MORNING MESSAGE: As Federal Prosecutors Cash In, Big Bankers Go Unpunished
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "We needed heroes after the financial crisis. Instead we got bureaucrats, compromisers, and perhaps something much worse. Federal law enforcement officials, our 'thin gray line' against banker crime, were charged with restoring the balance of justice and reducing the threat of future crises. Seems they had other things on their minds. Now the Obama administration’s first-term posse is riding off into the sunset. The most visible departure is Deputy Attorney General Lanny Breuer. Remember those submissive or avaricious sheriffs in the old Westerns, the ones who were always letting the bad guys run wild ? 'Sorry, Ma’am, I’d like to help you and the boy but there ain’t nothin’ I can do.' That’s Breuer, whose shattered credibility and extreme reluctance to prosecute has become the stuff of legend. But he’s not the only one. Meet the senior partners in a firm that is more aptly named 'Covington, Burling and Justice."
Economic Growth v. Inequality
U.S. Income Inequality Worse Than Many Latin American Countries [Huffington Post]: "Latin America has long been viewed as a region plagued by some of the worst wealth inequality in the world. But in recent years, those figures have turned around, while in the United States income inequality is on the rise. Adam Isacson, analyst for the Washington Office on Latin America, notes the change on his blog. According to recent figures on income published by the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.S. income gap now exceeds that of several countries in the Americas."
Wages Recover For Top One Percent, While Stagnating For Most Workers [Huffington Post]: "If you feel the economic recovery hasn't helped your pocketbook much, it's not just your imagination. The annual wages of the bottom 90 percent of workers declined by 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2011 when adjusted for inflation, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Meanwhile, the top one percent's wages rose 8.2 percent during the same time period by the same measure. The richest Americans have benefited the most from the economic recovery so far. The top one percent captured 93 percent of all income gains during the first full year of the economic recovery (2010), according to a study by Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley."
If you care about deficits, poverty, or profit WaPo's E.J. Dionne says you should care about growth: "The moment’s highest priority should be speeding economic growth and ending the waste, human and economic, left by the Great Recession. But you would never know this because the conversation in our nation’s capital is being held hostage by a ludicrous cycle of phony fiscal deadlines driven by a misplaced belief that the only thing we have to fear is the budget deficit. Let’s call a halt to this madness. If we don’t move the economy to a better place, none of the fiscal projections will matter. The economic downturn ballooned the deficit. Growth will move the numbers in the right direction."
Robert Kuttner write that reversing economic inequality will be Obama's heaviest lift: "President Obama is off to a good start in his second term. "We, the people," he pledged in his second inaugural, "still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity." Amen to that. But as the economy continues its agonizingly slow recovery, his greatest challenge will be to reverse the economy's widening inequality. Ordinary working families are falling further and further behind the cost of living. …So the challenge, as President Obama famously told "Joe the Plumber" is to spread the wealth around. How do we do that? Here are four ways."
GOP v. Economy
Pauk Krugman sorts out the GOP's problem with "makers and takers": "Republicans have a problem. For years they could shout down any attempt to point out the extent to which their policies favored the elite over the poor and the middle class; all they had to do was yell “Class warfare!” and Democrats scurried away. In the 2012 election, however, that didn’t work: the picture of the G.O.P. as the party of sneering plutocrats stuck, even as Democrats became more openly populist than they have been in decades. As a result, prominent Republicans have begun acknowledging that their party needs to improve its image. But here’s the thing: Their proposals for a makeover all involve changing the sales pitch rather than the product. When it comes to substance, the G.O.P. is more committed than ever to policies that take from most Americans and give to a wealthy handful."
Wonkblog's Suzy Khim writes that Paul Ryan is saying sequester is definitely going to happen: "On Sunday morning, Rep. Paul Ryan reiterated a message that House Republicans have been trying to push since the fiscal cliff deal happened: The GOP is unafraid to let the sequester take effect. 'I think the sequester is going to happen,' Ryan said on NBC’s 'Meet the Press.' 'We think these sequesters will happen because the Democrats have opposed our efforts to replace those cuts with others–and they’ve offered no alternatives,' Ryan said. Ryan’s comments reinforced House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) insistence that the sequester would be the biggest point of leverage for Republicans to extract the cuts that they want. And at least rhetorically speaking, other House GOP members have stepped into line."
Threat of automatic cuts costly to federal agencies [Washington Post]: "The drastic $85 billion in automatic spending cuts Congress approved in hopes of heading off another deficit showdown may or may not occur, but federal agencies say the threat has been disrupting government for months as officials take costly and inefficient steps to prepare. …This is what happens when the federal government prepares for something Congress never intended to become a reality. If Democrats and Republicans cannot end their deficit standoff by March 1, the cuts will kick in across the country. Sequestration, as the law is known, has sent agencies scrambling to buffer themselves, spending time and money that ultimately may be for naught."
GOP v. Democracy
The Daily Beast's John Avlon says something's rotten in the state of Virginia: "In the wake of their decisive 2012 election defeat, Republicans aren’t digging the demographic changes making once safe states like Virginia go for Obama the last two presidential elections. Their response, as Michael Tomasky detailed yesterday, is to try and change the rules to allow electoral votes to be split up by congressional districts, compounding their advantage created by the rigged system of redistricting. In many of the states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio – this is at the level of legislative discussion rather than action. …This is an inversion of the basic principle of democracy: that elections are won by the candidate who gets the most votes. To add insult to the intended injury, Virginia humorist and political blogger Paul Bibeau pointed out that the bill would have the effect of making Obama voters count as three-fifths of a person."
At PR Watch, Brendan Fischer reveals that ALEC has opposed "popular vote" efforts that would guard against electoral college rigging: "The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has actively lobbied against state plans to implement a national popular vote for president, urging state legislators to preserve the Electoral College -- which GOP legislators are now trying to rig to ensure the the next president is a Republican. In late 2011, ALEC officially changed its policy on the Electoral College to implicitly support allocating electoral votes by congressional district. In December 2011, ALEC reconfirmed its support for the Electoral College, but with one tweak -- official ALEC policy no longer supports allocating electoral votes based on the winner of a state's popular vote for president."
Laurence Lewis, at DailyKos, writes that the GOP's war on democracy will tear the country apart: "Republicans can't win national elections anymore, having lost the popular vote in five of the last six, and with demographics shifts moving solidly against them, rather than try to better represent the will of the American electorate, they're instead going to try to break the system so that the will of the American electorate no longer matters. And it would be perfectly legal, because we choose our presidents through the Electoral College, and there are very few rules about how the electors are allocated. Make no mistake: This is a war on the very concept of democracy and republic. This is a war on the very nature of our system of governance. If it succeeds, it will tear this country apart."
Immigration Debate Update
Sam Knight, at Political Animal, gasps in shock and awe at Arizona's latest anti-immigrant measure: "Just when you thought Arizona couldn’t go any further out of its way to repel non-whites and foreigners, a state representative wants orderlies to join Phoenix’s draconian crackdown on undocumented immigrants. According to a state ABC affiliate, State Representative Steve Smith proposed House Bill 2293 last week. It’s a bill that 'would require hospital workers to attempt to verify a patient’s citizenship, essentially make a note of it and call authorities.' …The law wouldn’t just cost the state and federal government money by scaring away undocumented immigrants. It could also keep legal U.S. residents, tourists and foreign students away from Arizona. Who would want to visit a state that could end up requiring people to carry their passports on them at all time in case they get hit by a car or mugged? And what happens if a legal resident or visitor shows up at a hospital unable to verify her status?"
Senators Reach Agreement On Overhauling Immigration [NPR]: "A bipartisan group of leading senators has reached agreement on the principles of sweeping legislation to rewrite the nation's immigration laws. The deal, which was to be announced at a news conference Monday afternoon, covers border security, guest workers and employer verification, as well as a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in this country. Although thorny details remain to be negotiated and success is far from certain, the development heralds the start of what could be the most significant effort in years toward overhauling the nation's inefficient patchwork of immigration laws."
