Looks like Steny's going to get his way on the tax vote...

TPM confirms that the House will not be holding a vote on the Obama Middle Class Tax Cuts before the Midterms. Genius! Genius I tells ya!

Score one for Steny.

The one thing I got from watching the Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell (Weeknights at 10pm, Eastern!) was a clear sense of who's ass was being covered by there not being a vote on the Tax Cuts in the Senate (see: Reid, Harry).

I would like know who's ass is getting covered in the House.

Steve Benen's review of the Wisconsin Rally

Shades of '08...

Some of the White House's political gambits of recent months have been smarter than others. ("Recovery Summer," for example, belongs squarely in the "what were they thinking?" category.)

But whoever came up with the idea for a series of '08-style rallies in the campaign's closing weeks probably deserves a pat on the back. President Obama headlined an impressive event at the University of Wisconsin in Madison late yesterday afternoon, and if the goal was to capture some of the spirit of the presidential campaign, it worked like a charm.

...

According to local law enforcement, 26,500 people showed up for the rally, and before the gates opened, the line of people waiting to enter stretched over a mile. (A local report said the crowd was "exceedingly well behaved.") What's more, the event was simulcast online to 200 other campuses, as part of a not-so-subtle attempt to reinvigorate younger voters who gave Obama a boost in 2008, but who traditionally don't vote in midterm elections.

In a message that seemed targeted specifically to those first-time voters from two years ago, the president said, "You proved that the power of everyday people, going door to door, neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend, was stronger than the status quo. You tapped into something that this country hadn't seen in a very long time. You did that. Every single one of you is a shareholder in that mission of rebuilding our country."

That "shareholder" line seemed new and noteworthy -- it was a way of reinforcing the notion that those who helped elect Obama are literally invested in his success, and have an incentive to avoid a hostile takeover of what they created.

Wisconsin, home to competitive gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, was the first of four scheduled "Moving America Forward" rallies, with the next three scheduled for Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, each of which will also hold key gubernatorial and Senate races this year.

Politico's report noted that Madison offered "proof that the president could still work his magic."

I have no quantifiable evidence that rallies like these actually boost midterm turnout or affect the "enthusiasm gap," and with a struggling economy, I'm not sure how much of the country is even willing to listen.

But if last night was any indication, the White House may want to revisit the schedule and hold a few more of these events over the next 34 days.

The President's rally (in front of 26,000) in Madison, Wisconsin (VIDEO)

But did you have to bring up the Bears and the Packers?? Really?



From the prepared remarks:

The fact is that we’re not where we need to be -- not even close. The hole that we’re climbing out of is a deep one. People, I want you to understand the magnitude of what we’ve gone through. This is deeper than the last three recessions combined. Most of the jobs we lost took place before any of our economic policies had a chance to take effect. And on top of that, the middle class had been struggling for more than a decade and jobs had been getting shipped overseas and millions of families were still treading water. Millions are still barely able to make their bills or make the mortgage. I hear their stories every day. I read them in just heartbreaking letters that I receive each night.

So I understand that people are frustrated. I understand people are impatient with the pace of change. Of course they are. Look, I’m impatient, but I also know this: Now is not the time to lose heart. Now is not the time to give up. We do not quit. And we cannot forget that this nation has been through far worse and we have come out stronger from war to depression to the great struggle for equal rights and civil rights. We do not quit.

In every instance, progress took time. In every instance, progress took sacrifice. Progress took faith. You know, the slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs, they weren’t sure when slavery would end but they understood it was going to end. When women were out there marching for the right to vote, they weren’t sure when it was going to happen but they kept on going. When workers were organizing for the right to organize and were being intimidated, they weren’t sure when change was going to come but they knew it was going to come. And I am telling you, Wisconsin, we are bringing about change and progress is going to come -- but you’ve got to stick with me. You can’t lose heart.

Change is going to come. Change is going to come for this generation -- if we work for it, if we fight for it, if we believe in it. The biggest mistake we could make right now is to let disappointment or frustration lead to apathy and indifference. That is how the other side wins. And I want everybody to be clear, make no mistake: If the other side does win, they will spend the next two years fighting for the very same policies that led to this recession in the first place. The same policies that left the middle class behind for more than a decade. The same policies that we fought so hard for to change in 2008.

Breitbart Syndrome

Andrew Sullivan (still mad at ya!) was re-posting a list of "signs that your opinions function more to signal loyalty and ability than to estimate truth". He named a few as Breitbart Syndrome, after functioning racist, Andrew Breitbart:

• You find it hard to be enthusiastic for something until you know that others oppose it.
• You have little interest in getting clear on what exactly is the position being argued.
• Realizing that a topic is important and neglected doesn’t make you much interested.
• You have little interest in digging to bigger topics behind commonly argued topics.
• You are less interested in a topic when you don’t foresee being able to talk about it.
• You are uncomfortable taking a position near the middle of the opinion distribution.
• You are uncomfortable taking a position of high uncertainty about who is right.
• You care far more about current nearby events than similar distant or past/future events.
• You find it easy to conclude that those who disagree with you are insincere or stupid.
• You are reluctant to change your publicly stated positions in response to new info.
• You are reluctant to agree a rival’s claim, even if you had no prior opinion on the topic.
• You are reluctant to take a position that raises the status of rivals.

Kevin Drum's response to President Obama's kick in the pants to the lethargic left

Only because Steve Benen referenced his piece in Mother Jones:

Well, that's not going to be popular with Obama's lefty critics, though obviously you'd expect a mushy sellout like me to agree with him. And I do! But I'd also make a distinction. If you're, say, Glenn Greenwald, I wouldn't expect you to buy Obama's defense at all. All of us have multiple interests, but if your primary concern is with civil liberties and the national security state, then the problem isn't that Obama hasn't done enough, it's that his policies have been actively damaging. There's just no reason why you should be especially excited about either his administration or the continuation of the Democratic Party in power.

On the other hand, if your critique is the broader and more common one — that Obama has moved in the right direction but has been too quick to compromise and hasn't accomplished enough — then I think you should take his defense of his record way, way more seriously. It's all too easy, like Velma Hart, to convince yourself that he could have waved a magic wand and gotten a bigger stimulus and a better healthcare bill and stronger financial regulation and a historic climate bill. But honestly, you have to buy into some pretty implausible political realities to believe that (Olympia Snowe would have voted for a trillion-dollar stimulus, there were Republican votes for a climate bill if only it had been a bigger priority, healthcare reform could have been passed via reconciliation, Harry Reid could have unilaterally ended the filibuster, etc.). The votes just weren't there and the president's leverage over centrist Dems and recalcitrant Republicans just wasn't very strong. Maybe he could have done better, but the evidence says that, at best, he could have done only a smidge better.

And the alternative? Well, if the prospect of ripping apart healthcare reform, shutting down the government, deep sixing START, slashing social spending, and reliving the glory days of investigations over Christmas card lists isn't enough to get you motivated, I guess I'm not sure what is. I wish I got more warm and fuzzies from Obama too, and I wish, like Mike Tomasky, that his "fetish of not kowtowing to public opinion" were a little less ostentatious. But letting Darrell Issa take over the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform doesn't seem like a very good way of getting that message across.

OK then. I think I'll go donate a hundred bucks to someone. Who do you think it should be?

Steve Benen's response to President Obama's call out of the lethargic left

From "A Passionate Plea":

For those in the "inadequate" camp, the president's pitch may or may not be persuasive, but I think it should be. We talked recently about the accomplishments of the last 21 months, so I won't rehash the list again, but I continue to believe it's a record that's as impressive as anything we've seen in modern times. What's more, I'm not at all convinced it was within the president's power to make these milestone breakthroughs any stronger. The accomplishments can and should go further, but for the Democratic base, that should mean getting more engaged, not less.

Reaching that final group seems to be a tougher sell. The administration's economic policies have made a huge difference, but the status quo is still woefully unacceptable. It's not necessarily up to the president alone to grab hold of the economy and make it better, but there have been missteps and the frustration is understandable.

I suppose the pitch Democrats can make to these voters is: it can and will get worse if Republicans win, and would have been much worse had the GOP gotten its way. Obama has taken steps to get us on the right track, and conditions have slowly improved, but the surest way to stop the progress, the argument goes, is to hand the GOP power and encourage Republicans to pursue their discredited economic agenda.

Or, as Kevin concluded, "And the alternative? Well, if the prospect of ripping apart healthcare reform, shutting down the government, deep sixing START, slashing social spending, and reliving the glory days of investigations over Christmas card lists isn't enough to get you motivated, I guess I'm not sure what is."

Erza Klein's reponse to the President's calling out lethargic Democrats

From this afternoon's Washington Post:

For the record, I'm in agreement with the view that the Obama administration has been a disappointment on civil liberties, unconvinced by the argument that a more combative White House would have led to more policy achievements, and hostile to the view that things like health-care reform aren't major successes worth celebrating.

Place your bets on how long before the GOP turns on CBO Director Doug Elmendorf?

From Steve Benen:

When the Congressional Budget Office tells the GOP what it wants to hear, the party loves the office and finds it credible. When analyses offer discouraging news, Republicans consider the CBO useless.

With this in mind, I'd be surprised if Republicans didn't try to shut down the CBO entirely, or at least fire its director, after today.

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf testified before the Senate Budget Committee today and dropped something of a bombshell. Extending the Bush tax cuts, he said, will "probably reduce income relative to what would otherwise occur in 2020." The reason is simple: Debt.

Elmendorf doesn't deny that tax cuts stimulate the economy. But they don't stimulate it that much, he says, and over the long run, the net economic growth from the tax cuts will be quite small. The net deficit impact won't be. "Lower tax revenues increase budget deficits and thereby government borrowing," Elmendorf said, "which crowds out investment, while lower tax rates increase people's saving and work effort; the net effect on economic activity depends on the balance of those forces." [...]

So the bottom line is that extending the tax cuts indefinitely would hurt the economy. The less you extend the tax cuts, the less damage you do to the economy.

Oh, so that's why Rand Paul is getting his @$$ kicked (VIDEO)

Remember what I said about the polling in Kentucky? Wanna bet that this may be a reason why?



Maybe not such a good time to pull off the air in Kentucky, eh GOP?

"The precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead..."

Shifting away from the Rolling Stone piece, and to a backyard discussion (like we've seen before) in New Mexico (video will be posted as soon as its made available), the President addressed his faith:

In response to a woman who asked him why he is a Christian, Obama also offered some rare personal comments about his faith.

"I'm a Christian by choice," he said, noting that his mother "didn't raise me in the church" and that his family did not attend church every week.

"So I came to my Christian faith later in life," Obama said. "And it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead - being my brothers' and sisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me."

He said he also reached an "understanding that . . . Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we're sinful and we're flawed and we make mistakes, and that, you know, we achieve salvation through the grace of God."

He continued: "But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people and do our best to help them find . . . their own grace. And so that's what I strive to do. That's what I pray to do every day. I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith."

Obama emphasized, however, that "as president of the United States, I'm also somebody who deeply believes that part of the bedrock strength of this country is that it embraces people of many faiths and of no faith." While the United States "is still predominantly Christian," he said, "we have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and . . . their own path to grace is one that we have to revere and respect as much as our own."

"“You can afford to operate on the basis of your ideological predispositions.”

Continuing from Rolling Stone:

There’s also a concern when it comes to financial reform that your economic team is closely identified with Wall Street and the deregulation that caused the collapse. These are the folks who were supposed to have had oversight of Wall Street, and many of them worked for or were close to banks like Goldman Sachs.
Let me first of all say this. . . .

You used to work for Goldman Sachs!
[Laughs] Exactly. I read some of the articles that Tim Dickinson and others have produced in Rolling Stone. I understand the point of view that they're bringing. But look: Tim Geithner never worked for Goldman; Larry Summers didn't work for Goldman. There is no doubt that I brought in a bunch of folks who understand the financial markets, the same way, by the way, that FDR brought in a lot of folks who understood the financial markets after the crash, including Joe Kennedy, because my number-one job at that point was making sure that we did not have a full-fledged financial meltdown.

The reason that was so important was not because I was concerned about making sure that the folks who had been making hundreds of millions of dollars were keeping their bonuses for the next year. The reason was because we were seeing 750,000 jobs a month being lost when I was sworn in. The consequence to Main Street, to ordinary folks, was catastrophic, and we had to make sure that we stopped the bleeding. We managed to stabilize the financial markets at a cost that is much less to taxpayers than anybody had anticipated. The truth of the matter is that TARP will end up costing probably less than $100 billion, when all is said and done. Which I promise you, two years ago, you could have asked any economist and any financial expert out there, and they would have said, "We'll take that deal."

One of the things that you realize when you're in my seat is that, typically, the issues that come to my desk — there are no simple answers to them. Usually what I'm doing is operating on the basis of a bunch of probabilities: I'm looking at the best options available based on the fact that there are no easy choices. If there were easy choices, somebody else would have solved it, and it wouldn't have come to my desk.

That's true for financial regulatory reform, that's true on Afghanistan, that's true on how we deal with the terrorist threat. On all these issues, you've got a huge number of complex factors involved. When you're sitting outside and watching, you think, "Well, that sounds simple," and you can afford to operate on the basis of your ideological predispositions. What I'm trying to do — and certainly what we've tried to do in our economic team — is to keep a North Star out there: What are the core principles we're abiding by? In the economic sphere, my core principle is that America works best when you've got a growing middle class, and you've got ladders so that people who aren't yet in the middle class can aspire to the middle class, and if that broad base is rolling, then the country does well.

“I could have had a knock-down, drag-out fight…that might have energized you and The Huffington Post, and we would not have health care.”

President Obama's message to Progressives sitting on the fence during the midterms has gotten a lot of attention, not all of it positive.

I stand by what I said a couple days ago. There's a reason I'm a Liberal who can't stand other Liberals. Some Liberals are idiots, and don't seem to grasp the idea that if you want better progressive governance, it doesn't help to make it harder for the President to govern progressively.

But in fairness, just the one version of his statement was highlighted on TPM.  He came back to Jann Wenner after the interview and said the thing that was highlighted on TPM.  This was buried in the interview. The whole statement was far longer, and (like all other Obama statements) a hell of a lot more thoughtful and complete:

One of the healthy things about the Democratic Party is that it is diverse and opinionated. We have big arguments within the party because we got a big tent, and that tent grew during my election and in the midterm election previously. So making everybody happy within the Democratic Party is always going to be tough.

Some of it, also, has to do with — and I joke about it — that there's a turn of mind among Democrats and progressives where a lot of times we see the glass as half-empty. It's like, "Well, gosh, we've got this historic health care legislation that we've been trying to get for 100 years, but it didn't have every bell and whistle that we wanted right now, so let's focus on what we didn't get instead of what we got." That self-critical element of the progressive mind is probably a healthy thing, but it can also be debilitating.

When I talk to Democrats around the country, I tell them, "Guys, wake up here. We have accomplished an incredible amount in the most adverse circumstances imaginable." I came in and had to prevent a Great Depression, restore the financial system so that it functions, and manage two wars. In the midst of all that, I ended one of those wars, at least in terms of combat operations. We passed historic health care legislation, historic financial regulatory reform and a huge number of legislative victories that people don't even notice. We wrestled away billions of dollars of profit that were going to the banks and middlemen through the student-loan program, and now we have tens of billions of dollars that are going directly to students to help them pay for college. We expanded national service more than we ever have before.

The Recovery Act alone represented the largest investment in research and development in our history, the largest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower, the largest investment in education — and that was combined, by the way, with the kind of education reform that we hadn't seen in this country in 30 years — and the largest investment in clean energy in our history.

You look at all this, and you say, "Folks, that's what you elected me to do." I keep in my pocket a checklist of the promises I made during the campaign, and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we've probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do — and by the way, I've got two years left to finish the rest of the list, at minimum. So I think that it is very important for Democrats to take pride in what we've accomplished.

All that has taken place against a backdrop in which, because of the financial crisis, we've seen an increase in poverty, and an increase in unemployment, and people's wages and incomes have stagnated. So it's not surprising that a lot of folks out there don't feel like these victories have had an impact. What is also true is our two biggest pieces of legislation, health care and financial regulatory reform, won't take effect right away, so ordinary folks won't see the impact of a lot of these things for another couple of years. It is very important for progressives to understand that just on the domestic side, we've accomplished a huge amount.

When you look at what we've been able to do internationally — resetting our relations with Russia and potentially having a new START treaty by the end of the year, reinvigorating the Middle East peace talks, ending the combat mission in Iraq, promoting a G-20 structure that has drained away a lot of the sense of north versus south, east versus west, so that now the whole world looks to America for leadership, and changing world opinion in terms of how we operate on issues like human rights and torture around the world — all those things have had an impact as well.

What is true, and this is part of what can frustrate folks, is that over the past 20 months, we made a series of decisions that were focused on governance, and sometimes there was a conflict between governance and politics. So there were some areas where we could have picked a fight with Republicans that might have gotten our base feeling good, but would have resulted in us not getting legislation done.

I could have had a knock-down, drag-out fight on the public option that might have energized you and The Huffington Post, and we would not have health care legislation now. I could have taken certain positions on aspects of the financial regulatory bill, where we got 90 percent of what we set out to get, and I could have held out for that last 10 percent, and we wouldn't have a bill. You've got to make a set of decisions in terms of "What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to just keep everybody ginned up for the next election, or at some point do you try to win elections because you're actually trying to govern?" I made a decision early on in my presidency that if I had an opportunity to do things that would make a difference for years to come, I'm going to go ahead and take it.

I just made the announcement about Elizabeth Warren setting up our Consumer Finance Protection Bureau out in the Rose Garden, right before you came in. Here's an agency that has the potential to save consumers billions of dollars over the next 20 to 30 years — simple stuff like making sure that folks don't jack up your credit cards without you knowing about it, making sure that mortgage companies don't steer you to higher-rate mortgages because they're getting a kickback, making sure that payday loans aren't preying on poor people in ways that these folks don't understand. And you know what? That's what we say we stand for as progressives. If we can't take pleasure and satisfaction in concretely helping middle-class families and working-class families save money, get a college education, get health care — if that's not what we're about, then we shouldn't be in the business of politics. Then we're no better than the other side, because all we're thinking about is whether or not we're in power.

Sharron Angle doesn't believe anyone should have a Federal guarantee of Healthcare...except Sharron Angle and her husband.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Sharron:

Angle's campaign acknowledged to Nevada journalist Jon Ralston Monday that both the candidate and her husband receive health care from the federal government.

Spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said in a statement: "Mr. Ted Angle receives his pension through the (federal) Civil Service Retirement System. While it is not supplemented by the federal government, current civil servants pay into the program to pay the schedule of those already retired - much like how the Social Security Program works today. Mr. Angle does not qualify - nor does he receive Social Security benefits. His health insurance plan (the Federal Employee Health Program), which also covers Sharron, is a continuation of what he was receiving while he worked for the federal government."

The Rolling Stone Interview with President Obama

Jann Wenner got another one of his mega-super-incredibly detailed interviews with the President, and was good enough to put the whole thing up (not just snippets) online at the Rolling Stone site.

I'm actually still reading the thing as I type this (and listen to my afternoon Randi), and snippets are just about everywhere, but there are a couple of good quotes I enjoyed.

How filibustering has and hasn't worked:

I had served in the United States Senate; I had seen how the filibuster had become a routine tool to slow things down, as opposed to what it used to be, which was a selective tool — although often a very destructive one, because it was typically targeted at civil rights and the aspirations of African-Americans who were trying to be freed up from Jim Crow. But I'd been in the Senate long enough to know that the machinery there was breaking down.

What I was surprised somewhat by, and disappointed by, although I've got to give some grudging admiration for just how effective it's been, was the degree to which [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell was able to keep his caucus together on a lot of issues. Eventually, we were able to wear them down, so that we were able to finally get really important laws passed, some of which haven't gotten a lot of attention — the credit-card reform bill, or the anti-tobacco legislation, or preventing housing and mortgage fraud. We'd be able to pick off two or three Republicans who wanted to do the right thing.

But the delays, the cloture votes, the unprecedented obstruction that has taken place in the Senate took its toll. Even if you eventually got something done, it would take so long and it would be so contentious, that it sent a message to the public that "Gosh, Obama said he was going to come in and change Washington, and it's exactly the same, it's more contentious than ever." Everything just seems to drag on — even what should be routine activities, like appointments, aren't happening. So it created an atmosphere in which a public that is already very skeptical of government, but was maybe feeling hopeful right after my election, felt deflated and sort of felt, "We're just seeing more of the same."

Lawrence O'Donnell's interview with Vice President Biden (VIDEO)

While part of me is sad that Lawrence isn't in town shopping a new scripted TV-series, he's in his element on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. I liked what I saw so far.

My favorite MSNBC moment featuring Mr. O'Donnell came a couple of months ago when he was guest-hosting the Ed Show for Ed Schultz, and he laid it down on Lobbyists.

Simply put, yes Lobbyists can be cockroaches, but there are some areas where Lobbyists are useful. The good ones are the ones who tell you the benefits of supporting their position, and the costs. It may be too much Washington spin, but that's the way it used to work. "Hell, if you can't drink [the Lobbyists] booze, take [the Lobbyists] money and then vote against [the Lobbyists], you don't belong in this business."

We had a similar moment early on in the Last Word, when Lawrence was talking about the Senate's decision not to pursue the Obama Middle Class Tax Cuts until after the midterms. He said he saw it both ways, which struck me as fundamentally honest. He gets it that holding the vote after the midterms is dumb. At the same time, he understands how vulnerable some Senate Dems are (namely Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid).

In any case, his showpiece for his fist show was an interview with Vice-President Joe Biden, and it was illuminating in a couple of points:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And Part 2:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Where exactly is this Republican surge coming from??

From NBC News:

A majority of the country still believes that President Obama isn't responsible for the state of the U.S. economy, but the number has steadily declined since his presidency began.

According to the brand-new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 56 percent think Obama inherited the economic situation, versus 32 percent who say his policies are responsible for it.

That's a drop from January of this year (when 65 percent said Obama inherited the economy), and from Feb. 2009 (when 84 percent said that).

"It is becoming Obama’s economy -- slowly but surely," said Democratic pollster Jay Campbell of Hart Research Associates, the Democratic half of the NBC/WSJ survey.

Also in the poll, a whopping 70 percent believe the nation is still in a recession, despite the National Bureau of Economic Research's determination that the recession officially ended last year.

The President's Conference Call with Student-Journalists (AUDIO)

Right around noon today the President took some time for a conference call with college and university student-journalists. He explained that part of the reason he was reaching out was to keep them engaged with their democracy:



Bear in mind there ain't a lot of video here. It's all audio, intersperse with photos of the President.

The President's Interview on NBC's Today Show "Education Nation" (VIDEO)

An long format interview with the President ona major Broadcast network mostly on Education? Why, tell me more!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By the way, the President's answer wasn't as harsh as the Post made it sound. The story covered the answer adequately, but the headline was a tad bit sensationalistic.

Matt Lauer took a stab at the Velma Hart issue, and failed miserably. Actually, he sounded like an idiot when he asked the question.

Lauer was better on the Clinton issue, and the idea that Democrats have not been rigorous enough.

And really, a Rahmbo question? Really??

UPDATE: 10:37am Pacific Sept. 28th: Okay. Maybe the Rahmbo question was legit after all.

The National GOP has pulled off the air in Kentucky?

Via Greg Sargent at the Plumline:

Are Republicans confident in a Rand Paul win? National GOPers have pulled their advertising in Kentucky, which Dems say is a sign of worry, but Republicans say they're doing it because they don't believe the public polling showing it close.

Since the signing of the Small Business bill won't make the Networks, might as well see it here (VIDEO)

Might as well post the video since odds are this isn't going to get covered on any of the major news networks:



President Obama signs a bill that will allow small businesses to grow and hire new workers by providing tax breaks, better access to credit and other incentives.