Mitt Romney will breathe a sigh of relief, though Politico thinks he’s got to reach the McCain bar.
Michele Bachmann better come in second.
Tim Pawlenty is toast unless he comes in second, and Newt keeps trying to pay off his debt.
As for Rick Perry, he continues to act like Iowa doesn’t matter, while Mike Huckabee takes pot shots at him.
If Mitt was daring, the second Rick Perry announces he should hit him from the left on being against Social Security and Medicare. No general election candidate could survive such a ridiculous proposition as Perry is suggesting, challenging the social safety net on constitutional grounds.
Speaking to Chuck Todd today, vaunted Iowa reporter David Yepsen said that if Paul wins the Ames straw poll it hurts the credibility of Iowa and diminishes it’s political power.
As far as I’m concerned that’s something that should have happened a long time ago. They’ve already got a reputation of people winning the straw poll who can’t go the distance; see Pat Robertson. But there’s still a lot of talk about Paul’s organization this time around, so don’t be surprised if it happens.
Yepsen also had a warning for Obama: liberals are demoralized, not just in New York, but in Iowa, so he better get busy. Trouble is there really is no way for Obama to energize liberals at this point, unless he pulls a juicy jobs initiative out of Sherrod Brown’s hat.
To update, The Fix has the whole story today. It wasn’t enough to take back the Senate, but it’s a beginning that could mean something very big by the time 2012 rolls around. I’ve got one thing to say about that: Run, Russ, Run.
Consider this an open thread. Good coverage from Ed Schultz, with Keith Olbermann and John Nichols good too.
Pres. Obama has already telegraphed that he’s ready to work with Republicans, as the Administration prepares to privatize education, while changing the public school system under the mantel of “reform.”
Matt Damon played offense recently and he effusively heaped praise on the teachers who don’t get paid enough and take way too much grief for what they are paid.
But this is when Austerity’s grip, the need for more and better schools, and partnerships with businesses wanting to help offer more options tend to make some people simply ask Why not?
It’s not about qualified teachers with experience getting a living wage and some control over the task they’ve been asked to do.
“Pivot [to jobs] is not an appropriate word. It is continuing the focus we have had…” (Via Sam Stein on Twitter)
That is the funniest thing I’ve read today, until I read this… From The Hill:
President Obama will travel the Midwest by bus this summer to talk up the White House’s job-creation efforts and to try to shore up political support in battleground states.
Obama will embark on a three-day tour, from Aug. 15 to 17. The administration said Wednesday that the trip had long been planned but wouldn’t outline an itinerary beyond saying the stops would be in the Midwest.
[...] “He looks forward to talking to the folks about growing the economy, creating jobs,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney at Wednesday’s press briefing.
Pres. Obama could step off of a bus in Missouri in blue jeans, a work shirt and steel toes, but nobody and I mean nobody is going to buy this stunt. The biggest mistake any politician can make is trying to be someone he isn’t and Barack Obama is not a bus guy. It’s an optics effort, but now his advisers better pray this pr move doesn’t turn into a Dukakis in a tank moment.
As for the jobs pitch, Matt Stoller and Digby team up for the tweet of the day, which really is the biggest failure of Obama’s presidency, though there are plenty of items from which to choose:
It’s hell when a president with one eye on his legacy shoots for history, but hits his own political party in the heart.
From a negotiating standpoint, Pres. Obama putting entitlements on the table as some wildly brilliant chess game, which is always the Obama loyalists’ case, in order to expose Republicans was horribly thought out from the start. Mr. Obama believes he can get elected by betraying his entire voting base, well beyond progressives and liberals, because he remains Mr. Wonderful, which will become even clearer when Republicans choose their nominee. Instead, the furor over what the White House is doing in the debt ceiling meeting has caused an irreparable gag reflex in Democratic Party ranks that won’t be forgotten soon.
It’s here I should mention what Sen. Bernie Sanders said on the Stengthen Social Security conference call on Friday. When asked about conversations with the White House, Sanders said they’d been “less than effective” in reaching out. He also called out Obama for reneging on a campaign promise, which is proven with video(h/t Susie Madrak). Sen. Whitehouse went further, not only using the word “capitulating” when speaking of Pres. Obama’s dealing with Republicans, but also stated that it was thought Social Security and entitlements were “off the table,” then Pres. Obama “opens the door for the GOP,” clearly unhappy with the subterfuge. Both senators leading the fight against COLA cuts and other manipulations in Obama’s “balanced approach” strategy. [update] (Also participating were Charles Loveless of AFSCME, Ed Coyle from Alliance for Retired Americans, Terry O’Neill of NOW, Max Richtman of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security, and Sarah Lane of MoveOn.org.)
“Elections matter. What candidates say when they’re running for president matters. … The president made a promise to the American people and he should keep that promise.” – Sen. Bernie Sanders (on conference call, 7.8.11)
Now everyone knows he cannot be trusted with the legacy that makes Democrats Democrats.
As I wrote this week, it isn’t over until the Tea Party squeals and, predictably, they did and Speaker Boehner got an earful.
The Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America, as is the Democratic Party, though at least Democrats have a soul hidden away in the bottom tier where alternative energy and the “Welfare for All” crowd hang out, so the notion the establishment political class would cause a complete implosion of the financial market is absurd. Even Sen. Jim DeMint said on Fox News Sunday there was no way there would be a default, sending a very strong message to Tea Party members, though we’ll have to see if Mrs. Bachmann gets the message.
Defaulting on the debt ceiling was never going to happen.
“Despite good faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes,” Boehner said in his statement. “I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase.”
White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer countered that Obama wants “a balanced approach that asks the very wealthiest and special interests to pay their fair share as well, and we believe the American people agree.”
