My grandfather was a farmer; believe me when I say I’m all in favor of family farming as a lifestyle. But massive subsidies are wrecking markets, doing substantial humanitarian damage, and promoting environmental destruction. Stay tuned in the next few weeks for an opportunity to fight farming subsidies.
This week, America commemorates two momentous occasions. This year, the first African American president was inaugurated. He takes office on the promise of respecting the dignity of the poor, the needy, the sick, the immigrant, the prisoner, the homosexual, and the outcast. This is change we can believe in.
Hopefully, so is this.
The Monday night special edition of the Weekly Filibuster has been canceled. If you haven’t already, please check the archives for last night’s Republican round-table on the Bush Presidency.
Four decades have passed since Martin Luther King fought overt discrimination in our legal system. Now, especially with the election of Senator Obama to the Presidency, we tend to view his dream as largely accomplished. However, it would be a mistake to view his work as merely a historical remnant to remind us of a time when there was racism. It exists today, and we need to acknowledge and fight it like we once did.
Four decades after the civil rights movement, African-Americans have an infant mortality rate twice that of white Americans while 20% of African Americans still lack basic health insurance. In a country with a corroding public school system and violent inner cities where homicide is the leading cause of death amongst people under 50 we have not yet achieved the dream. Racial profiling and police brutality are still far too common in our legal system. Look at our board rooms and our nation’s top colleges which remain difficult for African Americans to enter. African American unemployment is twice that of white unemployment.
But this stain on American society runs far deeper than the mechanics of our businesses, schools, and government. It is a part of who many Americans are. When Obama began his candidacy for President, there was an assumption that as a black American he could not be a ‘one of us’, a patriotic American, or as the McCain campaign termed most of the country, not “real Americans”. There were the rumors that he would not say the pledge of the allegiance. Far worse were the rumors that he was a Muslim. To this I must ask: so what if he was? He isn’t, but why would it matter. Dr. King’s most valuable ideal was the hope that we would one day judge each other by the content of our character. In a world in which the average American can not look beyond an individual’s religion, we have a long way to go.
In fact, one of the largest problems has become that we no longer recognize racism as a disease that ails our national system. We must recognize that that awful history is still a part of our society and we must do everything we can to combat it. I believe, that one day, if we do as Dr. King asked, we will be able to truly judge people by the content of their character.
Please take time today to think about Dr. King’s legacy, what he has sacrificed for our nation, and what we must do to rededicate ourselves to his memory and dream.
Thanks to all of you who tuned in to our conservative roundtable about the Bush Presidency and our exclusive interview with Peter Schiff! As President-Elect Obama prepares to take office on Tuesday, it is important to remember why we need conservatives. To that end, I am pleased to share a look at what the next eight years may bring…
Did you hear Senior Republican panelist Matt Cavedon guest-moderate our special “conservative” edition of the Weekly Filibuster? We heard from author and former Ron Paul economic advisor Peter Schiff, who predicted the economic crisis months and months before anybody else. Schiff has a new book out. Then, our special “Conservative Roundtable Retrospective” on the Bush presidency, with Republican panelist Jay Gobeil and guest panelist Duc Luu at Harvard University. Plus, a live report from Washington, DC, where Moderator Ben Goodman and Senior Democratic Panelist Tom Dec are gearing up for Tuesday’s festivities.
Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration will be one of the most historic events in American history – so you know the Weekly Filibuster crew will be there with live wall-to-wall coverage.
Can’t make the trip yourself? Join us this Sunday and Monday at 10pm here at weeklyfilibuster.com for the inside scoop live from the Capitol. It’s the next best thing to being there.
And in true Weekly Filibuster fashion, you never quite know what’s going to happen – or which of the country’s political powerbrokers are going to show up.
Michael Tanner over at Cato is very, very right. Obama can blame Bush or he can blame the free market for America’s recent problems, but blaming both is just ridiculous. The massive trends towards privatization and deregulation in the past eight years that Obama went all Kucinich on during the campaign are not a part of observable reality. If anything, they stopped when Clinton left office.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/01/13/of-course-that-implies-he-had-principles/
“President Bush says that he ‘chucked aside my free-market principles’ when faced with the current financial crisis. Well, duh!
The president said that he had no choice because he was “concerned that the credit freeze would cause us to be headed toward a depression greater than the Great Depression.” Even if one accepts that rather contestable premise, one is tempted to ask what caused him to chuck aside conservative and free market principles when he:
* Increased federal domestic discretionary spending (even before the bailout) faster than any president since Lyndon Johnson.
* Enacted the largest new entitlement program since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, an unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit that could add as much as $11.2 trillion to the program’s unfunded liabilities;
* Dramatically increased federal control over local schools while increasing federal education spending by nearly 61 percent;
* Signed a campaign finance bill that greatly restricts freedom of speech, despite saying he believed it was unconstitutional;
* Authorized warrantless wiretapping and given vast new powers to law enforcement;
* Federalized airport security and created a new cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security;
* Added roughly 7,000 pages of new federal regulations, bringing the cost of federal regulations to the economy to more than $1.1 trillion;
* Enacted a $1.5 billion program to promote marriage;
* Proposed a $1.7 billion initiative to develop a hydrogen-powered car;
* Abandoned traditional conservative support for free trade by imposing tariffs and other import restrictions on steel and lumber;
* Expanded President Clinton’s national service program;
* Increased farm subsidies;
* Launched an array of new regulations on corporate governance and accounting; and
* Generally did more to centralize government power in the executive branch than any administration since Richard Nixon.”
