Mary Landrieu vs. ‘moral corruptness.’
If there is one U.S. senator who, time and again, has stood for justice and against nonsensicalness and moral corruptness, it’s Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. She identified rampant nonsensicalness in the 2007 immigration-reform bill, so, along with just seven other Democrats, she voted to kill it. Then she saw the potential bankruptness in the so-called public option–instead pushing for a “private market-based approach”–and joined a small chorus of Democrats who helped ensure its absence from the final health-care bill. And most recently she moved to combat the president’s distressingly insufficient pro-oilness by holding up the appointment of Jacob Lew to head the Office of Management and Budget until the administration lifted the moratorium on off-shore drilling. This is the same Louisiana senator who, two weeks after BP’s oil started flowing, offered her own gusher: “I think this industry has very tight regulations and good regulations.”
So who could be surprised to see Landrieu courageously decry Obama’s proposed compromise on the Bush tax cuts as “morally corrupt”?
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Isn’t moral corruption Louisiana’s biggest export?
Political leadership still tends to be a confederacy of dunces.
And Mary Landrieu is one of the biggest dunces in Congress. This is about her ongoing feud with the White House over offshore drilling, which never ends.
The White House can safely ignore her because she was never there for Obama to begin with, something progressives might want to think about before they decide to cut the cord.
I don’t buy the “moral corruptness” charges at all. It was — as we say in Catholic debates — a prudential decision on Obama’s part. I did see a clip of one of the late-night comedians asking why the Republicans bothered to win the House when they can already get their way in the minority. But see For Obama, Tax Deal Is a Back-Door Stimulus in the Times, which says in part,
The important thing right now is for the economy to improve.
I challenge the premise of this threat. Obama’s cave-in on extending tax cuts for the wealthy is an instance of moral as well as political corruption. It isn’t “prudence,” David — it’s neoliberal principle. And please, no defenses on the grounds of “pragmatism.” President Wimpy showed us long ago what a corporate shill he was, so the argument that he was always vehemently opposed to extending the cuts is nonsense. As Michael Hudson argues in this cogent essay, President YesWeCan may well have set in motion a train of moral and political depredations.
http://www.counterpunch.org/
Robert Reich is also very distressed by the Obama tax compromise. Some commenters on a previous thread raised the issue of the need for Obama to better educate the public about the need/wisdom of his actions. Reich says that, in addition to being bad tax policy, this compromise is just disastrous from a public education perspective; it completely re-enforces the Republican world view and makes it difficult for the Democrats to persuade people to their own view of how things stand and what needs to be done. http://robertreich.org/
Name calling is the lowest and least persuasive form of argumentation.
Once again an issue turns around the question: when if ever is it right to assent to or tolerate what one sees as a moral evil? A similar question: is compromise always evil?
I’m not sure of the answer, but I am sure that a democracy can’t work if there are no such compromises. I’m not even sure of what “assent to” means here, even though I think it is necessary to describe such compromises as “assents”. I’m also sure it doesn’t mean simply “tolerate”.
Is it a matter of doing evil to avoid a worse evil? The Church seems to accept the “lesser of two evils” principle, bit democracy seems to test that principle all the time.
This is one of the smartest things I’ve read on deals and ideals and why liberals always seem to have to accept less than their ideals:
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/12/yet-more-tax-deal-blogging
The short answer is, we actually WANT something constructive from government. It’s a whole lot easier to follow a scorched earth policy when you actually don’t mind if the earth gets scorched.
“First, there’s a real asymmetry between liberal and conservative goals. Liberals want active change. This means they can’t just obstruct. They have to figure out a way to build a supermajority coalition for complicated legislation, and that means compromise. And everyone knows this. So compromise is baked into the cake. But conservatives, to a much larger extent, are often OK with simply preventing things from changing, either as their first best or second best position. For that, all you have to do is maintain a very simple position among a minority caucus. No real coalition building or compromise is necessary.”
ISTM his second conclusion, “To fix this, you need more liberal Democrats, not tougher leadership,” isn’t the only thing that’s needed. The de facto 60-senator majority needed to pass major legislation is the big hurdle. That figure needs to be junked.
Oops — missed copying my first paragraph to my last post: It goes”
Thanks, Barbard, for the fine Kevin Drum article. ISTM that his first point actually explains a lot of the last 100 years of American legislative history –
“If there is one U.S. senator who, time and again, has stood for justice and against nonsensicalness and moral corruptness, it’s Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.”
Really???? Newsflash: Catholics believe that abortion is morally corrupt.
Catholic Senator Landrieu recieved $100 million for her state by voting for the pro-abortion health care blill
Her voting Record: Only 35% pro-life voting record in U.S. Senate
She has voted several times against amendments that would stop abortion funding.
http://www.lifenews.com/2009/12/08/state-4627/
Mary Landrieu’s record is a mixed one. Unfortunately, though she started out on the moderate side, she gets more and more conservative with age. Something needs to be said about her m. o. — she plays hard-ball like few others do. People who think women are supposed to be sweet can’t stand that, and her pretty blond looks make the contrast between her school-girl looks and her godzilla actions even starker.