The Congressional Cash Machine

Posted: December 26, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | Tags: , | 8 Comments

I’m just waiting for life to get back to the normal rat race and off the holiday frenetic rat race.  I need to get some plumbing parts, a few store-related things, and a person from my bank to pick up the phone who isn’t distracted or gone.  Commerce is dysfunctional this time of year and I just hate it.   I found out the hard way that Friday was holiday of some sort and of course, Saturday and Sunday were complete wastes of time.  I feel held hostage this time of year. Same thing seems to apply to useful items in newspapers and magazines around the country.

I did manage to find one thing at WAPO today that was snuck in between those perpetual what to do with left overs and presents you do want articles:  ‘Lawmakers seek cash during key votes’. Well, isn’t that special?    It seems while we were frantically hoping they’d repeal DADT, pass the Dream Act, and ratify START, the Reigndeers were playing Reigndeer games.  I’m hoping the information in that article doesn’t get buried in the holiday waste paper.

Numerous times this year, members of Congress have held fundraisers and collected big checks while they are taking critical steps to write new laws, despite warnings that such actions could create ethics problems. The campaign donations often came from contributors with major stakes riding on the lawmakers’ actions.

For three weeks in June, for instance, the members of a joint House and Senate committee worked to draft final rules for regulating the financial industry in the wake of its 2008 meltdown. During that time, the 35 members of the drafting committee collected $440,000 in donations from that same industry, which was then lobbying heavily for looser rules.

What on earth can we do to stop this cash extraction/infusion process from the big special interest groups?  Why aren’t people holding their congress critterz accountable for this kind of obvious black mail?  This example was just appalling AND unsuprising.

Earlier this month, the chairman of the Senate committee overseeing tax policy, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), gave himself a birthday-party fundraiser – on the same day that the chamber took its first vote on an $858 billion tax package that would provide breaks to wealthy citizens and business interests.

They must know we’re stupid.

Here’s a real christmas gift from the Center for Responsive Politics: Lobbying Your True Love: Twelve Days of Gifts and Special Interests Access This Christmas.  This will let you know who was on the nice list recently. (Hint: it wasn’t you or me.)

Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, there were 273 days. That means you should be able to retain the California Pear Growers Association, which reported $20,000 in lobbying expenditures during the first three quarters of 2010, for $73 a day.

To be true to the song, though, you’ll need the Pear Growers trade group every day for 12 days. And 12 days at $73 a day equals $879.

By that same logic, retaining DLA Piper’s services, which is playing a happy tune with $7.6 million in lobbying income this year, would cost $27,875 per day. Good thing they’ll only be need twice — on the eleventh and twelfth days, for a total cost of $55,751.

Your wallet might also take a hit trying to woo Goldman Sachs, which likes the ring of their $3.5 million investments in lobbying between January and September.

While the investment bank’s daily rate is less than half of DLA Piper’s, you’ll pay even more for their services since you’ll need them for eight days: $12,857 per day multiplied by 8 days equals $102,857.

Defense contractor Blackbird Technologies, named after the colly bird, and lobbying firm Drummer and Associates, meanwhile, will each run just $110 a day.

But Leap Wireless International, the parent company of Cricket, will cost ten times as much: $1,099 per day.

And the Dairy Farmers of American, the trade group for maids-a-milking, will cost twice that: $2,220 per day.

On the other hand, the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance — a big fan of ladies dancing — is a steal at just $27 a day. Even for four days of services, you’re only out $110.

Other poultry-related interests — the National Chicken Council, an ardent supporter of French hens, and the United Egg Producers, who have a special place in their heart for geese-a-laying — will cost $586 per day and $165 per day, respectively.

This has got to stop some place. Look at this from the same WAPO link.

Over the course of three weeks in June, the 35 conference committee members collected $440,000 in donations from the financial industry. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of the Senate banking committee and a powerful conferee, collected the most that month – about $90,000 from financial interests.

