GrizDave Thoughts

First Gray Wolf in 80 Years Enters California

2011-12-31T12:02:00.000-08:00

First Gray Wolf in 80 Years Enters California:
Following years of dedication on the part of conservationists to reintroduce the animals to their native habitats, things are looking up as the first gray wolf to be seen in California in nearly eight decades is spotted.

Jared Bernstein: Pesky Brother-in-Law: Christmas Edition

2011-12-25T13:36:00.000-08:00

Jared Bernstein: Pesky Brother-in-Law: Christmas Edition:

Hear those jingle bells in the distance? It's a sleigh coming up the drive, led by that chubby, jolly, old... conservative brother-in-law.

What with Christmas upon us and the family coming around, it's time for the next edition of what to do when that pesky brother-in-law, or aunt, or whomever, hits you with so many Fox canards that you can't even enjoy your new iPod.

[Earlier editions: here, here, and here.]

I like those flat tax plans from Perry, Gingrich, and the rest of them... those guys really get what wrong with our crazy tax system!

Response: Yeah, those plans do sound simpler than the current mess, that's for sure -- but I'm afraid they're not as simple as you might think. Or as fair. (Dramatic pause, as your audience looks up expectantly from their figgy pudding.)

First off, if we really want everyone to pay one tax rate and we set that rate so as not to lose a lot of revenue, a lot of people's taxes could go up. Remember old Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan... sounds pretty flat, right? Well, over 80% of taxpayers faced higher payments under his flat tax plan. And the ones with the biggest breaks on these flat plans are the richest taxpayers. Rick Perry's flat tax lowers tax payments for multi-millionaires by a cool $1.5 mil.

Now look, we all know every tax change is going to have winners and losers, but I don't think most people want to whack the middle class so the rich can do a lot better

What's that? You're willing to trade a little more on your tax bill for simplicity?

I hear you but here's the problem. Flat taxes can end up being more complicated than they sound. They often work like national sales taxes -- like in Europe, just a straight 20%, say, on what you buy. But in those cases, they usually exclude basic necessities so now you have to keep track of that, and fight over what get exempted.Next, to make sure you avoid the Cain problem of some people paying more, both Perry and Gingrich proposed that you could either pay the flat tax or stick with the current system. So, guess what? Now you get to figure out your tax bill both ways so that you can figure out which is cheaper. That sure doesn't sound simpler to me.Anyway, you know what makes the system we have complicated? It's not the different rates. If that's all it was you could just look your income up in a set of tax tables, find your liability, and be done with it in literally seconds. And that would be true whether we have one rate or a hundred rates.What complicates things are all the exemptions, credits, and special privileges for different types of income. For a lot of people, you pay a higher rate for money you earn teaching children, like Aunt Debbie does, than for money you make when you sell a stock. That's both unfair and too complicated.So I say let's add simplicity and fairness by just taxing every dollar as a dollar no matter who earned it on which day of the week. And keep the progressive rates in place, so everyone can pay their fair share.

You liberals love Social Security, but everyone knows it's a dinosaur program, about to go extinct. None of you kids are ever gonna see a dime from it, so you might as well drop it.

Response: That's a mistake a lot of people make, bro, but it's simply not true. In fact, the folks who keep the books on this point out that for about the next 25 years, Social Security can pay full benefits. After that, it will be able to pay 75% of scheduled benefits. And by the way, even with that reduction, those benefits will be higher than they are today (that's because they're scheduled to go up over time, so even with the reduction, they'll be higher than today's).

Still, you've got a point--there's not enough retirement security in America. The real dinosaur in the room, unfortunately, is the guaranteed pension. Fewer and fewer jobs provide that anymore -- it's all 401(k)'s, where you get to bet your future on the stock market-good luck with that these days (note heads nodding in affirmation). In fact, if you think about it, the only guaranteed pension you can depend on is... wait for it... (dramatic pause)... Social Security! And believe it or not, a lot of conservatives want to turn Social Security into a stock market plan-(shake head despondently, with pity for those who don't get what a bad idea this is...).

So we've got to mend it so that it can pay full benefits, not just 75% over the long-term horizon. One thing to keep in mind is that the funding shortfall of the program is just about equal to the high end part of the Bush tax cuts--the part that just goes to households about $250K and that's supposed to expire at the end of 2012. So fixing the program in perpetuity shouldn't be that hard a lift.

And there's other stuff we could do. Did folks know that the tax to fund the program only hits salaries up to $110,000? That means that if you make a million bucks, about 90% of your salary is tax free when it comes to the payroll tax that funds Soc Sec. That ain't right.

So rest assured, with some smart, fair tweaks, the program will be around for many Christmas's to come. The bigger concern is that Social Security on its own won't provide enough income to provide a comfortable retirement for a lot of folks. But it's still a solid foundation for folks to build upon, one that we should be sure to make more solid for generations to come.

This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein's On The Economy blog.

Dan Kennedy: Why Liberals Should Be Rooting for Romney

2011-11-30T23:35:00.000-08:00

Dan Kennedy: Why Liberals Should Be Rooting for Romney:

I come neither to bury Mitt Romney nor to praise him. Instead, I hope to persuade you that you should be rooting for Romney to win the Republican nomination for president. And yes, by "you" I mean liberals who are planning to vote for Barack Obama in 2012.

Now, I realize this proposition is counterintuitive. However reluctant Republicans seem to be about getting behind their supposedly inevitable standard-bearer, most Democrats and independents understand that Romney is by far the strongest of a remarkably weak Republican field.
If Obama's re-election is all that matters, then of course it would be better for the president to take on a divisive figure like Newt Gingrich, the latest anti-Romney flavor of the month among conservative Republicans. Needless to say, Obama supporters would be beside themselves with joy if the Republicans were to nominate an even more flawed candidate like Herman Cain (who could be gone by the time you read this), Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann.
Romney, unlike most of his Republican rivals, is a credible candidate with real management experience in both the private sector and in government. You can picture him as president without breaking into a cold sweat. As governor of Massachusetts, he was a competent leader who did some good things (most notably on health care, as you may have heard) and some bad (demagoguing against same-sex marriage). Until he started running for president midway through his sole four-year term, he was moderate, pragmatic and results-oriented -- everything today's Republican Party is not.

I realize this is not a good week to try to make a case for Romney. His lying ad about Obama was repulsive in its cynicism -- but no more so than his flogging of Perry for taking pretty much the same position on immigration that Romney himself did a few years ago.

Yet if Romney fails to win the nomination, it could be disastrous for the country, for the Republican Party and even for the Obama presidency. Let me take these one at a time.

1. It would be bad for the country. Nearly three years into the Obama era, the economy is still in miserable shape. With Europe collapsing as a result of the debt crisis afflicting Greece and Italy, and now spreading to other countries, we could very well be heading into another recession in 2012.

Obama's bold-if-not-quite-bold-enough steps in 2009 -- the stimulus package, the bailout of the financial and auto industries and related measures -- may very well have averted a 1930s-style depression. But that's of little comfort to millions of Americans who are out of work, stuck with bad mortgages and angry. Obama could lose his re-election bid even to the likes of Gingrich or Perry if things get worse. If they get much worse -- well, would you want to bet against Bachmann or Ron Paul if the unemployment rate hits 15 percent?

My point is that Obama could lose no matter who his Republican opponent turns out to be. Given that obvious fact, do you really want to take a chance on Obama's losing to anyone other than Romney?

2. It would be bad for the Republican Party. The party of Lincoln -- not to mention Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush -- has become a destructive force in recent years, wedded to discredited ideas such as tax cuts for the wealthy and climate-change denialism. Above all, today's Republicans are devoted to destroying Obama, echoing their sex-obsessed persecution of Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

In the long run, the implosion of one of our two major parties benefits no one. The American form of representative democracy works best with an effective governing party and a responsible opposition. If Republican voters nominate Romney, it would send a signal to John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell, as well as their Tea Party allies, that they're sick and tired of their relentless, self-serving obstructionism.

3. It would be bad for the Obama presidency. Despite my fears that even a fringe candidate could beat Obama if the already-ailing economy collapses, it is more likely that the president wouldn't have to break a sweat in dispatching Gingrich, Perry or Bachmann. And that wouldn't bode well for a second term, as Obama wouldn't earn a mandate so much as have one handed to him.
Given Romney's incessant pandering, I may be too optimistic in hoping that an Obama-Romney contest could play out as a serious conversation about our country's future. But a boy can dream, can't he?

Romney currently finds himself in an impossible position: he's widely described as the inevitable nominee, yet the Republican Party's right wing -- its dominant wing -- loathes him. This week the New Hampshire Union Leader endorsed Gingrich -- no surprise, but a complication for Romney given how crucial the Granite State is to his chances.

The prospect that the president may face an extreme, supposedly unelectable Republican may seem enticing to those hoping for a second Obama term. As always, you should be careful about what you wish for.

WELL THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM

2011-10-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

WELL THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM:

WELL THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM

Submitted by:

DavidJ3d

Sen. Harry Reid: Affordable Care Act Helps Women

2011-08-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

Sen. Harry Reid: Affordable Care Act Helps Women:

When I was a kid, I thought I was a lot tougher than I was. My mother taught me that if you acted like you could handle yourself, then you could. But sometimes that meant enduring unnecessary pain.

My family could not afford to see a doctor and had to confront health needs alone.

Several families like mine have endured illnesses simply because they could not afford medical evaluations, making early detection or prevention of them difficult.

A report from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finds last year's health insurance reform is already changing this.

Preventative care has become much more affordable. For Medicare beneficiaries, the cost burden of services -- such as mammograms, colonoscopies and blood pressure checks -- has been lifted entirely.

This year, more than 17 million seniors have received preventive measures they desperately needed, without copayment, deductibles or coinsurance, according to HHS. And an additional one million seniors have received free wellness visits.

This is particularly great news for women. More women have struggled with chronic illnesses than men.

In 2009, the Commonwealth Fund found that more than half of women delayed or avoided preventive care because of cost concerns. Even moderate co-pays for preventive services such as mammograms or pap smears have deterred women from visiting a doctor.

Yet chronic diseases, which account for 75 percent of the nation's health spending, are often preventable. The Affordable Care Act is helping women -- young and old -- avoid the onset of illness and improve their quality of life.

In its report, HHS announced new guidelines that will ensure women of all ages receive preventive health services at no additional cost. HHS's announcement follows a report by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine that included fundamental preventive services are a basic health need of all women.

Starting in 2012, new health insurance plans will not only put money back in the pockets of women, but they will cover a wider net of preventive care services, such as Human Papilloma Virus DNA testing, HIV screening and counseling, FDA-approved contraception, breastfeeding support and domestic violence screening and counseling.

Too many women like my mother lacked the preventive services they needed to stay healthy because of cost concerns. It's up to us to make sure today's women know about the benefits available to them.

HealthCare.gov is a great resource for anyone looking to learn more. And the Department of Health and Human Services Web site provides great guides, too.

In a country as great as ours, no one should be forced to struggle without medical coverage because of an illness that could have been detected and treated.

This blog comes from MomsRising.org and CustomFitWorkplace.org and presents innovative ideas to strengthen 21st Century American families through public policy, business practice, and cultural change.

James Peron: F.A. Hayek Against the Conservative

2011-08-18T07:47:00.000-07:00

James Peron: F.A. Hayek Against the Conservative:

Glenn Beck told his audience that Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom was the "best thing you can read." The book shot up the Amazon bestseller list instantly as Beck's cult-like followers rushed out to buy it.

Beck was unaware that Hayek's friend, and sometimes sparing partner, John Maynard Keynes, also called it a "grand book" and said he found himself "in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement." The New York Times said this book, by the Nobel Prize winning economist, is one of the staples of the conservative Tea Party movement.

The Tea Party and Glenn Beck would do well to educate themselves as to Hayek's actual view in his essay, "Why I Am Not a Conservative." Conservatives concentrate on Hayek's opposition to state socialism, but have little understanding of his radical classical liberal ideas and ignore his opposition to conservatism. Hayek saw himself as a liberal, in the classical sense of the word. And, while Keynes differed greatly from Hayek's views on economics, Keynes saw himself in the same ideological camp as his friend. Hayek was "not averse to evolution and change" and said that when "spontaneous change has been smothered by government control, it [liberalism] wants a great deal of change." This, he argued, was in conflict with the "conservative attitude" which was a "fear of change, a timid distrust of the new as such." Hayek said his position "is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead." Conservatives focus on Hayek's distrust of centrally imposed, top-down change. Meagan McArdle, for instance, invoked Hayekian theory to claim, "changing the explicitly gendered nature of marriage... might be accidentally cutting away something that turns out to be a crucial underpinning." This confuses Hayek's opposition to imposed change with opposition to all change. Hayek's view was that for a new social order, or social rules, "To become legitimized... [they] have to obtain the approval of society at large -- not by a formal vote, but by gradually spreading acceptance," much the way that same-sex marriage has gained support. This is particularly true when the change recognizes a "conflict between a given rule and the rest of our moral beliefs." Then we "can justify our rejection of an established rule." For example, when denying same-sex couples the right to marry conflicts with our acceptance of equality of rights before the law, we can justify changing the laws on marriage according to Hayek's insights.

Hayek warned that conservatives, however, "are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rates to whatever appeals to the more timid mind."

Another difference between Hayek and conservatives is he saw order emerging from voluntary interactions of people, while "Order appears to the conservative as the result of the continuous attention to authority." The conservative, he said "feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change 'orderly.'" Hayek believed in the rule of law, with government powers strictly limited to general rules of social order. Contrast this with a conservative who "does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not be too much restricted by rigid rules." Hayek warned that the conservative is "less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them" and said "he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people."

Hayek saw conservatives as lacking principles but not "moral conviction." He wrote, "The conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions," but "has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions." Hayek's liberal social order allows people of differing convictions the freedom to pursue their own values. The joking response to conservatives, "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married," actually encapsulates Hayek's view of a liberal society, which allows people of different views the freedom to pursue their own values. Those who oppose erotica are free to NOT buy it, those who oppose abortion are free to shun abortions, those who oppose gay marriage don't have to get gay married!

It is here that Hayek's liberalism is most clearly in opposition to both conservatism and socialism. "I sometimes feel that the most conspicuous attribute of liberalism that distinguishes it as much from conservatism as from socialism is the view that moral beliefs concerning matters of conduct which do not directly interfere with the protected sphere of other persons do not justify coercion."

Conservatives invoke supernatural claims to justify intransigent opposition to change, not so with Hayekian liberals.

"The liberal differs from the conservative in his willingness to face [human] ignorance and to admit how little we know, without claiming the authority of supernatural forces of knowledge where his reason fails him. It has to be admitted that in some respects the liberal is fundamentally a skeptic -- but it seems to require a certain degree of diffidence to let others seek their happiness in their own fashion and to adhere consistently to that tolerance which is an essential characteristic of liberalism."

Hayek's wrote, "What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different spheres which ought not to be confused."

Hayek never feared evolutionary change in society, nor believed religious values sufficient reason for using power of the state to prevent change. Hayek, the intransigent opponent of socialism that Beck and conservatives admire, also saw himself equally opposed to their conservative agenda, something conservatives ignore at their peril. More confusing for these so-called admirers of Hayek would be the fact that Hayek opposed their conservative agenda for precisely the same reasons he opposed socialism. But that, I suspect, is a brew too strong for the so-called Tea Party.

Paul Abrams: "Before the Next Election": The Overlooked Phrase in Perry's Treason Accusation

2011-08-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

Paul Abrams: "Before the Next Election": The Overlooked Phrase in Perry's Treason Accusation:

Rick Perry (R-TX), the Republicans' flavor of the day before they embrace the more marbled beef of Chris Christie (R-NJ), told Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke that he would be committing "treason" if he "printed money prior to the next election," and that, if he dared come to Texas after committing such an act, he would be treated "ugly."

While the Beltway was, properly, taken aback by the not-too-subtle physical threat to Bernanke by a sitting governor who aspires to be president, they all overlooked Perry's time qualifier, "before the next election." That ought to dispel any doubt that the Republican Party will prevent an economic recovery so that they might win the next election.
Presumably, if Bernanke launched QE3 (the means to expand the money supply) after the election, it would not be treason, and Bernanke could go to Texas without fear for his life or health.So, what was Perry really getting at? It seems clear that Perry was warning Bernanke not to improve the economy before November 2012 because it might help President Obama's re-election chances. That is, they will prevent 14 million Americans from getting jobs. They will make millions more family members suffer. And, they will express outrage that anyone even suggested that that is what they are doing. It was one of these authentic, unscripted moments in which the candidate said what he really believed. Indeed, he began his answer to the voter question about the Federal Reserve by stating he did not want to address it. But, could not stop himself. Robert Gibbs is absolutely correct. The Republican Party will keep millions of Americans from having jobs, a payroll tax cut, and unemployment insurance so that the economy will suffer, just so the President will have a more difficult time winning re-election.

Their frontrunner just said so. There is no other plausible (or implausible) explanation for qualifying his outrageous accusation and implied physical threat against Chairman Bernanke with an election-related timeframe.

So, Mr Gibbs, you have the "smoking gun." Use it as evidence. Use it often.

COUNTDOWN to SHUTDOWN

2011-04-09T16:09:00.000-07:00

COUNTDOWN to SHUTDOWN: "

'Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.'

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

The government shutdown might happen this Friday - and let me emphasize the word 'might'. It's quite clear that the assholes who act as spokesmen for the 'party of Abraham Lincoln' haven't yet made up their minds whether or not a shutdown will benefit them politically. It didn't in 1994, but they seem to think that it might work this time around. Back in '94 there was little publicity involving what was about to happen. Seventeen years later they're not being as clumsy. They're out there on the talk show circuit in droves this morning, bracing the public for the storm on the horizon, chanting their silly mantra:

'How can the Democrats allow this to happen?'

We'll know soon enough if the propaganda has the desired effect. My guess is that, like in '94, this is going to blow up in their clueless faces. I certainly hope so. Watching the utter implosion of the Republican party is an absolute joy that is difficult to put into words. I can barely contain myself.

I hate to be seen as a cheerleader for the Democrats, I really do. I often feel like I'm in a restaurant and the waiter is asking me, 'Would you like a nice cool glass of donkey piss to wash down that juicy plate of elephant shit you've ordered, sir?' Our choices these days are sparse - no question about it. But when everything has been sliced and diced, I feel that am left with no choice but to side with the Dems. The alternatives are too depressing too even think about. 'Stick with Tweedle-dee', I tell myself, 'Tweedle-dum is brain-damaged.' He's also a bit of a pervert.

Or think of it this way:

'Hmm....Which record shall I put on the ol' turntable - 'Go Away, Little Girl' by Donny Osmond, or 'Sugar Sugar' by the Archies?'

The choice is very easy, but hardly satisfying - While 'Sugar Sugar' may rock - barely - it's not going to send me into the clouds. Unfortunately, those are the kind of choices we're faced with these days.

Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Strange days indeed
Most peculiar, Mama!

-John Lennon

At least the Democrats - some of them - still understand the truism that we're never going to get our 'fiscal house in order' until the people and corporations who have more money that they know what to do with are taxed at the rate they should be. The economy will never recover as long as the tax burden is placed on the back of the poor and middle classes. And please, don't shoot back at me that tired old myth that the poor do not pay taxes. Everyone pays taxes. Remember that the next time you pay $4.31 for a $3.99 pint of Nicolai Vodka.

FUN FACT:

I paid more in taxes last year than General Electric. You did, too.

And then there's that nasty subject of defense spending. Do you want to know why I love Bernie Sanders? Because he seems to be the only human being in Washington with the guts to say (or the sense to say) the unspeakable truth that no one else has the courage to say: We spend way-too-much of our national treasure on weapons of mass destruction. You know! Those things we took out Saddam Hussein for possessing that he never even possessed? If our representatives only had the foresight to understand this, a lot of the problems that plague the body politic would vanish. Not only that, we could reinvest in our infrastructure - and that would translate into jobs - lots and lots of them. It would also mean a long overdue renaissance for the middle class. But that's never going to happen. The chances are pretty good that your congressman or woman is bought and paid for by the military industrial complex.

Instead, the conservatives of both parties would rather privatize Medicare and Social Security. Instead of investing in our badly neglected infrastructure, they want tax breaks for the obscenely wealthy. Good luck, America.

The Republicans are telling us that they wish to 'restore fiscal sanity in Washington'. The only problem is that their proposals are beyond insane. The lunatics have not only taken over the asylum, they're writing the fucking prescriptions. Line up for your medications, boys and girls!

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:

This excellent article by Robert Reich was posted this morning on that horribly subversive, commie-loving website AlterNet:

Why We Must Raise Taxes on the Rich, ASAP!

Just one of many reasons why I love this site!

Robert J. Elisberg: Public, the Enemy No. 1

2011-03-20T11:15:00.000-07:00

Robert J. Elisberg: Public, the Enemy No. 1: "

For reasons difficult to understand (at least, rationally), Republicans have long seemed to dislike public employees. Generally, it's centered on workers making too much money, a concept Republicans don't mind in the private community. But if a public employee dares make above a sustenance wage, bring out the commentators and pitchforks. If a public employee makes $100,000, that is a sign of the Apocalypse.

(What most Republicans tend never to ask, mind you, is why that public employee is making $100,000. So, they never hear that usually a) the employee is a head supervisor with decades of expertise, b) cutbacks in government funding forced layoffs, which require this expert to work extra overtime, and c) someone with that much experience in private business generally earns significantly more. But why ask about reality, when howling at the moon is easier?)
Now, I understand there's a difference between a private worker earning $300,000 for a corporation, and a public employee getting $60,000 paid by taxpayers. The former is deservedly rewarded for helping make a profit. The other is serving the public good to make citizens' lives better. Personally, I think the latter is noble-minded and something selfless to be admired and appreciated. But hey, that's just me.
I understand, too, that the patron saint of conservatism, Ronald Reagan, said, 'Government is the problem,' which set that unshakeable philosophy in impervious stone. And so, we tend to hear from many Republicans the all-encompassing ridicule, 'Would you like to see Big Government run...?' - followed by the name of some private industry, always meant to suggest that the government can't run anything properly, while private business is near-godlike.

Government red tape can indeed be one of Dante's seven levels of hell. But given that 60% of all new restaurants fail in their very first year, I wouldn't care to see the National Restaurant Association in charge of snow removal.

But let's be fair. For the sake of argument, let's accept the conservative Republican view that the government is terrible at running things, and if private business did the work, taxes would be lower. Okay? Great! So, then, let's ask the exact same question as before, just - reversed.

'Would you like to see private industry run...?' And now fill in the blank with some government agency.

Because we're just being fair. Right?

Would you like to see private business run the Armed Forces? Just make everything a private militia. It's already in the Constitution. Let the branches compete, and only the strongest would survive. That's Business 101. The military could even be outsourced overseas. If a private investor wanted to buy his own brigades, that's the business spirit that made America great. And the president wouldn't have to worry about spreading himself too thin as Commander-in-Chief, a job most haven't really been qualified for anyway.

Would you like to see private business run the nation's police departments? They certainly have experience already with Home Security companies. And if a private consortium wants to start up another police force, just imagine all the extra protection.

Would you like to see private business run the fire departments? Volunteer fire brigades worked swell in the 1850s, so they're time-tested. And remember last year when a Tennessee fire department let a house outside its district burn down because the owner had forgotten to pay his $75 fee? Just think of the money collected by private companies. It wouldn't be a piddling $75. Charge what the service demands - which is a lot.

Would you like to see private business run libraries? They are such a drain on government spending. If a businessman can't turn a profit lending free books, he'll just close the branch. There could be a huge business opportunity here - why even lend books? Sell them. You could close down all those brick-and-mortar libraries and do transactions online.

And would you like to see private business run the school system? We have great private schools right now, just make all schools private. If somebody can't afford a good school - or afford a school at all - it's like buying a new car. If you can't afford one, walk. Maybe education isn't for everyone anyway. Just smart, rich people.

And while we're at it, if you really hate how government operates, wouldn't you like to see private business run the Senate, House, judiciary, and President? We're always hearing about wealthy Republican CEOs spending their personal fortunes to become governor so they 'can run this state like a business.' Why not extend that to its logical conclusion? Just let private business run the entire country. You don't need a Chief Executive, just a Chief Executive Officer. The best people would clamor for the job - with so much privatized, there'd be little to run, and a guaranteed $150 million bonus, like on Wall Street. And since the public always says they hate politicians, you wouldn't need any. The CEO of United States Incorporated (a fully-owned subsidiary of Nabisco, a division of China, Ltd.) would simply appoint senior and junior executives to Congress. And hire ombudsmen instead of Federal judges.

Hey, just make everything in government private! Because if Republicans think government is so bad, it only makes sense to turn it all over to private business. Republicans have pretty much done that with their own party already. So, they've got a good handle on where to start.

Now, of course, this is just exaggeration. Obviously. Private business does much well, as does government. But accepting that is difficult for conservatives because it totally changes their issue. It's no longer, 'Government is the problem,' as the unmovable, blanket GOP starting point. Rather, it's now becomes a fair question of debate: what does government do well (and do well with its public employees)? And where does private business fail?

In the end, government is not the problem. Nor is private business. The problem is being close-minded.
"

Doonesbury 2/13/2011

2011-02-13T10:47:00.000-08:00

Doonesbury 2/13/2011: "

"

Treasury's wily plan to fix the housing market

2011-02-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

Treasury's wily plan to fix the housing market

Don't cofuse them with the facts - EPA Chief Bullied by Republicans

2011-02-11T21:41:00.000-08:00

EPA Chief Bullied by Republicans: "

Republicans took their assault on clean air to the House yesterday, as they ran EPA administrator Lisa Jackson through the ringer at an Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing.

With the cast of characters doing the questioning, it's no surprise that things got heated...

Rep. Fred Upton (R) and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R) shamelessly introduced the “Energy Tax Prevention Act” after a closed-door meeting with a list of who's who of big time polluters — including the American Petroleum Institute, National Mining Association, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The measure seeks to protect the profits of polluters under the guise of saving jobs.

“The Chinese government and other competitors have no intention of burdening and raising the cost of doing business for their manufacturers and energy producers the way E.P.A. plans to do here in America. Our goal should be to export goods, not jobs,” Upton sneered.

Tell that to the athletes who showed up to the Beijing Olympics in surgical masks because the air pollution was so horrific.

Is that the pollution standard you'd like to see in America?

Hell, why not adopt China's child labor regulations while we're at it; it would at least boost manufacturing jobs...

Meanwhile, the other sponsor is none other than Rep. Jim Inhofe, Capitol Hill's resident climate change crackpot.

Inhofe has not only compared the EPA to the Gestapo, but has also cavalierly compared environmentalists to the Third Reich.

Jackson remained poised during the proceedings, standing by the EPA's claim that they are responsible for regulating greenhouse gas pollution. Here's a bit of her opening statement:

Based on the best peer-reviewed science, EPA found in 2009 that manmade greenhouse gas emissions do threaten the health and welfare of the American people.

EPA is not alone in reaching that conclusion. The National Academy of Sciences has stated that there is a strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that the climate is changing and that the changes are caused in large part by human activities.

Eighteen of America’s leading scientific societies have written that multiple lines of evidence show humans are changing the climate, that contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science, and that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on society, including the global economy and the environment.

The Upton/Inhofe legislation argues the EPA doesn't have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The Supreme Court begs to differ. In a 5-4 decision, the court found the EPA has the authority to regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act if the agency's scientists found that CO2 posed a public danger — which they have.

“Chairman Upton’s bill would, in its own words, repeal the scientific finding regarding greenhouse gas emissions," Jackson added. "Politicians overruling scientists on a scientific question — that would become part of this committee’s legacy.”

