Hell to Pay: Paul Wellstone memorial edition
nominees

post from Daily Kos on 26 October 2012 07:00:06 PM. © Daily Kos

Picture of Wellstone bus, taken by William Wesen on 09/25/2005 at Memorial Site This week we're doing something different with Hell to Pay, and honoring the memory of Sen. Paul Wellstone. The plane crash that killed Sen. Wellstone, his wife, daughter, and staff was Oct. 25, 2002. To honor his memory, we're going to devote Hell to Pay fundraising to the candidates who best embody the spirit of Wellstone.

You had some fantastic suggestions, including two Senate candidates who have been previous recipients of our fundraising efforts, Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin. Because we've raised for them before, they're getting honorable mention here. Update: and also Jim Graves in MN-06. We've raised for him, too.

And greytdog had a great idea in picking both a Senate and a House candidate. The Senate nominee who came up most frequently with commenters is Sen. Sherrod Brown, and they make a compelling case:

Brown has guts and compassion which make him a champion. He knows the winger army of the night is after him, but he turns slightly and waves at them as he goes onward out of their reach--so far. At least the wingers got this target correct because they have much to fear from a successful progressive.
by judyms9 on Thu Oct 25, 2012 at 05:45:58 PM MDT
and
Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Another fighter for an inclusive govt an inclusive country - a man who understands that America is about Community, that the people are America's finest asset and greatest strength.
by greytdog on Thu Oct 25, 2012 at 05:22:09 PM MDT

So Sherrod Brown for the Senate it is. Here are your House nominees:

It is so good to see David Gill on this list. Unfortunately David won't be my congressman due to redistricting. But I have donated to his campaign because his is a voice like Paul Wellstone's. David will provide a strong fact backed progressive voice in the house!
by Maximilien Robespierre on Thu Oct 25, 2012 at 05:10:04 PM MDT

Rick's running an unabashadly progressive campaign and demonstrating that you can do that and win, which is exactly what Paul Wellstone taught us all. Please do what you can to help send Rick Nolan to Congress as my representative.
by Joel in Duluth on Thu Oct 25, 2012 at 06:51:41 PM MDT

Lois Frankel of Florida. She gets it. She understands that not only does she represent her district & her state, but that she does also represent every American in the House. The House of Representatives is the people's voice and Lois believes in people, she understands that this isn't just about women, it's not just about people of color, it's about Americans?about how we define ourselves as a people, as a nation.
by greytdog on Thu Oct 25, 2012 at 05:22:09 PM MDT

Jim Graves -- he's from MN, he's running against the truly horrible (Michele Bachmann), he's a hotel CEO who's supported by the hotel unions, so he gets my vote.

~~by Tamar on Thu Oct 25, 2012 at 06:57:11 PM MDT~~

Long time reader, first time commenter... and I have to chime in about Ami Bera. He is NorCal's Paul Wellstone. From the first day I met him over 3 years ago, this man has made reaching out to local activists his priority, and he has genuinely appreciated my help and support. He is uncomfortable about his notoriety but continues to fight on because it has meaning, especially with Dan Lungren as his opponent. Ami is running because, as a doctor, he knows just how important basic health care, a clean environment, and the protection of women's rights are to our society. He gets it. In every fiber of his being. And it shows in the loving relationship he has with his own family. I can't vote for Ami because I don't live in his district but I would do anything to make sure he gets elected. And re-elected.
by SacramentosKing on Fri Oct 26, 2012 at 10:23:11 AM MDT

All making a compelling case, so here are your nominees for the week. Who's going to join Sherrod Brown as our House Hell to Pay candidate? Who's gonna give the Republicans the most hell?

Ami Bera CA-07
Lois Frankel FL-22
David Gill IL-13
~~Jim Graves MN-06~~
Rick Nolan MN-08

4:08 PM PT: I messed up. We've already had a Hell to Pay for Jim Graves. So it wouldn't be fair to Warren and Baldwin to keep him in the mix. I can't edit the poll, unfortunately, but please consider him out of the mix.

