UNIDOS Day of Action: Misinformation or pure propaganda?
April 25, 2012
by Pamela Powers Hannley Regardless of the cause, spreading misinformation to pump up emotions is not right. OK, call me a Pollyanna in a fact-free universe, but I still believe in telling the truth. UNIDOS, the high school/university student group that supports the revival of now-defunct Mexican American Studies Program in Tucson Unified School District … Read more
Can we finally have a rational debate on comprehensive immigration reform?
April 25, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
I am always amused by the media villagers and Beltway bloviators who blame President Obama for not having passed a comprehensive immigration reform law (as if he can waive a magic wand and simply make it happen). The media suffers from selective memory loss, often for partisan political reasons.
Comprehensive immigration reform was on the table in 2007 with a bipartisan bill, the "Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007," cosponsored by Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain. It had the support of President George W. Bush who had run for office on a promise of comprehensive immigration reform.
The Kennedy-McCain bill was undermined and eventually defeated by far-right extremists in the Republican Party, most notably by Sen. McCain's own seatmate, Sen. Jon Kyl, and Texas Sen. John Cornyn. On June 28, 2007, the heavily amended bill failed to get the 60 votes necessary to end a GOP filibuster. The final cloture vote lost 46-53. This effectively ended its chances, and President Bush said he was disappointed at Congress's failure to act on the issue.
Since then, the conservative position on immigration reform has only hardened, bordering on nativism. John McCain when he ran for president in 2008 had to disown his own bill for comprehensive immigration reform and adopted extremist rhetoric: "Just build the danged fence!"
Today, comprehensive immigration reform cannot even get a committee hearing in the Tea-Publican controlled House or the "filibuster everything" Senate. Don't blame President Obama for this political environment. Opposition to comprehensive immigration reform comes almost exclusively from the conservative far-right.
For years now the Republican excuse for blocking any and all comprehensive immigration reform has been a single, vapid bumper sticker slogan: "Secure the border first." The border is now more secure than it has been in years. Now That Mexican Border is Secure, Will Republicans Stop Blocking Immigration Reform?
From Pew Hispanic Research, Net Migration from Mexico falls to zero and perhaps less:
The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants—more than half of whom came illegally—the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped—and may have reversed, according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of multiple government data sets from both countries.
The standstill appears to be the result of many factors, including the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates and changing economic conditions in Mexico.
The Fire Next Time: The Euro Financial Crisis – ‘Austerity’ and The Great Unraveling
April 25, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The Tea-Publican Party has been pushing for conservative economic "austerity" measures in Congress and in statehouses across the country. They still believe in Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's economic advice to President Herbert Hoover after the Crash of 1929:
"Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people."
This policy was an epic failure for Herbert Hoover, and resulted in the misery of the Great Depression.
So conservative economic theory was "updated" under President Ronald Reagan in 1981 into supply-side "trickle down" economics: reduce federal debt and taxes, and this will result in economic growth. The only problem is, there is no empirical evidence in support of this economic theory. (Spare me the Saint Ronnie Reagan mythology. Reagan tripled the national debt while simultaneously raising taxes 11 times during his administration).
When this supply-side economic theory became fundamentalist dogma under George W. Bush, it was an epic failure, and resulted in the misery of the Bush Great Recession. The Bush Years Were a Lost Decade.
Now, Tea-Publicans are looking to the conservative economic "austerity" agenda that's dominating Europe and calling for the United States to follow the continent's lead. But as Steve Benen writes, the European Union provides 'A cautionary tale':
This is especially true of David Cameron's British austerity policies, which have drawn enthusiastic praise from Republicans, who wish President Obama would implement parts of the Prime Minister's plan here in the U.S.
Indeed, it was almost exactly a year ago when Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) wrote an op-ed urging U.S. policymakers to follow the lead set by our friends across the pond: "We need a budget with a bold vision — like [the one] unveiled in Britain."
We're getting a very good look at the efficacy of the austerity agenda Republicans are so fond of.
Britain's economy slid into its second recession since the financial crisis after official data unexpectedly showed a fall in output in the first three months of 2012, piling pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron's embattled coalition government.
The Office for National Statistics said Britain's gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012 after contracting by 0.3 percent at the end of 2011, confounding forecasts for 0.1 percent growth.
The last time Britain suffered a double-dip recession was in 1975.
Remember, this is of critical importance here in the U.S., because Republicans are eager — desperate, really — to impose this same kind of austerity agenda here. In fact, perhaps the most frustrating realization about the news out of the UK is that it won't deter Republicans at all.
At what point is it no longer impolite to suggest the GOP's economic vision is ridiculous?
College students: the latest target for right wing demonization
April 25, 2012
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by David Safier When the right wing wants to fundamentally destroy some part of the government, it launches a campaign of demonization. It's not enough to say there are problems with, say, traditional public school systems or Social Security or Medicare or public workers' unions, because it's possible to take reasonable measures to fix problems. … Read more
The banksters of Wall Street are a bunch of ingrates
April 25, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
I have posted several times over the years that the stock market performs better under Democratic presidents.
Now there is updated research again making my point. Steve Benen writes Parties and markets and bears, oh my:
In February, we discussed an unmistakable trend: over the last half-century, the stock market has invariably performed better under Democratic administrations than Republican administrations. But Doug Henwood has taken this a little further, noting stock market gains over the first 40 months of presidential terms, going back 70 years.
