In the new issue of Democracy, Karen Kornbluh details the rise of juggler families – families with two working parents or a single parent – and the challenges they face from stagnating wages to health insurance to unemployment. She then does something extraordinary: she tells us how to help them.
The New York Times is now confirming that
Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues, Republican lawmakers said Saturday.
Since Hastert has already called for a criminal investigation, if he knew, and covered up, he is a potential accessory after the fact. Republican back benchers like Shays are already running for cover on this one, calling for any leader who knew to step down. For those looking at the odds that Hastert the Unspeakerable is about to be swept out of power, they just went up substantially. He may even lose his own seat... Already the joke is starting to circulate "So which Republican is going to be the next minority leader?"
I once considered myself a Republican. In light of the record of the Bush Administration and the Republican controlled congress, I can no longer claim to be a Republican. Now we have George “AWOL” Bush and his sidekick, Dick “Five-Deferment” Cheney calling Democrats who question their failed Iraq strategy, “cut and runners”.
Meet Tammy Duckworth, Democratic candidate for Congress from Illinois and combat veteran. Tammy lost both legs in a helicopter crash. Hearing the charge that she wanted to cut and run, Tammy said:
"Well, I didn't cut and run, Mr. President. Like so many others, I proudly fought and sacrificed,; Duckworth said. "My helicopter was shot down long after you proclaimed 'mission accomplished."
The Washington Post has published the first excerpts of Bob Woodward's new book -- and they put the lie into Condi Rice's statement of four days ago: "What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years."
America Blog is reporting that the House leadership knew about Rep. Foley's indiscretions a year ago... and did nothing. When I was in Florida in 2000, there were rumors about Foley, rumors which turn out to be true given the chats that ABC has released. Foley should know how much trouble he is in, he wrote the Foley Provisions in H.R. 4472, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.
While the Abramoff affairs is more substansive, and ties together the House of Scandal the Foley Pedophile Scandal shakes to the core the entire Republican contention that they are qualified by their superior morality to judge the character and direction of America.
I was surprised to read in today's newspaper that the President used a campaign speech yesterday to attack this 5'3" grandmother - because I said that he got it backwards: fighting them there may make it more likely that we'll fight them here. The President believes that the jihadist fight can be contained in Iraq. But just tell that to the people of Jakarta, Madrid, London, Amman and Mumbai - all of whom have seen massive terrorist attacks in their cities since our invasion of Iraq.
The terrorist threat is growing more dangerous. But instead of addressing it, we are playing politics with the issue, passing laws that won't make us safer.
The Talent-Nelson bill to limit interest rates on lending to soldiers to 36% just passed the House-Senate Conference. When the House and Senate come back to vote on the Defense Authorization bill, the cap will be in there—and there can be no more amendments. The only choices are to vote yes or no.
Mark this day on your calendar: We’ve been talking about it here on Warren Reports for months. Congress finally said, at least in this limited circumstance, “Enough is enough.” Lenders cannot prey on military families with tricky credit instruments that can result in interest rates in the 400% range. Credit issuers everywhere—from payday lenders to credit card companies to home mortgage issuers—felt a slight disturbance in the force.
The consumer groups and military support groups worked hard, so there is plenty of credit to spread around. Even so, the Center for Responsible Lending deserves extra special credit for pulling together data and pushing on this issue for a very long time. Their hard work really paid off.
It has been a long time since I've had the chance to celebrate some pro-middle-class legislation. I’m ready to raise a glass!
Looks like a Power Point presentation, of all things, has lured the mighty Atrios out of his cave. Evidently you can take the boy out of the economics dept., but etc. etc. I haven't read Reed Hundt's book, which should probably disqualify me from posting this, so go ahead and sue me. But on the strength of the slides and the posts, I have to say that he sounds excited but confused.
Others have written in more depth on the Bill of Rights Repeal that shuffled its way through the Senate, from the disingenuous press, to the debate being between two reactionary wings of the Republican Party, to the absolutely glaring incompetence of the Democratic Caucus in the Senate, which burned their base to the ground in return for dubious political advantage, the entire sad spectacle proves that a government can be no smarter than the medium which elects it, and our government is still elected by television.
Others have written with great depth and insight on the results this bill, however, it is not an isolated incident, but part of a broader pattern of our constitutional crisis.
I’m obsessed, but don’t really know what to say, about the torture bill passing the Senate. But then I come across this, and fortunately for my sanity, I know exactly what to say. This is the third paragraph, the third paragraph of the New York Times’ front-page story about the self-destructing candidacy of Westchester County attorney Jeanine Pirro for attorney general of the state:
"But to many people who have been watching the couple for decades, the Pirros look a lot like an echo of that other Westchester power couple, the Clintons, who are also political and financial partners whose fates and fortunes are profoundly intertwined. The Pirros live in Rye, the Clintons in Chappaqua."
"Look a lot like an echo of" is one of the great weasel phrases of modern journalism, even apart from the simple fact that echoes don’t "look" like anything. Here are the "echoes" between the Pirros and the Clintons:
Al Capone once said, "A good lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than ten men with machine guns." Some of today's corporate tax lawyers might agree.
Today's Wall Street Journal ($) quoted Scarface Capone in describing how Merck saved $1.5 billion -- that's with a "b" -- by aggressively exploitating international tax loopholes.
Most important, thanks for the good question. Good or not, here's the answer: Americans number 5% of global workforce and make about 20% of world's products. It's only the Chinese workforce that stands much of a chance of making a serious dent in that share of global production in the next 20 years. American firms lead or share leadership in hundreds of markets; it's only Chinese firms that stand much of a chance of taking leadership in lots of those markets. There will be rivals from India, Japan, Korea, and others, but no country will launch so many vigorous attackers as China. It's American consumers who shape world markets more than the consumers of any other nation; it's only Chinese consumers that can change that fact over the next 20 years, and thereby draw disproportionate shares of global investment in everything from manufacturing to marketing.
Yes, we should have in the USA more public goods, an antitrust law, portable pensions and -- most important -- market-opening laws applicable to energy and health care, even if there were no China emerging on the world scene. But because of China's emergence in all the ways cited above, among others, the potential loss for the United States's firms and citizens of not taking these actions is far greater. All our actions over the next 20 years occur in China's Shadow and if we want the next generation of Americans to emerge into the sunny uplands of income equality and improving standards of living, then the steps I've urged (and I'm not alone, although I can't think of anyone else who focusses on antitrust and market-opening law and technology as much as this book does) are not just nice but necessary.
We had the happy news two days ago from Steve Clemons that the effort to get John Bolton confirmed by the US Senate as the US Ambassador to the United Nations is really finished. The report has not been picked up by any major news outlets so far, and when asked in the daily post-Security Council session stake-out by the press where his nomination stands, Bolton demures.
Could Bolton merely go out with a whimper, and not a bang?
Unfortunately, the bully may still get your lunch money. Indeed, there is a strong possibility that President Bush could not only reappoint Bolton to the UN Ambassadorship, but continue to send him the same paycheck, too.
Though to some extent this sad story in today's Times is sui generis, it raises at least two concerns that merit consideration.
Is is constitutional for state governments to cripple the First Amendment rights of union members to raise money to participate in the political process?
That is the question that the United States Supreme Court will address this term in reviewing a case from the Washington Supreme Court, Washington v. Wash. Edu. Assoc. (combined with a parallel case)
There's something I'm missing, and whether it's a failure of Hundt as a writer or a failure of me as a reader (quite likely) I am not sure. While it's certainly beyond question that the implications for the world economy of the fast development of an economy with a billion or so people is something that planners and policymakers need to think seriously about, what I'm not entirely sure of is which of Hundt's policy recommendations would be different if China did not exist.
I look forward to reading Reed's book, and I don't have any expertise to comment on his prescriptions to improve American competitiveness. But after spending several days in China reporting on the efforts of the new Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, to persuade China to change some of its basic economic policies, I can say that the job that he (and the United States) has in doing so is daunting indeed.
When the Supreme Court ruled against permanent incarceration without legal process, I crankily warned that the Democrats would miss the political point: namely, that the R's would create a pro-terrorism, anti-due process bill and force a vote on it in the fall. A number of, ahem, commenters asserted oh no the wicked witch had been killed by the Supreme Court, etc., and that we had no more reason to fear an assault on liberty. I urged that the D's introduce legislation that mandated immediate trials, and that they insist that in the absence of trials the Administration couldn't get to the truth and couldn't adequately mete out punishment where deserved, and so was losing the war on terror. Oh no, we wouldn't want to do that, because we are the party of protecting rights, even of the accused. But I didn't want us to derogate rights; only to gain the high ground on the issue of captured suspects and judicial process.
There is a word missing in the declassified “Key Judgments” of the terrorism NIE that was released last night: Afghanistan. Yet it is in Afghanistan that the true failure of Bush’s “war on terror” is now most apparent.
A spate of recent articles, including the excellent piece by Jon Landay that Bruce mentioned the other day and a stellar report by David Rhode in the New York Times, attests to the fact that Afghanistan is once again becoming the place it was before the Taliban was toppled almost five years ago: a place where jihadists of all stripes can train and engage in terrorism against infidels of all kinds. Since, as the NIE notes, the same dynamic is also taking place in Iraq, we now have two Afghanistans instead of one. That’s the true measure of Bush’s failure.
To Coffee House Dwellers in the Senate or House:
I will be hosting a very large national security policy event today in the Senate which is serving as the release event for the Princeton Project on National Security.
Here is the scoop. Join us if you can.
-- Steve Clemons
Senator Harry Reid, fearful of doing anything that would anger the "Jack Bauer independent" vote, has said:
"We want to do this," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. "And we want to do it in compliance with the direction from the Supreme Court. We want to do it in compliance with the Constitution."
There is no way to torture in compliance with the Constitution. First because the United States is a high contracting party to the Geneva Conventions, and second because the Bill of Rights specifically prohibits both cruel and inhuman punishments, and it specifically states:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"
Torture is unreasonable by definition. It is unreasonable because it does not work.
Everyone should be so lucky as to have such fine readers and commentators: they collaboratively improve on the product, which is one of Yochai's great points.
I hurry to assert a comment and a riposte. I am not indeed DLCentric. I am, for their likes, too convinced of the need to open markets by force of law and regulation and to bolster entrepreneurship at the individual and company level by substantial doses of public goods. That's the riposte.
Although the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) regarding Iraq and terrorism is still classified (UPDATE: The Key Judgments are now declassified and can be found at this link), the data behind the findings is not and has been publicly available for three years. I have written repeatedly on this fact and it has been, I am told, the judgment of the intelligence community for at least two years. The statistics on terrorist activity, until this year, were published in the State Department's annual report on terrorism (Patterns of Global Terrorism). The Bush Administration tried to not publish the report last year because the data showed an unprecedented surge in international terrorist attacks. The following chart shows the bad news (it is based on the statistics collected by the CIA and supplied to the Department of State):
A "Significant" terrorist incident is one in which a person was killed, wounded or kidnapped (or there was property damage in excess of $10,000). The statistics tell a very clear and simple story (I bet someone who can read My Pet Goat can figure it out).
Now that was a game. And it really was a lot more than that. I always find the psychological aspects of a sporting event’s effect on a community to be very interesting, but in this case the role the Saints played in uplifting New Orleans last night was worth the millions of dollars that was spent on the stadium. Some New Orleans folk are conflicted about the decision to invest so much in a single building when there’s this, you know, housing problem, but I’m with those who think that this was a good and important way to spend it. To understand why, we need to return to the theme of the Common Good.
The Talent-Nelson Amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill is in play this week, and the dealing is going thick and fast. The amendment says that lenders cannot charge military families more than 36% interest. If it passes, this would be the first effective usury rate in the US since 1980. The amendment got a big boost in early August when the Department of Defense issued a powerful report calling on Congress to protect military families, citing the need to maintain troop readiness.
Talent, in a close race back in Missouri, doesn’t want to back down. He wants to look like a guy who stands up for the military, and the GOP wants him to look good. So the creditors are starting to get scared that the amendment will stick—and that means the banks want to cut a deal. They are willing to toss over their unwaivering objections to any usury laws, evidently admitting some lenders engage in abusive practices. But they claim that those abusive lenders are the OTHER guys, not the banks, so they want a special exception for the banks even if they charge more than 36% interest.
Today began Tony Blair's long goodbye. At a time when we are sorely hurting for global leaders who combine thought and power, vision and mission, he will be sorely missed. It's tragic that his own legacy will be tainted by his alliance with Bush and his foray into Iraq along with Bush. For tpmcafe readers, especially, Blair's farewell address to the Labour Party Conference today, on the website of the Guardian newspaper, is well-worth reading. It's beautiful, forecful prose--but it also makes an excellent case for Blairism, the vision that brought the British left back from the dead.
A lot is being written about regarding the truthiness of Condi Rice's statements regarding a master plan to combat terror. She is, under any reading of the 9/11 report, factually incorrect. Plans were made, discussions were sought, a strategy was being pursued. . . and she didn't listen. To some extent, she is right to say that a comprehensive plan was not handed to her. Clinton's hold-over folks had been trying to get her to come up with a new plan -- lets call it a comprehensive plan -- after the Cole bombing made it clear that the threat wasn't going away.
Judging by some of the initial responses, Reed Hundt has succeeded in hiding his progressive agenda in the post even more thoroughly than he does in the book. Perhaps I'm reading my own wishes into it, but I understand this book to be an effort to develop a new set of political alignments around a set of core policies that will improve American productivity while at the same time improving distributive justice.
Americans live in a fantasy world, Jill over at Skippy points to one example, but the pervasive unreality of the underlying story needs to be brought home.
Leader Pelosi is doing her part, by bringing a privileged resolution on the floor of the House of Representatives, which would hold a closed session on the National Intelligence Estimate. The motion was defeated with Shays of Connecticut being the only Republican to vote for it.
She contends that "someone is not telling the truth" about Iraq, if the NIE does indeed conclude that Iraq has made the fight against terrorism more difficult. This is the conclusion one would have to draw from the grave readiness problems that the Army faces.
The last pre-election loophole through which John Bolton's confirmation might have snuck through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was at 2:15 this afternoon at a previously called "business meeting" of the Committee.
That meeting has been cancelled -- and with it even the dimmest chance of John Bolton being confirmed as US Ambassador to the United Nations.
Some have said that another effort could be mounted during a lame duck session of Congress, but there are several Republicans who will not feel bound by the White House in that circumstance; Dems as well -- who will vote against cloture on the floor of the Senate were it to get out of Committee then.
So, it's over. Wow.
John Bolton might agree to serve as the uncompensated Ambassador to the UN in a second recess appointment, or might agree to serve as a recess appointed political deputy at the UN and made "acting Ambassador and Chief of Mission" at a pay cut.
The last pre-election loophole through which John Bolton's confirmation might have snuck through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was at 2:15 this afternoon at a previously called "business meeting" of the Committee. That meeting has been cancelled -- and with it even the dimmest chance of John Bolton being confirmed as US Ambassador to the United Nations. Some have said that another effort could be mounted during a lame duck session of Congress, but there are several Republicans who will not feel bound by the White House in that circumstance; Dems as well -- who will vote against cloture on the floor of the Senate were it to get out of Committee then. So, it's over. Wow.
Kudos to the Raleigh News and Observer for today’s front page story on Afghanistan. It’s a model of informative, frank news coverage. The N&O is a McClatchy newspaper, the story by Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy, so it may also appear in other papers. The more the better for helping regional publics get the information and analysis needed amidst the latest Bush administration spin onslaught.
The story is centered on the front page with a large bold headline. Its first two paragraphs grab with a dramatic scene. The next paragraph leads with a telling quote from a U.S. officer: “They [the Taliban] hide their weapons and become farmers.” The next paragraph lead: “Afghanistan has become Iraq on a slow burn.” The next paragraph connects the “Taliban comeback” to the diversion to Iraq. The next gives the comparative stats of “only 42,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops to secure a country that’s one-and-a-half times the size of Iraq, where 150,000 U.S.-led coalition troops are deployed.” And stats on Afghan suicide bombings, from two in all of 2002 to one every five days. And that’s all before you leave the front page.
More quality coverage follows inside, including one graph showing the sharp increases in terrorism and deaths, and another on the nearly 300% increase in opium cultivation.
Along with the New York Times revelation of the latest NIE, we’re getting a clearer and more honest picture of where we stand against terrorism than the Bush series of speeches. It’s not just about how bad the threat is, but how good the strategy is.
I didn’t read Reed’s book (yet), but his initial post does raise some interesting issues – issues that the entire progressive world is grappling with, and must grapple with, as we look toward governing either partially next year or fully two years later.
And while the two that strike me can be categorized as “foreign” and “domestic,” the truth is that the lines have between the two have blurred. As Reed makes clear, the rise of China and the promise of upward mobility for American families are part and parcel of the same issue: global competitiveness.
David Broder is a complete head case -- consumed by the convoluted efforts to square the circle of his own conflicting impulses.
Why would I say such a terrible thing? Is it because I’m a “vituperative, foul-mouthed blogger,” as he described people like me in the first of his two columns saluting the “independence party” of Democratic and Republican insiders that he wishes to see reelected?
Tonight ESPN showed Katrina statistics including the death toll of 1833. Seeing that number used I realized I never did an update here on the Katrina death toll. The death toll dropped in August......
A bipartisan group of former national security officials involved with FISA wrote the following, tying to debates of last week amidst concerns that the interrogation/FISA debate is likely to merge in terms of congressional authorization. Here it is:
The three years I spent working on In China's Shadow, along with my colleague Elizabeth Cavanagh, led me to conclusions that surprised me and I hope interest you. Here's the outline:
Six weeks out and the election is beginning to feel like it might just be a Democratic sweep.
A recent T-P Sports article said:
For [Saints] quarterback Drew Brees and several others it will be their first trip inside the stadium that drew worldwide attention during Katrina."I'll be wide-eyed a little bit just looking around and seeing what it's going to feel like for the next 10 years hopefully, the rest of my career," Brees said. "I've only seen it on television.
"If anything, the Superdome was a saving grace for a lot of people; it housed a lot of people and probably saved a lot of people. For that to have happened -- I think several people were killed and there was a suicide, that was horrible. But to think of all the people who were saved, you look at that arena as more than just a football stadium."
I will say it simply--the Iraqi Government of Prime Minister Maliki is taking part in an information operation to help Republicans in the upcoming election. The evidence? How about the repeated claims that "we have killed or captured" the number two in Iraq? (And no, my reference to "number two" is not a euphemism for defecation.) I refer instead to the steady drumbeat of breathless anouncements about the "latest" capture of a senior Al Qaeda operative in Iraq. The frequency of these claims is not a simple consequence of stepped up U.S. and Iraqi military operations. It is a deliberate effort to manipulate U.S. public opinion into believing real progress is being made in Iraq because the truth--that we're losing the ground war in Iraq--is unpalatable grist for the November elections.
Consider the following news flash:
On Sunday (3 September 2006), Iraq’s national security adviser announced the arrest of Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, also known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, and said that had left al-Qaida in Iraq suffering a “serious leadership crisis.”
One of the core questions, policy and philosophical, for domestic as well as foreign policy is what is it each of us does better as individuals and what do we better together? It’s a question worth at least a Sunday night musing after today’s Ryder Cup loss to Europe. All these great individual American golf stars that yet again couldn’t play well as a team. Against those Europeans who we deride as too collectivist, all weighed down by social democracy, yet who do better together than each as individuals.
We also lost in the Davis Cup today. Individual stars like Andy Roddick playing poorly as a team and losing to the Russian team. We lost a few weeks back to Greece in the Basketball World Championships, where even our Coach K couldn’t sufficiently forge a team concept out of guys so used to playing for individual highlight films. We also lost earlier in the year in the World Baseball Championships – the most American of American sports – where the collection of all-stars didn’t gel as a team. Think back to the recent Olympics and how much worse we did in team sports than individual competitions.
The foreign policy links are two.
Many are the spectacular features of Bill Clinton's fierce counterattack against the smarmy Chris Wallace on Fox News this morning, after Wallace charged in to relay listener e-mails demanding to know why Clinton "didn’t...do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President." The weaselly foxy Wallace got his comeuppance when Clinton not only knew his stuff (no surprise) but refused to let Wallace try to save face by changing the subject.
Clinton roared back, citing his efforts against bin Laden and denouncing winger Republicans for demanding of him what they have never demanded of George W. Bush and his enablers.
We would have a different politics in this country if more Democrats followed Clinton's lead. When the sycophants ask you a question, dare to ask them why they're asking that question of you and not of Republicans. When they sling falsehoods at you, don't miss the opportunity to call them for what they are.
[P. S. Media Matters has a complete rundown of 42 Fox "News" Sunday interviews with top Bush officials since September 11, 2001. Turns out that Chris Wallace did once, in 2004, ask Rumsfeld whether the administration should have "been thinking more about" terrorism before the day it got religion. Once. As for other 41 occasions, the foxy interviewers "have almost entirely ignored several key questions regarding the Bush administration's efforts to pursue bin Laden and Al Qaeda."
Since Tony Snow conducted a number of those interviews, wouldn't it be amusing and possibly revelatory if reporters asked him to comment?]
One reason we have problems in this country is the number of lying idiots who work for major press outlets. The lastest entrant in the media class twit of the year sweepstakes is Perry Bacon Jr. who says "the Netroots hit their limits" because "Liberal online activists are finding you can't move elections with just modems and IM."
First, let's get something that reporters are supposed to get right - facts. Liberal activists are far more likely to have broadband. If Perry wants to be a more skillful distortionist, he needs to get things like that right early, so at least he has some credibility to blow.
Second, the birth of liberal politics online, back in 2003, was when people realized that merely being online didn't do anything - when liberals on the net went from complaining on forums, to running blogs and, this will shock Perry Bacon Jr. - running meetups. Had he penned that headline in 2003, he would have been making an astute observation. Now, he's just a liar. But let's dig deeper. [Update Steve Gilliard lays into Bacon Jr. as well.]
AP reports today that John McCain is calling for "quick confirmation" of John Bolton.
Senator McCain seems to be doing something that I regretfully admit that I have done on some occasions. With a tail between my legs, I will admit that I too have invited people to dinner knowing they couldn't make it -- but happy to get credits in place for doing so.
It's not smart to do this often, but Senator McCain knows that even if the White House pulled off a miracle Tuesday afternoon and coughed John Bolton's confirmation out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, there's no "quick confirmation" likely.
As global leaders gathered this week in New York to denounce each other and popularize Noam Chomsky, they ignored the issues that could actually help the U.N. become a far more effective institution in addressing global problems. One is Security Council reform, about which more later. Another is "the mandate gap," the huge disparity between what the Security Council resolves, with great fanfare, and what happens on the ground. See the following op-ed, which I published through Project Syndicate in a number of different papers around the world.
Every year, big corporations spend insane amounts of money on parties and unless someone gets indicted, as with Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, the press makes no big deal of it. But a union throws a holiday party to reward major volunteers and the NY Daily News runs a story with the title, Union for poor lives high<
