Since they couldn’t have Palin, congressional GOP turn to their second choice: Newt Gingrich.
Since they couldn’t have Palin, congressional GOP turn to their second choice: Newt Gingrich.
Earlier this month, the top congressional GOP fundraising committees — the NRSC and the NRCC — issued a joint press release announcing that Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) would deliver the keynote address at their annual fundraising dinner. However, Palin’s staff quickly quashed the excitement, saying that “[e]nthusiasm during a scheduling meeting…was misinterpreted as a confirmation of attendance.” Embarrassed, Republicans began trashing the governor. “She was a disaster,” said one Republican source. “We had confirmation.” The GOP has now turned to its second choice — former House speaker Newt Gingrich. The Wall Street Journal reports that Gingrich has agreed to “speak in her place.”
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Conservatives Falsely Assert That Green Economy Legislation Would Impose $3,100 Tax On Families
Conservatives Falsely Assert That Green Economy Legislation Would Impose $3,100 Tax On Families
Cross-posted from The Wonk Room.
Conservatives in Congress are resting their objections to effective green economy legislation on a bogus stat. Conservative leaders like Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) are attacking the cap-and-trade proposal before Congress by claiming that it would “cost every American family up to $3,100 per year in higher energy prices.”
This is a deliberate lie.
They seem to be getting this number from an intentional misinterpretation of a 2007 study performed by a group of researchers at the MIT.
In an interview with PolitiFact, John Reilly, an MIT professor and one of the authors of the study, explained about this $3,100 claim:
“It’s just wrong. It’s wrong in so many ways it’s hard to begin.”” [...]
“Someone from the House Republicans had called me (March 20) and asked about this,” Reilly said. “I had explained why the estimate they had was probably incorrect and what they should do to correct it, but I think this wrong number was already floating around by that time.”
House Republicans apparently took the total revenues from the hypothetical cap and trade system that MIT analyzed and crudely divided it by the number of households in America, getting approximately $3,100 per family.
What they don’t mention, however, is that not only did John Reilly explicitly tell them that this was an inappropriate way to do this calculation, but that MIT had determined the net welfare effect on a typical family and the burden would be less than 1/40th what they claim, and wouldn’t occur until 2015.
As PolitiFact explains: “The report did include an estimate of the net cost to individuals, called the “welfare” cost. It would be $30.89 per person in 2015, or $79 per family if you use the same average household size the Republicans used of 2.56 people.” In exchange, we’d get a clean & renewable energy economy, decreased reliance on oil, and a safer climate for the world.
The reason Boehner’s methodology is totally inappropriate?
“That’s just not how economists calculate the cost of a tax proposal, Reilly said. The tax might push the price of carbon-based fuels up a bit, but other results of a cap-and-trade program, such as increased conservation and more competition from other fuel sources, would put downward pressure on prices. Moreover, consumers would get some of the tax back from the government in some form. [In this case,President Obama wants to use revenues from cap-and-trade to fund a tax cut for 95% of working families]“
When conservatives tell you you’d see your energy bills go up $3,100 every year, it’s not distortion or spin, it’s just a lie.
After Flip-Flopping On Recovery Package, Rep. Cao Suggests He Might Support Obama’s Budget
After Flip-Flopping On Recovery Package, Rep. Cao Suggests He Might Support Obama’s Budget
Several days before the House voted on President Obama’s economic recovery package, freshman Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) told the Times-Picayune that he would “more likely than not” vote for the legislation because the “2nd Congressional District needs a stimulus package.” When it came time to vote, however, Cao gave into pressure from his party and voted no.
Now, Cao appears to be flirting again with the idea of bucking his party, telling the Hill earlier today that he may vote for Obama’s proposed budget:
Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La.) may buck his party when the House votes on President Obama’s budget proposal later this week. The freshman lawmaker told The Hill that his constituents are split, adding that he wants more information before deciding whether to stick with his party or side with the president. [...]
“At this point, I’m not sure which is approach is better,” Cao said Tuesday morning. If he votes yes, Cao would be the first Republican in recent memory to support a Democratic budget resolution.
