Facing a press conference with embarrassing questions about his cover-up of the Mark Foley child-buggering scandal, Republican campaign chairman Tom Reynolds decided on a bold strategy. He surrounded himself with little children, then refused to make them leave the room when questions of an adult nature came up.
The video is here.
This reminds me of a scene in the first Burton Batman movie. While being beaten up by Batman, the Joker reaches into his pocket, whips out a pair of glasses, and puts them on. Then he says, "You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses, would you?" (Note: Greg Kuperberg reminds me that Bugs Bunny did that joke first.)
Also, doesn't this remind anybody of a certain OTHER organization that is well-known for internally covering up evidence that high ranking officials were taking sexual advantage of little kids?...
Ugh. That's so disgusting! :-(
ReplyDeleteHello Russell! I am a bit surprised that it has not been on your radar screen that Dick DeVos, one of the kings of Amway, is running for governor of Michigan. One guess as to which party nominated him. In my book this is much worse than the antics of Tom Foley or Tom Reynolds.
ReplyDeleteHi, Greg -- nice to hear from you after so long. And welcome to the blogosphere, even though I see you've been around since January.
ReplyDeleteIt hasn't escaped my attention that Amway bigshot DeVos is now Republican bigshot DeVos, and yes he's scary, and that sucks for the state of Michigan. On the other hand, this isn't an all-purpose political blog like Daily Kos, and I write stuff as the mood strikes.
Also, face it, yet another Republican politician who happens to be a financial con man doesn't exactly count as either shocking news or high comedy.
I think that Amway clearly crosses a line that even many Republican voters don't want to cross. It is clear even to many Republicans that Amway is a corrupt distortion of rational conservative aims. This is not a case like Mark Foley in which the guy was conservative Republican in public and a NAMBLA type in private. Amway is like Jesus Camp for grownups, in the sense that more reasonable Republicans don't like it and yet can't distance themselves from it. The GOP has been supported by Amway for a long time and I think that it should be aired. I don't think that it's just a "birds of a feather" story.
ReplyDeleteOh also -- the joke in Batman is great, but it has also appeared in Bugs Bunny cartoons.
ReplyDeleteGreg,
ReplyDeleteI updated the entry to reflect your Bugs Bunny correction.
I think you may be overestimating the degree to which rank and file Republicans care about financial ethics. First of all, you and I are familiar with the tactics of Amway, but it's not clear to me that the average voter knows enough about them to have a seriously negative impression. Many of the people I come in contact with gradually lost interest in running "their" business, but are surprised to find that there's anything actually wrong with Amway as a whole. And these are the people who actually got involved. Most people just don't think about Amway at all and haven't any idea what they stand for.
Second, at the risk of sounding as cynical as my dad sometimes does, I think many Republican voters believe they have some kind understanding of financial issues when they all they really know is reciting some lines handed to them by the super-rich. I mean, the widespread use of the term "death tax" by a very large number of people who will never, ever be affected by it is a case in point. Rhetoric aside, have the Republicans ever really been the party of fiscal responsibility, or just of low taxes and tremendous deficits?
Regarding Mark Foley, I think the relevant issue is not that Foley likes to seduce underage pages. Nobody can blame the leadership for the actions of individuals. But like the Catholic Church, the big problem is the deliberate coverup. For people who claim to vote on "family values", the fact that so many Republican apologists are willing to come out and say "What's the big damn deal about a little sexual harassment anyway?" really ought to speak volumes.
I think you may be overestimating the degree to which rank and file Republicans care about financial ethics.
ReplyDeleteThere is more than one kind of rank and file Republican. Sure, the Becky Fischers of the world don't understand and don't care. But there are also a lot of swing voters and so on. In some sense, I'm almost one of them. I don't usually vote Republican, but I still think of Democrats as "they" rather than "we".
First of all, you and I are familiar with the tactics of Amway, but it's not clear to me that the average voter knows enough about them to have a seriously negative impression.
Neither one of us are real campaign workers, so I mean my point partly at an intellectual level. Your blog is surely an intellectual exercise to an extent, isn't it?
Most people just don't think about Amway at all and haven't any idea what they stand for.
But they should learn more about it in Michigan and elsewhere. After all, it was your big message that Amway is horrible. You could argue that you have said all that there is to say about not joining Amway. But when the Amway stinkers get deep into politics, that opens a new chapter.
Rhetoric aside, have the Republicans ever really been the party of fiscal responsibility, or just of low taxes and tremendous deficits?
In the presidential context it's a somewhat loaded question, because there haven't been that many recent examples. Yes, that is all that Reagan and Bush 43 ever really stood for. But, for example, a Republican Congress at least acceded to balanced budgets when Clinton was president in return for other goals. And at the state level, we have a Republican governor who is no worse, fiscally, than the cynical Democrat who preceded him.
Another question is whether Republicans want to balance budgets in any fair way. If they followed Democratic priorities on that, then they would really be what they call "RINOs". Either way, some form of fiscal restraint has been witnessed at times, even if it isn't a progressive form of restraint.
But like the Catholic Church, the big problem is the deliberate coverup.
I won't defend Foley or Hastert or anyone else on this, but I have to say that Washington will never get anywhere if it cannot rise above investigating coverups. So Foley dropped his pants, figuratively speaking, around some pages. So Hastert did nothing about it for a long time. None of it is nearly as bad as what the DeVos family has done to America even without their foray into politics.
Many of the people I come in contact with gradually lost interest in running "their" business, but are surprised to find that there's anything actually wrong with Amway as a whole.
In fact, a little higher up the chain, a lot of managers at large and medium-sized companies are quietly annoyed by Amway's parasitic presence in their workers' lives. They are also unimpressed by the fake inventory system for Amway "dealers", and by the insecure cult mentality that it fosters. If they don't mind DeVos running in Michigan, they may just not have thought through his real business record.
Aside from the precise identity of the audience, I just think that you have a strong message about Amway that goes beyond ordinary dissatisfaction with the other side of the political aisle. If you had merely been corralled to a campus GOP club meeting, I don't think that you would have come away quite that angry.
Neither one of us are real campaign workers, so I mean my point partly at an intellectual level. Your blog is surely an intellectual exercise to an extent, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteYes and no. To some extent my blog is just an attempt to preach to the choir. I have some pretty heated online arguments about these subjects, mostly on the message boards at fool.com, but I decided there was no point in treating this blog as a tool for conversion -- in general, anybody who cares to read this blog on a regular basis mostly agrees with me anyway. I get some random traffic, but not all that much.
Most people just don't think about Amway at all and haven't any idea what they stand for.
But they should learn more about it in Michigan and elsewhere. After all, it was your big message that Amway is horrible. You could argue that you have said all that there is to say about not joining Amway. But when the Amway stinkers get deep into politics, that opens a new chapter.
Yes they should, but one thing I learned from having that Amway page up for all these years is that you can't force people to care about an issue they don't care about. People tend to get "fired up" about either debunking or defending Amway once they've had significant personal contact with it. And although the number of people who have had casual contact with Amway distributors is significant, I think the proportion of people who find Amway worth reading about is an extremely small proportion of the population. I suspect that if I started talking about DeVos's Amway connection with a disinterested conservative, they'd be far more likely to feel friendly towards Amway because they don't like my position, rather than feel hostile toward DeVos because they don't like Amway.
In the years since I got interested, I believe Amway has gone from about an 8 billion dollar company to about a 5 billion dollar company. If I were on an ego trip, I'd love to take credit. :)
Rhetoric aside, have the Republicans ever really been the party of fiscal responsibility, or just of low taxes and tremendous deficits?
In the presidential context it's a somewhat loaded question, because there haven't been that many recent examples. Yes, that is all that Reagan and Bush 43 ever really stood for. But, for example, a Republican Congress at least acceded to balanced budgets when Clinton was president in return for other goals. And at the state level, we have a Republican governor who is no worse, fiscally, than the cynical Democrat who preceded him.
Reagan took office 26 years ago. At my age, he's the first Republican president I was ever aware of. (Fun fact: Nixon resigned exactly one month to the day before I was born. And the only familiarity I have with Ford is through old Chevy Chase clips.) How many years of consistently applied "borrow and spend" policy need to pass before people renounce the claim that Republican leadership is in any way interested in fiscal responsibility?
I'm not familiar with which governor you mean, but to say that he is "no worse" than his Democrat counterpart seems to be damning with faint praise.
I won't defend Foley or Hastert or anyone else on this, but I have to say that Washington will never get anywhere if it cannot rise above investigating coverups. So Foley dropped his pants, figuratively speaking, around some pages. So Hastert did nothing about it for a long time. None of it is nearly as bad as what the DeVos family has done to America even without their foray into politics.
I certainly don't think that Foley is the defining issue that illustrates how bad this presidency and Congress have been, but I think it is a convenient metaphor for the moment. The fact is that the administration really likes covering things up. They didn't support an investigation of 9/11 until they had been badgered about it for years. They pretended for many more years that the situation in Iraq is just great. They didn't care to find out how it was that Hurricane Katrina turned into such a spectacular debacle. Then they aggressively slandered and questioned the patriotism of any journalist or private citizen who brought up these kinds of inconvenient questions.
The fact that this particular scandal happens to involve a cover-up of sexual harassment of very young underlings is just a neat little twist of irony. Now that fiscal responsibility is a national joke and the public no longer supports the war in Iraq, "moral values" seems to be the last shred of respectability that the Republicans still cling to.
In fact, a little higher up the chain, a lot of managers at large and medium-sized companies are quietly annoyed by Amway's parasitic presence in their workers' lives. They are also unimpressed by the fake inventory system for Amway "dealers", and by the insecure cult mentality that it fosters. If they don't mind DeVos running in Michigan, they may just not have thought through his real business record.
I'm not unwilling to discuss the perils of Amway when the subject comes up, but I notice that in most discussions, it almost never does. I haven't done the math, but I suspect that managers of large and medium-sized companies make up a fairly small percentage of the electorate.
Aside from the precise identity of the audience, I just think that you have a strong message about Amway that goes beyond ordinary dissatisfaction with the other side of the political aisle. If you had merely been corralled to a campus GOP club meeting, I don't think that you would have come away quite that angry.
Back then, maybe not. Now, I'm not so sure. If I had ever been very open to being a Republican, and temporarily bought into some of the myths that they routinely foist on the public, I might have gotten angry once I got disillusioned.
How many years of consistently applied "borrow and spend" policy need to pass before people renounce the claim that Republican leadership is in any way interested in fiscal responsibility?
ReplyDeleteIf you mean at the presidential level, you're not commenting on very many examples. Even so, you can make a few comparisons that go in the other direction. For example, George H. Bush's fiscal handling of the Persian Gulf War was superior in every respect to Lyndon Johnson's fiscal handling of the Vietnam War.
Now, I agree with you that the main trend of Republican presidencies -- as defined mostly by Reagan and Bush 43 -- is "borrow and spend". But that is not the same statement as that the entire leadership is uninterested in fiscal discipline. When Bush 41 was president, that was not the best time for a balanced budget according to standard Keynesian theory. But never mind that for the moment. If no Republican ever took any interest in fiscal discipline, then they never would have cooperated with Clinton to balance the budget.
I'm not familiar with which governor you mean, but to say that he is "no worse" than his Democrat counterpart seems to be damning with faint praise.
My governor is Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was going to say that he is better fiscally than Gray Davis, who he replaced in a recall. On the surface, it is true, because California's credit rating has substantially improved since Schwarzenegger took office. See here. But if I were to make a complete case, I would have to compare it to the general economic conditions that they faced. So I admit that I don't know enough yet to settle the matter.
In any case, if you look at the credit ratings of all the states, there is no consistent pattern that the Republicans are good and the Democrats are bad. Possibly the Republicans are worse than the Democrats in each individual state, but clearly overall fiscal health depends on factors other than just whether the state is Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. For example, Georgia has the top rating, while California is near the bottom.
Sorry, I forgot to put in this url for state credit ratings.
ReplyDeleteNow, I agree with you that the main trend of Republican presidencies -- as defined mostly by Reagan and Bush 43 -- is "borrow and spend". But that is not the same statement as that the entire leadership is uninterested in fiscal discipline. When Bush 41 was president, that was not the best time for a balanced budget according to standard Keynesian theory. But never mind that for the moment. If no Republican ever took any interest in fiscal discipline, then they never would have cooperated with Clinton to balance the budget.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've read, they didn't cooperate. One of the major planks in Clinton's economic policy was a tax hike on the wealthiest 1%. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 passed under a Democratic Congress, without a single Republican vote. Many Republicans publicly (and wrongly) predicted that it would yield economic disaster.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report in 1998 analyzing the causes behind the shift from deficit to surplus. They concluded that a generally improved economy was the greatest factor, but legislation passed in 1993-1994 was responsible for $141 billion in deficit reduction, while budgetary actions taken by the Republican Congress actually increased the deficit by $11 billion. They summarize:
"The facts show that the 1998 budget is balanced despite Republican legislative efforts, not because of them."
Alan Greenspan also agreed that the 1993 bill was the greatest contributor to the surplus.
My governor is Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was going to say that he is better fiscally than Gray Davis, who he replaced in a recall. On the surface, it is true, because California's credit rating has substantially improved since Schwarzenegger took office. See here. But if I were to make a complete case, I would have to compare it to the general economic conditions that they faced. So I admit that I don't know enough yet to settle the matter.
If four presidents and 26 years wasn't a good enough sample size for you, then I'm sure you'd recognize that two governors shouldn't count for much more than purely anecdotal evidence.
In any case, I'm not really sure how to interpret this information you linked, because it's not all that clear to me whether or how a state's credit rating is connected to its overall financial health. I'm not even sure what state credit ratings are based on. Knowing a bit about personal credit ratings, and having a fairly high rating myself, I think I can confidently assert that looking at a person's credit rating is not a good predictor of their personal wealth.
However, when it comes to compiling the "big picture", here's some information that I have seen thrown around for the last few years. Another nonpartisan group, the Tax Foundation, put out a report in 2004 showing which states received more federal tax dollars than they produced, and vice versa. The results were actually pretty striking: 17 of the top 20 "receivers" were red states. Only 14 states were "producers"; of those, 11 are blue states.
I may be overgeneralizing, but this seems to indicate that money tends to flow out from liberal states and into conservative states.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report in 1998 analyzing the causes behind the shift from deficit to surplus.
ReplyDeleteBut you are not quoting the CBO report itself, you are quoting interpretation of the CBO's numbers that was added by David Obey, who is a Democratic politician.
I don't think that Obey is completely or even mostly wrong, by the way. What I think is that he does not make a complete case. $11 billion is actually very small in the grand scheme of things. It is approximately zero. This means that Clinton and the GOP Congress managed to preserve a course of fiscal restraint over the course of six years. If the GOP Congress had seized on a borrow-and-cut-taxes policy as their top priority, it would not have looked like that. Clinton did not fend off a horde of Vandals single-handledly.
Alan Greenspan also agreed that the 1993 bill was the greatest contributor to the surplus.
That may well be true. But neither Greenspan nor most economists would say that fiscal prudence is 100% on the side of the Democrats.
If four presidents and 26 years wasn't a good enough sample size for you, then I'm sure you'd recognize that two governors shouldn't count for much more than purely anecdotal evidence.
It's all just anecdotal evidence of course. Or rather, it's six complicated examples. The CBO analysis -- but not Obey's partisan spin -- is in the direction of a more informed appraisal of the issue.
In any case, I'm not really sure how to interpret this information you linked, because it's not all that clear to me whether or how a state's credit rating is connected to its overall financial health.
A bond credit rating is not at all the same thing as a personal credit rating. In order to even have a bond credit rating, you have to lay open your books for a detailed appraisal by the credit agencies. This is a standard procedure not only for state debt, but also municipal debt and corporate debt. Basically for any institution that wants to borrow money by selling bonds. The credit rating affects the interest rate that the issuer has to pay. Whether fair or not, California has to pay higher interest than Georgia, because the market trusts California less.
I'm sure that there are inaccuracies in bond credit ratings. It does still have guesswork. Nonetheless, you have to look at things like credit ratings if you want to rise above gut impressions, or what you call "anecdotes". I would not recommend betting against the market by trading Georgia bonds for California bonds.
I may be overgeneralizing, but this seems to indicate that money tends to flow out from liberal states and into conservative states.
Money certainly does flow out of liberal states and into conservative states via the federal government, but this doesn't really say much about fiscal responsibility. Rather, it's because the states that benefit have more land, which (a) gives them a direct political advantage, (b) makes them poorer and more on the dole, because they are less urbanized, and (c) makes them more conservative, again because they are less urbanized. A more subtle contributor to (c) is that large-state cities are newer; older cities tend to be more liberal than newer ones.
But you are not quoting the CBO report itself, you are quoting interpretation of the CBO's numbers that was added by David Obey, who is a Democratic politician.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, that was sloppy of me not to have noticed it. Sorry.
I don't think that Obey is completely or even mostly wrong, by the way.
Okay then. :)
What I think is that he does not make a complete case. $11 billion is actually very small in the grand scheme of things. It is approximately zero. This means that Clinton and the GOP Congress managed to preserve a course of fiscal restraint over the course of six years. If the GOP Congress had seized on a borrow-and-cut-taxes policy as their top priority, it would not have looked like that. Clinton did not fend off a horde of Vandals single-handledly.
Perhaps, but if most of the progress was triggered by acts passed under the Democratic Congress, then it does seem to turn some conventional wisdom -- that divided government is best for fiscal prudence -- on its head. $11 billion may be small, but it is still a net negative compared to a net positive.
That may well be true. But neither Greenspan nor most economists would say that fiscal prudence is 100% on the side of the Democrats.
Perhaps not, but modern Republicans explicitly hold to an unusual notion of what "fiscal responsibility" means that is largely based on the supply-side economics that Arthur Laffer popularized in the 80's. Reagan slashed taxes on the wealthy under the theory that it was guaranteed to raise more revenue -- even though nobody ever had never established exactly where on the Laffer curve the economy really was. If you reduce taxes from 100%, sure, you'll yield more productivity; but unless you can prove that we aren't on the side of the curve where revenues go up as taxes go up, this doesn't apply.
Republican mouthpieces like Sean Hannity go around reciting howlers like "Every time you cut taxes, you double revenue." Yee haw, let's cut taxes to $0 and we'll get an infinite amount of money! I would bet that if you talk a poll of Republicans, the great majority of him would generally agree with the sentiment. Yet from what I've read, this is the economist's version of creationism: A large number of politicians and the general public believe it, but a vanishingly small segment of professional economists do.
I certainly don't think that all Democrats are fiscally responsible, but I think that Republicans by and large base their policies on such a flawed model that they are nearly guaranteed to do as badly as they actually have in the last six years.
Money certainly does flow out of liberal states and into conservative states via the federal government, but this doesn't really say much about fiscal responsibility. Rather, it's because the states that benefit have more land, which (a) gives them a direct political advantage, (b) makes them poorer and more on the dole, because they are less urbanized, and (c) makes them more conservative, again because they are less urbanized.
Admittedly it can be hard to separate cause from effect, but this seems hard to square with what you said earlier. You are suggesting that there is a correlation between "being poor" and "being more conservative". Not a causal correlation, to be sure, but if states with more land both (a) are poorer, and (b) are more conservative, then it follows that conservative states tend to be poorer states -- a proposition which I clearly would agree with.
How, then, does that affect to your assertion that credit rating corresponds to overall financial health? Georgia, for instance, has a below average per capita income, even though, as you pointed out, they have the best credit rating.
A more subtle contributor to (c) is that large-state cities are newer; older cities tend to be more liberal than newer ones.
That one I don't see at all. I can't follow how you would justify the "newness" of a state directly affecting its political orientation. Many of the rural states were among the last added, so there might be a correlation there, but I certainly don't see why the "newness" itself is a relevant feature of the calculation.
By the way, did you get my apolitical email this time?