Sponsor Of SB-1070 Russell Pearce Tells Undocumented Students ‘I Don’t Make The Law’
Sponsor Of SB-1070 Russell Pearce Tells Undocumented Students ‘I Don’t Make The Law’
Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), the sponsor of SB-1070 who was recently elected state Senate president, has pushed and authored a series of other lesser-known immigration laws in his state. One of those was Proposition 300 — a referendum approved by Arizona voters in November 2006 which forces undocumented Arizonans to pay out-of-state tuition and bars them from receiving financial aid.
Recently, two undocumented students confronted Pearce and asked him if he believed they should be punished for the sins of their fathers. In response, Pearce — a lawmaker — told the students that he “doesn’t make the law”:
DREAMer: What do you think about you should not be punished for the sins of your father? — Because it wasn’t our choice to come here…
PEARCE: I understand, but blame your father. I agree with you. Shame on him.
DREAMer: Okay, do you believe that we should not be punished for that though?
PEARCE: Well, that’s not the issue. I don’t make the law. I will enforce the law. It’s illegal under federal law. All it is is a codification of the law. I will enforce it.
DREAMer: But the 14th amendment — that is the law, and you want it to change…
PEARCE: No it’s not! You can pervert the Constitution all you like. Doesn’t work well. I’m not gonna listen to this garbage.
Watch it:
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio often defends his draconian immigration tactics by pointing out that he doesn’t “make” the laws. However, Pearce does. His bills don’t codify federal law, but rather redefine the laws themselves. It’s true that Section 505 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) prohibits states from “providing a postsecondary education benefit to an alien not lawfully present unless any citizen or national is eligible for such benefit.” However, it doesn’t bar states from providing in-state tuition to undocumented students — a practice that the state of California implements. Pearce also erroneously claimed that “it’s illegal [for undocumented immigrants] to attend higher ed under federal law.”
Pearce is trying to “reinterpret” the 14th amendment to prevent the American-born children of undocumented immigrants from receiving U.S citizenship upon birth. As part of this new legislative project, Pearce has also toyed with the idea of charging undocumented children tuition if they receive a public elementary or high school education in Arizona. This proposal is clearly in conflict with federal law and the Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court decision, which determined that all children, regardless of immigration status, are guaranteed access to public education from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Besides the fact the Pearce does make the law, his response is also interesting in relation to his faith. Pearce is a “devout Mormon.” Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that the “sins of parents cannot be answered upon the heads of their children.” The Book of Mormon also states that “little children” are “not capable of committing sin.”
Yet the laws that Pearce authors cast a wide net that seeks to punish undocumented men, women, and children alike. SB-1070 begins with the proclamation that “attrition through enforcement” is “the public policy of all state and local government.” In other words, the law’s purpose is to make life so miserable for all undocumented immigrants that they choose to self-deport. Meanwhile, the federal government has a policy of focusing its limited resources on pursuing undocumented immigrants who are violent criminals.
You can watch the full video here.
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Stimulus Bashing Governors Issue Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars In Stimulus Funded Bonds
Stimulus Bashing Governors Issue Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars In Stimulus Funded Bonds
Govs. Haley Barbour (R-MS) and Bobby Jindal (R-LA)
And Christie is evidently not the only stimulus-critic who feels no guilt about building up his state courtesy of the Recovery Act. Today, the Treasury Department released a full list of Build America Bond projects, as issuances under the program surpassed $150 billion, and look who’s on the list:
– Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX): Perry said that, when it came to the stimulus, “this was pretty simple for us…We can take care of ourselves.” But he used $2 billion in Build America Bonds for highway improvements and another $182 million for “public improvements.”
– Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS): “A lot of this is just crazy,” Barbour said of the stimulus. “I’m better off not to get it.” But that didn’t stop him from using $98 million in Build America Bonds for recreational facility improvements.
– Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN): “It hasn’t worked,” Daniels said of the stimulus. “You have to be a blind zealot to say that this thing has done any good.” The Indiana Financial Authority issued $192 million in Build America Bonds, while the Indiana Bond Bank issued another $54 million.
– Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA): Jindal has called the Recovery Act “a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus that has not stimulated.” Louisiana has issued $181 million in Build America Bonds for highway improvements.
