OBA endorsements: not necessarily a good thing for Dems

The Oregon Business Association has made endorsements in 27 Oregon legislative races; among these, and somewhat unusually for a pro-business group. are eleven Democrats. A few of these make sense: picking Cheryl Myers, a small business owner & entrepreneur over Patrick Sheehan, handmaiden to Kevin Mannix and the Tea Party, demonstrates that the OBA is, if nothing else, not stupid. But for every Democrat endorsed, at least 2 Republicans get their nod. Not surprising for a “pro-business” organization. And while the OBA includes the membership of some major businesses with Democratic leanings — Sokol Blosser Winery and the Yoshida Group, to name two — and while those Dems who got the Association’s endorsement are pointing this out to voters, I think Dems need to be careful before they get too excited about this group. And I have two words of warning:

Paul Ryan.

Wisconsin Rep Ryan is, in the words of Paul Krugman, “the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes.” Many are hailing Ryan for being an innovative thinker; the OBA, rather benignly, calls him a “GOP rising star” as it introduces him as the keynote speaker for their upcoming “Statesman Dinner”. Prof Krugman has a different name for Ryan:

The Flimflam Man.

Krugman reports that the “nonpartisan Tax Policy Center … finds that the Ryan plan would cut taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population in half, giving them 117 percent of the plan’s total tax cuts” — yet would raise taxes on the “lowest” 95% of taxpayers. This is, as Krugman puts it, the “audacity of dopes”. Ryan has found a new way to sell old nonsense: cut taxes for the wealthiest few while cutting government services, but not taxes, for those who are in the most dire need. Krugman sums it up thus: “The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future.”

Now of course, this is a partisan stance. Those who support the neocon/tea party attacks on government — government is bad, private sector is good, the rich make things better for all of us, the poor are a destructive force who bring their misery on themselves and everyone else — consider Ryan a hero, an innovative thinker, a towering intellect who can challenge Obama’s leftist/socialist policies that will destroy America’s greatness. For those who think government can be a force for good, Ryan is another in a long line of propagandists who claims the latest and greatest magic formula to save American from big, bad government while in fact working to further enhance the power of Wall Street, banks and multinational corporations.

We have heard this song before. Anyone remember the Laffler Curve, David Stockman celebrating how supply-side economics would raise government revenues while cutting taxes? That didn’t work so well, given the concomitant increase in military spending; ultimately, Reagan had to agree to tax hikes (as Clinton later agreed to program cuts). In business, government and economics, there are no magic formulas. That does not stop the snake-oil sellers from trotting out their “innovative” brands.

For me, Krugman’s years teaching at Princeton and his Nobel Prize, as well as the findings of the TPC (a program of the Brookings Institute, a think tank that can only be called liberal if compared to the Cato Institute or Federalist Society), not to mention Ryan’s stridently partisan attacks on Pres Obama and the health care plan, are enough to convince me I want nothing to do with Ryan’s Roadmap. As far as I can tell, the map leads to one of those Bridges to Nowhere. It’s a map back to the halcyon days of Bush/Cheney, and we’ll be years recovering from that debacle. No need for a replay.

So it disturbs me if one of Oregon’s leading business association’s happily invites someone like Rep Ryan to be its keynote speaker. Speaking at the dinner is not necessarily an endorsement, but given the range of options available to the OBA for a speaker, to select Rep Ryan indicates more than a desire to hear from a “rising star” — it indicates a desire to learn more from this particular rising star. I don’t think it’s a big stretch to assume Rep Ryan will find an open and appreciative audience at the dinner. With so many in the business world still believing they were better off under GOP policies, despite the horrific damage suffered by the nation under those policies, I don’t think I’m going overboard in my assumption: the majority of OBA members are likely to be allies of Ryan.

Which brings me back to the 11 Democrats who received endorsements from the OBA. Yes, I can see how being found to be worthy of that endorsement might be something to trumpet. But among the Dems endorsed is Sen Martha Schrader, who this past February voted to kill a very limited ban on BPA and the plastic bag ban designed to protect Oregon’s fragile beach ecologies. Why would a pro-environment, pro-consumer Democrat want to be lauded by a group that opposes laws to protect Oregon’s people and environment? Cheryl Myers does not need OBA’s endorsement: her 22 years as a business owner or the fact that she’s helped others start businesses should be endorsement of a strong small-business approach to government. (She also serves on Oregon’s Economic Gardening Task Force.) And to be happy to receive the OBA’s endorsement while it gives help to candidates of the other party — in Myers’ case, even against the man whose seat she hopes to inherit and with whom she has been running an allied campaign, Brent Barton — is short-sighted, a poor long-term strategy.

I’m not saying Democrats and their allies should have nothing to do with business groups or with groups that seek to be “non-partisan”. But a careful review of endorsing organizations is important. In the case of the OBA, which will be working to bring down the Democratic majorities that have helped undo years of GOP destructiveness and which is bringing in one of the chief thugs of national GOP fiscal policy, this is an endorsement of which I would not be proud.

But then again, they’re the non-partisans, right? Rep Paul Ryan can vouch for that.