Not much of value comes from gangs. Oh sure there are some rap artists who started as gang members and I am not going to minimize the art that they have created, but really they are the exception not the rule. Gangs in history and in contemporary America are generally associated with criminal activity.
Given this basic premise it is hard to understand why a long time United States Senator would want to form a gang, but Sen. Lieberman really has a bit of a chubby for them. It was eons ago in blog time, 2005, but there was a show down between Democrats and Republicans over judicial nominees. The Dems where holding up 11 applet court nominees and the Republicans were talking about the "nuclear option" of ending the filibuster.
This would have been a really radical thing. The Republicans were going to argue that even though the Senate rules said it required a 2/3 majority to change Senate rules, that a they could hold a simple majority vote and declare the filibuster rule (60 votes for cloture) dead and then move forward with judicial nominees without cloture and over the minorities objections.
To forestall this, the Gang of 14 Senators was formed. They agreed they would always vote for cloture on President Bushes nominees in the 109th Congress. In return the Republicans would not vote with their party to enact the nuclear option. It was a crappy compromise all the way around and attracted the Dem Senators you might think (Ben Nelson, Jell-O Jay Rockefeller, Robert Byrd, Ken Salazar, Mark Pryor Dan Inouye and Mary Landrieu). All in all it was a pretty crappy deal. Some of the most reactionary Right Wing judges got life time appointments to the Federal Court of Appeals and the Democrats got, well they basically got nothing for it.
Now Sen. Lieberman is talking of starting another gang, this time a gang designed to preserve the tax breaks for the ultra wealthy. Yesterday, according the Talking Points Memo, he said:
"All I'm saying now is that this is a place where we really do need -- it's an awful word --but we need another gang. We need a bipartisan gang to come to a bipartisan agreement on tax cuts,"
You know what, Senator Lieberman? I wouldn’t trust a deal you proffered if my family were starving in the street. Nothing good comes form the Senator who is so weakly attached to the Democratic Party that he seriously wanted to run on the Republican ticket as Sen. McCain’s Vice President. The fact is that extending the tax cuts for just the 98% of Americans who don’t make $250,000 a year is going to cost 3 trillion (3,000 million) dollars over the next decade. It is a ton of money but when the middle class is taking a huge hit as we are now, then and money is so cheap (historically low levels) it is the right thing to do. However there is no reason in the world why we should think for a second about tacking another 700 billion on to that huge level of borrowing so folks like the Koch brothers, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh can have million dollars a year tax break. When your annual income is measured in millions or tens or even hundreds of millions, you won’t miss the money and you don’t need a tax break.
Yet Senator Lieberman does have one thing right, in calling it a gang. It would, at the very least, a moral crime for any Democratic Senator to sign on to such a gang. The idea that there are members of our caucus who would put the welfare of millionaires and billionaires ahead of the good of the rest of the nation is one of the reasons our base is disgusted with our party. It is time for Democrats to stand up to Republicans and stop appeasing them.
We have seen where this fetish for bipartisanship leads. The policy is horrible, the Republicans take every compromise they are offered and give none of their own. Then they turn around and call Democrats weak and socialist and un-American. This is not bipartisanship, this is legislative date rape. Everything will be fine as long as Democrats close their eyes and think of England.
Given that the polling shows that Americans by a strong majority are in favor of letting the tax breaks on the ultra wealthy expire (and in battle ground states at that) it would seem like a no brainer. Let’s not forget that the same weak Blue Dog Democratic Senators who are most likely to join a gang on taxes are the same ones who would vote to roll back Social Security in the name of deficit reduction. This mealy mouthed hypocrisy is so galling that only a long time Senator like Ben Nelson could participate in it and sleep at night.
It is time to speak up. Make a call to your Senator today and tell them not to join any "gang" on extending tax breaks for the folks making more than $250,000 a year. Tell them you don’t want them to be part of any gang as gangs generally represent criminal activity and you would rather your Senator be above such things.
If you don’t know your Senators number, you can look it up here. They may or may not heed your advice but by speaking up and making sure that they know how you feel you will be holding up your end of the bargain of democracy. If they hold up their part then things will be much better.
The floor is yours.