Barney Frank on Morning Joe

Posted: April 28, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Democratic Politics, Domestic Policy, Foreign Affairs, Health care reform, Iran, Libya, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , | 9 Comments

Barney Frank was on Morning Joe Tuesday. The interview was wide ranging and involved serious discussion of issues. Because of his seniority as the former chairman of the House Finance Committee and current ranking member, he can bring insight to the discussion. When he speaks, I make it a point to listen. He provides framing of subject in a manner that is understandable by the public. Also, we gain insight into what a major leader of the House is thinking.

Key issues discussed were:

  • federal debt is a result of past mistakes by both parties
  • NATO is a mechanism for Europe to outsource their military costs to the US
  • we need a new model of medical care which involves more than Medicare
  • clarifying end of life care considerations
  • the need to re-evaluate the utility of NATO
  • putting a missile shield in Poland to protect them from Iran is not our problem
  • problems of Libya are more germane to countries within spitting distance of Libya while NATO wants us to step up with more
  • Less defense spending could leave more money for health programs.

The  Morning Joe, Barney Frank segment can be viewed here. The first part of the segment is information to set up for the discussion with Barney which starts at 4 minutes. The video is about 17 minutes which enables a good discussion. Joe basically conducts the interview and generally lets Barney make his points.  He typically interrupts the conversation only for agreement or clarity.

Obama’s Political Leanings (pssssttttt … he’s no liberal)

Posted: April 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, abortion rights, Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, Domestic Policy, Environment, Environmental Protection, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, right wing hate grouups, Surreality, Team Obama, The DNC, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd, WE TOLD THEM SO, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments

Time to trot out the Unity Pony

I’m having an interesting day reading all the links out there and discussions on several Ezra Klein blog posts. Some one should’ve noticed Obama’s hero-worship of Reagan during the primaries about three years ago. Some one should’ve read his books that were gleeful about past Republican policy initiatives. But no, we were too busy discussing other things to notice how far to the right Barrack Obama really is.

Here’s one of Klein’s posts that’s getting netplay now: The shocking truth about the birthplace of Obama’s policies. Some people just have not been paying attention at all.

President Obama, if you look closely at his positions, is a moderate Republican from the early 1990s. And the Republican Party he’s facing has abandoned many of its best ideas in its effort to oppose him.

If you put aside the emergency measures required by the financial crisis, three major policy ideas have dominated American politics in recent years: a health-care plan that uses an individual mandate and tax subsidies to achieve near-universal coverage; a cap-and-trade plan that attempts to raise the prices of environmental pollutants to better account for their costs; and bringing tax rates up from their Bush-era lows as part of a bid to reduce the deficit. In each case, the position that Obama and the Democrats have staked out is the very position that moderate Republicans staked out in the early ’90s — and often, well into the 2000s.

I’ve been saying for years–literally–that the Obama Health Care Plan was more conservative than Nixon’s and basically was grabbed from Lincoln Chaffe’s Heritage Plan in the 1990s which was later called Dolecare and then later morphed into Romneycare. That’s just Klein’s first example.  He also provides evidence on cap and trade which was supported by George H.W. Bush and Newt Gingrich when it was applied to ‘acid rain’ instead of  ‘global warming’.  He then moves to tax policies. Obama’s obvious proclivities to voodoo economics even showed up in the first stimulus which was top heavy with tax cuts and not big enough on job creation measures.  Klein doesn’t even touch the increasing military budgets and interventions, the GLBT and women’s rights issues that get bargained away, FISA, Gitmo, etc., etc., etc. …

Here’s Mark Thoma’s take on the Klein piece and a follow-up by Andrew Samick.  Samick considers Obama to be a Rockefeller Republican of all things.  I’d say Obama’s even more to the right than that because that’s pretty much the side of the Republican party that raised me. Rockefeller Republicans love Planned Parenthood among other things. Warren Buffet is a great example.  Hell, Charlton Heston loved Planned Parenthood.  I even heard him speak on population control issues in Omaha, Nebraska in the mid 1970s sponsored by–gasp!–Planned Parenthood.  The most interesting part is Thoma’s ending question.  Why are we moving so far to the right now?

What’s left unexplained is why movements to the right by both parties — and these aren’t marginal moves — haven’t alienated the middle of the road, swing voters that seem to make a difference in elections. I don’t think I have a good answer for why. In the present case, there is some voter remorse — Obama is far more conservative than many thought — but I don’t think that explains the larger trend.

