The Progressive Pen

One More Reason to Pass HCR

Think Progress: Limbaugh vows to leave country if health care passes.

 

Technorati Tags: Health care,Rush Limbaugh

Kuttner: Moment of Truth

Via the Huffington Post, Robert Kuttner notes that the direction/fate of Obama's presidency may very well be decided in March:

March 2010 will either be remembered as the month when the scales fell from Barack Obama's eyes and he realized that the bipartisan fantasy, given the current Republican Party, is a fool's errand. Or it will go down in history as the moment when Obama had a chance to change course and emerge as a leader -- and flinched. Which will it be?

 

Technorati Tags: Robert Kuttner,Obama,healthcare reform,bipartisanship

Fox: Snowstorm = No Global Warming

Well, you had to see this one coming.

As reported by TPM and elsewhere, Fox News is suggesting that the recent snowstorms in the Northeastern United States disproves the existence of global warming.

For example, Fox News blowhard Sean Hannity declared that the storms refute "Al Gore's hysterical global warming theories."

Global warming, of course, is not "Al Gore's theory.”  Gore is not a scientist, so Gore does not develop scientific theories.  Tough concept to grasp, eh Hannity?

Gore is an advocate for a cause he believes in.  That does not make climate change Gore’s theory.   The global warming trend has been studied by scientists , the overwhelming majority of whom agree that the climate crisis is very real and will have potentially devastating consequences.

But all of this science stuff is irrelevant, according to Fox, because... it's snowing!

Thankfully, Fox's latest bout of stupidity did not go unnoticed by The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  The relevant segments are posted below. Both pieces do a great job of highlighting the absurdity of Fox’s logic and worth watching if you enjoy a good laugh.

 

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Unusually Large Snowstorm
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
We're Off to See the Blizzard
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Skate Expectations

 

Technorati Tags: Fox News,Colbert Report,the Daily Show,John Stewart,Stephen Colbert,Sean Hannity

Krugman: Obama "Clueless"

From Paul Krugman's blog:

I’m with Simon Johnson here: how is it possible, at this late date, for Obama to be this clueless?

The lead story on Bloomberg right now contains excerpts from an interview with Business Week which tells us:

President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

Obama sought to combat perceptions that his administration is anti-business and trumpeted the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies. He plans to reiterate that message when he speaks to the Business Roundtable, which represents the heads of many of the biggest U.S. companies, on Feb. 24 in Washington.

Oh. My. God.

Thank you sir, may I have another?

Incredibly, the Obama administration still holds delusions of bipartisanship.  Sam Stein of the Huffington Post reports:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Monday that President Obama is willing to "add various elements" to health care legislation suggested by Republican lawmakers during an upcoming bipartisan meeting on the topic…

"We have to get, frankly, the Republican members of the House and Senate to re-engage in this process," she declared. "I think it is not acceptable that half of the legislative body pushed away from the table when this conversation began months ago and basically said, 'We don't want to participate in this process.’

So, rather than showing actual leadership by pushing the Democrat-crafted bill through Congress, the Obama administration wants to "reengage" Republicans.

Earth to President Obama: Republicans do not care about healthcare reform.  Their foremost concern is that you fail.

How Obama can continue to be so naïve is beyond me.

 

Technorati Tags: Health care reform,Obama

You Are a Coward

Via The Huffington Post:

“You are a coward, Joe Lieberman.”

So declared Ed Schultz in an impassioned plea for health care reform.

 

Technorati Tags: Health care,Ed Schultz

Reich: Our Incredibly Shrinking Democracy

In his latest column for the Huffington Post, Robert Reich declares:

I wish conservatives would stop complaining about big government and start worrying about the real problem -- small democracy.

What exactly does Reich mean by "small democracy"?  He explains:

It seems as if more and more decisions that should be made democratically are being shunted off somewhere to a few people who make them in back rooms. Which programs should be cut, which entitlements pared back, and what taxes raised in order to reduce the long-term budget deficit? Hmmm. Let's convene a commission and have them decide.

Commissions are a default mechanism when politicians want to hand off difficult issues to "experts." But reducing the long-term budget deficit has almost nothing to do with expertise. It's about our nations' values and priorities. Nothing could be more central to the democratic process.  (Emphasis added)

Democracy requires at least three things: (1) Important decisions are made in the open. (2) The public and its representatives have an opportunity to debate them, so the decisions can be revised in light of what the public discovers and wants. And (3) those who make the big decisions are accountable to voters.

Reich notes that the problem extends far beyond the proposed independent deficit reduction committee.  We are witnessing an alarming lack of transparency with some of the very largest government programs and initiatives.

Among the most egregious examples Reich lists:

• TARP --“The notorious Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) began with a virtual blank check from Congress. Treasury officials then secretly decided which companies were to receive hundreds of billions of dollars.”
• The Fed -- "The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, has gone far beyond its traditional role of setting short-term interest rates. It has bought up massive amounts of debt -- mortgage debt, Treasury bills, and debt instruments emanating several public agencies, many of them supporting a wide range of private entities. No one outside the Fed knows the ultimate beneficiaries of all this government backing, the criteria used by the Fed for making these commitments, or even how much debt the Fed is buying.

Reich's point is not to debate whether the expanded role of Treasury and the Fed was necessary.  Rather, Reich questions the bizarre cloak of secrecy under which Treasury and the Fed are permitted to spend hundreds of billions of dollars.

Reich appropriately observes:

Even if the economic emergency justified such secrecy -- and it's hard to see exactly why it would -- the emergency is over, and yet closed-door decision making continues. Will Treasury use what's left of TARP to help stimulate more jobs and, if so, how? Will the Fed stop buying mortgage-backed securities? No one knows.

 

Technorati Tags: Robert Reich,TARP

A Reason Not to Donate to the DNC

From the Huffington Post:

The Democratic National Committee is defending its decision to spend nearly $500,000 on television ads that, in the process of defending Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) for his support of health care reform, took a swipe at a public option for insurance coverage.

On Monday, Joe Sudbay of Americablog reported that the DNC had forked over $459,760.00 to the Nebraska Democratic Committee, which, in turn, used that money to sponsor television ads on Nelson's behalf. Those ads featured the senator explaining his support for health care legislation in part by noting he had changed the legislation so that insurance coverage would not be "run by the government." It was a clear slight at the public plan.

Liberals already had a reason to be wary of donating money to the DNC, when the money could conceivably end up in the hands of conservative Democrats like Ben Nelson, who tried to derail healthcare reform.

Now we are learning that the DNC is funding ads that actually defend Nelson's actions?

Very, very troubling

The DNC has certainly gone downhill fast since Howard Dean’s days at the helm.

 

Technorati Tags: Ben Nelson,Howard Dean,DNC,healthcare reform

The Wrong Direction

Barack Obama, by all accounts, is a bright individual.  Yet he seems determined to ignore that timeless lesson: It's the economy, stupid.

Obama must have created quite an insular bubble at the White House if he thinks the public's foremost concern is the deficit.  No, Mr. President.

I know this may sound shocking, but when the country is mired in double-digit unemployment -- with little hope for significant improvement in the near future -- the electorate is bound to be angry.

But Mr. Obama evidently has placed a higher priority on triangulation than he has on job creation.

Obama's plan to enact a three-year freeze on a large portion of discretionary spending shows he just does not get it.  Robert Reich explains why this course of action is wrongheaded:

A pending freeze will make it even harder to get jobs back because government is the last spender around. Consumers have pulled back, investors won’t do much until they know consumers are out there, and exports are miniscule.

Simply put, the government should be spending more, not less.  In the short term, Obama's problem is that the deficit is too small.

The country needs another FDR; however, Mr. Obama seems intent on channeling Herbert Hoover.

 

Update:

Not surprisingly, Mark Thoma and Brad DeLong both have harsh words for Obama's Herbert Hoover initiative.

“It is hard to imagine a less competent legislative operation,” writes Delong.

 

Technorati Tags: Obama,Robert Reich,Herbert Hoover,FDR,Brad DeLong,Mark Thoma

Overstocked

Frank Rich summarizes the current political climate:

The Obama administration is so overstocked with Goldman Sachs-Robert Rubin alumni and so tainted by its back-room health care deals with pharmaceutical and insurance companies that conservative politicians, Brown included, can masquerade shamelessly as the populist alternative.

 

Technorati Tags: Frank Rich,Obama,Robert Rubin