Remember this speech, wherein John McCain promised that the regional Republicans would DO something about earmarks, waste, and spending? 'My friends, I will make them famous ...!', he promised.
What's John McCain been up to? Well, he's proposed internet legislation that would throw consumers to the wolves. He's been out defending property rights, according to his website.
Have you heard any Senator's earmark getting "made famous" by John McCain?
In other words, the Reagan Revolution on taxes, having run its course, is almost all smoke-and-mirrors. The Bush Administration never - never once - made revenues equal expenses.
Monday, November 2, 2009
GOP Blowing Smoke on Taxes, "Small Government"
Jindal's "Mankiw Moment" - A Warning to New Jersey
MORE 'TRICK' THAN 'TREAT'
After having followed Bush in passing out unpaid tax-cut candy, Louisiana's GOP Gov, Bobby Jindal, faced his 'Mankiw moment' a while back, as the state's finances went into the trash barrel, with a distinct revenue problem.
Now, he's proposed cutting back hard on higher education, health care and firing 1,200 state employees (bringing the total to over 3,000).
That's right, for the most part, the GOP's one-way train on taxes is now hitting education, health care, and the ability of the state of even properly handle what work it has to do...
Without the Federal aide coming to his state, Jindal would be looking for another $3+ billion to finance his ideology, over the upcoming years. He seems to suggest that consolidating mental health facilities in New Orleans is somehow more than a drop in the bucket.
In New Jersey, Chris Christie is promising voters an unpaid for tax cut. John McCain is robo calling voters to say that this is the change that New Jersey needs.
Please - we've seen the ending to that movie, already.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Political Milestones, Tin Can Edition
Frank Rich's column is so au point that I couldn't stop laughing.
Add in Andrew Sullivan's caught-on-tape observations.
And people took umbrage when Krugman wrote that grown-ups are back in charge or something similar.
Black Adder Update: Scozzafava has endorsed her non-party rival, the Democrat in the race.
Christianist Watch Update, Party Purges and Purity edition: NOM puts out press release pointing to their $150,00 NY-23 boost as the second largest in the district and lauding Scozzafava's abandonment as a defeat of "the first pro-gay marriage GOP congressman".
Thursday, October 29, 2009
'Save the Children', 2009 version/re-mix
GAYS ARE COMING FOR YOUR CHILDREN!!!
Now that the tactics of the NOM cabal are once again shown to be ... about winning a vote with knuckles, not making a case, I wonder why gay activists didn't have a ballot initiative of their own, to split the vote. Maybe it is forbidden under Maine law? Its slyness would certainly help combat the ugliness of NOM's approach.
Anyway, the response to this ad should be "Leaving our children in darkness". I can think of a pretty hard hitting script. Afterall, schools are places of learning and churches are places of indoctrination.
What you need to know about the Senator from Aetna
"NEW YORK (AP) -- Health insurer Aetna Inc. says its third-quarter profit rose 18 percent on gains in both commercial and Medicare enrollment."
In the middle of a recession ...
It's true.
Guaranteed enrollment is very, very valuable. Are Democrats getting enough for mandating insurance, which is really not at all like car insurance? Could Obama walk away from a bad bill, saying 'no bill is better than a bad bill'?
What's more, the fight over the public option, which is key, is also masking some of the other controversial aspects of the legislation, which seem to be getting less airtime because of the big struggle to not pass out a mandate without getting something really, really valuable in return...
Hate Crimes - The Long War
For the record, the final tally in the Senate, on the pertinent, controlling amendment. Orin Hatch, true to form, submitted his 'more study' proposal, once again. It was defeated.
Voting against are the usual suspects, except Arlen Specter, now D-PA, who voted with the majority.
Senator John McCain joined his freakishly non-mainstream colleague from AZ to vote against. Senator Grassley is on the wrong side, here. Coupled with his stance on healthcare, one wonders if Iowa will continue to be enamored of their l
ongtime warrior Senator...
adding:
"Brief History of the HCPA
Hate crimes legislation was initially introduced in the House and Senate in 1997. During the subsequent 12 years, Congress passed various versions of the HCPA, but was ultimately unsuccessful in advancing the bill for the President’s signature.
This changed during the 111th Congress, when versions of the HCPA were introduced by Representatives John Conyers (D-MI) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) in the House and Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA ), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Arlen Specter (D-PA), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) in the Senate. On April 29, 2009, the House of Representatives passed hate crimes legislation (H.R. 1913) by a vote of 249-175. On July 16, 2009, the Senate voted 63-28 to proceed with hate crimes legislation (S. 909) as an amendment (S. Amdt. 1511) to the Department of Defense (DoD) authorization bill (S. 1390). The DoD authorization bill then passed the Senate with hate crimes legislation attached as an amendment on July 23, 2009.
As part of the final negotiations between the House and Senate, the conferees honored the memory of two victims of hate crimes by naming the hate crimes provision of the Conference Report the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Matthew Shepard was a gay college student who was tortured and murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, and James Byrd, Jr., was an African-American man who was dragged to death in Jasper, Texas.
The final version of the DoD authorization bill, containing the HCPA, passed the House on October 8, 2009 and the Senate on October 22, 2009. The legislation was signed into law by President Obama on October 28, 2009 (Public Law No. 111-84).
The legislation was endorsed by more than 300 law enforcement, civil rights, civic and religious organizations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police, National District Attorneys Association, Presbyterian Church, Episcopal Church, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Young Women’s Christian Association and National Disability Rights Network."The other federal crimes ...
Some commentators appear to have been caught flat-footed, bemoaning the hate crimes legislation enacted to cover, at last, 'sexual orientation'. How?
Well, the senate, spurred by the irksome Senator Sessions, voted overwhelmingly to federalize crime against service members. ...AND any of their property ... OR their family or any of their property.
From the "small government" crowd, crickets, leaving one to conclude, once again, that it really is all about the gay ...
From the so-called "libertarians", who might cast a wary eye on the wide net of 'conspiracy to harm' written in the legislation as a militarization of sorts, crickets.
Monday, October 26, 2009
DADT and Upping the Standing Army in Afghanistan
So, who thinks that any effort next year on Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell will fall by the wayside, if there is a 'right sizing' of the effort in Afghanistan that involves tens of thousands of troops, either from Iraq or from the growth in the U.S. standing army approved under Bush?
As long as there are tens of thousands of troops deployed, there is an 'excuse' in the Senate to delay action ....
This is why "the deal", with the military and/or with the Senate, on DADT should be part of any 'surge' authorization ...
Friday, September 11, 2009
The CNBC Echo-Chamber
Is CNBC turning into a group-think nightmare? You get a group of deliberately like-minded people together and, sooner or later, they start talking jibberish, or worse, right?
Today's sample:
The usually sane and calm Maria Bartiromo, 11: 53 a.m.: "What's wrong with a boom and bust economy?"
Larry Kudlow (rejoinder): "Great stuff, Maria"
This was after being treated to Steve Moore of the WSJ crying aloud about deficits, then 'rejoicing' that the Dems would have to raise taxes, asserting that not a single Republican in the House would vote for tax increases.
Party of responsibility?
It's like Nero fiddling while Rome burned. I'm not kidding. They - all the panelists - were laughing.
Same for Pat Buchanan. He can stop whining about what the Reagan Revolution did to American politics, when he is ready to break the 'no new taxes' taboo and, actually suggest that, for the Republic, Republicans might consider new taxes.
The Emergence of Effete Conservative Snobs
'JOE WILSON', THE LATEST CONSERVATIVE EMOTICON
Andrew Sullivan starts a post, "Conservatism vs. the GOP", linking to a whiny post by Bruce Bartlett. Isn't that a quintessential sign for our times?
Even if the effete conservative intellectuals don't want to face it, the bare news is that "conservatism" is not a governing philosophy. It's not much more than a mob, a political axis that exists for the sake of those in it.
For years, liberal intellectuals were made fun of by the Right, for pointing out that Stalinism wasn't communism. That was a point too fine for their political opponents.
So, as was pointed out here before Tanenhaus wrote his book, American conservatives look like 60s radicals, today, making some fine point about ideals, idols, and the idyllic.
Even if the effete conservative intellectuals don't want to face it, the bare news is that "conservatism" is not a governing philosophy, despite even the pretenses of the "neo-conservatives". It's not much more than a mob, a political axis that exists for the sake of those in it.
The fact that the mob is intellectually dishonest, opportunistically inconsistent, and oftentimes morally vacant ought not to come as a surprise to readers of, I don't know, Conservatives Without Conscience?
These new snobs should just leave the party, either start their own or join the Democrats (afterall, enough of the Dem Senators are captured by special interests that they can't even vote to stop foreclosures during a crisis!).
"War" = Good Politics for the Right
Behind the rhetoric of "evil empire" (aka self-described intolerance), Reagan and Thatcher were both fully on-board with the cold war status quo.
We still haven't paid off the enormous sums that Reagan spent chasing faulty intelligence about the Soviets' imminent collapse, yet AS's readers are fretting over health care costs.
Let's have the GOP suggest ways to raise the taxes to pay off all of the last three Republican Presidents' collective debts, and then we'll worry about Democratic 'entitlements', deal?
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Foreclosures Continue Apace
Senators or others who had kicked the can down the road on foreclosures face the grim reality that foreclosures continue apace, as reported by RealtyTrac today. And while the Treasury Secretary seemed to find some importance in the pace peaking, that hardly seems relevant to policy options that even Dems set aside.
Analyst Meridith Whitney tells CNBC this morning that home prices are headed still lower, with high probability... I suspect the flow of foreclosed properties to the market will be managed to avoid anything precipitous, but the supply of homes ought to at least keep a lid on prices, if it doesn't push them down further, in the regions most affected, including the national political-lynchpins, like Florida.
Arianna writes:It's hard to hear stories like these and not be outraged that, as a country, we have given trillions of dollars to save banks like Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo that are now turning around and refusing to modify mortgages, so that at least people with children can stay in their homes.
It's important to remember that many of the people losing their homes now are not people with crazy sub-prime mortgages or who took out massive loans they couldn't afford. They are hard working, middle class Americans who have lost their jobs and are struggling to make ends meet.
It's equally important to remember that these are the same banks that used bailout money -- our money -- to hire lobbyists to kill legislation in the Senate this spring that would have saved over a million-and-a-half people from losing their homes.
It's really astonishing that the collective suffering caused by Wall Street excesses has not generated more political pressure.
14,000 Americans will lose their health coverage today
....representative Joe Wilson, R-SC, is a ... footnote.
Every 1% rise in health costs above whatever a company can achieve in productivity gains puts countless more workers at risk, for under-insurance or no-insurance, from their nanny-corporation.
===
Update:
This blog will try to ignore Joe Wilson, just as it does Ann Coulter, admitted sensationalist, in all things. But this write-up is hilarious.
Rightwing Radicalization Goes Supreme
Justices Roberts and Alito seem ready to pound down a century-old American belief, a belief that companies should more or less stay out of political campaigning.
They sound like tools, casting about for legal grounds to subvert what is a settled, collective wisdom on the matter, that the political process isn't served well, by deep-pocketed companies that create cynicism about government among regular-way 'citizens'.
Some conservatism. Alito seems confidently unaware of the risks to the Republic, a Republic increasingly wealth-polarized, of opening up the government to further sale. These are not the conservatives of doubt or caution. They are courtroom radicals, tied up, obviously, in reconciling abstractions about free speech for man-made creations, like corporations.
Their questions suggest almost laughable, childish views about what shareholders can do to hold managements accountable. At least Scalia sounds partly tongue-in-cheek, as he taunts council with statistics on sole-proprietorships, as a way to pretend that the Teddy Roosevelt era of big trusts is bygone.
The Baucus Plan
Bob Cesca has a rip-up.
If his 'proposal' is an example of the current state of the debate, then the idea that there will be a bill out of the Senate Finance Committee within a week is a danger, not a relief.
Fees? Does he honestly think that those won't just get passed on to the policy holders? You'd expect to see that kind of thing as a GOP amendment, not a Democratic proposal.
An excise tax on $8,000+ plans? That's an interesting idea, but how much money is that worth? Is that meant to be a dedicated tax or what?
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Heathcare Hash
ON THE ROAD TO FIND OUT...
Along the way, a lot of ill people are going to get care, they would not have otherwise.
But, my head is not behind the current approach of more private, for-profit insurance as a comprehensive solution to the system's ills.
There will be a reckoning, on these both, perhaps even in my lifetime. (And I rather resent Obama for sort-of telling 'his progressive friends' they might be dreaming too big). We lost a lot of time with the sad, aborted HMO end-run. How much do we have left?
At least, if there is going to be 'concession money' or legislation for malpractice-reform studies or trials, then there ought to be money for public-private ventures to amplify the better ways to deliver health care, including bold alternatives to the 'nanny corporation'.
AS LONG AS YOU ARE TAKING IDEAS, MR. PRESIDENT
Last, if he wants ideas, here's one.
Amplify the so-called 'public option' with an extension of the Federal plan for dental, the one that Senators' access.
Anyone citizen who wants to can sign up or substitute it for the company plan (using money their company would contribute to a private plan). It's a way to start small, head in the right direction, prove to a skeptical and confused electorate that change can work, and address a critical need, for the uninsured and the under-insured. It's easy to sell, and it's not as expensive as the whole enchilada. What's more, the government isn't in the fining and collection business and the justice department isn't chasing down flunking health insurers, who live in court as much as the real estate lobby, for ... messing up on 'the rules'.
Speech Qua Speech
GALVANIZED FOR ACTION?
Will it do all that was hoped?
Maybe some.
Here's a test: name three to five critical points about the bill. Can you?
Don't laugh. Remember how far Bush got with his "an Iraq that can govern itself and sustain itself and defend itself"? 12 words. (!) Don't forget, also, that the target audience is people who think Medicare existed since the time of George Washington.
Did he raise the bar on the competition?
He did well enough, getting impassioned, without getting self-righteous (even as much as FDR). He could have said that those not batting down the mis-information are actually supporting false-witness. Now, that might have raised the bar more than 'call them out'. Afterall, this is not a miscellaneous product ad campaign, but the lives of citizens in the rub.
Otherwise, galvanizing is a good word, for much of it.
Given that listeners will likely feel the galvanizing parts, based on how many already favor some type of reform or even universal care, I'm not sure people will understand why exactly there is nothing enacted yet and what they need to do. Reagan used to ask people to help him, to go over the heads of the Washington establishment to get his agenda through.
Obama could have done more to establish his credibility. He's a young President. Afterall, he belongs to the party that brought Medicare and Social Security and much else besides, and he could tap into that and say, in effect, 'trust me' and do not listen to the crazy notions that you will lose your coverage, your doctor, or your options.
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