Saturday, November 06, 2010
Time To Attempt A New Tone In Washington
Barack Obama campaigned for president to bring a new tone in Washington. He promised a new kind of politics. But it obviously takes two hands to clap. And it is not like he did not make attempts. There were major pre-emptive tax cuts in the stimulus bill. He put those in there to gain Republican support he did not get.
Now when the Republicans have the House, and credit can more equitably be distributed among both parties, it is time to attempt that new tone thing again.
It requires really listening to the other side. Ideological fervor can lead to sound bites that make no policy sense. But those emotional outbursts are necessary to the political process perhaps, and at some level have to be seen in perspective.
There is a time for campaigning and there is a time for governing. No party has a mandate to outrun the other party. But both parties have a responsibility to the people. Vigorous debates are good. But then you sit down across the table and stop posing for the cameras and craft meaningful legislation in the spirit of genuinely listening, and getting things done.
But then the president also has to draw the line if he feels like the other side has started to overreach. The people elected him for four years and will re-elect him for four more. Two years are not his full term. He has the power to attempt a new tone, and he has the power to draw the line if necessary.
This electoral outcome is an excellent opportunity for the president to attempt a new tone in Washington that was his signature on the campaign trail when he ran for president.
The new tone is about not talking past each other, but talking to each other, listening to each other, doing due diligence and working out the kinks, and attempting middle ground legislations on the big issues of the day, and yes that includes immigration reform next year.
On his part the president has to carry out the work of eliminating the deficit when the time is right, which is when the country is squarely out of the recession.
Both parties have to work to get the unemployment rate down to 5%. That is the number one item on the agenda.
New York Times
Black and Republican and Back in Congress For the first time in over a decade, the incoming class of Congress will include two black Republicans ..... While the number of African-Americans in Congress has steadily increased since the civil rights era, black Republicans have been nearly as rare as quetzal birds. .... Of all the blacks ever to serve in Congress, 98 have been Democrats and 27 have been Republicans; there are 42 African-American members in the current lame-duck Congress..... “His opponent was Pelosi-Obama liberal,” Mr. Thrasher added, “and Allen gave them a different understanding of how government could be.” .... Mr. West said he was more surprised that he won as a Republican in a district carried by the Democratic presidential nominee three elections in a row than as an African-American in a district with a white majority. But, he added, “I am honored to be first black Republican congressman from the state of Florida since Reconstruction. There is a historic aspect of it.”
Paul Krugman: The Focus Hocus-Pocus act of intellectual cowardice — a way to criticize President Obama’s record without explaining what you would have done differently ..... severe crises are typically followed by multiple years of very high unemployment ..... he could have chosen to be bold — to make Plan A the passage of a truly adequate economic plan, with Plan B being to place blame for the economy’s troubles on Republicans if they succeeded in blocking such a plan. ..... I felt a sense of despair during Mr. Obama’s first State of the Union address, in which he declared that “families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.” Not only was this bad economics — right now the government must spend, because the private sector can’t or won’t
Barack Obama, Phone Home Nothing says “outsourcing” to the American public more succinctly than India. .... the seemingly irrational calculus of Tuesday’s exit polls. Voters gave Democrats and Republicans virtually identical favorability ratings while voting for the G.O.P. .... Traditional Republican boilerplate — lower taxes, less spending, smaller government — was chanted louder and louder, to pander to the Tea Party rebels, but with zero specifics of how it might be carried out. .... Even in victory, most Republicans can’t explain exactly what they want to do .... DeMint published a book last year detailing his view that Social Security be privatized to slow America’s descent into socialism. Paul can elaborate on his ideas for reducing defense spending and cutting back on drug law enforcement. Bachmann will explain her plans for weaning Americans off Medicare.
The Pelosi-Bachmann Conundrum Bachmann is the most visible Tea Party leadership in the House, second nationally only to Sarah Palin in terms of visibility.....our third straight “throw the bums out” election
‘Blindsided’: A President’s Story
Exporting Our Way to Stability: discovering, creating and building products that are sold all over the world. ... every $1 billion we export supports more than 5,000 jobs at home.... some of the fastest-growing markets in the world are in Asia
The Grizzly Manifesto This week, Bachmann triggered a blog explosion when she claimed, on CNN, that the president’s trip to India is going to “cost the taxpayers $200 million a day.” This is more than it costs to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. ..... Men don’t cringe on behalf of their sex when Newt Gingrich goes Islamophobic, or Carl Paladino threatens to take out a reporter.
How Obama Saved Capitalism and Lost the Midterms the presidency of George W. Bush produced the worst stock market decline of any president in history. The net worth of American households collapsed as Bush slipped away. And if you needed a loan to buy a house or stay in business, private sector borrowing was dead when he handed over power..... More than 1 million jobs would have disappeared had the domestic auto sector been liquidated. .... “An apology is due Barack Obama,” wrote The Economist, which had opposed the $86 billion auto bailout. .... Corporate profits are lighting up boardrooms; it is one of the best years for earnings in a decade. ..... Of course, nobody gets credit for preventing a plane crash. ..... Billions of profits, windfalls in the stock market, a stable banking system — but no jobs. .... He should hector the companies sitting on piles of cash but not hiring new workers.
Jobs Data Highlights the Challenges for Washington Nearly 15 million people are still out of work, and the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 9.6 percent..... Economists themselves cannot agree about what kinds of policy measures would rescue the job market. .... battle cries over “currency wars” ..... many of the nation’s long-term unemployed have become increasingly desperate.
What’s a Pooled Trust? A Way to Avoid the Nursing Home
Yes, a Recovery Did Begin
Is the Recovery Losing Steam?
Friday, November 05, 2010
Bobby Jindal: Streamliner
The American Spectator: Dazzling in a Dark Suit
the top floor of the 100 Club, an elegant private club that overlooks the brick-and-cobblestone streets of downtown Portsmouth, N.H. .... one youthful, thin male with the distinct appearance of an aide to a powerful man. One might have thought he was the assistant to whichever man accompanied the dazzling, dark brunette in the flame-red dress ...... almost everyone's attention was directed to the thin man in the middle ..... Those who weren't watching him were watching the woman in the red dress ...... the most striking woman in the building was with none of the taller, more imposing-looking men, but with the unassuming, almost frail one whose off-the-rack navy suit hung loosely from his frame, giving him something of the appearance of a teenage boy going to his first semi-formal dance. ........ a haphazard queue facing the thin, dark-skinned couGoverning: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's Evolving Leadership
Image via Wikipediaple, whom anyone could now identify as the most-VIP in the VIP reception. ....... the man who might one day be the most recognizable, and powerful, person on the planet. ...... All had come to see the man who didn't even fill out his suit ..... his first speech ever in New Hampshire ..... Granite State political operatives size up candidates on how well they can work a room, tell a story, make people smile. ..... swiftly, deftly, and without the slightest hint of insincerity or effort ..... Jindal warmed up the crowd with jokes about being a politician from a state famous for its corrupt politicians. ..... coming across as both reluctant hero and common-sense everyman who doesn't know much, but knows incompetence when he sees it. ...... self-deprecating stories ...... By the time Jindal left, the room was practically vibrating with energy. Every person I spoke with after the event was impressed with the performance, and these are people who have weathered many primaries and met many presidents.
Today another Louisiana governor with presidential ambitions occupies the fourth floor of the Capitol skyscraper that Huey Long built. ...... s Jindal’s bold plans to downsize and transform state government. ..... the nation’s boldest effort at streamlininBobby 2016, Until Then Adios
Image via Wikipediag .... was elected Louisiana’s 55th governor in 2007, he was widely viewed as the Republican answer to Barack Obama. They both have fairly exceptional backgrounds: Obama is half-Kenyan; Jindal is Indian. Obama served as president of the Harvard Law Review; Jindal was a Rhodes scholar. ........ Jindal has developed one of the most sterling resumés in American politics. In 1996, at the age of 24, he was appointed as secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. Stints followed as executive director of a national commission on Medicare reform, as president of the University of Louisiana System, and as an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In 2003, he returned to Louisiana and, in his campaign to become governor, suffered an unexpected loss to Kathleen Blanco. He ran for Congress instead and won handily. Four years later, he ran for governor again, and this time was swept into the governor’s mansion with a huge majority. An uninspired response on national television to Obama’s first State of the Union address damaged the new governor’s standing with the chattering classes. An energetic response to the BP oil spill resurrected it. While pundits parse his performances before the cameras, a far more interesting exercise has been playing out in Louisiana. ......... Two years ago, the Jindal administration began one of the most serious efforts to streamline state government in the country. ....... his administration has doubled down on his effort to make government smaller ...... his obvious brilliance and deep background ....... his anti-tax, smaller-government resolve has made him the most popular politician in Louisiana, an incumbent who is a virtual shoo-in for re-election next year ..... Streamlining is strategic. It involves establishing priorities, and then determining how to and who can best achieve them with the resources available. Budget cutting is short term and ad hoc. It often involves accounting gimmicks and across-the-board cuts aimed at balancing budgets for the fiscal year with no regard for what follows. Budget cutting happens during times of crisis. Streamlining tends to happen just after the crisis has
Image via Wikipediapassed, when revenues are rebounding but memories of hard times remain. ....... performance-based budgeting known as “budgeting for outcomes.” ...... the usual budgeting process, a system where departments propose to spend what they spent last year -- or more, if they can -- and look to the legislature to keep funding those expenditures. This “continuation” budgeting process ...... y having her agency define its priorities and force divisions to compete for the resources to deliver them ..... . Health outcomes in the state have been abysmal ...... Outspoken, combative and savvy, Levine was fearless in pushing his conservative agenda. ..... His first step was to call the Legislature into special session to pass an ethics bill. ..... Jindal delegated dealing with legislators to staff. ..... Jindal has focused on articulating broad conservative principles. “No one ever sees him as failing,” he adds, “because he’s committed to principles,” not specific programs. .... Jindal “learned early on that getting into details can get you into trouble” ...... he has focused on the trinity of issues at the heart of modern conservatism: taxes, guns and pro-life issues ...... his leadership style -- hands-on in responding to disaster, hands-off in making policy -- ..... Davis was able to trim the state workforce by eliminating 6,000 authorized postings, outsourcing numerous functions to the private sector. Levine reduced the size of his health department by 25 percent and set the state Medicaid program on the path to managed care. ..... . “We tried in six months to build a new budget process” ...... Tucker voted against the budget. One week later, Jindal retaliated by using his line-item veto to strike funding for several projects in Tucker’s district.
The Importance Of The Private Sector
Image via WikipediaTo me it feels like Bill Clinton makes fun of the United Nations every year. Just when the UN is having its most important week of the year, Bill Clinton goes ahead and hosts his conference and goes on to raise more money for his foundation than is the UN's annual budget. Here is a retired white guy. I mean. The guy should have restructured the World Bank and the IMF when he was president so as to let the Global South have a greater sense of ownership with those global institutions.
All member governments need to give 1% of their GDP equivalent to the UN like citizens pay taxes in democracies.
Like Al Pacino say in a mafia movie, "I will give you money, but not power."
The US continued to not pay the UN what the US owed to the UN in obligations - taxes, if you will - when Bill Clinton was president.
No less than a Nobel Prize winning black woman called Bill Clinton "America's first black president" to honor this white guy from the South who has taken pains throughout his life to go out of his way to try and suggest maybe his heart is alright.
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeHe is not like the white guys who stood in MLK's path every way they could. His heart might be clean, but he did not exactly lead the efforts for structural changes at the global level that might have sped up the process of global poverty elimination.
A few billion dollars raised by the Clinton Foundation or a few tens of billions of dollars raised by the Gates Foundation will, at the end of the day, will not be the decisive blow to global poverty.
Poverty will not be eliminated because some white guys retired. Poverty will be eliminated because many people decided to make careers out of the cause. And perhaps the fundraising efforts send a clear message it is the private sector that will play the decisive role in poverty elimination. There are many for profit ways.
Image via WikipediaPolio could be cured. Poverty can be eliminated. And it can happen faster than many people imagine. 
Hope Lives On In Iran
This one minute video is proof hope lives on in Iran. And this is a smart move. This is not exactly indoors, but this is not out in the street. For now don't go out into the street. Build solidarity off the streets. The time to come out into the streets will come again. And that time will be decisive. But that time is not now.
Shout Allah O Akbar From The Rooftops Every Night 10-10:30 PM
Monday, November 01, 2010
Telling Ads
I have not paid too much attention to this election except to root a little bit for a guy I rooted a lot for in the 2008 election cycle. But it is not like I have not paid any attention at all. Everyone seems to be resigned to the Republicans taking over the House. The pendulum of democracy is about to swing, looks like. But if that be the outcome, it will shake the Republican establishment as much as the Democratic establishment. Cost cutting is going to get more politically urgent.
Precisely The Time For Progressive Fervor
The Tea Party Is Getting America Talibanized
Source: Foreign Policy: 'The Arabs (and Indians and Chinese) Are Coming!'
Precisely The Time For Progressive Fervor
The Tea Party Is Getting America Talibanized
Source: Foreign Policy: 'The Arabs (and Indians and Chinese) Are Coming!'
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Precisely The Time For Progressive Fervor
Image via WikipediaIn 2008 progressives used to make it sound like registering people to vote was revolutionary, getting people to show up and vote was the grand stand, calling voters up was Gandhi's Salt March. By 2010 the standards should have been raised. Where is the organization that has a one point agenda to take the minimum wage to $10? That organization should have been going toe to toe with "the American Family Business Institute, which is dedicated to abolishing the inheritance tax." Instead of building such organizations the people who stand to lose the most are planning on sitting out this election. It is not easy to organize the poor and the powerless, but in this day and age you would think it would at least be easier. Citizenship is a near daily responsibility. It is not a vote once and watch Barack walk on water proposition. Even dictators who engage slave labor to build roads and bridges have needed a minimal of cooperation from the people. But in a democracy the people have to offer willful, fervent cooperation if they want big things to happen.
A crowd that wants a tax cut for the super rich that would be as big as the stimulus bill was but complains the stimulus bill happened is borderline insane. But the insane will carry the day if the common sense people will let them. People responsible for unpaid wars to the tune of trillions long lost their right to preach fiscal responsibility. And they know they did. That is why they have now climbed down to downright economic illiteracy. The dogma they are preaching is coherent, but it is as coherent as the gold standard. The name Tea Party is no accident. This is not a longing to kick out the British: there are no British. This is a hearkening to the slavery era.
The billionaire sponsors of the Tea Party drama got pawns running up and down the streets. The previous administration turned record surpluses to record deficits. It went into two unpaid wars. It blew up another trillion on tax cuts. It did not give drugs to the seniors. It gave a give away to Big Pharma.
That the government has to spend big when families and businesses are stepping back on their spending is elementary economics, it is quite basic. It is like demand and supply. Even George Bush knows that. But once you get the economy back on track, then you bring down the deficit which is not hard to do at that point because the revenues are coming in. Deficit spending in a recession is not only a good idea. It is the only idea.
Since Ronald Reagan real wages have not much gone up. There were a few years of anomaly in the Clinton years. But otherwise the no movement has been the norm. Barack Obama has to set the tone for a generation. He has to put into place a worldview whereby it is a rising tide lifts all boats kind of thing. And so you can't have the political pendulum swing the other way right now.
Those who have the most to lose seem to be the least interested in fighting even when they have at their disposal the mightiest political office ever created in the history of humanity. The apathy of the powerless is mesmerizing.
The New Yorker: October 25, 2010: Harry Reid And Sharron Angle Square Off In Nevada: The third group was the American Family Business Institute, which is dedicated to abolishing the inheritance tax....... “Our Contract with America is the Constitution”; “I want Harry Reid to stop doing more for Nevada—we can’t afford it!” ..... repeal the health-care-reform bill; liquidate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal home-mortgage agencies; oppose the Administration’s lawsuit aimed at overturning Arizona’s immigration law. ...... the anti-tax Club for Growth, the Tea Party Express, and American Crossroads, the new conservative organization co-founded by Karl Rove...... Nevada is in such bad shape that comparisons to the Great Depression are justified. It has the highest foreclosure rate, the highest bankruptcy rate, proportionally the highest state budget deficit, and the highest state unemployment rate in the country....... Congress passed more major pieces of progressive legislation in one session than it has in decades. ....... Nevada .. the most nationally powerful politician in its history....... she has called for abolishing the Departments of Energy and Education and the Environmental Protection Agency, and for privatizing Social Security, Medicare, and the Veterans Administration....... “Man up, Harry Reid!” .... Reid plainly had gone into the debate with the idea that he could demonstrate that Angle is “extreme,” but nothing seemed to stick....... some of the distinctive aspects of American life in the twenty-first century (loosening of social bonds, soaring hope in new ventures, rootlessness, risk, debt) have been cultured ...... more recently, he has called Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, the “hottest member” of the Senate ..... Everybody in Nevada politics has a story about the brusque telephone calls he makes at all hours..... Charged with cleaning up the casinos, Reid faced down the real-life versions of the Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci characters in “Casino.” ...... only once in his long career has he won more than fifty per cent of the vote in an election. He’s a will-power politician...... He took personal umbrage at George W. Bush. “I have made no secret of my antipathy toward the second President Bush,” he wrote. He added that Bush “is an ideologue who has done incalculable damage to the government, reputation, and moral standing of the United States of America.” He twice publicly called Bush a liar, explaining, “When one lies, one is a liar.” Late in his Presidency, Bush summoned Reid to the White House and tried to appease him. “I never went to Kennebunkport as a kid,” Reid recalls. “I never went anywhere. And I’ve got no blue blood in my veins, just some desert sand. So as he and I sat there in the Oval Office, I said little in return.” ...... practically the only good thing that ever happened in the life of his father was joining a union ...... “The American government is the greatest force for good in the history of mankind”; Social Security is “the greatest social program since the fishes and loaves.” ..... most establishment Republicans in Nevada, is backing Reid over Sharron Angle ...... “Social Security unites all Democrats. It’s the founding principle of our party” ..... he had spotted Barack Obama as a comer and given him a prominent assignment ..... Without the barest hint of braggadocio or conceit, and with what I would describe as deep humility, he said quietly: ‘I have a gift, Harry.’ ...... Reid’s gift—relentlessly working the Senate Democratic caucus, member by preening member—is one that Obama lacked any interest in during his four years in the Senate..... Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist, and Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut almost-Republican ..... In the partnership between the Obama White House and the Reid Senate, Obama supplied the eloquence and grace and originated the policy ideas. Reid’s role was to get it done. Between Obama’s Inauguration, in January, 2009, and the congressional recess early last month, more consequential liberal legislation passed than at any time since the Great Society: health-care reform, the economic-stimulus package, financial regulation, a big education bill, the rescue of the auto industry, and the second phase of the rescue of the big banks. Others (a large expansion of protected public lands, funding for universal broadband access) didn’t get the attention they normally would have......... Reid would explain that each senator is a “brand”: Maria Cantwell, of Washington, is high-tech ...... respecting the power of committee chairmen helps to win their loyalty..... In 2005, Reid decided to establish an early Presidential caucus in Nevada, like Iowa’s..... Reid had the wit to become actively involved in the Republican primary campaign, so as to get the opponent he wanted in the fall...... She is unlike Reid in almost every way except in her relentless determination..... she and Reid are in a dead heat in the polls ...... Reid, a teetotaller who doesn’t gamble ..... beginning in 2007, and escalating in 2008 and 2009, Nevada went spectacularly bust. Last year, the state lost population for the first time since the Great Depression. Next year, the state legislature will meet to balance a budget that, on a two-year cycle, has a three-billion-dollar deficit, on total spending of less than seven billion dollars. The construction industry—Nevada’s second-largest, after casinos, during the boom years—has nearly disappeared. More than half the students in the Clark County public school system are eligible for the federal school-lunch program........ “You had a large group of people from California who took advantage of the system. Come here, buy a house, no money down, take out a HELOC—a home-equity line of credit—use it to buy another home, get a second mortgage, get some cash. And then they’re gone—poof. They all came at the same time and they all left at the same time....... MGM is not just Nevada’s largest employer and taxpayer; it is proportionally among the largest single taxpayers in any state, supplying eleven per cent of the budget of Nevada’s government. ....... Angle’s campaign ignores what would seem to be a basic rule of elective politics: that you have to promise to deliver government services to your constituents, especially in hard times. ...... European governments get into trouble by overloading on pensions and other expensive benefits; American governments get into trouble by practicing a kind of casino liberalism, in which credit flows too easily, everybody goes too deeply into debt, and if the growth ever stops, everything crashes.
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