National Review Online - As Gov. Scott Walker (R., Wis.) battles the public-sector unions, Cain says Madison has become “ground zero for the rest of the nation.”
“For the last couple of days, America has heard from ten percent of the workforce. It’s now time for them to hear from the [other] 90 percent of the workforce,” Cain told the crowd. “Maybe the ten percent has forgotten that we pay the bills.”
The more I hear of Herman Cain, the more I like his prospects in the 2012 GOP Presidential race.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Outrage: Republicans Establishment Reject Tiny Spending Cuts
Patterico's Pontifications - Unbelievable — and yet, all too believable:
The House rejected a measure cutting an additional $22 billion from the Republican spending bill, as conservatives ran into a wall of opposition from the GOP establishment over the depth of reductions to federal funding.
$22 billion is too much for our side? $22 billion??
The amendment backed by the conservative Republican Study Committee failed, 147-281, but not before putting the GOP spending divide under a spotlight on the House floor. Authored by RSC chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the proposal would have dramatically reshaped an appropriations bill that already slashes federal spending by $61 billion over the next seven months.
More than half of the Republican conference backed the measure in opposition to two party chiefs, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who voted with every Democrat against it. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) did not vote, as is traditional for Speakers.
Let me remind you what my man Chris Christie said about people who would promise to do something about the debt and fail to deliver:
This afternoon at the American Enterprise Institute, New Jersey governor Chris Christie said he wants House Republicans to “put up or shut up” on entitlement reform and had a message for those candidates he campaigned for in 2010: “If the people who I campaigned for don’t stand up and do the right thing, the next time they’ll see me in their district [it will be] with my arm around their primary opponent,” Christie said. “Because you asked me to put my reputation on the line for you based on a promise that you were going to deal with these hard issues.”
As a reminder, here is what we do not want to see: cowardice from people who want to put the burden on the other side to handle the problem:
And as another reminder, here is what we do want to see: people standing up and talking about the problem and what we need to do to fix it — even when saying these things is politically risky:
I know I already showed you that video . . . but God, I love it so much.
And the contrast to the Geither video is telling. Geither’s attitude that, hey, sure our plan sucks, but let’s see if you people can somehow muster the political will to do better! . . . that is exactly what Gov. Christie is talking about.
If you want to claim to be a leader, try leading.
The House rejected a measure cutting an additional $22 billion from the Republican spending bill, as conservatives ran into a wall of opposition from the GOP establishment over the depth of reductions to federal funding.
$22 billion is too much for our side? $22 billion??
The amendment backed by the conservative Republican Study Committee failed, 147-281, but not before putting the GOP spending divide under a spotlight on the House floor. Authored by RSC chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the proposal would have dramatically reshaped an appropriations bill that already slashes federal spending by $61 billion over the next seven months.
More than half of the Republican conference backed the measure in opposition to two party chiefs, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who voted with every Democrat against it. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) did not vote, as is traditional for Speakers.
Let me remind you what my man Chris Christie said about people who would promise to do something about the debt and fail to deliver:
This afternoon at the American Enterprise Institute, New Jersey governor Chris Christie said he wants House Republicans to “put up or shut up” on entitlement reform and had a message for those candidates he campaigned for in 2010: “If the people who I campaigned for don’t stand up and do the right thing, the next time they’ll see me in their district [it will be] with my arm around their primary opponent,” Christie said. “Because you asked me to put my reputation on the line for you based on a promise that you were going to deal with these hard issues.”
As a reminder, here is what we do not want to see: cowardice from people who want to put the burden on the other side to handle the problem:
And as another reminder, here is what we do want to see: people standing up and talking about the problem and what we need to do to fix it — even when saying these things is politically risky:
I know I already showed you that video . . . but God, I love it so much.
And the contrast to the Geither video is telling. Geither’s attitude that, hey, sure our plan sucks, but let’s see if you people can somehow muster the political will to do better! . . . that is exactly what Gov. Christie is talking about.
If you want to claim to be a leader, try leading.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Wisconsin Public Unions Show Their True Face
Phineas - Forget the overheated rhetoric and signs comparing democratically elected governors and legislators to Hitler and rapists. Forget the spoiled-brat demands and Athens-style protests for the unquestioned continuation of gold-plated benefits that most private-sector workers would give their eye teeth for. You want to know just how much of a threat to democracy, representative government, and the general safety public-employee unions can be when threatened?
Try to take away their goodies, and they’ll go after your mother:
Idaho has a “superintendent of public instruction,” and his name is Tom Luna. He has proposed some measures that the teachers’ union doesn’t like, at all. And his opponents have made sure that he feels good and threatened.
Someone went to his mother’s house — his mother’s. Someone slashed his tires and spray-painted a threat onto the door. As reported in this article, Luna has said, “Family and personal property are off-limits. You don’t cross that line . . .”
Oh, yes, you do. At least some do. I will repeat what I have already said this morning: I don’t want to hear from the Left about “civility” for the rest of my life.
Neither “civility” nor “democracy.” And this is in deep-Red Idaho!
This isn’t just (or at all) a fight over benefits or economics; this is a struggle over who has power — the elected representatives of the people or union bosses and their paid-for allies in the Democratic Party. Right now it’s just Idaho, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana, but the battles here and, inevitably, in other states will determine who has that power. The Left has drawn such hard lines already against any reform that the governors can’t afford to back down, lest they let Labor know the elected representatives of the people can be intimidated through intransigence and thuggery. It’s a sad thing for decent union members who would likely have accepted reasonable compromise if the situation had been honestly explained to them, but their leaders have lead them into a battle that forces the governors to break the unions in order to keep faith with their voters — the taxpayers who are the public employees’ real bosses.
More than being about fiscal soundness, this is a battle between representative democracy and corporatism.
Regarding the President’s shameful insertion of himself into what is purely a matter for state governments, Matt Welch at Reason cuts through the bull and asks “Is this how a President should act?”
I have written in the past about how libertarians are pretty lonely in the political scheme of things in terms of constantly being challenged to defend themselves against the “logical conclusion” of their philosophy. But I think it’s time to amend that. We are witnessing the logical conclusion of the Democratic Party’s philosophy, and it is this: Your tax dollars exist to make public sector unions happy. When we run out of other people’s money to pay for those contracts and promises (most of which are negotiated outside of public view, often between union officials and the politicians that union officials helped elect), then we just need to raise taxes to cover a shortfall that is obviously Wall Street’s fault. Anyone who doesn’t agree is a bully, and might just bear an uncanny resemblance to Hitler.
The president’s heavy-handed involvement, along with House Republicans’ refusal to sign off on any new bailout of the states, means that this may very well be America’s biggest and most widespread political fight in 2011. It’s a cage match to determine first dibs on a shrinking pie. A clarifying moment.
And that clarity will not work to the unions’ benefit. The public is on to their racket.
Break them.
Try to take away their goodies, and they’ll go after your mother:
Idaho has a “superintendent of public instruction,” and his name is Tom Luna. He has proposed some measures that the teachers’ union doesn’t like, at all. And his opponents have made sure that he feels good and threatened.
Someone went to his mother’s house — his mother’s. Someone slashed his tires and spray-painted a threat onto the door. As reported in this article, Luna has said, “Family and personal property are off-limits. You don’t cross that line . . .”
Oh, yes, you do. At least some do. I will repeat what I have already said this morning: I don’t want to hear from the Left about “civility” for the rest of my life.
Neither “civility” nor “democracy.” And this is in deep-Red Idaho!
This isn’t just (or at all) a fight over benefits or economics; this is a struggle over who has power — the elected representatives of the people or union bosses and their paid-for allies in the Democratic Party. Right now it’s just Idaho, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana, but the battles here and, inevitably, in other states will determine who has that power. The Left has drawn such hard lines already against any reform that the governors can’t afford to back down, lest they let Labor know the elected representatives of the people can be intimidated through intransigence and thuggery. It’s a sad thing for decent union members who would likely have accepted reasonable compromise if the situation had been honestly explained to them, but their leaders have lead them into a battle that forces the governors to break the unions in order to keep faith with their voters — the taxpayers who are the public employees’ real bosses.
More than being about fiscal soundness, this is a battle between representative democracy and corporatism.
Regarding the President’s shameful insertion of himself into what is purely a matter for state governments, Matt Welch at Reason cuts through the bull and asks “Is this how a President should act?”
I have written in the past about how libertarians are pretty lonely in the political scheme of things in terms of constantly being challenged to defend themselves against the “logical conclusion” of their philosophy. But I think it’s time to amend that. We are witnessing the logical conclusion of the Democratic Party’s philosophy, and it is this: Your tax dollars exist to make public sector unions happy. When we run out of other people’s money to pay for those contracts and promises (most of which are negotiated outside of public view, often between union officials and the politicians that union officials helped elect), then we just need to raise taxes to cover a shortfall that is obviously Wall Street’s fault. Anyone who doesn’t agree is a bully, and might just bear an uncanny resemblance to Hitler.
The president’s heavy-handed involvement, along with House Republicans’ refusal to sign off on any new bailout of the states, means that this may very well be America’s biggest and most widespread political fight in 2011. It’s a cage match to determine first dibs on a shrinking pie. A clarifying moment.
And that clarity will not work to the unions’ benefit. The public is on to their racket.
Break them.
New York Times Endorse Mob Rule In Wisconsin
Legal Insurrection - Now this represents real change.
After two years of using the pages of The NY Times to lash out at peaceful health care protesters and Tea Parties, the Board of Editors of The New York Times has decided that actual violence by unions in Wisconsin is "not surprising" (emphasis mine):
"Like many governors, [Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker] wants to cut the benefits of state workers. But he also decided a budget crisis was a good time to advance an ideological goal dear to his fellow Republicans: eliminating most collective bargaining rights for public employees.
Not surprisingly, thousands of workers descended on the Capitol building, pounding on windows and blocking doors, yelling “shut it down.” ...
Keeping schools closed and blocking certain public services is not a strategy we support and could alienate public opinion and play into the governor’s hand. Short of that, the unions should make their voices heard and push back hard against this misguided plan."
And just what does "push back hard" mean? Those sound like fighting words to me.
If one of the union members hurts someone, will that also be "not surprising"? Are the Editors contributing to a "gale of anger" the consequences of which will be their responsibility?
And what process is it that the Editors find so distasteful that they feel mob rule is needed? Why, it's the democratic process in the Wisconsin state legislature.
After two years of using the pages of The NY Times to lash out at peaceful health care protesters and Tea Parties, the Board of Editors of The New York Times has decided that actual violence by unions in Wisconsin is "not surprising" (emphasis mine):
"Like many governors, [Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker] wants to cut the benefits of state workers. But he also decided a budget crisis was a good time to advance an ideological goal dear to his fellow Republicans: eliminating most collective bargaining rights for public employees.
Not surprisingly, thousands of workers descended on the Capitol building, pounding on windows and blocking doors, yelling “shut it down.” ...
Keeping schools closed and blocking certain public services is not a strategy we support and could alienate public opinion and play into the governor’s hand. Short of that, the unions should make their voices heard and push back hard against this misguided plan."
And just what does "push back hard" mean? Those sound like fighting words to me.
If one of the union members hurts someone, will that also be "not surprising"? Are the Editors contributing to a "gale of anger" the consequences of which will be their responsibility?
And what process is it that the Editors find so distasteful that they feel mob rule is needed? Why, it's the democratic process in the Wisconsin state legislature.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Why Isn't Wall Street Thugs In Jail?
Matt Taibbi - Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."
I put down my notebook. "Just that?"
"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.
This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18.
The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.
Invasion of the Home Snatchers
Instead, federal regulators and prosecutors have let the banks and finance companies that tried to burn the world economy to the ground get off with carefully orchestrated settlements — whitewash jobs that involve the firms paying pathetically small fines without even being required to admit wrongdoing. To add insult to injury, the people who actually committed the crimes almost never pay the fines themselves; banks caught defrauding their shareholders often use shareholder money to foot the tab of justice. "If the allegations in these settlements are true," says Jed Rakoff, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, "it's management buying its way off cheap, from the pockets of their victims."
Taibblog: Commentary on politics and the economy by Matt Taibbi
To understand the significance of this, one has to think carefully about the efficacy of fines as a punishment for a defendant pool that includes the richest people on earth — people who simply get their companies to pay their fines for them. Conversely, one has to consider the powerful deterrent to further wrongdoing that the state is missing by not introducing this particular class of people to the experience of incarceration. "You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once."
But that hasn't happened. Because the entire system set up to monitor and regulate Wall Street is fucked up.
Just ask the people who tried to do the right thing.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."
I put down my notebook. "Just that?"
"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.
This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18.
The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.
Invasion of the Home Snatchers
Instead, federal regulators and prosecutors have let the banks and finance companies that tried to burn the world economy to the ground get off with carefully orchestrated settlements — whitewash jobs that involve the firms paying pathetically small fines without even being required to admit wrongdoing. To add insult to injury, the people who actually committed the crimes almost never pay the fines themselves; banks caught defrauding their shareholders often use shareholder money to foot the tab of justice. "If the allegations in these settlements are true," says Jed Rakoff, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, "it's management buying its way off cheap, from the pockets of their victims."
Taibblog: Commentary on politics and the economy by Matt Taibbi
To understand the significance of this, one has to think carefully about the efficacy of fines as a punishment for a defendant pool that includes the richest people on earth — people who simply get their companies to pay their fines for them. Conversely, one has to consider the powerful deterrent to further wrongdoing that the state is missing by not introducing this particular class of people to the experience of incarceration. "You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once."
But that hasn't happened. Because the entire system set up to monitor and regulate Wall Street is fucked up.
Just ask the people who tried to do the right thing.
President Obama Accuses Wisconsin Conducting An "Assualt On Unions"
Ed Morrissey - Barack Obama spoke with Wisconsin television station WTMJ earlier this morning to weigh in on Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to force unions to accept restructuring of the public sector to solve long-term budget crises in the state. Wisconsin Republicans swept the state elections in 2010 in the aftermath of large budget shortfalls. Obama conceded the need for action, and claimed credit for his federal pay freeze as an example of his own leadership, but accused Walker of conducting “an assault on unions.” Eyeblast provided this clip:
He told TODAY’S TMJ4 in an exclusive interview that sacrifices should be made to deal with fiscal changes, but that public employees should not be vilified.
“Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where they’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions,” Mr. Obama said to TODAY’S TMJ4′s Charles Benson in a one-on-one talk.
“I think everybody’s got to make some adjustments, but I think it’s also important to recognize that public employees make enormous contributions to our states and our citizens.”
This is yet another meaningless cliche from Obama. Everyone contributes to someone, either customers or communities, or both. Public-sector workers get compensated for their “contributions,” and they do so with a great deal less accountability, more job security, and in most cases better compensation than employees in the private sector do. Walker’s efforts intend on rectifying that balance by bringing pension contributions and health-insurance costs in line with the private sector and making it easier to terminate those employees who waste taxpayer money through incompetence, non-performance, and insubordination.
Taxpayers want more accountability and less bureaucratic entrenchment from their government. Unions have conducted an assault on those concepts for decades. All that Walker, Chris Christie, and even Andrew Cuomo have done is to stop retreating and start fighting back for fiscal sanity and public-resource accountability. For Obama, that is apparently one retreat too few.
He told TODAY’S TMJ4 in an exclusive interview that sacrifices should be made to deal with fiscal changes, but that public employees should not be vilified.
“Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where they’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions,” Mr. Obama said to TODAY’S TMJ4′s Charles Benson in a one-on-one talk.
