Friday, November 19, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Mosque Madness
by Tyler Reny
If you have been paying attention to the conservative echo chamber of talk radio and Fox News, and I certainly hope everyone does once in a while (it is good for a laugh, scream or an occasional cry), you should be aware that the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" is a serious issue (it isn't).
According to our fearless leaders, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, we have been informed that the mosque is being built by the shifty radical "Muslim Brotherhood operative" Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who harbors a nefarious "secret agenda." The mosque, we are told, is a victory for radical Islam and a slap in the face to the victims of the September 11th attacks.
Or, if you decide to use your brain, probe a little bit and examine the man for yourself, you will learn that Feisal Abdul Rauf has devoted much of his life to fostering better Islamic-U.S. relations. He authored the book, "What's Right With Islam Is What's Right With America," and is the vice-chair of the Interfaith Center of New York. According to Hendrik Hertzberg, who wrote a New Yorker piece on the mosque debate, Rauf has consistently denounced terrorism and the September 11th attacks and has been hired various times by the FBI to conduct sensitivity training for its agents.
Hertzberg also points out that Daisy Khan, Rauf's wife, runs the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which, according to the organization's Web site, "promotes cultural and religious harmony through interfaith collaboration, youth and women's empowerment and arts and cultural exchange."
The center itself, Cordoba House, will also not be located at ground zero, as the media's name suggests, but two blocks north, and will be far more than a mosque. Hungry? Grab a bite to eat there, it will have a restaurant. Wandering around lower Manhattan enjoying the hundred-degree weather and the smell your shoes produce as the rubber melts into the pavement? Go for a swim, there will be a pool! The plans also include a gallery and a memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks, and it will be open to all.
But with the November elections looming and an energized base of tea-partiers, the GOP has turned this non-issue into a serious issue. Armed with an extremely influential media arm and GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz, who conducts focus groups to see what the most effective language will be for framing the issue, the "Ground Zero Mosque" has become a hot topic of debate, a mobilization tactic and vote producer.
The jowly Conservative history professor and architect of the 1994 House Takeover, Newt Gingrich, has perhaps been the most vocal opponent of the center. According to Gingrich, the construction is part of an "Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization" by "replacing it with a radical imposition of Sharia." He refers to the construction as part of a larger "stealth jihad," harking back to memories of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's "fifth-column" scares of communists lurking around every corner during the Cold War.
While there is no factual evidence for any of Newt's rants, though plenty of speculation, it does scare people. And when people are scared, they tend to support the national security measures offered up by our Republican brethren. As Lisa Miller pointed out recently in her Newsweek column, terms like Jihad and Sharia freak people out and cause a general distrust of all Muslims. A few weeks ago, a New York City cab driver was stabbed when his passenger found out that he was a Muslim. The hysteria and paranoia clouding this event resemble the political climate that lead to past injustices and atrocities like the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Words do matter and new media, especially conservative talk radio and news sources, have a huge amount of influence in this country. All of the sudden the percentage of Americans who believe President Barack Obama is a Muslim has risen from 11 percent in March to 18 percent in August. Public opposition to Cordoba House is booming and anti-mosque rallies have popped up in New York City to protest the project. While there is no way to accurately measure prejudice against Muslims, all indicators show that it is growing, and is being fueled by people like Limbaugh, Beck and Gingrich.
The real issue isn't a mosque, or the placement of a mosque or even Islam. The issue is that Republicans are telling blatant lies and using shameless fear tactics to trigger voter anxiety, gain political support and fuel prejudice. So next time you find your remote under a pile of dirty beer stained clothing and switch on that TV, put on Fox, see what they are saying about the mosque, scream at the TV and change the channel.
If you have been paying attention to the conservative echo chamber of talk radio and Fox News, and I certainly hope everyone does once in a while (it is good for a laugh, scream or an occasional cry), you should be aware that the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" is a serious issue (it isn't).
According to our fearless leaders, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, we have been informed that the mosque is being built by the shifty radical "Muslim Brotherhood operative" Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who harbors a nefarious "secret agenda." The mosque, we are told, is a victory for radical Islam and a slap in the face to the victims of the September 11th attacks.
Or, if you decide to use your brain, probe a little bit and examine the man for yourself, you will learn that Feisal Abdul Rauf has devoted much of his life to fostering better Islamic-U.S. relations. He authored the book, "What's Right With Islam Is What's Right With America," and is the vice-chair of the Interfaith Center of New York. According to Hendrik Hertzberg, who wrote a New Yorker piece on the mosque debate, Rauf has consistently denounced terrorism and the September 11th attacks and has been hired various times by the FBI to conduct sensitivity training for its agents.
Hertzberg also points out that Daisy Khan, Rauf's wife, runs the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which, according to the organization's Web site, "promotes cultural and religious harmony through interfaith collaboration, youth and women's empowerment and arts and cultural exchange."
The center itself, Cordoba House, will also not be located at ground zero, as the media's name suggests, but two blocks north, and will be far more than a mosque. Hungry? Grab a bite to eat there, it will have a restaurant. Wandering around lower Manhattan enjoying the hundred-degree weather and the smell your shoes produce as the rubber melts into the pavement? Go for a swim, there will be a pool! The plans also include a gallery and a memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks, and it will be open to all.
But with the November elections looming and an energized base of tea-partiers, the GOP has turned this non-issue into a serious issue. Armed with an extremely influential media arm and GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz, who conducts focus groups to see what the most effective language will be for framing the issue, the "Ground Zero Mosque" has become a hot topic of debate, a mobilization tactic and vote producer.
The jowly Conservative history professor and architect of the 1994 House Takeover, Newt Gingrich, has perhaps been the most vocal opponent of the center. According to Gingrich, the construction is part of an "Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization" by "replacing it with a radical imposition of Sharia." He refers to the construction as part of a larger "stealth jihad," harking back to memories of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's "fifth-column" scares of communists lurking around every corner during the Cold War.
While there is no factual evidence for any of Newt's rants, though plenty of speculation, it does scare people. And when people are scared, they tend to support the national security measures offered up by our Republican brethren. As Lisa Miller pointed out recently in her Newsweek column, terms like Jihad and Sharia freak people out and cause a general distrust of all Muslims. A few weeks ago, a New York City cab driver was stabbed when his passenger found out that he was a Muslim. The hysteria and paranoia clouding this event resemble the political climate that lead to past injustices and atrocities like the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Words do matter and new media, especially conservative talk radio and news sources, have a huge amount of influence in this country. All of the sudden the percentage of Americans who believe President Barack Obama is a Muslim has risen from 11 percent in March to 18 percent in August. Public opposition to Cordoba House is booming and anti-mosque rallies have popped up in New York City to protest the project. While there is no way to accurately measure prejudice against Muslims, all indicators show that it is growing, and is being fueled by people like Limbaugh, Beck and Gingrich.
The real issue isn't a mosque, or the placement of a mosque or even Islam. The issue is that Republicans are telling blatant lies and using shameless fear tactics to trigger voter anxiety, gain political support and fuel prejudice. So next time you find your remote under a pile of dirty beer stained clothing and switch on that TV, put on Fox, see what they are saying about the mosque, scream at the TV and change the channel.
Stealth Donations Endanger Democracy
by Tyler Reny
It's election season again. The media finally has something more pertinent to talk about than Lindsay Lohan's release from prison or Lady Gaga's meat dress. Now ideologically conflicting pundit's can yell at each other as they try and predict the outcome of November's elections. But who's really going to win? Who knows! We can only be sure that Christine O'Donnell dabbled in witchcraft as a teen.
With election season, however, comes a far more annoying phenomenon: political advertisements. They are omnipresent and obnoxious as hell. Some try to scare the elderly by exposing Obamacare as a Medicare killing behemoth. Others warn of the job slaying effects of any bills that would help wean us off of fossil fuels.
What is more important than the often-misleading messages of these advertisements is the nearly illegible funding groups that pop up at the bottom of the screen during the last few seconds of the ad.
The group often has a pleasant grass-rootsy-sounding name like Americans for Job Security but, too often, turns out to be a front group for wealthy donors or corporations who want to quietly and anonymously funnel large amounts of money toward influencing legislation or political campaigns.
The ads raise the important issue of disclosure. Who is funding these ads? What do they stand to win or lose? Due to loopholes in current campaign finance law, we often don't know.
Americans for Job Security, for example, was founded by Republican business interests in 1997 and because of its non-profit status can raise unlimited funds and is exempt from having to disclose its donors. The group, which sounds like a grassroots job security advocacy organization, is actually a single employee front for conservative interests that funnels money ($6.1 million last year) into politically charged issue advocacy.
Perhaps the most influential and least known corporation, famous for quietly donating astonishing amounts of money to deceivingly titled front groups, is Koch Industries, the $100 billion dollar conglomerate from Kansas.
Koch Industries owns a variety of different companies, from Brawny towels to Dixie cups, but collects the majority of its profits from oil and gas pipelines and refineries around the country. It is the second largest private corporation in the U.S. and has made its owners, the Koch brothers, Charles and David, some of the richest men in America, with a combined wealth of about $35 billion.
The brothers, who have spent an estimated $100 million on issue advocacy, have recently been credited with funding the climate change denial machine. Greenpeace has reported that between 2005 and 2008 the corporation funneled $24.8 million to about 35 distinct groups that have fought to discredit the science behind global climate change.Their political action committee has given about $5.7 million to conservative Congressmen and spent $37.9 million on direct lobbying.
As the Greenpeace report puts it, Koch Industries' "tight knit network of lobbyists, former executives and organizations has created a forceful stream of misinformation that Koch-funded entities produce and disseminate. This campaign propaganda is then replicated, repackaged and echoed many times throughout the Koch-funded web of political front groups and think tanks."
When you see those ads lambasting the "questionable science" behind global climate change or "job killing" government initiatives funded by organizations with names like The Institute for Energy Research, just be aware that much of their funding often comes from greedy billion-dollar corporations who fear a potential threat to their bottom lines.
A functioning democracy requires the transparency that comes from better disclosure laws. Citizens must know just who stands to win or lose on a given issue. Last week Senate Democrats tried to push a bill through Congress that would require corporations and unions to disclose how they spent their money in political campaigns. The bill quietly died when the GOP blocked the bill from coming to a vote and accused the Democrats of ignoring the larger issues. Republicans clearly don't want us to know who pays their bills.
It's election season again. The media finally has something more pertinent to talk about than Lindsay Lohan's release from prison or Lady Gaga's meat dress. Now ideologically conflicting pundit's can yell at each other as they try and predict the outcome of November's elections. But who's really going to win? Who knows! We can only be sure that Christine O'Donnell dabbled in witchcraft as a teen.
With election season, however, comes a far more annoying phenomenon: political advertisements. They are omnipresent and obnoxious as hell. Some try to scare the elderly by exposing Obamacare as a Medicare killing behemoth. Others warn of the job slaying effects of any bills that would help wean us off of fossil fuels.
What is more important than the often-misleading messages of these advertisements is the nearly illegible funding groups that pop up at the bottom of the screen during the last few seconds of the ad.
The group often has a pleasant grass-rootsy-sounding name like Americans for Job Security but, too often, turns out to be a front group for wealthy donors or corporations who want to quietly and anonymously funnel large amounts of money toward influencing legislation or political campaigns.
The ads raise the important issue of disclosure. Who is funding these ads? What do they stand to win or lose? Due to loopholes in current campaign finance law, we often don't know.
Americans for Job Security, for example, was founded by Republican business interests in 1997 and because of its non-profit status can raise unlimited funds and is exempt from having to disclose its donors. The group, which sounds like a grassroots job security advocacy organization, is actually a single employee front for conservative interests that funnels money ($6.1 million last year) into politically charged issue advocacy.
Perhaps the most influential and least known corporation, famous for quietly donating astonishing amounts of money to deceivingly titled front groups, is Koch Industries, the $100 billion dollar conglomerate from Kansas.
Koch Industries owns a variety of different companies, from Brawny towels to Dixie cups, but collects the majority of its profits from oil and gas pipelines and refineries around the country. It is the second largest private corporation in the U.S. and has made its owners, the Koch brothers, Charles and David, some of the richest men in America, with a combined wealth of about $35 billion.
The brothers, who have spent an estimated $100 million on issue advocacy, have recently been credited with funding the climate change denial machine. Greenpeace has reported that between 2005 and 2008 the corporation funneled $24.8 million to about 35 distinct groups that have fought to discredit the science behind global climate change.Their political action committee has given about $5.7 million to conservative Congressmen and spent $37.9 million on direct lobbying.
As the Greenpeace report puts it, Koch Industries' "tight knit network of lobbyists, former executives and organizations has created a forceful stream of misinformation that Koch-funded entities produce and disseminate. This campaign propaganda is then replicated, repackaged and echoed many times throughout the Koch-funded web of political front groups and think tanks."
When you see those ads lambasting the "questionable science" behind global climate change or "job killing" government initiatives funded by organizations with names like The Institute for Energy Research, just be aware that much of their funding often comes from greedy billion-dollar corporations who fear a potential threat to their bottom lines.
A functioning democracy requires the transparency that comes from better disclosure laws. Citizens must know just who stands to win or lose on a given issue. Last week Senate Democrats tried to push a bill through Congress that would require corporations and unions to disclose how they spent their money in political campaigns. The bill quietly died when the GOP blocked the bill from coming to a vote and accused the Democrats of ignoring the larger issues. Republicans clearly don't want us to know who pays their bills.
Grand Old White Party
by Tyler Reny
I was rather excited when the Republican Pledge to America was released. Finally, I would glean some insight into the modern Republican Party. The Party of No was about to become the party of ideas. Their great orange leader, Rep. Boehner, was going to pull us out of this economic mess. And how will he do it? Well, I still don't know.
The pledge doesn't propose any solutions. All I can glean from the text is that the GOP is going to magically reduce the deficit through modest reductions in discretionary spending and tax cuts. The document neglects the elephant in the room, defense or entitlement spending, which together eat up the majority of the budget. Only Rep. Paul Ryan has the political cojones to suggest reductions in these political third rails. Even Boehner refused to offer specifics. He instead clarified that the document is not meant to "get to the potential solutions" but to "make sure Americans understand how big the problem is."
Even scarier than Boehner's ridiculous comments are the photographs. The Pledge is 45 pages long and interspersed with lovely color snapshots of hard working Americans: old white people voicing their opinions in a town hall, old white people in cowboy hats, older white people at business meetings, old white people selling red meat and old white people, well, just being old.
It's official; the Republican Party has managed to, through legislation and poisonous rhetoric, repel most minorities from their party. The Grand Old Party can now safely change its name to the Grand Old White Party.
In the past, the GOP has actually tried to project an image of diversity. Remember when Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steel offered "fried chicken and potato salad" as incentives to draw more diversity into the GOP? His gaffes make Joe Biden look like the Dalai Lama.
But the country is changing rapidly. Hispanics now constitute about 15 percent of the population and are on track to be about 30 percent by 2050. Their electoral turnout has increased from 8 percent of the total population in 2006 to 10 percent in 2008. The African-American vote has grown as well, thanks to President Barack Obama's candidacy, and always trends heavily democratic.
Our last Amigo in Chief, George Bush, actually fought to capture the growing Hispanic vote and managed to increase the Republican share of Hispanic voters from 21 percent in 2004 to 40 percent by 2006.
Bush's stance was illustrative of past trends. The Republican Party used to be split internally over immigration. Pro-market conservatives, like Bush, supported expansive reform and border hawks, like Tom Tancredo, rallied for harsher restrictions. This may be changing as moderates shift toward the border hawk category.
The few remaining pro-immigration Republicans are embracing Hispanics as their new political punching bag. John McCain cosponsored an immigration bill in 2007 and now says he wouldn't vote for it if it were to be introduced again.
The GOP is in trouble if it continues to turn against minority voters. Hispanics ensured victory for Obama in a few South Western states and offer a key electoral advantage in some closely divided regions. Also, old white people are going to die soon and dead people have historically had very low voter turnout.
The GOP might be smart in the short run. There is evidence from numerous studies published in leading political science journals to suggest that as the Hispanic community grows and spreads throughout the U.S., white resentment, anxiety and fear will grow along with it.
The Republicans have been very successful in the past at harvesting and promoting racial fear in return for electoral gains. Nixon and Bush Sr. did it successfully. Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo are trying it now. But Gov. Pete Wilson also tried it in California in 1994 and he and his party got pummeled.
The potential for a backlash exists. Then again, California has a massive minority population and the nation still doesn't. But when it does, the Hispanics will not forget the old white men who demonized them. Neither will the African-Americans, gays or Muslims.
I was rather excited when the Republican Pledge to America was released. Finally, I would glean some insight into the modern Republican Party. The Party of No was about to become the party of ideas. Their great orange leader, Rep. Boehner, was going to pull us out of this economic mess. And how will he do it? Well, I still don't know.
The pledge doesn't propose any solutions. All I can glean from the text is that the GOP is going to magically reduce the deficit through modest reductions in discretionary spending and tax cuts. The document neglects the elephant in the room, defense or entitlement spending, which together eat up the majority of the budget. Only Rep. Paul Ryan has the political cojones to suggest reductions in these political third rails. Even Boehner refused to offer specifics. He instead clarified that the document is not meant to "get to the potential solutions" but to "make sure Americans understand how big the problem is."
Even scarier than Boehner's ridiculous comments are the photographs. The Pledge is 45 pages long and interspersed with lovely color snapshots of hard working Americans: old white people voicing their opinions in a town hall, old white people in cowboy hats, older white people at business meetings, old white people selling red meat and old white people, well, just being old.
It's official; the Republican Party has managed to, through legislation and poisonous rhetoric, repel most minorities from their party. The Grand Old Party can now safely change its name to the Grand Old White Party.
In the past, the GOP has actually tried to project an image of diversity. Remember when Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steel offered "fried chicken and potato salad" as incentives to draw more diversity into the GOP? His gaffes make Joe Biden look like the Dalai Lama.
But the country is changing rapidly. Hispanics now constitute about 15 percent of the population and are on track to be about 30 percent by 2050. Their electoral turnout has increased from 8 percent of the total population in 2006 to 10 percent in 2008. The African-American vote has grown as well, thanks to President Barack Obama's candidacy, and always trends heavily democratic.
Our last Amigo in Chief, George Bush, actually fought to capture the growing Hispanic vote and managed to increase the Republican share of Hispanic voters from 21 percent in 2004 to 40 percent by 2006.
Bush's stance was illustrative of past trends. The Republican Party used to be split internally over immigration. Pro-market conservatives, like Bush, supported expansive reform and border hawks, like Tom Tancredo, rallied for harsher restrictions. This may be changing as moderates shift toward the border hawk category.
The few remaining pro-immigration Republicans are embracing Hispanics as their new political punching bag. John McCain cosponsored an immigration bill in 2007 and now says he wouldn't vote for it if it were to be introduced again.
The GOP is in trouble if it continues to turn against minority voters. Hispanics ensured victory for Obama in a few South Western states and offer a key electoral advantage in some closely divided regions. Also, old white people are going to die soon and dead people have historically had very low voter turnout.
The GOP might be smart in the short run. There is evidence from numerous studies published in leading political science journals to suggest that as the Hispanic community grows and spreads throughout the U.S., white resentment, anxiety and fear will grow along with it.
The Republicans have been very successful in the past at harvesting and promoting racial fear in return for electoral gains. Nixon and Bush Sr. did it successfully. Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo are trying it now. But Gov. Pete Wilson also tried it in California in 1994 and he and his party got pummeled.
The potential for a backlash exists. Then again, California has a massive minority population and the nation still doesn't. But when it does, the Hispanics will not forget the old white men who demonized them. Neither will the African-Americans, gays or Muslims.
Carbon Victory, Senate Failure
by Tyler Reny
Common logic would dictate that the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, the worst in U.S. history, would have offered politicians, environmentalists and the public the impetus to pass climate change legislation. In reality, the spill, in addition to poor political decisions by Barack Obama and Harry Reid, nailed the coffin shut on the most serious Senate effort to control U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
The New Yorker recently published an article with an amazingly detailed description of the political maneuvering and missteps that led to the tragic death of the "Cap and Trade" bill drafted by liberal, centrist and conservative senators: Kerry, Lieberman and Graham. The "Cap and Trade" proposal would have placed overall caps on emissions while offering flexible options for polluters to comply. The author of the article, Ryan Lizza, investigated exactly why the bill failed.
Before the tragic oil spill, a perfect storm of factors had steadily chipped away at the legislation. Republicans were already jumping ship. McCain, who had offered Lieberman his vote, had pulled out. He was facing a rare primary challenge from the ultra-conservative J.D. Hayworth in Arizona and he would have to moderate his views to appease the party's base. Throughout the spring, the conservative talking heads had won the framing war by branding the Cap and Trade bill as a "Cap-and-Tax." Trying to justify a new tax to reduce levels of carbon dioxide is a tough sell to voters.
The triumvirate's key political strategy to win back some republican and moderate democratic support for the Cap and Trade legislation was to offer expanded offshore oil drilling in return for a vote. After the "drill, baby drill" demonstrations at GOP conventions, it was clear that the republican base supported the expansion.
But that is where Obama screwed up. On March 31, without conversing with the senators, he announced that the administration was opening up large tracts of U.S. waters to oil drilling. The bargaining chip was off the table. The senators now had nothing to offer to conservatives and moderate democrats for their support. Graham's other possible strategy, offering new large loans to build new nuclear plants in return for votes, had already been destroyed when Obama's budget proposal was released with $54.5 billion for that exact purpose. Obama handed the opposition exactly what they wanted without asking for anything in return.
Then on April 15, the White House drove Graham away from the bargaining table. Somebody in the Obama administration had told a Fox News reporter that the White House was not going to support Graham's proposal in the bill to raise gas taxes to pay for the Cap and Trade bill. This was a blatant lie. Graham had never proposed such a raise. The news quickly spread around the airwaves and Graham's phones rang off the hook with angry calls. The tea-party conservatives were livid that one of their own would propose an increase in taxes. Graham felt the pressure from his home state, lost his temper and walked out on the talks for good.
To make things worst, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stunned his colleagues when he announced that the Senate would tackle immigration reform before climate change. Immigration was rising to the forefront of the debate in his home state of Nevada and, facing a tough reelection campaign, Reid felt he needed to mollify his home state voters. But it was all a political ploy. The Cap and Trade bill was almost ready for public release and Reid should have thrown all of his support behind it. The Senate Majority leader revealed that he wasn't at all serious about the legislation.
The fate of Cap and Trade was sealed on Earth Day, ironically, when the Deep Water Horizon rig sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and 62,000 barrels of oil a day began mixing with the warm ocean waters. The bill, which would have drastically expanded such drilling, was drowning under media coverage of dead sea birds and oil slicks the size of Rhode Island. With such a disaster on their hands, no senators would ever have supported it. Seven months of negotiations were destroyed. The bill was tossed.
Republicans are poised to take back the House in November and greatly diminish the democratic majority in the Senate. The GOP's "Pledge to America" specifically mentions its opposition to any future Cap-and-Trade bill and the future Speaker of the House John Boehner is unlikely to support any type of climate change legislation.
So, we sit back and watch as dysfunctional Washington continues its partisan sniping and carbon continues to spew into the atmosphere. Perhaps when we reach the peak in global oil production (by conservative estimates in the next 20 or 30 years) and prices begin to spike will our government finally get its act together. In the meantime, however, I suggest looking into purchasing land in Greenland. By the time we retire and the ice recedes, its coasts might offer prime beachfront real estate.
Common logic would dictate that the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, the worst in U.S. history, would have offered politicians, environmentalists and the public the impetus to pass climate change legislation. In reality, the spill, in addition to poor political decisions by Barack Obama and Harry Reid, nailed the coffin shut on the most serious Senate effort to control U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
The New Yorker recently published an article with an amazingly detailed description of the political maneuvering and missteps that led to the tragic death of the "Cap and Trade" bill drafted by liberal, centrist and conservative senators: Kerry, Lieberman and Graham. The "Cap and Trade" proposal would have placed overall caps on emissions while offering flexible options for polluters to comply. The author of the article, Ryan Lizza, investigated exactly why the bill failed.
Before the tragic oil spill, a perfect storm of factors had steadily chipped away at the legislation. Republicans were already jumping ship. McCain, who had offered Lieberman his vote, had pulled out. He was facing a rare primary challenge from the ultra-conservative J.D. Hayworth in Arizona and he would have to moderate his views to appease the party's base. Throughout the spring, the conservative talking heads had won the framing war by branding the Cap and Trade bill as a "Cap-and-Tax." Trying to justify a new tax to reduce levels of carbon dioxide is a tough sell to voters.
The triumvirate's key political strategy to win back some republican and moderate democratic support for the Cap and Trade legislation was to offer expanded offshore oil drilling in return for a vote. After the "drill, baby drill" demonstrations at GOP conventions, it was clear that the republican base supported the expansion.
But that is where Obama screwed up. On March 31, without conversing with the senators, he announced that the administration was opening up large tracts of U.S. waters to oil drilling. The bargaining chip was off the table. The senators now had nothing to offer to conservatives and moderate democrats for their support. Graham's other possible strategy, offering new large loans to build new nuclear plants in return for votes, had already been destroyed when Obama's budget proposal was released with $54.5 billion for that exact purpose. Obama handed the opposition exactly what they wanted without asking for anything in return.
Then on April 15, the White House drove Graham away from the bargaining table. Somebody in the Obama administration had told a Fox News reporter that the White House was not going to support Graham's proposal in the bill to raise gas taxes to pay for the Cap and Trade bill. This was a blatant lie. Graham had never proposed such a raise. The news quickly spread around the airwaves and Graham's phones rang off the hook with angry calls. The tea-party conservatives were livid that one of their own would propose an increase in taxes. Graham felt the pressure from his home state, lost his temper and walked out on the talks for good.
To make things worst, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stunned his colleagues when he announced that the Senate would tackle immigration reform before climate change. Immigration was rising to the forefront of the debate in his home state of Nevada and, facing a tough reelection campaign, Reid felt he needed to mollify his home state voters. But it was all a political ploy. The Cap and Trade bill was almost ready for public release and Reid should have thrown all of his support behind it. The Senate Majority leader revealed that he wasn't at all serious about the legislation.
The fate of Cap and Trade was sealed on Earth Day, ironically, when the Deep Water Horizon rig sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and 62,000 barrels of oil a day began mixing with the warm ocean waters. The bill, which would have drastically expanded such drilling, was drowning under media coverage of dead sea birds and oil slicks the size of Rhode Island. With such a disaster on their hands, no senators would ever have supported it. Seven months of negotiations were destroyed. The bill was tossed.
Republicans are poised to take back the House in November and greatly diminish the democratic majority in the Senate. The GOP's "Pledge to America" specifically mentions its opposition to any future Cap-and-Trade bill and the future Speaker of the House John Boehner is unlikely to support any type of climate change legislation.
So, we sit back and watch as dysfunctional Washington continues its partisan sniping and carbon continues to spew into the atmosphere. Perhaps when we reach the peak in global oil production (by conservative estimates in the next 20 or 30 years) and prices begin to spike will our government finally get its act together. In the meantime, however, I suggest looking into purchasing land in Greenland. By the time we retire and the ice recedes, its coasts might offer prime beachfront real estate.
The Electric Fence Solution
by Tyler Reny
Rep. Steve King (R-IA), the new chair of the House Subcommittee on immigration, has grand plans for the future. In 2006 he showed off a model of an electrified U.S-Mexico border fence on the House floor. It would be electrified, he pointed out "with the kind of current that would not kill somebody…We do this with livestock all the time." King's disgusting and shameful rhetoric, and the enforcement-only legislation that he has proposed, is just the beginning of what to expect from the immigration debate for the next two years. As long as Rep. King mans the crucial veto point in the House, liberals can kiss comprehensive immigration reform goodbye.
Immigration reform used to be an issue that cut across traditional partisan divides. The Republican Party was split between pro-business conservatives that lauded the cheap labor that immigrants provided and the socially conservative border hawks, or nativists, who warned that immigrants were a threat to our national identity. On the Democratic side were pro-labor Democrats who believed that new immigrants competed with native workers and lowered wages and cosmopolitans who believed that increased diversity only strengthened the country. But these historic partisan divisions are quickly lining up along strict partisan lines with Republicans opposed to anything but enforcement legislation and Democrats fully behind comprehensive reform.
When President George W. Bush, a friend of Hispanics and selftitled compassionate conservative, made a speech in 2006 in favor of "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants, his popularity was already in the toilet and his party had been running against his presidency in re-election campaigns. Needless to say, the Republican Party didn't jump immediately on board. The 2006 amnesty bill that Bush was advocating passed the Senate but died in the House when Republican leaders refused to bring it up for a vote.
In 2007, with a new Democratic majority in the House, Senator Kennedy (D-MA) teamed up with Senator McCain (R-AZ) to push a comprehensive and bipartisan bill through the Senate. During debate, the bill was weighed down with multiple conservative amendments that shifted the bill so far to the right that many on the left threatened to walk away. But, with hesitant support from many civil rights and pro-immigration advocacy groups, most Democrats stayed on, fearing that total failure would be more devastating than a bad bill. When the conservative bill came up for a cloture vote (which would allow debate to end), most Republicans (with the exception of 12) bailed and withdrew their support. The bill died. Pro-immigrant Republicans have all but disappeared.
With Federal immigration reform officially dead, at least for a while, states like Arizona are taking matters into their own hands. This summer, Arizona's state legislature passed the toughest immigration bill in the country (which was actually written, funded and lobbied by the private prison industry, but that is the topic of another column). The bill, which is now being battled in court, allows local police officers to arrest anybody that looks "suspiciously illegal." All legal immigrants need to carry papers proving their legality. Kind of like how free blacks had to carry papers around proving their "freedom" in the mid 19th century.
The Arizona bill polled well with voters around the country. Some 59 percent of voters approve of law as written and many Republican candidates have built their campaigns around anti-immigrant sentiment. Sharron Angle, the Republican who ran against Majority Leader Harry Reid for Senate in Nevada, ran some of the most negative, xenophobic and blatantly racist ads ever aired against Hispanics. Tom Tancredo, Republican running for governor of Colorado, based his campaign on anti-Hispanic rhetoric and fear mongering. While both Angle and Tancredo lost, they both amassed a solid base of Republican supporters who shared their nativist sentiment and rewarded them in the voting booth.
Many of those Republicans, now in charge of the House, will advocate an enforcement only approach to immigration reform, never mind that President Barack Obama already signed a massive $600 million enforcement-only bill in August. Any attempt at serious reform from Democrats will likely get hung up in Rep. King's committee. But not all hope for reform is lost. The Republican presidential candidate in 2012 will have to appeal to Hispanics to win key battleground states during the general election. Maybe the electric fence idea will get ditched for something less contentious, like border guards with cattle prods.
Rep. Steve King (R-IA), the new chair of the House Subcommittee on immigration, has grand plans for the future. In 2006 he showed off a model of an electrified U.S-Mexico border fence on the House floor. It would be electrified, he pointed out "with the kind of current that would not kill somebody…We do this with livestock all the time." King's disgusting and shameful rhetoric, and the enforcement-only legislation that he has proposed, is just the beginning of what to expect from the immigration debate for the next two years. As long as Rep. King mans the crucial veto point in the House, liberals can kiss comprehensive immigration reform goodbye.
Immigration reform used to be an issue that cut across traditional partisan divides. The Republican Party was split between pro-business conservatives that lauded the cheap labor that immigrants provided and the socially conservative border hawks, or nativists, who warned that immigrants were a threat to our national identity. On the Democratic side were pro-labor Democrats who believed that new immigrants competed with native workers and lowered wages and cosmopolitans who believed that increased diversity only strengthened the country. But these historic partisan divisions are quickly lining up along strict partisan lines with Republicans opposed to anything but enforcement legislation and Democrats fully behind comprehensive reform.
When President George W. Bush, a friend of Hispanics and selftitled compassionate conservative, made a speech in 2006 in favor of "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants, his popularity was already in the toilet and his party had been running against his presidency in re-election campaigns. Needless to say, the Republican Party didn't jump immediately on board. The 2006 amnesty bill that Bush was advocating passed the Senate but died in the House when Republican leaders refused to bring it up for a vote.
In 2007, with a new Democratic majority in the House, Senator Kennedy (D-MA) teamed up with Senator McCain (R-AZ) to push a comprehensive and bipartisan bill through the Senate. During debate, the bill was weighed down with multiple conservative amendments that shifted the bill so far to the right that many on the left threatened to walk away. But, with hesitant support from many civil rights and pro-immigration advocacy groups, most Democrats stayed on, fearing that total failure would be more devastating than a bad bill. When the conservative bill came up for a cloture vote (which would allow debate to end), most Republicans (with the exception of 12) bailed and withdrew their support. The bill died. Pro-immigrant Republicans have all but disappeared.
With Federal immigration reform officially dead, at least for a while, states like Arizona are taking matters into their own hands. This summer, Arizona's state legislature passed the toughest immigration bill in the country (which was actually written, funded and lobbied by the private prison industry, but that is the topic of another column). The bill, which is now being battled in court, allows local police officers to arrest anybody that looks "suspiciously illegal." All legal immigrants need to carry papers proving their legality. Kind of like how free blacks had to carry papers around proving their "freedom" in the mid 19th century.
The Arizona bill polled well with voters around the country. Some 59 percent of voters approve of law as written and many Republican candidates have built their campaigns around anti-immigrant sentiment. Sharron Angle, the Republican who ran against Majority Leader Harry Reid for Senate in Nevada, ran some of the most negative, xenophobic and blatantly racist ads ever aired against Hispanics. Tom Tancredo, Republican running for governor of Colorado, based his campaign on anti-Hispanic rhetoric and fear mongering. While both Angle and Tancredo lost, they both amassed a solid base of Republican supporters who shared their nativist sentiment and rewarded them in the voting booth.
Many of those Republicans, now in charge of the House, will advocate an enforcement only approach to immigration reform, never mind that President Barack Obama already signed a massive $600 million enforcement-only bill in August. Any attempt at serious reform from Democrats will likely get hung up in Rep. King's committee. But not all hope for reform is lost. The Republican presidential candidate in 2012 will have to appeal to Hispanics to win key battleground states during the general election. Maybe the electric fence idea will get ditched for something less contentious, like border guards with cattle prods.
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