These totals leave out the slew of local school districts and local governments in these states that also took advantage of the Build America Bonds program to make critical investments in state infrastructure. As The American Prospect’s Tim Fernholz explained, Build America Bonds “is one of the most successful programs of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, spurring productive investment, job creation, and creating a more progressive and democratic method of local finance.”
Of course, stimulus hypocrisy is nothing new for the GOP: ThinkProgress has identified 114 Republicans who voted against the Recovery Act, while touting its benefits back home.
Former Obama Health Policy Advisor: Republicans Will Shut Down The Government Over Health Reform
Former Obama Health Policy Advisor: Republicans Will Shut Down The Government Over Health Reform
A former senior health care advisor to President Barack Obama and a prominent advocate of the Affordable Care Act predicted that Republicans will shut down the federal government in their efforts to de-fund the health care law. Speaking at a Harvard School of Public Health forum, David Cutler — a Professor of Applied Economics at that university — predicted a stalmate with little chance of resolution, given the new Republican majority in the House:
CUTLER: We are likely to have an immense stalemate and I would not be surprised if we shut down the federal government over funding of discretionary health care early next year, the debt ceiling limit, the physicians’ payments. There will be about 10 opportunities to shut down the government. If we’re not going to shut them down, each time we’ll have to compromise and that strikes me as somewhat unlikely. [...]
We will go through a burning bridge, I’m not quite sure of the right analogy, in the next few months. We will either have have or come increasingly close to having a government shut down and we will probably not have any agreement on how to move forward on health care, except with the idea that maybe the 2012 elections will settle a little bit more and that’s in part because there are no wise men, I think on the Republican side who are willing to meet anyone half way.
Watch it:
The forum focused on the Impact of the “2010 Elections on U.S. Healthcare Reform,” but also delved deeply into policy specifics about cost control mechanisms and the policy specifics in the Affordable Care Act. Another panelist, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former McCain campaign advisor and CBO director, predicted that Republicans will “unwind” the bill through the discretionary spending process. “It will slow down the implementation and in that way put it on a timetable to coincide with the 2012 election… that’s when this whole point will be resolved,” he said.
Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggested that Republicans would not shut down the government over the issue, telling CNN’s John King, “we’re not talking about shutting down the government. What we’re doing here is talking about responding to the American people’s desire that this bill not become law.”
Did Election Day Bring The Robo-Signing Banks A Reprieve?
Did Election Day Bring The Robo-Signing Banks A Reprieve?
Last month, a few of the nation’s biggest banks froze (and then restarted) foreclosure filings, following revelations that they had relied on “robo-signers” — employees who were okaying documents without verifying basic information — to approve foreclosures. All 50 state Attorneys General subsequently launched a coordinated investigation into the banks’ practices.
But as CNN Money reported today, half of [the investigation's] 12-member executive committee now find themselves in their last months of service” as they were booted from office on election day:
Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, New York and Ohio will all have new attorneys general come January. Most prominent in that group is Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who had filed suit against Ally Financial, alleging that the bank and its employees had signed and filed false affidavits in foreclosure cases, a practice commonly known as robo-signing. Cordray lost his reelection bid to Republican Mike DeWine, who has not yet declared whether he intends to pursue the issue.
Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is leading the effort, added that “it is unclear how much the group can accomplish in the next two months with membership in flux and the new AGs trying to get briefed on all aspects of their new jobs.”
The experts that CNN interviewed said that, substantively, the investigation will pick up essentially where it left off. “AGs come and go all the time,” said James Tierney, director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia University. “That’s just the nature of the beast.”
However, waiting for two months as the new AG’s get up to speed gives the banks two opportunities. First, it allows them to resubmit all of the troublesome paperwork that caused them to halt foreclosures in the first place. Bank of America claimed to have reviewed more than 100,000 foreclosure cases in 10 days in order to resubmit them, so two months is ample time to get plenty of foreclosure cases back in the pipeline.
Second, it gives the banks still more opportunity to continue framing the robo-signing scandal as one that only involved “mistakes,” rather than as a systemic abuse of due process and property rights. The banks committed fraud by circumventing the legal process in place for initiating and completing a foreclosure, even if they improperly foreclosed on no one (which we know they did). Unless the AG’s keep the heat on, the banks will have even more time to draw attention away from the system they employed to rush foreclosures through as quickly as they could, regardless of the legal process on the books.