“I think everybody’s got to make some adjustments, but I think it’s also important to recognize that public employees make enormous contributions to our states and our citizens.”
This is yet another meaningless cliche from Obama. Everyone contributes to someone, either customers or communities, or both. Public-sector workers get compensated for their “contributions,” and they do so with a great deal less accountability, more job security, and in most cases better compensation than employees in the private sector do. Walker’s efforts intend on rectifying that balance by bringing pension contributions and health-insurance costs in line with the private sector and making it easier to terminate those employees who waste taxpayer money through incompetence, non-performance, and insubordination.
Taxpayers want more accountability and less bureaucratic entrenchment from their government. Unions have conducted an assault on those concepts for decades. All that Walker, Chris Christie, and even Andrew Cuomo have done is to stop retreating and start fighting back for fiscal sanity and public-resource accountability. For Obama, that is apparently one retreat too few.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
President Obama Will Veto GOP Cuts
David Rogers - President Barack Obama signaled his openness to larger deficit-reduction talks with Congress on Tuesday but drew a sharp line at the immediate spending cuts proposed by the House, even suggesting that Republicans were jeopardizing the Pentagon’s ability to “meet vital military requirements.”
The thinly veiled veto threat was delivered in a formal statement of administration policy just hours after debate opened in the House on the Republican plan.
And the suggestion that Republicans risked hurting the nation’s defense amounts to an especially hardball political response designed to play on divisions in the GOP over the level of Pentagon cuts.
“The bill proposes cuts that would sharply undermine core government functions and investments key to economic growth and job creation and would reduce funding for the Department of Defense to a level that would leave the department without the resources and flexibility needed to meet vital military requirements,” the statement read. “If the president is presented with a bill that undermines critical priorities or national security through funding levels or restrictions, contains earmarks or curtails the drivers of long-term economic growth and job creation while continuing to burden future generations with deficits, the president will veto the bill.”
In fact, Republicans have already sworn to keep all earmarks out of the bill, and their primary focus remains domestic and foreign-aid spending. But under pressure to meet the goal of cutting $100 billion from Obama’s 2011 requests, the House Appropriations Committee agreed to cut $15 billion from what Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had requested for 2011.
In the early rounds of the floor debate Tuesday, the $516.2 billion defense chapter of the bill was the first up for amendments — and the immediate target of more spending cuts offered by newly elected conservatives.
Pro-defense forces prevailed in the first series of votes last night. But House Armed House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) has grown increasingly agitated with the level of cuts and most fears the prospect that, unless the spending impasse is resolved soon, it will be impossible to get a final defense budget in place.
“Whatever it takes, we need to get a bill,” McKeon told POLITICO.
But going to his friend Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and seeking relief, was not an option at this stage. “Boehner’s in a box right now,” McKeon said of the pressure on the leadership from the right and tea party freshmen. “Boehner’s got parameters that he has to work within.”
“They [the speaker and GOP leadership] worked out what they thought was workable, and the freshmen and other conservatives kind of told them it wasn’t enough. He has to get some kind of deal.”
In this light, the White House veto threat fits into a Democratic strategy of standing back, perhaps poking at the Republican majority but largely hoping that divisions arise within the GOP itself.
For example, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, a member of the Democratic leadership, delivered emotional remarks during a news conference on the education cuts in the bill — speaking of the impact on districts, like his own, that have a large concentration of poverty and on as many as seven historically black colleges targeted by the GOP.
“You explain to me how that will provide us the wherewithal to compete,” Clyburn said of the cuts. “They’ve just gone in with a meat ax chopping stuff out in order to get to some magic number without regard to what this means to the people that we are trying to prepare for the future and what it means to this country if we are going to compete.”
But limited by the rules governing debate, restoring funding would be difficult, and Clyburn appears to be focusing on directing what remains to the areas of greatest need.
Senate Democrats are Obama’s real line of defense, but in turn, the president is under pressure there to show that he is willing to make more of a commitment to a longer-term deficit reduction scheme akin to suggestions that came out of his presidential commission last year.
“I’m not suggesting that we don’t have to do more,” Obama said at the White House, in the face of criticism that his new budget fell short of the mark.
“It’s a matter of everybody having a serious conversation about where we want to go and then ultimately getting in that boat at the same time so it doesn’t tip over.”
“Congress and the president always have this dance,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). “This is the beginning of the question, if at the end of the day you can have a dramatic agreement, I still think it’s very possible. This time it’s different.”
And whatever the disappointment with Obama’s budget, those dreaming bigger still met Tuesday morning and reported progress on their own efforts.
“My personal thing is the numbers are wrong, it’s highly inaccurate and doesn’t go near where we need to be, and I think they realize that,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) of the White House. “This is the first bid. It is a negotiating chip.”
The thinly veiled veto threat was delivered in a formal statement of administration policy just hours after debate opened in the House on the Republican plan.
And the suggestion that Republicans risked hurting the nation’s defense amounts to an especially hardball political response designed to play on divisions in the GOP over the level of Pentagon cuts.
“The bill proposes cuts that would sharply undermine core government functions and investments key to economic growth and job creation and would reduce funding for the Department of Defense to a level that would leave the department without the resources and flexibility needed to meet vital military requirements,” the statement read. “If the president is presented with a bill that undermines critical priorities or national security through funding levels or restrictions, contains earmarks or curtails the drivers of long-term economic growth and job creation while continuing to burden future generations with deficits, the president will veto the bill.”
