A somewhat disturbing new survey from the Pew Research Center found that Americans have an incredibly dim view of most institutions in public life, with special contempt reserved for the federal government, Congress and the banks:

Americans’ trust in government and its institutions has plummeted to a near-historic low, according to a sobering new survey by the Pew Research Center.

Only 22 percent of Americans surveyed by Pew say they can trust government in Washington “almost always or most of the time” — among the lowest measures in the half-century since pollsters have been asking the question.

And an increasing number — almost 1 of every 3 people — say they believe government is a major threat to their personal freedoms and want federal power reined in.

Here’s the historic graph of trust in government and satisfaction with the state of the nation:

My initial instinct is to attribute most — if not all — of this to last year’s bailouts, high unemployment, and the dismal long-term unemployment outlook. And to some extent, the data bears this out. Despite expressing incredible skepticism of government’s ability to accomplish anything, a solid 61 percent of respondents want greater government regulation of the financial industry. From the outside looking in, Congress and the federal government both seem unconcerned with unemployment and overly solicitous of financial interests, which — in addition to hyper-partisanship — has all but tanked trust in government. My prediction, for the time being, is that if the unemployment numbers fall by way of visible government action, you’ll see an uptick in support for and trust in the federal government.

Also, I found this bit from the report really interesting:

Trust in government is typically higher among members of the party that controls the White House than among members of the “out” party. However, Republicans’ views of government change more dramatically, depending on which party holds power, than do Democrats’. Republicans are more trusting of government when the GOP holds power than Democrats are when the Democrats are in charge.

This pattern is particularly evident in the Obama era. The president’s policies – especially the year-long effort to overhaul the health care system – have served as a lightning rod for Republicans. Currently, just 13% of Republicans say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right, nearly equaling a low point reached in June 1994 during the Clinton administration (11%). [Emphasis mine]

I don’t have a ready explanation for why Republicans are so intensely hostile towards Democrat government but comparatively open-armed towards GOP control. My guess is that this is very much mixed up in racial and class politics, with Republicans more trusting of the government that doesn’t appear to redistribute “their hard earned money” to the “undeserving.” In a word, they’ve got “theirs” are extremely hostile to anyone who says otherwise. Of course, this is just a guess, and I’d happily stand corrected.

Yesterday’s Charles Blow column has inspired some particularly obtuse punditry. I expected it of Tom Maguire, who as a run-of-them-mill right-winger is prone to completely missing the point. But I’m honestly surprised to see Conor Friedersdorf stumble blindly down the road of understanding.  In a recent post at the American Scene, Friedersdorf takes Blow’s column as further evidence that race is used as a cudgel against the right:

It’s this kind of piece that causes people on the right to think that on matters of race, they’re damned if they do, and they’re damned if they don’t — if they don’t make efforts to include non-whites they’re unenlightened propagators of privilege, and if they do make those efforts they’re the cynical managers of a minstrel show, but either way, race is used as a cudgel to discredit them in a way that would never be applied to a political movement on the left. [Emphasis mine]

I wouldn’t say that Friedersdorf is missing the point here, I’m not sure if he’s aware enough to grasp the problem with this particular display of “diversity.” Conor calls Blow’s piece unfair, asserting that “In any context except a Tea Party, the vast majority of liberal writers would praise the act of highlighting the voices of ‘people of color’ even if they aren’t particularly representative of a crowd or corporation or university class.”

But the “minstrelsy” Blow decries doesn’t flow from the mere presence of minority voices at a conservative rally — which is what Fridersdorf seems to think — it flows from the fact that those voices are forced to engage in elaborate tribal rituals to show the white Tea Partiers that they’re on their side. And that’s precisely because there are so few people of color within the Tea Party Movement, and conservative circles more generally. From what I’ve seen, conservative activists have a habit of categorically defining people of color as ideologically hostile, so that their mere presence isn’t enough to convince organizers or attendants that their sympathies are shared. In turn, this suspicion requires those singular voices of color to “perform” and show their loyalty, in order to gain acceptance. The exact opposite dynamic occurs on the left, for the simple reason that white liberals feel they can readily assume ideological sympathy from any given person of color, regardless of circumstance. Which, admittedly, is also very problematic.

One last (baffling) thing: it’s clear that Friedersdorf doesn’t understand why conservatives are far more open to racial criticisms than liberals. But it’s really not that complicated. As I wrote last week:

William F. Buckley Jr., the preeminent voice of conservatism for half a century, opened his editorial salvo with a defense of segregation in the National Review. Barry Goldwater wasn’t a racist, but he didn’t hesitate to harness white racism in his presidential bid. Richard Nixon turned racial resentment into an art form, and Ronald Reagan took it a step further, inaugurating his 1980 campaign for president at the final resting place of three civil rights workers, gunned down by Klansmen. Even George H.W. Bush, a careful moderate, stoked resentment and fear for political benefit. These days, conservatives hold to a stance of anti-anti-racism, where accusations of racism are far, far worse than actual prejudice against minorities.

And this is to say nothing of the current conservative affinity for overt displays of white nationalism, or the fact that the two most prominent spokespeople of the Right regularly peddle racial paranoia to their basehead devoted followers. Given the obvious reasons people of color have to be skeptical of the conservative movement, it really shouldn’t be this hard for Conor to see why conservatives might have to be especially sensitive about these things.

Photo credit: Amanda Lucidon/New York Times

I didn’t do much reading this weekend, but I was able to catch Charles Blow’s characteristically good column. Riffing off of the recent New York Times poll of Tea Partiers, he noted that the movement is strangely monochromatic considering that its members purport to speak for all Americans. Which is about right. The Tea Party movement is remarkably unrepresentative, with 89 percent of Tea Partiers identifying themselves as white. Despite this, a whopping 84 percent of Tea Partiers agree that their views reflect those of most Americans. The only way this makes sense, internally, is if “most Americans” is a category that excludes racial minorities.

