Democrats embracing Tea Party tactics? That won"t work without a new ideology | Jamie Peck

While Republican lawmakers were colluding with vice president-elect Mike Pence about how best to repeal — and probably not replace — the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday, President Obama held a meeting of his own. Unlike many previous meetings of his, Republicans were not invited. He did not “reach across the aisle.”

Instead, the outgoing president laid out a strategy to oppose Republican efforts to repeal his signature healthcare legislation, a move that could kick up to 30 million Americans off health insurance. That strategy involves pushing the phrase “Make America Sick Again,” refusing to “rescue” Republicans by helping them pass bound-to-be-Randian replacement measures and referring to the resulting disaster as “Trumpcare,” as in: “I would have gotten my leg set by a doctor, but thanks to Trumpcare, I’m using Scotch tape.” The political fallout, he said, must solely hurt the Republicans. (Sounds like someone is finally jumping on the Bernie “time to admit you lied” Sanders train.)

Contrast this with remarks made back in April in which Obama warned his party against becoming too much like the Tea Party. Speaking to a group of law students in Chicago, he worried that Democrats would “stake out positions so extreme, they alienate the broad public.” He’s hardly become Eugene Debs, but it seems he’s come around to a more confrontational strategy. (Funny how your priorities change when you go from quelling a left-insurrection to trying to quell a right one.)

In instructing his party to openly vie for power and engage in the muck of actual politics rather than genteel tinkering, the president became the latest and most high-profile advocate of an idea that’s finally picking up steam in mainstream Democratic circles: copying the Tea Party, a faction which, for better or for worse, was and remains devastatingly effective at carrying out its program.

Beginning immediately after Obama’s 2008 election, a vocal, ideologically-driven minority of “activists” began storming town hall meetings, pressuring Republican representatives to resist Obama no matter what he tried to do and purging their party of anyone deemed insufficiently reactionary. Eight years later they enjoy a unified right-wing government and undisputed dominance of the Republican Party. Gone are the days when Congressional Republicans will let themselves be cucked by compromise. It’s high time the Democrats sunk to their level.

A 23-page Google document titled “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda” has been spreading around Washington faster than John Podesta’s risotto recipe. Written by a group of Congressional staffers who witnessed the rise of the Tea Party firsthand, it lays out a number of practical ways progressive activists and lawmakers can defend the incremental gains of the Obama era using Tea Party tactics, minus the physical intimidation and rabid racism.

Operating on a local level, acting defensively and waging constituent phone call campaigns are all ideas that can easily be appropriated. Considering the razor-thin margins by which Republicans won in many states, it should not be hard to frighten Republican representatives with the prospect of getting voted out.

Activists can also empower (or pressure, as the case may be) Democratic lawmakers to stand up for progressive principles, and this means tugging the political spectrum back to the left. Republicans have long known it’s foolish to start negotiations in the middle. They stake out extreme positions — a six-week abortion ban, a complete gutting of the Office of Congressional Ethics — so they can bargain down to what they actually want — a 20-week abortion ban, a “bipartisan” gutting of the OCE.

In contrast, Democrats said they were open to replacing Obamacare before Congress was even in session, voted to authorize the Iraq War and competed throughout the 1990s to show they could put black people in prison and dismantle the welfare state with the best of them. They let the ACA’s public option fall to the threat of a filibuster from Joe Lieberman, which they could have easily withstood if they’d wanted to. Even now, they deride the Tea Party’s tactics as childish and crass, when the truly crass thing is that 45 million people are living in poverty in the richest country in the world.

Of course, what the Google doc and the president fail to mention is that this only works if the Democrats are progressive in the first place; there can be no left-Tea Party without an organizing ideology. Which brings me to another Tea Party tactic: the purge.

While some Democrats (Elizabeth Warren, logical left-Tea Party choice for DNC chair Keith Ellison) are already reasonably progressive and more can potentially be dragged left by political expediency, many are simply too committed to neoliberal ideology and/or beholden to monied interests to be rehabilitated. Which means some pink-slipping and primary-challenging is in order.

