Hello, Friends!
It’s summertime at PTB, which means we’re off the air until August.
But do not fear! We have lots of great things to share with you in the summertime.
You can go check out Page 2 Politics, our dedicated politics blog, or listen to one of Skaaren’s Now That’s What I Call Boogie! playlists!
All our love,
Permission to Boogie
Let’s talk about deficit hysteria for a second.
Here’s a wonderful example from Crossroads GPS:
(Pause for a moment and remember that it’s someone’s job to make those things. Somebody found the perfect sad piano music and filmed those kids playing basketball.)
Anyway, one of the charges most frequently leveled against the president is that he’s dramatically increased government spending. It’s the central theme of the basketball ad and countless GOP stump speeches.
While it’s true that federal deficits are growing, the federal spending has grown more slowly under Obama than any other president in 30 years.
Here’s the data visualized differently.
The perception of the president as a runaway spender is exaggerated, to say the least. Federal spending growth was nearly six times greater under George W. Bush than it is today, even when the first federal stimulus is re-attributed to Barack Obama.
Federal spending is higher under Obama than it was under Bush and the national debt has grown more quickly under Obama because of revenue lost to the Great Recession, but there has been no Obama boom where government spending is concerned.
The relatively sudden outrage regarding deficits and debt isn’t a reaction to any crazed presidential spending spree. As Steve Kornaki from Salon writes, deficit hawksmanship is a time-tested political tool.
Voters have a demonstrated tendency to express concerns about deficits only when the economy is bad. This is why, for instance, the Democrats during the 1981/82 recession reaped a political windfall while railing against Ronald Reagan’s massive deficits, but gained zero traction on the issue when the economy improved in 1984 – even though deficits were even higher (and still soaring) then.
The lesson is that most voters don’t actually care about the deficit itself, or really understand what it is. But it’s a scary-sounding word that conjures thoughts of government bloat and reckless spending, which makes it an irresistible weapon for a recession-era opposition party.
Lamar Smith should win easily in next week’s Republican primary, but the Internet is making the Texas congressman’s reelection campaign a little more difficult.
Smith became persona non grata online last year thanks to his sponsorship of the SOPA, the draconian anti-piracy bill that was finally slain by Internet backlash in January.
Now, a few upstanding members of the online community are pooling their resources to become political players deep in the heart of Texas’s 21st Congressional district. On Monday, Test PAC, the brainchild of some angry Redditors, made a small ad buy in Smith’s district, which includes parts of Austin and San Antonio.
Here’s the ad they ran:
But Test PAC’s founders aren’t the only crusaders taking aim at Lamar Smith; Ben Huh, the creative force behind the I Can Haz Cheezburger media conglomerate, bankrolled a pair of billboards in the San Antonio area through a group called Fight for the Future.
2012 will be Lamar Smith’s fourteenth congressional election and he tends to win big. The fledgling opposition doesn’t pose much of a threat to Smith this time around, but it does send an important message to politicians at every level.
For the first time, internet communities are mobilizing and lobbying for their pet cause (online freedom) in the real world. And though this election cycle likely won’t be influenced much by groups like Test PAC, the internet is transforming into an efficient grassroots lobbying platform that can compete with the moneyed interests that dominate the electoral process.
So, who’s ready for /b/PAC?
Lamar Smith should win easily in next week’s Republican primary, but the internet is making the Texas congressman’s reelection campaign a little more difficult.
Smith became a persona non grata online thanks to his sponsorship of the SOPA, the draconian anti-piracy bill that was killed by internet backlash in January.
Now, a few upstanding members of the online community are pooling their resources to become political players deep in the heart of Texas’s 21st Congressional district.