Samantha Bee - Matt Bevin Takedown

Obama/Bevin exchange on healthcare

Interview with Michael Coblenz, Democratic Candidate KY 6th congressional

Liberal in Kentucky's interview with Michael Coblenz.  He's running for KY's 6th congressional seat in 2016.  Andy Barr now occupies the seat after defeating Ben Chandler in 2012.

-Why are you running for Congress?

I’m running to try to fix our broken political system. I know most candidates say that, but I have developed a detailed plan to restructure our Congressional elections in a way that will allow third parties to participate in a meaningful way. We have had third parties throughout our history (Whigs, Abolitionists, Progressives) and they existed because we had multi-seat Congressional districts, which allowed a candidate with less than 50% of the vote to gain a seat in Congress. This will introduce new ideas into the political debate, and reduce (I hope) the divisive bitterness in politics.    

I am not running to fight with Republicans. I am running to change the system so that Democrats and Republicans can have a serious discussion about how to address the challenges facing the nation. 

I address my plan in detail on my website www.coblenzforcongress.com

 -What should be done about social safety nets?

Conservatives say that welfare programs strip people of their initiative to work, and should be cut to liberate people from dependency. If this was true then countries without welfare systems would be nations of hard working strivers with vibrant economies, and countries with welfare systems would be plagued by indolent citizens and a dissolute economy. Yet a look at a globe says that this is simply not true. In fact almost the exact opposite is true. Countries without welfare systems, even those with natural resources and an educated citizenry, are mired in poverty.

The other point to understand about welfare programs is that they were initially instituted to ensure that the poor did not become desperate and do socially disruptive things, like revolt. The main purpose was not simply to assist the disadvantages. Simply put, welfare protects society, not the poor.    

That’s a convoluted way of saying that I generally support social welfare programs. I certainly believe that we can modernizing them, make them more efficient, and make them less susceptible to fraud. But it is fallacious and historically ignorant to suggest that we help society by eliminating welfare programs.   

 -What would you change if anything about the ACA/Obamacare?  Should we move towards a single payer system?

Our health care system is a paradox. We lead the world in the development of new drugs and medical therapies, yet at the same time we lag much of the developed world in health care outcomes like life expectancy and infant mortality. The sad reality is that we have two systems, a bad one for the poor, and a very different one for those who can afford it.

There are a number of problems with this. One is that we all live in the same society, and a health emergency, like a pandemic, can’t be confined to households below the poverty level. Another problem is that unhealthy citizens aren’t able to fully participate in the economy, and can become a cost to society. It seems far smarter to provide decent health care on the front end, which will ensure people can contribute, than on the back end in caring for the disabled.

Our health care system is grossly inefficient. We spend a huge amount on the accounting and management of insurance, and that money would be better spent on actual health care.

That’s a round-about way of saying that I wouldn’t oppose a single payer system, but I am concerned about the potential impact on health care innovation.   

 -You're a veteran, what's your take on America's conflicts abroad?

We should obviously be thoughtful and judicious about our use of force in the world. Unfortunately even when we do something for the best of reasons it can cause problems and create enemies. I thought removing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was a good idea, but it had disastrous results. I also thought removing Hosni Mubarak in Egypt was a good idea, but that turned out badly as well.

At the same time we can’t imply withdraw from the world. It is a tough balance and I don’t know where to draw the line.

I do know that calls by some politicians to bomb every enemy will only make things worse. Calls by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump to engage in scorched earth tactics in the Middle East are clearly irresponsible. No rational President would order soldiers to commit war crimes. I can tell you as a veteran that that will break the military. Such overly aggressive action will also further destabilize the Middle East and create far more enemies than we will ever kill.      

-What can be done about the looming student loan crisis and higher education overall?

I wish I knew. I have a daughter in college and the cost is outrageous.

There are a number of factors that have caused the dramatic increase in the cost of college education. One is that states have reduced funding for higher education. Inflation hasn’t stopped, so as costs increase due to inflation and state funding decreases, the costs for students increases far faster than inflation.   

One factor that is within the control of colleges, however, is the fact that the administrative staffs of colleges and universities have grown dramatically, and generally far faster than the increase in teaching staff. Colleges are also spending more on student housing and academic buildings.

I think states have been penny wise and pound foolish for decreasing funding for higher education. An educated workforce is one of the key components of a vibrant state economy.

I’m not sure what I think of Bernie Sander’s call for free college education. I can see how it makes sense in some ways, but the cost will have to be borne somewhere, and the only place is through higher taxes on someone. At the moment I don’t think that this is a fight worth having.  

-Are you in favor of a minimum income?

Absolutely. We now live in a global economy and many aspects of that economy create downward pressure on wage. If we removed the minimum wage, as a few conservatives have proposed, I have no doubt that wages would be forced down. While this might have some impact on employment it would mean that more and more people would be working poor.