In fact, Republicans have already sworn to keep all earmarks out of the bill, and their primary focus remains domestic and foreign-aid spending. But under pressure to meet the goal of cutting $100 billion from Obama’s 2011 requests, the House Appropriations Committee agreed to cut $15 billion from what Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had requested for 2011.
In the early rounds of the floor debate Tuesday, the $516.2 billion defense chapter of the bill was the first up for amendments — and the immediate target of more spending cuts offered by newly elected conservatives.
Pro-defense forces prevailed in the first series of votes last night. But House Armed House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) has grown increasingly agitated with the level of cuts and most fears the prospect that, unless the spending impasse is resolved soon, it will be impossible to get a final defense budget in place.
“Whatever it takes, we need to get a bill,” McKeon told POLITICO.
But going to his friend Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and seeking relief, was not an option at this stage. “Boehner’s in a box right now,” McKeon said of the pressure on the leadership from the right and tea party freshmen. “Boehner’s got parameters that he has to work within.”
“They [the speaker and GOP leadership] worked out what they thought was workable, and the freshmen and other conservatives kind of told them it wasn’t enough. He has to get some kind of deal.”
In this light, the White House veto threat fits into a Democratic strategy of standing back, perhaps poking at the Republican majority but largely hoping that divisions arise within the GOP itself.
For example, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, a member of the Democratic leadership, delivered emotional remarks during a news conference on the education cuts in the bill — speaking of the impact on districts, like his own, that have a large concentration of poverty and on as many as seven historically black colleges targeted by the GOP.
“You explain to me how that will provide us the wherewithal to compete,” Clyburn said of the cuts. “They’ve just gone in with a meat ax chopping stuff out in order to get to some magic number without regard to what this means to the people that we are trying to prepare for the future and what it means to this country if we are going to compete.”
But limited by the rules governing debate, restoring funding would be difficult, and Clyburn appears to be focusing on directing what remains to the areas of greatest need.
Senate Democrats are Obama’s real line of defense, but in turn, the president is under pressure there to show that he is willing to make more of a commitment to a longer-term deficit reduction scheme akin to suggestions that came out of his presidential commission last year.
“I’m not suggesting that we don’t have to do more,” Obama said at the White House, in the face of criticism that his new budget fell short of the mark.
“It’s a matter of everybody having a serious conversation about where we want to go and then ultimately getting in that boat at the same time so it doesn’t tip over.”
“Congress and the president always have this dance,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). “This is the beginning of the question, if at the end of the day you can have a dramatic agreement, I still think it’s very possible. This time it’s different.”
And whatever the disappointment with Obama’s budget, those dreaming bigger still met Tuesday morning and reported progress on their own efforts.
“My personal thing is the numbers are wrong, it’s highly inaccurate and doesn’t go near where we need to be, and I think they realize that,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) of the White House. “This is the first bid. It is a negotiating chip.”
There Is No New Era Of Civility On The "Left"
Ed Driscoll - Not that it ever existed of course.
First up, here’s Ed Morrissey on AlterNet’s racist attack on Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather Pizza, after his speech at CPAC this past weekend:
While young conservatives chased out a white-supremacist recruiter from CPAC, it seemed that one site on the Left felt more comfortable with racist attacks. AlterNet, a site that proudly proclaims its “strong content” and “huge readership and reach,” offered its analysis of Herman Cain’s speech at CPAC by calling the former CEO of Godfather Pizza a “monkey in the window”:
In the immortal words of Megatron in Transformers: The Movie, Herman Cain’s speech at CPAC really is bad comedy. As you know, I find black garbage pail kids black conservatives fascinating not because of what they believe, but rather because of how they entertain and perform for their White Conservative masters.
When race minstrelsy was America’s most popular form of mass entertainment, black actors would often have to pretend to be white men, who then in turn would put on the cork to play the role of the “black” coon, Sambo, or Jumping Jim Crow. Adding insult to injury, in a truly perverse and twisted example of the power of American white supremacy black vaudevillians would often pretend to be white in order to denigrate black people for the pleasures of the white gaze. …
In total, CPAC is a carnival and a roadshow for reactionary Conservatives. It is only fitting that in the great tradition of the freak show, the human zoo, the boardwalk, and the great midway world’s fairs of the 19th and 20th centuries, that there is a Borneo man, a Venus Hottentot or a tribe of cannibals from deepest darkest Africa or Papua New Guinea on display. For CPAC and the White Conservative imagination, Herman Cain and his black and brown kin are that featured attraction.
We always need a monkey in the window, for he/she reminds us of our humanity while simultaneously reinforcing a sense of our own superiority. Sadly, there are always folks who are willing to play that role because it pays so well.
Gotta love that “he/she” there — even in the midst of a racist attack on a prominent conservative, it’s important to reflexively use the appropriate gender-neutral pronouns, lest one commit a politically correct thoughtcrime.
Meanwhile, National Lampoon, with its glory days now decades in the rear-view mirror, enters the gutter and continues to descend, wishing AIDs upon Andrew Breitbart for being “a meanie.”
Wait, being “mean” is now a pejorative at the Lampoon? Michael O’Donoghue must be rolling over in his grave.
