Pruitt, along with other attorneys general who attended the Greenbrier meeting-- Murray Energy sued in the federal court case as well, just as had been planned.

In February 2016, the Supreme Court indicated that it would side with opponents of the rule, moving by a 5-4 vote to grant a request by the attorneys general and corporate players to block the implementation of the Clean Power Plan while the case worked its way through the federal courts.

When Donald J. Trump decided to run for president, he did not appear to have a clear understanding of the nation’s climate change policies. Nor, at the start of his campaign, did he appear to have any specific plan to prioritize a huge legal push to roll those policies back.

Mr. Trump had, in 2012, said on Twitter, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” But he had also, in 2009, joined dozens of other business leaders to sign a full-page ad in the The New York Times urging Mr. Obama to push a global climate change pact being negotiated in Copenhagen, and to “strengthen and pass United States legislation” to tackle climate change.

However, it did not go unnoticed that coal country was giving his presidential campaign a wildly enthusiastic embrace, as miners came out in full force for Mr. Trump, stoking his populist message.

And the surest way for Mr. Trump to win cheers from coal crowds was to aim at an easy target: Mr. Obama’s climate rules. Hillary Clinton did not help her cause when she said last spring that her climate policies would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

In May 2016, Mr. Trump addressed one of the largest rallies of his campaign: an estimated crowd of over 10,000 in Charleston, W.Va., where the front rows were crammed with mine workers.

“I’m thinking about miners all over the country,” he said, eliciting cheers. “We’re going to put miners back to work.”

“They didn’t used to have all these rules and regulations that make it impossible to compete,” he added. “We’re going to take it all off the table.”

Then an official from the West Virginia Coal Association handed the candidate a miner’s hat.

As he put it on, giving the miners a double thumbs-up, “The place just went nuts, and he loved it,” recalled Barry Bennett, a former adviser to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign. “And the miners started showing up at everything. They were a beaten lot, and they saw him as a savior. So he started using the ‘save coal’ portions of the speech again and again.”

Mr. Trump’s advisers embraced the miners as emblematic of the candidate’s broader populist appeal.

“The coal miners were the perfect case for what he was talking about,” Mr. Bennett said, “the idea that for the government in Washington, it’s all right for these people to suffer for the greater good-- that federal power is more important than your little lives.”

Mr. Trump took on as an informal campaign adviser Robert E. Murray-- chief executive of the same coal company that had been working closely for years with the Republican attorneys general to unwind the Obama environmental legacy.

Mr. Murray, a brash and folksy populist who started working in coal mines as a teenager, is an unabashed skeptic of climate science. The coal magnate and Mr. Trump had a natural chemistry, and where Mr. Trump lacked the legal and policy background to unwind climate policy, Mr. Murray was happy to step in.

“I thank my lord, Jesus Christ, for the election of Donald Trump,” Mr. Murray said soon after his new friend won the White House.

Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Ebell, the Competitive Enterprise Institute fellow who had worked for years to undermine the legitimacy of established climate science, to head the transition team at E.P.A. Mr. Ebell immediately began pushing for an agenda of gutting the Obama climate regulations and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.

When it came time to translate Mr. Trump’s campaign promises to coal country into policy, Mr. Murray and others helped choose the perfect candidate: Mr. Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general.

Mr. Trump, who had never met Mr. Pruitt before his election, offered him the job of E.P.A. administrator-- putting him in a position to dismantle the environmental rules that he had long sought to fight in court.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump wanted to be seen delivering on the promises he had made to the miners. As controversies piled up in his young administration, he sought comfort in the approval of his base.

In March, Mr. Trump signed an executive order directing Mr. Pruitt to begin unwinding the Clean Power Plan-- and he did so at a large public ceremony at the E.P.A., flanked by coal miners and coal executives. Mr. Murray beamed in the audience.

Meanwhile, a battle raged at the White House over whether to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement. Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, urged him to remain in, cautioning that withdrawing could be devastating to the United States’ foreign policy credentials.

Murray Energy-- despite its enormous clout with Mr. Trump and his top environmental official-- boasts a payroll with only 6,000 employees. The coal industry nationwide is responsible for about 160,000 jobs, with just 65,000 directly in mining, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

By comparison, General Electric alone has 104,000 employees in the United States, and Apple has 80,000. Their chief executives openly pressed Mr. Trump to stick with Paris, as did dozens of other major corporations that have continued to support regulatory efforts to combat climate change.

But these voices did not have clout in Washington, either in Congress or at the White House, when it comes to energy policy.

Mr. Trump’s senior adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, backed by Mr. Pruitt, told the president that pulling out of the deal would mean a promise kept to his base.

“It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-- along with many, many other locations within our great country-- before Paris, France,” Mr. Trump said in his Rose Garden speech on Thursday. “It is time to make America great again.”

