We previously discussed the disconnect between Democratic leaders and liberal voters in the increasing complaints of leaders like Vice President Biden over Democratic “lethargy.” Democrats in Washington once again seemed shocked that voters are not eager to fight for their retention. Now, Biden has added the helpful advice to Democratic voters to “stop whining” about things that they did not get in Washington and to “buck up.”
The “buck up” comment was meant as an improvement over the “whining” comment. It turned out that “whining” was not greeted by voters as an improvement over “lethargy.”
Here is the latest statement:
“And so those who don’t get — didn’t get everything they wanted, it’s time to just buck up here, understand that we can make things better, continue to move forward and — but not yield the playing field to those folks who are against everything that we stand for in terms of the initiatives we put forward.”
By “everything [we] wanted,” I assume Biden is including the fulfillment of our treaty obligations to investigate and prosecute war crimes such as torture — which the Administration blocked.
I assume it includes removing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which the Administration is trying to preserve by asking a court not to impose a national injunction freezing the policy.
I assume it includes allowing dozens of privacy lawsuits to go forward against companies, which the Administration blocked despite evidence of unlawful surveillance by the Bush Administration.
I assume it includes allowing torture victims to seek review in federal court, which the Administration has successfully blocked.
I assume it includes protecting pristine areas along the East Coast from drilling, which the Administration has fought to open up for development even after the BP accident.
I assume it includes reducing the faith-based programs of the Bush Administration which raised concerns over the separation of church and state, which Obama expanded.
Well, it includes a lot of things that democratic and independent voters wanted. What they got was a Democratic majority saw power as the end to itself rather than the means to fight for principle. For civil libertarians, “those folks who are against everything that we stand” include the Obama Administration which has been a perfect nightmare in the adoption and expansion of Bush policies.
Yet, Biden wants civil libertarians, environmentalists, and liberals to stop whining and buck up. The Administration made a cynical calculation that liberals and civil libertarians and environmentalists have no where to go and that they have to support the Democrats regardless of these obnoxious policies. Now, they are simply shocked that voters are not enthusiastic about their continuing in power.
The Democratic leadership has conveyed that the only principle that they are committed to is their retention of power. All other principles — torture, the environment, privacy, free speech — are immaterial to that one overriding goal. They just do not understand why everyone does not see it that way.
Well, I am one of those whining, lethargic voters and I cannot get myself to buck up to support leaders who turned their back on such core values. Perhaps if enough Democrats are replaced, the party may rediscover the benefit of being principled and standing for something other than their own insular interests. They need to actually represent something other than “we are not as bad as those guys.” The problem for voters is that, by retaining these leaders, we reaffirm that they cynical calculation by the White House was correct. There is no reason why Democrats should fulfill their commitments in these areas if voters do not hold them accountable. I know some on this blog may disagree, but I personally think I will stick with the whining for now.
Source: Real Clear Politics
Byron,
I am very thankful that there are publicly funded colleges and universities. I did not come from a family of means. Had it not been for a state college in a nearby community, I would not have been able to afford a college education. Public colleges and universities and the GI Bill have helped millions of Americans like me to better ourselves…to live the “American dream.” I became a public school teacher and tried to pay back my debt to a society that helped provide me with a quality college education. Do you think publicly funded higher education should be done away with?
Tony C:
“@Slarti: I see no reason to pretend respect for somebody just because they sincerely believe in what they say, if what they say is damaging, dangerous, simplistic and wrong. Pretending respect when I feel repelled is a lie, I don’t much care if Byron’s feelings are hurt. They deserve to be hurt because he is promoting his own selfish religion, as you say.”
Don’t worry about my feelings, I only care what people I admire and respect have to say.
Sometimes simple works out pretty well, you aren’t smart enough to control an economy and neither is government.
Worked out real well for the communists in Russia and the Nazis in Germany. Given those outcomes, I think I’ll take simple.
lottakatz:
“Play out that Libertarian ideal to include health care and all government regulation of industry and you will quickly find yourself in a Dystopian future resembling nothing so much as Somalia for all but the very wealthiest among us.”
So the 19th century and first part of the 20th century in this country were “dystopian”? I guess my history is off.
Fictional “dystopian” societies, at least the ones I have read, are progressive in nature – We, Anthem, 1984.
Somalia is a fundamentalist religious lawless state, so I don’t know how one could even compare.
I don’t see what your complaint with Byron is,Tony C. You want the democrats to lose so the tea party can take over and privatize. That is how this discussion began.
Elaine:
“I DO object to my taxes paying to prop up companies that caused the near collapse of the US economy and to my taxes contributing to the obscene bonuses of multi-millionaire financial wizards who work for them.”
And I object as well, it is totally against my core beliefs and the reason I am no longer a republican.
Although I don’t disagree with large bonuses if people earn them and they are not tax payer subsidized.
Tony C.,
Did you read this article?
From Rolling Stone
Wall Street’s Big Win
Finance reform won’t stop the high-risk gambling that wrecked the economy – and Republicans aren’t the only ones to blame
by Matt Taibbi
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/188551
Slarti:
“The primary reason for a safety net and public services is not to protect people from their own stupidity (although that is a side effect), but to strengthen society as a whole. Why is a healthier society a bad thing?”
A healthier society is a good thing but I posit that our society is much less healthy than it was 100 years ago and due directly to the influence of European style welfare states whose principles were brought to this country in the late 19th century. From my readings mostly by German immigrants.
The thing is why should I be forced to help people I don’t know and don’t care about? If you want to help the poor and downtrodden then be my guest but don’t force those of us who would choose to help in different ways, say pay higher salaries to our employees or give money to a private school whose philosophy we agreed with. Why is it with the left that they want their pet projects paid for but conservatives are just evil selfish beasts bent on the destruction of society?
Whose idea of society is being promulgated? Certainly not mine and I resent having to pay for things I do not philosophically agree with. What makes your idea of society the one that needs to be supported? Why is it always progressive thinking that must be supported? Your idea of society is forced on me by big government. I would not force you to give to a cause you find antithetical to your core principles. And that is what a free society is all about.
But your view will prevail as it has for at least the last 80 years and I will continue to be forced to pay for public school teachers who proselytize the young and I will be forced to subsidize incompetence at my state’s department of transportation and I will be forced to pay 2-3 times what a property is worth because of “open space” laws.
Now I ask you how does paying 2-3 times what a property is worth help the poor or having 15% of a dishwashers salary taken for social security help him or rent control or any number of do good feel good projects that typically end up screwing the poor. How has any of that helped the poor? It hasn’t, we still have a bunch of poor people and more on the way thanks to Bush and Obama.
Fear is a powerful emotion and socialism is a warm blanket. But fear is not a good place from which to take decisions.
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/148306/alan_grayson%3A_the_democrat_who_punches_back%2C_enraging_gop_hacks_and_tea_party_billionaires/ Tony C complains the democrats are weak and when one like Grayson punches back, he opposes him. Most of the left is firmly backing Grayson. Grayson is the tea party’s favorite target. Tony C’s agenda seems solely to punish democrats including Feingold. He opposes Byron’s libertarian views but says he will vote for libertarians to punish democrats.
@Elaine: I am with you on not bailing out companies. I think the solution there would have been to force the companies to claim bankruptcy, throw them into receivership, fire 100% of the management that realized income over $250K, make all their options and stock worthless, and THEN have the government pay the lunch-box workers (figuratively speaking) to unravel their mess as best we could.
I have been a stock investor for decades. The first rule to learn is you can lose everything, there are no safe stocks, ever. The same thing goes for loans or bonds. They pay more than a savings account because they carry a risk of total loss and default. The bond holders and stockholders should have lost everything, the executives should have lost their jobs and been sued by the government for misappropriation of funds to recover the fortunes paid to them, and tried for fraud and deceptive practice.
The same goes for GM and Chrysler. In both cases, the ends do not justify the means, meaning I don’t care if we saved the auto industry and I don’t care if we saved the banking industry. I had about half my net worth in the stock market, and I would rather have lost every penny of it than see this happen.
The financial bailout helped solidify my opinion that both parties are just as corrupt as possible, and the government now exists to serve corporate masters. While we fight for years, unsuccessfully, to get an extra billion into public schools, the banks extract $750 billion literally overnight, by threatening financial Armageddon.
We have laws to deal with this; the Congress could just as easily have passed a law requiring all credit default swap claims be registered with a financial court and only paid in the amounts ordered by that court. They could have included a provision that all credit default swaps of any kind be registered with the financial court within 30 days or be deemed invalid contracts. Or any number of such measures, but instead they bailed out the rich so their buddies wouldn’t go bankrupt.
That sickens me. On top of it, the “bank reform” bill is nothing of the kind, it does not prevent the credit default swaps or demand collateral for these wild insurance risks, does not limit the 40:1 leverage that helped cause the catastrophe, and does not eliminate the shadow market of private trades that moves far more money and completely overshadows the real market.
It is just one more instance of polishing an apple that is rotten to the core. Obama is out there now saying, “Look, we stopped those credit card companies from defrauding you!” (but not really) while the bankers are still playing with weapons of mass financial destruction on Wall Street, now armed with Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards.
Byron,
Schools? Privatize them
Roads? make most of them tolls
Fire protection? pay for it out of your pocket to a private company.
Police protection? don’t private communities have a private security force?
Social Security? privatize it and let people actually create wealth and have the ability to pass it to their heirs.
Lottakatz is right. The US is already on the road to becoming a third world country. Maybe you’d like to push it along faster? I think it benefits citizens of all income levels to have an educated population. I agree with most of what Tony said to you in his comment at 12:09 am today. I, too, think Medicare is a good program.
If we didn’t have Social Security, many of our elders would be living in dire poverty. Many of those elders–like my mother–probably worked all their lives at low-paying jobs. I don’t trust the Wall Streeters and their ilk. They’re out to create wealth for THEMSELVES! I DO NOT object to my taxes paying for public schools, police and fire protection, roads, libraries, trash collection, snow removal, and a number of social programs that benefit many of our citizens. I DO object to my taxes paying to prop up companies that caused the near collapse of the US economy and to my taxes contributing to the obscene bonuses of multi-millionaire financial wizards who work for them.
“Schools? Privatize them
Roads? make most of them tolls
Fire protection? pay for it out of your pocket to a private company.
Police protection? don’t private communities have a private security force?
Social Security? privatize it and let people actually create wealth and have the ability to pass it to their heirs.”
Play out that Libertarian ideal to include health care and all government regulation of industry and you will quickly find yourself in a Dystopian future resembling nothing so much as Somalia for all but the very wealthiest among us.
@Slarti: I see no reason to pretend respect for somebody just because they sincerely believe in what they say, if what they say is damaging, dangerous, simplistic and wrong. Pretending respect when I feel repelled is a lie, I don’t much care if Byron’s feelings are hurt. They deserve to be hurt because he is promoting his own selfish religion, as you say.
As for my black and white thinking; probably guilty as charged, but I will say in my defense that I do not arrive at it lightly. As I mentioned earlier, I have time to read, and understand, and think enough to arrive at what I believe are strongly justified conclusions. I have been thinking about whether I should vote in 2010 ever since the public option failed. I had no black and white reasons, I had a log of ideas and links. And finally I concluded I would be voting for thieves, and I have given my reasons for that conclusion. It may come across as black and white, but that is because I have no uncertainties left, or I wouldn’t have come to a “conclusion” in the end-of-deliberations sense of that word.
I analyzed the faulty logic of libertarians decades ago, and have never seen a reason to change that analysis. I am not opposed to changing my mind, I have (previously) abandoned six weeks of research within ten minutes of realizing why it wasn’t going to ever work. The ten minutes was to verify I actually had a logical flaw in my approach and I did, and there was no way around it, so … that idea is done for, I was stupid, let’s clean up this mess and move on to something else.
But if I see no shades of gray, I see no point in presenting it otherwise.
@Byron: If all roads were private property and toll roads, they would be natural monopolies on your path to work, and it would cost you 20% of your paycheck in tolls, not to mention an extra half hour in stopping. It would also cost you a lot more for food and most other products, because the shipping companies would be forced to pay those tolls too. The government builds roads for zero profit and maintains them for zero profit and lets everybody use them for free because that is in the public good. It reduces your costs of transportation, and the businesses costs of transportation.
If the government did not build roads with your gasoline taxes and other taxes, it would cost you about ten times as much as you save to USE the roads, because every road owner along the way would be gouging you for the right to use his road; and no road owner would have any incentive whatsoever to charge you less.
This is what libertarians do not understand, that the government can run something as a zero-profit operation with no exorbitant pay and no shareholders demanding any profit, and deliver it cheaper and with better quality than a FOR profit organization could ever do.
This is the case with Medicare: Its overhead is less than 5% compared with for-profit insurance companies of 30%. Nobody in Medicare earns over $200K, the C-suites of for profit health insurance earn tens of millions, and the shareholders earn hundreds of millions more. Studies by universities have shown that Medicare is MORE efficient than for profit healthcare, not less, and studies by universities also show that those insured by Medicare have a far higher satisfaction rate with Medicare *despite using it much more often* than do users of for-profit health care companies.
Libertarians think that paycheck belongs to them, but what they fail to realize is that if they had their way and schools were privatized, roads were privatized, and all them gummint programs they rail against were privatized, it would cost them far more than any taxes they didn’t pay. It is simple economics: we buy an Interstate Highway system everybody gets to use for free, or …. Nothing. You don’t get toll roads to replace it. You know why? Because there were decades before WW II when people talked about how great it would be, and no hundred-billionaires stepped up and actually built even a modest system, like a ten thousand miles of it, and maintained it and charged people to drive on it. Eisenhower built it after WW II.
The same thing was true of state roads, the states built them because no private individuals would do that.
The same thing with public schools and child education, before there were public schools there were private schools and the vast majority of people got a third grade education and went to work, you had a serf class. It isn’t that there wasn’t plenty of rich entrepreneurs, it is that there is no MONEY in basic education but there is a lot of BENEFIT both to individuals and to society in education. The reason there is no money in basic education is that people do not think long term, and about 300 years of evidence throughout the world suggests they never will. So educating your child to be able to do basic arithmetic SOUNDS good, but actually we need him pitching hay that day and feeding chickens, so maybe next week.
The same thing is true of social security. It sounds wonderful; let people invest their OWN money and build their OWN wealth!! It doesn’t take a genius to see that DOESN”T WORK. It is not HUMAN NATURE to think that far ahead, no matter how much you want it to be, it is not a reality-based plan. What happens instead is everybody lives paycheck to paycheck and saves FAR less than they would actually need to retire on, and then they get sick, and all their savings disappears in a year, and then they are destitute and the young libertarians point at them and say “Don’t be like that.”
But of course they are exactly the same and hit 63 and cancer or kidney failure or tuberculosis like everybody else, and spend their savings to stay alive, and sell their house to stay alive, and then die anyway and leave their spouse with nothing but a stack of unpaid medical bills.
Why do you think Social Security got started in the first place? To address these exact issues, the LAST time the banks screwed over everybody in the country with their deceptions and lies, and left those people “investing their own money” with no frikkin’ money.
Even if Libertarians are just saying they should have the choice of how to spend their money, they should not, because they end up free riders. They SAY they want to manage their own retirement, but what they really want is the extra money to spend, or bet wildly in the market, or whatever. Then they hit retirement with no money, and they are homeless and starving and sick and in the ER all the time, and what do Libertarians propose we do about these destitute individuals? Let them starve, because they deserve it? THAT is not human nature either; and they end up GETTING the health care they didn’t pay for, and food they can’t pay for, and shelter and heat they can’t pay for, and it all comes out of the public pocket. Either that or they turn to crime, because THAT is human nature too when people get hungry and desperate enough, and that increases theft and violence and the public still pays for that in both stolen goods and stolen years of productive life.
One way or another you are going to pay for your share of society, you will not get to freeload, and forced taxes by the government is actually the cheapest of the ways to go. That is why the system evolved into what it is, because you are right about one thing: We tried the alternatives and voters back then decided they SUCK, and DON’T WORK, and when the pain caused by those sucky systems became great enough they demanded something different and got it.
Other than a few morons like Sharron Angle parroting a simplistic logic that fails to address the CONSEQUENCES of this ideology, nobody is really agitating against social security, or Medicare, or health inspections of restaurants, or making medicine manufacturers prove their medicine isn’t likely to kill anybody, or the idea of public schooling, or any of the myriad other services the government provides you with free of charge.
People argue with the *implementation* of these ideas, and how thorough they are or what quality of service is provided. But people picket to make the public schools BETTER, not to shut them down so they can save a few bucks on their property taxes.
Libertarianism as you define it is just out of touch with reality, it is a fantasy where you ignore human nature and ignore completely what the ALTERNATIVE to the public service would cost if it were done at a profit, not to mention the corruption that would be present. If the police became a for-profit enterprise, justice would go to the highest bidder, and the poor would get none. Unless you can afford to BE the highest bidder, you get no justice.
There is no freedom if money buys everything. There is a royal class and the serfs.
All.
Some words have owners and can only benefit these people no matter who uses them (eg terror, terrorism). Some words are disputed territory and their meanings are being fought over. Such is the word “libertarian”.
Different people have compltely different meanings in mind when they use the word “libertarian” please be aware of this. Some use the word for those who support liberties, some to describe a certain kind of right wing fanatic.
Mike S.
I think you are being unfair to Glen Greenwald, I read him daily and have never detected any “Hipper that thou” attitude. He and Radley Balko are my two favorite bloggers, I think you should read him more often.
Grayson is a loud-mouthed jerk. His deceptive ad about “Taliban Dan” Webster was a disgrace that would have made Breitbart proud.
The Democratic Party doesn’t need any Tea-Party-Left candidates.
Byron,
You’re big on ‘unintended consequences’ so I’m assuming that you are advocating:
1) Elimination of the middle class (one of the key building blocks of the middle class is the public school system and the concentration of wealth is also a demonstrated effect of free market capitalism).
2) Segregation of the poor to ghettos (since they can’t afford to use your toll roads)
3) Amnesty for crimes committed against the poor (since they wont be able to pay for police protection).
4) Letting slums burn (ditto fire protection).
5) A return to the days when large percentages of the elderly died in poverty.
You’re just as bad as Tony C at seeing things in black and white – there is a spectrum of choices of economic systems, not just capitalism and socialism. What makes free market capitalism sacred? Why should your religion of unregulated free market capitalism be imposed on the rest of us?
As you well know, the alloy of carbon and iron is much stronger and more flexible that either on it’s own – why don’t you think that the same principles apply to economic systems? Don’t you want the steel of a mixed system over an iron system (capitalism) or a carbon system (socialism)?
The primary reason for a safety net and public services is not to protect people from their own stupidity (although that is a side effect), but to strengthen society as a whole. Why is a healthier society a bad thing?
Tony C,
You seem to be able to identify black/white thinking in anyone but yourself. Every indication that I’ve seen tells me that Byron is a good man who truly and honestly believes what he is saying (wrong as it is). As Blouise pointed out, you need not show his ideas any mercy, but attacking him personally just lowers your credibility (certainly to me and I believe to others as well). I’ll respond to your post later but for now could you please try to cut down on the hypocrisy and incivility?
Tony C:
so tell me how we got along for over 100 years without an income tax or a Federal Reserve or any number of government “services” that most of us don’t need or regularly use?
Schools? Privatize them
Roads? make most of them tolls
Fire protection? pay for it out of your pocket to a private company.
Police protection? don’t private communities have a private security force?
Social Security? privatize it and let people actually create wealth and have the ability to pass it to their heirs.
I could go on and on.
Our society has been set up to protect irresponsible and stupid people from the reality of their actions. The rest of us are able to take care of ourselves and don’t need government for any function except as referee when someone has been injured in some manner.
Hopefully we can get back to our roots of self reliance and respect for other people. As in respecting their person as an individual and not part of some tribe or collective.
So yes Tony there are 2 choices you can let government run rampant over our rights or you can stop feeding at the trough and start standing on your own 2 feet as a responsible member of a society where government doesn’t wipe your ass or bandage your boo boo.
Seems to me that is the adult way to go about life.
By the way our country was created and developed by individuals in service to themselves for their own betterment. And guess what during the 19th century when we had as close to a free market as we could get, the rate of charitable giving was the eighth largest “industry” of the day.
If the police force, fire department and school system were privatized those people who were actually good at what they did would probably make more money than they do now and the risk policemen and firefighters take might be appropriately compensated. Risk is usually appropriately compensated in a free market [maybe the reason a hedge-fund manager makes more than a dishwasher].
That’s part of most people’s dislike for a free market, it actually expects them to be worth something and provide a service or product that is worth purchasing.
Tony C.,
I don’t often agree with Byron’s political philosophy but he is not self-centered or a selfish fool. Denigrate his argument, not him.
Tony C Byron thinks like a libertarian. You said you could support the libertarians over the democrats so what’s the problem?