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More Americans have a ‘favorable’ opinion of the IRS than of the Tea Party.

By Matt Corley on Apr 8, 2010 at 5:09 pm

Earlier this week, John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira, Center for American Progress senior fellows and co-directors of the Progressive Studies Program, noted that Americans viewed socialism as favorably as they viewed the Tea Party. Now, a new Fox News poll shows that the Tea Party is viewed less favorably than another bugaboo for the Tea Party, the Internal Revenue Service:

Fox News poll on IRS and Tea Party

Fox’s poll finding is particularly humorous considering that a recent conservative attack on health care reform has been to falsely claim that it would lead to the hiring of 16,500 IRS agents to enforce the law. “I suspect every Republican candidate will campaign on a promise to cut off all funding in January for the 16,000 IRS agents,” said Newt Gingrich recently. “You don’t need a health Gestapo in the United States.”

Yglesias

China Currency Resolution Still on Track

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 8, 2010 at 4:44 pm

We seem to be very close to resolving this situation: “The Chinese government is preparing to announce in coming days that it will allow its currency to strengthen slightly and vary more from day to day, a move being taken for domestic policy reasons in China but likely to please the Obama administration, people with knowledge of the emerging consensus in Beijing said on Thursday.”

Basically this is what I said yesterday. It’s important to note that though China’s desire to portray this as domestically motivated is itself politically motivated, it’s also true. Chinese people are very poor. China could use, in the aggregate, many more consumer goods. A stronger currency will help people get them.

Economy

Economic Downturn Pushed Unemployment For Young Workers To Historic Levels

By Pat Garofalo on Apr 8, 2010 at 4:33 pm

Yesterday, I highlighted this report from the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative, which shows that 44 percent of the unemployed workers in America have been jobless for six months or longer. This is the highest percentage since World War II. But the plight of the long-term unemployed is not the only problem with the labor market (which is still in dire straits, even with last month’s encouraging addition of 162,000 jobs).

As this new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reveals, the jobless rate for young adults has also been at unprecedented levels. EPI found that “since the start of the recession in December 2007, young adults have attained the highest unemployment rate on record (since 1948)…Between December 2007 and January 2010, the unemployment rate for young workers increased 7.1 percentage points.”

And the picture gets even uglier for young minority workers. Here’s the unemployment rate for 16-19 year old workers, broken down by race:

And here’s the rate for 20-24 year olds:

Being unemployed at a young age has an impact that will last the rest of a worker’s life. Research has shown that each missed year of work translates into “2 percent to 3 percent less earnings each year thereafter.” In fact, college students who graduated during the 1982 recession were still earning less than students who graduated into a strong economy ten years later. As the Washington Post reported, the current generation of young workers “might be the first generation that does not keep up with its parents’ standard of living.”

Fortunately, this is not a problem of which people are unaware. Today, the White House threw its support to a House-passed bill that aims to create summer jobs, building on the economic stimulus package passed last year. “We have to do more,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). “It’s really important that we get the resources to the communities as soon as possible.”

Of course, efforts to address this problem could have been underway already, if Senate Republicans hadn’t scuttled a summer jobs bill with a budget technicality last month.

Politics

Don Blankenship in 2009: It’s ‘very difficult’ to obey ‘nonsensical’ safety rules.

By Brad Johnson on Apr 8, 2010 at 4:10 pm

Coal baron Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, complained last year that it is “very difficult” to obey “nonsensical” safety rules. On April 5, 2010, 25 miners died in an explosion at his Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, WV, which had racked up thousands of safety violations. Massey is appealing “at least 37 of the 50 citations for serious safety violations” the mine received last year. When asked in a June 2009 interview if he was concerned that Massey was complying with safety regulations, Blankenship derided them as “nonsensical”:

They’re very difficult to comply with. There’s so many of the laws that are, if you will, nonsensical from an engineering or a coal mining viewpoint. A lot of the politicians, they get emotional, as does the public, about the most recent accident, and it’s easy to get laws on the books that are not truly helping the health or safety of coal miners. I think we need to be very pragmatic and very careful when we’re passing laws of that nature to make sure that we create as much safety and as much health as can be created for each of the resources we expend.

Watch it:

Blankenship concluded the interview by saying that his company has had “very good success on the safety and the environment.”

Related Posts

Yglesias

Is Frum Actually Right About the GOP?

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 8, 2010 at 3:57 pm

Jon Chait hints at this, but it is worth saying that while any liberal will have to appreciate some elements of David Frum’s growing alienation from the conservative establishment it’s not at all clear to me that the heart of his criticism—that Republicans need to moderate in order to become electorally viable—is really true. The empirical evidence to me suggests that our default view about the relationship between ideology and electability ought to be one of nihilism—any challenger can win provided the economy is doing poorly, and any incumbent can get re-elected provided things are going allright. An important caveat to that is that our empirical data rests on the assumption that both parties are able to mount real nationwide campaigns.

I do think, however, that there are two senses in which moderation would be useful. One has to do with race. There’s obviously a lot of identity-driven voting happening, and right now African-Americans, Asians, and Hispanics are both disinclined to vote Republican relative to demographically similar white Anglos. Republicans either need to increase their appeal to non-whites or else drive up increasing levels of white solidarity voting to stay viable.

The other, more important sense, is that precisely because it’s the fundamentals that matter most to campaigns actually governing well makes a great deal of difference to political outcomes. The big problem with thinking that tax cuts cure all problems, in other words, isn’t that it’s unpopular it’s that tax cuts do not in fact cure all problems which makes it hard to govern effectively and avoid the sort of bad outcomes that lead to incumbent losses.

Health

Pawlenty Believed Health Reform Was Constitutional Before He Didn’t

By Igor Volsky on Apr 8, 2010 at 3:46 pm

On Tuesday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) brushed aside his attorney general’s opinion that the health law does not violate the tenth amendment, and announced that he would join a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of reform. “The federal government is now requiring citizens under penalty of a fine to buy a good or a service, and we think that’s an unprecedented overreach by the federal government into the lives of individual citizens,” he said.

But as Newsweek’s Andrew Romano points out, Pawlenty believed that “federal mandates within the boundaries of the law” as recently as last year. In October 2009, during an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Pawlenty seemed to agree with his attorney general when he claimed that the courts have said that the federal government can supersede the power of the states to regulate commerce:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And Governor Pawlenty, let me begin with you, because after the speech on Thursday night, the president says he’s going to get this done. After the speech on Thursday night, you suggested perhaps invoking the Tenth Amendment, which reserves powers to the states, if indeed this does pass. What exactly are you saying? There is a movement to actually nullify health care if it passes?

PAWLENTY: Well, George, in the legal sense, I think the courts have addressed these Tenth Amendment issues, but more in the political sense, in the common sense arena, we need to have a clear understanding of what the federal government does well and what should be reserved to the states. [...]

STEPHANOPOULOS: So just to be clear, are you suggesting that any parts of the plan as the president has laid it out are unconstitutional?

PAWLENTY: Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a legal issue. I was raising it as much as a practical matter, that there are some things that the federal government shouldn’t do, doesn’t do well, and should leave to the states.

Watch it:

Romano observes that Pawlenty’s decision to sue the federal government is part of a broader effort to align himself with the Tea Party movement ahead of the Republican presidential primaries. As Stephanopoulos noted, Pawlenty has flirted with challenging the constitutionality of reform since September. “Depending on what the federal government comes out with here, asserting the 10th Amendment might be viable option, but we don’t know the details,” the governor speculated on a conference call with right-wing activists.

In fact, Pawlenty is now so eager to appeal to the conservative base, he attended yesterday’s rally with Sarah Palin and Gov. Michele Bachman (R-MN) and “bought the domain name BachmannRally.com and then redirected traffic to his own site.”

Alyssa

Down In the Treme / Me and My Baby

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 8, 2010 at 3:33 pm

So last night, I got together with Anna John, Latoya Peterson, Kay Stieger, Matt Yglesias and Rachael Brown to watch the first two episodes of David Simon’s new show, Treme.  We’ll be running a roundtable on it all weekend over at The Atlantic‘s Culture Channel.  My first entry in that conversation went up this morning:

So it seems appropriate that Treme, Simon’s new show, is a valentine with a devious, violent heart. I say devious because after the first episode, I didn’t quite know what to make of the show. And the second upset my understanding of what I’d seen entirely. 

…

The show is—as befits a David Simon production—profane, challenging, and frequently funny. But it also relies on a deep assumption of kindness between its main characters. In The Wire, such emotions were portents of doom: D’Angelo Barksdale, a young drug dealer, was marked for jail and worse the moment he showed signs of sensitivity. Homicide’s detectives may wield gold shields, but they’re still vulnerable to heartbreak, suicide, and violent death. Watching Treme, I found myself expecting Antoine to be turned down when he asked for a loan, an extension on paying cab fare, or help finding a gig, and intensely relieved when his friends amiably agreed to help him out. 

Treme is very good, but it’s also a complete different animal from The Wire (despite the presence of Clarke Peters, Wendell Pierce, and fellow Simon alum Khandi Alexander) which I think is fortunate.  It would be distressing, and probably not very good television, if Simon & Co. had simply tried to create a simulacrum of McNulty, Omar, Kima, Bubbles, et. al.  The characters are marvelously themselves, and Treme packs a huge amount of characterization and exposition into single lines and scenes.  The show is beautifully shot: brass, and feathers, and hot light make for a visual feast.  And the music is luscious.  I don’t want to say a lot more than that because I want you to read the piece, and the ones that follow.  I’ll be putting up links here and into next week.  But I also highly, highly recommend getting yourself to a television with HBO on Sunday at 10.  It’s worth your while.

Yglesias

Why Not “Civil War History Month”?

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 8, 2010 at 3:14 pm

I’ve got a Daily Beast column about the odd neo-Confederate revival in GOP circles.

(cc photo by rvaphotodude)

(cc photo by rvaphotodude)

It occurs to me that basically everyone’s legitimate concerns on this subject could be easily taken care of by having Virginia (or whichever state) proclaim a “Civil War History Month” in which we could acknowledge the valor and whatnot demonstrated by everyone and also say we’re glad to be one country and not have slavery anymore. Could be fun, even—the Civil War Era is interesting. Check out David Blight’s lectures available for free courtesy of Yale if you don’t believe me.

Politics

ANALYSIS: Nearly 70% Of Officials In Right-Wing Health Care Suit Are Up For Re-Election Or Higher Office

By ThinkProgress on Apr 8, 2010 at 3:01 pm

Even before President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, right-wing state attorneys general were announcing their intentions to sue the federal government over the constitutionality of health care reform. Virginia’s Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli — who is also an avowed Tea Party loyalist — was the first one out of the gate with a lawsuit, going to Richmond’s federal courthouse to the file papers less than five minutes after Obama signed the legislation. Eighteen other states have also now joined Florida’s similar lawsuit.

These lawsuits are frivolous. Even conservative legal scholars have acknowledged that they have no chance at succeeding and seem to be nothing more than political theater. ThinkProgress has done an analysis of the states suing the federal government and founded that indeed, political motivations do seem to be driving the suit:

– Of the 16 attorneys general in the lawsuits, 11 are either running for re-election or higher office. Four, including Florida’s Bill McCollum, are campaigning to become governor, and seven are up for re-election this year.

– Four Republican governors have gone around their attorneys general who have refused to sue and joined the lawsuit themselves. Half of them are up for re-election this year, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty (MN) is considered a potential GOP nominee for president in 2012.

– South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster (R), who is running for governor, is circulating a video touting his role in the health care lawsuit, which may “open the suits to the charge of playing politics.”

