By Robert Creamer

There is a tendency among people who spend their lives working to promote policy positions, Members of Congress, Congressional staffs, and even the media to discuss political issues in terms of public policy.

I don’t mean simply that they use wonky terms and acronyms – though that is often true and it is the surest way to make people’s eyes glaze. I mean that they focus on the potential “effectiveness” of a particular legislative or administrative initiative.

Now the effectiveness of a particular program or policy is enormously important – both to government and politics. But everyday voters mainly make decisions over whether a policy – or a political leader – is effective based on the objective circumstances of their day-to-day lives. If, for instance, President Obama’s policies are not ultimately effective dragging the economy out of the economic ditch into which it was driven by George Bush he will certainly have a very difficult time being re-elected.

But when it comes to the impact of political dialogue – of direct messaging – on the outcome of elections, discussions of the effectiveness of policy are not important determinants of outcomes. Often messaging focused on the effectiveness of a candidate – or a person – can in fact have a big impact on outcomes, but not the discussion of the effectiveness of a policy. The Democrats need an effective economic policy because that will ultimately impact the real circumstances of everyday people. Those real circumstances will have a huge impact on the outcome of elections. But it isn’t the “discussion” of those policies that will be determinative in the least.

Elections are decided by two groups: persuadable swing voters, and mobilizable voters who would cast their ballots for one of the two parties but are unlikely to vote unless they are mobilized.

Neither of these groups is comprised of policy wonks. In fact, both are less likely to be heavily engaged and focused on political and policy issues than more partisan voters. That doesn’t mean these voters are less intelligent than more partisan voters – just less interested.

They care about the things that normal people think about – not policy debates. They care first and foremost about the actual circumstances of their own families – about their job, their income, their kid’s school, their retirement, their hopes and aspirations.

But when it comes to what dialogue – or messaging –affect their political decisions, they don’t focus on the potential “effectiveness” of one policy or another. Instead they want to know whether something is right or wrong.

From the standpoint of most voters there are two inter-related but distinct components of this notion of right and wrong.

On the one hand there is the moral frame that is engaged by any particular political message. Normal voters think of political decisions as choices that are measured against values – not “policies.” This fall we need to make the election a choice between our very popular progressive values and their very unpopular values.

We have to provide a clear contrast to the Right’s belief in unbridled pursuit of individual interest with our commitment to the common good; selfishness versus commitment to others; division versus unity; fear versus hope; that we’re all in this together, not “all in this alone.”

On the other hand voters make political decisions by asking the closely related question of whether you are on “my side.” Whose side is a candidate on? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Does he represent good guys or bad guys? Are his proposals right or wrong? And remember that right and wrong, and good guys and bad guys, are always defined from the standpoint of who you are and where you sit.

In other words — as George Lakoff argues — from the point of view of the voters, most political decisions are moral decisions.

This is not so because swing voters and mobilizable voters are somehow more “unsophisticated” than more engaged, partisan voters. In fact, you could argue that they are actually more focused on what really matters. Whether a particular policy will “work” is important, but it is a technical question. In fact, most people know instinctively that it’s not the principal driver of political decision-making in any society or group. Normal voters want to strip away the euphemism and policy talk and get to the real question: whose interest is being served and whose is not? What real choices are being made? Is it fair?

Political decisions involve competing self-interests. Normal people know it, and they want to know whose nest is being feathered and whose ox is being gored. First and foremost they want to know if a candidate is on their side.

For many years the Republicans and the far right did a much better job of speaking to that sense of right and wrong than Democrats and Progressives. That helps explain why for much of the last 40 years they were more successful politically. That changed in 2006 and especially in 2008. Barack Obama communicated moral language about hope and possibility – about justice – about standing up for everyday people not special interests.

To win this fall, Democrats need to revive that sense of moral fervor. We have to assure that the election is not about the “effectiveness” of Democratic policies – but whose side a candidate is on.

The debate in the next two months must focus on one central question: do you want to entrust our future once again to Republicans who wrecked the economy – not because they were incompetent or had “bad” policies – but because they were bought and paid for by huge special interests like the big Wall Street Banks, Big Oil and the insurance industry. That is a moral question – not a policy question.

Voters were not outraged by the bank bailout or the huge Wall Street bonuses because they thought they were “ineffective” policies. They are furious because they saw them as unjust.

Everyday people are perfectly willing to sacrifice for a cause that is important. In fact, they long to be called upon to commit their lives to a cause that is bigger than themselves — something to which they can make a significant personal contribution. One of the chief self-interests of every person is a desire for meaning in life and meaning comes from the commitments you make. Everyday voters want their leaders to call on them to make commitments to the greater good – to the future of their children.

But people are livid if they believe they are called upon to play by the rules and then one day get laid off from their job – for no fault of their own – because some Wall Street sharpie made horrible bets with someone else’s money and then walked off scott-free with millions of dollars when the bottom fell out. That’s wrong.

The right-wing arguments that stuck during the health care debate were not “policy” arguments. They were the myths about “death panels,” and Government controlling your life and depriving you of freedom. It was the myth that Health Care reform would cut the Medicare that you have paid into your entire working life. People view these questions in moral terms – in terms of right and wrong – not effectiveness or efficacy.

There are three additional reasons why political messaging that involves moral frames is so resonant:

. Moral questions engage the emotions, not just conscious thought. Emotion is much more likely to break through – to get people’s attention. It is especially effective at mobilizing people to vote. With mobilizable voters, the problem is not convincing them that we are right. Mobilizable voters – by definition — are voters who would vote Democratic, but need to be mobilized to assure they will go to the polls. In 1994 we did not lose because most Americans disagreed with Democratic policies, but because Democrats stayed home and Republicans went to the polls. Mobilization is not about persuasion, it’s about motivation – motivating them to act. That is much more about emotion than thought.

· Moral questions engage value frames that are deeply embedded in each of our unconscious minds. As Lakoff points out, we often have several contradictory value frames. Our view of a subject or candidate is heavily influenced by the frame that is being activated at the particular time. If Democrats do not communicate in moral terms and the other side does, they will be much more apt to activate a clear value frame and win the day.

· A final reason we are much more likely to gain attention of the voters when we use moral language involves narrative. Everyday voters are much more likely to become engaged with our campaigns and candidates if we engaged them with a narrative – or story – about the race. Narratives always involve a protagonist and antagonist. They always involve conflict. At some level, every good story is about right and wrong. Good stories engage us because we empathize with some character and end up rooting for their success. The same is true of election campaigns.

In this election a moral frame is particularly important because it allows Democrats to play offense. We will not win a debate over whether we have been “effective” enough at digging out of the economic hole that Bush and the Republicans left. People are too unhappy with the status quo. Virtually every economist agrees that the stimulus bill did a great deal to stave off true economic disaster, but that doesn’t ring true to someone whose brother-in-law is out of work. In this election the winning ground for Democrats is the question of who’s on your side, and whether we want to hand over the country to the Republicans who will once again do the will of elite special interests.

Discussing questions in moral terms requires that we always address the question of motive. In fact, the motive is often more important than any other aspect of our message. What is important is not just that the Republicans wrecked the economy – but that they wrecked the economy at the bidding of the Big Wall Street banks. They didn’t wreck the economy because they were incompetent or stupid, but because they were – and remain – a wholly-owned subsidiary of the biggest special interests in the country.

And let’s remember that while on the one hand, this is by far the most compelling way to frame the issues in the Mid-terms; it is also without any question the most accurate description of reality.

If Democrats are to persuade and mobilize this fall, every debate must be cast in moral terms:

· Republicans want to cut guaranteed benefits and privatize Social Security for two reasons: because Wall Street wants to get its hands on the Social Security Trust Fund – and so that they allow the wealthiest people in America to keep the huge Bush tax breaks. They would much rather “balance the budget” on the backs of Social Security recipients than demand that the wealthy pay the same tax rates they did during the prosperous Bill Clinton years. It turns out, by the way, that over the next 25 years the “shortfall” in Social Security is about the same amount as the revenue lost if Congress continues the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%.

· Republicans want to replace Medicare with vouchers for private insurance from the same companies that raised their rates three times faster than wages and are now engorged with profit.

· Republicans opposed the Democratic stimulus bill, extensions of unemployment and more federal money for teachers, firemen and police because they wanted the recovery to stall for their narrow political purposes.

· Republicans oppose tough regulation of drilling by oil companies because they have been bought and paid for by Big Oil.

· Republicans want to repeal the new law reining in the recklessness of the Big Wall Street banks that cost eight million Americans their jobs, because they are owned by Wall Street.

· Republicans want to take away provisions in the new Health Care law that prevent insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions because the insurance companies dump millions of dollars into their campaigns.

· Republicans side with big business contributors when they consistently oppose measures to discourage the outsourcing of American jobs abroad.

Everything has to be about who is on your side. Everything has to be about motive — about right and wrong.

Democrats face a tough political environment in November because the economic catastrophe that the Republicans created two years ago was so fundamental. It would be outrageous if they were allowed to reclaim control of Congress as their reward for causing that catastrophe and then doing everything they can to stall economic recovery. Now that would be wrong.

Over the next two months we have to passionately make the moral case. We must make the election a choice between those who side with everyday Americans and those who stand shoulder to shoulder with the economic elites whose greed and recklessness unleashed a flood of misery that has yet to fully recede from the Main Streets of America.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

On Labor Day, Work to Save the Middle Class

This Labor Day feels gloomy. It’s a celebration of work when there is not enough of it, a day off when too many desperately seek a day on.

America has commemorated two Labor Days since this brutal recession began near the end of George Bush’s presidency in December of 2007. Now the relentless high unemployment, the ever-rising foreclosures, the unremitting wage and benefit take-backs have replaced American optimism and enthusiasm with fear and anger.

Happy Labor Day.

On this holiday, we can rant with Glenn Beck, kick the dog and hate the neighbor lucky enough to retain his job. Or we can do something different. We can join with our neighbors, employed and unemployed, our foreclosed-on children, our elderly parents fearing cuts in their Social Security lifeline and our fellow workers worrying that the furlough ax will strike them next. Together we can organize and mobilize and create a grassroots groundswell that gives government no choice but to respond to our needs, the needs of working people.

We can do what workers did during the Great Depression to provoke change, to create programs like Social Security and achieve recognition of rights like collective bargaining. These changes were sought by groups to benefit groups. In a civil society, people care for one another. And America is such a society – one where people routinely donate blood to aid anonymous strangers, children set up lemonade stands to contribute to Katrina victims and working families find a few bucks for United Way.

The self-righteous Right is all about individuals pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. That proposition – the do-it-all- by-yourself-winner-takes-all philosophy – clearly failed because so many Americans are jobless, homeless and too penniless to afford boots.

Over the past decade, the winner who took all was Wall Street. The banksters gambled on derivatives and other risky financial tomfoolery and won big time. Until they lost. And crashed the economy. After the American taxpayer bailed them out, those wealthy traders returned to making huge profits and bonuses based on perilous schemes.

Still, they believe they haven’t taken enough from working Americans. They’re lobbying to end aid for those who remain unemployed in a recession caused by Wall Street recklessness. And they’re demanding extension of their Bush-given tax breaks. This is the nation’s upper 1 percent, people who earn a million or more each year, the 1 percent that took home 56 percent of all income growth between 1989 and 2007, the year the recession began.

Since 2007, 8.2 million workers have lost jobs. Millions more are underemployed, laboring part-time when they need full-time jobs, or barely squeaking by on slashed wages and benefits. Since the recession began, the unemployment rate nearly doubled, from 5 percent to 9.6 percent, and that does not include those so discouraged that they’ve given up the search for jobs, a decision that is, frankly, understandable when there are only enough openings to re-employ 20 percent of the jobless. Five unemployed workers compete for each job created in this sluggish economy.

And American workers weren’t prepared for this downturn, having already suffered losses in the years before it began. The median income, adjusted for inflation, of working-age households declined by more than $2,000 in the seven years before the recession started.

At the same time, practices like off-shoring jobs and signing regressive international trade deals contributed to the loss of middle class, blue collar jobs. A new report, “The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market,” by the Center for American Progress and The Hamilton Project, says:
“The decline in middle-skill jobs has been detrimental to the earnings and labor force participation rates of workers without a four-year college education, and differentially so for males, who are increasingly concentrated in low-paying service occupations.”

The recession compounded that, the report says:
“Employment losses during the recession have been far more severe in middle-skilled white- and blue-collar jobs than in either high-skill, white-collar jobs or low-skill service occupations.”

What that means is high roller banksters are living large; lawn care workers and waitresses subsist on minimum wage, and working class machinists and steelworkers are disappearing altogether.

The researchers found the U.S. economy is increasingly polarized into high-skill, high-wage jobs and low-skill, low wage jobs. America is losing the middle jobs and with them its great middle class.

No wonder the rising anger in middle-class America.

But fury doesn’t solve the problem. This Labor Day, we must organize to save ourselves and our neighbors. We must stop America from descending into plutocracy. We must demand support for American manufacturing and middle class jobs. That means terminating tax breaks for corporate outsourcers, ending trade practices that violate agreements and international law and punishing predator countries for currency manipulation that subverts fair trade by artificially lowering the price of products shipped into the U.S. while artificially raising the price of American exports.

We must demand support for American industry, particularly manufacturers of renewable energy sources like solar cells and wind turbines that create good working class jobs, increase America’s energy independence and reduce climate change.

We must insist on policies that support the middle class, including preserving Social Security and Medicare, extending unemployment insurance while joblessness remains high, and enforcing the health care reform law so that every American worker and family can afford and is covered by insurance.

On this Labor Day, we should all have a picnic, invite neighbors, friends and family, and over hot dogs and potato salad, organize to save the American middle class.

Mobilize to end the gloom and restore American optimism.

***

For help: the Union of the Unemployed, the AFL-CIO, USW, Working America. Join the One Nation March for jobs Oct. 2 in Washington, D.C.

Rich Trumka is talking this Labor Day about the need for Economic Patriotism. It’s a message/theme we think will resonate–certainly among working people and the millions of jobless workers–and one that certainly can apply in many ways: EG: Corporations acting anti-patriotic by moving jobs out of this country. (In the much-discussed New York Times artilcle yesterday on Wall Street deserting Obama, this graf buried toward the end hit me hard:

***Just last week, Paul S. Otellini, chief executive of Intel, said at a dinner at the Aspen Forum of the Technology Policy Institute that “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”

Mr. Otellini has overseen two big acquisitions in the last two weeks — the $7.7 billion takeover of the security software maker McAfee and the $1.4 billion deal for the wireless chip unit of InfineonTechnologies. If he is true to his word, those deals will most likelylead to job cuts in the United States, not job creation.***

Piling on to not only call out such behaviors but cast them for what they are–unpatriotic, anti-American–can help us take back the ground grabbed by reactionaries for so long, with the Tea Party just the latest manifestation of such warped usage of the red, white and blue.

Also, check out our national television ad running this Labor Day weekend during baseball, NASCAR and college football events:

www.aflcio.org

It’s downloadable from our homepage.

Tula

……………………………………….
Tula Connell
AFL-CIO Managing Editor
815 16th St., N.W.
Washington, DC 20006
www.aflcio.org

Follow the AFL-CIO at
Facebook: www.facebook.com/AFL-CIO/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/AFLCIO
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/AFLCIONow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHvgH5m1ujU

I absolutely love this video!

-Stephen Crockett

August 5, 2010

CONTACT:

Sue Walitsky 202-224-4524 or 202-320-0819

CARDIN LAUDS SENATE ACTION TO SAVE TEACHERS AND FIRST RESPONDERS FROM BUDGET CUTS

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) praised Senate passage today of emergency funding that would prevent mass layoffs of tens of thousands of teachers and first responders across the nation.

“Local communities throughout Maryland and across the nation are finally feeling relief today with the long-awaited Senate passage of $26 billion in aid to our states, $10 billion of which will help prevent 140,000 teachers and 150,000 first responders from being laid off. For Maryland, this emergency measure, which is fully paid for and adds zero dollars to our federal deficit, means an estimated $178 million for education, which translates into 2,200 jobs.

“The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act has been credited with saving 300,000 education jobs and has helped to lessen the impact of the recession. As that funding comes to an end, however, massive job cuts threatened to stall economic recovery and damage our children’s education. Thus far, almost 80% of school districts across the nation have had to lay off educators. Maryland, which is number one in the nation in education, according to Education Week for the second year in a row, has not been immune. Prince George’s County alone has seen 800 jobs cut, 355 of those were classroom positions. These job losses have an economic ripple effect. The Economic Policy Institute projects that every 100,000 education jobs lost causes an additional loss of 30,000 private sector jobs in local communities. This can take a devastating toll on families and on whole communities. The Senate had to act. As our children prepare to go back to school, I am thankful that we were able to keep teachers in the classroom, school bus drivers on their routes and school nurses and counselors in place to ensure our children’s safety.”

It seems like the Republicans in Congress have decided that sabotaging economic recovery and employment growth is their best tactic for electoral gains in the November elections. Indications of this plan have been around since the Democratic victories in 2008. It seems that all doubt about facilitating the economic downturn as a path to political power for Republicans have been removed by recent legislative votes.

Economic recessions and depressions almost always result from insufficient “effective” consumer demand for goods and services produced domestically. In economic terms, wanting something is not “effective demand” . For a want to become a demand for goods or services, it must accompany the desire to buy with the ability to actually purchase. Money is required.

Jobs are not created by just having large pools of investment money available. There must be the opportunity to invest in a business that will have customers who can buy the goods and services before the investment money flows into job creation activities. The Republican Right economic theory that economic prosperity and employment ” trickle-down from the wealthy” has proven to be unsound by historical experience.

Tax cuts for the wealthy create huge investment money pools but not jobs. Our nation has plenty of money setting idle in corporate and personal coffers. Corporations have almost a trillion dollars setting essentially idle in corporate accounts at this time.

Republicans are seeking to extend the tax cuts for the wealthy by falsely stating that increases in taxes for the upper 2% of income earners would hurt demand and prolong the economic downturn. Experience and history prove otherwise.

Tax cuts at the highest marginal incomes brackets do concentrate wealth and political power in the hands of the economic elite. The resulting political power by the economic elite pushes government policy in directions that dramatically cut the percentage of the nation’s wealth and income held by the vast majority of Americans. This reduces the ability of most Americans to buy goods and services. As a result, the economy unwinds because customers do not have enough disposable income to keep the flow of goods and services at a healthy economic level. The former middle class disposable income now controlled by the economic elite funds speculation and unsound “bubbles” in the economy instead of a healthy economy because sound businesses now lack paying customers.

Deregulation helps corporations charge excessive prices. Not enforcing anti-monopoly laws permits price gouging. Not capping interest rates concentrates wealth and reduces consumer spending. Outsourcing jobs to foreign nations reduces incomes available to buy goods and services. Union-busting keeps wages and benefits down which undermines the purchasing power of workers.

Privatizing government services costs consumers more in out of pocket expenses once provided by government. This reduces disposable income for these consumers. When employers reduce benefits and increase co-pays, it increases the cost-of-living for workers. As a result, these workers have less disposable income to spend on goods and services.

Middle class tax cuts do help the economy because they increase the disposable income of those members of society who spend the vast majority of their incomes and have little left over to save. The money changes hands over and over again instead of setting idle. This is the multiplier effect in economics.

Extending unemployment benefits has a huge multiplier effect. This is because unemployment benefits are so low that essentially all of it gets spent on goods and services immediately.

Excessive concentration of wealth and income unwinds our economy. All the Republican policies for the past 100 years have been designed to concentrate wealth and income in the hands of the very few. Every time they reach the economic concentration levels that currently exist, we have a serious depression. This is a direct result of increasingly “Republicanized” governmental policies over the previous 30 years.

Economic concentration of wealth and income are currently at levels very similar to those just before the Great Depression in 1929. The only reason our current situation has not quite deteriorated to that of the last Great Depression is that the Republicans have not been completely successful in undoing the reforms put in place as a result of the New Deal. Despite repeated attacks by Republicans our social safety net remains only damaged but not destroyed. It is not from lack of trying by Republican politicians.

Republican attempts to gut Social Security continue. Privatization keeps coming back to threaten the stability and viability of Social Security. Cutting Social Security benefits instead of increasing revenue seems to be the most effective avenue for the current attack. This approach is being pushed by most Republicans and some corporatist Democrats. A wiser economic approach would be to remove the income ceiling over which Social Security tax is not paid.

Why should almost all workers be taxed at over 13% while those making a million a year are paying closer to 1% and those making 10 million dollars a year are taxed at around 1/10th of 1% on their income? Social Security taxes are the most regressive tax system I know of in our current system. The poor and middle classes pay much, much more in percentage terms than the wealthy.

For decades, working people have been paying in far more than the current needs for each respective year of Social Security payments. These surpluses were “borrowed” by the federal government so they could fund annual deficits created by cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans, cutting taxes on corporations by huge margins and nearly eliminating taxes on imports. It is only fair that corporations, wealthy Americans and foreign exporters selling in the American market pay higher taxes to fund these previous decades of “borrowing” since they reaped the benefits of that “borrowing”.

Republicans only want to look at cutting benefits instead of making Social Security taxes fairer by equalizing the Social Security tax rate for all income levels! These Republicans do not want to pay back the Social Security tax money borrowed by the federal government to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, fight two wars on credit and allow the near elimination of taxes on imports.

Sound economics says government should run surpluses in good economic times and deficits during economic downturns. Following this advice helps reduce the severity of economic cycles. Under the Republican Presidencies of Reagan and both George Bushes, we did exactly the opposite and created both the current downturn and the debt crisis. The vast majority of our total national debt developed under these three conservative Republican Presidents.

Currently, the Republicans in Congress have fought every measure to increase employment and help small businesses. They have fought all kinds of economic reforms that would curb corporate abuses of consumers, shareholders or workers. They have fought all attempts to curb excessive corporate political or economic power. They have been against any measures that would increase demand for goods and services or levels of employment.

By their actions, it is hard not to conclude that the Republicans want to worsen the economic downturn until it reaches Great Depression levels. The economic downturn was created by “Republicanizing” our economy and the Republicans want to blame the Democrats instead! With tons of corporate money behind them and a corporate dominated media helping them, it might just work.

Written by Stephen Crockett (host of Democratic Talk Radio http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com and Editor of Mid-Atlantic Labor.com http://www.midatlanticlabor.com). Mail: 698 Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, Delaware 19702. Email: demlabor@aol.com. Phone: 443-907-2367.

Feel free to publish without prior approval.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Lauren Weiner, 202-470-5870
July 29, 2010 Jeremy Funk, 202-470-5878

Senate Republicans Offer “Alternative” to Democratic Bill to Hold BP Fully Accountable for Devastating the Gulf Coast: ‘Do the Polar Opposite’

Huffington Post: GOP’s Oil-Spill Liability Bill Would Have BP Only Paying $150 Million

Washington DC – Senate Republicans wasted no time this week unveiling a big-oil-friendly “alternative” to the Democratic Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act, oil-spill-victim-focused legislation that would hold BP fully financially accountable for the cost of the Gulf Coast oil disaster, lower energy costs and create over 160,000 jobs through investments in energy-efficiency, and cut down the nation’s dependence on oil.

Yesterday, Senator David Vitter (R-La.), who has taken $791,335 from the big oil and gas industry, laid out the Grand Oil Party’s plan for letting BP off the hook for their recklessness — with the American taxpayers in its stead. As reported by the Huffington Post: “Under the leading Republican plan for BP’s post-spill economic liability, those affected would receive potentially as little as $150 million due to the oil giant’s expected record loss in this latest quarter.”

Tom McMahon, Executive Director, Americans United for Change: “No surprises here – just outrage. While the well has been dry on new ideas and real solutions from Congressional Republicans for some time now, you can always count on them to offer “alternative” legislation whenever the bottom line of their big corporate donors is threatened. For all their talk about the deficit, not even the biggest oil spill disaster in U.S. history could give Senate Republicans pause before seriously proposing something that would put taxpayers on the hook for the untold billions of dollars in damages BP left in its wake.

“For all their talk about jobs, Senate Republicans will no doubt work overtime to block this legislation that will put over 160,000 Americans back to work through smart investments in energy efficiency. After creating zero net private sector jobs and turning a record surplus into a record deficit during the Bush years, Republicans in Congress are not the economic stewards they think they are. These Republicans need to stop asking themselves, ‘What would Bush do?” or “What does BP want us to do?” and start asking themselves “How can we help clean up the mess we made?”

MORE FROM HUFFINGTON POST:

[T]he GOP has rallied around a counter-proposal, authored by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) that would cap an oil company’s liability at an amount equal to its profits of the last four quarters. If the company had not made a profit in the past four quarters, it would be liable for $150 million (or twice the current cap).

To be sure, BP still has a chance to turn around its profit margin during the next three quarters. But in terms of net earnings, it is now operating out of a $17 billion hole. If Vitter’s version of economic liability legislation were the law of the land, there would be open concern about the damage payments that Gulf residents would end up recouping. As a Democratic operative working on the issue notes:

When Vitter introduced the bill, we pointed out that one of the co-owners of the Deepwater Horizon rig, Andarko, had not made a profit in the last year. But with this news today, if BP doesn’t overcome this quarter’s losses, next year they could be responsible for a disaster as bad as or worse than the one in the Gulf and they would only be liable for $150 million if Vitter’s bill were law.

UPDATE: An astute reader points out that another Senate candidate, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), has sponsored legislation similar to Vitter’s in the House.

http://IleneProctor.net

Media Contact, Ilene Proctor 310-858-6643

Cell: +1 310-721-2336

Collateral Damage Justice in Mississippi

Former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice

Oliver E. Diaz

Republican Judge Says Bush DOJ Targeted Him

Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz was indicted in 2003 on charges relating to his receipt of a loan guarantee from trial lawyer Paul Minor — a personal friend and the largest Democratic donor in Mississippi — to help defray campaign debts. A Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney, Dunnica Lampton, brought charges of bribery against Diaz, Minor and two other Mississippi judges. Diaz was acquitted of all those charges. Within days of his acquittal, Diaz was indicted for a second time, and again acquitted.

“After I was indicted and before my trial, my home was also broken into,” recalls Diaz. “Our door was kicked in and our documents were rummaged. Televisions, computers and other valuables were not taken, despite the fact that we were out of town for several days and the home was left open by the burglars. We could not figure out a motive for the burglary and reported it to the Biloxi Police Department. The crime was never solved.”

There is now substantial evidence that Judge Diaz’s prosecutions will shortly be exposed as being politically motivated and directed. In any event it is clear that they were designed to, and did, have a key role in influencing elections in Mississippi for the benefit of the Republican Party.

.Justice Diaz was charged and acquitted twice in federal court. After reviewing the Diaz case in some detail, it is clear that no independent prosecutor would ever have brought these charges, that the prosecution was inspired and driven by political appointees in the Bush Administration working together with Diaz’s political opponents in Mississippi, and that the prosecutions served a manifestly partisan, and inherently corrupt, political agenda.

But to understand the Diaz prosecution, it’s essential to start in Washington, with the man widely viewed as the most powerful Mississippian in the nation’s capital. In 2002 Haley Barbour, one of the key figures in recent Republican party history, told friends and supporters that he had decided to return to Mississippi and seek to capture the Jackson statehouse for the G.O.P. in 2003. Under Barbour’s leadership, the G.O.P. captured both houses of Congress—a red-letter event since the G.O.P. had not controlled the House of Representatives for forty years. Along with Newt Gingrich, Barbour was one of the architects of the new Republican majority that wielded great influence in Congress even during the Clinton years, and emerged as a real powerhouse after Bush brought the G.O.P. back into the White House in 2001.

Barbour ran the G.O.P. as its chair from 1993-97. But on the side, lobbying work was his passion and he quickly became a fixture of the K Street community. In 1991 he founded Barbour Griffith & Rogers LLC, (BGR) which Fortune magazine labeled the most powerful lobbying firm in the United States in an article run in 2001. While recently profiled here in connection with the firm’s representation of wannabe Iraqi strongman Ayad Allawi, BGR is best known as the lobbyist of choice for the tobacco industry—in 1997 alone, it took in $1.7 million from tobacco sources.

If the tobacco industry had a principal adversary in the eighties and nineties, it might have been Michael Moore—not the documentary film producer, but the attorney general of Mississippi. While serving from 1988-2004, he brought the state into litigation against big tobacco in a major way. The state was represented by Dickie Scruggs and a group of trial lawyers based in the Gulf Coast area. In 1997, Moore settled Mississippi’s claims in the tobacco litigation, leading to a plan for tobacco companies to pay Mississippi about $4 billion over the next quarter century. Scruggs and dozens of other trial lawyers who funded the case, split $1.4 billion in attorney fees from the companies.

The settlement made a number of lawyers in south Mississippi profoundly wealthy. Paul Minor was one of these men. They were, for reasons that should be obvious, by and large supporters of the Mississippi Democratic Party, its attorney general, Michael Moore, and governor Ronnie Musgrove. The trial lawyers were a core constituency of the Democratic Party of Mississippi before 1997. But with the settlement money that came their way during that year, they emerged as the party’s treasury. Moreover, the south Mississippi trial bar was closely tied to the Democratic administration in Jackson, providing the key pool for the recruitment of judges and appointed and elected officials. If the Republicans had wanted to deliver an incapacitating blow to their political opposition, there is no question how it could be delivered: by going after the south Mississippi trial bar that funded Democratic campaigns and supplied key Democratic candidates.

As the fall of 2002 approached, and thoughts began to turn to the looming election, something curious emerged. It was learned that FBI agents were busy all over the southern part of the state looking at the dealings of prominent Mississippi trial lawyers. Investigators were examining money given by trial lawyers to judges as loans and campaign contributions. They were also reviewing the judicial appointments of Governor Musgrove, with a focus on anything that involved south Mississippi trial lawyers. In the coming election it appeared that large sums of money from the business community gushed through the Law Enforcement Alliance of America and on to the coffers of Republican candidates for office and G.O.P.-favored judicial candidates. Another key source of campaign money had ties to the casino gambling interests represented by Jack Abramoff. Yet no investigative or prosecutorial resources were being channeled into an examination of these very shadowy campaign funding processes.

On July 25, 2003—ninety days before the gubernatorial election between Musgrove and Barbour—the U.S. Attorney in Jackson, Dunn Lampton, secured indictments of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz, his ex-wife Jennifer, Chancery Judge Wes Teel, former Circuit Judge Whitfield, and attorney Paul Minor. The accusations revolved around loans made to the judges and claims that they were corruptly influenced in their decisions. The indictments were trumpeted very loudly in the Mississippi media by U.S. Attorney Lampton, and played a focal role in the election campaign of Haley Barbour. The G.O.P. campaign used reports about the indictments and criminal investigations very prominently in print and broadcast media.

Noel Hillman, the head of the Public Integrity Section, whose focal role in the Siegelman prosecution was portrayed here, also occupied the central role in these cases. His presence helped develop media coverage for the cases. Hillman, a political protégé of Michael Chertoff, was touted as a “professional prosecutor,” and his involvement was used to show that the cases were not politically motivated. And as the case developed it became apparent that Hillman had taken control of it. Indeed, during the trial, U.S. Attorney Lampton suggested that he had “recused” himself and that the case was being managed by lawyers from Washington. It appears that this “recusal” was at least as illusory as Leura Canary’s in Montgomery, however. When the point was pushed, Lampton clarified that he had not recused himself, but Peter Ainsworth, the Public Integrity trial attorney who sat as first chair in the trial, told the court that the case was being carried by Washington rather than the Jackson U.S. Attorney’s office.

Most lawyers I spoke with said they were mystified by the Government’s decision to go after Diaz. “I don’t get it,” said one, “the bottom line is that Diaz never participated in any cases in which the loan would have made a difference. He recused himself from all the cases.” Diaz was represented up to the indictment by former U.S. Attorney Brad Pigott, and afterwards by Rob McDuff. Pigott expressed his amazement that the case was being pressed even after investigators had established that Diaz did not participate in Minor’s cases. He couldn’t understand why his client was being charged. Pigott met with Noel Hillman on one of his visits to Jackson in 2004, before the indictment was announced, trying to dissuade him from proceeding. Pigott describes Hillman as being resolute and indifferent to the points which ultimately controlled the case in the mind of the jury. But it could be that Hillman had something else on his mind. These events line up with Hillman’s pursuit of a judicial appointment and frequent interaction with the White House in connection with his application.

The First Target: Oliver E. Diaz, Jr.

A graduate of both the University of South Alabama and the University of Mississippi School of Law, Oliver E. Diaz was elected as a Republican to the Mississippi House of Representatives, serving from 1988 to 1994. During this period he also served as City Attorney for D’Iberville, Mississippi. Later Diaz was elected in a non-partisan contest to Mississippi’s intermediate appellate court. While a Republican, Diaz states that he entered the Mississippi legislature in the same class with Senator Ronnie Musgrove. The two soon became good friends, and their philosophies about life and the law showed they had more in common than the party labels reflected. Diaz was appointed to fill an unexpired term on the Mississippi Supreme Court by Musgrove in March 2000.

Mississippi lawyers describe Diaz as a respected judge who was, despite his Republican Party affiliation, viewed as more pro-plaintiff than most. He hails from the Gulf Coast region of Mississippi and has close connections with the successful plaintiff’s bar centered there. After being appointed to the Supreme Court by a Democratic governor, he had to mount an expensive campaign for election to the court in his own right. He sought financial support for the campaign. This led to Diaz’s financial dealings with the Democratic Party’s principal contributor and fundraiser in Mississippi, Paul Minor. With financial support from Minor and other sources—largely from the trial lawyers of Mississippi—Justice Diaz was elected to an 8-year Supreme Court term in 2002.

The charges eventually brought by U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton accused Diaz, along with Minor and two other Mississippi judges, of bribery and mail fraud crimes. Specifically, Diaz was accused of accepting loans from Minor with the understanding that Diaz would influence a libel case pending against Minor’s father, the celebrated Louisiana and Mississippi journalist Bill Minor. Diaz was also accused of giving Minor an unfair advantage in cases in which he was involved.

From the start, however, local federal prosecutors raised questions about the legitimacy of the case. Diaz never actually participated in the deliberation or resolution of any case involving Paul Minor either directly or in which Minor was counsel. Diaz did participate in the decision of the case involving Minor’s father, which was resolved in a unanimous ruling by the Court. And at no point were any of Diaz’s fellow judges interviewed about their knowledge of impropriety on his or Minor’s part. Had they been, the interviewer would have learned that Diaz did nothing to attempt to influence the court or his fellow judges about the case.

However, a number of aspects of the investigation and prosecution of Diaz reflect serious irregularity. In the Supreme Court election, Diaz had faced stiff opposition from a Mississippi trial judge named Keith Starrett, who had been backed by G.O.P. interests. Starrett’s mentor and friend, who took a deep interest in his election campaign, was none other that U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton, and Starrett’s law secretary was Donna Lampton, a close relative of the prosecutor. So from a distance, the investigation and targeting of Diaz looked suspiciously like payback for an unanticipated election defeat. Moreover, the investigation had proceeded as an inquiry into just who financed the judges supported by the Democrats, and how. The Republicans appeared to be astonished at their poor showing in many of these races, into which large sums of money had flowed from the business community. There was, it seems, a strong interest in shutting off the flow of cash to the political opposition to better their electoral odds.

The most amazing disclosure to come out post-trial goes to FBI agent Kevin Rust. He had managed the inquiry into Diaz, put the case together, testified before the grand jury, and sat through the trial. Yet an examination of campaign finance records similarly links Rust to the political campaign of Diaz’s opponent, Keith Starrett. Under applicable ethics rules, neither Rust nor Lampton should have participated in any way in the case. Yet it appears that they built and propelled it. Was it payback for the election defeat of their friend Keith Starrett, now a federal judge?

The Acquittal, a Second Indictment, a Second Acquittal

The jury did not think much of the charges and evidence against Diaz. He was acquitted on all charges in 2005. But no sooner was the jury’s verdict returned, than Lampton unsealed another indictment of Diaz: on income tax charges. That case went to trial and resulted in a second acquittal.

The Diaz case reflects another astonishing example of highly partisan justice–timed, presented and calculated to boost the electoral prospects of Haley Barbour. Diaz was acquitted twice, but the major objective of the prosecution—the election of Haley Barbour—was achieved. Barbour become governor, ousting Musgrove. As November 2007 approaches, Mississippians find Barbour seeking a second term.

One of the striking aspects of the case is the extremely heavy hand of Noel Hillman, who personally monitored and managed the case. In the past the presence of Public Integrity was taken as a guarantor of “no politics,” but in this case in Mississippi, like the Siegelman case in Alabama, Hillman’s involvement amounted to “politics 24/7.”

Most clearly, the case was an example of discriminatory prosecution. An investigation occurred which was directed with laser-like precision against the major donors of the Democratic party. No comparable investigation occurred that examined Republican party funding and campaign operations. The message that the prosecutors–Hillman should be singled out–delivered is simple: those who fund Democrats will be targeted and fly-specked; those who fund Republicans have nothing to worry about.

The prosecution served a double function. Democrats were discredited and humiliated, during an election cycle, for the benefit of their political opponents. In addition to this, their campaign resources were dried up so that the Republicans secured a further unfair advantage in future elections. These tactics are a pernicious corruption of the political process by politically appointed Justice Department officials posing as its guardians.

Information supplied by Scott Horton in Harper’s

The Tea Party movement has started to come unglued over a series of internal contradictions that amount to an identity crisis. The Tea Party is caught in a “Catch 22” position that has largely been ignored by the corporate mainstream media.

Just this morning I watched a local PBS show where a Republican operative claimed that the Tea Party movement was not “Republican, Right Wing or racist.” The comment appears to be the Republican Right Wing official spin on all things “Tea Party” in nature. Unfortunately, the claim really lacks credibility because it conflicts with the facts on the ground all over the nation.

Anyone who really watched the development of the Tea Party movement, as part of the anti-healthcare reform effort, understands that it was a creation of Fox News and corporate funded Right Wing Republican operatives. Despite many claims to the contrary, it brought very few new faces into the political process.

What the Tea Party public relations campaign did was simply “re-brand” the various largely discredited, Right Wing fringe elements in the Republican Party under a new name. It did con the mainstream corporate media very effectively into calling blatant corporatist, economic elitist policies “populist.” It was a bad joke that the media completely missed or just ignored.

Like the fake ACORN pimp and voter registration scandals, the storyline falls apart completely when the details are examined in any detail. The spin relies on manufactured “facts” that are really outrageous lies being told over and over again. In time, the storyline falls apart but often the damage has been done. It appears the mainstream corporate media has learned absolutely nothing from their Iraq War-Weapons of Mass Deception experience.

The reality is that there is probably not much of a Tea Party movement outside of Republican Right Wing corporate control. When it comes to economic populism, the Tea Party has either been completely missing in action or in outright opposition to every proposal that is populist in nature.

Our middle class has been under constant attack by corporate forces for decades. The Reagan-Bush Republicans have been pushing changes in government policy that benefit only the most elite of economic elitists for 30 years. American workers are being driven out of the middle class by government policy and market power. The Republican Right has successfully placed many of the levers of power in government in the hands of the corporatist economic elite. Some Democrats assisted parts of this corporate take-over of government but it was overwhelmingly Republican effort.

The government is not the enemy if it is controlled by the majority of middle class Americans. It is a check on excessive corporate power under those circumstances.

The genius behind the Tea Party campaign is that it is a corporate created public relations/political campaign designed to promote pro-corporate economic policies via government while calling the movement “anti-corporate and anti-government.” The racism angle is a just a way to hook “poor and middle class whites” into an effort designed to economically benefit the wealthiest of the wealthy at the expense of “the poor and middle class of all colors.”

Racism has long been used to divide working Americans up along color lines so they do not demand a better deal from the economic and political elite. Racism serves an economic purpose and always has served an economic purpose. Racism is a sucker bet for working Americans. It has been a key element in building the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party since Richard Nixon. Republican Right wing economic policies are a disaster for 90% of Americans and social wedge issues including race have been the key to Republican victories for more than a generation.

If the Tea Party was really a new creature, it would be fielding third party candidates everywhere under the Tea Party name. Republican and Right Wing operatives claim it is independent of the Republican Party but at the same time strongly oppose real independence. The Republican Party is the Tea Party. The Tea Party is just the most extreme elements of the Republican Party devoted to driving any remaining moderates out of the Republican Party.

You cannot support Pat Toomey-Club for Growth economic policies and still claim to be a populist movement. You have to support economic policies that increase the wages of American workers, support government measures to help the unemployed, curtail the ability of corporations to move jobs outside the United States and sell untaxed imports in our country, shift the tax burden back in the direction of corporations and the Super Wealthy instead of putting it on the middle classes and seek to regulate corporate market power to be an economic populist.

Economic populists do not make excuses for BP like Rand Paul or Sharon Angle. Economic populists do not oppose government deficits during a severe economic downturn nor support government deficits in good economic times, like the Republicans are doing. Opposing better access to affordable healthcare is not a populist position. Giving massive tax cuts to wealthy people while our government is running massive deficits and local governments are firing teachers, firefighters and police is simply stupid economics and has nothing to do with economic populism.

If the Tea Party is” populist” in nature, as they claim, then the policies they support should demonstrate that populism. If the Tea Party is independent of the Republican Party, then they should field independent candidates in the November general elections to prove their independence. If the Tea Party is not racist, then they should condemn the expression of racism from within their movement every time they occur. If the Tea Party is not an expression of extreme Right Wing sentiments, then they should stop supporting the political agenda of the Far Right.

American voters will learn in coming months just how fake and flakey the Tea Party con job is by watching the Tea Party Republicans seeking office in November. You will learn nothing about this from Fox News but the mainstream media should not drop the ball on this story in 2010. The voters deserve a real discussion about the unreality of the Tea Party reality.

Written by Stephen Crockett (Host of Democratic Talk Radio http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com ). Mail: 698 Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, Delaware 19702. Phone: 443-907-2367. Email: demlabor@aol.com.

Feel free to publish without prior approval.

House Democrats gathered on yesterday to discuss the results of a national survey on the deficit and manufacturing that House Republicans were passing around late last week. Digging into the survey, which was paid for by the Alliance for American Manufacturing and done by Dem Mark Mellman and GOPer Whit Ayers, hints at an answer to why people are so passionate about the deficit: It’s about jobs. Asking whether Congress should address the deficit or the jobless crisis, therefore, is the wrong question. Create jobs and the deficit concern goes away. Reading into the survey, you find that people relate the deficit to indebtedness to China and indebtedness to China is a proxy for American decline and the collapse of manufacturing, a huge concern among voters. About 45% of respondents said the biggest problem is that “we are too deep in debt to China,” the highest-ranking concern, 58% of folks said the U.S. is no longer the strongest economy, with China being the overwhelming alternative people identified. Three-quarters had an unfavorable view of goods made in China and 83% felt the same toward companies that set up shop there. The number one objection people had to China was the $2 trillion the country holds in U.S. debt. Asked how to improve the economy, the number one solution provided by voters was to “crack down on foreign countries who violate their trade agreements with us.” The survey: http://bit.ly/d4gv1F