conservatives Archives - Rogue Columnist

‘The party of ideas’

Here's something that baffles me about this moment. The right-wing captured Republican Party has complete control over Congress and the White House, as well as growing numbers of federal judges. Damage abounds. But based on their rhetoric and the desire of their voters…

…Why not enact a new version of the Immigration Act of 1924? This was a backlash against decades of record immigration and set strict quotas on people allowed to come, based on their country of origin (hint: big plus for whites, but also no restrictions on Latin Americans). These were in place until 1965 and, uncomfortably for liberals, coincided with the zenith of the American middle class. Congress, firmly in Republican hands and facing no presidential veto, has the absolute power to do this.

…Abolish the Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Again, the Republicans have the complete power to do this. None of these entities existed in 1960, when America was "great." Devolve the responsibilities to the states.

…Repeal the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. It's a longstanding article of faith among conservatives that these are both unconstitutional and bad for the economy. Poof! Gone. Strict interpretation of Article 10 would allow states to impose environmental laws — or try to, facing right-wing federal judges — but it's not something enumerated in the Constitution for the national government.

Republicans, never more in lock-step with the most extreme agenda of their party, could do this. It could avoid the third rail of Social Security. True, it can't outlaw abortion (and birth control), force prayer into public schools, or reverse the gains of LGBTQ people. But the above would be monumental victories, on the order of the New Deal, Great Society, or Trump's beloved Jackson era. They might last only two years — but maybe not, given GOP control of the Census, gerrymandering, vote suppression, and divisions among the Democrats.The GOP couldn't accomplish these sweeping changes under Reagan (when it branded itself as "the party of ideas") or George W. Bush. Now it could.

Yet it didn't. This is fascinating.

Jon Talton May 3, 201830

Politics: National

Trump and the GOP

It's rich that star columnist George "Chickenlips" Will has left the Republican Party because of the likely nomination of Donald Trump. He told the Federalist Society on Friday that he would change his registration to unaffiliated because the party that would have such a standard-bearer "is not my party." In a later interview, he said, "Make sure he loses. Grit (your) teeth for four years and win the White House."

I usually decline to extend [the real-estate developer's] brand by calling him by name, but here I am making an exception for clarity and economy of writing.

Beyond the unseemliness of a working journalist being registered as anything but an independent, Will's statement and even its forum tell us much — but not as he intended.

Columnists such as Will and the vast right-wing infrastructure that includes the Federalist Society (its specialty is the law and courts) have spent decades creating this moment. Decades of seeding the politics of racial antipathy through the Southern Strategy. Decades of teaching Americans to hate their government and be misinformed about its essential place in our society, history, and economy. Decades of creating devils (Hillary!) — and, yes, the left is capable of this, but doesn't have the reach of right-wing media. Decades of pushing policies that defunded schools, ruined our infrastructure, destroyed the middle class. All this was funded by a dark conspiracy of billionaires intent on repealing everything from the New Deal through the Nixon administration.

And this was mere prelude to the actions of the Republican Party in the Obama years. Even before Barack Obama was sworn in, we saw the frightening Nuremberg-lite rallies ginned up by Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Things got so bad that an embarrassed John McCain was forced to contradict an old bat who kept saying Obama was a Muslim terrorist. Palin led the party's final exodus from knowledge ("elitism!"), history, common sense. George Will didn't disown any of this; none of it offended his bow-tied Tory sensibility.

Then seven-and-a-half years of scorched-earth policy, where the GOP Congress regularly held the nation's economy and government hostage, even threatening default. Even minor appointments by the president were held up for years. The GOP-controlled House voted at least 60 times to repeal Obamacare, offering no alternative for uninsured Americans. Mr. Obama faced the unprecedented situation where his nominee to the Supreme Court could not even get a hearing. The party bigs and their puppetmasters helped fund the creation of the Tea Party — giving voice to an eager cohort of angry whites — ensuring a GOP so extreme that today Ronald Reagan couldn't win a Republican school-board primary. Not a peep from George Will. He was out to the ballgame.

Jon Talton June 27, 201651

Politics: National

Still Nixon to kick around

I was listening to a Fresh Air podcast the other day when the guest said that President Richard Nixon, elected as a conservative Republican, declared a federal "war on cancer" in 1971 with seed money of $100 million for research ($580 million in today's dollars). It started the trajectory that now has cancer-research funding at $4.8 billion.

That snippet reminded me that Nixon also created the Environmental Protection Agency and enthusiastically signed the Clear Air Act. He supported the Clean Water Act but vetoed the version Congress sent him based on cost (the veto was overridden). The similarly groundbreaking Marine Mammal Protection Act — also supported by Nixon and it became law in 1972.

These things happened not because Nixon was the prisoner of a Democratic majority in Congress — the Democrats were often divided and in those days Republicans had liberals, centrists and conservatives — but because he believed in them or thought they made good politics. He also largely funded LBJ's Great Society, albeit some cloaked in the rhetoric of his "New Federalism."

Nixon was no tax cutter. Instead, he instituted revenue sharing with states and cities, putting federal funds behind his conservative principle that they could use the money more efficiently. He proposed a federal health-care program that foreshadowed in many ways Obamacare, as well as a form of guaranteed income for all. Amtrak saved passenger trains, albeit imperfectly, on Nixon's watch.

For decades, Richard Nixon has been the devil to the left. But the left isn't politically relevant anymore (Jerry Ford Republicanism is what passes for "the left" in today's broken political spectrum). What's more consequential is that Nixon is now the devil to the right, which is more powerful than ever. So in the public square today, we are relitigating not Watergate but the domestic achievements of Tricky Dick.

Jon Talton March 30, 201550

Politics: National

The same-sex marriage moment

What does same-sex marriage mean? This is not a rhetorical question. Nor am I trolling. So stay with me and please provide your thoughts in the comments section.

As I write, a majority of states recognize same-sex marriage and the federal courts keep striking down bans. On a personal level, the meaning is profound. Being able to marry whom you want. To be at his or her side in the hospital and have legal rights of spouses. It is also arguably the biggest civil-rights victory since 1965.

And yet, the same-sex marriage moment is happening as most of the country, geographically at least, is becoming not merely more conservative but rabidly reactionary.

The assault on women's reproductive rights is unlike anything seen since the dark age before the advent of the pill.

Republican governors and legislatures, which control a majority of the states, are engaged in an ongoing effort to suppress the vote.

And the last time I checked, the GOP has a 66 percent chance of taking control of the Senate in November. If so, our halting regress toward national suicide will get a tremendous boost.

Jon Talton October 13, 201467

Politics: National

Doomsday Machine II

While a breathless nation watched natural redhead Lindsay Lohan try to adjust to jail and the most prestigious organ of the American press prominently lamented the failure to regulate Froot Loops, your world and the world for your children and grandchildren changed last week. Reported grudgingly if at all in most of "the media": The death of legislation that would even begin to address climate change. Others have commented on the shameful retreat by the Democratic Congress and White House, and even Tom Friedman had a good column. It included the pungent observation:

We’ve basically decided to keep pumping greenhouse gases into Mother
Nature’s operating system and take our chances that the results will be
benign — even though a vast majority of scientists warn that this will
not be so. Fasten your seat belts. As the environmentalist Rob Watson
likes to say: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics.
That’s all she is.” You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You
cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No,
Mother Nature is going to do whatever chemistry, biology and physics
dictate, and “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats
1.000,” says Watson. Do not mess with Mother Nature. But that is just
what we’re doing.

I'd like to explore the future we're making by our own choice.

Jon Talton July 26, 201021

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

Arizona crazy

From the Jim Crow anti-immigrant law and birther bill to the reality television show Sunset Daze, Arizona is gaining an international reputation for being crazy. It's not just "image" or "bad publicity." How did this happen to my beloved home? It took decades and tectonic shifts. Some will sound familiar to regular Rogue readers, but for the sake of the thousands of newbies that have found Rogue Columnist and are curious/frightened about Arizona, here's a primer:

The new Republican Party: Arizona always had a strong reactionary element, going back to its dependence on mines and railroads. Even the Democrats were mostly conservative. Arizona never produced, for example, a William Borah, the progressive Republican senator from Idaho. But even among the Republicans, there was independence and an understanding that Arizona would blow away without massive amounts of federal money. Republicans were a minority until Barry Goldwater slowly built them into the state's dominant party in the 1960s. Even then, Goldwater, Arizona Republic publisher Eugene C. Pulliam and others kept the John Bircher element at arms length, happy to use them but never let them take control. This changed with time and massive influx of new people. By the 1980s, conservative extremism was in the governor's seat. From the 1990s onward, the Christian Coalition and other national right-wing groups began taking control of the party from the lowest levels up, and purging old Arizona Republicans who now were labeled RINOS (Republicans in Name Only). They also focused on winning offices that held the most budget power, from school boards to the Legislature. The result is an entirely different creature: militant, frozen in ideological conformity, hostile to the facts, deeply committed to enacting "conservative" abstractions with little evidence they succeed. And, as the evidence shows, racist. Now, the Republicans have pretty much ruled for decades and the state is a catastrophe. Questions? That doesn't stop them from acting like victimized outsiders and the duhs and ignos in this ill-educated state fall for it.

The Big Sort: The journalist Bill Bishop used this as the title of his book on the dramatic clustering of like-minded people in different regions. It's a big change from most of American history, and as Bishop puts it, the Big Sort "is tearing us apart." Arizona is Exhibit A in this self-selecting process, especially among the Anglo population that votes, has money or is easy pickings for the demagogues. Arizona doesn't have its Austin (sorry, Democratic Tucson's strings are ultimately pulled by a car dealer and the sprawl barons). Despite the notion in the mid-1990s that population growth would moderate Arizona politics, or even the Democratic seats picked up during the nadir of the Bush presidency, Arizona has become redder and redder. People increasingly seemed to move to Arizona or the Phoenix suburbs to be with their co-religionists on the right, while progressive-minded folks moved out.

Jon Talton April 28, 201026

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: The Mormons

The Arizona Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mesa.

Growing up in Arizona, I found the Mormons neither strange nor mysterious, much less threatening. They were part of the wonderful mosaic of a state still tasting of the frontier, before it had been overrun by immigrants from the Midwest and miles of lookalike crapola subdivisions.

We had a Book of Mormon in our library, more a testament to my mother's insatiable curiosity than any desire to convert. My great-grandparents were among the first non-LDS farmers to settle near Mesa, and Grandmother reveled in telling the story about how the Saints pestered them to convert and "seal" their marriage in the temple, much to the horror of these former Presbyterian missionaries. But it was a story told gently and with affection for all.

The Mormons were revered among the great Arizona pioneers. They were known for their generosity, including to "gentiles," something our family experienced. Mormons were hard-working, reliable, self-reliant, patrons of education and the arts. Mesa in those days was a beautiful small city, a monument to the energy and far-sightedness of its LDS founders. We would regularly drive down neat and prosperous Main Street to see the beautiful Arizona Temple. The Mormon kids with whom I went to high school were among the most talented in one of the country's top high-school fine arts program.

The Mormons were also powerful. That was clear even at an early age.

Jon Talton June 23, 200915

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: Rugged individualism

Phoenix is built on many myths. Perhaps the greatest is that of the rugged individualist, standing in opposition to the statist and collectivist tendencies of "the East" and Europe. It's a familiar myth of the West, but it reaches levels of hilarious dissonance in my hometown.

In reality, Phoenix is the largest-scale example of government social engineering and public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy — i.e. socialism — in American history. Without massive government intervention, Phoenix would be a benighted little farm town of a few thousand, instead of a benighted migropolis of some 4 million, many raging along the public highways in their SUVs imagining themselves as 21st century range riders.

Modern Phoenix began with federal reclamation, the Newlands Act, which would begin the dam building that tamed the Salt River. It envisioned a Jeffersonian yeoman farmer democracy, with plots of 160 acres cultivated by citizens liberated from the dark satanic cities of the East. It didn't quite work out that way — rich farmers emerged and poor farmers (like my family) struggled. But all were being subsidized by federal tax dollars long before the New Deal. Their endeavors would not have been possible without the federal investment.

Jon Talton June 16, 20095

Politics: National

Can candidate Hoover fool us again?

John Sidney McCain III said today "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," sounding exactly like Herbert Hoover after the crash of 1929. The parallels are interesting. Republican policies largely caused the Great Depression. Hoover had done honorable and even miraculous work before the presidency (feeding World War I refugees). He was a progressive Republican but became a reactionary. The biggest similarity, besides "the fundamentals" lines, is that the world had passed both men by. The world had become too complex for their remedies or policies. They were/are overwhelmed. Except Hoover didn’t have Karl Rove, "the base" (which interestingly translates in Arabic as al Queda) and so many ignorant, easily led voters.

On the other hand, maybe the key word in McCain’s statement is "our" economy. As in the economy represented by his rich friends and supporters, the nationless corporate oligarchy and his Treasury secretary-to-be, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm (also prime architect of banking and Wall Street deregulation). He of the "nation of whiners" and "mental recession." For them, the winners at a time when income inequality is worse than anytime since before the crash of ’29, the economy is strong. So maybe unlike his campaign of late, McCain actually spoke the truth.

The recession that’s all in our heads claimed two of the most powerful and influential investment banks in the world over the weekend. Anybody who claims to tell you what will happen next — much less that the worst has passed — is about as reliable as all those telephone mortgage chislers during the housing bubble. What is more clear is how it happened, and, perhaps, some of the ramifications.

Jon Talton September 15, 20082

Uncategorized

Looking on while the world takes the lead

The Olympics have provided a showcase for China’s real leap forward, from the edgy Bird’s Nest stadium to the huge new terminal at the Beijing airport, which is twice the size of the Pentagon and claims to be the largest building in the world. But you don’t have to look to a giant nation that has scarily fused capitalism and authoritarianism to see nations moving ahead. Dubai is building a subway and Vancouver is working on an ambitious expansion of its SkyTrain.

And where is America? Our airlines are collapsing — have you read about the CEOs cutting back on fuel to save money, raising safety concerns, or United pilots worrying about maintenance standards? Amtrak is seeing a record demand due to higher gasoline prices and the sheer awfulness of flying — but years of underfunding are causing it to struggle. Cities face huge roadblocks and long timelines to build transit systems they should have had years ago. America, which once led the world in accomplishments, seems tired, decadent, gridlocked — especially in the face of new global realities.

This was especially brought home when I saw an article in Trains magazine about the two-year-old Central Station in Berlin. It’s an architectural landmark of the kind of modernism I find tedious, but never mind that. Built under difficult conditions, with budget fights and NIMBYs, it was nevertheless built. It serves 300,000 passengers and 1,100 trains a day. It also has 80 stores, travelers lounges and office towers. On display is a 21st century transportation network that can handle global warming and Peak Oil.

Meanwhile, we talk — talk — about repairing "our roads and bridges" in our 1965 transportation system. Our elected leaders include Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who said Democrats "want Americans to take transit and move to the inner cities. They want
Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, [and] take
light rail to their government jobs. That’s their vision for America."

Jon Talton August 12, 20086

Politics: National

A referendum on conservatism and ‘conservatism’

Part of me wants to nap until election day — and I’m a political junkie. The campaign coverage has descended to such a level of distraction and foolishness, especially in the electronic media, that it’s difficult to bear. Unfortunately, most people will be sufficiently indoctrinated by this sideshow, and I give you President-elect McCain. Where he is the truly risky choice, the media must have Obama in that box. Where the election should be a referendum on the now incontestable consequences of the Republican policies McCain will continue, it will be a referendum on Obama. I give you: President-elect McCain.

And he’s the "conservative." Yet he is no impostor. He is the same kind of "conservative" that has run the country for years.

This perhaps is the biggest irony in the room. A quarter century of "conservative" rule — including Bill Clinton and the Gingrich Congress — have given us a larger government, huge deficits, a crippling debt, debased culture, overseas adventures and imperial presidential power (We’re Americans: we torture) that would make Calvin Coolidge, Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater cringe. It is even counter to the ideas of Ronald Reagan as a political thinker (and, yes, he was a formidable one). By way of context, Ike, Nixon and George H.W. Bush were right-of-center pragmatists, not conservatives.

The heirs of Buckley bravely carry water for today’s "conservatives," but Buckley couldn’t have died a happy man, to see where his counter-revolution led (he became a vocal critic of the Iraq adventure). Burke and Russell Kirk are spinning so fast in their graves as to provide new data to particle physicists.

Jon Talton July 31, 20083

Uncategorized

The danger to the economy: Size does matter

One of the biggest underlying problems behind the financial crisis is size. These are the wages of years of mergers and industry consolidation, combined with weak or non-existent regulation. Thus, Wachovia today posted a loss of $8.9 billion — enough to add to the public funding of Amtrak by nearly eight-fold. In a healthy market economy, a bank with such performance could simply be allowed to "fail," with depositors covered by the FDIC and the shareholders who enabled the disaster taking the fall.

But Wachovia is too big to fail. Like its cousin investment banks on Wall Street and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, its collapse could bring down the entire economy. If necessary it will be propped up, as the Fed and Treasury have done with those other giants. (The immediate damage: $25 billion). That’s your money. Of course, the executive class will continue to take home tens-of-millions paychecks as a reward for these disasters.

And yet, the brain surgeons in the executive suites of Wachovia are merely trying to fix the bank enough to sell it. Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase seems to be the last shopper standing at the garage sale of the American economy. The result, in addition to calamity in Wachovia’s hometown of Charlotte, will be an even bigger behemoth to hold taxpayers hostage next time.

Jon Talton July 22, 20081