Previously:

The 2011 Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa (September 18, 2011)

The 2011 Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa: Senator Bernie Sanders (I) (September 19, 2011)

Paul Begala (center right) speaking with the press at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa. photo – Jerry Schmidt, Show Me Progress.

Paul Begala was one of the featured speakers at the annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on Sunday. Paul Begala’s speech:

[applause] Paul Begala: Thank you very much. Thank you.  [applause] Uh, thank you, Senator [Tom] Harkin, uh, and, and Ruth [Harkin].  I want to particularly thank you all for coming out on a rainy afternoon, you know, on a rainy Sunday.  And so if I may begin by quoting scripture, in the Book of Matthew, right, the Lord taught us the rain falls upon the just and the unjust. Which means somewhere Dick Cheney is soakin’ wet. [laughter][applause][cheers] I know I’m among the just under this tent, brothers and sisters. And talk about preachin’, how about Brother [Senator Bernie] Sanders. [applause][cheers] Preach it. Golly. That was wonderful. [applause] I could take you home to Sugarland [Texas] and put you in a tent, tent revival, Senator. That was fantastic. Thank you for reminding us of what’s at stake. [voice: “Yes.”] And what we can be when we are at our best. And he has been such a powerful voice for us in the Senate, so I really want to thank and honor Senator Bernie Sanders. [applause]…

“…the Lord taught us the rain falls upon the just and the unjust. Which means somewhere Dick Cheney is soakin’ wet….”

…And, of course, none of us would be here if it were not for Ruth Harkin. [laughter] Um, it’s true. [applause] As, as, as my wife likes to say, behind every successful man is an astonished wife. [laughter] Ruth has dragged Tom a long way in forty-three years and we’re grateful for it. [laughter] Uh, and of course, mostly, uh, our, our host, uh, I told him this, um, earlier this morning. Uh, my old boss, President Clinton, was, had to do Meet the Press and a bunch of these shows this morning ’cause he’s doing his Clinton Global Initiative.  So, just like the old days he kinda got the old band together yesterday and we did a little prep session, you know. And it was just great fun, but, you know, we kinda wrapped up. And he said, you know, you gonna be watchin’? I said, well, I’m gonna try, but I’m gonna be out in Iowa for the Harkin Steak Fry. [voice impression] Oh, God, I love that thing. That’s great. [laughter][cheers]  I swear to God, that’s exactly. [voice impression]  You know, I, I’ve spoken there three times. I believe I hold a personal record. [laughter] [inaudible] He said, [voice impression] it was raining cats and dogs. Harkin was all worried. I told him it’d be just fine. The good lord just parted the clouds, just… [laughter]  So, he loves, loves, loves Tom Harkin. He loves Ruth Harkin. And he loves Iowa and he loves you. And he wanted me to tell you that from the bottom of his heart. [applause] So, thank you for supporting Bill Clinton [applause] [inaudible].

I am from Texas. I, I grew up there. Uh, I’m from a little town called Sugarland, Texas where our congressman was Tom Delay. [voices: “Oh.”] Oh, but he’s committed, so, so committed to public service that I believe soon he’ll be making license plates [voices][inaudible][laughter][applause] So he’s got a heart for service, you gotta admire that from, from old Delay. Um, but you know, I grew up in that town. It is, it is maybe the most right wing little town in my great big right wing state. [laughter] And, uh, I’d go home and I’d go see all the guys I grew up with and, and ’cause I lived in Washington and worked there, my friends would say, well, I would say to them, like how, what do you think about Delay? I thought at some point, you know, that car would run out of gas back home. So, I’d say that to ’em, how’s, how’s Delay doing? And invariably they’d say, well, you know, not bad, for a liberal. [laughter] Those are the people I grew up with, but I love ’em. [laughter] Um, I, I very often felt like the only fireplug at the dog show, but, you know. [laughter] It makes you tough. [laughter] And [laugh], and so what you do, maybe many of you grew up like that, right, what you do if you’re, first of all it is good for the soul. It gave me great respect, honestly, for the other side, and to learn from them, and to be honest, and have these discussions, and to know that I, I not only know, but I love people who are Republican. Some of them are in my family. Deeply misguided, my brother [inaudible]. [laughter] Um, but this teaches us, right, all how to get along. But, they way you kind of, people always ask me, you came out of this really right wing town and you’re big liberal and how does that happen? Well, in part, it happens because you have to seek your leadership. It’s not handed to you. You have to seek it. So, all those years in Texas I was not represented by Tom Delay. I was represented by Tom Harkin. [voices: “Yeah.”] [applause][cheers]

Every, every one of us, show of hands. How many of us, and I’m one of ’em, have a loved one who is disabled and now emancipated because of Tom Harkin’s Americans With Disability Act, the Emancipation Proclamation [applause] for the disabled community?  Thank you, Senator Harkin for that law. [cheers] It’s a life changing law [applause] for a whole lot of people. How many of us have a loved one who can benefit from the stem cell research and the medical research and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Act that Senator Harkin wrote and passed and put into law [applause] to try to save lives [cheers] here in America? [applause] How many of us have been, could be, or would be denied health coverage because we committed the sin of having a preexisting condition? Or, as my wife likes to say, hell, life is a preexisting condition. [laughter] That’s no longer [applause] gonna happen because of Tom Harkin and the work he does chairing [cheers] that health committee in Washington. [applause][cheers] I want to thank Senator Harkin [applause] for his fight on behalf of all of us. And, and, by the way, for all of you who are in to agriculture, who’s here into agriculture, if you eat you’re into agriculture. [laughter] Some of you are into it a little more than others. [laughter] I, I have, you know, you’ll all laugh at this, but I have a little bitty sixty-three acre, uh, farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. And every farmer and every farm family in America owes a debt to Tom Harkin for the decades of service he has done for family farmers and small farmers all across this country. [applause] In your state and all the other forty-nine states, too. [applause] So we owe him so much. And I want him to know this in public, that all across America there are places where sometimes we feel like we’re represented, we don’t have a voice, no one is fighting for us, and then, by God, we can go turn on the television and see Tom Harkin and it says D Iowa, but it ought to say D everyone. [voices: “Yeah.”] [applause] ‘Cause that’s who he’s fighting for [inaudible]. [applause] And this is the thing. This is what I love about him. Is that he combines this wonderful big hearted compassion and this, this very broad sense of what winner circle ought to be in America with a willingness and ability to fight. [voices: “Yeah.”] [applause] You know, sometimes I think the definition of a liberal is someone who’s afraid to take his own side in a fight. [laughter] That’s not Harkin, right?

You know, I , when,
I, my wife and I first started dating, this is now thirty years ago, and, ad I’m a big sports fan and it was fight night at our college. And so I took her to the fights. And, and, you know, they, they begin and she’s real smart and full of questions, she said, well, why does the, the ref in the ring, why does he wear a bow tie? It seems sort of odd for a boxing match. I said, well, that, that symbolizes the civility, that there is some rules here and dignity and civility and that’s what he sort of represents. Then they come to the center of the ring and shake hands. She said, well, well, what is, what does that mean, they shake hands? I said, well, it’s, you know, it’s still a friendly fight. They’re gonna go and beat each other’s brains out, but, but then they’ll [laughter] come back and, and be friends again. And then right before the fight began one of the fighters in the corner did this. My wife, a Lutheran, I’m a Catholic, she looks at this, sign of the cross, and she says, well, what does that mean? And I said, well, honey, it don’t mean a damn thing if he don’t know how to fight. [laughter][applause] Tom Harkin knows how to fight. [applause] By God, he knows how to fight. [applause] And I love that about him. And we need that on our side, ’cause we can see the other side, right?