I also think we should raise the minimum wage. Conservatives are fond of saying that raising the minimum wage hurts employment, but statistics don’t really bear this out. The minimum wage has been raised 28 times since it was instituted in 1938. We have comprehensive statistics for the US economy since 1950, and the wage has been raised 24 times since then. Unemployment went up seven times, down nine times and stayed roughly the same the remaining 8 times. So unemployment went down more times than it went up, disproving the supposed iron correlation between wages and employment.  

I wrote about the issue in some detail on my blog:

http://thedisappointedoptimist.com/2015/02/13/minimum-wage-and-unemployment/ 

Michael Coblenz is a lawyer, veteran of the U.S. Air Force and lives in Lexington Kentucky.

Richard Wolff Global Capitalism Update: February 2016

The World Population Explosion in 2000 Years (Video)

Donald Trump and his Fascist Overtones

We'd been doing this every night if the Nazi's had won the war.  This is lip synced by the way:

Celebrated Americans historian Rick Perlstein has been over this topic in a great piece on Trump's campaign:

"Donald Trump is not a fascist––probably.

His ex-wife Ivana once claimed he kept a volume of Hitler’s collected speeches in a cabinet by his bed, and read from time to time the fuhrer’s vision of human life as a pitiless war of all against all. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them,” he told Vanity Fair in 1990. But consider something the architect of Trump Tower, Der Scutt, once said on how to evaluate the truth value of Donald Trump claims: “divide by two, then divide by four, and you’re closer to the answer.”

Trump worships armed force, pronouncing at a rally in August in Derry, New Hampshire: “I believe in the military and military strength more strongly than anybody running by a factor of a billion.” (Applying Scutt’s formula, that means Trump believes in military strength 125,000,000 times more than Lindsey Graham, who opened his presidential campaign with a promise to go to war with Iran.)

When Trump speaks in the subjunctive mood, he can certainly sound like an aspiring dictator. Regarding a $2.5 billion plant Ford intends to build in Mexico, he announced that “every car, every truck, and every part manufactured in this plant that comes across the border, we’re going to charge you a 35 percent tax—O.K.?” The Constitution, of course, grants Congress, not a president, the power to tax. Maybe it’s just ignorance on his part. Or maybe, by “we” he’s referring to the Congressional coalition he’s building in his spare time between stadium rallies. But if Trump has ever made reference to any understanding of the three coequal branches that govern the United States, I haven’t noticed it."

Richard Wolff Global Capitalism Update: January 2016

Obama's great response to the argument, "You can't outlaw Murder."

Obama's great response to Chris Kyle's (American Sniper) widow on the argument, "you can't outlaw murder."

Kentucky Insurrection - A story about a coup in 1900 that killed a Governor

5 Movies/Videos you need to see about the crash of 2008 right now.

The 2008 crash left wounds that still haven't healed 8 years later.

Here are some movies/videos you need to see about the crash ASAP:

-'The Big Short':

A star studded cast - a movie about a group of people who saw the housing crisis before everyone else.

-'Margin Call':

Kevin Spacey plays the part of a big bank executive that liquidates their toxic mortgage assets that kicks the financial crisis off.

-'Inside Job':

A great documentary narrated by Matt Damon with interviews with key players in finance.

-'David Harvey's 'The Crisis of Capitalism':

A Marxist perspective of how capitalism widens wealth inequality and doesn't deal with it's problems, but moves them around.

-'Noam Chomsky's Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours':

A broad discussion of the affects of the crash shortly after.

Noam Chomsky endorses Bernie Sanders for President

Richard Wolff Global Capitalism Update: December 2015

2 videos You need to see on Gun Control right Now

Guns have changed since 1776:



People with carried concealed licenses aren't generally capable shooters unless they literally receive police training:

Consumer Capitalism in the U.S. versus Britain

The difference between Black Friday in the UK and in America
Posted by The Independent on Friday, November 27, 2015

The Big Short has a Star-Studded Cast, Takes on The Housing Bubble of 2007

What you need to see this year in addition to Star Wars (of course)!

Loony Ron Paul Fights with Loony Reagan Conservatives in this Loony Tunes piece on The Drug War

Trade whatever year this was in the late 80's for 2015 and it suddenly has the energy and chaos of a Donald Trump rally.  Ron Paul is right on this issue, drugs should be legalized.

SNL Lampoons your Conservative Family at Thanksgiving 2015

A very 2015 Thanksgiving.  A laugh riot!

KY Governor's Race Autopsy - An Interview with Stephen Voss

An Interview with Professor Stephen Voss UK Political Science Professor about Kentucky's Governor's Race 2015:

Liberal in Kentucky:  What happened with the polling this year?  Why was it so off?

Stephen Voss:  Evidence is still rolling in, but one way or the other, the story has to involve a much higher Republican turnout than the polls detected.

That is not a new problem: Many polls and forecasters failed to account for the so-called Enthusiasm Gap that favored Republicans in 2010, and parts of the Obama coalition turned out in surprisingly low numbers in 2014, resulting in polling bias toward the Democrats in Senate races around the country.

I guess it looks foolish, in retrospect, not expecting the same problem here this year -- but SurveyUSA had made adjustments to the Bluegrass Poll after 2014 to try to fix their errors, and the arrangement of responses across different social groups did not look as fishy this year as they had in 2014.  Also, the results were more consistent across polls and polling organizations this time around, whereas in 2014 they bounced all over the place.  So I trusted the polls like everyone else.

A conspiracy theory is circulating right now saying that the polls were closer to the truth than we realize, and it's the electronic voting machines that are the problem, having skewed the vote in some way toward the GOP.  Assuming that's not what happened, though, I see two main explanations:

1) People lie about their intention to vote, giving the socially desirable response that they'll show up at the polls when in reality they are not going to bother.  Pollsters need to massage their data so that they're estimating the preferences of people actually likely to vote.  It's possible they underestimated how many conservatives of low-socioeconomic status would show up on Election Day.

2) Conservatives tend to be more suspicious of professional organizations than are voters on the left, and they may not be cooperating equally with pollsters.  I can believe that this ideological difference might be even stronger in Kentucky, such that the right-wing vote was floating under the radar.  Benjamin Knoll of Centre College ran an exit poll in Boyle County, which means he was catching people as they left the polls.  No need to filter his data for likely voters.  Yet the results of the exit poll showed a much higher Democratic vote than the actual election returns. (click for link)

LIK:  What's the implication for the Democratic Party after this election?  Do you think they move to the right?  Or run purer candidates?  Was Conway's loss caused by not exciting the base?

Voss:  After almost every election, the activists on the losing side complain about the same two things: The candidate was not ideologically pure enough, and their candidate ran a bad campaign.  They're almost always wrong about why they lost.

Yep, Jack Conway was a poor candidate, weak on the stump and terrible in debate.  But Matt Bevin, while a better public speaker, was worse at the craft of electioneering overall.  When the polls were forecasting a Conway win, commentators were reciting a litany of errors that Bevin had made -- and you'd better believe that's where the Republicans would be pointing if they'd lost.  Both sides offered flawed candidates.  The mistake here is thinking that campaigns and candidates determine election outcomes when usually they operate at the margins.

Ideology, on the other hand, shapes voter preferences -- so it can matter a lot.  But being purer, more extreme, will not help because the parties are already far apart ideologically.  Any rational voter concerned about the ideological direction of public policy faced a clear choice between Bevin and Conway.

Conway's challenge was to excite the center, the conservative Democrats and populist Republicans who are up for grabs in Kentucky because they're not so sure in which direction they'd like things to go.  Not all of those swing voters are centrists: Some face a tough choice because they are conservative on social and cultural issues, but fairly liberal on economic issues.  Those swing voters stayed undecided in large numbers until late in the election season, but many of them broke toward the Republicans in the final days.  In an era dominated by discussion of same-sex marriage and Planned Parenthood, perhaps that's not so surprising -- but their level of motivation sure was!

What should Kentucky Democrats do now?  I don't think it would be unwise to look for candidates who could have greater appeal out in the towns, in the countryside.  But don't rule out the possibility that the Democrats should change nothing at all.  The Republicans now have an inexperienced governor with strained relations inside his own party who has made a lot of promises that will be tough to keep and who will face a lot of problems not of his own making: a looming pension crisis, declining coal demand, crumbling infrastructure.  Republicans at the national level are not helping: They've been making a terrible spectacle of themselves in Congress, and because the Tea Party hasn't taken out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell yet, it's not clear they're done eating their own.  Sometimes you just hunker down, offer solutions as the opposition party, and wait until voters decide they want a change.

LIK:  A follow up on the polling versus what happened:

What was this year about?  Was this anti-Obama sentiment?  Was this the general mood in the country?  Strange to throw the party in power out otherwise with unemployment hovering around 5% and gas prices around $2 a gallon?

Voss:  President Obama currently symbolizes the Democratic Party, but it's a mistake to suppose that once he exits the political stage, Kentuckians suddenly will become Democrats again.  Obama's race, and the fact he's a northern liberal, may make it somewhat easier to demonize the Democrats than if they had a white Southerner as figurehead -- but the party did not perform all that well here when John Kerry carried their standard, and not even campaign visits from the Clintons have made much of a dent in the Republican lean of the electorate.  Replacing Obama with Hillary Clinton might help some, but not as much as hoped by the observers who want to blame racism for the partisan swing here.