For most people, this isn’t hard to grasp. But for one right-winger, Tom Maguire, it is nearly impossible:

Ooops, my bad – that was a link to the NY Times Board of Directors, which seems to be utterly free of any Hispanic, black or Asian presence.

Anyway, the NY Times poll reported the Tea Party as 89% white, which makes them a lot more diverse than the Times Board. And contra Mr. Blow, the Tea Party is reported to be 3% Hispanics. That won’t change his point (as if anything would) but it would be nice to see the Times present the correct figures.

I’m sure Maguire won’t understand this, but the diversity — or lack thereof — of the New York Times Board of Directors has absolutely nothing to do with the diversity of the Tea Party Movement. The NYT Board of Directors doesn’t present itself as a mass uprising of ordinary Americans, and doesn’t claim to speak for the American citizenry writ-large. Like any the NYT board, like any other board of directors, claims to speak for — at most — the company and its shareholders. Indeed, by trotting out the board of directors as a counter-point to criticism of the Tea Party, Maquire showed the whole world that he has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.

That said, the appropriate comparison for Maguire would be any number of liberal grassroots organizations that do claim to speak for the American public writ large. Of course, given the fair amount of diversity in liberal grassroots organizations, Maguire wouldn’t actually be able to make his point. Which is unfortunate for him, but great for the rest of us.

Former President Bill Clinton on Friday said that “legitimate” comparisons can be drawn between today’s grassroots anger and resentment toward the government and the right-wing extremism that bubbled up prior to the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City 15 years ago.

Commemorating the anniversary of one of the most traumatic domestic events of his presidency during a speech at the Center for American Progress, Clinton judged the “fever” of anti-government sentiment in the mid 1990s as similar in some respects to the current political environment.

Making comparisons between the two times is “a legitimate thing to do, but I think it’s important to draw the contrast between what happened then and what’s happening to America,” Clinton said.

I wrote a post on this a few days ago, but it suffices to say that the Department of Homeland Security was absolutely right to warn Americans about the threat of right-wing extremism. The Oklahoma City Bombing claimed 168 lives and was the most destructive terrorist attack in the United States prior to September 11th. Since Obama’s election, there has been a surge in activity by right-wing extremist groups, and President Clinton is right to draw a comparison between the extremism on display during his presidency, and the extremism President Obama faces. Like I said before, while it’s easy to dismiss these groups as part of the inevitable fringe, we should take their threats seriously and not dismiss them on account of their lunacy.

Yesterday, President Obama did right by same-sex couples:

President Obama on Thursday ordered his health secretary to issue new rules aimed at granting hospital visiting rights to same-sex partners.

The White House announced the rule changes, which will also make it easier for gay men and lesbians to make medical decisions on behalf of their partners, in a memorandum released Thursday night. In it, the president said the new rules would affect any hospital that participates in Medicare or Medicaid, the government programs to cover the elderly and the poor.

“Every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindness and caring of a loved one at their sides,” Mr. Obama said in the memorandum, adding that the rules could also help widows and widowers who rely on friends and members of religious orders who care for one another. But he says gay men and lesbians are “uniquely affected” because they are often barred from visiting partners with whom they have spent decades.

It’s not a DADT repeal — or same-sex marriage rights — but it is a good start, and a welcome change to a status quo that was as unjust as it was cruel.

Newt Gingrich indulges his persecution complex in the pages of the Washington Post:

At the outset of the dispute and well into the initial stages of litigation, Hastings said that CLS had violated the university’s bans on religious and “sexual orientation” discrimination. After CLS noted that the law school allowed other groups to organize around nonreligious ideas, Hastings suddenly asserted that no group could exclude anybody for any reason. So the Young Democrats, for example, are apparently required to accept Republicans as members and allow them to be elected to leadership positions in their club. That’s simply absurd.

Moreover, it’s a ploy contorted to camouflage the double standard being applied to CLS simply because it is a Christian organization. Hastings officials hope to hide the fact that on their campus, as at countless other colleges and universities nationwide, people of faith are being deliberately marginalized and excluded not for any real misdemeanors but for having the temerity to suggest that there’s an authority higher than school administrators, a truth more compelling than the latest government-dictated cultural doctrine, and a God more worthy of worship than the idols of the left.

Given that it is a day ending in “-y”, I’m not surprised to see Gingrich indignant, offended and stricken with the vapors. That said, I am a little sympathetic to the plantiffs here. While it may violate the university’s non-discrimination policies, it is ridiculous to mandate that a religious organization allow members and officers who don’t share similar beliefs. But pace Gingrich and most conservative grievance addicts, a single incident at a single college isn’t evidence of some outrageous conspiracy against young believers.

Indeed, if current polling is any indication, religion isn’t doing too poorly among the nation’s undergraduates. Yes, Millenials are less likely to claim a particular faith — 26 percent say they are religiously unaffiliated — but on the converse, a solid majority of Millenials are religiously affiliated. Moreover, a 2009 study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that college doesn’t have a uniformly positive or negative impact on religiosity and religious attendance. Essentially, it varies student to student and major to major, with certain majors showing a statistically significant positive correlation with religious attendance, and others, the opposite.

The same is true of college and university professors. Granted, religious skepticism is three times higher among professors than it is the public at large. Even still, around 56 percent of professors profess some belief in God, with 34.9 percent professing a strong belief in the existence of God. Which is to say that Gingrich, unsurprisingly, is completely full of shit. Opening kids up to new experiences and now ideas changes them; some kids might lose their religion, others might rediscover it. Regardless, there is no conspiracy to shake students of their religious belief, and it’s ridiculous to believe otherwise. Of course, the facts don’t really mean anything to outrage peddlers like Gingrich.