And while those are both euphemistic attacks, CBS journalist Lara Logan was physically assaulted in Egypt — and then further rhetorically trashed by Nir Rosen, a fellow at the NYU Center for Law and Security, in a vile stream of tweets screencapped by Jim Geraghty, who writes:
Nir Rosen deleted some of his worst comments about Logan on his Twitter feed, but… it’s the Internet. It’s never gone forever.
I’m sure Rosen will apologize at some point, and perhaps we’ll get some tut-tutting statement from NYU about the need for “civility” and “restraint” and “sensitivity.” Brows will be furrowed. Maybe they’ll hold a seminar about technology and emotional reactions to breaking news events.
But let’s just remember one thing going forward: Nir Rosen believed this was the right moment to let the world know that he “ran out of sympathy for her” and that we should “remember her role as a major war monger” and that we “have to find humor in the small things.”
Your move, NYU.
Perhaps they said something to him, as Rosen has since tweeted an apology. Though it should be placed into context with this item from blogger Armed Liberal, who writes, “When last seen on these pages, Nir Rosen was a journalist embedded with the Taliban who used his US documents to pass a band of Taliban through an Afghan government checkpoint.”
(And sadly, the right wasn’t immune to attacking Logan as well, as Debbie Schlussel responds to Logan’s attack by writing, “As I’ve noted before, it bothers me not a lick when mainstream media reporters who keep telling us Muslims and Islam are peaceful get a taste of just how ‘peaceful’ Muslims and Islam really are. In fact, it kinda warms my heart.” Classy.)
First up, here’s Ed Morrissey on AlterNet’s racist attack on Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather Pizza, after his speech at CPAC this past weekend:
While young conservatives chased out a white-supremacist recruiter from CPAC, it seemed that one site on the Left felt more comfortable with racist attacks. AlterNet, a site that proudly proclaims its “strong content” and “huge readership and reach,” offered its analysis of Herman Cain’s speech at CPAC by calling the former CEO of Godfather Pizza a “monkey in the window”:
In the immortal words of Megatron in Transformers: The Movie, Herman Cain’s speech at CPAC really is bad comedy. As you know, I find black garbage pail kids black conservatives fascinating not because of what they believe, but rather because of how they entertain and perform for their White Conservative masters.
When race minstrelsy was America’s most popular form of mass entertainment, black actors would often have to pretend to be white men, who then in turn would put on the cork to play the role of the “black” coon, Sambo, or Jumping Jim Crow. Adding insult to injury, in a truly perverse and twisted example of the power of American white supremacy black vaudevillians would often pretend to be white in order to denigrate black people for the pleasures of the white gaze. …
In total, CPAC is a carnival and a roadshow for reactionary Conservatives. It is only fitting that in the great tradition of the freak show, the human zoo, the boardwalk, and the great midway world’s fairs of the 19th and 20th centuries, that there is a Borneo man, a Venus Hottentot or a tribe of cannibals from deepest darkest Africa or Papua New Guinea on display. For CPAC and the White Conservative imagination, Herman Cain and his black and brown kin are that featured attraction.
We always need a monkey in the window, for he/she reminds us of our humanity while simultaneously reinforcing a sense of our own superiority. Sadly, there are always folks who are willing to play that role because it pays so well.
Gotta love that “he/she” there — even in the midst of a racist attack on a prominent conservative, it’s important to reflexively use the appropriate gender-neutral pronouns, lest one commit a politically correct thoughtcrime.
Meanwhile, National Lampoon, with its glory days now decades in the rear-view mirror, enters the gutter and continues to descend, wishing AIDs upon Andrew Breitbart for being “a meanie.”
Wait, being “mean” is now a pejorative at the Lampoon? Michael O’Donoghue must be rolling over in his grave.
And while those are both euphemistic attacks, CBS journalist Lara Logan was physically assaulted in Egypt — and then further rhetorically trashed by Nir Rosen, a fellow at the NYU Center for Law and Security, in a vile stream of tweets screencapped by Jim Geraghty, who writes:
Nir Rosen deleted some of his worst comments about Logan on his Twitter feed, but… it’s the Internet. It’s never gone forever.
I’m sure Rosen will apologize at some point, and perhaps we’ll get some tut-tutting statement from NYU about the need for “civility” and “restraint” and “sensitivity.” Brows will be furrowed. Maybe they’ll hold a seminar about technology and emotional reactions to breaking news events.
But let’s just remember one thing going forward: Nir Rosen believed this was the right moment to let the world know that he “ran out of sympathy for her” and that we should “remember her role as a major war monger” and that we “have to find humor in the small things.”
Your move, NYU.
Perhaps they said something to him, as Rosen has since tweeted an apology. Though it should be placed into context with this item from blogger Armed Liberal, who writes, “When last seen on these pages, Nir Rosen was a journalist embedded with the Taliban who used his US documents to pass a band of Taliban through an Afghan government checkpoint.”
(And sadly, the right wasn’t immune to attacking Logan as well, as Debbie Schlussel responds to Logan’s attack by writing, “As I’ve noted before, it bothers me not a lick when mainstream media reporters who keep telling us Muslims and Islam are peaceful get a taste of just how ‘peaceful’ Muslims and Islam really are. In fact, it kinda warms my heart.” Classy.)