Despite Cao’s wobbly position on Obama’s agenda, his constituents appear to support it whole-heartedly. Not only did Cao’s district vote 75 percent in favor of Obama last November, but after Cao voted against the recovery package, several of his constituents initiated a recall campaign.
Obama’s budget offers significant benefits to the people of Louisiana. The Center for American Progress Action Fund found that approximately 1.5 million Louisiana families would benefit directly from Obama’s proposal to extend the Making Work Pay tax cut. As Cao himself noted, Obama’s proposal also includes one billion dollars for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Housing Voucher Program and Affordable Housing Trust Fund, a portion of which will go to his most needy constituents.
Finally, because a significant number of his constituents live in New Orleans, Cao should consider the fact that Obama’s budget includes money to continue and accelerate recovery from Hurricane Katrina. The question now is whether or not Cao can begin to put the long-term interests of his constituents before his own short-term interests within the House Republican Caucus.
Sanford: It would be ‘fiscal child abuse’ to accept millions of stimulus dollars for education.
Sanford: It would be ‘fiscal child abuse’ to accept millions of stimulus dollars for education.
As Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) continues to wage an ideological war against $700 million of sorely-needed stimulus funds for his state, he has become more and more desperate to stave off his critics. Tonight on Glenn Beck’s Fox show, Sanford claimed that accepting the funds — 80 percent of which would fund education in his state — would be akin to “fiscal child abuse”:
BECK: But your point, if I’m not mistaken is, no, no, no, you’re taking care of the children in South Carolina by not taking it. Can you explain that? [...]
SANFORD: Since we don’t have any of this money that’s now being dispensed from Washington, DC; since we’re going out and printing money and we’re issuing debt to solve a problem that was created by too much debt; since that’s taking place, and since those costs will be borne by the next generation, in fact it is sort of fiscal child abuse to do what we’re doing.
BECK: Yes.
Watch it:
It’s unclear whether South Carolina student Ty’Sheoma Bethea will agree that denying her crumbling school the stimulus cash it needs to rebuild — or that firing 4,000 state teachers — is protecting her from child abuse.
Hersh: Cheney ‘Left A Stay Behind’ In Obama’s Government, Can ‘Still Control Policy Up To A Point’
Hersh: Cheney ‘Left A Stay Behind’ In Obama’s Government, Can ‘Still Control Policy Up To A Point’
In an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, host Terry Gross asked investigative journalist Seymour Hersh if, as he continues to investigate the Bush administration, “more people” were “coming forward” to talk to him now that “the president and vice president are no longer in power.” Hersh replied that though “a lot of people that had told me in the last year of Bush, ‘call me next, next February,’ not many people had talked to him. He implied that they were still scared of Cheney.
“Are you saying that you think Vice President Cheney is still having a chilling effect on people who might otherwise be coming forward,” asked Gross. “I’ll make it worse,” answered Hersh, adding that he believes Cheney “put people back” in government to “stay behind” in order to “tell him what’s going on” and perhaps even “do sabotage”:
HERSH: I’ll make it worse. I think he’s put people left. He’s put people back. They call it a stay behind. It’s sort of an intelligence term of art. When you leave a country and, you know, you’ve driven out the, you know, you’ve lost the war. You leave people behind. It’s a stay behind that you can continue to contacts with, to do sabotage, whatever you want to do. Cheney’s left a stay behind. He’s got people in a lot of agencies that still tell him what’s going on. Particularly in defense, obviously. Also in the NSA, there’s still people that talk to him. He still knows what’s going on. Can he still control policy up to a point? Probably up to a point, a minor point. But he’s still there. He’s still a presence.
Listen here:
The idea that Cheney would seed the government with trusted contacts is not surprising. As Hersh noted in his talk with Gross, Cheney has “been around forever” and “understands bureaucracy much better” than almost anyone in government. In 2006, Robert Dreyfuss reported for The American Prospect that when Cheney helped staff the Bush administration in 2001, he put together a “corps of hard-line acolytes” that served “as his eyes and ears” in the federal bureaucracy. Former officials called them “Dick Cheney’s spies.”
Additionally, before leaving office, the Bush administration aggressively placed political appointees into permanent civil service positions as part of a process known as “burrowing.” Some of the burrowed former political appointees have close ties to Cheney, such as Jeffrey T. Salmon, who was a speechwriter for Cheney when he served as defense secretary. In July, he was named deputy director for resource management in the Energy Department’s Office of Science
Transcript: More »
Filibusters skyrocket under Republican minority in 110th Congress.
Filibusters skyrocket under Republican minority in 110th Congress.
Yesterday, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) slammed the idea of passing health care reform and other Obama priorities through a simple majority of the Senate, a process called reconciliation. “Now, if they do that, that, in effect is the nuclear war,” Kyl said. The Republicans have become experts at using Senate filibusters — or often just the threat of filibusters — to block the Democratic agenda while in the minority. As this chart from Norm Ornstein shows, the use of filibusters have skyrocketed under Republicans:
Ezra Klein writes, “If you want to understand why the earth is likely to heat and why comprehensive health reform is unlikely to pass and why the government is increasingly letting the Federal Reserve govern its response to the financial crisis, that graph basically tells the story.”
Rasmussen Polls On Non-Existent ‘Global Currency’ Issue, Before Admitting It’s A Non-Existent Issue
Rasmussen Polls On Non-Existent ‘Global Currency’ Issue, Before Admitting It’s A Non-Existent Issue
The right wing, led by the always reliable Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Glenn Beck, is in a panic about a supposed plot to replace the dollar with a “One World currency.” Repeating its pattern of echoing conservative memes, Rasmussen polled on the issue, and — unsurprisingly — found that most Americans favor keeping the dollar:
Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Americans say it is important for the dollar to remain the currency of the United States, including 70% who say it is Very Important.
Only three percent (3%) say it is not at all important if the dollar remains America’s currency, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
All four of Rasmussen’s questions asserted that a proposal exists to create a “new global currency” that will “replace the dollar,” asking how important it is “that the dollar remain the currency of the United States.” However, in its own write up of the poll, Rasmussen admits that “the issue” is not about replacing Americans’ dollar bills but rather with moving to a new standard for the global currency reserves:
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner generated concern in Washington when he seemed willing to consider a proposal for replacing the dollar, then later backtracked on it. At issue is not replacing the money in Americans’ wallets but what currency will be the world standard against which all other monies are measured.
Indeed, there is no plan — and no suggestion of a plan — to create a global currency. The fact that Rasmussen even polled on Bachmann’s insane legislation banning the replacement of the dollar with a fictional currency shows just how unconcerned Rasmussen is with truth, accuracy, or intellectual honesty.
VIDEO: Watch O’Reilly’s Harassment Machine in action.
VIDEO: Watch O’Reilly’s Harassment Machine in action.
Crooks and Liars’ John Amato has compiled a wonderful 87 second video that documents the methods and tactics of Bill O’Reilly’s Harassment Machine. The video shows O’Reilly producer Jesse Watters — the guy who accosted Amanda while she was on vacation — and other Fox henchmen stalking, ambushing, and harassing various victims. Watch it:
Salon’s Alex Koppelman writes about the “real danger of O’Reilly’s ambush interviews.” Please join ThinkProgress’ Stop Supporting The O’Reilly Harassment Machine campaign.
Murkowski rips Jindal’s ‘volcano monitoring’ comments on Senate floor.
Murkowski rips Jindal’s ‘volcano monitoring’ comments on Senate floor.
In February, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) criticized the fact that the stimulus package provided funding for “volcano monitoring.” Ironically, last week, Mt. Redoubt in Alaska erupted, spewing gas 11 miles into the air and sending ash toward Anchorage. In an impassioned floor speech yesterday discussing the “importance of volcano monitoring,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) — who introduced legislation funding volcano monitoring — took a minute to criticize Jindal’s ignorant remarks:
MURKOWSKI: I think we’re all aware that there has been some recent comments made about federal spending for volcano monitoring and the suggestion perhaps that this might be wasteful money — that we don’t have any need to be monitoring volcanoes. And I can assure you, Mr. President, that monitoring volcanoes is critically important to the nation, to the world, and particularly to Alaska right now where we are being held hostage by a volcano.
Watch it:
Curiously, Murkowski voted against the stimulus package that provided funding for volcano monitoring.
Feith Responds To Spanish Charges: ‘I Never Advocated’ For Torture, I Was Just ‘Giving Advice’
Feith Responds To Spanish Charges: ‘I Never Advocated’ For Torture, I Was Just ‘Giving Advice’
Last week, a Spanish court said it would consider opening a criminal case against six Bush administration officials “over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo.” Yesterday, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, one of the officials implicated in the complaint, went on Fox News to defend himself in front of torture advocate Bill O’Reilly.
Feith argued that the charges that he helped approve torture are completely bogus. “I’m being criticized for a position that I never advocated. And so the facts are just wrong,” he said. Feith said he was simply giving “advice” to President Bush and had no role in “directing” torture policy:
FEITH But there’s also a broader point of principle here, which is what the Spanish authorities are considering doing is indicting people, former U.S. government officials for giving advice to the president. And the idea that a foreign official can disagree with advice given to the president, they’re not talking about action. And they’re not even talking about directing people to take action. They’re talking about people who were advising the president on policy and legal questions.
“This is an effort to intimidate U.S. government officials,” Feith alleged. Watch it:
But last year, Feith himself bragged in an interview with British law professor Phillippe Sands that he played a pivotal role in ensuring that Geneva protections against “outrages upon personal dignity” did not apply to detainees:
I asked Feith, just to be clear: Didn’t the administration’s approach mean that Geneva’s constraints on interrogation couldn’t be invoked by anyone at Guantánamo? “Oh yes, sure,” he shot back. Was that the intended result?, I asked. “Absolutely,” he replied. I asked again: Under the Geneva Conventions, no one at Guantánamo was entitled to any protection? “That’s the point,” Feith reiterated. … “This year I was really a player,” Feith said, thinking back on 2002 and relishing the memory.
Indeed, Feith’s arguments became official U.S. policy with the signing of a presidential memorandum on February 7, 2002.
Feith’s knee-jerk denial that he pushed for torture is nothing new. “We took an extremely strongly pro-Geneva Convention position in the Pentagon,” he said last April. Speaking with O’Reilly, Feith also made sure to go after Sands. “What’s going on in Spain is implementing, essentially, an, idea that a British lawyer has been proposing, a guy named Phillippe Sands, who wrote an extremely dishonest book on the subject,” he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai signs a law that ‘legalizes’ rape.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai signs a law that ‘legalizes’ rape.
Today, the UK Independent reports that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has signed the new Shia Family Law, which women’s groups believe will essentially legalize rape. Specifically, the measure “negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman’s right to leave the home.” Shinkai Karokhail, a woman MP who campaigned against the legislation, called it “one of the worst bills passed by the parliament this century.” More details:
The most controversial parts of the law deal explicitly with sexual relations. Article 132 requires women to obey their husband’s sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least “once every four nights” when travelling, unless they are ill. The law also gives men preferential inheritance rights, easier access to divorce, and priority in court.
A report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Unifem, warned: “Article 132 legalises the rape of a wife by her husband”.
Critics are charging that Karzai rushed the bill through parliament “in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.” (HT: AMERICAblog)
Sanford’s ‘Compromise’ Offer To State Legislature: Adopt My Neo-Hooverite Approach
Sanford’s ‘Compromise’ Offer To State Legislature: Adopt My Neo-Hooverite Approach
As his state plummets into nearly unmatched unemployment and enormous budget shortfalls, Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) has been waging an ideological, politically-motivated war to prevent needed stimulus funds from reaching South Carolinians. He has already twice proposed spending some $700 million in stimulus cash to pay down the state debt — and has twice been rebuffed by the White House.
Five days before the deadline for accepting the stimulus funds, and as criticism of him escalates, Sanford gave a speech yesterday outlining a new “compromise” proposal: He’ll accept the $700 million but demand that the state legislature find other state funds to pay off the debt. In other words, You accept my neo-Hooverite approach of cutting spending in a deep recession:
Gov. Mark Sanford has proposed a compromise with state lawmakers over accepting $700 million in federal stimulus money — one that would require diverting state funds to pay off debt and accepting Sanford’s suggested budget savings. [...]
Sanford wants:
• Lawmakers to approve $270 million in cuts Sanford included in his executive budget and to spend that money on debt.