Adam Serwer comes out against the reprehensible practice of denying voting rights to prisoners while counting them for the purpose of representation:

Look, the proper thing, in my view, is to allow prisoners to vote, as they do in Maine and Vermont. Counting people who are unable to vote from their home address strikes me as only slightly fairer than counting them from where they are incarcerated. I see the reasoning behind removing the right to vote during incarceration, but if people literally can’t vote it’s not really fair to count them as a constituent, and not counting them isn’t a viable alternative either. There also isn’t any real civic benefit from felony disenfranchisement — it doesn’t deter crime, it’s a purely punitive measure that uses criminal liability as an excuse to take away the votes of people who don’t have much of a political voice anyway. [Emphasis mine]

I hit on this a few days ago, but if voting rights are actually rights in any meaningful sense, then we can’t actually speak of prisoners “losing their rights.” It’s far more accurate to say that prisoners have their voting rights irrespective of crimes committed, but are denied the ability to exercise them, which is incredibly problematic. As far as I understand it, prisoners are allowed to exercise virtually every right they have under the Constitution except for voting rights and the right to bear arms. For the latter, the case for denial is incredibly strong, but I have yet to hear a compelling case for circumscribing a prisoner’s right to vote, and I don’t actually think there is one.

Listen, we all agree that the right to vote is intrinsic to one’s citizenship, and unless we’re willing to strip convicted criminals of their citizenship, we have no business barring prisoners from voting. Beyond that, if states and localities are counting prisoners for the purpose of representation, then the jig is all but up. Like Serwer says, “if people literally can’t vote it’s not fair to count them as a constituent.”

My housemate Tess — whose baking blog you should read — sent me this news article about a new trend in the world of New York spas:

Gemstones are the hot new ingredient in spa treatments popping up around the city. Apparently emeralds, rubies, pearls, and even gold plump, lift, brighten, purify, what have you (or so they say).

[...]

At Townhouse Spa, the jewel of choice is amethyst, which the aestheticians claim reduces skin inflammation and radiates infrared rays in order to stimulate healthy cell growth. The $275 Amethyst Purifying Gem Facial begins with a thorough cleansing, followed by penetration of an amethyst serum with an LED light, and finished with an eye cream aided by a sonic frequency device. The final step is a mask containing 63 percent amethyst powder. The skin is supposed to be instantly firmer and brighter.

As I’ve noted time and time again, the super-wealthy have an astoundingly low tax burden. In 2007, the richest 400 American taxpayers paid an effective federal income tax rate of 16.6 percent, which is roughly comparable to what an individual earning $32,000 would have paid that year. Keep in mind too that from 2002 to 2007, the top 1 percent of households reaped almost 70 percent of the nation’s income gains. This doesn’t include state and local taxes, but given that those taxes are regressive, it stands to reason that they don’t have much of an impact on the tax burden for the wealthy, as consumption takes up a relatively small percentage of their income. With so after-tax income, it’s no wonder that they can afford to have gemstones crushed onto their face.

Of course, I don’t begrudge anyone willing to spend $275 to have someone smear gemstones onto their face. It’s a little strange, yes, but everyone is entitled to their quirks, and I’m not going to condemn someone for having an unusually expensive one. That said, if you can afford to spend $275 on gem treatment, then you can afford higher taxes. Likewise, if “summer” is a verb in your household, you can afford to pay higher taxes. Ideally, tax forms would have a question at the end, “Did you receive gem treatment at a spa?” If you answer yes, your tax rate automatically jumps twenty percent. Anything less is unacceptable.

Tea party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, tend to be Republican, white, male, and married, and their strong opposition to the Obama administration is more rooted in political ideology than anxiety about their personal economic situation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters look like Republicans in many ways, but they hold more conservative views on a range of issues and tend to be older than Republicans generally. They are also more likely than Republicans as a whole to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”

And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”

What I found most interesting was this tidbit from the CBS write-up:

An overwhelming majority of Tea Party supporters, 84 percent, say the views of the Tea Party movement reflect the views of most Americans. But Americans overall disagree: Just 25 percent say the Tea Party movement reflects their beliefs, while 36 percent say it does not.

I think this lends more credence to the view of Tea Partiers as a group of older white people who feel completely divorced from America as it exists. For most of their lives, they’ve been told that America was created for and governed by people who look and think like them. That hasn’t been true for some time, but it became incredibly obvious with Obama’s election (among other things). They are terrified that their country is being taken out from under them by liberals, minorities and every other right-wing boogieman, and accordingly, they are lashing out.

Michelle Singletary’s column calling for stricter regulation of tax preparation services strikes me as a little short-sighted:

Nineteen people were sent to large and small preparers in three states — Arkansas, New York and North Carolina. The survey, analyzed by the National Consumer Law Center, found that “a significant number of testers were the victims of poor quality tax preparation, or outright tax fraud.” Of particular concern was the way tax preparers aggressively pushed “refund anticipation loans,” which are short-term cash advances backed by a tax refund.

Separately, the IRS recently announced dozens of civil injunctions, indictments and convictions resulting from its beefed-up efforts to catch unscrupulous tax-return preparers.

Both the report from the IRS and the action by the consumer groups — Arkansans Against Abusive Payday Lending, the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project in New York and the Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina — provide more evidence that the tax-preparation industry needs better and more consistent oversight.

The IRS has announced a major effort to register and monitor tax preparers. It’s a good initiative. But I want to see even bolder reforms.

