December 2009
90 posts
Record lobbyist spending reveals basic problem... →
notthatkindagay:
southpol:
moreoraleeza:
jonathan-cunningham:
Washington’s influence industry is on track to shatter last year’s record $3.3 billion spent to lobby Congress and the rest of the federal government — and that’s with a down economy and about 1,500 fewer registered lobbyists in town, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. Many lobbying firms have...
Record lobbyist spending reveals basic problem... →
moreoraleeza:
jonathan-cunningham:
Washington’s influence industry is on track to shatter last year’s record $3.3 billion spent to lobby Congress and the rest of the federal government — and that’s with a down economy and about 1,500 fewer registered lobbyists in town, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. Many lobbying firms have escaped the worst of the corporate...
Obscure congressman plans to enjoy the only time... →
(via savingpaper)
Rep. Parker Griffith switches to GOP →
hilker:
“POLITICO has learned that Rep. Parker Griffith, a freshman Democrat from Alabama, will announce today that he’s switching parties to become a Republican.
According to two senior GOP aides familiar with the decision, the announcement will take place this afternoon in Griffith’s district in northern Alabama.
Griffith’s party switch comes on the eve of a pivotal congressional health...
CNN Poll: 6 point jump in support for health care... →
Internals also reveal increasing support for the bill among Democratic voters (+10%) AND increased approval of Obama among liberals.
According the to poll, 54 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama’s doing as president, up 6 points from early December, with 44 percent disapproving, down 6 points.
Given how high expectations have been so far for Obama and how tough the situation...
What we talk about when we talk about stimulus...
jeffmiller:
squashed:
“We’re basically the drug-addict parent who breaks his child’s piggy bank so he can buy “one more hit,” all while promising to go straight as soon as he gets through this one rough patch first. Except we’re worse, because sometimes drug addicts do give up drugs.”
—
Jeff Miller, who doesn’t like the idea of using debt to finance a recovery. Presumably he feels the same...
“The most troublesome task of a reform President was that of bringing the Senate...”
– Henry Adams, in The Education of Henry Adams (via savingpaper)
“The latest annual Census Bureau figures show that in 2008 just 5.96 percent of...”
– Dean’s Blind Spot - The Atlantic Politics Channel
Minorities don’t seem to have much doubt about their investment in this debate. In November’s Kaiser Family Foundation health care tracking poll, two-thirds of non-white Americans said that their family would be better off if...
“BREAKING at TPM: President Obama has reached a climate change deal with China.”
– tpmmedia (via brooklynmutt) Well, it’s official then… getting China on board with reducing carbon emissions is officially easier than getting Ben Nelson to vote for health care reform. (via savingpaper)
US vs Europe: Who is the Welfare State?
Which region is the true Socialist state?
-Europe has cradle to grave health care plans, generous unemployment benefits, and free or subsidized college costs.
-The US gives away public assets (oil, gas, mineral rights) for pennies on the dollar, has huge subsidies and tax breaks, and bails out reckless speculators.
It turns out that both regions are welfare states — only in Europe, the...
Santa Barbara Daily Sound apologizes for column... →
Their bad. Won’t happen again.
Pregnant, in Prison and Denied Care →
robot-heart-politics:
-smart-tart-:
The lack of common sense and compassion with which imprisoned pregnant women are treated is chilling. Three stories illustrate the dangers women face when they cannot get anyone to take their medical needs seriously.
First, some women are not taken to the hospital until after they have already given birth, despite having informed staff members that they are...
“Democratic senators have to make a decision: What is the expectation of being a...”
– Andy Stern: Don’t Kill The Bill. Fix It.
I don’t know what Senate the SEIU prez has been paying attention to.
"It’s the same narrative every year: Congress... →
(via unburyingthelead)
“In New York City, the Bowery Mission tossed away a batch of fried chicken...”
–
A Bunch of Chickens - Daily Brickbats : Reason Magazine
I do not understand this country anymore. I really don’t.
(via jeffmiller)
I understand it perfectly. This is the sort of thing that happens when liberal Democrats get in power. The nanny state will ban trans fats and inadvertently...
David Simon on the American Oligarchy
DAVID SIMON (interviewed in Vice Magazine):
Why does reform seem so impossible?
We live in an oligarchy. The mother’s milk of American politics is money, and the reason they can’t reform financing, the reason that we can’t have public funding of elections rather than private donations, the reason that K Street is K Street in Washington, is to make sure that no popular sentiment survives. You’re...
“In an interview Thursday with a Nebraska radio station, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.)...”
– Ben Nelson rejects abortion compromise
Is it just me or does Ben Nelson need to take his Trent Lott hair and piss off?
Secretive Scholars of the Old South finally find... →
Mr. Livingston says Abbeville is, for the first time, publicly advertising a conference, on secession and nullification—the refusal of states to recognize given federal laws within their territory—to be held February 4 to 7 in Charleston, S.C. It is the institute’s eighth annual conference. The group does not endorse secession but does say the idea has moral and political validity.
...
Democrats' Blues Grow Deeper in New Poll →
Julie Edwards, 52, an aircraft technician for Boeing Co. in Mesa, Ariz., said she voted Democratic in the past two elections but wasn’t sure how she would vote next time. She wondered why Wall Street firms were bailed out when average Americans needed help. “We can bail out Wall Street, but everybody else has to suffer in spades for it,” she said.
vs.
House Speaker Nancy...
“We seem to be at a cultural inflection point that we haven’t seen since World...”
– Spendthrift to Penny Pincher: A Vision of the New Consumer
Don’t worry, Mr. Taylor. Where there’s an MBA, there’s a way. Just pretend it’s cool to be careful for a little while, then get back to business.
(via Jon Taplin, who would have little use for my smartassedness).
“This is why the White House and the Beltway media is now publicly freaking out...”
– Howard Dean, Movement Leader
Dear people who want to kill the health care...
You are effing nuts.*
*Unless it’s a tactical decision to try and stanch the tide of concessions before the whole thing bleeds out. In which case, carry on.
“To put it more bluntly, on a widening range of issues, Obama’s critics to...”
– Ed Kilgore in TNR: Taking Ideological Differences Seriously
Recommended.
Parties Behave as if Congress Operates on a... →
notthatkindagay:
It is not that Harry Reid and his Democrats are eager to be bipartisan; they, too, are drawn to the chimera of parliamentary government, especially with 60 Democratic Conference members making it theoretically achievable. But holding all 60 is a nearly impossible task for something like health care reform, and Obama and Reid would have found the expedited path to a bipartisan...
All Hail Bernanke!
Matthew Yglesias
Bernanke takes office in February of 2006 holding what’s probably the second most-important job in the United States and the most important job for determining overall macroeconomic conditions. He follows basically conventional thinking and doesn’t make any unusual errors. Unfortunately, conventional thinking and normal errors lead into a major financial panic and the worst...
Let's review the health care debate of 2009
Open Left:
Democratic base: We demand X.
Sen. LieberNelsnowe: That’s dead on arrival.
Democratic base: There’s strong support for X.
Sen. LieberNelsnowe: I don’t support it and there aren’t enough votes anyway. Maybe I’ll consider a Jiggered X.
Democratic base: We can’t accept a Jiggered X. How about an opti-X?
Sen. LieberNelsnowe: We need to slow down...
The GOP had at most 55 Senators during Bush's...
AMERICAblog:
In fact, during Bush’s most effective years, from 2001 to 2005, the GOP had a grand total of 50, and then 51, Senators. The slimmest margin possible. And look at what George Bush was able to accomplish in the Congress with fewer Senators than the Democrats have today: - John Ashcroft nomination - Iraq war resolution - Repeated Iraq funding resolutions - 2001 & 2003 tax...
“There is the explanation that Lieberman is an unusually talented egoist;...”
– Why Lieberman Hates The Health Care Bill
Hey Joe… where you going with that vote in your hand?
“The White House is encouraging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to cut...”
– POLITICO
But Reid is described as so frustrated with Lieberman that he is not ready to sacrifice a key element of the health care bill, and first wants to see the Congressional Budget Office cost analysis of the Medicare buy-in. The analysis is expected early this week.
Yeah. Cause Joe Lieberman...
“Joe Lieberman is on a lifeboat with a young woman who was denied insurance...”
– 10 jokes about Joe Lieberman & his threat to filibuster any health care bill which includes a public option
Yeah it’s a few days old. What can I say, I have a case of the Liebermans.
“In their 2009 report to Congress, the Medicare trustees estimate that the...”
– Weisberg, on the GOP’s health-care hypocrisy. (via newsweek)
Pot says kettle is the new black.
“These opening remarks may lead you to assume that my suggestions for the...”
– George Marshall, Nobel speech, 1953.
It’s not that this particular record is bad or indefensible. It’s just that it’s broken.
via Historical precedent for Obama’s Oslo speech
A Partisan Post, You Have Been Warned « The... →
moorewr:
Now, let me tell you what I am sick of:
1. People who insist that the recent change in our fiscal spending is the product of high spending, without looking at the numbers, because their political priors are so strong they assume that high deficits under a Democratic president must be due to runaway spending. And it’s not just Robert Samuelson.
2. People who forecast the end of the...
World's top bankers get "told" by former Fed... →
As bankers demanded that new regulation should not stifle innovation, a clearly irritated Mr Volcker said that the biggest innovation in the industry over the past 20 years had been the cash machine. He went on to attack the rise of complex products such as credit default swaps (CDS).
“I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic...
Shocker: HOUSE GOP IS PRO-CHRISTMAS →
It was just six weeks ago that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) decided he was fed up with empty, meaningless congressional resolutions. These largely symbolic measures are taken up all the time — it’s been routine fare for years — but Boehner decided they’re now evidence of Democratic negligence. “These are your hard-earned tax dollars at work,”...
“At its fundamental core, the goal of the public option campaign was to get more...”
– Making the case for the compromise
The Real Chicago Way
Thomas Frank - WSJ.com:
As it happens, Chicago is the nation’s leader in municipal privatization efforts. That’s right: The city that conservatives portray as the citadel of the power-grabbing, government-growing left has been selling itself off in pieces for years. It signed a 99-year lease for the Chicago Skyway, a toll road in the city’s South Side, back in 2005. It did the...
Fight for issues, not politicians
Docudharma:: “They All Disappoint”
As citizens and activists, our allegiances have to be to the issues we believe in. I am a partisan Democrat it is true. But the reason I am is because I know who we can pressure to do the right thing some of the times. Republicans aren’t them. But that does not mean we accept the failings of our Democrats. There is nothing more important that...
“Heads of state and others are gathering this week at the United Nations Climate...”
– Chuck Norris
Tips: Read it in Chuck Norris’ voice, add menacing looks, feints, karate chops, beard flaunting, etc.
