Back to the Future with Debra Saunders

Debra Saunders would probably be happy living in the deep south.  Pre-Civil War.  She may picture herself as a Southern Belle in wide hoop skirts sipping mint juleps on the verandah while darkies peel her grapes.  At least that’s the impression this reader got after reading her Chronicle column this morning.  No, she is not spouting right wing rhetoric, nor pining for the good old days. She’s simply saying she wants the voters in each state to decide what marriage laws will apply. If State A says ok for same sex couples to marry, she’s all for it, but if State B says no way, she’s for that too. 

She prefaces this whole “let the voters decide” spiel with her avowed support for gay marriage.  She has lots of gay friends, she hastens to assure us and she would never be happy if California passed a law allowing them to marry. (So long as those who object don’t have to perform the ceremonies.)

That kind of reasoning would have kept slavery in half our country. It would have denied black people and women the right to vote.  It would have prevented interracial couples from marrying. And it would have allowed states to deny basic reproductive freedom to women.  Oh, yeah, she uses Roe v. Wade as an example, pointing out that the Supreme Court could go back on precedent in the choice cases and re-interpret the Constitution to take away a women’s right.

But so could the states’ voters make similar changes if it was left up to them. With voter suppression statutes being proposed in many states, and not just the Southern ones, it is only the courts that keep the legislatures and the voters in check. If a measure that is enacted through popular vote is unconstitutional, it cannot stand.

If we believe in basic equality, then all people should be free to marry whom they choose and where they choose, not be forced to move if their state denies a right that another state allows. This is a fundamental freedom. In this she parts company from even her conservative gay friends, who have filed a “Friend of the Court “ brief supporting gay marriage in the Proposition 8 case now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Instead, she echoes another conservative, Bush Assistant US Attorney General known for his authorship of the “torture memo”, now a law professor, who states: “It would be a mistake for the Supreme Court to use this case to basically cut off the political process and impose its own view on a moral and political question that is very divisive.”

Wrong. It would be a mistake to leave such an issue, one of basic human rights, up to the whim of voters. That’s why we have a Constitution and a Supreme Court.  Do they always get it right? No, especially with the Bush era court we are now stuck with. But they will, eventually.  Just as the Court did away with the policy of separate but equal in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education; and a year later reversed its 1905 Decision in Lochner v. New York decision that allowed gouging of employees under a convoluted interpretation of contract law, stating in Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma “The day is gone when this Court uses the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down state laws, regulatory of business and industrial conditions, because they may be unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought."

Put away the picture hat, Debra, and join us in the 21^st century, crossing our fingers that this Court does the right thing!

Poltiical Mythology or Republican Spin?

In today's Chronicle column, entitled "Overly obstructed - deconstructed" in the print version and "The mythology of Obama's obstacles"in the SFGate version, Republican columnist Debra Saunders tries to spin the details of when and to whom Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said that the "single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president," into a Democrat-destroying myth.  They got the time and place wrong, rants Saunders.  But did they misquote?  No. Did they take it out of context?  No.  He said it when it appeared the Republicans were on the verge of  mid-term gains.  He said it to an interviewer from the National Journal .  He never denies saying it or meaning it. 

And furthermore, that's not all he said. In explaining his comments in a speech after the 2010 election, he said the only way to achieve the Republican goals to "repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things. We can hope the President will start listening to the electorate after Tuesday’s election. But we can’t plan on it. And it would be foolish to expect that Republicans will be able to completely reverse the damage Democrats have done as long as a Democrat holds the veto pen."

So, after criticizing Obama's programs ("damage Democrats have done"), and then because his new Congress will will not be able to "completely reverse" this damage, he needs a president who will not veto their programs.  (Read the Glenn Kessler Washington Post "Fact Checker" article about who said what when here.)

So he said it; he meant it, and he reiterated it. It's a fact.  It doesn't have wings, a horn in the middle of its head or live in a lake in Scotland. By focusing on the when and where rather than the what and why, Saunders is the one obstructing the truth, that the Republicans, led by McConnell and John Boehner, have made it their no. one priority to obstruct, deflect and prevent passage of any legislation Obama and the Democrats put forward, whether in the past they would have agreed with it or not.     Like waivers in the welfare program their own governors asked for. And jobs for veterans.

But I guess in Republican-World, spin is everything. That's why Obama is looking good for a second term and Democratic chances for Congress are rosy. As long as we are talking myth and superstition, fingers crossed that it all doesn't get derailed by the very real voter suppression efforts now underway by Republicans in swing states.

Here's a quote for Ms. Saunders to ponder: Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai:"Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.” Let's see how she spins that one.

Debra Defends Romney on the 47% - with about 47% enthusiasm

Trying hard to justify Romney's blooper

Here she goes again. In today’s Chronicle, Debra Saunders, who I believe is secretly pulling out her hair by its roots over having to yet again, defend her boy Romney, as the good little Republican she is, uses some convoluted reasoning to tell us that Romney’s statement at that now infamous fundraiser, caught on video, and broadcast all over the internet and picked up by both the mainstream and the down stream media all week – and who took that video anyway and how did it find its way to Mother Jones I wonder?)  about 47% of Americans not paying taxes is “in the right neighborhood.” (Poor choice of words, as Romney’s neighborhood is on the other side of the tracks and up the hill from the people he purports to be talking about. I guess he has a good telescope to keep an eye on the peons below.)

While acknowledging it was a mistake to lump in the likes of senior citizens who have worked their whole life paying into the system, and now live on their meager Social Security, she says Romney “also hit on a truth: the percent of filers who pay payroll taxes for Social Security, but not federal income taxes has grown a lot.”

Taxes are taxes are taxes

Note:    Payroll taxes ARE income taxes. They come out of your income.  They go into a federal pot.  They may or may not be around to help you when you reach the age of retirement.  (Not, if Ryan/Romney have their way – they’d rather you put your money in the all mighty market and let the whims of economic forces, which the people who live in their neighborhood control, determine whether you get a pot of gold or potluck at the end of your working days). And only about 17% of people pay neither of these taxes. These include the elderly and the "working poor."

Saunders concedes Washington had good reason to provide some tax relief for the working poor, but parrots Romney’s belief that this somehow results in “over half of voters [supporting] any scheme designed to expand the federal government secure in the knowledge that they likely will not have to pay for it.”

Huh?  Where did that come from?   Over half the voters want the government to expand the government?  Which part of the government?  The military? I don’t think so.  Homeland security?  Probably not that either.   Maybe the part that builds roads and bridges, and puts out fires and catches criminals, and protects our air and water and food safety.    Those could all use shoring up.   But the part about not having to pay for it comes right out of the air. Or the Romney talking points.

The working poor pay taxes. Plain and simple. Stop lying about that.  Even if they get some federal breaks, they pay FICA, they pay sales tax, they pay property tax (and don’t tell me that if they rent, they don’t. Savvy landlords factor their tax load into that rent, and in poorest neighborhoods, abuses abound). And don't get me started on retires. They paid their whole working life into the system.  Do  Debra and her man Romney really expect us to believe these folks want more government without having to pay for it? 

The price of civilization

As Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, “Paying taxes is the price of admission to a civilized society ”  (or some variation on that. In a legal opinion he said: "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society" and he is reported to have said (in a book by Justice Felix Frankfurter on Holmes' life) to a young secretary:  "I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization." 

What kind of society do we want?  Do we really want only pharmaceutical companies researching drugs to cure diseases? Do we want private toll roads?   Private fire departments?  Sick people too poor to pay for private insurance or private doctors, spreading germs to all?  Kids too ignorant to get any kind of job because their parents can’t send them to the private schools?  Or maybe we do. Maybe we want kids to work in factories for a pittance, like Romney saw in China, where the barbed wire is to keep people out, because a pittance looks good when you’re starving on the street.

The big lie - Tax cuts for the rich create jobs

And one last point. Debra lambasts the Obama proposal for increased taxes on the rich, reading from her Republican playbook, that to do so would “give business another reason to sit on their capital instead if hiring new workers.” Well, Debra, or someone, anyone, please show me the jobs, created in this country because of the Bush tax cuts.  Where are they, what are they?  According to one report by Forbes writer Rick Ungar (admittedly calling himself the "token leftie, much as Debra refers to herself as the "token Republican") in July of this year, during the Bush years, the increase in employment in the United States was between 4.5 and 7%.   That's a lot less than in the years without major tax cuts for the wealthy. So much for "job creators." 

As Ungar says:  Putting more money in the pockets of the wealthy may create a few jobs for the foreign bankers who get to count the extra money funneled into into the off-shore accounts of the rich, but there is nothing in the way of actual data to support the notion that putting more money into the pockets of the wealthiest Americans will inure to the benefit of those looking for work.

Debra Debra Debra - Come back to Earth!

I cringe to think what Debra Saunders, the so-called "token" Republican of the San Francisco Chronicle will do to Clinton's speech and then to Obama's, considering the mash up she made of Michelle's.  In a weirdly constructed column, Saunders entitled:  First lady: You, too, can be Mitt Romney, today, she takes the Obamas to task for having received student loans, as described in Michelle Obama's stirring speech at the Democratic Convention on Tuesday.


This is the weird part. I had to read these three short paragraphs several times and I must say I am stumped . Maybe you can hep me understand what this all means if anything, to Ms. Saunders:
 
     "As I listened the first lady talk about what her family did to make sure she got a first-class education and how she and her husband struggled to pay off their hefty student loans, I couldn't help but think that Barack and Michelle Obama would not be the fine people they are today if they hadn't had to stretch themselves to get ahead.

     "So why do they seem to think the government should hand out more taxpayer-backed grants and loans to today's college and graduate students? If someone else had handed their college and law-school educations to the Obamas, they'd be Mitt Romney.

    "Yet they bash Romney for not having to work as hard as they had to in order to get where they are today."

Ok, let's parse those sentences. First she says Michelle and Barack are fine people because of the struggles they had to get ahead.  So far so good.  Then she asks why they think government should help other people get ahead.  Huh?   What does this mean?  Others should not get what they got?  Which is really not "getting" anything, but the opportunity to got to college and then work hard to pay back the loans that paid for their education.  Is this what she's saying.

And then, say what? These hard working people who want others to have the same opportunities they did bash Willard Mitt Romney because he had to "work as hard as they had to in order to be where they are today?"

Did the editor leave out a crucial sentence?  Is Debra really saying that Romney a) had to work hard and b) is now where the Obamas are today? 

I don't get it.  Romney came from wealth.  When he went to college he lived in a basement and ate spaghetti with the lovely Ann through choice, not circumstances.  And poor Ann just never could never understood why he did that.  Something about the Mormon missionary experience he had to get out of his system I guess.  Did he take out student loans? Maybe, I don't think so.  (and so what?) Is he now where the Obamas are today?  Not by a long shot. He's on Jupiter and they are simply living on Planet Earth. And this is meant by way of analogy, not to slam Mr. Romney for being out of touch with the home planet (even though he is.) 

(For those who don't like to interrupt their reading to click through to arcane internet sites, and to paraphrase Bill Clinton, here's the score: Romney $250 million; Obamas not quite $6 million. No, it's not chump change, but Barack Obama didn't have a rich daddy who gave him his first stock options or who bought him a home when he got tired of the "dump" he lived in in college.)

I guess Saunders is drinking whatever they've been pouring over in Romney world. Because she finishes up her column with the wholly unsubstantiated statement that "More student aid leads to higher tuition; higher tuition leads to record college debt." 

Not that I don't think some unscrupulous college chancellors in both public and private schools wouldn't jump at any excuse to bloat their own salaries as we have seen all too often in our own UC system, but come on.  If that's the case, don't punish the students, change the system.   Does Saunders really believe people shouldn't get student loans?  Does she really believe Mitt had to work as hard as the Obamas ever in his life?

Earth to Debra, come on back down here and let's get you some help.  Seriously, making her write this column every single day of the Convention might just be too much to ask of a nice San Francisco Republican.