Executives of accounting giant Ernst & Young contributed the lion’s share of that amount for Schumer: $49,000 in all of June, including $2,000 from chief executive James Turley. Ernst & Young works for some of the biggest firms on Wall Street. This week, New York state sued the company, accusing it of using a paperwork shuffle to help Lehman Brothers hide billions of dollars in debt before that firm’s 2008 collapse.

…

Senators collected $469,000 from the financial industry the day before, the day of and the day after that key Sept. 16 vote, a Post review of donations shows. The biggest recipient was Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who shepherded the legislation and faced a tight reelection race.

We’ve turned into a plutocracy.  No doubt about it. Money doesn’t talk any more.  It screams.

What if this is as good as an Obama Administration Gets?

Posted: December 26, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Populism, POTUS, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , | 78 Comments

Frank Rich, in today’s Gray Lady, asks:

Who Killed the Disneyland Dream?

From the link:

This month our own neo-Kennedy president — handed the torch by J.F.K.’s last brotherand soon to face the first Congress without a Kennedy since 1947 — identified a new “Sputnik moment” for America. This time the jolt was provided by the mediocre performance of American high school students, who underperformed not just the Chinese but dozens of other countries in standardized tests of science, math and reading. In his speech on the subject, President Obama called for more spending on research and infrastructure, more educational reform and more clean energy technology. (All while reducing the deficit, mind you.) Worthy goals, but if you watch “Disneyland Dream,” you realize something more fundamental is missing from America now: the bedrock faith in the American way that J.F.K. could tap into during his era’s Sputnik moment.

How many middle-class Americans now believe that the sky is the limit if they work hard enough? How many trust capitalism to give them a fair shake? Middle-class income started to flatten in the 1970s and has stagnated ever since. While 3M has continued to prosper, many other companies that actually make things (and at times innovative things) have been devalued, looted or destroyed by a financial industry whose biggest innovation in 20 years, in the verdict of the former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, has been the cash machine.

I believe there was a poll conducted not too long ago that gives a fairly good baseline from which to guestimate just how many middle class Americans still “believe” — I’m talking about that WaPo poll back at the end of October, which found that 53% of Americans are concerned about their ability to pay their rent or mortgage.

Getting back to Frank Rich’s piece, Rich concludes the following:

It’s a measure of how rapidly our economic order has shifted that nearly a quarter of the 400 wealthiest people in America on this year’s Forbes list make their fortunes from financial services, more than three times as many as in the first Forbes 400 in 1982. Many of America’s best young minds now invent derivatives, not Disneylands, because that’s where the action has been, and still is, two years after the crash. In 2010, our system incentivizes high-stakes gambling — “this business of securitizing things that didn’t even exist in the first place,” as Calvin Trillin memorably wrote last year — rather than the rebooting and rebuilding of America.

In last week’s exultant preholiday press conference, Obama called for a “thriving, booming middle class, where everybody’s got a shot at the American dream.” But it will take much more than rhetorical Scotch tape to bring that back. The Barstows of 1956 could not have fathomed the outrageous gap between this country’s upper class and the rest of us. America can’t move forward until we once again believe, as they did, that everyone can enter Frontierland if they try hard enough, and that no one will be denied a dream because a private party has rented out Tomorrowland.

…which brings me back to what I wrote yesterday in my Saturday roundup, about America being locked in reflexive doubt, and that being as corrosive as blind faith.

A huge part of the problem is that we have an empty suit in the White House from whom the best we can hope for is that he simply lets other people lead for him and make something good happen once in awhile, if we are even that lucky. It’s a victory if he lets other people throw us a bone and fight the fights of ordinary Americans for him. Woo hoo.

Three years ago or so the Obama campaign started churning out posters with the word “believe.” The Obama machine wanted us to believe in an image, a brand. Whenever it has come time for Obama to get us to believe in ourselves, he quietly folds up his teleprompter and goes golfing.

For months on end we had the MSM trying to explain away Obama’s inability to communicate that he even cares. Oil gushed out into the Gulf, and all Obama could muster up was “I can’t suck it up with a straw.”

Sure he cares. Now watch this drive.

