Jon Henke's blog

A few weeks ago, Obama said it was an "outrage" for an organization "that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed" to pay "any bonuses" to employees.  Congress and President Obama ultimately passed punitive "clawback" legislation to tax these deals at an absurd 90%, basically nullifying contracts on a whim and after the fact.

It was the usual Democratic demagoguery (sadly, joined by many Republicans): "Somebody, somewhere is rich. And you're not.  Torches and pitchforks for everybody!"

Well, remember the "tax cuts" Obama promised?  Turns out the federal government itself is also "in financial distress due to recklessness and greed", and "The government is going to want some of that money back."

Clawbacks for everybody! (except politicians, who have yet to make any substantive sacrifices)

Bottom Line: Policies tend to have a lot more to do with preserving politicians, winning the news cycle and helping "favored political constituencies" than with establishing dependable, sustainable and objectively good rules.  Government has the biggest Principal-Agent Problem of all.

"The Right has aircraft carriers, the Left has pirate ships."

The Old Guard is building more aircraft carriers. Two new groups have been announced, one composed of "House and Senate Republican lawmakers", the other "a collection of the party's senior strategists".

Because nothing says Reform like a coalition of the politicians who got the Republican Party where it is today.

The National Council To Stay Relevant for a New America intends to "hold town halls" and "produce GOP ideas".   "Let's start an organization, then figure out why later" does not inspire confidence - normally, organizations are created because somebody already has an idea - nor does their announcement letter which is a buzword salad that manages to say absolutely nothing.

They also intend to "rebrand a struggling Republican Party", which is something I think Republicans fundamentally misunderstand.   Your "brand" is not "spin you hope people believe".  Branding only works when you're focusing attention on something authentic about a product.  Republicans can't sell the brand they want to sell (limited government, responsibility, values, good defense), because those things are not authentically true of the Republican Party. 

Rebranding the Party can't be done with new Buzz Words and a shiny coat of paint.  Republicans are going to have to actually reform the Party.

Look, I really don't intend to be such a downer and I sincerely hope these organizations can do something to genuinely reform the Republican Party.  If they do, they can count me as an ally.  But the rot is deep and it's hard to see how the Old Guard will be the agent of change.

The GOP has been a Zombie Party for a long time now, and the only thing that kept it moving was a certain skill at tactical political posturing and the fact that people didn't want to believe the legacy brand of the GOP was gone.  But now, even that appearance of Republican vitality is gone.

The conservative movement is carrying the dead body around, trying to convince everybody that the movement and the GOP are doing just fine and won't you please help us stay relevant?  The Zombie Party is spending a Weekend at Bernie's.  But it's quite clear by now that the Right isn't capable of accomplishing the ideals we want to accomplish with our current policies, politicians and infrastructure, and repackaging the status quo is not how the movement and the GOP will be renewed.

The next Republican revolution will come from outside current (political and movement) leadership.  The next political leaders of the Right will be the people who reform the Republican Party.

The news that Arlen Specter is switching parties has sparked a lot of attention to the predictable Republican reaction, which ranges from disappointment to blame-storming to "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out".

But that's not the most interesting story here.

Once everybody gets the Republican reaction story out of their system, we'll turn to a much, much more interesting chapter in this story: How will Democrats react to Democratic Senate candidate Arlen Specter?

Early reaction (Daily Kos, Glenn Greenwald, The New Republic, MyDD, Open Left) suggests Senator Arlen Specter has somehow managed to join a political Party that dislikes him even more than Republicans did. 

So, by promising to give Specter the institutional support of the Democratic Party, it looks like the Democratic establishment has engineered a switch that advances their political control at the expense of the ideological agenda and ideals of the progressive movement.

This will be a crucial test of who holds the power on the Left. Who controls the Democratic Party: the Party establishment or the progressive movement?

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public..." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

One of the central political problems is not the confict between Republicans and Democrats, but the conflict between politicians and people.

• The incumbent protection acts (campaign finance reform)
• The incumbent slush funds (earmarks)
• Opaque and half-hearted ethics investigations
• The foot-dragging on transparency (Executive and Congressional)
• The legislative bundling process which allows politicians to pass unworthy legislation by bundling it with more popular legislation (Omnibus bills, reconciliation process, non-germane amendments, earmarks, etc).

We have a crisis of politicial collusion.  Just as Adam Smith (and Public Choice Theory) predicted, our politicians create legislation, rules and processes that amount to a conspiracy to protect themselves.  They collude against the public.

This is not new and it is not partisan.

• Congress has long exempted itself from the rules it applies to everybody else (e.g., OSHA, FOIA).  Congress exempts itself from the oversight and accounting practices that it applies to businesses, and we end up with a budget process that is not transparent and politicians who are not accountable.
• The Obama administration believes torture was committed and the international laws by which the US abides have been violated.   And yet, rather than pursue investigations and perhaps prosecutions, President Obama says "Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past", protecting both Republicans and Democrats who might be inconvenienced by an investigation.
• Sen. Stevens and Rep. Jefferson were generally slow-rolled and excused through the investigative process.  President Clinton was given a slap on the wrist and all hell broke loose over him getting that.  Abusive police officers and judges tend to get defended/excused for misconduct, or just minor administrative punishments.  The Milwaukee police chief openly flouts the law, and the Mayor defends him.  As happens with so many questionable and/or indefensible politicians, the "aw heck, let's just let bygones be bygones" tendency ultimately wins.
• If the Senate considered a $50 million earmark for a musuem in Nevada as a standalone piece of legislation, it would almost certainly fail 98-2.  98 Senators simply would not be able to justify spending the countries money on parochial favors.   And yet, if we had a piece of legislation spending $50 million for a musuem in every state ($2.5 billion total), it would likely pass by an overwhelming margin.   None of the expenditures are any more worthy the the musuem that failed 98-2, but the politicians have colluded to buy more votes. 

This is, of course, all done For Your Own Good.   But Adam Smith also said, “I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”

If Republicans want to rebuild their credibility, they might start by putting a stop to some of this political collusion.

We've written about Tea Party protesters needing to focus on local activism.   So here's a useful project for the Milwaukee Tea Party protesters.   Get Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn fired.  After the Wisconsin Attorney General affirmed the 2nd Amendment, pointing out that it is "legal to openly carry a gun", Ed Flynn said I am above the law...

"My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether you have a right to carry it,” Flynn said.

Tea Party protesters - and many others besides - ought to insist upon a number of things immediately.

• Milwaukee citizens should demand that Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen uphold the law, immediately having Ed Flynn arrested and charged with intentional violation of the law.  Citizens should also insist that charges be filed against any police officer, chief or politician who violates the open carry rights that Van Hollen has recognized (and "following orders" is no excuse).  If Van Hollen will not do that, citizens should file a suit against him and/or Wisconsin.
• Milwaukee citizens should file a civil suit against Police Chief Ed Flynn (and perhaps the city, as well) for depriving them of a basic civil liberty (protected under both the Constitution and Wisconsin law.)
• Milwaukee police should openly and vocally refuse Police Chief Ed Flynn's orders - and perhaps file charges against him for ordering them to commit a crime.  They might also include Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in that lawsuit, since he supports Flynn's decision to ignore State and Federal law.
• Protesters should find and rally behind a strong candidate to replace Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

Government would be better if politicians and beauracrats were a lot more worried that they might be prosecuted or sued.  Milwaukee protesters can accomplish that.

President Obama "will order members to identify a combined $100 million in budget cuts over the next 90 days...".  Granted, as Greg Mankiw says, this is the government equivalent of a cup of coffee, but it does signal that the Obama administration recognizes the public outrage over spending. [UPDATE: I think Heritage gives this budget cut entirely too much credit; in fairness, they probably just don't have a smaller dot]

Is this the first sign that the Tea Party protests are having an impact?  Maybe.  But politicians cannot be allowed to get credit for fiscal responsibility by making trivial noises about spending cuts.  This is a very easy thing to measure.

So, how can we measure how serious Obama is about long term fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction?  Watch how Obama funds programs that are not successful, or that do not have clear metrics for success/failure.  Recall a point that Obama made in his inaugural address.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works ... Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.

Here's my prediction: programs that Democratic groups are inclined to like will almost never end.  They will be given additional funding.  For those programs, the answer will almost never be "no".

If Democrats cannot make serious sacrifices (actual, significant cuts) in the spending their coalition groups want, then you can be pretty certain that politicians are unwilling to share in the sacrifices they say we all need to make. This is a very measurable thing.  They need to be held accountable, both by the media and by voters.

The same thing goes for Republicans, too.  We can't dig our way out of this fiscal hole by "cutting waste".   We certainly can't afford any significant tax cuts at this point.  Proposals that are not politically viable are not "serious"; they are grandstanding for the base.  If Republicans want to be taken seriously, they need to start talking much more seriously about the trade-offs and innovative approaches necessary to address the long term deficit and tax system.  For starters, that probably involves means-testing entitlements.

This kind of story is tiresome.

The Drudge Report banner headline on Friday morning reads, "Poll: 75% of Texans would vote to stay in USA."  What's troubling is not that 75 percent of those polled by Rasmussen Reports would vote to remain in the United States; what's troubling is that 18 percent of those surveyed said they would prefer that Texas secede.

People say a lot of inexplicable things in response to polls.  25% of people say animals deserve the same rights as humans; the percentage of people who say they go to church weekly bears no relationship to the percentage of people actually in church weekly.  Is it really shocking that a certain percentage of people vent about things like this, especially in polls?   Consider these results from old Daily Kos polls...

• If you were President, and the South seceded, you would ... Accept the move... - 66%
• Would we have been better off if ... the South had seceded? Yes - 78%
• In an enlightened act of self interest, the Blue states should ... Secede - 67%
• If America continues on the march to Republicanism, California should ... Secede from the nation! - 94%
• If there were a movement to secede, would you join? ... Yes - 66%
• What Do You Think of a 'Liberal Exodus'? ... I like secession as an option, so let's pick a state to move to. - 61%

Of course, those mean nothing more than "people like to express a sense of frustration at, and independence from, the federal government."  And that's generally healthy.  In fact, it was built into our Bill of Rights.  Everybody gets frustrated when their side is losing; and, as we see lately, the winners often turn into concern trolls.  Don't take them too seriously.

Left organizations accused Right organizations of (gasp!) organizing, James Wolcott stumbled through a nobody I read covered the tea parties, Left media pundits giggled over one pun (repeated 1000x), and hundreds of Totally Fake protests were attended by hundreds of thousands of Totally Fake people.  The Leftosphere is pretty sure the whole thing was just Photoshop.

So, I'd say the Tea Party protests went pretty well.

But what now?   Three things.

1) Building the New Guards: Rebuilding a movement requires time, and a lot of unifying moments, stories and ideas.  If you look back at the reemergence of the Democratic party over the last 10 years, you will see a great many important points - the impeachment, the 2000 election, the Iraq war, the Dean campaign, Katrina, and many others.  There is no turning point.  There are only rallying points that slowly add up to an effective movement.  Events like the Tea Party protests give new guards a chance to coalesce and have an impact on the old guard.

2) Keep it Personal: As Dave Weigel points out, many see the protests as "an opportunity to acquire new bodies for political campaigns and new names for their mailing lists."  There is nothing wrong with that, per se, but there is a great danger with trying to redirect grassroots energy to organizational ends. The minute you email those new activists with "as a Tea Party protester, we know you will take action immediately on (something they don't care about)", you're burning those new activists.   The minute you spam your grassroots with as a conservative reader of Human Events, we believe you really want to learn more about warm blankets with sleeves, you're moving down the Movement->Business->Racket path.

We need to put a lot less energy into vertical (national) coordination of the Tea Party protesters, and a lot more into horizontal (local) coordination of the protesters.  For instance, creating email groups of local protesters would be a lot more valuable than sending them impersonal blasts from a national group.  In short, let them organize themselves, an army of entrepreneurs.

3) Pick the Fight:  Many people have pointed out that the protests don't have an agenda, a point, or a clear demand.  To some extent, this is incorrect.  As Ross Douthat says, "They're anti-bailout, anti-stimulus, anti-deficit, and anti- the tax increases".  But while "No" is often the best political position of all, a movement also needs a more positive vision and agenda.  At the moment, the Right does not have this. 

While the Right is very unhappy with the status quo, it does not yet know how to change it.  So here is the most crucial lesson of all for the Tea Party protesters and the Right's new guards: This is not about Democrats.

Sure, there are plenty of Democratic policies to which we object.  But Democrats are not the problem we can fix.  Our problems are (1) the Republican Party, (2) the status quo conservative movement, and (3) the structural incentives that make politicians and government so unaccountable.

The next leaders of the Right and the Republican Party will be the people who succeed in fighting the old guard, destroying the conservative movement's comfortable status quo, and genuinely reforming the Republican Party.  They're not going to go quietly.

Plagiarism is the author's attempt to use the work of other people as your own, without disclosing their involvement.   Astroturfing is exactly the oppose: it is an organization's attempt to attribute their own work to other people without disclosing the involvement of the organization.

If I said Paul Krugman was a plagiarist because he quoted other people in his columns (with attribution), that would be ridiculous. I would owe him a correction.  And possibly monetary damages. Words mean things.

Yet, in today's New York Times column (in which he makes some reasonable points about the sad state of the Republican Party), Paul Krugman grossly misuses a term to libel a variety of people.

Last but not least: it turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News.

What Freedomworks and various other organizations are doing is not "astroturf" any more than the anti-war protests of some years back were astroturf because ANSWER and Moveon.org helped organize people around those events.  Astroturfing is paid activism by an organization; it is not genuine grassroots activism that funded groups are simply helping to organize.

The Center for American Progress & Think Progress, of all groups, should know better than to use the word "astroturf" against funded, ideological 501c(4) organizations that are trying to organize activists.  Especially considering how many funded, ideological 501c(4) organizations they have trying to organize activists.

The accusations Paul Krugman makes in the New York Times are very similar to the talking points that have spontaneously arisen in the Leftosphere recently, and their attempts to delegitimize these policy protests are not likely to stop unless the Right fights back.  For starters, unless Krugman and the New York Times issue a correction, the people they have libeled should consider responding to this libel through appropriate legal channels. 

Beyond that, it is crucial that the groups attempting to organize activists around these Tea Party protests see their role as service-oriented infrastructure.  Provide the information and tools, and let the grassroots continue to organize themselves.

UPDATE: Contra Matt Yglesias, I did not "attack CAP/AF as astroturf".  Indeed, my point was that the CAPAF (Think Progress) "grassroots advertising and organizing" is not astroturf, so they shouldn't throw the astroturf accusation at other groups that do grassroots organizing.

For the record, astroturf really requires two things: (1) A claim to be organic/grassroots, and (2) non-disclosure of the non-grassroots group that is really behind the activity.  Organizational involvement in activism is not, itself, astroturf.  Nor is it astroturf when an organization conducts its own activism project with full disclosure of their involvement.

A lot of people wonder who the next leaders of the Republican Party should be.  I don't know.  But you know who it shouldn't be?   Anybody who thinks the current elected Senator from Alaska should resign so that the corrupt former Senator Ted Stevens can be brought back to the Senate.

Forewarned is forearmed.