‘If You Tried To Enact A Law Like DADT In Israel, You’d Be Laughed Out Of The Knesset’
‘If You Tried To Enact A Law Like DADT In Israel, You’d Be Laughed Out Of The Knesset’
Yoav Sivan, an Israeli journalist, offers a refreshing perspective of how the IDF came to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in its forces. In its early days, Israel had “no specific prohibition against serving,” but soldiers discovered to be gay were usually discharged.” Beginning in 1983, “they were allowed to serve but were required to undergo psychiatric evaluations and denied security clearances.” All of that changed in 1993:
When the media released a photograph of a soldier—wearing his uniform—literally coming out of a closet constructed for Israel’s first gay pride event in 1993, the soldier was tried in a military court and forced to leave his unit. In February of that year, things began to change. The Knesset held its first hearing on gays in the military, where Uzi Even, the chairman of Tel Aviv University’s chemistry department, testified that he had been fired from his top secret position in Israel’s nuclear facilities because he was openly living with a man. The fact that he was dismissed after 15 years of service created a national outcry and inspired Prime Minister Yizhak Rabin to rethink the policy. Within three months, then-IDF chief of staff Ehud Barak signed the command banning military discrimination based on sexual orientation into law. [...]
The speed at which the policy has changed indicates that constantly embattled Israelis feel as if they have bigger fish to fry than squabbling over gays in the military. When then-editor of The Forward Seth Lipsky asked Ariel Sharon, a former general and minister of defense, for his take on gays in the army in the early 1990s, the question brought a “quizzical look to his face,” Lipsky wrote. Sharon had to ask an aide, “What is our policy on gays?” The aide didn’t know either.
Significantly, a review conducted in 2000, showed no indication that lifting the gay ban compromised military effectiveness. The study found that “acknowledging the presence of gay peers has no bearing on unit social cohesion, irrespective of the kind of military policy in place.”
Sivan notes that while none of the 25 countries that allow open service have “experienced the dreaded loss of morale or unit cohesion conjured by anti-gay politicians in America,” “emotionally-driven issues such as the common shower (that universal test of unit cohesion) preoccupy Americans.” Israelis have a different perspective, however. “Avner Even-Zohar, a retired IDF captain who lectures extensively on LGBT issues, says that “in officers’ training in the Israeli army they told us that real soldiers hardly shower at all.” (H/T: Ed O’Keefe)
McConnell Stumbles Trying Explain Contradiction Between Repealing Health Law And Lowering Deficit
McConnell Stumbles Trying Explain Contradiction Between Repealing Health Law And Lowering Deficit
Yesterday, I argued that Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) pledge to repeal the health care law undermined his goal of reducing the deficit and slowing government spending. Last night, CNN’s John King asked McConnell about this contradiction and the Senate minority leader conveniently dismissed the notion, claiming that nobody believes that the health care law will save money:
KING: So answer somebody out there, whether they’re a Democrat or an Independent, or maybe even just some Republican who is doing the math, who says, ‘okay, this Republican leadership says they want to reduce the deficit. But if you extend the Bush tax cuts, I understand your policy argument, people can agree or disagree with it, that would, in the short-term at least, maybe if the economy roars back it would change it, but in the short-term that would add to the deficit, somewhere in the ballpark of $700, $800 billion. The Congressional Budget Office says, the Obama health care bill, for all the policy disagreements that you have with it, reduces the deficit by $143 billion over the next ten years or so. Are those inconsistent?
MCCONNELL: Well, the assumptions are all wrong. The fact of the matter is if you raise taxes in the middle of a recession, the government is going to get less revenue, not more….Nobody seriously believes the health care bill is actually going to save money. Nobody believes that. So don’t assume that you’re going to exacerbate the deficit by doing any of those things.
Watch it:
Of course, the Congressional Budget Office does, and as McConnell’s Senate colleague Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has pointed out, “CBO is God around here, because policy lives and dies by CBO’s word.” Grassley is right and McConnell’s dismissive attitude underscores that he is either not serious about repeal and is not concerned about offsetting its costs or is ready to repeal the law without plugging the budget hole it will leave behind.
