By the time they wake up (it will be the same story in the UK) the moment will be lost. The strict austerity in Germany isn't necessary today despite what the right believes. Spain, Greece and Portugal may be a different story, but in this case, the belt tightening is going to be costly in the long term.
"The German economy is nowhere near pre-crisis levels yet," Roubini told Capital on Monday. "The current growth rate may look good on paper, but that is mainly a statistical effect."
Germany can currently borrow money cheaper than ever and German Chancellor Angela Merkel should take advantage of this and only start consolidating once the rest of Europe is in better shape, Roubini said.
The switch to “savings mode” at that point would still slow growth, but at least it would prevent “an emergency stop without a safety belt,” he said.
Better late than never, but still very much appreciated. The banks listen to little other than an iron fist so hopefully the White House is ready to carry through on their talk.
Federal law enforcement officials are investigating possible criminal violations in connection with the national foreclosure crisis, examining whether financial firms broke federal laws when they filed fraudulent court documents to seize people's homes, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Obama administration's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is in the early stages of an investigation into whether banks and other companies that submitted flawed paperwork in state foreclosure proceedings may also have misled federal housing agencies, which now own or insure a majority of home loans, according to these sources.
The task force, which includes investigators from the Justice Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies, is also looking into whether the submission of flawed paperwork during the foreclosure process violated mail or wire fraud laws. Financial fraud cases often involve these statutes.
Conflict of interest much? Somehow I don't see the Republicans doing much about this shameful situation.
More than 17,000 doctors and other health care providers have taken money from seven major drug companies to talk to other doctors about their products, a joint investigation by news organizations and non-profit groups found.
More than 380 of the doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other professionals took in more than $100,000 in 2009 and 2010, according to the investigation released on Tuesday. The report said far more doctors are likely to have taken such payments, but it documented these based on information from seven drugmakers.
The payments are not illegal and usually not even considered improper. But the investigation by journalism group ProPublica, Consumer Reports magazine, NPR radio and several publications showed doctors were sometimes urged to recommend "off-label" prescriptions of drugs, meaning using them for conditions they are not approved for.
BP's new boss Bob Dudley has told the company's 80,000 employees that safety will be the sole measure for bonus payments in the fourth quarter.
Mr Dudley said in an email that payments would be linked to "reducing operational risks" and "excellent safety and compliance standards".
Existing bonus arrangements would be honoured for the first nine months of the year, he added.
Also of note is that BP has re-agreed to waive the $75 million liability cap. Many were surprised when BP lawyers suggested they may renege on their previous deal of accepting all costs for the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
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173 hours after #DADT was suspended, Judge Phillips once again stands with service against's #POTUS and his discriminatory policy
The Obama administration can now ask the Ninth Circuit for a stay -- and the Obama administration will.
I'm including the text of Judge Phillips' decision, but this is the bottom line:
None of the factors the Court weighs in considering whether to enter a stay favors granting a stay here. Accordingly, the Court DENIES Defendants' Application for a Stay.
Republican Christine O'Donnell challenged her Democratic rival Tuesday to show where the Constitution requires separation of church and state, drawing swift criticism from her opponent, laughter from her law school audience and a quick defense from prominent conservatives.
The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
The phrase "separation of church and state" is usually traced to President Thomas Jefferson. In a letter in 1802, he referred to the First Amendment and said that it built "a wall of separation between Church & State."
Now imagine a whole Congress for of people like her.
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Andrew Gully, senior vice president of the Brandeis University communications office, confirmed that Ms. Hill had received the message and that she had turned it over to the campus department of public safety. That office, in turn, passed it on to the F.B.I.
ABC News quoted from the voicemail:
“Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginny Thomas,” it quoted from the voicemail. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. Okay have a good day.”
Wow, private industry really can be much more efficient than the government. Somehow giving the insurance industry new customers isn't enough for them. They only want the right kind of customers, as in those who are happy to be ripped off with high internal costs. Maybe there will be no other choice but to bring back the public option if the industry can't manage to control their excessive internal costs.
The Obama administration is awaiting the recommendation of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, meeting in Orlando this week, for how and when to implement key changes to the "Medical Loss Ratio" rule.
Under health reform, beginning 2011, insurance companies will have to spend 80% to 85% of the premiums they collect on care instead of toward their own profits and overhead costs.
Prior to reform, requirements varied from state to state. In some cases, insurers didn't have to meet any minimum requirements.
For example, some plans have a 40% loss ratio. That means individuals could be paying $1 for 40 cents of care.
For those of you looking for clues about the economic future and what's on the menu — inflation or deflation — for the next ten years or so, Paul Krugman points to this "remarkable" graph from Mary Daly of the San Francisco Fed.
That "History suggests" comment in the graph is not just Krugman's point; it's Mary Daly's as well. If our experience continues to parallel Japan's, we're looking at core CPI between +1% and –1% out past 2015. Energy costs will boost some prices, but that looks like it. A remarkable graph indeed.
[W]hen people expect falling prices, they become less willing to spend, and in particular less willing to borrow. After all, when prices are falling, just sitting on cash becomes an investment with a positive real yield...
And when that happens, the economy may stay depressed because people expect deflation, and deflation may continue because the economy remains depressed. That’s the deflationary trap we keep worrying about.
