Do your own Dirty Work

I wouldn’t mock this quite so much.

You saw it, somewhat, in the Clinton years. Democrats didn’t defend Clinton because he embodied Liberal attitudes (at least I hope they didn’t!) but because his opposition was sooooo odious.

Bernstein has had this idea for a while. It’s very odd. His understanding seems to be that left-liberalism _just wants_ more government spending, no matter on what or how. It has no clear connection to reality, of course, but then, I don’t know if one should in this case expect much else.

Well I did my bit of Bush-boosting in November 2004, arguing that there was a strong case for electing a known lemon in order to highlight the need for drastic change in the US political system. I couldn’t even persuade Daniel Drezner. But my faith in Bush is undiminished. If only he could be given a third term, he would surely persuade Americans of the need to switch to a parliamentary system where all it takes to get rid of an embarrassing leader is a no-confidence motion.

sd: “Politics is, for better or worse, somewhat tribal.”

Yes. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The enemy of the right is the left. Bush is the enemy of the left, therefore the right MUST support him.

irresponsible government spending,

Irresponsible? Explain which of the following items is irresponsible, in liberal terms:

A sweeping expansion of social programs since 2000 has sparked a record increase in the number of Americans receiving federal government benefits such as college aid, food stamps and health care.
A USA TODAY analysis of 25 major government programs found that enrollment increased an average of 17% in the programs from 2000 to 2005. The nation’s population grew 5% during that time.

It was the largest five-year expansion of the federal safety net since the Great Society created programs such as Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s.

* * *

USA TODAY found three major causes for soaring enrollment in government programs:

•Expanded eligibility: Congress has expanded eligibility for programs in ways that attracted little attention but added greatly to the scope and cost of programs. Congress added food stamp eligibility for 2.7 million people by ending a rule that disqualified people from receiving food stamps if they had a car or truck worth $4,650 or more. The change, one of a series of expansions in 2001 and 2002, was designed to make it easier for food stamp recipients to work.

•Increased participation: The government has made applying for benefits easier, prompting more eligible people to get them. Forms have been shortened, office visits reduced and verification streamlined.

•Welfare reform: 1996 overhaul pushed millions of people off cash assistance and into the workforce. Congress expanded eligibility for benefits to support people with low-wage jobs.

economic mismanagement

Hard to know what you’re talking about here. No one has alleged that “economic mismanagement,” or anything that might be so described, is an example of liberalism.

gigantic handouts to energy and pharma companies disguised as environmental and health policy

Do you have any evidence for this characterization? What’s more, do you have any reason to believe that Bush has done any worse on this score than any real-life liberal politicians? Or do you maintain that programs signed into law by liberal Presidents are, by some miracle, able to avoid spending money in any way that rewards various liberal interest groups?

The challenge for any minority party is to criticize the majority party without implying that its chieftains are utter monsters

I’m so sorry, man. I had Ward Churchill ballgagged in the basement, but the Instapundit pulled a Luke Skywalker on me and loosed ‘im.

And Kieran, while you can no doubt uncover various ties between the Bush administration and some energy companies, the task here is to explain why Bush is any worse than a real-life liberal politician. Thus, you should take into account the Clinton administration’s collaborations with Enron (see here and here for just a few examples).

That’s some perceptive thinking, abb1. I had never heard the theory that Enron and the like were a “majority of the US population” before. No wonder its bankruptcy had such an effect!

Enron was a liberal interest group?

If only he could be given a third term, he would surely persuade Americans of the need to switch to a parliamentary system where all it takes to get rid of an embarrassing leader is a no-confidence motion

Or at least a French system with a more diluted executive branch and a legislative branch that actually reins them in every now and then.

Look, environmentalists is a liberal interest group, that’s millions of people. Government implements environmentalist policies and millions of people benefit. Sure, some corporations will also benefit, good for them.

Now, large shareholders of the Exxon-Mobil is a “conservative” interest group. That’s hundreds of people, a few thousand at most. When they benefit – they benefit and that’s it. Everyone else loses.