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/10/17/how-to-argue-against-schip/
Popular doughnut maker Krispy Kreme, hoping to hop on the Obama Inauguration bandwagon by offering costumers a free doughnut this Tuesday, is facing a backlash from crazy pro-life groups.
“Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American’s sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies — just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet ‘free’ can be.”
Yes, it seems the problem is that the phrase freedom of choice (even when talking about doughnuts) “is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand”.
So keep in mind, all you baby-killing chocolate iced glazed cruller eaters, that ” the next time you stare down a conveyor belt of slow-moving, hot, sugary glazed donuts at your local Krispy Kreme, you just might be supporting President-elect Barack Obama’s radical support for abortion on demand.” YOU WERE WARNED!
I always hear this argument about how the left is comprised of the “politically correct”. This goes a bit towards realizing that it is on both sides, and what is referred to by saying “politically correct” is the longstanding fight on both ideological sides over which words and phrases are used to describe and name things. The bailout is called the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” in order to make it sound more essential to our economic survival. Language on abortion is used to underline a particular side’s views, whether it is about “choice” or “life”. Words are powerful, bringing with them certain connotations and evoking certain feelings, so naturally there is going to be a fight picked over which words are used.
The “would be hilarious if it wasn’t so insane” press release from the American Life League, by clicking “read the rest”.
While parallelism is good, maybe you shouldn’t get too far ahead of yourself Mr. President…
I wonder how Don Rumsfeld kept a straight face…
David Bardallis takes on Obama’s new plan for the economy.
Sometimes it’s just the way he says it…
The International Filibuster has launched its new blog here. Check it out and don’t forget to comment.
The Financial Filibuster will be launching its blog in the next few weeks.
I think Bush could have been ruder…. I’m not sure how though….
Watch this one. Same summit. Wow, he was on a roll.
Bush: not so much with the diplomacy.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, which is required to recommend Eric Holder for AG before the vote passes on to the full Senate, has 19 members. There are 9 members from each side of the isle and one chairman, who, because it is a Democratic Senate, is a Democrat. However, Joe Biden is the 3rd ranking Democrat on the committee and will have to resign the Senate before the Holder nomination comes up for a vote. That will leave the committee at a 9-9 partisan tie and a tie vote is a failed motion. This is critical. Although it would take a lot of guts for Senate Republicans to take on a President this popular at the inception of his Administration, they have the option to attempt to cripple the Obama Administration with an embarrassing episode of weakness right out of the gate. What’s the downside for Senate Republicans? They’d look bad for a week and people would forget within a month. However, I don’t think that this scenario is likely, for that we have to look at the list of members of the Judiciary committee.
For starters, I don’t think there are any Democrats on the committee that there would be a remote chance of turning (Sen. Blanche Lincoln isn’t on Judiciary). Secondly, I think that while most Republicans would be hard to convince, there are several I don’t think would ever go for this play. Among them Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), and Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania). Take note, the Democrats would only need one Republican vote so even if Hatch (R-Utah), Kyl (R-Arizona), Sessions (R-Alabama), and Coburn (R-Oklahoma) decided to try to burn an incoming President, they’d probably be standing alone.
From Dowd’s column Sunday: Asked by People magazine what moments from the last eight years he revisited most often, W. talked passionately about the pitch he threw out at the World Series in 2001: “I never felt that anxious any other time during my presidency, curiously enough.”
I think this speaks for itself.
Yes, you’ve probably forgotten about this embarrassing episode from Bush’s visit to China, but it has always been one of my favorites. Enjoy!
I’ll largely agree with you here, especially on the State Department funding. Diplomacy is an essential, inherent, constitutional duty of the government, and tending to it is very important. That said, efficiency as well as new funding is important…
1) Nuke control ought to be shifted out of State and Energy over to Defense. It would streamline the process, show that we are committed to nuclear non-proliferation, and reduce costs.
2) USAID spends about $2.5 billion every year in Gaza and the West Bank. Given that we are subsidizing Israel’s military, is that not self-defeating?
3) USAID spends $2.1 billion on explicitly development-related projects in Africa. The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, spends $8 billion every year subsidizing the production of staple crops in America, crushing the ability of African farmers to compete in American markets. Some consolation prize.
4) USAID has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in Afghanistan fighting the production of opium. It would be far cheaper, effective, and beneficial for security and economics to legalize and regulate the production of the mild narcotic for medical and recreational reasons. American drug companies import all opium from India and Turkey; why not let Afghanistan’s poor farmers have a fair shot at cracking (no pun intended!) the market instead of selling to druglords or getting busted?
5) USAID has spent quite a bit on foreign aid handouts. Private investment, trade liberalization, and peace are far, far better models for economic development and elevating the human condition than state aid.
The ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Karen Kwiatkowski, and what the death of Oscar Grant tells us about the future of Black America.
Plus, a tribute to one year of The Weekly Filibuster.
Whether the purpose is postconflict stabilization and reconstruction, promoting the rule of law, encouraging democracy, aiding economic development, combating disease, or preventing the proliferation of nuclear arms, the State Department and USAID need a significant increase in their manpower and funding. To give an idea of how small the departments have become, there are more members of the military bands then there are diplomats and while DOD’s annual budget now stands at $750 billion the combined budgets of USAID and DOS barely reach $31 billion. In fact, when you take into account spending through DOE on nuclear technology and through NASA on iintelligence technology, hard-power accounts for 99% of spending on National Security and Foreign Relations.