Time travelers from the New Deal era would be confused to learn the leftmost major party’s 2016 nominee for president ran her primary campaign against the $ 15/hour minimum wage, tuition-free college and single-payer healthcare, deriding these common sense reforms as pie-in-the-sky fancies on the level of Trump’s wall, and only begrudgingly adopting certain elements of them once it became clear the left wing of her party might revolt.

In the general election, Trump exploited establishment Democrats’ longstanding support of labor-opposed trade deals to stake out a leftward position that threw the Clinton campaign for a loop. Despite the benefit of hindsight, many in the party’s leadership still refuse to recognize the role these failures played in their 2016 defeat.

For all the New Democrats’ talk of pragmatism over ideology, it seems the truly practical thing would be to grow some sort of ideological backbone. Those who refuse to do so must be left in the woods.

The good news is that once this happens, progressive activists and lawmakers will be able to use Tea Party’s tactics better than the Tea Party itself, because the left has actual grassroots movements.

Black Lives Matter, Fight For $ 15 and Bernie Sanders’ remarkable campaign are all examples of regular people coming together to effect change that put the Tea Party’s “grassroots” theatrics to shame.

If these movements have already achieved some modest victories on their own, imagine what they’ll be able to do with the legislative and monetary powers of a newly invigorated Democratic Party at their disposal. What the party may lose in large donations, it will gain in small ones, votes and the ability to fix this mess.

And that’s worth spilling some tea along the way.

Democrats embracing Tea Party tactics? That won"t work without a new ideology | Jamie Peck

The Commission of Audit in a nutshell: ideology over proof

The Commission of Audit is a uncommon instance of a government attaching itself to a document that appears to detest Australia. Its recommendations start off from a premise that the Australia which has become the envy of the globe needs to be dramatically altered. Notions of equality and fairness which have underpinned our well being, training and welfare methods would be replaced with a see that efficiency trumps all.

Its few recommendations that have an effect on income would pit states towards each and every other with an ultimate aim of further reducing tax income in the hope that there will require to be more cuts to solutions equivalent to what has occurred in the US over the past thirty many years.

It is like the authors caught a few episodes of The Wire and considered, “if only”.

This kind of drastic changes to our social and economic way of life would possibly not be so undesirable if it wasn’t suggested in such a silly way as in the Commission of Audit report. The complete document lacks considerably coherence. Suggestions are made with little care for their impact on other places. They also stray into regions like the minimal wage, which have absolutely nothing to do with the budget.

It suggests governments should protect the “truly disadvantaged” and then proceeds to suggest cuts to Newstart, NDIS, carers allowances, foreign aid, the pension, homeless funding and students.

Probably we need to disregard it – and realise its goal is just to soften us up for the budget. In the past, sensible individuals in the government and their media cheerleaders would have put it speedily to 1 side. But such sense is thin on the ground these days. The softening up is not just for the budget, but to shift to the proper what is deemed a “neutral” position.

Get the proposed $ 15 charge for GP visits. The price range will very likely introduce just a $ six charge. Each are poor policies – one particular just appears much less radical.

The GP charge is a traditional situation of what occurs when economists believe they know every thing.

Economists really like cost signals. They are extremely successful at modifying behaviour, and when utilised in wellness policy (this kind of as with cigarettes) they can change behaviour for the good. But folks are extremely poor judges of why we ought to go to the GP, and fewer visits to the GP will not make for a healthier Australia. The extra price would not only harm these on reduced incomes, it will also deter people who presently do not go to the GP ample, and lead to increased fees by way of hospital remedy.

The head of the commission, Tony Shepherd last Friday could offer no proof to a Senate committee for why he believed the current typical of 11 GP visits a year was “excessive”. He just believed it have to be since men and women acquired it for “free”.

Ideology over evidence. The commission in a nutshell.

Similarly, its view that private health insurance coverage is a far more efficient way to insure health owes considerably to ideology and tiny to proof. It charts a way towards a a lot more American style of private insurance coverage dominated health.

