Craig Gurian's Blog

Warning: there is a lot of "No, we won't" out there

2008-11-06T22:15:50Z

I'm just as excited by Senator Obama's victory as anyone else who has never experienced a great President in his or her lifetime (I was born midway through Eisenhower's second term), but all this "the nation is transformed" talk has got to stop. Or at least, if you need to say it, don't actually drink the Kool-Aid.

However, as the Center for the Study of the American Electorate reports, voter turnout was, at most, 61.7% of eligible voters (one percent higher than 2004). That means that Senator's Obama's 56% of those who voted represents only 34.6% of eligible voters (more than Bush, true, and much more than Clinton, but hardly a number anything like the "country on the wrong track" numbers).

I don't for a second believe that this means that the President-elect should not proceed aggressively. On the contrary, I have argued that Democrats should not give up where they fail to achieve the 60 votes needed for cloture, but should instead challenge Republican "dead-enders" to follow through on full-blown filibuster.

It concerns me, though, that I am hearing a lot of wishful thinking from people who seem to believe that the bad guys are either already transformed, or else will courteously play the role of fair-minded opposition.

In fact, the bad guys have not been transformed (and will continue to fight dirty), and the ranks of the indifferent remain enormous (and will continue to be susceptible to MSM spin). In short, we must continue to guard against complacency: the struggle has just begun.

This is also a moment for those who do believe in Senator Obama's call for a new American community to be especially vigilant against the already visible signs of self-interest being promoted over the broader common interest (see both the individual scramble for jobs, and the organizational or "constituency-based" scramble for a piece of the pie).

I would be ecstatic if more people truly believed in the principle of "one community, no exclusion," but, even at this moment of triumph, I don't hear that particular element of Senator Obama's message being trumpeted by enough of even the 56% of those who voted with him.

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Rachel Maddow Turning Into Wolf Blitzer?

2008-10-29T12:46:19Z

This may be difficult to remember because it was so long ago, but Wolf Blitzer was once a serious reporter. Even when he started reporting for CNN from Israel, his spots tended to provide actual information.

Then he saw his star rising.

Keen observation became too dangerous; speaking without shouting became too boring.

And then came the dreaded false equivalence bug: a Respected and Neutral Anchor could not afford to appear to be biased. The easiest way to accomplish this? Turn everything into a question about process. "Candidate X: your opponent says that the sky is not blue -- are you concerned that this line of attack may be resonating with voters?" In short, preside over bits of infotainment, making sure never to open one's eyes (let alone one's mouth) to what is true and false.

]]> Rachel Maddow's star has recently been rising. Her new show has garnered very good ratings. While she started with a focus on issues ("What is McCain's health plan"), she appears, sadly, to be in the process of re-branding herself. The other night, there must have been 10 times when she repeated the theme that "the problem with the McCain campaign" has been the way it has been run or the way it hasn't had "message coherence." When the process discussions take over like this, the downward slope is very slippery indeed.

How do you know that the ailment is getting worse? A surefire sign is the appearance of "signature segments." Maddow, for example, needs to pretend each night that she is in a panic...so that she can proceed with her "Talk Me Down" feature. Presumably, one's panic level varies from night to night, and it would not be a tragedy to let one's show vary from night to night, taking actual developments in the news as one's guide.

Final awful thought: even Adam Nagourney of The New York Times once actually functioned as a reporter, and regularly decried the undue focus on process and polls. Then he was sucked in.

Going through "TV star training" actually shares many similarities with going through law school training: the only way that you can emerge with your personhood, intelligence, and integrity intact is to try very conscientiously to ignore the assumptions that your teachers try to embed within you.

Maybe it's not too late for Rachel to turn things around.

Bloomberg Devotee: It's the rich who matter

2008-10-27T12:02:06Z

Progressive New Yorkers are often tempted to shake their heads in wonder when they looking out across a national landscape where those who fight back against the class warfare so successfully waged by the wealthy are still being red-baited. Tempted, that is, until they stop and wonder why, in a City where the legislative Council is 94% Democratic, progressive governance and accomplishments seem such a distant dream.