4:20 PM PT: foreverblue makes a pitch in comments:

I strongly recommend voting for Lois Frankel (1+ / 0-)

We need her to defeat Adam Hasner, who was speaker of the most right-wing, Tea Party, special-interest controlled Florida House in memory. He abandoned the Senate race when he was hand-picked by Allen West to take his place so he could run in a more conservative district. We need her in the House to stand up to the GOP and support the middle class.

4:33 PM PT: Another endorsement, from peglyn:

David Gill!!! (1+ / 0-)
I, too have been redistricted out of Dr. Gill's congressional district and have STILL donated to him. A quality man and a quality candidate who has a real chance of winning against a man hand-picked in a Republican closed-door session- not even by the voters- and they are pissed about this. Please read about him: http://www.gill2012.org/ and support his campaign.

4:37 PM PT: Another endorsement for Frankel from Ricochet67

because I live in Florida and even though Debbie WS is my congresswoman (Yayyy!), I've been contributing to Patrick Murphy (against Allen West). I didn't know that Lois's opponent was picked by that idiot AW for that district.

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CNN knows their spin, and they're sticking with
it

post from Daily Kos on 26 October 2012 06:45:04 PM. © Daily Kos

CNN's new poll shows Obama winning likely voters in Ohio by a four-point spread. But that's not how they're reporting their own numbers:

CNN screen shot shows 50-46 Obama lead among Ohio likely voters: CNN chyron says 'Obama, Romney tied in Ohio: 4-point lead within sampling error'

Oh, CNN. That is not how margin of error works. But whatever fits the narrative of the day, I suppose.

Please chip in $5 to help President Obama.

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Have White Voters Been Taken for Granted

post from The American Prospect on 26 October 2012 06:31:40 PM. © The American Prospect

Have white voters been taken for granted? That?s the basic thesis of a recent piece from Politico?s John Hohmann, who argues that if Mitt Romney wins, it will be proof that ?white voters still matter.? This, we suppose, is true. Mitt Romney is winning by historic margins among white voters, and Barack Obama's re-election depends on his ability to win over at least 40 percent of them.

The problem with Hohmann?s argument, of course, is that no one has said otherwise! There is no one in American politics arguing that white voters somehow ?don?t matter.? In fact, the exact opposite is true. At the moment, the campaigns are obsessed with winning voters in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Colorado. What do these states all have in common? They are fairly white compared to the rest of the country. Obama has been campaigning with Bill Clinton in an explicit effort to increase his margins among the ?Bubbas? of American politics.

African Americans are nearly taken for granted by Democratic politicians, and Latinos are well on their way to the same status?after all, their only alternative is a party that has institutionalized hostility to Hispanic immigrants. The only swing voters left in this country are whites, and both parties have bent over backwards to accommodate them.

Put another way, the idea that white voters are ?overlooked? is so ludicrous that the only proper response is to mock it. Mercilessly. Have fun.

So They Say

"I?ll wash John Boehner?s car, I?ll walk Mitch McConnell?s dog."

?President Obama's last-resort fiscal cliff tactics, as explained to radio host Michael Smerconish

Daily Meme: Homework for Undecideds

Election coverage has turned into a poll-chasing, swing state-version of Carmen Sandiego, which is, of course, no help to undecideds. If you're still trying to narrow down your choices, or want something a little chewier to read this weekend, we have some suggestions.
We already have a good idea of what the Obama presidency would look like?we've seen quite a bit of it the past four years. But what about a Romney presidency? What does a Romney economic plan and foreign policy look like?
Here's a list of Romney's top advisors for more background on how he would lead.
How do Obama and Romney differ on immigration? It's an issue that hasn't gotten much play in the final lap before November.
Whoever is president come January 21 will have a lot of power in shaping the Supreme Court for decades to come. ProPublica explains how the candidates differ when it comes to the Court.
Climate change is an increasingly pressing problem, but it hasn't been mentioned at all on the trail, even though voters acknowledge it is something we need to deal with. Here is what Obama and Romney might have planned for the environment.
Christian Science Monitor has a handy guide that breaks down the differences between the two candidates, issue by issue.
What about us voters? Are we better off than four years ago? Read this special report from Bloomberg Businessweek and decide for yourself.

What We're Writing

Harold Meyerson checks in on Osceola County, which may decide where Florida's electoral votes end up.
Abby Rapoport discovers that your mail-in ballot may not be as reliable as you think.

What We're Reading

Nate Cohn lays out what needs to happen for Obama to win Ohio.
Conservatives are very angry about Lena Dunham's new Obama ad, which is basically a double entendre about voting and sex. Too bad Ronald Reagan made the same joke 32 years ago.
You know who is a big Obama donor? The real first black president. Also, Trekkies and Lisa Simpson.
Ohio voters, who get bombarded by electoral politics more than anyone else in the country, are a bit disenchanted by all the promises.
GQ talks to Key and Peele about their most excellent "Obama Anger Translator" skit.
Jonathan Alter says don't count on Moderate Mitt sticking around for New Year's.
Romney's new favorite thing to like? The word "big."

Poll of the Day

New polls from Ohio show Obama still holds an edge, albeit an increasingly narrow one. The CNN/Opinion Research poll holds the score at 50-46, while the Purple Strategies and ARG polls hold the advantage at 46-44 and 49-47, respectively.

For more polling information, go to the Prospect?s 2012 election map.

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Landmark Moment: Army Vet and Trans Activist to
Head Up LGBT Military Advocacy Org

post from Firedoglake on 26 October 2012 06:22:26 PM. © Firedoglake

It's a moment of transition in the post-Don't Ask, Don't Tell era. There is still work to be done to bring the lives of LGB service members to parity with their straight colleagues when it comes to civil rights. It is a bold and insightful decision for[...]

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Monster Overload On Mockingbird Lane

post from ThinkProgress on 26 October 2012 06:21:08 PM. © ThinkProgress

Over at The Atlantic, I took a look at NBC’s reboot of The Munsters, Mockingbird Lane, and beyond that, the question of what monsters are for and whether they can have any actual impact when they’ve become ubiquitous: So if we aren’t supposed to be frightened of the Munsters, what are they for? Mockingbird Lane [...]

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gress0Borg0Calyssa0C20A120C10A0C260C10A970A210Cmockingbird0Elane0E20C/story01.htm

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Planned Parenthood Files Suit Against Texas In
State Court

post from ThinkProgress on 26 October 2012 06:15:55 PM. © ThinkProgress

Earlier today, the Fifth Circuit federal appellate court denied Texas Planned Parenthood’s request for a re-hearing before the full bench regarding the Texas Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) decision to defund Planned Parenthood affiliates in the state. In a press release, Planned Parenthood has just announced that state affiliates have now filed a [...]

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Understanding the Polls in Ohio

post from Talking Points Memo on 26 October 2012 06:01:12 PM. © Talking Points Memo

I've mentioned a few times that there's a pattern in the Ohio polls. The premium polls seem to consistently show better results for Obama than the others. Now 'premium' can mean a lot of things. But in this case I mean in part a subjective read of the[...]

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Harry Reid Taken to Hospital After Car Crash

post from Talking Points Memo on 26 October 2012 06:01:12 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) was taken to University Medical Center in Las Vegas this afternoon after his security motorcade was involved in a multi-car accident. There is no information currently available on Reid's condition. Late Update: Subsequent[...]

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Top Romney Economic Adviser: 'The Rich Are Taxed
Enough'

Back in June, Mitt Romney's top economic adviser Glenn Hubbard caused a stir when he took his partisan politics beyond the water's edge and onto the op-ed page of a German newspaper. Now, the man the New York Times labeled Romney's "go-to economist" has uttered something far more appalling, if entirely predictable. "The rich," Hubbard declared, "are taxed enough." As it turns out, Uncle Sam's total tax bite as a percentage of the nation's economy isn't just at its lowest level in 60 years. The effective tax rate for American millionaires--one which Governor Romney's plan will slash further-- has been plummeting for two decades.