I don’t know how many of y’all saw the big Republican debate at the Reagan Library. [voice: “No.”][voice: “Yeah.”] Yeah. I, I had the, I had the sense that for some of them it was their first time in a library. [laughter] [inaudible][cheers] [applause]  You know, they, they, they held it, I work at CNN, but I watched, it was on Fox News, and I highly recommend it. It’s the, Fox is this comedy channel pretends like it’s news, it’s hilarious. [laughter] But I do two things every day. I do. I read the Holy Bible and I watch Fox News so I know what both sides are thinking. [laughter] [applause] ‘Cause I believe in good and evil in the world. [applause] So I like to hear from both, so I tuned in and I watched that debate. And, oh, my stars, I mean, Senator Harkin is right, these, these, these folks, uh, Eisenhower would not have been welcome on that stage. Ronald Reagan woulda had the bends. I mean. They’ve gone so far right it was really astonishing. There was a point at which they were all arguing over who hates evolution more. [laughter] Right? You remember that? And, and I knew Rick Perry when he was first starting out, he was a Democrat, now he’s a Republican, so he supports evolution of a sort. [voice: “Yeah.”] Right? [laughter] And Mitt Romney? [laughter] [voice: “That’s devolution.”] Devolution. That’s right, that’s moving in the wrong direction. That’s, that’s going in the, uh, from, that’s going the other way in that ascent of man chart, you know, they’re about the third one from the left. [laughter] And, and Romney, he, I remember when he was running against Teddy Kennedy, God rest his soul, back in ninety-four. And he got up in a debate, I swear to you, you go look at this on YouTube, Mitt Romney, uh, still with that very perfect Grecian hair that he’s got. [laughter] Grecian formula, whatever it is. And he turns to Senator Ted Kennedy, one of the great progressive champions we have ever had, and he turns to him and he says, if I’m elected to the Senate I will be more pro gay rights than you will, [laughter] Senator Kennedy. And, I, even at the time I thought, well, Mitt, unless you’re like doing it with a dude you’re not gonna be more. [laughter][applause] And now [applause], now [applause], now he wants to amend our Constitution to discriminate against our brothers and sisters just because of who they happen to be and how God made them? That’s evolution of a sort, but you’re right, it’s going the wrong way. But, oh, no, they can’t say that anymore, right? They, they, now, it’s, it’s a litmus test.

Wolf Blitzer asked them at one of the debates, who here believes in, in the biblical, not the biblical, the biological theory of evolution? And, kind of, nobody raised their hand.  And so a few sort of looked like they might have wanted to, but they didn’t dare and. [laughter] Course, they don’t let me out on the stage to do the questions or my follow up would have been, okay, how ’bout gravity or photosynthesis, [laughter], electromagnetism, any of that spooky science [laughter][inaudible]? [applause] My, my oldest, my, I have four boys and my oldest just turned nineteen, he’s starting college. He’s [inaudible] he wants to be a neuroscientist, right, so, he’s studying science. And so he’s studying evolution. By the way, he went to a Catholic school and the priest who taught him evolution explained to him that there’s no, there’s no, uh, uh, uh, conflict there at all. Uh, and so, my, my son was having one of these arguments with on of his right wing friends who said that, well, you know, evolution is just a theory. And my son said, yes, so is gravity. Lay down on the floor and let me hold a rock over your head. [laughter][applause] he’s a smart ass, he really is. He gets that from his mother. [applause]….

The remainder of the transcript will follow in subsequent posts.

Todays big Roy Blunt news:

Sen. Roy Blunt, a key Republican political insider, will head Mitt Romney’s effort to secure congressional support for the former Massachusetts governor’s presidential bid, the latest move by the GOP establishment to close ranks for 2012.

According to both Romney and Blunt, this political marriage is based on their mutual concern for “job creation.”  Or is it their mutual concern for “job creators,” as in big corporate campaign contributors?

Then there’s this observation:

A longstanding conservative as well as an establishment figure, Blunt could help polish Romney’s image among both conservatives and Washington insiders.

I think that this means that the Romney camp recognizes that Blunt has managed the essential balancing act between serving GOP corporatist goals and numbly spouting Tea Party bromides. So far, Romney’s efforts to straddle that line looks looks like nothing other than the crassest sort of flip-floppery. My own personal theory about this distinction is that Blunt’s demeanor is so wooden and his delivery so rote that it is taken as unstudied by the literally unstudied Tea Partiers, whereas the glib and relatively animated Romney only excites distrust from the less-polished denizens of Tea Party Land.

It also helps that Blunt never really bothers to explain or justify his past actions; he just grunts and stays on the GOP point du jour. Maybe he can teach Romney to shut up about Romneycare, the forerunner of “Obamacare,” and help him jettison his efforts to justify his abysmal job creation record in Massachusetts. Blunt’s rule is don’t explain, just attack, no matter how crude your weapon, and, so far, it has the  advantage that, as a way to divert attention from his past record, it’s worked.

Blunt and Romney also have one other singular commonality:  They resemble ventriloquist’s dummies popular in the middle of the last century, respectively Howdy Doody and Charlie McCarthy.* This fits well with still yet another narrative attendant upon the announcement of Blunt’s role in the Romney campaign, which is that Romney’s rival, Rick Perry, scares the party establishment silly:

There has been talk in Republican circles that Perry might be too dangerous to run in 2012 because he demonstrates little appeal to independents. Some in the GOP point to 1972, when liberal Sen. George McGovern won the Democratic nomination for president and lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide with long-lasting political consequences.

I can easily imagine that predictable corporate puppets are preferable to the GOP movers-and-shakers – though not necessarily to the GOP base – than the perpetually foot-in-mouth loose-cannon, Rick Perry.

*Sentence edited for clarity.  

The follow the money shell game can get complicated. Yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C000953 MO REPUBLICAN PARTY [pdf] 9/19/2011

HRCC Inc

PO Box 1313

Jefferson City, MO 65102

9/19/2011

$15,000.00

[emphasis added]

It’s not like it’s one hand washing the other, is it? Just asking.

Previously: The 2011 Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa (September 18, 2011)

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont)(left) out in the rain at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa. photo – Jerry Schmidt, Show Me Progress.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (i) was one of the featured speakers at the annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on Sunday. Senator Sanders’ speech:

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont): [applause] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

And let me begin by thanking you, not only for allowing me to be with you for a few minutes, but also for sending Tom Harkin [voice: “Yeah!”] to the United States Senate. [applause] Tom and I serve on the same committee, the Health, Education, Labor, Pension Committee, which he chairs. He has picked up the mantle from Senator [Ted] Kennedy. He is doing an extraordinary job. And I have to tell you, when it comes to the issue of children, when it comes to the issue of labor, when it comes to the issue of the environment your senator, Tom Harkin, is consistently out in front and a real national leader. Tom, thank you very much. [applause]

What I’m going to tell you this afternoon in many ways is what you already know better than I do. And that is that this is a pivotal moment in the history of the United States of America. [voice: “Amen.”] It’s [applause], it’s a pivotal moment because of the work that so many people have done for so many years, so many struggles that have taken place, so many sacrifices by our veterans and others to make this country a great and Democratic country, a country which has been the envy of the entire world. [applause] And now there are forces afoot who want to roll back every victory that has been won by working people over the last eighty years. They, they have a belief that what America is supposed to be about is that every person is in it alone. And you saw a glimpse of it just the other day at the Republican debate. Somebody asked one of the candidates, well, what happens if somebody doesn’t have health insurance and that person becomes terribly ill? What happens to that person? And the answer was, well, too bad, guess he has to die. [voices:  “No.”] That is not our belief. [applause] [voice: “Thank you.”]  What our belief is is that we are a nation, historically and today, which understand that when one child goes hungry, when one senior cannot afford the prescription drugs that she needs, that all of us are in it together to make sure that we address those needs. [applause]…

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) speaking under the big tent at the Harkin Steak Fry. photo – Jerry Schmidt, Show Me Progress.

…And what we understand is that this country is great, not because we have more billionaires than any other country, we are great because we have tens of millions of people who go to work every day, do their jobs, create the wealth that provides for all of us. [applause]

Now let me very briefly tell you what you already know. It’s not a pretty story. But we cannot go forward unless we are honest and straightforward in discussing the realities of today. Not pleasant realities. Let’s get ’em out on the table so that we can begin to address them. First reality, the great middle class, the people who have built this country and made it the envy of the world, that middle class is collapsing. That’s the reality. No hiding it. What do I mean by that? Today unemployment in America is not nine percent. Unemployment in America, real unemployment, is sixteen percent if you include those who have given up looking for work and those who are working part time. Second of all, you have millions of American workers today who are employed, they’re working longer hours at lower wages than they used to work. Third, median family income is plummeting, gone down beyond, below three thousand dollars as what it was ten years ago. What we have in this country today are young people who cannot get work, older people who are working for lower wages, lower wages, and twenty-five million people who have no work at all.

The first issue that [Senator] Tom [Harkin] and I are gonna be working on is a major jobs program [cheers] to put our people back to work. [applause] [cheers]  And let me tell you how we’re gonna do it. [applause]  Let me tell you how we’re gonna do it. In my state, I don’t know about Iowa, but in my state we have major infrastructural problems. Let me tell you what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is that we have roads that are in disrepair, bridges that are crumbling, we have water systems that were built before the Civil War, or rail system is totally inadequate, there are many parts of the state we can’t get good quality broadband or cell phone service, we have got a lot of schools that are not serving our kids well and need to be rebuilt. If we begin addressing the infrastructural needs of this country, if we understand that today we are spending two percent, two point two percent to be exact, of our GDP [gross domestic product] on infrastructure, China is spending nine percent. They’re building high speed rail. They’re building airports. They’re building sustainable energy.  Now is the time for us to rebuild our infrastructure. When you do that, not only do you make us more productive, more internationally competitive, you’re gonna put millions of people back to work. [applause] Let’s rebuild our infrastructure. [applause]

Second of all, we are spending as a nation three hundred and fifty billion dollars every single year importing oil from Saudi Arabia and other countries. I was in Saudi Arabia some years ago and I can tell you that the royal family of Saudi Arabia is doing just fine. [laughter] They don’t need any more money from the United States of America. Our job is to move to energy independence, to move to energy efficiency, and to move to sustainable energy. [applause] And when we do that we create millions of good paying jobs. [applause][cheers]

Lastly, I want to, in terms of job creation, I want to touch on an issue where there are differences of opinion. There are differences of opinion, but I’ll give you mine. When you talk about the collapse of the middle class, when you’re talking about the loss of millions of good paying jobs in recent years in this country, when you talk about workers’ wages going down what you are talking about to a significant degree is the decline of manufacturing in the United States of America. Now I don’t know about Iowa, though I suspect it’s the same, but in Vermont you go shopping, you go to a store, you go to a mall, you buy a product. You know where that product is made? [voices] It’s made in China. That’s where it is made. In the last ten years alone, if you can believe this, we as a nation have lost fifty thousand factories. [voice” “Augh.”] Vermont has never been a major manufacturing state, but we had a number of jobs. Last seven or eight years my guess is we’ve lost twenty-five percent of our manufacturing jobs. One of the reasons for that in my view is that we have had a trade policy which has worked very, very well for the CEOs of large corporations, not very well for American workers. [voice: “That’s right.”][applause]  I am talking about NAFTA, I’m talking about CAFTA, I’m talking about permanent normal trade relations with China. What these trade agreements are, in my view, by and large they’re saying to American workers we want you to compete against people in the third world who are working for pennies an hour. That’s your competition. And when wages go down and down maybe we’ll ring some of those jobs back. Here is a sad story I’ll tell you, two sad stories reflecting what’s going on in America
today. In Detroit, Michigan where the UAW is strong, new jobs being created, we hope this being changed as a result of the new agreement signed by the UAW, but last year the good news was that Chrysler and the other companies were adding new jobs. That’s the good news. The bad news is that those new jobs were paying workers fifty percent of the wages that the other workers were making from twenty-eight bucks an hour down to fourteen dollars an hour.

There’s another story. Someplace, I can’t remember the state. Good news is that a company, American company, had gone to China, they were coming back to America. Do you know why they were coming back to America? ‘Cause the wages were so bloody low they could make more money paying people seven fifty an hour in the United States than doing business in China and paying the transportation costs. Those are not the options we want to be looking at.

What do we want? Seems to me pretty obvious. Turn on TV tonight and all you’re gonna see is ads telling you, buy this product, buy that car, buy these shoes, buy this, buy that, buy the other thing. If these large corporations want us to buy their products the time is now for them to build those products here in the United States [applause] of America and to rebuild our manufacturing sector.

Now, when [Senator] Tom [Harkin] and I go back to work on Tuesday what we’re gonna be looking at are a series of attacks on programs in the United States of America that have been unbelievably important to the well-being of working people.  Social Security, in my view, is the most successful federal program [applause] in the history of the United States of America. [cheers][applause] And do you know why Republicans hate Social Security? They hate Social Security because Social Security is working the way it was supposed to work. Social Security is successful, which is why they hate it, why they want to privatize it, and why they want to send it to Wall Street. We take programs like Social Security for granted. We shouldn’t. As a result of the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street the crooks on Wall Street, and I use that word advisedly, the crooks on Wall Street led us into this recession. [applause] And when this recession took place not only did millions of people lose their jobs they lost their homes and they lost their life savings. That’s what happened. For seventy-six years Social Security has paid out every nickel owed to every eligible American in good times and in bad. Not one penny has been denied an eligible person. And we’ve done that in a very cost effective administrative way. Furthermore, when you hear people telling you Social Security is going broke, that is a lie. [applause] Social… [applause] the Congressional Budget Office came out with a report a couple of weeks ago, Social Security has a two point five trillion dollar surplus, can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next twenty-seven years. Social Security, and everybody’s got to understand this, yeah, we do have a serious deficit problem, Social Security, however, hasn’t added one nickel to that deficit because it’s paid by the payroll, [applause] payroll tax. So we have got to stand tall and say, no cuts to Social Security. [applause][voice: “Yes.”] In my view if you want Social Security to be strong, not just the next twenty-seven years but for the next seventy-five years, there’s an easy way to do that. And that is, you lift the cap. [voices: “Yeah.”] [applause] And if you do that [applause], and you could start at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, you do that Social Security is strong for the next seventy-five years. And that’s what we should do [applause][cheers] and that’s the legislation that I’ve introduced. [applause]

Now there are some folks out there, our Republican friends, [voice: “Not here.”] they want to voucherize Medicare. [voices: “No.”]  [booing] Here is their brilliant idea. If you’re old, you don’t have a whole lot of money, and if you’re sick, maybe you got cancer, maybe you have some terrible disease, and you’re sixty-eight years old, they’re gonna give you a check for eight thousand dollars. Lotsa luck, that’ll last for at least two days. [laughter] That’s what they want to do. And then there are other people who say, well, maybe we don’t want to go that far, but, you know, we got a serious deficit problem, we want to raise the eligibility level from sixty-five to sixty-seven. [voice: “No.”] Well, you tell me what happens to a sixty-six year old worker when he or she gets sick. We are not going to let them raise the eligibility age [applause] to sixty-seven. [applause]

Then you got Medicaid. We have fifty million people today with no health insurance and many others are under insured, large deductibles and high premiums. And there are some who say, well, let’s cut a few hundred billion dollars off of Medicaid. Brothers and sisters, forty-five thousand of our fellow Americans die every year because they don’t have health insurance and they don’t get to a doctor on time. We are not gonna throw millions of children and working people off of Medicaid. No cuts in Medicaid. [applause]

In terms of health care the sixty-four dollar question that we have got to answer is the following. Why is it that with fifty million people uninsured, with costs soaring, with forty-five thousand Americans dying each year because they don’t get the medical care they need, why is it that we end up spending almost twice as much as do the people of any other country? Why is it that in this great country we are the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care to all of our people? My view is, and I hope, I hope that my small state of Vermont is gonna lead the nation in a new direction. We need a Medicare for all single payer [applause] health care program. {applause][cheers]

The day has got to come [applause], the day has got to come when health care is a right and not a privilege, that people don’t have to stay at a job [applause] only because of health care. That’s what we’ve got to do.

Let me conclude ’cause I promised [Senator] Tom [Harkin] this would not be an eight hour speech. [laughter] [voice: “Why not?”] [voices: ” Go on.”] [voice: “Give ‘eh hell, Bernie.”]

I mentioned before that the middle class is collapsing. I mentioned before, as you all know, that poverty is increasing. I want to say a word about poverty. Poverty is not something we talk a whole lot about in this country. And mostly it’s because, you know, at the political level poor people don’t make major campaign contributions, you know, many poor people don’t even vote. But I want to tell you something, about poverty. When we think about poverty we think, well poverty’s a bad thing, people live in inadequate housing, they don’t have a good car, maybe they don’t go to the movies on Saturday night. We just did, on Tom’s committee, the health committee, we just did a hearing last week. And you know what we discovered, what doctors told us? If you are in the lower twenty percent of income earners you will die six and a half years earlier than if you are in the top twenty percent. In other words, poverty in America is a death sentence. And as a nation we should profoundly embarrassed that in America we have, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth. Twenty-one percent of our kids. That is something that has got to end. [applause] Instead of investing in the wars [applause] let’s invest in our children and make them the best educated and the healthiest kids in the world. [applause] [cheers]

