President Obama

Who Needs Congress to Raise the Federal Minimum Wage? (March 6, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

poor-eat-rich

President Obama’s now legendary State of the Union address, delivered before a joint session of Congress last month, touched on several notable issues that the POTUS plans to incorporate into his second term agenda. As of midnight last Friday, we now know that one of the Presidents’ goals: the negotiation of a budgetary deal that would take the place of the unpopular sequestration maneuver, was a dismal failure. In part, the inability to secure a new plan can be blamed on an important miscalculation on the part of the POTUS. Believing (incorrectly it seems) that the GOP would place concern for the immediate cuts to defense spending above its commitment to opposing him at every turn, Obama played the waiting game – and lost.

So that’s one down from the State of the Union with many to go. The increasingly comprehensive paralysis on Capitol Hill inspires little confidence that deeply partisan issues like gun control and immigration reform will be dealt with in an expeditious and logical fashion. The majority of Americans have been placed in the same uncomfortable position as the Commander-in-Chief: gamely rooting for members of the House and Senate to do the jobs to which they’ve been elected, while suspecting a whole lot of nothing in the end. Our collective silver lining gut feeling, which is all we really have to sustain us at this point: is that somehow, someway, Congress will be divested of its ability to hold the fiscal, social and foreign policy of the nation hostage. It’s perfectly arguable that the rise of a viable third political party has never been more necessary.

We’ve grown so accustomed to our “do nothing” government as the root cause for so much of what ails our country, it’s often easy to forget that we really don’t have to depend on lawmakers to come to the rescue. Sometimes the solutions are just sitting there staring ordinary citizens and the private sector in the face.

Take, for example, President Obama’s stated intent to advocate for an increase in the Federal minimum wage. During this portion of the State of the Union address, the President framed the issue in this context: “Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour…This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families.”

The minimum wage, which currently sits at $7.25 an hour, has held steady since 2009. The President is proposing an increase to $9.00 that would take effect in 2015. This is the sort of common sense idea that one might expect could be embraced by members occupying both side of the political spectrum. Of course, that’s not true. The opposition from the business community is to be expected, and upon remembering that most of the Republican Party rests comfortably inside the corporate pocket, most of us are well prepared for yet another showdown.

But in considering the potential squashing of another effort to assist the beleaguered working and middle classes, it occurs to me that this isn’t an issue that should require Congressional intervention. In anyone else tired of reading about the record-breaking profits and hoards of cash enjoyed by American companies, even as workers struggle to hold onto jobs that pay them flat wages?

Call me naive but I’d like to see the media machine hold some freaking feet to the fire. For example, why is pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb planning to layoff nearly 500 additional workers, when 2012 fourth quarter profits were up over 22 percent? Why isn’t Anderson Cooper keeping the company and scores of other greedy operations like it, honest with these types of questions? Why is it continually viable to discuss making the economy work for business, without any concern for the people who are responsible for the flush state of a company’s bottom line?

Against the backdrop of a government “for the people, by the people” which does seem to serve all parties except individuals’ sense that revolution is inevitable grows more palpable. With regard to the increase of the Federal minimum wage, with a little partnership from the media, we shouldn’t need Congress to act. The Tea Party is supposedly all about individual initiative, right?

The Media Gives the Republican Party a Free Pass to Obstruct (January 8, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

GOP-fillibuster

For all the complaints on the right side of the political spectrum, decrying a “liberal media bias” in favor of President Obama, I sometimes wonder if I am alone in drawing the opposite conclusion. That is to say when it comes to reporting on the increasingly partisan deadlock that has virtually consumed Washington, as well as the nation’s inability to accomplish anything beyond an endless train of disappointing stopgap measures, I wonder if the bulk of the country’s media outlets, concerned with mass appeal and the appearance of a balanced approach, have grown too afraid of identifying the Emperor without his clothes.

Case in point, this headline today on Yahoo! News via Reuters:Analysis: Obama shows combativeness entering second term but risks await. The writer, Matt Spetalnick is correct in his observation that before the official commencement of his second elected term, we have seen a President more self-assured and emboldened by poll numbers that consistently reflect an electorate exhausted by Congress’ failure to come together on long-term solutions to real problems, including but not limited to: our national debt, the effect of current entitlement spending on future generations, the systematic annihilation of the middle and working classes, the growing income disparities and education costs that are denying millions of Americans a fair shot at pursuing the American Dream.

However comments like this leave this reader curious as to whether the meaning of “analysis” has been lost on some of those who write about the political machine for a living: “Some critics say Obama now runs the risk of overreaching when he should instead be building Republican bridges to resolve the next looming budget confrontation.”

I do not have to ask Mr. Spetalnick for a list of his sources to hazard a guess as to who some of those “critics” might be: John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, an assortment of Tea Party crackpots or anyone working for these folks, immediately come to mind. As a long-time journalist, I completely understand the need to represent both sides of the story, but I was also under the impression that one of the driving tenets of journalism is to educate the public, to bring issues to light that might otherwise go unresearched by a general population preoccupied with the business of daily life.

I do not mean to single Spetalnick out for special scorn. There are far more egregious examples of bland, wall-sitting journalistic hatchet jobs disguised as legitimate reporting, and we could have a whole separate discussion about the ways in which the consolidation of corporate media and the lower profit margins of traditional journalism have affected the way we receive our “news.” But with that said, analysts and reporters are under no obligation to surrender their insights for a pair of rose colored glasses, and at some point we have to stop letting them get away with it.

Exactly what kind of “bridges” should Obama be building with the GOP? What happened to the one he tried to build in the summer of 2011, the efforts to strike a Grand Bargain with House leaders over the raising of the debt ceiling limit, which included what many liberals considered an unwarranted gift of borderline austere spending cuts? The same one that Republicans ultimately rejected in favor of last month’s manufactured fiscal cliff crisis? The real truth is my friends, nothing short of absolute capitulation on tax policy, spending and limited government would satisfy the current Republican party, and to take that one step further, the party’s platform is BAD for America by almost any standard of growth or savings.

In a true, functioning democracy, when a special interest group has lost perspective and reasoning and turns to policy development that serves a small minority, the end result is marginalization and ultimately, disintegration. With every Presidential election, the GOP moves itself farther away from laying claim to representing the will of the people. Voter turnout and statistics back this conclusion. But now, at the inception of President Obama’s second term, with looming fights in front of us over a host of issues that demand attention and reform, it is time for members of the media to surrender their own manufactured centrism in the interest of moving the country forward.

The Republican Party Resolves to Destroy Middle Class Once and For All in 2013 (December 27, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

middle-class

Paul Krugman, the famed economist and Op-Ed columnist forThe New York Times, has, in recent years, coined quite a few clever nicknames for hypocritical fiscal conservatives. And in referring to fiscal conservatives, he does not write of the dying breed of Republicans like Bob Dole, the former Senator, Presidential candidate and disabled war veteran who was humiliated in public by his own party earlier this month.

Dole made a rare appearance in the Senate chamber several weeks ago in an attempt to promote passage of a seemingly benign U.N. Treaty, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Designed to improve access and mobility for the disabled across the globe, the treaty met with defeat from the crazed likes of political also-ran Rick Santorum, who decried the treaty on the catch-all Tea Party grounds that it posed a “direct assault on us and our family!”

It’s enough to make you wonder if Dole asked Santa for a time machine this Christmas so he could venture back to 1996 and fall off the stage at that rally directly onto Santorum’s delusional, useless noggin. It’s frightening to consider that in 2013, nearly 20 years after his failed bid for the Oval Office, Dole would be considered an unelectable liberal radical within his party’s ranks.

But I digress. When Paul Krugman writes of “deficit scolds,” “bond vigilantes,” and my personal favorite, “prophets of fiscal doom,” he refers to true charlatans like Congressman Paul Ryan, who wrote former President George W. Bush a budget-busting blank check for eight years, rubber stamping every unaffordable idea of which Dubya could dream, before suddenly putting on his serious monetary face the minute a Democratic President took the oath of office.

For months, nay years, we have been hearing from Ryan and his ilk that failure to address our long term budget deficits presents dire consequences, an imminent collapse of American security and respectability at a minimum if not an outright nullification of our entire way of life. As we moved ever closer to the edge of the fiscal cliff, the caterwauling grew louder…until it became clear that there’s just no way that President Obama is going to go against public opinion and leave the Bush-era tax cuts intact wholesale.

And just like that, the old fiscal cliff doesn’t seem so scary to GOP leadership. After all, when you come down to it, it’s not Ryan, Santorum or the one percent who will end up hurting if Congress blows past its 2012 deadline, right?

Those who booted up their computers this week to catch up on post-holiday news were greeted with headlines like this: “Senators Returning With Little Urgency as Fiscal Clock Ticks.” Writers Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauer report “With just five days left to make a deal, President Obama and members of the Senate were set to return to Washington on Thursday with no clear path out of their fiscal morass even as the Treasury Department warned that the government will soon be unable to pay its bills unless Congress acts.”

Why the sudden move away from Republican baying about the dangers of falling over the fiscal cliff? Another writer for The Times, Nelson D. Schwartz, offers a possible answer: “Some hits — like a two percentage point increase in payroll taxes and the end of unemployment benefits for more than two million jobless Americans — would be felt right away. But other effects, like tens of billions in automatic spending cuts, to include both military and other programs, would be spread out between now and the end of the 2013 fiscal year in September.”

Why worry about what happens at the end of the year, in other words, when it is merely the unemployed and the working middle class who will take an immediate hit to their financial solvency? And lest anyone think the GOP is really troubled by the “automatic spending cuts,” it is best to keep in mind that the word “military” is the only one that gets their attention.

By now I really ought to be used to this sort of disingenuous skullduggery, the seamlessness with which members of the GOP establishment will hold the ENTIRE NATION and its future hostage in order to save some millionaires/billionaires a few bucks, but I must confess, I am not. I urge the mass media to give these tricks their proper title – treason.

Welcome to the Jungle: The GOP Dysfunction Infused 112th Congress Reports for Duty (November 13, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

They’re here. They of the 64 percent “Poor” performance rating, according to a late-August publication from Rasmussen Reports, while only eight percent of the voting public was confused enough at the time of the poll to pronounce the group’s accomplishments “Good.” Exactly no one judged the body “Excellent” when it comes to getting things done. You know who I’m talking about.

It’s Congress!

The greatest example of petty taunting and counter-productivity since the 7th grade lunch table returns to Capitol Hill today, fresh off President Obama’s re-election and just in time to do battle over measures that must be implemented to avoid the looming “fiscal cliff.” There are just seven weeks left to reach some form of agreement that would take the place of mandatory budget cuts and tax hikes that may very well deepen the already painful Great Recession.

Here we go again.

Removing the annoying shackles of campaign promises of bipartisanship, the GOP is back to its old tricks. While calling upon President Obama to work with House Republicans, Speaker John Boehner has reiterated the Republican Party’s opposition to raising any taxes to deal with the country’s debt and deficit. Because it’s always so much easier to roll up one’s sleeves and work together on a balanced approach with a group that demands full and total capitulation.

For years now it has been stupefying to watch Republican lawmakers wax philosophical about the “immorality” of our nation’s deficit while remaining quite willing to risk our collective future in order to save millionaires a few bucks. And in keeping with the party’s high moral standards, it is apparently acceptable to savage the social safety net and burden the poor and already-struggling middle class in order to save the “temporary” Bush tax cuts. Is anyone buying this?

The new faces showing up for work in Washington today offer an American public that wants to see something done a tiny sliver of hope. Democrats picked up two extra Senate seats that they didn’t have in October, for a total of 53 spots. Five of the newly elected Senators, across both parties, are strong women like consumer advocate and male-model crusher Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. It is also true that Dems collected three extra seats in the House than they had before, and may have found themselves at an even lesser disadvantage, were it not for the eminently questionable redistricting resulting from the 2010 U.S. Census.

How does a party retain power while losing the popular vote? Ask former President George W. Bush.

Regardless of its partisan makeup, this Congressional class may find it a lot harder to kick down the road. If the record turnouts and general rebuke of incumbents is any indication, the struggling electorate simply won’t tolerate further stagnation. A positive result of Capitol Hill’s growing paralysis since Obama took office in 2009 is a growing sense that Republican lawmakers care a lot more about winning and protecting their wealthy donors then they do about their constituents. They have a real opportunity to here to demonstrate otherwise. It will no longer do to play the blame game.

 

Obama and Romney Campaigns Play the Waiting Game (November 6, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

For those of us who haven’t yet completed our ballots, there’s nothing left to do but vote. Residents of the hotly contested and closely watched swing states must be ready to breathe a sigh of relief, welcoming a return to fast forwarding through conventional television commercials promoting toothpaste, cars and tampons. I wrote these lines last evening on my blog:

T’was the night before the election, and all through Ohio
Margaritas were flowing like Cinco De Mayo.
Because Buckeye State residents were confident no matter who won,
Their days in the swing state spotlight were temporarily done.

After an extremely long and intense campaign, there is something to be said for the collective exhaust of the voting public. On a certain level, before the returns are counted and cable news channels morph into trigger-finger caffeine freaks, ready to call the election at a second’s notice, and before the long-winded pundits begin their Wednesday morning quarterbacking, it’s nice to take a moment and exhale.

We the people have worked hard during this interminable electoral season. While the Wall Street Journal reported that 41 percent fewer television viewers tuned in to see Paul Ryan accept the Republican Party’s nomination for vice-president (versus the near-record numbers of disbelievers who couldn’t stay away from the spectacle of Sarah Palin), and less folks checked out the Democratic presentation as well, it was a banner cycle for the the presidential and vice-presidential debates.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “A total of 67.2 million people watched the [first] debate between President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, according to figures released late Thursday by the Nielsen Co. – a 28% increase over the 52.4 million who tuned in to the first debate in 2008.” It is meaningful that the public remained this engaged heading into the home stretch, suggesting that years of prolonged unemployment, decreased home value, rising fuel and food prices and skyrocketing college tuition led to a certain thirst for voter information.

And despite the endless flip-flopping and shape shifting of Candidate Romney, it was entirely clear that the electorate was left with two very distinct choices: Obama the incumbent, the idealist come pragmatist who displayed fortitude, character and leadership in bringing the U.S. economy back from the brink, ended the war in Iraq, took steps to stem the rising tide of healthcare spending and clarified the rights of gays and lesbians to serve their country without retribution. On the other hand, voters were presented with Romney, the shameless panderer who positions were often impossible to quantify, but in instances of clarity, a return to Bush-era failings was the clear takeaway. Let’s call this agenda the Survival of the Mittest.

No matter who emerges victor (Obama) today is a day for celebrating ourselves and our participation in the democratic process. We survived a tough four years: reducing our household debt, looking for work or clinging desperately to the jobs we have and finally, finally under the leadership of our President, things are looking up. Despite the concerted efforts to disenfranchise voters at the polls, unaffected by the struggles of daily survival, we are the winners today. Our voices will be heard.