Any individual recommending our wellness system follows the US actually ought to not reduce paper without supervision, let alone give tips on how to cut the budget. Bloomberg in 2013 rated our wellness method the seventh most effective in the world the US came 46th.

Obviously we’re the ones who want to dramatically adjust.

Final 12 months I mentioned the richest 20% of 60-year-olds can anticipate to dwell two years longer than the poorest twenty%. In the US, the gap is 4 many years between the richest 50% to the poorest 50%, which means the gap amongst the most severe twenty% would be even greater.

The inequality of the US wellness system is so undesirable that considering that 1977 existence expectancy for 65-yr-olds in the richest half has risen by six years, whereas for the poorest half it rose a mere 15 months.

So it’s not actually a technique you’d want to emulate – specifically if you are also advising the pension age be raised.

Although it could be worse ­– you could be youthful and unemployed. Tony Shepherd suggested only the “deeply disadvantaged” should get government help, which is lucky, because if his recommendations have been implemented there would be a whole lot much more of them.

Last week I wrote how tightening an presently progressive welfare program decreases people’s incentive to work and that the main difficulty with Newstart is that it is as well meagre to alleviate poverty. So it was really surprising to see the commission advise modifying Newstart in a way which reduces not only the incentive to perform, but also its capacity to alleviate poverty.

It recommends altering the amounts Newstart is reduced when you earn over $ one hundred a week from 50 cents for every dollar earned to 75 cents. Yep, earn $ a hundred and only be $ 25 better off.

Blogger David Plunket estimates that beneath the proposed changes to Loved ones Tax Benefit, a single individual with two kids earning $ twenty,000 a 12 months would be practically $ five,000 worse off.

The US training technique is also apparently worthy of emulating. The commission argues funding should be a lot more state funded and managed and that the wants-based funding model is abandoned. It suggests funding isn’t as essential as “how schools and classrooms are run”. Which is a wonderful way of saying public colleges should get much less income.

It also suggests Hecs need to start being paid off at the minimal wage of $ 32,354 alternatively of the recent threshold of $ 51,309. Fine if you get a excellent job after uni, but if you have to get a low paying occupation (as I did), effectively, negative luck.

The minimal wage will be a lot decrease as nicely if the commission had its way. Even however nothing at all in its terms of reference has anything at all to do with recommendations on the minimum wage, the commission produced them anyway.

It suggests our minimum wage should boost by one% significantly less than inflation till 2023. In recent dollars that would see individuals on minimal wage taking a 19% pay minimize and earn $ 132 a week significantly less.

It in contrast our minimal wage to the US, Canada, United kingdom and New Zealand, arguing it hurt youth employment. Even though Australia’s minimal wage is high amid OECD nations, our youth unemployment price is not, and neither is the gap among it and total unemployment.

Moreover, even though the percentage of young people on the minimal wage is better than individuals who earn above that fee, it is really worth noting that most staff on minimal wage are over 25:

I guess we ought to also envy the higher amounts of operating poor in the US:

A US family on median earnings in 2012 really earned significantly less than it did in 1989, whilst its middle class as a whole has shrunk. That’s a hell of situation to feel it is really worth aiming for.

Is there anything at all excellent? Positive. Their suggestions for paid parental depart and some of the tidying up of regulatory and funding overlaps and complexities, and competition for the pharmacy sector. But small that is good that has not been already recommended by personal think tanks.

It would be great to feel this dopey regurgitation of libertarian masturbatory fantasy will be put to 1 side.

In the past, sensible heads would have prevailed. Numerous of the recommendations are comparable to individuals in the 1996 commission of audit. A report John Howard largely ignored, and but bizarrely Australia was ready to carry on to develop for another 18 years straight. But this government is as well total of individuals who really feel in this idiotic ideological view of the planet – in which “reform” is a synonym for “cut”, and ideology trumps evidence. And for them, the price range is just a first phase to attaining it.

The Commission of Audit in a nutshell: ideology over proof