In particular, Singletary wants Congress to outlaw “refund-anticipation loans,” short-term loans secured by a taxpayer’s expected refund, and designed to provide quicker access to said funds. These loans come with hefty fees, and like payday loans, are incredibly ripe for abuse. Regulating them — and other tax return services — would help a lot of people avoid scams and fraud. That said, greater regulation doesn’t actually solve the problem. Last year, 60 percent of Americans used tax preparers, which is ridiculous; a large chunk of Americans either don’t pay federal income taxes or have a simple filing that doesn’t require paid consultants.

The real issue here is that millions of Americans are terrified of doing their taxes, and would rather spend money on tax preparers if it meant they could avoid mistakes and missteps. Instead of regulating tax preparers, it makes more sense to reduce the demand for tax preparation services. Given the IRS’ technology and information, it wouldn’t take much for the agency to offer automatic, pre-prepared tax forms to the substantial minority of Americans that fill out one or two forms, max. For a substantial minority of people, that would be enough, and if it wasn’t, you’d still able to make changes before accepting the return. Regardless, you would have a much easier time of paying your share to Uncle Sam.

Of course, this is one of those ideas that is easy to apply and tough to implement. Tax preparers have lobbyists too, and they aren’t terribly enthusiastic about legislation that would slice demand to a fraction of what it once was. Moreover, conservatives are suspicious of anything that makes government more accessible and more efficient. Clearing those two hurdles wouldn’t be easy, and I doubt there’s anyone in Congress willing to start that fight.

Of the first class of West Coast rappers, you can make a strong case that the D.O.C was the best, or at least, the one with the most potential (Ice Cube notwithstanding). Unfortunately, a serious car accident cut his career short. He survived, but his vocal cords were severely damaged in the crash. Still, if you ever get the opportunity, pick up a copy of No One Can Do It Better and marvel at what could have been.

Anyway, Obama has long had hang-ups with nuclear weapons. If memory serves, he was in effect a SANE Freeze guy at Columbia (or he wrote an article placing himself in that camp). The fact that he has now committed us to a treaty arrangement that reflects his views — or reflects movement in that direction — is not shocking. But even if we had no missile treaties of any kind, the likelihood that he would ever use nukes remains close to zero. I think pretty much everyone around the world knows that about him. And whether this treaty is ratified or not, that will remain the case until he leaves office.

In the interest of charity, I’m going to assume that Goldberg thinks this is a good thing. But I’ve been wrong before.

This conversation seems mostly played out, but with regards to the “47 percent of households owe no taxes” business, I always think it’s worth noting the terrific benefits high-income Americans receive from the federal government. The federal tax code privileges wealth through its low tax rates on capital gains and other forms of non-labor income. Moreover, the tax code offers a constellation of tax breaks and deductions, most of which are only relevant to high-income households. When paired together with the Bush tax cuts — which transferred huge shares of national wealth to the top 1 percent of income earners — you have a tax code that provides serious income supports to the nation’s wealthiest citizens.

Contra the dogma of the Randian Right, lower and middle-income Americans aren’t “leaching” off of the productivity of the wealthy. And in fact, the opposite might be true. Thanks mostly to conservative efforts, federal tax policy has tilted strongly towards increasing the after-tax income of the nation’s wealthiest citizens. For thirty years, wealthy Americans have enjoyed explosive income growth and falling tax rates, while everyone else has been forced to deal with stagnant wages, rising costs, and greater debt. This upwards redistribution has been the goal of the conservative movement since its inception, and Republicans would love for it to continue indefinitely.

On talk radio, Rush Limbaugh accused Obama of administering “statist-assisted suicide.” Talk show host Michael Savage called Obama’s health-care plan “socialized medicine” and described the nuclear treaty as “insane.” These are not isolated comments; the terms “radical,” “socialist” and even “totalitarian” are bandied about frequently by Obama opponents, including congressional and other GOP leaders.

To one outside the partisan and ideological wars, charges of radicalism, socialism, retreat and surrender are, frankly, bizarre.

[...]

Looking at the range of Obama domestic and foreign policies, and his agency and diplomatic appointments, my conclusion is clear: This president is a mainstream, pragmatic moderate, operating in the center of American politics; center-left, perhaps, but not left of center.

I’ve brought this up before, but it’s worth considering the racial implications of this language. In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights leaders were routinely accused of being under the influence of “communists” or “socialists.” And more broadly, accusations of “communism” were used to discredit integrationist leaders as fundamentally foreign or un-American. Indeed, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover launched a massive crusade against Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders, with the aim of marginalizing King and his supporters with said accusations.

Given the racial dimensions of conservative opposition to redistributive policies, as well as the widespread Birtherism among grassroots conservative activists, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that these spittle-flecked accusations of “socialism” and “totalitarianism” are simmering with a healthy amount of racial paranoia.

Pit maverick Republican Congressman Ron Paul against President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 election match-up, and the race is – virtually dead even.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of likely voters finds Obama with 42% support and Paul with 41% of the vote. Eleven percent (11%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.

Given Rasmussen’s history, I wouldn’t be shocked if Republicans were overrepresented in the polling sample. That said, Republicans — and everyone else, for that matter — should take this poll with a large grain of salt. Presidential approval ratings are volatile things, heavily tied to major events and economic performance. More importantly, we’re still two years away from the presidential election. At this point in his term, even Ronald Reagan looked like a one-term president. A whole lot can happen in two years, and conservatives would do well not to pin their hopes on silly straw polls.

Pharoahe Monch’s Desire is a criminally slept on album. Listen to it when you get the chance.

Steve Benen notices that the debate over the Obama administration’s recent efforts on nuclear arms control has fallen into a familiar pattern:

It’s a reminder of a larger dynamic we’ve seen repeatedly over the last year or so — the major national security and foreign policy fights do not necessary pit left vs. right, or Democrats vs. Republicans. Rather, they pit the American mainstream against what’s become of contemporary conservativism.

In the case of nuclear policy, President Obama is being attacked by far-right personalities like Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and assorted right-wing members of Congress. The White House’s approach has been endorsed, meanwhile, by the Secretary of Defense, the chairman and vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and top officials from the Bush and Reagan administrations.

We’ve seen this same dynamic — Obama and the mainstream vs. confused conservative clowns — again and again, on everything from Iran to civilian trials to Gitmo to torture.

And yet, we’re apparently supposed to take Giuliani, Palin, and Gingrich seriously.

I get the sense that Benen thinks this is a good thing. I’m not so sure. While it’s politically beneficial for the Obama administration to have situated itself within the mainstream of most foreign policy questions, it’s also the case that the mainstream is sometimes very, very wrong. For instance, the mainstream position is that Al-Qaeda (and terrorism more generally) represent a serious threat to our immediate and long-term interests. But that isn’t necessarily true. Andrew Bacevich would prefer the United States to view Al-Qaeda “as the equivalent of an international crime conspiracy” that requires a targeted and sustained police effort,  not the full force of the American military. Likewise, while mainstream policy makers see Iran’s nuclear program as a deterrable threat, folks like Daniel Larison argue — convincingly — that it isn’t actually within our power to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Admittedly, it is hilarious to see alarmist Republicans overreact to Obama’s bland, mainstream decisions. But it’s also counterproductive to the goal of having a sane and measured foreign policy. Without credible, mainstream opposition, skeptics aren’t in a position to keep Obama in check and challenge him when he is wrong. For a great example of this, look no further than the muted controversy over Obama’s assumption of the right to assassinate American citizens. On national security matters, you can expect the president’s party to quickly fall in line, which the responsibility of challenging the president to the opposition party. But with the GOP wedded to kidnapping and torture as an instrument of executive power, there is little hope for a powerful response to President Obama’s insane declaration of executive power.

Photo credit: White House/Pete Souza

“Jim Crow” is what the Washington Post is calling Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s new plan to institute an essay requirement for former nonviolent felons who wish to see their voting rights restored:

Although the powers that be in Richmond regard former felons with such contempt that they don’t even bother counting them, voting rights advocates estimate that some 300,000 ex-cons in Virginia remain barred from voting. African Americans account for just a fifth of Virginia’s 7.8 million citizens but are thought to constitute about half of those ineligible to vote. This is Jim Crow by another name.

Now Mr. McDonnell may be compounding the damage by insisting that nonviolent former felons — people convicted of shoplifting and other property crimes, for instance — must do more than just apply to the state if they wish to vote, a process that until now has been time-consuming but generally successful for those who stick with it. Mr. McDonnell would have them submit a letter making the case that they have contributed to society since their release — an utterly arbitrary standard. What’s more, they are asked to explain why they think they should get their rights back.

As we see it, the correct answer is: Because they are rights. Period. By insisting on this exercise in expository writing, Mr. McDonnell is transforming the process into a kind of literacy test — as obnoxious in its own way as the literacy tests of Jim Crow, which were intended to exclude blacks from voting. Whatever the intent, the likely effect will be to dissuade thousands of people who might otherwise apply. [Emphasis mine]

I’m glad to see the Washington Post call out this policy for what it is: a not-so-subtle attempt to keep the mostly African-American ex-felon population from participating in state politics. Moreover, it is apt for the Washington Post to describe this as a throwback to Jim Crow. Right now, I’m reading Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” I plan to write more on this book once I finish it, but it suffices to say that her basic thesis is a little controversial: the criminal justice system, and the laws and customs felons are subject to after leaving prison, come together to form a powerful web of social control that is similar in function to Jim Crow.

In 2002, more than ten percent of black males between the ages of 25 and 29 were sentenced and in prison, and the ex-felon population in the United States is disproportionately African-American. Once out of prison, former inmates are subject to hiring discrimination, voting disenfranchisement, and harsh stigmas, all of which work together to keep a large — and growing — class of black men completely disconnected from mainstream society. There is a reason, after all, for the astronomically high recidivism rates among black males released from prison. With few social supports and little opportunity, formerly incarcerated African-American men are far more likely to return to crime. Sadly, and despite his earlier rhetoric, Bob McDonnell’s has seen fit to maintain and expand this system as much as he can.

One last thing: on a conceptual level, felon disenfranchisement laws don’t make any sense. If a “right” is something citizens hold intrinsically, regardless of status, then it can’t actually be taken away. Curtailed, maybe, but not eliminated. Most states don’t allow their prisoners to vote, which is a mistake. Even the most reprehensible criminal is still a citizen of the United States and entitled to representation. Moreover, by taking prisoners out of the political process, we make it that much more difficult to reform the criminal justice system (which is in desperate need of reform). After all, prisoners don’t vote, so why should they matter? I’d add too that McDonnell’s move is more egregious than most, since it would turn voting (and representation) into a privilege, rather than the right that it is.

Our species separated into two parts 50, 60, or 70 thousand years ago, depending on which paleoanthropologist you ask. One part remained in Africa, the ancestral homeland. The other crossed into Southwest Asia, then split, and re-split, and re-split, until there were human populations living in near-total reproductive isolation from each other in all parts of the world. This went on for hundreds of generations, causing the divergences we see today. Different physical types, as well as differences in behavior, intelligence, and personality, are exactly what one would expect to observe when scrutinizing these divergent populations.

[...]

We see the same differences in traits that we don’t think of as directly physical, what evolutionary psychologists sometimes refer to as the “BIP” traits — behavior, intelligence, and personality. Two of the hardest-to-ignore manifestations here are the extraordinary differentials in criminality between white Americans and African Americans, and the persistent gaps in scores when tests of cognitive ability are given to large population samples.

Now, Derbyshire has long been known for his embrace of scientific racism, so while it’s surprisingly nasty for him to lecture black law students — at one of the nation’s top law schools — on their supposed inferiority, it’s not exactly a surprise. What’s funny, as far as I’m concerned, is that I read this after glancing through a piece by Bob Parks, a journalist and black conservative writing for Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government:

When I read Monica Crowley’s piece on Big Government, I must admit to being thoroughly disgusted.

Not because she posted racial-slur laden voicemails sent to Dr. Christopher Metzler, Associate Dean of Continuing Studies at Georgetown University because of his opposition to ObamaCare. No, I am disgusted because for years the mainstream media has invited black conservatives on their radio and television programs to be an opposing voice to the black liberals who are often sought as the voice of black America. We’ve told them (off the record) of the response we normally get after our appearances.

We know what the headlines would read if something were said to annoy Al Sharpton. But it took racist phonecalls to a dean to invoke outrage.

I know many other black conservatives have endured the racial slurs from the left for decades, and the media has never had our backs.

It’s not at all uncommon to hear this complaint from black conservatives. “The Left is full of racists! But only conservatives have to account for it.” And each time, my response is “yes, that’s exactly right.” Of course there are liberal racists, it would be silly for me to pretend otherwise. But this isn’t a “pox on both houses” situation. While there are liberal racists, there isn’t a single institution on the Left that excuses racism, or elevates members who routinely spout racist things. Moreover, there is broad space for anti-racism activism on the Left, as well as a fair amount of racial diversity among activists and leadership.

By contrast, the Right is incredibly tolerant of intolerance. Derbyshire is a writer at the National Review, one of the conservative movement’s flagship publications. The “tea party” movement — heralded by Republicans and conservative leaders — is bursting with racial resentment and ugly prejudice. Indeed, the de facto spokesmen of the Right, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, spend most of their time stoking racial paranoia among their followers. Last week, Virginia’s right-wing governor flew the banner of white nationalism, and received vocal support from the chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

I am genuinely sorry that Bob Parks has faced racism from his ideological opponents; that is inexcusable. But it doesn’t change the fact that prejudice and racial resentment are embedded in the DNA of the conservative movement. William F. Buckley Jr., the preeminent voice of conservatism for half a century, opened his editorial salvo with a defense of segregation in the National Review. Barry Goldwater wasn’t a racist, but he didn’t hesitate to harness white racism in his presidential bid. Richard Nixon turned racial resentment into an art form, and Ronald Reagan took it a step further, inaugurating his 1980 campaign for president at the final resting place of three civil rights workers, gunned down by Klansmen. Even George H.W. Bush, a careful moderate, stoked resentment and fear for political benefit. These days, conservatives hold to a stance of anti-anti-racism, where accusations of racism are far, far worse than actual prejudice against minorities.

Of course, not every conservative is prejudiced, or condones the use of racial resentment for political gain. But there’s no escaping the fact that the conservative movement is mostly friendly to the interests of racists. If conservatives want to live in a world where that isn’t the case, then they need to make a concerted effort at purging white nationalism and resentment from their movement. Otherwise, they have zero room to complain.

So, given all of this, it’s not a shock to see the Obama administration touting its deficit numbers, which are lower than expected:

The federal deficit is running significantly lower than it did last year, with the budget gap for the first half of fiscal 2010 down 8 percent over the same period a year ago, senior Obama administration officials said Monday.

The officials attributed the results to higher tax revenue and to lower spending than projected on bailing out the financial system. If the trend continues for the rest of the year, it would mean the annual deficit would be $1.3 trillion — about $300 billion less than the administration’s projection two months ago for 2010.

This isn’t necessarily a good thing. As Brad DeLong notes, unemployment is higher than it was a year ago, which suggests that the deficit should also be higher, as the government should still be pumping money into the economy. That the deficit is lower is a possible sign of mismanaged fiscal policy, a longer recession, and a slower recovery.

Of course, opinions on this differ: yesterday, Business Week’s Mike Dorning argued that the economy is recovering much more quickly than we realize, and the New York Times’ Floyd Norris agreed, pointing to the surprising amount of good news in recent economic reports. For what it’s worth, I’m inclined to support Kevin Drum’s pessimistic take, especially when factoring in the horrible job market and terrible long-term employment numbers. I understand the impulse to pat oneself on the back, and reducing deficits is (normally) great, but the Obama administration still needs to work hard on guiding the economy out of the recession.

“Shake Your Rump” by the Beastie Boys

“There are a lot of vague parallels,” said Newt Gingrich, the Republican leader who oversaw the takeover in 1994 and now proclaims himself “moderately optimistic” that Republicans can again win the House, at least.

In many ways, the 1994 election has become the template both Republicans and Democrats are looking to as they set their strategies for the fall Congressional elections. Democratic campaign operatives, who are girding for big losses, began meeting quietly with party strategists involved in the 1994 contests last summer, looking for lessons on how to avoid another rout.

I am going to continue pushing against this idea that the 1994 midterm elections are at all instructive for this year’s midterms. The critical difference between then and now is that the parties have basically aligned themselves on ideological and sectional grounds. There was a “revolution,” but it mostly took the form of Republicans replacing conservative Southern Democrats, and it just so happened that there were a lot of conservative Southern Democrats. The entire affair had more to do with structural factors than it did presidential popularity, and the same is true now.