The White House considers “a balanced approach” offering up a Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid “strengthen” strategy that includes cuts to benefits, on which they intend to double down even after hearing no from Speaker Boehner, proving once and for all that any alleged Social Security chess game was actually just another figment of his fans’, as well as the Democratic establishment’s, wildly optimistic imaginations.
If Democrats don’t find their inner Tea Party gene, by the time Pres. Obama’s through negotiating away the foundation of the party, including in messaging, there won’t be anything left that anyone cares about voting for in 2012. Many are already there.
Tim Geithner with David Gregory talked down the economy on “Meet the Press”:
MR. GREGORY: When do you think recovery is actually going to start feeling like recovery?
SEC’Y GEITHNER: Oh, I think it’s going to take a long time still. This is a very tough economy. And I think for a lot of people…
MR. GREGORY: Yeah.
SEC’Y GEITHNER: …it’s going to be–it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for some time to come. And that–but that is because that is the tragic effects of a crisis this deep and this bad caused by a long period of lost opportunities to do things to make the country stronger.
MR. TODD: … And you know, I’ve been fascinated by the economic talking points from the administration. When you have the president out there saying, you know, it may be better for people to rent rather than own–he has said that a few times. … And the Treasury secretary to say, “Boy, it’s going to take a while for people to feel the recovery,” it’s almost–I guess, they’re trying to say, “Hey, look, we’re, we’re trying to be straight with you, this is what the environment’s going to look like for a while.” And it is clear that’s what they’re preparing–the environment they’re preparing to run in, which is going to be a tough one.
This message won’t work for 2012.
If this is all the White House can come up with it leaves Obama and the Democrats with absolutely no economic game up against what will be a blizzard of attacks against the Democratic Party whose leader, with nothing equal to show for it first, has been eager and willing to sacrifice its soul.
“I think it was nine days (of shutdown) at that time, and I think we could have gotten a better deal if we had allowed that to continue for a while and the people of Minnesota would have seen the issues play out a little longer,” the Republican presidential hopeful said Thursday night at a press conference at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport. – Tim Pawlenty: Shutdown could be a good thing
But the type of leadership that Mr. Cuomo exercised — setting a lofty goal, refusing to take no for an answer and using every tool at his disposal to achieve it — is reminiscent of the stories sometimes told about with President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had perhaps the most impressive record of legislative accomplishment of any recent president.
It’s also a brand of leadership that many Democrats I speak with feel is lacking in President Obama.
This screen capture of the White House homepage, which has been live until recently, is representative of Barack Obama. When I visited the White House site and this image came up I found it jarring. Just why did Obama reelect pick this photo of Obama looking upward (an image they’ve used before), making it appear he’s got his head in the clouds and his nose in the air? It’s the oddest, most out of touch photo possible, aloof, but it does have a regal air to it reflecting the hubris of the man and his presidency. Someone who doesn’t so much care about people’s concerns as he does about projecting an image he finds presidential, even if it makes him look unreachable, out of touch, which it remains, with his “leadership” more in the minds of his speechwriters than in evidence through his actions.
As for Dowd invoking Catholic clergy, because of his two-faced political marketing he’s actually worse than New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan she mentions in her column, who as a representative of the Catholic Church is predictably reprehensible on marriage equality. Remember that the Catholic Church won’t give women power either and they actually might have been able to save these corrupt men from raping and pillaging the youth of the young boys under their charge.
The man who was able to beat the Clintons in 2008 because the country wanted a break from Clintonian euphemism and casuistry is now breaking creative new ground in euphemism and casuistry.
Obama is “evolving” on the issue of gay marriage, which, as any girl will tell you, is the first sign of a commitment-phobe.
Maybe, given all his economic and war woes as he heads into 2012, Obama fears the disapproval of the homophobic elements within his own party. But he has tried to explain his reluctance on gay marriage as an expression of his Christianity, even though he rarely goes to church and is the picture of a secular humanist.
While picking up more than three-quarters of a million dollars from 600 guests at a gay and lesbian fund-raising gala in Manhattan on Thursday night, the president declared, “I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country,” even as he held to his position that the issue should be left to the states to decide.
I don’t know what people like Ms. Dowd have to see in order to understand that Pres. Obama is taking the stance on gay marriage equality, because he’s trying to protect the part of his base, including people beyond the Democratic Party, that he cannot survive 2012 without, including African American and Hispanic churchgoers, a serious segment of the Dem base, but whom he feels cannot be lobbied or convinced to change their minds.
Andrew Cuomo is a corporate Democrat in the great tradition of our two-party duopoly, but he made Pres. Obama look like a mouse.
It’s not about Obama’s own religious beliefs. This is about Obama’s craven political opportunism, which mimics most every other ordinary politicians seeking reelection. His problem is he now is to the Right of New York Republicans.
It’s completely understandable that people don’t want to believe Barack Obama is who he is. I gladly voted for the man in ’08 and don’t regret it at all given the alternative. John Aravosis wants to believe the best, which I appreciate.
However, I’m not in the business of partisan fan politics anymore. I simply say it as I see it.
Pres. Obama is voting “present” on marriage equality.
While taking the LGBT’s money, he proves this community is too trusting and refuses to understand he’s only your friend when he’s got cover (see DADT). Like any president who wants a second term he’s thinking of himself and Obama reelect simply believes marriage equality will cost him the 2012 election, so they won’t fight for it, because he rarely fights for anything but Bushesque wars, proving Barack Obama is an old style mediocre politician from our 20th century past, contrary to his herculean marketing hype.
Perhaps it’s time for the LGBT community to take a lesson from Richard Trumka. Sure, he will likely land in Obama’s court come 2012, but he’s not going to play the sucker for nothing.
The Great Equivocator has spoken. “Evolving” is simply a word to keep people hanging on and it’s working, as Obama reelect knew it would.
But now that Republican New Yorkers have broken the LGBT community’s way, isn’t it time this community decoupled itself from Pres. Obama to see what can be accomplished beyond him, especially since Pres. Obama’s clearly not an ally on marriage equality?
From Chris Cilliza, who doesn’t believe Van Jones can replicate on the Left what the Tea Party did on the Right. Of course, Cilizza says it’s “unlikely,” which in traditional journo speak means not a chance in hell.
“We think we can do what the tea party did,” Jones said in an interview with The Fix. “They stepped forward under a common banner, and everybody took them seriously. Polls suggest there are more people out there who have a different view of the economy, but who have not stepped forward yet under a common banner.”
Cilizza gets points from me for using “liberal” in the title of his post. I’ve never called myself a progressive, though I support most of what movement progressives are doing and admire them greatly. I just don’t have much use for congressional progressives and their caucus who caved on health care, causing more grief for Democrats than if they’d stood up and fought.
Unlike One Nation, in which long-standing liberal groups agreed to collaborate, Jones’ movement is hoping to attract people who are ideologically aligned but not politically active. Those people will define their own goals. But Jones is also in conversations with many of the labor and civil-rights groups that were involved in the One Nation effort. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recorded a web video for the campaign.
Institutional involvement does not go against the tea-party model. The tea-party movement has its own benefactors — Americans for Prosperity, Our Country Deserves Better PAC, and other groups backed by longtime Republican donors and strategists. Those groups capitalized on disparate protest movements around the country, many of whom say they have no connection to the political battles fought in their name.
Still, it will likely be hard to get liberals and supporters of more progressive economic policy to rally in the same way. Tea-party activists tend to be wealthy and well-educated; Jones is hoping to reach unemployed veterans, struggling homeowners, and other groups who likely have less time to organize and grow more politically active…
I’m skeptical for one reason. If you’re going to stand up to feckless Democratic “leadership” the place to start would have been to primary Pres. Obama, no matter the outcome or the inevitable race-baiting that would occur. But because the inevitable would have manifested in a loss it wasn’t attempted. There is simply no evidence that today’s progressive Democrats have the taste for the jugular you have to have to become a Left version of the Tea Party, a group that takes no political prisoners.
A debate on Pres. Obama adopting Bush foreign policy tactics, as well as adopting Republican economics, would have been worthy of the effort. Because no one person is more important than the liberal policies that have allowed generations of Americans to maintain middle class lifestyles in the midst of herculean efforts to stack the deck for the richest against the working class who made American the great country it’s been since founded.
Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has created a new protected class: The “Too Big for Justice” corporations.
The high court on Monday rejected a massive job discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., on the grounds that the class-action status that could potentially involve hundreds of thousands of current and former female workers was too large.
In other words, because there is reason to believe that Walmart discriminated against hundreds of thousands of women, as opposed to just a few, the company cannot be held to account for any lawlessness. …
Too big for justice attempts to put this decision in the Wall Street category made famous during the recent financial collapse.
More from Toobin:
The case could be resuscitated, Toobin said, but attorneys would have to “figure out another way to get the courts to consider the possibility that there was enormous gender discrimination at Wal-Mart. That conversation will continue. This lawsuit in its current form will not,” he added, saying the lawsuit could be reconfigured into several smaller lawsuits, which would pose less of a threat to Wal-Mart.
Texan4Hillary offers his perspective as a movement progressive activist.
Thanks to Rachel Maddow for hammering the hypocrisy of our puritanical pols in saying progressive Congressman Weiner resign. Unlike Ed Schultz, who has begged all week for Weiner to go, Maddow has hammered at the Right. She gets that having a progressive who can speak with passion on the issues is critical. She notes Weiner never campaigned on being high and mighty like many in the GOP do all the time. But leave it to the puritans of DC to try and dictate this man’s career. Cantor, Foley (yes), Huckabee, Tim Kaine have no shame. Here is Maddow’s must see bit on our DC puritans:
Trumka took it a step further against both parties at the National Nurses Union conference this week. This was one hell of a speech, and even had a four letter word in it about corporate Dems:
“For too long, we’ve been left after Election Day holding a canceled check, waving it about—‘Remember us? Remember us? Remember us?’—asking someone to pay a little attention to us,” recalled Trumka, who like many union leaders was frustrated with the failure of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and other needed labor law reforms. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a snootful of that shit!”
There was no way to misread Trumka’s message for Democrats who have strayed on issues …
“When it comes to politics, we’re looking for real champions of working women and men. And I have a message for some of our “friends.” It doesn’t matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside—the outcome is the same either way,” he explained. “If leaders aren’t blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families’ interests, working people will not support them. This is where our focus will be—now, in 2012 and beyond.”
Single Payer champion Margaret Flowers, among others, are organizing mass protests in Washington DC October 6th against the austerity mania sweeping the political elite and the war machine. Here is part of her stirring message and plan:
… We have witnessed the Arab Spring and the blossoming of the European Summer. We ask ourselves if now we will experience the American Autumn.
People in America see that corporate power controls the political process and the media. The Forces of Greed steal our treasure and squander it on militarism and needless wars for empire. Forces of Greed render our White House, Congress and Supreme Court dysfunctional so that the denizens of these bodies regurgitate what their corporate paymasters feed them.
Our country faces crises on every front: the economy, education, jobs, the environment, health care, housing, the wealth divide, an empire stretched too thin and ready to shred. None of these crises has to exist. Just and sustainable solutions are available and known. What stands in the way of all these solutions is concentrated corporate power.
The normal tools of democracy no longer work.
October 6 is the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan invasion, and the beginning of the new federal budget year—an austerity budget for everything except for war and the corporate security state. On this day, we are calling for sustained and nonviolent mass resistance in Washington, D.C. The action, Stop the Machine! Create a New World!, portends an American Tahrir Square at Freedom Plaza between the White House and Congress, a block away from the National Press Club and a few blocks from the Chamber of Commerce and K Street, the stomping ground of corporate lobbyists.
An impressive array of people have already signed on. Among them: Ann Wright, …Chris Hedges, Cornel West, .. Glen Ford, Jane Hamsher, Jodie Evans, Leah Bolger, Medea Benjamin, Mike Ferner, Larry Pinkney, Rabbi Michael Lerner, …
We know however, that it is not leaders who make change, but people united who insist on change that will succeed!
If interested in this new progressive organization go here.
In the same vein the Guardian’s Peter Wilby may have one very good idea for why we have not yet seen massive civil unrest from the vanishing middle and working classes:
One reason why the working classes so often disappointed the left was that, having little daily contact with the rich and little knowledge of how they lived, they simply didn’t think about inequality much, or regard the wealthy as direct competitors for resources. As the sociologist Garry Runciman observed: “Envy is a difficult emotion to sustain across a broad social distance.” Nearly 50 years ago he found manual workers were less likely than non-manual workers to think other people were “noticeably better off.” Even now most Britons underestimate the rewards of bankers and executives. Top pay has reached such levels that, rather like interstellar distances, what the figures mean is hard to grasp.
But the gap between the richest 1% or 2% and everybody else in the top 20% or 30% is now so great and growing so rapidly that, one might reasonably think, it should change the terms of political trade. The income distance may be huge but the social distance is not. Those in the top 2% and the next 28% have often been to the same schools and universities. More important, they compete for scarce resources: places in fee-charging schools, houses in the best areas, high-end personal services. The super-rich have provoked raging inflation in the prices of these goods. Many of the not-so-rich were born into the professional classes and high expectations. Now, to their surprise, they find themselves struggling. In income distribution, their interests are closer to those of the mass of the population than to people they once saw as their peers.
They are not, however, imminently likely to join a crusade for equality. This generation of the middle classes has internalized the values of individualist aspiration, as zealously propagated by Tony Blair as by Margaret Thatcher. It does not look to the application of social justice to improve its lot. It expects to rely on its own efforts to get ahead and, crucially, to maintain its position.
Reagan, Thatcher and the Right have brainwashed a generation that we do not need social justice per say. Nope we can solve our problems if we simply work harder. But we are approaching a breaking point here.
Labor makes a primary threat on Dem Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD). He is not up for re-election until 2014, but he currently chairs the Banking Cmte. And he is a corporate hack who is flirting with undoing provisions of FinReg. So AFL-CIO has told him if he screws with Wall St. reform he will be primaried.
Arianna Huffington’s piece slamming Obama on his mishandling of the economy has gained much attention since she supported him so in 2008. There is a growing cry from the Left for Obama to change course on jobs and Arianna gives a must read:
..the White House embraced the GOP message that the deficit is a bigger problem than jobs, kneecapping its ability to push for additional ways of stimulating the economy. And now the president and his team wanly claim there’s not much they can do. But what they don’t mention is how complicit they were in creating the conditions that have left them with not much to do. They gave away all the ammo and now plead helplessness because of… a lack of ammo.
The conventional wisdom is that “there is no appetite in Congress” for additional stimulus measures. But, in fact, members of Congress have an appetite for whatever their constituents have an appetite for. And for months, the American people have been hearing the president agree with the GOP that the deficit is the biggest problem in the country. Had the White House told the truth — that the lack of jobs and anemic economic growth are far greater threats to the country — people would be a lot more open to job creation proposals.
Instead the president, even on the heels of the latest round of depressing numbers, is oddly passive. “This economy took a big hit,” he said Friday. “It is just like if you had a bad illness, if you got hit by a truck, it’s going to take a while for you to mend.”
Being hit by a truck is not a bad metaphor — but he left something out. If you get hit by a truck, you are taken to a hospital for major interventions. When you are wheeled through the emergency room doors on a gurney, people react; they move purposefully and quickly; machines are brought out; desperate measures are taken. But that’s not at all what happened with the economy. Instead, the economy got hit by a truck, was wheeled into the ER, and those in charge largely left the patient to heal on his own while they went into a back room to talk about the long-term building plan for the hospital. And, every now and again, they come out to tell the patient: “Remember, you were hit by a truck. It’s going to take a while to mend.”
You know what might help speed along the mending? Surgery.
Many are worried about the WH cutting a deal on Medicaid spending with the GOP. 41 Senate Democrats wrote to Obama and told him they will block any cute deals altering the Medicaid program. Sen. Rockefeller, from W.V., is pushing against any deals on the program and his state, one of the poorest, cannot afford such bargains.
Early this week the Obama WH said Senate Democrats shouldn’t persue job creation programs because it would cost too much. You that correctly. Ah but Senate Dems have their own ideas and met with progressive economist Jared Bernstein on crafting a jobs package.
Liberals and even some conservadems are rallying around the need for stimulus. One way might be a infrastructure package funded by closure of offshore tax breaks. The Hill reports:
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, endorsed Harkin’s argument for more infrastructure spending, and said it is gaining support in the broader caucus.
“There’s very broad support,” Rockefeller said. “There’s no other way to get at this problem.”
Rockefeller said a spending package was discussed at several meetings Wednesday and that there’s a recognition Democrats need to be tougher in negotiations with Republicans.
“We have to be much more aggressive about all this, because as soon as they say ‘We’re not going to do that,’ as they’ve been saying for so long about so many things, you just kind of say ‘oh.’ We’ve got to stop saying ‘oh,’ ” he said, referring to the hard line Republicans have taken for Medicare cuts and against tax increases.
Even centrists like Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) say a major infrastructure package funded by tax revenue-generating measures is what’s needed to strengthen the economy….
Bernstein told the Dems in the Senate that they:
…should not shy away from spending money to energize the economy.
“There are some things you can do without spending money, but that’s obviously a very tough constraint and not one that politicians should accept,” he said.
Bernstein, who met with the Democratic Caucus Thursday, said it would be ambitious to hope that more infrastructure spending could reduce unemployment by 2 points, but nevertheless said it’s a smart idea.
Even if it passed the Senate, the GOP House would kill it since it makes sense and would improve lives. But Dems should push it especially if there is a grand budget deal.
“This will be the largest economic campaign we have ever run,” Justin Ruben, MoveOn’s Executive Director said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “The goal here is to really change the debate and refocus it on the stuff that is necessary to create jobs and make the economy work for regular people … It is unreal that with widespread misery across the country, Washington is focused on closing the deficit and giving tax breaks to millionaires.” – Sam Stein, Huffington Post
The video was marketing, as Stein explains in his piece.
UPDATE: T4H has a post up “In the News” on the Obama administration’s ridiculous refusal to endorse a jobs bill. That’s right, a Democratic administration thinks it’s too expensive to focus on jobs.
Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi ruled Thursday that Republican legislators violated Wisconsin’s open meetings law during the run up to passage. She says that renders the law void.
The law pushed by Gov. Scott Walker takes away all bargaining rights except over base salary for teachers and other public workers.
The decision is not the end of the legal fight. The state Supreme Court has scheduled arguments for June 6 to determine whether it will take the same case.
Easy solution for Republican union busters in Wisconsin. Just pass the law again, this time by not violating the “open meetings law.”
Then look for a new line of work, because collective bargaining is wholly American, just ask Chris Christie.
Chris Hedges ushered in 2011 by calling it a brave new dystopia. For a brief moment in time, the Egyptian and Wisconsin protests provided a glimmer of “there’s something happening here,” but then we were returned to our regularly scheduled dystopic nightmare. I don’t know about you, but lately I’m finding that the actual headlines these days sound more satirical than the ones in the Onion. They leave me either wanting to lolsob…or just sob. So, on that note…
This photo of sailboats at sunset has us yearning for the sea, which makes it an Editors’ Pick for week one of our 2011 Traveler Photo Contest in the category of Outdoor Scenes. The photographer Ken Michael Jon Taarup writes, “Boracay has never ceased to amaze many people from all over the world. With its white crystal sand, pristine blue waters, and beautiful sunsets, this place still tops the list of the most visited and beautiful resorts in the Philippines.”
That’s so you have something calming to visualize while you read my Saturday picks.
Alright, grab your morning cuppa if you haven’t already, and read on.
Let’s just get the biggest distraction out of the way first…
Being pro-choice means understanding that self-determination for women regarding sex, sexuality, reproduction and motherhood is a fundamental precursor to womens’ ability to achieve their own educational, economic and familial aspirations, a fundamental precursor to the health and well-being of individuals and families, and a core condition of the long-term stability and health of society. It therefore also means understanding the profound connections for women–supported by more than ample evidence–between economic and educational status and unfettered access to comprehensive sexual health education, contraception, family planning services, and abortion care.
The War on Unions… now brought to you by Dems in MA?
The bill will take a month before coming to the state Senate, but the overwhelming vote in the House, and [Gov.] Patrick’s kinder, gentler rights-stripping plan, make it look like something’s going to happen in Massachusetts. Time to get out in the streets in another blue state.
“I’ve played at hundreds of protests and demonstrations, and this was really unique,” he said. “It was every segment of society. It was radical students and cops on the same side, and I’d never seen that before.”
Hillaryland
The otherwise serious and reliable Laura Rozen overreacted a bit to Hillary taking a few days of Easter R&R time off with her family. There’s a reason Hill was dubbed the “Energizer Secretary.” The woman works non-stop. She has a personal life that she’s entitled to attend to and/or just recharge every few years or so.
Sean Penn spotted at Foggy Bottom on Thursday. Rozen says one reason for his visit to the State Department might be his recent humanitarian work in Haiti.
First of all, I didn’t have modest experience in management. Managing Stanford University is not so easy. But I don’t know what Don was trying to say, and it really doesn’t matter. Don can be a grumpy guy. We all know that.
As always, Black Agenda Report tells it like it is…
This is an instant classic! Please read and disseminate. Bruce A. Dixon’s Top Ten Answers To Excuses For Obama’s Betrayals and Failures. Note Number 9 — it’s for all the Obamaphiles who won’t accept that Obama is the third Bush-Cheney term. And, to quote a snippet from Numero Uno (Re: “It’s our fault the Obama presidency hasn’t kept its commitments. We need to ‘make him do it.’”):
You cannot make a US president do what he fundamentally doesn’t want to. Michelle Obama is nice to look at, but she is no Eleanor Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt used to publicly bask in the hatred of wealthy banksters. Barack Obama’s dream is mostly not to piss off rich people.
For more on the atrocities of Bush-Cheney III, give BAR’s April 25th podcasta listen. In the first segment BAR’s Glen Ford interviews Labor Notes editor Mark Brenner, who sees no growth and no jobs on the horizon and says:
“Absolute disaster for working folks. If we follow the Ryan plan or if we follow the Obama plan, none of it spells good news for the rest of us.”
In another segment, Clarence Thomas, former Local 10 union secretary-treasury, says “what one needs to understand is that this is not simply an attack on public sector workers, it is also an attack on public services.”Thomas says the goal is to put labor back where it was before the New Deal, noting that it is a corporate and rightwing agenda in which“the Democratic party is complicit.”
In response to the brutality of the crackdown, President Barack Obama signed an executive order today instituting sanctions against the Syrian intelligence agency and two of Assad’s brothers, a White House official confirmed. Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Council voted in Geneva today to condemn the Syrian crackdown.
“The [Executive Order] is a watershed,” Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Envoy.“This is the first time an Assad has been designated by the [U.S. government], and the first time the USG has issued an EO on human rights in Syria. Until a few months ago Human Rights was a distant fifth on our list of issues with Syria. Now it’s emerged as the center of our policy.”
Ms. Cheng was arrested on what was supposed to have been her wedding day last fall for sending a single sarcastic Twitter message that included the words “charge, angry youth.” The government, lacking a sense of humor, sentenced her to a year in labor camp.
Republican primary voters at this early stage of the game now give billionaire developer Donald Trump the edge over presumptive favorites Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in the race to be the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2012. – Another Meaningless Poll That Sends a Message to Democrats
It got blown out by Trump versus Obama contest, but a Washington Post – Pew poll released late Tuesday night revealed why so many people are disenchanted with the Democratic Party. In the age of Obama, Republican economics has now completely replaced Democratic Party ideals, which have always been moored to jobs, middle class growth, and retirement security.
Democrats have also led the way on changes to the concern question: 81 percent of Democrats now say the federal budget is a major problem that must be addressed now, up from 64 percent in December.
A new Marist poll backs up Pres. Obama’s economic malpractice: 40% — approve of how the president is dealing with the country’s economy while nearly six in ten — 57% — disapprove.
This is why the argument recently forwarded by Ezra Klein that Obama is a “moderate Republican” is so damaging, even as Obama loyalists try to lap it up as a positive triangulation that could work for Democrats, because all that matters is reelecting Pres. Obama.
Why do Democrats and progressives want to back a moderate Republican to lead the Democratic Party? This is supposedly what progressives found so abhorrent about Pres. Bill Clinton’s presidency, along with the fact that he hurt the party, but no one can say that jobs weren’t his number one focus. So why are these same progressives accepting Barack Obama who is not advancing Democratic Party economics or focusing on jobs?
Missed in all the noise of Donald Trump is something very simple. David Frum talked about it yesterday, while tying himself in knots, citing Trump’s background as a “troubled student (at one point he attended a military school) who nonetheless gained admission to Wharton.” Frum going on to say his father’s wealth was an aid to his trajectory to Wharton, but it’s the former that’s the issue.
Trump’s bullying braggadocio of Pres. Obama, as well as his puffing up of his own prowess, is gauchely low brow. It’s common. As David Brooks wrote recently, it’s the “gospel of success,” which every person wants to dream about again, but which they can’t grab a hold of today. It’s rooted in something well beyond Democratic versus Republican economic points of view. Ups and downs, failures and fulminating falsehoods and all, this billionaire to bankruptcy and back again represents what people see America needs to do, too. Our great country economically hobbled with no one having the answers except to take things away from people who are barely holding on, Donald Trump not only says no to Paul Ryan’s Medicare scheme, but in the same breath he says no to China, OPEC, the Saudis and everyone else he sees laughing at America.
Meanwhile, Pres. Obama is in charge, but seen to be failing at doing anything about jobs or the economy, barely mentioning jobs in his first term.
It’s also why Obama’s reelection campaign began with a question “are you in?” Because the optimism, hope and change portion of Barack Obama’s mystique has left the stage, with all that’s left behind is let’s win this one for Obama.
I have no idea if a legitimate Republican can grab on to the message of what’s possible in America today, which Pres. Obama can’t find with both hands, his aides and the power of the presidency behind him. But the kernel of success in 2012 lies in parts of what Donald Trump’s low brow persona has tapped in the American populace through his crassly competitive and confrontational style, even if people recoil at the prospect of ever voting for Donald Trump.
“When the history of the Tea Party is written, what you accomplished here will not be forgotten. And the 2012 election begins here,” she affirmed. To drive the point home, Palin recalled the Green Bay Packers’ 2011 Super Bowl win, saying, “What better place to call out the liberal left and let them know, Mr. President, game on!”Politico
It was short and stinging, with the woman of 2010 letting everyone know that she’s still around.
Andrew Breitbart was Palin’s opening act, introducing her in a speech that defended the Tea Party against racism charges, talked about civility, then told the labor activists to “Go to hell. Go to hell. Go to hell.” This is very typical of Mr. Breitbart, whom I have had several back and forths with on Twitter. One of his first instincts when exchanging tweets was to go after my hair.
Immediately after Palin took the stage she started by teeing off on Speaker John Boehner’s budget deal, then kept on going but not for long. This was a quick rhetorical bomb to let everyone know that Donald Trump won’t be representing the Tea Party any time soon.
“Then after some politics as usual and accounting gimmicks we found out — ya know that $38 billion? We’re actually borrowing that $38 billion,” Palin said. “That is not courage, that is capitulation.”
The former Alaska governor also painted President Barack Obama as unserious about cutting government spending. “Our president isn’t leading, he’s punting on this debt crisis,” Palin said. “Win the future? The only future he wants to win is his reelection.”
Does this sound like someone getting ready to run for office or what?
“A pension is a promise that must be kept,” she added. “Scott Walker understands this. He understands that states must be solvent to keep their promises. He’s not trying to hurt union members. Hey folks, he’s trying to save your jobs.”
A pension is a promise… Sarah Palin, your sensible union representative, who can keep unions alive, at least that’s the message she’s trying to float.
But Palin wasn’t alone. AP reports “hundreds” of labor activists greeted the Tea Party rally in Wisconsin with, “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Scott Walker has got to go!” and “Recall Walker!”
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Sarah Palin out revving up Tea Party activists and looking like a leader of them. Shaking off her “blood-libel” gaffe after Tucson, she’s been on Fox, but had a pretty low profile, no doubt hoping everyone will forget and I betcha they have.
Something happened when Donald Trump started sucking all the oxygen in his direction, coming in first in two polls, with Sarah losing altitude. As I wrote yesterday, it’s just possible Trump is pulling her in, perhaps sooner or maybe she saw her chance slipping and it woke her up.
Republicans seem to finally sense Trumps just might mean business (see Karl Rove’s statement) and with his immediate connection with people shown through poll numbers against other unannounced candidates, it proves he just might cause other wannabes a problem, including Sarah Palin.
None of this is good for the GOP establishment or Mitt Romney, who may be the competent conservative, but crazy is what’s selling right now.
Nobody expected Donald Trump to connect. Nobody was taking him seriously. Palin has that in common with Trump, because no one takes her seriously either.
“… But [it] creates, I think a problem for them when they want to actually run in a general election where most people feel pretty confident the President was born where he says he was, in Hawaii. He– he doesn’t have horns…we’re not really worrying about conspiracy theories or– or birth certificates…” – Pres. Barack Obama, interviewed by George Stephanopoulos
Donald Trump has blown away Sarah Palin in the unannounced GOP-Tea Party sweepstakes, also putting a hurt on Mitt Romney. On the other side, union leaders join a lot of disgruntled Democratic activists who are discovering Barack Obama only talks sweet when he needs something from them; trouble is he never gives anything back.
“Trump takes the lead” is the headline today on the Public Policy Polling results that show Trump pulling away due to birtherism. So whether it’s luck or serendipity, tonight he’ll be on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show talking about just that subject.
From PPP, but make sure you read the details, because they’re odd as hell for a presidential race.
Only 38% of Republican primary voters say they’re willing to support a candidate for President next year who firmly rejects the birther theory and those folks want Mitt Romney to be their nominee for President next year. With the other 62% of Republicans- 23% of whom say they are only willing to vote for a birther and 39% of whom are not sure- Donald Trump is cleaning up. And as a result Trump’s ridden the controversy about Barack Obama’s place of birth to the highest level of support we’ve found for anyone in our national GOP polling so far in 2011.
Trump’s broken the perpetual gridlock we’ve found at the top of the Republican field, getting 26% to 17% for Mike Huckabee, 15% for Romney, 11% for Newt Gingrich, 8% for Sarah Palin, 5% for Ron Paul, and 4% for Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.
Meanwhile, Pres. Obama was in Chicago making sure “the campaign is in your hands,” one of his reelection lines. So it looks like the President won’t even take responsibility for earning your vote. Instead he wants to dump this dog in your lap after you gave him a huge win in ’08, with Obama swaggering into office with the press at his feet, the people ready to follow him, while the world watched and waited for greatness or at least Democratic competence. Instead what Democrats got was a man who adopted Republican economics, with a large dose of Bush foreign policy, so that the middle class is being set up for another rout.
“Now, not only are we getting screwed by the Republicans but the Democrats are doing it too,” said one union official, characterizing the mood at a summit of labor leaders who are worried that Democrats seem unlikely to go to the mat for them as an election year approaches.
Voters in 2008 put the country in Barack Obama’s hands and what he’s done with it is deliver Republican outcomes. No one should be impressed, which is why even though rank and file Democrats remain behind him, the people who push for better Democratic policy prescriptions while the rank and file go about their lives are not.
I love Coco. My husband gets up at 5:00 a.m., so he can’t stay up to watch him, but I’m awake until the wee hours doing research, reading and writing, so I rarely miss him. I thought this bit was particularly hilarious.
The latest vote count in the state Supreme Court race in Winnebago County indicates incumbent David Prosser is leading Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg in votes.
A tally compiled by The Associated Press Wednesday and used by news organizations statewide, including the Journal Sentinel, indicated Kloppenburg was leading the race by 204 votes. Figures on Winnebago County’s website are now different from those collected by the AP.
Rush Limbaugh was talking about voter fraud today on his show, blaming Democrats. I’m reminded of the Brooks Brothers riot in 2000. If you don’t remember it use The Google.
Texan4Hillary offers his perspective as a movement progressive activist.
Senator Sanders and others held a great rally with seniors to push pols not to touch Social Security in any way.
Next, a letter to the President for today, but written in 1938. In 1937 F.D.R. made a bad move to cut spending in a depression. It was a disaster, raising unemployment and undoing progress made. However F.D.R. was a great president and after he saw how badly the cuts went he went back to pumping federal money into the system to boost American jobs. A public letter written to Roosevelt in 1938 is getting attention. Warnings abound for Obama:
This is the New Republic in 1938 going “I told you so about balancing the budget too early F.D.R..” Listen up, because this is what the liberal econoblogosphere is going to sound like next year if the Democrats cave and try to turn it around later.
Here’s Bruce Bliven, “Confidential: To the President,” New Republic, April 20, 1938:
THE NEWSPAPERS have told us during the past week or so, Mr. President, that you have at last decided to return to the policy of “pump-priming” through large federal expenditures. Amounts running as high as four or five billion are being mentioned. I am one of the millions of people who earnestly hope that these plans will be put into effect.
No one can any longer doubt that the present depression is an extremely serious matter. The Federal Reserve Board index has sunk from 118 a few months ago to 79 at present…
I can well understand, Mr. President, with what grim humor you must have listened, in recent months, to the anguished howls of business men-anguished because you had taken their advice and they didn’t like it. For years, every self-appointed spokesman for business had been demanding that you should balance the budget. To be sure, nobody suggested that we should accomplish this by increasing taxation to the level of the British, for example, which is about three times as high as our own. On the contrary, they wanted you to perform this mystic and sacred rite by economizing in expenditures. Since nearly all the abnormal spending in your administration had been for relief, that is obviously where the wanted the cuts to be made.There is a deadly parallel between the downward movement of the business index and this enormous drop in federal spending. I am not saying that the curtailment of relief was the only cause of the trouble, or even the chief cause…no one can doubt that the sudden withdrawal of hundreds of millions of dollars of federal relief funds, the smashing of thousands of projects all over the country, did contribute materially to the creation of our present misery. Your triumph over your foes-on this point, at least-is complete.
To be sure, they do not hate you any the less because you have demonstrated that on this extremely important matter they were wrong and you were right. If anything, they hate you more than ever. One of the great mysteries that historians of the future will puzzle over is why you have aroused such bitter animosity….Taxes during your administrations have on the whole been amazingly light…Your very mild efforts to regularize Wall Street, to make the electric utilities behave, to obtain recognition of union labor, have been matters on which most sensible men have agreed with you. They have been directed chiefly against the small minority of bandits whom the majority has always wanted to discipline if it could.
Those who were demanding economy, a year ago, and now don’t like it, have gone back to the old cry about “confidence.”
If you would only do something to restore confidence, they say, business would go on zooming across the landscape, full of vitamins…
Meanwhile Feingold, in the Roosevelt tradition, launches a campaign to oust Mr. Immelt, CEO to G.E., from Obama advisor team. G.E. turns out is getting billions in tax “relief” while the company outsources jobs. So:
Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) launched a petition Wednesday calling on President Barack Obama to oust General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as the head of the White House’s jobs panel, if the executive doesn’t step down voluntarily.
Feingold’s complaint stems from recent revelations that GE will pay no taxes this year, despite making more than $5 billion in the United States in 2010.
Feingold’s PAC, which sent the email, launched earlier this year and gained traction during the labor protests in Madison, has registered the web domain, ImmeltMustGo.com
“We cannot stand by and watch while we are led down this road. Mr. Immelt must step down from the president’s jobs panel — and if he won’t, President Obama needs to ask for his resignation,” Feingold wrote. “How can someone like Immelt be given the responsibility of heading a jobs creation task force when his company has been creating more jobs overseas while reducing its American workforce? And under Immelt’s direction, GE spends hundreds of millions of dollars hiring lawyers and lobbyists to evade taxes.”…
“It’s time for policymakers to stop coddling corporate interests, and get to work creating jobs and wealth for Main Street. We shouldn’t reward wealthy CEOs and Wall Street for behavior that undermines the nation’s economy,” Feingold wrote Wednesday.
The Republican House is about to launch a probe on the A.A.R.P.. They want to see if A.A.R.P. will make billions from the health law. Um yeah. Going after A.A.R.P. is very risky, recall the Right got into office with huge numbers of seniors voting them in. As Taylor points out: the Right is trying to take down the A.A.R.P. to weaken it so when they go to gut Medicare A.A.R.P. won’t be able to fight ala ACORN.
Send this video, just released by A.A.R.P., to everyone you know. The C.E.O. of it explains why A.A.R.P. is nonprofit and it’s history. Also they got up a response website to the G.O.P. smears with more information here.
Politicususa gets at the heart of what the G.O.P. is doing and how badly it is likely to backfire:
In a perverse way, it is good that Americans are finally seeing the lengths Republicans are willing to go to destroy America and its democratic form of government. Incrementally, the GOP has assaulted every segment of American society and the voters will get retribution at the ballot box. The recall efforts in Wisconsin should be a wakeup call to Republicans. But like all true believers and liars, Republicans’ arrogance stemming from their success in 2010 has blinded them to the anger they are eliciting from their all-encompassing assault on the American people. Republicans are losing support from gays, working-class Americans, women, students, minorities, the poor, and now the elderly, but they can count on support from corporate America and the 400 richest families in America. They have assaulted, demeaned, disenfranchised and shown abject contempt for every other segment of American society and the population will have their retribution.
Finally late breaking news: Governor Kaisch just got passed S.B.5, the union busting bill in Ohio. It now awaits his signature. Once signed, unions have 90 days to get 260k signatures and get union rights on the ballot for a November election. And yes, the unions will likely get those signatures very fast. Polls show intense interest by voters in undoing the law, and by passing such a bill it is undoing the G.O.P. in a key swing state. See more here.
Many cops and firefighters have thrown their allegiance to the GOP for years — union members who frequently stray from labor’s longtime support for Democrats. A host of new Republican governors is changing all that. [...] Chuck Canterbury, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said his members are “shocked” by the turn of events. “Who are these evil teachers who teach your children, these evil policemen who protect them, these evil firemen who pull them from burning buildings? When did we all become evil?” said Canterbury, whose union endorsed Bush in 2000 and 2004 and John McCain in 2008. – Politico
The midterm elections were a rout. But voters weren’t giving a mandate to Republicans to come after collective bargaining rights or to weaken the unions that protect cops and firefighters. A massive overreach on their mandate is threatening Republicans for 2012 even more than their lousy presidential candidates.
Gallup also finds that people back unions over the marauding governors, 48% to 39%.
This is not rocket science. When you attack the main vein of how the middle class stays the middle class this was very predictable, especially when you have CEO pay exploding. From USA Today:
The heads of the nation’s top companies got the biggest raises in recent memory last year after taking a hiatus during the recession. At a time most employees can barely remember their last substantial raise, median CEO pay jumped 27% in 2010 as the executives’ compensation started working its way back to prerecession levels…
Add to this Donald Trump’s birther front man show and you’ve got a real circus on the Right.
UPDATE: LiberalJoe makes an excellent point in the comments that Politico forgot, which I hadn’t considered either:
Many Police officers/Law Enforcement, Firefighters/EMT’s, and building trades folks are married to, or have relatives who are, teachers, nurses, and other unions under attack by the GOP. The GOP in all their studidity, and desire to crush unions and the Dems forgot that simple truth. The GOP was attacking spouses, brothers /sisters. parents, relatives, and probably neighbors. When you start doing that to loved ones , family differences in political leanings are thrown out the window. You protect and fight for your own.
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