US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

From The Economist:

“…News Corporation and its subsidiaries paid only A$325m ($238m) in corporate taxes worldwide. In the same period, its consolidated pre-tax profits were A$5.4 billion. So News Corporation has paid an effective tax rate of only around 6%. By comparison, Disney, one of the world’s other media empires, paid 31%.

...

“By taking advantage of a provision in the law that allows expanding companies like Mr. Murdoch’s to defer taxes to future years, the News Corporation paid no federal taxes in two of the last four years, and in the other two it paid only a fraction of what it otherwise would have owed. During that time, Securities and Exchange Commission records show, the News Corporation’s domestic pretax profits topped $9.4 billion.”

http://www.alternet.org/story/150327/how_you_end_up_bankrolling_fox_news:_news_corp._and_rupert_murdoch_weasel_out_of_paying_taxes?akid=6703.275643.An3hXS&rd=1&t=8

FUCK MICKEY MOUSE

?

http://www.scotusblog.com/?p=116863

this case is nearly beyond me. the argument that a campaign finance law that provides extra funding for publically financed campaigns that are faced with the budgets of campaigns run by self-financed millionaires is a free speech issue makes no sense

until you realize that Citizens United case really cemented the equivalence of Free Speech and Money so firmly into legal thought, that the idea of someone else being provided equivalent funds can be seen as a disincentive to you continuing to speak yourself (i.e. spend more money on your own campaign)... but the truth, that this has nothing to do with actual Free Speech, or ideas, or message anymore -- this is just Money -- this is so utterly warped I got lightheaded even trying to follow these arguments

the Plutocracy is being signed into common-law one decision at a time

so who's watching this speech in a few minutes?

people playing the "let me be clear" drinking game?

I don't watch speeches

yikes.

LOL at the notion of anyone threatening a dictator of 40 years and change that time is not on his side.

almost got into an argument with my dad about obama and this war tonight :(

a lot of what i end up thinking about in times like this is that obama, who i believe is one of the most decent and intelligent people to have ever ascended to this position of global hegemonic CEO, is much more powerless than we think he is given the "overton window" he has to work with, both globally and domestically. this speech was disappointing in incredibly familiar ways. he said the kinds of things that a president in 2011 would HAVE to say. (i like to think that someone of obama's intelligence is acutely aware of how straitjacketed he is by his role, but i don't know.)

and further, it makes me think that the task of the left is to work hard at making more things possible for an intelligent president, to loosen the straitjacket or at least make it fit differently. and to prise that window open will take - i believe - something fairly radical. not one radical act, but sustained radical thinking. i don't think there's any other way (sorry ezra klein).

but the exciting thing is, the world system is so caddy wampus, so unstable and out of kilter, so far from equilibrium, that the smallest pushes can create big chain reactions. look at egypt. look at wisconsin. so i see it as an encouragement to go ahead and push. go ahead and try. this is the time when small factions can have huge effects.

Tracer, I love to read your thoughts on politics. You should come back to America and organize us all/lead us to victory.

it makes me think that the task of the left is to work hard at making more things possible for an intelligent president

How?

As for Obama, I understand not wanting to project Bush style arrogance but in trying to avoid that he sometimes ties himself in knots or just takes Bush-like actions but in a passive manner that may look different but has the same sad result.

How?

Wisconsin is a good example.

it is, but it's also reactive.

not gonna happen until things get REALLY awful. and maybe not even then.

not with THAT attitude, it won't

by the way thanks for saying that, Virginia!

morbius WHAT'S not gonna happen? not following you. what i'm saying is that i believe we live in a time when little things can make a big difference. of course that's always the case but i think you need less luck in 2011 than you usually do.

Why worry about Obama and Dems letting us down when we can laugh at Newt Gingrich (Washington Monthly linked to this):

"I have two grandchildren: Maggie is 11; Robert is 9," Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. "I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

Secular atheist AND dominated by radical Islamists! I am sure Professor Newt can explain how it will be both

TH:

"work(ing) hard at making more things possible for an intelligent president, to loosen the straitjacket or at least make it fit differently"

See, you still believe an intelligent non-bastard can be elected president. Under the current system, I don't. And as long as we have NO possibility of campaign finance reform (under that Supeme Court corporate personhood decision), there's no altering that. The game is solidly rigged.

lol @ holding up Wisconsin as an example of anything. in case no one noticed, the left lost that battle.

battle isn't completely over. or at least, the recall movement is still plenty active

but the Left won the narrative on that, Shakey, and Walker's career is v probably ruined....

I think he's an intelligent non-bastard who upon swearing in had his innards replaced with Chief-o-bot 2000 parts, the same basic config that all presidents have received since World War II. When he leaves office his innards will be returned to him. It's our job to change the world enough that Chief-o-bot 2000 looks outdated.

meanwhile, forbes asks the burning question: "unpaid jobs -- the new normal?"

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/25/unpaid-jobs-the-new-normal/

the slight hope i have left is obama wins a second term and takes off the gloves without having to ever worry about running again. but i am also a huge sucker

xp ehhh kinda, I think the best you're gonna get is complete reprogramming.

But I do think you're gonna get that: you've been completely otm itt Tracer, and I totally am willing to believe that Wisconsin is just the beginning of something...

the slight hope i have left is obama wins a second term and takes off the gloves without having to ever worry about running again. but i am also a huge sucker

innards do not get returned before their time

Here's Obama's idea of negotiating right now:

For example, Obama proposed in his most recent budget request reducing commodity payments to wealthy farmers for a savings of $2.5 billion over the next decade (though the proposal would save nothing this year). The budget also proposes to eliminate Pell college grants for summer school, for a savings of $60 million this year. And it offers a host of provisions intended to streamline the major government health programs, Medicare and Medicaid, in part by expanding federal program integrity authority.

Republicans are resisting this approach. W. Post

I don't get the Pell cut proposal.

In Wisconsin the left needs to finish the job there via recalls, court challenges, and eventually getting legislators who will restore collective bargaining.

oh i don't think a second obama term will be much different than the first

but the Left won the narrative on that, Shakey, and Walker's career is v probably ruined....

my guess is Walker doesn't give a fuck about the governership and has his eye on national office - which, with the gratitude and support of the Koch bros and the notoriety this stunt has brought him, seems entirely within his reach to me

um I hate to point out the rather obvious historical fact that the vast majority of presidents' major legislative accomplishments fall in the second term. there may be a brief flurry of activity, particularly on the foreign policy front, following re-election, but for the most part it's diminishing returns with a second term.

Obama is going to win re-election handily. dunno if I'll bother voting for him or not, there's no way any Republican candidate has a prayer in California so my vote is probably moot.

um I hate to point out the rather obvious historical fact that the vast majority of presidents' major legislative accomplishments fall in the second FIRST term

my guess is Walker doesn't give a fuck about the governership and has his eye on national office - which, with the gratitude and support of the Koch bros and the notoriety this stunt has brought him, seems entirely within his reach to me

I highly doubt this; I mean, anything's possible, but c'mon...

well he seems pretty blase about his prospects in Wisconsin

maybe he's eyeing a senate seat or something

I think he just wants a fuck-ton of cash, which a former governor with tea party idealogical bona fides can probably make pretty easily.

Obama hasn't had his innards replaced: he's governed exactly as we expected in 2008. My only surprise is his indifference about explaining his connections to the plutocracy.

?? i think the answer is right in front of us: he's a true believer. he thinks smashing the whole range of wisonsin's public assets is the best thing to do, because their existence is coercive and the people who administer them and depend on them are parasites.

xp re: walker

I don't see "true believer" and "opportunistic shitheel" as being mutually exclusive

if Wisconsin goes through with the recall & manages to oust him and then goes ahead and elects him to the Senate, well then Wisconsin is fucking stupid.

There I said it

Rub on your titties

LOL

as far as the future goes, i really don't know what to think. two things really get under my skin tho:

one, americans (big caveats here of course, americans aren't any single thing) have reacted to the current moment by becoming more conservative, by self-description

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/03/the-conservative-states-of-america/71827/

so if the country becomes meaner, more unequal, more precarious, it'll be more or less what it asked for.

second, all the apocalyptic elements of american political life are now totally mainstream.

http://depts.washington.edu/uwiser/racepolitics_research2011.html

To capture the difference between the two camps, we asked whether or not people thought the following proposition true: “Barack Obama is destroying the country.” If Tea Party conservatives were as extreme as some suggest, we thought asking a question of this type, i.e., fairly extreme, would tease out differences between the two camps. The data suggest the two conservative factions are divided on this question. Under these circumstances, 6% of non-Tea Party conservatives believe the president is destroying the country versus the 71% of Tea Party conservatives who believe this to be true.

i bang on about this constantly, but i don't think "tea party conservatives" are a new thing -- they've always been a part of the american right. but now they've been given a name, and are treated in a weird way as a parallel faction to regular-old republicans, even though they ARE regular-old republicans, of a kind. they've been empowered instead of kept in the closet. dealmaking is now basically impossible.

so, we're getting poorer and angrier, and the poverty and anger so far have only served to push the lever in a worse direction

they've always been a part of the american right. but now they've been given a name, and are treated in a weird way as a parallel faction to regular-old republicans, even though they ARE regular-old republicans, of a kind. they've been empowered instead of kept in the closet

This is exactly what I've been saying for months. If they're "new," credit timing and their ability to coalesce. But we dealt with these types in the recent past: the anti-Clintonites of the nineties, and the cadre of young professional lawyer types that came of age in the Reagan administration.

To be honest, with the exception of Goldwater's candidacy, before Reagan I have trouble defining what "conservatism" meant besides "anti-liberal."

Ford, Nixon, Rockefeller, Dole, Poppy Bush – what were they besides reluctant liberals?

Tea Party used to be, like, John Birchers and scary anti-communists and stuff. The angry "populist" contingent. It's not a new thing though that they want to control or drive the Republican Party, they've been doing that for at least twenty years.

Ford, Nixon, Rockefeller, Dole, Poppy Bush – what were they besides reluctant liberals?

LOL. Nowadays all the Democrats are reluctant conservatives.

but the Left won the narrative on that, Shakey, and Walker's career is v probably ruined....

in 1998, i thought that Newt Gingrich's career was v. probably ruined ... but no it wasn't. see any of another bunch of GOPers who "bounce back" after some catastrophe that would've done in a Dem.

Obama is also a "reluctant liberal" (when he's actually governing, when he's campaigning that's a different matter)

Mods...?