Not only are the parties more or less ideologically coherent, but there are far fewer marginal seats, which puts a damper on the scale of a Republican win/Democratic loss. And if there is a big Republican win, it will have everything to do with the large number of Democrats in marginal seats. These are districts that would have never normally elected a Democrat, and given the opportunity, will elect a Republican. In other words, there’s a good chance that most Republican pickups this year will be in districts that they should have won two years ago. Which, frankly, isn’t really something to brag about.

Over at Salon’s Broadsheet, Sara Libby – a Friend of the Blog — takes a critical look at the whiteness and maleness of the new pundit class:

What bothered me about Calderone’s ranting wasn’t so much whether any of these young men deserved to break into these famously stodgy, old-school institutions — I find all their work refreshing and valuable; Cillzza, especially, is an incredibly tenacious reporter — but that they were simply younger versions of what has long been an old boys club. Is it really that much of a surprise that pages typically populated with old, white men are now also occasionally featuring young, white men?

The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel isn’t too happy about this analysis — given that he is a young, recent hire — but I think he makes the mistake of taking it too personally. Libby isn’t arguing that editorial pages are deliberately excluding women — as far as I know, there isn’t much evidence for it, either way — she’s arguing that power structures replicate themselves, absent a concerted effort to do otherwise. Simply put, people are more familiar and more comfortable with people who look like them, in the absence of any countervailing pressures, will (subconsciously or otherwise) preference people who look like them. In the white male-dominated world of opinion writing, women are at a natural disadvantage. And this is to say nothing of the fact that young women bloggers tend to cluster around feminist/women’s issues, which — unfortunately — aren’t particularly salient to the gatekeepers of elite opinion writing.

Another way of looking at this is to ask a question: Ezra Klein has had an incredibly rapid rise, but would that have been the case if he were a woman? Would she have been able to overcome the institutional barriers to female advancement? Or is talent really enough to overcome those barriers?

One last thing: if you took Libby’s piece and replaced “women” with “people of color,” you’d be in the exact same place. Like women, people of color are dramatically underrepresented in opinion journalism, and face some of the same institutional barriers. Unless op-ed pages make an effort to recruit young women and people of color, there’s a strong chance that it won’t happen.

This isn’t much of a shock, but the Obama presidency has been great for white supremacist group’s recruitment numbers (via ThinkProgress):

In the upcoming issue of Newsweek, Evan Thomas and Eve Conant report on how “‘Patriot’ groups— described by the [Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)] as outfits ‘that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose ‘one-world government’ on liberty-loving Americans’ — are ‘roaring back’ after years out of the limelight.” According to the SPLC, there has been “a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009, growing from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 groups in 2009.

The fact that the president is black has a lot to do with this, but we shouldn’t ignore that this also has a lot to do with the fact that the president is a Democrat. The Clinton presidency spawned a cottage industry of right-wing extremist groups, most notably the “Patriot” movement, which entered national consciousness with the Waco disaster in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. As Matt Yglesias noted a few days ago, it’s not unusual to see a massive backlash against president’s that come from outside a narrow coalition of conservative southern states. Had Hillary Clinton been elected president in 2008, she would have faced a similar extremist backlash.

The main difference difference between now and the 1990s is that the current crop of extremist groups is racialized and far more focused on anti-immigration activity. The Southern Poverty Law Center made note of this in its most recent “intelligence report”:

The number of hate groups in America has been going up for years, rising 54% between 2000 and 2008 and driven largely by an angry backlash against non-white immigration and, starting in the last year of that period, the economic meltdown and the climb to power of an African American president.

According to the latest annual count by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), these groups rose again slightly in 2009 — from 926 in 2008 to 932 last year — despite the demise of a key neo-Nazi group. The American National Socialist Workers Party, which had 35 chapters in 28 states, imploded shortly after the October 2008 arrest of founder Bill White for making threats against his enemies.

At the same time, the number of what the SPLC designates as “nativist extremist” groups — organizations that go beyond mere advocacy of restrictive immigration policy to actually confront or harass suspected immigrants — jumped from 173 groups in 2008 to 309 last year. Virtually all of these vigilante groups have appeared since the spring of 2005.

While it’s easy to dismiss these groups as part of the inevitable lunatic fringe, we should take their threats seriously. Remember, before 9/11 shifted America’s focus towards “Islamic” terrorism, law enforcement agencies were most concerned with right-wing domestic terrorism. Prior to 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing was the most deadly terrorist attack in American history, claiming 168 lives, including 19 children. Since then, local and federal law enforcement officers have stopped dozens of plots, a few of which — according to the SPLC — had the potential for mass destruction:

April 22, 1997: Three Ku Klux Klan members are arrested in a plot to blow up a natural gas refinery outside Fort Worth, Texas, after local Klan leader Robert Spence gets cold feet and goes to the FBI. The three, along with a fourth arrested later, expected to kill a huge number of people with the blast — authorities later say as many as 30,000 might have died — which was to serve, incredibly, as a diversion for a simultaneous armored car robbery. Among the victims would have been children at a nearby school.

One more point: if there’s anything particularly worrisome about this current resurgence in extremist activity, it’s that a combination of factors have left these groups have far fewer barriers to the mainstream. As we saw during the health care fight, conservative leaders won’t hesitate to use extremist rhetoric for political advantage, or transmit radical ideas — nullification is making a revival — into the mainstream. The right-wing has been whipped up into a frenzy, and its something we should at least pay more attention to.

Jon Chait drops knowledge:

I wouldn’t necessarily call “spread the wealth” a racist codeword. But it’s worth understanding that public opposition to income redistribution is largely a racist phenomenon. Ethnocentric attitudes among whites correspond strongly with opposition to transfer programs — even when you control for partisanship, ideology, and other factors.

This is actually a good time to mention a new study from the University of Washington, showing that those who are “racially resentful” — they believe the federal government has done too much to support African-Americans — are “36 percent more likely to support the tea party than those who are not.” Which, as Chait notes, isn’t a shock. And as far as political science is concerned, it’s not particularly controversial to note that racial resentment and “ethnocentrism” are incredibly powerful drivers of political behavior. Indeed, America’s welfare state owes a good deal of its structure to the long-running attempt to expand its scope without offending the legions of white Americans reluctant to redistribute wealth downwards to the “undeserving.”

As far as I’m concerned, the annoying thing is that conservatives grumble and resist this fact of reality, even as they benefit from its implications. Sooner or later, conservatives — movement and otherwise — will have to grapple with the fact that elements of their rhetoric have firm roots in the uglier parts of American history. This isn’t to say that their rhetoric is somehow illegitimate. But that it is incredibly disingenuous to use racially-coded rhetoric and then disavow the plain racial resentment and racism of the conservative base.

Newt Gingrich is a shining example of the old adage “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”:

The opening day of the Republican meeting closed with a rousing entrance from Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, who strode into the Hilton Hotel ballroom to the Survivor tune, “Eye of the Tiger.” For several minutes, he shook hands and waved to admirers as the song from Rocky III played over the loudspeakers.

Mr. Gingrich urged Republicans to recruit strong candidates for political races at every level, from school board and city council to governor and member of Congress. He said the political transformation in the United States will come in stages.

“When we win control of the House and Senate this fall,” Mr. Gingrich said, “Stage One of the end of Obamaism will be a new Republican congress in January that simply refuses to fund any more of his programs.”

Fifteen years ago, as Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich led the newly-minted Republican congressional majority in shutting down the government, with the aim of crippling Bill Clinton’s presidency. By the time the stand-off ended, Bill Clinton had successfully outmaneuvered Gingrich, whose disapproval rating skyrocketed to 65 percent. By 1997, 64 percent of Americans opposed Gingrich’s re-election as Speaker, and in 1998 — when his Republican colleagues successfully forced him out of the position — 70 percent of Americans approved. In 2000, 82 percent opposed his bid for president.

Which is to say that should the GOP retake the House — and I’m extremely doubtful — it might be best to disregard a man whose political career can be summed up in two words: huge failure.

Dave Weigel of the Washington Post reports on the tough reception Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La) received from some constituents:

Yesterday, I talked briefly to Cao but stepped aside as one of those no-longer-happy Republicans read him the riot act over his initial vote for health-care reform. (He voted against the final bill last month.)

“I supported you,” said Kim Hasney, a photographer from Jefferson Parish. “I can’t support you anymore.”

“You have to understand,” said Cao, “that I represent a district that’s 70 percent Democrat.”

Cao thanked Hasney for her honestly, but after she sparred a bit with other Republicans about what it was fair to expect from Cao, she told me of her disappointment with how he was using his vote.

“He had fundraisers, he had meetings, all in the suburbs — the white suburbs,” said Hasney, who attended one of those events. “He had nothing in the district. We got him elected. Then, he goes and says ‘but I have to represent my district,’ which is all liberal, giveaway, spread-the-wealth, welfare, black. We thought he would try to change the demographics of that district by supporting things that were not giveaway things. You know, supporting things that would get them out of the ghetto.”

This is something of a banal observation, but it makes zero sense for Republicans to oppose Joseph Cao, even with his occasional heterodoxies. His district, the Louisiana 2nd, is 64.1 percent African-American with a median income of $25,514. It has been represented by a Democrat for the past four election cycles, and overwhelmingly supports Democratic candidates in presidential elections. Barack Obama, John Kerry and Al Gore each won the district with around 75 percent of the vote. That a Republican represents the district is completely ridiculous, and the RCCC ought to be doing everything it can to strengthen Cao’s position. As it stands, Republican leaders are more than ready punish Cao for his attempts to maintain good standing with his district.

This is why I’m fairly certain that Republicans won’t win the House this cycle. Winning that kind of congressional majority requires a fair amount of ideological flexibility; party leaders and activists need to be comfortable supporting candidates that tilt closer to the center, otherwise, the GOP has little hope at winning the few districts conservative enough to elect a moderate — or even liberal — Republican.

Stupak, a conservative Democrat from Michigan, announced Friday he’s retiring after nine terms. He was among the most influential figures in the just-completed health debate, first forcing the House to adopt tough anti-abortion language in is version of the health bill. Then he voted for a final version that didn’t have that same language, in exchange for a presidential executive order asserting that federal dollars wouldn’t pay for any abortions.

His reward: He went from hero to villain in the eyes of many in the anti-abortion movement, and became a target of tea party followers for voting in favor of the final legislation.

Stupak is certainly facing a strong challenge from the right, but I don’t think we should discount the pressure he’s received from the left. In the weeks since she announced her primary challenge, Michigan Democrat Connie Saltonsall has won endorsements and support from the National Organization for Women as well as NARAL Pro-Choice America. Granted, the Tea Partiers have certainly been vocal about opposing Stupak, but it’s safe to say that the pressure was coming from both sides.

But as a white southerner old enough to remember the final years of Jim Crow, when every month was Confederate History Month, I have a better idea for McDonnell: Let’s have a Neo-Confederate History Month that draws attention to the endless commemorations of the Lost Cause that have wrought nearly as much damage as the Confederacy itself.

It would be immensely useful for Virginians and southerners generally to spend some time reflecting on the century or so of grinding poverty and cultural isolation that fidelity to the Romance in Gray earned for the entire region, regardless of race. Few Americans from any region know much about the actual history of Reconstruction, capped by the shameful consignment of African Americans to the tender mercies of their former masters, or about the systematic disenfranchisement of black citizens (and in some places, particularly McDonnell’s Virginia, of poor whites) that immediately followed. [Emphasis mine]