Posts tagged Grover Norquist

Strange Bedfellows

38
1 month ago
by dcpetterson in
English: Grover Norquist at a political confer...

Grover Norquist: immi­gra­tion reform supporter

Things really can change quickly in Amer­ica. In 2010, Ari­zona passed the now-​​infamous SB-​​1070, a state law which as a prac­ti­cal mat­ter would have required Hispanic-​​looking Amer­i­cans in Ari­zona to carry iden­ti­fi­ca­tion papers with them at all times, and would have allowed cit­i­zens to sue police if they weren’t suf­fi­ciently zeal­ous in detain­ing peo­ple who look like they may be in the coun­try ille­gally (what­ever that means).

Now, three years later, not only were most of the pro­vi­sions of SB-​​1070 struck down by the Supreme Court, and a sim­i­lar Indi­ana law ruled uncon­sti­tu­tional by a fed­eral court last month, other pro­vi­sions of SB-​​1070 are also being exam­ined. As a fur­ther sign that tec­tonic shifts have occurred, real immi­gra­tion reform may be at hand. And it will include a path to cit­i­zen­ship. A rather curi­ous col­lec­tion of inter­ests has lined up behind the idea, each for its own rea­sons. This doesn’t mean pas­sage is assured, but it does make progress more likely than at any time in more than a gen­er­a­tion. (more…)

Poopyheads!

17
6 months ago
by filistro in

Imme­di­ately after the recent elec­tion, Grover Norquist famously said that Barack Obama won reëlec­tion by por­tray­ing Mitt Rom­ney as a “poopy­head”. This rather odd remark caused some hilar­ity among politics-​​watchers, but it did tend to shine a spot­light on the issue of polit­i­cal name-​​calling. It also led to the usual hand-​​wringing about the “lack of civil­ity” and how our elec­tion cam­paigns have become “dirt­ier than they’ve ever been in history.”

Polit­i­cal debate, circa 1800

Before we get into this dis­cus­sion, let’s save some time by stip­u­lat­ing up front that we all do it to each other; right, left and cen­ter, and we always have. Name-​​calling and insults may have sur­vived to the present day, but they are an old and not-​​so-​​honorable com­po­nent of the fab­u­lous sport­ing pur­suit we know as pol­i­tics. If you don’t believe me, watch this clip that recalls some of the lan­guage used by politi­cians back in the 1800s. (Even if you do believe me, watch it any­how, right to the end. It’s less than two min­utes long and really quite wonderful.)

Some other favorite polit­i­cal insults:  (more…)

Getting the Special Treatment

18
9 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Two votes hap­pened in the U.S. Sen­ate last Wednes­day, votes which high­light how Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats feel about tax rates.

Sen­ate Repub­li­cans voted to raise taxes on all Amer­i­cans. Sen­ate Democ­rats voted to avoid rais­ing taxes on all Amer­i­cans. A Democratic-​​sponsored bill that lim­its tax increases was passed, despite Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion. Repub­li­cans are now insist­ing that the bill the Sen­ate passed has no chance in the Republican-​​controlled House. In other words, Repub­li­can votes could force everyone’s taxes to go up.

How in the world will Grover Norquist spin this?

That’s not the most amaz­ing part. Democ­rats have been try­ing to make the argu­ment that Repub­li­cans only care about the super-​​rich. Repub­li­cans have been try­ing to deny this charge. So to demon­strate their posi­tion, Sen­ate Repub­li­cans forced a vote on a bill to lower taxes on the super-​​rich as the quid pro quo for avoid­ing tax increases on every­one, appar­ently not notic­ing that this proves the Democ­rats’ point.

Let’s review how we got into this pecu­liar sit­u­a­tion. (more…)

Mean Girls

97
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in

Remem­ber over last year or two, how Repub­li­cans repeat­edly threat­ened finan­cial dis­as­ter? Like high school drama queens in some teenage soap opera, they man­u­fac­tured one cri­sis after another. We’re on the verge of another series of show­downs. Get your score­cards ready.

Grover Norquist at a political conference in O...
High School Diva

To recap the story so far…

We had the debate over extend­ing the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2010. Repub­li­cans insisted we needed to main­tain those tax cuts, espe­cially for the wealthy, or else in a fit of piqué the spoiled rich kids would pick up their mar­bles and stop cre­at­ing jobs. Part of the deal for extend­ing the cuts included expan­sions of Pell grants for col­lege stu­dents and a tem­po­rary reduced pay­roll tax for America’s work­ing people.

Then, in April of 2011, Amer­ica found itself on the verge of a gov­ern­ment shut­down. 800,000 fed­eral work­ers came within a hair’s breadth of being tem­porar­ily out of work. The spend­ing appro­pri­a­tions finally passed, after an unnec­es­sary soap-​​opera-​​like drama. Then we had the debt ceil­ing debate the fol­low­ing sum­mer. Repub­li­can reluc­tance to raise the debt limit to finance the spend­ing they’d already approved resulted in the first-​​ever down­grade of the US credit rat­ing. The even­tual deal included the cre­ation of a “Super­com­mit­tee” charged with find­ing nearly two tril­lion dol­lars in addi­tional debt reduction.

The Super­com­mit­tee failed, due to Repub­li­cans refusal to con­sider even one dime in addi­tional taxes. (Thank you, Grover Norquist, the de facto czar of America’s tax pol­icy.) This means we have mas­sive auto­matic bud­get cuts set to kick in begin­ning in January.

Many of these bad deals are com­ing back to haunt us. The sequel approaches. (more…)

One Week at a Time

12
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

Tomor­row, a one-​​week exten­sion on fund­ing the fed­eral gov­ern­ment will likely pass with the sup­port of a minor­ity of the House.

Wait…a minor­ity will pass it?

This is one of those sub­tle, strange facets of our leg­isla­tive gov­ern­ment. (more…)

Steel Cage Match

13
1 year ago
by filistro in

In this corner…“the most pow­er­ful man in Amer­ica not sit­ting in the White House.” That’s what Lawrence O’Donnell calls him. He has a signed pledge of loy­alty from every influ­en­tial Repub­li­can politi­cian, includ­ing state gov­er­nors, Con­gress­men, pres­i­dents all the way up to (and includ­ing) George W. Bush, and every one of the currently-​​serving GOP sen­a­tors. And yet mem­bers of his own party are often crit­i­cal of, and some­times at war with him. Frank Gaffney thinks he’s a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sleeper agent, and Tucker Carl­son, of all peo­ple, once called him a mean-​​spirited, dis­hon­est, humor­less lit­tle creep.

Who is this inter­est­ing com­bat­ant? It’s Grover Norquist, pres­i­dent of Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, who aggres­sively lob­bies for smaller gov­ern­ment, lower tax rates, and absolutely no increases in tax­a­tion. Ever. For any rea­son at all. (more…)

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