Whether it was letting Bill Clinton bring Euna Lee and Laura Ling home or letting Joe Lieberman lead the way to repeal of DADT, it seems this is the zenith of the Obama presidency. Letting other people do the actual president-for-the-people stuff while he enjoys the perks of Being President.

With this president, the sky is not the limit, it is merely aspirational..

Ordinary Americans are just trying to survive in today’s economy, at a time when their own president does not think the sky is the limit in terms of the lengths to which he will go to fight for the American people but rather insists that the best he can do is talking point reforms with all the corporate benefits and backdoor privatization buried in the fine print, not to even speak of all the obligatory pork.

Asking or expecting people in such a hostile working/living environment to believe “the sky is the limit if they work hard enough” is essentially asking them to bury their heads in the sand. What is still left of Obama’s ostriches (think Dubya’s 23 percenters) can ignore reality all they want, but that will not change the fact that most Americans are invisible to this president and they know it.

We are stuck in reflexive doubt at this point, but how is having a president who reinforces all of those doubts supposed to help? At this point, I have no idea why anyone on the left still persists in the delusion that there’s any 2% less evil difference between Obama and the GOP.

From a recent Democracy Now interview with Chris Hedges (h/t Dakinikat), where he talks about his latest book, Death of the Liberal Class:

AMY GOODMAN: Your assessment of President Obama?

CHRIS HEDGES: A disaster. A poster child for the bankruptcy of the liberal class. Somebody who, like Clinton, is a self-identified liberal, who speaks in the traditional language of liberalism but has made war against the core values of liberalism, which is a concern for those people outside the narrow power elite. And the tragedy, if tragedy is the right word, is that Obama, who made this Faustian bargain with corporate interests in order to gain power, has now been crumpled up and thrown away by these interests. They don’t need him anymore. He functioned as a brand after the disastrous eight years of George Bush.

And what we are watching is an even more craven attempt on the part of the White House to cater to the forces that are literally destroying the United States, have reconfigured, are reconfiguring this country into a form of neofeudalism. And all of the traditional—the pillars of the liberal establishment, that once provided some kind of protection and, more importantly, a kind of safety valve, a mechanism by which legitimate grievances and injustices in this country could be addressed, have shut tight. They no longer work. And so, we are getting these terrifying, proto-fascist movements that are leaping up around the fringes of American society and have as their anger not only a rage against government, but a rage against liberals, as well. And I would say that rage is not misplaced.

And, there you have it. This is the difference between having Obama and having a GOP president.

So he lets Lieberman or Clinton or someone do something right once in awhile. So what?

I personally won’t waste time denying Obama the “credit.” While the soldiers and the activists who fought for repeal of DADT at the grassroots level are the ones who made this historic step in that direction possible and are the real heroes and sheroes of this story, the fact of the matter is that had Obama succeeded in blocking the DADT repeal, then the blame would have been piled on high at his doorstep.

So he can have the credit, but he also needs to take responsibility for the fact that simply standing back and allowing others to do the heavy lifting once in awhile is neither enough nor the vision of someone who thinks big or sets the sky as his limit for what he can do AS president for the people who elected him.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama set the limit to just being president.

No one would be happier than I would be if Obama would just prove this theory wrong. I have no Disneyland dreams or illusions that he will do so, though.

Tuesday Reads

Posted: December 21, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Catfood Commission, Civil Rights, Democratic Politics, Team Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 66 Comments
Good Morning!

The Tax Cuts for Billionaires (tm) program has passed and will keep all the scrooges making merry merry for a bit.  Unfortunately, the stimulus and capital investment will probably go outside the United States and a budget fight is on deck.   The next budget crisis is looming.  The Federal government will probably hit the debt ceiling in April.  There’s 50 other problem budgets out there also. CBS has an interesting state of the states piece up called “The Day Of Reckoning”.

Most states will have worse problems because they must balance their budget, they’re running cyclic deficits which happens when unemployment goes up and they can’t print money.  State budgets are overwhelmed with needs for state programs like food stamps and unemployment as well as SCHIP and other family safety net programs.  They are also underwhelmed by incoming revenues because demand for things is way off.  Federal tax cuts make this worse because many states–including here in Louisiana–base their income tax formulas on how much Federal Taxes have been paid. It’s tough for them to change the law at this point to reflect that Obama/McConnell Billionaire rescue plan ™.   States and municipalities must watch their bond ratings and compete with other states for investor funds.  This keeps them on a much tighter rein than the Feds.  Additionally, there was some stimulus money in the original Obama stimulus progam that is not being renewed and will run out.    All-in-all, 2011 will be a bad year for states. The worst is yet to come.

This situation has already worried Wall Street and  will undoubtedly cause an increase in unemployment as state and local workers are laid off to balance budgets.  One problem that we’ve had here in Louisiana is that state employment levels have been frozen in the clerical areas and the increased demand for unemployment has led to a 4 – 6 month backlog in processing unemployment benefits.   If you don’t have a rich relative or an emergency savings fund, you’re most likely going to find yourself out on the street.  It’s been the topic of many an investigative report in local TV.  I found that it’s not just in Louisiana.  It’s happened in Connecticut, Kansas, Rhode Island, and California too.

The states have been getting by on billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds, but the day of reckoning is at hand. The debt crisis is already making Wall Street nervous, and some believe that it could derail the recovery, cost a million public employees their jobs and require another big bailout package that no one in Washington wants to talk about.”The most alarming thing about the state issue is the level of complacency,” Meredith Whitney, one of the most respected financial analysts on Wall Street and one of the most influential women in American business, told correspondent Steve Kroft

Whitney made her reputation by warning that the big banks were in big trouble long before the 2008 collapse. Now, she’s warning about a financial meltdown in state and local governments.

“It has tentacles as wide as anything I’ve seen. I think next to housing this is the single most important issue in the United States, and certainly the largest threat to the U.S. economy,” she told Kroft.

Asked why people aren’t paying attention, Whitney said, “‘Cause they don’t pay attention until they have to.”

Whitney says it’s time to start.

This investigative report has examples of looming problems for California, Arizona and New Jersey.  If you live in any of these three states, you should be prepared for an incredible scale back of government services and possible tax hikes. Another state with serious problems is Illinois.  Illinois is already in the ‘deadbeat’ state category.  Here in Louisiana, severe budget cuts by “Bobby is for Bobby” Jindal have led to attempts to break all public service unions including the ones for teachers, state clerical workers, firefighters and police.  Here’s a list of targeted furloughs, layoffs, and firings in Louisiana as reported by WBRZ, a Baton Rouge TV station last month. If they’re not happening in your state already, they will undoubtedly be starting next year when the stimulus funds run out.  Prison guards are even on the list.  I wonder who will win the debtor’s prisons and poor house farms?  Halliburton perhaps?

There is one more major lame duck issue sitting on the docket.  Democratic senate leaders are hopeful they will get the START treaty ratified despite ongoing Republican obfuscation. Let’s hope they’ve got the votes they need.  Even Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell are on board with ratification.

By the end of another tumultuous day, treaty backers said they could count more than the two-thirds majority required for approval in votes that could begin as early as Tuesday. The Senate mustered as many as 64 votes in defeating Republican amendments on Monday, just two short of what supporters need for final approval, and three senators who supported one of the amendments have already said they will vote for the treaty in the end.

The momentum building for the treaty came despite the announcements of the two top Senate Republican leaders, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Jon Kyl of Arizona, that they will vote against the treaty, known as New Start. Treaty supporters pressured wavering Republicans on Monday with an appeal by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s top military officer, to approve the agreement.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s recent slip of the tongue will undoubtedly create issues should he decided to make a run for the presidency in 2012. Barbour gave an extensive interview that basically showed how many parts of the south have not changed.   The Mississippi governor praised a civic group that is–for all intent and purpose–a  white supremacist group  in the state.  He also made a comment about the things not being so bad during the civil rights era.  Kinda makes me think Trent Lott might have a better shot at the presidency than good ol’ Haley does.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says he doesn’t remember the Civil Rights era being “that bad,” citing his attendance at a Martin Luther King Jr. rally nearly 50 years ago.

“I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” Barbour (R), 63, told the conservative Weekly Standard, which did a lengthy profile on the governor. “I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ’62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white.”

The profile also showed Barbour’s ignorance of the role of hate group in trying to maintain segregation.  The group has a long history of white supremacist activities and writings.

“You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK,” said Barbour. “Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”

The White Citizens Council movement was founded in Mississippi in 1954, shortly after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregated public schools, and was dedicated to political activities opposing civil rights — notably boycotts of pro-civil rights individuals in Barbour’s hometown, as opposed to Barbour’s recollection of actions against the Klan. It was distinguished from the Klan by the public self-identification of its members, and its image of suits and ties as opposed to white robes and nooses.

If you check the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate map of Mississippi, you’ll see that they’ve identified approximately 25 hate groups there.  Many are in the area surrounding Yazoo.  You’ll see that the Council of Conservative Citizens is quite active around the area. Some of these groups have changed their name to sound more palatable but it’s the same old racist screeds. It wouldn’t take much for Barbour to learn about these folks.

The Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) is the modern reincarnation of the old White Citizens Councils, which were formed in the 1950s and 1960s to battle school desegregation in the South. Created in 1985 from the mailing lists of its predecessor organization, the CCC, which initially tried to project a “mainstream” image, has evolved into a crudely white supremacist group whose website has run pictures comparing pop singer Michael Jackson to an ape and referred to blacks as “a retrograde species of humanity.” The group’s newspaper, Citizens Informer, regularly publishes articles condemning “race mixing,” decrying the evils of illegal immigration, and lamenting the decline of white, European civilization.

In Its Own Words

“God is the author of racism. God is the One who divided mankind into different types. … Mixing the races is rebelliousness against God.”
— Council of Conservative Citizens website, 2001

“We believe the United States is a European country and that Americans are part of the European people. … We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States that threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime. We believe that illegal immigration must be stopped, if necessary by military force and placing troops on our national borders; that illegal aliens must be returned to their own countries; and that legal immigration must be severely restricted or halted through appropriate changes in our laws and policies. We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called ‘affirmative action’ and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.”
—Statement of Principles, Citizens Informer, 2007

“Controlling immigration is about the security of this republic [terrorists illegally crossing the borders] and making sure countries like Mexico stop dumping their murderers, rapists, those carrying AIDS and other communicable diseases and gang members on America’s door step.”
—Devvy Kidd, Citizens Informer, 2006

Yup, nothing to see here.  Just about as benign as your local chamber of commerce or Elk’s Club. You’d think a governor would be familiar with terrorist and hate groups in his own state, wouldn’t you?

This Politico op-ed by Robert Kuttner is undoubtedly one of the first in the a number that will come up as Obama moves on Social Security. It’s called ‘Obama to blink first on Social Security’. Kuttner says that key senate Democrats and the White House are moving to embrace the Cat Food commission report AND cuts in social security. We’re supposed to hear about it in the State of the Union address coming up in January.

The idea is to pre-empt an even more draconian set of budget cuts likely to be proposed by the incoming House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), as a condition of extending the debt ceiling. This is expected to hit in April.

White House strategists believe this can also give Obama “credit” for getting serious about deficit reduction — now more urgent with the nearly $900 billion increase in the deficit via the tax cut deal.

How to put this politely? For a Democratic president, this approach is bad economics and worse politics.

For starters, cutting Social Security as part of a deficit reduction deal is needless — since Social Security is in surplus for the next 27 years. The move also gives away the single most potent distinction between Democrats and Republicans — Democrats defend your Social Security, and Republicans keep trying to undermine it.

If you think the Democratic base feels betrayed by Obama’s tax-cut deal, just imagine the mayhem when Obama proposes to cut the Democrats’ signature program.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) compared Obama’s tax deal to punting on first down. A pre-emptive cut in Social Security is forfeiting the game before kickoff.

Hey, Al, I got an idea.  Why don’t you and the others fight him just for once?  Frankly no deal is better than the deals he’s been negotiating for us.  Don’t hold your nose and vote for this one like you did with the Tax Cut for Billionaires (tm) plan.  Please?

Altogether now,  “We are so F’d”.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads

Posted: December 20, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, DADT, Democratic Politics, GLBT Rights, income inequality, morning reads, Populism, SCOTUS, The Great Recession, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , | 79 Comments

Good Morning!!

There was a terrible oil pipeline explosion in San Martin Texmelucan, Mexico.

A massive oil pipeline explosion lay waste to parts of a central Mexican city Sunday, incinerating people, cars, houses and trees as gushing crude turned streets into flaming rivers. At least 28 people were killed, 13 of them children, in a disaster authorities blamed on oil thieves.

The blast in San Martin Texmelucan, initally estimated to have affected 5,000 residents in a three-mile (five-kilometer) radius, scorched homes and cars and left metal and pavement twisted and in some cases burned to ash in the intense heat.

Relatives sobbed as firefighters pulled charred bodies from the incinerated homes, some of the remains barely more than piles of ashes and bones.

The disastrous accident is being blamed on thieves who were attempting to steal crude oil.

Investigators found a hole in the pipeline and equipment for extracting crude, said Laura Gurza, chief of the federal Civil Protection emergency response agency.

“They lost control because of the high pressure with which the fuel exits the pipeline,” he said.

The oil flowed more than half a mile (one kilometer) down a city street before diverting into a river. At some point a spark of unknown origin caused both to erupt in flames.

I found that story on Fox News. I’m not sure how much attention it will get in the U.S. Cudos to Fox for covering it.

The National Journal has a preview of what we’re in store for in 2012 if we can’t dump Obama and find a qualified, electable liberal to replace him. According to the author, Ronald Brownstein, there are two types of Republicans who might run for president: “managers” like Mitt Romney and “populists” like Sarah Palin.

The most prominent populists are former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. The leading manager is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, although he could face competition from such current governors as Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, and, conceivably, New Jersey’s Chris Christie. Onetime House Speaker Newt Gingrich straddles both camps but leans toward the populist side. Outgoing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a self-described “Sam’s Club” Republican with an equable manner, also straddles the line but probably tilts toward the manager camp, as would Sen. John Thune of South Dakota if he ran. Conversely, if Texas Gov. Rick Perry reverses his decision and joins the race, he would enter as a full-throated populist.

No matter which type we get stuck with, it’s going to be a nightmare.

The two groups disagree on some issues (trade, aid to banks), but the most important differences between them are cultural and stylistic, not ideological. The populists thunder; the managers reassure. The populists stress their social values; the managers tout their economic competence. The populists rage at the elite; the managers mingle easily with them.

To their supporters, the populists represent a cultural statement: Who they are is more important than what they will do. For the managers, that equation is reversed: Their biggest selling point is their agenda, not their identity.

Of course, Obama might be able to get some of his base back now that Congress has suddenly handed him DADT repeal. IMHO, Obama didn’t really want it, but he’ll take the resulting bump it will probably give him. It’s not clear yet what results the tax cuts will have on Obama’s popularity. I guess we’ll have to wait and see about that.

Also at the National Journal, there’s an interesting piece by Michael Hirsch: Obama Tried to Placate Liberal Economists

At a White House news conference on December 7 in which he announced a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, Barack Obama chastised his liberal base for sticking unrealistically to their “purist” positions.

What the president didn’t say was that a few hours earlier he had met with and tried to assauge some his most vociferous liberal critics — economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Alan Blinder, and Robert Reich, the former Labor secretary.

Excuse me? Why the hell did it take so long for this story to get out?

“He didn’t really respond,” said one of the participants. “He said it was hard to change the narrative after 30 years” of small-government rhetoric and policies dating back to Ronald Reagan. “He seemed to be looking for a way to reassure the base. Or maybe it was just to reassure himself.”

Um…presidentin’ is hard. Part of the job is influencing “the narrative.” Maybe if Obama had actually tried, he could have accomplished something. But why try? Might as well just relax, play basketball, and vacation in Martha’s Vineyard wine tours, enjoying Hawaii, and let the other Reaganites control “the narrative.” The article even harks back to Obama’s praise of Reagan during the primaries.

We just have to dump this loser!

There’s a great post on Washington’s Blog arguing for a causal connection between income inequality and the crashes of 1929 and 2008.

…recent studies by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty are waking up more and more economists to the possibility that there may be a connection.

Specifically, economics professors Saez (UC Berkeley) and Piketty (Paris School of Economics) show that the percentage of wealth held by the richest 1% of Americans peaked in 1928 and 2007 – right before each crash…

Please go read the whole thing.

Raw Story reports that a new study supports the hypothesis that the “Supreme Court is becoming a tool of corporate interests.”

A study has found that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has undergone a fundamental shift in its outlook, ruling in favor of businesses much more often than previous courts.

According to the Northwestern University study, commissioned for the New York Times, the Roberts court has sided with business interests in 61 percent of relevant cases, compared to 46 percent in the last five years of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who passed away in 2005….

Meanwhile, a second study, from the Constitutional Accountability Center, has charted the growing influence of the US Chamber of Commerce on the courts. The chamber started filing amicus briefs with the top court three decades ago in an effort to prompt more business-friendly rulings.

According to the study, the Roberts Supreme Court has sided with the Chamber 68 percent of the time, up from 56 percent under the Rehnquist court, and noticeably higher than the 43 percent during the relevant part of Chief Justice Warren Burger’s court, which ended in 1986.

Fox News reports the results of another study, one that finds that “Prime Time TV ‘Objectifies and Fetishizes’ Underage Girls”

According to a new study conducted by the Parents Television Council (PTC), Hollywood is shockingly obsessed with sexualizing teen girls, to the point where underage female characters are shown participating in an even higher percentage of sexual situations than their adult counterparts: 47 percent to 29 percent respectively.

PTC’s report, entitled “New Target: A Study of Teen Female Sexualization on Primetime TV” is based on a content analysis drawn from the 25 most popular shows in the 12-17 demographic throughout the 2009-2010 television season.

“The results from this report show Tinseltown’s eagerness to not only objectify and fetishize young girls, but to sexualize them in such a way that real teens are led to believe their sole value comes from their sexuality,” said PTC President Tim Winter. “This report is less about the shocking numbers that detail the sickness of early sexualization in our entertainment culture and more about the generation of young girls who are being told how society expects them to behave.”

“Storylines on the most popular shows among teens are sending the message to our daughters that being sexualized isn’t just acceptable, it should be sought after,” Winter said.

I have to say, this study reflect what I’ve noticed in the small sample of TV I expose myself to. Prime time is sure different than when I was a teenager.

At the Washington Post, there’s a story about (surprise!) hypocrisy in the Senate.

The Senate Armed Services Committee prohibits its staff and presidential appointees requiring Senate confirmation from owning stocks or bonds in 48,096 companies that have Defense Department contracts. But the senators who sit on the influential panel are allowed to own any assets they want.

And they have owned millions in interests in these firms.

The committee’s prohibition is designed to prevent high-ranking Pentagon officials from using inside information to enrich themselves or members of their immediate family.

But panel members have access to much of the same inside information, because they receive classified briefings from high-ranking defense officials about policy, contracts and plans for combat strategies and weapons systems.

Of course it’s not just hypocrisy. It’s a wide open invitation to corruption.

Since I’m a psychologist, I’m going to throw in a story about psychological research. The author, Tyler Burge, is a professor of philosophy at UCLA. He discusses one of my pet peeves–the way brain imaging research is glorified in the media, even though it’s really just based on correlations between brain activity and specific behaviors. While the results of these studies can be interesting, they aren’t sufficient to actually explain human behavior.

Burge writes:

Imagine that reports of the mid-20th-century breakthroughs in biology had focused entirely on quantum mechanical interactions among elementary particles. Imagine that the reports neglected to discuss the structure or functions of DNA. Inheritance would not have been understood. The level of explanation would have been wrong. Quantum mechanics lacks a notion of function, and its relation to biology is too complex to replace biological understanding. To understand biology, one must think in biological terms.

Discussing psychology in neural terms makes a similar mistake. Explanations of neural phenomena are not themselves explanations of psychological phenomena. Some expect the neural level to replace the psychological level. This expectation is as naive as expecting a single cure for cancer. Science is almost never so simple.

Correlations between localized neural activity and specific psychological phenomena are important facts. But they merely set the stage for explanation. Being purely descriptive, they explain nothing. Some correlations do aid psychological explanation. For example, identifying neural events underlying vision constrains explanations of timing in psychological processes and has helped predict psychological effects. We will understand both the correlations and the psychology, however, only through psychological explanation.

Unfortunately, Burge wants to replace the evidence from brain imaging research with perceptual research. Okay, but perception doesn’t fully explain human behavior either.

I could make the same argument for other psychological fields. For example, what about child development? One problem with research on brain structures is that every child’s brain develops differently, depending on the experiences the child has with his or her environment. The brain is so flexible that each human brain is truly unique–even though there are obviously many similarities across individuals.

Anyway, it’s an interesting article. Check it out if you’re interested in psychology.

Soooooo… what are you reading this morning? Please share!

It’s time to Fight Them Harry!

Posted: December 17, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: DADT, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: | 21 Comments

Our country is being held hostage by our political class.  Every day the headlines just keep getting worse.  This lame duck session of congress has put partisan excess on display.  Now is the time to stand up to the Far Right.  Democratic leadership has been far too conservative and far too pliable.

Here’s the Appalling headline setting Peace against Civil Liberties via Wonk Room:

Sen. Corker Threatens Reid: If You Bring DADT Repeal For A Vote, We’ll Walk Away From START

Other Republican Senators — including McCain and Graham — have privately hinted that they would oppose ratifying the treaty if the Senate voted on DADT, but Corker is the first lawmaker to publicly threaten to walk away from the measure. Last night, Reid filed cloture on DADT and DREAM and promised to hold cloture votes on both measures on Saturday, before returning to the START treaty. Reid has also promised that he would accommodate six or seven days of debate on the measure.

Corker’s description of DADT as “partisan” is surprising in light of the increasing Republican support for the measure. Republican Senators Susan Collins (ME), Olympia Snowe (ME), Scott Brown (MA) and Lisa Murkowski (AK) have pledged to vote for the stand-alone repeal bill. The measure is also supported by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the overwhelming majority of the American people. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll released earlier this week found that 77% of Americans support ending DADT, the highest level of support since the poll began asking the question.

This is surreal.  Corker thinks that issues like Civil Liberties and treaties negotiated in the interest of the American People are just “campaign promise types of issues”.  Listen to what this man’s says and be prepared to be outraged. Any decent Republican should distance themselves from Corker’s misguided attempts to confuse public will with his narrow political interest.

Lindsey Graham is indicating he may not vote for START because of the DADT repeal.   This is the new Republican Meme:  It’s “poisoning the well” despite it being the will of the majority of the people and in keeping with our constitutional precepts of equal rights.

This is a tweet from ManuRaju from Politico:

Sen. Graham may vote against START, saying DREAM/DADT push has “poisoned the well.” “The lame-duck is beginning to smell up the place.”

What smells is that it’s taken us nearly TWO years to start discussing the issues that Democrats were elected on.  We expected immigration reform.  We expected discriminatory laws against the GLBT community to go away.  We expected bold steps to end the recession brought on by 8 years of reckless GOP war profiteering.  These are fights for  basic Democratic party values that should have started a long time ago.  Senator Reid only has a few weeks left to do the right thing by the voters.  My hope and prayer is that he stays and fights.   The president leaves for Hawaii tomorrow morning having used what little prestige there is left in his office to push through the Tax Cuts for Billionaires plan. Obama obviously doesn’t care enough about these issues to stay and fight!  Please let Henry Reid behave like something other than a Reagan Democrat. Stick to your guns and your voter’s intent!

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →