Mitchell Reaffirms ‘Linkage’ In Remarks On Direct Talks
Mitchell Reaffirms ‘Linkage’ In Remarks On Direct Talks
Reading today’s Quartet statement on resumption of direct talks, it’s worth noting that, while Prime Minister Netanyahu was successful in avoiding a complete reiteration of the Quartet’s March statement emphasizing Israel’s settlement obligations, as President Mahmoud Abbas wanted, Abbas also got the reference to 1967 borders that he wanted, and which Netanyahu had resisted:
The Quartet reaffirms its full commitment to its previous statements, including in Trieste on 26 June 2009, in New York on 24 September 2009, and its statement in Moscow on 19 March 2010 which provides that direct, bilateral negotiations that resolve all final status issues should “lead to a settlement, negotiated between the parties, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors.
Speaking to the press after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement of the resumption of talks, Special Envoy George Mitchell said that the administration believed a peace agreement “can be done within a year, and that is our objective.”
Mitchell also restated the importance of achieving a peace agreement not only to the Israelis and Palestinians, but also as a key U.S. interest “in terms of dealing with other conflicts in the region.” This was a clear reference to the “linkage” concept that has informed much of the administration’s approach, but which is still resisted by many conservatives who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unrelated to other U.S. challenges in the Middle East.
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Law Enforcement Association Claims Phoenix Police Department ‘Fudged’ Kidnapping Stats
Law Enforcement Association Claims Phoenix Police Department ‘Fudged’ Kidnapping Stats
Since the passage of Arizona’s tough new immigration law, its defenders have justified SB-1070 by claiming that Phoenix, AZ is the “kidnapping capital of the world.” Though that claim was immediately dismissed by experts, the 358 kidnappings the Phoenix Police Department reported in 2008 is quite high when compared to other surrounding areas. Sgt. Phil Roberts, who worked kidnapping investigations for Phoenix, is now alleging that the Phoenix Police Department is “inflating its kidnapping numbers, possibly to get federal stimulus money.”
According to Roberts, only 20 to 30 “traditional” kidnappings occurred in Phoenix in 2008 — a range which more closely resembles that of surrounding cities. “Traditional” kidnappings are defined by procedures such as monitoring phone calls, money drops and apprehension or attempted apprehension of kidnappers. Roberts believes the inflation occurred as a result of procedural errors and duplicate reports. “Despite this understanding of how kidnapping statistics were being falsely inflated,” he wrote in an August 13th memo, “others would later push and tout these numbers to the news media and eventually to the United States Congress.” KPHO reports that the Phoenix Police Department’s own records “describe 59 of those 358 reports as ‘incident information only,’ and states that those reports ’should be excluded from the count of kidnapping incidents.’”
Mark Spencer, President of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA) is standing by Roberts’ claims. “Frequently when you work with the federal government as long as the problem persists the money keeps flowing,” explained Spencer. “The bigger the problem, the more money you get.”
Watch local coverage:
Nonetheless, the Phoenix Police Department denies Roberts’ and PLEA’s allegations. “If it’s a kidnapping, it’s a kidnapping and that’s what we count as a kidnapping,” stated Sgt. Tommy Thompson. Ironically, Roberts actually cited the same kidnapping figures he now disputes in an interview with ABC News for a report broadcast in February 2009. And despite PLEA’s claims that the kidnapping numbers are fudged and that the kidnapping problem is not as bad as it has been made out to be, they are still strong supporters of Arizona’s controversial immigration law.
McMahon Claims Raising Taxes On The Rich Is ‘A Big Dig For Small Business’
McMahon Claims Raising Taxes On The Rich Is ‘A Big Dig For Small Business’
Linda McMahon, the Republican senate nominee in Connecticut, is selling herself as the consummate business woman, thanks to her years as an executive with World Wrestling Entertainment. But if her appearance last night on CNBC is any indication, McMahon is a little unclear about how much money the typical small business owner is earning.
CNBC’s supply-side devotee Larry Kudlow asked McMahon for her position on allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans to expire, and McMahon used the standard Republican argument that permitting the expiration would cause a tax increase on small businesses:
The fallacy Larry, and you know this as well as anyone, it’s not just that top marginal tax rate that’s going to affect the wealthy, it’s going to affect small businesses. I’ve started as a Subchapter S corporation, and so when you increase that top marginal tax rate, if it goes from 35 to 39.6 percent, you know, that’s going to be a big dig for small businesses. And as I talk to small businesses all over the state of Connecticut, they’re telling me, ‘look, I’m not going to grow. I’m not going to go over that level. I’ll lay somebody off, I won’t take that next job, I can’t work any harder, and I’m just not going to work any more for the government.’
Watch it:
Florida’s senate candidate Marco Rubio said the same thing last week — calling the very phrase “Bush tax cuts for the rich” a “misnomer” — but it hasn’t gotten any more true in the interim. The fact remains that fewer than two percent of small businesses and less than three percent of people with any business income whatsoever will see a tax increase if the top two income tax brackets reset to the 2001 level, as President Obama has proposed.
McMahon tried to make the case that S-corporations — which don’t pay the corporate income tax, but pass their earnings through to owners who then file the income on their personal returns — would be hammered by the tax increase. But IRS data shows that those who both claim S-corp income on their personal returns and would be affected by the tax cuts expiring “come disproportionately from the ranks of the super-rich.” 89 percent of people claiming $10 million or more on their personal income tax returns have some S-corp. income.
According to the latest survey of small businesses by the National Federation of Independent Business, which is totally in the tank for extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, nearly half of small businesses are not hiring due to economic conditions or sales prospects (so lack of customers), while just twelve percent cite “political conditions.” And handing more than $700 billion to the rich is not going to improve those sales prospects at all.
McMahon herself, who holds personal assets worth anywhere from $156 million to $400 million, would face higher tax rates if the tax cuts for the rich expire. The same can’t be said for the vast majority of small business owners.