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Iran The New Protests Part 2
WASHINGTON – Amidst a new wave of protests in Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday accused the Iranian government of "hypocrisy," saying it must listen to the wishes of its demonstrators.
"What we see happening in Iran today is a testament to the courage of the Iranian people, and an indictment of the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime -- a regime which over the last three weeks has constantly hailed what went on in Egypt," Clinton told reporters.
"We wish the opposition and the brave people in the streets across cities in Iran the same opportunities that they saw their Egyptian counterparts seize."
Iranian opposition protesters took part in a banned march to support the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings that overthrew their governments. They reported Monday on a website that dozens were arrested.
"Let me, clearly and directly, support the aspirations of the people who are in the streets in Iran today," Clinton said.
Unlike in Egypt, where now-resigned autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak was a friend to the US, American officials seemingly feel freer to denounce the regime and side firmly with the reform movement.
Widespread protests broke out in Iran in 2009, when many were killed, but the Iranian regime held power after a controversial election that fueled the belief that the government was illegitimate.
A witness told Reuters that Iranian security forces used tear gas to scatter and intimidate the demonstrators. The regime's security apparatus has been forceful in cracking down on even peaceful dissent since the unsuccessful uprising of 2009.
Clinton called for a more "open" society in Iran.
"We think that there needs to be a commitment to open up the political system in Iran to hear the voices of the opposition and civil society," she said.
"What we see happening in Iran today is a testament to the courage of the Iranian people, and an indictment of the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime -- a regime which over the last three weeks has constantly hailed what went on in Egypt," Clinton told reporters.
"We wish the opposition and the brave people in the streets across cities in Iran the same opportunities that they saw their Egyptian counterparts seize."
Iranian opposition protesters took part in a banned march to support the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings that overthrew their governments. They reported Monday on a website that dozens were arrested.
"Let me, clearly and directly, support the aspirations of the people who are in the streets in Iran today," Clinton said.
Unlike in Egypt, where now-resigned autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak was a friend to the US, American officials seemingly feel freer to denounce the regime and side firmly with the reform movement.
Widespread protests broke out in Iran in 2009, when many were killed, but the Iranian regime held power after a controversial election that fueled the belief that the government was illegitimate.
A witness told Reuters that Iranian security forces used tear gas to scatter and intimidate the demonstrators. The regime's security apparatus has been forceful in cracking down on even peaceful dissent since the unsuccessful uprising of 2009.
Clinton called for a more "open" society in Iran.
"We think that there needs to be a commitment to open up the political system in Iran to hear the voices of the opposition and civil society," she said.
Andrew Sullivan Breaks Ties With Obama
John Treacher - Andrew Sullivan, forensic obstetrician and blogger for The Atlantic, pauses in his neverending search for Trig Palin’s afterbirth to announce that he has torn his Barack Obama poster off his bedroom wall and thrown himself facedown on the bed in despair. Opining on Obama’s new budget — “cynical and unrealistic,” according to the WSJ — Sullivan keens:
…this president is too weak, too cautious, too beholden to politics over policy to lead. In this budget, in his refusal to do anything concrete to tackle the looming entitlement debt, in his failure to address the generational injustice, in his blithe indifference to the increasing danger of default, he has betrayed those of us who took him to be a serious president prepared to put the good of the country before his short term political interests. Like his State of the Union, this budget is good short term politics but such a massive pile of fiscal bullshit it makes it perfectly clear that Obama is kicking this vital issue down the road.
To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you’re fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama’s cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts. He let you down. On the critical issue of America’s fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end.
This from the man who once wrote: “We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama.” I’ve got another bridge I’d like you to take a look at, Andrew. It’s in Brooklyn…
…this president is too weak, too cautious, too beholden to politics over policy to lead. In this budget, in his refusal to do anything concrete to tackle the looming entitlement debt, in his failure to address the generational injustice, in his blithe indifference to the increasing danger of default, he has betrayed those of us who took him to be a serious president prepared to put the good of the country before his short term political interests. Like his State of the Union, this budget is good short term politics but such a massive pile of fiscal bullshit it makes it perfectly clear that Obama is kicking this vital issue down the road.
To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you’re fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama’s cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts. He let you down. On the critical issue of America’s fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end.
This from the man who once wrote: “We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama.” I’ve got another bridge I’d like you to take a look at, Andrew. It’s in Brooklyn…
Monday, February 14, 2011
Rep. Paul Ryan Slams Obama $3,73 Trillion Budget
Ed Morrissey - Chris Wallace asks Paul Ryan whether the new Obama budget is “dead on arrival,” and Ryan replies in his Fox News Sunday interview that he will have to see the full proposal first. According to White House leaks, however, Ryan assumed that the budget would contain “paltry” cuts followed by spending increases recast as “investments,” along with tax hikes to raise funds. “Borrowing and spending is not the way to prosperity,” Ryan warns, and blasts the President for failing to lead:
The budget proposal was pretty much as expected from the leaks, with the addition of previously-rejected tax hikes:
President Barack Obama’s budget proposal resurrects a series of tax increases that were largely ignored by Congress when Democrats controlled both chambers. Republicans, who now control the House, are signaling they will be even less receptive.
The plan includes tax increases for oil, gas and coal producers, investment managers and U.S.-based multinational corporations. The plan would allow Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012 for individuals making more than $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000. Wealthy taxpayers would have their itemized deductions limited, including deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes. …
Obama’s $3.729 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2012 shows the deficit rising to $1.645 trillion in fiscal 2011, then falling sharply to $1.101 trillion in 2012.
This trend would trim the deficit as a share of the U.S. economy to 3.2 percent by 2015 from 10.9 percent this year, and meet a pledge Obama made to his Group of 20 partners to halve the deficit by 2013. The news was well-timed, with G20 finance ministers meeting in Paris on Friday and Saturday.
In other words, we’re not going back to 2008 budgetary levels, but instead going back to somewhere between 2009 and 2010. These are basically symbolic cuts rather than any sea change in Beltway business.
The budget proposal was pretty much as expected from the leaks, with the addition of previously-rejected tax hikes:
President Barack Obama’s budget proposal resurrects a series of tax increases that were largely ignored by Congress when Democrats controlled both chambers. Republicans, who now control the House, are signaling they will be even less receptive.
The plan includes tax increases for oil, gas and coal producers, investment managers and U.S.-based multinational corporations. The plan would allow Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012 for individuals making more than $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000. Wealthy taxpayers would have their itemized deductions limited, including deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes. …
Obama’s $3.729 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2012 shows the deficit rising to $1.645 trillion in fiscal 2011, then falling sharply to $1.101 trillion in 2012.
This trend would trim the deficit as a share of the U.S. economy to 3.2 percent by 2015 from 10.9 percent this year, and meet a pledge Obama made to his Group of 20 partners to halve the deficit by 2013. The news was well-timed, with G20 finance ministers meeting in Paris on Friday and Saturday.
In other words, we’re not going back to 2008 budgetary levels, but instead going back to somewhere between 2009 and 2010. These are basically symbolic cuts rather than any sea change in Beltway business.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Obama Administration Loves The Muslim Brotherhood
Legal Insurrection - The wilful ignorance of the Obama administration to the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists in Egypt is astounding.
Just look what happened in Gaza where the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot Hamas was elected to office and proceeded to drown out all other voices, or Lebanon where Hezbollah has intimidated non-Islamist parties, including some Christians, into going along with the Iranian agenda. Or, of course, Iran, where a coalition was bullied out of power by the Islamists, subjugating generations to strict Islamic law and pushing women's rights back to the middle ages.
I have no doubt that many if not most of the people in Egypt initiating the protests against Mubarek were true democrats, who wanted an open, western-style political process, and who harbored no grand plans of the destruction of Israel. But those democrats will succumb to the hard line Islamists just at democratic people everywhere have faded when faced with Muslim Brotherhood-style forces.
There is a reason the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has moderated (relatively speaking) its public agenda. For over 30 years the Egyptian government has kept its foot on the back of the Muslim Brotherhood to prevent it from growing, much as governments in Europe have kept their feet on the backs of neo-fascists.
The lack of Muslim Brotherhood power in Egypt does not reflect that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a threat, but rather, that the threat has been taken seriously by the Egyptian government.
For the Obama administration to treat the Muslim Brotherhood as just another secular and democratic player is profoundly ignorant and dangerous.
Now to the videotape:
These words, reportedly spoken by Mubarek to an Israeli official shortly before his resignation, may be prophetic:
"We see the democracy the United States spearheaded in Iran and with Hamas, in Gaza, and that's the fate of the Middle East .... They may be talking about democracy but they don't know what they're talking about and the result will be extremism and radical Islam."
It doesn't need to be this way, and Mubarek bears much responsibility for not laying a foundation for a civil transition, but that doesn't make him wrong about the risk.
Just look what happened in Gaza where the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot Hamas was elected to office and proceeded to drown out all other voices, or Lebanon where Hezbollah has intimidated non-Islamist parties, including some Christians, into going along with the Iranian agenda. Or, of course, Iran, where a coalition was bullied out of power by the Islamists, subjugating generations to strict Islamic law and pushing women's rights back to the middle ages.
I have no doubt that many if not most of the people in Egypt initiating the protests against Mubarek were true democrats, who wanted an open, western-style political process, and who harbored no grand plans of the destruction of Israel. But those democrats will succumb to the hard line Islamists just at democratic people everywhere have faded when faced with Muslim Brotherhood-style forces.
There is a reason the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has moderated (relatively speaking) its public agenda. For over 30 years the Egyptian government has kept its foot on the back of the Muslim Brotherhood to prevent it from growing, much as governments in Europe have kept their feet on the backs of neo-fascists.
The lack of Muslim Brotherhood power in Egypt does not reflect that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a threat, but rather, that the threat has been taken seriously by the Egyptian government.
For the Obama administration to treat the Muslim Brotherhood as just another secular and democratic player is profoundly ignorant and dangerous.
Now to the videotape:
These words, reportedly spoken by Mubarek to an Israeli official shortly before his resignation, may be prophetic:
"We see the democracy the United States spearheaded in Iran and with Hamas, in Gaza, and that's the fate of the Middle East .... They may be talking about democracy but they don't know what they're talking about and the result will be extremism and radical Islam."
It doesn't need to be this way, and Mubarek bears much responsibility for not laying a foundation for a civil transition, but that doesn't make him wrong about the risk.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)