Sunday, October 19, 2008
Paul Krugman: The Real Plumbers of Ohio
Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the social changes taking place.
It was a winning formula. And the great thing was that the new packaging didn’t require any change in the product’s actual contents — in fact, the G.O.P. was able to keep winning elections even as its actual policies became more pro-plutocrat, and less favorable to working Americans, than ever.
John McCain’s strategy, in this final stretch, is based on the belief that the old formula still has life in it.
Thus we have Sarah Palin expressing her joy at visiting the “pro-America” parts of the country — yep, we’re all traitors here in central New Jersey. Meanwhile we’ve got Mr. McCain making Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, a k a Joe the Plumber — who had confronted Barack Obama on the campaign trail, alleging that the Democratic candidate would raise his taxes — the centerpiece of his attack on Mr. Obama’s economic proposals.
And when it turned out that the right’s new icon had a few issues, like not being licensed and comparing Mr. Obama to Sammy Davis Jr., conservatives played victim: see how much those snooty elitists hate the common man?
But what’s really happening to the plumbers of Ohio, and to working Americans in general?
First of all, they aren’t making a lot of money. You may recall that in one of the early Democratic debates Charles Gibson of ABC suggested that $200,000 a year was a middle-class income. Tell that to Ohio plumbers: according to the May 2007 occupational earnings report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual income of “plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters” in Ohio was $47,930.
Second, their real incomes have stagnated or fallen, even in supposedly good years. The Bush administration assured us that the economy was booming in 2007 — but the average Ohio plumber’s income in that 2007 report was only 15.5 percent higher than in the 2000 report, not enough to keep up with the 17.7 percent rise in consumer prices in the Midwest. As Ohio plumbers went, so went the nation: median household income, adjusted for inflation, was lower in 2007 than it had been in 2000.
Third, Ohio plumbers have been having growing trouble getting health insurance, especially if, like many craftsmen, they work for small firms. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2007 only 45 percent of companies with fewer than 10 employees offered health benefits, down from 57 percent in 2000.
And bear in mind that all these data pertain to 2007 — which was as good as it got in recent years. Now that the “Bush boom,” such as it was, is over, we can see that it achieved a dismal distinction: for the first time on record, an economic expansion failed to raise most Americans’ incomes above their previous peak.
Since then, of course, things have gone rapidly downhill, as millions of working Americans have lost their jobs and their homes. And all indicators suggest that things will get much worse in the months and years ahead.
So what does all this say about the candidates? Who’s really standing up for Ohio’s plumbers?
Mr. McCain claims that Mr. Obama’s policies would lead to economic disaster. But President Bush’s policies have already led to disaster — and whatever he may say, Mr. McCain proposes continuing Mr. Bush’s policies in all essential respects, and he shares Mr. Bush’s anti-government, anti-regulation philosophy.
What about the claim, based on Joe the Plumber’s complaint, that ordinary working Americans would face higher taxes under Mr. Obama? Well, Mr. Obama proposes raising rates on only the top two income tax brackets — and the second-highest bracket for a head of household starts at an income, after deductions, of $182,400 a year.
Maybe there are plumbers out there who earn that much, or who would end up suffering from Mr. Obama’s proposed modest increases in taxes on dividends and capital gains — America is a big country, and there’s probably a high-income plumber with a huge stock market portfolio out there somewhere. But the typical plumber would pay lower, not higher, taxes under an Obama administration, and would have a much better chance of getting health insurance.
I don’t want to suggest that everyone would be better off under the Obama tax plan. Joe the plumber would almost certainly be better off, but Richie the hedge fund manager would take a serious hit.
But that’s the point. Whatever today’s G.O.P. is, it isn’t the party of working Americans.
Iraq's majority Shiites: Get Out Entirely By 2011!
Iraq's majority Shiites draw a line in acquiescing to continued occupation by the US. They want a fixed timeline for an exit - what Palin wanted in 2006 - before agreeing to the new SOFA. They are now in direct opposition to John McCain. And they want more legal jurisdiction over US troops:
If the conditions are not met, "I cannot see that this agreement will see the light," said Sami al-Askeri, a Shiite parliamentarian and political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki...
Askeri said the possibility of an extension raised concerns among members of the Shiite bloc, who met on Saturday night. "Some people say, what's going on?" he said. "This article opens the door to the next government" of Iraq to lengthen the U.S. troops' stay, he said.
Iraqis are as impatient as many Americans. If this is not an empire, why would we want to stay past the deadline the occupied country wants?
“Kristol Was Out There Shaking The Pom-Poms.”
The East Coast right-wing elite is the real reason Sarah Palin has been plaguing so many Americans' sleep these past six weeks. First up, Bill Kristol, Mike Gerson and Fred Barnes, had lunch with her during one of those Weekly Standard cruise ships from hell. The combination of a very long "grace" recited by Palin before lunch and two very large assets dangling in front of their faces seem to have sent little starbursts up the pundits' legs. First touted by blogger Adam Brickley, a follower of "Messianic Judaism", Palin went on to wow the beltway big spending neocons. Bill Kristol, however, as we all now know, is the real architect of the Palin fiasco, just as he was instrumental in the Iraq fiasco:
“She could be both an effective Vice-Presidential candidate and an effective President,” he said. “She’s young, energetic.” On a subsequent “Fox News Sunday,” Kristol again pushed Palin when asked whom McCain should pick: “Sarah Palin, whom I’ve only met once but I was awfully impressed by—a genuine reformer, defeated the establishment up there. It would be pretty wild to pick a young female Alaska governor, and I think, you know, McCain might as well go for it.” On July 22nd, again on Fox, Kristol referred to Palin as “my heartthrob.”
He declared, “I don’t know if I can make it through the next three months without her on the ticket.”
The National Review crowd who subsequently came to pay their respects included Rich "Little Starbursts" Lowry, John "Nuke Iran Now!" Bolton, Victor Davis Hanson, Dick Morris and Jay Nordlinger, whose own little starbursts keep popping out of his zipper:
In an online column, he described Palin as “a former beauty-pageant contestant, and a real honey, too. Am I allowed to say that? Probably not, but too bad... Her political career will probably take her beyond Alaska. Dick Morris is only one who thinks so.”
Morris, it appears, was also ga-ga. The only athentic thing about Palin are the thousand-dollar outfits she wears to appeal to the white working class.
GOP Voter Registration Fraud Case Leads To Arrest
SACRAMENTO -- The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario late last night on suspicion of voter registration fraud.
State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California.
Jacoby's arrest by state investigators and the Ontario Police Department comes after dozens of voters said they were duped into registering as Republicans by his firm, Young Political Majors, or YPM. The voters said YPM tricked them by saying they were signing a petition to toughen penalties against child molesters. The firm was paid $7 to $12 for every Californian it registered as a member of the GOP.
Several agencies had launched investigations into Jacoby's activities, including the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, which issued the warrant for his arrest earlier this month on felony charges of voter registration fraud and perjury.
Efforts to reach Jacoby were unsuccessful.
STEELER FOOTBALL WEEK # 7
Final Score: Pittsburgh 38, Cincinnati 10
Cincinnati, OH (Sports Network) - Mewelde Moore gained 120 yards on 20 carries with two rushing touchdowns and caught another as the Pittsburgh Steelers ripped the winless Cincinnati Bengals 38-10.
Ben Roethlisberger completed 17-of-28 passes for 216 yards and two touchdowns for the Steelers (5-1), who won their third straight. Moore filled in aptly for Willie Parker, who missed his third straight game with a left knee injury.
Santonio Holmes gained 89 yards on five catches, Hines Ward had four catches for 60 yards and a score, and Nate Washington had a 50-yard touchdown grab for Pittsburgh, which outscored the Bengals 21-0 in the fourth quarter.
Ryan Fitzpatrick completed 21-of-35 passes for 164 yards and a touchdown for the Bengals, who are 0-7 for the first time since 2002. Fitzpatrick filled in for Carson Palmer, who missed his third start in four weeks because of an injured right elbow.
The Bengals are no strangers to woeful starts. Cincinnati has gone 0-8 to start a season four times since 1978, and will try to avoid the worst start in franchise history, an 0-10 beginning to the 1993 campaign.
Cedric Benson, inserted in the starting lineup over ineffective running back Chris Perry, gained 52 yards on 14 carries for Cincinnati. T.J. Houshmandzadeh gained 58 yards on eight catches, while Chad Johnson had eight grabs for 52 yards and a score.
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