The original Ezra Klein piece is here: ‘Obama revealed: A moderate Republican’.  Believe me, the conversation has gone viral with folks like The National Review (Be forewarned if you go there, it’s a  putrid thread.) on line taking the bait.  Booman  even twists himself into a world class logic pretzel trying to say this is good news because it means Obama’s policies are “mainstream”.  Joseph Romm at The Grist   discusses the climate policy even further.

In the climate bill debate of the past two years, Obama and the Democrats embraced Republican ideas in an effort to minimize or avoid the partisanship inherent in other approaches that had been explicitly rejected by Republicans, including a tax and a massive ramp up in clean energy funding, as I’ve argued.

But Klein makes an effective case that it simply didn’t matter how reasonable or centrist or business-friendly a strategy environmentalists and progressive politicians pursued (or might have pursued). The Republicans simply were committed to stopping Obama from appearing bipartisan.

The Dems keeps getting suckered by Republicans the way Charlie Brown keeps getting suckered by Lucy. But the difference is that the GOP’s strategy wasn’t even a secret.

Ah, here’s the deal. Romm ties back to Thoma’s question. Why all this goose stepping to the right?  Easy.  It was the Republican strategy of say not to everything.  They had to go further right to say no.  Now, we’re in policy measures that are from John Birch Society land. Finally, the Democratic Congress said no more compromises when Planned Parenthood went on the chopping block. They also decided to get what they could get done before Boehner took over the house.  We saw a few last minute Democratic Policies get passed but it was only due to the folks in Congress. Obama just went along because, hell, a win is a win, right?

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell told The New York Times in March 2010, “It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out.” Why? As McConnell blurted out right before the 2010 midterm elections, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Obama kept proposing “conservative” policy at the onset. The Republicans announced they would sabotage it from the get go.  This is something we complained about and pointed out here and elseblog for years.  Obama’s opening policy moves were always a compromise position for real Democrats.  He never was worried about putting policy out there with a real Democratic stamp on it because issues aren’t important to him. This President  desperately wanted to pass anything with his name on it that would be called success.  I frequently argued he wanted to makes sure there was a Health Plan that went through just to show he could do it when the Clintons couldn’t do it. He threw the Democratic plans over board almost immediately including the wildly popular single payer option.  Dumping women’s access to private insurance with access to abortion was his final compromise maneuver to pass the silly thing.  He’s thrown policies to the wind that have been basic Democratic Platform staples every chance he’s been in office. The Republicans were never going to act satisfied and were going to keep goosestepping further right. It was their announced strategy.  He was more than willing to go right along with them because his proclivities are rightish anyway and he just wants the win.

So, my big question is why didn’t these folks see this coming all along like we did?  Then a follow-up, what good does all this discovery now do three years too late?

Of course, if you read the Republican blogs, they’re still screaming Obama’s a socialist and Klein’s a fool.  If you hit the partisan Democrats, the pretzel logic maneuvers are as obvious as Booman’s trying to find the sunny side up.

I’ll I can say is we told them so.  Follow that up by a we are so f’d.

They ALL Suck

Posted: April 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, Elections, John Birch Society in Charge, Populism, Republican presidential politics, Surreality, Team Obama, The Bonus Class, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | Tags: , , | 23 Comments

We have gone through the Mirror to a new perverse American Wonderland.

The true lessons from the last two elections have been pretty clear.  Voting for “throwing the bums out” just brings worse bums into play.  Also, voting for relative unknowns hoping that will change the direction of the country because of their ‘outsider’ status doesn’t work either.  Sooner or later, they all become part of the problem.  The current crop of new faces is a pretty good indication that voters should be using better criteria than change, hope, not part of the DC establishment, and talks a good talk.  I wake up feeling like Alice who went through the looking glass into some perverse alternate reality.  The problem is that there really seems like there’s no way back.

The displeasure is obvious in the polls.  For the last two elections, folks voted for ‘outsiders’ and got even more dysfunctional government.  This latest crop of newbie politicians seems to come in with a ready-made interest group on their coattails. The interest of the general populace isn’t even in the equation any more.  We’re worried about unemployment, paying for expensive basics like food, health care, and gas at the pump while the current crop of elected officials just keep inventing surreal crises that simply feed their base’s interests and their donor’s pockets.