Either way, his dismissiveness is dishonest. Republicans frequently tout CBO estimates to criticize the health care law or bolster their own proposals (Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) just did so yesterday) and below are a few examples of McConnell doing just that:
- “The independent Congressional Budget Office has said that comprehensive liability reforms would save the taxpayers more than $50 billion.” [McConnell on the floor, 12/09/2009]
- “Businesses that can’t insure workers face stiff fines, resulting in lost wages and jobs, according to the independent Congressional Budget Office.” [McConnell on the floor, 12/09/2009]
- “In the run-up to that vote, they said these cuts weren’t really cuts, and that Medicare Advantage, in particular, isn’t really a part of Medicare — arguments plainly contradicted by the text of the bill itself, by the Department of Health and Human Services, by the independent Congressional Budget Office, and by the experience of seniors themselves.” [McConnell on the floor, 12/04/2009]
- “The proposals over in the House, according to CBO, and not only aren’t paid for, they don’t really dramatically increase the — decrease the number of uninsured.” [McConnell on Meet The Press, 7/19/2009]
During the interview, McConnell refused to guarantee that he would preserve the more popular consumer protections of the bill but instead said that Republicans would target the individual mandate (which would actually jeopardize many of those provisions), the $500 billion cuts in Medicare and the 1099 reporting requirement.
GOP Climate Deniers Vie To Run House Energy Committee
GOP Climate Deniers Vie To Run House Energy Committee
The House energy committee is seeing an intense leadership fight, as four different Republicans are vying to become take over the influential post from Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who shepherded progressive climate legislation to the House floor in 2009, before it foundered in the U.S. Senate. The four candidates — Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) — all want to reopen the floodgates for a deregulated fossil fuel industry. But precisely how reactionary the committee will become — whether investigations will be launched against climate scientists and all clean-energy efforts killed — could depend on which fossil-fueled Republican wins the intraparty fight.
The frontrunner Upton is the only candidate who doesn’t explicitly question the science of manmade global warming, though he is opposed to any policy action. It remains to be seen if the new GOP caucus — dominated by climate deniers — will accept Upton’s marginally realist stance, or if denial of science will be a litmus test.
FRED UPTON
Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) is the seniormost member eligible to take over the committee. In 1990, Upton voted for the Clean Air Act, enacting a cap-and-trade system to limit the sulfur pollution that causes acid rain. Now, however, although Upton admits “we need to reduce emissions” of greenhouse pollution, he opposes “cap-and-tax,” he said in April 2009:
A cap-and-tax, cap-and-trade will essentially kick American families when they’re down. I do believe that we need to reduce emissions, but it needs to be done in a commonsense way that takes into account the economic and global realities of the issue.
Appearing at the Copenhagen climate conference last December, Upton reiterated his position that somehow greenhouse pollution be be lowered without explicit limits:
I think we can lower our emissions. I think the world will be better off if we did that, and we can do it without cap and trade.
Seeking the chairmanship, Upton is remaking himself as a Glenn Beckian conspiracy theorist (“It is also quite unfortunate that Van Jones, the former Green Jobs Czar, avoided congressional scrutiny and could not be questioned on his alarming associations with the so-called “9/11 truther” movement or on his radical leanings”) who will hound Obama climate advisor Carol Browner:
Because Browner serves as a Czar, she has not been subject to the customary Senate confirmation hearing in which her philosophy on transparency could be examined. This circumvention is wholly unacceptable, especially given Browner’s wide-ranging legislative portfolio and influence within the administration. She was the Obama administration’s point person for a massive economy-killing national energy tax in the form of a cap-and-trade scheme. Thankfully, the American people did not fall prey to the administration’s climate gimmicks and had their voices heard at town halls across America last summer. . . .
House Republicans pledge to conduct vigorous oversights of the Obama administration next year if the American people entrust us with the Majority. With Republicans at the helm and exercising its authority to oversee activities of the executive branch, we will restore the public trust and subject this White House and its dozens of czars to the scrutiny that taxpaying Americans expect and deserve.