Politico Fails The Politics Of Health Reform
Politico Fails The Politics Of Health Reform
In a provocative story published yesterday in Politico, Ben Smith claims that Democratic allies close to the White House are suddenly “dramatically shifting” their health care messaging, “abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to ‘improve it‘”:
The messaging shift was circulated this afternoon on a conference call and PowerPoint presentation organized by FamiliesUSA — one of the central groups in the push for the initial legislation. … Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. Instead, the presentation is designed to win over a skeptical public, and to defend the legislation — and in particular the individual mandate — from a push for repeal. …The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed.
You can read the entire slide show presentation here, but Smith’s claims of a “dramatic” or secret change in messaging is anachronistic and misleading. They ignore the shifts in message that occurred throughout the reform period and suggest, incorrectly, that Democrats are abandoning previous claims to save a sinking ship, a notion that’s not supported by recent polling data. As Michael Crowley points out, “a late-July Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 50% of the public views the new law favorably, up 9 points from May, while the proportion of Americans who view reform unfavorably has dropped from 44% to 35% in the same period. In late June, more Americans (49%) told Gallup that the law’s passage was ‘a good thing’ than those who disapproved — the first time the law showed a positive result in Gallup’s survey.”
Democrats certainly opened the health care debate with an economic argument developed by Peter Orszag and his staff. They talked about health care bending the cost curve and eliminating unnecessary spending and ultimately lowering the percentage of GDP dedicated to health care. These arguments may have wooed moderate Democrats like Kent Conrad or Ben Nelson, but they did little to sell the American public on the idea of reform.
As early as the summer of 2009 (even before the August town halls), prominent Democrats began weaving personal narratives about premium increase, the public option and insurance company abuses into their public remarks and stressed the bill’s consumer protections and market place reforms. In August of 2009, the Star Ledger — a NJ newspaper — noticed a “shift in Democratic tactics,” brought on by decreased support for reform. After months of bringing all of the stakeholders to the table, Democrats began describing insurers as “villains” and arguing that reforms like the public option could break their private monopolies and provide Americans with more choice and competition. “They are the villains in this. They have been part of the problem in a major way,” Pelosi said of the insurance industry.” “They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening, and the public has to know about it.” In October of 2009, Politico also reported on the Democrats’ embrace of this more populist message. Under a headline titled, “Dems Change Focus in Health Debate,” Manu Raju wrote, “Democrats have succeeded in changing the terms of the debate, redirecting focus to the merits of a public option, and attempting to create a sense of momentum that the bill is moving forward.”
Obama adopted a hands off approach throughout the health care debate, but even his final pitch eschewed broad economic messaging and focused on how reform would help individual Americans. “So you want to know why I’m here, Ohio?” Obama asked during a campaign-like stop in Strongville, Ohio on March 15, 2010. “I’m here because of Natoma [a woman who had to give up her individual health insurance coverage because she could no longer afford it]. I’m here because of the countless others who have been forced to face the most terrifying challenges in their lives with the added burden of medical bills they can’t pay. I don’t think that’s right.”
At that rally, Obama laid out “three things” he was hoping to change with his health care proposal and listed cost control last: 1) “It would end the worst practices of the insurance companies” 2) “For the first time, uninsured individuals, small businesses, they’d have the same kind of choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves,” 3) “my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for families, for businesses, and for the federal government.”
It’s not that Democrats completely abandoned the economic message of health care reform — they simply moved it down on the list of messaging priorities. Intervening events like WellPoint’s 39% premium increase in California provided Democrats with an opportunity to make their case in terms that better communicated the intent of the legislation and naturally pushed the party away from esoteric terms like “deficit,” “bending the cost curve,” and “percent of GDP.”
Since the bill was signed into law, HHS and the White House have hosted almost weekly web chats, conference calls, and cut commercials and brochures to educate the public about the new regulations and changes. The messaging about economics and cost control is now less prominent because it is less immediate. Savings from the law will accrue only after it’s fully implemented and regulators are appropriately focusing on ensuring that those savings actually materialize through proper implementation.
The Politico article incorrectly assumes that reform is hanging on for dear life and that Democrats and their allies are making one last ditch effort — a sudden message switch –to resuscitate it. The reality is that Democrats are having trouble convincing certain sectors of the public on the merits of the law and are relying on past messaging efforts to close the sale.
Stephen Rademaker’s Process Whining
Stephen Rademaker’s Process Whining
Stephen Rademaker’s defensive op-ed in the Washington Post is a fairly transparent effort to shift blame for the delays in the ratification of New START to the Democrats. According to Rademaker, the failure of New START could never actually be blamed on pouting GOP Senators who refused to vote for the treaty and therefore endangered our nuclear security merely because they don’t like Obama. No, obviously if New START fails it’s not because the GOP didn’t vote for it, it’s because John Kerry would have “rushed” or “pressured” GOP Senators.
This sort of up is down logic seems to be all opponents have left in the START debate. What is so amusing about Rademaker’s op-ed is that he essentially says that all the GOP policy concerns can be met in such a way that they can vote yes. There is of course a reason why their concerns can be met — they are mostly baseless and stupid concerns that exist due to a seemingly general failing of high school level reading comprehension. For instance, Rademaker sights a concern that the treaty doesn’t mention certain types of missiles –- well this is because they don’t exist, but if they did exist they actually would be covered. Yet no matter how ridiculous, all these concerns have been addressed endlessly in the more than 20 hearings that were held. As a result, the debate over START has become tediously repetitive and is now largely about something that has nothing to do with the actual treaty — nuclear pork.
The real heart of Rademaker’s piece, however, is more process whining. He claims “and if treaty critics aren’t going to be accommodated on questions of process, they almost certainly aren’t going to be accommodated on substance.” But Rademaker’s claims are completely off base.
First, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee DELAYED the vote until September so GOP Senators didn’t feel rushed. If a vote were held before the August recess, perhaps the GOP could hang their hat on something, but the vote was delayed so that all the i’s can be dotted and all the t’s crossed.