If it passes, it would represent the first time in history that Congress overturned a scientific finding, Jackson noted.

Seeking to quell some of the partisan rancor, Rep. Henry Waxman (D) revealed a letter from George Bush's EPA chief that essentially agreed with current EPA administration that greenhouse gases were indeed a public health issue.

Stephen Johnson, Bush's EPA chief, wrote a memo to Bush in 2008 regarding findings supported by science that greenhouse gases were related to rising temperatures, and that the EPA must develop regulations on the gases.

'This bill appears to be part of a broader effort in this Congress to delay, weaken or eliminate Clean Air Act protections of the American public,' Jackson added.

As long as the big time polluters keep lining the pockets of Republican congressmen, it looks like that broad effort will keep trudging on... scientific evidence be damned.

Be Well,

Jimmy

EPA Chief Bullied by Republicans originally appeared in Green Chip Stocks. Green Chip Review is a free 2x-per-week newsletter, is the first advisory to focus exclusively on investments in alternative and renewable energies.

David Katz, M.D.: Is The Affordable Care Act ReallyUnconstitutional?

2011-02-06T10:41:00.000-08:00

David Katz, M.D.: Is The Affordable Care Act ReallyUnconstitutional?: "

I have no idea what the U.S. Constitution meant to say about health insurance -- and, frankly, I don't think any Constitutional scholar does either. There was no health insurance when the Constitution was written.

So, my best guess may be about as good as anyone's, and my best guess is: not much. That may be why interpretations of how the Constitution pertains to the Obama Administration's health reform package seem to have more to do with political affiliation than any irrefutable position staked out by the Founding Fathers. The federal judge in Florida who just found the whole magilla unconstitutional is -- surprise -- a Republican. Democrats to date have -- surprise again -- uniformly gone the other way.

My plea in this post is a variation on the theme I've already established for this topic: maybe we are on our own. Maybe the founders did not anticipate drug-eluting coronary stents, chronic ambulatory peritoneal dialysis, or the costs, co-pays, and deductibles that come along with them. Maybe we need to use our own common sense, rather than keep telling one another why long-dead people meant to say what our particular team wishes they meant to say.

I suppose even common sense might take us in opposing directions, but here's where mine takes me. Healthcare is not a 'commodity' like any other.
The crux of the Constitutional debate seems to be whether or not the federal government can compel us to buy any commodity. What my common sense tells me is that in the case of healthcare, it is not the government, but the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that compel the 'purchase.'
If you can't afford a car, you can get by without one. If you can't afford nice clothes, you can manage with Good Will. If you don't ski, there is certainly no reason to buy skis, or lift tickets.But if you are hit by a bus, or fall off your roof, or drive a shovel into an underground electric cable, or have a heart attack, or get struck by lightning, or develop diabetic ketoacidosis ... you will get treated. The only option is for passers-by to leave you lying, writhing, seizing, or bleeding -- because you have not expressly, in advance, chosen to 'purchase' health care. Chances are, if you were conscious while seizing or hemorrhaging, you might want the opportunity to reconsider.
But there is no opportunity to reconsider priorities, commodities, or purchases during a calamity. During a calamity, the default judgment of passers-by, the default action of a society of fundamentally decent, compassionate people is ... to shoot treatments at you first, and ask questions about your insurance status and credit score afterward. Would anyone really want this to work differently? Can you envision the world where you are left on the sand to bleed after a shark attack until we verify your financial assets?

Now let's consider the heavy hand of government against which the Republican version of what the founding fathers meant to say protects us.
Maybe you, the one bleeding, seizing, or dying -- are not compelled to 'buy' health insurance -- because nobody's the boss of you. Maybe you get treated for your calamity, and simply don't pay the bill. But then I, and everyone else, are compelled to 'buy' what you did not. We pay more taxes to support the public provision of care. We pay higher insurance premiums to cover higher hospital charges to account for the fact that a certain percentage of customers get care they don't pay for. If health care is a commodity, then by not requiring some to buy it, we are -- ipso facto -- requiring others to buy it for them. Where's the Constitutional protection against that?

There is none -- and can be none -- because health care is not a commodity. It is an event, a crisis, an occurrence. And paying for it simply ... happens. There isn't much in the free market system that looks like this. There isn't any particular reason why the founding fathers would have anticipated this issue.
The problem with debating how what the Constitution says about commodities applies to healthcare is that healthcare is not a commodity. It is, all too often, as unintended and unplanned as it is unavoidable. Health care is not a commodity, and the Constitution does not seem to have said anything in particular about whether or not to send out an ambulance to deal with someone who can't pay for it, and then impose the bill on those who can.

My common sense tells me that health care is, and should be, a case apart. And therefore before we imagine different meanings in the words of those who never imagined health insurance, perhaps we should consider what would be the sensible way to handle a 'purchase' the purchaser is apt to be in no condition to refuse.

Not because of anything the Constitution or Obama Administration did or didn't say. But simply because the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune may fall on any of us at any time -- and when they do, somebody will be left to pay the bill.

Dr. David L. Katz; www.davidkatzmd.com

www.turnthetidefoundation.org

President of Arizona Senate proposes secession measure ---- Can they take Texas and Florida with them? Pretty please!!!!

2011-02-02T18:59:00.000-08:00

President of Arizona Senate proposes secession measure

Completely shocking news!!!!!!!

2011-01-25T20:39:00.000-08:00

"WASHINGTON — The Bush White House, particularly before the 2006 midterm elections, routinely violated a federal law that prohibits use of federal tax dollars to pay for political activities by creating a “political boiler room” that coordinated Republican campaign activities nationwide, a report issued Monday by an independent federal agency concludes. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/us/politics/25ethics.html

Weiner Gives 'Half Time Report' In Debate Over Health Care Repeal

2011-01-20T22:26:00.000-08:00

Jamie Oliver Denied Access for Lunch Program Reform

2011-01-17T14:08:00.000-08:00

Jamie Oliver Denied Access for Lunch Program Reform: "

'We've brainwashed our kids so brilliantly so even though they know something is disgusting and gross, they'll still eat it if it's in that friendly little shape,' explained Jamie Oliver, star of the reality television series Food Revolution.

Food Revolution piloted last year with the goal of educating American families on nutrition and the dire need for reform in diet and lifestyle.

The program focused mainly on areas that are statistically unhealthy, including one city in West Virginia, where the celebrity chef and health campaigner from the UK started a grassroots campaign in the United States to curb obesity.

'I'm here because I need this community to inspire and show Americans that just a little effort can make a massive difference,' Oliver said during season one of the show.

Focusing on school lunch programs as a core problem with childhood obesity, Oliver's program won an Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program.

And this year, Oliver will take to the road again to uncover the less-than-savory truth behind America's school lunch programs in Southern California...

The show's second season will not only examine what children are eating in the school cafeteria; but it will also include visits by Oliver to families' homes and to Jamie's Kitchen, a space Oliver established in Los Angeles as his kitchen classroom and production set.

There's only one minor problem...

Oliver is meeting serious resistance with Los Angeles school district to gain access to their cafeterias.

The Los Angeles Unified School Direct has outright refused to let cameras into the schools — despite Oliver's assurance he is not looking to cause trouble in the school system, but rather to shed light on their lunch program for the purpose of improvement.

A spokesman for the district told the Los Angeles Times LA Unified is avoiding the formula inherent in reality television: 'You either have to have drama or create conflict to be successful. We're not interested in either.'

The resistance from the LAUSD has led Oliver and others to wonder just what the ladies with hairnets are serving up to students for lunch.

Is the district concerned or fearful about what Oliver could uncover in their lunch programs?

And if so, seems like a good opportunity to shed some light on their program...

In a district where 80% of the nearly 700,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, the majority of the student body stands to have access to a nutritious meal at least once a day — and lessons in what food choices to make the rest of the time.

Following Food Revolution's success in Huntington, West Virginia, last year, Los Angeles public schools could benefit greatly from Oliver's experience and know-how in reforming school lunch programs.

Parents and community members in the Los Angeles area are behind Oliver, going as far as to write to Board of Education members in their district to express distress at the school system's refusal to let someone who could potentially help their children even get a look at a single cafeteria or meal program.

Oliver maintains that he will work with families in their homes in the Los Angeles area, as well as local grocery stores and fast-food chains when Food Revolution starts again this spring — regardless if the LAUSD allows him access to the schools.

School lunches are becoming a greater focus in the nutrition story and a building block for America's growing health problems.

Childhood obesity is one of the most serious public health challenges of the century. Instances of childhood obesity in the United States have risen three times in the last 30 years, and continue to increase at a staggering rate.

By the end of this year, cases of obesity among children are expected to reach more than 40%...

Earlier this year, a group of retired military officers petitioned Congress for a nutrition bill, demanding healthier school lunch programs around the country.

First Lady Michele Obama's Let's Move! initiative aims to solve the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation, focusing on making healthy food accessible and affordable (especially to children and in school meal programs), promoting making healthy choices, and education in nutrition and the importance of an active lifestyle.

In December, the Child Nutrition Bill was signed into law, allowing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to update the national school nutrition standards for all food sold outside of school meals. The new proposed meal requirements will raise standards for the first time in more than 15 years...

The law will effectively remove junk food from school cafeterias and vending machines. This bill marked the first increase in funding for the national school lunch program in more than 35 years, which will allow schools to meet improved nutrition standards.

The buzz on school lunches is becoming a national priority as health care experts place a new importance on early childhood education in nutrition and lifestyle. Studies show that proper nutrition can benefit children not only physically, but emotionally and mentally, as well.

When Oliver first began implementing healthy menus in England's public schools, researchers found a direct correlation between the schools with healthier meals and improved test results, as well as a 15% decrease in absences (as a result of illness).

But as a spokesman from Huntington, WV, explained following Oliver's time spent in their schools, change is not easy...

"We’re having some trouble getting the kids to eat the food. It’s a change that’s going to take some time.”

As with anything, change takes time.

But that time might be later added to the life of many children who avoid obesity, type 2 diabetes, and depression and social anxiety because they are informed — and because they have a choice between the salad bar and the daily slice of pizza.

Brigid

Jamie Oliver Denied Access for Lunch Program Reform originally appeared in Green Chip Stocks. Green Chip Review is a free 2x-per-week newsletter, is the first advisory to focus exclusively on investments in alternative and renewable energies.

The Moon Made Me Do It

2011-01-15T11:24:00.000-08:00

The Moon Made Me Do It: "

Lunacy. Lunatic. The lunar effect. All through human history, the moon has been blamed for some amazing things. Everything from schizophrenia to werewolves; increases in crime rate and increases in emergency room visits. Even epilepsy has been blamed on the effects of the lunar cycle. While I’ve never personally tangled with a werewolf, I know many people believe there is some connection with the full moon and people acting a fool.

NASA Galileo image of the moon December 7,1992

There is something about the moon that draws us. Beautiful, mysterious, changeable; the object of poetry and passion. Sometimes it looks full and bloated; red and bloody; even every once in a while… blue. I can sympathize with our distant ancestors for being moonstruck. After all, our moon goes through some pretty interesting changes over the course of a year.

Diagram of Lunar Phases, donated to WikiPedia, Public Domain image

Some studies seem to suggest there is a connection between the cycles of the moon and human behavior, while more studies say there is no connection. Some surgeons won’t operate during a full moon because they say lunar cycles impact survival rates, and I’ve read more than one psychological study which claims that symptoms of various conditions respond to lunar cycles.

A Harvest Moon - WikiPedia free media

What’s really interesting about the moon is that the more we know about it, the more we recognize that it really does impact our lives. I’m not going to say that it impacts medical conditions, but it certainly has a lot to do with stabilizing the Earth’s wobble so we have a climate with which we can live. It may or may not impact criminal behavior, but it definitely has a whopping impact on our oceans. It even significantly effects the speed at which the Earth rotates.

The first map of the moon, by Johannes Hevelius, 1645

I think our moon is unbelievably beautiful, and I enjoy the rich cultural tradition with which it’s associated. Is the lunar effect real? I dunno, but for me, it doesn’t need to be.

Robert Creamer: Do Americans Have the Right to Bear Weapons of Mass Destruction?

2011-01-13T20:55:00.000-08:00

Robert Creamer: Do Americans Have the Right to Bear Weapons of Mass Destruction?: "

The massacre and assassination attempt in Tucson have reignited the ongoing battle over what limitations should be placed on our rights to bear arms.

Let's assume for a moment -- though there are many Constitutional scholars who disagree -- that the majority of the Supreme Court is correct in its view that the Constitution does in fact confer on Americans a right to bear arms that is similar in scope to our right to free speech and assembly. What does it actually mean, that we have a right to bear arms?

The Second Amendment reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

What exactly are 'arms'? Do Americans have the right to bear atom bombs? How about biological or chemical weapons?

For the vast majority of Americans, the proposition that we have the right to bear our own nuclear, biological or chemical weapons is preposterous. But what about stinger missiles that can down commercial aircraft -- or bazookas? They are all arms.

Strict constructionists of the Constitution would want to look back at original intent. So let's think for a moment what the framers of the Constitution meant by 'arms.'
At the time the Constitution was written in the late 18th century, 'arms' included weapons that had a fairly limited degree of destructive power. To Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton, the term 'arms' referred to clubs, swords, single shot cannons, single shot muskets and pistols. Weapons that allowed people to rapidly fire many bullets had not been invented. There were no assault rifles, machine guns or semi-automatics. While there were a few double barreled rifles as early as the seventeenth century, the double barreled rifle would not be perfected until the late 1800's. Samuel Colt would not invent the revolver -- the six-shooter -- until 1836.

To the framers, the term 'arms' referred mainly to single shot muskets and pistols.

But beyond the question of what the Constitution means by the 'right to bear arms,' we must also remember that no right is absolute. Each person's rights are constrained by the extent to which they impinge on another person's rights.
If you live by yourself on an island, you have an absolute right to do whatever you want. There's no one else around with whom your rights can conflict. But as soon as you join a society of other people, an individual's personal rights are limited by the degree to which they affect the rights of others. Legislative bodies and courts were set up precisely to adjudicate the conflicts between these rights.

There is general agreement that the right to free speech does not give individuals the right to falsely cry 'fire' in a crowded theater, because that conflicts with everyone else's right to avoid being killed or injured by the ensuing panic.

The right to free speech doesn't allow individuals to lie under oath to a court, because that would conflict with the rights of others to a fair trial.

Like any other right, the right to bear arms is limited by the rights of other Americans not to be killed or injured. So -- given the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment -- the question is not whether Americans have the right to bear arms, but rather how that right should be limited because it conflicts with other rights.

I believe the answer to that question is clear. The mounting volume of gun deaths and injuries, the easy access that criminals and terrorists have to what amounts to weapons of mass destruction, require substantial limitations on the ability of individuals to use, carry and obtain guns. That need is enhanced by the technological advances that have been made in weapons technology in the years since 1789.
Our laws currently ban guns made of plastic, because they cannot be identified by metal detectors.

There are very few Americans who would support repealing our current laws banning guns on commercial aircraft.

For many years we have banned personal possession of large caliber machine guns -- including those that could bring down airplanes.

In 1994, Congress and the President passed a bi-partisan assault weapons ban that outlawed private possession or sale of specific types of fully and semi-automatic weapons whose principle uses are to kill people in war, or by police forces. That bill also banned the possession and sale of high-volume magazines of the sort that allowed the Jared Lee Loughner, the accused Tucson killer, to fire thirty-one shots in rapid succession before stopping to reload. That bill sunset in 2004, and the Republican Congress and Bush Administration refused to extend its provisions.

Had it still been in effect it would have been likely that Loughner -- who bought the magazines legally -- would have had to reload after firing off only 10 rounds, which was the maximum magazine capacity under the assault weapons ban. Since nineteen people were killed or injured, that would have preventing the death or injury of at least another nine human beings.

When the ban expired, assault weapons once again began to flood our streets -- and -- according to the Mexican government -- have played a major role in the drug violence that has torn apart the border region. Regardless of the increasing gun carnage, many Republicans are pushing to expand the right to carry weapons of all sorts. They oppose reinstituting the assault weapons ban and even want to allow people to carry guns into schools, churches, restaurants and bars.

Arizona recently eliminated the requirement that individuals get permits to carry concealed weapons.

Their argument is that if more people carried guns, there would be people around with weapons to stop other people who would use their guns against their fellow citizens. It's the 'quick draw' argument. I'm not sure many people would go for that argument in a plane, or a crowed restaurant, or in a bar where most of the customers have thrown back a few drinks - particularly if the whole crowd were carrying Glocks with the ability to squeeze off 31 rounds each in a matter of seconds. Frankly, it's ridiculous.

Let's see how many of the Republicans in Congress who want to allow everyone to pack assault weapons feel about eliminating the ban on weapons in the Capitol. Why not just let any old American (or other visitor) wander the halls with Uzi's while we're at it?

You hear, 'guns don't kill people, people kill people.' Sure. But if Loughner had a knife or a club instead of a semi-automatic Glock with extended magazine, lots of people would be alive today.

We all agree that someone like Loughner -- or any other citizen -- should not be permitted to possess a nuclear weapon or some other weapon of mass destruction. Why should he be permitted to carry semi-automatic Glock with extended magazine? It is also a weapon of mass destruction. Its only purpose is to kill or injure large numbers of people. It can't kill hundreds of thousands, but we know empirically that within a few seconds it can kill and injure nineteen.

The argument that our society would be safer if we had even more guns -- and especially high-powered guns -- is simply absurd. Hopefully the shock of the appalling massacre in Tucson will prompt us to snap out of our NRA-induced stupor and pass restrictions on weapons that effectively balance the right to bear arms with our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

Boner (Orange Man) admits some rethuglicans are stupid

2011-01-07T22:20:00.000-08:00

Boehner reacts to birther outburst: "

In his interview with John Boehner, NBC's Brian Williams got the new House speaker to react to today's outburst by a birther in the House gallery during the reading of the Constitution.

Williams: I'm curious as to how much responsibility you feel specifically because of something that happened this morning. During the reading of the Constitution, Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey, was reading a portion of the document, interrupted by someone who heckled from within the chamber. It was to express doubt over the president's American citizenship. Provided you believe the president is an American citizen, you've got 12 members co-sponsoring legislation that does about the same thing, it expresses doubt. Would you be willing to say, 'This is a distraction, I've looked at it to my satisfaction. Let's move on'?
Boehner: The state of Hawaii has said that President Obama was born there. That's good enough for me.
Williams: Would you be willing to say that message to the 12 members in your caucus who seem to either believe otherwise or are willing to express doubt and have co-sponsored legislation?
Boehner: Brian, when you come to the Congress of the United States, there are 435 of us. We're nothing more than a slice of America. People come, regardless of party labels, they come with all kinds of beliefs and ideas. Uh it's, it's the melting pot of America. It's not up to me to tell them what to think.

The rest of the interview with air on 'Nightly News' beginning at 6:30 pm ET.

Eric Boehlert: Jon Stewart Did What Pundits and Reporters Should Have Done

2011-01-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

Eric Boehlert: Jon Stewart Did What Pundits and Reporters Should Have Done: "

There's lots of media chatter about Comedy Central host Jon Stewart in the wake of yesterday's Senate vote to pass the 9/11 first responders bill. The chatter surrounds what appears to be the central media role Stewart played in shining a spotlight on how Republicans were blocking the legislation and, just as importantly, how the Beltway press was, inexcusably, ignoring the unfolding story.

Indeed, as Media Matters first noted, the day after the initial vote was held two weeks ago in which filibustering Republicans unanimously voted to not let the first responder bill proceed, none of the network news telecasts that night reported on the story. None. And in the 48 hours that followed, the cable news channels didn't have much to say either, nor did many print or online pundits. The bill to aid Sept. 11 heroes had been dealt a rather stunning blow in the Senate, and most mainstream media players didn't care, to the point where the story wasn't even covered.
But yes, on the night of the vote, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart covered the vote. And Stewart, in his signature way, highlighted the stunning hypocrisy in play.
Then last week Stewart reloaded for another round. Plus, the host sat down with first responders and interviewed them about the diseases many of them were suffering, and also got their take on the surprisingly difficult legislative battle they were facing in Congress.

And guess what? Stewart, at that point, was practically alone in carrying out that simple act of journalism. By dedicating even a few minutes of his show to the 9-11 bill and by interviewing key players in the saga, Stewart instantly lapped most of the Beltway press corps. Why? Because for some bizarre reason, there seemed to have been a kind of groupthink conclusion that the 9/11 first responder bill, and the fact that it was being blocked by filibustering Republicans, was not news. (Nothing to see here, people... )

But, of course it was. And by shaming both the press and Republicans last week, Stewart proved that point. (And people wonder why younger demos turn to Stewart for their news?)
But again, I don't think the takeaway here is that OMG a comedian turned the tide of the 9/11 responder debate, mostly because the line between news and entertainment was long ago blurred beyond recognition. What's more important, and frankly more depressing, is that Stewart was forced to fill a gaping, Mack truck-size hole in the press corps. That is, by pointing out the hypocrisy of the GOP's opposition to the bill, Stewart was doing the work of what countless pundits should have done. And by interviewing the first responders himself, Stewart was doing the work of what countless reporters should have done.

In other words, Stewart was simply practicing journalism on the first responder story, and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is, Stewart was practicing journalism on the story because it seemed nobody else would.

Crossposted at County Fair, a Media Matters for America blog.

Mitchell Bard: Why Sarah Palin's North Korea Flub Matters

2010-11-27T23:21:00.000-08:00

Mitchell Bard: Why Sarah Palin's North Korea Flub Matters: "

Sarah Palin provided prime material for news outlets and comedy programs when she said on Glenn Beck's radio show Wednesday:

'But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies.'
If she hasn't already, I'm sure Palin will say that the 'elitist,' 'lamestream' media is doing her wrong, and that she is once again a victim of 'gotcha journalism.' And Palin's small but passionate group of supporters will undoubtedly argue that Palin made an honest slip of the tongue, something that could happen to any of us. Her supporters are right. Saying 'North' instead of 'South' is something that any of us could easily do.
But here's the thing: Any of us did not stand up two years ago and claim we were qualified to fill a job that is a heartbeat away from the American presidency. We haven't written books, made speeches, endorsed candidates and spoken to the (mostly right-wing) media as if we were policy experts. And we haven't been scouting office space in Iowa for a 2012 presidential run.In short, more should be expected of Sarah Palin than any of us, based on how she has portrayed herself, and how she is treated by the media.

The real story, though, isn't that Palin said 'North' instead of 'South.' Let's be honest: Vice President Joe Biden could have just as easily blown a line like that.

No, the real story is that Palin was discussing a complex, precarious, highly dangerous issue as if she were an expert, even though she clearly isn't.
Does anyone outside of Palin's relatively small group of smitten followers honestly believe that she is competent to act as an expert on Korean policy? That she knows the intricacies and risks of engaging with the North Koreans? That she understands the possible leadership struggle going on there? Do you think she has the first clue about the history of Korea over the last century? Do you think she's ever heard of Syngman Rhee, the Bodo League massacre, the Battle of Inchon, or National Security Council Report 68, or that she knows about the decades of Japanese rule in Korea? Do you think she's ever read about the role the propaganda efforts of the post-Stalin Soviet government played in the eventual armistice that ended the fighting?

Doubtful, at best.

Now, do you doubt for a second that Joe Biden could reel off a dissertation-level analysis of these issues from the top of his head?
That's the real story about the Palin flub about North Korea that the media isn't covering. It's not that she misspoke, but that anyone cared what she had to say on the issue in the first place.

Sarah Palin, with her reliance on spouting talking points, simplistic approach to issues and complete lack of experience beyond a half term as governor of a state the size of Columbus, Ohio, is not competent to be discussing North Korea. (

Columbus, Ohio's population is bigger than Alaska's, 769,360 to 698,743.) And shame on any media outlet that treats her opinions as if they're worth anything.

The real damning Palin quote in the Beck interview is the one in which she worries if 'the White House is gonna come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea's gonna do.' Putting aside her usual butchering of the English language, she takes a complicated problem facing the United States (and the world) and reduces it to a talking-point political attack on the president. Her comment reveals that she has no understanding that we are dealing with a North Korean leadership that may not be rational and may even be self-destructive. And one with the firepower to kill legions of South Korean civilians. To her simplistic, politics-driven approach, it's only about how the Democratic president isn't tough enough. (As an aside, she is talking about a president who has increased troops in Afghanistan, stepped up drone attacks on the enemy, and taken out more Taliban and al Qaeda leaders than George W. Bush ever did, but I digress... )
She recklessly portrays the North Korea crisis as one that is simple and only requires American strength, when, in reality, it is a difficult-to-solve issue fraught with danger. It is complicated and nuanced, and one wrong move could lead to an attack on Seoul.

I wonder if Palin would be so cavalier in her approach if North Korea's missiles could reach Anchorage, Dallas or some other city in Real America?
And this person wants to be president? It's a joke.

Palin's 'North'-for-'South' flub matters, but not because she misspoke. It matters because we, as a country, are acting as if she is some kind of policy expert, when, in reality, she is simple-minded and ignorant. She can say the wrong name, just like us. But just like most of us, she has no business acting like she understands the North Korea crisis in the first place.

Ira Glasser: Calling the Republican Bluff

2010-11-10T21:23:00.000-08:00

Ira Glasser: Calling the Republican Bluff: "

The Republicans have increased their power by advocating for lowering the deficit, lowering taxes and, ostensibly, increasing jobs. But there is no way they can deliver all three. They can't even deliver two of the three. Here's why:

1. Lowering taxes will increase the deficit. There is no way around this. Nonetheless, Obama and the Republicans agree, and Obama has consistently proposed since before he was elected, that the tax cuts due to expire on Dec. 31 should be extended for all families earning less than $250,000 annually. That means nearly all of us, 98 percent actually. But Obama wants to let the tax cuts expire for those families earning more than $250,000. The Republicans do not. If these tax cuts for the wealthy are extended, it will increase the deficit by an estimated $680 billion over the next ten years,. The Republicans want this not because it will repair the economy or create jobs for the middle class or relieve suffering; they want this because they are the party that stands for funneling more and more money to the wealthy at the expense of ordinary people. And although they claim to want to cut the deficit, they favor growing the deficit by this $680 billion gift to the already rich.

Since 1979, when Ronald Reagan was elected, there has been a steady and enormous shift of the share of national income from the middle class to the very rich -- the top 1 percent. Today, that income inequality is more skewed than it has been since the gilded age of the 1920s, before the Great Depression. And as pre-tax incomes of the very wealthy have soared, so their effective tax rates have dropped more than the tax rates on the middle class. These changes have not been due to the invisible hand of the so-called free market, but to explicit government policies since 1980. Extending the Bush tax cuts that would otherwise expire on Dec. 31 to the wealthiest class would only continue that trend.

Aside from the injustice of this approach -- why would middle-class voters support a policy that shifted more of their tax-dollars to the very rich? -- this policy, if enacted, would substantially increase the deficit the Republicans say they want to reduce!

2. If Republican tax policies will enrich the rich and increase the deficit, how then do the Republicans propose to cut this larger deficit? They say they will do it by reduced government spending. But they never say precisely what government spending they propose to reduce, and by what amounts exactly. This is because they can't.

Approximately 85 percent of the entire federal budget goes for mandatory programs or the military. There isn't enough discretionary fat in the budget, outside of these programs, to make a substantial dent in the deficit.
Four categories of government expenditures account for the great majority of federal spending: interest on what we owe, which is to say, interest on the deficit; the military; Social Security; and Medicare. The deficit -- which has now reached about $1.3 trillion and which will go higher if the Republicans continue tax cuts for the rich -- cannot significantly be reduced without substantial cuts in one or more of these four categories. And there's the rub.

We obviously can't significantly reduce the interest we are paying on the deficit until the deficit is substantially reduced, so that's out for now. As for discretionary programs, as far as I am aware, no Republican favors substantial cuts in military expenditures, and not many Democrats do either. So that leaves Social Security and Medicare. Do you want these programs destroyed (trimming won't be enough)? I didn't think so. The last time George W. Bush proposed eliminating Social Security prospectively and replacing it with private investment accounts, which would be a bonanza for investment banks while endangering the security of the elderly retired, he got walloped by the public's reaction and withdrew his proposal. Certainly, the 23 percent of the electorate who are over 65, many of whom voted Republican in the last election, did not think they were voting to cut Social Security, or for that matter Medicare, which pays for most of their medical expenses. So most Republicans today will tell you if you ask them that they are against major cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

But without such major cuts, the deficit cannot substantially be reduced without increasing taxes, at least on the very wealthy. And Republicans don't want to increase taxes, especially not for the very wealthy; to the contrary, they want to decrease such taxes, thus creating even more wealth inequality, and growing the deficit!

So their platform proposals make no sense; they cannot work, and they won't be implemented. Republican campaign promises, taken together, will turn out to be so much snake-oil.

3. And then there's the matter of jobs, and the 15 million people out of work, nearly 10 percent of the workforce. That is the most crucial economic problem facing us, and it was voter anger over that issue, more than anything else, that fueled the recent electoral 'throw the bums out' dynamic. The president and the Democrats in general offered no coherent vision, program or remedy to address this problem; the Republicans did, but their vision is fraudulent, as will become increasingly apparent.

There are two ways to create lots of jobs:

a) The private sector -- privately-owned companies -- can spend more to expand their businesses, which would require more employees. In order to do this, they need either to spend the cash they have (many companies have accumulated very large cash reserves) or borrow it to finance expansion. But right now, and for the foreseeable future, businesses that have a lot of cash are hoarding it because the economic climate remains uncertain, or using it to buy back their own stock, thus driving up the price of their shares. And they either won't borrow more money for the same reason, or can't because banks and other lenders are reluctant to extend credit, even after being bailed out to do so. Banks are once again paying huge bonuses to themselves, but they're not extending huge amounts of credit.

In New York City, to cite only one example, the new construction industry is at a standstill, and likely to remain so for some time, because builders cannot borrow enough to build, and cannot in any case justify the high expense of building by the fading prospect of high returns in a depressed economy. (If more luxury residential and office towers are built, who exactly will occupy them?)

So the likelihood that the private sector will, anytime soon, spend enough to expand the number of jobs sufficiently to put a major dent in the unemployment rate is vanishingly small. When a newly-elected senator like Rand Paul of Kentucky proposes to let the private sector solve the unemployment problem, he is smoking from the same pipe Herbert Hoover smoked in 1930. He does not know what he is talking about. What he is proposing can't happen, and it won't happen. (Of course, many who share Rand Paul's belief will tell you, if they are honest, that if the Great Recession gets bad enough, that is, if unemployment persists and gets worse, and everything becomes cheap enough, then at some point the private sector will swoop in and re-enter the job-creation market. But even if that is possible, it would require the worsening of the unemployment depression plaguing America, considerably and for a long time. Republicans subscribing to this view may be willing to have middle-class Americans endure such suffering, but I doubt that most such Americans share that willingness.)

b) So if the private sector can't or won't expand anytime soon and create lots of new jobs, the only alternative for spending to expand the number of jobs is the public sector, which is to say the government, state and federal. Certainly, there is much important, even crucial work to be done: new and repaired bridges, tunnels and roads; an efficient, high-speed railway system; new construction to repair and replace ancient water pipe and sewage systems, many of which are crumbling and on the precipice of disaster -- in a word, infrastructure, public infrastructure, like the Interstate Highway system President Eisenhower initiated in the fifties. This is work that needs to be done, and would put substantial numbers of people to work, providing lots of new jobs.

But these are precisely the kinds of expenditures that state governments cannot afford, and where they have started them, they are canceling them. For example, the new Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, not once but twice has now canceled the planned railway tunnel beneath the Hudson River connecting New York and New Jersey. States everywhere are cutting their budgets, further reducing employment, not expanding it. And most of the new Republican governors just elected have resolved to continue such austerity. So if the private sector isn't doing it, and state governments can't do it, who can create a sufficient number of new jobs? There is only one alternative left: the federal government.
At a time like this, the federal government must be the job-creator of last resort, as it was between 1932-45, because there is no other alternative to continued and persistent high unemployment, and the misery it causes so many of us.

There are two ways to pay for this: by higher taxes or by increased borrowing (from China and others willing to buy our Treasury bonds). Increased borrowing will, for awhile, increase our national deficit. But higher taxes right now (except for the very wealthy, who could easily absorb higher taxes, and should) will crush middle-class people who are already suffering from high unemployment, housing foreclosures and the like. So there is no way out of our dilemma except to have the federal government fund enormous public works and other programs that will require a massive number of new jobs. But that solution runs right up against the mistaken consensus that reducing the deficit should be a high, if not the highest, priority. If that continues to be a priority, unemployment will rise even more. There is no way around this choice. Either the deficit grows or unemployment grows. For those without jobs, the choice should be clear. The federal government must, in the short term, increase the deficit by massive job-creating public works expenditures, partially off-setting those expenditures by restoring the traditional taxes on the wealthy by letting the Bush tax cuts for them expire as planned on Dec. 31, while extending the tax cuts for 98 percent of individuals and families.

But would such expenditures actually create lots of jobs and significantly reduce unemployment? Yes, if the expenditures are large and ambitious enough. People will argue that the prior 'stimulus' program failed. But the reason it failed to make a noticeable dent in the unemployment rate (although it did keep joblessness from going even higher) is not that the idea was wrong, but that it wasn't large enough, especially since its gains were largely offset by expenditure cutbacks at the state level. If we mean to get out of this fix, and end the suffering of the middle class, much larger expenditures by the federal government to create jobs will be required.

But can we afford to increase the national deficit even more? Yes, we've done it before and we can do it again. Even in the midst of the Depression that had not yet ended, when we felt that our survival was at stake after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, we did not hesitate to increase the deficit very substantially in order to respond. In fact, WWII increased the national deficit, as a percentage of Gross National Product, by way more than it is today. But without that increased deficit, without the federal expenditures we incurred to finance the war effort, we could not have survived. And that huge deficit also put millions to work, effectively ending the Great Depression. Even after the war, the deficit was increased to fund the G.I. Bill, housing subsidies, the Marshall Plan and the Interstate Highway system. Most of that huge deficit was erased by economic growth during the period of prosperity that began in 1946. The short term but huge increase in the national deficit turned out to be precisely the stimulus the economy needed.

Today, we do not face the same kind of war for survival that we faced after Pearl Harbor. But we do face a war for survival of our way of life, a fight to maintain the promise of America for the middle class, and to assure the prospect of a better life for our children and grandchildren. That fight must be funded with the same resolve that allowed us to fund WW II, and, yes, by the same faith in the promise and resilience of America, and our ability to rebuild our country with paying jobs for people who need them.
It will not happen if we follow the Republican pipe-dream of enriching the rich, cutting federal and state expenditures, reducing the deficit and letting more and more Americans suffer joblessness while they wait for the banks and the captains of industry to get back into the job market -- after the rest of us have suffered enough to make it profitable for them.

Given what the Republicans say they want to do, they have no capacity to lead us out of this dilemma, no matter how many elections they win with their campaigns of disinformation. President Obama should not be reaching out to them, he should be charting a different path and articulating a different vision. If he will not lead us along a different path at this critical moment, and the Republicans can't, then who will?

Robert Reich: Obama's First Stand

2010-11-10T21:09:00.000-08:00

Robert Reich: Obama's First Stand: "

The president says a Republican proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts to everyone for two years is a 'basis for conversation.' I hope this doesn't mean another Obama cave-in.

Yes, the president needs to acknowledge the Republican sweep on Election Day. But he can do that by offering his own version of a compromise that's both economically sensible and politically smart. Instead of limiting the extension to $250,000 of income (the bottom 98 percent of Americans), he should offer to extend it to all incomes under $500,000 (essentially the bottom 99 percent), for two years.

The economics are clear:

First, the top 1 percent spends a much smaller proportion of their income than everyone else, so there's very little economic stimulus at these lofty heights. On the other hand, giving the top 1 percent a two-year extension would cost the Treasury $130 billion over two years, thereby blowing a giant hole in efforts to get the deficit under control. Alternatively, $130 billion would be enough to rehire every teacher, firefighter, and police officer laid off over the last two years and save the jobs of all of them now on the chopping block. Not only are these people critical to our security and the future of our children but, unlike the top 1 percent, they could be expected to spend all of their earnings and thereby stimulate the economy.

Conservative supply-siders who argue the top 1 percent will stop working as hard if they have to return to the 39 percent marginal rate of the Clinton years must be smoking something (probably an expensive grade).

Their incomes of the top are already soaring (Wall Street is reading a 5% boost in bonuses, executive salaries and perks are back on the trajectory they were on before the collapse, and the stock market is booming), so it's hard to argue much hardship. Besides, only earnings over $500,000 would be affected because -- remember -- we're talking about the marginal tax rate. In addition, the Clinton years weren't exactly bad years, economically, for the top 1 percent.

Finally, the Bush tax cuts didn't trickle down anyway. To the contrary, between 2001 and 2007, the median wage dropped. And Bush's record on jobs was pitiful.
The politics are even clearer. Over the next two years, Obama must clarify for the nation whose side he's on and whose side his Republican opponents are on. What better issue to begin with than this one?
The top 1 percent now takes in almost a quarter of all national income (up from 9 percent in the late 1970s), and its political power is evident in everything from hedge-fund and private-equity fund managers who can treat their incomes as capital gains (subject to a 15 percent tax) to multi-million dollar home interest deductions on executive mansions.

If the President can't or won't take a stand now -- when he still has a chance to prevail in the upcoming lame-duck Congress -- when will he ever?

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

Does Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?

2010-10-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

Does Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?: "
I asked Josh Libresco, Executive Vice President of The OSR Group, a public opinion and marketing research firm based in San Rafael, California, to weigh in on the recent CDC study showing that states emphasizing abstinence-only education in schools also have the highest teen pregnancy rates. Did the media infer too much causation?

__________________________________________________________________________________

Does Abstinence Make the Heart Grow Fonder?

Quinn Fabray, the fictional cheerleading captain on the Fox series, Glee, spent most of last season pregnant and feeling that the pregnancy had turned her world upside down. Ironically, Quinn was also the President of the Celibacy Club, at least until her condition was revealed and she quickly became the ex-President.

A new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that irony is not confined to the Fox Network. According to the CDC study, some U.S. states have dramatically higher teenage pregnancy rates than others, and the states with the highest teen pregnancy rates happen to be states that emphasize abstinence-only education.

In Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, for example, 2008 birth rates were less than 25 per 1,000 teens aged 15 to 19. By contrast, in Mississippi, Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, the birth rate was higher than 60 per 1,000 teens in the same age group.

There is no doubt that teen pregnancies can lead to poor health outcomes for both the mother and the child, and the CDC data have been used to advocate for more aggressive efforts at sex education.

But is it really fair to connect abstinence-only education with teen pregnancy? Or, to put it more precisely, is it fair to say that there is a causal link between abstinence-only education and higher teen pregnancy rates? The two items may be correlated, but is it fair to say that the first causes the second?

Other state-by-state data provide some clues. In the New England states, for example, the average age of mothers at first birth is more than 27, among the highest in the nation. (This is from a National Center for Health Statistics Study conducted in 2002.) At the other extreme are Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming - many of the same states highlighted above. In these states, the average age of mothers at first birth is around 23. Is the average lower because of teen births, or are there other factors that lead people to start their families earlier in these states?

A 2007 AAUW (American Association for University Women) study revealed that the same set of states also tends to be lowest in educational attainment for women. Arkansas ranks next to last among the states in the proportion of women who have achieved a four-year college degree. Mississippi ranks 45^th; Oklahoma ranks 42^nd, Texas is 35^th, and New Mexico ranks 25^th. Are these educational levels lower because of teen pregnancy, or are there other reasons that women in these states might choose to forgo college and begin their families earlier?

A 2010 study by the Guttmacher Institute provides another important piece of the puzzle. While teen birthrates are highest in the five states listed above, the abortion rates in these states tend to be among the lowest. Arkansas ranks 45^th in the percentage of teens 15-19 who choose to end their pregnancies with abortions, and Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas are also in the bottom half of the states with respect to abortion percentage. Teens in the New England states are much more willing to consider abortions - for example, Connecticut ranks 5^th on this measure, and Massachusetts ranks 11^th. So some of the explanation for high teen birth rates in the abstinence-only states is that teens in those states are more likely to carry their babies to term.

And now we get to the key, unspoken factor in the equation - religion. In some states, strong Fundamentalist religious beliefs discourage sex education, and also discourage both birth control and abortion. Young women in Fundamentalist families may also be less interested in pursuing higher education and more interested in starting families early.

How does this relate to the five high-profile, abstinence-only states? According to statistics from the Southern Baptist Convention, in 1990, Mississippi had the highest percentage of Southern Baptists in the nation - almost 34%. Oklahoma was third, at 31%, and Arkansas, at 25%, was in 7^th place. Texas stood 10^th in Southern Baptist percentage (19%), and even New Mexico - not exactly a Southern state - had 10% Southern Baptists, good for 14^th place nationwide.

So yes, it may be true that abstinence-only education is related to higher teen pregnancy, but it is also related to a number of other factors - including average age of the mother at birth, educational attainment of women, willingness to have an abortion, and even religious affiliation. Yet correlation is not the same as causation. The CDC study does not prove that abstinence-only education has somehow caused an increase in teen pregnancy, and the study does not separate the influence of abstinence-only education from the influences of many other, related factors.

After all, abstinence-only states should not be the only targets in the battle against teen pregnancy. In 2010, Ohio abandoned abstinence-only, and began a sex education program in schools for the first time in 10 years. Glee's Quinn Fabray lives in Lima, Ohio.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Josh Libresco is Executive Vice President of The OSR Group, a public opinion and marketing research firm based in San Rafael, California. His firm conducts research projects using online interviews, telephone surveys, focus groups, and other methods for corporations, foundations, and government agencies throughout the United States and in more than 60 countries around the world.

Advance Estimate of GDP for the Third Quarter of 2010

2010-10-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

Advance Estimate of GDP for the Third Quarter of 2010: "

Today’s report shows that real GDP, the total amount of goods and services produced in the country, grew at a 2.0 percent annual rate in the third quarter of this year, the fifth straight quarter of positive growth. While the economy continues to recover from the deepest recession since World War II, faster growth is needed to bring down the unemployment rate more quickly.

Some key components of GDP continued to expand in the third quarter. Consumer expenditures on goods and services rose at an annual rate of 2.6 percent, up slightly from the second quarter. Fixed investment (nonresidential structures, equipment and software, and housing investments) grew at an annual rate of 0.8 percent. Business investment in equipment and software increased by 12 percent, the fourth consecutive quarter of solid growth, indicating continued expansion of investments by private firms. Inventory investment contributed 1.4 percentage points to GDP growth, slightly less than the average in the last four quarters. Residential investment, however, declined.

Given the depth and severity of the recession, considerable work remains before our economy is fully recovered. Therefore, it is essential that we take the additional targeted actions that the President has recommended to further stimulate growth and job creation, such as extending tax cuts for the middle class, investing in our infrastructure, providing tax incentives to encourage businesses to invest here at home, and promoting exports abroad.

Austan Goolsbee is the Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers

new dictionary entry for clueless

2010-10-24T20:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20020296-503544.html

Christine O'Donnell Slams Media, Defends Views on Church-State Separation

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In an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" on Thursday, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell defended comments she made questioning the notion of the separation of church and state in the First Amendment. She also said she thought she "got the better of" Democratic rival Chris Coons in the Tuesday morning debate where she made the comments.

"It's really funny the way that the media reports things," O'Donnell said, in an interview with ABC's Jonathan Karl. "After the debate, my team and I, we were literally high-fiving each other... thinking that we had exposed [that Coons] doesn't know the First Amendment. And then when we read the reports that said the opposite we were all like 'what?!'"

Critical Contests: CBS News Election 2010 Race Ratings

See all the Ratings for Senate, House and Governors in an Interactive Map

"I do think I got the better of him," O'Donnell added, citing that when she asked Coons to name the "five freedoms" of the First Amendment, "he could not."

O'Donnell and Coons faced off on Tuesday in a heated debate at Delaware's Widener School of Law, and O'Donnell raised eyebrows when she challenged Coons on his assertion that the Constitution delineates the separation of church and state.

"Let me just clarify: You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?" O'Donnell said during the Tuesday debate.

When pressed during the Thursday interview to clarify her position on the separation of church and state, O'Donnell cited the language of the Constitution.

"Well I think it says exactly what it says: that the government will not create - will not dictate - that every American has to believe a certain way, but it won't do anything to prevent the free exercise thereof," she said.

The controversial Tea Party candidate also made a plea for support from Republican Party leadership during the interview. "This is a call-out to them," O'Donnell said, adding that when she approached the party for help, "they said that if we close the gap in the polls... and, you know, and that's a shame."

MORE Newt LIES-Fact Check: Obama 'less' press conferences 'than any recent president'?

2010-10-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

Fact Check: Obama 'less' press conferences 'than any recent president'?: "

Newt Gingrich this past week said the following, per NBC's John Boxley, about Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R) not speaking to the press.

'I think she should have a press conference at least as often as President Obama...check how often President Obama has had real press conferences, very very seldom, less than any recent president.'

So First Read did check.

First, a note about accessibility. President Obama went through one of the longest primaries in American history. Democrats had about 40 debates, including the three for the presidential general election. That's not including the various question-and-answer sessions at the back of campaign planes. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and most of the others who ran in 2008 were far more vetted and questioned than Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, Christine O'Donnell, or Sarah Palin, for that matter, whom the press had just two-plus months to question before the general election.

Regarding his time in office, President Obama, through Sept. 10, 2010, has held 36 press conferences (15 solo and 21 joint), according to data compiled by Dr. Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University. Obama has held 67 short question-and-answer sessions, 216 interviews and 820 addresses and remarks.

He has averaged about two press conferences per month. Where does that rank when it comes to 'any recent president?'

It's slightly less than former President George W. Bush, who average 2.2 per month over eight years; it's the same as former President Clinton, who also averaged 2.0 per month; and four times as many as former President Reagan, who held just an average of 0.5 per month. In fact, Obama in less than two years, has given just 10 fewer total press conferences than Reagan did in eight years (36 vs. 46).

President George H.W. Bush gave an average of 3.0 per month; Carter just 1.2 a month; Ford 1.3; Nixon 0.6; Johnson 2.2; Kennedy 1.9; Eisenhower 2.0; Truman 3.4; Hoover 5.6; Coolidge 7.8; Wilson 1.7.

The most press conferences by a president -- by far -- was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who held 1,020, or an average of seven per month.

As far as strictly solo press conferences, President Obama has given two fewer than President George W. Bush did in his first four years (15 vs. 17). President Bush gave 33 in his second term. President Clinton gave 44 in his first terms and 18 in his second term. H.W. Bush gave 84 solo in four years. President Reagan gave 27 solo in his first term, and 19 solo in his second. President Carter gave 59.

President Obama has already given more interviews to reporters than any of his immediate predecessors. He's given 216 interviews; President George W. Bush gave just 76 in eight years; President Clinton gave 82; George H.W. Bush gave 87. President Obama's addresses and remarks are already more than H.W. Bush (625), and almost as many as W. Bush (908) and almost as many as Clinton (837)."

10 Ways Our Economic Policies Benefit Women

2010-10-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

10 Ways Our Economic Policies Benefit Women: "

Today, the National Economic Council released a report on how the Obama administration’s economic policies address the challenges facing American women, both in the tough economic times we’re going through now and in the long term. From day one, the President has focused on laying the foundation for economic growth that creates good jobs for all Americans -- many of these policies have been particularly important for women.

Here are 10 ways the Administration’s policies benefit women:

1. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill the President signed, ensures fair treatment in the workplace.

President Barack Obama signs into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in the East Room of the White House.

2. The Paycheck Fairness Act builds on the Ledbetter Act to ensure equal pay for an equal day’s work. President Obama strongly supports the Act and has urged the Senate to act swiftly so that he can sign it into law.

3. SBA Recovery Act loans make it easier for women to grow their businesses and create jobs. More than 12,000 SBA Recovery Act loans have driven $3 billion in loans to women small business owners.
4. Wall Street reform helps women make smart financial choices by empowering women through financial education and financial literacy. This legislation ends predatory practices, simplifies credit card bills, stops hidden fees and unfair rate hikes, and sets up a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to enforce the toughest financial protections in history.

5. The Affordable Care Act addresses women’s unique health care needs. Health Care reform protects women from insurance company abuses, makes coverage more affordable, and makes preventive care like mammograms, neonatal care, and newborn carefree under all new plans.

Palin: Anew career as a bad comedienne

2010-10-11T22:38:00.000-07:00

Palin: Tea Party not 'extreme,' but 'voice of reason': "

From NBC's John Boxley and Domenico Montanaro
SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- Sarah Palin challenged the notion that the Tea Party is extreme in a speech here Saturday.

'We are not the extreme ones,' she said at the Patriotic Gala Celebration. 'We are the voice of reason.'Palin stressed that the election is about the little guy, which is what she claims the Tea Party is all about.

'The little guys all across America have risen up,' she said, 'and the 'Mama Grizzlies' are starting to growl. We are going to protect our young, we are going to protect the next generation of Americans, so the Mama Grizzlies are growling, we are rising up on our hind legs and saying no, we are going to change course, we need that real hope, we need that real change.'

Praising the Tea Party, Palin said, 'The Tea Party is a beautiful movement. It's held both sides of the aisle accountable, and both parts of the GOP and the Democrat machine, they don't know what to do with the Tea Party America.'

Listening to Palin speak, it certainly sounded like the former Alaska governor is in no hurry to return to public office. She's enjoying the chance to speak her mind.

'I get to say some things that some of you guys can't say,' she said, 'because I have no title, I have no uniform, I have no office. It's Todd and me -- I get to say what I feel....'

And it was vintage Palin, saying everyone who voted for the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda 'must be fired.'

'We need to take back the gavel from Nancy Pelosi,' Palin said. 'We're going to get this country back on the right track no matter what it takes. We will do it.'

And, of course, she took on the media: ''We have the media here tonight, and its never smart to pick a fight with those who buy ink by the barrelful, but what the heck. When the 'Lamestream Media' just doesn't get it, and if they don't believe what your message is, so they want to belittle you and treat you with much disdain; they can do that to me, that is fine, because I know truth, and I am fine with the political shots they take.'

One Week Later, Nearly 2,000 Small Businesses Approved for SBA Loans Due to Jobs Act

2010-10-06T21:45:00.000-07:00

One Week Later, Nearly 2,000 Small Businesses Approved for SBA Loans Due to Jobs Act: "

Late yesterday, just a week after President Obama signed the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, nearly 2,000 small business owners who had been waiting for SBA-backed loans had been approved and will soon have those loan funds – totaling nearly $1 billion – in hand. That’s a quick turnaround, and it’s an example of this Administration’s deep commitment to giving entrepreneurs and small business owners the support they need to grow and create jobs.

Here’s how we made it happen.

After the Recovery Act passed last year, SBA increased the guarantee and reduced the fees in our top two loan programs. That two-part formula worked. We saw a significant rebound in SBA lending, helping unlock much-needed capital for small businesses. All told, SBA took just $680 million in taxpayer dollars and turned it into nearly $30 billion in lending support to about 70,000 small businesses. That’s a strong bang for the taxpayer buck.

Wireless Voice Calls are Obsolete

2010-10-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

Wireless Voice Calls are Obsolete: "Is it just me, or have cellphones become useless for voice conversations? To be fair, cellphones do work in limited situations, such as: "I WILL BE THERE IN TEN MINUTES! TEN MINUTES! I SAID I WILL BE THERE IN TEN MINUTES! HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME? FUCK THIS STUPID PHONE, I'LL TEXT YOU! AND I'M DRIVING, SO I MIGHT BE DEAD IN TEN MINUTES!"

Generally speaking, a cellphone conversation is a frustrating failure if any of these conditions is true.

1. You have a weak signal.

2. You are using an earpiece or headset.

3. The other person has a weak signal.

4. The other person is using an earpiece or headset.

5. The other person has a cell phone (delay problem).

6. You are multitasking and can't think.

7. The other person is multitasking and can't think.

8. You are in a noisy environment, such as Earth.

9. The other person is in a noisy environment, such as Earth.

10. You get another call you have to take.

11. The other person gets another call he has to take.

12. You have a dying battery.

13. You have a phone that drops calls for no good reason.

14. The other person has a phone that drops calls for no good reason.

15. The other person has a dying battery.

16. You are in a restaurant and you're not a jerk.

17. The other person is in a restaurant and isn't a jerk.

18. There is a child within 100 yards of you.

19. There is a child within 100 yards of the other person.

Yes, that covers almost every situation. And the list goes on. In my life, voice calls using cellphones fail more often than they succeed, and the situation is getting worse. There was a time when most cellphone calls involved a land line on the other end, so at least one end of the conversation was likely to be trouble-free. Now most of the calls I fantasize about making would be between my cellphone and another cellphone. I don't like those odds. So I send text messages instead.

For important calls, I use a land line that serves as my fax line. If I receive a call on my cellphone, I try to keep it short, or I call back from my fax line. Or I beg for an email that gives me whatever information I want. My situation is worse than most because I have an iPhone, and it decides on its own when my calls are done, no matter how strong the signal is. (I suspect that my ear is using the touchscreen without authorization from my brain.)

While voice calling is getting worse, texting is becoming easier. More smartphones have full keyboards. And texting isn't the huge inconvenience that phone calls are. I explained in another post that all phone calls have a victim, i.e. the person receiving the call. You're ALWAYS in the middle of doing something else when someone calls to yack. The worst offenders are the people in cars who don't have satellite radio, or books on tape, and they're just calling to make their drive less boring.

Texting is way better. It can fill in all of the tiny spaces in life while you're waiting for something else to happen and a voice call would be too large for the space. When I get a text alert, it always makes me happy, even before I read the message. When my phone rings, I think, Uh-oh, what fresh hell is this?

Another great advantage of texting is that it thwarts bores. Bores love voice conversations. In a pinch, they will send you overlong emails. But texting forces boring people to be brief. How great is that?

In a situation in which both I and the other person have smartphones, I always choose texting over a voice call. In time, everyone with whom I want to communicate outside of a business context will have a smartphone, and I'll never need to make a cellphone-to-cellphone call again. Kids are already there. Wireless voice calls are dinosaurs, and that big shadow you see is a meteor.

Robert Reich: The Defining Issue: Who Should Get the Tax Cut -- The Rich or Everyone Else?

2010-09-19T20:35:00.000-07:00

Robert Reich: The Defining Issue: Who Should Get the Tax Cut -- The Rich or Everyone Else?: "

Who deserves a tax cut more: the top 2 percent -- whose wages and benefits are higher than ever, and among whose ranks are the CEOs and Wall Street mavens whose antics have sliced jobs and wages and nearly destroyed the American economy -- or the rest of us?

Not a bad issue for Democrats to run on this fall, or in 2012.Republicans are hell bent on demanding an extension of the Bush tax cut for their patrons at the top, or else they'll pull the plug on tax cuts for the middle class. This is a gift for the Democrats. But before this can be a defining election issue in the midterms, Democrats have to bring it to a vote. And they've got to do it in the next few weeks, not wait until a lame-duck session after Election Day.

Plus, they have to stick together (Ben Nelson, are you hearing me? House blue-dogs, do you read me? Peter Orszag, will you get some sense?)

Not only is this smart politics. It's smart economics.
The rich spend a far smaller portion of their money than anyone else because, hey, they're rich. That means continuing the Bush tax cut for them wouldn't stimulate much demand or create many jobs.
But it would blow a giant hole in the budget -- $36 billion next year, $700 billion over ten years. Millionaire households would get a windfall of $31 billion next year alone.And the Republican charge that restoring the Clinton tax rates for the rich would hurt the economy -- because it would reduce the 'incentives' of the rich (including the richest small business owners) to create jobs -- is ludicrous.

Under Bill Clinton and his tax rates, the economy roared. It created 22 million jobs.

By contrast, during George Bush's 8 years, commencing with his big 2001 tax cut, the economy created only 8 million jobs. And as the new Census data show, nothing trickled down. In fact, the middle class families did far worse after the Bush tax cut. Between 2001 and 2007 -- even before we were plunged into the Great Recession -- the median wage dropped.

It's an issue that could also be used to expose the giant chasm that's opened between the rich and everyone else -- aided and abetted by Republican policies. As I've noted before, in the late 1970s, the top 1 percent got 9 percent of total national income. By 2007, the top 1 percent got almost a quarter of total national income.

These figures don't even count in taxes. The $1.3 trillion Bush tax cut of 2001 was a huge windfall for people earning over $500,000 a year. They got about 40 percent of its benefits. The Bush tax cut of 2003 was even better for high rollers. Those with net incomes of about $1 million got an average tax cut of $90,000 a year. Yet taxes on the typical middle-income family dropped just $217. Many lower-income families, who still paid payroll taxes, got nothing back at all.

And, again, nothing trickled down.

As I've emphasized, the U.S. economy has suffered mightily from the middle class's lack of purchasing power, while most of the economic gains have gone to the top. (The crisis was masked for years by women moving into paid work, everyone working longer hours, and, more recently, the middle class going into deep debt -- but all those coping mechanisms are now exhausted.) The great challenge ahead is to widen the circle of prosperity so the middle class once again has the capacity to keep the economy going.

In other words, this is the right issue. It's the right time. It allows Democrats to explain what the Bush tax cuts really did, why supply-side economics is bogus, and the economic challenge ahead.
Even if Democrats feel they have to respond to the Republican charge that taxes shouldn't be raised on anyone when the employment rate is 9.6 percent, they have a powerful fallback: Extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone through 2011, then end them for the rich while making them permanent for the middle class.

Get it, Democrats? Please don't blow it this time.

This post originally appeared at robertreich.org
"

Fighting to Protect Consumers

2010-09-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

Fighting to Protect Consumers: "

Over the past several weeks, the President and I have had extensive conversations about the vital importance of consumer financial protection.

The President asked me, and I enthusiastically agreed, to serve as an Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He has also asked me to take on the job to get the new CFPB started—right now. The President and I are committed to the same vision on CFPB, and I am confident that I will have the tools I need to get the job done.

President Obama understands the importance of leveling the playing field again for families and creating protections that work not just for the wealthy or connected, but for every American. The new consumer bureau is based on a pretty simple idea: people ought to be able to read their credit card and mortgage contracts and know the deal. They shouldn’t learn about an unfair rule or practice only when it bites them—way too late for them to do anything about it. The new law creates a chance to put a tough cop on the beat and provide real accountability and oversight of the consumer credit market. The time for hiding tricks and traps in the fine print is over. This new bureau is based on the simple idea that if the playing field is level and families can see what’s going on, they will have better tools to make better choices.

If the CFPB can succeed at leveling the playing field, we can go a long way toward repairing a gaping hole in the budgets of millions of families. But nobody has ever thought or argued that the consumer bureau can fix everything. Lost jobs, stagnant incomes, rising costs for college, dwindling retirement savings—there’s a lot of work to be done.

When she was 16, my grandmother, Hannie Reed, drove a wagon in the Oklahoma land rush. Her mother had died, so she was up front with her little brothers and sisters bouncing around in the back. When I was growing up, she talked about life on the prairie, about marrying my grandfather and making a living building one-room schoolhouses, about getting wiped out in the Great Depression. She was hit with hard challenges throughout her life, but the moral of her stories was always the same: she would solve her problems one at a time by pulling up her socks and getting to work.

It’s time for all of us to pull up our socks and get to work.

Let's Stop Torturing Facts and Start Working Together

2010-09-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

Let's Stop Torturing Facts and Start Working Together: "

Lindsay Graham has often shown that he’s fully capable of being reasonable and bipartisan. Which made it particularly disappointing to see his misleading use of numbers yesterday.

On Meet the Press, the Senator, against a wave of evidence to the contrary, argued that the Recovery Act has been “an absolute disaster” and called for cancelling “a lot” of what’s left in the bill (transcript here).

His evidence for this claim: “...we’ve lost two-and-a-half million jobs since the stimulus passed.”

Take a look at the figure below and you’ll see why this is so misleading. He’s conflating two periods of very different employment trends. In the first, when his team’s policies dominated, employment hemorrhaged at nightmarish rates. In the second, when the Recovery Act was on the scene, job losses in the private sector began to diminish, and this year, turned positive.

Mark Green: 'But' Nothing: Why the Right to Build a Mosque Trumps the "Heckler's Veto"

2010-08-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

Mark Green: 'But' Nothing: Why the Right to Build a Mosque Trumps the "Heckler's Veto": "

Many of those opposed to the proposed Islamic cultural center (and mosque within) say they're all for religious freedom -- and then comes the 'but.' But not Islam. But not there. But not if it offends 9/11 families.

'But' is un-American.

The entire point of the First Amendment's protections of freedom of speech, assembly and religion is that these rights can't be restricted based on their substance. Of course there are 'time, place and manner' restrictions on speech and prayer -- so people are not entitled to talk at 120 decibels in a residential neighborhood no matter their religion or views. Zoning laws can prohibit incompatible or dangerous activities, like a liquor store near a school. And obviously government can punish the bad conduct of anyone claiming to act in the name of a religion or group: For example, would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad or anyone conspiring with him.
What we cannot do, however, is condition speech or religion based on its content. That's the bedrock of the First Amendment.
Going further, courts have ruled against what's called the 'heckler's veto.' Whether a speaker is, say, for or against birthright citizenship, an audience member cannot shout him or her down; otherwise, speech would be contingent on the whim of any mob or critic. So, as painful as it was, our laws permitted Nazis to march though a community of Holocaust survivors near Skokie, Illinois in 1978.
Which brings us back to 'but.'

The opponents of the Park51 project claim this is not about rights -- it's about the difference between 'right and wrong.'

However, no group or momentary majority can be allowed to veto another's right, as Judge Vaughn Walker ruled in the protracted battle over same-sex marriage in California. If the proposed Islamic center is effectively shouted down because it's unpopular or the murderous acts of a few are attributed to an entire religion, then why can't community sentiment stop any religion with some members who've done awful things? 'But' is the exception that swallows the first amendment's rule.
Nor can there be a 'compromise' because of 9/11. Having been a city-wide official on that calamitous day, I am sensitive to the sensibilities of victims' families; they are sincere and upset. But while buildings fell that morning, our system of constitutional law did not. In America, legal questions are decided by juries or judges, not aggrieved parties.
But -- there's that word again -- what about 'hallowed ground'? Beyond the unarguable reality that the proposed center is north and out of sight of Ground Zero, even that sacred site now has a huge, new commercial building being erected on its footprint. The city could have tried to make the whole area a cemetery to commemorate that day and those deaths. But by rebuilding, Mayor Bloomberg -- and the city as a whole -- instead properly chose to focus on the future of lower Manhattan, not its past.

Frustrated that the law and the facts are not on their side, many prominent conservatives are now resorting to absurd analogies and hysterical assertions. Islam and this planned mosque, however, are not comparable to Nazis, Pearl Harbor, Saudi Arabia, Carmelite nuns at Auschwitz, or liquor stores near schools. When Fox's Glenn Beck declares that after 'you've killed 3000 people, you're going to now build your mosque?', Dick Morris concludes that it will be 'a command center for terrorism', and Sean Hannity nightly attempts to 'Sherrod' the Imam behind it with similar out-of-context attacks, they're all just assuming that those behind the mosque are terrorists. Any serious evidence? None of them has yet to explain why Bush 41's State Department (and now Obama's) chose to send Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to Arab countries because, as a New York Times profile last Sunday documented, his entire life has been as a bridge-building moderate Muslim between East and West.

(That eloquent accelerant, columnist Charles Krauthammer, on Friday finally blamed, of course, 'liberals' for playing the bigotry card. It's a verbal gimmick to blame the mirror for reflecting reality --if it's intolerant to point out intolerance, then civil rights workers in the '60s were apparently the racists.)

Here's the deal -- because of the values of the very first amendment, Fox News and Islam should both be allowed to say and pray as they wish without getting permission from offended dissenters. Curiously, they're alike in that both have about three million American followers as well as lots of angry critics.

Those who have been saying but-not-this-religion now have to be called out for their Muslim McCarthyism. Once again, demagogues and fear-mongers - Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Peter King, Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, Rick Lazio, Rush Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly, Krauthammer, et. al. -- are using guilt-by-association, innuendo, sophistry and sheer lies.

Now as anti-Muslim protests spread around the country far beyond the location of 9/11, two Republicans especially stand out with the potential to shift the axis of debate. With the credibility to have a Nixon-to-China moment.

One is Rupert Murdoch. He has the editorial choice of allowing Fox's slanderous attacks to continue or establishing a more fair and balanced approach that could help calm the hysteria. The other is George W. Bush, who as the President attacking two Muslim nations made clear that America was fighting al Qaeda, not all of Islam. This is the perfect moment for them to speak out and remind everyone why the new World Trade building at Ground Zero will be exactly 1776 feet tall.

Originally posted at NYDailyNews.com

Geoffrey Dunn: AFL-CIO President Compares Palin to Joe McCarthy

2010-08-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

Geoffrey Dunn: AFL-CIO President Compares Palin to Joe McCarthy: "

Two years ago this week, at the biennial convention of the Alaska AFL-CIO in Anchorage, then-Governor Sarah Palin was whisked off by her husband to Ted Stevens International Airport for a flight to Arizona, where Palin met, first with senior advisers to Republican presidential nominee John McCain, and finally McCain himself, in a haphazard, slipshod vetting process that resulted in her being selected as McCain's running mate.

Palin was a keynote speaker at the Alaska convention in 2008 and a darling of union leadership, as she used the AFL-CIO convention for a photo-op to sign House Bill 3001, which granted an exclusive pipeline license to Canadian-based TransCanada Corp. -- an agreement which promised, at least on paper, a barrelful of union jobs in the Last Frontier.

Two years later, after her failed bid for the vice-presidency and her abandoned governorship, Palin is a darling no more. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka -- whose speech attacking racism in the 2008 presidential campaign went viral on Youtube -- went after Palin directly today in Anchorage, comparing her to the American right-wing demagogue Joe McCarthy and referencing recent comments Palin had made at the Oil Palace in Tyler, Texas, about union 'thugs' and 'waving the Jones Act.'

Palin, of course, responded with yet another hyperbolic and self-serving posting to her Facebook page, thus elevating Trumka's comments to several spins in the nightly news cycle.

Here are some of the highlights of Trumka's remarks about Palin:

What is this crazy magnet that's pulling people to the right? I mean, look at your former governor... Who is she, anyway? Sarah Palin?

She used to have a job, your governor... You knew her... Or thought you did... I know I thought I did. She seemed like a decent person, an outdoorswoman. Her husband's a steelworker. She seemed to take some OK stands for working families.

And then things got weird. After she tied herself to John McCain and they lost, she blew off Alaska. I guess she figured she'd trade up... shoot for a national stage. Alaska was too far from the FOX TV spotlight.
I bet most of you, on a clear day, can see her hypocrisy from your house.
I think Sarah Palin quit so she wouldn't have to be accountable... so she wouldn't have a record that could be scrutinized...
Instead, she's hanging out on cable TV, almost a parody of herself, coming out with conspiracy theories about Obama and his 'death panels... ' Talking about 'the real America.' Talking about building schools in 'our neighboring country of Afghanistan.' Writing speech notes to herself on her hands.

Sometimes -- about Sarah Palin -- you just have to laugh... But it's not really funny. In this charged political environment, her kind of talk gets dangerous. 'Don't retreat... reload' may seem clever, the kind of bull you hear all the time, but put it in context. She's using crosshairs to illustrate targeted legislators. She's on the wrong side of the line there. She's getting close to calling for violence. And some of her fans take that stuff seriously. We've got legislators in America who have been living with death threats since the health care votes.

And down in Tyler, Texas, she's talking about -- and I quote -- 'union thugs.' What? Her husband's a union man. Is she calling him a thug? Sarah Palin ought to know what union men and women are.
Oh, she goes to great pains to talk differently about unions and the working people who belong to them, knowing full well we're one and the same.

But using the term 'union thug.' That's poisonous. There's history behind that rhetoric. That's how bosses and politicians in decades past justified the terrorizing of workers, the murdering of organizers...
To me, it just doesn't seem OK to go where she's going... It sits wrong with me... The Mama Grizzlies, Sarah Palin says, just sense when something's not right. Well... I wonder if those Mama Grizzlies can sense something's just not right with her.

Award-winning writer and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn's book The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power will be published by St. Martin's Press.

Weekly Address: No Corporate Takeover of Our Democracy

2010-08-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

Weekly Address: No Corporate Takeover of Our Democracy: "

The President calls out Republicans for blocking campaign finance reforms that would address the Supreme Court decision opening the floodgates of corporate money into elections.

Click here to see the video.

Chris Weigant: Obama Reframes Mosque Debate

2010-08-17T06:09:00.000-07:00

Chris Weigant: Obama Reframes Mosque Debate: "

President Barack Obama, in a White House Ramadan address last Friday, expressed his thoughts on the 'Ground Zero mosque' debate, and in doing so not only got it exactly right, but also managed to change the debate in a considerable way which few have noticed yet. Because in his comments Friday (and in his off-the-cuff comment the next day), the president refocused the debate from the notion of 'should be allowed' to the question of 'should.' In doing so, Obama elevated the level of the debate for both him and the project's detractors.

The initial controversy over building an Islamic cultural center two and a half blocks away from 'Ground Zero' was cast in the harsh light of 'there oughta be a law' by most of the people who were outraged at the very idea. A mother who lost her child on 9/11 put it thusly: 'I think it's despicable, and I think it's atrocious that anyone would even consider allowing them to build a mosque near the World Trade Center.' Note that 'allowing them to build.' As I said, before the zoning board ruled, the argument was that the government should act, and prevent the mosque from being built. Unfortunately, this would have been impossibly unconstitutional -- the government cannot prevent a mosque from being built there, unless we're all ready to throw the First Amendment in the garbage can. This fact, though, didn't stop those opposed to the idea from demanding that the government 'do something' about the plans to build the mosque (Bill of Rights be damned!).

The entire controversy started from this basic position: the mosque should not be allowed to be built. But Obama has moved the framework of this debate, even though most in the media largely missed it this weekend (preferring to chase the 'news cycle' story about whether he had 'walked his support back' or not, which was pretty ridiculous). Obama showed that the argument is not a simple one, and in fact has two major segments that need to be addressed separately. The first is the question of whether or not the mosque 'should be allowed' to be built. The second is whether it 'should' be built.

It sounds like splitting hairs, which is why the media thought (much to their delight) that they had somehow caught Obama in some sort of contradiction. They hadn't. Obama, Saturday morning, merely separated the two issues for people who hadn't really grasped the implications of what he had said the night before.

Obama, who was (if you'll remember) previously a professor of constitutional law, came out very strongly against any sort of government interference in the decision to build a mosque anywhere that New York City had zoned appropriately. This really shouldn't be all that shocking, as it is truly the only position which can honestly be held in accordance with the Constitution. Any other position is to advocate for enshrining bigotry in our laws -- 'a church may be built here, but not a mosque.' This is, at its core, seriously un-American.

But there is a second issue here, one that Obama addressed in his remarks Saturday. This is the issue of whether a mosque 'should' be built on the site. And that is an issue which is fully open for debate. Even outright bigotry is still an acceptable position on this question, if by 'acceptable' one means 'faithful to our Constitution.' Every citizen is free to argue until they are blue in the face that a mosque should not be built at the site (for whatever their reason), and everyone is free to attempt to convince the imam not to build a mosque there, in any legal way they choose. That is the force of public opinion, and it can indeed be a mighty thing. Public opinion has already led to the imam deciding to include a memorial to the 9/11 victims in the plans, and has convinced him to change the name of the project. Of course, it's a free country, and he could indeed have remained firm and refused to do either -- without having to worry that he would 'not be allowed' to do so by law.

The real news was that Obama chose to insert himself in the debate, of course. Previously, the White House's position was that they had no comment on a 'local issue.' The fervor was even dying down a bit, ever since the planning board had ruled that the project could go forward, except in the right-wing media. Obama (as I heard one breathless reporter describe it this weekend) 'poured gasoline on the fire' by inserting his remarks into the fray.

But I have to say, Obama got this one right. He stood up for a principle, strongly. He didn't care whether public opinion agreed with him or not, because the principle was the important thing. And it's a pretty good principle to be standing up for. His whole speech is worth reading, if you've just heard excerpts (it's a very short speech). Every paragraph consistently says pretty much the same thing: the government does not discriminate on the basis of religion. Here is but one example:

But let me be clear. As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.

Note that 'not be treated differently by their government' phrase. This was Obama's core argument, and it is indeed unshakeable.

The media, apparently, heard a different speech. Or maybe they just didn't take the time to read it or listen to it. Because when Obama pointed out the next day that he wasn't talking about 'the wisdom' of building a mosque there, the media went into feeding-frenzy mode, convinced that Obama was somehow 'walking back' his earlier remarks. He wasn't -- he was clarifying that he had been standing up for a basic constitutional right, and wasn't even addressing the overriding issue about whether it was a good idea or not. Which (again, read his speech) was exactly right.

As I said, this changes the tenor of the debate. Because it is not a contradiction -- or, if it is a contradiction, then it is one shared by many Americans -- to be supportive of the right to build the mosque but also to be against actually building it. A recent poll commissioned by none other than Fox News showed this in stark terms. While 64 percent of the people said it would be wrong to build the mosque there, 61 percent of the same people said the group has the right to build it there.

Rights, though, are thankfully not subject to the whim of the electorate, because they are guaranteed to all. Therefore public opinion polls are largely meaningless when it comes to basic rights. But the appropriateness of the project is another kettle of fish entirely. And it is a subject which while not subject to public opinion, is doubtlessly influenced by public opinion. Even bigoted public opinion.

The entire story, to me at least, seems to be somewhat overblown. There is another mosque a mere two blocks from the site under discussion. Using the logic of the detractors of the new project, this mosque should also probably be moved further away. But I have yet to see anyone advocating this position (although I fully admit, I don't read a whole lot of right-wing opinion, so I could very well be wrong). And -- horror of horrors -- Islamic services are held inside the Pentagon, which was also attacked on 9/11. Using the anti-mosque logic, there should also be loud cries to ban this worship from the 'hallowed ground' of a 9/11 attack site. So far, I haven't heard any (see previous qualification).There are also dark intimations about the whole project, and the imam in charge of it. The plan is to build a community center -- complete with a movie theater and other secular usage -- with a prayer room in it, two and a half blocks away from the World Trade Center site.

I have to digress here for a moment, because one tangent that bugs me is the phrase that detractors have latched upon for describing the 'hallowed ground' they are talking about: 'in the shadow of Ground Zero.' This is a really stupid phrase. I will give credit for the poetic nature of the imagery, but when actually examined, this concept is truly laughable. First off, 'Ground Zero' is a hole in the ground. Holes in the ground do not cast shadows, unless you count the shadows actually cast inside the hole. Literally, the phrase is meaningless. But even taking it at the intended meaning: 'in the shadow that used to be there from the World Trade Center twin towers,' it's still pretty silly. Because if that truly was the yardstick being used here, then we'd have to draw an arc (a little more than a half-circle) around the World Trade Center site, with the radius of the arc being dependent on what angle the sun reaches during the Winter Solstice (when the shadow's sweep would be greatest). I'm no civil engineer, so I cannot tell you how many blocks of Manhattan this would encompass, but the reason it's a silly metric to use is that the arc would only cut to the east, north, and west. Meaning you could build right next door to the site -- to the south -- and not be caught 'in the shadow' of any building built there.

But, to come out of the shadows (as it were), opponents of the project have been casting similar darkness upon Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, with all sorts of rumors and unfounded suspicions. Here is a fact seldom pointed out in all of this mudslinging -- Rauf has, quite obviously, gone through some background checks with the federal government. According to Hendrick Hertzberg of The New Yorker magazine, 'The F.B.I. tapped [Rauf] to conduct 'sensitivity training' for agents and cops.' He is about to embark on the third trip to the Middle East -- paid for by the American taxpayers -- to talk about religious tolerance in America. As a State Department spokesman said:

Imam Feisal will be traveling to Qatar, Bahrain, and the U.A.E. on a U.S. Government-sponsored trip to the Middle East. He will discuss Muslim life in America and religious tolerance. ... We have about 1,200 of these kinds of programs every year, sending experts on all fields overseas. Last year, we had 52 trips that were specifically focused on religious -- promoting religious tolerance. We will expect to have roughly the same number of programs this year. For Imam Feisal, this will be his third trip under this program. In 2007, he visited Bahrain, Morocco, the U.A.E. and Qatar. And earlier this year in January, he also visited Egypt. So we have a long-term relationship with him. His work on tolerance and religious diversity is well-known and he brings a moderate perspective to foreign audiences on what it's like to be a practicing Muslim in the United States.

Got that? Rauf not only helped the F.B.I. train agents and cops, but he's also participated in a State Department program to promote religious tolerance. And has been doing so for years. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, when sent on the first of these trips, George W. Bush was president.

This doesn't exactly fit in with the rumor and innuendo about the imam from those desperately trying to paint him as some sort of terrorist or terrorist-lover, does it? One assumes that either the F.B.I. or the State Department (or both) have done a full background check on this guy, and he came up squeaky clean. If he hadn't, I simply don't believe he would have been allowed to participate in any sort of official program from either federal department.But no matter where the debate about the 'Ground Zero mosque' goes in the next few weeks, even rumor and innuendo and wild-eyed conspiracy theories can all be seen as part of the normal flow of American public discussion. Even flat-out bigotry. As I said, it's a free country, and every citizen is free to espouse any view they wish.And there is indeed a rational argument, free of bigotry and innuendo, to be made to the imam to convince him not to build at his chosen location. This argument hinges on sensitivity. Disney famously backed down from plans to build a 'historical' theme park right next to a Civil War battlefield, due to overwhelmingly negative public opinion. And, while it didn't happen in our country, religious sensitivities can be taken into account as well, as when a group of nuns decided not to build next to a Nazi death camp, in deference to overwhelming public opinion against the project. I'm not saying I completely buy into the sensitivity argument myself, but it has to be seen as a valid reason to argue that the imam should consider moving his project.This is where the argument now lies -- in the realm of public opinion. Whether based on sensitivity or based on naked fear or hatred of Muslims, this is the arena these arguments will now be debated in. As they should be. Whether the arguments range into religious intolerance or not, they will all be about whether the mosque 'should' be built. Again, as they should be.What Obama managed to do this weekend was to change the whole framework of this debate. Even the critics of the mosque now are beginning to couch their language in phrases like 'well, we're not saying the government should stop it, we're saying the imam should rethink the idea.' This is likely why Obama inserted himself into the debate in the first place. As a constitutional scholar, he felt it was important to make the point that the government should never have the authority to make such a discriminatory decision, because those are the very freedoms we're fighting to protect against enemies who attack us. Saturday, without contradiction, he further pointed out that defending someone's rights is not the equivalent of defending their words or actions. Here is his full quote from Saturday morning:

I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That's what our country is about.

Rather than 'walking his support back' (as the entire media universe gleefully decided), Obama was pointing out the difference between the two concepts. Which is a healthy addition to the discussion. Reasonable people can disagree on the question of whether the mosque 'should' be built, in other words, but it goes against everything this country stands for to try to argue that the mosque 'should not be allowed' to be built by government decree.Personally, I see no contradiction at all. Even if the media read him wrong, President Obama forcefully changed the entire framing of the debate, and in a very healthy direction -- and he did so without interjecting himself into the raging public-opinion debate about whether the project was 'proper' or not. He showed true presidential leadership, and political courage. And now that he has done so, the debate will continue, but it will hopefully continue on a much different level than before.

Chris Weigant blogs at:

Comic for August 11, 2010

2010-08-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

Comic for August 11, 2010: "

The Myth of Idle Recovery Dollars

2010-08-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

The Myth of Idle Recovery Dollars: "

John Boehner wants a lot of people to lose their jobs.

We were awfully surprised to hear Rep. Boehner come out for killing jobs en masse in his own state and district by stopping the Recovery Act on last Sunday’s news shows.

Though we’re sure he didn’t know it, the Congressman is advocating to kill the expansion of the Butler County Community Health Center and bring some of the twenty-five highway projects across the district to a grinding halt. Across the state of Ohio, he said that approximately 4 million working families should get an unexpected cut in their paycheck as the Making Work Pay tax credit disappears, unemployed workers should go without unemployment benefits, and major Ohio road projects like the US-33 Nelsonville Bypass project and the Cleveland Innerbelt Modernization project should be stalled or stopped. Oh, and some of the more than 100 clean energy Recovery projects employing workers across the state should be shut down.

Weekly Address: Medicare Officially Safer After Health Reform

2010-08-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

Weekly Address: Medicare Officially Safer After Health Reform: "

The President discusses a new Medicare Trustees report showing Medicare to be on much stronger footing as a result of the reforms in the Affordable Care Act. In addition, seniors are also already getting help with prescription drug costs when they fall into the infamous “donut hole.”

Click here to see the video.

Jeff Cohen: Colbert 1, U.S. State Department 0

2010-08-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Jeff Cohen: Colbert 1, U.S. State Department 0: "

On last night's Colbert Report, an amazing moment occurred when Stephen Colbert raised a major social issue that U.S. mainstream media assiduously ignore: the huge U.S. prison population. The issue quickly disappeared due to the apparent ignorance of Colbert's guest: Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, in charge of 'Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.'

In a sometimes jokey interview with Posner discussing China's various human rights abuses (including prisoners), Colbert tried to steer the conversation to human rights problems in our own country.

COLBERT: We've actually got more people in prison than China does.

POSNER: Well I'm not sure that's true.
Colbert's assertion is indisputably true. Posner's denial is false. Does the State Department's man in charge of human rights not know the facts?
According to statistics gathered by the authoritative International Centre for Prison Studies in London, the United States has by far the largest prison population in the world: almost 2.3 million people behind bars. China's prison population is second in the world: roughly 1.6 million.

The United States is also number one in the world in its 'prison population rate': 748 inmates per 100,000 citizens. Russia is third. China is tied for 114th.

This is a U.S. human rights problem of enormous proportions. Our bloated prison population has many causes including the 'drug war,' mandatory minimum sentencing, poverty, and racism. And there are corporate profits to be made from 'The Prison-Industrial Complex' -- as independent journalists like Eric Schlosser began documenting a dozen years ago.
Wouldn't it be great to see this issue tackled by some mainstream TV voices . . . other than Stephen Colbert?

