Just Say Hell No

The Republican party - a party once expected to fade away until the Democrats got blamed for the foundering economy and ended up looking like the Whigs of yore - has been showing its resurgence by saying no to everything in the lame-duck session of Congress. Senate Republicans have unanimously pledged to stop all Senate business until they get the tax cuts for the rich that they want. Even if the Democrats did stand up to them (don't give it a second thought, they won't), nothing to help the people will get accomplished.

That includes lifting the ban on gays in the military, which got a lot of momentum from a study released yesterday saying it wouldn't have an affect on unit cohesion. Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, military veterans both, have suggested that while lifting the ban can be done, the study fails to say whether it should be done. President Obama should come right out and tell the Republicans not to play semantics with him on this issue and make them feel the heat. Not in this month of December or in any other month will that happen.

As for the tax cuts, the only recourse for the Democrats is to let them expire and let the Republicans take the blame for a sudden tax hike on the middle class. But the Republicans never pay a price for leaving the unemployed high an dry by refusing to extend unemployment insurance, as they just did again. They only get applauded by those who have jobs for not spending more money on freeloading the jobless, even though benefits are meager for individual claimants and it would help the economy by generating two dollars worth of economic activity for every dollar paid out. If taxes go up, and the Democrats try to place the blame on Republicans for their refusal to compromise (again, not going to happen), Frank Luntz will probably come up with some scary slogan to deflect the blame to the Democrats (which will happen regardless).

All of this Republican brinkmanship over taxes have set the tone for the foreseeable future, and possibly beyond that. And the reason the Republicans are not in trouble for their greedy, swinish, nasty values is because the voters also have greedy, swinish, nasty values. Say what you will about Fox News, a lot of people are actually watching it.

Guess Who's Coming To the White House

President Obama had his long-delayed meeting (without dinner) at the White House with Republican congressional leaders today, and I'm sure that the result in finding common ground on issues such as the extension of the Bush tax cuts and extension of unemployment benefits was that the President gave his orders to the White House staff on how to proceed . . . right after John Boehner and Mitch McConnell handed those same orders down to him.

Rumors that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is working on a proposal designed to appease Republicans sound very Chamberlainish. The White House has to choose between compromise or conflict in dealing with Republicans. The President is on the verge of choosing compromise. He will have conflict. Some of it will come from a liberal base once convinced that the President would stand up for their interests. I don't care what pundits like Jonathan Alter says about trying to get along with Republicans or big business, because they have the most power to create the private-sector jobs we need. How is Obama going to get anything he wants if the Republicans demand everything they want? Meanwhile, eight hundred thousand unemployed Americans are about to lose their benefits tonight with no congressional action.

The federal government, swinish as it is, isn't evil. The Senate did pass sweeping food safety regulations in this lame-duck session, and the House finally got around to compensating black farmers for their earlier failures to get federal aid after a court ruling in the farmers' favor. So, there's that.

But it should be more.

Kyl Bile

Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, is my current peeve. Kyl undistinguished himself yesterday on NBC's "Meet The Press" by defending his hold on the strategic arms treaty with the Russians and insisting that many of the issues involving modernization of nuclear weapon facilities have to debated thoroughly, and that Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's agenda, which was repudiated at the polls earlier this month (actually, the Democrats kept the Senate by losing fewer seats than expected, thanks to Reid's own re-election, but never mind) don't allow such a debate in the lame-duck session. Kyl also defended continuing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, insisting that low tax rates will enable job creation. Really? These tax cuts were enacted nearly a decade ago, and jobs have been lost, not created. Tonight, Chris Matthews brought up an earlier quote from the Arizona lawmaker on extending jobless benefits, which he (Kyl) opposes even as he favors letting the rich keep more money that won't be spent to help the economy; extending unemployment benefits, he said, promotes sloth and laziness rather than encouraging people to find a job.

Hearing Kyl pontificate on economic issues as if he were an expert on the economy is like hearing Madonna defend her artistic integrity. Most people who collect unemployment benefits only get about $250 to $300 a week, far less than they made when they were working. They'd happy to get a job that allows them to make ends meet, but there are five applicants for every job in this country. And the Republicans are ready to let unemployment benefits run out so they can give the rich more tax reductions. Well, Senator Kyl, I'm actually out of work, but I'm not lazy, thank you very much. I write on this blog regularly. I tirelessly grind out my thoughts, opinions, musings, and all other sorts of stuff. I work very hard at keeping this blog going and I am vigorously pursuing my latest venture - bashing Republicans. And this week, Senator Kyl, I'm devoting my craft to singling you out for special abuse!

I'm working, I'm just not getting paid for this.

Jon Kyl . . .. Call me trivial, but I don't trust anyone who spells his entire name with only six letters. Even Madonna uses seven.

No Job? Too Bad!

Twenty-five years and change ago, on his way to becoming the second Democratic presidential candidate to lose 49 states, Walter Mondale complained that the Republican attitude to unemployment was that if you were jobless, you were on your own. The unemployment rate was falling at the time of the 1984 presidential campaign - even though most of the jobs that were created paid less than $11,000 a year, a laughable annual salary even then - and so Mondale's gripe fell on deaf ears. That same complaint doesn't seem to be getting anyone anywhere these days either. Republicans have continuously blocked extending unemployment benefits in the Senate, and neither party has been in any rush to help people who have been out of work for 99 weeks - that's nearly two years, folks - out of fear of deficit spending. Ed Schultz, on his MSNBC show, has complained that the Senate isn't listening to the people.

Uh, they kind of are. It turns out that Ed Schultz's Minnesota populism is as popular as Mondale's was back in the eighties. Cathy Lewis, a public talk radio host from metropolitan southeastern Virginia (where Schultz is originally from, incidentally), says that the topic of unemployment benefits doesn't come up a lot on her radio show. "I think," Lewis told Gwen Ifill on the PBS NewsHour last night about the benefits issue, "you only find that level of discontent if you yourself are affected by it. That's my sense on the radio program that I do every day. I don't hear people talking as much about that. What I hear them talking about is the hiring and the jobs are not coming back as quickly as they had hoped that they would."

In other words, if the people aren't so concerned about it, the Senate won't act on it. And why should most Americans be concerned? There are currently four million Americans who are affected by unemployment benefits running out, but in a nation of three hundred million or so, that's not a number that's going to move any Republicans in the Senate. Nor does it move many other Americans. I think Cathy Lewis's remarks about her listeners in Virginia indicate a general attitude among Americans toward the unemployment benefits issue; if it's not their problem, why care about it?

Bear in mind also that, even in the worst of economic circumstances, unemployed Americans, including the discouraged jobless people or part-timers not officially counted in the unemployment rate, are always a minority of the population. The employed majority are usually more interested in keeping their own jobs in a recession than helping others find a job or hold on to a safety net. Indeed, Lewis noted that many people in her area are more interested in preserving the jobs they have than creating new ones with the federal stimulus money southeastern Virginia has received. And you can bet there are a lot of voters - especially independents - who worry about too much spending.

Democrats in Washington are trying to balance the budget on demand, trying to find cuts to offset emergency spending on jobless benefits so as to avoid deficit spending. Spending more money to put more people to work - building infrastructure, for example - seems to be out of the question. And the Democrats' efforts to accommodate deficit hawks may not be enough. Bottom line? What Walter Mondale said in 1984 is true today.

Any Jobber Got The Sack

Jobs, jobs, jobs. You'd think that's all the Republicans care about, since they keep snapping at President Obama for not having done enough to help create enough jobs. Try using that line with the folks at English Paving of Clifton, New Jersey, who, thanks to federal stimulus money, got a contract to repave part of Bloomfield Avenue, the main street connecting Newark with its northwestern suburbs. (Don't try that line on me; I've had to drive on the milled pavement far too often.)

So what have the Republicans done to promote job growth? Well, they've blocked job legislation this week in the Senate that, among other things, would have extended unemployment insurance to jobless Americans who are about to run out of benefits. But then those people dependent on unemployment insurance - which they've paid into with their taxes - are just a bunch of spoiled layabouts. That's what Republican U.S. Senate nominee Sharron Angle in Nevada says.

The Republicans claim to be about creating jobs, and they won't help people who can't find jobs? Who are they kidding? Apparently, a lot of people; the Guardians Of Privilege (note the initials) are still favored to make big gains in the midterm congressional elections, and Angle leads incumbent senator Harry Reid by about seven points in one poll.

So is there any Republican doing anything to preserve jobs? As a matter of fact, there is. In New Orleans, federal judge Martin Feldman, a Reagan appointee, threw out President Obama's moratorium on deep-water oil drilling, dismissing it as capricious. Feldman, who obviously hasn't watched any underwater video camera footage of gushing oil recently, cited the detrimental effect it would have on jobs in the petroleum industry. Perhaps Feldman would have more empathy for the fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico who have lost their livelihoods if he had financial interest in seafood processors and not in two of BP’s largest shareholders, BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase.

Martin Feldman is not to be confused with the late British comic actor Marty Feldman, though such confusion is understandable. This ruling sounds like a joke from a comedian.