Second, claims that it is justified for GOP Senators to hold up the vote because they didn’t get the negotiating record are bunk. In US history, treaty negotiating records were almost always kept private and almost every US President has insisted this be the case. Yet Rademaker’s claims that there is precedent for the release and he points to a past arms-control treaty where the record was released. But the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time in a bipartisan letter specifically noted that the release of the record should be seen as an exception not a precedent. But even with all that being said, the Administration recently shared the negotiating record dealing with missile defense with the GOP Senators.
Third, the complaints about START critics not being heard, while not being true, is largely a reflection of there being so few START opponents. Kerry in fact held hearings featuring substantially more Republicans than Democrats. But the committee, to appease far-right Senators Jim Demint and James Inhofe, searched and found anti-nuclear arms control ideologues like the Bush administration’s Robert Joseph and Eric Edelman and Keith Payne were heard from.
Finally, Rademaker claims the Senate should look to the Chemical Weapons Convention as a model and follow its slow two year approach. This is comparing apples to oranges. That was an entirely new treaty, with brand new implications, and that did not have any urgency about it. New START is merely continuing and updating the status quo – we know what this treaty does. So spending two years on it is just a huge waste of time. But moreover, the go slow approach is one that is extremely dangerous as we are losing intelligence on Russian nukes and missiles as inspections have ceased. Senator Jon Kyl, claimed to have not known this and as David Broder noted, “what a price to pay for ignorance.” And as John Farrell, an editor at US News and World Report noted, “Are Republican senators providing aid and comfort to the Russian military?… the answer to this question is: Yes.”
Rademaker’s oped is simply a transparent attempt to deflect criticism from the GOP for doing something incredibly reckless – obstructing the START treaty. It also demonstrates just how weak the opposition’s case to START really is. Rademaker didn’t write a piece nitpicking New START – that has already been done and rebuffed – he didn’t write a piece opposing the treaty, and he didn’t even write a piece that really talked about the treaty. No, he wrote a whole op-ed making false and dubious claims whining about process. To invoke the spirit of Alan Iverson, “process!” “what are we talking about? We’re talking about process man.” This is all opponents have left is to grasp at is process. And even there they have nothing to grasp at.
Will Pawlenty Lead A New Round Of Gubernatiorial Grandstanding Against State Aid?
Will Pawlenty Lead A New Round Of Gubernatiorial Grandstanding Against State Aid?
When the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e. the stimulus) was first signed into law, a handful of Republican governors grandstanded against money for extending unemployment insurance, threatening to reject the money because of “the strings attached.”
“We can take care of ourselves. And we do not need any more strings from Washington attached to programs,” said Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who was joined in his stand by Govs. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Haley Barbour (R-MI), Mark Sanford (R-SC), and former half-term governor Sarah Palin (R-AK).
Of course, all of the governors wound up accepting the money: Sanford this month “quietly signed a bill passed by the Legislature that expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits.” Perry, in fact, was only able to balance his budget thanks to the stimulus.
But now that Congress has passed a new round of aid to states, the gubernatorial grandstanding is beginning again. This time, it’s Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) who was the first to cast doubt on whether he will accept money from a bill he has criticized as a “reckless spending spree”:
Pawlenty, eyeing a run for the White House in 2012, said Thursday in an interview with the Star Tribune that he has not decided what to do. “I haven’t made a decision,” he said. “We are still looking into it.”
Minnesota is eligible for $263 million from the $26 billion bill, which provided $16 billion in aid for Medicaid programs and $10 billion for education jobs. The education funding alone will save an estimated 2,400 jobs in the state.
But Pawlenty is no stranger to taking advantage of stimulus money while simultaneously pretending to be staunchly against federal spending aimed at combating the effects of the Great Recession. After all, he has derided the Recovery Act as “misdirected,” “incoherent,” and “largely wasted,” but that didn’t stop him from using it to balance his budget for the last two years.
In February, Pawlenty refused to sign a letter in favor of extended Medicaid funding, even though he had already included the money in his budget. The letter was signed by 47 other governors, including Barbour, and conservative darlings like Govs. Chris Christie (R-NJ), Bob McDonnell (R-VA), and Mitch Daniels (R-IN).
Of course, these days Pawlenty seems far more concerned with slashing entitlements and cutting taxes for multi-millionaires than helping those in his state who have been battered by the recession.
CBO Director Says He ‘Didn’t Feel A Great Deal Of Political Pressure’ Analyzing Health Reform Bill
CBO Director Says He ‘Didn’t Feel A Great Deal Of Political Pressure’ Analyzing Health Reform Bill
This morning, during an appearance on C-Span’s Washington Journal, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) director Douglas Elmendorf dismissed claims that his office was pressured to produce politically favorable scores of the health care law. Responding to a caller’s concerns, Elmendorf said, “the truth is I didn’t feel a great deal of political pressure as we analyzed the health legislation”:
ELMENDORF: We felt a lot of time pressure and we were very careful to resist that in the sense that we didn’t rush out numbers that we were not satisfied with and we were often being pushed to move more rapidly. We worked very hard but we insisted that we would do the analysis in a way we thought was right and we could stand behind and we did. There are many who were hoping for different outcomes of our analysis. There were people who thought that our analysis wasn’t right. We received criticisms of that, the cost of the insurance expansions in the legislation would with be more expensive than we expected. We received criticism that the savings through reforms in Medicare would be much larger than we expected. We think on both those issues and others that our estimates were in the middle of the distribution of possible outcomes.
Watch it:
One of the CBO’s most vocal critics was Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who attempted to dismiss the CBO scoring by suggesting that Democrats had bamboozled the agency with budget gimmicks and that the true cost of the bill was much higher. “These CBO numbers don’t add up when you actually look at the real world, massive deficits, massive debt. And so the Speaker can write a bill, that is full of smoke and mirrors and the CBO can give you the answer you want, but that’s still not based on the real world,” Ryan told Fox News in March.