The sobering reality is that we in New York City remain well in the grip of a version of trickle-down economics not so far removed from that of Bush and McCain. While our current Mayor, beloved by the press and his fellow moguls, is presented as The Hero who will right our ship of state, we get no explanation of how he managed to leave New York so dependent on, and so vulnerable to, the Wall Street economy.

Every once in a while, however, a window is opened on the embedded assumptions that shape City politics. The New York Times recently interviewed Felix Rohatyn, long-famed for bringing New York "back from the brink" of fiscal ruin in 1975. Rohatyn thinks we couldn't possibly have a better Mayor than Mike Bloomberg (Bloomberg is "as indispensable as anyone I know in doing that job"). Apparently Rohatyn is particularly reassured by comparing Bloomberg to himself: "I don't think there's anything I know about finance that [Bloomberg] doesn't know or can't get by snapping his fingers").

Entirely missing from Rohatyn's analysis, of course, was any reason why anyone should believe that Bloomberg has been or will be looking out for New York's middle and working classes. And Rohatyn provided the reporter (Sam Roberts) with a wonderful insight into why: The test of the city," says Rohatyn, "is whether it keeps attracting rich people, important people..."

It is thinking like this that perenially causes City policies to be skewed to favor the wealthy and well-connected, and that trivializes the essential question of how New York can continue to function when housing has become unaffordable for so many.

A "financial whiz" like Rohaytn or Bloomberg is always sensitive to the possibility that the wealthy might flee (though few remember that Bloomberg initially tried to lower taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, and lost the Commuter Tax in the bargain). What they never seem to get is that rising rents combined with the loss of rent-regulated units from the system operate as the equivalent of huge tax increases on those who are not wealthy. Mayor Bloomberg has never lifted a finger to strengthen rent regulation, preferring the system to die the death intended when George Pataki put the system on the road to ruin.

But maybe the City will keep on attracting rich people, important people. That's what counts, isn't it?

Rock-solid documentation of Socialist pronouncements

2008-10-21T21:42:45Z

"No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered, not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective: a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate."

Notice that the call is not only for a progressive Income Tax, but for a virtually confiscatory Estate Tax as well.

Who would have the temerity to so unabashedly tout the "Socialist line" in the United States?

Teddy Roosevelt, in 1910.

Overcoming filibuster-phobia

2008-10-20T21:07:09Z

Why has George Bush not needed to veto more legislation these last 21 months despite Democratic control of Congress? The Democrats' razor-thin margin in the Senate doesn't provide an answer: even the smallest margin allows the majority party to control the agenda. The conventional response from inside the Senate Democratic Caucus has been, "We don't have 60 votes."

Sixty is seen as the magic number because only 60 votes will guarantee success on a cloture motion (the procedural device that limits further debate on a measure to a time certain). By this logic, however, all progressive legislation is forever held hostage so long as Republicans can muster 41 votes (which they will surely be able to do, regardless of how well the election goes for Democrats).

There is a simple alternative. Select a bill with broad popular support, like the bill to overturn the Supreme Court's narrowing of the Equal Pay Act. The bill would have the support of a President Obama, and would be passed in the House. In the Senate, challenge Republicans to vote "no" on a motion for cloture. If the motion fails, dare the Republicans to filibuster against equal for women, keeping the Senate in session for as long as Republicans want to have that stance define them.

In other words, "just say no" to the habit of letting the Republicans off the hook with a single "no" vote on cloture. Instead, put them to the test of sustaining a wildly unpopular filibuster. With proper issue selection -- other examples include pegging the minimum wage to increases in inflation and permanently setting the estate tax exemption at a level the insulates everyone except the wealthiest among us -- Democrats can make it substantially more difficult for their opponents to maintain successfully the reactionary posture they've patented over the course of 40 years.

Does this proposal mean that "reaching across the aisle" in order to "get things done" doesn't make sense? To the contrary, this proposal will facilitate the process of reaching across the aisle. The difference is that Democrats will be reaching across from a position of strength, not weakness.

Bloomberg: I'm more indispensable than Lincoln or FDR

2008-10-17T11:57:08Z

Or: being a billionaire with adoring editorial boards in your pocket means that you can lie shamelessly, and never have to say you're sorry.

In 1864, the Civil War was raging. As late as July, victory for the Union was looking unlikely, and it was widely expected that President Lincoln would lose his bid to be re-elected. Many of the President's advisors urged him to postpone the election in the interest of the nation. Lincoln rejected the idea: "We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego or postpone a national election, it might already fairly claim to have conquered and ruined us."

New York City's last two Mayors have had a very different view of individual indispensability.

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Rudy Giuliani wanted to call off the 2001 elections after the tragedy of 9/11, and wanted to be able to serve a third term. Ultimately, his power grab was seen for what it was, and the election went forward. Mike Bloomberg was elected.

For years, Mayor Bloomberg consistently rejected efforts to alter New York City's law (enacted and reaffirmed by voter referendum) that limits the Mayor and other City officials to two consecutive terms in office. But this year, after toying with a run for President, Bloomberg's view on term limits changed. For months and months -- well before the collapse of Wall Street -- he worked the story, teasing the public with his interest, getting editorial boards to agree to beg for him to stay on, and getting the working press to sit up and beg or scrap of information.

Now, in coordination with the Speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, he is pushing a move to override the expressed will of the people, and to alter term limits by legislative fiat.

I have a bridge I'd like to sell you...

Bloomberg actually has the gall to assert three things. First, that his move to overturn term limits is motivated by the "financial crisis." Second, that a City Council override of the will of the voters only "expands" voter choice (people can vote for whomever they want). Third, that he, the person who helped cheerlead for the Wall Street titans who got us into this mess, is the only person to lead us out of the mess.

Asked yesterday by City Council Member Tony Avella why the Mayor did not simply appoint a Charter Revision Commission to consider and put to the voters any proposed changes to the law, "Anthony W. Crowell, counselor to the mayor, replied that no one could have foreseen the financial crisis" (NYT, 11/16/08. 2:54pm update). Bloomberg himself is lobbying Council Members, pressing his case that "economic trouble requires 'continuity of government,'" and assuring the legislators that they needn't worry about accountability: "people do forget about things like this."

Assertion versus reality

Bloomberg's rationalizations are demonstrably false, and his record in office is very different from that which has been portrayed. In the first instance, Bloomberg had been laying the groundwork for a third run for at least months before the financial crisis "hit" (there has, of course, been a continuing crisis for middle class families in New York, especially in terms of housing costs, but that reality does not jive with the triumphalist reporting on the Bloomberg regime). The citing of recent events as a motivating factor for his desire to stay in office is quite transparently only a convenient way to get people to ignore his pre-crisis machinations.

What job does a Mayor actually perform?

Someone should tell Mayor Bloomberg that it is the federal government, not New York City, that has direct authority over the conduct of financial institutions. Whether the Mayor is Bloomberg or Weiner or Thompson or Avella (one-time Mayoral candidate and champion flip-flopper Chris Quinn has now conceded by pulling out of the Mayoral race that she agrees that she would not be as good a Mayor as Bloomberg), none of them is empowered either to be Treasury Secretary, head of the SEC, or Chair of the Fed (and Mayor Bloomberg of course, never had the "insight" or interest to be motivated to blow the whistle on those in the financial industry who rapaciously lined their own pockets). None has the power of Congress and the President to enact a national stimulus package.

What any of them -- or any other challenger -- would be charged with doing is running the City in straightened circumstances, trying to grow sectors of the City's economy other than Wall Street, allocating resources in a way that does not hurt poor and middle class New Yorkers, and acting as a pro-urban advocate with the state and federal government to increase the help the City gets for housing and other vital needs.

It helps enormously if the candidate has the vision to subordinate private interests to the greater public good; it is just as important (as we've learned through the bitter experience of President Bush) that a leader have a healthy sense of his or her own limitations.

The tasks at hand, in other words, are tasks that many candidates in many elections have been judged on. Perhaps the biographical item with least relevance to meeting today's challenges is the fact that, once upon a time, the incumbent earned a ton of money by building a financial services company.

Expanding voter choice?

Yet another canard being put forward by Mayor Bloomberg and other supporters of changing the rules is that they are merely "giving the voters another choice." That is, "people can vote for whomever they want." If Bloomberg really believed that, he would be satisfied with the current system. New York's term limit law does not cap elective government service at eight years, it caps years of consecutive service. There is nothing in the current law that would prevent either Mayor Bloomberg (or any of the Council Members who are being term-limited out) from running for election in 2013. At that time, the voters will be able to "vote for whomever they want." Ah, but that wouldn't work ("that's different," in the infamous reasoning of the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore). Bloomberg and the others well know that they are not relying on "voter choice," but rather relying on the overwhelming power of incumbency. The interest in maximizing voter choice is zero.

May we discuss Bloomberg's record, or will he not respect us in the morning?

Over the last seven years, while the press has gone gaga over the Billionaire Mayor, his actual record has not been discussed very much. In part, this is because many advocates have been seduced by the benefits of being in his good graces, and are aware that this Mayor (as well as the Council Speaker) are ready, willing, and able to punish those who do not toe the party line.

Even most of those who oppose changing term limits without a voter referendum tend to bow in the direction of giving praise to the Bloomberg mayoralty.

It is true that the issue directly at hand is one of democracy versus plutocracy and cronyism (the local headlines have featured which billionaires and "respected business leaders"

But it is important to have the debate not be skewed by the false premise that the Bloomberg years have been glory years for New York. Though his second term has featured some useful efforts to make an urban center work better (like making the City more pedestrian-friendly), his record is neither that of a "maverick," nor of an effective advocate for urban interests, nor or a friend of the middle-class:

(1) Bloomberg covered up City's financial condition in his first year in order to protect the re-election of Pataki, the worst governor possible for New York City;

(2) Bloomberg lost the commuter tax when he overreached and tried to get a tax decrease on the wealthiest New Yorkers;

(3) Bloomberg went along with property tax rebates, failing to collect the money for a rainy day;

(4) Bloomberg kept the City's economy over-dependent on Wall Street;

(5) Bloomberg diverted dollars and attention in an impetuous bid to get the Olympics;

(6) Bloomberg ignored a broad range of good government, business, and advocacy groups in pushing a stubborn desire to have a West Side stadium;

(7) Bloomberg subsidized the Yankees to the tune of several hundred million dollars of public money;

(8) Bloomberg supported through legal means (his endorsement) and illegal means (the suppression of dissent) the most anti-urban President in modern history in 2004, when he (Mayor Bloomberg) was probably the individual who, if he had chosen a "country first" path, might well have had a key influence on outcome;

(9) Bloomberg has continued to give away City taxes in the service of various corporate "incentives," including incentives to what are now recognized as some of the most irresponsible players on Wall Street;

(10) Bloomberg opposed greater restrictions on tax exemptions for developers; and

(11) Bloomberg opposes rent regulation and mandatory exclusionary zoining, the things that would help New York's middle class.

Whatever, Michael Bloomberg may be to New York's wealthiest, he's no hero to the rest of us.

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In the 20th Century, no President faced the level of challenge confronted by Franklin Roosevelt. Yet this country, made sober in part by the reality that FDR never should have run for a fourth term, and chastened, too, by the dangers of permitting any individual to serve for too long, enacted a Constitutional Amendment to limit a President to serving two terms.

The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, has not served us poorly (would you have preferred a third Reagan term, perhaps?). No great disaster will befall New York City if we continue with a similar system. We are only put at risk by the outsized ambitions of Mayor Bloomberg and those who, like him, treat the citizenry as just one more public relations issue to manage.

McCain's Gift to Obama: "I'm not George Bush"

2008-10-16T10:57:45Z

Virtually all media observers thought that Senator McCain got off "the line of the night" when he told Senator Obama that he, McCain, is not George Bush. Hearing that line told me two very different things. First, poor media coverage (ideological blinders aside) reflects a profound misunderstanding of the difference between an assertion on the on hand and the presentation of evidence on the other. Second, attempts to "make this a horse race" notwithstanding, Senator Obama should have a very good next few days.

Pre-debate, I wrote that one of the problems with coverage is that media tend to weigh comments not by substance but by the frequency of repetition (hence "No, I'm not" and "Yes, you are" are treated, just like in elementary school, as neutralizing one another). By anyone's estimation, Senator Obama has, for months, been assembling and deploying a mass of evidence to demonstrate that Senator McCain fundamentally follows the philosophy of President Bush. Yet to the media, trotting out the set piece of "No, I'm not" is the same as demonstrating that one is not. On the central economic issues, McCain proved that, indeed, he is Bush redux (we can't have any of that redistribution of income away from the wealthy; we need to continue tax policies that redistribute income to the wealthy.

Just as Richard Nixon's infamous "I am not a crook" defense ultimately did not help him, McCain's "I am not the President with the lowest approval rating" will not help him, either. The more attention the media give to "the line of the night," the more the Obama campaign will have the opportunity to say, "Well, let's talk about that."

And that is exactly what the Obama campaign should want to be doing.

Bob Schieffer's Top Ten Embedded Assumptions

2008-10-15T11:19:35Z

When you're pulling your hair out during the debate tonight, it is not because Bob Schieffer thinks he is in league with Republicans. It is not even because Schieffer has palled around with McCain. Indeed, the likelihood is that if Schieffer were being honest (that is, honest to the extent of his self-knowledge), he would admit to identifying as a Democrat.

No, the problem is the embedded assumptions that distort the lens through which Schieffer (and many of his colleagues) see and understand the world. These are the kind of assumptions that let an Alan Greenspan be represented year after year as a sage, and that currently treat Mike Bloomberg's financial success in building a financial information services company as even vaguely relevant to the skills needed to run a City. These are the assumptions that require no "conspiracy" or "coordination," just a shared sense of what "everyone knows" to be true.

1. "Everyone knows" that social security must be "reformed" (tip of the hat to Tom Brokaw for trotting this out last time). No, there is an elite consensus that we should choose to make people live in more constrained circumstances in their retirement rather than more equitably distribute income to enable people to continue to receive the benefits they receive today. Even if Schieffer were to ask McCain about McCain's admission at the last debate that he would cut social security benefits (today's workers will not get the same benefits as current retirees), Schieffer wouldn't know how to follow-up: Schieffer would believe that McCain was giving the "correct" answer to recite the need for "reform."

2. "Everybody knows" that "both candidates" are being "unrealistic" by refusing to back away from their spending proposals in the face of the financial crisis. Perhaps Schieffer believes that any Republican President in the last 40 years has been interested in balancing the budget. He doesn't remember or want to remember that David Stockman admitted that the strategy of the Reagan Administration was to starve the government of funds so that domestic programs would be seen to be an unaffordable luxury. Also outside Schieffer's frame of reference is the fact that the Great Depression was not resolved by "belt tightening" by but massive government spending brought on by World War II.

3. People want "tax cuts," Democrats are one who tax and spend, and thus Democrats are "vulnerable" on the tax question. "Senator Obama, aren't you really going to raise taxes on ____?" It doesn't matter how many tax schemes are wildly skewed to favor the wealthy, we only hear about "class warfare" when the goal is to create more equity (we can safely predict that Senator McCain won't be asked why he is seeking continue to wage the class warfare against the poor and middle class that the richest among us have successfully waged for the last eight years).

4. Senator McCain has the national security credentials, and thus Senator Obama needs to "prove" himself. Democrats have been allowing themselves to be bullied on national security issues since the McCarthy era, so it is not surprising that Schieffer and his colleagues find it unimaginable that Obama doesn't simply fall down when McCain attacks. So we're much more likely to hear about the success of the surge than we are to hear about the Republican abandonment of Afghanistan.

5. Afghanistan, of course, reminds us of a crucial basis for all of the embedded assumptions: history began yesterday, or, at the longest, a week ago (except for attacks on Obama's supposed associations). As such, Schieffer accepts the master narrative of Republicans -- starting with Reagan -- standing tall to defeat our adversaries, a thrilling counterpoint to the defeatism of Vietnam. There can be 20 books written about blowback, and patient explanations given of how the U.S. supported and enabled bin Laden and supported and enabled Hussein, but all of that simply doesn't exist in Schieffer-world.

6. Conservation is nice, but economic growth depends on robust energy use. In the first iteration of this appeal to a vanished world (the gas tax holiday) the press could not believe that Obama wasn't swamped by the gimmick. The most deeply embedded assumption is that "economic growth" depends on growth in population, consumption, and building. For all of Schieffer's promises to hold the candidates' feet to the fire, don't expect Senator McCain to be asked to confirm that all experts believe that "drill, baby, drill" won't yield a drop for years. Or whether McCain really thinks that a concern about the safety of nuclear power plants is silly.

7. Both candidates need to be pushed on negativism, as though all "attacks" are equal (yes, false equivalence is actually Commandment Number 1). False and irrelevant versus true and relevant? Both have been said, so both are attacks and both weigh the same.

8.The Republican view of the campaign is what the campaign is about. This will likely lead (as it had in the past) to probing Obama with an "are you a bad guy" question, and to "digging equally deeply" to ask McCain, "Is Obama a bad guy?" On the other hand, we might get to see Obama challenged as to whether he is unfairly attacking McCain, and McCain asked whether Obama is unfairly attacking him. Wait a sec: both scenarios assumed that it was Obama who either had something to hide or that it was McCain who was being unfairly maligned.

9. It will look unfair if I challenge McCain more than Obama. I remember how much heat CBS took when Dan Rather challenged Bush the First. The impact, of course, is that the candidate who lies more gets the benefit of a higher percentage of lies going unchallenged. Why wouldn't this assumption work to protect the Democrat? Because Schieffer doesn't believe that the consequences of angering Democrats are nearly as serious as the consequences of getting Republicans upset.

10. McCain the Maverick. What can one say?

Gee, I hope I'm wrong, but I haven't even mentioned the burning desire in the MSM to have a "game changer" that "makes it anybody's race."

Please God, Don't Let The Big Banks Get Their Feelings Hurt

2008-10-14T13:04:08Z

Rescue Package 2.0 features $250 billion of investment in banks, 40% of which goes to just four banks (Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo). The dominant theme coming from the Treasury Department and from the conventional wisdom commentariat is that it was essential to walk a "fine line" so that these banks feel entirely comfortable in accepting our money.

What exists on either side of that no-so-fine line? On one side is the public interest; on the other side is unjust private enrichment. So even in the plan's conception, the idea is to see the extent to which the public interest can be minimized.

If an entity wants $25 billion of my money, the first things I would want to know would be: (1) Do you need it? and (2) How come? Unfortunately, Treasury is most interested in avoiding "stigmatizing" any bank, so we taxpayers none of that basic disclosure.

If a bank did need the massive infusion of cash from a private investor, that private investor (say, for example, Warren Buffett) would not be saying, "How can I arrange the deal to make it least burdensome on you." That private investor would be in the driver's seat, and would demand terms accordingly. Does the Treasury follow that private sector example? No, sir.

Henry Paulson has been palling around with financial terrorists, and there's no telling what those guys might do if they get crossed. Best to give them whatever they want.