As Henwood found, market performance under President Obama is the third best — outpacing both of Reagan's terms — and the average under Democratic presidents in general is considerably better than under Republican presidents. (h/t chart by Doug Henwood).
In 2004, a Bush cabinet official said job creation and GDP numbers don't really matter because "the stock market is … the final arbiter" of economic success. If that's still true, Republicans appear to have some explaining to do.
It also suggests Barack Obama is the worst socialist of all time. A soaring stock market, record high corporate profits, private sector job growth … it's almost as if the president didn't listen to Karl Marx at all.
The Banksters of Wall Street are contributing heavily to GOP Super PACs and forming PACs of their own in the wake of Citizens United v. FEC for the purpose of defeating President Obama.
This despite the fact that President Obama has not prosecuted a single bankster of Wall Street for the greatest fraud in the history of the world and nearly destroying the world's financial system and economy in the process; he has not sought a repeal of provisions of law that allow for exotic investment devices like derivatives and credit default swaps that have turned Wall Street into a casino gambling numbers game rather than entrepeneurial investment in industry; and he has not sought to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act firewalls between banking-investment-insurance.
Also despite the fact that the "investor class" is the only sector of the economy that has recovered their losses from the Bush Great Recession that resulted from their rapacious fraud, and they are fabulously wealthy again.
The banksters of Wall Street are a bunch of ingrates. So what explains this? They see themselves as "masters of the universe" who can do no wrong, and their feelings are hurt when they are portrayed as the villains, indeed criminals, that many of them truly are.
Nuke Waste Dump: Votes and Prayers
April 25, 2012
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by David Safier As AZ Blue Meanie posted this morning, the State House and Senate passed Concurrent Memorial SCM 1004 praying for a nuclear waste dump in Arizona. Seriously, praying. I'm not up on my Memorial lingo, but apparently, after all the "Whereas" clauses, the wording is: Wherefore your memorialist, the Senate of the State … Read more
Quick recap of oral argument of SB 1070 today
April 25, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court heard the final oral argument scheduled for this Term in Arizona v. United States. The Court will consider whether four key provisions of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s immigration law, are preempted by federal law.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who frequently portrays himself as an "original intent" constructionist of the U.S. Constitution, demonstrated this is a lie by taking a radical position unsupported by the language of the Constitution or precedents in his questioning of legal counsel today. Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog.com recaps the oral argument from this morning. Argument recap: A choice between radical and reasonable?:
With Justice Antonin Scalia pushing the radical idea that the Constitution gives states clear authority to close their borders entirely to immigrants without a legal right to be in the U.S., seven other Justices on Wednesday went looking for a more reasonable way to judge states’ power in the immigration field. If the Court accepts the word of Arizona’s lawyer that the state is seeking only very limited authority, the state has a real chance to begin enforcing key parts of its controversial law — S.B. 1070 — at least until further legal tests unfold in lower courts.
In an oral argument that ran 20 minutes beyond the scheduled hour, the Justices focused tightly on the actual operation of the four specific provisions of the law at issue, and most of the Court seemed prepared to accept that Arizona police would act in measured ways as they arrest and detain individuals they think might be in the U.S. illegally. And most of them seemed somewhat skeptical that the federal government would have to change its own immigration priorities just because states were becoming more active.
At the end, though, the question remained how a final opinion might be written to enlarge states’ power to deal with some 12 million foreign nationals without basing that authority upon the Scalia view that states have a free hand under the Constitution to craft their own immigration policies. The other Justices who spoke up obviously did not want to turn states entirely loose in this field. So perhaps not all of the four clauses would survive.
Conservative Republicans speak out against the radical Tea-Publicans’ War on Women
April 25, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
There was a My Turn column in the Arizona Republic on Sunday by Linda Binder (Lake Havasu): Susan Gerard (Phoenix); and Roberta Voss (Glendale), each a former Republican state legislator.
Each legislator was considered a "solid conservative" Republican in their day, but in today's radicalized Tea-Publican Party would be vilified as a "Republican in Name Only " (RINO), or worse: (choose one) a socialist, communist, Marxist, Leninist, Maoist, secular humanist, "librul" Democrat — disparaging terms used interchangeably without regard to meaning by Tea-Publicans to refer to anyone who disagrees with their radical extremist agenda.
Binder, Gerard and Voss sounded the alarm on the radicalized Tea-Publican War on Women. Stripping health choices from women isn't priority:
Among Republicans there is a history of support for access to health care, including Planned Parenthood, and rejection of the intrusive laws being passed by the more extreme-right members of the party now.
In fact, we Republicans just a short decade ago passed Arizona's state law requiring insurance companies to provide fair coverage of contraception — the very bill these extreme right Republicans now are working to repeal.
The sad thing is, if this new crop of Republicans get their way, more women would be uninsured, medical discrimination against women would be legal again, and women would once again be forced to pay more for health care and get less for their money.
Even the nation's family-planning program — to provide low-income women with birth control and other preventive care — was signed into law by President Richard Nixon and expanded by President George H.W. Bush. Solid conservatives, like Barry Goldwater, supported Planned Parenthood. His wife, Peggy Goldwater, sat on the board of Planned Parenthood in Arizona.
