The Blast will be on hiatus beginning Sunday the 25th, and is scheduled to return Saturday the 31st or Sunday the 1st.
AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. Odds and Ends
Governor and Executive Council huddle behind closed doors, banking connection?
NH1 Political Report, by Kevin Landrigan, nh1.com, October 23, 2015
It’s curious, and the amount of public information is limited but something appears up at the upper echelon of the New Hampshire Banking Department.
The clear signal was Wednesday’s meeting of Gov. Maggie Hassan and the Executive Council in the small town of Mason.
The New Hampshire Political Report observed Hassan and the council adjourning their regular business meeting to go across the street to meet privately in a classroom of the Mason Elementary School.
The agenda is not public but it sure looked to be about Banking Commissioner Glenn A. Perlow.
Well, the council, Hassan and legal counsel can meet on personnel matters under the Right to Know Law but they aren’t allowed to legally bring in all kinds of parties to discuss with them unless they are connected to the case.
And inside the private meeting for more than 45 minutes was Perlow and his lawyer, Russell Hilliard.
Hilliard, a former, longtime chairman of the Legislative Ethics Committee, has represented both the government and private targets of ethics and public integrity charges.
After the session he quickly escorted his client to his car and drove away.
Hassan and the council then voted in public to seal all minutes of the executive session.
Asked if this private matter may ever become public Hassan only added, "All I am going to say is this is a personnel matter. Period."
Another observation: Attorney General Joe Foster stayed studiously outside the building while the governor and council met.
Sometimes in the past when the council has considered "public integrity" charges, past AGs have stayed out of executive sessions since it’s the AG unit that investigates these matters.
That’s all we know for now.
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With a little over a week before both major outcomes let’s take a look see at the mayoral race in the Queen City.
This one is clearly a barnburner. There is no doubt that less than 5 percent will separate incumbent Mayor Ted Gatsas, a Republican, and challenger/Alderwoman Joyce Craig, a Democrat.
As we have written before, Manchester voters have a penchant for deciding their mayor are like old dishrags and should get thrown out every four to six years whether they are still useful or not.
Gatsas has done a lot to fight this trend staying very much on the offensive during this fall run-off during both their forums and some stinging mail pieces.
Craig’s team has responded in kind with their own hit mail that attacks Gatsas for failing to deal quickly enough with the heroin/opioid/fentanyl crisis.
Color this one all about turnout and with time still left the slightest of edges right now goes to the challenger.
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Then there’s the mayor’s race for a vacant spot in Nashua where outgoing Mayor Donnalee Lozeau is departing but by no means retiring.
During her final weeks in office, Lozeau remains very politically active and many see a campaign for higher office in her future with a bid for governor the most likely option.
Now to the final choice between Democrat and former Mayor Jim Donchess and Republican/former Nashua Chamber CEO Chris Williams.
Who wins this one?
Again, not easy. Donchess won the preliminary going away and has already attracted the endorsement of Alderman-at-Large David Deane, a Republican and third-place finisher.
Now Deane and Donchess, an alderman-at-large, are colleagues but Williams had clearly hoped to get the support of all four other competitors who are card-carrying Republicans; no such luck.
You have to give the momentum edge to Donchess since after eight years with the moderate Republican Lozeau in charge, Nashua Democrats are hungrier.
But despite his youth, Williams, 40, has been associated as a strategist with many GOP campaigns that exceeded expectations and this one could too.
Williams does have the backing of three former Nashua mayors. Could he pick up a fourth? Will Lozeau weigh in during this final week?
The New Hampshire Political Report has learned Lozeau’s mother has a "Williams-Move Nashua Forward" sign on her front law, for what that’s worth.
The New Hampshire Political Report has learned Lozeau’s mother has a "Williams-Move Nashua Forward" sign on her front law, for what that’s worth.
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Count on Republican activists and Super PACs to climb all over Gov. Maggie Hassan the first time the Senate Majority PAC aka outgoing Minority Leader Harry Reid’s Super PAC
That came this week with Hassan’s team making much out of a Democratic-leaning poll (Public Policy Polling) that had the Democratic challenger a point ahead of Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte, R-NH.
Here’s their e-mail.
America Rising PAC mocked Hassan for slamming Reid over his anti-New Hampshire primary comments last week.
"There’s no time for hurt feelings when there's money to raise! Governor Hassan has reached a new height of hypocrisy by bemoaning Senator Reid's comments and complaining about outside spending while Reid-backed special interest groups raise and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to prop up her campaign," said Amelia Chasse, the PAC’s press secretary.
Another sign this race at this early stage has reached prime time: America Rising has dispatched a full-time tracker to shadow Hassan wherever she goes.
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Meanwhile, Hassan is on the environment and not so subtle fashion trying to put her Republican Senate foe on the defensive.
Hassan pressed for support of Obama’s Clean Power Plan and uses it to emphasize her support for the state’s own target to use 25 percent of energy from renewables by 2025.
As state senator she also supported the state’s Greenhouse Gas Initiative and Renewable Portfolio Law.
Don’t figure on Ayotte sitting back and taking the beating; her team no doubt will point out some of these ``green’’ proposals raised electricity rates that already are among the highest
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What does Jack Flanagan’s exploring a bid for Congress say about the future of House Speaker Shawn Jasper after the 2016 elections?
In any other time could you imagine the House’s top Republican looking to take out a popular two-term incumbent Congresswoman in a presidential year (read Democratic leaning electorate)?
Sure it could happen but begs the question does Flanagan think he’s likely to be bounced as House majority leader even if Republicans keep control of the New Hampshire House.
We’ve confirmed that has had nothing to do with Flanagan’s thinking and furthermore while former Speaker William O’Brien would like nothing better than to knock off Jasper, no prominent House Republican conservative has yet emerged to say I’ll do it.
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What’s behind the timing of Mark Connolly confirming that he would be a Democratic candidate for governor in 2016?
It’s all about the Anybody But Colin Caucus in the Democratic Party.
The New Castle Democrat has an interesting story to tell, Connolly served as director of securities regulation and was a whistleblower in the aftermath of the Financial Resources Mortgage that swindled more than $30 million from unknowing investors.
Connolly wrote a tell-all book that didn’t mince words and criticized both the Banking Department and the Attorney General’s Office (under now-Sen. Kelly Ayotte) for falling down on the job.
Now there remain some critics who say it was Connolly who refused to consider FRM’s dealings were securities that his office should have cracked down on.
But back to Colin, the worst-kept secret in the Democratic Party is there remains a faction that is not fully behind Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern’s candidacy.
To be sure, Van Ostern has built an impressive, grassroots organization already and will raise the money.
But as a former campaign operative turned councilor, Van Ostern sometimes blazed his own trail and ruffled some party leader feathers.
Consider the 2014 election when Van Ostern got behind a little-known, legal aid laywer (Dan Feltes) who buried the party’s darling for an open State Senate seat (Kass Ardinger).
So Connolly had word leak out a day before he was meeting with another Democrat eying a race for governor, Stefany Shaheen, the eldest daughter of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH.
Connolly will take the pledge to veto a sales or income tax when he gets into the race which could be in the next week or so. Look for an announcement in Concord.
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Former State Rep. Maureen Mann didn’t win back a seat in the House but that doesn’t mean conservatives are done looking for someone to blame for a campaign worker indicted for voter fraud this week.
Carl Gibson had put out the false press release claiming Republican Yvonne Dean-Bailey had dropped out of the race.
The Super PAC Gibson worked on, Credo, had launched a $3 million campaign and supported then-candidate Carol Shea-Porter, D-NH, who upset Congressman Frank Guinta in 2012.
Guinta returned the favor in 2014.
"Carol Shea-Porter loves to trumpet her opposition to PACs, but her hollow claim is downright laughable. The reality is the former congresswoman is only opposed to those organizations that are not working to further her own ambitions," said Derek Dufresne of Citizens for a Strong New Hampshire.,
"The indictment of embattled Carl Gibson, an ally of the former congresswoman who worked for a group that spent millions of dollars to benefit liberals like her, is the perfect reminder of her blatant hypocrisy."
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The New Hampshire Democratic Party began an Accountability Project on Ayotte this week focusing a lot on women’s health where they believe Hassan has an overwhelming advantage.
Ayotte and her allies have been working hard on building the firewall and the incumbent continues this week with the Senate taking up her legislation on health risks to unborn children whose mothers have done heroin.
She’s also helped lead the campaign to oppose the Obama directive that is reducing the use of mammograms.
Privately Democratic insiders love Ayotte trying to improve her women’s health chops.
"This is our field and the more they want to try and play on it, it’s fine with us. It’s a contest she can’t win," one key Shaheen operative said.
2. Stopping Dangerous Junk Therapy in NH
Gay “Conversion Therapy” Ban Planned for NH Minors in 2016
by Mike Clifford, publicnewsservice.org, October 23, 2015
CONCORD, N.H. - The stage is set for the Granite State to tackle a hot topic next legislative session: so-called gay conversion therapy.
A Republican lawmaker has announced plans to file a measure that would ban conversion therapy for minors in New Hampshire.
Staff attorney Samantha Ames with the National Association for Lesbian Rights said the New Hampshire bill would follow a national trend.
"What the state bills do, and the New Hampshire bill is very much included in that, is protect minors under 18 from being subjected to conversion therapy at the hands of licensed mental-health practitioners," she said.
Opponents say it should be up to parents to determine the proper care for their children. Ames said the measure would follow the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, both of which say this kind of therapy can increase guilt and anxiety for minors.
Rep. Eric Schleien, R-Hillsborough, said he will introduce the measure in January. Ames said Schleien is among the growing ranks of Republicans denouncing conversion therapy.
"These bills have actually enjoyed broad bipartisan support," she said. "In fact, Chris Christie in New Jersey signed the conversion-therapy bill there into law the same year that he vetoed the Marriage Equality Bill. What we're seeing is a lot of Republican lawmakers who are seeing this is really about protecting our youth, regardless of who they are."
Some say the ban wouldn't go far enough, that it would fail to take into account spiritual or faith-based efforts at "converting" gay youth. Both President Obama and the Surgeon General have taken stands against conversion therapy, calling it junk science.
3. Trickle-Down Campaign Spending
Campaigns Ramp Up Spending in N.H., and Political Insiders Reap the Benefits
by Dan Barrick, nhpr.org, October 23, 2015
Presidential candidates boosted their spending in New Hampshire this summer, spending nearly six times as much as they did in the previous three month period.
The Republican and Democratic candidates doled out nearly $2 million across the state from July to September. The vast majority of that cash, however, went to a small handful of Republican operatives and consultants -- and the New Hampshire Democratic Party.
The largest slice of spending last quarter, according to new numbers from the Federal Election Commission, went to payroll and consultants, as campaigns bulked up their Granite State staffs. At the same time, candidates have significantly upped their spending on advertising and other kinds of promotion, including fundraising support.
CREDIT SARA PLOURDE / NHPR
These New Hampshire tallies, however, are not a complete picture of spending associated with the presidential primary campaign. First, the figures do not include any money spent on television advertising in the state, which, at least for some candidates, reaches six figures in recent months. Campaigns manage ad buys through third-party firms that negotiate directly with TV stations, and those firms are all based out of state.
These FEC numbers also don't include spending by Super PACS, the independent fundraising vehicles which are spending large sums of money to support candidates, through advertising, direct mail, and voter outreach.
And there's another important footnote to this data: Hillary Clinton's campaign included no information about New Hampshire staff salaries or consultants in its last FEC filing. Instead, the address of nearly every campaign staffer is given as a P.O. Box in New York City, "care of Hillary For America." So, without a complete list of New Hampshire staffers, it is impossible to know how much Clinton's Granite State operation is costing her campaign. A Clinton spokesman declined to provide a list of New Hampshire staff or information about the campaign's state payroll.
Who's spending the most?
Still, the 3rd quarter FEC filings provide a guide to how candidates in both parties have been ramping up their New Hampshire campaigns.
Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who spent much of the summer rising in the polls against Clinton, led all candidates in New Hampshire spending over that period, with $365,000 in total expenses. Close behind, however, was a candidate who's no longer in the race: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The Republican dropped his White House bid in September because of lackluster fundraising and lagging poll numbers.
But, at least according to his New Hampshire financial records, Walker was spending plenty of cash in an effort to raise more money in the final weeks of his candidacy. Through July, August and September, Walker paid $322,000 to SCM Associates, a Dublin, N.H.-based firm that specializes in fundraising pitches for Republican candidates. The firm's past clients include Mitt Romney's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, Scott Brown's failed Senate bid last year, and Walt Havenstein's 2014 campaign for governor.
In fact, Walker's tab with SCM Associates made the firm the biggest single recipient of primary campaign cash in the state last quarter.
CREDIT SARA PLOURDE / NHPR
Most of the other top recipients were GOP strategists, consultants and lobbying firms advising candidates on their New Hampshire strategy. This includes RightOn Strategies, run by Mike Biundo, who's helping steer Sen. Rand Paul's campaign; Elevare
Also on that list is Green Monster Consulting, the firm run by Corey Lewandowski, the national campaign manager for Donald Trump.
Another big beneficiary of candidate spending last quarter was the New Hampshire Democratic Party. The party received a total of $140,000 from Sanders. Of that amount, $40,000 came as a direct contribution in late August. The rest was the price tag of the party's voter file, a sprawling database with information on New Hampshire voters stretching back several election cycles. The file, which state party officials have spent years compiling and refining, can help campaigns target potential supporters, and can provide a big boost to campaign voter ID and get-out-the-vote efforts. Clinton purchased the data in the file earlier this year.
Where the dollars are landing
When it comes to the geography of campaign spending in New Hampshire, Manchester is definitely the winner. Roughly one-third of all campaign dollars was spent in the Queen City last quarter. Second was the town of Dublin, home of the aforementioned SCM Associates.
But, as the map below shows, the state's spending hotspot is the lower I-93 corridor, from Concord south, with a smattering of additional spending on the Seacoast. Many towns in northern and western New Hampshire saw no candidate spending last quarter. This pattern mirrors the campaign calendar: Candidates are much more frequent visitors to cities and towns in southern New Hampshire, where the majority of voters live. (Click on each town to see the candidate-level spending amounts there.)
Map: Campaign Spending by N.H. Town
[To see the interactive map, click on the following link:
Politics aside, what does this spending mean for the state and its economy?Researchers have tried to gage the impact that hosting the nation's first presidential primary has on New Hampshire's economy, including tourism dollars, business development and overall impression of the state.
But, looking solely at direct candidate spending this year, if you want to benefit from all that campaign cash sloshing around the state, it's best to be a GOP strategist with a Manchester address.
AND NATIONALLY
4. Pessimism Below the Presidency
Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble.
by Matthew Yglesias, vox.com, October 19, 2015
The Democratic Party is in much greater peril than its leaders or supporters recognize, and it has no plan to save itself.
Yes, Barack Obama is taking a victory lap in his seventh year in office. Yes, Republicans can't find a credible candidate to so much as run for speaker of the House. Yes, the GOP presidential field is led by a megalomaniacal reality TV star. All this is true — but rather than lay the foundation for enduring Democratic success, all it's done is breed a wrongheaded atmosphere of complacence.
The presidency is extremely important, of course. But there are also thousands of critically important offices all the way down the ballot. And the vast majority — 70 percent of state legislatures, more than 60 percent of governors, 55 percent of attorneys general and secretaries of state — are in Republicans hands. And, of course, Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Indeed, even the House infighting reflects, in some ways, the health of the GOP coalition. Republicans are confident they won't lose power in the House and are hungry for a vigorous argument about how best to use the power they have.
Not only have Republicans won most elections, but they have a perfectly reasonable plan for trying to recapture the White House. But Democrats have nothing at all in the works to redress their crippling weakness down the ballot. Democrats aren't even talking about how to improve on their weak points, because by and large they don't even admit that they exist.
Instead, the party is focused on a competition between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton over whether they should go a little bit to Obama's left or a lot to his left, options that are unlikely to help Democrats down-ballot in the face of an unfriendly House map and a more conservative midterm electorate. The GOP might be in chaos, but Democrats are in a torpor.
Democrats have been obliterated at the state level
The worst part of the problem for the Democratic Party is in races that are, collectively, the most important: state government.
Elections for state legislature rarely make the national news, but they are the fundamental building blocks of American politics. Since they run the redistricting process for the US House of Representatives and for themselves, they are where the greatest level of electoral entrenchment is possible.
And in the wake of the 2014 midterms, Republicans have overwhelming dominance of America's state legislatures.
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In what Democrats should take as a further bleak sign, four of the 11 states where they control both houses of the state legislature — Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois — have a Republican governor. This leaves just seven states under unified Democratic Party control.
Republicans have unified control of 25 states. Along with the usual set of tax cuts for high-income individuals and business-friendly regulations, the result has been:
An unprecedented wave of restrictions on abortion rights
Large-scale layoffs of teachers and other public sector workers who are likely to support Democrats
Admittedly, one of the Democrats' seven states is California, which contains more than 10 percent of the nation's total population. But Texas and Florida combine for more people than the Golden State, and the GOP also dominates Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina — all of which are among the 10 largest states by population. Democrats' largest non-California bastion of unified control is Oregon, home to only about one percent of the American people.*
As of 2012 or so, Democrats thought they had a solution to this. Hard-right GOP governors in places like Wisconsin and Florida had become unpopular and were clearly overreaching — reading a wave driven by the poor economy in 2010 as an ideological mandate for sweeping conservative policy change. And that worked in Pennsylvania's 2014 gubernatorial election — Tom Wolf rode a backlash against then-Gov. Tom Corbett's hard-right policies to victory. But Scott Walker, Rick Scott, Rick Snyder, and even Maine's Paul LePage were all reelected. And while the old plan didn't pan out, no new one has risen to take its place.