Upton’s top donor is nuclear waste giant EnergySolutions ($38,800), with other major donors including Michigan utilities CMS Energy ($22,750) and DTE Energy ($16,900). His leadership PAC distributed $129,000 to other Republicans, which should help him in the chairman’s battle.
JOHN SHIMKUS
Eight-term Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) is “calling members of the GOP Steering Committee and will soon reach out to rank-and-file lawmakers” to seek the energy committee chairmanship. Shimkus both denies global warming and makes absurd claims about the threat of limits on carbon pollution. Shimkus thinks climate legislation would be worse than the September 11th attacks:
I think this is the largest assault on democracy and freedom in this country that I’ve ever experienced. I’ve lived through some tough times in Congress — impeachment, two wars, terrorist attacks. I fear this more than all of the above activities that have happened.
Watch it:
Shimkus is a Koch Industries candidate ($18,500 this cycle), and his top contributor is nuclear giant Exelon ($20,000). Other top donors include the coal-using National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and American Crystal Sugar ($10,000 each). His leadership PAC only distributed $25,500 to fellow Republicans.
CLIFF STEARNS
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) has been angling for the energy committee chairmanship for months. Like Shimkus, his main strength against Upton is that he is a hard-right ideological conservative. Stearns has been a strong proponent of expanding drilling, claiming falsely that “ANWR alone would be capable of reversing the decline in U.S. petroleum supply within a decade.” Stearns responded to the BP oil disaster: “The Challenger and the Columbia disasters did not end our space program and this spill should not be the end of our domestic energy production.” In 2007, Stearns gave a floor speech promoting the “global cooling” myth:
Not everyone sounded the alarm about global cooling in the seventies, just like not everyone is sounding the alarm about global warming today. Madam Speaker, the fact that so many experts were wrong about global cooling in the seventies does not necessarily mean that they are wrong about global warming today, but it does at least show that experts are sometimes incredibly, incredibly wrong.
Watch it:
Like the others, Stearns repeats false claims of economic disaster from a cap-and-trade system. However, Stearns recently told Politico that “we’ve got to control CO2“:
I think all of us realize we’ve got to control CO2 and that we have various ways to do it. … My position has been anything we can do to control and regulate is good, but do it through the private sector. The energy policy I’m talking about isn’t on global warming; it’s making us self sufficient.
Stearns’ contributions mostly reflect his position as the top Republican on the telecom committee, although he has received $5000 each this cycle from Progress Energy and and Peabody Energy. His leadership PAC has contributed a measly $2,500 to four House Republicans.
JOE BARTON
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the top Republican on the energy committee, will need a waiver from GOP leadership to return to the chairmanship. Yesterday, he “sent out letters to the incoming 60-and-counting Republican freshmen asking them for support,” which rail against “radical cap-and-trade legislation” and the “rotten core” of Obama’s health care legislation. Most recently famous for apologizing to BP, Barton thinks global warming is “natural“:
Barton is a sponge for oil and coal money. This cycle, his top donors include coal giant Murray Energy ($20,990), Koch Industries ($18,000), coal utility PPL Corp ($17,500), Valero Energy ($15,000), Exelon ($14,000), DTE Energy ($13,500), Exxon Mobil ($12,000), American Electric Power ($10,000), and a raft of industry trade groups. His leadership PAC has distributed $88,500 to fellow Republicans.
Will The Lame Duck Congress Extend Unemployment Benefits?
Will The Lame Duck Congress Extend Unemployment Benefits?
Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the economy added 151,000 jobs last month — and that private sector payrolls grew by 159,000 — but that the unemployment rate held steady at 9.6 percent. Nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed, and 41.8 percent of them have been unemployed for six months or more.
With job growth still sluggish and such a high percentage of unemployed persons in the ranks of the long-term unemployed, extending unemployment benefits is a necessary step. President Obama yesterday reiterated his support for such a move, saying “I think it makes sense for us to extend unemployment insurance because there are still a lot of folks out there hurting.”
This will have to be a job for the lame duck Congress, as benefits are set to expire at the end of the month. If no extension is approved, two million workers will lose their benefits in December (just in time for the holidays!), according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP). “The current expiration date will cause a cascade of unemployed workers to fall off the unemployment rolls, prematurely cutting benefits for some and making any form of an extension completely unavailable for others,” NELP noted.
