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NEWS FLASH

73 Percent Of Americans Support The ‘Buffett Rule,’ Including Two-Thirds Of Republicans | Every demographic sub-group supports President Obama’s proposed tax increase on the wealthy — known as the “Buffett Rule” — including two-thirds of Republicans, more than half of self-identified Tea Party members, and nearly three-fourths of those who make more than $100,000 a year. Overall, the Buffett Rule receives 73 percent approval, according to a new Daily Kos/SEIU “State of the Nation” poll conducted by Public Policy Polling and released today. Republicans have labeled the increase as “class warfare,” despite the fact that the richest Americans continue to see their incomes rise and their tax rates plummet.

Yglesias

Mass Transit Operating Subsidies Would Be Excellent Stimulus

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 27, 2011 at 6:15 pm

Budget conditions for America’s cities continue to be bleak, as reported in a new survey from the National League of Cities. Sales tax revenues remain well below the pre-recession trend, financial assistance from state governments has been slashed, and property tax revenues that normally exhibit little sensitivity to the business cycle have been hammered by the current housing-driven downturn. Mayors hoping for the federal government to step into the breach can find a lot to like in President Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act, which would offer billions to help sustain public sector employment and activity. But the plan contains one unfortunate oversight—ongoing transportation costs where the labor market impact of cutbacks could be particularly severe.

Read the rest up at The Atlantic Cities.

NEWS FLASH

CHART: Obama Economic Plan Raises Less Revenue Than Plans Conservatives Support | When President Obama released his economic plan this month, conservatives immediately assailed it for including tax increases. “If we’re just going to do class warfare and get tax increases out of this, then I don’t think much will come of it,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). The press, meanwhile, described Obama’s plan as “[giving] his liberal critics exactly what they wanted,” and “a direct appeal to his often-disgruntled base.” However, as Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden noted, Obama’s plan actually raises less revenue than many plans that conservatives say they support:

As Linden noted, the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission’s report, the Gang Of Six’s deficit reduction plan, and Bipartisan Policy Center’s plan all “share some common elements“: “They all received significant support either from current or former Republican members of Congress, and they all rely on more revenue than does the president’s plan.”

NEWS FLASH

21 States Suing Over Health Reform Accept Its Funding, Including Perry’s Texas | Today, the Department on Health and Human Services announced that it would be awarding $103 million in grants under the Community Transformation Grants program created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The initiative is designed to “help states and communities tackle the root causes of chronic disease such as smoking, poor diet and lack of physical activity.” Community centers in 36 states applied for and received the funding, including 21 states that are challenging the constitutionality of the health reform law. Rick Perry’s Texas, for instance, received $11,526,158, while communities in Bob McDonnell’s Virginia will benefit from $499,559 in funding.

– Karl Singer

By Guest Blogger on Sep 27, 2011 at 6:01 pm

LGBT

Sponsor Of North Carolina’s Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment Can’t Explain How Gays And Lesbians Undermine Marriage

By Igor Volsky on Sep 27, 2011 at 6:00 pm

This afternoon, during a rocky 22 minute interview, SiriusXM’s Michelangelo Signorile challenged North Carolina state Sen. James Forrester (R) — the sponsor of the bill to add an amendment to the constitution outlawing same-sex marriage — on his recent claims that people in the gay “lifestyle” live shorter lifespans, exposing the lawmaker’s lack of knowledge and embarrassing him in the process. Forrester, a medical doctor, initially claimed that he learned that gay people live shorter lives from the Atlanta Center for Disease Control, but then began referring Signorile to a book by Fred Turek, a Christian activist who argues that gay people are embracing harmful, “illegitimate” and “changeable” behavior — on par with that of sociopaths, alcoholics, or even gay-bashers. Signorile pressured Forrester on the source and he eventually admitted, “I’m not an expert on everything there.”

The senator also couldn’t explain how same-sex marriage undermined the institution and even threatened to end the interview when Signorile asked if Forrester would be introducing legislation to ban divorce. “I can’t answer all these questions you have,” he conceded:

SIGNORILE: Why don’t you ban divorce, why not?

FORRESTER: That wasn’t my intent of the legislation.

SIGNORILE: Is divorce a good thing? I’ll ask you some yes or nos, how’s that? Divorce a good thing?

FORRESTER: I think I’m going to end this conversation right now because I see you’re completely negative, on the other side, trying to set me up.

Listen to the interview in two parts:

Alyssa

Is the Departure Of Keith Olbermann Responsible For MSNBC’s Ratings Slide?