For Kentuckians to be impervious to economic indicators just backs up what I was saying earlier about social issues dominating this electorate.  Obama has not made the country better by their standards, even if the economy's on firmer footing.  He's presided over a powerful shift leftward in our cultural norms, and moral conservatives feel that the country's on the wrong track.  The Democratic Party is paying for that in a place like Kentucky even as they reap the rewards among other electorates.

Of course, the anti-Democratic shift has appeared in many places,  not just Kentucky.  Your question applies broadly: Why are the Democrats doing so badly when economic conditions have improved and, supposedly, "It's the economy, stupid."  Keep in mind, though, that these voters have not thrown the Democrats out of power.  They still hold the White House, and they're strongly represented in the federal courts.  Voters who want relatively moderate, compromise outcomes appreciate divided government as the best way to get something between the partisan extremes.  A government of Obama, McConnell, and Ryan is not conservative or Republican.  Put someone from the GOP in the White House and those same voters are likely to start feeling a lot more Democratic.

LIK:  What are the implications for the healthcare law?  Can Bevin pull Medicaid funding as a realistic option?  Is he a pragmatic candidate or an ideologue?

Voss:  People are stuck guessing what Governor-elect Bevin is going to do with Kentucky's implementation of the Affordable Care Act.  Gov. Beshear created that policy by unilateral executive action rather than by going through the law-making process, so ultimately Bevin should be able to tear it back down if he wants to do so.  The question is how much wiggle room the feds have given him to undo what Beshear did -- a question that ultimately might need to be settled in court -- and also how much wiggle room he has politically.  The Republicans he'll be leading do not speak with one voice on government programs, and the press will be more than happy to publicize any negative outcomes resulting from his policies.  It's time to start building political support if he wants to make a difference.

LIK:  This [type of policy providing government programs] used to work for the Democratic Party [in Kentucky] (Herald Leader article map) - especially under FDR.  What's happened to the electorate in Kentucky?  I'd have to glance at the map, some of this looks like old 5th territory - what are your thoughts?

Voss:  The party system of FDR's New Deal Era revolved around social class most of all.  Democrats started losing the South, though -- not to mention many working-class communities around other cities -- as economic issues gave way to the hot-button social issues that arose during the postwar era.  Many counties in eastern Kentucky always backed the Republican Party, a legacy of the Civil War period, but now GOP supporters appear all over the state.

LIK:  Yeah, Kentucky was an oddball post LBJ 1964 Civil Rights - being a pretty solidly white state - would you agree a bunch of the shift towards Republicans rode on Nixon's Southern Strategy?

Voss:  People misunderstand what the Southern Strategy actually accomplished.  Yes, the GOP tried to compete for voters, previously Democrats in the Solid South, who were upset with racial change and angry at spiking crime rates -- the racial conservatives.  (Nixon also targeted voters fearful of Communism and worried about student protesters.)  He attracted some of those votes in 1968, but he shared them with segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, and while he may have swept them in 1972, it was a temporary result of his landslide victory.

What the Southern Strategy really accomplished was to serve as a catalyst, starting a reaction that broke apart Democratic dominance in the South.  Once two-party competition emerged in the early 70's, though, voters sorted themselves out based on considerations other than just race: initially social class, later moral and cultural issues such as abortion or gun control.  As late as 1991, former Klansman David Duke's gubernatorial bid in Louisiana drew as heavily from Democratic voters as from Republican voters.  Social conservatives have taken a long time to start identifying with the Republican Party, which is why what happened in the last election cycle still managed to surprise most observers.

LIK:  So wrapping this up, Dr. Voss.  Any predictions in the next 5, 10 and 20 years for Kentucky?

Kentucky isn't exactly Texas, although the demographics here seem to be sliding in a different direction (urban with a large influx of Hispanics in the last census).  This [Herald Leader Article on the 2010 Census] stat stood out with me:   "the number of Hispanic residents — up 112 percent since 2000."  

Voss:  I don't know how we project where the party system is headed right now.  The U.S. population has shifted dramatically both in terms of ideology and through population changes caused by loose migration policies.  Young people are still finding themselves politically.  Meanwhile, the financial and economic challenges look dire, but they have not hit home yet, so their political effects are uncertain.  We have no idea what the two major parties will be fighting about in five years, let alone longer, but today's obsessions likely will not stick around for long.  So although I cannot think of any phrase as trite as 'only time will tell,' that's really where we are with party politics in the near future.

LIK:  Thanks so much for your time.

Voss: Thanks ... was fun!



-Stephen Voss is a professor of political science at the University of Kentucky. He studies, writes and give commentary on Kentucky politics.

How Class Works -- by Richard Wolff

Richard Wolff Annalates Bill O'Reilly's Claims Against a Welfare State

Regulating: