The “Cha Cha Slide” is a song often played at dance clubs, school dances/proms, parties, skating rinks and weddings in Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom (the song reached number one in the latter country in 2004), created by Chicago’s DJ Casper (Willie Perry aka Mr. C the Slide Man). The Cha Cha Slide is a line dance with called instructions. Writer: William Perry Producer: Men On Business.
Willie Perry Jr. wrote the lyrics for, and recorded his performance of, the original version of the Cha Cha Slide around April 1, 1998. The song was heavily inspired by the Chicago stepping movement. Around June 12, 1999, Perry recorded a second version of the song, entitled “Casper Slide Part 2,” at the home studio of Fred Johnson with the help of Hollywood Scott, band leader for the Platinum Band. Perry recorded and released the song at his own expense and manufactured copies and distributed them with the help of Gardner Douglas (“Cisco”), owner of the Cisco’s Music World record stores in Chicago, Illinois.
Can you shimmy, watusi, do the jerk, tighten up, mashed potatoes, twist, funky chicken, hustle, cabbabe patch, running man, electric slide, Texas two step? Want to learn a few steps of the oldies but goodies? Stay with 3 Chics this week, as we get down with it. don’t hurt yourselves, now!
E.J Dionne’s talking about race being injected into conversation whre PBO’s concerned.
Here we go with another white man trying to school us on when is it appropriate to call out racism.
GTFOH E.J.
GOP Health care plan, REMEMBER?
Missouri Lt. Gov Addresses Stripper Flap: Religion Helped Me Change My Strip-Club-Going Ways
Missouri Lt. Gov Peter Kinder (R) has spoken out about the allegations that he long frequented a strip club and sort-of stalked a stripper who worked there, admitting that he used to go to the strip club in question but maintaining that it was years ago. “I came to realize that this is not consistent with my upbringing. I’m a Christian,” he said.
Kinder also denied many of the allegations against him. “A single man is vulnerable to any fantastic charge,” he told the St. Louis Beacon.
In an interview Wednesday, Kinder told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he used to frequent the Diamond Cabaret in Sauget, Illinois, which he first found after a baseball game. He says he went back about ten times, but it was the 90s, and who didn’t do crazy stuff in the 90s? “I came to realize that this is not consistent with my upbringing. I’m a Christian,” he said. “I was raised in a good family, and I thought, you know, continuing to go there is leading me down the wrong path.”
Kinder, a Tea Party aligned conservative, is widely expected to run for governor in 2012.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/missouri_lt_gov_addresses_stripper_flap_religion_h.php?ref=fpb
I’m gonna say it.
NIGGER , PLEASE
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It’s Only the Race Card When You Play It
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Aug 18 2011, 9:00 AM ET
Comment
Heh. Allen West:
Rep. Allen West says he is a “modern-day Harriet Tubman” who wants to lead black voters away from the “plantation” of the Democratic Party. There is a “21st century plantation” of African-American voters unwaveringly supporting Democrats, but the freshman Republican from Florida said Wednesday night that he is out to change that.
“The people on that plantation are upset because they’ve been disregarded, disrespected and their concerns are not cared about,” West said in an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” responding to the anger that black Democrats showed earlier this week at a Congressional Black Caucus town hall in Detroit.
“I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman to kind of lead people on the underground railroad away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility,” said West, who is the sole Republican member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Some black leaders are “are nothing more than overseers over that plantation,” West said, including Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), whose remarks at that town hall expressing frustration with President Barack Obama have drawn widespread attention.
The black voters are presumably the slaves, Waters and company the overseers who do the slavemaster’s bidding, and West the freedom fighter who will lead them to liberty. West is effectively calling Waters a sell-out. West, himself, would of course go into a frothing seizure should such a charge ever be lodged at him.
West finished his comments by noting that the Republican Party has not always done a very good job at “reaching out” to black communities. Presumably now that West is on the case, the Promised Land is upon us.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/08/its-only-the-race-card-when-you-play-it/243799/
MOFO please! West is the biggest slave-catching nigga around.
Growing body of research says dogs really can smell cancer
A new study adds to the body of research suggesting that “man’s best friend” may actually be able to smell cancer.
Researchers in Germany found that dogs were able to pick up on the scent of organic compounds linked to the presence of lung cancer in the human body, and that their keen sense of smell may be useful for the early detection of the disease.
Four family dogs – two German shepherds, one Australian shepherd and one Labrador retriever – smelled test tubes containing breath samples of 220 patients, both those with lung cancer and those without it. The dogs were trained to lie down in front of the test tubes where they smelled lung cancer and touch the vial with their noses. According to the study, the dogs successfully identified lung cancer in 71 out of 100 patients with the disease.
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/17/growing-body-of-research-says-dogs-really-can-smell-cancer/?hpt=hp_t2
Harriet Tubman visitor center: a good first step
Our view: State will build a visitors center to honor Harriet Tubman, but a national park should be added
11:09 a.m. EDT, August 18, 2011
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-tubman-20110818,0,7697666.story
Harriet Tubman was one tough lady. She escaped slavery, fleeing an Eastern Shore plantation. She was a leader in the Underground Railroad, traveling at night under the North Star — probably along the Choptank River — hiding at safe houses along the path to freedom. During the Civil War, she saw duty as a spy, assisting Union forces that raided plantations and freed slaves along the Combahee River inSouth Carolina.
She was just 5 feet, 5 inches tall, but she played an outsized role in American history, a contribution that is recently (and belatedly) being justly recognized. This week, the state of Maryland announced that it had secured a mixture of federal and state funds to build the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center about 10 miles south of Cambridge. When completed two years from now, the visitor center will house an exhibit hall and interactive displays. There are also plans for walking trails and a garden on the grounds.
This project was a long time in getting off the ground. An earlier attempt in 2007 stalled for lack of money. But state officials pieced together a variety of funding sources, including $8.5 million from the federal Transportation Enhancement Program, to come up with the $21 million needed to make the project a go. The 15,000-square-foot visitor center is expected to attract tourists and pump dollars into the local economy. The construction phase is slated to create about 225 jobs, and the center is expected to have a staff of 10.
The next task is creating a historic national park in her name. The proposed park, composed of four sites in Dorchester County and one each in Talbot and Caroline counties, would mark the locales where Ms. Tubman was born and toiled as a slave, and a safe house where “passengers” on the Underground Railroad were hidden. This park would enable visitors to walk in Ms. Tubman’s footsteps, and — aided by talks from park rangers — come to a deeper understanding of a period of American history and the extraordinary achievements of this strong-willed Maryland native. A smaller national park is also projected for Auburn, N.Y., where she lived later in life working on the women’s suffrage movement and establishing a home there for elderly African-Americans.
Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, backed by his fellow Maryland Democrat Sen. Barbara Mikulski and New York Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, have put forth a bill in the Senate that would fold the Maryland and New York sites into the National Park Service. Making the 5,700 acres in Maryland and the smaller New York site a national park would cost an estimated $15 million.
In the past, there had been no comparable effort in the House of Representatives. But this week, the office of U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, whose district includes the Eastern Shore sites, said Mr. Harris is working with fellow Republican New York Rep. Richard Hanna to designate the lands as a historic national park. This is a welcome sign. Given the tough fiscal climate in Washington and the anti-spending attitude of the House, crafting a way to move this effort forward will require considerable skill. We wish them well.
As this page has stated, even in the hard times, we cannot turn our back on our past. Scores of historic park sites, such as the Appomattox Courthouse, were established when the nation was in much worse financial shape.
Building a Harriet Tubman visitor center is a welcome first step in the project that will both preserve the legacy of this remarkable woman and bring jobs to an area with some of the highest unemployment rates in the state. Establishing the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historic Park would finish the task
GOP: However Bad, They’re Worse
by BooMan
Thu Aug 18th, 2011 at 12:33:05 PM EST
No matter how bad you think the Republicans are, they can always surprise you by being even worse. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has jurisdiction over regulatory affairs, including of the financial services sector of the economy. He has actually hired a former Goldman Sachs vice-president to work on his staff. That, by itself, would be worrisome. But the man is actually working under an assumed name. When he worked at Goldman Sachs he was known as Peter Simonyi. But, as he was leaving Goldman Sachs in 2009, he adopted his mother’s maiden name. Why would someone do that? Why would a grown man change his name?
Initially, he went to work for the law/lobbying firm Brickfield Burchette Ritts & Stone, but as soon as the Republicans retook the House, he was hired to work on Darrell Issa’s staff. In that capacity, Peter Simonyi, now known as Peter Haller, began lobbying against new financial regulations concerning collateral requirements for firms who trade in derivatives. One of those firms is Goldman Sachs.
So, in a nutshell, after helping to blow up the global economy and cause mass joblessness and home loss, Goldman Sachs sent a vice-president under an assumed name to work as a lowly congressional staffer on a committee that has oversight of the departments that regulate Goldman Sachs.
Don’t tell me that you thought they could be this unethical.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/8/18/12335/1048
Shredding Documents Is Always The Right Way to Go
by John Cole
Your government in action:
An enforcement lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission says that the agency illegally destroyed files and documents related to thousands of early-stage investigations over the last 20 years, according to information released Wednesday by Congressional investigators.
The destroyed files comprise records of at least 9,000 preliminary inquiries into matters involving notorious individuals like Bernard L. Madoff, as well as several major Wall Street firms that later were the subject of scrutiny after the 2008 financial crisis, including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and Bank of America.
The S.E.C. is the very agency that is charged with making sure that Wall Street firms retain records of their own activities, and has brought numerous enforcement cases against firms for failing to do so.
The agency’s records were routinely destroyed under an S.E.C. policy, since changed, that called for the disposal of records of a preliminary inquiry that was closed if it did not get upgraded to a formal investigation, according to Congressional records and people involved in inquiries into the matter. The agency believes that both the original policy and the new rules comply with federal document-retention laws.
John Nester, an S.E.C. spokesman, said that while the agency was not required to retain all documents, it changed its policy last year regarding destruction of files for “matters under investigation,” the category of initial inquiry by the S.E.C.’s enforcement division that is the subject of the current scrutiny.
Changes were made to the S.E.C. policy after questions about the document destruction were raised in early 2010 by Darcy Flynn. Mr. Flynn, an employee of the S.E.C.’s enforcement division for 13 years, began a new job in January 2010 helping to manage the disposition of records for the division. Mr. Flynn, who continues to work at the S.E.C., has sought protection under federal whistle-blower laws.
The document disposal, which was first reported by Rolling Stone magazine on Wednesday, is the subject of inquiries by the Senate Judiciary Committee; the National Archives and Records Administration, which oversees laws governing federal agency records; and the inspector general of the S.E.C., according to the records and to people involved in the investigations.
Thank god for Taibbi and Rolling Stone who explain what this means:
Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – “Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?” No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.
That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – “18,000 … including Madoff,” as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.
Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency’s records – “including case files relating to preliminary investigations” – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term “Orwellian,” devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or “Matters Under Inquiry” – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission’s internal website. “After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation,” the site advised staffers, “you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI.”
Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital.
The widespread destruction of records was brought to the attention of Congress in July, when an SEC attorney named Darcy Flynn decided to blow the whistle. According to Flynn, who was responsible for helping to manage the commission’s records, the SEC has been destroying records of preliminary investigations since at least 1993. After he alerted NARA to the problem, Flynn reports, senior staff at the SEC scrambled to hide the commission’s improprieties.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/08/18/shredding-documents-is-always-the-right-way-to-go/
All kinds of HEADS need to ROLL, drop tot he floor and go SPLAT! for this fuckery.
August 18, 2011 12:35 PM
Watching things unravel in slow motion
By Steve Benen
Moody’s Analytics this week significantly lowered its expectations for economic growth for the rest of the year, citing an “extraordinary reversal of fortune.” Whereas the company expected the economy to grow at 3.5% in the latter half of 2011, Moody’s now sees GDP growth closer to 2%.
The Philadelphia Fed index, a closely-watched metric for factory activity, was atrocious this morning; existing home sales dropped unexpectedly; and first-time unemployment claims have taken a turn for the worse.
Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, cut its global growth forecast for the next year by a full percentage point. It cited “a policy-induced slowdown,” aggravated in part by “the prospect of fiscal tightening” in the United States and Europe.
Ezra Klein explained:
In other words: Growth is weak and policymakers are hurting rather than helping. The debt-ceiling debate hurt. The dithering response to the Eurozone’s debt crisis hurt. And the expected austerity in both the United States and Europe is going to hurt even more. JP Morgan notes that one reason they think the United States might tip back into recession is that in the first quarter of 2012, there will be “an automatic tightening fiscal policy if, as our US team currently assumes, this year’s fiscal stimulus measures will expire.”
The economy may very well be slipping back into a recession, but it’s within our power to prevent this. Too many policymakers simply don’t want to. We’re headed for a cliff, but there’s plenty of time to hit the brake and turn the wheel. Conservatives simply refuse. Their ideology demands it.
We are talking about a rare sight: a recession conservative politicians are causing through neglect, ignorance, and fealty to a misguided philosophy.
Wall Street is effectively pointing at a downturn. Republicans, who’ve been wrong about every economic challenge of the last quarter-century, are practically aiming for the disaster Wall Street is telling them to avoid.
Josh Marshall added, “It really is a downturn made in Washington. Mind-numbing to behold. But then, who hires Washington?”
Update: In case this isn’t already clear, the rules of supply and demand still exist, and the economy is lacking demand. Democrats prefer to make more public investments, which boost demand and inject capital into the economy. Republicans prefer austerity, which lowers demand and takes money out of the economy. Every time you hear some GOP politician say, “What we need right now is to cut spending,” he or she is effectively begging for an even weaker economy.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/watching_things_unravel_in_slo031632.php
Political AnimalBlog
August 18, 2011 1:45 PM
Perry tackles science in N.H.
By Steve Benen
Political AnimalBlog
August 18, 2011 1:45 PM
Perry tackles science in N.H.
By Steve Benen
“Your mom is asking about evolution. You know, that’s a theory that’s out there; it’s got some gaps in it. In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution in our public schools — because I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one is right.”
This is important for a couple of reasons. First, Perry may have no idea what goes on in Texas’ public schools, but if they’re teaching “both creationism and evolution,” they’re violating the law. It’s not even a gray area — the Supreme Court has already struck down a law that called for “balanced treatment for creation-science and evolution-science in public school instruction,” concluding that the law violated the separation of church and state. Teaching religion in science class is illegal under the First Amendment.
It’s not exactly a secret that plenty of school districts ignore the law, but that’s not really the point here. Rather, this is a governor arguing publicly that his entire state is ignoring the law. That should, in theory, be a problem for him. (Follow up question for Perry: what are other laws do you ignore in Texas?)
Also, Perry’s explanation reinforces the underlying problem: Texas, he claims, teaches both science and pseudo-science and leaves it to students to “figure out which one is right.” On a fundamental level, this is a failure of what education is even supposed to be. Reality is not multiple choice. Public school curricula are not supposed to present fact and fiction, only to leave it ambiguous which is which. It’s a recipe for prolonged ignorance and stunted growth.
In other words, over the course of about 45 seconds, Perry admitted on camera that his state is flouting the law and he’s comfortable with promoting ignorance in science classes.
Postscript: As for the notion that evolutionary biology is somehow dubious because of “gaps,” Perry should probably wake up and smell the 21st century. As the National Academy of Sciences has explained, “The occurrence of evolution in this sense is a fact. Scientists no longer question whether descent with modification occurred because the evidence supporting the idea is so strong.”
Other scientific theories that are “out there” include gravity, electromagnetism, plate tectonics, and general relativity. Does Perry want science classes to teach the opposite of all of these, two, and hope kids are “smart enough to figure out which one is right”?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/perry_tackles_science_in_nh031635.php
It is evident to me that folks like Perry, Palin, and Bachman were CREATED, but not EVOLVED.
Gov. Rick Perry’s big donors fare well in Texas
Many of the GOP presidential candidate’s mega-donors have won hefty contracts or appointments. Perry’s aides vigorously dispute that any got special perks.
By Matea Gold and Melanie Mason, Washington Bureau
August 16, 2011
Reporting from Washington— Texas Gov. Rick Perry has powered his political career on the largesse of donors like Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, who gave the governor $1.12 million in recent years.
And donors like Simmons have found the rewards to be mutual, reaping benefits from Texas during Perry’s tenure.
Perry has received a total of $37 million over the last decade from just 150 individuals and couples, who are likely to form the backbone of his new effort to win the Republican presidential nomination. The tally represented more than a third of the $102 million he had raised as governor through December, according to data compiled by the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice.
Nearly half of those mega-donors received hefty business contracts, tax breaks or appointments under Perry, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis.
Perry, campaigning Monday at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, declined to comment when asked how he separated the interests of his donors from the needs of his state. His aides vigorously dispute that his contributors received any perks.
“They get the same thing that all Texans get,” said spokesman Mark Miner.
Along with Simmons — who won permission to build a low-level radioactive waste disposal site in Texas, a project that promises to generate hundreds of millions of dollars — The Times found dozens of examples in which major donors to Perry have benefited during his tenure.
Auto magnate B.J. “Red” McCombs, who contributed nearly $400,000 to the governor, is the primary financial backer for a Formula One racetrack to be built near Austin. The state has pledged $25 million a year in subsidies to support the project.
The Houston-based engineering firm of James Dannenbaum, who gave more than $320,000 to Perry, received multiple transportation contracts from the state. In 2007, Perry appointed Dannenbaum to a coveted post on the University of Texas’ board of regents.
A Mississippi-based poultry company run by Joe Sanderson, who gave $165,000 to Perry, received a $500,000 grant from a state business incentive fund championed by Perry to open a chicken hatchery and processing plant in Waco.
With its mix of big-money industries like oil and campaign finance rules that allow unlimited political donations, Texas has a reputation for monied campaigns. And its elected officials have long sought to elevate their political patrons.
Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said donors had benefited more under Perry’s administration than they did under recent governors such as Democrat Ann Richards and Republican George W. Bush, Perry’s predecessor.
“It’s not unprecedented, but we haven’t seen it in a while,” he said.
In his 11 years in office, Perry has smoothed the path for corporate interests by stocking state agencies with pro-business appointees, said Jim Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
“The achievement is not a favor here or there,” Henson said. “It’s to create a regulatory apparatus that favors business.”
Simmons, the second largest individual contributor to Perry, is poised to gain perhaps the most as his firm constructs the first new low-level radioactive waste disposal site in the country in three decades. The venture could not have happened without the backing of Perry, who early in his administration signed a controversial law allowing a private company to build such a facility in Texas.
Simmons’ company, Waste Control Specialists, or WCS, lobbied fiercely for the measure and eventually got its license approved by Perry-appointed state regulators despite objections from some state environmental agency staff.
WCS is spending more than $500 million to build the facility in Andrews County, an isolated patch of West Texas near a hazardous waste dump the company has operated since the 1990s. When it is finished late this year, it will be able to house 2.3 million cubic feet of waste from nuclear power plants, hospitals and research facilities
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-0816-perry-donors-20110816,0,7718310.story
Exclusive: Goldman Sachs VP Changed His Name, Now Advances Goldman Lobbying Interests As Top Staffer To Darrell Issa
By Lee Fang on Aug 18, 2011 at 3:21 am
Has Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) turned the House Oversight Committee into a bank lobbying firm with the power to subpoena and pressure government regulators? ThinkProgress has found that a Goldman Sachs vice president changed his name, then quietly went to work for Issa to coordinate his effort to thwart regulations that affect Goldman Sachs’ bottom line.
In July, Issa sent a letter to top government regulators demanding that they back off and provide more justification for new margin requirements for financial firms dealing in derivatives. A standard practice on Capitol Hill is to end a letter to a government agency with contact information for the congressional staffer responsible for working on the issue for the committee. In most cases, the contact staffer is the one who actually writes such letters. With this in mind, it is important to note that the Issa letter ended with contact information for Peter Haller, a staffer hired this year to work for Issa on the Oversight Committee.
Issa’s demand to regulators is exactly what banks have been wishing for. Indeed, Goldman Sachs has spent millions this year trying to slow down the implementation of the new rules. In the letter, Issa explicitly mentions that the new derivative regulations might hurt brokers “such as Goldman Sachs.”
Haller, as he is now known, went by the name Peter Simonyi until three years ago. Simonyi adopted his mother’s maiden name Haller in 2008 shortly after leaving Goldman Sachs as a vice president of the bank’s commodity compliance group. In a few short years, Haller went from being in charge of dealing with regulators for Goldman Sachs to working for Congress in a position where he made official demands from regulators overseeing his old firm.
It’s not the first time Haller has worked the revolving door to help out Goldman Sachs. According to a report by the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, Haller — then known as Peter Simonyi — left the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2005 to work for Goldman Sachs, then quickly began lobbying his colleagues at the SEC on behalf of his new firm. At one point, Haller was compelled to issue a letter to the SEC claiming he did not violate ethics rules. A brief timeline of Haller’s work history underscores the ethical issues raised with Issa’s latest letter to bank regulators:
– After completing his law degree in 2000, Haller was employed by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as an economist, and later with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Office of Enforcement.
– In April of 2005, Haller resigned from the SEC to take a job with Goldman Sachs. Although he was not a registered lobbyist, he soon began lobbying the SEC on compliance issues on behalf of Goldman Sachs.
– In 2006, Haller left Goldman Sachs to take a job with the law/lobbying firm Brickfield Burchette Ritts & Stone.
– In January of 2011, Haller was hired to work for Issa on the Oversight Committee. Under the supervision of Haller, Issa sent a letter dated July 22, 2011 to bank regulators (including the heads of the Federal Reserve, FDIC, FCA, CFTC, FHFA, and Office of Comptroller) demanding documents to justify new Dodd-Frank mandated rules on margin requirements for banks dealing in the multi-trillion dollar OTC derivatives market, like Goldman Sachs.
When he took over the chairmanship of the Oversight Committee this year, Issa dramatically shifted the committee’s focus away from its traditional role of investigating major corporate scandals. Instead, Issa has used the committee to merge the responsibilities of Congress with the interests of K Street and Issa’s own fortune.
In June of this year, ThinkProgress broke the story about Issa’s own complicated relationship with Goldman Sachs. We revealed that Issa purchased a large amount of Goldman Sachs high yield bonds at the same time as he used the Oversight Committee to attack an investigation into allegations that Goldman Sachs had systematically defrauded investors leading up to the financial crisis. This conflict of interest, along with our exclusive story about Issa’s earmarks benefitting his own real estate empire, received coverage in a recent piece by the New York Times.
We also broke a story last month revealing other revolving door conflicts within Issa’s staff. Peter Warren, Issa’s new policy director, maintains some type of financial contract with a student loan lobbying group he led last year, and received a bonus from the lobbying group before leaving to work for Issa. Since joining Issa’s staff, Warren and his colleagues have fought to weaken the recently created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new agency charged with overseeing student loans.
The new revelations about Peter Haller, however, raise even more significant ethical concerns than Peter Warren and other ex-lobbyists working for Issa. Why did Issa hire a high-level Goldman Sachs executive to work on stopping regulations on banks like Goldman Sachs? Haller’s direct involvement in the July letter brings Issa’s ability to lead the Oversight Committee — charged with conducting investigations on behalf of the public interest — into serious doubt.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/18/298485/exclusive-goldman-sachs-vp-changed-his-name-now-advances-goldman-lobbying-interests-as-a-top-staffer-to-darrell-issa/
under THEY ARE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE news:
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Coburn Suggests Taking Care of The ‘Frail Elderly’ Is Unconstitutional Because ‘That’s A Family Responsibility’
By Ian Millhiser on Aug 18, 2011 at 9:50 am
Last week, ThinkProgress reported that Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) believes that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional. Turns out, he’s not he only one. At a town hall in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) appeared to embrace Perry’s claim that providing for America’s seniors is unconstitutional:
QUESTION: With more and more cuts in Medicare and Medicaid on the horizon, I’m really worried about protecting our frail elderly in the Medicare and Medicaid facilities. So I would like to know how Congress proposes to balance the budget and still make sure our frail elderly in these facilities are protected and have trained care staff.
COBURN: That’s a great question. The first question I have for you is if you look in the Constitution, where is it the federal government’s role to do that? That’s number one. Number two is the way I was brought up that’s a family responsibility, not a government responsibility.
The answer to Coburn’s first question is Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. The Constitution gives Congress the power to “to lay and collect taxes” and to “provide for the…general welfare of the United States.” No plausible interpretation of the words “general welfare” does not include programs that ensure that all Americans can live their entire lives secure in the understanding that retirement will not force them into poverty and untreated sickness.
While Coburn’s first question reveals his need to actually read the Constitution before he pretends to know what’s in it, his second question betrays his utter disconnect from the reality ordinary American families face. The annual cost of nursing home care in Tulsa is $47,815.00. So Coburn apparently thinks that it is a family’s responsibility to either wipe out their savings or face crippling debt in order to ensure that their parents and grandparents are cared for.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/08/18/298380/coburn-medicare-is-unconstitutional/
Reverse Racism’: A Sad Misnomer for a Tragic Mississippi Murder
The “double-r words” have been invoked again. I bristle every time I hear the term “reverse racism” applied in a new context. It’s kind of like the blogger at “I’m not a racist, but,” who tracks the use of this phrase in Facebook postings, then documents the clueless racist statements that inevitably follow. Same goes for the double-r; whenever you hear it, brace yourself for what follows.
Last week, The New York Times reported that a relative has come to the defense of Deryl Dedmon, a white teenager who is being charged with murder for his alleged role in beating and then driving his truck over James Craig Anderson, a 49-year-old black man.
The gruesome incident took place in Jackson, Miss., in late June and was caught on video by a security camera monitoring the parking lot where the attack took place. It burst into national headlines when CNN aired the video last week. Hinds County Prosecutor Robert Shuler Smith is expected to bring hate crime charges against Dedmon. He was among a group of white teens allegedly involved in beating Anderson while repeatedly yelling racial epithets, including “White Power!” according to witnesses. Smith has asked for federal assistance in investigating the crime, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, and is exploring charges against additional teens allegedly involved in the incident. One other teen, John Rice, has been charged with simple assault.
More than 500 people marched in Jackson on Sunday to denounce the crime and memorialize Anderson.
On a Facebook page set up by Dedmon’s supporters, the teen’s great aunt said, “He is not a racist or a murderer…. If anything, he is being tried by the media, suffering from reverse racism and placed in jail without bond. I am sick of the race card.”
With this recasting of the story, the alleged white murderer is now the victim, the perpetrator is the media, and the crime is “reverse racism.” And anyone suspecting racist foul play is recklessly playing the race card.
If your head is spinning, welcome to the Orwellian world of so-called post-racialism, where the new racists are people of color, along with anyone who still sees or speaks about racism. The new victims of racism are always white. Any effort to redress racism is itself racist.
The gospel of this new, upside-down world is colorblindness, which treats any kind of race consciousness as a cardinal sin. Of course, there are exceptions, such as when you play the race card in an effort to absolve someone likely to be charged with a racially motivated murder. That’s an irony that I’m sure is lost on those whose only true colorblindness is to their own whiteness.
Efforts to equalize opportunities across race, such as affirmative action and voluntary school integration, are viewed in this new universe as “reverse racism,” merely because they acknowledge racism’s existence. This sentiment is best epitomized by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who famously opined, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis or race.”
In other words, focusing on racism is the problem, rather than racism iteslf. It follows that ignoring race—not remedying racism—is the solution, at least as seen through Robert’s rosy colorblind lens.
Those with a clearer view of the real world, however, see these twisted efforts to characterize racial remedies as “reverse racism” as the distraction they are intended to be. Sure, racial prejudice can go in all directions—forward, sideways and especially backwards. But racial prejudice is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding the realities of racism. Power, more than prejudice, is the foundation of racism.
Despite holding the overwhelming share of economic, political and cultural power, some white people believe in “reverse racism” because they truly fear that whites are the targeted and threatened racial group. If you hold this worldview, the concepts of systemic racism, white superiority or even white privilege are likely to escape you. This reductionist view limits racism to mere personal prejudice.
But most racism stems from a historically-evolving and institutionally-based system of racial hierarchy and inequality that routinely privileges white people and disadvantages people of color. It’s alive and well today, and even worsening—as, for instance, with the widening racial wealth gap, which has reached record highs thanks to a recession that has hit people of color hardest.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/08/reverse_racism_a_twisted_misnomer_for_a_tragic_mississippi_murder.html
Few veterans using benefits review board
Colororado Sen. Mark Udall wants the federal government to begin spreading the word about a program to ensure that a veteran’s disability and retirement benefits are in line with their record of service.
The Pentagon’s Physical Disability Board of Review was established as part of the Dignified Treatment of Wounded Warriors Act of 2008. One reason, Udall says, was that thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans weren’t receiving adequate treatment for service-related injuries.
The board allows veterans to appeal their separation decision and service-assigned disability rating to ensure they’re getting what they have earned.
Udall says the need for the program is evident – 56 percent of the veterans applying to it have received higher combined disability ratings following a review.
But while about 77,000 veterans are eligible to appeal, only 2,411 veterans have done so. In many cases, Udall says, the problem stems from veterans being out of the military long enough that the Defense Department no longer has accurate contact information.
Last week, Udall sent a letter to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki to coordinate with DoD to spread the world about the program. Udall did this on behalf of Colorado veterans, of course. But it sounds like it makes sense for Virginia veterans to know about it, too.
To check out the board’s website, to go to http://www.health.mil. You’ll see a topic index along the top with letters of the alphabet. Click on P and you should see the website for the Physical Disability Board of Review on that list.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/military/dp-nws-recon-818-20110817,0,7289339.story
The Real Vacation Outrage: The U.S. Is The Only Developed Country Where Citizens Aren’t Guaranteed Paid Vacation
Many political pundits and conservative politicians have seized the opportunity to criticize President Obama’s planned vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. Former Massachussetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) said he wouldn’t be doing the same if he were president, and the political paper Politico even consulted a group of “political strategists” to compile a list of less politically sensitive locations Obama could vacation instead.
But the real outrage here isn’t the fact that Obama is taking paid vacation (at 1/3 the rate of his predecessor), but rather that working Americans aren’t guaranteed any paid vacation days at all.
In fact, the United States is alone among the developed world in not providing its citizens with guaranteed vacation days (paid or unpaid) as a right of employment, as the following chart of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries shows:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/18/298568/obama-vacation-days-americans/
Coburn: Obama Wants To ‘Create Dependency’ Because He Benefited From Government Programs ‘As An African-American Male’ | Fresh off his outlandish suggestion that Medicare and Medicaid violate the Constitution, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) offered an equally outlandish theory about how President Obama’s race influences his priorities:
Responding to a man in Langley who asked if Obama “wants to destroy America,” Coburn said the president is “very bright” and loves his country but has a political philosophy that is “goofy and wrong.”
Obama’s “intent is not to destroy, his intent is to create dependency because it worked so well for him,” he said.
“As an African-American male,” Coburn said, Obama received “tremendous advantage from a lot of these programs.”
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/08/18/298737/coburn-obama-wants-to-create-dependency-because-he-benefited-from-government-programs-as-an-african-american-male/
I ABSOLUTELY LOATHE these MOFOs. Ask any of these Cracka ass crackas why the programs where put in place to begin with. Ask them about INSTITUTIONALIZED, SYSTEMATIC RACISM.
Selfish, racist muthafuckas!
I’ll ask the Latino community again..
what part of
IF YOU AIN’T WHITE
don’t you understand.
they pushed Good Hair as one of the ‘ Republicans that they could work with’.
now, outside of trying to eliminate your voting rights through the bullshyt Voter ID law..
now, can you see where Good Hair has thrown you.
hint: UNDER THE BUS
……………………………………………..
Perry Flip-Flops On Immigration Policy: We Must ‘Clearly Stay Away’ From A Pathway To Citizenship
As Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) barnstorms through the early primary states talking up his far-right views, many Tea Partiers remain unsettled about Perry’s record of relative tolerance regarding undocumented immigrants.
During his tenure as governor, Perry made Texas the first state in the nation to sign a “DREAM Act,” granting in-state tuition to all students at public universities in Texas, regardless of their immigration status. He also opposed a harsh immigration bill like Arizona’s SB 1070 in his state, saying such a move “would not be the right direction for Texas.” Perry even said he could support a “path to citizenship for people who are here illegally” if it accompanies border security.
As a result of his policies as governor, many in the Republican Party view Perry as insufficiently cruel to immigrants. Now, as the issue threatens to turn off Republican primary voters who might otherwise be sympathetic to his hard right record, Perry is changing his tone.
During a business roundtable yesterday in Bedford, New Hampshire, a questioner pressed Perry on the issue of immigration. After the Texas Governor tried to end the conversation multiple times by saying that we just needed to “secure the border,” the questioner challenged Perry about his plan for the millions of “illegals” already in the country. Though Perry noted we can’t “ship 12 million people back to whatever country they come from,” he backtracked on his previous support for a pathway to citizenship. Said Perry, “you gotta come up with a way that clearly stays away from this issue of making individuals legal citizens of the United States if they haven’t gone through the proper process.”
QUESTIONER: A follow-up. What’s your plan with the illegals that are already here?
PERRY: At that particular point in time, I think you have a good conversation about how do you deal with the numbers of people that are here illegally. Obviously you’re correct, you’re not going to ship 12 million people back to whatever country they come from, but you gotta come up with a way that clearly stays away from this issue of making individuals legal citizens of the United States if they haven’t gone through the proper process.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/18/297981/rick-perry-flip-flop-immigration/
*FACEPALMS*
Perry’s Fiercest Opponents
by BooMan
Thu Aug 18th, 2011 at 09:26:26 AM EST
I’ve been saying the same thing:
“The Bush people don’t fool around, as you know,” [Howard] Dean said Tuesday night on MSNBC. “You can say a lot of things about Bush’s presidency and his failures as president, but one thing nobody should say [anything] bad about [is] his political team. They know what they’re doing, and they are ruthless, and they are going to take [Rick] Perry out.”
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/8/18/92626/6275.
AFL-CIO: Labor will stand by Obama
Organized labor won’t sit out President Obama’s reelection campaign and let a Republican win the presidency, the AFL-CIO’s political director said Wednesday.
* * *
“I don’t think that the labor movement will be on the sidelines with President Obama,” he said in a sit-down interview with The Hill Wednesday.
* * *
“I think our approach would be more toward investing our resources in races where there is a really pro-worker candidate and where there is a good opportunity to win,” Podhorzer said, “and to basically stay on the sidelines for the candidates for the Democrats that you would put in the Lincoln category.
To that end, about a half-dozen Democratic incumbent senators or candidates — Podhorzer named Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) as an example — could expect the labor federation’s support. Elizabeth Warren would also be a good candidate that could have labor support if she runs against Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), according to Podhorzer. The AFL-CIO’s involvement in House races is difficult to peg, he said, because of ongoing redistricting fights.
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/177271-afl-cio-lab… –
LOL This is why the Rethugs are starting to have controlled, paid meetings with constituents. PAYING CONSTITUENTS! This is a new trend the Republicans have started, charging folks to ask them scripted questions with prefab answers.
The collective dismissal of this issue is disgusting. You have people fighting to erode our already weak safety net system while more and more children are being forced to live in poverty. Sickening
http://sisterescape.blogspot.com/2011/08/childhood-poverty-on-rise-racial.html
Duly noted, and thank you, Le Chele.
Blog
August 18, 2011 9:20 AM
The third and final shutdown threat
By Steve Benen
Going into 2011, we knew there were three procedural choke points , at which the threat of a government shutdown was quite real. The first was in early April, when funding for the current fiscal year nearly forced a shutdown. The second was the debt-ceiling vote, which was resolved a few weeks ago.
And then there’s the third one, which is coming sooner than many may realize.
Once lawmakers return to Capitol Hill after Labor Day, they’ll have just a few weeks to approve new appropriations bills before October 1 to avoid yet another shutdown showdown.
At least for now, it appears House Republicans have less of an appetite for brinkmanship.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) urged rank-and-file Republicans in a Wednesday memo to avoid brinksmanship in upcoming battles over Washington spending.
The message from the majority leader is an effort to prevent the kinds of fights over government spending that could lead to government shutdowns this fall if Congress cannot agree on legislation to fund the government.
It suggests Republican leaders worry they could take a political hit if there is a government shutdown from voters already irritated over the contentious summer talks on raising the debt ceiling.
Cantor’s plan, at least of this week, is to persuade his caucus to be satisfied with spending levels agreed to in the debt-ceiling deal. “While all of us would like to have seen a lower discretionary appropriations ceiling for the upcoming fiscal year, the debt limit agreement did set a level of spending that is a real cut from the current year level,” Cantor said in his letter. “I believe it is in our interest to enact into law full-year appropriations bills at this new lower level.”
The oft-confused Majority Leader also stressed the importance of economic “certainty” in the private sector, which seemed bizarre given Cantor’s role in holding the debt ceiling hostage for months, contributing to widespread uncertainty.
Nevertheless, the larger point here is that House Republicans don’t appear eager to force yet another contentious confrontation, which is encouraging, at least until GOP leaders change their minds. Rank-and-file Republican members can still throw a tantrum — maybe they’ll demand a Planned Parenthood rider again? — but with GOP poll numbers deteriorating, it seems likely that Republicans don’t see much of an upside to forcing a shutdown, especially since spending levels will be lower than last year anyway.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/the_third_and_final_shutdown_t031620.php
Cantor and Boehner co-wrote a piece in USA Today yesterday. SSDD Same shit, Different day…
Cantor’s Memo
by BooMan
Thu Aug 18th, 2011 at 11:18:04 AM EST
Is this the rankest form of hypocrisy or an acknowledgment that he went too far and is responsible for our credit downgrade? Eric Cantor sent out a memo to his caucus that warns them not to resort to brinksmanship in the appropriations process (which is now operating as part of an agreed-upon deal). The memo also says that businesses are sitting on cash that could be invested because of all the chaos in Washington. I mean, it’s his responsibility to make sure his team keeps its word on the appropriation levels, so I can see why he’s trying to talk some sense to his caucus. But it sure is rich for him to walk out of the talks and undercut any grand bargain, and then say that brinksmanship is screwing up the economy. No shit, Sherlock.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/8/18/11184/5902
Political AnimalBlog
August 18, 2011 9:55 AM
Under the bus
By Steve Benen
Karl Rove’s attack operation occasionally picks strange things to get excited about.
The spokesman for deep-pocketed GOP group American Crossroads, Jonathan Collegio, emails that the group considers the Secret Service’s doomsday bus such a soft political target that they expect to put it on TV next fall.
“It’s obscene that Barack Obama’s billion-dollar campaign is chiseling hard-working American taxpayers for a million-dollar campaign bus. Everybody knows that Obama’s bus tour is about his reelection, so he needs to pay the taxpayers back,” says the group’s chairman, Mike Duncan. “We’re going to make a star out of Obama’s million-dollar campaign bus because it symbolizes his presidency: politics instead of results, a huge waste of taxpayer dollars, and a long ride that leads nowhere.”
I don’t doubt some intellectually lazy folks will find this persuasive, but it’s worth appreciating the fact that Rove’s attack operation isn’t really going after President Obama with this nonsense; it’s going after the Secret Service.
American Crossroads believes it was the president who sought “a million-dollar campaign bus.” In Grown-Up Land, the Secret Service purchased two buses, to be used in a variety of circumstances, not just in a campaign context. Previously, the Secret Service made use of more traditional buses retro-fitted with protective armor, but concluded these new vehicles offered better security.
Obama used one of the two buses this week, and will probably do the same next year while seeking re-election. The other one? It will be used by the Republican presidential nominee.
So, when American Crossroads condemns the buses, it’s condemning the security policies of the Secret Service, and when American Crossroads mocks “Obama’s million-dollar campaign bus,” it’s also mocking a bus its own GOP allies will be using this time next year.
I realize Republicans tend to prefer pinata politics — grab a bat and swing wildly until you hit something — but does Karl Rove really see an upside in picking a fight with the U.S. Secret Service? To what end?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/under_the_bus031621.php
August 18, 2011 10:30 AM
Kasich to Labor: Let’s make a deal
By Steve Benen
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) hasn’t been especially interested in working with those he disagrees. Soon after getting elected, he declared, “If you’re not on the bus, we’ll run over you with the bus. And I’m not kidding.”
It was with this attitude that Kasich and his GOP allies used a heavy hand to pass a measure called SB5, which restricted the collective bargaining rights of Ohio’s public employees, affecting more than 350,000 teachers, police officers, state employees, and others. When labor and its Democratic allies balked, the governor just ran them over with the bus. When some Ohio Republicans sided with workers, they were punished, too. Kasich signed SB5 into law four months ago.
Unions and their allies promptly got to work collecting signatures, forcing a ballot referendum that will give voters a chance to repeal SB5 on their own in November (SB5 opponents needed about 230,000 signatures, but collected over 1.2 million). Polls show progressives likely to win.
All of a sudden, wouldn’t you know it, Kasich wants to talk.
Gov. John Kasich and top Republican lawmakers said Wednesday that they were offering to change a new law limiting collective bargaining in an attempt to keep a repeal effort off the November ballot. The administration released a letter asking for a meeting on Friday to discuss a compromise with 10 union leaders authorized to negotiate on behalf of We Are Ohio, the group pushing for a repeal of the law.
The letter reiterates supporters’ backing for the law and their confidence they can win in the fall, but it signals a desire to avoid a costly ballot battle. “A divisive fight on these issues that could possibly be avoided is in the best interest of everyone, including public employees and people who support public employees,” said the governor, above, a first-term Republican.
Kasich said the offer to revisit the law he recently signed has nothing to do with “a fear we are going to lose.”
The laughter was audible throughout Ohio. I mean, really. Why else would the governor suddenly discover a willingness to change a law he championed?
It’s almost amusing — Kasich wants to negotiate with state employees after gutting their collective bargaining rights, because he knows his constituents are likely to side with workers over him.
A progressive coalition, We Are Ohio, dismissed talk of a deal, but said Republicans can avoid the November referendum by repealing the anti-worker measure.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/kasich_to_labor_lets_make_a_de031622.php
Limbaugh Names New Oreo After Obama
‘Or-Bam-eo’ is a ‘biracial triple double-dipper,’ Rush slurs
Rush Limbaugh called a new Triple Double Oreo a “biracial” cookie with both vanilla and chocolate cream that he quipped will be known at the “Or-Bam-eo—the triple double-dipper.” Limbaugh has used the Oreo slight once before against Obama, BET points out. In 2009, he said that food safety advocates were “going to go after Oreos,” but said they might have to wait until “Obama leaves office.”
Nevertheless, Limbaugh once groused about a claim that Oreos had been thrown at former RNC chair Michael Steele. “They’re throwing Oreo cookies at the guy when he goes out and makes a speech, and they’re claiming he’s ‘black on the outside, white on the inside,'” an outraged Limbaugh huffed on his talk show. Many Americans “may have given Limbaugh the benefit of the doubt concerning the various charges that he might be a racist,” notes the Daily Mail. “That benefit has probably now been rescinded.”
http://www.newser.com/story/126135/limbaugh-names-new-oreo-after-obama.html
August 18, 2011 11:00 AM
Republicans take aim at EPA
By Steve Benen
Two months ago, at a debate for Republican presidential candidates, Michele Bachmann explained her belief that the Environmental Protection Agency shouldn’t exist. E.J. Dionne Jr. noted afterwards, “It’s a sign of how far to the right the Republican Party has moved that she didn’t stand out for her extreme views. On this stage, suggesting we should just rid ourselves of the Environmental Protection Agency seemed par for the course.”
Two months later, the accuracy of that assessment appears even more obvious.
The Environmental Protection Agency is emerging as a favorite target of the Republican presidential candidates, who portray it as the very symbol of a heavy-handed regulatory agenda imposed by the Obama administration that they say is strangling the economy. […]
Opposition to regulation and skepticism about climate change have become tenets of Republican orthodoxy, but they are embraced with extraordinary intensity this year because of the faltering economy, high fuel prices, the Tea Party passion for smaller government and an activist Republican base that insists on strict adherence to the party’s central agenda.
To be sure, the entire GOP field is not saying exactly the same thing about the Environmental Protection Agency, and their degrees to the hostility. Two candidates — Bachmann and Gingrich — want to eliminate the EPA altogether, while others simply want to put severe restrictions on the agency, prevent it from doing its job. But every person in the field has criticized the EPA, and even Jon Huntsman supports easing environmental standards until the economy picks up.
Rick Perry is of particular interest, since, as the New York Times noted, the Texas governor “has been at war with the E.P.A. almost since the day he took office.” This from the candidate who believes the entirety of climate science is a conspiracy cooked up by greedy scientists.
The Times added, “[W]hile attacks on the E.P.A., climate-change science and environmental regulation more broadly are surefire applause lines with many Republican primary audiences, these views may prove a liability in the general election, pollsters and analysts say. The American people, by substantial majorities, are concerned about air and water pollution, and largely trust the E.P.A., national surveys say.”
I certainly hope that’s still true. The very existence of the EPA has never been a partisan issue until now — Nixon created the agency four decades ago — and my fear is Republican activists will loathe the office simply because their national candidates tell them to.
But the American mainstream will probably know better. Atrios explained a while back, “Water (and air) in much of the country used to be dirty. Really really dirty. A lot of those really dirty waterways are now somewhat less dirty, if not places you want to actually swim in or fish, and a lot more of the places that were somewhat dirty are now places people swim and fish in.”
If voters want to turn back this clock, the Republican Party will offer candidates eager to do just that. But if this becomes a campaign issue, the GOP may be surprised by the extent to which Americans still care whether their air and water are clean.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/republicans_take_aim_at_epa031623.php
SEC accused of dumping records
By David S. Hilzenrath, Published: August 17
The SEC has violated federal law by destroying the records of thousands of enforcement cases in which it decided not to file charges against or conduct full-blown investigations of Wall Street firms and others initially suspected of wrongdoing, a former agency official has alleged.
The purged records involve major firms such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and hedge-fund manager SAC Capital, the former official claimed. At issue were suspicions of actions such as insider trading, financial fraud and market manipulation.
The allegations come at a time when the Securities and Exchange Commission faces criticism that it has pulled punches or missed warning signs in its policing of Wall Street.
A file closed in 2002 involved Lehman Brothers, the investment bank whose collapse fueled the financial meltdown of 2008, according to the former official. A file closed in 2009 involved suspected insider trading in securities related to American International Group, the insurance giant bailed out by the government at the height of the financial crisis, the former official wrote.
Others involved Bernard Madoff, whose multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme the agency failed to stop despite repeated tips.
The allegations were leveled in a July letter to Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) from Gary J. Aguirre, a former SEC enforcement lawyer now representing a current SEC enforcement lawyer, Darcy Flynn.
Flynn last year began managing SEC enforcement records and became concerned that records that were supposed to be preserved under federal law were being purged as a matter of SEC policy, Aguirre wrote.
Flynn contacted the National Archives and Records Administration, which sent a letter to the SEC saying it appeared there had been “an unauthorized disposal of federal records,” Aguirre wrote.
Based on Flynn’s account, the SEC inspector general’s office has been investigating and plans to issue a report by the end of September, Inspector General H. David Kotz said.
From 1993 through July 2010, records of about 9,000 preliminary inquiries were destroyed, Aguirre wrote. The inquiries, a first step in the enforcement process, can lead to full-fledged SEC investigations or be dropped without further action. They are known as MUIs, or “matters under inquiry,” and are opened when the SEC has reason to suspect someone violated securities law.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sec-accused-of-dumping-records/2011/08/17/gIQAKxF7LJ_story.html?wpisrc=nl_fedinsider
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) Leads Charge Against ‘Extreme’ Rick Perry
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) is on a media blitz this week as part of his mission to sink Governor Rick Perry’s candidacy, lending a Texan face to national Democrats’ efforts.
“He’s arrogant, he’s full of himself, he just fits the stereotype that is sometimes misapplied to our state,” Doggett told TPM in an interview. “We all are really proud to be Texans, but we’re not proud of what he’s done to our state.”
Doggett urged voters to look at Perry’s recent cuts to K-12 education as a model for how he would govern. After insisting that the legislature not dip into the state’s rainy day fund or raise taxes to help make up a shortfall this year, the governor forced deep cuts to social services instead , including $4 billion in education funding.
“My feeling is he will have much greater difficulty selling himself to independent and even former or recent Republicans in the suburbs on issues such as funding neighborhood schools” he said. We have seen a real reversal in the state of Texas from what was once a bipartisan, if inadequate, commitment to public education….meanwhile, we’re dead last among the state in percentage of population with a high school diploma.”
State Democrats are counting on Texas’ bottom ranking health and education statistics to rebut Perry’s emphasis on its economic growth, adding that many of the gains have come in the forms of low-paying, low-benefits jobs.
Still, Doggett predicted Perry would be a “force to be reckoned with” in the GOP primary.
“He is willing to be as extreme as necessary and will not be out right-winged,” he said. “He may come across as a braggadocious Texan in boots, but he is a serious politician who is ready to press the right emotional buttons without regard to the consequences to motivate people.”
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/rep-lloyd-doggett-d-tx-leads-charge-against-extreme-rick-perry.php
For Discussion: The Congressional Black Caucus Is Tired Of Making Excuses For President Obama….Are You???
During a sometimes-raucous session of what’s being called the “For the People” Jobs Initiative tour, a key member of the Congressional Black Caucus told an audience in Detroit Tuesday that the CBC doesn’t put pressure on President Obama because he is loved by black voters. But at the same time, Rep. Maxine Waters said, members of the CBC are becoming increasingly tired and frustrated by Obama’s performance on the issue of jobs. Even as she expressed support for the president, Waters virtually invited the crowd to “unleash us” to pressure Obama for action.
“We don’t put pressure on the president,” Waters told the audience at Wayne County Community College. “Let me tell you why. We don’t put pressure on the president because ya’ll love the president. You love the president. You’re very proud to have a black man — first time in the history of the United States of America. If we go after the president too hard, you’re going after us.”
The problem, Waters said, is that Obama is not paying enough attention to the problems of some black Americans. The unemployment rate for African-Americans nationally is a little over 16 percent, and almost twice that in Detroit. And yet, Waters said, the president is on a jobs-promotion trip through the Midwest that does not include any stops in black communities. “The Congressional Black Caucus loves the president too,” Waters said. “We’re supportive of the president, but we’re getting tired, y’all. We’re getting tired. And so, what we want to do is, we want to give the president every opportunity to show what he can do and what he’s prepared to lead on. We want to give him every opportunity, but our people are hurting. The unemployment is unconscionable. We don’t know what the strategy is. We don’t know why on this trip that he’s in the United States now, he’s not in any black community. We don’t know that.”
As she discussed her dilemma — frustrated with the president but hesitant to criticize him lest black supporters turn on her — Waters asked the crowd for its permission to have a “conversation” with the president. “When you tell us it’s alright and you unleash us and you tell us you’re ready for us to have this conversation, we’re ready to have the conversation,” she said. Some members of the crowd immediately voiced their approval. “All I’m saying to you is, we’re politicians,” Waters continued. “We’re elected officials. We are trying to do the right thing and the best thing. When you let us know it is time to let go, we’ll let go.”
http://bossip.com/442784/for-discussion-the-congressional-black-caucus-is-tired-of-making-excuses-for-president-obama-are-you/
Someone needs to call out Ms Waters for serving on the Financial Svs cmte instead of cmtes that serve black constituents.
Someone needs to call out the CBC which has chosen not to stack committes that impact the urban agenda of the black community and instead serve on committes that bring pork to their own communities.
Like the powerful Appropriations Committee where they can direct funds to their own districts and virtually guarantee themselves re-election.
There are have 4 CBC members in the powerful Appropriations Committee, out of 50 members total: Jesse Jackson Jr.-IL , Barbara Lee- CA, Chaka Fattah-PA, and Sanford Bishop-GA.
So how come Ms. Waters ain’t meeting with these folks and creating programs that funnel money to the urban agenda of unemployment instead of trying to call out
the POTUS?
Check out this description about the Appropriations committee:
The committee tends to be less partisan than other committees or the House overall. While the minority party will offer amendments during committee consideration, appropriations bills often get significant bipartisan support, both in committee and on the House floor. This atmosphere can be attributed to the fact that all committee members have a compelling interest in ensuring legislation will contain money for their own districts. Conversely, because members of this committee can easily steer money to their home districts, it is considered very difficult to unseat a member of this committee at an election—especially if he or she is a “Cardinal.”
In addition, the ability to appropriate money is useful to lobbyists and interest groups; as such, being on Appropriations makes it easier to collect campaign contributions ”
.
Thank YOU, Opulent; I’ve been waiting for you to respond here
Ummm With all due respect, Ms. Waters, you’ll NEVER, EVER, get nor do you need my permission as a black woman to become unleased. It’s ironic, that you would even use the word ‘UNLEASED” as if you and the members of the CBC are slaves in bondage, only you are literally accusing President Obama of being the slave master.
You sound like a fool, a victim. And I’m not for one minute buying the black folks will come after me bullshit, if I come after POTUS. DO.IT. Everyone else is piling on and declaring Barack Obama as some sort of savior.
You want to blame one man for the CBC dissmal failures of more than 40 decades, you go right ahead. Or you can look at your record as a congresswoman. What have you DONE for your constituents in all the decades that you’ve been representing them?
I think you and the CBC are not happy with the changes since this POTUS has been in office. I think you were comfortable with the status quo, and it has been disrupted. I think you like, other members of teh UNITED STATES CONGRESS are having to take a real hard look at yourselves and take stock of what it is you have done, need to do and continue to do to support this president and serve the American people. You all are being asked to STEP UP YOUR GAM. That’s right, put some WALK IN YOUR TALK, DO YOUR DAMN JOBS.
You don’t need anybody’s permission to have a talk with the president. Talk to your damn self, and ask what you can do to “pay attention to some black Americans.” And if you’re getting tired, wipe off the sweat, throw in the towel, and let some new, fresh faces in the game.
THE END
Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
by: Matt Taibbi
A whistleblower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals.
Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – “Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?” No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.
That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – “18,000 … including Madoff,” as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.
Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency’s records – “including case files relating to preliminary investigations” – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term “Orwellian,” devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or “Matters Under Inquiry” – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission’s internal website. “After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation,” the site advised staffers, “you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI.”
Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/is-the-sec-covering-up-wall-street-crimes-20110817?print=true
News Alert: Obama calls on Syrian President Assad to resign
August 18, 2011 10:02:19 AM
—————————————-
President Obama on Thursday for the first time explicitly called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, a symbolically significant step intended to ratchet up pressure on the government five months after the start of the uprising in that country. The president also issued an executive order expanding sanctions against Syrian government officials.
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/7CWL7Z/S388EG/I9JCLP/DGUH5L/VSV7T/ZH/h
For more information, visit washingtonpost.com
August 18, 2011 8:00 AM
The real Grand Bargain
By Steve Benen
For about at least a year, there’s been simmering talk about a flaw in the economic discourse. Republicans at least claim to be concerned about the deficit and long-term debt; Democrats are concerned high unemployment and economic growth. For all the contentious debate, there’s never been a good reason to stop policy policymakers from pursuing both goals at the same time.
The White House appears to have reached the same conclusion. With President Obama set to unveil a new economic plan in a few weeks, the administration appears likely to push for a real Grand Bargain: Obama will push for long-term debt reduction beyond the Super Committee’s $1.5 trillion goal and push for measures intended to boost the economy in the short term.
The point, of course, is to package the two objectives. As the president said yesterday, “We can’t afford to just do one or the other. We’ve got to do both.”
As is always the case, the details will make all the difference, and ideally, the debt-reduction portion of this agenda will focus far more on revenues than entitlements. But what about the stimulus phase? We’re likely to see a package that combines a series of ideas, which in isolation appear fairly modest, but when put together, would be intended to make a significant impact.
The measures include ideas that are no doubt familiar to those following the debate — infrastructure, payroll tax break, etc. — but there’s one proposal in particular that’s worth keeping an eye on.
‘
The jobs package that President Obama plans to unveil shortly after Labor Day could include tens of billions of dollars to renovate thousands of dilapidated public schools and a tax break to encourage businesses to hire new workers, according to people familiar with White House deliberations. […]
The elements of Obama’s plan remain under debate. But backers of the school renovation plan and the tax credit for hiring new workers think the proposals could attract Republican support. At the same time, they think that if the debate becomes a public confrontation, the ideas would give Obama the upper hand in a battle for voters. […]
Supporters estimate that each $1 billion in school construction work would generate up to 10,000 jobs. A $50-billion program, for example, would underwrite half a million jobs by that calculation.
The average U.S. school building is 40 years old, and many are suffering from neglect — poor ventilation, energy inefficiencies and mold. A report by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2009 gave the nation’s public school facilities a D grade.
This is referencing a bill called the Fix America’s Schools Today Act (FAST Act), which would be a school-based infrastructure measure, putting people to work improving public school facilities. Progressive economists love it, and if the White House incorporates this into the plan, it’d be very good news.
Will Republicans go along with any of this? Almost certainly not — any measure that creates jobs will necessarily draw immediate, reflexive GOP opposition. Trading debt reduction for jobs, in conservative circles, just isn’t good enough.
But once Republicans reject good, popular ideas that address the nation’s #1 issue, Americans will at least be able to see where both parties stand, and then choose accordingly next year.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/the_real_grand_bargain031618.php
DO.IT.MR.PRESIDENT.
Political AnimalBlog
August 18, 2011 8:35 AM
Paul Ryan still doesn’t understand health care
By Steve Benen
The New York Times reports today on the very low expectations surrounding the Murray/Hensarling “Super Committee,” tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade, and putting this bipartisan plan together over the next few months. If there’s anyone who expects the panel to succeed, he or she is hiding well.
But there’s a quote in the piece that stood out.
“I don’t think this committee is going to achieve a full fix to our problems, because Democrats have never wanted to put their health care bill on the table,” Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who leads the House Budget Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
It’s hard to overstate how little sense this makes. I share Ryan’s pessimism about the committee, but to argue that Democratic support for the Affordable Care Act dooms prospects for bipartisan progress is foolish, even for him.
The ostensible goal of the debt-reduction committee is, well, debt-reduction. Ryan wants the Affordable Care Act on the table, but what the right-wing Budget Committee chairman may have forgotten is that the Affordable Care Act reduces the debt by a substantial amount. Indeed, when Ryan’s House GOP caucus pushed a repeal measure earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office said the Republican plan would add $230 billion to the debt, just over the next 10 years, and far more over the following 10 years.
In other words, Paul Ryan says he wants to focus on the reducing debt, but he also wants to target a health care law that happens to be the biggest debt-reduction bill passed by Congress in a long while. Even by GOP standards, that’s just absurd.
Jon Chait explained, “To understand what Ryan’s saying, you have to grasp a couple of his premises. Ryan lives in a world in which the Affordable Care Act dramatically worsens the deficit picture, and the Congressional Budget Office’s score of the bill is totally inaccurate. Ryan’s beliefs about this are based on a bunch of demonstrable fallacies, but that of course is part of the problem — the CBO is going to score any deficit-reducing bill, which means it will be scored by CBO-math instead of by Ryan-math.”
I’d add, by the way, that Ryan is on safer ground if he wants to argue that health care costs are one of the driving factors of the nation’s long-term debt, because in reality, that’s true. But even here, Ryan is still offering the wrong policy agenda, since his notorious budget plan doesn’t even try to reduce health care costs in the short- or long-term, and both he and his party tend to oppose sensible ideas — IPAB, for example — that actually bring down the cost of care itself.
Ryan is looking “to achieve a full fix to our problems”? If he understood those problems, the larger discussion would be far more constructive.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/paul_ryan_still_doesnt_underst031619.php
I want lil Eddie Munster Ryan to throw his hat in the ring as a presidential candidate. Oh PLEASE, run….
Florida Supreme Court Takes Rick Scott Down A Notch
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has taken his executive authority a step too far, according to a state supreme court ruling this week.
When Scott took office in January, one of his first initiatives was issuing an executive order barring state agencies from creating new rules or regulations. It further created the Office of Fiscal Accountability and Regulatory Reform within the governor’s office to review any rules that stifle job creation or “impose burdensome costs on businesses.”
As the Florida Independent reports, Rosalie Whiley, a blind woman in Florida seeking to apply for food stamps, filed suit against Scott’s executive order, arguing that the initiative made it more difficult for her to apply for the food stamps.
“Just because the Legislature allows the governor to appoint the heads of these agencies does not mean that the governor has the power to control their rulemaking by fiat,” the lawsuit argued, according to the report.
As the Miami Herald reports, Whiley wanted the executive order lifted. But the court didn’t go quite that far. Instead, the court ruled that the “Legislature retains the sole right to delegate rulemaking authority to agencies, and all provisions in [Scott’s executive orders] that operate to suspend rulemaking contrary to the Administrative Procedures Act constitute an encroachment upon a legislative function.”
Scott called the ruling a “disappointment.” “Think about it,” he said. “Secretaries of these agencies report to me. And I’m not supposed to supervise them? It doesn’t make any sense.” Scott’s office did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment.
As the Independent points out, the practical implications of the ruling are not yet clear. But it’s a judicial blow to a governor who in May earned his worst approval rating yet.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/florida_supreme_court_takes_rick_scott_down_a_notc.php?ref=fpb
my answer to Kasich..
HELL MUTHAFUCKING NO
See you at the ballot box in November
……………………………..
Kasich: Let’s Make A Deal On My Anti-Union Bill — And Call Off The Repeal Referendum
Eric Kleefeld | August 17, 2011, 3:34PM
Gov. John Kasich (R) on Wednesday offered a deal to the state’s public employee unions: Let’s compromise on my law stripping away your collective bargaining rights — and withdraw the referendum where you could get it repealed.
The Columbus Dispatch reports on Kasich’s press conference, at which he was also joined by top Republican legislative leaders:
Kasich said avoiding a fight is in “best interest of everyone, including public employee unions.” He asked the unions to “set aside political agendas and past offenses.”
The governor said the offer stems from him being a “believer in talking,” and not out of “a fear we are going to lose.” Kasich asked for a delegation of 10 public employee union leaders to talk with state officials.The law has not actually taken effect, but was put on hold by the petition process that triggered the referendum for this November. A recent Quinnipiac poll from this past July showed that repealing the bill had a lead of either slightly under or over 20 points, depending on the wording of the question.
According to the Dispatch, the possible deal from Kasich’s side would include a modified binding arbitration system, the right to strike for non-public safety employees, and the likely restoration of “fair share” payments to unions by non-union employees that the law would have eliminated, among other issues that would be put on the table. A main fiscal austerity part of the bill, requiring increased contributions by public employees to their health care and pensions, would have to be agreed to in some form.
We Are Ohio, the lead organization behind the repeal referendum, put out a statement in response — saying no to a deal, and that Kasich and fellow Republicans should repeal the law in its entirety if they want to avoid the referendum. Key quote:
Today We Are Ohio once again stood firmly with the 1.3 million Ohioans who signed petitions to repeal SB 5 by telling the extreme politicians who passed it, to repeal it. Following a press conference held by Governor Kasich, Speaker Batchelder and Senate President Niehaus, We Are Ohio issued the following statement:
“We’re glad that Governor Kasich and the other politicians who passed SB 5 are finally admitting this is a flawed bill,” said Melissa Fazekas, spokeswoman for We Are Ohio. “Just like the bill was flawed this approach to a compromise is flawed as well. Our message is clear. These same politicians who passed this law could repeal it and not thwart the will of the people. They should either repeal the entire bill or support our efforts and encourage a no vote on Issue 2.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/kasich-lets-make-a-deal-on-my-anti-union-bill—-and-call-off-the-repeal-referendum.php?ref=fpb
LMBAO X’s 100000 HELL NO, REPEAL THAT BITCH.
August 17, 2011
The Tea Party as far-right losers
To understand why Tea Party-propped pols such as Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry have no chance — none — of winning the White House, today’s NY Times op-ed “Crashing the Tea Party,” by David Campbell of Notre Dame and Harvard’s Robert Putnam, is an excellent place to start.
The researchers compare this declining movement’s increasing fanaticism to the left’s Vietnam-era McGovernism. I assume they do so only to avoid the more obvious comparison so routinely made: the Goldwater debacle.
The Tea Party as a recent phenomenon pointedly born of busted government budgets and intense economic distress? Not really, write Campbell and Putnam. It’s just the old right’s familiar far right: nativist, bigoted whites who are “disproportionately social conservatives” of a pronounced theocratic bent. (“Yet it is precisely this infusion of religion into politics that most Americans increasingly oppose.”)
Furthermore most Tea Partiers are not, as they love to propagandize and bamboozle, new to politics or political battle: they “were highly partisan” — and active — “Republicans long before the Tea Party was born.”
The op-ed’s most intriguing passage:
[I]n data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.
Bundle these snapshots and what you have is a Class of ’64 GOP yearbook. Goldwater himself was no theocrat or even much of a social conservative; in fact, his libertarian skin crawled when he finally acceded to his advisers’ demands that he demagogue mid-1960s “social morality.” But the Puritans had been politically marooned for decades and they seemed ripe for exploitation — so exploit, a very desperate Goldwater did (to his subsequent and much greater regret, when his Puritan liberation transmogrified into the rancidly un-libertarian New Right).
Today, however, the demographics of the far right’s nativist, racist, socially conservative whites are leaner — far leaner — than they were in 1964, and the projection for outyears is, essentially, electoral doom. Sure, the Bachmanns and Perrys are gussying up their far-right appeal with mindless overtures to economic medievalism, which retains a certain and larger appeal to a fundamentally conservative nation, but their Christian fundamentalist trail is a long, ineradicable, and haunting one.
Enough to deprive them of the GOP’s 2012 nomination? That’s my guess, in that rabidly anti-Obama primary voters are especially keen on electability, unlike the anti-Great Society thumpers and ideologues of ’64.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m pulling for Perry — I’d add Bachmann, but even God can’t help her — to go all the way in the nomination process. Regrettably, assuming Perry fails to self-immolate first, Mitt Romney seems pragmatically capable of maintaining a proper Tea-Partying distance and flaming Perry’s evangelical ass but good, and rather soon.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2011/08/the-tea-party-as-far-right-losers.html
August 17, 2011
September’s promise
Democratic strategist Paul Begala offers Obama some unimpressive advice:
Listen, Mr. President, Republicans have one objective, and it is not a stronger economy or bipartisanship — it’s destroying your presidency. If you believe anything else, you are deluding yourself…. It’s a faith-based myth that anything is going to force these people to behave in a bipartisan way.
I describe it as unimpressive since even Republicans don’t deny it. In fact, they boast about it. Says, for example, Rob Collins, a former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor
It’s hard for me to believe [the White House is] going to build a compelling case that they can pressure Republicans, that they have this grass-roots army to force us to do something…. It didn’t work in the past and it’s not going to work now.
Collins is of course right, which by comparative logic makes Obama’s bus-tour admonitions of intransigent Republicans not so much wrong as rather useless. The GOP was already soaring in public disapproval, which renders this point more acute: for the White House, the only public ire to be tamed is that directed against government inaction on the jobs front.
Hence, this mystifies:
[T]he president … will deliver a major policy address outlining his plan for deficit reduction and job creation in early September, a senior administration official told Politico. Obama has said his proposal will include a hybrid of deficit cuts, tax reform and modest job-creation initiatives.
There’s always the potential of mere political gamesmanship in the administration’s lowering of expectations; but any “modest” jobs proposal in the grips of the severest downturn since the Great Depression is likely to be greeted, among Democrats, by a deafening thud — indeed so thuddish, the cost in party enthusiasm could offset any gains made among more conservative independents.
By and large the electorate is primed for boldness. And Obama should give it to them
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2011/08/septembers-promise.html
SEC accused of dumping records
By David S. Hilzenrath, Published: August 17
The SEC has violated federal law by destroying the records of thousands of enforcement cases in which it decided not to file charges against or conduct full-blown investigations of Wall Street firms and others initially suspected of wrongdoing, a former agency official has alleged.
The purged records involve major firms such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and hedge-fund manager SAC Capital, the former official claimed. At issue were suspicions of actions such as insider trading, financial fraud and market manipulation.
The allegations come at a time when the Securities and Exchange Commission faces criticism that it has pulled punches or missed warning signs in its policing of Wall Street.
A file closed in 2002 involved Lehman Brothers, the investment bank whose collapse fueled the financial meltdown of 2008, according to the former official. A file closed in 2009 involved suspected insider trading in securities related to American International Group, the insurance giant bailed out by the government at the height of the financial crisis, the former official wrote.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sec-accused-of-dumping-records/2011/08/17/gIQAKxF7LJ_story.html?wpisrc=nl_fedinsider
Obama’s Job No. 1: Create jobs
By Fareed Zakaria, Published: August 17
Democrats are finally up for a fight — with President Obama. Having despaired that Obama gave in to the Tea Party on the debt deal, they now criticize him as too cautious in his proposals to boost American jobs. They’re right that Obama should present a sharp distinction to the public between his efforts and the Republican Party’s utter passivity in the face of a national employment crisis. But perhaps Obama realizes that the most important factor that will help his reelection — and Democratic prospects more generally — is a rise in employment. And to have any impact on the actual economy, Obama needs proposals that can get through Congress, not ones that sound good on TV.
The problem before the country is more acute than people realize. It goes beyond the indebtedness issues that are surely depressing the recovery. In June, the McKinsey Global Institute published an eye-opening report called “An economy that works: Job creation and America’s future.” It points out that for 20 years, America has had huge difficulties creating jobs. After every recession since the Second World War, once gross domestic product recovered to pre-recession levels, employment also returned to pre-recession levels within about six months.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-job-no-1-create-jobs/2011/08/17/gIQAHXQ8LJ_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Good Morning, Everyone!:-)
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Mornin’, rikyrah. Thank you, for your encouraging words, prayers in support of SG2.