Reich got it wrong in his recent article called the "Quite Closing of Washington".
Reich is not known as a Conservative, but has lost a lot of support from the left with his calls for ending Corporate income taxes, attacks on the Obama administration for not going after Wall Street banks, attacks on Obama for not trying to bring about national health care, etc.
His June 8th article shows he has bought into the right wing thinking while trying to explain the way things are.
details after the fold.
He starts out trying to blame the GOP for blocking any meaningful action in government since 2011. His main example is the lack of passing a budget for FY 2012. (ignoring that the last budget passed was in 2009 and that has been blocked in the Democratic controlled Senate) this is followed by claims that there is no jobs agenda (both parties put out one every day and accuse the other side of not having one) no grand bargain on the debt (ignoring the grand bargain called "Sequester") etc.
He then goes on to expand on the lack of laws passed by Congress in 2012 (just 283, but according to Reich, none) as an example that the Federal Government as stopped governing.
Because of this he says: "But the nation’s work doesn’t stop even if Washington does. By default, more and more of it is shifting to the states, which are far less gridlocked than Washington. Last November’s elections resulted in one-party control of both the legislatures and governor’s offices in all but 13 states — the most single-party dominance in decades. "
Meaning that 12 states are fully controlled by the Democratic party - Governor, Senate, and Assembly (or lower house...yeah, there is Nebraska's single chamber, but you get the idea) and 23 states run by the GOP. the most "single party dominance since 1952" (he presents this as a bad thing but we have survived it before)
But what does this mean? Reich says: "This means many blue states are moving further left, while red states are heading rightward. In effect, America is splitting apart without going through all the trouble of a civil war."
But is this shifting such a bad thing? Reich thinks so, pointing that red states are refusing to raise taxes to repair roads, increasing the cost of education, gutting social care programs and handing out tax breaks to millionaires. These are all signs that this is not good for American because these are bad things.
Yet he glosses over the positive: New York, Colorado, Maryland, California passed strong limits on guns, Minnesota and CA raised taxes on the millionaires, Colorado has directed millions to K-12 education.
Seems like the good is balanced by the bad. A great quote on this is "It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system," Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in 1932, "that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." As long as people are free to go between states, you can move to a state that governs the way you want.
But Reich says there are three things wrong with this: "First, it leads to a race to bottom. Over time, middle-class citizens of states with more generous safety nets and higher taxes on the wealthy will become disproportionately burdened as the wealthy move out and the poor move in, forcing such states to reverse course."
Here on issue one he buys the right wing lie that generous safety nets attracts poor people and put a burden on tax payers. Really? Ignoring how these poor people can come up with the funds to move, isn't the point behind the safety net that it is a, well, SAFETY NET! People fall and get caught by the net, get back on their feet and return to the workforce. Or it keeps them in the workforce and out of poverty while they adjust to changes.
The right winger tells us that poor people are just a burden, they provide nothing of value to society and the safety net is really a hammock they never get out of. Would a state be better off just letting people fall into abject poverty? Or catching them as they fall and getting them back to work? Our (the US) version of poverty looks nothing like the poverty i've seen in other nations. The average poor family in the US lives like kings compared to the average poor family in Central Africa. We benefit from keeping people from that level of poverty because they can't fall that far. They get back on their feet and start working again. Extreme poverty all you do is try to find the next days food (or more often that days food). You don't work, you seek for food and hope for luck the next day.
The "generous safety net" reduces poverty and its associated problems (and costs to the government). There is no reason to think that raising taxes on millionaires by $12,500 a year would even be noticed beyond some party whining. We read threats all the time about the rich leaving CA and NY, but last I checked David Koch still lived in NYC and was still donating tens of thousands to Gov. Cuomo's campaigns.
Reich's second fear: "Second, it doesn’t take account of spillovers...a young person who receives an excellent public education courtesy of the citizens of one states is likely to move to another state where job opportunity are better."
Really? A kid gets a great education in a state that values government support of schools, who has been taught to think and reason and knows the value of good government, is going to pack up and move to the low tax, poor roads, crappy underfunded school systems, violence prone, discriminatory state to take a job in those states because the "opportunity is better"?
Here again he has bought the lie from the Right. That low tax states have attracted businesses who will offer better employment than a state that educates its kids. What kind of better opportunity could they offer? Long hours for low pay that won't pay off your college student loan? No decent pay because union's have been banned or regulated out of effectiveness? Oh, but lower tax states will get lots of businesses and they will steel away the best and brightest from states with good education and safety nets.
And some how this will convert the highly educated from knowing the benefit of good schools, roads, clean environment, into wage slaves who are happy to be treated like slaves. Even if there were better opportunities in red states, all those highly educated kids would turn into democratic voters and shift the control away from the GOP.
The third fear of Reich is: "Finally, it can reduce the power of minorities. For more than a century “states rights” has been a euphemism for the efforts of some whites to repress or deny the votes of black Americans. Now that minorities are gaining substantial political strength nationally, devolution of government to the states could play into the hands of modern-day white supremacists. "
"Now minorities have gained substantial political strength nationally..." And what would that national political strength be? Black and Hispanic Congressional Representatives? TV talk show hosts? World recognized business leaders?
I guess, like the right wing nut, Reich agrees that local political power can only be held by the white. That minorities have to impose their goals of equality from above and can't express those views at the local and state level. That there are no black mayors, no hispanic state senators, that city and town councils are for whites only. That minorities can't make gains with out help from the mostly white federal government, that they need help and protection because they can't do it on their own.
The fear of the GOP is minorities having power locally and at the state level. Why else would they be doing the voter dis-enrolment efforts? Even then they are failing as more and more minorities get registered and vote. Are we really worse off if some states get large numbers of energetic minorities moving into it because they are treated like equals? Or do we have to buy the right wing lie that they are really just burdens.
Robert Reich has many great ideas, but he has fallen for the lies of the right wing. They have been saying them so much that they have become true. His attacks on the Obama DoJ have been spot on, and much hated by those who feel Obama can do no wrong. His idea to remove the cap on Social Security taxes to pay for an exemption on taxes on the first $25,000 of income is a great idea.
Sadly this article further makes him look less and less like a democrat and more in line with the GOP.