Month: October 2013

But, Its More Complicated Than That

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By Tom Prezelski

Re-Posted from Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Back in 1995, during the last government shutdown, prompted, as some might recall, by Speaker Newt Gingrich’s fit of bratty pique
after a perceived  snub by President Clinton, Arizona Governor J. Fife
“Three Sticks” Symington pledged that he would take action to keep Grand
Canyon National Park open during the crisis. He sent the Arizona
National Guard in for this purpose. The Guard protected access to one
road that ran from the park boundary to a single scenic overlook for a day or so. In other words, they did exactly enough to provide a show for the teevee and nothing else.

Yet,
as late as 2007, I heard a member of the legislature brag about how the
State showed how they could run the park better and cheaper than the
federal government could, but it would be difficult for anyone to
sincerely say that what the Guard was doing was the same as managing a
1900 square mile piece of land that receives over four million visitors a
year.

Speaking of insincerity, in the wake of the phony umbrage
which followed the lockout of  veterans from the World War II Memorial,
Republican National Committee Chairman Rence Priebus pledged $150,000 to pay a small staff of 5 security guards to keep the monument open for a month. Like Symington before him, Preibus, seems to be gleefully ignorant of what running a public park actually entails.

The GOP’s a la cart budget plan is a prequel to the ‘prioritized’ debt ceiling bomb

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Screenshot-9The latest GOP gimmick comes from Speaker of the House Sen. Ted "Calgary" Cruz, an interloper in the House, whose Plan E is an a la carte funding of government agencies that the GOP will be embarrassed by if the Tea Party "Suicide Caucus" Shutdown continues – for veterans’ programs, national
parks and museums, and services in Washington – and to punish government agencies it detests, like the EPA and the IRS.

On Tuesday night, Plan E failed, but the GOP will bring it back up for a vote on Wednesday because they are fresh out of gimmicks. House
G.O.P. Pushes Piecemeal Approach as Democrats Stand Firm:

The Republicans suffered embarrassing losses on Tuesday night when three
bills — to finance veterans’ programs, national parks and museums, and
services in Washington — failed to get the two-thirds majority required
to pass under fast-track procedures.

The list of federal programs being singled out for financing is
expanding. Democrats criticized House Republicans on Tuesday for
choosing national parks over cancer research at the National Institutes
of Health. The response: a measure to finance the health institutes,
too. Congress had already passed legislation to make sure active duty
uniformed military forces would continue to be paid. Criticized for
leaving out the National Guard and Reserves, Republicans added them to
the favored list.

The White House has already threatened a veto.

“Consideration of appropriations bills in a piecemeal fashion is not a
serious or responsible way to run the United States Government,” the
White House budget office said. “Instead of opening up a few Government
functions, the House of Representatives should reopen all of the
Government.”

* * *

Democrats say they will not negotiate any changes to the health care
law, nor will they reopen the government piece by piece. To do so, they
said, would only encourage Republican brinkmanship.

What is reallly at stake: the principle of majority rule in a democracy

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Steve Benen has a must read post today that crystalizes what is reallly at stake in this Tea Party "Suicide Caucus" Shutdown: the principle of majority rule in a democracy. 'Defending the health of our democracy':

Kudos to James Downie for bring the Federalist Papers into the debate:

"If a faction consists of less than a majority," wrote James Madison
in Federalist No. 10, "relief is supplied by the republican principle,
which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote.
It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it
will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the
Constitution." The idea that voting expresses the popular will, that
elections' results have consequences, is fundamental to democracy. It is
also an idea that Republicans are determined to ignore.

Quite right. Thomas Friedman is thinking along similar lines.

This time is different. What is at stake in this government shutdown
forced by a radical Tea Party minority is nothing less than the
principle upon which our democracy is based: majority rule. President
Obama must not give in to this hostage taking — not just because
Obamacare is at stake, but because the future of how we govern ourselves
is at stake. […]

If democracy means anything, it means that, if you are outvoted, you
accept the results and prepare for the next election. Republicans are
refusing to do that. It shows contempt for the democratic process.

President Obama is not defending health care. He's defending the
health of our democracy. Every American who cherishes that should stand
with him.

It's fair to say that Friedman, love him or hate him, is
not a partisan bomb-thrower or a reflexive ideologue. I don't imagine
it was easy for him to write a column accusing Republican lawmakers of
attacking democratic norms and abandoning the standards of the American
tradition, which makes it all the more important that he did so anyway.

Questions for Martha McSally: ‘Why not?’ I’ll tell you why not

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

For several months now, this blog has posted a series of "Questions for Martha McSally" regarding her positions on current hot topics — I am
not going to give her a free pass until after the GOP primary like our local media did in 2012. I had hoped this would encourage local media to be more aggressive in questioning McSally, instead of allowing McSally a free pass.

ChickenbunkerAt least on day one of the "official" McSally campaign, my hopes were dashed. Wick Communications, which essentially controls small town newspapers in Southern Arizona, failed miserably in the coverage of Martha McSally's campaign kick-off — which also happened to fall on day one of the Tea Party "Suicide Caucus" Shutdown of the federal government.

The editors allowed McSally to simply spew empty platitudes, bumper sticker slogans, and ad hominem attacks on President Obama that she no doubt memorized at GOPAC candidate school, or was provided by "The Scarp," former Arizona Daily Star reporter Daniel Scarpinato from the RNCC.

In reading through the superficial reporting below, it is painfully obvious that Martha McSally is a vacuous candidate who does not know enough about any subject to offer a thoughtful and detailed explanation of her positions. So she continues to hide in the bunker and refuses to offer any detailed explanations of her positions. McSally is counting on our local media to give her a free pass again this time. At least on day one, McSally got exactly what she wanted from our local media.

The shutdown in the news — False Equivalency edition

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by David Safier

There's what happens and what the media says happens. Sometimes they're pretty close to the same, other times, not so much. The most important thing to watch in the reporting of the shutdown isn't the purely factual reporting. That's reasonably straightforward. It's whether coverage follows the false equivalency viewpoint — a pox on all their houses for the shutdown, no matter who bears the brunt of the blame — or points out that the Republican party, led by its far right wing, has created the messwe're in.

My verdict based on coverage I'm seeing in the Star and a few other papers: false equivalency is still rearing its ugly head, but lots of the commentary, especially editorials, is getting it right.

The AP story the Star put on its front page is pure false equivalency. It actually lets the Republicans draw first blood, saying in the second paragraph, "Republicans said it was [Obama's] fault, not theirs, and embarked on a strategy — opposed by Democrats — of voting on bills to reopen individual agencies or programs."

But then you turn to the editorial, which tells the story correctly.

[T]here are times, as we have reached now, when a small number of elected officials — this time a fundamentalist subset of the Republican Party — can monkey-wrench the legislative process and hold the country hostage to their unreasonable demands.

The bottom line, to our mind, is one of practicality: One cannot reason with bullies. Any attempt to do so presupposes a position of good faith that we have yet to see in the tea-party Republicans who are putting their beliefs and political aspirations above the law of the land.