Something About Dignity and Filthy Mouths (Class Warfare Edition)

[#resist]

This is, thematically, more than simply important; it is basically the right-wing game:

Hatch had an opportunity to defend his proposal on the merits and/or explain why he disagreed with the non-partisan assessments, but he chose instead to make this personal. The Utah Republican is apparently under the impression that his upbringing matters, and factual descriptions of his legislation don’t.

(Benen)

This is standard Republican fare; they cannot defend the policy, so they pitch a fit about dignity, instead.

So damn old.

No, really, look, conservatives have this thing, like wanting to talk shit about other people but pretending offense at the notion they have a filthy mouth, and the thing is that in this dualistic society^α, people will line up to the tune of forty to forty-five percent, reflexively, just because. And the rest they can scrabble after, especially if forty-six percent, or so, will win.

What, does nobody remember when the wealthy bawled about class warfare just because Americans elected a black man?

Well, here’s the class warfare they wanted.

No, really, this is #WhatTheyVotedFor.

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^α Americans are post-Christian, and have thus always been polarized. Left/Right; Liberal/Conservative; Good/Evil; God/Devil; man/woman; white/nonwhite; binary/nonbinary (yes, really); Christian/Everybody Else (yes, really). What is that we hear? Americans are more polarized than ever? That pretty much means we are being ourselves. The functional question—(function/dysfunction)—has to do with juxtaposing the Constitution for ourselves and our posterity against the proverbial suicide pact.

Image note: Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT), left, is flanked by House Speaker Ryan (R-WI), right, while signing the American Manufacturing Competitiveness Act of 2016, on Capitol Hill, 18 May 2016, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Benen, Steve. “A senatorial clash that explains what’s wrong with the tax fight”. msnbc. 17 November 2017.

Another Memo to the Late Party of Reagan

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

MEMORANDUM

To: Republican voters

re: What now? (Follow-up)

So it turns out we weren’t the only ones who noticed. Or, as Steve Benen put it today:

In the same interview, Moore added, “Reagan ran as an ideological conservative. Trump ran as an economic populist. Trump’s victory turned it into the Trump party.”

One of these days, conservatives are going to have to come to terms with the fact that they have no idea what “populism” means.

Indeed, not long after Moore’s remarks, the Republican president-elect, leading the newly transformed “populist working-class party,” indicated a variety of far-right billionaires would join his cabinet, including vulture capitalist Wilbur Ross for the Department of Commerce.

Which was right around the time Republicans celebrated a court ruling blocking President Obama’s policy expanding access to overtime pay for millions of working-class Americans.

Which was right around the time the Associated Press reported―about a month too late―that Trump’s tax plan would actually raise taxes on many middle-class Americans while delivering a windfall to those at the top.

This. Is. Not. Populism.

A Low Rumbling Noise Out of New Jersey

It is not exactly what we might call vacation, but sometimes we find ourselves somewhere else, doing other things, and the result is a cheap, quick-hit, read-this blog post.

You know, kind of like this. Read this bit from Steve Benen:

If the GOP candidate is comparing himself to the American norm, Christie is in rarefied economic air. Unless his income fell dramatically last year from 2013, it’s both factually and politically wrong for him to say he’s “not wealthy.”

In a speech on entitlements this week, the New Jersey Republican said, “Let’s ask ourselves an honest question: do we really believe that the wealthiest Americans need to take from younger, hardworking Americans to receive what, for most of them, is a modest monthly Social Security check?” He added, “I propose a modest means test that only affects those with non-Social Security income of over $80,000 per year, and phases out Social Security payments entirely for those that have $200,000 a year of other income.”

In other words, Christie this week defined “the wealthiest Americans” as those who earn far less per year than he does.

The Chris Christie Show would seem to be counting down to liftoff, and one can only wonder at the advisability of doing so with such odds of a deeply-reverberating crash. We must remember that the Clown Car is mostly an entertainment spectacle, so try to keep all this early disgrace in perspective. After all, even Herman Cain had his moment atop the polls during the 2011-12 primary season. Maybe these failed political campaigns should try a PR stunt―a dollar a vote, given to charity after they drop out. At least then it wouldn’t be a complete waste of time and money.

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Benen, Steve. “Despite 1% status, Christie says he’s ‘not wealthy'”. msnbc. 16 April 2015.

Worth Keeping an Eye On

Sometimes it feels nearly head versus wall:

Progressives are angry at the president for caving in to Republicans on the CRomnibus budget bill, and rightly so—the rollback of post-Great Recession regulations on financial derivatives is simply inexcusable. But there is a way for President Obama to win back his party’s base with a bold strike on behalf of the middle class: Raise the overtime pay threshold.

Overtime pay is to the middle class what the minimum wage is to low-wage workers. In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week, but by 2013, that number had dropped to less than 11 percent. That’s because the income threshold at which employers are required to pay overtime has been allowed to erode to only $23,660 a year, less than the poverty line for a family of four. The 89 percent of salaried workers who now earn over that threshold can be forced to work unlimited overtime hours for no additional pay at all ....

.... But it doesn’t have to be this way: President Obama could raise the overtime threshold to $69,000—enough to cover the same 65 percent of salaried workers that it covered 40 years ago—and with no prior congressional approval. Because unlike the minimum wage, the overtime threshold is set through the Department of Labor’s existing regulatory authority.

(Hanauer)

And if we find ourselves thinking there must be a catch, there probably is. The first thing to mind, for instance, is that American corporations will revisit the question of which jobs they need to keep close by, and which can be shipped overseas. Then again, even the executives will hedge before they send their expense reports to Bangalore.

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Hanauer, Nick. “Give Americans the overtime pay they’ve earned”. The Hill. 18 December 2014.