“I think that one important point to emphasize is that what we produced an estimate of was the legislation as written,” Elmendorf responded today. “There are another set of concerns that the legislation won’t be implemented over time in the way it is written down.” “It is your job to estimate the legislation and people who think it will be changed later those proposal will be estimated by the Congressional Budget Office in terms of their effect and effect on health insurance,” he explained.
Every GOP NH Senate Candidate Is A Global Warming Denier
Every GOP NH Senate Candidate Is A Global Warming Denier
NH GOP Senate candidates (l-r): Jim Bender, Gerard Beloin, Bill Binnie, Kelly Ayotte, Dennis Lamare and Ovide Lamontagne
Every single Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) is a global warming denier. Appearing at a debate hosted by the Seacoast Republican Women in Portsmouth, NH on Wednesday, the six candidates — from millionaire businessmen Bill Binnie and Jim Bender to former attorney general Kelly Ayotte — were unanimous in their denial of man-made climate change, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence and the obvious changes that have already hit New Hampshire:
It was symbolic when the six Republican candidates for U.S. Senate stood up together side-by-side during a debate Wednesday. It resembled their positions on major issues. All said they would have voted against extending long-term unemployment benefits. All argued Elena Kagan should not have been appointed to the Supreme Court. All said man-made global warming hasn’t been proven.
With greenhouse pollution from fossil fuels building up in the atmosphere at an increasing rate, the world is now hotter than it has ever been in recorded history. New England is unambiguously warming. Fueled by the warmer world, catastrophic rainfall is rising, as “exemplified by the ‘100-year’ floods that have occurred in southern New Hampshire in 2005, 2006, 2007.” It also seems that the crop of anti-reality Republicans fueled by allegiance to coal and oil polluters is also on the rise.
The WonkLine: August 20, 2010
The WonkLine: August 20, 2010
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 9:30 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security, immigration and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below. You can also follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.
National Security
“The United States pledged an additional $60 million Thursday to the U.N. flood relief effort in Pakistan…in a move designed to encourage other governments and private donors to boost their aid.”
“Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to announce Friday that Israel and the Palestinians will return to direct negotiations for the first time in 20 months.”
“The Obama administration, citing evidence of continued troubles inside Iran’s nuclear program, has persuaded Israel that it would take roughly a year — and perhaps longer — for Iran to complete what one senior official called a ‘dash’ for a nuclear weapon.”
Health Care
“The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the 5-month-old health reform package could ultimately tamp down the job market, largely because of an expansion of Medicaid and federal subsidies meant to help individuals afford insurance.”
“Colleges and universities say some rules in the new health law could keep them from offering low-cost, limited benefit student insurance policies – and they’re seeking federal authority to continue offering them.”
“Nurses at two hospitals in northern Minnesota have overwhelmingly voted to authorize a one-day strike, which would become the second walkout in three months’ time for nurses represented by the Minnesota Nurses Association.”
Immigration
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales writes that he opposes changing the 14th amendment, explaining, “as a father who wants the best for my own children, I understand why these parents risk coming to America.”
California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman (R) “faces an awkward homecoming at the [Republican] party’s convention because of her shifting tone on illegal immigration and climate change since winning the GOP primary in June.”
A recent survey shows 90 percent of Florida Republicans support an Arizona copycat immigration law compared with 43 percent of Florida Democrats.
Economy
Initial claims for jobless benefits took an unexpected jump to 500,000 last week, which is the most since November but still “well off the recession highs of March 2009.”
Reuters reports that Wall Street firms are making new assets out of delinquent mortgages, thus making a profit “repairing the troubled loans that many had a hand in creating.”
According to a new study by the Schott Foundation for Public Education, New Jersey and the city of Newark lead the nation in the percentage of black male students graduating from high school.
Climate Change
Scientists believe dead zones caused by large undersea plumes of BP’s toxic oil will last for years in the Gulf of Mexico.
“I’m not going to take a course in Ron Johnson science any time soon,” Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) said of his opponent’s belief that sunspots cause global warming.
Senate Foreign Relations chairman John Kerry (D-MA) toured flood-ravaged Pakistan yesterday, “as he announced that the United States would ramp up its flood relief package to $150 million.”
Suing While Implementing: Utah Officials Meeting With HHS On ‘Daily Basis’ To Implement Reform
Suing While Implementing: Utah Officials Meeting With HHS On ‘Daily Basis’ To Implement Reform
Utah is suing the federal government over the constitutionality of health care reform, but like many states in this position, it’s also taking steps to implement the law. In fact, according to Dessert News, the state is moving quickly to establish a health exchange for small businesses:
Starting on Sept. 1, the Beehive state’s first health care exchange for small businesses will officially begin operation. On that same day, the federal version of the Utah Comprehensive Health Insurance Pool, which covers people with high-risk health conditions, will also start offering coverage. [...]
In the meantime, the state is set to launch its own health exchange designed for small employers — of two to 50 employees — in which companies will give their workers money they will use to purchase insurance coverage from a wide array of plan options tailored to their specific needs. Exchanges for larger employers will follow in a few weeks.
The tension between states implementing reform on one hand and suing the federal government on the other, is well pronounced in Utah, which has joined Florida’s challenge to the individual mandate, but has also established a special task force to implement the measure.
According to local health advocates on the ground, moderate to conservative Republicans are working diligently to assert local control over how reform is implemented and maximize Utah’s autonomy over the measure — all the while paying lip service to the repeal meme. The state has applied for the rate review grants announced earlier this week and is considering all other funding opportunities. Utah officials are conducting what was described to me as “daily” meetings with HHS officials about implementation, some of which include the governor’s adviser on health reform, John T. Nielsen and Utah Lt. Governor Greg Bell, a moderate Republican.
The tension in the state seems to rest between moderate and conservative Republicans, the latter of which is not too happy about the state’s partial embrace of reform. State health advocates I spoke to warned me that if the November elections bring the hard liners into power, any progress on implementing the measure could be reversed. But the willingness to at least give reform a try is itself surprising.
One Utah involved in state health issues speculated that even the repeal and replace advocates realize that “this is how they have to do reform and it is important to get started and try out some of these ideas.” “I wonder if they’re not thinking well, the only way to prove reforms are wrong, is to give them a good college try,” this person told me.
Pentagon Doesn’t Anticipate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Will Be Priority For Military Families
Pentagon Doesn’t Anticipate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Will Be Priority For Military Families
Tomorrow, the military will mail paper surveys to 150,000 spouses of military servicemembers to gauge their reaction to repealing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law. The survey is part of a larger Pentagon effort to study how allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would affect military and family life. It comes on the heels of a controversial and highly criticized survey of 400,000 active military and reserve members.
Pentagon sources tell me that this second questionnaire will be analyzed in a qualitative, rather than a quantitative manner. The military will try to assess if repealing the policy will affect military retention and recruitment, and the importance of the issue in the context of other concerns like educational opportunities and medical benefits. The Pentagon will work with groups like Servicemembers United to reach out to the spouses of gay and lesbian troops.
“We are asking the family members, if we were to change the law, are there any impacts at all that might affect family readiness and military community life,” DoD spokesperson Cynthia Smith told me. “We understand that military spouses play an important role in a servicemembers’ decision about whether or not they’re going to stay in the military. It’s a retention issue. It’s aslo a recruiting issue becaue we know that spouses are influencers in local communities.”
Interestingly, one source told me that the Pentagon expects DADT to rank low on the list of priorities and said that past focus groups have shown that family members have other, more pressing concerns.
Military spouses will have until September 27th to complete and mail in the survey.
Waxman And Stupak Demand BP Detail Scope Of Greenwashing Campaign
Waxman And Stupak Demand BP Detail Scope Of Greenwashing Campaign
In a letter to BP America CEO Lamar McKay, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) are demanding that BP disclose its “spending on corporate advertising and marketing relating to the the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and relief, recovery, and restoration efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.” Their request follows the efforts of Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) to get answers about BP’s massive greenwashing campaign, which includes months of full-page advertisements in national and regional newspapers, radio spots, television commercials, and Internet ads on websites including ThinkProgress.org. Outside estimates of the scope of the greenwashing campaign managed by BP’s public relations firm Mediashare are in the tens of millions of dollars, the Washington Post’s Krissah Thompson reports:
After the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April, BP went on the air with television ads and bought a series of full-page ads in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other papers to position itself as an imperfect but responsible corporation committed to the cleanup of the gulf. The company has spent $55.8 million on television and print advertising so far this year, according to the Nielsen Co., which tracks ad spending.
According to Media Monitors, BP’s radio spots surged to 10,684 last week, with a particular focus on Florida stations. Since mid-July, BP’s internet ads have been running on political blogs, including Talking Points Memo, the Common Sense Media network of liberal sites from FireDogLake to AmericaBlog, and a host of right-wing sites, including Eagle Interactive’s network with RedState and the Salem Web Network’s Townhall.com and Hot Air.
BP seems to be working harder to protect its brand than to help the people of the Gulf Coast, argued Alabama Attorney General Troy King. He has filed suit against BP because “while BP is spending millions on print ads and airtime, it’s not spending what it should on claims.” Fortunately, BP’s control of the claims process will finally end Monday, with the launch of Kenneth Feinberg’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility.
(HT Mother Jones)
BP has an agreement with Common Sense Media to be notified about this story, reserving the right to pull ads from ThinkProgress.
New Report Details How Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Hurts The Military And The Troops
New Report Details How Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Hurts The Military And The Troops
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell scholar Nathaniel Frank — formerly of the Palm Center — is out with a new report detailing how the ban against open service undermines the military — which supporters of the policy claim to be preserving. But as Frank explains, “[f]ar from protecting military readiness, the policy has harmed it, sacrificing badly needed personnel that is replaced with less qualified talent; undermining cohesion, integrity, and trust through forced dishonesty; hurting the morale of gay troops by limiting their access to support services; wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars; invading the privacy of all service members—gay and non-gay alike—by casting a cloud of suspicion and uncertainty over the intimate lives of everyone in the armed forces; and damaging the military’s reputation which makes it harder to recruit the best and brightest America has to offer.”
Frank’s report substantiates what many of the recent personal stories of closeted soldiers have described anecdotally. He lists 12 ways in which the military is harmed by the policy (I’m excerpting the top five below):
1. Waste the talents of thousands of essential personnel with “critical skills” who were fired for their sexual orientation — 757 troops with “critical occupations” were fired under the policy between fiscal years 1994 and 2003.
2. Strike at the heart of unit cohesion by breaking apart cohesive fighting teams — a 2009 study published in Military Psychology found that sexual orientation disclosure is positively related to unit cohesion, while concealment and harassment are related negatively. Forcing troops to conceal their sexual orientation appears to reduce cohesion.
3. Hamper recruitment and retention by shrinking the pool of potential enlistees — an additional 41,000 qualified gay Americans might join if the ban were lifted, and an additional 4,000 personnel might remain in uniform
4. Lower the quality of military personnel by discharging capable gay troops leaving slots to be filled through “moral waivers” that admit felons, substance abusers, and other high-risk recruits.
5. Infect the morale of the estimated 66,000 gay, lesbian, and bisexual troops and their military peers who must serve in a climate of needless alienation, dishonesty, and fear
It’s worth pointing out that while these effects on military readiness are easily verifiable (by the Pentagon’s own reports no less), the claims from the other side about how repealing the policy would harm the institution have yet to be experienced by any of the 26 NATO allies that allow open service.
Deficit Fraud Kelly Ayotte’s First Step Toward Deficit Reduction Would Result In A Deficit Increase
Deficit Fraud Kelly Ayotte’s First Step Toward Deficit Reduction Would Result In A Deficit Increase
Kelly Ayotte, the front-runner for the Republican senate nomination in New Hampshire, likes to portray herself as a fierce fiscal hawk. “The spend-a-thon in Washington must stop. That means stopping anymore spending that adds to our deficit and debt,” she has said, adding that “spending cuts must be made with a hatchet, not a scalpel.”
But if her sit-down with the Foster’s Daily Democrat’s editorial board is any indication, Ayotte is a bit clueless when it comes to the federal budget, as her prime deficit reduction strategy would actually result in the deficit increasing:
One way Ayotte wants to cut the deficit is repeal the $900 billion health care reform bill. She noted many components don’t kick in until after the presidential election in 2012. “That’s why it’s important to keep the repeal effort alive,” she said. “What we owe is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. It’s an American issue.”
Of course, as Matt Finkelstein notes, “according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit by $130 billion in the first ten years (and up to $1.3 trillion by 2029).” So repealing it will have the opposite effect of that which Ayotte claims she’s going for.
But this performance is really in line with the rest of Ayotte’s deficit peacockery. In an op-ed in the Nashua Telegraph — entitled “Time to stop the spendathon in Washington” — Ayotte outlined five steps that she thinks will fix the deficit. The first, a balanced budget amendment, is a pipe dream that even Republicans realize will be horribly destructive for the economy.
The next, repealing what’s left of the stimulus bill, only cuts spending in the short term and would necessitate repealing money dedicated to middle class tax cuts, thus increasing taxes on the middle class. She would also end earmarks, which amount to less than one percent of the federal budget, and add a “sunset” provision to federal programs, even though discretionary spending programs already have to be renewed every year.
Finally, she would indiscriminately cut every federal agency by 20 percent. I’m curious if she’s really in favor of downsizing the Defense Department, border enforcement, the FBI, the Coast Guard, and a whole host of other vital programs like food inspection or port security, by 20 percent overnight.
Note that none of Ayotte’s solutions have anything to do with the structural causes of the deficit. They’re simply the kinds of ideas conservatives like to tout even when the deficit isn’t a concern. If this is the best she can come up with, no one should be talking Ayotte’s deficit-cutting credentials seriously.
Conservatives Torn Over Whether Marriage Equality Is A Conservative Value
Conservatives Torn Over Whether Marriage Equality Is A Conservative Value
Matt Lewis has an interesting piece following the fallout from the Ann Coulter/HomoCon/WorldNetDaily controversy. To recap, this is the one in which the sharp-tounged but no longer terribly relevant Coulter was dropped from WorldNet’s “Taking America Back National Conference” for agreeing to speak at HomoCon, GOProud’s first annual conservative gay event. WND editor Joseph Farah punted on Coulter because, as he put it, “it would not make sense for us to have Ann speak to a conference about taking America back when she clearly does not recognize that the ideals to be espoused there simply do not include the radical and very ‘unconservative’ agenda represented by GOProud.”
Well, Lewis tracked some up and coming conservative leaders and they took issue with Farah’s characterization of conservatism:
“Conservatism and gay rights are actually natural allies,” said S.E. Cupp, conservative columnist and author of “Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity.” “Conservatism rightly seeks to keep the government out of our private lives, and when you strip away the politics of pop culture, it’s this assertion of privacy and freedom that the gay rights movement is essentially making.”
This is how institutions evolve and emerge within a conservative culture,” says Jon Henke, a libertarian-leaning blogger. “In time, gay people will be married, extending the valuable social institution of marriage to more people. In time, conservatives will argue that the positive impact that marriage has on the gay community is further evidence of the importance of the institution of marriage.”
National Review’s Dan Foster believes the changing attitudes are largely generational, but added that “a central thread of conservatism, going back to Edmund Burke, is…gradualism.”
The growing acceptance of gay rights within the younger faction of the conservative movement sounds promising, but somehow insufficient and even irrelevant. “In time,” a greater number of conservatives could very well argue about “the positive impact that marriage has on the gay community,” but gay people shouldn’t have to wait. Gradual public acceptance of marriage may be enough for some conservatives who already enjoys the benefits of full equality under the law, but I suspect it’s less acceptable to those still fighting for it.
Some older conservative leaders already agree with this. As Olson asked yesterday on MSNBC’ Andrea Mitchell Reports, “What could be, at the end of the day, more conservative than two loving people, that want to get married, that want to build a family, that want to be part of our neighborhoods and community — that is a conservative value.”
Steven Rosen’s Wonderland Road Map
Steven Rosen’s Wonderland Road Map
To read former AIPAC official Steven Rosen’s piece in Foreign Policy today is to enter a wonderland. Adding a fun new element to his usual Israelis awesome/Palestinians awful rubric, Rosen writes “The Palestinians deeply distrust interim arrangements, and they have frequently asserted that they will not enter another interim agreement”:
But the Palestinian Authority might not hew to this uncreative position if intelligent American mediation led the way. Abbas accepted the Quartet’s Middle East Roadmap in 2003 knowing that it called very clearly and explicitly for an interim arrangement with a Palestinian state having “provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty … as a way station to a permanent status settlement.” The Roadmap made this interim Palestinian state Phase II of the process, after Phase I (”Ending Terror and Violence, Normalizing Palestinian Life, and Building Palestinian Institutions”) and before Phase III (”Permanent Status Agreement and the End of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”)… (Palestinian objections to interim agreements have been a continuing feature of Middle East diplomacy, but the record is replete with past examples where they did in fact agree to the step-by-step approach.)
This is quite right, the record is replete with past examples where the Palestinians did in fact agree to the step-by-step approach — and here they are, almost twenty years after the Madrid conference, with no state, and Palestinian land increasingly carved up into an archipelago in a sea of Israeli settlements and security zones. I can’t imagine why the Palestinians would distrust interim arrangements at this point.
Calling on the Obama administration to make use of the the 2003 Road Map, Rosen reminds us that it “is the only document providing a pathway to a Palestinian state ever accepted by all the parties involved in Middle East peace negotiations”:
It was issued by the Quartet, consisting of the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the secretary-general of the United Nations on April 30, 2003. Then it was endorsed unanimously by the U.N. Security Council (including Syria!) in Resolution 1515 on Nov. 20, 2003. It was endorsed again by the Quartet on March 19, 2010. It was accepted “without any reservations” by Abbas at the Middle East peace summit in Aqaba, Jordan on June 4, 2003. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accepted it on May 23, 2003, and Sharon’s government, by a majority vote, accepted it on May 25, 2003. Both sides are bound by the Roadmap, and it does not require a fresh endorsement by either. It is one of the signed written commitments of the Palestinian government on which the peace process is based today.
I agree with Rosen that the Road Map provides a useful framework for getting peace negotiations back on track. But here’s the thing: So does President Obama. According to Moran Banai, policy director of Middle East Progress, “The Obama administration has been building on the Road Map.” Banai continues:
The whole concept upon which they began their work was, everyone has obligations under the Road Map, everyone committed to it, so everyone should live up to it. That includes Israel’s obligation under the Road Map, to stop building settlements. The Road Map cited the Sharm el-Sheikh committee’s report with regards to this issue, which called for a freeze on all settlement construction, including natural growth. It comes back to what the administration did at first, asking everyone to live up their commitments, which the Palestinians to a great extent have done.
The Israelis, when they accepted the Road Map, did so with reservations, and a main one was, we won’t do anything until the Palestinians get security under control and meet their obligations. Considering the progress that the Palestinians have made on their security forces and on institution-building, the Palestinians have essentially mooted this objection.
Given all this, it’s simply surreal for Rosen to ask whether Obama will “take the advice of the pressure-on-Israel enthusiasts who twice led him into the cul-de-sac of the ‘freeze on natural growth’ of settlements,” as if a “freeze on natural growth” of settlements weren’t itself an Israeli obligation of the Road Map.
Current reports indicate that the parties are “on track” to direct talks. One of the main arguments made by those trying to convince Abbas to agree to negotiations is that it would allow the Palestinians to test Israel’s seriousness. And just as rumors of talks are swirling, there appears to be an effort underway, of which Rosen is a part, to downplay Israel’s responsibilities and minimize what it will agree to, including this sort of talk of another “interim agreement.”
While Israel under Netanyahu has, for the first time, thanks to the Obama administration’s commitment to enforcing the Road Map, taken a step toward meeting its obligation on settlements by implementing a 10-month settlement moratorium (if a largely symbolic one), that moratorium will soon be over, and it’s not clear that Israel has any intention of continuing to meet this obligation. Moreover, it is Israel which is currently opposed to a Quartet statement reiterating those commitments and outlining final status parameters so that the talks can begin.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has his own domestic political pressures to deal with, and so does President Abbas, but it’s silly to pretend, as Rosen would have us do, that the Palestinians don’t have good reasons for resisting the sort of “interim arrangements” that, from their perspective, have in the past only served to facilitate the expansion of Israeli settlements on land that the Palestinians intend for their state. Especially given that Netanyahu himself is on record bragging about his past success in manipulating those arrangements to frustrate progress toward peace.
Toomey Says His Plan To Privatize Social Security ‘Would Be A Very Important Start’
Toomey Says His Plan To Privatize Social Security ‘Would Be A Very Important Start’
Earlier this week, a host of Republican pundits tried to claim that no members of their party are proposing to privatize Social Security. “There’s no Republican, basically, standing up and saying that, and we haven’t for a very long time,” said Republican talking head Ed Rollins.
Of course, plenty of Republicans have proposed just that, most notably Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), whose Roadmap for America includes the creation of personal Social Security accounts. Kentucky’s Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul said “let young working people opt out, the sooner the better, let ‘em opt out and get a better investment,” while Indiana’s GOP Senate candidate Dan Coats has endorsed a Social Security plan “along the lines of what Paul Ryan has proposed.”
And then there’s Pat Toomey, the Republican nominee for the Senate in Pennsylvania. During an interview with Real Clear Politics, Toomey touted his plan for Social Security privatization, conveniently leaving out the word “privatization”:
RCP: Your campaign website, under “spending,” complains of “wasteful pork projects, multiple bailouts, the so-called stimulus, and new government programs.” But what about entitlements?
Toomey: You know, I’ve always said that we need to reform our big entitlement programs. These programs are not sustainable in their current form and so we’re going to have to put them on a secure footing. That’s what we have to do.
RCP: OK, how do we do that? Do we raise the retirement age? Do we cut benefits?
Toomey: I’ve got a whole chapter in a book that I wrote that deals with how I think, one of the ways I think we could reform Social Security to make it viable. So I have provided great detail on that whole idea. That would be a very important start.
Of course, in Toomey’s book, the first subhead under the “Transforming Social Security” chapter is “Personal Accounts Lead to Personal Prosperity.” And it’s really no surprise, considering Toomey’s reaction to President George W. Bush’s privatization scheme. “I have been arguing for many years in favor of Social Security personal retirement accounts,” Toomey said at the time. “I’m thrilled that the President is taking up this critical issue.”
Of course, as a Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis found, under a Bush-style privatization plan, an October 2008 retiree would have lost $26,000 in that year’s market turmoil, and if the U.S. stock market had behaved like the Japanese market during that retiree’s life, the private account would have lost $70,000. And it’s likely not a coincidence that Toomey didn’t let the word privatization into his response, as polls show that such a plan is highly unpopular.
Ken Starr: Defending SB-1070 ‘Is Going To Be A Very Hard Case,’ Birthright Citizenship ‘A Venerable Tradition’
Ken Starr: Defending SB-1070 ‘Is Going To Be A Very Hard Case,’ Birthright Citizenship ‘A Venerable Tradition’
Last night, on Fox News’ On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, “Clinton White House nemesis” and new president of Baylor University Law School Ken Starr explained that Arizona is going to have a tough time defending its immigration law against the Justice Department’s claims that it is preempted by federal law:
I think the law is such that it’s going to be a very hard case for Arizona and I’ll tell you why: the Constitution itself provides for a power given to Congress to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, or immigration control. [...] Certain provisions, those in terms of checking immigration papers or checking identity papers…those touch on the powers of Congress to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.
As the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) points out, “the U.S. Supreme Court consistently has ruled that the federal government has broad and exclusive power to regulate immigration.” SB-1070 contains several provisions that not only expand the scope and limits and federal immigration law, but also directly conflict with it. That’s why federal district court judge Susan Bolton enjoined several major provisions of Arizona’s immigration law, most notably, the section which requires police to enforce immigration law. Bolton concluded that “the United States is likely to succeed on the merits in showing that…[the enjoined provisions] are preempted by federal law” and the “United States is likely to suffer irreparable harm” in the absence of an injunction. Starr described Bolton’s ruling as a “strong decision.”
Starr also weighed in on the 14th amendment debate. While some right-wing lawmakers have argued that the 14th amendment can simply be “reinterpreted” or “clarified” to overturn birthright citizenship, Starr affirmed in absolute terms that the only way to deny the American-born children of undocumented immigrant citizenship would be by changing the Constitution. Starr also noted that the provision was neither an oversight nor a mistake made by the architects of the 14th amendment, rather, the restoration of a “venerable tradition” that overturned the Dred Scott decision:
This [birthright citizenship] is an ancient part of law that we then made absolutely clear in the 14th amendment. [...] The 14th amendment begins with a very specific definition that a person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States is a citizen of the United States. That’s pretty clear to me. [...] It’s not as if the ratifiers and the architects of the 14th amendment just made it up — they were restoring a very venerable tradition in English and, and frankly, United States law.
Watch it:
Starr emphasized that the broken immigration system cannot be adequately addressed by the courts and that it’s up to Congress to fix it by enacting immigration reform.
FLASHBACK: McConnell Predicted Health Law Would Increase Prescription Drug Costs
FLASHBACK: McConnell Predicted Health Law Would Increase Prescription Drug Costs
When HHS sent out the first round of rebate checks to seniors who fall into the so-called doughnut hole of Medicare Part D, Republicans accused the administration of “hiding the whole truth” and argued that prescription drug costs would still increase for seniors. “What the administration, however, will not mention at today’s event is that for every senior who gets a check, more than three other seniors will see an increase in their prescription drug insurance premiums,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in early June. He went further: “The reason for this is that the health care bill Democrats forced on Americans earlier this year requires higher government mandated minimum standards for everyone. So those who opted for anything below that minimum will now see their premiums go up. And the number of seniors in this category far, far outnumbers those getting a check.”
At the time, FactCheck.org questioned McConnell’s assertion, pointing to a CBO report which found that premiums would increase by “about 4%” in 2011, but “beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs apart from those premiums would fall, on average, as would their overall out-of-pocket drug spending including premiums.” Yesterday, the CMS further disproved McConnell’s predictions. According to the agency, most seniors will pay about the same for prescription premiums in 2011, while those with the highest costs will pay less:
The average monthly premium charged by Medicare drug plans for standard coverage will rise to an estimated $30 in 2011, an increase of $1 over 2010, or about 3 percent, said Donald Berwick, Medicare administrator. …Nonetheless, seniors with high drug costs can look forward to a noticeable improvement next year.
That is because the new health care law will begin to close the coverage gap known as the doughnut hole. Medicare recipients in the gap will get a 50 percent discount on brand name drugs and 7 percent on generics. The discounts will gradually increase until the gap finally closes in 2020.
Republicans are still dedicated to repealing the drug rebates, however, and have described the checks as “a colossal waste of money” that the country can’t afford.
Coats Admits He Has No Idea How Much His Giant Tax Cuts For The Rich And Corporations Would Cost
Coats Admits He Has No Idea How Much His Giant Tax Cuts For The Rich And Corporations Would Cost
Yesterday, Indiana’s Republican Senate candidate Dan Coats unveiled his job creation plan while campaigning at a medical parts manufacturer. Like the jobs plan that have been released by other Republican senate hopefuls like Marco Rubio (FL) and Roy Blunt (MO), Coats’ plan is heavy on the tax cuts and fearmongering about government regulation.
Coats calls for permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts, including those for the richest two percent of Americans that President Obama would like to see expire, as well as eliminating the estate tax and cutting the corporate income tax. But when asked about how much these massive cuts would add to the deficit, Coats freely admits that he has no idea:
He could not say what the fiscal impact of his proposals would have on the nation’s deficit, saying it would need more analysis. “I believe the effectiveness will far outweigh the costs,” he said. “Our hope is that we can come back with a budget neutral (plan) or savings.”
Coming back with a budget neutral plan may be Coats’ hope, but in order to achieve that he’s going to need draconian spending cuts or huge middle class tax increases, because the tax cuts he’s proposing will blow a serious hole in the budget. Extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy alone will cost $830 billion over ten years, and eliminating the estate tax is another $784 billion. All of this spending and borrowing will serve to benefit the richest two percent of the country.
As for the corporate income tax, Coats doesn’t actually say how big a cut he has in mind, just that he wants “to make the U.S. competitive with other leading industrial nations.” This is a common conservative trick, focusing on the marginal rate while ignoring that the myriad loopholes and deductions that are in the U.S. corporate tax code result in the U.S. bringing in below average corporate tax revenue for an industrialized nation. For the sake of putting a number on this, the House Republican plan to cut the corporate tax rate to 12.5 percent would cost $2.7 trillion over ten years.
Finally, this is supposed to be Coats’ jobs plan, but according to the Congressional Budget Office, extending the Bush tax cuts is the least effective tax step that could be taken to boost the economy, while cutting the corporate tax rate “is not a particularly cost-effective method of stimulating business spending.” “Increasing the after-tax income of businesses typically does not create an incentive for them to spend more on labor or to produce more,” CBO said.
So let’s call this plan out for what it is: a conservative tax cut wish-list that dramatically lowers taxes for rich people, without even pretending to be fiscally responsible.
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