A second effect: even aside from expectations of future deflation, falling prices worsen the position of debtors, by increasing the real burden of their debts...
Finally, in a deflationary economy, wages as well as prices often have to fall – and it’s a fact of life that it’s very hard to cut nominal wages — there’s downward nominal wage rigidity. What this means is that in general economies don’t manage to have falling wages unless they also have mass unemployment, so that workers are desperate enough to accept those wage declines.
There's been an enormous amount of coverage about the spending by outside groups allied with the Republicans. Not so much spending by the Democratic allied groups. There's a reason. Today, Ben Smith takes a look at the edict from the Obama operation that rich donors should not contribute to progressive organizations. Mike Lux wrote about this a couple weeks ago.
As, you hear more stories about how Democrats are being outspent, keep this in mind:
Democrats enter the home stretch of the 2010 elections complaining vocally about the flood of Republican money, much of it anonymous, pounding their candidates.
But as the White House points the finger at outside Republican groups, many Democrats point the finger back at the White House, which dismantled the Democratic Party's own outside infrastructure in 2008 and never tried to rebuild it.
Never tried to rebuild it. Ben calls it "unilateral disarmament":
But it's also easy to underestimate the president's ability to increase the flow of cash to Democrat-friendly groups, had he chosen to do so. Instead, Obama's choice has been unilateral disarmament.
To the White House, that posture is a mark of the purity of the presidential brand, and of Obama's consistency. "Throughout his 2008 campaign, the President vowed to change business as usual in Washington and take on some of the tough challenges that politicians in Washington had put off for too long," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "We're pleased to have made so much progress on these priorities — from Wall Street reform to health care reform - while staying true to the values and vision that earned the enthusiastic support of so many Democrats and Republicans during the campaign."
True to the values and vision? I guess that's true on this particular issue of discouraging any outside spending on progressive groups. And, good to know Team Obama is so "pleased," despite the havoc that is being wreaked upon the Democrats. (Outside of DC media types, does anyone actually use the word "pleased"?)
Now, as you can imagine, not everyone thinks "unilateral disarmament" is a great idea:
But to some of its more practical-minded allies, the White House is protecting the brand at a very real cost to the party.
"The leadership of the Obama campaign warned their donors against giving to outside groups - including many of the key issue groups that motivate progressives. The leadership in the White House has done the same thing," said Erica Payne, one of the founders of the Democracy Alliance, a group of the largest liberal donors, who now heads the Agenda Project. "As a result, the administration often looks like Will Ferrell in the movie 'Old School' - running through the street naked, shouting, 'Come on everybody's streaking' when in reality they are all by themselves."
According to one fundraiser, some donors aren't giving so they'll get invited back to the White House:
Jennifer Swanson, a fundraising consultant briefly connected with one of the independent 2008 efforts, cited both the bad economy and low Democratic expectations as factors cooling independent donors.
But she said a persistent sense of presidential disapproval is also a major factor.
"Donors don't want to do something that is going to make them unwelcome at the White House," she said.
That is just absurd. That's like knowing advocacy groups won't push the White House because they want to get invited to the White House.
The point of what we're doing isn't to get invited to the White House. It's supposed to be about enacting a progressive agenda.
So, the donors and the advocates have rigged things so that they can continuing having fun at their White House parties. Meanwhile, action on the progressive agenda is slipping away -- and will go nowhere after the November elections.
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ABC News - here's John McCain talking to George Stephanopoulos:
But the fact is that this president has not reached out, not one time, on a major issue to Republicans. I hope that he will. We look forward to problem solving with him. But we really need to respond to the anger and frustration that the American people feel today." [emphasis added]
Yeah, like the time President Obama cut the stimulus in half, and then cut another $100bn, and then gave 35% of what was remaining away in near-useless tax cuts in order to appease the Republicans - and pretty much guaranteed we'd lose the House as a result of the weak impact the remaining stimulus would have on the economy - is that what you mean, Senator Magoo?
Or the time Obama left it up to Chuck Grassley, for months and months and month, to come up with a health care reform compromise, and then - surprise! - Grassley and the Republicans apparently were never interested in ever finding any compromise at all!
Or how about the time the President left global warming in the capable hands of Lindsey Graham. How's that going?
I liked John McCain a lot more before he lost his mind.
And, excuse me, but how in the world did George Stephanopoulos let McCain get away with saying this, and then simply respond by saying "Thanks for being on our show"?
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According to Politics Daily, the two of races with the most outside spending are in Pennsylvania and Missouri:
Pennsylvania's Senate race between Democrat Joe Sestak and Republican Pat Toomey ranks second in outside general election spending at almost $9 million, followed by Missouri's Senate race between Republican Roy Blunt and Democrat Robin Carnahan at $7.7 million.
And, it's GOP-related outside groups who are doing most of that spending.
That's why two polls released from Public Policy Polling (PPP) are especially significant -- and hopeful.
You can put Pennsylvania Senate back in the toss up category. Joe Sestak leads Pat Toomey 46-45 in our newest poll of the race, erasing the 9 point deficit he had in an August PPP survey.
Toomey's support has remained stagnant over the last 2 months while Sestak's has gone up 10 points from 36% to 46%.
