On the Issues
This page contains some quick briefings on issues I’ve covered in the blog, and links to related posts on those issues. This page is a work in progress. As the blog continues to grow, so will this resource. Please feel free to suggest sources for more information in the comments.
Contents:
- Economy
- Energy
- Environment
- GLBT Rights
- Immigration
- Regulation
- Taxes
- Transportation and Infrastructure
Economy
Jobs
Republicans always try to claim that lowering taxes on the wealthy creates jobs. This just doesn’t make any sense. Our economy is driven by consumer spending; giving money to the middle and lower classes makes it much more likely to go toward consumption than giving it to the wealthy. More consumption — i.e. more demand — also creates demand for more jobs.
Sound too abstract? Just look at the data:
Useful links:
- 21st Century Democrats - Presidential Economic Data
Related posts:
- If cutting taxes helps businesses, how come Republican presidents always lose jobs?
- More on Democrats, Republicans, and the economy
- Americans lost income under both Democratic and Republican control, but less under Democrats
The housing and financial crises
Our economic crisis should be seen as a final verdict on the Republican policies of the past three decades. Deregulation and a “do-nothing” philosophy on the economy caused the government to turn a blind eye to the threat posed by subprime mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.
Blaming the meltdown on minorities and the community reinvestment act is abhorrent. Outlawing discrimination in the housing market was one of the wisest things our Congress has done, both morally and financially. The housing crisis actually stemmed from a combination of poor regulation and the misguided belief that home values would rise forever.
Useful links:
Related posts:
The bailout bill
The bailout package that passed Congress in early October was absolutely unpleasant, but necessary to help save our economy. Most people don’t want to bail out wealthy CEOs who helped to create this crisis. That’s understandable, but shortsighted, because the crises affects our whole economy. The stock market doesn’t just affect the rich; it affects millions of Americans’ retirements. The credit crisis isn’t an abstract numbers game; it directly affects our jobs and wages.
Even after the bailout, of course, the economy is in bad shape. What we’ve prevented, however, is an even greater catastrophe.
Related posts:
- Why we needed the bailout
- Without a bailout, this is what happens to your wages
- Why the bailout plan couldn’t pass [before it did, of course]
Energy
The Republicans have been pushing a plan based on endless oil drilling. So much for being concerned about our “addiction to oil.” As many people have noted, the Republican plan is the equivalent of solving alcoholism by buying alcohol in bulk.
What’s even worse is that the Republican plan won’t accomplish anything: even their own analysis confirms it. In fact, between offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR, we stand to save only a couple of dollars per barrel, and not until 2030.
Useful links:
- Energy Information Administration - Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf
- Energy Information Administration - Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (PDF)
Related posts:
- Drill in ANWR, save $1 per barrel
- Coleman’s offshore drilling plan is useless
- Tinklenberg has great response to Bachmann oil lunacy
- Drilling more oil won’t save us
Environment
There is no serious debate over whether global warming exists. Yet somehow, it has been more common — not less — for Republicans to decry global warming as a “myth.” This fits into their general policy of simply ignoring problems and hoping they’ll go away. On the environment, like many other issues, the Republicans choose to simply drag their feet and pass the problem on to the next generation.
Related posts:
GLBT rights
I believe we have a moral obligation to always work towards expanding the rights and freedoms given to Americans. It’s not always easy, and it’s not always pretty, but when we give people freedom, instead of taking it away, we can always be sure we are on the right side of history.
The only time when it does not make sense to extend certain freedoms is when that would cause other people harm. That’s why we don’t have the freedom to drink and drive, for instance. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t think of a way that same-sex marriage harms anybody. Without a legitimate reason why same-sex marriage harms our society, we are just acting on an arbitrary grudge. What’s to stop us from going further down the slippery slope and outlawing other marriages?
Related posts:
Immigration
Conservatives love to focus on illegal immigration. Their position seems reasonable at first: immigrants are doing something illegal and should be stopped. But the problem is that the laws don’t match the market reality. Conservatives love the free market, don’t they? It’s funny how they abandon it when it comes to immigration.
Our market has an incredible appetite for immigrant workers, and indeed it always has. That’s why dozens of immigrant groups have managed to find success in our country, and why we have such an incredible diversity of cultures here. But today, our laws don’t allow them into the country in adequate numbers. When we open our borders and embrace immigrants, just like we have throughout our history, the problem will disappear.
Related posts:
Regulation
Since the Reagan administration, deregulation has been one of conservatives’ greatest goals. It’s part of their mentality that “the free market solves all.” Well, lately we’ve seen that it hasn’t been working out so well. First, we had the Enron fiasco. We’ve had numerous cases of dangerous drugs being allowed onto the market because of a lack of oversight. The collapse of the housing market also stemmed partly from a lack of regulation and oversight by Federal agencies.
The free market is a good thing. But completely unregulated privatization is not.
Related posts:
Taxes
“No New Taxes” is a scam. When it comes to financing our government, there are three options:
- Pay for things we need up front.
- Put them on the credit card (i.e. build up the debt).
- Cut services and investments in infrastructure.
Tim Pawlenty has chosen options 2 and 3, and we’ve felt the impact of his choices. Our decades-old investments in the social contract in Minnesota have been getting chipped away. What was once the “State That Works” has been falling deeper and deeper into mediocrity in almost every way. It’s becoming clearer and clearer — we weren’t the State That Works in spite of our taxes, but because of our investments.
Of course, Minnesotans have been paying anyway. Because he knows that we won’t tolerate the loss of the services we’ve come to depend on, Pawlenty has jacked up fees on almost everything. And to compensate for the loss of state aid, local government property taxes have skyrocketed. Check out the graph below — is there any doubt where your property tax bill has come from?
Useful links:
- Minnesota Independent: How Tim Pawlenty made his case for VP by wrecking the Minnesota economy
Related posts:
- Sacrifice and the American way of life
- How the gas tax will help us
- How do you balance the budget with “no new taxes”?
- Does the MNGOP care about tax fairness? Don’t bet on it.
Transportation and Infrastructure
Roads and bridges
Underfunding of our transportation and infrastructure has put us in danger, and it will cost more in the long run anyway. In Minnesota, we’ve had the clearest example of the necessity of investing in our infrastructure. Since the I-35W bridge collapse, 3 other bridges have been closed, either temporarily or permanently. Recently, we got a shock as over half a ton of concrete fell from a crumbling freeway.
Maintaining our roads and bridges is just not something that we can afford to put off. Good financial management would be to eliminate problems before they start — it’s a lot cheaper to do routine maintenance than to replace a bridge. Instead, the Pawlenty administration has not only foregone maintenance, they’ve tried to put new construction on a credit card. DFL legislators have used an increase in the gas tax to start properly funding transportation investments. The question is, are you willing to pay an extra 5 cents per gallon to stop 1200-pound chunks of our freeways from falling on us? I know I sure am.
Related posts:
- Our literally crumbling infrastructure
- Safe bridges, courtesy of your DFL legislature
- Another thank you to the “Override 6″
Transit
Think of transit as just another form of infrastructure. Conservatives would like you to think of it as a subsidized waste of money, but it’s no more of a waste of money than freeways. You don’t see conservatives demanding we get rid of those.
The typical statistic thrown around is that 70 percent of the cost of transit is subsidized. That’s true, but all transportation is subsidized, not just transit. In fact, 74 percent of all transportation costs are subsidized.
Useful links:
Related posts:
Posted by Jeff Rosenberg | August 2, 2008
By Isaiah, October 25, 2008 @ 11:53 am
Here is a tip:
DFL candidate and incumbent in 56B, Marsha Swails has received the endorsement of both Twin Cities major papers. Strib in online. PP is in early Sunday edition, but not online at present. See text below.
View Swails’s opponent self-declared embarrassment in debate performance at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQAd2xxWdB4
PP endorsement:
Sunday 10-26-2008
District 56B: Marsha Swails
(Woodbury and Landfall)
Marsha Swails, of Woodbury, a high school English teacher endorsed by the DFL, won her first term in 2006. She was among several moderate Democrats who defeated Republican incumbents that year. This time around, her opponent is Lee Bohlsen, of Woodbury, a church administrator endorsed by the Republican Party.
Bohlsen, 57, argues for personal responsibility, smaller government, lower taxes, free markets, for protecting the sanctity of life and preserving traditional marriage. She says there’s waste to be found in entitlement programs and that allowing able-bodied people to become reliant on welfare programs is akin to enslaving them. She’d like to see the federal government get out of education.
Swails, 56, sees herself as a fiscal conservative who is business-friendly. As a teacher, she appreciates the additional accountability produced by the federal No Child Left Behind Act—“it has sharpened us in the classroom,” she says—but says it needs to better measure individual achievement to reflect what real progress students and schools are making. She says her top priorities should she be re-elected are education and the economy, affordable health care and property-tax relief. She’s proud of what she sees as the orderly conduct of business in the last two legislative sessions and a break in the partisan gridlock of earlier sessions. Swails brings to her party a moderate, suburban point of view. We’ll trust her to resist the potential intemperance of a larger DFL majority, should it happen, and we endorse her for a second term.