What You’ve Been Waiting For: Obama’s Gay Rights Revolution
The Administration Discusses Its “Plan.” Hint: There Is None
“Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” might accurately describe the turn of events for the gay community and their supporters since late Thursday, thanks to the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice, which filed a brief in Smelt v. United States, a federal gay marriage case. (If you’re not up-to-speed, read, “DEVELOPING: Obama Defends Defense Of Marriage Act?“)
Akin to any Republican who criticizes Rush Limbaugh, the Obama Administration once again had to go back to the gay community to smooth things over. You remember, even before the election, there was Obama’s silence on Prop 8. We knew it was a hot-button issue and we wanted him elected, so we ignored it. Then, even before Obama took office, there was the Pastor Rick Warren debacle. We got angry, but sloughed it off. And then there was the conspicuous silence after every gay marriage win. We said, he doesn’t want to get involved in the smaller issues, he’ll make it a big issue. Besides, there was that whole the-country’s-about-to-go-down-the-tubes thing called The Recession. We accepted nothing because we figured that’s all it was. back in March there was the total ignoring of gay issues during Obama’s “Online Town Hall.†And then there was the very quiet in-the-dark-of-night removal of Obama’s promises to repeal DOMA and DADT that somehow disappeared from WhiteHouse.gov. Some thought maybe it was an over-zealous intern. But the White House came back with the spin, “we want WhiteHouse.gov to list successes, not plans” BS. And we thought, OK… Hmmm… But we let that go by as well.
(In case you feel like you’re reading that old poem, “First they came…,” well, feel free.)
After Thursday’s DOJ filing, the punditocracy was ablaze in speculation as to what the brief meant. Was it a mistake? Was Obama legally required to defend DOMA? Was the brief a left-over from Bush? But sure enough, the truth has seeped out, thanks in large part to the Obama Administration itself. Obama unleashed his highest-ranking openly gay official, John Berry, to chat with The Advocate over the weekend, another sign he gets that his gay-community blind-spot hindered an intelligent approach to the Smelt/DOMA brief.
Before I get any further, I have to ask, why is the director of the Office of Personnel Management the highest openly-gay member of the Obama administration? I get that it’s a huge position, but it’s not that high up the food chain. And why is he qualified to be Obama’s defacto representative to the gay community? It’s because he’s gay. That’s fine, but this issue is a legislative issue, and a DOJ issue, not a personnel management issue. So, while I respect Berry’s statements as representing the Administration, I reject the idea that he should be their voice to us on gay issues. We deserve a representative that can actually do something for us once they return to the White House. (I can imagine the conversation in the West Wing: “Oh crap, the gay issue just blew up. Who can we put on this? Oh yeah, Berry, he’s gay.” Sorry, not good enough.)
So, here’s what we’ve learned from John Berry’s talk with The Advocate:
• There is no “secret deal” with any or all of the gay rights groups. No secret HRC deal, Joe Solmonese did not offer to delay DADT to next year in favor of getting Hate Crimes passed this year. (Honestly, I’d be happier if there were a plan, call it what you want.) I find it interesting that the White House wanted “to be clear about” this at all.
• Berry said their first goal is, “we will get our federal house in order.” That’s great. Definitely want to set the example. “[T]he president is going to be announcing something in the very near future that is going to be a very significant announcement…” making “sure that we get the benefits for the LGBT community that are equal to all other benefits provided to other federal employees.” OK.
• In no specific order, Berry says: Hate Crimes, ENDA, DADT, DOMA. Well there you have it. The same ones I’ve been talking about for months. Good to know we’re on the same page. Berry says Hate Crimes should be this week. (Word just came that Hate Crimes is attached to a tourism bill. Not sure who to blame for that irony.)
• Before we start jumping up and down, here’s the sound of the other shoe dropping: “The pledge and the promise is that, this will be done before the sun sets on this administration…” Before the sun sets? To me, that sounds like “by the end of our second term.” So, “four more years” takes on a whole new meaning, now, doesn’t it? Did the president say, “You Don’t Poll Whether People Get Treated Equally Or Not, you do it because it’s the right thing to do” in your second term? You can say, all you want, “give the guy a break.” Problem is, we have given him a break. And every time we do, we get not only ignored, but the White House sets us back a few years. To be fair, Berry says,
“It’s clear that we want to accomplish these things on this administration’s watch. We hope we get eight years, but if we’re limited to four, we’re still going to try to pursue this agenda. I was there for the entire meeting, start to finish. Nobody said second term, nobody is crazy enough to presume that we get a second term – the American people decide whether we get a second term.”
But to be fair, that’s political posturing. Of course they hope for and are thinking about a second term. (I certainly hope they are. Too many reasons for us to not want them to. Do not even begin to think the Republicans will ever be on our side on this.) • On the Smelt/DOMA fiasco that was unleashed Thursday, Berry claims that the president had no choice, “This president took a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and he does not get to decide and choose which laws he enforces.” Well, that sounds reasonable. But wait, did the President have to invoke references to incest and marrying children to uphold the Constitution? I think not.
Let me take a moment here to say a few things. First, as I have been reminded, the Department of Justice is supposed to be free of presidential interference. It should act impartially, uphold the law, not act on the president’s personal law-enforcement agenda. I get that. But I find it terribly hard to believe that Eric Holder had no clue what was in the DOMA brief, that there was no conversation between Justice and the White House. And if there wasn’t, why wasn’t there? This is a terribly pragmatic administration. Surely, given the amount of coverage gay rights and gay marriage have, surely someone must have thought that this was a very sensitive issue that could blow up in their faces? Well, it did.
While we’re here, let me remind you of Andrew Sullivan’s take on all this:
“I suspect that this was a function not of malevolence but of negligence. The truth is: this administration is not hostile to gay equality; it just doesn’t give a damn about it.”
OK, back to Berry, who next says,
“We ought not waste energy and angst attacking him when we should be focusing the energy and effort on getting 218 votes in the house and 60 votes in the Senate, and that’s where we ought to target the energy and the strength of this community and this president is with us, this is our agenda and it’s his agenda.”
Now, just a moment. The gay community has done nothing but support this president. We’re a big group, we carry a lot of weight, and a lot of votes. Granted, the vast majority of them would have gone to any Democrat, but it’s still a lot of votes. And a lot of money. A lot of money. Money that some think we shouldn’t be so generous with.
It’s time someone asked, Why isn’t there a specific gay agenda advocate in the White House? So, here’s the kicker. Berry ends with,
“We don’t have the votes to do Hate Crimes right now, we don’t have the votes to do ENDA, how are we going [to get “don’t ask, don’t tell]?”
WHY THE HELL NOT? This is a Democratic President with a Democratic Congress. I get Obama’s busy. But there’s a difference. A big difference between letting things slide, which, I think many in the gay community would accept, to viciously supporting DOMA and comparing gay marriage to incest and invoking marrying children. Say what you want about who might have written the brief; it doesn’t matter. Lighting the fire and ignoring the person while they strike the match have the same effect here. And it’s going to take a lot more effort now to put the blaze of homophobia that is Smelt back in the bottle.
I’ll throw one on the side of Bill Maher at this point:
“I’m glad that Obama is president, but the “Audacity of Hope” part is over. Right now, I’m hoping for a little more audacity.”
Me too.
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President Donald Trump thrilled his supporters in New York on Friday as he shared how he came up with his latest nickname for Democrats — his explanation included a spelling lesson.
“Blue means Dumocrat,” the president said. “That’s a new name I came up with.”
“I was, I was thinking about this character we have in the House. His name is Hakeem Jeffries,” Trump said to boos from the audience.
“And he’s a low IQ person, very low IQ.”
“And I watched what he was saying, and what the horrible things he was saying, and I said, ‘He’s a dumb guy.’ I said, Wait a minute, he’s a Dumocrat. That’s how I got the name,” Trump excitedly said.
“You take the ‘e’ out, you don’t use the ‘b’. A lot of people don’t know ‘dumb’ has a ‘b’ in it, actually. You don’t need it. You discard the ‘b.’
“But you take the ‘e’ out, and you replace it with a ‘u.'”
“They are Dumocrats. You know why? ‘Cause their policies are dumb. Their policies are very dumb. All of their policies.”
Critics mocked the president.
“His uncle taught at MIT, but Trump just recently learned there is a b in dumb,” wrote political strategist Jeff Timmer.
“Dumbo @realDonaldTrump here is the only one who doesn’t know there’s a b in DUMB,” said former GOP Congresswoman Barbara Comstock.
“It’s impossible to overstate how f— — stupid Trump looks on the world stage,” wrote another online commenter.
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s controversial Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is resigning.
“Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” DNI Gabbard wrote to President Trump, Fox News reports. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”
“During pivotal moments,” NBC News reports, “as Trump deliberated over possible military action or watched live video feeds of operations in Iran or Venezuela, Gabbard was often not in the room, underscoring her outsider status.”
“Gabbard has had a tough tenure being sidelined on Venezuela and Iran. Last month, Trump floated replacing her with Pam Bondi, but some advisers saved her,” reported WIRED’s Hugo Lowell.
President Trump wrote that Gabbard had done an “incredible job,” and “we will miss her,” while Reuters reports that the White House ”forced” Gabbard “to resign from her post, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Dave Brown called Gabbard’s tenure “tumultuous.”
Critics were quick to respond.
“Good riddance. The Iran war has been the biggest display of intelligence incompetence in decades,” wrote U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI).
“Tulsi Gabbard leaves this administration in disgrace after helping Trump drag the country into yet another forever war in the Middle East,” wrote political strategist Mike Nellis. “She built her entire image on opposing these wars, then abandoned that principle the second it became politically inconvenient. That’s her legacy: a complete fraud, completely full of s— — about the one thing people thought she genuinely believed in. Good f— — riddance.”
“Also, is anybody in Congress or the media going to get to the bottom of the whistleblower’s story about Tulsi Gabbard withholding classified intercepted intel for political reasons?” Nellis continued. “What the hell happened there, or are we just going to pretend that didn’t happen?”
“Are we ever going to found out if Tulsi Gabbard broke how many different national security laws by allegedly refusing to hand over investigative documents, or is that just going away now?” asked writer Charlotte Clymer.
Professor and policy analyst Adam Cochran called Gabbard’s resignation “shocking,” and added: “Can’t imagine what they would ask to do that is too out of line for her…”
Associate Professor of Political Science Christopher Clary said Gabbard “will go down as perhaps the most ineffective and incompetent DNI in the short history of that position.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump managed to effectively raise taxes on the majority of Americans through his tax policies, while handing the richest five percent a tax cut. Now, many Americans want to see the rich pay their fair share — and that could mean increasing their taxes.
The former chief economist of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Professor Zachary Liscow, argues there’s a “slow, boring” yet “easy” way to do so.
“The United States is seeing an increasing concentration of wealth at the very top and a worsening national debt,” Liscow writes in an op-ed at The New York Times. “For many Americans, taxing the rich more is an obvious move.”
He details some of the “novel proposals to curb the many intricate ways the rich make and hide their money,” including a wealth tax, a tax on unrealized gains, and a tax on “loans that billionaires take against their stock.”
But, Liscow warns, while novel, these methods would not raise the substantial amount of money the U.S. needs.
“The boring truth is that Congress can accomplish a lot simply by raising the rates of the taxes already on the books,” Liscow explains.
He examines U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) proposal to tax “fortunes above $50 million,” and says there are “serious constitutional and policy arguments for this idea, but the Supreme Court’s current members would probably strike it down.”
There is a billionaire’s tax proposal by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) that would tax unrealized capital gains, “the appreciation in the paper value of assets such as stocks.” That would likely find a Supreme Court challenge.
There are other tax vehicles, like fixing the “buy, borrow, die” loophole, which would tax loans taken against stock portfolios, but that would likely not raise sufficient funds: “It’s just not where the money is.”
He finds that “the most powerful lever is also the simplest one,” and concludes that “Congress has a simpler, tried-and-true tax policy to choose from: raising the rates.”
Liscow is advocating to restore the “top marginal ordinary income tax rate to its pre-2017 level of 39.6 percent” — where it was before Trump’s first term in office.
“In addition, raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent toward the 35 percent it had been set at historically would add hundreds of billions in revenue for the government,” he says.
“Raising the rates,” Liscow concludes, “the simple, boring answer — is where the real money lies.”
Image: Christopher Penler / Shutterstock.com
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