State Name Political Ambitions
Florida Bill McCollum, attorney general (R) Running for governor
Michigan Mike Cox, attorney general (R) Running for governor
Pennsylvania Tom Corbett, attorney general (R) Running for governor
South Carolina Henry McMaster, attorney general (R) Running for governor
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) Re-election as governor
Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons (R) Re-election as governor
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) Possible 2012 presidential candidate
Alabama Troy King, attorney general (R) Re-election as attorney general
Colorado John Suthers, attorney general (R) Re-election as attorney general
Idaho Lawrence Wasden, attorney general (R) Re-election as attorney general
Nebraska Jon Bruning, attorney general (R) Re-election as attorney general
North Dakota Wayne Stenehjem, attorney general (R) Re-election as attorney general
South Dakota Marty Jackley, attorney general (R) Re-election as attorney general
Texas Greg Abbott, attorney general (R) Re-election as attorney general
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) Not up for re-election in 2010
Indiana Greg Zoeller, attorney general (R) Not up for re-election in 2010
Louisiana Buddy Caldwell, attorney general (D) Not up for re-election in 2010
Utah Mark Shurtleff, attorney general (R) Not up for re-election in 2010
Virginia Ken Cuccinelli, attorney general (R) Not up for re-election in 2010
Washington Rob McKenna, attorney general (R) Not up for re-election in 2010

Missouri’s lieutenant governor, Tennessee’s lieutenant governor, Wisconsin’s attorney general, and Mississippi’s governor have indicated that they are interested in signing on to the Florida lawsuit as well, although several of them need to overcome legal and political challenges to do so.

At least 11 attorneys general from Kentucky, Kansas, Arkansas, Ohio, Iowa, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Montana, Oregon, and West Virginia have all refused to join the suit, saying it would be a frivolous waste of scarce taxpayer dollars. The attorneys general from Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota, and Nevada have also all decided against suing, but they were overruled by their governors. Tennessee and Missouri’s attorneys general have also opted against joining the suit, but their lieutenant governors are now trying to go around them.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius also recently called out the political motivations driving the lawsuits, stating that they have been “filed by Attorneys General in states where they have also some interest in higher office. I’m going to let the lawyers go debate the situation. [But] we are confident that the legal standing of the law is solid and that this has more to do with politics than policy.”

– Amanda Terkel and Nick McClellan

Security

With Historic Treaty Signed, A Glimmer Of Bipartisanship As Rove Calls New START ‘Helpful’

By Max Bergmann on Apr 8, 2010 at 3:00 pm

This morning President Obama and Russian President Medvedev signed a historic new START treaty that will cut nuclear weapons and maintain nuclear stability by extending and updating the verification and monitoring measures in Ronald Reagan’s original START treaty. This agreement is an affirmation of the effort to reset US-Russian relations after they descended to new post-Cold War lows under the Bush administration. But this treaty is also just a first step, as it importantly lays the groundwork for a new more far-reaching treaty that deals with the thousands of tactical and non-deployed nuclear weapons that both sides continue to possess.

But with the signing of the treaty, attention now turns to Republicans in the Senate. For a treaty to be ratified it requires two-thirds of the Senate – 67 Senators – that means the fate of the US-Russian nuclear relationship and global nuclear stability rests with Senate Republicans. Even though some GOP Senators sending strong signals throughout the treaty negotiations that they would not support the treaty, as of yet no Senator has come out in opposition to the treaty. Senate Republicans may be calculating that launching an all-out fight against extending and updating a treaty that Ronald Reagan original initiated is not the right place to draw the line in the sand against Obama’s nuclear agenda.

Karl Rove, of all people, has given some more reason to think bipartisanship is possible. He appeared on Fox yesterday where he called the New START treaty “helpful” and then went on to make the case that the START treaty is just not that big of a deal.

Transcript:

ROVE: The other thing is this so-called New START Treaty that is going to be signed with the Russian. Now that’s helpful but let’s not it make into a big deal.

Watch it:

Now Rove is wrong – this is an historic treaty and the implications of his point about the bomber rule have been thoroughly debunked. But what is important about Rove’s statement is not its policy content, but its political meaning. Saying the treaty is “helpful” and not that big of a deal, is hardly rallying the troops to go to war against ratifying the treaty.
Read more

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