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Sep 27, 2011 at 5:44 pm

The New York Times has a decent-sized story about the impact of Keith Olbermann’s departure on MSNBC and another one today on the larger challenges the channel faces. The piece describes two core problems for the network: the fact that it’s getting beat by competitors between 8 and 11, and the fact that it’s getting beat on news. But is Keith Olbermann the real problem for MSNBC?

Even before his defenestration from MSNBC and his move to Current, Olbermann’s ratings were falling. In 2010, Olbermann drew an average of 1 million adults and 268,000 adults aged 25-45 during the 8PM hour (that first number was down 11 percent from 2009, the second, down 25 percent in the same time period).

Olbermann wasn’t alone in his woes at MSNBC, though his numbers were slightly worse than some of his colleagues. Rachel Maddow’s numbers fell between 2009 and 2010, too, down 6 percent overall and 14 percent in that coveted demographic of younger viewers. And MSNBC saw its viewers between 8 and 11PM go down 9 percent overall and 18 percent in the demographic. In the same time period, for the same viewing hours, Fox News saw a slight but slower decline, falling 5 percent overall and 6 percent in the demographic. And CNN, which is now challenging MSNBC for that third-place, looked like it was in free-fall. Its number of overall viewers in the 8-11 hour was down 36 percent, and its number of young viewers was down 37 percent, to 184,000.

But this September, MSNBC pulled in 269,000 viewers ages 25-45 in the prime-time block, up modestly from an average of 249,000 in 2010. But CNN’s made a dramatic improvement, lifting its young viewers from an average of 184,000 for the primetime block in 2010 to an average of 257,000 in September 2011. The Times piece from which I’m drawing those numbers doesn’t break out Fox’s numbers for the full month of September, but looking at day-by-day data on TV By the Numbers, they appear relatively consistent with the figures the network pulled in 2010, when it averaged 2.4 million people total and 612,000 younger viewers in primetime.

So Olbermann’s numbers and MSNBC’s were declining at the time he left. And even in the context of Current’s smaller viewership, he’s continued his downward slide. MSNBC is available in 78 million households in the U.S., while Current is available in 60 million. But absent the network profile of MSNBC, Olbermann’s ratings initially fell more than the 23 percent that might have been the difference between the two networks and have continued downward. The week of Olbermann’s launch on Current, an average of 354,000 people total and 131,000 in the demo tuned in. The next week, after the novelty wore off, it was down to an average of 253,000 total and 93,000 in the demo. By August 1-5, those numbers had fallen to an average of 208,000 and 85,000 in the demo.

With all this context, it’s not totally clear to me that Olbermann, even if he’d stayed, would have reversed his ratings trend—and the network’s. Olbermann’s departure was messy and public. But while the resulting vacancy may have prompted CNN to shake up its lineup, it wasn’t the only thing affecting MSNBC’s viewership. How to get the network growing significantly in prime time is a question that’s much more complicated than one hour, and one anchor.

Climate Progress

Vermont Governor Shumlin: “There Is Nothing More Important You Can Do on this Planet Than Join this 350 Movement”

By Climate Guest Blogger on Sep 27, 2011 at 5:38 pm

“We will not join the others in the denial, in the pretend, in the ‘let business happen as usual,’ because our kids and our grand kids mean more to us than our own greed. And we’re going to get off oil and move forward as quickly as we know how.”

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin got the crowd fired up at 350.org’s “Moving Planet” event at the Vermont Statehouse in Montpelier last week.   Shumlin spoke about the recent impacts of global climate change on Vermont, how Vermont has taken a leadership role in doing something about it, and how the state can do even more to overcome this challenge in the future:

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin at 350.org’s “Moving Planet” event from Ben B on Vimeo.

Vermont was devastated by the 1-in-100 year deluge from Hurricane Irene:

Read more

Climate Progress

Bill Clinton On Claims That Solyndra Means All Green Energy Is Bad: ‘Don’t Insult My Intelligence’

By Brad Johnson on Sep 27, 2011 at 5:32 pm

Republicans and other conservatives have argued that the Solyndra bankruptcy means that all clean-energy investment is disastrous. The Heritage Foundation claimed Solyndra “ends the green jobs myth.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said the bankruptcy is “Exhibit A in the case for why the president’s economic policies have failed.” “A green jobs fueled recovery is a theory, and is yet unproven,” argued Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) at a hearing on Solyndra.

Last week, former president Bill Clinton met with a small group of bloggers on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York City and blasted these right-wing attacks on technology innovation. Asked by ThinkProgress Green about how to fight the corrupting influence of climate deniers, Clinton said that people need to defend the facts about the green economy as vigorously as the opponents of the clean economy promote lies:

They can take nothing like Solyndra and say that proves all green energy is bad. Why? Because those of us on the other side don’t say: Whatever the truth is, here’s the mega truth. We can’t burn up the planet. We’ve got to find an economically sustainable way to save it. Green energy jobs have grown at twice the rate of overall economy jobs in the last decade, they pay 20 to 30 percent more, they’re directly responsible for a $60 billion trade surplus.

Do whatever you want about Solyndra, but do not insult my intelligence by trying to say that the big oil compaires are right and the green tech people are wrong.

Clinton was citing the analysis by the Brookings Institution of the clean energy economy, which found that employment in the clean-tech sector, which includes companies like Solyndra, grew at 8.3 percent from 2003 to 2010, twice as fast the overall economy.

Many of the Republicans attacking clean-energy jobs seem to just be seeking to score political points against a Democratic administration, especially those who helped put the clean-tech loan program in place. Other conservatives, as Clinton noted, are attacking technological innovation as a way of defending the continued dominance of fossil interests.

Later in the roundtable, Clinton offered some thoughtful analysis of why the government is “picking winners and losers,” as some have described the loan guarantee program that supported Solyndra. He explained that the understanding that corporations have a responsibility to all stakeholders has been lost to the idea that they only answer to shareholders. The role of government in setting market fundamentals has been attacked relentlessly. So government policies that define the market — like clean energy standards, cap and trade, or carbon taxes — can’t get passed, even though those are the most efficient at supporting economic innovation.

People need to understand that the government should play a role in making markets, Clinton said, and “part of the market making should be designed be create a mentality of shared value rather than just shareholder value.”

Read more coverage of the Clinton Global Initiative from ThinkProgress.

NEWS FLASH

Alabama Town Delays ‘Go To Church Or Go To Jail’ Program | Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported that the Alabama town of Bay Minette was poised to implement an unconstitutional plan that would effectively allow minor offenders to be sentenced to a year of church attendance, under penalty of imprisonment if they missed a Sunday service. In the wake of national press attention widely condemning the unconstitutional plan, the town will delay implementing the program in order to re-examine whether the plan is legal. If the town’s lawyers are even minimally competent, they will conclude that it is not. Even conservative Justice Scalia agrees that compelled attendance at religious services violates the Constitution, and a Mississippi judge was recently suspended from the bench for implementing a similar program.

Yglesias

What Problem Is ‘Getting Money Out Of Politics’ Supposed To Solve?

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 27, 2011 at 5:29 pm

I’ve heard Dylan Ratigan talk a fair amount on his show about his plan to get money out of politics, but it was only today that I saw what his specific proposed constitutional amendment is:

No person, corporation or business entity of any type, domestic or foreign, shall be allowed to contribute money, directly or indirectly, to any candidate for Federal office or to contribute money on behalf of or opposed to any type of campaign for Federal office. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, campaign contributions to candidates for Federal office shall not constitute speech of any kind as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or any amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Congress shall set forth a federal holiday for the purposes of voting for candidates for Federal office.

Ezra Klein’s question “what party does your third party solve” also seems relevant here. There are some obvious problems that this would create. Like let’s say you’re Elizabeth Warren and you want to run a campaign against Scott Brown. How do you pay your campaign manager? How do you let people know that you’re running? To me, this doesn’t solve the problem that when Washington regulates the financial system, it’s dependent for expertise on people with ties to the financial industry. It doesn’t solve the problem of the revolving door. It doesn’t solve the problem that politicians need the “legislative subsidy” of lobbyists to do policy analysis. Nor does it solve the problem of monied interests exercising disproportionate influence over think tanks, advocacy groups, or even (through speaking fees and the like) journalists and pundits. Presumably the people who make the F-22 will still be allowed to advertise about how high levels of defense spending are awesome, just as ExxonMobile will still be allowed to advertise about how fossil fuel extraction is the road to prosperity. You’l have created some big new logistical hassles for political campaigns without, I think, addressing any concrete issues.

I’d say that in general, the problems we have with money and politics aren’t really that there’s too much money “in” the politics and we need to get it “out.” It’s too difficult for non-incumbent candidates to get any money. And it’s too difficult for elected officials to get expert technical opinion on issues without relying on interested parties.

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