The Courier Times Gives It Up For “No-Corp-Tax” Pat

In a thoroughly unsurprising development, the Bucks County Courier Times endorsed Pat Toomey for the U.S. Senate from PA today (here)…

For sure, (Joe) Sestak, a Delaware County congressman and retired admiral, is far to the left of Toomey. He has energetically supported President Obama’s initiatives on the economy and health care reform – and makes no apologies for that. He argues that the stimulus bills and the bailouts, vilified now as immense debt diggers, were necessary to stanch economic disaster and widespread unemployment.

Looking at the glass “half full” for a minute – when it comes to the bailout of GM, the company is now poised for an IPO and may actually turn a profit in the short term, as noted here (throwing “good money after good,” if you will).

Continuing…

A Harvard graduate, Sestak was equally supportive of health care reform, including a liberal-favored government-run public option that was not included in the final law.

I hate to break the news to the Courier Times, but Sestak voted against the public option, as noted here (see “Fun With Committee Votes”).

Continuing…

Toomey, a former Lehigh Valley congressman, would extend the cuts for all Americans and pay for them by cutting spending, including rescinding the unspent portion of federal stimulus money.

As noted here as of last July, “According to Recovery.gov, $55 billion of the unspent ARRA money comes in the form of tax benefits for middle class and working families.”

So, by saying he wants to reclaim “unspent funds” from the stimulus, what Toomey is really saying is that he wants to raise our taxes.

Continuing with the editorial, Toomey also says that he wants to “cap discretionary spending unrelated to national security”; as far as I’m concerned, that’s an extreme position when even a partisan like Senate Repug Bob Corker of Tennessee says here that defense cuts have to be “on the table.”

Also, I’m concerned that Toomey says he would “create competition among health care insurers,” which to me is more code in favor of allowing insurers to compete across state lines – it doesn’t make me happy to point out that a mechanism for this is already in place in HCR, as Ezra Klein tells us here…

(1) “Let families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines.” This is a long-running debate between liberals and conservatives. Currently, states regulate insurers. Liberals feel that’s too weak and allows for too much variation, and they want federal regulation of insurers. Conservatives feel that states over-regulate insurers, and they want insurers to be able to cluster in the state with the least regulation and offer policies nationwide, much as credit card companies do today.

To the surprise and dismay of many liberals, the Senate health-care bill included a compromise with the conservative vision for insurance regulation. The relevant policy is in Section 1333, which allows the formation of interstate compacts. Under this provision, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho (for instance) could agree to allow insurers based in any of those states to sell plans in all of them. This prevents a race to the bottom, as Idaho has to be comfortable with Arizona’s regulations, and the policies have to have a minimum level of benefits (something that even Rep. Paul Ryan believes), but it’s a lot closer to the conservative ideal.

And of course, Toomey supports “tort reform”; as noted here, it was enacted in Ohio but hasn’t lowered rates (as if Toomey cares about that).

Oh, and Toomey of course supports privatization of Social Security, and the Courier Times editorial board is just ducky with that…what a shame that they apparently didn’t read the following letter in their own newspaper today (here)…

On the subject of Social Security, the president cannot direct the Social Security Administration to issue a COLA. The COLA is mandated by law using the Cost of Living Index for urban and clerical workers for the previous fiscal year.

If a COLA is not generated, then the law prohibits a COLA for the following year. Congress can change this by amending the law to consider the cost of living for seniors.

Those receiving Social Security were sent a $250 payment. This was requested by the president and Congress approved it with a vote. It was funded by the stimulus money. If you do not think you got this, check your bank statements for May or June. Some federal retirees got a tax credit and not a direct payment.

Social Security is solvent for the next 25 years. The money being paid covers the obligations so it is not adding to the deficit. The deficit is caused by unfunded spending, such as tax cuts with no corresponding cuts in spending, or two wars lasting a decade that included billions of dollars to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq.

If workers are allowed to divert some of their Social Security payments to a private account, that will result in a loss of funding to Social Security; and as an obligation set by law the taxpayers will have to make up the loss, higher taxes, to provide the benefits to the beneficiaries. No one has considered this as the unintended consequence of “privatization.”

Susan Gibbons
Fairless Hills, PA

Finally, Toomey supports reducing business tax rates – please watch Keith Olbermann’s report here (first video) and then try to tell me why I should give a fig about tax liability for corporations.

Meanwhile, to support someone who will actually support us (and time is short now, people), click here.

Monday Mashup Part One (10/11/10)

(At least one of these items is from last week, but this is the first chance I’ve had to post on it.)

1) Former Senator (and would-be Repug party presidential nominee, apparently – dear God, please let him win the nomination…I’ll post forever!) Man-On-Dog opined as follows in (where else?) The Philadelphia Inquirer recently here…

Liberal elites are once again using health-care policy to advance one of their agenda items, this time on the abortion front.

The American Civil Liberties Union has launched an effort to force religious hospitals to provide abortions. The organization is asking the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – which controls nearly $800 billion in President Obama’s latest budget – to force hospitals to provide abortions or lose federal funding.

The views of the centers’ administrator, Dr. Donald Berwick, are so controversial that Obama had to appoint him while Congress was in recess. Now he is overseeing the writing of countless new health-care regulations, and the ACLU can’t let an opportunity like that slip by.

Using a handful of mostly anonymous anecdotes about pregnant women who were denied abortions at religiously affiliated hospitals, the group is demanding that Berwick’s agency rewrite the rules of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act to force care providers to perform abortions.

I’m not going to post about Dr. Berwick because I don’t want to rehash any right-wing arguments and thus inadvertently give them more oxygen than they deserve. Instead, I want to focus on an “anonymous anecdote,” as Little Ricky glibly puts it, that seems to be a lynchpin for his specious argument (of course, he con-vee-niently chooses to downplay the anonymity right patients have anyway due to HIPAA regulations).

This tells us of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, AZ, a Catholic-owned hospital that provided a life-saving abortion to a young mother of four who was dying from pulmonary hypertension.

As the story tells us…

The hospital’s Ethics Committee determined that her physicians would be permitted to perform the abortion under the Ethical and Religious Directives under which Catholic hospitals operate. Though the hospital provided the necessary care in this instance, the Catholic hierarchy — via the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (PDF) and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix (PDF) — subsequently issued statements denouncing the emergency abortion, and making clear that abortion can essentially never be performed at a Catholic hospital. This means that the next woman who enters a Catholic hospital in need of an emergency abortion could die.

And as this story tells us, the hospital administrator, Sr. Margaret McBride, was “automatically excommunicated” by Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted.

The story from the ACLU web site tells us that the group “asked the federal government to ensure that religiously affiliated hospitals provide emergency reproductive health care as required by the Emergency Medical Conditions and Women in Labor Act and the Conditions of Participation for hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds (PDF).”

Of course, given what passes for Santorum’s thought processes, forcing Catholic hospitals to comply with the law automatically gets spun into forcing health providers who oppose abortion to act against their “conscience.”

So just remember, you would-be moms who run into catastrophic circumstances with your pregnancy, as far as Santorum is concerned, you can either save your own life and commit a mortal sin in the process, or die a slow, excruciating death with a clear conscience, just so long as you “propagate” the faith.

2) Also, I haven’t had much to say about columnist Deroy Murdock, but this item was impossible to ignore, particularly the following…

Washington dictates showerhead water pressure, limits the capacity of flush toilets, and essentially will ban Edison-style light bulbs as of 2014.

Yep, looks like those dern terrists are even gonna come after us in our bathrooms (Godless heathens, including those danged li-bu-ruuls).

This tells us that the law phasing out incandescent light bulbs was signed in 2007, so whatever you may think of that (and the jury seems to still be out, as they say, on the replacement-type bulbs…I’ve read that though fluorescent bulbs contain a smaller amount of mercury than the traditional incandescent bulbs, they pose more of a risk of mercury exposure than the older type if they break), you can’t blame Obama for that (not as president, anyway).

But in terms of the water from the shower heads, the Murdoch Street Journal tells us here that consumers mostly aren’t affected, and 95 percent of existing shower heads are compliant anyway.

So it looks like Deroy Murdock is all wet (sorry, too easy).

3) Finally, it’s time for another chapter of Fun With Poll Numbers Starring Former Laura Bush Employee Andrew Malcolm (here)…

According to president No. 44, George Bush presided over eight years of failed policies and left a huge mess that Obama has been unable to clean up, even with Joe Biden’s verbal help.

But here’s the problem. And it’s a big one: The American public is now disagreeing with Barack Obama on that issue, too. A new CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows the pair are virtually tied now in terms of approval of their presidencies.

This tells us the following (“Photoshopped” pic and all)…

A new CNN/Opinion Dynamics poll released today should provide some hope to Democrats and cause a bit of concern for the GOP ahead of the mid term elections. The poll revealed that a majority of Americans (53%) blame George W. Bush and the GOP not Barack Obama and the Democrats for the nation’s current economic problems.

The CNN/ Opinion Dynamics poll asked a very simple question. Who do you hold responsible for the nation’s current economic problems George W. Bush and the GOP, or Barack Obama and the Democrats? Fifty three percent of respondents blamed Bush and the Republicans, while only 33% blamed Obama and the Democrats, 10% blamed both parties, 3% said neither, and 1% were not sure.

In the poll cited by Malcolm, the numbers are 47 percent Obama and 45 percent Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History (which, despite it all, are twice those at least of a former moose-hunting, half-term Alaska governor, as noted here).

Tuesday Mashup Part One (10/5/10)

1) I give you the following recent example of “High Broderism” (here)…

The Democrats were lying in wait for John Boehner when the Republican leader of the House announced that he would address the subject of congressional reform in a speech Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute.

Before Boehner opened his mouth, Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted him in a statement charging that “Congressional Republicans and Mr. Boehner have stood in the way of Democratic reform efforts in Congress for the last four years, and now they want to take America back to the exact same failed policies of the past that put the corporate special interests ahead of the middle class.”

That is par for the course in this campaign season, and it represents the sort of reflexive partisanship that voters are understandably sick of.

Actually, what it represents is the utterly craven and pointless Republican obstruction that voters are understandably sick of.

And how does The Esteemed Beltway Journalist know what “voters are sick of” anyway? Why, he takes his periodic jaunt to a rib shack in Dubuque or a Rotary Club meeting in Fond du Lac to find some quotes from individuals who perhaps are not as well versed in the art of media spin as he is that reinforce his pre-defined narrative (i.e., Republicans know what’s best, and when they force their agenda, the Dems should respond, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?,” lest there be a breach of “bipartisanship”).

Fortunately, Bob Herbert of the New York Times is a member of the reality-based community, and he wrote the following on The Orange One today (here)…

It’s beyond astonishing to me that John Boehner has a real chance to be speaker of the House of Representatives.

I’ve always thought of Mr. Boehner as one of the especially sleazy figures in a capital seething with sleaze. I remember writing about that day back in the mid-’90s when this slick, chain-smoking, quintessential influence-peddler decided to play Santa Claus by handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Congressional sleazes right on the floor of the House.

It was incredible, even to some Republicans. The House was in session, and here was a congressman actually distributing money on the floor. Other, more serious, representatives were engaged in debates that day on such matters as financing for foreign operations and a proposed amendment to the Constitution to outlaw desecration of the flag. Mr. Boehner was busy desecrating the House itself by doing the bidding of big tobacco.

Embarrassed members of the G.O.P. tried to hush up the matter, but I got a tip and called Mr. Boehner’s office. His chief of staff, Barry Jackson, was hardly contrite. “They were contributions from tobacco P.A.C.’s,” he said.

When I asked why the congressman would hand the money out on the floor of the House, Mr. Jackson’s answer seemed an echo of Willie Sutton’s observation about banks. “The floor,” he said, “is where the members meet with each other.”

…

The Times’s Eric Lipton, in an article last month, noted that Mr. Boehner “maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R.J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.

“They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.”

The hack who once handed out checks on the House floor is now a coddled, gilded flunky of the nation’s big-time corporate elite.

And let us not forget the following Boehner moment here, in which he said “Know that I have all of you in my trusted hands” to the Consumer Bankers Association, which ended up losing as a result of legislation to reform the student loan scam enacted under the happily-now-long-departed 109th Congress.

Returning to Broder, I give you the following…

What Boehner called “a cycle of gridlock” afflicts both sides of the Capitol, and has been enabled by both parties, depending on who had the majority. As he was honest enough to admit, the abuses did not start when Pelosi took the gavel, and both sides have been guilty of twisting the rules.

Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if Broder were “honest enough to admit” this?

Update 10/12/10: And in case anyone out there thought I was exaggerating, I give you this from one of Broder’s pals (h/t Atrios).

2) Next, I give you the following from former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm (here)…

(Repug U.S. House Rep “Joe” Cao of Louisiana) said he wanted to work for the benefit of his constituents, whatever that took. So when it came time earlier this year to vote on the House floor on President Obama’s massive healthcare bill, the first Republican to hold that district since 1891 became the only Republican in the entire House to vote in favor of the Democratic president’s bill.

His wasn’t the deciding vote. But, yes, that bipartisan decision caused him some grief among GOP colleagues.

Cao hoped the president might reward that bipartisanship by endorsing him in the Nov. 2 midterm election against a Democratic state legislator named Cedric Richmond. Or at least by staying out of the race, one of 435 across the country.

And this gives Malcolm an excuse in his utterly demented quest to demonize every possible thing Obama does (including stuff Malcolm imagines, like this).

As noted here, Cao did vote initially for passage of health care reform, but he voted against the version that emerged from the Senate-House conference, which is a particular problem for him because one-fifth of the residents of his district don’t have health insurance. That has a lot more to do with Cao’s current electoral trouble than anything Obama could have said or done.

As noted here, though, Malcolm has been wrong about health care reform before, and I’m sure will be again; when it comes to his own particular brand of wankery, I’m afraid he is beyond hope of a cure.

3) Finally, yesterday was the ninth anniversary of the death of a Florida man from an anthrax attack; more information is available here (one of others that took place immediately after the 9/11 attacks).

And I would say that that presents a good opportunity to move, at long last (even in a potential lame duck session) on the bill to investigate the attacks sponsored by Dem U.S. House Rep Rush Holt here.

Wednesday Mashup (9/29/10)

Some of these are a few days old, but this is my first chance to say anything in response…

1) John Harwood of the New York Times told us the following recently (here)…

Mr. Obama aims to use President George W. Bush’s record in the same way Mr. Reagan used Mr. Carter’s. It was Mr. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress, he tells campaign audiences, who drove the economy “into a ditch.”

The velocity of contemporary media, not to mention its ferocity, may render that argument more difficult to make. In the ever-advancing news cycle, on cable television and the Internet, news tends to get old faster.

Soo…Harwood is arguing that the Internet will make people forget who created the mess that Obama inherited?

Not according to this.

2) Also, Marc Thiessen, in the midst of some shockingly sensible commentary, provided what I thought was a hilarious observation here…

The arrival of conservative insurgents will fundamentally transform the Senate in other ways. Some of the worst bills in the Senate get approved by unanimous consent, which means all it takes is one senator to object. Today, for example, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma wages a lonely campaign for fiscal discipline by objecting to authorization bills where spending increases are not offset by spending cuts elsewhere. But it gets tiring being the skunk at the garden party every week. Soon there will be a raft of newly elected senators willing to join him in saying “no” to bad legislation.

This tells us that Coburn is holding up a food safety bill costing $1.4 billion because he claims that the bill isn’t paid for. Of course, no immediate calculation is available telling us how much it would cost to hospitalize victims of something similar to the recent egg contamination outbreak were that to occur again – my guess is that it would cost more than $1.4 billion (And as far as I’m concerned, Coburn’s supposed fiscal prudence is more Beltway media mythology – how about cutting $95 million in useless “abstinence only” funding, as noted here?).

What I object to most in Thiessen’s column, though, is the notion that, in the god awful event that people such as Ken Buck, Sharron Angle, etc. were actually elected to the Senate, they would restore some kind of fiscal rectitude.

In response, I think we should look at a hero of the teabaggers from a few months ago, and that would be Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts. As noted here (hat tip to lynnrockets.wordpress.com)…

WASHINGTON — Senator Scott Brown says he will fight to fund a multibillion-dollar weapons program that could generate jobs in Massachusetts but that the Pentagon insists it does not need, sparking criticism that Brown is breaking his campaign vow to rein in wasteful spending.

The Bay State Republican’s support for General Electric’s bid to build a backup engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter puts the new senator in the middle of a confrontation over congressional earmarks with the Obama administration, which has threatened a presidential veto if Congress inserts funding for the engine for the fifth year in a row.

…

“This is yet another example of how ‘fiscally responsible’ lawmakers have a giant blind spot when it comes to defense spending in their districts,’’ said Laura Peterson, a senior national security analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group that monitors earmarks. “His support was clearly driven by parochial concerns rather than financial ones.’’

“If Scott Brown helps out GE he will be doing exactly the opposite of what he said he would do when he ran,’’ said Loren Thompson, a defense budget specialist at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., which is supported by multiple defense firms, including Pratt & Whitney.

And in another related “pot, meet kettle” development, I give you this.

3) Finally, Joe Pitts was given more online real estate at Tucker Carlson’s Crayon Scribble Page recently to concoct the following (here)…

The first objective of the Pledge to America is to create jobs, end economic uncertainty, and make America more competitive. This means standing against job-killing tax hikes that are due to take effect on January 1, 2011. Our plan calls for growing new and existing small businesses through a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their business income. We also need to repeal the burdensome new tax-reporting requirement created by the health care reform bill.

As noted here…

Republicans forecast disaster when the Democratic Congress and President Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993, and forecast rising prosperity when taxes were cut in 2001. Both forecasts were wrong.

From the end of 1993 through the end of 2000, the American economy grew at a compound annual rate of 3.9 percent. Since then, the average rate has been 1.6 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose at a compound rate of 13.1 percent a year during the first period, assuming reinvestment of dividends. Since then investors have not even broken even. Of course, there is no way to know what would have happened had tax laws not changed in those years.

Pancake Joe also tells us…

The Pledge calls for an immediate stop to stimulus spending. Over $200 billion remains unspent and we must act quickly to prevent more waste. This also means permanently cancelling the TARP bailout program and returning the money to the Treasury.

As the New York Times noted recently here in a fine editorial about the “pledge,” the recent Dodd-Frank amendment in financial reform legislation prohibited more TARP funding.

The editorial also tells us the following…

While it promises to create jobs, control deficit spending and restore Americans’ trust in government, (the “pledge”) is devoid of tough policy choices. This new “governing agenda” does not say how the Republicans would replace revenue that would be lost from permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts, or how they would manage Medicare and Social Security, or even which discretionary programs would go when they slash $100 billion in spending. Their record at all of these things is dismal.

The best way to understand the pledge is as a bid to co-opt the Tea Party by a Republican leadership that wants to sound insurrectionist but is the same old Washington elite. These are the folks who slashed taxes on the rich, turned a surplus into a crushing deficit, and helped unleash the financial crisis that has thrown millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes.

Not only are the players the same, the policies are the same. Just more tax cuts for the rich and more deficit spending. We find it hard to believe that even the most disaffected voters will be taken in. But again, these are strange and worrying times.

Returning to Pitts…

One way to get back to balanced budgets is to repeal the healthcare law. Contrary to White House claims, the Congressional Budget Office and Medicare’s own actuaries have shown that Obamacare will not pay for itself. This new law will be an extraordinary weight on government, businesses, and, most importantly, doctors and patients. We are committed to repealing the law and replacing it with free-market solutions.

No word on whether or not Pitts wants to “repeal” the defense budget, for example, and replace it with “free market solutions” (many expenditures in the budget will not pay for themselves and are “an extraordinary weight”…of course, Pitts con-vee-niently singles out one of his favorite targets).

Meanwhile, in the matter of the financing of health care reform, the following should be noted (here)…

(The Congressional Budget Office) has finished its work and will release the official preliminary score…But here are the basic numbers: The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period. In the second 10 years — so, 2020 to 2029 — it will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion. The legislation will cover 32 million Americans, or 95 percent of the legal population.

And if Pitts had read the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) report that was released in April of this year, he would know that increases in national health expenditures are largest in 2016 and “gradually decline thereafter” (here).

Update 10/1/10: As noted here, HCR is “paid for” anyway, so Pitts’ entire talking point looks particularly ridiculous.

When I think of the GOP’s “pledge,” I think of a household product of the same name that applies a shine to furniture, but does nothing to structurally reinforce the product to which it is applied. And in terms of making something look attractive without implementing economically sound fundamental fixes, I think of the GOP’s “pledge” in about the same way.

Once more, to help Lois Herr, Joe Pitts’ Dem opponent for his PA-16 U.S. House seat, click here.

Tuesday Mashup (9/7/10)

1) I don’t know how many people remember the story of 5-year-old Kyler Van Nocker (pictured), a little boy who suffered from neuroblastoma, which is a very rare form of childhood cancer that targets the nervous system and creates tumors throughout the body.

As Think Progress told us here last February…

Due to successful treatment in 2007, Van Nocker’s cancer went into remission, giving him 12 months of pain-free life. Unfortunately, in Sept. 2008, the cancer returned, and Van Nocker was once again in need of treatment. Unfortunately, his health insurer, HealthAmerica, refused to pay for one form of treatment doctors believe could save his life (MIBG treatment) because they consider it “investigational/experimental” since it has yet to be approved by the FDA.

Yet in April 2008, the insurer approved cheaper treatment for Van Nocker that was also “experimental,” prompting Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky to ask, “So why, pray tell, is HealthAmerica playing the ‘experimental therapy’ card in the case of the MIBG treatment Kyler now needs? Gee, money couldn’t have anything to do with the decision, could it?”

Well, as Polaneczky tells us in her column today, Kyler Van Nocker died last weekend at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, three months shy of his sixth birthday.

Also…

Drained as he was yesterday by grief, (Kyler’s father) Paul was still able to express outrage at the immorality of the American health-care machine, in which the expertise of world-renowned doctors – like those who treated Kyler – is routinely usurped by insurance bureaucrats responsible first and foremost to shareholders, not to patients.

“Because of the lawsuit, I have had to behave and keep quiet about what I think,” lest he jeopardize Kyler’s case in any way, he said. “Well, I don’t have to keep quiet anymore. I am a pissed-off dad whose son’s life was made hell by bean-counters who got in the way again and again of what was right.”

And gee, where were the Koch Brothers-funded teabaggers to offer what they could in support of the Van Nockers? You know, to do something actually constructive instead of parading around with their racist signs and funny clothes, screaming about a government takeover of health care, or whatever? I guess they think our delivery of health care in this country, whereby a family could become utterly destitute while an insurance conglomerate refuses to fund treatment for a sick family member, is just A-OK.

Our deepest sympathies go out to the Van Nockers over their awful loss, as well as admiration for their endurance and courage in the face of an ordeal no one should ever have to undergo.

2) Returning to the more mundane world of politics, I give you the following from The Hill (here)…

GOP Rep. Geoff Davis (Ky.) used the weekly Republican radio address to pound the Obama administration over its economic record, suggesting that the economy would revive quickly if the government loosened a swath of business regulations.

Davis’s address came a day after statistics were released by the Labor Department that showed 67,000 new jobs were added in August — more than expected — but the nation still saw a net loss of 54,000 jobs.

If you want to read what Davis actually said, be my guest, but suffice it to say that it was a rehash of every other Republican talking point about the economy (including Davis’s claim that the stimulus didn’t provide jobs, which is particularly hilarious coming from him seeing that, as Think Progress tells us here, Davis was one of the 114 (!) Repug lawmakers deriding the “stim” while taking credit for the jobs it provided).

And as noted here, there’s the little matter of about $30 grand in campaign donations Davis received from Tom DeLay that he never donated or returned. And on top of that, this post tells us how he slashed funding for Medicaid, food stamps and student loan subsidies, abused Congressional franking privileges, sided with his wealthy donors over our troops by opposing caps on military payday loans, and has no trouble attacking the patriotism of those who disagree with him.

With all of this in mind, let’s do what we can to help Davis’s opponent (and disabled Iraq war vet) John Waltz; to say Waltz faces an uphill challenge in this heavily Republican district is an understatement (and Waltz is a true progressive who deserves whatever support we can provide).

3) Finally, I give you the latest from Tucker Carlson’s crayon scribble page (here)…

Teachers who may be worried that their pupils don’t have enough access to curriculum materials with a liberal slant will be pleased to know that the lefty Nation magazine is revamping their Educators Program, which includes a weekly series of teacher guides designed to influence what is taught in schools

A spokesman for the magazine told The Daily Caller that the magazine wants to ensure students are exposed to liberal thinking, citing what he said was a tendency for classes to exclude progressive ideas and viewpoints.

And as you might expect, all of this is treated for yuks by TDC (including the pic of Malcolm McDowell’s “conditioning” experiment in “A Clockwork Orange” – nice touch), though if you read to the bottom of the story, you learn the following…

According to the Nation’s spokesman Ben Wyskida, the magazine has proposed teaming up with National Review on a collaborative education program, but no decisions have been made. (The National Review’s publisher, Jack) Fowler said they were open to it, but he was not making it a priority.

“If there was a backburner for the backburner for the backburner, this would be on it,” he said.

Yeah, that sounds like a really serious commitment, all right.

Well, at least The Nation is proposing educating students on more than one point of view.

As opposed to this example (definitely not a shining moment for what passes for conservative thought).

Some Acute Schizophrenia Republican Party Blues

With apologies to The Kinks, Rachel Maddow explains (all the stuff they were for before they were against).

Monday Mashup Part One (8/2/10)

1) I received the following communication from Democracy for America, and I’m going to share it with you because I was uncharacteristically disturbed by it…

That’s right, I said it — Insider Democrats scored another epic fail.

I mean, just take a look at this headline in yesterday’s New York Times — “Plan to Aid 9/11 Victims Is Rejected in House.”

Here’s the best part — the vote was 255-159 in favor of the bill. Now, I wasn’t a math major, but 255 was bigger than 159 last I checked.

So, what happened? Democrats brought up the bill under special rules requiring two-thirds support to pass. So even though the bill had clear majority support, it still failed.

This isn’t the sort of bold progressive leadership I fought for in 2006 and 2008. I worked to elect Democrats to get stuff done, but they keep letting Republicans trip them up with parliamentary tricks. I’m sick of it.

That’s why here at DFA we don’t support just any Democrat, we support Better Democrats. We support Democrats with backbone, who are willing to lead on the tough issues and get stuff done — Democrats like Howard Dean and Alan Grayson. But we can’t do it alone. We rely on small contributions from supporters across the country to get our work done. Contribute today to support our mission.

Help elect Democrats with backbone, leaders who know that 255 is bigger than 159 — Contribute $10 right now.

Progressive legislation has been killed or watered down over and over again. The public option — killed. Climate change legislation — killed. Wall Street reform — watered down. Now, Democrats are letting Republicans kill bills to help 9/11 victims.

In 2006, Insider Democrats told us to sit down and be quiet — we needed to retake the Congress, even if it meant we weren’t electing the most progressive candidates.

In 2008, Insider Democrats told us to sit down and be quiet — we needed to retake the White House and get 60 votes in the Senate, even if it meant we weren’t electing the most progressive candidates.

Well, now it’s 2010 and it’s time they learned DFA members aren’t going to sit down and be quiet. We’re not going to support candidates just because they have a “D” next to their name.

But if we’re going to fire up progressives and elect a real, progressive majority then we need to start today. So here’s the plan: We’re going to put staff on the ground in critical states where our progressive primary challengers won, like Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and Elaine Marshall in North Carolina. And we’re going to work to elect progressives like Beth Krom in so-called “red” districts, just like we did with Alan Grayson in 2008.

Help elect a progressive majority with real backbone — Contribute today.

I don’t want to see headlines like that one in the New York Times again. I want to wake up on the day after Election Day and see “Progressives Win” in big, bold letters. Contribute today to help make it happen.

-Arshad

Arshad Hasan, Executive Director
Democracy for America

If nothing else, this is one of the worst fundraising appeals I’ve ever seen.

There have been plenty of episodes where the Democratic Party has not shown much of a spine (FISA, HAMP, not fighting enough for the public option in health care reform, not backing up the glowing rhetoric from Number 44 about the climate crisis with actual legislation to combat it, etc.), but the recent vote over funding health benefits for first responders on 9/11 is not one of them as far as I’m concerned (indeed, Anthony Weiner commendably flipped out at his fellow New York rep, Repug Peter King, over his parliamentary trick that helped defeat the bill, as noted here).

As the HuffPo link tells us, the House Democrats brought up the bill in suspense of the rules to prevent the Repugs from gumming up the works with more of their pointless amendments, a tactic they’ve worked to near perfection in the Senate. However, by doing so, it dictated that a 2/3rds vote would be required for passage.

To me, this is “epic fail” all right, but not on the part of the Democrats (who voted in their entirety for the bill along with 12 Republicans).

As I said, if DFA wants to go after the party leadership for fundraising (a bit counterproductive, I would think, but oh well), they need to choose their targets better next time.

2) Also, John Harwood of the New York Times tells us the following here today…

…leading Democrats rule out a short-term, across-the-board extension of the expiring Bush tax cuts, even though a temporary extension might stimulate the economy.

Does Harwood have a degree in economics or finance that we don’t know about? If he does, then why isn’t he writing for the business section?

Continuing…

Given the economy’s weakness, Mark Zandi, an independent economist, recently warned that letting taxes rise now would be a bad idea.

…
With impressive discipline, Republicans have argued that Mr. Obama’s economic policies represent big-spending government gone wild. The argument starts with the 2009 stimulus law.

Never mind that Mr. Zandi, whose message on taxes Republicans have welcomed, was a co-author of a paper last week that found “very substantial” economic benefit from the $787 billion spending bill. Republicans said it represented a wasteful and damaging increase in deficits.

I thought Harwood’s explanation here of what Zandi said was confusing; this WaPo story clarifies things somewhat, telling us that Zandi said that “The Bush tax cuts should be extended permanently for families with annual incomes of less than $250,000 and should be phased out slowly for those making more than that.”

And the Repugs oppose letting Dubya’s godawful tax cuts expire “with impressive discipline”? Is Harwood auditioning for The Weakly Standard?

Or his he just taking hallucinogenic drugs?

3) Finally (and concerning the economy and tax cuts also), Joe Pitts took time out from his busy schedule of voting No to concoct more drivel for The Tucker Carlson Vanity Project (here)…

On January 1, 2010 Americans could see the largest tax increase in the history of our nation—$3.8 trillion over ten years. Every single tax bracket would be increased, child tax credits would be slashed and the estate tax would return in full force, if Congress does not act.

This tax hike will affect every American individual and business. Most in Congress agree that we shouldn’t sit by idly and let the economy grind to a halt, but there is sharp disagreement about whether some Americans should have to pay more next year.

I wonder if PA-16’s waste of protoplasm knows that, as noted here, “this year the Bush tax cuts will give millionaires more in tax breaks than 90 percent of Americans will make in total income”?

And as dday tells us here…

Returning the tax rates to the Clinton years, a time of historic prosperity, would bring $2.6 trillion dollars back into the government, which can roll back out in services in a highly progressive fashion. It saves the government money in the long-term and would allow the funding base for all kinds of programs that promote economic equality. It could also allow for immediate spending to arrest the jobs crisis, and the kind of larger deficit that we need immediately, with the funding rolling in down the road.

I know it’s tempting to go “Nyah nyah” at the teabaggers and inform them that the Obama White House has cut taxes and not raised them, but the phrase “cutting off your nose to spite your face” comes to mind.

Uh, yep.

And Pitts tells us he’s concerned that “child tax credits could be slashed”?

Is Pitts SERIOUSLY trying to communicate to us that he cares about kids?

I don’t know whether to laugh or pick up my PC monitor and try to throw it out the window in response!

This tells us that Pitts opposed a five-year renewal of the Head Start antipoverty program for children of ages 3 to 5 and the Early Head Start program for infants, toddlers and pregnant women.

The same link also provides information on how Pitts voted against a bill empowering the FDA to regulate cigarette content, requiring disclosure of product ingredients, banning cigarette marketing to children, and requiring more prominent health warnings.

This tells us that Pitts voted against a bill providing federal employees with additional benefits under the Family and Medical Leave Act; the bill would entitle civil servants to four to eight weeks of paid leave to care for a newly born, adopted, or fostered child (such leave is now available to civil servants without pay).

This tells us that Pitts voted No on HR 1256, a bill to begin federal regulation of tobacco products. The bill empowers the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigarette content, require disclosure of product ingredients, ban cigarette marketing to children, and require more prominent health warnings (the bill would preempt state tobacco laws).

Also, Pitts tells the following…

In my district in southeastern Pennsylvania, farmers are especially vulnerable to the estate tax. Many are eking out a living farming land that is worth millions to developers.

I wonder if Pancake Joe is aware that Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Jon Kyl want to set the estate tax rate for family farms at 35 percent (here – argue about the merits of this if you wish, but I think it speaks volumes about how out of touch Pitts is that he somehow doesn’t know this).

Residents of PA-16 who may happen to be reading this, please click here to do all you can on behalf of Lois Herr, Pitts’ Dem opponent this fall. By sending Pitts back to private life, you will, among other things, give him ample free time to write for The Daily Caller as much as he wants.

Friday Mashup Part One (7/23/10)

1) Christine Flowers tells us here today that, as long as the Obama Administration is apologizing to former USDA worker Shirley Sherrod for their overreaction to the doctored videotape from Andrew Breitbart of Sherrod’s speech to the NAACP, they should apologize to Alberto Gonzales also (and speak for yourself about “short-memory spans,” Christine)…

Given our short memory spans, here’s a brief recap. Toward the end of the Bush administration, the Gonzales-led Department of Justice was criticized for firing a handful of U.S. attorneys over what liberals called “political reasons.” (Here’s where we insert the word “duh,” this being Washington and all.)

Democrats were up in arms about the firing of prosecutors who they maintained had lost their jobs not for legitimate reasons but for their refusal to toe the Bush line. Notable among the firees was David Iglesias, accused of being soft on voter fraud in New Mexico. (He went on to parlay his dismissal into a lucrative career doing books, interviews and op-eds in the New York Times.)

Which, of course, automatically makes Iglesias guilty of rank opportunism as far as Flowers is concerned – speaking of the Times, they had a lot to say about why Gonzales should resign, which he eventually did, here (some of this is repeated in posts that appear below).

(Also, the third bullet here tells us who else wrote to the Times.)

Continuing…

In response to the uproar, which reached a crescendo during the run-up to the presidential election, the Department of Justice in 2008 assigned Nora Dannehy, a career prosecutor, to investigate the firings. Dannehy had a strong history of uncovering official corruption and was viewed by both liberals and conservatives as a straight-shooter.

This was no exception. While acknowledging that the Justice Department was wrong to have fired Iglesias without bothering to get all the facts about the accusations against him (hmm, sounds familiar, White House . . . controversy . . . half the facts . . . pink slip!), Dannehy concluded that no crime had been committed and there was no effort to influence prosecutions, as Democrats had long alleged.

Oh yes, Abu G. was merely a victim of Bushco circumstance, as it were, all this time; this post about his eventual hire at Texas Tech University for a job recruiting minority students and teaching a junior-level poli sci course touches on the ways that he fronted for the Bushco gang (more here) – and the fact that he wasn’t hired by a law school speaks volumes (interesting that Christine ignores that – yet another occasion where lawyer Flowers chooses to cast a blind partisan eye concerning her ostensible area of expertise).

And as noted here by Glenn Greenwald, Gonzales tried to argue that he was innocent in the 2004 DOJ dispute over warrantless surveillance because he approved only of “data mining” of the calls as opposed to the surveillance of the calls themselves; spying on the calls of American citizens in the way Gonzales approved (and the manner objected to by former AG John Ashcroft as well as Robert Mueller of the FBI and deputy AG James Comey) was then illegal under FISA, though the Democratic congress, to their eternal shame, amended FISA to basically let Gonzales off the hook.

Comparing Shirley Sherrod with Alberto Gonzales is typically monstrous Flowers demagoguery…just add this to her bilious pile of literary dreck.

2) And speaking of journalistic hackery, J.D. Mullane of the Bucks County Courier Times linked to this L.A. Times story about trying to resurrect the “public option” in health care reform as a deficit-reduction measure (with typically “brilliant” insight, Mullane dismissed it with the remark that “Nov. 2 can’t get here fast enough”).

Well, I hate to break the news to you, J.D., but it would lower the deficit in a big way; this post tells us it would save $400 billion, and this from Media Matters tells us that it would “reduce the federal budget deficit by about $15 billion” in 2020 and would save “about $68 billion” through 2020.

Of course, I’m sure that, by 2020, you won’t have a job as a pundit any more because of your paper’s loss of circulation, leading to its extinction (doesn’t give me a kick to say that, but I can’t imagine any other outcome, seeing as how they continue to allow you space to propagate your brand of wingnuttery, among other reasons).

3) Finally, this from the Democratic Party tells us the following about Wingnut Pat Toomey, running as a Repug for the U.S. Senate from PA…

Even as the BP oil crisis raged on, (Toomey) advocated for expanding offshore drilling — and in the past has said that regulating oil companies “borders on the criminal.”

He voted to allow drilling in the Great Lakes, even though the amount of oil the BP oil spill crisis has leaked into the Gulf would contaminate every drop of Lake Erie, a source of drinking water for millions.

He is running a campaign funded by special interests. He’s pulled in $851,489 from Wall Street and $54,950 in donations from the oil and gas industries — including the largest donation that Halliburton’s PAC made in May.

Under his watch, the Club for Growth spent about $10 million on a publicity campaign to privatize Social Security; Toomey lamented that it was a “pity” that Bush’s proposed privatization “couldn’t be implemented sooner.”

After making a fortune trading derivatives on Wall Street, he wrote legislation repealing key laws that kept banks and investment firms separate — spurring massive deregulation that led to the economic crash.

In response, to help Admiral Joe, click here.

A Polite Warning To My Lefty Brethren

I purposely steered clear of the story of the two men threatening Dem U.S. House Rep Bart Stupak of Michigan (Stupak being, of course, the co-author of the pro-sepsis, coat hanger abortion amendment to HCR along with PA-16’s waste of space, Joe Pitts) because I try to avoid stories pertaining to ongoing criminal investigations.

However, The Daily Kos ended up chiming in as noted in the pic:

The problem, though, is that, when you read the story from The Hill, there is no mention that either suspect (Russell Hesch and his son David Hesch) belongs to a teabagger organization (I read two other accounts of this story, and I could not confirm that either one of the Heschs were teabaggers from those accounts either).

Despite all of the wingnut umbrage out there, we are still on the correct side of the issues (if anything, the biggest disenchantment out there isn’t over Obama and Congress doing too much, but that they’re doing too little). We have enough on our side to maintain our majorities in governance this fall if we put in the necessary work (probably losing seats, I’ll admit), but that doesn’t give any of us the right to suddenly get sloppy with the facts.

If it turns out that either of the Heschs do, in fact, belong to teabagger organizations, then I’ll update this post accordingly. But for now, we should leave the funny-hat-and-racist-sign crowd out of it.

Corbett’s Conundrum Over Health Care Reform, Etc.

The latest from Michael Morrill and Keystone Progress…

The Office of Attorney General is one of the most important offices in all of government. The Attorney General, as the chief law enforcement officer of the Commonwealth, is responsible for the safety and security of all of the residents of Pennsylvania. The Attorney General has the power to file criminal and civil charges that can end a person’s life, lock someone in prison away from family and friends, and impose penalties that can eradicate a life’s savings.

It is therefore incumbent upon the Attorney General to not only impartially prosecute the laws of the Commonwealth, it is vital that he avoid even the appearance of bias.

In the last few weeks Attorney General Tom Corbett has come under almost daily criticism for appearing to be using the Office of Attorney General for political gain. Among the criticism are the following:

• Corbett has politicized the Office of Attorney General by joining in a highly partisan lawsuit to repeal the recently passed federal healthcare reform legislation. Corbett agreed to join the lawsuit before the bill was even written, meaning he made his decision before reading the legislation.

• Questions have been raised about the appearance of selective prosecution of legislators who may have used their legislative staff and offices to run political campaigns. Corbett has pursued the prosecution of mostly Democrats in what has become known as the “Bonusgate Scandal.” Recently, it has been reported that Corbett’s office did not investigate allegations against Republican State Senator Jane Orie.

• Corbett’s campaign staff has admitted that they had been planning to file their suit against the healthcare reform legislation even before he had read the bill, sending out a fundraising mailing in February saying that he is “leading the fight” against “government-run socialized medicine.”1,2

• Corbett has been accused of using his office and staff for his campaign for governor-the same charges he has brought against mostly Democratic lawmakers. 3

• Keystone Progress filed a Right to Know request on March 26 seeking correspondence between the Office of Attorney General and outside entities, seeking to determine if there were political motives behind the Corbett’s decision to join the lawsuit against healthcare reform. To date the AG’s office has not provided that information. 4

When there are so many concerns being raised it puts the integrity of the Office of Attorney General in serious question. The Attorney General’s judgment and actions cannot be doubted. His performance must be beyond reproach. That is why so many attorneys general, including Virginia Republican Bob McDonnell and New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte, have resigned when seeking a higher office.

After taking all of these factors into consideration, we have come to the conclusion that it is time for Mr. Corbett to resign as Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The people of the Commonwealth need to trust that the justice system will work impartially, but the clouds of doubt and suspicion that are engulfing Mr. Corbett are raising too many doubts.

We therefore urge Mr. Corbett to resign immediately. Click here to sign our petition, telling Attorney General Corbett to resign. www.corbettmustresign.com

Signed,
Michael Morrill
for Keystone Progress

We are not alone in our questions about the recent actions of Attorney General Corbett.

• The DuBois, PA Courier-Express has called Corbett’s anti-healthcare suit “grandstanding,” “specious,” and “showboating with taxpayer money.”5

• The Chambersburg Public Opinion said that the “accusations of hypocrisy warrant investigation.”6

• The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board says his lawsuit “clearly looks like a political ploy and a waste of state tax dollars.”7

• The York Daily Record said “his [Corbett's] decision to join a lawsuit seeking to undo the recently passed health care reform package looks a lot like using state resources to make political hay.”8

• The (Harrisburg) Patriot-News editorial board declared that “Corbett has gone too far” by joining the anti-reform lawsuit.9

• The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that even some Corbett loyalists are questioning his motives. “‘He’s not representing the people of Pennsylvania, he’s representing the Republican Party,” said Ruth Kahn of Warminster.” Kahn is described as a “former Corbett supporter.”10

1 Philadelphia Daily News, April 2, 2010 (here)

2 Philadelphia Daily News, March 31, 2010 (here)

3 York Daily Record, March 27, 2010 (here)

4 PA2010.com, March 26, 2010 (here)

5 Courier-Express, March 27, 2010 (here)

6 Chambersburg Public Opinion (here)

7 Philadelphia Inquirer, March 25, 2010 (here)

8 York Daily Record, March 26, 2010 (here)

9 Patriot-News, March 26, 2010 (here)

10 Philadelphia Inquirer, March 28, 2010 (here)

Ed Rendell once recently praised Corbett on “The Rachel Maddow Show.” After reading this, I cannot possibly imagine why.

And speaking of Corbett, here is an example of democracy in action from a couple of weeks ago.