The Senate Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), released a report timed to coincide with Mother’s Day that highlights the precarious position of service member moms in the military today. The report finds that the availability of child care services do not keep up with deployment schedules, short leave periods after childbirth or adoption, and insufficient access to mental health services for mothers and children coping with service during wartime.

Read more »

Professor Warren's post about Senator Bunning's disdain for "government handouts" -- also known as higher education funding -- raises a few issues about Congressional members in general. First, how do lawmakers' words line up with their actions? Second, do Congressional members have access to so much free money that they eventually forget what it feels like to live life without a readily-available war chest? Since Senator Bunning is on the hot seat today, let's take a look at these questions and see if his situation offers us any answers.

Read more »

It was over six weeks ago when the House and Senate passed their $2.9 trillion budget resolutions for the federal fiscal year starting on October 1, 2008 and projected budgets through 2012. Since then, the attention of most members of Congress has been on the war in Iraq and whether or how to end it.

But a small group of budgeteers like House Budget Committee chair John Spratt (D-SC), his Senate counterpart Kent Conrad (D-ND) and other Democratic congressional leaders have been wrestling with the differences between the House and Senate resolutions, trying to arrive at compromises that the budget resolution conference committee can ratify. The conference committee finally convened yesterday, but there was no resolution, so to speak, of the main sticking points between the House and Senate.

Read more »

Tuesday, May 9, 2007 was a great day for the Irish. It was not so great for Israelis and Palestinians.

On Tuesday, the conflict over Ireland, which began in the 12th century (and in which 3500 people have been killed since 1966), ended when ultra-hard-line Protestant leader Reverend Ian Paisley joined former senior IRA commander Martin McGuinness in a power-sharing Catholic-Protestant unity government. In the words of the BBC, it was a "moment of such improbability that it sets a new benchmark against which the future will judge unlikely events still to come” – like the signing of a peace treaty between Israelis and Palestinians.

For a time, of course, it appeared that Israelis and Palestinians would end their conflict before Irish Catholics and Protestants. It was in 1993 that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasir Arafat signed the Oslo agreement on the White House lawn. But Rabin was assassinated in 1995 and, after that tragedy, neither side fully observed the agreement although it did, nevertheless, succeed in dramatically reducing the violence – which skyrocketed after Oslo collapsed in the fall of 2000.

Read more »

A couple weeks back, Professor Warren noted that middle-class families have been suffering from the combination of stagnant incomes and rising costs.  Interestingly, those rising costs don't affect everyone equally.  In fact, the lower your income, the more you pay for basic goods and services.

Read more »

Even with few details released, the one thing that has come out of the announcement of the trade deal between Dem leadership and Bush is an admission by US corporate leadership that US law does not meet minimum international human rights standards, as embodied by the International Labor Organization (ILO):

The US Chamber of Commerce welcomed the bipartisan deal, saying it would secure support for Congressional approval of the four pending bilateral trade agreements... [Said Tom Donohue, president and chief executive of the world's largest business federation.] "we are encouraged by assurances that the labor provisions cannot be read to require compliance with ILO Conventions."

It's almost nice to see the business elite admitting that the US is an international law violator, but pathetic that the Democratic leadership have signed onto a deal that doesn't even require the US to meet the minimum international rules for protecting labor rights.

Read more »

When I first read Jonathan Chait's article on the progressive blogosphere (sic), I thought it was about 90 percent right. Since then, Atrios, Ezra Klein, Henry Farrell, Matt Yglesias and others have uncovered problems. I don't have the energy to untangle it all. So instead, after stipulating that the liberal-activist netroots are having an excellent impact on national politics, and its honchos (Markos, MyDD) deserve great credit, I offer this simple cut of the Gordian knot:

1. The liberal netroots are soft on Democrats in every issue area except Iraq.

2. The liberal netroots are tough on Iraq, but narrow in their criticisms, since fundamentally the liberal netroots are soft on imperialism, if not completely oblivious to it.

Read more »

At the Senate Finance Committee hearing yesterday, "Can the Middle Class Make Ends Meet," I testified, along with a Brookings fellow, a social worker specializing in pediatric oncology, and the president of a tax-cut foundation. I can't repeat the whole hearing, but Senator Baucus who called the meeting and Senators Stabenow, Lincoln, and Salazar offered some very thoughtful comments.

One exchange stands out. Senator Salazar asked if I had any ideas about how to help middle class families afford college. I talked about Service Pays (direct government loans for four years of college expenses, which could be forgiven if the graduate put in four years of public service--essentially an expanded GI bill). Several senators seemed interested, but Senator Jim Bunning was clearly out of sorts. He explained that he paid for college for his seven children and he didn't ask for a "government hand-out." He wanted to know when thinking had changed that families should expect "government handouts" if they wanted to send their kids to college. I haven't checked the transcript, but I think he said "government handouts" about ten times.

Read more »

Let me apologize in advance.

You log onto TPM for an intellectual caffeine jolt, and instead, encounter some bean counter with unsettling news about the economy. So if you want to click elsewhere, no harm, no foul.

Read more »

The Wall Street Journal today highlighted potentially the most important story of 2008-- namely an infusion of millions of new Latino voters from a massive citizenship drive led by Univision:

If the citizenship campaign culminates in two million to three million new Hispanic voters, "that could turn the tide in several states," including Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, says Sergio Bendixen, a pollster who specializes in ethnic markets. In 2004, Republicans won by a small margin in those states.

Given that there are eight million green card holders, a massive disruption of turnout assumptions from new citizens is moving forward-- and Univision appears to have the clout to make a difference:

Read more »

Think for a moment of the ideal business. Your company is one of a handful of suppliers of a service. Customers must get their equipment from you. They can use your service on your terms only. They can’t leave without getting hit with large penalties. The quality of the service isn’t that great, contrasted with other places around the world.

Welcome to the world of telecommunications. Once upon a time, most of that description could have applied to the old Ma Bell, AT&T, which provided the telephone service and controlled access to the telephones. Over the years, the old Bell System’s controls largely slipped away as regulators in 1968 decided that equipment other than the “official” gear could be attached to the network, leading to developments like the fax machine, modems and faster connections to the Internet.

Read more »

Bloomberg has a long and fascinating piece on who "Obama's people" (on economics, anyway) are:

Obama's economic brain trust -- a blend of up-and-coming academics and former officials in President Bill Clinton's administration -- displays a fondness for backing innovative solutions to the nation's problems. [...]

Three academics -- Austan Goolsbee, 37, a University of Chicago professor and columnist for The New York Times, Jeffrey Liebman, 39, a pension and poverty expert at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and David Cutler, 41, a Harvard health economist -- form the core of Obama's economic team.

The article goes on to list issues in which this group of young wonks and Obama's policy team more broadly are trying to build non-traditional solutions on the auto industry (see Monday's speech in Detroit), trade and health care. If Clinton was trying to find a creative middle ground between Right and Left, these folks look to be trying to find a creative middle ground between Left and Center. The Fourth Way, you might say.

Read more »

Rep. Conyers is getting things started, and it looks like it's going to be a long day for the AG. Check out TPMMuckraker for updates throughout the day.

Predictions? Impressions?

Update: Check out TPMtv today. If TPM were somehow elected to Congress and given a seat on the House Judiciary, these are the questions we'd ask with our five minutes.

Tony Blair has informed his Queen and his Cabinet that he is stepping down as Prime Minister.

Americans tend to look at other country's heads-of-state through the prism of their own president -- but Blair even more so.

Blair used to seem a lot like Clinton. Now sadly, he looks a lot like Bush.

Read more »

Our failure to dry up the seemingly endless pool of recruits willing to martyr themselves is the main reason why we continue to lose ground against al Qaida worldwide.

It is al Qaida, not Iraq, that is our biggest problem, and we need much better strategies for dealing with it. It seems to me that restoring America's core values and proud legal traditions are a big piece of any strategy for improving our tarnished international standing and winning the argument with the next generation of would-be terrorists.

That's why restoring habeas corpus, reining in the use of national security letters, and shutting down the prison at Guantánamo Bay are so important.

Read more »

Greg Sargent wonders why liberals are relatively quiet about Murdoch's bid to gobble up Dow Jones and the WSJ. I don't think we're quiet, I think we're (a) dazzled but unsurprised, (b) appalled, and (c) jaded. How obvious could it be that Murdoch with a major world newspaper in his clutches is a more dangerous Murdoch with yet more propaganda ops than anyone else in the world?

Read more »

Number 9… number 9… number 9… number 9…

No, we’re not singing the lyrics to our favorite Beatles song. We’re alerting you to former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves, who can now be referred to as the 9th fired U.S. Attorney. Much like the 5th Beatle, he hasn’t gotten as much attention as the others. And that’s specifically why he’s the subject of today’s episode of TPMtv.

Read more »

I predicted a few weeks ago that we would start to see more stories about the
bizarrely conflicting roles of one Mark Penn, who holds down the job of
"Worldwide President and CEO" of the fifth-largest public relations firm in the
universe (Burson-Marsteller) while also apparently being the
de facto campaign manager for Senator
Clinton's presidential bid.
Ari
Berman of the Nation has now opened the bidding with a superb article
revealing much of what it actually means to be Worldwide President and CEO of
Burson-Marsteller, including presiding over more than one Republican lobbying
operation and a
union-busting
outfit that was once prominently featured on the Burson-Marsteller website
but was quickly given the
"Commissar
Vanishes" treatment after I mentioned it
in
passing. I wasn't actually that interested in Penn's conflicts of interest
as in the nature of his advice and his polling, and its influence on American
politics. (I'm told that Berman will have more about Penn-as-pollster in the
print edition of the Nation.)



Kevin
Drum asks a good youngest-child-question: "Can someone explain to me the
cult of the pollster in big-league politics?....Surely any politician with an IQ
in three digits is pretty well aware of what people think and how they vote."
Indeed, at some point, probably dating to Patrick Caddell's role in the Carter
campaign, the superstar pollster joined the media buyer in the small subset of
campaign workers who live in Georgetown townhouses and Virginia horse farms.



But I'm not as skeptical as Kevin of the role of pollsters, which is why my
argument is specific to Penn, and why I'll use this opportunity to say a little
more about it.

Read more »

In international finance circles, Michael Mussa is a legendary figure who used to work at the thin air levels at the International Monetary Fund. For those interested, Mussa's story is in one of the few real page-turners on international finance I have read, The Chastening: Inside the Crisis that Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF by Paul Blustein.

Mussa is judicious, non-partisan, and seriously respected. He articulated yesterday what most think about World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz's situation -- whether they blame him or not for various misdeeds.

Read more »

E.J. Dionne has a terrific column in today's Wash Post wondering what lessons American progressives can cull from the winds of change that are blowing through Europe and elsewhere, (outside of Latin America) bringing conservatives to power even in countries like Sweden where the social democratic left has nearly hegemonic power. The latest loss, of course, was Segolene Royal's to Nicholas Sarkozy in France. EJ ends his column by proposing that perhaps progressives in America have something to teach our brothers and sisters across the ocean, now that it appears that our forces are on the ascendency. Maybe so. But a lot of the same issues that plague European social democracy also plague what we call liberalism in America, or progressive politics, or whatever term we use as part of our American exceptionalism.

Read more »

Below, Andrew rightly laments the digital divide, and worries that, rather than beginning to dissolve economic and class inequalities, the Internet might actually reinforce the differences.

After all, broadband access is not cheap; others have suggested that the digital divide marks yet another gap between the haves and have nots.

But I think the "divide" is not so much a matter of cost and income, but rather, a matter of differences in what people enjoy. Most people just are not that interested in spending their time becoming informed. Our school systems (private as well as public) don't tend to encourage intellectual curiosity.

In addition, there is a huge generation gap. Many people over the age of, say, 50, are not interested in struggling to learn how to use the Internet. It really is much, much harder for older people. I've seen perfectly intelligent people give up. They would rather read a book. You could offer them Internet service for free, and they would say 'no thanks.'

An aside: One reason we don't make widespread use of health care information technology (i.e. medical records) in our hospitals is because a surprising number of physicians over the age of 50 or so . . .

Read more »

The dirty secret of the Democratic takeover of Congress is that they still haven't passed any significant legislation. Bush hasn't even had to use his veto pen on anything other than the recent Iraq bill. Most initiatives are still going to their grave in the US Senate.

Yet progressives are winning serious victories on health care, on clean energy, on voting rights, on gay rights and other issues across the country; a number of state legislators have already finished their 2007 sessions (they're quicker) and Progressive States has highlighted important victories this year here and here. Just a few highlights from states like Washington, Iowa, New Mexico, Maryland and even partially-Republican states like Indiana:

Read more »

Well, mainstream media, better late than never. Yesterday evening CNN picked up on the story of Bradley Schlozman, the former US Attorney in Kansas City, who, if you’ve been reading TPMmuckraker at all for the past 3 weeks, you’ll know is at the epicenter of the Bush administration’s dramatic reshaping of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. In fact, CNN wasn’t the only one turning its gaze Schlozman’s way yesterday: the same evening the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Mr. Schlozman a letter requesting his cooperation in their ongoing investigation of the U.S. Attorney firings.

Read more »

If you're a denizen of the blogosphere you've heard all the arguments about the democratization of the public sphere, the ways in which blogs like this one are breaking down old boundaries, the way Wikipedia is creating a free and massive database of human knowledge through radically new forms of mass collaboration, the ways in which the non-profit and political sectors are able to grow their fundraising and organizing base with little or no start-up cash. It's only just beginning, and my guess is we'll still be sorting it all out for decades to come.

But as some of us experiment and dream of these possibilities, a majority of the country, and a vast majority of the world, have seen little or nothing at all of this radical new future.

Read more »

Is there a mommy war?

Below is my answer, published last Sunday in the Washington Post under the headline and subhead "The Mommy War Machine: Put a binky in it!":

You see the magazine illustration: two women glaring at each other, about to take a swing with their satchels -- one a briefcase, the other a diaper bag. And you know right away what's coming: another "Mommy Wars" story, a juicy tale of mothers who work and moms who stay home, dissing each other on playgrounds and in school parking lots with junior-high-level bile.

This trend story has been running for a generation. Just this month, the latest salvo -- Leslie Bennetts's book "The Feminine Mistake," a call-to-work warning women about the long-term costs of staying at home -- hit the shelves with a bang, setting off another round of news stories, talk shows and cyberspace debates about the progress on the battlefront.

But I've got news for you: This is a war that isn't.

Read more »

Item: Neo-con Robert Kagan throws big wet kiss to Obama.

Item: Obama calls for 92,000 expansion of armed forces.

Item: The liberal Center for American Progress hosts Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Item: Hillary would leave 'residual force' of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Item: Matt Stoller notes that some of Edwards' national security advisors suck.

Attesting to my own political marginality, I was surprised to read that Barack Obama had flubbed a big question in the first debate. In response to a Brian Williams "Kitty Dukakis" hypothetical about the destruction of two cities under terrorist attack, evidently Obama's crime was to lapse into rationality. He delivered a sober litany of impeccable, immediate considerations: the relief effort, intelligence to determine the source of the aggression, and the priority of rallying U.S. allies behind a response. His mistake was failing to instantly brandish the option of military response.

The public debate about U.S. national security is still idiotic.

Read more »

Wonks like Jared and me habitually complain that journalists pay too little attention to policy. But then when we read an ill-informed piece like the one in today’s Washington Post dismissing John Edwards’ anti-poverty proposals, we get even more infuriated. Maybe the mainstream media should just leave things well enough alone and stay away from wonkery after all. In addition to Jared’s criticisms of the Post article, I’d add these (and I don’t have any connection to Edwards’ campaign either):

The Post says Edwards’ proposals “do not challenge liberal orthodoxies by, for instance, exploring private-school vouchers, even though supporters of the idea say it is justified by the same logic as Edwards’s housing voucher program: giving poor families a choice.” But housing vouchers and school vouchers, as implemented in the real world, aren’t remotely analogous.

Read more »

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Much like last Thursday’s, today’s episode is another TPMtv Newsreel. This one is a montage of George Tenet’s interview with Tim Russert on yesterday’s Meet the Press. We spliced it together with some clips of speeches by President Bush during the march to war in Iraq. The opening sequence is from an October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati, Ohio – a previous draft of which included Niger/uranium language that was specifically expunged on the command of George Tenet and his deputies… only to reappear in the President’s 2003 State of the Union address a few months later. The second series of clips you’ll see is from the President’s Address to the Nation on March 17, 2003, in which he gives Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq or face military conflict. And the last clip we show you is, of course, from the 2003 State of the Union address.

Ladies and gentlemen, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  Much like last Thursday’s, today’s episode is another TPMtv Newsreel.  This one is a montage of George Tenet’s interview with Tim Russert on yesterday’s Meet the Press.  We spliced it together with some clips of speeches by President Bush during the march to war in Iraq.  The opening sequence is from an October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati, Ohio – a previous draft of which included Niger/uranium language that was specifically expunged on the command of George Tenet and his deputies… only to reappear in the President’s 2003 State of the Union address a few months later.  The second series of clips you’ll see is from the President’s Address to the Nation on March 17, 2003, in which he gives Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq or face military conflict.  And the last clip we show you is, of course, from the 2003 State of the Union address.

Developments in Turkey are certainly fascinating.

The latest is that the Presidential candidate from the ruling Islamist party has decided not to run, at least for now. His withdrawal follows mass rallies by secular Turks and a warning from the army to step in if any Presidential candidate threatens Ataturk's legacy of secularism.

I wonder if I'm alone in my conflicted view of all this. I am all for democracy and for the military keeping its nose out of politics.

On the other hand, there is something I like about a political order which has secularism as, you'll forgive me, an article of faith.

Read more »

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has quite publicly put up about $5 billion to buy-out Dow Jones & Company, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal. Apparently, News Corp. has cash on hand to give all shareholders more than their current stakes are worth on the stock market.

What is Murdoch after? By most accounts, Murdoch’s ostensible plan is to draw on the unparalleled brand name of the “paper of record of the economy” for a cable network that News Corp. plans for later this year. That network will plan to unseat CNBC’s primacy in the cable financial news business. Reaction from media reformers and the Journal’s own union came fast and furiously after the announcement last week. Um, they’re opposed.

Read more »

More evidence of how states are driving health care reform is the massive expansion of health care coverage of children in the states. It received little fanfare, but the New York legislature approved a budget in April that includes health care for essentially all children. SCHIP coverage was extended to children of families within income up to 400% of poverty (roughly $80,000 per year for a family of four) and allows richer families to buy into SCHIP coverage.

This follows a wave of states, highlighted by a new Georgetown University report, working to expand access to health care for children in 2007. 29 states have enacted or are working on proposals to improve kids' coverage.

Read more »

The Washington Post really got it wrong this AM on John Edwards and poverty.

The article criticizes Edwards for not bringing any new ideas to his signature issue: a plan to focus much more energy and resources on poverty reduction. But as someone who has studied this issue for decades, I can assure you of two things. First, there simply is no amazingly effective silver-bullet idea out there that we’ve somehow overlooked. And second, we know that some, not all, of the “old” ideas work.

Read more »

It's always a danger sign when a business person is widely known by their first name alone. In the case of Rupert Murdoch, like Donald Trump, the significance is his famously hands-on style and the power of his personality. (Note by contrast that the sage of Omaha is not typically known as "Warren.") For Rupert, the news, not just editorials, in his newspapers is what he wants it to be, and not what his editors may think it is; the editors who disagree leave, and are replaced with loyalists who dedicate their careers to being exquisitely in tune with R's sensibility and are inured to translating his opinions slavishly into what is presented as fact.

Read more »