Politics -- A Radical Agenda

September 2, 2008

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers

POLITICS

A Radical Agenda

Last week, the Republican Party put the finishing touches on its 2008 election platform, which the party will officially adopt this week at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN. Many on the right have indicated that this year's platform represents one of the most conservative in the history of the party. For example, the legislative advocacy arm of the ultra-conservative Family Rights Council hailed the 2008 platform as the most "conservative, pro-life and pro-family platform in Republican party history." David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU), considers the platform "very conservative," while the ACU's vice chairman Donald Devine called the document "a vast improvement" over the 2004 platform. Indeed, the platform calls for constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and abortions, positions that, according to a recent Time Magazine poll, only 35 and 10 percent of Americans support, respectively. And while the document refrains from using the term "privitization," its "solution" to Social Security calls for giving workers "control over, and a fair return on, their contributions" to the program.

LIP SERVICE ON THE ENVIRONMENT: To its credit, the 2008 GOP platform recognizes the human role in global warming and advocates long-term tax credits for renewable energy. However, the GOP's environmental platform is "loaded with caveats about the uncertainty of science and the need to 'resist no-growth radicalism' in taking on climate change." It also ridicules "doomsday climate change scenarios peddled by the aficionados of centralized command-and-control government." In effect, this approach endorses the Bush administration's climate policy, which has led to an increase in greenhouse gases. Moreover, unlike the 2000 and 2004 platforms' planks on protecting the Great Lakes and Everglades, the 2008 platform mentions neither. Also absent from the 2008 platform is any mention of mandatory federal emission cuts in a cap-and-trade program. While the party's presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), has pushed for a federally mandated cap-and-trade program, he has walked away from it at various points during the campaign season.

GOP VERSUS McCAIN: The 2004 platform "found 80 things to 'applaud,' 17 to 'hail,' a dozen to 'commend' and several hundred opportunities to say what a great job [President] Bush was doing and would continue to do." Yet this year's document contains only one mention of McCain, which is simply "in support of his candidacy and those of our fellow Republicans across the nation." Indeed, there are many areas of disagreement between McCain and his party. "The platform calls for a 'major expansion' of research involving adult stem cells but opposes embryonic stem-cell research, which Sen. McCain supports." The party's immigration stance is tougher than in 2004 -- when the GOP called for a "humane" immigration system with a temporary-worker program and a path for illegal immigrants "to come out of the shadows'' and apply for citizenship. This year however, the GOP opposes any plan that includes "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants, saying "the rule of law suffers if government policies encourage or reward illegal activity." McCain has previously supported a path to citizenship but his current position remains unclear, having declared securing the borders as his new number-one priority. Despite these disagreements, the McCain campaign reportedly plans to "run on the final version of the platform."

PROGRESSIVE SOLUTIONS: The Center for American Progress has provided progressive solutions to a wide variety of social, economic and national security challenges facing the United States. Specifically, CAP has laid out a comprehensive approach to reproductive health that respects a variety of viewpoints, diffuses the abortion debate, and has a broad-based appeal. CAP has also provided an immigration reform plan that provides for tough, but smart enforcement, at our borders and at worksites, establishing mechanisms to require the estimated 12 million undocumented living in our midst to become legal, taxpaying, and contributing members of our society, and creating the means for regulating the flow of immigrants into the country. On the environment, CAP has called for a policy "revolution" that will create a low-carbon society while providing a powerful charge to the economy by fundamentally changing the way we produce and consume energy, investing in new clean energy technologies, creating new green jobs and pathways out of poverty, and taking a leadership role in international agreements to fight global warming.

MEDIA -- RIGHT-WING MEDIA ELITES BLAST COMMENTERS ON LIBERAL BLOGS AS 'VICIOUS,' 'HURTING THE COUNTRY': Yesterday at the Republican convention, the Huffington Post hosted a panel discussion about the rise of new media with a number of leading traditional media personalities. Conservative talker Laura Ingraham applauded the rise of the online journalism, stating, "Look, the old media blew it; the free market does work." But many of her conservative co-panelists lamented the perils of this free market. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said the flip side of the emergence of the blogopshere is that "it's so ugly now in some parts of the internet" that good people are being dissuaded from running for office. His fellow conservative media elites chimed in with similar criticisms. Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan said online commenters "are much like what you would have gotten in 1880 if you walked into a bedlam with a megaphone and said, 'I'd like to say a few words.' It's wild, it's crazy, and it's awful, and it's often quite vicious." Conservative pollster Frank Luntz said, "Mean would not describe it. It is as humanly vicious as it possibly can be," adding that it is "deliberately insulting." Scarborough then proposed a solution: "Why don't internet sites that want to be respected make people [commenters] put their names and their phone numbers." Arianna Huffington agreed with him about the need to keep commenters from "hiding behind the cloak of anonymity."