This constitutes a major threat to our diplomatic efforts abroad because our diplomatic efforts need a transition from a focus on Europe to a global focus with particular attention to previously ignored developing nations. To meet these emerging US interests will require a significant increase in both personnel and funding. Secretary of Defense Gates agrees saying “Congress has not been willing, decade in and decade out, to provide the kind of resources, people and authority that it needs to play its proper role in American foreign policy.” One of Secretary Gate’s major concerns when making that statement was the level to which DOS responsibilities could not be met because of funding and personnel shortages were transferred to a military that is not adequately trained for those responsibilities.
One of the major problems with cutting Foreign Service Officers is that it has a negative result on FSO training. For training and other purposes the DOD, even under its current strain, only keeps 21% of its personnel forward deployed. However, 68% of the Foreign Service is forward deployed leaving no back bench. If DOS want to give FSOs additional training for new operational responsibilities then they do so at the cost of leaving their job vacant for the remainder of the training. The result is that DOS is reluctant to give FSOs even necessary training. The crisis is even more critical at USAID which has seen a 75% decline in employees since the 1970s. That decline has reduced USAID to a shell of its former-self and transitioned much of their operational (but not planning) responsibility to the military. The negative effects of this decline are clearly seen in the US’s failure to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq because USAID is the department that hires the government’s experts in postconflict reconstruction, a much needed and lacked capability.
Unlike the US military, diplomacy is not capital intensive. Although long term spending will have to be multiplied by 2 to 3 times the current $31 billion budget, experts such as Ambassador Holmes believe that the DOS can make monumental strides forward with $2.5 billion annually for diplomatic operations (a 33% increase) as well as doubling the number of FSO, increasing USAIDS’s staff by 150%, and increasing the number of experts at State by 50%. All of this would come at an annual cost of $6 billion. While this seems like a hefty price to pay, it is currently 2 weeks worth of Iraq War spending and in return the government builds the necessary capabilities to engage in postconflict stabilization and reconstruction.
With only 9 days left until Bush leaves office, I will shamelessly post a hillarious video each day, if for no other reason than that the joke won’t be relevant in a week and a half.
So, let me get this straight: every single one of our fifty states has an economy at least as big as Bangladesh and up to as big as Russia and Italy, but you want MORE federal funding of health care, education, transportation, and economic regulation?
Dude, there’s a reason the UN doesn’t work. Let’s not copy it as a system for governing 300 million people over 5,000 miles from coast-to-coast. Put fifty states with nation-sized GDPs to work if you want, or, even better, follow the route of Third World countries and look at private development of airports, highways, bridges, aviation control, ports, and a whole slew of other infrastructure projects. The federal government (and the state governments, for that matter) funding these things isn’t going to create jobs without taking money out of the economy first. Don’t forget that unemployment was worse in 1939 after two terms of the New Deal than it was in 1931 when he started, or that GDP was worse in ‘39 than in ‘29.
Infrastructure may have merits in and of itself, but to think that massive public spending on infrastructure will create jobs and GDP is, as experience showed us under Roosevelt, Carter, Bush I, and Bush II and as experience showed Japan in the “Lost Decade” of the Nineties, delusional.
Of course, the government will simply brag about “creating 3 million jobs” and argue that the resulting unemployment increase is a justification for more taxing/inflating and spending…
CNN: Zimbabwe’s central bank will introduce a $50 billion note — enough to buy just two loaves of bread — as a way of fighting cash shortages amid spiraling inflation. The country’s acting finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa, made the announcement in a government gazette released Saturday. Although Chinamasa did not give the date on which the $50 billion and new $20 billion notes would come into circulation, an official at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said the notes would be distributed to all banks by the end of Monday. Zimbabwe is grappling with hyperinflation now officially estimated at 231 million percent, and its currency is fast losing its value. As of Friday, one U.S. dollar was trading at around ZW$25 billion. When the government issued a $10 billion note just three weeks ago, it bought 20 loaves of bread. That note now can purchase less than half of one loaf.
Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com wrote an excellent piece that challenges a Wall Street Journal Editorial on the legitimacy of Franken’s win that was certified by the Minnesota Canvasing Board last Monday.
The original Wall Street Journal article is here - for the other side.
Take a look, they’re both very interesting.
The incoming Obama Administration has begun circulating a $800 billion stimulus package and have told legislatures that the acceptable range of spending is capped at $1.2 trillion. Noticeably absent from the $800 billion plan is any funding for Public Transportation. A re-investment in Public transportation has enormous potential to stimulate the economy with good construction and engineering jobs, while enabling working-class Americans to cheaply arrive at their places of work, and helping the environment by reducing pollutants. Federal spending on Public Transportation is key because un-subsidised, Public Transport is simply too expensive to be commercially viable to its target audience. That can be undone with Federal funding just as it is in a majority of the World’s developed nations.
Critics of spending on Transportation note that it would take years to plan and implement any new transportation projects and therefore would be a poor form of stimulus. However, the Department of Transportation estimates that there are nearly $25.2 billion in transportation projects that could begin construction within a year.
The U.S. Labor Department released Employments statistics that show worse than expected job losses this year. The United States lost some half a million jobs in December alone bringing the total for 2008 to 2.6 million. This brings the unemployment rate to 7.2% up from 6.7% just two months ago. 2008 was the single worst year for job losses since World War II ended in 1945.
As disturbing as those statistics are, the worst news is in under-employment statistics. Under-employment is the phenomenon where Americans seek-out full-time jobs but can only find a part-time job. Under-employment has risen to a record 13.5% out of 14 years of tracking. The Department of Labor Statistics projects that the average weekly paycheck fell anywhere from $200 to $611. This is obviously an imperfect statistic. It counts all people including those who have maintained their jobs throughout this economic crisis when the vast majority of lost income comes from the 20.7% of the population that is either un-employed or under-employed. There is no statistic that accounds for just how much income each of those households would have lost however, the point is that it is a very large sum of money.
Actually, even the Cato Institute unconventional calculations show disproportionate growth in the bottom 40% and the top 20% while relatively modest growth in the middle-class. This growth is accompanied by a higher relative cost of living than existed in 1987.
What this data really shows is that the majority of Americans (around 70%) are coalescing while the top 20% have 1.25% of the expansion of middle-class income.
Cato Institute’s calculations are a disguise. While the bottom 40% and the top 20% have seen relatively similar (more or less 20% pre-tax increase) since 1987 this disguises three things. First, no one has access to pre-tax income. It’s just stupid to calculate on pre-tax. The real calculation of where people are is the post-tax calculations: what people get to keep. Those would show that with a dramatic drop in taxes for the upper-income brackets, the top 20% is doing better than advertised post-tax. Second, they do not stratify far enough. If the Cato Institute broke off a category for the top 1% then even Cato’s figures would see dramatic top 1% increases over the last decade. Third, 120% of $20,000 and 120% of $2,000,000 aren’t even close to being the same! A 20% increase in the income of the top 20% is a huge increase in their standard of living while a 20% increase in a working-class family’s salary is fine, but it might not even be enough to keep up with expanding costs. Certainly any real definition of equality has to account for those three factors!
…but income reporting on tax forms has not. See pages 20 and 21 for the fastest visual evidence that the top percent of richest Americans is doing no better today compared to everyone else than it was in 1987. Read the rest to see why it looks like they are in many publications.
Senator Feinstein has made significant news in the past three days for her opposition to Leon Panetta, President-elect Obama’s choice to head-up the Central Intelligence Agency. She says that her real issue is experience, however Panetta is well experienced for this new leadership position.
He has experience working with political leaders from his time as a Representative starting in 1976 and served for 17 years. In his period in the House of Representatives he served as the Chairman of the US House Committee on the Budget where he became well versed in the full range of US interests and resource allocation. He was then Picked to be Clinton’s Director of Office of Management and Budget after a year of his 9th term as a Congressman. From there he was selected as White-House Chief of Staff where he served for three years. In those three years, he sat in on every intelligence briefing, had close contact with the National Security Council, was included in every meeting at the Presidential level or slightly below in the Situation Room, and advised President Clinton on those matters. If that isn’t National Security experience, then I don’t know what is.
To start with, Panetta is firmly against warrentless wiretapping, torture, and extrajudicial renditions. These stances are solidly against Senator Feinstein’s. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she has supported reductions in limits on the Executive Branch’s power to tap the phone calls and e-mail of American citizens through FISA. She voted for ex-post immunity for Telecom corporations that enabled the government to illegally wiretap American citizens. She was the original Democratic co-sponsor of the USA PATRIOT Act. Finally, she was one of only six Democrats to vote to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General, a supporter of waterboarding and certain ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ which continue in use today. Her real opposition appears to be more ideological: she supports a much slimmer definition of civil-rights than Leon Panetta does.
Second, as ‘The New Republic’ has pointed out, they have had an antagonistic political relationship for several decades. As Chief-of-Staff to President Clinton, Panetta was responsible for opposing several of Senator Feinstein’s most important priorities. Notably, the Base Closing Commission considered in 1995, closing several military bases in California including Long Beach Naval Shipyard. The Senator lobbied Panetta to scrap the report and force the Commission to start over. Panetta refused and then traveled to California, where he was once a Congressman, and explained the President’s decision to community leaders. In addition to this and other clashes over policy, they were both candidates in the 1998 race for the Democratic Nomination for Governor of California. Although it is far from definitive, there is certainly a significant possibility that part of her opposition has its roots in personal disagreements between the two northern-California politicians.
Just a few rebuttals to Matt’s response that go point by point:
1)The overwhelming majority of tax-relief was for the top 1% of Americans. There was a lowering of taxes for the middle-class as political cover.
2) Your $1 trillion figure for the national debt is over a single year. The total end of fiscal year calculation is over $11 trillion with various exact calculations: http://www.marktaw.com/culture_and_media/TheNationalDebt.html
3) Do we really think that Africans with AIDS never considered abstinence? If they aren’t going to abstain then we should try to help rather than making moralizing statements from Washington DC
4) Drug companies make more money from curing Erectile Dysfunction and Restless Leg Syndrome than they would from curing diseases prevalent among poorer populations. Public funding is necessary to save lives because there will never be a profit motive to cure certain diseases.
5) I understand your position on stem-cells. But they will be destroyed either way. Health clinics won’t keep them frozen indefinitely, only until relatives no longer need them. If they’re going to be destroyed anyway, I can’t see why we shouldn’t attempt to improve people’s lives.
6) I don’t think that Matt hates poor kids. I also don’t think that Bush does. However, SCHIP is a wildly sucessful program. If any government health insurance merits continued funding then certainly it is a state program for poor children’s insurance.
7) Alito is terrible on civil rights and if any group should be charged with standing up for the rights of Americans then it should be the courts.
Banks have money, you’re right. But they aren’t loaning it. They can’t pull out of loans they’ve already guaranteed but they’re being very selective about new investments.
9) Many families lost as much as 1/4 of their net worth over the last year. It obviously depends on diversification and which sectors individuals were more heavily invested in. However, many senior citizens would have found themselves in a precarious financial situation.
NOTE: Matt’s list seemed a little like an explaination of how there were a few things Bush didn’t completely screw up. I still haven’t heard what he did right.
To refute just a few of Bowen’s points:
1) The middle-class got tax relief under Bush, too. The average family paid about 7% less in taxes in 2008 than in 2000 when Clinton left office: http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm
2) The US deficit just hit a record $1 trillion: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7816035.stm
Even factoring in Obama’s $800 billion surplus and various other spending proposals, the total deficit is still only about $2.8 billion under worst case scenarios. Both numbers are far short of Bowen’s claim of $11.3 trillion.
3) The only nation to shrink its AIDS-infected population since the epidemic began has been Uganda. The fall happened after a policy of abstinence as the first priority, followed by monogamy, was introduced. I’m not saying it’s a proven, but it certainly did not make things worse.
4) The National Institutes of Health budgets were cut, but more medical research is being done in America than ever before. Less federal subsidization means private companies have better competitive incentives to do their own research. The competition between companies working on cures also produces better results and more varied treatments.
5) The President was right on stem cells. If they can do all scientists think, the day might come when I could stand up for the first time in my life. But I cannot tolerate any research that kills the innocent to benefit others, especially when it is financed by my tax money.
6) If vetoing SCHIP means Bush hates poor kids, so do I. The best way to help poor kids is not more bureaucracy and public regulation. Its free market health care reform and a more robust economy prompted by lower taxes.
7) Samuel Alito is no “radical rightist.” No ruling he issues from the bench will impede on your right to vote for a state legislature and in some cases a federal Congress that will promote gay rights, abortion rights, gun control, liability clauses, and more education standardization. All he is going to do is prevent the Court from being used to advance agendas better left to the legislatures. I’d rather he was better on civil and legal rights, but even those can be protected by legislatures. The Court is not absolutely needed to do better there.
The credit crisis of 2008? Credit hasn’t contracted in decades. Credit hit a six-month plateau this year, always still higher than at the beginning of the year. The credit problems were a result of awful monetary and fiscal policies that put interest rates into the negatives after 9/11 (also Bush’s fault, by the way).
9) Social Security privatization was only a half-hearted effort by Bush. Too bad. In fifty years, at current rates of spending, entitlement programs will have a $520,000 per household liability. There is no reason that every working American, regardless of ability to provide for herself, should be forced to buy a government pension at a cost of 7.5% of her income every paycheck. In October 2008, in the midst of recession, the Dow was still 2,000 points (20%) higher than it was five years ago. Not a bad return on investment, especially for retirees.
Among other things, Cardinal Renato Martino said, “Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp.”
People of conscience everywhere must remember that Palestine has been occupied for forty years. Regardless of the merits of this particular offensive or that one, the occupation has left 60% of Gazans without clean drinking water every day. It has disenfranchised 2.5 million people in their own homeland and violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by denying these people a homeland. It has led to the destruction of countless families, livelihoods, and ideals.
No matter what these coming weeks bring, ending the illegal and permanent military and political occupation of Palestine must be at the forefront of Middle Eastern peace efforts and humanitarian work today and for however long it takes until Palestine is free.
1967 is over. 42 years later, it is high time to acknowledge the sovereignty and self-determination of the people of Palestine and their right to govern, trade, and live as they choose as a member of the community of nations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7817019.stm
Although it is certainly funny to claim that Dr. Sanjay Gupta is no more ready to be Surgeon General then Ben Goodman is to Chair the Council on Foreign Relations, it is simply not true. Dr. Gupta has broad administrative experience from serving for several years as a White-House Fellow and Special Adviser. He also has extraordinary medical talents, serving as a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Emory University (one of our country’s top 25 schools). To say that he only performs surgery on a couple of Iraq War vets is also untrue. He regularly performs brain surgery at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta Georgia where he works. So, he has experience in government administration, experience as a surgeon dealing with the problems routinely experienced by other doctors, and he has communication skills that would be helpful to a Surgeon General. He is an excellent pick.
Timothy Geithner is a similarly accomplished nominee. He served in the international division of the Department of the Treasury throughout the Clinton Administration, finally becoming the Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in 1998 and serving there until the Bush administration took over two years later. He continued his experience in US inter-connectivity with Foreign Economies as a Senior Fellow on the Council on Foreign Affairs. In 2003, he was named the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. With the turbulence in the US economy, the rise of China, and the large amount of debt owned by foreign creditors, could there possibly be a better time to nominate someone as well versed in US relationships with Foreign economies as he is? Quite simply, no. He is similarly a fantastic pick.
Leon Panetta, President-elect Obama’s pick to head up the CIA is, once again, a good choice. He has experience working with political leaders from his time as a Representative starting in 1976 and served for 17 years. In his period in the House of Representatives he served as the Chairman of the US House Committe on the Budget where he became well versed in the full range of US interests and resource allocation. He was then Picked to be Clinton’s Director of Office of Management and Budget after a year of his 9th term as a Congressman. From there he was selected as White-House Chief of Staff where he served for three years. In those three years, he sat in on everyintelligence briefing, had close contact with the National Security Council, was included in every meeting at the Presidential level or slightly below in the Situation Room, and advised President Clinton on those matters. If that isn’t National Security experience, then I don’t know what is.
That is not to mention the outstanding nominees who’s credentials have not come under fire from Conservatives: Robert Gates for Defense, Hillary Clinton for State, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Eric Holder for Justice, Susan Rice for UN, Tom Daschle for HHS, and other extremely qualified and competent candidates.
Believe me, I get that Conservatives don’t like the ideology of Obama’s nominees. I’ve lived with that feeling through 8 years of Bush’s Cabinet. Conservatives should criticize the results of the Cabinet, just as Liberals should be skeptical of results. That’s our job as citizens of our great democracy. However, each of these candidates is qualified and we should give them their due.
Governor Blagojevich is still the Governor, and under Illinois law the Governor still retains the power to appoint a senate replacement to an outgoing senator. There is no stipulation for indictments or impeachments, the law says what it says. The Illinois State Legislature had weeks to revoke the Governor’s ability to make pardons and they chose not to. Therefore, it is the express will of the representatives of the people of Illinois that Governors maintain the right to make Senate appointments.
With the very well supported accusations of corruption on a massive scale from attempting to sell the senate seat to blackmailing money from a children’s hospital, he is undoubtedly not in the best position to make an appointment. I believe that it was unethical of him to appoint a Senator given the accusations of illegitimacy that surround him. However, that is an entirely different question. The question here is whether the US Senate should follow the laws that they wrote governing the selection of members of the senate as well as the decisions that they deferred to the respective states. Such deferred decisions include how a selection of a replacement senator is to be made. Senator Reid’s (D-NV) argument rests on the fact that the Secretary of State of Illinois has not yet certified the selection. The Illinois law does stipulate that the appointment must bear the Seal of the State, which only the Secretary of State can give. None the less, the Secretary of State’s role in the proceedings is to affirm that the Governor made the appointment, just as he would affirm that the people made the decision in a standard election. No part of his role is to countermand the decision of the Governor just as it would not be his role to reverse the decision of the people in an election. This is a question of the rule of law, and the law is clear. The Secretary of State and the United States Senate are obligated to uphold it and to do so immediately. If the people of Illinois lack confidence that Burris was the appropriate selection, they will have the opportunity to reverse the decision in the 2010 election.
Looks like a massive contraction of credit isn’t what started this mess:
How about record inflation that gave us negative interest rates and worthless government bonds, meaning the housing market suddenly looked like the sexiest investment on the planet? Especially when you factor in laws like the Community Reinvestment Act, which actually mandates that banks give loans to high-risk mortgage seekers, and government charters for two cutely-named companies to control 70% of American mortgages without getting the same scrutiny as private banks, it is even more clear that “unrestrained free market capitalism” isn’t to blame for this. Neither is the more Robin Hood-esque “corporate greed.”
Does America’s government resemble a House of Commons or a House of Lords. At the surface, there are the oft cited examples of Senator Hillary Clinton, wife of President Bill Clinton, who was elected without prior experience and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, son of Joseph Kennedy and brother of John and Bobby Kennedy. But even in the Senate, the issue runs far deeper. Tom Udall of New Mexico and Mark Udall of Colorado were both elected to the Senate in 2008 from the famed Udall family. The Udalls were leaders in the move westward and are sometimes even termed the ‘Kennedys of the West’. Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon was just unseated by Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley. Senator Smith is also an Udall. Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire is the son of a former Governor of New Hampshire.
Lisa Murkowski, a Senator from Alaska, is the daughter of former Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski who appointed her to the senate. Elizabeth Dole, the recently unseated Senator from North Carolina is the wife of Bob Dole, former senator from Kansas. Mark Pryor of Arkansas was elected to the Senate as the son of Arkansas Governor and former Senator David Prior.
The House of Representatives does not fare much better. Rep. John Salazar is the brother of Senator Ken Salazar (now nominee for Interior). Jessie Jackson Jr. of Illinois is the son of Jessie Jackson and was recently heavily considered as a possible senate apointee. Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island is the son of Senator Ted Kennedy. Speaker Pelosi is the daughter of a former Baltimore mayor and 5 term Congressman. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard’s father was a congressman from the same district. Rep. Sander Levin is the brother of Senator Carl Levin. The list goes on and on.
As if this pehnomenon wouldn’t be ugly enough as a case of nepotism in elected office, it extends far beyond that. Minority Whip Roy Blunt found a lobying job for his son Andrew and wife at Altria. Colin Powell’s son Michael Powell was appointed Chairman of the FCC. Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. Her husband was made Chief Counsel for OMB. Eugene Scalia, son of Justice Scalia, was made chief counsel to the Department of Labor. Strom Thurmond Jr., Son of famed racist Senator Thurmond, is the US Attorney for South Carolina. It’s possible to go on an on. With no-bid contracts, shady employments, and questionable appointments.
NOTE: I don’t mean to say that none of the above people are qualified to hold the jobs that they do. Many of them are. But I think that we should recognize that Politics is very much a family business for many politicians and that isn’t a good thing. For every person who gets a job from nepotism and is qualified, there are probably several who are not.
With the new Congress being sworn in today, Eve Fairbanks over at The New Republican previews why the GOP caucus is likely to swing even farther to the right:
You would not expect House conservatives, dwindled in numbers and without even the consoling possibility of filibusters, to be relishing the prospect of 2009. But purist right-wingers in the House are oddly happy these days. That’s because they, like many outcast peoples, have discovered in their folklore their own Little Bighorn, a tale of resistance that gives them pride and hope.
If House Republicans push back on the proposed stimulus plan – not objecting to it completely, but acting as the party that says “you can’t have everything, here’s what’s wasteful” – they can score a great deal politically. This is, afterall, what we’ve been constantly hearing: the GOP has to go back to its roots.
We discussed the violence in the Gaza strip, the ongoing Senate dramas, Bill Richardson, Tim Kaine, and counted down the top 20 political moments of 2008!
Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.com:
Is there any other significant issue in American political life, besides Israel, where (a) citizens split almost evenly in their views, yet (b) the leaders of both parties adopt identical lockstep positions which leave half of the citizenry with no real voice? More notably still, is there any other position, besides Israel, where (a) a party’s voters overwhelmingly embrace one position (Israel should not have attacked Gaza) but (b) that party’s leadership unanimously embraces the exact opposite position (Israel was absolutely right to attack Gaza and the U.S. must support Israel unequivocally)? Does that happen with any other issue?
Here’s a popular piece of political conventional wisdom: Independents swing Republican. But is it actually true? Let’s go through the reasons.
Reason 1: Democratic voter identification has remained significantly higher than Republican identification over the last 50 years and yet Republican candidates have won six of the last ten Presidential elections. In order for that to be true, voters without a fixed political affiliation must have voted with the Republicans in at least six of the last ten elections.
This argument is false at the most basic levels. A lot of the explaination for high Democratic ID comes from the south. Older Southerners who are historically Democrats (as were their parents) but feel that the party has abandoned their conservative views often claim to identify with Democrats and vote for Republicans. For example, Louisiana is 40% Democratic and 32% Republican, Oklahoma is 37% Republican and 39% Democratic, and North Carolina is 35% Republican and 37% Democratic. So, it would seem logical that Democrats would have the electoral edge in all 3 of those states. Well, that’s not quite true because the Democrats lost 2 of them and narrowly won the 3rd.
Exit polls showed that only 75% of Louisiana Democrats voted for Obama while 96% of Louisiana Republicans voted for McCain. They’re holdover Democrats, and they vote like it. But one state isn’t enough to prove the point. In Oklahoma which has a 2% Democratic edge in Voter ID only 67% of Democrats voted for Obama while 95% of Republicans voted for McCain. Even in North Carolina where Obama won he carried 90% of the Democratic vote to McCain’s 95% of Republicans. And that is a vast improvement for North Carolina Democrats over that number in the 2004 election. It gets complicated after this point, but if we were to measure nationally the number of people who say they are Democrats and then vote that way against the number of people who say they are Republican and then vote that way (let’s call that Actual-Party ID), it seems likely that Republican Actual-Party ID would be higher than Democratic Actual-Party ID.
Reason 2: This is a much more academic explanation for why some Political Scientists believe this to be an actual phenomenon. Because it involves the actual use of statistics and facts, it is a less common argument so I tackled it second rather than first. These political scientist point out that Democrats have lost the independent vote in 8 of the last 13 Presidential elections. This explanation merely pretends to be more sound. Including the last 13 elections takes us all the way back to 1960! If you are trying to figure out how 1960’s voters would have decided on a group of candidates in a hypothetical and purely academic pursuit then this information might be useful. However, the political landscape has changed dramatically since then. To pretend that American politics is at all similar to politics before the Reagan Revolution that brought economic libertarianism to prominence in the Republican Party is absurd. So, if we look at how Independents have decided after the Reagan revolution we get a more accurate picture of how independents might vote in future elections. In the last 20 years of Presidential Elections, Independents have voted Democratic four of six times. Starkly opposed to a deficit, it’s a whopping 67% of the time!
Boy, if Caroline Kennedy is qualified to be vice president because of her name, her ability to part-time fundraise for public schools, and her ability to see the Russian Tea Room from her house, I have got quite the vice presidential candidate for you…
With HRC moving to serve as SOS in the Obama Administration, Gov. Paterson will have the opportunity to appoint a person to represent New York until the next federal election in 2010. Any choice he makes should surely be a shoe in for the special election – in the heavily democratic New York, republican opposition is generally weak. Much speculation has been swirling in recent weeks about the possibility of Caroline Kennedy replacing Hilary as the U.S. Senator from New York.
For the Obama Administration, this would be a gift from above: a liberal senator who endorsed Obama in the election. I think Caroline could be a great pick. She has largely been outside of the political scene down in Washington since this year, she has lead and been a player in the non-profit sector, and is also an author and a lawyer. Granted, she needs to clarify some of her views, and granted I do have reservations about some of the ones she has voiced (such as her support for the auto bailout), but I think she would be a fine Senator.
Caroline has received support from many prominent New Yorkers, and she has been gaining traction on the national stage. Now we just wait for Gov. Paterson….
If you support Caroline’s bid for U.S. Senate, you can sign a petition to Gov. Paterson here.
Everyday, great discussions happen here at the Weekly Filibuster blog. Right now, for example, some of the topics include:
We’re going to continue these, and other great conversations throughout the year. Make sure to get in on the discussion by posting a comment on any blog post. It’s easy, allows you to voice your opinion, and will make reading this blog all the more fun!
We put a man on the moon; I’ll chalk that one up for the Feds. Saving Europe? Please. We didn’t enter the war until we were directly hit, at which point doing anything less would have been cowardly. The Marshall Plan helped make inefficient bureaucratic welfare states throughout Europe possible by breaking prosperity away from economic sanity. We ended racism in our legal systems, sure, but never forget that it was legal systems that made institutional racism possible. We used Social Security to force every American, no matter how well-off or far-sighted, to buy into socialized pensions that will either bankrupt themselves in a few decades or face privatization (not to mention that our seniors were NOT living in abject poverty before Social Security and the market has grown by a third in the past forty years! Show me any Social Security account with that kind of growth, even after factoring in recession!). We faced down Stalin? Where? We faced down Khrushchev by taking American missiles out of Turkey quietly – hoorah humility. We proved to the world democracy and free markets could work by being rich and free without central control of our lives and money.
America is doing more research than any other nation on the planet to research cures for everything from cancer to HIV/AIDS to genetic diseases to heart disease. Our private system of health research and insurance means that people can choose to pay for more experimental treatments than they are elsewhere. In the UK, every treatment must be certified by a central government body. One of the criteria they use for certification is cost effectiveness. If a treatment does not extend average life expectancies by a certain amount per pound spent, it is not approved. A recent kidney treatment extended average life spans by six months in patients; unfortunately, the government cost ratios mandated at least a year of improvement before the drug could be used. In America, you are free to make your own choices about the kind of treatment you need with your doctor. Unfortunately, new HHS Secretary Daschle’s plan could change that.
Universal health insurance will not come without dramatic new government control of the health care system. 130,000 pages of Medicare regulations already set the standards for what is cost-appropriate. Believe me, I’ve purchased more than one wheelchair and other pieces of medically necessary equipment through private insurance and still had to have my needs meet state standards. As long as the government is footing the bill for health care, it and not competition, my freedom to pick insurers, and my doctors will have the power to ultimately say what I can consider. If we want to truly help the poor, let’s limit tort and liability so that doctors can take patients as Good Samaritans and make house visits without fearing the lawyer. Let’s give more tax deductions for research of new drugs and cut back on restrictions that prevent people from freely choosing alternative and experimental treatments. Let’s shrink down Medicare and Medicaid so that more private insurers can be innovative with their coverage plans.
Finally, as for railroads, the labor standards sucked and were abusive, fine. In the end, though, it is perhaps more of a testament to the dedication of Chinese immigrants that the system came out as well as it did, just as Southern agriculture is a credit to the slaves who built it from nothing. In so much as the overlords and task masters get credit, you are right, it is wrong because so many were forced to work without contracts they freely entered. Perhaps, though, the end result is a source of pride for the people whose ancestors still worked through it all and made something impressive. But then, I’m just another white guy from the middle class who cannot really speak of such things.
If you’re feeling up to it, Ben Schott provides “one hundred and eighteen questions, and a fiendish election table, on the incidents, accidents, hints and allegations that defined 2008.”
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Israeli Likud Party, has released this video on his English campaign website explaining the conflict. His campaign website, seemingly directly modeled after President-Elect Obama’s campaign website, is using social networking websites Obama-style to organize supporters ahead of the February 10 Elections, where Likud holds a small lead in the polls. Israel needs Netanyahu back at the helm.
Despite the fact that Netanyahu does not belong to Prime Minister Olmert’s Kadima party (founded by former PM Sharon a few years ago), Olmert has sent Netanyahu and Kadima Leader Tzipi Livni out to do joint statements, and asked Netanyahu to do foreign interviews–probably because he is such a well known figure.
Watch Netanyahu explain what’s going on, and why Israel is doing what it is doing.
Bloomberg has a story this morning about how Israel is using Bloomberg to make their case (in proving how justified they are) for their strikes against Hamas in Gaza. Here’s one of the videos (the text from the YouTube page explaining the video follows):
Video of Israel admitting a Gazan child for treatment at an Israeli hospital via the Erez crossing. Hamas has used the people of Gaza as human shields—Israel, in contrast, values human life and is willing to open its borders to provide for medical treatment.
Despite the ongoing rocket fire, 12 Palestinians from Gaza were allowed in Israel from Gaza on 31 Dec. 2008. This child, who was not hurt as part of operation “Cast Lead,” will join hundreds of other Gazans hospitalized in Israel.
Blago, Burris, Chicago, Obama, Senate
Blago Impeachment…..Already?
In Commentary on January 2, 2009 at 9:09 pmAccording to this report from the Chicago Tribune, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich may be impeached as early as next week. A Illinois House Investigative Committee may recommend the impeachment of the Governor as early as next week. Blago was invited to testify in front of the committee at a later date, and tapes were being turned over to the Committee by the state’s Attorney General.
Isn’t this a bit preemptive? Don’t get me wrong, based on media reports it seems as though Governor Blagojevich is guilty, but should the legislature impeach someone just because they were accused of being corrupt? It seems as though it would be out of place right now. I agree with Senate Democrats not wanting Burris to take office while the Governor is [rightfully] accused of selling the seat, but for the legislature to impeach before any type of legal action seems irresponsible. Apparently Blagojevich feels he has done nothing to warrant impeachment, so let’s have due process do its magic.
If the Assembly was nervous about Blagojevich appointing someone, they should have stripped Blagojevich of that power and held a special election. Now, we have an appointed Senator – definately qualified – by a seemingly corrupt Governor.