DISPATCHES

GINGRICH’S BAGGAGE HAS BAGGAGE

It looks like Newt Gingrich is next in line to lead the Republican presidential primary race this week. Gingrich benefits from three things: A lot of Republicans can’t stand Mitt Romney, Herman Cain and Rick Perry have shamed themselves in public, and by contrast, he’s had no bad debates. So far he’s come off as smart and affable, trying to rally his rivals against the big, bad media that’s trying to get them to fight.

Since Gingrich has mostly been in single digits, far back in the polls, his rivals have humored him and ignored his liabilities. That’s about to change, and Gingrich, like Perry, Cain and Michele Bachmann before him, will likewise wither under the hot sun of political scrutiny. The seemingly affable professor and author is a hothead with many political liabilities and almost as many enemies. He’s committed so many political and ethical transgressions that his baggage has baggage.

Gingrich is probably best known for serving his wife with divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery, so he could marry his mistress, whom he later divorced to marry a staffer. But he’s also probably the only politician, who when you’re asked “What’s the worst thing he’s done?” has done a lot of things that rival leaving his cancer-stricken wife for his mistress. For most people in the world, in fact, that would be the hands-down worst act ever; for Gingrich, it’s just not that clear-cut ...

For instance, he’s the only House speaker in American history to be disciplined by Congress for ethics violations. In 1998, he paid a $300,000 fine after he was found to have been misusing his tax-exempt foundations for political gain.

OK, those have to be the two worst things, dumping his wife who had cancer for his mistress, and congressional ethics sanctions, right?

But wait, but there’s more:

Shutting down the government in 1995 at least partly because President Clinton allegedly snubbed him by seating him in the rear of Air Force One on a flight home from Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral. No, really, he told reporters the “snub” was “part of why you ended up with us sending down a tougher continuing resolution.”

Advocating that the children of welfare recipients be taken away from their parents and raised in orphanages.

Leading the drive to impeach Clinton over lying about adultery when he was himself lying about adultery, cheating on his wife with a staffer, Callista Bisek, who became his third wife.

Insisting President Obama suffers from “a Kenyan anti-colonial mindset” like his Kenyan father, even though he barely knew his Kenyan father.

Denouncing Paul Ryan’s radical budget (that was actually smart) as “right-wing social engineering,” then flip-flopping and warning that “any ad which quotes what I said Sunday is a falsehood.”

Railing against Obama’s alleged “class warfare” when he’s run up a $500,000 tab at Tiffany’s.

But my all-time favorite Newt Gingrich “worst” was the time he blamed the horrendous case of Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who murdered her young sons in 1994, on Democrats. Smith, you’ll recall, first blamed her son’s drowning deaths on a black man who supposedly car-jacked her, but it turned out, she did it herself. Just before the 1994 election, in which his party swept back into power, Gingrich said:

"I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things. The only way you get change is to vote Republican. That’s the message for the last three days."

Two days later, Gingrich defended his comments by insisting he’d been saying the same thing for years: that Democratic rule had frayed the moral fabric of the country: “We need very deep change if we’re going to turn this country around.” Asked directly if he was saying electing Republicans could stop killings like Smith’s, he said flatly: “Yes. In my judgment, there’s no question.”

He later blamed the Columbine and Virginia Tech killings on liberals, too. But his Susan Smith lies were a special kind of awful, and that’s my pick for Gingrich’s worst act. Politically, though, I think his callous divorces will hurt him more. What do you think? — Joan Walsh, Salon.com.

UNINSURANCE RISES WITH UNEMPLOYMENT. The percentage of adults with no health insurance is the highest on record, with 17.3% of adults uninsured in the third quarter of 2011, Gallup found. That's up from 14.4% of adults lacking health insurance three years ago, in the third quarter of 2008. While some depicted that as a failure of President Obama’s health care reform, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos.com (11/14) that adults from 18-25 have seen an increase in coverage and the reason more adults are uninsured is because unemployment remains above 9% and the government has taken an austerity route instead of maintaining a full-time focus on jobs and the economy. “The component of the ACA that would increase the number of insured is the small business tax credit, but with small business not hiring and in fact reducing their labor force, the success of that provision has been limited. But there is evidence that small businesses have increased the number of remaining employees covered by insurance,” McCarter wrote.

The Supreme Court announced (11/14) that it would consider whether it should strike down the Affordable Care Act. Ian Milhiser noted at ThinkProgress.org that conservative Judge Laurence Silberman, in his decision (11/8) upholding the health reform law, wrote that the law's opponents “cannot find real support for their proposed rule in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.”

“The plaintiffs’ primary challenge is to the provision requiring most Americans to either carry health insurance or pay slightly more income taxes,” Milhiser wrote. “In their vision of the Constitution, this provision runs afoul of some unwritten rule against being told what to do. The federal government can regulate how people go about the business they are already engaged in, under this vision, but it is utterly powerless to push people to engage in commerce they would prefer to avoid.”

The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider whether it should hear the challenge to the healthcare law, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were feted at a Federalist Society dinner sponsored by law firm, Bancroft PLLC, that will argue the case before the high court, the Los Angeles Times reported (11/14). Steve Benen noted at WashingtonMonthly.com (11/15) that lower-court judges would risk ethics violations by taking similar actions. Benen also noted that Scalia and Thomas attended a conservative strategy session hosted by Koch Industries last year.

DEMS PRESERVE NET NEUTRALITY. Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-backed resolution to disapprove of the FCC’s rules on net neutrality, Reuters reported (11/10). The vote was 52-46 against a resolution by Sen. Kay Hutchison (R-Texas) to reverse the FCC adoption last December of rules that forbid broadband providers from blocking legal content while leaving flexibility for providers to manage their networks.

Craig Aaron of Free Press wrote at SaveTheInternet.com (11/10) that the fight would now turn toward getting the FCC to strengthen the rules to protect all Internet users. The new rules fail to protect mobile Internet users.

The rules still face a court challenge from AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and other telecoms who want the ability to offer tiers of service. Backers of net neutrality say big providers could otherwise use their gatekeeper role to discriminate against competitors. Republicans said the rules were an unprecedented power grab by the FCC.

REPUBLICANS TARGET VETS' HEALTH CARE. Mitt Romney may have written off the veterans' vote when he floated the idea of privatizing the veterans' health care system during a roundtable with vets in South Carolina on Veterans Day (11/11). “Sometimes you wonder if there would be some way to introduce some private-sector competition, somebody else that could come in and say, you know, that each soldier gets X thousand dollars attributed to them, and then they can choose whether they want to go in the government system or in a private system with the money that follows them,” said Romney. “Like what happens with schools in Florida, where people have a voucher that goes with them. Who knows?”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced a similar proposal during the 2008 presidential campaign, but ThinkProgress.org noted (11/14) that veterans groups panned the initiative, which would have given veterans “the option to use a simple plastic card to receive timely and accessible care” outside of the VA system. AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America and the Veterans of Foreign Wars argued that while veterans should have access to private care, providing “rural veterans greater access to VA-sponsored care exclusively through private providers” would undermine the existing health care system.

A study by the RAND Corporation in 2005 found that “VA patients were more likely to receive recommended care” and “received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow up. Rather than taking veterans out of a system that consistently delivers “higher quality of care,” Igor Volsky wrote at ThinkProgress.org, Romney should expand its services and improve access.

The RAND study concludes, “if other health care providers followed the VA’s lead, it would be a major step toward improving the quality of care across the US health care system.” And Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (11/14), “the [Veterans Health Administration] is a huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform.”

In January, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) proposed to slash $4.5 bln in veterans services and reduce disability compensation for 150,000 veterans, before an outcry from vets' groups forced her to withdraw the plan. During a debate on national security (11/12), Bachmann made the unfounded claim that President Obama's Affordable Care Act would force active duty military personnel would be forced out of the government-funded TRICARE health care system.

VOTERS SEE GOP SABOTAGE. Voters are beginning to come around on the realization that Republicans are deliberately tanking the economy in an attempt to undermine the Obama presidency. A national survey of registered voters by Public Policy Polling, conducted for DailyKos.com and the Service Employees International Union, released 11/8, found that 50% of respondents believe the Republicans are intentionally stalling efforts to jumpstart the economy to insure that Barack Obama is not reelected, while 41% said they did not believe it. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released 11/7 also found 50% nationwide agree with the statement that President Obama is “making a good faith effort to deal with the country’s economic problems, but the Republicans in Congress are playing politics by blocking his proposals.” And a poll conducted by Boston's Suffolk University for a Miami TV station found 49% of voters said they believe that the Republicans are intentionally hindering efforts to boost the economy so that President Barack Obama will not be reelected. Thirty-nine percent disagreed.

BLUE-COLLAR WHITES IN PA. BACK OCCUPY. Predictions that blue-collar whites will turn on Occupy Wall Street over its theatrics, even as they might be receptive to the populist message, are not borne out by recent polling, Greg Sargent notes at WashingtonPost.com (11/4). A poll by Franklin and Marshall College (released 11/3) finds that 57% of Pennsylvania voters say they would be very or somewhat likely to vote for a candidate who supports the Occupy Wall Street movement, while only 33% say the opposite. And a plurality of 49% generally supports the protests vs. 37% who oppose it. In a gauge of blue-collar sentiment, Sargent noted that 53% of non-college whites would support a candidate who supports the goals of the protesters, while 33% wouldn't be likely to do that. A plurality of 41% of non-college whites support the protesters vs. 39% who don't.

REPUBS CHEER WATERBOARDING. Support for waterboarding is the latest applause line for Republican presidential candidates. When asked at the debate in South Carolina (11/12) if they agreed with a veteran who said "torture is always wrong in all cases," Herman Craig got applause when he said of waterboarding, which simulates drowning, “I agree that it was an enhanced interrogation technique ... Yes, I would return to that policy. I don’t see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique.”

Michele Bachmann also drew applause with her response: “If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding. I think it was very effective. It gained information for our country. And I also would like to say that today, under Barack Obama, he is allowing the ACLU to run the CIA.”

Rick Perry said of waterboarding: “I don't see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique.”

Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman agreed that waterboarding is torture and is wrong. The others were silent at the debate, but Mitt Romney’s spokesman later told reporters Romney does not believe waterboarding is torture and he would not rule out using it.

Obama called his opponents uninformed. “They're wrong. Waterboarding is torture,” the president said (11/13). “And anybody who has actually read about and understands the practice of waterboarding would say that that is torture. And that's not something we do. Period.”

Sen. John McCain, who was tortured as a POW in Vietnam, tweeted: “Very disappointed by statements at SC GOP debate supporting waterboarding. Waterboarding is torture.”

LOOKING TO CHINA AS A MODEL. Even by Michele Bachmann's standards for nonsense, her endorsement of the Chinese approach toward a social safety net sets a new low. “The Great Society has not worked, and it’s put us into the modern welfare state," she said at the GOP debate on foreign policy (11/12). "If you look at China, they don’t have food stamps. If you look at China, they’re in a very different situ — they save for their own retirement security. They don’t have pay FDIC. They don’t have the modern welfare state. And China’s growing. And so what I would do is look at the programs that LBJ gave us with The Great Society, and they’d be gone.”

Steve Benen noted at WashingtonMonthly, “Bachmann considers programs like Medicare to be ‘socialist,’ which she thinks is bad, and looks longingly at Chinese communism, which she thinks is good. Remember over the summer when Bachmann won the Ames Straw Poll and looked like a top-tier candidate? A few months later, it still seems hard to believe.”

Yet Bachmann still gets to participate in the debates while former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson are denied access.

MEMORY LAPSE ILLUSTRATES MINDLESS GOVERNMENT-BASHING. Rick Perry's inability to remember one of the federal departments he wanted to abolish made him the butt of jokes by late-night comedians, but E.J. Dionne Jr. noted in the Washington Post (11/14) that the memory lapse illustrates the state of the conservatives’ movement “and the health of their creed.”

Perry claimed he would simply scrap the departments of Commerce, Education, and Energy, though the Texas governor didn’t take the proposal seriously enough to remember it.

“Would Perry end all federal aid to education? Would he do away with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the part of the Commerce Department that, among other things, tracks hurricanes? Energy was the department he forgot. Would he scrap the department’s 17 national labs, including such world-class facilities as Los Alamos, N.M., Oak Ridge, Tenn., or — there’s that primary coming up — Aiken, S.C.?

“I’m not accusing Perry of wanting to do any of these things because I don’t believe he has given them a moment of thought. And that’s the problem for conservatives. Their movement has been overtaken by a quite literally mindless opposition to government. Perry, correctly, thought he had a winning sound bite, had he managed to blurt it out, because if you just say you want to scrap government departments (and three is a nice, round number), many conservatives will cheer without asking questions.

“This is a long way from the conservatism I used to respect," Dionne wrote. "Although I often disagreed with conservatives, I admired their prudence, their affection for tradition and their understanding that the intricate bonds of community are established with great difficulty over time and not easy to reweave once they are torn asunder. At their best, conservatives forced us to think harder. Now, many in the ranks seem to have decided that hard and nuanced thinking is a telltale sign of liberalism.”

Steve Benen noted at WashingtonMonthly.com (11/14), “That last point seems especially important, and should give thoughtful conservatives pause. What has become of their ideology? Are they satisfied with the depth of thought and seriousness of purpose when it comes to the right’s approach to public policy? Do they look at the intellectual rigor of conservative politics in 2011 and feel a sense of pride?

“Or do even they realize that the right has descended into knee-jerk, soundbite solutions to every problem?”

MOST US TAX SUBSIDIES GO TO 4 INDUSTRIES. More than half of corporate tax subsidies to the nation's largest businesses went to four industries: financial, utilities, telecom and energy, Citizens for Tax Justice (ctj.org) reported in an analysis of corporate taxes from 2008 to 2010. Out of $222.7 bln in tax subsidies in those three years, $37.5 bln went to financial industry, which reported an effective tax rate of 15.5%; $31.2 bln went to gas and electric utilities, which paid 3.7% effective tax rate; $30.7 bln went to telecoms, which paid 8.2%; and $24.18 bln went to oil, gas and pipelines, which paid 15.7%. CTJ examined 280 of Fortune's 500 largest American companies and found: “While the federal corporate tax code ostensibly requires big corporations to pay a 35% corporate income tax rate, on average, the 280 corporations in our study paid only about half that amount. And many paid far less, including a number that paid nothing at all ...

“Many people will be appalled to learn that a quarter of the companies in our study paid effective federal tax rates on their US profits of less than 10%. Others may be surprised to learn that an almost equal number of our companies paid close to the full 35% official corporate tax rate.” Hunter at DailyKos.com noted (11/10) that the average effective tax rate for the 280 companies was 18.5%, but 30 companies paid a negative tax rate while 71 companies paid effective rates of over 70%.

BANKS PROFIT OFF THE POOR. The same banks whose speculation in mortgage-backed securities delivered a financial crisis that has destroyed millions of jobs have figured out how to turn widespread unemployment into a profit center, Janell Ross reports at HuffingtonPost.com (11/10). She notes that Shawana Busby has been out of work for much of the last three years and depends upon a $264-a-week unemployment check from the state of South Carolina. But the state has contracted with Bank of America to administer its unemployment benefits, and to withdraw her benefits, using a Bank of America debit card at ATMs in her area, Busby must pay fees, which reach as high as $5 per transaction. She estimates that she has paid at least $350 in fees to tap her unemployment benefits.

Bank of America recently aborted plans to charge ordinary banking customers $5 a month to use their debit cards in the face of national outrage. But 41 states have contracted with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and other banks to provide access to public benefits, allowing them to collect unlimited fees, both from the unemployed and state governments. South Carolina, for instance, pays Bank of America a fee for each transfer it facilitates on a debit card, and for handling direct deposit of unemployment benefits. These contracts also typically allow banks to collect unlimited fees from merchants and consumers.

The New York Times reported (11/14) that banks have been quietly raising fees on everything from replacing lost cards to monthly maintenance. BofA customers can be charged $1.50 for speaking to a customer service operator more than once a month, $1.50 for using an “out-of-network” ATM, and $0.50 for entering the wrong PIN number too many times.

Bryce Covert at reported at newdeal20.org (11/2) that, “big banks are making a tidy profit by acting as middlemen for what should be publicly provided services.” US Bancorp made $357 mln in revenue from its unemployment benefit card division — more than one-fourth of its total revenue. JP Morgan made $5.47 bln in net revenue for most of last year in the division that handles food stamp cards.

Fed up with big banks’ exorbitant and never-ending fees, customers have been flocking to credit unions. One survey found that credit unions gained at least 650,000 new customers since 9/29, the day Bank of America announced its debit card fee.

CITIES APPARENTLY COORDINATED 'OCCUPY' CRACKDOWN. Police in New York cleared the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park early 11/15, in what could be a coordinated effort to break up Occupy protests around the country. The eviction in New York, which also resulted in the arrests of several credentialed journalists covering the event, happened less than 24 hours after police in Oakland arrested 33 people while dismantling the Occupy camp in a downtown plaza, BBC's TheTakeaway.org noted (11/15). Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said the move was necessary because "the Occupy Wall Street movement itself is having a hard time controlling the encampments." Protesters returned to the camp the night of 11/14.

Quan, under intense criticism for the city's efforts to break up Occupy Oakland protests in her city, told the BBC, "“I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation ...” Gregg Levine noted at FireDogLake.com (11/15) that many witnesses to the government crackdowns of numerous Occupy encampments have been wondering if the rapid succession was more than a coincidence; "Jean Quan's casual remark seems to imply clearly that it was."

WHAT NEXT FOR OCCUPY? The eviction in Oakland came on the same day Canadian magazine AdBusters, which is credited for inspiring the Occupy movement, released a "tactical briefing" suggesting that protesters might "declare 'victory'" and scale back the camps before winter sets in.

"[A]s winter approaches an ominous mood could set in … hope thwarted is in danger of turning sour, patience exhausted becoming anger, militant nonviolence losing its allure. It isn't just the mainstream media that says things could get ugly. What shall we do to keep the magic alive?

"Here are a couple of emerging ideas:

#1: We summon our strength, grit our teeth and hang in there through winter …

#2: "We declare 'victory' and throw a party ... Imagine, on a Saturday yet to be announced, perhaps our movement's three month anniversary on December 17, in every #OCCUPY in the world, we reclaim the streets for a weekend of triumphant hilarity and joyous revelry," it wrote.

"We dance like we've never danced before and invite the world to join us.

"Then we clean up, scale back and most of us go indoors while the die-hards hold the camps. We use the winter to brainstorm, network, build momentum so that we may emerge rejuvenated with fresh tactics, philosophies, and a myriad projects ready to rumble next Spring..."

GITMO 'WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE PRISON.' Guantanamo is the world's "most expensive prison," costing more than $800,000 to keep each of its detainees for a year — more than 30 times the average cost of a traditional prison, the Miami Herald reported (11/8). The prison cost $139 mln last year to house 171 detainees. Congress has kept the prison open despite President Obama's January 2009 order to close it. (ThinkProgress.org, 11/10)

BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT WOULD MAKE THINGS WORSE. The House and Senate are expected to cast a symbolic vote on a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget. Chances of passage are virtually nil, but it is worth noting that, as Steve Benen wrote at WashingtonMonthly.com (11/10), "this is still one of the worst ideas in the history of bad ideas." Macroeconomic Advisers, which prepares respected, non-partisan economic analyses, reported that if a constitutional balanced budget requirement had been ratified in 2008 and took effect in fiscal year 2012, “The effect on the economy would be catastrophic.” If the 2012 budget were balanced through spending cuts, those cuts would have to total about $1.5 tln in 2012 alone, which the report estimates would throw about 15 mln more people out of work, double the unemployment rate from 9% to approximately 18%, and cause the economy to shrink by about 17% instead of growing by an expected 2%.

Macroeconomic Advisers also found that the balanced budget amendment would generate enormous economic uncertainty, which Benen noted is a problem Republicans sometimes pretend to care about, would make all future economic downturns “deeper and longer,” and would “retard economic growth” even during normal conditions. "This comes soon after an analysis from Standard & Poor’s — which Republicans claim to want to impress — which also said the amendment is a very bad idea."

HP HAS GREENEST CONSUMER ELECTRONICS. HP overtook Dell and Nokia to score top marks for its sustainable operations, Greenpeace reported in its Guide to Greener Electronics. The latest edition ranks 15 companies in three areas, Energy, Greener Products and Sustainable Operations. Dell placed second in the Guide, a dramatic improvement from tenth position in the previous version, scoring well for its ambitious plans to reduce emissions by 40% by 2020, and a strong policy on sustainable paper sourcing. After three years at the top, Nokia has slipped from first place to third, mainly due to weaker performance on the Energy criteria. Apple jumped five places to fourth, as a top scoring company on green products and relatively strong on sustainable operations, but scores poorly on energy. See greenpeace.org/rankingguide.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2011