There was a racist dust up at CPAC on Friday during a K. Carl Smith session sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots on how to get African Americans to vote Republican. Smith’s talk was filled with divisive and irrelevant lines like, “I’m not going to join the KKK. The Democratic Party founded the KKK.” During the question period, Voice of Russia radio host Kim Brown apparently asked how many black women were at CPAC and the whole session went off the rails.

She was shouted down and told she wasn’t wanted there. But then a young white supremacist spoke. He said that all this outreach to blacks was just going to alienate young white males. Smith responded with what I think is a non sequitur about how Frederick Douglass forgave his slavemaster. The young man replied, “For giving him shelter? And food?” At that point the session exploded.

Benjy Sarlin reported all of this for Talking Points Memo. After the whole thing was over, he talked to a number of people who had been at the event. And they were all angry. But not at the white supremacist. They were angry at the young black woman, Kim Brown. The session speaker Smith later released a statement saying Brown “rudely interrupted” him. But all he could say of the white supremacist was that he made a “racially insensitive” comment but that they “left as friends.”

This illustrates what is wrong with the Republican base. Smith isn’t trying to get the Republican Party to be more appealing to African Americans; he is just trying to brand the Democratic Party as racist. On the details, he’s right: the Democratic Party has a long history of racism. But for my entire life, the Republican Party’s main electoral power has come from its implicit and explicit appeals to white racial resentment. If it were 1850, I would almost surely be a Republican. Is that really all that the Republican Party has to offer?

Of much greater concern is the reaction of the attendees to the white supremacist. No one would say that he was wrong or that his statement was repugnant. Instead, they made excuses for the remarks. When asked if he was offended by the white supremacist, one of the few blacks at the event even said, “No they were just telling the truth.” There is a strength in this kind of behavior: Republicans apparently stick by each other no matter what. That helps in their quest for power. But there is obviously a very dark side to this. And what’s more: it seems that the reason the Republican Party claims not to be racist is that they don’t even know it when they see extreme examples of it.

Ah naivete! If it is authentic, it can be charming. But if it is inauthentic, it is just annoying. Yesterday morning on Up with Chris Hayes, Kyrsten Sinema was on the panel.

She is a member of the “Gang of 32” — the bipartisan group of new House members who are getting together to solve those problems they can agree on.

That’s all fine. But at one point she said, “This may surprise you, but our Gang of 32 statement—the very first thing we talk about is protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare.”

After she says that, Sam Seder almost jumps out of his chair. Here’s the question: is she naive or just stupid?

Republicans Don’t Mean What You Think They Mean

Can Sinema really think that when Republicans say they want to “protect and strengthen” entitlement programs that they mean literally that they want to protect and strengthen entitlement programs? Because that is most definitely not what they mean.

Republicans have been very clear on this point. In fact, it was a big deal in the last presidential election. Republicans want to savagely cut entitlement programs so that the programs will be around in the coming years.

The theory is that we just can’t afford the entitlement programs so we must cut them. Then we will be able to have some shadow of the programs in the decades to come—with the same name!

Block Grants

The best example of this is the block-granting of Medicaid. The idea here is that the federal government will give each state a block of money to support healthcare for the poor. The states can do with this money as they please.

But the big aspect of it is that the money will not keep up with the increasing price of healthcare. Eventually, Medicaid will be so starved for funds that it will be irrelevant as a program. But it will still exist! And in its uselessness, it will be robust!

With Pros Like Sinema

Yesterday, Jonathan Bernstein asked why it was that the “neutral” press was so in favor of cutting the budget deficit. If professional Democratic politicians like Kyrsten Sinema don’t understand the subtext of Republican claims to “strengthen” entitlement programs, how can the mainstream press, much less the average voter?

I fear that Sinema is both naive and stupid.

Image cropped from Kyrsten Sinema by Gage Skidmore under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Late last week, Sarah Kliff brought attention to the new Economic Report of the President. In the article, she notes that healthcare costs over the past few years have only grown at the rate of inflation. If this is not just a recession fluke, there are huge policy implications.

As anyone who reads this site knows, the only budget problem we have is the long term growth of healthcare spending. In fact, healthcare spending has been rising so fast the last few decades that if nothing is done, it will bankrupt our whole economy, much less the government. But if healthcare costs stabilize, we have no budget problem.

So the question is whether the slowdown is a long term trend. There is reason to believe that it is. One issue that Kliff does not mention is that we already pay far too much for our healthcare. Thus, it may be that the healthcare market has hit a ceiling. Remember: prices are set by what the customer will pay, not what the companies must pay to provide the good or service. But this doesn’t mean that we’ve necessarily reached a new normal in healthcare costs.

But let’s suppose we have. If that’s the case then all of the deficit hysteria is for nothing. And that is one of the biggest problems with all of this Chicken Little nonsense regarding Social Security and Medicare. We are being asked to cut these programs because in the future there may be a funding problem. This is just madness.

Now we have much of the Democratic Party—including President Obama—pushing for a Grand Bargain to cut Social Security and Medicare. And for what? So we can get the rich to pay a tiny bit more in taxes at a time when their taxes are extremely low by historical standards? And note: the Grand Bargain that Obama is pushing (any real deal would be worse) is 2/3 entitlement cuts to 1/3 loophole closing.

All liberals need to pay close attention to this issue. As Kliff points out, “It’s taken as an article of faith inside the beltway: Policy makers need to do something to tamp down on out-of-control health-care costs.” We need to counter this idea at every opportunity. Because we do not know that something must be done. And until we do, there is no reason to cut these programs. Unlike global warming (which we aren’t doing anything about), we can deal with any budget problems once they actually become budget problems.

Afterword

Most of the push for cutting entitlement programs is a cover for cutting taxes on the rich. Note that all the big conservative and moderate budget plans start with a big tax cut. In any normal world, this would make these plans Very Unserious indeed. But because they also do great harm to the poor, they are considered Very Serious.

Last week, Fred Hiatt over at the Washington Post came out in favor of presidential leadership, Obama Could Get Things Done by Governing Today. It is a wonderful example of false equivalence by a writer who knows that false equivalence is a bad thing. As a result of this, he cloaks the whole thing in an attack on Steve Israel’s claim that the Democrats really need to retake the House if Obama is going to get much done in his second term.

Who is Steve Israel? Only the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In other words, he is boosting for the DCCC. His statement is not standing policy of the Democratic Party. No Democrat is standing around waiting until they control the House to do any work. But Hiatt has to pretend that they are so he can compare it to an unnamed Tea Party idiot who does think that the best strategy is for the Republicans to obstruct until they get a decisive electoral victory.

All of this is just a smokescreen for what Hiatt really wants to say: both sides do it! The meat of his article is found in the following two sentences:

The first sentence is mostly true. It is deceptive to say that “many” Republicans presented Obama that way. He should say “nearly all.” That image of Obama was and still is a staple of Fox News, Hate Radio, and the vast majority of Republicans in Congress. Hiatt’s second sentence is roughly the same. I would say that “most” Democrats present the Republican Party as “unnaturally extremist, pathologically opposed to progress.” What’s more, I would say this is largely a factual statement. It is possible that if a Republican were in the White House, the Republicans in Congress would be more reasonable. But that’s not saying much and last time I checked, there was not a Republican in the White House.

After this stunning bit of false equivalence, Hiatt brings the article back to his cover story: the parties can’t just wait until they have full control of the government! But even in making this point, he puts the onus entirely on the Democrats. This is at the end of an article in which he’s admitted that Obama is trying to work with the Republicans. This begs the question: what was the point of the whole article? His argument comes down to: both sides say the other is extremist (And who can say which side is right? Certainly not Fred Hiatt!); Obama is trying to work with the Republicans; Obama should do what I already said he is doing.

Brilliant, right?

H/T 15 March Counterspin

Digby wrote a great article this afternoon, 10 Years On: the Press Reconsiders. In it, she looks at a new article by Villager Extraordinaire Howard Fineman in which he discusses the mistakes the media made in the run up to the Iraq War. To be fair, Fineman calls himself to task. But Digby shows with the help of his own writing at the time that his sins are far worse than he now admits. And then she shows that his current reporting is every bit as partial towards power as it was then.

I hate Howard Fineman. When he took over at the Huffington Post, I knew that website was doomed. And truly, there isn’t nearly as much good content as there once was and there is a hell of a lot more middle-of-the-road Villager coverage. But mostly I hate coming upon him because I know that all I’ll hear is the same old Washington insider bullshit that all Villagers trade in. In fact, Digby wrote something about this that is exactly my own experience:

I remember the early days of 2003. It boggled my mind that pretty much everyone accepted the administration at its word. Digby quotes Fineman saying exactly what I’m talking about, “If he’s a cowboy, he’s the reluctant warrior, the Shane in the movie, strapping on the guns as the last resort because he has to, to protect his family, drawing on the emotions of 9/11, tying them to Saddam Hussein, using the possible or likely rejection vote from the U.N. as a badge of honor.” What?! Are we really to believe that Fineman thought that Bush was reluctantly going to war? As Norman Solomon shows in War Made Easy, presidents always claim that the last thing they want to do is go to war. They’re always doing everything they can to not go to war. And yet, somehow, they are always pulled into war despite all their efforts. How many times can the media be fooled?

This is the problem when a sizable portion of a culture is taken over by a revolutionary group like the current Republican Party. All the installed interests—the opposition party especially—are in shock. Everyone is so vested in the system as it is that they pretend that all is well, even when the most naive among us can see that something is very much wrong.

I was just listening to NPR and James Fallows was talking some nonsense about how great it was that people like Rob Portman are able to have personal experiences that change their political outlook. If this is what we have to wait for, then we will never solve our most pressing problems. Rob Portman does not and never will know anyone from the island nation of Kiribati, which will soon be entirely under water; so Rob Portman will never care about global warming. Rob Portman does not and never will know young men who go to prison for years because an unconstitutional search revealed a small amount of cannabis; so Rob Portman will never care about the drug war. Rob Portman does not and never will know any of the working poor; so Rob Portman will never care about income inequality or raising the minimum wage. But don’t worry, because James Fallows is there to sooth everyone, “See: Republicans are reasonable if you give them enough time!”

And I think this is exactly what went on in the lead up to the Iraq War. It is the same thing that is happening now regarding Obama’s drone war on anyone he decides is an enemy. It’s all okay! We’re the Good Guys! There’s nothing to get riled up about!

Whether it is Howard Fineman or James Fallows or any of thousands of other mainstream journalists, the word is always the same: everything is as it should be and it is only fools who claim that those in power are anything but good leaders wanting to do what is best for everyone involved. There has got to be tenth circle of hell for these enabling sons of bitches!