• Lawmakers to find $70 million more over the next two years and to spend it on debt.
Sanford noted lawmakers have about $220 million in extra health-care funds — money the House spread throughout its $6.6 billion spending plan — to make up the difference. Paying off debt would save $80 million in each of the next two years, he said.
Sanford is hoping to have his cake and eat it too: accepting stimulus funds with his right hand while paying down the debt — the debt his disastrous tax cuts created — with his left hand. In the end, though, it’s the same pot of money, and forcing the state to pay down the debt means forcing cuts that could have disastrous consequences for South Carolinians.
Sanford’s fuzzy math wouldn’t change the budget cuts to education that state officials say could mean between 4,000 and 7,500 teachers will be fired. And since Sanford is still refusing the stimulus funds — unless his “compromise” is agreed to — the state Senate Finance Committee was forced to rewrite the budget yesterday stripping $368 million away, which “would translate to $161 million in cuts to K-12 education agencies, $103 million to the state’s Medicaid and health agencies, $44 million to higher education and $39 million to prisons and law enforcement.”
Indeed, Sanford’s compromise is a hollow one. Local news reported that the governor told audiences yesterday that he “remains firm in his belief that stimulus funds should be used to pay down debt or not used at all.” He also dismissed worries of teacher layoffs as “a farce” an a “game of chicken”, even as he faced protesters worried about education. Watch a short compilation:
Unions protest Joe the Plumber in Pittsburgh.
Unions protest Joe the Plumber in Pittsburgh.
Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber,” was recently tapped by the anti-labor group Americans for Prosperity to shill against the Employee Free Choice Act. Americans for Prosperity spokesperson Mary Ellen Burke said that Wurzelbacher was chosen because “he represents the American worker” and is a “role model.” At a rally yesterday near Pittsburgh, PA, Wurzelbacher received a chilly welcome from many residents — especially union members:
Two Green Tree police officers broke up several arguments to prevent fights in the midst of a crowd of about 150 packed inside a Radisson ballroom. The crowd was divided about evenly between union members and opponents of the so-called “card check” bill. No one was arrested.
Wurzelbacher, in a flannel shirt, T-shirt and jeans, drew some of the loudest rebukes from union members, who booed and jeered him for not having a plumber’s license in his native Ohio.
Watch a report from local CBS affiliate KDKA:
As the union members noted, Wurzelbacher never had a plumbing license. Many of the people in that profession are members of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry (UA), which supports the Employee Free Choice Act.
Transcript: More »
O’Reilly smears ThinkProgress once again, claims we attacked a rape victim and her family.
O’Reilly smears ThinkProgress once again, claims we attacked a rape victim and her family.
Yesterday on The Factor, Bill O’Reilly addressed ThinkProgress in his “Reality Check” portion of the show, “a segment set up to defeat deceit.” And of course, O’Reilly proceeded to peddle deceit, claiming that “far left zealots…attacked a rape victim and her family because they asked me to speak at their fundraiser.” Wrong. We never attacked the Alexa Foundation; we simply highlighted quotes from O’Reilly that were unsympathetic towards a rape victim. O’Reilly has never explained why he implied that women who dress in a certain way or consume too much alcohol should perhaps expect to be raped and murdered. Watch last night’s segment.
O’Reilly also fumed at UPS’s recent decision to stop advertising on The Factor. “Disappointingly, the UPS corporation helped” ThinkProgress “in their evil deed,” O’Reilly whined. “Check is quite surprised. UPS needs to wise up fast.” Or what Bill? Will they be stalked, ambushed, and harassed by your henchmen as well? Please join our campaign.
Goldfarb: ‘PNAC=Mission Accomplished; New mission begins’ with Foreign Policy Initiative.
Goldfarb: ‘PNAC=Mission Accomplished; New mission begins’ with Foreign Policy Initiative.
Last November, Weekly Standard super hawk Bill Kristol hinted that he would be starting up a new “think-tank” modeled after the neoconservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC provided much of the ideological framework for the invasion of Iraq and many of its members and sympathizers lobbied heavily for it. Today, Kristol is officially launching PNAC 2.0 — or as it is now called, “The Foreign Policy Initiative” (started with fellow neocons Robert Kagan and Dan Senor) with an event in Washington D.C. on the future of the Afghanistan war. The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss recently observed of FPI:
What do you do if your previous organization — and the ideology behind it — has become inextricably bound in the public’s imagination to one of the worst foreign policy blunders in American history? Obviously, shut it down, and start a new organization with a new name.
However, Michael Goldfarb — Project for a New American Century alum, former McCain campaign spokesman and current Weekly Standard editor — sees it differently. Writing on Twitter yesterday, Goldfard claimed: “PNAC=Mission Accomplished; New mission begins tomorrow morning with the launch of FPI.”
ThinkFast: March 31, 2009
ThinkFast: March 31, 2009
66 percent: President Obama’s approval rating, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Forty-two percent of the public believes the country is on the “right track,” the “highest percentage saying so in five years and marks a sharp turnabout from last fall, when as many as nine in 10 said the country was heading in the wrong direction.”
Business Forward, a new trade group founded by several Democratic consultants, is providing business lobbyists an opportunity to court key White House staffers. “Some business trade association representatives see Business Forward as an invention of the White House to create a fissure within the business community, which typically leans Republican.”
As President Obama leaves for the G20 summit in London today, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said there is only “a very small gap” between the United States and Europe on “how to make the [global financial] system more robust and stable.” Geithner told the Financial Times regulation would be a sovereign issue, rejecting the idea of a global systemic risk regulator.
The Justice Department announced yesterday that it has decided to release a detainee from Guantanamo Bay named Dr. Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi. Batarfi, “a Yemeni doctor who the Bush administration once claimed had taken part in an anthrax program of Al Qaeda,” will be released to “an appropriate destination country.” He is the second detainee released by the Obama administration.
Today, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) will “unveil draft legislation to reduce U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent,” with the ultimate goal being to reduce emissions to “83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.” The draft “will be missing crucial details for a cap-and-trade program, including how emission credits would be either given to businesses or sold to them via auction.” Yglesias explains why auctions are preferable.
After advocating death for AIG executives, Krauthammer rips Obama for ‘demanding’ GM CEO’s ‘head on a pike.’
After advocating death for AIG executives, Krauthammer rips Obama for ‘demanding’ GM CEO’s ‘head on a pike.’
Earlier this month, after the AIG bonuses controversy broke, Charles Krauthammer advocated unusual capital punishment for AIG executives, suggesting “an exemplary hanging or two” in Times Square and even a guillotine “party.” But today, after President Obama compelled GM CEO Rick Wagoner to resign, Krauthammer regained his sense of civility, criticizing the administration for “demanding” Wagoner’s “head on a pike”:
KRAUTHAMMER: What this is is the President giving in to populist pressure, demanding a head on a pike, which is the titular head of the company, whether or not it makes any economic sense at all. And that makes you worry.
Watch it:
Like many other Fox pundits who have been railing against unions today, Krauthammer added that organized labor has “utterly destroyed the auto companies.”
Fox News Blames Unions For Auto Companies’ Demise, Suggests Firing UAW Head
Fox News Blames Unions For Auto Companies’ Demise, Suggests Firing UAW Head
When Detroit’s Big Three auto companies first came to Washington last fall to ask for bailout funds, conservatives immediately insisted the companies’ woes were the fault of the United Auto Workers (UAW). Even though the Senate Republicans effectively blocked a fair bailout deal, they pointed the finger at the UAW, falsely claiming it was “willing to make no concessions — zero.”
Today, President Obama announced that the government will recommit to providing assistance to General Motors and Chrysler — but only if the companies presented restructured plans, including the firing of GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Fox News and Fox Business was apoplectic, insisting that the UAW had never been forced to make concessions (a false claim) and that the union’s leader, Ron Gettelfinger, should be fired instead:
– GRETCHEN CARLSON: Where’s the union in all of this? … Not one mention of the union possibly making concessions in this whole thing.
– BILL HEMMER: If you can fire the CEO, why can’t you fire the head of the union?
– STUART VARNEY: The union and General Motors have not agreed on how to take care of these legacy costs — that is, the health and pension benefits for retired UAW workers. That is what is breaking the bank at General Motors.
– SEAN HANNITY: I didn’t see any union reps get told that they had to get out in this endeavor, because Barack Obama wouldn’t anger his political base.
Watch a compilation:
It’s no surprise that Fox’s immediate instinct is to blame the UAW; the network has a history of animus toward organized labor. Just weeks ago, ThinkProgress tracked Fox’s misleading attacks on the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make unionization easier.
Unlike Fox News hosts, President Obama recognized that restoring the auto industry to health will require a shared sacrifice from everyone involved in the industry — including but certainly not limited to the union:
What we are asking is difficult. It will require hard choices by companies. It will require unions and workers who have already made painful concessions to make even more. It will require creditors to recognize that they cannot hold out for the prospect of endless government bailouts. [...]
Let there be no doubt, it will take an unprecedented effort on all our parts — from the halls of Congress to the boardroom, from the union hall to the factory floor — to see the auto industry through these difficult times.
It’s clear that the Fox hosts’ anti-UAW rhetoric has nothing to do with the specifics of the auto industry’s woes and everything to do perusing their own favorite pastime: union busting.
Former Cheney Aide Suggests That Hersh’s Account Of ‘Executive Assassination Ring’ Is ‘Certainly True’
Former Cheney Aide Suggests That Hersh’s Account Of ‘Executive Assassination Ring’ Is ‘Certainly True’
Last month, The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh revealed in Minnesota that former vice president Cheney presided over an “executive assassination ring.” “Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving,” Hersh explained.
Today, CNN interviewed Hersh and former Cheney national security aide John Hannah. Although he expressed regret for revealing the story (calling it a “dumb-dumb”), Hersh stood by his initial statements. “I’m sorry, Wolf, I have a lot of problems with it,” he said about the assassination scheme:
HERSH: I know for sure…the idea that we have a unit that goes around, without reporting to Congress… and has authority from the President to go into the country without telling the CIA station chief or the ambassador and whack somebody. … You’ve delegated authority to troops in the field to hit people on the basis of whatever intelligence they think is good.
Hannah replied that Hersh’s account of the assassination scheme “is not true.” Yet in the same breath, when asked about a “list” of assassination targets, Hannah echoed Hersh’s statements. Hannah said that “troops in the field” are given “authority” to “capture or kill certain individuals” who are perceived as a threat. “That’s certainly true,” he said:
Q: Is there a list of suspected terrorists out there who can be assassinated?
HANNAH: There’s clearly a group of people that go through a very extremely well-vetted process, interagency process…that have committed acts of war against the United States, who are at war with the United States or are suspected of planning operations of war against the United States, who authority is given to our troops in the field in certain war theaters to capture or kill those individuals. That is certainly true.
Hannah didn’t directly dispute Hersh’s claim that Congress wasn’t informed about the assassinations. “It is extremely hard for me to believe,” he said. Watch it:
Speaking about the program to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean said, “It’s potentially a war crime, it‘s potentially just outright murder, and it could clearly be in violation of the Ford executive order” — referring to a 1976 Executive Order that said, “No employee of the United States government shall engage in or conspire to engage in political assassination.”
Murtha: ‘If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district.’
Murtha: ‘If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district.’
Criticism of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), whom Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) calls one of the “most corrupt members of Congress,” has been mounting recently over his aggressive efforts to steer money to his district. In a recent interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Murtha used stark language to defend himself against charges of corruption:
Mr. Murtha, a 76-year-old Marine veteran schooled in the blunt-knuckle deal-making that defined politics here, is contrition-free when it comes to his success.
“If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district,” Mr. Murtha said. “My job as a member of Congress is to make sure that we take care of what we see is necessary. Not the bureaucrats who are unelected over there in whatever White House, whether it’s Republican or Democrat. Those bureaucrats would like to control everything. Every president would like to have all the power and not have Congress change anything. But we’re closest to the people.”
Murtha’s remarks recall another one of CREW’s most corrupt lawmakers, Rep. Don Young (R-AK), who defended his controversial earmarks on the House floor in 2007. “I was always proud of my earmarks. I believe in earmarks, always have, as long as they are exposed. But don’t you ever call that a scandal,” said Young.
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