Right now, the majority of voters are screaming none of the above. Congress and the White House are hopelessly out of touch with the priorities of the electorate.  When the public says its concerned about the economy, it doesn’t mean they are obsessed with the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of US debt instruments.  I told you that after they got their tax cuts for billionaires through, raters would do that during the debt ceiling fight, right? 

The Tea Party and the White House seemed to be in cahoots–despite seemingly being at odds with each other– to funnel what’s left of US wealth into the Wall Street Gambling Casino by either giving tax breaks to businesses who flee the country for higher stakes or rich people that buy ‘financial innovations’ that create risk and volatility in markets . This all happens along with funneling federal projects straight to them through no-bid government contracts and privatization schemes.  These things also enrich market parasites like brokerage firms and insurance companies.  I don’t get why people don’t connect these charades with the dismal economy and vote their interests.  Maybe it’s because there’s really no one to vote FOR any more.  There are only folks to vote against.  Angry people do not make good decisions as a general rule.

President Obama has gotten no bounce from his reelection campaign announcement, with his job approval rating dropping by 7 percentage points since January, his personal popularity at a career low and 57 percent of Americans disapproving of his handling of the economy. Yet he leads the potential GOP field.

There are chances for the Republicans in next year’s elections, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, in particular, nipping close to Obama in the latest ABC News-Washington Post poll. Economic pessimism, its highest in two years amid soaring gas prices, raises serious political peril for the president. But he benefits from two factors: personal approval that, while down, still exceeds his job rating, and substantial doubts about the opposing party’s lineup.

Forty-three percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they’re satisfied with the choice of candidates for the GOP nomination for president next year, compared with 65 percent satisfaction with the field at exactly this point four years ago. Nearly as many leaning-Republicans are dissatisfied with the field as are satisfied, and far more have no opinion of their potential candidates: 17 percent now vs. 3 percent at this point in 2007.

If those three are my choices, I’d rather opt out of the election and the country.  This is dismal!  No one is really satisfied with the presidential line-up.  I don’t know about you but my choices at the local level have been abysmal for years.   If there’s one candidate that really looks like they could actually make a change, a group of anti-abortion nuts, businesses, or other niche interest group comes out of the woodwork to tank them.  Our political system is like the proverbial septic tank letting the worst float to the top.

Obviously, money drives races any more.  It’s unlikely we can get that changed unless every state starts a ballot initiative for some kind of campaign finance reform.  Politicians are like crack addicts that are unlikely to go to rehab and more likely to sound like Charlie Sheen and his ‘winning’ chimera.  The problem is that now we have narrow interests funneling money into advertisements–ala swiftboating–that look like the message come from grass roots movements but are they really are the same old, same old that bring the same old, same old to Washington.  It’s only a new face. It is not a new person or an agenda of real change.

I’m still amazed to find any one that doesn’t see the astroturf in the Tea Party with the now obvious funding of the Koch Brothers and the like.  I’m sure that the investigation into all those ‘little’ donors to OFA will turn out finding yet another, perverse form of bundling. As Caro from Make Them Accountable believes, it’ll probably show that a bunch of Goldman Sachs people bought prepaid debit cards and had a hey-day.  The media is so corporate any more that they won’t focus on the jobs crisis, they’re running with the political pack to funnel more public assets to their stockholders.  Only the farthest reaches of Internatlandia appear to still be on the good side of the New American Looking Glass.

What a mess!  I’m beginning to think we’re just on the verge of the collapse of the empire and there’s not much we can do about. The last ten years have been all about the wrong things.  Just today, the UK Guardian released information on the relationship between big Oil and the Blair government’s decision to invade Iraq.  I’m just assuming that there’s a Dubya/Cheney set of meetings and memos there too.  More proof to support our well-founded skepticism of any motive but obscene profit-seeking from the already powerful and wealthy. We know that entire Iraq debacle was as contrived as ignoring the policies that would create jobs and growth and actually do something about the federal debt and deficit.  The emphasis recently on tax cuts has simply exacerbated all the problems but is still held up as the panacea.  The arm waving and speeches are just distractions from the real agenda.  Sadly, some folks still want to believe that those fresh faces really are more than just masks.

It’s like we’ve all gone through the mirror to some evil wonderland.   Help, we’ve fallen through and we can’t get up or out!

Late Night: FEC Investigating Obama’s 2008 Fundraising

Posted: April 16, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 8 Comments

From Roll Call:

Individuals familiar with the [Obama 2012] campaign told Roll Call Friday that the FEC has been investigating the financial records of Obama’s previous campaign. The scope of the probe, which began approximately two years ago, is unknown. Presidential audits typically take years to complete and can cost millions of dollars….

The FEC was not required to audit the president’s campaign because Obama chose not to accept $84 million in federal funds following the Democratic National Convention in 2008….The potential for the FEC’s audit became increasingly more likely as the FEC questioned some of Obama campaign filings. In all, the FEC wrote 26 letters to Obama for America warning the campaign that if it did not adequately respond to the agency’s questions that it “could result in an audit or enforcement action.”

These letters totaled more than 1,500 pages of questions and data that outlined compliance concerns — including the longest one ever sent to a presidential candidate.

The article says that the Obama campaign has spent millions on legal fees since 2008 and has had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Treasury department because of “unverifiable contributors.”

Like me, you may recall stories about how the Obama campaign had disabled software that would catch people who had already given the maximum or people who were using false identities. I located this relevant article from the October 9, 2008 LA Times.

Barack Obama’s money machine is fueled by the likes of Martha Murphy, a grandmother who has donated 104 times for a total of $2,475.34.

Murphy has used her credit card to donate in amounts as small as $10. “It is amazing how it adds up,” she said.

The Democratic candidate’s donors also include “Derty Poiiuy,” an individual with a scatological sense of humor who has given $950. “Mong Kong” has contributed $1,065 and lists an address in a nonexistent city. “Fornari USA” gave $800 and listed the address of an apparel store of that name near San Francisco.

The Republican National Committee filed a federal complaint this week, alleging that some of Obama’s small donations are illegal because they come from foreign nationals or exceed the limit.

Obama’s contributions have also exposed a loophole in the law, which does not require disclosure of the identities of donors who give $200 or less, making it impossible to determine whether they are legitimate without a federal audit.

I realize nothing will probably come of this, but it would be nice if it at least got enough play to be embarrassing for Obama’s campaign staff. I really don’t think Obama himself is capable of guilt or shame.

Republicans Vote to End Medicare, and Other DC Follies

Posted: April 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, Domestic Policy, Federal Budget, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, Hillary Clinton, House of Representatives, income inequality, legislation, Media, Medicare, Psychopaths in charge, Surreality, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , | 23 Comments

What a disgrace these House Republicans are! This afternoon, 235 of them voted to destroy Medicare and Medicaid when they voted for Representative Paul Ryan’s budget bill. The bill passed the House with all Democrats and only four Republicans voting against it.

The bill will most likely die in the Senate, but Democrats should make sure those House Republicans’ constituents know what they voted for. Of course Democrats will do no such thing, because, first they are wimps with no idea how to win, and second, their President is already signaling that he will compromise with Ryan in the bargaining over raising the debt ceiling.

Obama said that it is critical for the world economy that Congress vote to increase the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, but said that he would have to reach an accord with Republicans, who have called for a vote to be conditional on passage of fiscal reform.

“I think it’s absolutely right that it’s not going to happen without some spending cuts,” Obama said during an interview with The Associated Press.

Before the vote on the Ryan bill, there was a vote on an even more draconian bill proposed by far right Republicans. It turned into a bit of a free-for-all on the House floor. From Brian Beutler at TPM:

What was supposed to be a routine vote in the House — to knock down an amendment authored by conservative Republicans — turned into pandemonium on the House floor Friday, as Democrats tried to jam the plan through, and hang it around the GOP’s necks.

The vote was on the Republican Study Committee’s alternative budget — a radical plan that annihilates the social contract in America by putting the GOP budget on steroids. Deeper tax cuts for the wealthy, more severe entitlement rollbacks.

Normally something like that would fail by a large bipartisan margin in either the House or the Senate….But today that formula didn’t hold. In an attempt to highlight deep divides in the Republican caucus. Dems switched their votes — from “no” to “present.”

Panic ensued. In the House, legislation passes by a simple majority of members voting. The Dems took themselves out of the equation, leaving Republicans to decide whether the House should adopt the more-conservative RSC budget instead of the one authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. As Dems flipped to present, Republicans realized that a majority of their members had indeed gone on the record in support of the RSC plan — and if the vote closed, it would pass. That would be a slap in the face to Ryan, and a politically toxic outcome for the Republican party.

So they started flipping their votes from “yes” to “no.”

In the end, the plan went down by a small margin, 119-136. A full 172 Democrats voted “present.”

It’s nice to see a little bit of partisan spirit from the Democrats anyway. Too bad they had to use Obama’s old standby–voting “present,” but still maybe a good sign. It’s pretty clear that many in the House are unhappy with Obama and his kowtowing to Republicans. Maybe they will stand up to Obama next. Where there’s life, there’s hope.

Of the Ryan Budget bill, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said

“This Republican plan ends Medicare as we know it and dramatically reduces benefits for seniors,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the House minority leader, said in a floor speech. She said it would force the average senior citizen to pay twice as much for half the benefits while giving “tens of billions of dollars” in tax breaks to big oil companies.

The GOP plan “reduces Medicaid to our seniors and nursing homes . . . while it gives tax breaks to companies that send jobs overseas,” Pelosi said. “That’s just not fair.”

Pelosi was also very unhappy with President Obama’s “compromise” budget for 2011. Besides being angry about the cuts to programs that help the most vulnerable Americans, Pelosi was extremely unhappy that she and her Democratic House colleagues were completely cut out of the negotiations on the 2011 budget. In fact, Patricia Murphy at The Daily Beast says that many Democrats are “disgusted” with Obama. She writes that

…a number of Democrats are past protesting the president, discussing among themselves ways to recruit a primary challenger in 2012.

“I have been very disappointed in the administration to the point where I’m embarrassed that I endorsed him,” one senior Democratic lawmaker said. “It’s so bad that some of us are thinking, is there some way we can replace him? How do you get rid of this guy?” The member, who would discuss the strategy only on the condition of anonymity, called the discontent with Obama among the caucus “widespread,” adding: “Nobody is saying [they want him out] publicly, but a lot of people wish it could be so. Never say never.”

House Republicans, who got much of what they wanted in their negotiations with the White House, are whining because Obama said some mean things about them in his deficit speech on Tuesday. They were shocked that the president’s speech was “partisan.” Give me a break! Why do we have political parties if they aren’t supposed to be “partisan?”

The three Republican congressmen saw it as a rare ray of sunshine in Washington’s stormy budget battle: an invitation from the White House to hear President Obama lay out his ideas for taming the national debt.

They expected a peace offering, a gesture of goodwill aimed at smoothing a path toward compromise. But soon after taking their seats at George Washington University on Wednesday, they found themselves under fire for plotting “a fundamentally different America” from the one most Americans know and love.

“What came to my mind was: Why did he invite us?” Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said in an interview Thursday. “It’s just a wasted opportunity.”

The situation was all the more perplexing because Obama has to work with these guys: Camp is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, responsible for trade, taxes and urgent legislation to raise the legal limit on government borrowing. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Tex.) chairs the House Republican Conference. And Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is House Budget Committee chairman and the author of the spending blueprint Obama lacerated as “deeply pessimistic” during his 44-minute address.

Give me a break! Why do we have political parties if they aren’t supposed to be “partisan?” I’d like to see a hell of a lot more partisanship on the Democratic side. Of course Republicans are never accused of “partisanship,” but it is simply assumed that they will be rabidly “partisan” and the press eats it up when they are. But don’t worry guys, Obama is just mouthing the appropriate words before he surrenders and gives you most of what you want again.

Whatever Obama thinks he’s doing, it doesn’t seem to be working for the majority of Americans. Today Gallup reported that the president’s job approval rating is only 41%. The biggest drop in support for Obama is among Independents, only 35% of whom approve of his performance.

The latest buzzword in DC is “serious.” Republicans and columnists rave about how “serious” Ryan’s budget bill is. Democrats claim Obama’s plan is the truly “serious” one. But as Dakinikat keeps explaining, neither of these plans is going to do much to pull the country out of the doldrums, because neither has even a nodding acquaintance with economic reality. For anyone to call any of these politicians and pundits “serious” is nothing but a sick joke.

Today was just another pointless day in the lives of the least serious people in the least serious city on earth.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →