A Sure Sign Democrats Must Impose a Spending Freeze
Who’d a thunk it? When given a choice, voters are happy to impose higher taxes on those who have been getting rich while everyone else faces higher costs and stagnant wages.
Yesterday Oregon voters delivered a huge victory for progressives by approving Measures 66 and 67, raising taxes on incomes over $250,000 and large corporations to generate $733 million to close the state’s budget deficit. The Oregon legislature had approved the taxes last summer, but a corporate/teabagger alliance organized to put it to voters in a referendum.
One wonders if the national media will cover this victory at all – much less at the levels of the Massachusetts Senate race.
[snip]
The opposition ran a well-funded campaign, led by Nike, Columbia Sportswear, and other big businesses. They were joined by Ari Fleischer’s FreedomWorks and the libertarian publisher of the Oregonian, who used to be at the Orange County Register before it went belly-up. Together they ran a campaign arguing that the tax increases would worsen unemployment. But 55% of voters have rejected that, and instead showed that when a truly progressive campaign is waged, the right-wingers can be beaten. Even on taxes.
What it also shows is that progressive policies, supported by smart progressive organizing led by folks such as former US Senate candidate Steve Novick and the Oregon Bus Project, which reached out to younger voters and had a strong ground game, can beat well-funded, well-organized corporate/teabagger alliances.
Their message was deeply progressive:
These reforms protect nearly $1 billion in vital services like education, health care and public safety. These funds preserve class sizes, save jobs for teachers, provide seniors with in-home care, and provide health care for thousands of Oregonians through the Oregon Health Plan. In this time of economic crisis, we must protect those who have been hit the hardest – seniors, children and the unemployed – without putting more of a burden on the middle class.
Like Cruickshank, I’m not holding my breath for Cokie Roberts and George Will and Chris Matthews to drone on about how this is a game-changer. But it really must be read as the book-end to the MA Senate vote. Progressive messaging and policies do work. If only national Democrats can muster some progressive politics and messaging.
great news…thanks
“Like Cruickshank, I’m not holding my breath for Cokie Roberts and George Will and Chris Matthews to drone on about how this is a game-changer.”
And that this means everything is moving to the left.
If someone from the Oregon bus project has some man dress up in faux fur add a scantily dressed young beautiful woman swinging her ass to and fro..Chris Matthews might cover this win for progressives. He might even show the same clip 16 times in 10 minutes.
This is ultra-liberal wacked out Oregon; those hippies are in the 9th Circuit. It is not the real America of such working class stiff lunchbucket types as Will, Roberts and Matthews.
Apparently we don’t like those “familly values” out here in Oregon. I can’t beleive the people voted for things like schools, bridges, protecting the environment, and taxing people who make over $250,000 a year. (have I heard that before?) What a bunch of hippies, don’t these people understand Phil Knight is going to have to pay more taxes. Next thing you know they will be trying to give everybody healthcare.
Little off topic, but I watched JD Hayworth on Tweetie last night?
How does Arizona do it? Although, I’m jealous of Oregon, we have lost
our hippie status by electing Scotty…
How long does Scotty have?
How long does Scott Brown (41) have
this is the woman that I would love to witness run in Massachusetts. Elizabeth Warren. Amazing that Obama has not asked her to join his administration.
Over at Huff Po (unable to link)
Elizabeth Warren On The Daily Show: If We Don’t Act ‘The Game Really Is Over’ (VIDEO)
I think this’ll work. JS & Elizabeth Warren–whatta pair!
thanks. How about that Elizabeth Warren. Wonder if she would run in Mass? She is probably too sane
(Sigh) Arizona was a frontier state. Until the US annexed Hawaii and Alaska, a strip of land in southern Arizona (The Gadsen Purchase) was the most recent bit of land added to the US Empire. Outside of liberal pockets like Flagstaff and Tucson, most of Arizona is inhabited by rednecks, ranchers, and redskins (sorry, I succumbed to alliteration rather than political correctness). And conservative snowbirds who don’t want to be bothered with immigrants, school children and taxes.
Bob in AZ
Hey Bman, Most of the folks in Oregon don’t vote when they are liberal. This time is no exception. There is little to cheer about except that we know we have our own country here, and that we can make law the legislature can’t touch. In the past, our legislature was in the hands of the gop. No more, and likely never again. The east will ignore it, the remainder of the west will begin their efforts to emulate us.
Our next task will be to primary our dear Senator Wyden. A man so confused that he can’t remember his own promises, or help his own consitituents. I do hope that one of the candidates for governor that can win chooses to go against the senator from health care. And if you don’t know, DeFazio drives 1960’s detroit iron around town when he is at home. Thought you may appreciate that part of our strange “pacific wonderland”. (it is a 6 cylinder Dodge product however)
I was in Portland over the weekend, and the yes lawn signs were everywhere, except in the one wealthy neighborhood I visited, and there were a few there as well. The corporations put on a full press with their employees, telling them to vote no on both. Didn’t happen.
I do not mind Obama perhaps sticking to his plan to use a “scalpel” on various budgets. Unfortunately, he has not announced that.
Trimming waste while creating stimulus for jobs seems to make sense.
I would start by trimming the waste from DOD.
I find myself thinking of the movie, Dave. A favorite scene: where Dave (with the help of his accountant buddy played by Charles Grodin) pares the federal budget to save a homeless shelter for children — the cabinet members bemusedly participating just like a family sitting around the kitchen table wrestling with its own budget. Priceless Kevin Kline movie.
That was such a *super* movie!
Wildly OT, and maybe already discussed, but EW doesn’t even get a “some blogger” call out:
He says he was not “there.”
I would like to ask him what he saw on tape.
(my emphasis)
If you ask him under oath, I bet he can’t recall. I might also ask him he had any contact with interrogators during the interrogation, specifically including telephone contact. I would also ask him if he gave any specific directions to interrogators on use of techniques. Or who watched the tape with him .
Geez, we could have fun with that. Is Boies almost done with prop 8?
Sad to say, in this country under water works better than under oath in getting to the truth.
Boxturtle (Admit it. What have we got from putting BushCo under Oath?)
Who writes this stuff? un + loose ==> tighten, doesn’t it? Tightens your tongue in 30 seconds? Aargh.
Poetic license to kill.
A spending freeze sounds good, especially to the teabaggers. He avoids a fight with the senate, where there are only 60 democrats, on spending priorities. And if it actually NEEDS to be spent, Obama can approve it without the senate once again.
The kind of spending he’s aiming at is such a small part of the budget that even if he zeroed the entire catagory and meant it, it would not even amount to 1%.
Obama must be trying to get votes from teabaggers, they are the only folks dumb enough in general to believe the buzz words.
Boxturtle (Hurry, Obama! In the time you’ve wasted since the announcement, 100,000 paperclips have been purchased!)
Just. Shoot. Me. Now.
Mark Halperin has advice on how Obama can “revive his political mojo” by emulating—
—
—
wait for it
—
Ronald Reagan.
Sheesh.
Three degrees of separation:
Mark Halperin to Hugh Hewitt to Andrew Breitbart to James O’Keefe.
not an effective phrase right there
this is more effectively discussed ;
far more accurate, far more effective
Point well taken, perris.
“progressive politics and messaging” won’t motivate 18-29 year olds anymore.
It’s time to fish or cut bait, no matter the outcome, filibuster or no filibuster: It’s time to LEGISLATE, or the midterms for incumbents will be lost.
The President is running against himself with headlines like these: W.H. official: Liberal critics will be ‘muted’ once budget unveiled
I think they are going to announce a sizeable work program. Something big is coming. They let out the freeze info to stir it up
I’m watching with bated breath. I really don’t know what he’s waiting for. He knows he wants to rip insurance companies a new one. All the signs are there, but he dithers while the oppo’s plan their Reagan speech in Montgomery, Alabama, heart of the Confederacy, in the very room in which Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President of the Confederacy.
What transparently awful stagecraft that scene was.
The fastest way to get the press to report such happenings is to cut the income of those at the top by an order of magnitude. Brian Williams could still afford his custom Porsche. But he wouldn’t have as much incentive to poopoo raising taxes on the wealthy if he weren’t afraid of paying a slightly higher tax on his millions in annual income, which he earns by wearing custom suits, hairspray and make-up while reading from a teleprompter. Ditto for Tweety and the gang.
Yeah but there are some fat cats who are willing to have their taxes raised
Oxymoron: smart progressive organization, there is no such thing!
Yes, if only! Seems like Obama is rolling out the right-wing messaging on budget deficits, and government waste. The messaging gap since the election has been astounding.
Reagan arranged to tax unemployment checks, typical kind of thing the TeaParty folks might decry as double taxation.
Quite a while ago a nonprofit for which I provided IT helpdesk to its management, found an Oregon cooperative of nonprofits which offered a 100% free dental health plan and let us join. That is the only health insurance I have known that actually took care of its members humanely.
On the non-NatSec spending freeze, my impression is there are a lot of weak companies which are going to take a while longer to weed out; it is more than the spectrum covering merger acquisition bailout bankruptcy extinction; it involves oversight, and it has a mesh of international extensions to resolve.
I was somewhat surprised to see the inclusion among drones of CRoberts; although I have not heard her in a while, I recall the increasing discretion of what had been a fairly acerbic wit in years prior. Bushco muting of NPR remains a palpable shift; freeing that entity again will take time, just like the economic restorative curve.
OT:
I left a question at the end of the Exigent letters post, which has since closed.
I’m still hoping to hear thoughts from EW and the wise commenters here on this question:
Is it strange that the redactions in the documents released appear to be the statutory or other authorities for action. Is that normal? My experience of government work was always that you needed to cite your statutory authority, how could that be kept secret?
I’d been looking for a germane thread to re-post…failed. EW is too much the polymath.
I’m still working on two posts on that.
I think they’re trying to hide precisely what they were doing and to hide how little legal basis they did have for what they were doing.
Thanks! I look forward to reading them.
I’d been worrying that the redaction pen covered something like “AUMF”. Glad to hear that…zoinks.
OT, but something that will shake up CA politics:
link
Hey Leen and fatster,
Thanks for the link. (@ 31)
That needs to be a front page at FDL.
along with the more crude but brutally honest version of George Carlins “they own you” clip.
George and Elizabeth essentially say the same things except Carlin is crude and brutally honest. “they don’t care about the working class, they don’t give a fuck about you. At all at all at all”
Um, err, this progressive found Measure 67 to be problematic because if you look at it carefully, it is imposing a quasi- sales tax on businesses s which show 0 to small profits, like grocery stores gas stations etc. There is a gross income level that has to be exceeded and the tax is somewhat modest, but nonetheless, it’s a form of sales tax.
Measure 66 and 67 were lumped together as a unit when this measure went on the ballot…big mistake, IMO.
Also note that this was initially passed in the Legislature but subject to the Ballot Measure by the opposition. Without this measure, it would have automatically become law. I’m glad for the efforts that brought into the light of day, at least, a brighter version of the light!
Spending freeze accompanied by $38 billion business tax break. Seems like Obama is really taking Halperin’s “Be Like Reagan” advice to heart.
Yep. Obama claims his budget is in such disarray – while staying mum about how much crap he inherited from Bush – that he has to impose a hole-ridden spending freeze. He then turns around and gives away $38 billion from his budget via foregone tax revenues from those able to pay? With leaders like that, the Dems will be out of business within two election cycles.
To say that Bush III would do the same, but make it $380 billion in tax giveaways is no help to this false Democrat. It’s like the old joke about the sailor telling the madame, we’ve established what you are, we’re negotiating what I’m willing to spend.
NOLAgate ? Follow the money….
Sorry to skip ahead without reading all the comments–
but I’ve been watching MSNBC today in the run-up to the SOTU, and all the polls–
It looks like Obama has been playing the inside game for most of his first year with Rahmbo, and the voters (viz.: Massachusetts) don’t like what they’ve seen. He should see what pandering to the least conservative Republicans has done for his program (i.e., zipp-o) in the name of governing from the middle. He needs to show us, tonight, that he has an outside game, and this should mean some key staff changes, from insiders like Geithner, Summers, et al., to well-known outsiders.
Bob in AZ
And, for the record, I really understand Stewart’s last words to Elizabeth Warren.
So do you cats reckon the new SOTU
EcStim 2.0Jobs plan moves the ol’ football any, Democratic-Brand-wise? IIUC, it looks like the plan is to implement a large-ish stim package mainly through very targeted tax incentives — so fund the new economic activity we so badly need to exit the recession by motivating private investment rather than through Treasury outlay per se. Anyone buying it? Or is it now truly Hoovertime?”
Only for the “low information” voters.
My own observations:
1. We live on Maui, a real “low information” locale. Obama is regarded as a “local” [okay, Oahu, but still]. Yet when I first tentatively started wearing my “I voted for change, but all I got was this lousy t-shirt” shirt, people would stop me and say “yeah” or “where did you get that?”
2) My friends are located mostly in DC and were all strong Obama supporters. Most suffered through a year of my e-mail pleas and urgings. Yet every one of them without prompting remarks about how disappointed they are in Obama. Most, like me, will never go back. We’ll support good local Progressives, and individual Democrats, but never the national party. or Obama.
3) The other night my husband & I were at a performance by local musicians at a small venue. Afterwards, the artists, neither of whom we know, were mingling with the audience. We complimented one on a song he’d written [and we’d first heard] last year relating loosely to “hope and change,” and remarked how different things were now. He shook his head sadly.
There’s a lot of that out here, and we can’t ALL be DFHs.
@ezedit #43:
What made you think that the Republican response to the State of the Union speech was made in Montgomery, Alabama? The capital of the confederacy was in Richmond, Virginia, the city where Bob McDonnell now works as governor.
I’m not defending the choice of the hall — I thought Colbert took exactly the right tack in calling it “the white president’s state of the union speech”. But they didn’t fly him into freaking Alabama to stage the ridiculous Bizarroworld speech; he only had to go down the street.