Now what’s going on in Washington is you have, as I know you have here in Iowa, you have some extreme right wingers who have taken control of part of our government. And I will tell you from the bottom of my heart that these people do, are a fringe group who represent relatively few Americans. You go out on any street corner in the state of Iowa and in the state of Vermont and you say to people, people who walk by, and you say, do you think it makes sense to give tax breaks to b
illionaires and cut Social Security? Ninety-nine percent of the people will say, that’s crazy. Do you believe it makes sense to have a trade policy which literally gives tax breaks for companies who shut down in America and go abroad. [voice: “No.”] People will say, that makes no sense at all. But what is happening in America is the wealthiest people in this country have developed a new religion. They’re very religious. [laughter] But their religion is not love, it’s not compassion, it’s not concern for their fellow citizens or for the children. Or for the weak. Their religion is greed. [applause] And they want more and more and more. [applause]

In America today we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income. I know that’s not covered on CBS or NBC too often, but that is the fact. You’ve got the top one percent earning more income than the bottom fifty percent. And listen to this, you have the top four hundred wealthiest people in America owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, a hundred and fifty million people. And many of these people with their money, what they, and I don’t understand it, I really don’t.  It’s a, it seems to me to be almost a sickness. They can’t control themselves. They want more and more. They’re stashing their money abroad so they don’t have to pay taxes to the United States, shutting down plants in America, moving to China so they can make some more money. That’s what they’re doing.

And that’s what this fight is about. So let me conclude by saying this. They do have the money. They have incredible resources. Citizens United, absurd Supreme Court decision, has decided that a corporation is a person. I know people when I see it. Goldman Sachs is not a person. [applause][cheers] But what the fight is about is whether we developed the kind of organization that you are about, working people from all over this state and my state and the other states, whether we come together  when we get our brothers and our sisters and our cousins and our aunts involved in the political process, making sure they understand how important it is, what happens in Washington or in the state capitols. Those guys do have the money. We have the people. We have justice behind our back. And what this fight is about, it is not just for you or for me, far more importantly it is for our kids and our grandchildren. [voice: “Amen.”] Too many people for too many years have sacrificed and struggled to create the greatest country on earth, the greatest Democracy on earth where everybody has opportunity, where everybody has the right to a decent standard of living. Those people have struggled. We do not have the right to turn our backs on those people or on the needs of our kids and grandchildren. The fight is too important. So I can tell you that the people of Vermont stand with you to fight for a progressive, progressive movement so that government works for all of the people and not just the wealthy and the powerful. [applause] Thank you all very much. [applause][cheers]

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). photos – Jerry Schmidt, Show Me Progress.

One of the great Fall political events is the annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa. This morning we drove the almost two hundred fifty miles to the Balloon Field in Indianola to listen to Democratic Party and other like-minded luminaries address a large crowd of Iowa Democrats at the outdoor venue. The weather wasn’t too cooperative, ranging from a persistent drizzle to a steady downpour. Never mind – we brought our rain gear, old shoes, and large umbrellas. The big tent covering the dining area (and venue for speeches) also helped keep us relatively dry.

The featured speakers, in addition to Senator Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa, were Paul Begala – Democratic Party strategist and senior staffer for President Bill Clinton – and Senator Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont. They fired up the audience of over five hundred under the big tent.

“I Back Barack – 2012”

Volunteers on the food serving line. Note the Obama campaign buttons.

Paul Begala.

Paul Begala (right) and an Iowa Democrat conversing out in the rain.

Senator Tom Harkin (D) (left) and Paul Begala at the grill.

Paul Begala speaking to the press.

Senator Tom Harkin (D) speaking to the press.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I) addressing the crowd under the big tent.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I).

Listening to the message.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I).

Applauding Senator Bernie Sanders.

Senator Tom Harkin (D) addressing the crowd under the big tent – Ruth Harkin (left).

Paul Begala enjoying one of Senator Tom Harkin’s (D) many punch lines.

Taking it all in.

Paul Begala addressing the crowd under the big tent.

After the speech.

Roy Blunt wants to cripple federal agencies charged with overseeing activities that touch the lives of every American. Legislation he is currently touting would impose a moratorium on new regulations that have an associated cost of more than 100 million dollars. Before we say well-done, Roy, consider the following:

— The final report on the BP Gulf oil spill has concluded that the responsibility for the disaster lay with BP’s failure to adhere to federal regulations. The report recommends increased regulation and strengthened federal oversight if we are to avoid a repetition of a disaster that environmentalists believe would destroy the Gulf eco-system. I suppose I don’t need to point out that there would be massive economic costs as well as irreparable environmental impacts were such an event to occur?

— There were 85 food recalls that sickened at least 1,850 people between July 30, 2009 and  September 1, 2010. Decades of weakened regulation and oversight of food safety rules were taking a toll on the well-being of Americans, leading the Senate to finally pass in 2010 a food safety bill that has beefed up essential regulatory tools.

— No matter how Republicans seek to spin it – and they’ve got some doozies when it comes to fanciful stories about what caused our current recession – fair minded folks have to admit that we’re in the economic situation we’re in now because of lax financial regulation. Massive deregulation of banks, beginning in the 1980’s and culminating in S.E.C. rule changes in 2004, turned the banking environment into a new Wild West. Even anti-regulation guru, Alan Greenspan, had, however reluctantly, to admit that he had been wrong about the need for financial regulation.

These are just a few examples of situations where lack of intelligent regulation or the failure of regulatory enforcement bit us badly in the pocket-book as well as in terms of quality of life. Hobbling regulatory agencies is dangerous and possible upfront regulatory costs do not provide sufficient criteria to evaluate their actions. So why is Roy Blunt bellyaching about industrial regulation and proposing to do just that? To hear him tell it, it’s because regulations are “job-killing” – never mind the proven dangers to American jobs posed by the poorly regulated environment of the Bush years, which gave us no real boom, just anemic job creation followed by a monster bust with massive job loss.

The sad aspect of the GOP effort to use the Bush recession to win regulatory concessions favoring corporations is that they show so little respect for the intelligence of the American people that they don’t even bother to give us a coherent rationale. Washington Post fact checker, Glenn Kessler examined House Speaker John Boehner’s claim that there are:

…”219 new rules” that were in the works, which he said “will cost our economy at least $100 million.” He suggested the impact could be immediate. As he put it, “our economy is poised to take a hit from the government of at least $100 million – 219 times.”

When Kessler looked into the matter, he found that Boehner’s assertions not only failed to pass his “Pinocchio” test, they were so egregiously false that they merited the award of three whole Pinocchios:

Boehner left the distinct impression that 219 new regulations were hanging like a Sword of Damocles over the U.S. economy. But it turns out the number of potential regulations is inflated, as well as the potential impact. Many of the regulations may turn out to have substantial costs, but others could have benefits, as a report on the speaker’s Web site makes clear. Boehner wins points for admitting he may have overstated his case, but overall his statement contained significant factual errors.

Boehner earned his Pinocchios by telling fibs about the same types of regulation that Blunt is targeting. Before we allow compliant pols like Blunt to use spurious claims about “job creators” to further the GOP’s corporate wish-list agenda, maybe we should check the size of his nose.

 

Republicans like Rick Perry are skeptical of everything the government does-except when it executes people.

Previously:

Campaign Finance: Gov. Jay Nixon (D) continues, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (r) not so much… (September 14, 2011)

Campaign Finance: Gov. Jay Nixon (D) continues, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (r) not so much – part 2 (September 15, 2011)

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C001135 JAY NIXON FOR MISSOURI [pdf] 9/17/2011

The Simon Law Firm, PC

800 Market Street Suite 1700

Saint Louis, MO 63101

9/15/2011

$25,000.00

[emphasis added]

And look at that, for Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder (r) the big money drought continues…

1965 48 Hour Report of Contribution Received Over $5000 07/27/2011

1946 48 Hour Report of Contribution Received Over $5000 07/19/2011….

[emphasis added]

Go figure.