Jeff Cohen heads the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Mort Zuckerman Is Not Incompetent

2010-08-01T14:08:00.001-07:00

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Mort Zuckerman Is Not Incompetent: "

Mort Zuckerman's recent opinion piece in the Financial Times, 'Obama needs to stop baiting business,' is a tawdry, sorry spectacle. Paul Krugman's already explained how Zuckerman, the publisher of US News & World Report and the New York Daily News, distorted the President's words with a little Andrew Breitbart-style editing. While Zuckerman's proclivity for truth-twisting isn't a complete surprise, here's what is: If he's not lying about how he and his fellow CEOs are managing their businesses, then he and his friends are also incompetent executives.

In fairness to Zuckerman, let me be clear from the outset: I don't think he's an incompetent executive.

That would mean he's not telling the truth when he says that, for 'employers' -- that is, CEOs like Mort Zuckerman -- 'worries over taxes and increased costs of new regulation are holding back investment and growth.' Here's the implication of that statement: Businesses would hire and invest if not for Democratic policies. They have customers who want to buy, but they won't meet the demand because they're afraid of some hypothetical tax increase or new regulation.

The logic is ridiculous. Zuckerman's saying that corporate executives are refusing to make money because the President scares them. Any executive who misses an opportunity to make money should be fired on the spot.

Zuckerman's reportedly a friend and mentor to Daniel M. Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins. Their 'lack of confidence' didn't prevent Snyder from picking up Donovan McNabb, or Trent 'Silverback' Williams, or new coach Mike Shanahan. They're all big-ticket items. The Redskins - who were my hometown team long enough for me to develop a lifelong Dallas Cowboys allergy - are the second-highest grossing team in football, and I'll bet even a close friendship with Mort Zuckerman won't prevent Snyder from hiring all the vendors he needs to feed the fans.

The climate of fear Zuckerman describes is a hoax. To hear to him tell it, the titans of American enterprise are tremulously quivering in their boardrooms, unable to summon the courage to make money today because of what might happen tomorrow. In the real world, if CEOs really believed they were about to be buried under new taxes and regulations, they'd hire and invest like crazy so they can post as much profit as they can before the Bolsheviks seize the means of production.

Zuckerman's talking points echo those of a recent Fareed Zakaria piece (which we discussed here) in which he Zakaria allegedly interviewed a series of CEOs about the business environment. They all spoke with one voice ... a voice curiously like Fareed Zakaria's ...saying that they, like Zuckerman's cohort, had 'lost confidence' in the President.

Which means that at one point they had confidence in the President. But, where Zakaria's alleged informants remain anonymous, Zuckerman drops a few organizational names: The Business Roundtable, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the National Federation of Independent Business. These are the places where, says Zuckerman, 'disillusion has spread.'

The Business Roundtable and the US Chamber are shills for large corporations - and, in the memorable words of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, 'large corporate America is in very, very, very, very good shape.' It's hard to give much credence to Zuckerman's claims that these groups are 'disillusioned' and have 'lost confidence,' since there's no evidence they had illusions or confidence about Obama in the first place. Zuckerman's allegiance is clearly to these large businesses, too - and to Jamie Dimon, since Zuckerman serves on JP Morgan's National Advisory Board.

By choosing the National Federation of Business (NFIB) to represent smaller employers, Zuckerman decided to select a small business organization that stands to the right of many others. NFIB broke with the Main Street Alliance, a national network of small business groups, over that organization's support for health reform. Polling by groups like Small Business Majority paint a different picture of the business attitude toward Democratic policies. But even NFIB can't maintain the facade Zuckerman would have them maintain. It publishes a monthly 'Optimism Index,' precisely the kind of 'confidence' indicator you would think interests Zuckerman. Despite the NFIB's fierce antigovernment rhetoric, the actual figures in their latest report (July 2010) belies their own argument (and Zuckerman's): Only 12% of respondents based their negative 'expansion outlook' on the political climate, while 43% attributed it to 'economic conditions.'

Ultimately, even the right-wing rhetoricians who summarized the NFIB survey's findings were forced to acknowledge the obvious: 'What businesses need are customers, giving them a reason to hire and make capital expenditures and borrow ...' That's exactly right, the opposite of the conclusion Zuckerman would have us draw about the marketplace. Which raises the question, 'Who put the 'fib' in NFIB?'

What medium and small businesses also need is credit. As the NFIB survey reports, 'regular NFIB borrowers .. (are) at a record low (and) continued to report some difficulties in arranging credit.' That's not surprising, given that bank lending to small business has fallen 9% since TARP began. And Republicans supported by the US Chamber and the Business Roundtable just blocked a $30 billion program to aid lending to small businesses, even though they and not the Zuckerman/Chamber/Roundtable large businesses, are the engines of employment growth.

Zuckerman says some other silly things, too. He says 'America's get-up-and-go entrepreneurial culture outlived the frontier,' even though he represents the kinds of big business/government combines that attacked small businessmen and ranchers on our frontier. If we're all actors in a 21st Century Western, Zuckerman is speaking for the bad guys.

Zuckerman pushes some other old, tired right-wing canards, too. He says it's not fair that people 'lay all the blame for our difficulties on the business community and the financial world. This quite ignores the role of Congress in many areas, most glaringly in forcing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration to make loans to people who could not afford them.' He's saying that the real problem is that liberals forced reluctant financiers to sell mortgages to low-income, unqualified black and brown people. Unfortunately for Zuckerman, the highest rate of mortgage default is for homes worth more than a million dollars. Oops.

There's more silliness, but you get the gist.

Want to know who corporations have really lost confidence in? Banks. The Wall Street Journal reported that 'In the darkest days of late 2008, even large companies faced the threat that they wouldn't be able to do the everyday, short-term borrowing needed to make payrolls and purchase inventory.' One of the reasons companies keep cash on hand is out of fear that could happen again. And it could -- if anti-regulation types like JP Morgan Advisory Board Member Mort Zuckerman get their way.

It's understandable when CEOs like Zuckerman push for the lowest taxes they can get. That's their job. But Zuckerman's s a newspaper and magazine publisher, and he shouldn't be allowed to let journalistic integrity become another one of those 'damaged traditions' he claims to lament. Zuckerman and his fellows mega-corporate leaders seem to have adopted the dishonest, cut-and-paste deception of the extreme Right. They're beginning to sound less like titans of industry and more like Tea Partiers with private jets. Remember, those private jets are purchased with company profits - profits that Zuckerman claims are being left on the table because of a lack of 'confidence,' as in 'I'm scared.' That kind of fear-driven leadership would be nothing more than managerial incompetence.

And I don't think Mort Zuckerman is incompetent.

Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future. This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project. Richard also blogs at A Night Light.

Michael Winship: The Right Manipulates Muslims -- and Boy Scouts

2010-08-01T14:08:00.000-07:00

Michael Winship: The Right Manipulates Muslims -- and Boy Scouts: "

I was never a Boy Scout but I was a helluva Cub Scout.

Pack 30, First Congregational Church. I rose through the ranks: Bobcat, Wolf, Bear, Lion. I accumulated Gold and Silver Arrow Points, the Cubs' junior varsity version of merit badges. My mom was a Cub Scout den mother and spent a lot of time teaching fake Indian campfire songs and decorating various arts and crafts with poster paint.But when the time came to transfer to the big guys, the Boy Scouts, I saw years of knot tying and helping little old ladies across the street ahead of me and opted not to re-up. Nonetheless, I feel my time served qualifies me to have an opinion about President Obama not appearing in person at this week's National Scout Jamboree in Caroline County, Virginia.

The Jamboree is a gathering of the clans that takes place every five years or so and this year's is especially significant as 2010 marks the centennial of the scouting movement in the United States. Congratulations. The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) is a wonderful organization.Truly.But the right wing of this country, with the aid of Fox News and other media outlets, has opted to ignore many of the qualities one usually associates with a good scout -- trustworthiness, honesty and especially cleanliness -- to sling mud at the president for not making a personal appearance at the Jamboree. Instead, he videotaped a message for the lads.

Not exactly a sin on the order of massive oil spills or ethnic purification. But to hear conservative commentators you'd think he had at the very least used the flag to buff Air Force One. All of this complicated by the fact that the president came to New York instead for some fundraisers and an appearance on The View.

'It's unfortunate that President Obama didn't take the time to promote the Boy Scouts this week, but they should be able to thrive, as they have for the past 100 years, without him.' So sniffed Eagle Scout Nik Nelson, writing in The Weekly Standard, where he's an intern.

What these folks fail to mention is that President Obama met with a group of scouts and their leaders just a little more than two eeks ago. In the Oval Office. In fact, the president does so every year, but this year, special attention was given to the centennial.

As Scouting Magazine's official blog reported, 'During the White House meeting, the president and the BSA delegation shared their mutual goals for addressing key concerns for our nation's youth: healthy living, service to the community, and environmental stewardship.'

Admitting this, of course, would mess with the conservative narrative. Nor, it turns out, is this the first time that elements of the right have shamelessly tried to use the Boy Scouts, of all organizations, to impugn the Obama White House. A whispering campaign via e-mail (in cyberspace, no one can hear you scream) alleged that unlike his predecessors the president has refused to sign Eagle Scout certificates. As it turns out, there was a gap between the Bush and Obama presidencies when blank certificates were sent out.

But, as the debunking website www.snopes.com reports, 'Production of new Eagle Scout certificates bearing President Obama's signature... got underway in late 2009 for distribution to Scouts who obtained Eagle rank in Spring 2010. President Obama has also mailed over 13,000 personal letters of congratulation to individual Eagle Scouts, including a September 2009 case in which every single one of the five most senior members of Troop 182 in Palatine, Illinois, earned eagle rank.'

Now all of this would be simply silly if not for the fact that this is the pattern: find a bright, shining lie, an often trivial issue, reshape it to your agenda of attack and fear, distort and dissemble, bang it like a drum to rouse the media circus and distract the public - and its public servants -- from the critical work necessary to survive as a republic.

The Shirley Sherrod debacle at the Department of Agriculture last week is just one example. The current fight over building an Islamic 'mosque' near (not 'at') Ground Zero here in Manhattan is another and perhaps the loudest.

Once again, downtown New Yorkers are faced with outsiders telling us our business. Newt Gingrich: 'There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.' Sarah Palin: 'Many Americans, myself included, feel it would be an intolerable and tragic mistake to allow such a project sponsored by such an individual to go forward on such hallowed ground. This is nothing close to 'religious intolerance.' It's just common decency.'
But as developer Sharif El-Gamal told Jordana Horn of The Jerusalem Post, 'Those aren't my neighbors, my friends or my New Yorkers. A vocal minority have come out to amplify their own agendas of hate and bigotry that have nothing to do with my project.' He notes, too, as have many others, that calling it a mosque is an exaggeration. 'There will be a mosque component, which will be a separate not-for-profit component of the project,' Gamal said. 'It's going to be a small component in a community center, just like the 92nd Street Y has a synagogue.'
This is not to deny the emotions that always will be stirred by 9/11, especially by the friends and families of those who died there, but as Padraic O'Hare, director of the Merrimack College's Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations at Merrimack College, wrote in The Washington Post, 'Build a house which nurtures and cultivates less wounded, less ego-driven and more just and peaceful Muslims, people of real and healthy prayerfulness? Hand me the shovel.'
Meanwhile, as the citizenry has its attention diverted by xenophobic anti-Muslim harangues, on Thursday night, Republicans in Congress killed the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act to help emergency workers and others near Ground Zero. As the New York Daily News reported, the bill 'would spend $3.2 billion on health care over the next 10 years for people sickened from their exposure to the toxic smoke and debris of the shattered World Trade Center. It would spend another $4.2 billion to compensate victims over that span, and make another $4.2 billion in compensation available for the next 11 years.'

GOP members called it a 'slush fund.' Is there a merit badge for classy?

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.

Doonesbury 7/30/2010 - The truth!

2010-07-31T10:23:00.000-07:00

Doonesbury 7/30/2010: "

"

Linda Bergthold: Your Health Insurance Will NOT Be Taxed Next Year

2010-07-11T21:34:00.000-07:00

Linda Bergthold: Your Health Insurance Will NOT Be Taxed Next Year: "

There is another email making the rounds that claims that the new health reform law requires that you pay taxes on your employer-sponsored health insurance. It's not true. Politifact rates this email 'pants on fire' and Snopes also rates this 'false.'

The email says the following:

Starting in 2011--next year--the W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are provided. It doesn't matter if you're retired. Your gross income WILL go up by the amount of insurance your employer paid for. So you'll be required to pay taxes on a larger sum of money that you actually received. Take the tax form you just finished for 2009 and see what $15,000.00 or $20,000.00 additional gross income does to your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year. For many it puts you into a much higher bracket. This is how the government is going to buy insurance for fifteen (15) percent that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases, but it's not really a 'tax increase' as such, it a redefinition of your taxable income.

Politifact explains why this is not true about as well as anything I could write, including the following explanation (although Politifact does acknowledge that there is one piece of the email that is accurate):

The chain e-mail is correct that employers will be required to start listing the cost of insurance. The requirement starts for the tax year 2011, so employees will see it on the W-2s they receive in 2012.

But that amount will not be taxed. Current law excludes health insurance from taxable income, and there's nothing in the health care law that changes that.

Why is this provision in the law? It is there to assist the IRS in determining who has health insurance and who does not, because when health reform is fully implemented, there will be penalties for people who do not have health insurance and increased taxes starting in 2018 for the so-called 'cadillac' plans -- plans that have a value above $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for family policies

Requiring employers to report the value of the health insurance they provide employees is not a bad idea, by the way. Most people have little idea how much their employer contributes, because they pay only a portion of the premium -- usually around 20 to 30%. The W2 will make it clear just what the value of that insurance is to the employee.

If you want an excellent summary of the provisions of the new law, go to the Kaiser Family Foundation (no relation to Kaiser health plans) website and look at the section on 'new taxes.' As mentioned above, employer provided health insurance is NOT taxable and the law does NOT change that provision.

There are no fewer than 4,250 'hits' on Google related to the key words 'HR3590 and 2011 W 2 forms'. Most of these sites repeat the misrepresentation of this provision in exactly the same words as the original email. Few sites question the accuracy of the information and most are fairly hysterical about it. In fact, I was only able to make it through 8 pages of the Google search before I gave up on websites such as well regulated American militias, swamp bubbles, duck south, and divorce forum. So if you receive this email or hear about it -- pass along the accurate information!

Weekly Address: Help for Vets with PTSD

2010-07-10T20:28:00.000-07:00

Weekly Address: Help for Vets with PTSD: "

President Obama announces that the Department of Veterans Affairs, led by Secretary Shinseki, will begin making it easier for veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to receive the benefits and treatment they need.

Click here to see the video.

Michael Winship: This Fourth of July, Celebrate 1776 -- The Movie

2010-07-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

Michael Winship: This Fourth of July, Celebrate 1776 -- The Movie: "

As we commemorate the Fourth of July, one of the joys -- and there are many -- of life in these United States is that you never know what the hell we, the people, will say next.

There's the delightful teenage girl in Montclair, New Jersey, who when informed this week that the nice married couple nearby had been arrested as Russian intelligence agents, joked to The New York Times, 'They couldn't have been spies. Look what she did with the hydrangeas.'
On the other end of the comedy spectrum there's House minority leader John Boehner, who scoffingly told the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that financial reform was akin to 'killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.' Yep, the bank-fueled economic meltdown that created those 8 million U.S. job losses and $17 trillion in lost retirement savings and net worth was one heck of an anthill. Good one, John.
But one remark that really floored me occurred last week when I was interviewing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski before an audience at the Silverdocs documentary film festival just outside Washington, DC. At the end of the conversation, which covered everything from net neutrality and broadband access to the fate of investigative journalism in cyberspace, we took questions from the audience. One gentleman had several brief policy questions and then, of all things, asked Genachowski to name his favorite movie.
'1776,' the chairman instantly replied, with Fiddler on the Roof a close second.

Yes, 1776, the film version of the Broadway musical comedy by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone that turned the signing of the Declaration of Independence into a song-filled romp through eighteenth century Philadelphia. Ben Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson even dance down a staircase in Independence Hall.

You could have knocked me over with a quill when Genachowski said it. But truth be told, 1776 is a favorite of mine as well. I wouldn't rank it anywhere near such greats as Casablanca or Chinatown or The Godfather or Some Like It Hot and The Thin Man (to name but a few), but I saw the movie when it first came out in 1972, still tune it in when it pops up on cable and have even seen a couple of staged revivals of the original play, one at a dinner theater in Maryland where between scenes the actors playing delegates of the Continental Congress served up prime rib and strawberry shortcake.
Yes, it's corny; many of the jokes are groaners and some of the lyrics edge toward crossing that Spinal Tap fine line between stupid and clever. But there's something deeply stirring about seeing the Founding Fathers as human beings, their foibles broadly drawn, their desire for freedom duking it out against prejudice, self-interest and resistance to change.

'What's so terrible about being called an Englishman?' Continental Congress delegate John Dickinson asks Benjamin Franklin. ''The English don't seem to mind.'
'Nor would I,' Franklin replies, 'were I given the full rights of an Englishman. But to call me one without those rights is like calling an ox a bull. He's thankful for the honor, but he'd much rather have restored what's rightfully his.'

In some ways, this sparkly paean to patriotism is a subversive little hand grenade, its liberal politics woven into the plot at a time when Richard Nixon was still in the White House. In an exchange that stings even more now than it did then, John Hancock tells John Dickinson, 'Fortunately there are not enough men of property in America to dictate policy,' and Dickinson replies, 'Perhaps not. But don't forget that most men without property would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich, than face the reality of being poor.'

When the movie version was released its producer, Jack Warner -- allegedly at the behest of Nixon -- removed a song, 'Cool, Cool Considerate Men,' sung by loyalist, conservative delegates who smugly shout, 'We have land, cash in hand, self-command, future planned!' According to 1776 writer Peter Stone, 'The opponents of independence were very much involved in commerce and profits, so they were very much allied to modern conservatives. Nixon didn't want Americans to be reminded of this as he faced re-election in 1972, and the country was preparing to celebrate it's bicentennial. I think that's why he hated the song, and why Jack Warner took it out.'

Luckily, the missing footage was found and has been restored to the version we see today on TV and DVD.

1776 is a reminder that the embrace of the status quo in the face of revolutionary ideas is nothing new. Nor is bloody legislative compromise or our ongoing frustration over a Congress mired in petty squabbling, unable to take action.

At the beginning of the story, John Adams sings, 'A second flood, a simple famine, plagues of locusts everywhere, or a cataclysmic earthquake, I'd accept with some despair. But no, You sent us Congress! Good God, Sir, was that fair?' Later he laments, 'I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a Congress!'

But the Tea Partiers and Glenn Becks of America who scorn government and who have tried turning the Founding Fathers into libertarian deities will find little comfort in 1776. As Franklin says in the film, 'We're men, no more no less, trying to get a nation started against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed.' Rather than fall hopelessly into endless name-calling and mudslinging like today, ultimately these men engaged in forthright debate and overcame ideological differences that threatened to stop their revolution before it began. They managed to produce a nation, an experiment outlined in a Declaration of Independence that is, as the movie version's John Adams says, 'a masterful expression of the American mind.'

And they did so realizing, as a character in the film says -- quoting the words of conservative icon Edmund Burke, member of the British Parliament -- that a representative owes the people not only his industry, but his judgment, and he betrays them if he sacrifices it to their opinion.

So watch the movie and see what you think (Turner Classic Movies is playing it on the Fourth of July). I'd match 1776 against The Last Airbender or that Karate Kid remake any day.

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.

Caption Contest – Wookiees Are Great Mechanics – Winners

2010-07-02T22:20:00.000-07:00

Caption Contest – Wookiees Are Great Mechanics – Winners: "

What a great contest this week! There were so many lulz to choose from, It made it really tough to pick my favorites!

Caption By: midoban

Caption By: phelan

More After The Jump…

Since I got more than ten of these, I chose the first one I received that correctly quoted from the script.

Caption By: gullenalcott

Caption By: adam lunn

Caption By: tarcas

Caption By: bikemanjoey

Seriously, there were too many good ones to pick from. Thanks for participating! See you next week for another contest!

Giving Americans Control over Their Health Care

2010-06-24T00:31:00.000-07:00

Giving Americans Control over Their Health Care: "

Monday marked the 90 day anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act, the landmark new law that puts consumers, not health insurance companies, in charge of their own health care. We have hit the ground running and, in just three months, significant progress has been made.

To begin with, the new Patients’ Bill of Rights will end the worst insurance company abuses and provide the American people with the peace of mind that their insurance will be there when they need it most. After meeting with representatives of the insurance industry yesterday, President Obama announced this historic regulation that will ban rescission of coverage, discriminating against children with pre-existing conditions, and lifetime limits, as well as place restrictions on annual limits. For additional details about the Patient’s Bill of Rights, read the fact sheet or watch the webchat with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

Click here to see the video.

Another important step we’ve taken is to fulfill President Obama’s promise that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it.” Last week, Secretary Sebelius and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced a new rule that protects the ability of individuals and businesses to keep their current plan. It outlines conditions under which current plans can be ‘grandfathered’ into the system, minimizing market disruption and putting us all on the path toward the competitive, patient-centered market of the future. By providing the stability and flexibility that families and businesses need, Americans will be able to make the choices that work best for them. Learn more about the ‘grandfather’ rule.

You may be aware that increasing the number of primary care doctors and nurses is a key challenge to improving our health care system. Expanding our health care workforce and supporting our nurses, doctors and other providers are top priorities in reforming our health care system. One of the most obvious and important benefits of a strong health care workforce is increased prevention of disease – which can often mean avoiding the costly treatment of a chronic condition. During a speech last week at the American Nurses Association conference, President Obama announced investments in a new generation of primary caregivers. These efforts include increased resources for training, new incentives to physicians for providing primary care to patients, and support for caregivers who choose to enter primary care in underserved areas.

Even if you aren’t a senior, you probably know a few – and few things are more important to their health security than Medicare. That’s why the President and Secretary Sebelius held a tele-town hall to talk directly with America’s seniors, where they addressed misinformation and answered detailed questions about Medicare. It’s important for seniors to know that their guaranteed Medicare benefits are protected -- regardless of whether they are in Original Medicare or Medicare Advantage -- and seniors who have Medicare Advantage can choose to continue to be enrolled in the plan.

In the coming years, seniors can also expect free preventive care services, including annual wellness visits and cancer screenings, and advanced patient-centered care, which will improve coordination of health care resources and ensure that they have access to support in their community. Recently, we also announced the good news that seniors will begin receiving a $250 check from Medicare when they reach the ‘donut hole’ – a term used to describe the gap in Medicare Part D prescription coverage. Until this gap is completely closed in 2020, we will continue to help seniors manage their health care costs.

Finally, everyone likes saving money and we’ve made some big progress in this area. The new legislation includes some of the strongest anti-health care fraud provisions in history and we will continue to act swiftly and aggressively to prevent fraud and take action against those who break the law. Reductions in fraud and abuse will help extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund and provide taxpayers with cost savings. Ongoing activities include implementing tough new rules and sentences for criminals, enhancing screening and enrollment requirements, leveraging new tools and resources to prevent and fight fraud, and enhancing data-sharing among the agencies that are working to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse.

These accomplishments have brought about a number of important new benefits and each day, as we continue implementing the new law, we are working to give Americans greater control over their health care. The Affordable Care Act is laying the foundation for greater stability and giving American families and businesses the flexibility they need to make the choices that work best for them.

Stephanie Cutter is Assistant to the President for Special Projects

Senate Democrats push jobs tax compromise - Reuters

2010-06-23T22:48:00.000-07:00

Since when did 60 become a majority in the 100 Seat Senate, make the Republican filibuster if they really mean it, then pass the legislation! 51 is a majority in the Senate!

Senate Democrats push jobs tax compromise - Reuters: "

Big Journalism (blog)

Senate Democrats push jobs tax compromise
Reuters
WASHINGTON, June 23 (Reuters) - In an effort to break a stalemate over a package of unemployment aid and business tax breaks, Senate Democrats on Wednesday offered a compromise that would pare proposed aid to ...
Senate Democrats Trim Tax Bill, Set New VoteWall Street Journal
GOP senators may still block more jobless benefitsThe Associated Press
Unemployment: Outlook Grim For Jobs Bill Ahead Of VoteHuffington Post (blog)
Politico (blog) -Seattle Times -The Hill
all 240 news articles »

Doug Kendall: We Need to Stop Leaning into Scalia's Punches

2010-06-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

Doug Kendall: We Need to Stop Leaning into Scalia's Punches: "

Liberals really need to stop leaning into the punches being thrown by Justice Antonin Scalia. While Scalia claims he follows the Constitution as written and adheres to the values of our founders, the most frequent come back from progressives is: 'Wait, wait, wait, judging is so much harder than that.' Rather than pointing out that Scalia and his conservative colleagues frequently twist the law and depart sharply from the Constitution's text and history, this 'judging is hard' argument just reinforces the public's misperception that conservatives follow the law and progressives make the law up. What progressives must do, instead, is respond to Scalia and his cohorts by offering a different, more inspiring and appealing account of our Nation's charter.

The latest example of this back and forth played out this week in dueling opinion pieces in Thursday's Washington Post. Conservative columnist George Will's 'The danger of a government with unlimited power' rehearses the standard conservative line of attack. Conservatives, Will argues, want to return to the limited government enshrined in the Constitution by James Madison, while progressives want a 'living, evolving document' that 'frees government from limitations' and serves as 'an emancipation proclamation for government, empowering it to regulate all human desires as needs and hence as rights.'
Meanwhile, the progressive response is found in a piece called Souter's Challenge to Scalia by columnist E.J. Dionne, running right above Will's, that says, in effect, that judging is a lot harder than Scalia and other conservatives say it is. Citing a recent Harvard commencement speech by Justice David Souter, in which the former justice is deeply critical of Justice Scalia and his 'originalsim,' Dionne rehearses the progressive argument about how difficult it is for judges to interpret the Constitution's broad and open-ended terms, and chose among competing constitutional values. Dionne suggests that Souter's speech should be' the philosophical shot heard 'round the country,' and he encourages a nationwide debate about 'which approach is more trustworthy.'

With respect to both Dionne and Justice Souter, that's a sure-fire recipe for progressives remaining in second place in a two-team battle over the future of the Supreme Court. It's not that Dionne's (and Souter's) points about the Constitution's broad and open-ended terms and competing values are wrong. They are learned and erudite. But they are not an effective rejoinder to Scalia's vision of the Constitution and the Court's role under it and they can be counterproductive in a political debate framed by the conservative attack on 'liberal judicial activism.'

What's most disappointing about Dionne's piece is that Dionne himself has been among the most influential and forceful proponents of a new and better progressive message about the Supreme Court. In a brilliant series of prior pieces, Dionne has called on progressives to have an 'honest brawl' with conservatives about the future of the Supreme Court, and show that 'the threat of judicial activism now comes from right, not the left.' 'It is conservatives, not liberals,' Dionne adds, 'who are using the courts to overturn the decisions made by democratically elected bodies in areas such as pay discrimination, school integration, antitrust laws and worker safety regulation.'
Now is the time for progressives to have that honest brawl about why the Constitution itself points in a progressive direction. The Court's monumentally wrong ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, giving corporations the right to drown out the voices of We the People in the electoral process, coupled with the fringe ramblings of Rand Paul and the Tea Party crowd, have laid bare the underbelly of the conservative legal project. We need to explain how the Constitution protects ' We the People,' not 'We the Corporations,' how it empowers the federal government to address national problems like health care and civil rights, and how the Amendments adopted by Americans over the past 220 years should be revered for making the Constitution better, not repealed or underappreciated.
We can keep complaining that Justice Scalia is being simplistic and that judging is hard in conversations in faculty lounges and law journals. But when we're fighting publicly with conservatives about the Constitution, we should be loud and firm in asserting why the document itself points to the results we seek.

I entered a photo in this contest, vote if you want to..

2010-06-01T00:31:00.000-07:00

Vote for my entry in the 2010 Professional Photographer Magazine Cover Contest

Tax the Hell Out of Wall Street and Give it to Main Street

2010-05-08T14:20:00.000-07:00

Tax the Hell Out of Wall Street and Give it to Main Street: "

Today was a brutal day on Wall Street. Through no fault of investors.

Today was brutal because of traders and financial engineers who trade on every piece of data . Those that work from quantitative formulas that drive trades based on data input. Not a single one of them acts like a shareholder. And that is the reality of the stock market.

The market is no longer driven by shareholders. The market is driven by formulas that drive trades.

So what should the government do ?

Tax every single share of stock that is bought and sold 25 cents per transaction. One quarter. If you buy a share of stock, your brokerage pays a 25c tax. If you sell a share, your brokerage pays a 25c tax. 1 share, 100 million shares. Its 25 cents per share.

Of course the tax will be paid for by those of us who are buying and selling stocks. So what? Here is the reality. If you are a true investor. Someone who wants to own a share of stock in a company you believe in, then its an amount that is not going to impact your investment decision making process. You bought those shares to be a shareholder.

If you dont think the company you are buying is worth at least a quarter more than what you are paying , why are you buying shares ?

If you are a professional trader or an institutional trader that trades continuously, the same type of traders that created the mess in the market today, then it may impact your decision making process, but only to the point of reducing your returns by a minimal amount. Its not going to change your inclination to trade. As everyone on Wall Street will tell you “Traders Trade”. You may trade less and make less in aggregate, but no one but you cares about that. You will find your way to make money. There is always the loop hole and inefficiency. Thats what you live for. But you won’t stop trading.

If you are a day trader, you are going to have to be right more often or actually hold on to stocks for a longer period of time. That’s ok. I know it will be rough on some of you that make a living this way. But in reality, you don’t add anything to the markets.

Whats the bigger economic impact of having the tax ?

If the NYSE, Nasdaq, Amex and OTC are trading 2 Billion shares a day or more , like today, thats $ 500 Million Dollars PER DAY. If there are 260 trading days a year. Thats about 130 Billion dollars a year. If volumes drop because of the tax. It is still 10s of Billions of dollars per year.Thats real money for the US Treasury. Thats also an annual payment towards the next time Wall Street screws up and we have a black swan event that no one planned on.Of course there has to be some fine print. You could reduce the tax per share for stocks under $5 dollars to 5cents. But i would leave it at 5cents even for stocks priced at pennies per share or less. This tax would act as a protection for investors and traders who get pitched unregulated penny stocks and who are more often than not the victims of rip off artists. It would minimize the pink sheet companies that trade billions of shares of stocks priced for pennies. Those companies that are legit, could do a reverse split to protect their investors. The others can go away. They probably shouldn’t be public anyway.

The stock market today is dominated by financial engineers and traders. Institutions who look for the loopholes and exploit them. Thats not a bad thing. There will always be loopholes, and they will always find them. But at least with the tax, when they do, we are protecting ourselves a little bit. Heck, the Treasury could join in the show and buy long and short 20pct out of the money derivatives on the market to protect us even more. This way if things go haywire like they did a couple years ago and have the past few days, the Treasury will be playing with Wall Streets’ money. I’m sure Main Street won’t mind terribly if the Treasury plays with the house’s money.

Particularly since the only given for Wall Street is that every 5 years or so there will be an extreme event. Why ? Remember the rule of Wall Street …

First there are the innovators. Then there are the imitators. Then there are the idiots. And there are tons and tons of idiots. Just look at the billions upon billions squandered in closed Hedge Funds. The idiots always find there way back into the market and the market always wipes them out taking investors down with them.

It’s time to make all those playing this game pay a tax per transaction.

And one more thing. When Wall Street talks about how a tax will hurt liquidity, ask them why, if liquidity is so essential to a market, they don’t want any transparency and aren’t trying to increase liquidity for the derivatives they sell on a custom basis ? Or why they are not trying to increase the liquidity for the corporate bond markets where bonds trade with a huge spread ?

They want minimal transparencies where the spreads are high and they can keep them that way and price their products anyway they like. Where the spreads are already low, they cry wolf about the liquidity they need to do business. Let me explain the reality of liquidity in today’s world. It won’t increase the amount of capital available to businesses. The companies that plant servers next to stock exchanges to make a few cents per trade aren’t buying IPOs, secondary offerings, or holding shares in support of valuations in a company they believe in. Every time markets crater, there is never a lack of liquidity. THere are still a billion or more shares traded. There is plenty of liquidity.

So tax the hell out of Wall Street , give it to main street. Make it tougher for the financial engineers and you will make it easier for investors to evaluate companies and hold on to shares and maybe even act like owners of those companies.

Taxing the Hell Out of Wall Street could actually increase the trust investors have in Wall Street. And it might just protect us when the next meltdown happens. And it will happen

The idiots will see to it.

Bob Cesca: Republicans and Teabaggers Finally Embrace Big Government

2010-05-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

Bob Cesca: Republicans and Teabaggers Finally Embrace Big Government: "

For more than a year now, we've been hearing from Republicans, tea party people and Glenn Beck's chalkboard about how big government is destroying American liberty and freedom. Much of the shrieking is literally accompanied by the yellow Revolutionary War 'Don't Tread on Me' flag.

Every tea party lawn concert and misspelled sign regatta features people dressed in colonial drag with tea bags dangling from their tri-corner hats, waving banners in support of tax cuts, liberty and freedom and against the allegedly tyrannical Obama government. They're really scared and they want their country back from the (somehow) black liberal Nazi.We've heard about how the 'czars' are unconstitutional, even though the name 'czars' was invented by the press as clever pseudonym for 'advisers.'
We've heard about how the Recovery Act, which has created hundreds of thousands of jobs and cut taxes for 95 percent of working families, is unconstitutional and an attack on states' rights and individual liberty.
We've heard about how it's 'generational theft' for the government to spend money to solve an economic crisis. We've heard about how the tax cuts in the Recovery Act are just a scam and should be returned to the government in protest.
We've heard about the crazy conspiracy theories involving the IRS invading our neighborhoods with armed goon squads -- rounding up anyone who purchased one of Glenn Beck's dozens of McBooks. Of course this meme turned out to be entirely untrue as there is no enforcement mechanism in the health care reform law should you simply choose not to pay the tax penalty for not buying insurance.
Republican attorneys general across the nation are challenging the health care law in court because, they say, it's unconstitutional. House minority leader John Boehner once called the bill 'Armageddon' because of the tax penalty for Americans who choose not to buy insurance. Armageddon!
Throughout all of the misinformed and contradictory right-wing antics of the past year, I've been wondering how post-Bush Republicans and conservatives can possibly square all of their newly found affinity for freedom, liberty and the Constitution considering their eight year support for Bush era policies. Policies like illegal wiretaps of American citizens, the USA Patriot Act, suspension of habeas corpus (it's in the Constitution) and all the rest of it.
Have they at long last abandoned their support for these obvious trespasses against liberty and the Constitution? In fact, Glenn Beck said recently that he failed to speak out back then but, 'It doesn't matter. I'm here now.' Convenient timing. History appears to have skipped the first decade of the 21st century.

Put another way, are the Republicans suddenly joining up with civil libertarians to denounce policies that infringe upon basic constitutional rights? Maybe Rush Limbaugh teaming up with the ACLU during his drug case was a sign of things to come. A civil liberties-oriented conservative movement, eh?

Not a chance in hell.
This week, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said about the failed Times Square car bomb suspect, 'Did they Mirandize him? I know he's an American citizen but still.'
I know he's an American citizen but still. This easily catapults to the top of the list of awful, creepy, dangerous things Republicans have said in the context of terrorism since 9/11 -- the same list that includes: 'None of your civil liberties matter much if you're dead,' and, 'I have had it with members of your party undermining our troops, undermining a commander in chief while we are at war.'
Republicans from King to John McCain to John Cornyn and Jon Kyl are engaged in some sort of weird penis-measuring contest over the Faisal Shahzad case, each attempting to prove how quickly they can subvert the basic rights of American citizenship in order to appear 'tough' on terrorism.
Marco Rubio, who is the tea party favorite for the U.S. Senate from Florida, said, 'If this individual has information that could help us prevent future attacks and loss of life, nothing should stand in the way of that, including Miranda.'
So nothing except, again, the basic rights of American citizenship.

Pseudo-Republican Joe Lieberman wants to change the law in order to strip would-be terrorists of their American citizenship. Hey, why not expand that to encompass all violent crime. Before long, we're not going to need Amendments Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight and Fourteen.

Liberty! Freedom! Constitution! Except when we're scared.

At the same time, a new poll from the New York Times and CBS shows that a narrow majority of Americans support the Arizona anti-immigration law even though a wide majority also believes that it will involve racial profiling. Concurrent to this poll, a Gallup survey shows that 75 percent of Republicans support the Arizona law with only 17 percent opposed.

Knowing full well that American citizens who happen to be brown will be swept up in the law enforcement dragnet, regardless of whether or not they've actually broken the law and regardless of whether or not they've lived in Arizona longer than many of the white people there, the Republicans and tea party people appear to be perfectly comfortable with the idea of government overreaching and engaging in a clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, among other things.

Liberty! Freedom! Constitution! Except if you're brown.

And finally, as the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico rapidly buries any previous records for oil spills, dumping perhaps as much as 25,000 barrels of oil per day into the sea -- dooming jobs, wildlife and natural resources for decades to come, suddenly big government spending and 'redistribution of wealth' isn't so bad after all.

Republican lawmakers are quickly stashing their 'Don't Tread on Me' banners and tea bag hats in the nearest closet and demanding that the federal government come to the rescue of the Gulf States.

As documented by Dana Milbank this week, Republican David Vitter worried that BP couldn't do the job alone and that 'federal and state' government agencies pitch in.

Talk radio and Fox News, meanwhile, lied about the administration's allegedly slow response, implying that the government should be doing more -- even though we've been told by everyone of Ayn Rand to Sarah Palin that the free market ought to be able to handle these things on its own. (For the record, the administration has been on the ground and at sea since day one of the BP crisis.)

The governors of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, all run by small-government Republicans demanded more support from the National Guard. Small government senators Shelby and Sessions promised the full support of the federal government.

Bobby Jindal, who famously joked about federal spending for volcano monitoring and tried to stop any Recovery Act money from entering Louisiana, isn't so concerned about federal spending now. He issued a statement demanding 'critical' federal government resources.

I think you get the idea.

But maybe we should just slow things down. Before we spend any government money, before we spread the wealth around and engage in generational theft, maybe we should start over. I know there's a crisis here, sort of like the one in which the economy was rapidly sinking into another Great Depression or the one in which American families are filing for medical bankruptcies every 30 seconds or the one in which there are 9/11-level deaths every month due to a lack of health insurance, but let's just slow down and start over.

In his University of Michigan commencement address in front of 92,000 people last weekend, President Obama made a rational, reasonable case for government. It was a far cry from Reaganomics and President Clinton's declaration about the end of big government. He said, 'There are some things we can only do together, as one nation... So what we should be asking is not whether we need a 'big government' or a 'small government,' but how we can create a smarter, better government.'

Perhaps, despite the inchoate rage of the tea parties and the posturing of the Republicans, they really do understand that we live in an era of unprecedented national crises and that with many of these problems only the federal government is adequately suited to repair the damage. If we could all meet up on these terms, on the terms of 'smarter government,' I think we'd be able to accomplish anything and mitigate any crisis.

After all, how bad can it be. The grandfather of the tea party movement, libertarian Ron Paul, receives government Medicare benefits.
"

Tara Stiles: 5 Simple Ways to Live More Fully

2010-05-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

Tara Stiles: 5 Simple Ways to Live More Fully:

A good teacher once told me that it's impossible to live every moment to the fullest. (Fun fact: she wasn't a yoga teacher.) She was right. We miss moments all the time. If we obsessed over fully living them all we might spontaneously combust, or appear intensely hyper and loony. Her simple message brought awareness to all the moments that we do miss, that we dull out on, ignore, or choose not to plug into. We tune out for all sorts of reasons. We're tired, depressed, uninterested, bored, or simply lost in thought about the million other places we need to be. We're not present. What does that even mean anyway? I know I have been put off in the past by so many new age teachings telling me in convoluted ways how to tap into the earth energy and blossom my inner bumble bee . . . or whatever. Sounds like more distractions competing for attention, when what we really need is a little quiet.

When we focus mostly on our immediate needs, wants and desires, we may achieve some of them, but hardly feel satisfied. When we feel connected to ourselves on a deeper level, we get happy. We feel safe. This doesn't happen when we're thinking about channeling our earth mother, or about how connected we are. It just happens when we get quiet, watch, and listen. It happens when we pay attention without thinking 'I'm paying attention.' Best of all, what happens then is we're able to connect with others and catch some of those precious moments that are always there. What's the point? In these small moments lives a vibrant, renewable source of inspiration and creativity that fuels all things interesting, inspirational, joyful and fun.

Ever caught someone's eye on the street and shared a simple smile? Sure, we all have. Those moments of innocence connect us deeply with our own potential and are available for us to enjoy whenever we choose. We only have to be willing to wake up.

5 Simple Ways to Live More Fully.

1. Observe. Take a look around. Watch people. Watch nature. Watch the sun and the clouds. The world is set up for us to observe. Check it out.

2. Take in. In order to take in we have to soften. When we have built up armor against all the bad things we think might happen in the world, we have a false sense of protection and have only built up isolation. We can start where we're comfortable and build from there. Allow yourself to take in a sappy romantic movie at home. When vulnerability becomes just another feeling like excitement, we become more familiar with it and can allow it to flow through us.

3. Respond. We have to train ourselves in response just like we train ourselves in taking in. Our reactions are colored with our psychology and our mood. It takes some conscious effort to clear muddled psychology and make room for authentic response. When we find this clarity, we get to experience a gratifying release and much deeper relating.

4. Pay attention. Paying attention to what we allow ourselves to pay attention to is a tricky thing. It's like being in two places at once, but completely worth the discipline. We can react mindlessly or respond mindfully. It's up to us. When we turn on our observation capabilities we become much more in the moment, and much more powerful. Psychic powers have been known to develop from consistent practice of paying attention. It's available to us all. It's all in what we choose to practice.

5. Enjoy. Without a sense of lightness, life can become quite a drag. Our days fill with mundane tasks we need to complete and secret desires that lead to anxiety. Have fun and enjoy your life. Might as well while we're here.

Power9: 9 Habits of the World's Healthiest People

2010-04-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

Power9: 9 Habits of the World's Healthiest People: "

ShareThis

The United States is facing a health crisis of unprecedented proportions: Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Diabetes and heart disease rates are on the rise. For the first time in living history, the life expectancy of America’s children is less than that of their parents.

In other parts of the world, however, people are living longer, healthier lives. In certain areas known as Blue Zones, people tend to live well into their 90s and beyond while remaining mentally and physically vibrant. It’s no coincidence that people in these regions share several lifestyle traits.

The Blue Zones

Sardinia, Italy: a mountain village where researchers encountered a 102-year-old man who hikes at least 6 miles a day.
Okinawa, Japan: home to some of the world’s longest-lived people.
Loma Linda, California: where a group of Seventh Day Adventists commonly live to 100 years old and enjoy more healthy years of life than the rest of the United States.
Icaria, Greece: a tiny island with 20 percent lower rates of cancer, 50 percent lower rates of heart disease, and almost no dementia.
Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica: where residents enjoy lower levels of obesity and longer lives than the rest of Costa Rica.

Dan Buettner, explorer and writer for National Geographic, has worked with longevity researchers to identify the habits that allow Blue Zone inhabitants to reach the age of 100 at ten times greater rates than most of the United States, while suffering a mere fraction the rate of heart disease and cancer as the rest of the world.

The key to living longer, fuller lives, says Buettner, is to create an environment of health. Science has determined that less than 25% of a person’s lifespan is determined by genes. The rest can be influenced by lifestyle factors.

Healthy Lifestyle Habits

Buettner and his team of researchers have identified nine lifestyle factors common among Blue Zone inhabitants, all of which are associated with an extra 3-6 years of quality life. The secret to vitality and longevity is incorporating these habits into your daily life. Adopting all nine of these habits — known as the Power9 — is not necessary to experience the benefits of increased health and longevity; according to Buettner, practicing just six of the Power9 will deliver 90% of the benefits. His book, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, provides practical guidelines for setting up your home, your social life, and your work place to help add more quality years to your life.

Surprisingly, only one of the Power9 deals with exercise, and a full third involve social factors. In fact, says Buettner, the single most important thing you can do is extend your life is to build your own “Right Tribe.” The world’s longest-lived people were either born into or choose to associate with the right people — those who provide emotional support and the motivation to engage in healthy activities. Research shows that if you surround yourself with people who are active and eat healthy foods, you are more likely to adopt these habits yourself.

The Power9

1. Move naturally

Find ways to move mindlessly and adopt a lifestyle that makes moving unavoidable. In many Blue Zones, walking is the main mode of transportation. People also engage in some sort of moderate daily activity such as gardening, walking, or playing with their children. Buettner believes that many Americans exercise too hard; our bodies were not made to withstand years of heavy pounding and high-intensity physical activity. Regular, low-intensity activity — doing something light every day — may be more beneficial. Focus on activities you enjoy — even something as seemingly simple as a daily walk can provide health benefits.

2. Know your purpose in life

Having a meaningful reason to get out of bed in the morning can help reduce stress and ward off disease. Studies show that people who retire early often see a decline in their health and even experience higher mortality rates than those who continue to work. If you enjoy your job, keep working as long as possible. Volunteer work and community service can also help provide a sense of purpose.

3. Downshift

People in Blue Zones typically have less stress in their lives. Look for ways to simplify your life: slow down, get plenty of rest, and take vacations. Try to punctuate your day with periods of calm, whether that means meditating, taking a relaxing bath, or carving out some time for yourself to engage in a hobby.

4. Follow the 80% Rule

As Americans, we’re used to eating until we’re full, but allowing yourself to feel hunger can actually be beneficial. A study involving mice revealed that the appetite-stimulating hormone ghrelin may help fight stress and depression. People in Blue Zones typically stop eating when they are 80% full. Buettner’s book and the Blue Zone web site provide advice on adopting healthier eating habits.

5. Eat a plant-based diet

People in Blue Zones don’t diet; they eat wisely. Blue Zone diets consist of large amounts of locally grown vegetables and less protein than the average American diet. Limit processed foods, meats, fats, and sweets as much as possible. Also drink plenty of fresh water and herbal teas. In Icaria, residents drink high levels of herbal teas that act as diuretics, lower blood pressure, and prevent heart disease.

6. Drink red wine

Red wine is high in powerful antioxidants that can help fight cancer, reduce inflammation, and lower cholesterol. In Sardinia, researchers found a red wine with the world’s highest-known levels of antioxidants. Drink red wine consistently and in moderation — a glass or two a day is recommended.

7. Belong to a healthy social network

Having a strong and supportive social system is key to reducing stress and living a healthy life. There is a biological link between social connection and how well our bodies function. Fifteen years ago, the average American had three good friends; that number is now down to two. Our increasingly wired society and busy lifestyles have made us more isolated, which can shave years off our lives. Make an effort to spend time with friends and nurture a face-to-face network instead of just connecting with people online. Proactively build friendships with people who practice healthy habits. Participating in social exercise groups or volunteering are great ways to meet healthy, like-minded individuals.

8. Have a belief system

Having some sort of faith system or spiritual practice has been shown to have health benefits. Participating in a belief system doesn’t have to mean organized religion: Okinawans believe in ancestral worship; yoga and meditation are also forms of non-religious spiritual practices. “People who feel their life is part of a larger plan and are guided by their spiritual values have stronger immune systems, lower blood pressure, a lower risk of heart attack and cancer, and heal faster and live longer,” says Harold G. Koenig, M.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center.

9. Put your family first

People in Blue Zones make family a priority and nurture supportive relationships with their loved ones. Studies have shown that the average working American parent spends just 19 minutes a day engaged in childcare. As you work on simplifying your routine, look for new, beneficial activities you can do with your children and extended family members. Complete a craft project together, get the family together for a bike ride, or involve the children in making dinner and choosing healthy foods for the family.

For more information, visit the Blue Zones web site, which features a Vitality Compass for gauging your current state of health and life expectancy.

This is a post from our sister blog, Healthy Theory. Visit Healthy Theory for more health tips and news.

Republicans up to their SOP Version 2 (Version 1 try to create fear)

2010-04-25T15:53:00.000-07:00

Dems accuse GOP of 'lies' on bill

Posted: Thursday, April 22, 2010 1:59 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: Congress, Democrats, Republicans, Economy

From NBC's Ken Strickland, Sarah Blackwill, and Mark Murray
Since the financial regulatory debate began, Democratic leaders have accused Republicans of misrepresenting the facts about their bill. But in a news conference today, Senate Democratic leaders turned up the heat with a video presentation of Republican "lies" and alleged mischaracterizations.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Sens. Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer played clips showing Republican statements and speeches about the reform bill. One clip featured Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saying that "this bill not only allows for taxpayer bailouts; it institutionalizes them."

Responded Durbin: "So if you listen to this comment by the minority leader of the United States Senate, you wonder if he's read the bill -- particularly if he's read the section between pages 110 and 295, which is entitled orderly liquidation authority. Liquidation. Liquidation is the end of the bank, not a bailout that it can continue in business."

Durbin continued, "No matter how many times the minority leader says endless bailout, the fact is the clear language of this legislation says just the opposite. What he's reading to us is not from the bill. It's from a memo prepared by [GOP pollster] Frank Luntz, prepared even before this bill was written."

Reid added: "The Republican leadership has so far decided to be against reform, to in effect kill reform. They're betting on failure again. They decided the best way to stop us from cleaning up Wall Street is by polluting the debate with myths and mischaracterizations."

And Schumer said: "On the health-care bill, we allowed too many lies to get out there without rebuttal, because we thought they were so obviously untrue. But we've learned our lesson. And the minute these things come out of the mouths of some of our Republican colleagues, we rebut them. And we rebut them again and again. And fortunately, these lies are not taking hold.

A Practice That Will Soon Be Illegal

2010-04-24T12:04:00.000-07:00

A Practice That Will Soon Be Illegal: "

Just yesterday, we read with great alarm a news report that WellPoint, one of the country’s largest health insurers, is routinely dropping coverage for women that are diagnosed with breast cancer.

These are the kinds of scenarios that motivated the President to work so long and so hard to pass health reform. And because of the health reform legislation passed last month, the worst excesses and abuses of the insurance industry – including what WellPoint is said to have done -- will soon be reined in by new tough consumer protections.

Yesterday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote a letter to WellPoint’s CEO urging her company to immediately end this harmful practice:

April 22, 2010

[To: Angela Braly, WellPoint]

Dear Ms. Braly:

I was surprised and disappointed to read media accounts indicating that WellPoint routinely rescinds health insurance coverage from women recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Today’s report from Reuters indicating that your company “has specifically targeted women with breast cancer for aggressive investigation with the intent to cancel their policies” is disturbing, and this practice is deplorable.

As you know, the practice described in this article will soon be illegal. The Affordable Care Act specifically prohibits insurance companies from rescinding policies, except in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of material fact.

WellPoint should not wait to end the unconscionable practice of deliberately working to deny health insurance coverage to women diagnosed with breast cancer. I urge you to immediately cease these practices and abandon your efforts to rescind health insurance coverage from patients who need it most.

Breast cancer is the second-leading type of cancer among women, has touched millions of families, and will affect one in eight American women during their lifetime. This year alone, an estimated 192,000 American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.

I hope you will consider these women and their families as you work to end this harmful practice.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Sebelius
Dan Pfeiffer is White House Communications Director"

Who Is Really Fighting for Perpetual Bailouts?

2010-04-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

Who Is Really Fighting for Perpetual Bailouts?: "

As we noted earlier this week, the attacks from some quarters that the President’s Wall Street Reform proposal somehow opens the door to perpetual bailouts comes straight out of a now-infamous polling memo on how to defeat reform by pretending it doesn’t go far enough. A column from Paul Krugman in the New York Times today explains why this not only empty poll-driven rhetoric, but an absurd case of up-is-downism:

On Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, called for the abolition of municipal fire departments.

Firefighters, he declared, “won’t solve the problems that led to recent fires. They will make them worse.” The existence of fire departments, he went on, “not only allows for taxpayer-funded bailouts of burning buildings; it institutionalizes them.” He concluded, “The way to solve this problem is to let the people who make the mistakes that lead to fires pay for them. We won’t solve this problem until the biggest buildings are allowed to burn.”

O.K., I fibbed a bit. Mr. McConnell said almost everything I attributed to him, but he was talking about financial reform, not fire reform. In particular, he was objecting not to the existence of fire departments, but to legislation that would give the government the power to seize and restructure failing financial institutions.

But it amounts to the same thing.

If there is a position that supports perpetual bailouts, it is protecting the status quo, where without reform government will be forced to make the awful choice between helping banks and letting the economy collapse over and over again. That's what led financial reporter John Harwood to say that "Senator McConnell’s argument is a little silly when you look at the text of the bill." So let's do exactly that and leave no doubt about who is really fighting to prevent the need for any more bailouts:

1) “This bill not only allows for taxpayer-funded bailouts of Wall Street banks; it institutionalizes them.”

Incorrect: Under Chairman Dodd’s bill major failed financial firms will be sold off, broken apart, or otherwise liquidated; management will be fired, creditors will suffer losses, and shareholders will be wiped out. Wall Street, not taxpayers, will pay for any losses.

Chairman Dodd’s bill specifically prohibits the use of any funds for “bailing out” financial institutions. Under Chairman Dodd’s proposed resolution authority, large, interconnected financial firms facing insolvency would be sold off, broken apart, or otherwise liquidated over a limited time period. In that process, culpable management would be replaced, shareholders would suffer losses, and there will be clear authority to impose losses on unsecured creditors in accordance with the priority of claim provisions in the bill. . In addition, by requiring post-resolution assessments on the financial industry to recoup any losses, Chairman Dodd’s bill makes it absolutely clear that large financial firms – not taxpayers – would bear any costs associated with the resolution of a failed financial firm.

Must liquidate. Section 210(a)(1)(D) of the bill passed by the Senate Banking Committee (page 145, as modified by the Manager’s Amendment on page 54, line 16).

The Corporation shall, as receiver for a covered financial company, and subject to all legally enforceable and perfected security interests and all legally enforceable security entitlements in respect of assets held by the covered financial company, liquidate, and wind-up the affairs of a covered financial company, including taking steps to realize upon the assets of the covered financial company, in such manner as the Corporation deems appropriate, including through the sale of assets, the transfer of assets to a bridge financial company established under subsection (h), or the exercise of any other rights or privileges granted to the receiver under this section.

Mandatory terms and conditions--wipe out shareholders, fire management, creditors suffer losses; Section 206; Page 140, lines 3-19.

“In taking action under this title, the Corporation shall—

(1) determine that such action is necessary for purposes of the financial stability of the United States, and not for the purpose of preserving the covered financial company;

(2) ensure that the shareholders of a covered financial company do not receive payment until after all other claims and the Fund are fully paid;

(3) ensure that unsecured creditors bear losses in accordance with the priority of claim provisions in section 210; and

(4) ensure that management responsible for the failed condition of the covered financial company is removed (if such management has not already been removed at the time at which the Corporation is appointed receiver).”

Financial industry held responsible for any losses; subparagraph (C) of Section 210(o)(1); Page 280, line 8 to Page 281, line 2.

“(C) Additional Assessments. The Corporation shall charge one or more risk-based assessments in accordance with the provisions of subparagraph (E), if—

(i) the Fund falls below the target size after the initial capitalization period, in order to restore the Fund to the target size over a period of time determined by the Corporation;

(ii) the Corporation is appointed receiver for a covered financial company and the Fund incurs a loss during the initial capitalization period with respect to that covered financial company; or

(iii) such assessments are necessary to pay in full the obligations issued by the Corporation to the Secretary within 60 months of the date of issuance of such obligations.

2) “The bill gives the Federal Reserve enhanced emergency lending authority that is far too open to abuse.”

Incorrect: The Federal Reserve’s emergency lending authorities are restricted, not expanded, under Chairman Dodd’s bill.

Chairman Dodd’s bill eliminates the ability of the Federal Reserve to provide firm-specific assistance, requires prior approval from Treasury of any emergency lending program, and imposes strict congressional reporting requirements. Under Chairman Dodd’s bill, the Federal Reserve may not use its emergency authorities to aid failing financial firms, and those authorities will be subject to new approvals and significant reporting to Congress.

Chairman Dodd’s bill, in unequivocal terms, states that the Federal Reserve may not use its 13(3) lending authorities to “aid a failing financial company” and requires that the collateral received for any such emergency loans be of “sufficient quality to protect taxpayers from losses.” Failing firms will receive no protection from the emergency lending authorities of the Federal Reserve.

No aid to a failing financial firm; Section 1151; Page 1304, lines 1-8. “Such policies and procedures shall be designed to ensure that any emergency lending program or facility is for the purpose of providing liquidity to the financial system, and not to aid a failing financial company, and that the collateral for emergency loans is of sufficient quality to protect taxpayers from losses.”

Treasury approval prior to using emergency authorities; Section 1151; Page 1304, line 9-12. “The Board may not establish any program or facility under this paragraph without the prior approval of the Secretary of the Treasury.”
Enhanced congressional reporting requirements; Section 1151; Pages 1304, line 12 to 1308, line 17.

“The Board shall provide to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs of the Senate and the Committee on Financial Services of the House of Representatives—

(i) not later than 7 days after providing any loan or other financial assistance under this paragraph, a report that includes—

(I) the justification for the exercise of authority to provide such assistance;

(II) the identity of the recipients of such assistance, subject to subparagraph (D);

(III) the date and amount of the assistance, and form in which the assistance was provided; and

(IV) the material terms of the assistance, including—

(aa) duration;

(bb) collateral pledged and the value thereof;

(cc) all interest, fees, and other revenue or items of value to be received in exchange for the assistance;

(dd) any requirements imposed on the recipient with respect to employee compensation,

19 distribution of dividends, or any other corporate decision in exchange for the assistance; and

(ee) the expected costs to the taxpayers of such assistance; and

(ii) once every 30 days, with respect to any outstanding loan or other financial assistance under this paragraph, written updates on—

(I) the value of collateral;

(II) the amount of interest, fees, and other revenue or items of value received in exchange for the assistance; and

(III) the expected or final cost to the taxpayers of such assistance.

(D)(i) The Board shall disclose, not later than 1 year after the date on which assistance was first received under the facility, unless the Board determines that such disclosure likely would reduce the effectiveness of the program or facility in addressing or mitigating the financial market disruptions, financial market conditions, or other unusual and exigent circumstances sought to be addressed or mitigated by the program or facility, or would otherwise have a significant effect on the economic or financial market conditions—

(I) the identity of the participants in an emergency lending program or facility commenced under this paragraph after the date of enactment of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010;

(II) the amounts borrowed by each participant in any such program or facility and

(III) identifying details concerning the assets or collateral held by, under, or in connection with such a program or facility within 1 year of the date on which assistance was first received under the program or facility.

(ii) If the Board determines not to make the disclosures required in clause (i) within 1 year of the date on which a participant first received under a program or facility, then the Board shall—

‘‘(I) provide to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and the Committee on Financial Services a written report explaining the reasons for delaying the disclosures about such program or facility within 30 days of making such a determination; and

‘(II) provide to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and the Committee on Financial Services each year thereafter a written report explaining the reasons for continuing to delay disclosure, until the disclosures are complete.

(iii) The disclosures required in clause (i) shall be made not later than 12 months after the effective date of the termination of the facility by the Board.

(iv) If the Board determines not to make the disclosures required in clause (i), then the Comptroller General shall issue a report to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and the Committee on Financial Services evaluating whether that determination is reasonable.’’

3. “…the mere existence of this fund will ensure that it gets used. And one it’s used up, taxpayers will be asked to cover the balance. This is precisely the wrong approach.”

Incorrect. Under Chairman Dodd’s bill, FDIC and Treasury may only use the resolution authorities to protect the U.S. taxpayer from a financial crisis in connection with the failure of a major financial firm; and they have no authority to use the Orderly Liquidation Fund for any other purpose.

First, the bill provides no authority whatsoever for Treasury or the FDIC to expend funds from the Orderly Liquidation Fund, other than in exercising the resolution authority established in Title II of the bill – that is, only in connection with the resolution of a failed financial firm. There would be no reason and no authority to “use” the funds other than for their intended purpose.

Second, the bill mandates that financial firms be assessed fees to establish a $50 billion resolution fund. And the bill mandates that, if the costs of resolving a financial firm exceed that amount, the additional costs will be paid by additional fees assessed on the largest financial institutions so that Wall Street, not taxpayers, will pay the price of financial failure.

Use of Orderly Liquidation Fund is limited to winding down failed firms; Section 210(n)(1); Page 272, line 21 to Page 273, line 6.

“There is established in the Treasury of the United States a separate fund to be known as the ‘‘Orderly Liquidation Fund’’, which shall be available to the Corporation to carry out the authorities contained in this title, for the cost of actions authorized by this title, including the orderly liquidation of covered financial companies, payment of administrative expenses, the payment of principal and interest by the Corporation on obligations issued under paragraph (9), and the exercise of the authorities of the Corporation under this title.”

Fund amounts not needed for resolution can only be invested in U.S. Government securities; Section 210(n)(8); Page 274, line 21 to Page 275, line 4.

“(8) Investments.—At the request of the Corporation, the Secretary may invest such portion of amounts held in the Fund that are not, in the judgment of the Corporation, required to meet the current needs of the Corporation, in obligations of the United States having suitable maturities, as determined by the Corporation. The interest on and the proceeds from the sale or redemption of such obligations shall be credited to the Fund.”

Financial industry held responsible for the initial fund and any losses; subparagraphs (C) and (D) of Section 210(o)(1); Page 280, line 8 to page 281, line 2.

“(C) Additional Assessments. The Corporation shall charge one or more risk-based assessments in accordance with the provisions of subparagraph (E), if—

(i) the Fund falls below the target size after the initial capitalization period, in order to restore the Fund to the target size over a period of time determined by the Corporation;

(ii) the Corporation is appointed receiver for a covered financial company and the Fund incurs a loss during the initial capitalization period with respect to that covered financial company; or

(iii) such assessments are necessary to pay in full the obligations issued by the Corporation to the Secretary within 60 months of the date of issuance of such obligations.

Jen Psaki is Deputy Communications Director"

Dennis A. Henigan: How Justice Stevens May Have Saved Our Gun Laws

2010-04-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

Dennis A. Henigan: How Justice Stevens May Have Saved Our Gun Laws: "

As the nation contemplates Justice Stevens' impending retirement and its implications, all Americans concerned about the daily tragedy of American gun violence should pause to recognize their debt of gratitude to him for his penetrating dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller.

In Heller, Justice Stevens wrote for the dissenters from the Court's landmark 5-4 ruling recognizing, for the first time in our history, a Second Amendment right to possess guns for self-defense in the home. In so doing, Stevens brilliantly exposed the faux originalism and faux textualism of Justice Scalia's majority opinion, demonstrating that these oft-claimed 'neutral principles' of constitutional interpretation were, in Heller, a thin disguise for a deeply ideological reading of the Second Amendment.

For example, Stevens' dissent laid bare the artificiality of Justice Scalia's approach to the text, in which the meaning of the 'right of the people to keep and bear Arms' is determined before any consideration is given to the impact of the first thirteen words of the Amendment about 'a well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State.' This allows Scalia to assert the relevance of various 18th and 19th century examples of the phrases 'keep arms' and 'bear arms' denoting private conduct with guns unrelated to participation in a 'well regulated Militia.'
But, of course, the issue is not whether 'keep arms' or 'bear arms' could have a non-militia meaning in some conceivable context, but rather the meaning of the phrase 'keep and bear Arms' in the specific context of a provision referencing the importance of a 'well regulated Militia' to the 'security of a free State.' Justice Stevens carefully documents that 'bear Arms' had a predominately military meaning at the time of the Founding, and 'keep Arms' was a common phrase in state statutes specifying the duties of militiamen during the period. Thus, Justice Stevens shows that, taken in proper context, the Second Amendment right secured 'to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia.'
Instead, the Scalia majority manages to conclude that the Second Amendment 'surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home' in a text in which this interest is entirely hidden and in which the 'security of a free State,' not the security of 'hearth and home' is the only expressed purpose of the guarantee. 'The right the Court announces was not 'enshrined' in the Second Amendment by the Framers,' writes Justice Stevens. Rather, 'it is the product of today's law-changing decision.'
In addition to exposing the flaws in Scalia's version of original meaning, Justice Stevens' dissent spins out the dangerous implications of reading the Second Amendment to permit excessive second-guessing by courts of the considered judgments of elected officials on the regulation of guns to protect public safety. Justice Stevens warns that the Heller decision 'will surely give rise to a far more active judicial role in making vitally important national policy decisions than was envisioned at any time in the 18th, 19th, or 20th centuries,' expressing his fear that the District of Columbia's gun law struck down by the Court 'may well be just the first of an unknown number of dominoes to be knocked off the table.'

It seems reasonable to assume that this powerful warning from the dissenters was a primary reason for the extraordinary language in Justice Scalia's opinion offering reassurances about the limited effect of the Court's decision. This section of the majority opinion -- the now famous Part III -- effectively pulls the dominoes away from the edge of the table. The right to keep and bear arms, according to Scalia, 'was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.' Indeed, he adds, 'nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt' on a wide range of gun restrictions, including such categories as 'laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms,' 'prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons,' and prohibitions on 'dangerous and unusual weapons,' a listing of 'presumptively lawful regulatory measures' that 'does not purport to be exhaustive.'

In the two years since Heller, the lower courts consistently have relied on this language to uphold all manner of federal gun laws as consistent with the new Heller right. The categories of 'presumptively lawful' regulations laid out in Heller so far have functioned as 'safe harbors' for existing laws. As UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler has put it, 'The Heller case is a landmark decision that has not changed very much at all.' This result is a tribute to the impact of Justice Stevens' dissent.
Of course, if the Supreme Court decides, in the pending McDonald v. Chicago case, to incorporate the Second Amendment right as a restraint on the states, this will prompt an avalanche of additional legal challenges to state and local gun laws. But even if it endorses incorporation, and strikes down Chicago's handgun ban, it seems unlikely that the Court will say anything in McDonald to weaken the 'safe harbors' it constructed in response to Justice Stevens' dissent. Comments made during the McDonald argument indicate that those in the Heller majority remain sensitive to the charge of judicial activism, especially the suggestion by Justice Kennedy (the swing vote in Heller) that states should retain 'substantial latitude and ample authority to impose reasonable regulations' on firearms.

By putting the Heller majority on the defensive with his implicit charge of judicial activism, prompting the language of Part III, Justice Stevens may well have saved countless lifesaving gun laws against attack. For that, and for much more in his distinguished career as a jurist, we should all be grateful. And to President Obama, we should say -- send us more like John Paul Stevens.

For more information, see Dennis Henigan's Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy.

Rep. Barney Frank: A Key Part of Wall Street Reform Contains What the Republicans Want: Death Panels

2010-04-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

Rep. Barney Frank: A Key Part of Wall Street Reform Contains What the Republicans Want: Death Panels: "

During the overheated debate on health insurance reform, the Republicans stated the bill would create death panels that would kill grandma. They made it up, of course, but now they are ignoring a key aspect of the House and Senate Wall Street reform bill proposed by Democrats: death panels to shut down failing financial institutions.

In fact, yesterday, Senator McConnell took to the Senate floor to say the following: 'We cannot allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks,'' McConnell said. 'The way to solve this problem is to let the people who make the mistakes pay for them. We won't solve this problem until the biggest banks are allowed to fail.''The House bill does just that. The bill creates a Financial Stability Oversight Board that will monitor the activities and practices of large financial institutions, but if they run into trouble the Board becomes a death panel. If a Wall Street bank or investment bank begins to fail, threatening the safety of the financial system, it will be put to death. End of story. Shareholders are wiped out, unsecured creditors are out of luck, management and every employee that is not required to shut down the company is fired. And even secured creditors may be required to take haircuts. The industry pays into a fund to put the institution to death, and this fund is only used to protect the system and our economy when the bank fails. Republicans just don't want to believe it: Under the Democratic plan, the taxpayer is not put on the hook. Not now, not ever. Taxpayer bailouts, like the one President Bush authorized, are over.
Senator McConnell and every Republican member of the House should know that the cost of doing nothing is more bailouts. Republicans had every opportunity during President Bush's two terms to regulate derivatives, rein in subprime lending, end 'too big to fail' financial institutions and restrict bank practices. Unfortunately for the American people, Republicans failed time and time again. The result: President Bush's bailouts.
In December, the House passed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, legislation that will protect Main Street from the worst of Wall Street abuses after years of non-existent regulation and oversight by the Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans. Details on how the Democrats end bailouts and protect taxpayers can be found here.

just pay your taxes....

2010-04-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

Tea Parties

Wednesday, Apr 14, 2010 17:20 EDT

On the right, a taxing myth-understanding

Tea Party types love to play victim, which has given rise to some ugly myths about who is and isn't paying taxes

By Gene Lyons

AP/Gerald Herbert

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., speaks at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans on Saturday, April 10.

Journalists often look askance at politicians who opportunistically praise the wisdom and common sense of the voters. Granted, some office-seekers can be as obsequious as waiters at fancy French restaurants.

Reporters and pundits, however, can also be flatterers, rarely more so than on Tax Day, April 15. Perhaps because they, too, have spent the previous weekend digging through canceled checks for itemized deductions, many join the yearly lament about sky-high taxes and runaway government spending.

This season's caterwauling, however, has taken an even more self-pitying tone. The Associated Press ran a feature headlined, "Nearly half of U.S. households escape federal income tax." For them, the dreaded April 15 deadline "is simply somebody else's problem ... About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability."

Paradoxically, this revelation set off weeping on the right. After campaigning for generations to slash tax rates, many conservatives now see themselves as victims. Washington Monthly's Steve Benen chronicled the lamentations: "Rob Thy Neighbor," headlined the Drudge Report, "Half of Households Pay No Fed Income Tax."

On Fox News, former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum explained that when "people feel like ... they're getting money out of the Treasury for nothing, then there's no end to the amount of government that people want."

Needless to say, we heard nothing like this when the government Santorum wanted invaded Iraq and Afghanistan on credit.

But Democrats hold the White House, so "fiscal restraint" is all the rage among Republicans. Some of it's not real subtle. One North West Arkansas Times columnist, for example, explains that black voters "share the collectivist, welfare-state vision of Obama because they are net recipients from rather than contributors to welfare state programs." In contrast, "middle-class whites suspect that they are the ones who will end up paying for Obama's governmental largesse."

Nothing racial about it, of course. Perish the thought! Reading it, one couldn't guess that more than 80 percent of Arkansas voters, hence the vast majority of the state's Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance and Food Stamp recipients are as white as the buttocks the columnist inadvertently displayed.

But then hypocrisy and a determined refusal to think seriously about taxes and government spending characterize much of the U.S. electorate. Back to those households escaping income tax, for example: How many are retirees living on savings and Social Security? How many soldiers? Students? How many are unemployed amid the current recession, thus have no income to tax?

Notwithstanding Santorum's lament, it's also false to imply that households paying no income tax escape federal taxation altogether. Social Security and Medicare payroll deductions, for example, add up to a nonrefundable 15.3 percent -- a slightly higher rate than wealthy citizens pay on income from dividends and capital gains. Low-income earners, meanwhile, pay the same gasoline and sales taxes as everybody else.

Meanwhile, ever since the "Reagan Revolution" of story and song, income distribution in the United States has grown steadily more unequal. A graphic produced by the Institute for Policy Studies documents that in 2007 the bottom 50 percent of American taxpayers possessed a combined 2.5 percent of the wealth. They're scraping to get by. The top 1 percent, meanwhile, control 34 percent of the nation's wealth, the top 10 percent more than 70 percent altogether.

Meanwhile, the gap between the super-rich and everybody else grows ever wider. According to the same study, the top .01 percent of U.S. families currently enjoy an average income 976 times that of the bottom 90 percent; in 1928, a year before the Great Depression, the ratio was a mere 892-to-1. Political democracies are hard to sustain amid such economic inequality.

The Bush/Obama TARP bailout of Wall Street banks, while necessary to salvage the financial system in the short term, was yet another example of a large wealth transfer from middle-class taxpayers to the super-rich. They don't appear particularly grateful, do they?

Anyway, still worried about those low-income lucky stiffs who paid no income tax this year?

If so, then you must be a Tea Party member, a group of anti-tax activists like Tennessee GOP congressional candidate Stephen Fincher, a dedicated fiscal conservative who the Washington Post learned receives $200,000 in subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A cheap shot? Then check out Bruce Bartlett's fascinating Forbes article "The Misinformed Tea Party Movement." Polled, most attending a Washington demonstration overestimated federal taxes by a factor of three.

Moreover, like most Americans, and virtually all Republicans, they opposed increased government spending in general. But when quizzed on particulars such as highways, defense, education and healthcare, they advocate more spending. On the three big deficit drivers -- Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- fewer than 10 percent of Americans advocate serious cuts.

So pay up, and count your blessings.

Weekly Address: Relief for the Middle Class at Tax Time

2010-04-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

Weekly Address: Relief for the Middle Class at Tax Time: "

As April 15th approaches, the President discusses several of the tax breaks for middle class families he has signed into law. Find out more about the Making Work Pay tax credit, breaks for first-time homebuyers, rewards for making your home more energy efficient and more through our Tax Savings Tool.

Click here to see the video.

Borrowing from our Children

2010-04-10T08:26:00.000-07:00

Borrowing from our Children: "Last night I heard on television for the millionth time that our national debt is like borrowing from our children. Millions of viewers from around the country were probably nodding their heads in agreement. That saying has been around so long that we accept it as a simple statement of fact.

But are we borrowing from our children or investing in them? Suppose we decide to stop spending money so our children will have lots of money for themselves. That would be generous of us, right?

I don't think so.

I think future generations might like to have most of the things we're investing in, such as infrastructure, healthcare, schools, a clean environment, energy sources, and freedom, to name just a few. No one wants to inherit a country full of sickly, uneducated hobos, on the verge of being conquered by Cuba.

Obviously there's a middle ground, where we spend our money as wisely as possible in the present for the benefit of all. But stop making me feel guilty about leaving future generations a clean, educated, healthy, well-defended country with a vigorous economy, even if it comes with some debt attached. It still seems like a bargain.

And perhaps we should stop talking about the future debt in absolute dollars, because "trillions" scares the food out of my esophagus, through my large and small intestines, and about four feet into the surface of the earth. I prefer to hear our national debt expressed as percentages of, for example, our next 30 years of projected GDP. That way it doesn't seem so scary.

Future generations should go get a job. And a haircut. And stay off my lawn!

Jobs Are Coming Back. Will Energy Reform Come With Them?

2010-04-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

Jobs Are Coming Back. Will Energy Reform Come With Them?: "
Images via Climate Progress

You've likely heard the big news today that 162,000 new US jobs were added in March, which marks the biggest gain in employment in 3 years. Some 40,000 of those were attributed to the Census, but the rest was true private sector growth. Since the boilerplate (but untrue) talking points opponents of energy reform use was that it would kill jobs and burden the fragile economy, and now we're finally seeing distinct job growth again, is there a better chance that the beleaguered clean en...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Health Care Reform: Good for People Like Me

2010-04-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

Health Care Reform: Good for People Like Me: "

By Philip Brewer

A long time ago, I had an idea. I was working a regular job, but I realized that what I wanted to do was be a writer. I figured that I could make some money writing, but not necessarily enough to support myself. So, I came up with a naive plan. It started with living more frugally.

I did all the ordinary frugal stuff. I ate out less. I bought fewer gadgets. I moved into a cheap apartment. I drove less.

Living more frugally did two things. First, it narrowed the gap between what I figured I could earn as a writer and what I was spending. Second, it freed up cash for saving and investing — and investing let me fill the gap from the other side, augmenting my potential writing income with interest and dividends.

You'll have already seen why I call it a naive plan. When I first started, I figured all I had to do was build my investments to the point where my investment income filled the gap between my writing income and my spending. But in the United States, that didn't work — because of health insurance.

Now, I was prepared to include the cost of health insurance in my plan, just like I was willing to include rent, groceries, and my internet connection. But there's no way to budget for the cost of health insurance: it's cheap enough if you're healthy, but spikes up toward infinity if you get sick. Worse, there's every reason to worry that getting sick will prompt your insurance company to go over your medical history with a fine-tooth comb, and then use any omission or error in your insurance application as an excuse to rescind your policy.

The upshot, as I wrote a while back in an article called Not Free to Be Poor, was that health insurance in the U.S. wasn't really insurance at all. That is, it didn't protect your finances from the huge contingent expenses that would hit if you got sick.

Health care reform is fixing that. The first big change is that in just six months, insurance companies can no longer rescind policies just because you made some mistake on your application.

To people like me, that's a really important part. Right now (for the next six months) my whole financial future is riding on a bet: I'm betting that I'll only get seriously ill or badly injured one time in my whole life. Since I'm healthy, I've been able to get a good health insurance policy. And, since I'm healthy, and could get a good policy from a different insurance company, I'm in a position to shop around for a better rate. But getting sick would mean losing the bet. I wouldn't be able to get a new policy, so I'd be stuck with the old policy — which would immediately start getting more expensive, a process that would accelerate as healthy people shopped around and found cheaper policies to switch to, leaving only sick people behind, paying ever higher premiums.

There'll be future good things, too. In four years insurance companies won't be able to deny coverage just because you're sick. The health insurance exchanges will make it a lot easier to shop around for a policy. People who are really poor (earning less than 133% of the poverty level) will get free insurance through Medicaid, and people who are a bit less poor (up to 400% of the poverty level) will get a subsidy for the cost of their insurance.

So, health care reform is good for people like me. And there are a lot of us:

How many potential entrepreneurs would be willing to take the risk of starting a small business, but not the risk of going without insurance?

How many workers at big companies would be happier at a small company, but have a sick spouse or sick child and need the big company's insurance plan?

How many creative types (writers, artists, musicians, actors, dancers, filmmakers) would be willing to eke out a meager existence on what they can earn from their art, but aren't willing to bet their entire financial future that they won't get sick?

How many people just want to try something different, but have been sticking to their old job because it's got good insurance?

I look forward to the unleashing of all that talent and energy, once all the people like me are able to do what they're called to do, without worrying that one serious illness would bankrupt them. I think there's a lot of us.

I think we'll do great things.

Permalink | 42 comments | Philip Brewer's blog | Channel: Personal Finance, Health and Beauty

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This article is from Wise Bread.

An Unprecedented Level of Obstruction

2010-03-27T19:33:00.000-07:00

An Unprecedented Level of Obstruction: "

Faced with an unprecedented level of obstruction in the Senate, the President announced his intention to recess appoint fifteen nominees to fill critical administration posts. While the President respects the critical role the Senate plays in the appointment process, he was no longer willing to let another month go by with key economic positions unfilled, especially at a time when our country is recovering from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Many of these fifteen individuals have enjoyed broad bipartisan support, but have found their confirmation votes delayed for reasons that have nothing to do with their qualifications. It has more to do with an obstruction-at-all-costs mentality that we’ve been faced with since the President came into office. Because of political posturing, these fifteen appointees have waited an average of 214 days for Senate confirmation.

This opposition got so out of hand at one point that one senator put a blanket hold on all of the President’s nominees in an attempt to win concessions on two projects that would benefit his state. And another nominee’s confirmation was delayed by one senator for more than eight months because of a disagreement over a proposed federal building in his home state. When that nominee was finally given the vote she deserved, she was confirmed 96 to 0. When you attempt to prevent the government from working effectively because you didn’t get your way, you’re failing to live up to your responsibilities as a public servant.

To put this in perspective, at this time in 2002, President Bush had only 5 nominees pending on the floor. By contrast, President Obama has 77 nominees currently pending on the floor, 58 of whom have been waiting for over two weeks and 44 of those have been waiting more than a month. And cloture has been filed 16 times on Obama nominees, nine of whom were subsequently confirmed with 60 or more votes or by voice vote. Cloture was not filed on a single Bush nominee in his first year. And despite facing significantly less opposition, President Bush had already made 10 recess appointments by this point in his presidency and he made another five over the spring recess.

A few more numbers to put this in perspective:

These fifteen nominees have been waiting a total of 3,204 days or almost nine years to start their respective jobs.
Even the most recently nominated of these fifteen individuals has been waiting 144 days or nearly five months.
Jeffrey Goldstein was nominated to serve as the top domestic finance official at Treasury, a crucial position for fixing the economy and preventing another financial crisis. Goldstein has been waiting 248 days or over 8 months.
Jacqueline Berrien was nominated to serve as Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC currently lacks a quorum and cannot fulfill its mandate to protect American workers from discrimination. Berrien has been waiting 254 days or over 8 months.
Craig Becker and Mark Pearce were nominated to serve on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which protects American workers from unfair labor practices. The five member board has been trying to operate with only two members. Becker and Pearce have been waiting for 261 days or over 8 months.

The roadblocks we’ve seen in the Senate have left some government agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission impaired in fulfilling their mission. These agencies can now get back to working for the American people.

These nominees will remain pending before the Senate for what we hope will be the expeditious confirmation that candidates of their caliber deserve. But we also hope that this politically motivated gridlock comes to an end, because each day we dedicate to a strategy aimed at gumming up the works of our government is another day we aren’t doing right by the American people.

Jen Psaki is the White House's Deputy Communications Director

Something you won't see on faux noise

2010-03-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

O'Keefe, others plan to plead guilty: "From NBC's Pete WilliamsThe four men arrested in January for their stunt to embarrass staffers in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) are prepared to plead guilty, legal sources say, in return for reduced charges.
Federal prosecutors today filed misdemeanor charges against the four. James O'Keefe, who became a media sensation last year for his videos involving ACORN employees, and three others were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses. Two of them went to her...(read more)"

The Underlying Logic of Piracy

2010-03-23T23:01:00.000-07:00

The Underlying Logic of Piracy: "

rush limbaugh set to leave the US finally!

2010-03-23T00:44:00.000-07:00

Can't wait to see rush limbaugh leave the country! He promised he would leave the country if Heath Care Reform passed (though his being a republican, you are probably right to wonder if he will really follow through). He is a little confused though, he loved his health care in Hawaii (the closest thing to socialized medicine in the US) and he says he is headed to Costa Rica when he leaves (How soon rush?) which has socialized medicine.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/limbaugh-ill-leave-us-if_n_491536.html

9

2010-03-20T00:21:00.000-07:00

9: "

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9 -- that's number of states and the District of Columbia where there is still no specific law that makes it illegal for insurers to reject applicants who are survivors of domestic violence by citing the history of domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. [Source]

In many ways, America's women are those struggling most under the health care status quo. We're uniquely impacted by gender inequalities ranging from being charged higher premiums just because we're women to insurance companies being allowed in some states to deny coverage because of so-called “pre-existing conditions” like being pregnant. In addition, we're often the ones looked to for handling the health care of others. Most mothers say they're the ones responsible for managing their families' care -- from choosing doctors to taking their kids to appointments to fulfilling family prescriptions. And many women also find themselves caring for a sick or elderly relative.

While women may be dealing with many of the hardships of our broken health care system firsthand -- women also have the most to gain from health insurance reform.

Take a look at the video First Lady Michelle Obama previously recorded to highlight health insurance reform from the unique perspective of women:

Click here to see the video.

Today’s number -- 9 -- is the latest in our ‘Health Reform by the Numbers’ series, an online campaign to raise awareness about how we just can’t wait any longer for health insurance reform. You can follow the campaign on Whitehouse.gov and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.

To help spread the word, share this blog post with your family, friends and online networks using the ‘Share/Bookmark’ feature below.

If you still have questions about what reform means for you and your family, tune in tonight at 5:15pm ET to get answers from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Previous Numbers:

50/50
1
41
625
8
1115

3

2010-03-20T00:15:00.000-07:00

3: "

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3 million -- that’s the decrease in the number of middle-income earners who obtained health insurance from their employers from 2000 to 2008. [Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation]
And 3 times -- is how much faster health care premiums are rising compared to wages. [Source: Kaiser Family Foundation]

It’s no secret -- skyrocketing health care costs are crushing families and businesses, forcing small business owners to choose between health care and hiring and forcing families to make hard spending choices because of rising out-of-pocket health care costs. While our broken health care system is hurting everyone, it’s the middle class that’s being hit the hardest. Yesterday, the non-partisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released a report showing that the middle class became uninsured at a faster pace than those with less or more income.

Health insurance reform will change that by giving American families and small businesses more control over their own health care. While in Ohio earlier this week, President Obama detailed just what health insurance reform means for America’s middle class:

For the first time, uninsured individuals, small businesses, they’d have the same kind of choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves. Understand if this reform becomes law, members of Congress, they’ll be getting their insurance from the same place that the uninsured get theirs, because if it’s good enough for the American people, it’s good enough for the people who send us to Washington.

So basically what would happen is, we’d set up a pool of people; millions of people across the country would all buy into these pools that give them more negotiating power. If you work for a big company, you’ve got a better insurance deal because you’ve got more bargaining power as a whole. We want you to have all the bargaining power that the federal employees have, that big companies have, so you’ll be able to buy in or a small business will be able to buy into this pool. And that will lower rates, it’s estimated, by up to 14 to 20 percent over what you’re currently getting. That’s money out of pocket.

And what my proposal says is if you still can’t afford the insurance in this new marketplace, then we’re going to offer you tax credits to do so. And that will add up to the largest middle-class tax cut for health care in history. That’s what we’re going to do…

Look, I want everybody to understand -- the wealthiest among us can already buy the best insurance there is. The least well among us, the poorest among us, they get their health care through Medicaid. So it’s the middle class, it’s working people that are getting squeezed, and that’s who we have to help, and we can afford to do it.

Today’s number, 3, is the latest in ‘Health Reform by the Numbers,’ our online campaign to raise awareness about why the time is now for health insurance reform.You can follow the campaign on Whitehouse.gov and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.

To help spread the word, share this blog post with your family, friends and online networks using the ‘Share/Bookmark’ feature below.

Previous Numbers:

9
50-50
1
41
625
8
1115"

Responsible and Paid For

2010-03-20T00:12:00.000-07:00

Responsible and Paid For: "

Cross-posted from the OMB blog.

Today’s Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate of health insurance reform legislation reaffirms what we have said for the past year: that fiscally responsible health insurance reform is not only possible, but also is an important step toward long-term fiscal sustainability.

The new CBO estimate finds that health insurance reform will reduce the deficit by over $100 billion in this decade and by more than $1 trillion over the following 10 years. If enacted, this would be the most significant deficit-reduction package passed into law in over a decade. And it will begin to transform our health care system into one that delivers higher quality at lower cost, boosting the bottom lines of American businesses, families, and the federal government — all the while providing those with health insurance with new choices and a host of new consumer protections and expanding coverage to 32 million Americans.

By paying for itself and more, this legislation represents an important break from the way Washington has done business recently. In the first decade of this century, large, significant domestic policy initiatives—two tax cuts and a Medicare prescription drug benefit — were passed into law without being paid for, adding trillions to the deficit. That is why the President pushed for, and then signed into law, statutory pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) legislation that holds policymakers to a simple principle: if you propose new tax cuts or entitlement expansions, you must find a way to pay for them.

Some have raised concerns that the health insurance reform legislation may have fallen short of this PAYGO principle. That is simply false. CBO’s analysis shows that the combination of the Senate-passed bill and the reconciliation bill will be deficit-reducing according to statutory PAYGO standards — standards that go beyond simple deficit reduction.

In particular, the overall bill — including the Senate-passed bill and the reconciliation bill combined—generates over $100 billion in deficit reduction over the next decade (and more thereafter). For the purposes of statutory PAYGO, however, certain of the bill’s savings are not counted: namely, the deficit reduction coming from increased Social Security payroll tax revenues and from the CLASS Act, a long-term care program. But even excluding these components the combined bills generate a net reduction in the deficit, and thus are fully compliant with statutory PAYGO.

The CBO score today should leave no doubt that we are operating in a new fiscal era — one where we abide by our commitment to pay for new initiatives and take steps to restore fiscal responsibility by reining in the single biggest driver of our long-term shortfall.

Peter Orszag is Director of the Office of Management and Budget

50/50

2010-03-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

50/50: "

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If you’re an American under the age of 65, there’s roughly a 50/50 chance that you will find yourself without coverage at some point in the next decade.[Source]

President Obama first highlighted this staggering figure in a weekly address from this past September and detailed how, in our broken health care system, losing insurance can happen to anyone. At yesterday’s rally, the President reminded us of just how fragile the status quo really is:

Part of what makes this issue difficult is most of us do have health insurance, we still do. And so -- and so we kind of feel like, well, I don’t know, it’s kind of working for me; I’m not worrying too much. But what we have to understand is that what’s happened to Natoma, there but for the grace of God go any one of us. Anybody here, if you lost your job right now and after the COBRA ran out …

So let’s just think about -- think about if you lost your job right now. How many people here might have had a preexisting condition that would mean it’d be very hard to get health insurance on the individual market? Think about if you wanted to change jobs. Think about if you wanted to start your own business but you suddenly had to give up your health insurance on your job. Think about what happens if a child of yours, heaven forbid, got diagnosed with something that made it hard for them to insure.

For so many people, it may not be a problem right now but it’s going to be a problem later, at any point. And even if you’ve got good health insurance, what’s happening to your premiums? What’s happening to your co-payments? What’s happening to your deductible? They’re all going up. That’s money straight out of your pocket.

So the bottom line is this: The status quo on health care is simply unsustainable. We can’t have -- we can’t have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people.

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Viewing this video requires Adobe Flash Player 8 or higher. Download the free player.

Today’s number – 50/50 – is the latest in our ‘Health Reform by the Numbers’ series, an online campaign to raise awareness about how we just can’t wait any longer for health insurance reform. You can follow the campaign on Whitehouse.gov and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.

To help spread the word, share this blog post with your family, friends and online networks using the ‘Share/Bookmark’ feature below.

Previous Numbers:

1
41
625
8
1115"

1

2010-03-16T00:32:00.000-07:00

1: "

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1 -- in every six dollars in the U.S. economy is spent on health care today. [Source]
If we do nothing, in 30 years, 1 out of every three dollars in our economy will be tied up in the health care system. [Source]

Yesterday, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, non-partisan research organizations, released a report analyzing the cost of maintaining the status quo on health care. Here’s just a sample of what they believe we could be facing in the years ahead:

Families will face dramatically higher health care costs. Individual and family spending on premiums and out-of-pocket health care costs will increase significantly. Spending would jump 34 percent by 2015 and 79 percent by 2020.
Premiums will become increasingly expensive for employers and their workers. Premiums for both single and family policies would more than double by 2020, increasing from $4,800 to $10,300 for single policies, and from $12,100 to $25,600 for family policies.
Employers will see large increases in premium costs. Employer spending on premiums would increase from $430 billion in 2010 to $851 billion in 2020 -- a 98 percent increase.
Many small and medium sized firms would quit offering health care coverage to workers. As premiums nearly double, employees in small firms would see offers of health insurance almost cut in half, dropping from 41 percent of firms offering insurance in 2010 to 23 percent in 2020. Medium-sized firms would also cut offers of health insurance, dropping from 90 percent in 2010 to 75 percent in 2020.

It’s clear: the cost of doing nothing is too high. The time is now to reform our broken health care system.

Today’s number, 1, is the latest in ‘Health Reform by the Numbers,’ our online campaign to raise awareness about why the time is now for health insurance reform. You can follow the campaign on Whitehouse.gov and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.

To help spread the word, share this blog post with your family, friends and online networks using the ‘Share/Bookmark’ feature below.

Previous Numbers:

41
625
8
1125"

625

2010-03-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

625: "

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625 – That’s the number of people who lost their health insurance EVERY HOUR in 2009 [Source: WonkRoom.ThinkProgress.org]

Losing insurance – it can happen to anyone. We’ve all heard stories – maybe you know someone who’s recently lost their insurance, maybe that someone is you. President Obama has heard those stories too:

There's the father I met in Colorado whose child was diagnosed with severe hemophilia the day after he was born. Now, they had insurance, but there was a cap on their coverage. So once the child's medical bills began to pile up, the father was left to frantically search for another option, or face tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills.... Small business people -- I got a letter just this week from a small businessman. He said, "I don't know what to do. I've always provided health insurance for my families, but here, the attached bill, shows that the premiums have gone up 48 percent in the last year, and I think that I'm probably going to have to stop providing health insurance for my employees. I don't want to, but I don't have a choice."

These stories are wrong. They are heartbreaking. Nobody should be treated that way in the United States of America…

You can learn more about the family from Colorado in this video:

Click here to see the video.

It’s time to reform our broken health care system so that American families and businesses can get the stability and security they deserve.

Today’s number – 625 – is the third in our ‘Health Reform by the Numbers’ series, an online campaign to raise awareness about how we just can’t wait any longer for health insurance reform. You can follow the campaign on Whitehouse.gov and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.

To help spread the word, share this blog post with your family, friends and online networks using the ‘Share/Bookmark’ feature below.

Previous Numbers:

8
1125

41

2010-03-13T09:22:00.000-08:00

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41 -- that’s the number of leading economists -- including three Nobel Prize winners -- who sent a letter to President Obama and Congress yesterday urging the swift passage of comprehensive health insurance reform to curb skyrocketing health care costs. [Source]
41 -- is also the percentage of adults under the age of 65 who accumulated medical debt, had difficulty paying medical bills, or struggled with both during a recent one year period. [Source]

Laura Klitzka of Wisconsin is no stranger to the burden of crippling health care costs. In September, we had a chance to visit with her at her home in Green Bay. Here’s her story:

Click here to see the video.

With comprehensive health insurance reform, we can finally control rising health care costs and bring relief to Laura and her family and the many other American families struggling to keep up with their bills. According to these leading economists, “the health care reforms passed by the House and Senate – with recent modifications proposed by President Obama – include serious measures that will slow the growth of health care spending.” If reform fails, they add, “the chances of reducing growth of health care spending in the future will be greatly reduced.”

Today’s number, 41, is the latest in ‘Health Reform by the Numbers,’ our online campaign to raise awareness about why the time is now for health insurance reform. You can follow the campaign on Whitehouse.gov and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.

If you’d like to help spread the word, share this blog post with your family, friends and online networks using the ‘Share/Bookmark’ feature below.

Previous Numbers:

625
8
1125

Recovery Act in Action, #3: Tracking the Ripples

2010-03-10T21:58:00.001-08:00

Recovery Act in Action, #3: Tracking the Ripples: "

Editor's Note: In case you missed them, read Part 1 and Part 2.

Throw a rock in a still pond and you will observe many ripples.

Throw a Recovery Act program in a stagnant economy and you will observe many jobs.

Therein lies the lesson from our latest entry of the Recovery Act in Action, thanks to some truly thorough journalism by Robert Gavin of the Boston Globe.

Gavin looked at the ripple effects, or—if you want to be boring—multipliers, from $77 million in Recovery Act contracts awarded to Reveal Imaging Technologies (RIT), a manufacturer of airport security equipment in Bedford, MA.

RIT reports that thanks to the Recovery Act-funded contracts from the Transportation Security Administration, they’ve added nearly 40 jobs over the past year and they’re still hiring. They’ve expanded their plant capacity, more than doubling the size of their facility.

But what Gavin’s article shows is that beyond these direct hiring effects, there’s a lot more upstream and downstream job creation generated by this type of activity. So far, RIT has subcontracted parts of its Recovery Act projects to 21 other companies in 12 states “that make components or provide services for its advanced scanning machines.”

For example, an RIT subcontract helped reduce planned layoffs at a firm that assembles conveyor systems. Same with a machine tool shop, whose “metal cutting machines, silent several months ago, are humming again” thanks largely to another RIT subcontract.

I spoke to the owner of that machine shop, Jack McGrail. He told me that most of 2009 was pretty dismal and that if things didn’t improve he was going to have to let some folks go. Then, in November, the RIT order generated by the Recovery Act came in, and, as Jack said, “it saved me from laying two guys off and I was able to add one more.”

That’s one type of multiplier effect—the jobs created by firms providing inputs to the final product. But there’s another type that’s also important: the activity caused when people earn more and go out and spend it. Gavin picked up this kind of activity too by visiting Rebecca’s Café, a restaurant near RIT that reports a 15% increase in sales since RIT expanded its workforce.

The evidence around the RIT case supports something economists have known since Keynes taught it to us: the jobs you directly create through government spending at a time of recession are just the tip of the iceberg.

Thanks to the Recovery Act, there are hundreds of thousands of teachers in classrooms and police on the beat, construction workers fixing roads, weatherizing and rehabbing buildings, engineers building out the smart grid and planning new high-speed rail lines, and much more. But as with RIT, for each one of these jobs, there are many others helping to supply materials and services to these firms and workers.

We’ll be throwing a lot more stones in the water in coming months, and I’ll be sure to keep posted on both the splash and the ripples.

Jared Bernstein is Chief Economic Advisor to the Vice President

8

2010-03-10T21:58:00.000-08:00

8: "

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8 -- The number of people every minute who are denied coverage, charged a higher rate, or otherwise discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition. [Source: HealthReform.gov]
8 -- The number of lobbyists hired by special interests to influence health reform for every member of Congress in 2009. [Source: Center for Public Integrity]

Ellen Linderman is a wife and farmer -- and one of those 8 people every minute that’s been discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition. Here’s her story:

Ellen is a 61-year old farmer in Carrington, ND. She has had several difficult experiences with health care in recent years. Ellen was initially denied health insurance coverage a few years back when she and her husband (also a farmer) had to switch from the state employee plan to private insurance. However, since she had eye surgery less than six months prior to switching, she was considered high risk. The issue was eventually resolved but only after she went without coverage for several months. Health insurance reform would help people like Ellen who have a pre-existing condition and need to get insurance – insurance companies can't deny people due to a pre-existing condition.
Ellen and the hundreds of others like her who are treated unfairly because of a pre-existing condition are another reason why we just can’t wait any longer for health insurance reform.

Over the next several days, we’ll continue announce new numbers, like 8, to raise awareness about why the time is now for health reform. We’ll promote those figures here on WhiteHouse.gov and on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

If you’d like to help raise awareness, share this blog post with your family, friends and online networks using the ‘Share/Bookmark’ feature below."

Robert Creamer: Republicans Want to Vote Against Health Care Reform? Go Ahead, Make My Day

2010-03-08T22:08:00.000-08:00

Robert Creamer: Republicans Want to Vote Against Health Care Reform? Go Ahead, Make My Day: "

Over the last several weeks various pundits -- and Republican talkers -- have fanned out across the airwaves to proclaim that Democrats face grave political danger this fall if they are so bold as to pass health care reform in the face of united Republican opposition.

For Congressional Democrats, the source of this advice should be enough to make it completely suspect. And in fact, history shows that just the opposite is true -- and many Republicans know it. Republicans do not win when Democrats are successful at making fundamental progressive change. They win when they stop Democrats from making fundamental progressive change.
As a progressive Democrat, I would be thrilled if every Republican votes against a health care reform bill that passes Congress and is signed into law by the President, since history shows they will pay a steep price for their united opposition to progressive change.
All you need to do is look at the last century of American politics. When has the modern Democratic Party been most successful? When it delivered on fundamental progressive change.
After Roosevelt delivered Social Security, the right of unions to organize, the regulation of Wall Street through the SEC, the reorganization of the banking system and FDIC, public works programs, and by massively increasing the share of taxes paid by the very rich, Democrats maintained huge margins in Congress and the Presidency for two decades. They also lay the foundation for the most robust period of economic growth in the history of humanity.
When President Johnson and the Democratic Congress passed Medicare and Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act and the War on Poverty - and later the Democratic Congress created the EPA -- Democrats had majorities in the House for three and a half decades that outlasted the conservative Reagan revolution of the 1980s by 14 years.
It wasn't until 1994 - largely because of the failure of Congress to pass the Clinton health care reform plan - that Republicans gained control of the House.
Why do Democrats do so well when they make fundamental progressive change? Because those policies benefit the vast majority of the voters rather than the tiny super-wealthy minority - the top 2% of the population - that are the chief beneficiaries of Republican status quo economic policies.
Ask any senior, or person with a disability, how they feel about Medicare and Social Security - policies that were passed by Democrats and opposed tooth and nail by Republicans. Even some Tea Party activists carry around signs that read: 'Hands Off My Medicare.' Ask most everyday Americans how they feel about child labor laws, or the minimum wage, or the Food and Drug Administration that protects consumers from unsafe food and medicines. Ask any consumer how she feels about the Federal Trade Commission, or federal laws that protect us from unsafe products. Ask anyone who breathes how they feel about laws that cleaned up our air and water.
Ask virtually anyone in America how they feel about public education - or a woman's right to vote.
All of these fundamental changes in American society were fought by the conservatives of the time, and once passed they all came to define the high political ground.

Americans are not disgusted with Washington today because of the bold initiatives it is considering. They are disgusted, in considerable measure, because it appears gridlocked and unable to deal with the problems confronting the nation, and their stagnant standard of living. They are tired of politicians who see politics as a 'gotcha' game instead of a way to deal with the problems and opportunities that confront their families. They hate the idea that their political leaders are in bed with Wall Street, the oil companies and the insurance giants - that campaign contributors have more sway than the voters.

They want decisive action to make fundamental change every bit as much as they did when they elected Barack Obama a little over a year ago.

When Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) said last year that Republicans could make the defeat of health care reform 'Obama's Waterloo,' he understood that it was great politics for Republicans to prevent fundamental reform, not the opposite.
If, once it is passed and signed into law, the Republicans want to campaign to repeal health care reform I say, go ahead, make my day.
As a Democrat, I love our odds if we can campaign against Republicans who voted against allowing ordinary Americans to have the right to buy the same kind of health care that is available to Members of Congress.

Something like: 'Republican Congressman Mark Kirk is happy to let the government pay for his health care, but Congressman Kirk voted against requiring that ordinary Americans be eligible to buy the same health insurance as Members of Congress.

Congressman Kirk may enjoy being an important Member of Congress, but when it comes to his health care, he should be no better than the rest of us.'

When Congressman Roy Blunt runs for the Senate in Missouri this fall, I can't wait to see ads like:'When it came to health insurance reform, Congressman Roy Blunt knew which side he was on. Blunt voted against reining in the power of health insurance companies to raise rates - by thirty nine ... fifty... even sixty percent.
He voted to oppose preventing insurance companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
He opposed requiring that insurance companies spend at least 80% of our premiums on medical care instead of CEO salaries, lobbyists, exploding profits, and armies of bureaucrats that do nothing but deny claims.
In fact, Congressman Blunt stood up for the insurance companies every time he had a chance. Isn't it time we had someone who stands up for us?'
The pundits who are blathering on that passing the health care bill is bad politics for Democrats either don't know what they're talking about, or are running a deliberate misinformation campaign to persuade swing Democrats to vote no.
Democrats are already subject to whatever down side they will get for voting for health care reform. That isn't going to change. But if they pass the bill they will get a big up side for actually delivering change.
And Democrats in Congress can't be confused that the voters will 'punish' them for 'jamming the bill through' or other procedural issues. First, it is impossible to 'jam the bill through' with a majority vote. That's what we do in a democracy - a majority rules. We believe in up or down votes.
But just as important, no one ever votes based on 'procedural' issues - or even remembers them. Who knows or cares what procedures were used to pass Medicare or Social Security. What people care about is the impact policies have on their lives - not procedural bickering.
One of the reasons the public support for 'health care reform' in general has dropped is the focus of news stories on the procedural 'sausage making' of Congress. The voters still strongly support the components of reform, and those are the questions that will be issues in the upcoming election.
The fact is that when Democrats act boldly to pass fundamental progressive change, we win. That's why changing the Senate filibuster rule is fundamentally good for Progressives. Some say, 'Oh wait until the Republicans are in the majority, then you'll wish you had a filibuster to stop their policies.' The problem is that we are the party of change, and they are the party of the status quo. We win when we have the ability to make fundamental change. They win by stopping us. In addition, it turns out that when we actually make change, we don't lose our majorities.

Sunday's New York Times ran a story about Obama Senior Adviser David Axelrod. It was part of a continuing analysis by the media attempting to place 'blame' on various members of the Obama inner circle for the difficulty of creating fundamental change.

In general, I find these stories irritating for two reasons. First, they ignore the real reason why it has taken longer than hoped to pass health care reform, climate change legislation, financial reform and immigration reform: real change is hard to do. When you take on the wealthiest vested interests in America they don't just give up. They pressure members of Congress, they lie to the public -- they do everything in their power to stop reform dead in its tracks.

Second, these critiques generally rely on the opinions of a pundit chattering class in Washington that has never run a political or issue campaign, much less made fundamental change. These pundits are rarely held responsible when their predictions or analysis turns out to be completely off-base. And often they behave like the little schools of fish you see in the shallow waters at the seashore: the entire school turns on a dime - first going this way, then another - all as a group. Like the little fish, that kind of 'schooling' mentality may help them protect them within the safety of the pack - but it does nothing to promote accurate analysis or political insight.

David Axelrod is one of the most accomplished political and message strategists of our era. Along with David Plouffe, he crafted the best-run presidential campaign in American history. He happens to also be dedicated to fundamental progressive change.
Axelrod doesn't always get it right, any more than anyone who is actually in the arena trying to make change happen. But I'd trust our success at making that change - the strategy for making that change - to David Axelrod any time compared to virtually any of his critics.

The political problem facing Democrats in the Mid-term elections has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of leadership from people like David Axelrod. It has everything to do with actually delivering change.

In the next two weeks, Democrats in Congress must come together and pass health care reform.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: 'Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,' available on Amazon.com.

GrizDave Thoughts

First Gray Wolf in 80 Years Enters California

Jared Bernstein: Pesky Brother-in-Law: Christmas Edition

Dan Kennedy: Why Liberals Should Be Rooting for Romney

WELL THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM

Sen. Harry Reid: Affordable Care Act Helps Women

James Peron: F.A. Hayek Against the Conservative

Paul Abrams: "Before the Next Election": The Overlooked Phrase in Perry's Treason Accusation

COUNTDOWN to SHUTDOWN

Robert J. Elisberg: Public, the Enemy No. 1

Doonesbury 2/13/2011

Treasury's wily plan to fix the housing market

Don't cofuse them with the facts - EPA Chief Bullied by Republicans

David Katz, M.D.: Is The Affordable Care Act ReallyUnconstitutional?

President of Arizona Senate proposes secession measure ---- Can they take Texas and Florida with them? Pretty please!!!!

Completely shocking news!!!!!!!

Weiner Gives 'Half Time Report' In Debate Over Health Care Repeal

Jamie Oliver Denied Access for Lunch Program Reform

The Moon Made Me Do It

Robert Creamer: Do Americans Have the Right to Bear Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Boner (Orange Man) admits some rethuglicans are stupid

Eric Boehlert: Jon Stewart Did What Pundits and Reporters Should Have Done

Mitchell Bard: Why Sarah Palin's North Korea Flub Matters

Ira Glasser: Calling the Republican Bluff

Robert Reich: Obama's First Stand

Does Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?

Advance Estimate of GDP for the Third Quarter of 2010

new dictionary entry for clueless

Christine O'Donnell Slams Media, Defends Views on Church-State Separation

Critical Contests: CBS News Election 2010 Race Ratings

MORE Newt LIES-Fact Check: Obama 'less' press conferences 'than any recent president'?

10 Ways Our Economic Policies Benefit Women

Palin: Anew career as a bad comedienne

One Week Later, Nearly 2,000 Small Businesses Approved for SBA Loans Due to Jobs Act

Wireless Voice Calls are Obsolete

Robert Reich: The Defining Issue: Who Should Get the Tax Cut -- The Rich or Everyone Else?

Fighting to Protect Consumers

Let's Stop Torturing Facts and Start Working Together

Mark Green: 'But' Nothing: Why the Right to Build a Mosque Trumps the "Heckler's Veto"

Geoffrey Dunn: AFL-CIO President Compares Palin to Joe McCarthy

Weekly Address: No Corporate Takeover of Our Democracy

Chris Weigant: Obama Reframes Mosque Debate

Comic for August 11, 2010

The Myth of Idle Recovery Dollars

Weekly Address: Medicare Officially Safer After Health Reform

Jeff Cohen: Colbert 1, U.S. State Department 0

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Mort Zuckerman Is Not Incompetent

Michael Winship: The Right Manipulates Muslims -- and Boy Scouts

Doonesbury 7/30/2010 - The truth!

Linda Bergthold: Your Health Insurance Will NOT Be Taxed Next Year

Weekly Address: Help for Vets with PTSD

Michael Winship: This Fourth of July, Celebrate 1776 -- The Movie

Caption Contest – Wookiees Are Great Mechanics – Winners

Giving Americans Control over Their Health Care

Senate Democrats push jobs tax compromise - Reuters

Doug Kendall: We Need to Stop Leaning into Scalia's Punches

I entered a photo in this contest, vote if you want to..

Tax the Hell Out of Wall Street and Give it to Main Street

Bob Cesca: Republicans and Teabaggers Finally Embrace Big Government

Tara Stiles: 5 Simple Ways to Live More Fully

Power9: 9 Habits of the World's Healthiest People

The Blue Zones

The Power9

Republicans up to their SOP Version 2 (Version 1 try to create fear)

Dems accuse GOP of 'lies' on bill

Posted: Thursday, April 22, 2010 1:59 PM by Mark Murray Filed Under: Congress, Democrats, Republicans, Economy

A Practice That Will Soon Be Illegal

Who Is Really Fighting for Perpetual Bailouts?

Dennis A. Henigan: How Justice Stevens May Have Saved Our Gun Laws

Rep. Barney Frank: A Key Part of Wall Street Reform Contains What the Republicans Want: Death Panels

just pay your taxes....

Tea Parties

On the right, a taxing myth-understanding

Tea Party types love to play victim, which has given rise to some ugly myths about who is and isn't paying taxes

Weekly Address: Relief for the Middle Class at Tax Time

Borrowing from our Children

Jobs Are Coming Back. Will Energy Reform Come With Them?

Health Care Reform: Good for People Like Me

An Unprecedented Level of Obstruction

Something you won't see on faux noise

Posted: Thursday, April 22, 2010 1:59 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: Congress, Democrats, Republicans, Economy