Oh I’m sorry. I thought the Democratic party HAD got down on its knees and had been ‘doing a Lewinsky’ on Bush for the last (x) years? If not, why have they not made a serious and coherent attack on Bush’s Iraq policy, even though they know it is horrendously unpopular? Or (m)any of his other policies for that matter.

Shut up, Tim! You want us to start saying that at least Hitler made the trains run on time next?

Only a Thread-Nazi would try to impose what “the point” is on all of us!

NEVER AGAIN

I am not sure in what surreal sense David Boaz counts as a “schmibertarian”. He has never been a Bush supporter or an Iraq war supporter.

Point being, one could just as easily claim, “Democrats have put together an energy bill that includes subsidies to corporations. Liberals don’t support that sort of thing. Therefore Democrats are not liberals.”

Maybe there’s something to that. But then, who in the real world meets your pristine standard for being “liberal”?

abb1 wrote:

“Now, large shareholders of the Exxon-Mobil is a “conservative” interest group. That’s hundreds of people, a few thousand at most. When they benefit – they benefit and that’s it. Everyone else loses.”

That’s simply wrong. Factually, substantively wrong. The vast majority – overwhelming majority – of equity wealth in the US is held by institutional investors. Pension and other retirement funds for blue collar workers, teachers, middle class white collar workers. Endowment funds of colleges, universities, charitable organizations. Things that benefit large corporations benefit tens of millions of Americans. It may be that those benefits are out-weighed by associated costs that tens of millions of Americans bear, but it simply economic illiteracy to suggest that public policies that benefit a $50B, $100B, $200B company are concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of plutocrats.

The NY Times article referenced by Don Quijote includes the following:

“The analysis did not measure wealth directly. It looked at taxes on capital gains, dividends, interest and rents. Income from securities owned by retirement plans and endowments was excluded, as were gains from noncorporate assets such as personal residences.”

So it in no way supports his disagreement with sd.

don quijote:

Did you even read the article you linked to? I assume not, because if you had, you would have noticed:

“The analysis did not measure wealth directly. It looked at taxes on capital gains, dividends, interest and rents. Income from securities owned by retirement plans and endowments was excluded…”

Of course when you look at individual ownership of stocks you find that the wealthy own most shares. But institutions, not individuals, own a majority of stock. As of 2004, institutional investors owned about 70% of the shares in the 1000 largest US corporations. Of that, 41% was owned by pension funds, 22% by investment companies (much of which consists of the 401(k) assets of middle class white collar workers), 23% by insurance companies (most of which consists of assets against which life insurance claims to middle class families will eventually be paid), 12% by banks and 2% by non-profits.

Indeed, even taking your argument at face value (which, as noted above, is wrong to do), it still doesn’t confirm abb1’s asserion that “hundreds of people, a few thousand at most” benefit from corporate profits. The top 1% of housholds is what, maybe 1 million households? Not the vast middle class, to be sure, but not a handful of robber barons either.

Before I even read the news this morning, I was thinking about this very issue. What prompted it was that debt ceiling raise in the Senate yesterday, and how Democrats stood together in unity (Yikes! How often does that happen??!) in opposing it. I sent an email claiming we’ve entered a Bizarro World where Democrats are cranky old conservatives and Republicans are irresponsible, spend-crazy social engineers.

Then this morning I realised: this has nothing whatsoever to do with ideology. It’s all about power, and who has it.

Whomever is in power spends like they’ve just robbed a bank, becuase, well, THEY JUST HAVE! Ideology means nothing. You give these clowns keys to the treasury and they go bananas– here comes the pork! This is pure human nature: greed. The only ideological difference is what they spend it on: Democrats on social programs for the poor and middle class and pure science, Republicans on the military-industrial complex and their rich cronies. Then the party out of power gets all pissy and cranky and moralistic and starts tut-tutting about fiscal responsiblity. It’s a big farce.

The reality is that whomever is in power will spend irresponsibly, and whomever is out of power will bitch impotently about it. When the people get fed up enough, they’ll vote the corrupt assholes out of power and vote in a different group of corrupt assholes.

That said, I agree with Democratic spending priorities and I would much rather my tax dollar go to domestic programs and the poor and middle class, than on war and the rich elite and mega-corporations. Of course this is solely because I’m middle class and neither the rich elite nor a corporation. I suppose I can’t blame them for wanting to look out for their own.

Following up on Kevin, I think you could do a great pro-Bush post from a Francophile position. The Bush Administration has managed to change the perception of France from “declining ex-colonial power” to “leading enemy of the Anglo-Saxon world”, and has displayed

* Arrogance that makes Dominique de Villepin look like a humble son of the people

* Venality that makes Edith Cresson look like a sea-green incorruptible

* Dishonesty sufficient to make Jacques Chirac a champion of truth

Why wouldn’t Francophiles love Bush?

A,

If you actually bothered to click the link, you would see that the relevant post is from 2004, not 2005, and that it says “I didn’t vote for him in 2000, either.”

Re #s 9 and 26 at least:

Data not being the plural of anecdote blah blah blah, but the avid Bush fans I know do not, when I back off from criticizing him for a moment, go “oh, well then, maybe I don’t like him so much.” They get all smug and patronizing and say something about me having to admit they’d been right all along.

(I here distinguish “avid Bush fans” from “marginally thoughtful conservatives,” and note that one of the latter just this past weekend confessed to me that he had come to “really hate” Bush but couldn’t bring himself to tell a mutual friend who belongs in the former category.)

Digby has certainly talked about the way that the conservative establishment may attempt to separate itself from a ‘not truly conservative’ Bush as a matter of self-perpetuation.

And frankly, the ‘oh, if only the Dems had put up a better opposition’ line isn’t going to wash. I’m waiting for the polls in 2009 that show only 25% of those who voted in 2000/2004 cast their vote for Bush. Or so they say.

Well, that’s what Yahoo says (see the link above): BARCLAYS BANK PLC holds $16,660,664,550 worth of the Exxon stock.

This idea that many of the right love Bush just because the left hates him implies that those right-wingers are traitors against the USA. They are deliberately supporting somebody trashing the USA, because it makes some (the more patriotic) people of USA mad.

Yes, I know that’s what Yahho says. But here, from Barclay’s own site, is the reason why:

http://www.newsroom.barclays.co.uk/clients/

Barclays Capital is the investment banking division of Barclays Bank PLC which has an AA long-term credit rating and a balance sheet of over £924 billion. With a distinctive business model, Barclays Capital provides large corporate, government and institutional clients with solutions to their financing and risk management needs.

And

Barclays Global Investors is one of the world’s largest asset managers and a leading global provider of investment management products and services. It has over 2,700 institutional clients and over £780 billion of assets under management.

It transformed the investment industry by creating the first index strategy in 1971 and the first quantitative active strategy in 1978.

They’re managing money for other people. It doesn’t all belong to the bank.

Interesting that the discussion has devolved into the irrelevant tangent over who owns Exxon stock, leaving unanswered the obvious observation that 1) Kieran Healy is incorrect in claiming that Bush’s energy bill consisted of “gigantic handouts to energy . . . companies disguised as environmental . . . policy,”, and likewise, 2) Abb1 is even more incorrect in claiming that Bush’s energy bill was exclusively to the benefit of Exxon-Mobil, causing “everyone else” to “lose[].”

These statements are, at best, wild exaggerations. More importantly, if you look at what Bush’s energy bill ACTUALLY did, without knowing that Bush had signed the bill, you’d probably think it was the work of a liberal. THAT’s the point: If not for misinformed and irrational Bush hatred, liberals would be praising Bush for his willingness to agree with their policies in various areas.

Yeah, the Bush energy bill might do this and it might do that. But what it actually does do is point the U.S. down a coal-nuclear path with penny-on-the-acre leases for big companies and rate hikes for consumers.

Well, we have seen how things turn out when Bush and his gang run them. An energy bill giving a small tax break for a few hybrid vehicles, coupled with another bill giving a huge tax break for any gas guzzling highway hog, is business at the same old stand- one step forward, and a long march back.

At least my father can rest in peace, for if the past 50 years ahve taught us anything, it is the inevitable degeneracy of the intellect of those who inherit money. He called it inbreeeding, but the size of the genetic pool is now so large that, with the exception of the Hiltons, it must be a learned response.

The British Empire grew rich with the mechanism of the funded debt, and survived hard times by pullling in the belt and making the needed sacrifices. A story that seems never to have been told in the ivy-covered private schools of America.

If not for misinformed and irrational Bush hatred, liberals would be praising Bush for his willingness to agree with their policies in various areas.
Sometimes a good laugh is so nice!

Why wouldn’t Francophiles love Bush?
Misinformed and irrational Bush hatred. Seriously though, that Bush could make Chirac look good is the closest equivalent of a political koan I can think of.

Z — a good laugh is certainly easier than refuting anything that I’ve said (my posts being the only place on this entire webpage where you can find any factual information whatsoever regarding Bush’s actual energy bill).

I didn’t even mention any energy bill. Energy bill (and any other bill) can’t be atributed to the Bush administration alone, bills are passed by the congress.

All I said was that large shareholders of the Exxon-Mobil is a republican interest group – in contrast to enviromentalists being democratic interest group. Not only this is NOT incorrect – is it even controversial?

Also, Z, recall that Healy (inaccurately) summed up the Bush energy plan as if it had no environmental benefits at all, and as if it consisted solely of handouts to large companies. But why is this relevant? Because it’s supposed to prove that Bush hasn’t really done anything to further “liberal” goals. The implication here is that true “liberal” politicians wouldn’t do anything to further the interests of corporate contributors.

In that regard, you should consider the article that I quoted above. So that you won’t have to take the trouble to scroll upward, I’ll quote the relevant bit again:

Aside from a few token nods to the environmental lobby, the Democrats’ Senate bill accepts the underlying agenda of Bush plan. The Democrats bill offers a $1.8 billion hand-out to big coal companies, $5.2 billion in hand-outs and tax breaks to the oil industry, and $1 billion in tax breaks for nuclear power expansion. The bill also earmarks $20 billion towards completing a pipeline to carry natural gas from Alaska to the lower 48 states.

Does this mean that no Democrats are true “liberals”? No. (Ever heard of the “no true Scotsman” argument?) It means that liberals ALSO give their contributors some handouts along with furthering various environmental goals at the same time.

So, isn’t Bush doing exactly the same thing? He signed a bill that includes some corporate handouts (just as liberals do), and that does a lot of beneficial things for the environment as well (look at the Wikipedia list again; at least 90% of the items are obviously designed to benefit the environment in some fashion).

Now maybe Bush’s energy package doesn’t go quite as far as you would like. That’s a fair criticism, if you can back it up. But it’s just propaganda to claim that his bill consists of nothing but corporate handouts disguised as environmental policy.

OK, “liberal” — go to it. On one hand, you’ve got “$2.8 billion for fossil fuel production.” Does anyone know what that really is, by the way? Who’s getting the subsidy, and for what exactly?

Then on the other hand, you have this:

$4.3 Billion for nuclear power

$2.7 billion to extend the renewable electricity production credit

$?.? Billion for the Freedom Car initiative (1.7 billion 2003 CATO estimate)

$1.6 billion in tax incentives for investments in clean coal facilities

$1.3 billion for conservation and energy efficiency

$1.3 billion for alternative motor vehicles and fuels (ethanol, methane, liquified natural gas, propane)

$?.? Billion for hydrogen research

Plus:

Provides a tax credit of up to $3,400 for owners of hybrid vehicles;

Authorizes loan guarantees for “innovative technologies” that avoid greenhouse gases, which might include advanced nuclear reactor designs (such as PBMR) as well as clean coal and renewable energy;

Increases the amount of biofuel (usually ethanol) that must be mixed with gasoline sold in the United States to triple the current requirement (7.5 billion gallons by 2012);

Seeks to increase coal as an energy source while also reducing air pollution, through authorizing $200 million annually for clean coal initiatives, repealing the current 160-acre cap on coal leases, allowing the advanced payment of royalties from coal mines and requiring an assessment of coal resources on federal lands that are not national parks;

Authorizes subsidies for wind energy, and other alternative energy producers;

Adds ocean energy sources including wave power and tidal power for the first time as separately identified renewable technologies;

Authorizes $50 million annually over the life of the bill for a biomass grant program;

Contains several provisions aimed at making geothermal energy more competitive with fossil fuels in generating electricity;

Requires that no drilling for gas or oil may be done in or underneath the Great Lakes;

Requires that Federal Fleet vehicles capable of operating on alternative fuels be operated on these fuels exclusively (Section 701.)

Sets federal reliability standards regulating the electrical grid (done in response to the Blackout of 2003);

Requires the Department of Energy to study and report on existing natural energy resources including wind, solar, waves and tides;

Provides tax breaks for those making energy conservation improvements to their homes; For the umpteenth time, all of the above shows that Bush accepts the basic liberal premise that the government ought to do three dozen different things to improve the environment.

Now maybe he doesn’t do ENOUGH; or maybe he doesn’t do it PRECISELY on your terms; or maybe he mixes in a few corporate subsidies (just as all liberal politicians do).

None of that detracts from the overall point of David Boaz and David Bernstein: If this bill had been signed by a liberal politician, all of y’all would be cheering it on, praising the President who signed it, and attacking the nitpickers who criticized one or two elements of the deal.

You’re just proving the Davids’ point, in other words. When a liberal politician comes up with a plan (on energy, immigration, the environment, education, whatever), liberals will gently point out that they have one or two reservations about the plan, but will otherwise support it. When Bush signs a bill that has dozens of items, and that is maybe 80% of what a liberal President would have proposed, all of sudden you whip around and pull out the one element of the bill that you don’t like, and then pretend that the bill consisted of nothing else.

Well, what about some of those “criticisms” in the wiki article:

* The Washington Post contended that the spending bill is really a broad collection of subsidies for United States energy companies; in particular, the nuclear and oil industries [3].

* Texas companies in particular benefit from the bill. This criticism is heightened by the fact that the President, the United States House Majority Leader and the House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman are all from Texas.

* A Philadelphia Inquirer editorial on July 28th, 2005, suggested Congress had a “let’s pass it and claim we did something” attitude.

* Even supporters of the bill concede that the bill will do little to lower oil prices immediately, and that any changes the bill has enacted will not happen overnight.

* John McCain denounced the 2003 bill (which was not passed) as the “No Lobbyist Left Behind” Act[4].

* Speaking for the National Republicans for Environmental Protection Association, President Martha Marks said that the organization was disappointed in the bill: it did not give enough of a short to conservation, and continued to subsidize the well-established oil and gas industries that don’t require subsidizing. [5]

* The bill has had the unintended effect of causing shortages of E85, an ethanol and gasoline blend of fuel, in many parts of the country. Section 701 of the bill requires US Federal fleet flex-fuel vehicles (FFVs) to operate on alternative fuels 100% of the time. Formerly, such FFVs were required to be operated by the end of 2005 on alternative fuels only 51% (i.e., the majority of the time) by Executive Order 13149. (See Executive Order 13149 [6], dated April 21, 2000.) This effectively means that the US Government’s use of E85 has been doubled, with the unintended results of limiting public availability of E85 fuel and increasing its price. Although the price of corn has not changed, from which ethanol fuel is derived, the shortage has removed the price incentive to switch to alternative fuel.

functional wrote, Walt—and maybe it’s that you have no idea what Bush’s policies actually are?

Seriously, it’s easy to trade cheap insults. Do you have anything else to add to the discussion?

Pot-kettle-black.

Most of the “facts” you’ve cited come from that Wikipedia entry.

Note first that the entry appears to be a work in progress, and an incomplete one: “A fellow editor requested that someone provide references or sources for the information in this section.” The numbers for the tax breaks are confusing; for two of them, numbers are given as “?.?”. More importantly, it doesn’t state the duration of the tax breaks.

The quality of research in the article is questionable, given that the number for the tax breaks for the nuclear industry is pulled from a nuclear industry website.

We’ve already been through this: Any informed liberal who wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should want to encourage the use of nuclear power. That’s the number one thing that our country could do that would emulate those European countries that have been successful at reducing such emissions.

We’ve already been through this: Any informed liberal who wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should want to encourage the use of nuclear power.

I love that troll.

True, disposing of nuclear waste is an interesting engineering problem, but on the whole, it’s certainly safer than coal mining.

It tastes great when mixed with Kool-Aid, or so I hear.

First this
The Bush Administration has managed to change the perception of France from “declining ex-colonial power” to “leading enemy of the Anglo-Saxon world”

then this

It’s the way that more advanced countries (such as France) get most of their electrical power
Seriously, my country is on fire these days. Functional, as much as I enjoy discussing with you, there is something that prevents it: you have assumptions about “liberals” and what they should do that I do not share. I suggest that it might be you are mistaken about what they believe or should believe.

That’s what makes a good liberal, right?

I don’t know what makes a good liberal, but here are a few energy policies I would personnally think sound: 1) An immediate end of exploitation of nuclear energy. 2) The establishment of strong system of internalization of externalities, perhaps via a taxes on CO2 emmission. 3) Strong incentives to reduce energy consumption, probably via the most effective tool that I can think of: a sharp increase of prices. 4) Strong incentives to adopt renewable energies.

Comparing this with the actual act, you now understand (I hope) why I don’t like it. And you can thus direct your justified exasperation to the proper target.

>If you want the end of nuclear energy, then you necessarily want drastically higher carbon emissions. There’s no way around this. Just so you know.

Nonsense. Nuclear is more expensive than efficiency, more expensive than wind. If you really were serious about nuclear as a way to decrease carbon emission, then you would have to favor breeder, not light water reactors; while uranium is a common element on earth, uranium that can be extracted and processed for less energy than is produced is rare; uranium that can be so processed economincally rarer still. If we were to drastically increase the percent of power provided by uranium, we would use up the cheap uranium quite quickly and nuclear power would be even more expensive than it is – comparable to solar thermal with thermal storage. Similarly breeder reactors in practice have proven comparable in price to run to solar thermal with storage (which is why that breeder reactors for power production rather than for military purposes either end up being shut down or converted to light water reactors).

Or do you maintain that programs signed into law by liberal Presidents are, by some miracle, able to avoid spending money in any way that rewards various liberal interest groups?

Straw man. TWENTY FUCKING YEARS AGO, Kevin Phillips pointed out in “Wealth and Democracy”(and backed up his thesis with historical data) that consistently, repeatedly, during the periods that “conservative” administrations (and by this I mean, backed by the richest and most powerful people, and, not coincidentally happening to be the Republicans and their ideological ancestors) correlated quite strongly with (1) massive increases in the public debt and (2) relatively poor growth in the GDP.

Democratic or “progressive” administrations, OTOH, correlated consistently with (1)relatively small increases in the public debt, if not reductions of it (see Clinton, Bill) and (2) relatively strong increases in the GDP. Furthermore, over the last 36 yrs (a period where the Federal government was controlled more often than not by Republicans), inequity in income has grown steadily (Phillips wrote this in the mid-80s, but it was true up to that time, and it’s still true).

The trope that “Conservatives run the economy better than Democrats” is only true if you believe that “The Economy” consists only of the top 1% in income. “functional” might agree with that assessment, but why in the hell should his opinion matter to me, for example??