Let's Make a Deal! With Whom?

I'm trying to follow the insider baseball, sausage-making aspects of the current impasse in Washington as little as possible. But, to be honest, it's like seeing a couple of locomotives heading for a head-on collision: it's hard to turn away.

This is how I see things—and, again, I'm not DC villager or insider. I have no privileged access to the thinking process (and I use that term loosely) of either side.

There seem to be several issues in the hopper: (1) The 'continuing resolution' or 'CR' which in lieu of a new, agreed-to budget allows the Federal government to keep operating at its current level of funding (post-sequestration); (2) The 'debt ceiling' which the Federal government will hit on or about October 17, the extension of which would allow the U.S. Treasury to continue to pay interest on U.S. Treasury Bonds, i.e., pay the interest on Federal debt that has already been racked up; 3) The implementation of the Affordable Care Act aka 'Obamacare', more specifically the opening of statewide exchanges which allow individuals to purchase health insurance on the open market at collective, or group, rates which, theoretically would drive down the costs of premiums.

The present shut-down is supposedly about number (1) above. The House of Representatives has refused to pass a CR unless President Obama delay (3) or do away with ACA altogether. The House has a Republican majority and has refused to date to pass a clean 'CR' (one without extraneous matter attached), something the Senate has passed. The Republican House has voted some 40 times to repeal ACA. They have attached a similar repeal to the CR, and lately have attached a delay of the individual mandate portion of ACA to the CR.

It seems beyond dispute that the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, could get a majority of Congress members to pass a clean CR if he would agree to bring it to the floor of the House. Most, if not all, Democratic members would vote for a clean CR as would sufficient Republican to garner a majority of total votes. Boehner apparently refuses to do so because he cannot whip a majority of the Republican caucus in favor of bringing a clean CR bill to the floor.

The Republicans who want to repeal ACA will, it is believed, attempt to unseat Boehner as Speaker if he introduces a clean CR.

I've seen this tactic over and over. If you don't want to do a deal, you claim you can't do a deal. Someone else won't let you.

Boehner and the Republicans claim that Obama and the Democrats are refusing to negotiate. This despite the fact that the President met yesterday with leaders of both parties from both chambers. They claim ACA was never 'litigated' or negotiated. This despite the last major election in which Obama was decisively elected over a challenger who vowed 'on day one' to repeal Obamacare. And the full day in 2010 when Obama met with the leaders of the opposition to entertain their arguments about ACA—on national television. Moreover, ACA was passed by both houses of the Congress with Republicans using every procedural means available to stop it, but failing to participate in negotiations to improve or make it better.

This is not the first time the Republicans have used a CR to try and wrest concessions from the President. The last time, the President and the Speaker of the House reached an agreement in principle on a 'grand bargain' which included tax reform and revenue issues as well as budget cuts and entitlement reforms. This deal died when the Speaker took it to his members. And therein lies the problem.

By all appearances (and I cannot tell whether Boehner is playing a double game here), the Speaker does not have the power to negotiate on these matters. Or that, at least, is the face he is putting on the matter. I've seen this tactic on many occasions in my practice of law, as has any judge who deals with commercial matters. In order to knock heads together and force a settlement of a contentious litigation, the judge will often force 'decision-makers' for each party to meet. There can be no "I'll take it back to my people." The person in the room has to be authorized to act. And Boehner, apparently, doesn't have the authority to act on the CR.

This is a big problem. You can't negotiate with someone who doesn't have the authority to make a deal. If Obama and Boehner strike a deal, there is no guarantee that the Republican caucus will approve. So, what's a President to do?

Recall, the faction in the Republican party which is behind this matter campaigned on going to Washington to shut down the government. Shutting it down is what they want. There is statement after statement on the record vowing to shut it down. They met in caucus recently and voted to pursue this strategy. Eighty of them signed a letter recently declaring their intention to shut down the government if Obama refused to stop implementation of ACA. And now they want the press and American public to believe that the shutdown is Obama's fault because he refuses to negotiate with them. They do not want to be held accountable for their avowed plan. One supposes they are relying on the laziness and ignorance of the American public (and the press) which will blame both sides.

It seems to be an intractable mess. What's more, since many of these intransigent Republicans are in gerrymandered districts, there is little to no chance of defeating them in the next mid-term election cycle. As a result of the Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, moreover, many of these Republicans are financed by the political arm of the far-right Koch brothers operation, including but not limited to the so-called 'Tea Party' and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and any number of shady-money organizations.

While the shutdown of the Federal government is a nuisance and is debilitating to many people around the country—much of which these Republicans refuse to acknowledge—the failure of Congress to extend the debt ceiling could be disastrous. And there is every indication that the Republicans want to link the two and use them to increase their leverage over the President and against ACA.

No one seems to be asking why they want the 35 to 40 million people who will obtain affordable health insurance under ACA to lose their chance of being covered for medical costs. They claim it's a disaster, even though it hasn't been fully implemented yet. They claim we can't afford it, even though the rise in health care costs has slowed down significantly and individuals are finding that premium costs are within reach of middle-class Americans now for the first time in a generation.

Similarly, no one seems be asking why they are refusing to abide by their Constitutional duty. The Tea Party Republicans rode to power on a platform of forcing President Obama to abide by the U.S. Constitution which they treat as a sacred document.

Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution lays budgeting authority and responsibility squarely on Congress. Article I, section 9, clause 7 states that "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."

It is Congress's Constitutional duty to pass a budget, something it hasn't done in years and something it is refusing to do now unless it forces concessions from Obama on ACA.

Similarly, the Congress has the authority to borrow money to pay for the debts incurred by the government—debts which it and it alone specifically authorized. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states: "The Congress shall have power ...To borrow Money on the credit of the United States."

Moreover, by threatening not to extend the debt ceiling on Oct. 17, these Tea Party Republican Congress members are threatening to violate their Constitutional duty to pay the bills they themselves incurred (e.g., in authorizing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations). Amendment XIV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution states: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned."

Congress authorized the expenditure of the money (N.B. Once Congress authorizes expenditures, the Executive (i.e., President Obama in this case) must carry out Congress's wishes.) Congress authorized the borrowing of money to pay for these budgeted expenditures. Now, Congress has to pay that money back. Just because the costs of its actions exceeded its intake of revenue, it is not relieved of its responsibility.

Yet, this is what is being threatened by a faction of Republicans. Default on authorized, legitimate debts of the U.S. And no one seems to be capable of holding them responsible for their actions. Not John Boehner—whose intentions and motives in this are at best questionable. Is he merely craven? Seeking to hold onto his Speakership? Or is he in cahoots with the Tea Party faction in his caucus—despite his pleas to the contrary? Why does he refuse to bring a clean CR to the floor? Why is he allowing his members to threaten the 'validity of the public debt'?

Nor are their constituents, apparently, capable of holding this minority responsible. They are well-funded and organized and seem to be dug in.

I've tried to present this without resort to rhetoric or emotional terms such as 'hostage-taking'. This is my analysis of the law and the facts as I see them. What the resolution of this is is simply beyond me.

Contrast

Looks like it's gonna' get heavy up in here:

Anonymous declares war against the New York Stock Exchange:

[Video removed by proprietor]

Meanwhile, on the counter-revolutionary front, according to Bloomberg News (that radical leftist rag) it seems the fact that the Koch brothers (whose PR/Marketing wing is otherwise known as the Tea Party) have been running an anti-patriotic, corrupt, criminal enterprise for some time now is coming to light. Who would have guessed?

So, for contrast: 700 mostly poor, young peaceful protestors were arrested and thrown in jail over the weekend for exercising their Constitutional rights to assemble and speak freely on the Brooklyn Bridge because they broke some minor city ordinances, but the phenomenally wealthy, senescent owners/operators of a vast international corrupt criminal conspiracy get to continue to lobby the U.S. Congress with impunity and maintain their social and political prominence without legal consequence?

Am I missing something here?

"Exit Light/Enter Night"

Speaking of NeverNeverLand, Pat Boone, crooner and member of the Beverly Hills Tea Party, insists President Obama was born in Kenya.

Sounds like somebody's been smokin' on the water!



Or ridin' on the crazy train too long!



I guess he meant it when said "no more mr. nice guy!"

Tea Party Party

I'm probably going to piss some people off with this post. If so, so be it.

On September 29, 2010, Gene Cranick of rural Obion County, Tennessee lost all of his family's possessions, including three dogs and a cat, in a trailer fire started by Cranick's grandson burning trash nearby. Nothing out of the ordinary here. This sort of thing happens occasionally in the normal course.

What was unusual was that a local fire department from a neighboring jurisdiction—a jurisdiction that, technically, had no duty to provide fire services to Mr. Cranick's neighborhood—let the man's home burn down because Cranick had failed to pay a $75 fee for fire services.

This has caused plenty of outrage on many fronts, left and right. And that's a good thing. There's plenty of blame to go around. Let the debate begin.

The idea of optional, a la carte public services—fire, rescue, police, ambulance, homeland security, military protection, access to the judicial system, political representation, education, libraries, roads, air traffic control, mass transit, air quality control, food inspection, fresh water and sewer access, intelligence services, relief agencies, health and disease control, etc.—is antithetical to the notion of the "public" good, the "public" space, the "public" sphere.

Since the so-called Reagan Revolution, we have seen the sharp deterioration of the public square in the United States. Public assets have been sold off to cronies of the power elite at bargain-basement prices. Public services have been privatized.

The Tennessee trailer burn is simply the latest example of the problems with this notion of 'smaller government is better government.' Ronald Reagan once famously chuckled that the most frightening words in the English language were: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Well, here's a counter-example from real life: the firefighters were from the government, and they weren't there to help, even though Mr. Cranick and his family desperately needed them. If they had helped, they might have saved the animals at least.

This sort of occurrence will be more and more common in America if the Tea Party ethos that seems to be taking root in the Republican Party holds sway. Public services will be privatized even further, and we'll only get those services we pay for.

Paying taxes, they say, is bad because it forces us to pay for services for everyone, not just for ourselves—notwithstanding that public services, because of the lack of the profit motive, keep the costs of these services down and, by definition, are available to everyone, not just the privileged few who can afford the whole menu of services offered by the government or its private contractors.

[For example, anybody in the continental U.S. can write a letter, put it in an envelope, address it, put a forty-four cents stamp on it, and drop it in their own personal mailbox, and it will, in all likelihood, arrive at its correct destination within a day or two. This is the United States Postal Service. The USPS has two competitors, FedEx and UPS. For anywhere between four and twenty-five dollars you can take your letter to either of these private vendors and, using their designated envelopes and forms, have your letter arrive at its destination (so long as it's not a mailbox) within the same amount of time or even shorter. You can pay more for an even faster delivery, too. The difference between forty-four cents and, say fifteen dollars (taking an average) is operating costs and private profit—and it's what the fighting's all about. Thus endeth the lesson.]

This Tennessee trailer bonfire was a real tea party, a Tea Party party, if you will. This is a stark portrait, writ small and local and rural, of what to expect from the sort of libertarianism, the sort of small-government ideological anarchy, these people represent.The country envisioned by the Tea Party and its allies in the Republican Party will provide us with more and more such incidents.

The Tea Party is a stalking horse for the corporate interests—the monied interests that are actually fueling the useful idiots of the Tea Party, their organization, their rallies, and their public relations—to continue to plunder private profits at the expense of the public weal, that is, to steal from us all. Since the days of Reagan, we have seen the greatest transfer of wealth from the public to private interests this country has ever witnessed. And the Tea Partiers, or their corporate backers, want even more.

The Tennessee trailer fire is a harbinger of things to come. You should know that before you decide whether to vote in the upcoming mid-term elections in the U.S., and, if you decide to do so, which party you will vote for.

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Taxing Time: The Dangerous Game

As most of you are probably painfully aware, last Thursday, April 15, was the deadline for filing taxes in the U.S. Such being the case, it is probably a propitious moment to take note of the budding right-wing, populist, libertarian, anarchistic, anti-tax, gun-toting, militia, and paramilitary movement that seems to be gaining steam here. The face of the movement is Sarah Palin (call her, along with Michelle Bachman, its spokesmodel). Its senior statesman is Newt Gingrich, a disgraced former Republican Speaker of the House of Representative. Its libertarian ideologue is Ron Paul, currently a member of the House. Its PR front consists of the FoxNews commentators (Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity) and talk radio bullies (Rush Limbaugh, etc.).

This movement is a study in contradictions. But if you scratch the surface, you will find a coherent political strategy aimed at delegitimizing the Democratic party and re-establishing Republican rule.

Historically anarchism was a left-wing, anti-monarchism movement. By contrast—and incongruously—today's right-wing anarchy is aimed at representational government. The Tea Party and the militias claim that they distrust big government, by and large, even though they seem to want to protest against elective governments and taxing authorities all the way down to the municipal level. Moreover, polls here have shown that many of these so-called Tea Party members receive either Social Security or Medicare assistance from the government or served in the U.S. Armed Forces (the major elements of the U.S. government budget).

There is a populist strain to their protests, but many of the things they protest would seem to be in the best interests of the vast majority of the American people, such as health care/insurance reform and financial consumer protections and environmental protection and even budget=balancing measures.

A constant refrain in their protests is that they want to take their country back. It is not readily apparent from whom they wish it reclaimed.

They rail against what they term 'socialism'. But this is not a readily identifiable doctrine which anyone who has studied rudimentary political science would recognize. By this term they seem to mean they don't like being taxed. We in the U.S., of course, have had a long history of attacks on our Internal Revenue Service.

They also claim they are Constitutional fundamentalists. Funny thing that: the current President is a noted Constitutional scholar and the current conservative Supreme Court majority recently extended Constitutional free speech rights to corporate entities. But to acknowledge this contradiction might make their heads explode; they like Justice John Roberts but despise President Barack Obama.

In short, they are a paradox and only tend to make noises when Democrats are in office. To my ears, these folks sound a lot like a resurgence of the movement we saw in the 90s, coincidentally the last time Dems held majority status in Congress and controlled the White House.

What's troubling is that the rise of Tea Party protests and other right-wing activism is coupled with a growing sense of paranoia by gun rights activists and people calling themselves militia who, as well, have become increasingly vocal and active. I don't find this at all coincidental.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (a big government program [instituted under George W. Bush's massive reorganization of the government] if ever there was one and one none of these anti-government activists seemed concerned about at the time) released a draft report about the potential dangers of anti-government activists and right-wing extremism.

DHS Report on Right Wing Extremism
At the time there was a great hue and cry from the right. Yet, since then we've seen some troubling things:

• A group calling itself the Oath Keepers, which claims to consist of a group of soldiers and police who worry they might be asked to do certain sorts of things that are the hallmarks of tyranny, has organized within and among the U.S. military and in local police and first-responder organizations. Is it coincidental (or merely accumulative) that many right-wingers actually question the legitimacy of the current U.S. President, challenging his U.S. citizenship and his Constitutional duty as the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Armed Forces? (My guess is that these Oath Keepers would break anywhere between 6 and 10 of their so-called oaths if a Republican president asked them to organize to take out a drug cartel that had its grips on a Rio Grande city, whether it was Amcits or not.)

• A man flies his private airplane into a building in Texas housing U.S. government offices, including those of the IRS. Apparently he didn't like paying his taxes.

• Another armed man, a self-proclaimed White Supremacist and Holocaust denier, opens fire at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. killing a security guard.

• Yet another armed man, an anti-government, private property activist, opened fire at security guards in the Pentagon.

• And yet another armed man strolled up to a man as he was ushering parishioners at church and shot him dead. The killer was a right-wing anti-abortion activist.

• A group of people from the state of Michigan calling themselves a militia is arrested because of an alleged plot to kill a police officer in the hopes of fomenting an anti-authority revolt.

• Members of the legislature of the state of Oklahoma indicate they would like to institute a militia (in addition to the National Guard) to potentially keep the feds at bay.

• A number of rallies, including one in favor of Second Amendment gun rights on the Mall in D.C. and another an open-carry gun rally in a park just across the Potomac from the U.S. Capitol, are held around the country on April 19—coincidentally[?] on the fifteenth anniversary of the one of the most infamous acts of right-wing domestic terrorism: the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

• Starbucks announces it will permit patrons to carry weapons openly in their coffee shops if the states in which the shops are located allow it.

• The Republican Governor of the state of Texas, Rick Perry, makes noises about the right of Texas to secede from the U.S. (as if we didn't have enough trouble with that issue back in the 1860s).

• The Republican Governor of the state of Virginia declares April Confederacy month, but fails initially to include any reference to slavery.

• The Republican Governor of the state of Mississippi agrees that the legacy of slavery need not be a major consideration in celebrating the Confederacy: it's "diddly".

All of the above (and I'm sure I've missed some things) clearly evince a trend, and our ubiquitous media has picked up on it—but only in a piecemeal fashion. They are either supportive (FoxNews) or can't quite put the bigger picture into perspective.

Some first-rate investigative journalism by Rachel Maddow & staff on MSNBC, however, has shown that the Tea Party movement and gun rights activism and anti-environmental reform and anti-health care reform, among other trends, is the result of a heavily-funded public relations barrage on the national media (which, in a classic Bushian/Rovian tactic, the protestors simultaneously mock and intimidate). The organizers and funders of this movement are hardly populists: disgraced former Speaker of the House Dick Armey, the billionaire Koch brothers (Texans and Republican stalwarts all, by the way), among others. (I suspect there's a Bush somewhere in there calling shots as well).

To me, this is reminiscent of the Republican 'courting' of the evangelical movement in the 80s—Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc. At first it seemed like a fringe phenomenon, below the radar, but then-candidate Ronald Reagan's appearance before the Southern Baptist Convention was the moment the movement solidified.

The idea is to arouse the passions of the base (often sloganeered as 'God, guns, and gays'): igniting their passions in the hope of tipping the balance in the election. The trick is to co-opt the movement. This is a two-step process. Step 1: demonize and delegitimize the opposition party, in this case the Democrats who currently have control of the Executive and Legislative branches of government; make them the enemy, scary, threatening, perverse, alien, etc., and block their every effort to accomplish anything. Step 2: promise this activated base they'll have a seat at the table when the political pros move in.

You can read a very good expose on the phenomenon here: Sedition in slow motion.

But here's the problem with this psychological warfare strategy. Once you ignite the violent passions of the fringe, it becomes increasingly difficult to control their excesses. Witness Timothy McVeigh who, himself, was tangentially involved in the armed, right-wing militia movement of the 1990s.

Of course, the political pros and their PR media flacks know enough to keep their fingerprints off the actions of the extremists they've set in motion. The movers and shakers, like Armey and the Kochs, work in the shadows until called out by intrepid journalism. FoxNews—Murdoch's and Ailes's acknowledged Republican propaganda outlet—merely reports the outrage and the activities of the political front groups like the Tea Party, the militias, the guns-rights activists, etc. This provides plausible deniability for the political organization (the Republican party) even as it stands poised to reap the benefits.

Here's how it works though; there are several layers to this onion. (Think IRA and Sinn Fein: a violent, underground action organization and a political front group/propaganda organization.).( UPDATE: Josh Marshall agrees and gets it straight from the horse's mouth.)There are the funders and organizers, the faces and the activists, and the underground. It is the underground that has the potential to get out of control, especially when it has violent propensities.

“Other than suicide missions, little can be accomplished at this time. Small cells and lone wolves are the only practical methodology at this time; great bodies evolve from small cells. The most fearsome pack of wolves are a collection of cells. The future is moving quickly toward us. Power is moving toward us also. By jettisoning unwise and un-needed weight, and by being in great shape with strong will, I see little reason why our forces cannot be ready to grab the brass ring of power at a critical juncture in the not-too-distant future. Good Hunting.” Tom Metzger, White Aryan Resistance leader
March 1999 Editorial in WAR Newsletter (online)

Anger, ignorance, paranoia. Bigotry and loss of majority status by whites. These are the hallmarks of the right-wing, anarchist movement the Republicans are seeking to stir up and then co-opt. Yet, at its core this same movement professes its bedrock belief in American exceptionalism in the face of increasing globalization—that is to say, American neo-imperialism, the ambitious and costly (neo-conservative) program that pretty much bankrupted this country in the first decade of this century.

Yet, this anarchism is merely the face of the political machination of the hard-core Republican shadow organization who are in it more for the emoluments of being in power than for the good of these ersatz populists—useful idiots all. And the emoluments of power include the power to command the military and the parasitic paramilitary organizations G.W. Bush mobilized to further his dreams of oil and empire.

Militarism is such an entrenched habit with this bunch that when they are out of power they still feel the need to emphasize the violence of their wants and desires—their passions—that they resort to these unofficial sorts of guns-rights and militia and paramilitary threats. It's simply their style.

Can I rightly call it a conspiracy? Perhaps. Secretive big money, shadow government, activism, and militant anti-government sentiment all seem to be working hand-in-hand with the Republican minority party to delegitimize and oust the current Democratic party in power. It's a dangerous game.