JUSTICE -- REPORT: GONZALES MISHANDLED CLASSIFIED DATA: Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "improperly handled classified information about some of the government's most sensitive national security programs," according to a report to be released today by the Justice Department's inspector general. Gonzales "improperly stored" notes about the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program and other eavesdropping initiatives "in a safe in his fifth-floor office at the Justice Department...instead of in the special facilities accessible only by certain people with top secret security clearances." He also "might have taken [the notes] home at one point." The notes were written during a "March 2004 meeting between President Bush and congressional leaders in the White House Situation Room." According to the Associated Press, "Gonzales agrees with the inspector general's findings," saying his behavior "was not consistent with the department's regulations governing the proper storage and handling of information." There is no evidence that the information was "shared with or accessed by people who lacked the proper clearance to review it," and the Justice Department "will not recommend that [Gonzales] face criminal sanctions."

ECONOMY -- WORKERS WORSE OFF ON PAY, EMPLOYMENT: A Rutgers University labor scorecard reported that workers are "in worse shape than they've been in years," with 10 percent of Americans "unemployed, discouraged from seeking work or underemployed." Median weekly earnings have not grown in real terms over the last eight years, and the federal minimum wage is now "worth 40 cents less per hour, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was a decade ago." Despite these discouraging figures, President Bush declared in his radio address this week that "there have been some signs that our economy is beginning to improve." In fact, Bush will leave the next president with a record deficit of over $480 billion, the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression, and the lowest rate of job creation in the last 40 years. "Professor Douglas Kruse, a labor economist who created the scorecard, said a sharp decline in the number of Americans able to find full-time jobs, along with growing consumer debt and health care costs, were causes for concern."

64 percent: People concerned that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) "would pursue policies that are too similar to what George W. Bush has pursued," according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll. Forty-seven percent fall into the "very concerned": category and 17 percent rate themselves "somewhat concerned."

Hurricane Gustav struck the Gulf Coast with less strength than feared, "sparing New Orleans and the world's densest concentration of oil-and-gas facilities." While the emergency response effort went largely as planned, "officials said that at least seven people were killed" in the storm.

The death of a sailor in Afghanistan over the weekend marked the "500th U.S. service member to die in that country since the war there began in 2001."

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have been released from police custody in St. Paul, following their arrest while covering demonstrations at the Republican convention. According to Democracy Now!, all three were "violently manhandled by law enforcement officers."

And finally: The "micro-blogging" site Twitter -- which allows users to post 140-character messages -- has become an invaluable resource during Hurricane Gustav. One New Orleans resident, Robert Peyton, said that even when the power went out, he could still receive messages from the New Orleans Twitter community directly to his smartphone. Peyton added that Twitter was one of the only ways to get accurate updates. "The national broadcasts are just kind of silly and alarmist," he said.

Hurricane Gustav struck the Gulf Coast with less fury than originally feared.

THINK PROGRESS: Iraq war vets rally in St. Paul.

YGLESIAS: At the Republican convention, the party goes on despite Hurricane Gustav.

CROOKS AND LIARS: Democracy Now's Amy Goodman arrested in St. Paul.

DAILY KOS: Three years ago this week, the media "began holding the Bush administration accountable."

CALIFORNIA: Legislature aims to cut carbon emissions "by rewarding cities and counties that prevent urban sprawl and improve pubic transportation."

IOWA: "Bankruptcy filings increased 12 percent in Iowa in the first eight months of 2008 compared with the same period in 2007."

FLORIDA: Wage increases barely keep up with inflation and the rising cost of living in South Florida.

"We know for a fact that human activity is changing the amount of carbon -- CO2 and CO2 equivalents -- in the atmosphere."
-- Former New York governor George Pataki (R), 6/13/08

VERSUS

Q: Are you concerned that Governor Palin recently said, "I'm not one though who would attribute it [global warming] to being man-made?"
PATAKI: No, I'm not concerned about that.
-- Pataki, 9/01/08

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