The former head of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers made his remarks during Monday's Intelligence Squared Debate. There, Hubbard echoed Bush's 2004 pronouncement that "the really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway." As ABC reported:

"Raising tax rates on the rich is both counter-productive and unnecessary to fund the government we want," said Hubbard.

While steering clear of specifics, Hubbard told the audience at the Intelligence Squared Debate that "higher tax rates won't necessarily produce enhancements in revenue."

"We can and should achieve fairness and growth without taxing the rich more than they are today," he said.

It was altogether fitting that Hubbard's debate teammate was supply-side snake oil salesman Arthur Laffer. The architect of the fiscally reckless and thoroughly disproven Republican mantra that "tax cuts pay for themselves," Laffer told Fox News in 2009 that raising revenue "cannot be done at the high end because those people can get away from it" for a very simple reason:

"I mean, you really can't collect much money from upper-income people. They know how to get around taxes."

Of course, Mitt Romney has become the poster boy for tax avoidance that Bush, Laffer and Hubbard endorse. But his paltry 14 percent tax rate isn't just the result of endless machinations avoid paying his fair share to the United States Treasury. Changes to the tax code over the past two decades made Mitt's pittance possible.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities revealed in the chart above, the effective tax rate paid by millionaires and those among the top 400 richest earners in the country has been falling for years even as their incomes have reached stratospheric levels. Despite right-wing mythology to the contrary, economic expansion and employment growth were both faster when taxes on supposed "job creators" were much higher than they are today. (It is also worth noting that while most Americans are still recovering financially from the Bush recession that began in December 2007, by 2010 the wealthy had more than made up their losses.)

But it wasn't just the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 (which Glenn Hubbard helped put in place) which created this perverse result. The plummeting tax bill for the upper-crust is due in large part of the reductions in capital gains taxes both parties pursued over the past 25 years. An analysis by the Washington Post concluded that "capital gains tax rates benefiting wealthy feed [the] growing gap between rich and poor." As the Post explained, for the very richest Americans the successive capital gains tax cuts from Presidents Clinton (from 28 to 20 percent) and Bush (from 20 to 15 percent) have been "better than any Christmas gift":

While it's true that many middle-class Americans own stocks or bonds, they tend to stash them in tax-sheltered retirement accounts, where the capital gains rate does not apply. By contrast, the richest Americans reap huge benefits. Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.

This convenient chart tells the tale:

But Glenn Hubbard's deceit hardly ends there. Republican politicians and their conservative water-carriers pretend that it's always 1980 (when the top marginal rate was 70 percent) or 1944 (when it topped 90 percent). As Dylan Matthews explained in the Washington Post today ("When taxes are high, raising them hurts. When they're low, not so much."), research shows the impact of a small tax increase on wealthiest Americans has almost no impact on the economy when current rates are low, as they are now:

So the more realistic Jaimovich and Rebelo's model gets, the less likely it is to see any effects on growth of increasing taxes for high earners, and certainly if the increases are as small as the ones Obama has been proposing. That's in line with a recent Congressional Research Service study that found zero effect of changes in top tax rates on growth.

There's definitely a point at which high tax rates for the rich hurt growth. But we're nowhere near there yet.

Nevertheless, Glenn Hubbard's would-be future boss (Hubbard is rumored to be at the top of Mitt Romney's list for Treasury Secretary) would slash taxes for the rich further still. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that Romney's plan would result in a tax increase for the top 5 percent and increase for everyone else. But while Team Romney has protested that their magical scheme to close some to-be-determined deductions and loopholes would prevent that from happening, neither Mitt Romney nor Paul Ryan has had the courage to name a single tax break they would close. Or as Glenn Hubbard explained when Romney rolled out his 20 percent across-the-board cut earlier this year: