Empathy for the Stranger

(Disclaimer: By its nature, in this post I make some generalizations.  By no means do I intend to say that all conservatives are this way.  However, I do believe there is a trend worth examining, and this is based on my experiences in person and online, what conservatives say and do in the media, and opinion polls.)

"Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'" - Matthew 25:34-36

Talk about timing.  I had already composed the following post when this showed up on my Facebook feed:

The numbers appear fairly accurate, if awfully simplistic (well, I don't know about the "crack heads").  So it's not the numbers I take issue with, but rather the attitude.  The idea of 42 million Americans being "unemployable" is crazy and insulting.  It would mean we have an unemployment rate of around 30%, depending on how you measure it.  Also, the average SNAP (food stamps) monthly benefit is about $140, hardly enough for an "unemployable" person to live on.  If you're talking about TANF (i.e. welfare), the actual number of recipients is around 4.5 million.  And then there's the implication that undocumented immigrants are just here to be leeches.  It's all offensive, and the exact message that I try to counter below.

Almost all of the conservatives I know are good people.  They work hard, have fun, take care of their families, and participate in their communities in various ways.  Many of them would go out of their way to help someone in need.  Under certain circumstances they'll aid strangers - by supporting our soldiers and veterans, giving to a charity they approve of, or opening their hears and wallets after a tragedy like 9/11 or Sandy Hook.  However, when it comes to contributing to a government program that will aid someone less fortunate whom they are not directly or indirectly acquainted with, they respond with disgust.  Why should they help a moocher or a freeloader?  Why does their problem obligate them to do something?  How do they know their contribution won't be wasted?  Overcoming these obstacles, getting people to look past their communities and see the worthiness of investing in a broader civil society is one of my main goals as a prairie progressive.

A short anecdote before I continue.  I know someone who lives in a small Kansas town.  This person's son had to have an operation.  I'm not aware of all the details, but I do know that the elementary school community came together to help pay the medical costs.  This same person has posted anti-Obamacare memes on Facebook.

What the community did for the boy was fantastic and commendable.  I'd expect no less from the good people of small-town Kansas.  But here's the rub - not everyone is fortunate enough to have such a strong support network available when times are tough.  Everyone deserves appropriate medical care, but not everyone can afford it or receive the charity of a caring community.  This is where a government that doesn't care who you are or what your situation is can step in to help.  It might be the only institution powerful and far-reaching enough to effectively render aid to those who need it most.  This is why I believe it makes sense for everyone to contribute to a universal health care system, like every other advanced country on Earth.  The Obamacare-basher wouldn't need to worry about community support under universal health care.

Conservatives take care of their own, but it seems that they often display a lack of concern or empathy for the "other," which is often based on preconceived notions or stereotypes.  You can trace this common thread across the spectrum of political issues.  Recipients of welfare and other government aid are lazy and don't want to work; the jobs are out there if they just try.  Of course, no one they know is part of the infamous 47% moocher class; they can vouch for all of them.  Undocumented immigrants don't work hard and are a drain on the system; why don't they come here legally if they want to be here so bad?  Gun violence is a problem for urban blacks and the sporadic nutcase, why should they care if some gangbangers wanna shoot each other up?  Gays and lesbians don't need special treatment or marriage equality because they're not really a separate class of people.  If Muslims face discrimination and increased scrutiny, well, their kind shouldn't have attacked us on 9/11.  And a woman facing the challenge of an unwanted pregnancy shouldn't have put herself in that position to begin with.

I'm certainly not going to tackle all these issues in this post.  But the common theme is that sometimes we have to concern ourselves with the needs of strangers for the good of everyone. That can be a tough pill to swallow at times, but in the long run everyone will be better off.  It's one of the foundations of the social contract people make when they abandon anarchy in favor of an organized government.  You may abandon a bit of personal freedom (and money), but in exchange you get an institution that takes care of things individuals cannot.  Originally this meant stuff like building roads and providing for a common defense.  In the twentieth century most advanced countries furthered the cause of government to look after those whom the system has left behind, generally through no fault of their own.  It is the fulfillment of "promoting the general Welfare" mentioned in the US constitution.  It fuels economic growth, lowers crime, and promotes a more just and fair society.  And, God forbid, some day it could be you that's become dependent on the kindness of strangers.

Libertarian-types might claim such charity should be voluntarily handled by individuals and private or religious organizations.  I certainly don't want to downplay the fine work these groups do.  They have a vital role to play in civil society, and anything they can do to lessen the burden on government is well worth it.  But not everyone has access to those services or chooses to seek them.  Someone should not have to receive help from a church whose beliefs they don't share.  This is where government comes in.  Government does not care what god you worship, who you know, or what your demographic characteristics are (generally speaking).  It can provide help when no one else will or can.  That does not mean that everyone gets a free ride.  There are certainly good reasons to put reasonable requirements and qualifications on receiving aid.  (These can go too far - there's a bill in the Kansas legislature to require welfare recipients to apply to two dozen new jobs per week, an impossibility in most Kansas locales.)   Moreover, government may be the most effective institution in leveraging influence, power, and money to effective render aid.  This can actually save money.  Who can more efficiently cover health care costs - a group of concerned citizens, or the US government?  It's the same idea of pooled capital and risk that underlies the basic concepts of insurance.

So, how do progressives get conservatives to consider the needs of others?  For those in small towns, I think the key is promoting awareness to overcome stereotypes.  That doesn't mean people have to abandon small-town life; the Internet has made such awareness easier than ever before and it's one of the missions underlying this blog.  The many opportunities I have had to venture beyond my small-town heritage, meet new people, and understand their struggles and perspectives is a major reason I abandoned my teenage conservatism.  Conversely, many rural residents may never have met an openly gay person, or a Muslim.  They might not even have met a black or Hispanic person (there was one black kid in my middle school - in a bustling metropolis of 20,000 - but none in my high school).  Anyone they know receiving government aid they can vouch for as good people (including themselves - remember the military conservative who has no problem reaping socialist-style benefits), but it's easy for them to assume others are lazy good-for-nothings.  A primary cause of this is that conservative media figures seize on stereotypes and run with them, playing on fears of the unknown and promoting politicians who will end up cutting programs that benefit everybody (the vile untruths that Rush Limbaugh has spewed about non-Cuban Hispanic immigrants alone could fill volumes).  All of which, of course, ends up benefiting the rich.  I'm not worried about them.  They'll always be able to afford health care or college tuition.  They'll never be on welfare.  That's their privilege and I don't want to take it away from them.  I'm just trying to look out for the rest of us.  The 98% are in this together.

When Conspiracy Theories Go Mainstream

My previous post examined how conservatives often utilize feel-good gut reactions when crafting arguments that often fall apart in the face of closer scrutiny.  Today let's look at what happens - more often than not these days - when they are presented with data or facts that directly contradict what they believe deep in their hearts.  Conspiracy!

Of course, conspiracy theories are as old as human history and have deep roots in American history - Roswell, JFK, the moon landing, 9/11 - you know the drill.  They are the natural byproduct of momentous events and have a lot of appeal to amateur investigators, as any X-Files fan would attest.  (I've watched both the 9/11 "truth" movie Loose Change and its rebuttal, Screw Loose Change.) However, when innocent speculation for amusement's sake passes into unfounded paranoia about black helicopters, police states, and the New World Order, conspiracy theories can become dangerous.  Unfortunately, conspiracy theories are increasingly becoming the knee-jerk response when conservatives are presented with facts that they don't like.  They have broken out of the fringe and onto the mainstream media that is Fox News.  (Fox is the number one cable news network and the number one source of "news" for many Americans.  If you doubt it's mainstream, pull your head out of the sand. Also, if you're going to try the "both sides do it" false equivalency on this, please put forth similar theories peddled on MSNBC.)  So I'd like to point out some of these conspiracy theories that Fox and others have recently obsessed over, and then I'll venture into somewhat darker territory, where even the Fox "journalists" fear to tread.

Crazy Like a Fox

Skewed Polls: Before the 2012 election, in about September, when poll after poll was showing Obama pulling ahead of Romney, conservatives at Fox and elsewhere refused to believe it.  In their gut, "Mitt-mentum" was going to carry the day.  So they explained away all that pesky data through the claim that the polls were obviously skewed by liberal media and polling outfits.  They oversampled Democrats, obviously!  They want Republicans to be dismayed and stay home!  Nate Silver's in the bag for Obama!  One pundit even launched an "Unskewed Polls" website claiming to have the real data, which conveniently showed Romney ahead.  Of course, when the polls tightened after the first debate, they were suddenly correct again.  For a couple weeks, anyway.  Then the election happened, and Karl Rove had a meltdown live on Fox, because he apparently believed his own crap.  And the Boston Globe reported that Romney almost conceded but then waited until Fox stood by its Ohio call.  Witness the effects of falling far, far down the conspiracy theory hole.  Post election, nearly half of Republicans thought ACORN stole it for Obama, even though that organization doesn't exist anymore.  Anything to avoid accepting reality.

Skewed Jobs Numbers: While the liberal media was busy rigging polls, the Bureau of Labor Statistics was rigging unemployment data.  When the September 2012 jobs report showed better than expected numbers, conservatives like Fox's Eric Bolling just knew it couldn't be possible.  The BLS was obviously fudging the numbers to help Obama's reelection.  Never mind that the BLS is a nonpartisan organization, its methodology is very transparent and available for anyone to examine, and that economists nationwide agreed the numbers were legit.  The numbers just didn't "feel right" to former GE CEO Jack Welch, and therefore must be faked.  Data, schmata.  Social scientists everywhere were rightfully offended.

Benghazi and Hillary Clinton: There's way too much about Benghazi to go into much detail here, but suffice it to say that Fox has been desperately trying to make something out of the Benghazi attack when it's obvious to everyone else that, while mistakes were made, the idea of a mass government coverup is ludicrous.  They connect the dots in obscure ways that exemplify the "best" of conspiracy theory - everything is plausible and nothing is irrefutable.  I'm pretty sure I could just as easily make the case that Romney knew about the Benghazi attack in advance (his response was suspiciously quick in coming, don't you think?).  But they really went off the deep end when they accused Hillary Clinton of faking a concussion to avoid testifying about Benghazi, even after she was hospitalized for a resulting blood clot.  Fox's Laura Ingraham called it the "Immaculate Concussion" and had a good laugh about it.  Can you imagine the conservative response if liberals had a hearty laugh about a Republican Secretary of State having a potentially life-threatening injury?  Then during the testimony you had Senator Rand Paul calling Benghazi the "worst tragedy since 9/11" (never mind Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, Sandy Hook, or the numerous similar attacks under the Bush administration) and Senator Ron Johnson claiming that Clinton had an "emotional response" to avoid answering questions.  (And can you ever imagine him making that claim about a male SecState?)  And on Feb. 6, with Clinton out of office, Steve Doocy on Fox & Friends had a good chuckle when he proposed that Hillary had had a facelift for the picture on her new website (he later claimed he was referring to the website having a facelift - I say the transcript says otherwise, especially since the website is brand new so can't really have a facelift.  Like saying something is "new and improved.")  It's all part of their plan to preemptively destroy Hillary should she decide to run for President in 2016.  It's sexist, hypocritical (I see lots of the Fox ladies wearing what look like 7-inch heels) and shameful.

(Side note: I really can't stand Steve Doocy.  I can handle most conservative pundits blathering on without much trouble, but something about the smirk on his face when he's spouting the latest Fox bullshit and the fact that he grew up in Kansas and has a degree from KU really makes me want to punch him in the face.)

Obama Shooting Skeet: When the White House released a photo of President Obama skeet shooting, they joked that Photoshop conspiracy theories were sure to follow.  They were, of course, right.  It's impossible for the conservative mind to fathom that a sissy, elite liberal like Obama would ever shoot a gun, so of course it's fake.  Admittedly the White House could have handled this better; even David Axelrod copped to that.  But given that Obama told a TCU skeet shooter in 2010 that he practices with the Secret Service, this conspiracy reaches pretty far and wide.  It's a scary world, huh?

Fox Went Birther: Lastly, Fox rather fully embraced claims that Obama wasn't born in the US, starting in 2011 and continuing through the 2012 election by often giving Donald Trump a platform to air his nuttery.  Again, there's too much here to really dig into, but the "theory" basically rests on crazy notions that a Harvard yearbook carries more legal authority than a birth certificate certified by the Republican governor of Hawaii; that Obama's parents planted a birth announcement in the newspaper because it might come in handy some day, like if their son ran for President; that the Bush-era FBI really screwed up in any background checks they did for Senator and candidate Obama's security clearances; and that, even if he was born here, because he has a foreign-born parent, he belongs to some kind of half-citizen class that no court anywhere has ever defined.  The racist undertones of the birther conspiracy are palpable and offensive; for some conservatives it's just unacceptable that a black man lives in the White House.  I highly, highly doubt this nonsense would exist if Barack Hussein Obama were white.

Glenn Beck and Agenda 21

Just a few years ago Glenn Beck was the biggest name on Fox, besides maybe Bill O'Reilly.  He was even regarded as one of the most widely admired men in America.  Now he's off TV (thank God) but has found a home on conservative radio, where he continues to promote loony right-wing causes, such as building a libertarian Disney World / utopian community in Texas.  Beck is very much on the UN conspiracy theory bandwagon, which I touched on in my discussion of the Republicans' rejection of Bob Dole.  Beck's grave concern is that the UN is going to forcibly implement something called Agenda 21 which will basically lead to the destruction of the American way of life.  Like most conspiracy theories, there's a single grain of truth to this - Agenda 21 does exist.  It is a completely nonbinding set of recommendations and ideas for action to promote sustainable development worldwide in the 21st century - you know, the kind of economic development that improves peoples' lives without trashing the planet in the process.  Beck imagines that Agenda 21 is the first-step to an Orwellian future, with private property forbidden, people tattooed with ID numbers, and a one-world government deciding who lives and who dies.  I'm not joking.  And some politicians agree - newly elected Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz has said, "Agenda 21 dehumanizes individuals by removing the very thing that has defined Americans since the beginning—our freedom."  Nice try, Ted.  Unfortunately, way too many people are buying what Beck, Cruz, and others are selling.

The Dark, Scary World of Erik Rush and "WorldNutDaily"

This final section goes to a bit more disturbing place.  I won't go so far as to call these conspiracy theories mainstream, but the website WorldNetDaily has a loyal following of many internet conservatives.  This is, after all, the site that former and possibly future presidential hopeful Rick Santorum contributes to.  It's important to be aware of these as they can spread further - witness birtherism - and what can be really frightening is to read the comments posted to some of these articles, whose posters often don't think the original writer goes far enough.  To them Obama is literally the Antichrist at the head of the impending godless / communist / fascist takeover.  I'd like to ask them why, if Obama is such a totalitarian, the government hasn't tracked their IP addresses and come knocking on their doors yet.  It's true believers like these that make me glad the Secret Service is around.

Fanning the flames at WND and an even whackier site, Canada Free Press, is a writer named Erik Rush.  He appears on Fox, too.  Below are just a few of his "highlights," which I don't merit as worthy of full discussion.  Note the prevailing lack of, you know, facts and the desperate call of "Why doesn't anybody else see this???" throughout.

• Obama will spark a civil war as he takes us to a communist state worse than the Soviet Union.
• Obama will confiscate Americans' guns to quash civil unrest in his move toward a totalitarian state.
• Obama will have a Stalin-style purge of military leaders on his way to the communist coup.
• Rush buys into the Sandy Hook conspiracy crap.
• Obama wants to put "Doomsday preppers" in concentration camps.
• Obama is selling land to China to help usher in the era of American communism.
• And, lastly, Obama will cancel the 2014 election to aid in his communist consolidation of power.

These people are either professional trolls or have mental health issues.  And yet they are gainfully employed to write this stuff free of any accountability for how wrong they prove to be.  (I'm talking about accountability from the public or their employers, not censorship.)  And that is sad.

A Handy Reference

Finally, keeping track of the multitude of conspiracy theories just surrounding President Obama can be quite difficult.  Fortunately, Mother Jones has constructed this useful Venn diagram chart to help you keep things straight.  The accompanying article provides links to the sources of each theory.  Take a look and remember that this is what happens when a large group of people refuse to accept reality.  When that group comes to hold significant sway over one of a country's two major political parties, that is the real threat to democracy.

Tax Cuts Are Government Spending Too

Sometimes I envy conservatives because on face value their ideas can make a lot of sense.  Budget deficits are bad (only a recent conservative idea).  The government spends too much money.  Tax cuts always help the economy by giving people more money.  Welfare makes it easy for people to become dependent.  Sounds good, right?  These arguments can often feel good in the "gut feeling" sense - it just feels right.  As a teenage conservative I think that's often the place I argued from, because I didn't have the tools to properly analyze the issues.  Since then I've had a healthy dose of social science education and nearly four years experience in state government finances.  I've learned that gut feelings often mean squat in the face of actual data.  Many conservatives, however, seem to still be unaware that the world is a complicated place often unexplainable by "I've got a good feeling."  This was on stark display last November, when Republicans just knew down to their bone marrow that Romney would win, despite poll after poll that showed otherwise.  This belief is on display in many other issues as well - in the case of climate change, they seem unaware of how to properly analyze data, as they gleefully claim that one cold snap in one location on Earth proves that global warming / climate change is a hoax..

Before I get too off track, though, I want to focus on one issue where conservative logic often seems to win on the superficial level - tax cuts and government spending.  "It's your money, not the government's," to paragraph George W. Bush, "so we're gonna give it back to you."  Sounds great, right?  Well, the Bush tax cuts and unfunded wars erased the Clinton surplus and put us on the path to the deficits we now face (but Republicans sure don't like to talk about that).  The theory goes that tax cuts will give everybody more money, which they will spend wisely and generate so much more economic activity that any lost revenue from the lower tax rates will be made up.  Sounds good in the gut, but as I've noted before, there's no real data that supports this, especially when it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy, who are more likely to save that extra money than put it back into the economy.  Meanwhile, the government has less money to spend on its services.

Which brings me to my main point, which might blow a few conservatives' minds: tax cuts are a form of government spending.  Lowering taxes will bring in less revenue than is otherwise projected.  In essence, the government is "spending" that extra revenue by giving it to people in such a way that it hopes will improve the economy (or, the cynic would argue, to curry political favor with certain groups).  The government could just as easily spend that same revenue on investing in schools, infrastructure, or health care.  In my state government experience, I've seen numerous tax cut proposals put forth by both parties.  As analyzed, not a single one projected a resulting increase in government revenue.  All pointed to a decrease.  The government was spending money it otherwise would have received.

So in all this hysteria over deficits, tax cuts need to be weighed equally with government spending cuts.  And the fact is that government spending can be a more effective way to boost the economy than giving rich people more money.  This is especially true when times are tight; when people and businesses are having to be careful with their finances, the government might be the only institution that can give the economy a shot in the arm.  This is why obsessing over deficits during an economic downturn is a mistake.  Many conservative governments in Europe reacted to the Great Recession by implementing "austerity" cutbacks, and now find themselves in a second recession as a result.  That hasn't happened in the US, thankfully, but if the planned "sequester" cuts go into effect on March 1, we could be headed that way too.  US GDP shrunk by 0.1% in Q4 2012, even though consumer-related indices generally remained stable or improved.  What was the difference?  A sudden, temporary drop in defense spending.  By the government.  To turn another bit of conservative logic on its head, government deficits are not always bad.  Sometimes they are necessary to bail out the economy when nothing else will work.  Just ask Dick Cheney in 2002: "You know, Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter."  What a socialist, that guy!

And yet this staple of conservative "logic" is now being ruthlessly applied in my home state of Kansas.  Governor Brownback and his allies slashed income taxes last year, and now Kansas is one of only two states that is projecting a decrease in revenue for next fiscal year.  Tax cuts lowered revenue??  Shock!  Meanwhile the administration might have to go to court or even amend the state constitution to ensure it doesn't have to increase school funding.  It just amazes me that the people who think increasing school funding is pointless are largely the same folks who believe throwing the same money at the rich will magically fix the economy (because teachers making $35,000 are union thugs while millionaire businessmen are altruistic saints, don't you see).  Meanwhile schools with 30+ class sizes and stripped of extracurricular activities might become the norm in Kansas.  It's this kind of thinking that leads me to increasingly believe that the "sounds good" rhetoric is really just empty cover for giving the Koch brothers and other Republican backers a tax break.

Especially since, as I've noted before, what was billed as a tax cut to help all Kansans was actually a tax shift from the rich to the poor and middle classes.  Consequently, in Kansas now a lawyer doesn't pay state income tax, but his secretary does.  A doctor doesn't pay state income tax, but her nurse does.  All in the name of "tax fairness."  Baloney.  Again, I support targeted tax cuts that will put more money in the pockets of people that need it and will spend it.  But the Brownback administration seeks to make up the lost revenue through sales tax increases and other measures that disproportionately affect the incomes of the poor and middle classes.  Kansas is now one of only three states that has no exemptions whatsoever for the sales tax on food.  That is inexcusable.  The other two are very poor Mississippi and Alabama.   And given that those two states are among the biggest moochers off federal tax dollars, maybe conservatives aren't so opposed to fostering government dependency after all.

Red States Sure Have a Lot of "Takers"

This, my friends, is called cognitive dissonance.

Ah, makers vs. takers.  Since we apparently didn't get enough of this during the election, conservative arguments about the government dividing us into a nation of job-creating, awe-inspiring "makers" and lazy, dependent "takers" persist.  It's at the core of their push to slash social safety net programs - just ask Paul Ryan, still writin' them budgets.  It's also the source of one of the biggest logical missteps in their increasingly broken ideology - they either don't care or don't understand that some of the biggest "takers" come from their base and represent the parts of the country that are supposedly full of hard-workin', free-enterprisin', do-good Americans.  Ah, but when they reap the benefits of government largesse, it doesn't count.  They deserve it, you see.

First, an anecdote before we get to the hard numbers.  I know someone who's a pretty hardcore conservative.  He's always filling up his Facebook feed with stupid memes and Fox News talking points.  He loves to complain about the ills of government social programs and how the government punishes hard workers to reward the lazy.  But here's the thing.  He's ex-military.  Because of his service, he went to school for free on the Post-9/11 GI Bill.  He gets free health care for life.  He gets a housing stipend.  By his definition, he lives in his own socialist country (a rather nice one at that).  Now, I'm not saying he and other military members don't deserve these benefits.  But not everyone can be in the military.  They'd laugh me out of the recruiting office.  And it's really easy to complain about "takers" when you'll never have to worry about the cost of health care or make a student loan payment.  He advises that the way out of poverty is not through social programs but through prayer.  Did he pray his way through college?  I'm sorry, but I will take actual, directed programs with the goals of not only helping individuals in need but advancing society as a whole.  The original GI Bill was a massive government investment in human capital that helped fuel the post-WWII economic boom.  Everyone benefited.  Sometimes, though, those not in the military are deserving of some assistance.

So where do all those sweet government Benjamins go?  First, let's remind ourselves of the 2012 electoral map, which has only changed slightly in the years since 2000.

 

This should be pretty familiar; by now we all know where the red and blue regions of the country are.  Now I want to show you three maps that show, in different ways, which parts of the country receive the most money and benefits from the federal government.  As I do this, keep in mind that the core tenet of Republican governing philosophy is that government is too big, spends too much money, and wastes it on excessive social programs that prop up people without initiative.  For many Republicans, this includes (in their current forms) Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and disability benefits.

This map shows how much money each state gets in federal benefits for each dollar that it pays in federal taxes.  In essence, it divides states into makers (states under $1.00 - net payers of taxes) and takers (states over $1.00 - net receivers of taxes).  Notice where the largest concentration of taker states is?  Yup, the South.  Core red country.  Texas pays in due to oil taxes.  To be sure, there are some blue taker states as well.  New Mexico is a big receiver due to large Native populations here.  But any argument about a correlation between government handouts and a dominance of liberal government is clearly false.  Look at all those Republican Senators across the South, advocating for more money for their states.  In fact, it's the other way around - states like Illinois, Ohio, and New York are subsidizing others.  If the Neo-Confederates followed through on their silly ideas to secede, they'd have to hope Texas were around to bail them out.

This map answers the question "Who is Romney's 47%?" in a way that might make conservatives queasy.  It ranks in order, from most to least, the percentage of each state's population that has no federal tax liability (i.e., the infamous 47%).  The only blue states in the top ten are New Mexico and Florida (which barely counts).  By comparison, seven of the bottom 10 are blue.  So when Romney said there were 47% of the people whom he couldn't win the votes of, he was largely talking about his southern conservative base.  Funny, they voted for him anyway.

In a way this last map is a subset of the first one, but conservatives have been complaining a lot about disability benefits lately so it's worthy of inclusion.  Not surprisingly, the highest concentration of those receiving these benefits is, again, in the South.  It's true that you can't prove, based on this map, that people receiving the benefits are voting Republican.  However, as I've noted, everyone benefits from these programs.  People receive income they otherwise wouldn't and pump that money into the economy.  Meanwhile, someone should really tell Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky to do something about all the freeloaders in his state.

My point with these maps isn't to belittle the South, but merely to point out that conservatives love to complain about the mythical moocher, when he actually lives in their backyard.  When Republicans support slashing social insurance programs, they are hurting themselves too.  But they manage to convince millions of poor and middle class voters to vote in politicians that will slash programs that the poor and middle class benefit the most from.  And when they reap the rewards of tax cuts for the wealthy (capital gains, inheritance) or corporate welfare programs in amounts that would feed a poor family for years, that's ok.  They deserve it because they're job creators.  Who cares if nobody else has any money to buy their products?  What could possibly go wrong?

The Potential Attempt to Rig the Electoral College

After their losses in the 2012 election, some conservative Republicans are refusing to admit that their ideas might need to change to be more in line with mainstream America's beliefs and demographic trends.  No, instead they've come up with a brilliant idea to change the rules of the electoral college in key states that would make it near impossible, in a deeply divided country, for a Democrat to be elected President in 2016.  Gore losing to Bush in 2000 would barely register in comparison to this scheme.

How would it work?  Republicans currently control the state governments in some key states that Obama won in 2012, such as Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Michigan.  It is within their power to pass a law stating that their state's electoral votes would not be winner-take-all, but rather would be distributed according to which candidate wins each congressional district in that state.  The remaining two electoral votes (each state has EVs equal to its number of House seats plus 2 Senate seats) would go to the overall winner of votes.  Two states already do this - Maine and Nebraska.  However, these are small states - one solid red, the other solid blue - and no one cares much about them.  Obama actually won the EV from Omaha's congressional district in 2008, but didn't in 2012.

This may sound reasonable.  In fact, it would be pretty fair if the political leanings of a state's congressional districts were roughly in line with how the state voted in presidential elections - it would give a voice to minority voters in solid red or blue states.  However, the problem is that congressional districts are redrawn by state legislatures every 10 years, after each census.  The Tea Party wave in 2010 enabled Republicans in many states to gerrymander districts in their states to favor Republican candidates.  Now, both parties have used their legislative power to gerrymander districts in the past, but the effects of 2010 have put the Republicans at a large advantage in this arena.  The most common and effective way for Republicans to gerrymander a district is to clump all the Democratic voters together in one or two districts.  You thus cede those districts to Democrats, but it leaves Republicans alone to dominate the rest of the state.  You might end up with a Democratic candidate winning 75% of the vote in his district, and a Republican candidate winning 53% in his, but in the eyes of Congress, it's all the same.

The 2012 elections bore witness to the success of Republicans' 2010 gerrymandering.  The Republicans managed to hold onto their House of Representatives majority, despite the fact that more people voted for House Democratic candidates than Republican candidates,  In other words, just like Bush in 2000, the House GOP lost the popular vote, and still won.  It is this strategy that Republicans in key states are trying to cement into the electoral college.

 

These maps illustrate exactly how this plan could be put into action to almost guarantee a Republican president in 2016.  Notice that Obama won each state, some by healthy margins.  But notice how few of the House seats are Democratic; this is due to gerrymandering.  To be specific, let's look at Pennsylvania.  The vote count here was Obama 2,907,448; Romney 2,619,583.  A margin of victory for Obama of almost 300,000 votes, or 5.2%, owing to strong support in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Erie.  So under the rules of the 200-plus-year-old system, Obama won all 20 of the state's EVs.  Under the Republican plan, however, Romney would've won probably 13 EVs (assuming he won every R House district) and Obama 7.  An even nastier plan that's out there would give the 2 at-large EVs to whoever won the most House districts, yielding a score of Romney 15, Obama 5.  How is that possibly fair?  Oh, that's right, it's not.  Add that up in enough states (see above), and it would have been possible for us to inaugurate President Romney this week despite him losing the national popular vote by 3.5 million votes.

There is absolutely no honest defense for this plan.  It is subverting democracy, plan and simple, and making it more possible for an increasingly unpopular minority to upset the majority will of the people.  Republicans are trying to spin it as saying it's about taking away the dominance of urban voters at the expense of rural voters.  That is, to quote our VP, malarkey.   Every person's vote is equal (in swing states anyway - I'll get to that in a minute).  If Obama gets 85% of the vote in Philly, tough.  That's how it works.  This attempt to change to system simply makes urban votes worth less than rural ones, instead of them being equal.  And, of course, it's only underway in states where it would benefit Republicans.  You don't hear about them trying to make the system "fairer" in, say, Georgia - which probably would've given 5 EVs to Obama in a solid Romney state.

To their credit, some Republicans seem to realize this is a bad idea.  The Florida Speaker of the House compared it to ending a football game after the 3rd quarter just because you're ahead.  (My sports analogy would be it's like saying only shots that Democrats make from the paint in a basketball game count).  Smart Republicans know that this plan might win them an election or two, but in the long run it'll come back to, pardon, bite them in the ass.  Not only will they be seen as undermining majority will if the popular vote winner handily loses an election or two, but you better believe Democrats will take advantage of the new rules at their first opportunity.  Again, demographic trends being what they are, that's likely to happen soon - perhaps after the 2020 census.  It would set us down a path that would render the electoral college a true sham of democracy.

Of course, some would argue it already is.  So let's fix it.  There's a much fairer way to proportionally award a state's electoral votes - just do it by vote count.  This is done in many other countries.  For example, when a German votes for the Bundestag (Parliament), she votes for both a candidate in her district and a party she favors.  Parties then get awarded seats according to the proportion of the party votes they received.  Under this scenario, the EV split in Pennsylvania would've been something like Obama 12, Romney 8.  Extrapolate that to the whole country, and Obama still would have won, but the EV count would've been a lot closer than 332 to 206.  It would've reflected the national popular vote.  It makes votes across the country - not just in swing states - mean something, and it's not subject to political shenanigans every 10 years.  Of course, for this to happen both parties need to be convinced that it's in their best interests.  Perhaps this attempt by some Republicans to thwart democracy will be a wake-up call sufficient for Americans to demand a fairer electoral system.

Hitler, Hyperbole, and Hypocrisy

Actually Hitler was a community organizer of sorts.
So there's that I guess.

This is not a post about gun laws.  I think I've just about said my piece on that issue.  Rather, this is a post about the paranoia generated by conservative media that is rendering any sort of meaningful discussion on gun violence practically impossible.  To be frank, I've had it with the Hitler shit.  Moreover, on the opposite side, this week they dragged MLK into it, making the ludicrous claim that a nonviolent follower of Gandhi and gunshot assassination victim would be the NRA"s best buddy today.  To paraphrase a guest on the Daily Show, MLK is dead.  He doesn't get to be your black yes-man.  Likewise, Hitler's dead too.  He doesn't get to be the straw-man boogeyman you compare anything in America you don't like to.

First, let's set the record straight about Hitler.  There is no proof he ever said "To conquer a nation you must first disarm its citizens."  He did nothing about gun control until 1938 - well after the Nazis had established total control of the country - when he actually increased gun ownership rights for non-Jewish Germans, which had been severely restricted in the Treaty of Versailles after WWI.  Any support Hitler had for disarming people naturally referred to races he was bent on conquering and subjugating - namely the Jews.  This notion has led to what I believe are projection fantasies among some of the Right - if only they had been a Jew in the ghetto with a gun, by God, they'd have made the Nazis pay.  Well, guess what?  You weren't there, you have no idea what it was like, and you're not accounting for the cultural, political, and knowledge differences between Jews under the Reich and gung-ho Americans.  It's easy to say you'd fight when you know that the other option is a trip to a gas chamber; Jews had been through ghettos and pogroms before and many thought it would be OK if they could ride it out.  How were they to know otherwise?  It's not like they had a live Twitter feed from Dachau.  Moreover, it took the combined might of the free world five years to bring down the Nazis.  Any Jewish resistance would be - and was - met with brutal repression.

This same idea has been extended to slavery in America - if only blacks had guns, there would have been no slavery.  Yeah, ok.  Reminder: slaves were not people.  They had no money.  Gun access was generally impossible.  That's how the system worked.  What slave rebellions did occur were - surprise - brutally repressed.  State militias in the South were organized for that very purpose (some have argued this is the actual reason for the Second Amendment - I'm not going to go there).  To paraphrase the same Daily Show guest, if there had been a chapter in US history about mass slave uprisings, the next chapter would be called "All the Black People are Dead.  Now What?"

Nonetheless these factual inaccuracies haven't slowed down conservative media's Obama is Hitler Parade.  I suppose because he is a dictator that everyone knows and associates with pure evil, it's an easy and lazy comparison to make that gins up a lot of unwarranted emotions.  To be fair, I remember some liberals comparing W to Hitler.  That was stupid too.  But now we're talking about planting paranoia in a certain subset of gun owners who believe it's their duty to arm themselves against the tyrannical government and the coming gunpocalypse.  And that's dangerous.  Here are a few examples, all taken from that "fair and balanced" Fox News:

"The dictators and monsters of the 20th century -- from Stalin to Hitler, from Castro to Pol Pot, from Mao to Assad -- have disarmed their people, and only because some of those people resisted the disarming were all eventually enabled to fight the dictators for freedom." - Andrew Napolitano, January 10

"Under Feinstein's bill, which has been introduced, if the president does it that way, everybody in America who owns one of the guns on the list will be required to go in and give fingerprints, mug shot, be entered into a database. It will be "your papers, please" like Nazi Germany. We're going to register everybody." - Lars Larson, January 9

DOOCY: I think you, like a lot of people, Joshua, are worried that the federal government is going to come after our guns.

BOSTON: It's something we've seen happen time and time again in history, with Stalin. It happened in Cambodia, and then of course the Third Reich. No one saw that coming until it was too late. - Steve Doocy (a KU grad, sigh) and former Marine Joshua Boston, January 7

This is just the tip of the iceberg; examples from other outlets here.  It's this line of thinking that leads directly to the horrible conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged by the government as the beginnings of the Great Gun Grab.  The foundations of that lunacy are shaky even by conspiracy theory standards; I'm not a 9/11 Truther, but I'll give that gang an A for effort at least.

What really set me off is that, surprise, Fox has now reversed itself.   On January 16 Bob Schieffer on CBS said this about obstacles to passing new gun laws: “Surely passing civil rights legislation, as Lyndon Johnson was able to do, and before that, surely defeating the Nazis was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby.”  Which seems like a bit of a mild and indirect analogy compared to what I listed above, but he did use the N-word so it qualifies.  And the talking heads on Fox exploded.  Host and former Bush press secretary Dana Perino actually said, "“Think of if conservatives had used that language to describe liberals.  There would be collective outrage on the front page of the papers and demands for people to resign and apologize.”  Actually, it's pretty easy to imagine that scenario, Dana, because your network does it almost every day.  And while there has certainly been some outrage on lefty websites, no one else seems to care that much.  You all still have your jobs, right?

Unfortunately the gun-grabber tyranny hyperbole has now extended beyond right-wing media and into our elected officials.  On January 20 the campaign of Kentucky Senator and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell - the 2nd or 3rd most powerful Republican in DC (depending on what House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is up to that day) sent out an email to supporters full of blatant misinformation about Obama's plans to confiscate your guns.  The full text is here; this is how is opens:

Dear Patriot, 

You and I are literally surrounded.

The gun-grabbers in the Senate are about to launch an all-out-assault on the Second Amendment. On your rights.

On your freedom.

Just the other night, President Obama urged them to act. And then he went one step further, spelling out the 23 different Executive Orders he will take to get your guns.

My friend, our freedom is under direct assault.

Ugh, ugh, ugh.  I detest this use of the word "patriot" that implies only gun lovers are true patriots.  To their credit, there's no mention of Hitler.  But the idea that Obama and his allies are going to confiscate legally-owned weapons is a baseless claim straight out of Alex Jones-Conspiracy Land.  Especially the bit with the Executive Orders.  They have been bitching about these before and since they were issued and I have yet to see any criticism that suggests they have actually read them.  So please do so and try to figure out which of them means that the man in the White House is coming for your guns.  They are a bunch of requests for studies and for agencies to better share information with each other.  One of them says the ATF should make its interim head permanent.  A government bureaucracy has to fill out an HR form!  Scary!  McConnell is up for reelection in 2014 so has to rile up his base, but this fear-mongering is irresponsible, especially coming from a high-ranking Senator.

I'll close with a word of advice for conservatives, to make the next four years a bit easier on all of us.  Please look up the definitions of the following words: socialism, communism, Marxism, fascism, and tyranny.  They do not mean what you think they mean.  Then open up a history book.  Any one will do, because you seem to get just about all of it wrong.

2013: Watch Conservative Governance Harm Kansas in Real Time

Worth fighting for.

Although the 2012 elections were a victory for progressives in many ways, many state governors and legislatures are still in the grasp of the Tea Party, which has carried forward from its 2010 wave.  This is no more true than in my home state of Kansas, where, despite its red reputation, conservative Republicans will solidly control the Senate, House, and Governorship for the first time ever in 2013.

Republicans have long been dominant in the state, to be sure, but for decades moderate business-minded Republicans held control of the party.  The Republican governors of my youth - Mike Hayden and Bill Graves - were of this ilk.  There have been prominent Democratic politicians in Kansas history, too - most notably Kathleen Sebelius, a popular two-term governor whom Time ranked as one of the best in the country, before she left to be Obama's HHS secretary (we want you back, Kathleen).  The rise of movement conservatism since the early 90s, however, has bestowed Kansas with effectively three political parties.  The Democrats are relegated to permanent minority status and the real elections occur in the August primaries between moderate and conservative Republicans.  Former Governor Graves supported numerous moderates against conservative candidates in the 2012 primaries to no avail.  The conservatives won easily and now dominate the Legislature, with Tea Party favorite Governor Sam Brownback as their captain.  This political landscape is infinitely compounded by the fact that Koch Industries, the hundred-billion-dollar corporation hugely responsible for masquerading corporate lobbying as a grassroots political movement (i.e. the Tea Party) is headquartered in Wichita.

The Koch brothers scored a major victory in 2012 when Brownback and his legislative followers pushed through a massive tax cut deal that lowered income taxes and largely eliminated them for many businesses and farms (details here).  That may sound good on paper, but to partly offset the cost of the cuts, many tax credits utilized by the poor and middle classes were eliminated.  These include expenses for child care and food sales tax rebates - Kansas now joins Alabama and Mississippi as the only states with no food sales tax exemptions whatsoever.  Kansas' own Department of Revenue, not some liberal think tank, found that under the plan half a million filers who earn less than $25,000 would see an average tax increase of $156, while 21,000 filers making more than $250,000 would see an average cut of $5,200.  Those in between would receive a modest cut ($282).  It is Robin Hood in reverse, taking more money from the vast poor to reward the few rich.  And it is now the law of the land.

This is libertarian/conservative economic policy in practice in its rawest form.  The spin is that lowering the tax burden on "job creators" will usher in such a flurry of new economic activity that the lost tax revenues will be made up through a broader tax base.  It is the myth of supply-side, trickle-down economics.  In reality there has never been any conclusive proof that this works, and studies show that tax cuts that benefit middle and lower classes are actually better economic generators.  As I've said before, you have to stimulate demand by putting money in the pockets of people who are actually going to spend it. 

To the surprise of no one outside the conservative thought bubble, it doesn't appear to be set to work for Kansas either.  As state legislators prepare to craft the fiscal year 2014 budget, which takes effect July 1, last year's tax cuts have left a projected $700 million hole to be filled.  This was, of course, predicted by everyone who said the tax cuts were a bad idea.  But Kansas must pass a balanced budget, so those bucks have gotta come from somewhere.  (To provide a counterexample, here in New Mexico the state government is contemplating how to best spend a bit of new money for the first time in years.)

"Cut spending, cut spending!" cry the conservatives.  This is, shall we say, problematic.  Huge entitlement programs are largely federally funded, and reducing state funding for some programs can actually reduce the amount of federal dollars received - counterproductive to say the least.  State government operations could perhaps be trimmed a little, but they've already taken a hit and their budgets are small compared to other spending areas.  That leaves school funding and other aid to local governments, a huge portion of the budget.  It's really unlikely that Kansas schools will come out of this morass unscathed, and that is sad.  Worst of all, Brownback obviously saw it coming.  In one of the most blatant political shams I've seen recently, last year he appointed a task force to examine how Kansas schools can operate more efficiently, i.e. with less money.  There was not a single educator on it.

The cuts are coming, have no doubt.  Quality of education will suffer.  Teachers and other school personnel could be laid off.  And how is that supposed to help the economy?  Moreover, last week a district court ruled that the Legislature has been breaking its constitutional obligations since 2008 by underfunding schools.  While that case winds its way to the Kansas Supreme Court, any hope of rectifying the situation is slim at best in the face of the Koch juggernaut.

It's obvious that Republicans will support hardly anything on the revenue side of things (and what Democrats support doesn't matter in the Kansas of 2013).  The one tax option they have said they will consider is making a temporary increase to the state sales tax permanent.  Because everyone pays the exact same sales tax rate, this tax takes a higher percentage of income from those who earn less.  In other words, they picked the most regressive tax out there, the one that proportionally hurts poor people the most, and said "yeah, we can live with that.  And yes, you still have to pay it on food."  Can there be any doubt about who the Kansas ruling conservatives are really looking out for?  For those who think progressives like me just love taxes, let me state this clearly: Sales taxes are bad.  They should be as low as possible.  And yet Bobby Jindal in Louisiana has proposed eliminating his state's income tax and replacing it with a sales tax increase, thereby balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.  I think that's wrong.  If that makes me a tax-and-spend liberal, so be it.

Fellow Kansans, please pay attention to what's going on in Topeka.  Ask yourself if the political leaders there are using flowery language and freedom-loving rhetoric to persuade you to vote against your own economic interests.  Thanks to Brownback and his allies, half a million Kansans are now paying higher taxes and will be hurt the most by the inevitable forthcoming cuts to government services.  Those in the middle who received a small cut have to consider whether it was worth Kansas schools continuing to be underfunded.  Brownback et al. are up for election in 2014.  The votes of 21,000 rich people won't win elections.  But the noise generated by millions of Koch dollars could.  It's up to you to be well-informed and weigh your options carefully.  As a proud Kansan, the Prairie Progressive will be here to offer explanations as best I can.  Kansas is a great state; let's take it back from the narrow interests who have seized it for themselves.