The GOP is flexible
Liberals accustomed to chuckling over the ideological rigor of the House GOP caucus won't want to hear this, but one of the foundations of the GOP's broad national success is a reasonable degree of ideological flexibility.
Essentially every state on the map contains overlapping circles of rich people who don't want to pay taxes and business owners who don't want to comply with labor, public health, and environmental regulations. In states like Texas or South Carolina, where this agenda nicely complements a robust social conservatism, the GOP offers that up and wins with it. But in a Maryland or a New Jersey, the party of business manages to throw up candidates who either lack hard-edged socially conservative views or else successfully downplay them as irrelevant in the context of blue-state governance.
Democrats, of course, are conceptually aware of the possibility of nominating unusually conservative candidates to run in unusually conservative states. But there is a fundamental mismatch. No US state is so left-wing as to have created an environment in which business interests are economically or politically irrelevant. Vermont is not North Korea, in other words.
But there are many states in which labor unions are neither large nor powerful and non-labor national progressive donor networks are inherently populated by relatively affluent people who tend to be emotionally driven by progressive commitments on social or environmental issues. This is why an impassioned defense of the legality of late-term abortions could make Wendy Davis a viral sensation, a national media star, and someone capable of activating the kind of donor and volunteer networks needed to mount a statewide campaign. Unfortunately for Democrats, however, this is precisely the wrong issue profile to try to win statewide elections in conservative states.
Republicans have a plan
Any serious article about the prospects for Democratic Party policymaking in 2017 starts with the premise that Republicans will continue to hold a majority in the US House of Representatives. This presumption is built on four premises:
The natural distribution of population in the United States tends to lead the average House district to be more GOP-friendly than the overall population.
GOP control of most state legislatures lets Republicans draw boundaries in a way that is even more GOP-friendly than the natural population distribution would suggest.
Incumbents have large advantages in House elections, and most incumbents are Republicans.
So-called "wave" elections in which tons of incumbents lose are typically driven by a backlash against the incumbent president. Since the incumbent president is a Democrat, Democrats have no way to set up a wave.
One striking fact about this is that the presumption of continued GOP control is so solid that you don't even get pushback from House Democratic leaders when you write it down. Privately, some backbench Democrats express frustration that the leadership has no plan to try to recapture the majority. In their defense, it's not like anyone outside the leadership has a great plan either.
But this isn't just a parochial issue for the House Democratic caucus. It means that the party's legislative agenda is entirely dead on arrival at the federal level. And it's particularly striking that this stronghold of conservatism comes from the exact institution that so frequently generates embarrassing headlines for the GOP. House Republicans act extreme in part because they know they can get away with it.
The GOP, by contrast, has basically two perfectly plausible plans for moving its agenda forward. One is to basically change nothing and just hope for slightly better luck from the economic fundamentals or in terms of Democratic Party scandals. The other is to shift left on immigration and gain some Latino votes while retaining the core of the party's commitments. Neither of these plans is exactly brilliant, innovative, or foolproof. But neither one is crazy. Even if you believe that Democrats have obtained a structural advantage in presidential elections, it's clearly not an enormous one. The 51 percent of the vote obtained by Barack Obama in 2012 was hardly a landslide, early head-to-head polling of 2016 indicates a close race, and there's always a chance that unexpected bad news will hit the US economy or impair our national security.
Winning a presidential election would give Republicans the overwhelming preponderance of political power in the United States — a level of dominance not achieved since the Democrats during the Great Depression, but with a much more ideologically coherent coalition. Nothing lasts forever in American politics, but a hyper-empowered conservative movement would have a significant ability to entrench its position by passing a national right-to-work law and further altering campaign finance rules beyond the Citizens Unitedstatus quo.
The first step for Democrats is admitting they have a problem
In some ways, the Democrats' biggest disadvantage is simply their current smugness. A party that controls such a small share of elected offices around the country is a party that should be engaged in vigorous debate about how to improve its fortunes. Much of the current Republican infighting — embarrassing and counterproductive though it may be at times — reflects the healthy impulse to recognize that the party lacks the full measure of power that it desires, and needs to argue about optimal strategies for obtaining it.
On the Democratic side, the personal political success of Barack Obama has created an atmosphere of complacency and overconfidence. If a black guy with the middle name Hussein can win the White House, the thinking seems to be, then anything is possible. Consequently, the party is marching steadily to the left on its issue positions — embracing same-sex marriage, rediscovering enthusiasm for gun control, rejecting the January 2013 income tax rate settlement as inadequate, raising its minimum wage aspirations to the $12-to-$15 range, abandoning the quest for a grand bargain on balancing the budget while proposing new entitlements for child care and parental leave — even though existing issue positions seem incompatible with a House majority or any meaningful degree of success in state politics.
Whatever you make of this agenda substantively, there's no way to actually enact it without first achieving a considerably higher level of down-ballot electoral success than Democrats currently enjoy.
But instead of a dialogue about how to obtain that success, Democrats are currently engaged in a slightly bizarre bidding war between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to see whether Congress in 2017 will reject a legislative agenda that is somewhat to the left of Obama's or drastically to its left. The differences between them are real, of course, and at least somewhat important.
But the much more significant question facing the party isn't about the White House — it's about all the other offices in the land. The problem is that control of the presidency seems to have blinded progressive activists to the possibility of even having an argument about what to do about all of them. That will change if and when the GOP seizes the White House, too, and Democrats bottom out. But the truly striking thing is how close to bottom the party is already and how blind it seems to be to that fact.
5. Bringing Back "Socialism"
It's Time for the US to Return to "Socialist" Policies
by Thom Hartmann, truth-out.org, October 23, 2015
It's been just over a month since the Wall Street Journal ran its misinformation hit piece claiming that Bernie Sanders' budget proposal would cost $18 trillion, and the Journal is back at it again.
This time it's Jason Riley who's criticizing Bernie's budget plan as being unrealistic and expensive, not to mention socialist.
In his opinion piece titled "Bernie Sanders and the Soak-the-Rich Myth," Riley writes "Bernie Sanders has been asserting [...] that pretty much every domestic problem, from aging infrastructure to student debt to teenage acne, could be solved by raising taxes high enough on the super rich."
Riley goes on to construct the rest of his, very flawed, argument based on this exchange between Senator Sanders and George Stephanopolous on Sunday.
Bernie went on to explain that guaranteeing paid family and medical leave would require a small increase in the payroll tax across the board.
And Riley is quick to write that that would mean a tax increase that would "hit" everyone.
But he completely ignores the fact that guaranteed paid sick and family leave would actually save many US workers money because they wouldn't be forfeiting wages whenever they take time off.
Riley goes on to broaden the scope of his piece, he criticizes Hillary for claiming that she would "make the wealthy pay," and then he writes: "[T]he irony is that liberals who want the federal government to secure more revenue for redistribution ought to favor a tax code that's less progressive. Time and again, history has shown that the rich pay more when the marginal rate is reduced."
The rest of his piece weaves a web of historical dreams, one where President Kennedy supported trickle-down economics and one where economic growth has anything to do with the top marginal tax rates.
He preempts any criticism of his history by writing, "The reason liberals find this history unpersuasive is because their soak-the-rich-rhetoric is more about politics than economics."
He goes on to accuse liberals of being too concerned with inequality and not concerned enough about growth.
And he's wrong. On pretty much every count.
The truth is that liberals, and anyone familiar with our country's economic history, find Riley's version of history unpersuasive because it's a complete distortion of reality.
It's well documented that the economy does best when the middle class does best.
In other words, the economy does well when economic inequality is low.
Beyond that, according to a 2012 report from the Congressional Research Service, "Analysis [...] suggests the reduction in the top tax rates have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution."
That research looked at the last 65 years of tax rates compared GDP, and the researchers found that lowering taxes on the rich doesn't cause the economic pie to get bigger.
It just means that the richest in the country get a bigger slice of the economic pie.
Because that's what Reaganomics does, it concentrates the wealth at the top.
If Riley were really concerned about growth, he'd be supporting Sanders' plan to invest in US infrastructure and US jobs.
And if the Wall Street Journal were truly concerned about a healthy economy and stimulating private consumption, they'd support very high marginal tax rates for the top 1% of earners.
According to research published earlier this year, the highest marginal tax rate paid exclusively by the super-rich should be 90 percent, where it was just after World War II under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and Democrat John Kennedy.
And guess what? the economy grew under Eisenhower because he maintained high taxes on the rich and on corporations, and then he used that revenue to invest in massive infrastructure projects, expand social services and invest in the US middle class.
It's time that the Wall Street Journal stop trying to make Bernie Sanders and other progressives seem radical for proposing that we tax the wealthy and close corporate tax loopholes, that we provide tuition-free college and paid sick leave, that we rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and that we provide health care for all.
These aren't radical proposals.
They're proposals that both Republican and Democratic voters overwhelmingly agree on, and that every other developed country in the world has already implemented.
For 35 years, Reaganomics and tax cuts for the rich have only benefited the rich, at the expense of the middle class and the country as a whole.
Notwithstanding the Wall Street Journal's deceptively promoting Reagan's failed experiment in "trickle-down" economics, Americans overwhelmingly want our nation to return to the "radical socialist" policies pioneered by Dwight D. Eisenhower and bring the middle class back again.
6. The Doctor is a Quack
Dr. Ben Carson's prescription: Abolish Medicare
The GOP frontrunner in the latest Iowa poll would replace Medicare and Medicaid with savings accounts.
by Kyle Cheney and Jason Millman, politico.com, October 22, 2015
Republicans have fended off accusations for years that they'd gut Medicare for seniors and end the program "as we know it."
Not Ben Carson. The former neurosurgeon acknowledges he would abolish the program altogether.
Carson, who now leads the GOP field in Iowa according to the latest Quinnipiac Poll, would eliminate the program that provides health care to 49 million senior citizens, as well as Medicaid, and replace it with a system of cradle-to-grave savings accounts which would be funded with $2,000 a year in government contributions. While rivals have been pummeled for proposing less radical changes, Carson hasn't faced the same scrutiny -- and his continued traction in polls has left GOP strategists and conservative health care wonks scratching their heads.
"This isn’t a borderline issue. The politics of this are horrific," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, head of the American Action Forum and health care adviser to Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.
Carson's stance on the third-rail issue of Medicare is especially risky given his strength among elderly voters. In Iowa, Carson draws a quarter of the senior vote -- more than double any other candidate except Donald Trump, with whom he’s statistically tied among seniors. Carson’s support is even higher among voters between the ages of 55 and 64, who are on the verge of Medicare eligibility. He draws 34 percent of that age group, double Trump’s level of support, according to the Quinnipiac poll.
Carson's GOP rivals are largely holding their fire so far. Trump's campaign declined to comment, as did the campaigns of Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio. A spokeswoman for Bobby Jindal noted the Louisiana governor's support for reforming -- but preserving -- Medicare and Medicaid.
“Without change, they will go bankrupt,” said the spokeswoman, Shannon Dirmann. “Abolishing them is bad policy.”
Carson's position also puts him at odds with the Republican Party platform, which says the party “is committed to saving Medicare and Medicaid.” In a statement, the Republican National Committee chalked up Carson's position to the diverse opinions of its candidates.
Carson campaign declined requests to comment for this story.
The former neurosurgeon regularly talks up his savings account plan on the campaign trail and calls for the repeal of Obamacare, but he doesn't typically emphasize that moving dollars out of "traditional health care" means eliminating Medicare and Medicaid too.
"I have suggested that we provide the ability for anyone to have a health savings account from the day they are born until the day they die," he said during a speech at Cedarville University on Sept. 22. "We’ll pay for it with the same dollars that we pay for traditional health care with."
When pressed on his position in May by CNBC's John Harwood, Carson said Americans would support the elimination of Medicare when presented with the facts of his plan.
"When people are able to see how much more freedom they will have, and how much more flexibility they will have, and how much more choice they would have, I think it's going to be a no-brainer," he said.
Democrats and their allies have so far largely ignored Carson's position, choosing instead to highlight stray comments by Bush and Rubio criticizing Medicare. Bush continues to face criticism for his July comments suggesting he would "phase out" the program's current form. Though Bush later clarified that his comments were about reforming the program, it didn't stop Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton from rehashing them last week.
"I'll protect Medicare from Republicans committed to ‘phase it out,’ as one GOP candidate said,'" Clinton said in a statement marking the start of a new season of Medicare enrollment..
GOP strategists not affiliated with campaigns wonder how long Carson can avoid serious questions about his plan. Eric Fehrnstrom, who advised Mitt Romney's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, pointed out that Texas Gov. Rick Perry flopped in 2012 not long after revelations that he referred to Social Security, another treasured entitlement program, as a "Ponzi scheme."
"Whether Carson can avoid Perry's fate depends on how well he explains himself, although the very act of explaining puts him at a competitive disadvantage," Fehrnstrom said. "People like their entitlements, and as expensive as they are, candidates step gingerly around how they would change them until after they are safely elected."
Conservative health care analysts who reviewed Carson's plans lauded his willingness to broach entitlement reform but cringed at the effort required to sell it.
GOP strategists not affiliated with campaigns wonder how long Carson can avoid serious questions about his plan. Eric Fehrnstrom, who advised Mitt Romney's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, pointed out that Texas Gov. Rick Perry flopped in 2012 not long after revelations that he referred to Social Security, another treasured entitlement program, as a "Ponzi scheme."
"Whether Carson can avoid Perry's fate depends on how well he explains himself, although the very act of explaining puts him at a competitive disadvantage," Fehrnstrom said. "People like their entitlements, and as expensive as they are, candidates step gingerly around how they would change them until after they are safely elected."
Conservative health care analysts who reviewed Carson's plans lauded his willingness to broach entitlement reform but cringed at the effort required to sell it.
"I would guess that the impact on Medicare would be the biggest political obstacle to this plan," said Chris Jacobs, a conservative health policy expert who's worked for Jindal and conservative former Sen. Jim DeMint, in an email. Jacobs said the fiscal trajectory of Medicare will require reforms eventually, so Carson was right to dive in headfirst. "One might as well go in for a dollar if you're going to be in for a dime," he said.
Carson's willingness to ignore long-held tropes on the political toxicity of tackling Medicare does have its advantages -- it plays into his appeal to voters frustrated with the GOP establishment and looking for a dramatic break with the status quo.
Under the plan Carson outlined most specifically last year, the government would contribute $2,000 to each individual’s tax-free account every year, with a third of the funding earmarked for insurance to cover severe medical incidents. Individuals and employers could contribute additional funds to the accounts, and the unspent funds could be shared among family members, which Carson says "makes every family their own insurance company."
His main selling points – his plan gives people control of their own health care spending and would be cheaper to administer. The plan, he estimates, would cost the federal government $630 billion annually, a back-of-the-envelope calculation of providing the $2,000 credit to an estimated 315 million Americans.
“That’s not a whole lot compared to what we’re spending now, and everybody would have health care,” Carson said in an April 2014 video.
But that estimate doesn’t account for population growth, inflation, administrative costs, or funding a separate coverage program he's supported for the “5 percent of patients with complex pre-existing or acquired maladies.” This system would be similar to Medicare and Medicaid for the most vulnerable patients but would still incorporate “elements of personal responsibility,” he wrote in a July 2014 op-ed.
Carson's willingness to ignore long-held tropes on the political toxicity of tackling Medicare does have its advantages -- it plays into his appeal to voters frustrated with the GOP establishment and looking for a dramatic break with the status quo.
Under the plan Carson outlined most specifically last year, the government would contribute $2,000 to each individual’s tax-free account every year, with a third of the funding earmarked for insurance to cover severe medical incidents. Individuals and employers could contribute additional funds to the accounts, and the unspent funds could be shared among family members, which Carson says "makes every family their own insurance company."
His main selling points – his plan gives people control of their own health care spending and would be cheaper to administer. The plan, he estimates, would cost the federal government $630 billion annually, a back-of-the-envelope calculation of providing the $2,000 credit to an estimated 315 million Americans.
“That’s not a whole lot compared to what we’re spending now, and everybody would have health care,” Carson said in an April 2014 video.
But that estimate doesn’t account for population growth, inflation, administrative costs, or funding a separate coverage program he's supported for the “5 percent of patients with complex pre-existing or acquired maladies.” This system would be similar to Medicare and Medicaid for the most vulnerable patients but would still incorporate “elements of personal responsibility,” he wrote in a July 2014 op-ed.
Carson acknowledges that opponents of his plan will criticize his proposal to give the poor savings accounts rather than Medicaid, a program that provides 72 million low-income Americans with basic and long-term care services. Carson suggests that giving Medicaid members a savings account would empower them to have more control over their health care.
“People in Washington say, ‘Well, you can’t give poor people a health savings account because they’re too stupid. They won’t know what to do with it.’” Carson said at a West Des Moines, Iowa, town hall in August. “But the fact of the matter is, that is not the case.”
“People in Washington say, ‘Well, you can’t give poor people a health savings account because they’re too stupid. They won’t know what to do with it.’” Carson said at a West Des Moines, Iowa, town hall in August. “But the fact of the matter is, that is not the case.”
Carson's vision for Medicare goes much further than the premium support plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan, which Democrats have wielded as a political weapon in the last two election cycles. Under the Ryan plan, seniors could purchase private health insurance with government help instead of getting covered directly by Medicare – which critics say would force seniors to pay more for care if private insurance costs outpace government support. Some versions of the plan would also allow seniors to stay in the traditional program, though it might cost them more.
Republicans have largely embraced premium support as tool for taming entitlement spending -- House budgets have included the Medicare overhaul in recent years. But nothing has come to pass: the politically risky scheme was dropped from the final budget resolution approved by the GOP-controlled Congress this year.
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