I've always thought that Joe Sestak was going to win this race. It's a tough one, no doubt. But, he's tenacious and he seems to have a history of surging ahead just at the right time. Well, that's what happened in the primary earlier this year. Sestak's website is here.
The Missouri Senate race is getting closer, with Robin Carnahan pulling within 5 points of Roy Blunt in a new PPP poll conducted for her campaign. Blunt's lead is 46-41, in contrast with the 45-38 advantage he had when we last took a look at the race in August.
On Missouri, PPP's Tom Jensen concludes:
Some pundits have written off this race as an opportunity for Democrats to pick up a seat but Carnahan is within the margin of error and picking up support and if her party's base continues to awaken in the final 15 days before the election this race could provide a surprise.
Now, admittedly, I'm biased in this one. Robin has been a good friend for a long time. But, I've watched win before when it was not expected. And, she's a marathon runner -- and that's how she's approached this campaign. She's been steady throughout. These new numbers show movement towards Robin despite all the outside spending by Karl Rove and the Chamber of Commerce. Her website is here.
This is a Maddow two-fer, a revealing look at a problem, followed by the solution. I'm going to post both videos.
The Problem: "The media narrative ... has turned into a Republican campaign ad." It's that simple.
Rachel Maddow gets right to the point in this well-produced segment. Her bottom line — the media narrative is identical the Republican party spin on what the midterm elections mean. As I said, well-produced:
While this focuses on conservatives, let's not forget her spotlight on the press: "The media dressing these guys up like there is some coherent narrative here ... conveniently obscures what's really going on here. ... [W]e are on the precipice of elevating into federal office the most extreme ... set of conservative candidates in a lifetime."
Exactly. (And note that word "conveniently". I think she means it.)
And now the Solution: Attack, attack, attack. Her follow-on segment contains many effective examples of Democrats fighting back hard.
The discussion with Chris Hayes teases out some of the corner ideas, but the bottom line advice is clearly to defy the current Beltway pundits — and I'll add, that of many consultants as well. Don't hunker down; man up (as it were).
About "It's the Deficit", the lead lie in the pool. This one is totally disingenuous, both from the media (whose job is to know better) and conservatives (whose job is to lie to win).
Here's Paul Krugman's n-th attempt to illustrate a simple concept: The "deficit" has two components — income and expenses — not just one. The first set of bars in the graph below shows change in GDP, Expenditure, and Revenues in the last business cycle, 2001–2007. The second shows what came after. The "deficit" is the difference between the red bar (Expenditure) and the green bar (Revenues) next to it. (Note that the bars show rate of change, not nominal values.)
The red bar doesn't change much, but the green bar tanks. Hmm. Looks like "deficit" as code for "spending on the Wrong People" doesn't wash — not in the real world anyway. Keep your eye on that lie though. You'll hear it from a lot from people whose job is to know better. Just sayin'.
Meanwhile, GMAC Mortgage, whose procedures helped prompt the controversy when one its executives testified that he had signed 10,000 documents in a month, is also proceeding with foreclosures.
“We announced a temporary suspension of evictions and foreclosure sales in the 23 judicial states several weeks ago so we could commence the appropriate review,” said Gina Proia, a spokeswoman for GMAC. “As cases are being reviewed and, when needed, remediated, the foreclosure process moves forward as appropriate.”
Guy Cecala of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry publication, said: “This draws a line in the sand that the banks expect this problem will be over in relatively short order and it will be back to business as usual. If Bank of America can do it, certainly the smaller ones will follow suit.”
No campaign events on the President's schedule today. Although, he is hosting a ceremony to mark the "Obama Administration’s Executive Order on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics."
Obama is also meeting with Defense Secretary Robert Gates this afternoon. I'm sure they'll spend most of their time talking about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and the ongoing conflict in Iraq. But, I have to think Gates is also going to instruct Obama on how to proceed on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Because, we all know, Gates is calling the shots. Yesterday, Judge Phillips refused to grant the government's stay of her worldwide injunction on DADT enforcement -- for the time being, anyway. So, DADT is not the law right now. But, Gates wants the law back in effect. And, that's what matters.
I just find it very odd that a constitutional scholar, like our President, won't say if DADT and DOMA are unconstitutional. We've been trying to get that question answered for months to no avail. The White House won't answer it.
Biden is on the campaign trail today. He's going to be at an event for Patty Murray in Vancouver, Washington. Then, he'll be in San Francisco campaigning for Barbara Boxer. He's ending his day in Reno.
A Russian police spokesman says at least six people are dead after insurgents stormed the Chechen parliament complex, including the insurgents and two others.
Ramzan Bekkhoyev says there were at least four militants, one of whom blew himself up, killing two security guards at the complex in Grozny, the provincial capital.
Russian news agencies earlier reported the deaths of police, saying insurgents set off an explosive device at the entrance of parliament, while two others ran into the building, sparking a shootout with police.
Both sides continue to dig in, with the government preparing to make the final vote later this week on pension reform. Drivers have been concerned over stories of fuel shortages though the government has insisted supplies are fine. BBC News:
Tuesday will be France's sixth national day of protests since early September with further disruption expected to air travel, trains and schools.
Half of flights in and out of Paris's Orly airport have been cancelled and 30% of flights at other airports have been affected.
One opinion poll on Monday suggested that 71% of those surveyed supported the strikers, despite the increasing effect on people's lives.
Oil refineries have been shut for a week, hundreds of petrol stations have run dry and a further day of national strikes is under way.
Fools is another term that might as well be used for customers. Wall Street is certainly one place where the customer is not king. The king, of course, is Wall Street. How is any of this behavior legal? People are fed up with politicians who defend such activity and then blame the abused. Now that the GOP is preparing to take over it's hard not to look back and wonder how and why the Democrats missed the opportunity to implement serious reform.
A great article (with a video explanation inside) from the Times on this despicable behavior from Wall Street. As Joseph Stiglitz said, "privatized profits and socialized losses is not capitalism."
Here is the deal: Funds lend some of their stocks and bonds to Wall Street, in return for cash that banks like JPMorgan then invest. If the trades do well, the bank takes a cut of the profits. If the trades do poorly, the funds absorb all of the losses.
The strategy is called securities lending, a practice that is thriving even though some investments linked to it were virtually wiped out during the financial panic of 2008. These trades were supposed to be safe enough to make a little extra money at little risk.
JPMorgan customers, including public or corporate pension funds of I.B.M., New York State and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, ended up owing JPMorgan more than $500 million to cover the losses. But JPMorgan protected itself on some of these investments and kept millions of dollars in profit, before the trades went awry.
If there were a Nobel Prize awarded for breakthroughs in the field of "Seriously, I have plenty of black friends," then the Nevada Senate candidate would be on a Lufthansa flight to Stockholm right now. Sharron Angle told a gathering of Hispanic schoolchildren last week that she has difficulty distinguishing them from Asians. "So that's what we want is a secure and sovereign nation and, you know, I don't know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me. I don't know that." she said. "What we know, what we know about ourselves is that we are a melting pot in this country. My grandchildren are evidence of that. I'm evidence of that. I've been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly." To be fair, this is a person who thinks humans crossed the Bering land bridge only a few centuries ago (to flee the stegosaurus herds and whatnot).
Okay, maybe not the last part, but she is a creepy singing Japanese girl robot. And I'm sorry, but there's no way I'd turn my back on her (or give her access to the defense mainframe).
A reportedly over-sexed unmarried GOP spokesman, who should be the last person accusing others of sexual impropriety - after all, he is the public face of a family values party - is now emailing rumors to reporters about a Democratic congressman and possible adultery.
So we have Gingrich on his third marriage (with two adulteries thrown in), Palin with a kid who got pregnant out of wedlock (and, according to the NYT, whose own first pregnancy appears to have happened a tad early with respect to her wedding day, shall we say), Limbaugh on God knows how many marriages now (it's four, I believe), a party chairman who holds events at S&M bars, the party chairman before him is gay and raising money for gay marriage, a GOP spokesman who reportedly gets more "tail" (that's promiscuous unmarried sex) than anyone in DC, and a possible incoming Speaker whose response to charges of cheating on his wife is simply "no comment."
The Department of Justice today filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit in Murfreesboro, Tenn., where opponents of a new mosque are trying to stop its construction. In the brief, the DOJ declares that Islam is a religion and is entitled to freedom of expression.
Oh great. Another GOP attack against Freddie/Fannie. Why do I get the impression that Wall Street who packaged up junk and sold it will get a free pass? The GOP is talking about Countrywide, but of course, that company no longer exists and is part of Bank of America.
Darrell Issa, who would head the lower chamber’s main investigative committee, told the Financial Times in an interview: “We should look at financial entities and either reform them or kill them.”
The conservative Republican from California, who would become chairman of the powerful House oversight and government reform committee, said hearings would focus on whether the federal government should be involved at all in sponsoring home loans for the poor.
The investigations would centre on the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nationalised government-sponsored lending institutions, which Republicans say contributed strongly to the 2008 meltdown by promoting subprime lending.
It's Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal that is reporting on the story so that angle is not to be discounted. Even so, Facebook has had its share of problems so it's not much of a surprise either.
Many of the most popular applications, or "apps," on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook's strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook's rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users' activities secure.
As if more than enough evidence weren't enough, there's this:
Last month a Chinese trawler operating in Japanese-controlled waters collided with two vessels of Japan’s Coast Guard. Japan detained the trawler’s captain; China responded by cutting off Japan’s access to crucial raw materials.
And there was nowhere else to turn: China accounts for 97 percent of the world’s supply of rare earths, minerals that play an essential role in many high-technology products, including military equipment. Sure enough, Japan soon let the captain go.
I don’t know about you, but I find this story deeply disturbing, both for what it says about China and what it says about us. On one side, the affair highlights the fecklessness of U.S. policy makers, who did nothing while an unreliable regime acquired a stranglehold on key materials. On the other side, the incident shows a Chinese government that is dangerously trigger-happy, willing to wage economic warfare on the slightest provocation.
He goes on to talk about how, starting in the 1990s, the Chinese were allowed to take over the world's rare earth production industry, necessarily killing off our own industry in the process. About the Bush II era response, when we were supposedly doing everything and then some to protect our national security:
[P]olicy makers simply stood by as the U.S. rare earth industry shut down.
Seems like the Barons of the New America (and their political retainers and gophers) are willing to do anything for money.
As to lessons, the Professor suggests three, including:
China’s response to the trawler incident is, I’m sorry to say, further evidence that the world’s newest economic superpower isn’t prepared to assume the responsibilities that go with that status.
Let's put that a little differently. As the Republicans are to the Democrats, China is to all U.S. policy-makers — facing a self-neutered opponent, relentless, and willing to do anything to win. It's a match made in heaven — if you're a Republican, or the Chinese government.
We know things are crazy in Alaska. But, it got even more bizarre. Teabagger/GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller's security team handcuffed Alaska Dispatch reporter Tony Hopfinger who was trying to ask questions at a public forum. Yes, you read that right. Via The Mudflats:
Tony Hopfinger, editor at the Alaska Dispatch and host of a US Senate debate scheduled for Monday evening, followed Joe Miller into the hallway after the debate to ask additional questions. At a press conference last week, Miller announced he would no longer be taking questions about his past, but has continued advertising his past accomplishments; military combat service, Yale Law School, federal magistrate, etc.
1. Hopfinger had been trying to ask Miller questions when two or three guards told him to leave or risk being charged with trespassing.
2. When Hopfinger continued to try to ask questions, one of the guards put the reporter in an arm-bar and then handcuffed him.
3. Hopfinger was released after police arrived.
4. The reporter was on public property where a public event was being held at the time of the incident.
5. Miller has been adamant about his desire to avoid talking to the Alaska media, but no one in the working press in Alaska has ever before seen a candidate go to this length to avoid questions.
It is bizarre enough to have a reporter “arrested” by private security, but those of us who drive past The Drop Zone, the business behind Miller’s security, every day aren’t surprised by their over-reach or connection to Joe Miller.
Here's the report from ADN.com (and there's a photo of the handcuffed reporter):
The editor of the Alaska Dispatch website was arrested by U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller's private security guards Sunday as the editor attempted to interview Miller at the end of a public event in an Anchorage school.
Tony Hopfinger was handcuffed by the guards and detained in a hallway at Central Middle School until Anchorage police came and told the guards to release Hopfinger.
Hopfinger has not been charged but the owner of the Drop Zone, the private security firm that's been providing Miller's security, accused Hopfinger of trespassing at the public event, a town hall sponsored by the Miller campaign. The owner, William Fulton, also said Hopfinger assaulted a man by shoving him.
Last night, Scott MacAdams, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Alaska (and the voice of sanity in that contest), tweeted:
@JoeWMiller - in case you were unaware, the Constitution also applies to reporters #Ak #AkSen
Teabaggers have a very selective interpretation of the Constitution.
Last night in Kentucky, Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway had a debate with his opponent, teabagger Rand Paul. From all reports, Conway was on the offense. So much so that Paul would not shake his hand after the debate. The TODAY Show ran that clip this morning. And, Kentucky bloggers are calling it Paul's "temper tantrum."
Staying on the offense, Conway just sent out this email to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee list. It's good stuff. Conway and over 200 other Democrats are acting like Democrats:
Rand Paul, the Tea Party leader running against me for Senate in Kentucky, thinks Social Security is unconstitutional. Other Republicans across the nation are also campaigning on privatization and Social Security cuts.
With a Tea Party deep on the fringe, the way for Democrats to win in 2010 is to have a spine -- and go on offense.
That's why today, I am proud to announce with my friends at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee that over 200 congressional candidates and members of Congress are promising to oppose any cuts to Social Security.
The PCCC has done a great job working with me and other Democratic candidates to go on offense on Social Security. The 200 others include:
* Senate candidates Scott McAdams (AK), Roxanne Conlin (IA), Lee Fisher (OH), Alexi Giannoulias (IL), Kendrick Meek (FL), Paul Hodes (NH), Elaine Marshall (NC), and others
* House candidates Ann McLane Kuster (NH), Joe Garcia (FL), Bill Hedrick (CA), Rob Miller (SC), Julia Lassa (WI), Manan Trivedi (PA), Ed Potosnak (NJ), Michael Oliverio (WV), and others
* Members of Congress Raul Grijalva (AZ), Mary Jo Kilroy (OH), Alan Grayson (FL), Michael Acuri (NY), Carol Shea-Porter (NH), Ed Potosnak (NJ), Bill Owens (NY), John Boccieri (OH), and others
As Rachel Maddow would say, "This is what it looks like when Democrats go on offense." Over 200 bold Democrats strong!
Stephanie Taylor, PCCC co-founder who is leading PCCC's 2010 election efforts, told us:
We are saving the Democratic Party from itself. Progressive are working with bold candidates and members of Congress to show party leadership how to go on offense, run progressively, and win -- especially on issues like Social Security, where the public is so clearly on our side.
Maybe they missed it, but people don't exactly have the greatest faith in the way the White House negotiates with anyone about anything. They certainly haven't been impressive from a consumer perspective with the banks so far and it was only a few months ago they decided to play nice with BP as well. Everyone can appreciate the negative impact of delayed business in this economy but people can also appreciate the harshness of throwing a family onto the street.
Telling the public that the Justice Department will get tough but not open a criminal investigation could lead people to believe that another big talk, little action move is ahead. For some reason this administration is afraid of conflict and ready to fold at even the slightest hint of it. They forget that they have already played the "let's talk tough but act nice behinds the scenes" card a few too many times. Asking nicely does not work with this industry. It also doesn't win over a suspicious public that is already upset with the financial industry.
The full extent of the foreclosure mess is still coming into focus. Congress has called for a hearing on the subject, and the housing market in certain parts of the country has come to a near standstill.
The officials on Sunday stopped short of announcing a criminal investigation, and did not suggest that one was imminent. Instead, Mr. Donovan wrote that the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force — a coalition of federal agencies and United States attorney’s offices — has made the foreclosure issue “priority No. 1,” adding that Attorney General Eric Holder has said that if wrongdoing was discovered by the task force, it “will take the appropriate action.”
“Banks must follow the law,” Mr. Donovan wrote on The Huffington Post, “and those that haven’t should immediately fix what is wrong.”
The President was in Ohio over the weekend. Kept seeing tweets that reported the crowd at Ohio State University was 35,000. That's impressive. The candidates in Ohio sure need some help.
Today, the President is hosting the White House Science Fair. Sounds pretty cool, especially considering the last president tried to eliminate science. The White House also informs us:
The President will also announce his personal appearance on the upcoming December 8, 2010 episode of Discovery Channel’s MythBusters, a popular television show which uses science to determine the truth behind urban legends.
Tonight, Obama will be a at a DSCC fundraiser in Rockville.
There was a lot of buzz yesterday with Meghan McCain's comments on "This Week" that Christine O'Donnell scares her and is a "nut job." Here's the thing, Meghan: Christine O'Donnell is the progeny of Sarah Palin. And, Sarah Palin was inflicted upon us by your father in 2008. So, the McCain clan is not without sin here. Christine O'Donnell is in your family's political tree.
The TODAY Show showed the clip of Rand Paul refusing to shake hands with Jack Conway after their Kentucky Senate debate last night. Classy, Rand.
15 days til Election Day. Voting is underway in many states. It starts in DC and Arkansas today. Check the calendar at EarlyVoting.Net.
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It's not as though we haven't seen our own culture wars in the US, but in light of the recent poll in Germany, Merkel's attack is even more troubling. Outside of pure politics, why would Merkel make this such a big issue? There's a serious xenophobia issue in Germany that needs to be addressed. After all, it was only a few months ago when the country was worked into an irrational frenzy over the Greeks. Who will the scapegoat be tomorrow?
Chancellor Angela Merkel has branded Germany's attempts to build a multicultural society an "utter failure" in an unprecedented speech designed to revive her own and her conservative party's flagging popularity and regain the initiative in an increasingly hostile public debate about immigration.
Ms Merkel, who normally scrupulously avoids courting xenophobic opinion, bluntly told a meeting of young members of her ruling Christian Democratic party that the "Multikulti" notion of people from different cultural backgrounds living happily side by side simply did not work.
"This approach has failed, utterly failed," she told applauding young conservatives gathered at a conference in Potsdam outside Berlin on Saturday. Instead she urged Germany's 16 million immigrants to do more to integrate into society and to learn German.
I had exactly a twenty-dollar bill. It came to twenty-one and change... I offered him my cell phone, my wallet. I said i live right around the corner. I come in here all the time....
I said 'Can you just give her the pump. She's on the floor wheezing... I didn't know if an ambulance would get there on time. He said there was nothing he could do for me.
There was a lot of gay-related news coming from today's "Meet the Press."
Remember how we kept hearing that teabaggers don't really care about social issues? Not quite.
The latest anti-gay attack comes from Colorado's teabagger Senate candidate, Ken Buck. He was on "Meet the Press" today and espoused his belief that being gay is a choice. Apparently, that's because "you can choose who your partner is." And, somehow, he managed to bring alcoholism into his explanation. Not kidding. The Wonk Room got the video:
Buck's answers to the gay questions warrant the headline in the article about today's debate in the Denver Post: "Buck's remarks on homosexuality loom after Meet the Press debate"
It's not a choice. And, Buck gets added to the growing list of teabaggers who are unabashed homophobes -- along with Paladino, Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell.
If you live in Colorado, please don't let your friends and family vote for this homophobe. Elect Michael Bennet. This is a close race and Buck's homophobia should hurt him. Pollster.com shows Buck leading 48.2% - 44.1%. Nate Silver's model has the projected results favoring Buck: 49.8 - 47.5. But, it looks like Bennet is moving in the right direction.
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Robert Gibbs was on "Meet the Press" this morning. In my open thread, I wrote:
Robert Gibbs is the other guest on "Meet." So, we may be treated to more garbled and incoherent answers about the President's views on DADT.
And, as you'll see, that's exactly what we got. The last time Gibbs wasn't completely illogical on DADT was during the transition. At AMERICAblog Gay this mornuing, Tim Beauchamp posted that video. I also posted this "Meet the Press" video at there, too.
Note that Gibbs will not say if Obama thinks DADT is unconstitutional. We've been trying to get an answer to that question directly for months. Instead, we're told he hasn't spoken to it. Same for DOMA. Please. Obama is a constitutional scholar. Laws that treat LGBT Americans as second-class citizens aren't just discriminatory. Judges have found them unconstitutional. Obama just won't say it. The White House must think it will look really bad if he goes to court to defend unconstitutional laws -- instead of just discriminatory laws. It looks bad, period.
Just watch Gibbs. Keep in mind that he's gotten DADT questions all week. Kerry Eleveld grilled him on Thursday. There's still no coherent response. They still don't have a plan: Read More......
But yesterday in federal court, an attorney for the oil giant sent shockwaves throughout the Gulf region by suggesting that BP may seek shelter under the $75 million liability cap polluters can invoke under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.
U.S. District Judge Carl J. Barbier, who's presiding over the more than 300 consolidated lawsuits against the company, was taken aback when BP attorney Don Haycraft floated the idea of the liability cap. Barbier replied simply that "BP said it would pay whatever [is] necessary." Steven Herman, a plaintiffs attorney in the case, also registered surprise. "We're shocked over here to hear the defendants now bring up this $75 million cap," he said. "We were under the impression it was waived."
“Given how much stuff was coming at us,” Obama told me, “we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right. There is probably a perverse pride in my administration — and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top — that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.”
That is utter nonsense. It's difficult to find an administration more political, more worried about what people think (at least people on the right), than Team Obama. When have they ever forged ahead with "the right thing" to hell with the consequences? That simply is not the way they operate. The President starts a negotiation by looking for the lowest common denominator, the thing least likely to make waves with the opposition, and then, after a comfortable period of time doing next to nothing, rallies around whatever is left.
"But I keep a checklist of what we committed to doing, and we’ve probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we talked about during the campaign. And I hope as long as I’m president, I’ve got a chance to work on the other 30 percent."
That's a tad disingenuous. On health care reform, he didn't push for what he promised - he didn't even try - and was forced to settle for much less than he could have gotten. Is that really a full accomplishment, getting a B- when you could have gotten an A? And how about the stimulus, another "promise kept": The President failed to ask for the full amount needed, and now the economy is in the crapper while Democrats prepare to lose control of the House, and possibly the Senate. How is that a full success?
“It’s not that we believed our own press or press releases, but there was definitely a sense at the beginning that we could really change Washington,” another White House official told me. “ ‘Arrogance’ isn’t the right word, but we were overconfident.”
No, arrogance is the right word. This is a group of people who think they are so right that they don't need anyone else's help. Other than bad people who won't help them anyway. It's an odd mixture of arrogance and insecurity, really (thus the constant right-wing outreach).
The biggest miscalculation in the minds of most Obama advisers was the assumption that he could bridge a polarized capital and forge genuinely bipartisan coalitions. While Republican leaders resolved to stand against Obama, his early efforts to woo the opposition also struck many as halfhearted. “If anybody thought the Republicans were just going to roll over, we were just terribly mistaken,” former Senator Tom Daschle, a mentor and an outside adviser to Obama, told me. “I’m not sure anybody really thought that, but I think we kind of hoped the Republicans would go away. And obviously they didn’t do that.”
They thought the Republicans would just go away? That is beyond naive. How could any Democratic leader lead based on the assumption that the Republicans would simply go away on their own? In other words, Obama didn't feel the need, or desire really, to fight back.
Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, though, is among the Democrats who grade Obama harshly for not being more nimble in the face of opposition. “B-plus, A-minus on substantive accomplishments,” he told me, “and a D-plus or C-minus on communication.” The health care legislation is “an incredible achievement” and the stimulus program was “absolutely, unqualifiedly, enormously successful,” in Rendell’s judgment, yet Obama allowed them to be tarnished by critics. “They lost the communications battle on both major initiatives, and they lost it early,” said Rendell, an ardent Hillary Clinton backer who later became an Obama supporter. “We didn’t use the president in either stimulus or health care until we had lost the spin battle.”
Note how Rendell mentions "using the President" too late in the game on HCR and the stimulus. That's a point I've been making for over a year: That the President sat back and refused to get involved until it was too late on far too many policies. Apologists argued that the President had little role in legislating. Those of us who have actually worked in legislating know that the apologists were wrong. And now Rendell confirms it.
The other side would like more ideological rigidity. Norman Solomon, a leading progressive activist and the president of the Institute for Public Accuracy, said Obama has “totally blown this great opportunity” to reinvent America by being more aggressive on issues like a public health care option. Other liberals feel the same way about gays in the military or the prison at Guántanamo Bay. “It’s been so reflexive since he was elected, to just give ground and give ground,” Solomon told me. “If we don’t call him a wimp, which may be the wrong word, he just seems to be backpedaling.” Solomon added: “It makes people feel angry and perhaps used. People just feel like, Gee, we really believed in this guy, and his rhetoric is so different than the way he’s behaved in office.”
Spot on.
As a senior adviser put it, “There’s going to be very little incentive for big things over the next two years unless there’s some sort of crisis.”
There was very little incentive over the past two years either. Well, to be more precise, there was an incentive to do a few big things, and then cave on them from the outset.
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Today, Barack and Michelle Obama will be in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio campaigning for Governor Ted Strickland and raising money for the DNC. Ohio is a really tough state (again) this year. Strickland is trailing his GOP opponent, John Kasich (a former Lehman Bros. exec.) and Senate candidate Lee Fisher is behind his GOP opponent Rob Portman (a Bush admin. official.) Seriously Ohio? Lehman and Bush helped ruin your economy and you're going to reward them. Wow.
The Veep is in Allentown raising money for congressional candidate John Callahan.
The Sunday shows have a heavy dose of politics. For some reason, despite all the very competitive races, "This Week" has another nationally televised debate between Chris Coons and Christine O'Donnell. Then again, the other guest is Maria Shriver. "Meet the Press" is hosting a debate between Colorado Senate candidates Ken Buck and Michael Bennet. This one is really close, although a couple recent polls have shown Bennet with a lead. Robert Gibbs is the other guest on "Meet." So, we may be treated to more garbled and incoherent answers about the President's views on DADT. In a promo, David Gregory just said Gibbs would also tell us how the White House will respond if GOPers make big gains on Election Day. (How about not addressing that til it happens, Robert?)
Howard Dean and Liz Cheney are on "Face the Nation." And, the main guest on CNN's "State of the Union" is David Axelrod. So, that will be another chance to confuse us about Obama's plans on DADT.
It's going to be almost all politics, all the time for the next two weeks. But, there is a hearing tomorrow at 2:30 PM PT on the Obama administration's request for a stay in the Log Cabin Republican's DADT case.
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Looks like yesterday was a fun day in college football. I didn't think my Buckeyes would necessarily lose last night but I also figured they would drop a few games sometime this year. I was maybe more surprised that Nebraska lost to Texas. On the upside though, how about Michigan State? I was great seeing them pound UM last weekend and then stay on track yesterday. Oregon should take over as the new #1 but the Pac-10 doesn't do much with defense, so anything can happen out west this year.
It's sunny but chilly so I'm bundling up for an easy spin with my riding partner who just made it back from the US.
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Extremist views are certainly present elsewhere in Europe (and beyond) but it's unsettling that these numbers in Germany.
A new survey in Germany shows that 13 percent of its citizens would welcome a “Führer” – a German word for leader that is explicitly associated with Adolf Hitler – to run the country “with a firm hand.”
The findings signal that Europe’s largest nation, freed from cold-war strictures, is not immune from the extreme and often right-wing politics on the rise around the Continent.
The study, released Oct. 13 by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, affiliated with the center-left Social Democratic Party, revealed among other things that more than a third of Germans feel the country is “overrun by foreigners,” some 60 percent would “restrict the practice of Islam,” and 17 percent think Jews have “too much influence.”
I don't pretend to understand much of this, but he's a key founder of chaos theory and created fractal geometry. Like I said, I don't claim to totally understand either, but I've heard of them. The Sunday Telegraph from a while back has an accessible article on the man. His Wikipedia entry, on the other hand...
He used the geometry of fractals to explain how galaxies cluster, how wheat prices change over time and how mammalian brains fold as they grow, among other phenomena.
I personally got a kick out of this paragraph from the Telegraph:
Mandelbrot was a brilliant student and held a variety of academic positions, before resigning a post in France in 1958 in order to work in IBM's famous ideas factory (a group of oddball intellectuals paid to come up with great innovations). He was already seen as a cross-disciplinarian and a maverick and had created for himself "a very hostile intellectual environment. France does not like people not to belong".
Wells Fargo contends that unlike everyone else in the industry with robo-signing problems, their internal checks and balances are fine. It's possible, but at this point, it's not convincing. The banks are always very casual with details when it's someone else's money and life on the line.
The San Francisco-based bank said on Tuesday it was reviewing some pending cases, but it has maintained that it has checks and balances designed to prevent serious procedural lapses.
In a sworn deposition on March 9 seen by the FT, Xee Moua, identified in court documents as a vice-president of loan documentation for Wells, said she signed as many as 500 foreclosure-related papers a day on behalf of the bank.
Ms Moua, who was deposed as part of a foreclosure lawsuit in Palm Beach County, Florida, said that the only information she verified was whether her name and title appeared correctly, according to the document.
Only in the American insurance industry could this be possible. It's wonderful that GMA helped resolve this "clerical error" but you have to wonder how widespread these errors are across the country.
She's heartbroken because she has endured what no mother should have to endure. While pregnant with twins, she lost one of them at 30 weeks. The other baby, Kinsleigh, was born with serious heart problems.
But Barnes is angry because her insurance company, Aetna, held up paying thousands of dollars in medical charges. The reason? The insurance company said the newborn might have been suffering from a pre-existing condition.
"I don't know how something could be pre-existing in a baby, so it was very shocking to me to see something like that," Barnes told "Good Morning America." "It's a slap in the face. Her medical bills are the last thing I should be worrying about. I should know that my baby is being taken care of."
What a business model. What other industry can get away with increases like this during the worst economic period since the Great Depression? It's a relief to Big Insurance that the White House folded on the public option. But hey, don't let that stop the industry from calling him a socialist and anti-business. Yes, like Wall Street they wanted even more and will stop at nothing until they get it.
The state has given Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield the go ahead to raise premiums by as much as 47 percent for some members, and says health care reform is the reason why.
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to Insurance Commissioner Thomas Sullivan on Oct. 6, asking what he called "excessive" increases were approved without full consideration of all the facts. His letter mentioned rate increases for both Anthem and Aetna.