Note: Trump lost Youngstown, Detroit and Pittsburgh in the election. Hillary beat him in Youngstown handily and even won surrounding Mahoning County by around 4,000 votes. Detroit wasn't even close and Wayne County rejected Trump's ugly Know Nothing approach 519,444 (66.4%) to 228,993 (29.3%), a rout. Same in Pittsburgh. The mayor reminded Trump the city voted almost 80% for Clinton. Surrounding Allegheny County-- where Trump put immense resources during the campaign-- went for Clinton 367,617 (56%) to 259,480 (39%).

n Congress, reluctance to embrace that science has had no political downsides, at least among Republicans.

“We don’t yet have an example of where someone has paid a political price being on that side of it,” said Michael Steel, who served as press secretary for the former House speaker John A. Boehner, the Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and the current House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, during his 2012 run as Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential choice.

Instead, the messages of Mr. Pruitt still dominate.

“This is an historic restoration of American economic independence-- one that will benefit the working class, the working poor and working people of all stripes,” Mr. Pruitt said on Thursday, stepping to the Rose Garden lectern after Mr. Trump. “We owe no apologies to other nations for our environmental stewardship.”

American voters-- even many Republicans-- recognize that climate change is starting to affect their lives. About 70 percent think global warming is happening, and about 53 percent think it is caused by human activities, according to a recent study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. About 69 percent support limiting carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.

But most public opinion polls find that voters rank the environment last or nearly last among the issues that they vote on. And views are divided based on party affiliation. In 2001, 46 percent of Democrats said they worried “a great deal” about climate change, compared with 29 percent of Republicans, according to a Gallup tracking poll on the issue. This year, concern among Democrats has reached 66 percent. Among Republicans, it has fallen, to 18 percent.

Until people vote on the issue, Republicans will find it politically safer to question climate science and policy than to alienate moneyed groups like Americans for Prosperity.

There will be exceptions. The 2014 National Climate Assessment, a report produced by 14 federal agencies, concluded that climate change is responsible for much of the flooding now plaguing many of the Miami area’s coastal residents, soaking homes and disrupting businesses, and Representative Curbelo is talking about it.

“This is a local issue for me,” Mr. Curbelo said. “Even conservatives in my district see the impact. It’s flooding, and it’s happening now... There are members from deep-red districts who have approached me about figuring out how to become part of this effort,” Mr. Curbelo said. “I know we have the truth on our side. So I’m confident that we’ll win-- eventually.”

With reactionaries like Trump, Pruitt and Ryan willing-- eager-- to dance to the Koch brothers' tune, "eventually" may be too late. Last cycle alone, energy and natural resources companies poured $64,575,688 into congressional races-- bribes to get what they wanted. And who were the biggest recipients of this planet-killing cash? Among current House members the biggest recipients of bribes from this sector were among the crooked members of Congress who were willing to play the illegal quid pro quo game. The half dozen worst in the House:

• Paul Ryan (R-WI)- $1,149,303
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $613,100
• John Shimkus (R-IL)- $559,383
• Kevin Brady (R-TX)- $545,700
• Fred Upton (R-MI)- $507,463
• Steve Scalise (R-LA)- $498,750

You know what else-- aside from an eagerness to take Koch bribes-- these six crooks have in common? Not one of them was challenged by the DCCC last cycle.

Why Conservative Curmudgeon Richard Lugar Isn't Having Any Of Trump's Foreign Policy Bullshit

With his domestic agenda in tatters and his approval ratings circling the drain, Trumpy-the-Clown has decided to trying out his new super-powers in the foreign affairs realm. Plenty of reason for everyone to be plenty nervous about that. But Richard Lugar, a Republican former senator from Indiana spoke at the Foreign Policy Association Tuesday on conflict prevention and couldn't find much in Trump's approach to be sanguine about. He began with a warning about there'll threat we're facing as a country (and a planet): "Under normal circumstances, I might address such topics as the Middle East peace process, the need to secure weapons of mass destruction, the fate of the Iran nuclear agreement, or relations with Russia and China. But at the beginning of a new Presidential administration in Washington, we face an even more fundamental dilemma for conflict prevention. This is whether the United States will continue to provide comprehensive leadership in a dangerous world. Since World War II, the most essential factor in preventing conflict has been U.S. leadership. We may have made some mistakes during that time, but the overarching effect of America’s commitment to global order has been the growth of international norms and institutions that have checked conflict, promoted human rights, and expanded stability. We see this most clearly in Europe, a continent wracked by deadly conflict for centuries. With the benefit of a U.S.-led alliance and security guarantees, Europe has maintained peace in most corners of the continent for the last 70 years. For decades, both Democrat and Republican presidents have embraced American global leadership. It is early in the Trump presidency.  But the President and many of his aides have been outspoken in their skepticism or even disdain for continuing America’s global role. It is my contention today that if strong and comprehensive American leadership is withdrawn from the global stage, broader efforts at conflict prevention will fail. The people of the United States and most countries of the world will become poorer and will have to endure more frequent conflict. Solutions to threats that impact us all, including climate change, extreme poverty and hunger, communicable diseases, nuclear proliferation, cyberwarfare, and terrorism will be almost impossible to solve."

His description of Trump sounded like his description of a new puppy that hasn't been house-broken yet. "I am sure that President Trump wants to succeed and that he is learning on the job how our government functions, what powers the President can and cannot exercise, and how he can interact with the rest of the U.S. government. He is also having his first experiences with international politics." But Lugar said he's more worried about the Regime's "deliberate foreign policy choices" than about Trump's bungling first misteps.

The Trump Administration has criticized “globalism” and stated its intent to downsize American involvement and leadership in the world. This intent is reflected in the President’s proposed budget. One of the ironies of this is that a President who campaigned on his ability to achieve grandiose results is offering a vision that is so lacking in ambition and so devoid of American heroism. So far, Trump foreign policy has been an outgrowth of the 2016 Trump political campaign, rather than a sober assessment of global conditions and U.S. interests.

We elect Administrations, not just to execute policies that have political momentum. We also expect them to construct a strategic vision that attempts to integrate all levers of American power. We expect them to play geopolitical offense, not just hunker down in a defensive posture.

Many of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy goals are simplistic, prosaic, and reactive. These include building a wall to seal our southern border, extracting more contributions from fellow alliance members, seeking concessions from longstanding trade partners, ejecting as many undocumented immigrants as possible, and cutting the State Department budget by almost a third. Taken together, these policies do nothing to enhance American productivity or competitiveness at home or influence overseas. These are goals that normally would be associated with a selfish, inward looking nation that is being motivated by fear, not a great superpower with the capacity to shape global affairs.

What the President will learn in time is that geopolitical power is not primarily about deal-making or even decision-making. It has much more to do with building and maintaining leverage that can be brought to bear both in times of crisis and in the normal course of international operations. American leverage comes from numerous sources, not just military power. It comes from strong alliances and trade relationships. It comes from global leadership within international institutions. It comes from robust diplomatic capabilities. And it comes from the respect and confidence that other governments and peoples have in the historic leadership role of the United States.

President Trump has experimented with military power, especially in the recent strike against Syrian targets. This action reversed pronouncements he made as a candidate that military involvement in Syria would be a mistake. His budget also proposed large increases in military spending, even as other national security accounts were targeted for cuts. It is too early to fully judge the military policies of the Administration or the efficacy of its military actions in Syria. But the President must understand that military power cannot substitute for other forms of leverage. The events of this century should make it abundantly clear that the military instrument-- though essential-- is difficult to use. Military force can be incredibly expensive in lives and treasure and often is accompanied by moral dilemmas. It almost always elicits a response from enemies, sometimes through disproportionate warfare. A strong, well-funded military remains as important as ever in deterring aggression and addressing threats that cannot be solved in any other way. But we cannot bomb our way to security.

Unfortunately the first three months of the Trump Presidency have been an exercise in squandering America’s international leverage in favor of campaign-driven foreign policy themes that are fundamentally contradicted by centuries of world history. The President is choosing to wager American prosperity and security on the discredited panaceas that industry growth can be ignited by greater protections from global trade, that American jobs can be preserved by building a border wall and deporting immigrants, and that American security can best be protected by downsizing the U.S. role in the world. The President has rightly worried about how we compete with China, for example. But he has blithely rejected our most potent leverage in that competition-- the Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty.

In each of these areas-- trade, immigration, and alliances-- the common theme voiced by the Administration is that our country has been exploited by malevolent foreign forces and complicit American leaders. This has a strong appeal to some Americans who feel displaced by global competition or threatened by immigrants. But over time, the net effect of actually following through on all of this would be an economic and geopolitical disaster.

In the contemporary context, global trade is unsettling to many Americans. But trade is essential to any economy. It expands choices for consumers, holds down inflation, gives businesses the widest possible markets, stimulates innovation, and promotes economic growth.

We know that the most powerful force in the dislocation of American manufacturing is automation and the advancement of technology, especially information technology. These efficiencies have made our workers far more productive than they were at the beginning of this century. When industries produce more with less labor, workers lose jobs. The main challenge in responding to these economic dislocations is improving the business environment and finding ways to retrain workers and connect them to new jobs, often in different locations. This is a hard process, but it is not impossible. We doom our nation’s workforce to a dismal future if we shift the blame to trade and immigrants, instead of attacking the real challenge. We also know that attempting to isolate a nation from trade competition is a self-defeating strategy that will hurt those at the bottom of the economic ladder before anyone else.

On immigration, we are mired in a debate of distraction. The issue is not whether our nation could expand resources and embrace efficiencies that might improve border security. That is a reasonable goal that might be achieved in a number of ways. The problem is that the methods selected by the Trump Administration have been designed for ostentatious symbolism rather than for maximizing U.S. security. Building a border wall and issuing an executive order to ban entrants from certain Muslim countries waste both American resources and international good will. This is not to say that some malefactors might not be prevented from entering the country by a wall or a ban. But there are more cost-efficient and effective ways of going about this work that would not alienate global public opinion, poison good relations with Mexico, and hand a recruitment tool to terrorists.

In a world where dampening the rise of new terrorists is as important as dealing with existing ones, the ban on entrants from Muslim countries represents the most obvious recruitment tool against the United States since Abu Ghraib. We know the commitment of the American people and the strength of our Constitution in protecting freedom of religion. But a ban of this type, especially accompanied by the Trump campaign’s history of anti-Islamic rhetoric, gives verbal ammunition to any terrorist leader who seeks to focus followers on the United States. It also makes it more difficult to recruit allies, translators, sources of human intelligence, and other help that we need in Muslim countries around the globe. The ban has been a steep net loss to U.S. national security. Carrying out such a policy indicates either that the Administration has subordinated U.S. security to domestic political considerations or it has an extremely unsophisticated understanding of the power of international propaganda.

The cause of improving border enforcement is rational. But focusing these efforts so heavily on a wall, while proposing large cuts in the Coast Guard and State Department budgets bespeaks a similar misunderstanding of relative risk.   Advisors have failed to make clear to the President that the State Department and the Coast Guard are among the most important agencies in combating the entry of terrorists and drugs into the United States. That is a rather fundamental point to miss in such an important debate. But, of course, neither of those agencies has the symbolic lure of a massive construction project on our southern border.

Regrettably, the sound and fury over immigration symbolism neglects a reasoned debate on immigration that might generate a consensus political solution. As I have observed in the past, immigration is an issue that is conducive to a workable compromise that strengthens enforcement, improves our relationship with Mexico, ensures access to job-creating high-skilled labor, captures more taxes, and deals humanely with millions of undocumented immigrants. The details of an immigration compromise are well understood. This is a political problem, not a technical one.

Finally, as with immigration and trade, the Trump Administration’s early policies toward allies threaten to shed leverage that we will need to address crises in the future. It is fair for the President to seek greater contributions from our alliance partners. All recent Presidents have done that. But the Administration has to recognize that it cannot allow any doubts in the minds of our adversaries about U.S. commitment to our allies. Such ambiguity is not clever. It is dangerous and can lead to deadly miscalculation.

This is especially true in Eastern Europe where we have witnessed recent examples of Russian aggression near the NATO alliance. Our government should make very clear that the United States will honor our NATO Article V commitments under all circumstances. The positions of the United States of America and the statements of the President are a vital part of the baseline of global order.

Any nation, including the United States, must pursue its self-interest.  Nations, at their core, are not altruistic enterprises. They exist to promote the security and prosperity of their citizens. The irony is that the nations that succeed the most at self-interested goals have always been the ones that respect broader ideals of human freedom, justice for the individual, and rule of law. Those nations that do not aspire to a higher ideal lose their claim to greatness. The United States of America has been a powerful nation. But more importantly, it has been a heroic nation.

Our greatest moments-- the moments that have defined national character and propelled our society forward-- have been those when we have sacrificed something for more than just self-interest. The most compelling examples of heroism by American leaders have several important things in common. They have been directed outward, rejecting self-aggrandizement. They have looked to the future, as opposed to attempting to recapture the past. They have been absent bravado, declining to press advantages that they might have taken. And frequently, they have been self-sacrificial.

We think of George Washington carefully setting precedent after precedent that would assure that the power of the Presidency was constrained. We think of Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox foregoing the vengeance of a victor and Robert E. Lee, the rebel, rejecting the option of guerrilla war and urging his soldiers to go home and be good citizens. We think of Abraham Lincoln at the Second inaugural, urging reconciliation, when many advisors wanted retribution. We think of Franklin Roosevelt embracing the global burden of defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. We think of Dwight Eisenhower’s painstaking efforts to hold the Western alliance together to win the war in Europe and set the stage for the post-World War II order. We think of generations of leaders who sacrificed body and mind in the struggle for civil rights from Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman to Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and many, like John Lewis, who are still working today. We think of thousands of risk takers in science and industry from John Glenn and Neil Armstrong to Jonas Salk and Norman Borlaug who pioneered amazing discoveries that expanded human knowledge or saved millions of lives.

Our country, too, has been heroic. More than any other nation, the United States possesses a traditional moral identity. That identity is closely associated with religious tolerance, democratic governance, freedom of the individual, the promotion of economic opportunity, and resistance to oppression. This set of ideals was espoused in our founding documents and reaffirmed through the sacrifices of our own Civil War. It was amplified during two World Wars in which the United States opposed the forces of aggression and conquest. And it was reinvigorated through the struggle of our civil rights movement.

The United States has been and still is a force for good in the world. I believe this is indisputable from any objective point of view.  In most respects, we have been an incredibly generous nation. We have helped to rehabilitate enemies like Germany and Japan, and we initiated co-operative threat reduction to help the former Soviet Union protect and destroy the very nuclear arsenal that was once pointed at us. We have helped countries such as South Korea move from extreme poverty to impressive prosperity through our assistance and protection. Americans lead the world’s fight against AIDS and hunger. The United States is also the undisputed leader in disaster assistance.

Our armed forces, by their mere presence, have deterred major wars and minor conflicts. Our Navy has been the principal force for maintaining order on the high seas. Our democratic institutions and political and social freedoms have been models for the world, and we have actively helped to nurture democracy in numerous nations. Many Americans do not fully appreciate the international impact of the example set by our transparent political debate and the extraordinary degree of self-examination that accompanies American policy decisions.

I would contend that our leverage in global affairs, and therefore our own security, is intimately connected to this heroic tradition. But it has to be maintained. Once it is gone, it is very difficult to retrieve. Other power structures will occupy the void, and many of them are not sympathetic to American values and interests. We are already seeing clear actions by China, for example, to enhance its trade and foreign assistance relationships in Asia as neighboring countries deal with doubts about the Trump Administration’s willingness to stay fully involved in the region. China also is attempting to position itself as a leader on climate change to take advantage of a declining American role.

I remain optimistic about our country’s future as a global leader. Our institutions are very strong and grounded in a resilient Constitution. I believe that that the American people are proud of the historic leadership role of our country and recognize that it is indivisible from our own security. All of us must continue to make these points in public debate and continue to have confidence that the coming century will be one of American heroism and achievement.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Trumpanzee's first 3 chaotic months. Virtually everyone I know wishes Trump wasn't president, but I don't know many people who long for a Hillary Clinton presidency. Except Richard Lugar. and this kind of report in the media, just makes the whole dysfunctional Trump Regime even more difficult to contend with. This is important:

Primary Season Ends For Another Cycle

Christine O'Donnell must be missing student loans payments or mortgage payments again. She's threatening the Republican Party that she may run for the U.S. Senate again. Her successful primary challenge to popular mainstream Rep. Mike Castle in 2010 in universally thought to be the reason the GOP doesn't hold the Delaware Senate seat occupied by Chris Coons now. “I think I owe that to my supporters, to at least consider a run,” O’Donnell said in an interview last week. “People sacrificed. Not only came out of their comfort zone-- sacrificed to work hard in order to win the primary. And I think that I owe it to them to give it every consideration.” (She has also said she is available for a paying gig in a Romney Administration if he wins the November election.)

If Democrats are cheering, mainstream Republicans must be rolling their eyes at the thought. Primaries by right-wing extremists like O'Donnell have hurt the GOP in general elections, not so much in deep red states where the brain-dead citizens would vote for a lump of shit labeled "Republican"-- think Utah or Texas-- but in normal states. This primary cycle, for example, saw 15 congressional incumbents defeated-- 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats, although, to be fair, one of the Republicans, Bob Turner, was gerrymandered out of his district and then lost the GOP Senate primary.

All but 2 of the Democratic losses were incumbent vs incumbent matches-- Jason Altmire lost to Mark Critz in western Pennsylvania. Both are extremely reactionary right-wing Democrats who commonly vote with the GOP. In New Jersey moderate Steve Rothman lost to more progressive Bill Pascrell. In Ohio, quirky economic progressive/social conservative Marcy Kaptur beat progressive icon Dennis Kucinich, in a district that was drawn to predict those results. In Michigan under-funded progressive Hansen Clarke was beaten by ConservaDem Gary Peters and St. Louis political fixture Russ Carnahan, a moderate, was beaten by the more progressive William Lacy Clay in a 63% to 34% landslide. In the two districts where there were actual non-incumbent challengers, corrupt Blue Dog Tim Holden was beaten by a more progressive Matt Cartwright, 57-43%, a stunning and rare upset. A few weeks later a similar primary battle in El Paso resulted in longtime Establishment Democrat Silvestre Reyes going down to defeat at the hands of popular young reformer, Beto O'Rourke, 50.5 to 44.4%. (Beto, pictured on the right, will be the Blue America live guest at Crooks and Liars tomorrow at 11am (PT, noon El Paso time.)

In Republicanville, there were 3 incumbent vs incumbent races. Florida Establishment shill John Mica swamped teabagger Sandy Adams, widely considered the stupidest Member of Congress (yes, dumber that Gohmert). He swamped her financially, spending $1,214,486 to her $451,281, and beat her 60-40%. The Republican Machine wiped out an annoying teabagger without much effort. In Illinois, the GOP Machine got behind freshman zombie Adam Kinzinger and helped him beat Don Manzullo, 56-44%, even though the redrawn 16th CD included 44% of Manzullo's constituents and 31% of Kinzinger's. Kinzinger spent $1,548,515 on the primary and Manzullo spent $1,257,113 but outside groups orchestrated, possibly illegally, by Eric Cantor and Aaron Schock (widely rumored to have a gay crush on Kinzinger) spent a great deal of money to defeat Manzullo. The third incumbent vs incumbent race pitted Dan Quayle's lunkhead son, Ben, a leadership lackey, against David Schweikert. Ben Quayle was never popular in the Arizona district and was remembered for having been an on-line pornographer (DirtyScottsdale.com/Brock Landers) before narrowly winning a wild primary against 10 other Republicans (outspending all his rivals combined). This year Schweikert spent $1,289,381 and Quayle spent $1,537,407. An Adelson-funded superPAC, Friends of the Majority, spent another $1,120,000 in negative ads against Schweikert. But Arizona voters were tired-- after just one term-- of being embarrassed by the clownish Quayle and he went down 53-47%.

Far more interesting were the 4 races where non-incumbents beat incumbents. The headliner, of course, was far right extremist Richard Mourdock beating Indiana GOP icon Richard Lugar with a stunning 60% of the vote. Lugar was viewed (disapprovingly) as a mainstream conservative when the GOP primary voters wanted someone more like... Christine O'Donnell. Mourdock spent $3,162,191 on the primary and Lugar spent $8,301,994. But outside spending, mostly from extremist groups, was tilted in Mourdock's favor. Club For Growth spent $947,991 in negative ads against Lugar and $517,810 in favor of Mourdock. The Koch brothers' FreedomWorks spent $341,503 against Lugar and another $330,129 in favor of Mourdock. Similarly the NRA spent over a quarter million dollars tearing down Lugar and approximately $638,000 bolstering Mourdock.

In the Tulsa, OK-area and Jacksonville, FL-area House races, unknown challengers came from nowhere to beat, respectively, John Sullivan and Cliff Stearns. Jim Bridenstine beat Sullivan, an extremist and drug addict, 54-46%. Sullivan spent $1,113,091 on the primary and Bridenstine spent $293,890. The PACs from opthamologists and anesthesiologists, who had felt dissed by Sullivan, spent around $100,000 against him and seem to have made the difference in the race. And in the case of the never-popular Mean Jean Schmidt, it was podiatrists who did her in. In fact, a podiatrist, Brad Wenstrup, beat her 49-43%, in a district east of Cincinnati. Wenstrup sent $357,260 and Mean Jean spent $657,489. The good government group, Campaign for Primary Accountability, spent $132,022 against Schmidt. (It's worth noting that they also spent $240,000 against Reyes, $130,875 against Hoden and $224,529 (some of it funneled by Cantor and Schock) against Manzullo.

Primary season is over and it's time to get serious about November. Normally this would be a time when we could safely say that there isn't a single congressional race anywhere in America where the GOP nominated someone better than the Democrats. That may not be the case this year. We're still investigating, but Republican rebel and libertarian may well turn out to be a less odious choice for voters than anti-Choice fanatic Steve Pestka in the Grand Rapids/Battle Creek area of south-central Michigan. We'll get back to you on that one.

Would I vote for an 80-year-old U.S. Senate candidate? I don't think so. (Not without grave reservations, anyway)

We know that Senator Dick isn't going to get his six more years. My question is, should he even have asked for them?

by Ken

I understand the conventional wisdom about Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar's Republican primary defeat Tuesday by Teabagging thug Richard Mourdock, until recently a classically unelectable "joke" candidate in his home state. Even though I find it hard not to still think of Dick Lugar as Richard Nixon's favorite mayor, when he was mayor of Indianapolis, I understand that he is what passes today for a Republican "moderate." Heck, even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says so.

As CNN expresses that conventional wisdom, "Lugar's loss further polarizes U.S. Senate." And I'm not here to challenge this wisdom. I even have enough curiosity about the Indiana situation to have read Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake's Tuesday-morning washingtonpost.com "Fix" blogpost, "Dick Lugar is going to lose. Did he have to?" (If I may encapsule the verdict: If he had recognized the Teabag peril and acted early on to crush it, and if he had been willing to do absolutely whatever it took to hold onto his seat, he might have been able to -- leaving open the question of whether either of these conditions applied in the real world.)

Of course we'll never know whether Senator Dick (a) could have obliterated the Teabag challenge with prompt action, or (b) whether he could have turned himself into a sufficiently Teabag-preempting candidate to withstand the challenge -- the indications from his own statements are that that he wasn't prepared to present himself as a frothing extremist lunatic. My own hunch is that he wasn't as clueless about the political shape the race would take as is generally being assumed, that he wanted a seventh Senate term provided he could secure it on the same terms he had the previous six.

But on the whole, no, for once I'm not here to quarrel with the conventional wisdom. I just want to throw something out.

On April 4, Lugar turned 80. In Tuesday's primary, he was presenting himself for reelection to another six-year term in the Senate. Is it possible that this was a factor? I can't imagine that this hasn't been discussed. I just don't happen to have encountered any serious discussion of it. Of course, I wasn't really paying that close attention. Still, I confess that I'm surprised.

I realize I will be thought of as "ageist" for daring to suggest that the senator's age should perhaps have disqualified him from that elusive seventh term. So let me take this into the realm of the hypothetical. Is it ageist to ask: Would you vote to give a hypothetical 80-year-old candidate a six-year Senate term? Even this is arguably too presumptuous, so let me ask instead: Would I vote to give a hypothetical 80-year-old candidate a six-year Senate term? And the answer, I think, is I don't think so -- quite possibly not even if he or she was my all-time favorite pol.

Now I'm assuming that our hypothetical 80-year-old candidate is in manageable physical condition and still-alert mental condition. (At least for now.) Otherwise what is there to talk about? And I certainly don't assume that he won't be able to serve out a six-year term, still in manageable physical and alert mental condition. There are certainly many such 86-year-olds dwelling among us.

Not that many, though. And I would like to think that even our hypothetical candidate would be realistic and honest enough to recognize that in making ongoing commitments, it's prudent to be realistic and honest in how far ahead he or she projects. I am certainly not proposing that we automatically declare anyone unfit for further service to the public weal based on reaching a particular age. We already have too many mandatory retirement ages in place in our society which don't take into account the actual condition of the mandated retiree.

The stark reality is that we all age differently. Goodness knows, I cheered Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on for as long as he felt competent to serve, trusting that he would know when his time came. And I'm delighted to see that he still seems to have a fair amount of juice left in him now that he's retired. That's a lot of responsibility to put on an individual, to know when it's time to hang 'em up, and I suppose we have all those mandatory retirement ages because by and large we don't trust workers to know when it's time.

I don't think there's any question that there are all sorts of commissions, boards, and what-all on which Senator Dick would have been welcomed and where he could have made a real contribution, for as long as he cared to and was able to. But again, an 80-year-old Senate candidate? I would have to know way more about the voters of Indiana to know whether this played any significant part in their thinking. But I think it probably would in mine.

As it happens, my own congressman, Charlie Rangel, is in sort of this situation. Not identical, mind you, but similar. Congressman Charlie is almost two years older than Senator Dick, and as I was writing last month, something in him seems just unwilling to let go. But in his case, at least he's only presenting himself to the voters in his congressional district for a two-year term.

I don't know. I'm just asking.


A REAL-WORLD HYPOTHETICAL POSTSCRIPT:
MIGHT I HAVE VOTED FOR SENATOR DICK?

Yes, of course, I myself might have voted for 80-year-old Senator Dick on Tuesday if I was an Indiana Rerpublican and if I was faced with the choice between him and the Teabagger assclown. But that's a couple of more hypotheticals than I'm comfortable hypothesizing.

#

How Badly Does The GOP Want To Double The Interest On Student Loans?

Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar, a mainstream conservative, didn't vote Tuesday when Harry Reid tried to break the Republican filibuster against the legislation that would prevent the interest rate on student loans from doubling in July. Lugar didn't vote-- he surely would have backed the filibuster-- because he was, as you know by now, back in Indiana trying, without success to stave off a primary from the "teabaggers"... and funded by Wall Street. A primary factor in Lugar’s defeat last night stems from the power of the banksters' craven lobbyists.

The Indiana Republican can be viewed as a demonstration of Wall Street’s political muscle. In the words of Politico, “The banking industry is making an example of Sen. Dick Lugar.”

In a rare loss for Wall Street, the Senate last year rejected legislation to delay a rule to limit the amount banks can charge businesses for credit card swipe fees. The financial industry mounted an incredible lobbying campaign-- as Bloomberg reported, banks hired high priced K Street hacks, used conservative blogs like RedState, and developed Beltway advertising-- to pass the measure. But a coalition of big box retailers, like Wal-Mart and Target, along with small businesses and other vendors, persuaded enough legislators from both sides of the aisle to kill the measure and limit the fees. The rule affected some $16 billion in bank profits.

Lugar was among the few Republican senators up for reelection in 2012 to vote against the banks. As Anna Palmer and Robin Bravender reported, bank lobbyists decided early on to use the Indiana primary today to make an example out of Lugar:

Financial Services Roundtable’s Scott Talbott, Lisa Nelson of Visa, Peter Blocklin of the American Bankers Association and Vincent Randazzo of PNC hosted an inside-the-Beltway fundraiser for Lugar’s opponent, Richard Mourdock, this week. The Electronic Payments Coalition, which represents the industry, also sent out an email fundraising blast that included the event. [...]

The ABA supported Mourdock on June 23-- soon after the Senate vote on the swipe fee amendment-- sending him a $5,000 check, according to federal campaign filings. [...]

“There are just a lot of sour grapes out there,” said a GOP financial services industry lobbyist.

But with more battles over swipe fees on the horizon, bankers want to make it clear that there will be consequences for Republicans who vote against them.

Lugar has also been pummeled by front groups tied to the financial services industry. The Club for Growth, which is funded by several highly ideological hedge fund managers and investors, has aired numerous attack ads against the senator. FreedomWorks, run by Dick Armey, who served as a bank lobbyist after retiring from Congress and C. Boyden Grey, a current lobbyist working to chip away at Dodd-Frank, also ran anti-Lugar ads.

It's that kind of muscle, supercharged by the most blatantly corporate-subservient Supreme Court in the history of America, that led to the roll call on the student loan filibuster Tuesday. Reid's cloture try managed to garner 52 votes, 8 short of what was needed (really just 7 shy of the goal because he voted with the GOP so, by arcane and idiotic Senate rules, he can bring it up again). Every Democrat voted "Aye" and every Republican voted "Nay" except Olympia Snowe, who voted "present" (and the 2 absent conservatives, Mark Kirk and poor Dick Lugar. So along with the congenital reactionaries like David Vitter, Jim DeMint, Pat Toomey, Mike Lee, Tim Johnson and Marco Rubio, self-proclaimed "mainstream" Republicans like Susan Collins, Scott Brown, John McCain, Lisa Murkowski and John Thune all voted to guarantee that student loan rates would double. The White House statement expressed what, I believe, most Americans think about this obstructionism by the Republicans:

It is extremely disappointing that Republicans in the Senate today voted to ask millions of students to pay an average of $1,000 each in order to protect a loophole that allows millionaires to dodge payroll taxes. On July 1, more than 7.4 million students across the country will see their interest rates double unless Congress acts. We’re pleased that despite failing to address it in their budget, Republicans in Congress now profess to be concerned about this coming rate hike. But now it’s time for them to stop refighting old political battles and prove they’re serious by proposing a real solution to keep rates low for students without burdening middle class families or undercutting preventive health care for women. We look forward to continuing to work with Congress to prevent rates from doubling and ensure that students continue to get a fair shot at an affordable education.

The battle yesterday was over a loophole that allows wealthy people to avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes like normal people. This is the GOP base and the GOP would rather super-serve this small group of millionaires than worry about millions of Americans struggling to get a college education. As usual. It allows people who make over a quarter million dollars a year to file their taxes as a small business (thereby avoiding the taxes). If that loophole were closed it would pay for the $5.9 billion loan rate freeze. Deranged right-wing imbeciles are screaming it punishes the so-called "job creators," even though the only jobs they seem to be creating are for corrupt, reactionary politicians who look after their interests.




UPDATE


Boehner and his GOP cronies may have their own disingenuous way of spinning this issue, but as Lee Fang pointed out this morning, it was all about the Chamber of Commerce, the American Banking Association and other corrupt-- if not criminal-- enterprises that exist to bribe Congress so that, like in this case, they do the wrong thing, tossing their own constituents under the bus for the sake of the corporations that finance their slimy careers.

Republicans blocked the student loan interest rate bill simply because big businesses and campaign contributors lobbied aggressively against closing the loophole. The National Journal published a letter from a number of Beltway lobbying groups-- among them, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents many multinational corporations, and the American Banking Association-- protesting the measure. These lobbying groups have wide sway over both parties, but particularly the GOP.

Reintroduction Of The DREAM Act-- And How DSCC "Great Recruit" Joe Donnelly Has Guaranteed It Will Fail In The Senate

[NOTE: I stumbled on this post accidentally this morning. It was scheduled to run last May but never did. In light of the post we looked at this afternoon about the Indiana Senate race, I thought I'd run it this evening.]

The DREAM Act itself isn't really partisan or even controversial. Last time it was polled it was supported by 66% of Americans and when it was last approved by the House (in December), it passed 216-198, 8 Republicans voting with the Democrats. 55 Senators-- from both parties-- supported passing it but a contingent of the worst of the Republican racists filibustered it and it couldn't come to a vote. This week Dick Durbin and Howard Berman reintroduced the bill which provides a path to conditional legal residency for an undocumented immigrant child if he or she:

·         Was 15 years old or younger when brought into America

·         Has lived in the United States for at least five years before enactment of the law

·         Is of good moral character

·         Has earned a high school degree or a graduate equivalent diploma

Eligible people would have six years to earn lawful permanent resident status if they:

·         Successfully complete two years of higher education, or

·         Complete two years of military service and received an honorable discharge if he or she is discharged

Yesterday, Steve Benen pointed to the shame of one of the Senate's supporters, Indiana Republican Dick Lugar. Lugar has changed his mind-- or lost his balls... or soul. As recently as March, Lugar, a co-sponsor of the legislation, was predicting it would pass this year. And then he wound up with a racist teabagger challenging him in the GOP primary. He also has one of the few Democrats to oppose DREAM, another racist, Joe Donnelly, running against him in the general. By recruiting and supporting Donnelly, the DSCC has guaranteed the failure of DREAM this year. But, ssshhhhhhh... they don't want Latino voters to know that. Benen doesn't look past the primaries and doesn't see the impact racist Blue Dogs Donnelly and Jim Matheson (UT), who also opposed DREAM and is probably going to run against DREAM supporter Orrin Hatch, are having in killing the bill's chance to win.




ADDENDUM, May 7, 2012: Matheson chickened out of running against Hatch, but Donnelly is running for Senate, either against Lugar or Mourdock, depending on who wins the Republican primary tomorrow. Lugar would be a show-in in the general election but Donnelly would have a chance against a deranged fascist like Mourdock. In any of these scenarios, though, Indiana will doom itself to backward, right-wing representation steeped ignorance and cowardice. Apparently, it's what most of them want.