Plus, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted, there are still far more unemployed workers than there are job openings:
Finding a job remains extremely difficult: about 15 million people are competing for about 3 million job openings. That means that even if every job opening were instantly filled with an unemployed worker, four out of five unemployed workers would still be looking for a job. This situation is far worse than in the recovery from the 2001 recession.
And let’s get one thing clear: an extension doesn’t mean that those who have completely exhausted the maximum 99 weeks of benefits will get any more. It merely assures that those already in the UI program don’t get cut off midstream.
Last time around, Republicans in Congress made a huge stink over extending benefits, and approving the extension took 51 days. But in a lame duck session, that kind of time is simply unavailable. So will Republicans concede that an extension is the right thing to do, or will two million workers see their benefits disappear at the end of the month?
Iranian Human Rights Activist Ebadi: ‘You Should Not Think About’ Military Strikes On Iran
Iranian Human Rights Activist Ebadi: ‘You Should Not Think About’ Military Strikes On Iran
In an interview with Think Progress, Ebadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, said an attack on Iran “would give the government an excuse to kill all of its political opponents, as was done during the Iran-Iraq war.” For this reason, Ebadi suggested that the Iranian government probably “wouldn’t mind the U.S. throwing a missile at them.”
The last time Ebadi was in Iran was several days before the June 12, 2009 elections, when she departed for a conference in Spain. “I took nothing but a small bag and my blood pressure medicine,” she said. From her hotel in Spain, she watched the post-election protests unfold on Iran’s streets, and then the crushing of those protests by government security forces. She hasn’t been home since.
Ebadi disagreed with critics who said that President Obama should have spoken more forcefully in support of the Green movement in June 2009. “The Green movement is the Iranian peoples’ movement,” she said. While it’s important for the U.S. and other democracies to voice support for human rights, Ebadi said, real change “must come from inside Iran.”
“I believe Obama’s Middle East policy is correct,” Ebadi said. By showing a willingness to engage with Iran, Obama helped create international consensus “that it is the Iranian regime that doesn’t want to talk.”
In contrast, Ebadi criticized the Bush administration’s “axis of evil” approach in the Middle East, saying that Iran and Ahmadinejad, had become more popular in the region because of U.S. policies, particularly the invasion and occupation of Iraq. “You paid money, Iraqis died, and Iran has benefited,” said Ebadi. “Saddam was Iran’s enemy that was removed by the U.S.,” and Iran’s power and influence, both in Iran and elsewhere, has been increased as a result.
Asked what the U.S. could do to help democracy in Iran, Ebadi replied that, in addition to continuing to voice support for human rights, the U.S. should “help make peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”
“We have to be realistic, ” Ebadi said. “If there’s peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the Iranian government would lose” an important propaganda tool. Right now, any leader who stands up for the Palestinian cause is “will be a hero” in the Middle East, Ebadi said, something Ahmadinejad has used very effectively to his advantage.
Pentagon Isn’t Urging Congress To Take Up Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal In Lame Duck Session
Pentagon Isn’t Urging Congress To Take Up Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal In Lame Duck Session
Pentagon Spokesperson Geoff Morrell reiterated the importance of the department’s working group review of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell during a briefing yesterday, but stopped short of calling on Congress to move quickly towards ending the ban. In discussing priorities for the lame duck session of Congress, Morrell said that “we are clearly urging Congressional action, echoing the President on [ratifying the] START treaty,” but Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen “want a study to take place in advance of that repeal to educate us how to deal” with repeal:
MORRELL: The Secretary’s report is due on his desk by December the 1. The Working group, as I understand it, is very much on track to to meet that deadline. So I think in 26-days time the Secretary will have the work product that he thinks is so necessary for us to be able to fully understand the full implications of a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and then what additional measures we need to take in preparation of that eventuality.
You know from his discussion of this dating back to last February that [the Secretary] believes that it’s better to do this smart than stupid and that this report is very important to us doing this smartly. So, our focus right now is getting this report finished, getting it to the Secretary, having him review it carefully consider it and take measures from there….Once the Secretary gets it, I’m sure it will be a priority item for him to review and consider and then provide leadership for this department on how to move out based on what the report tells us.
Watch it:
Morrell did say that the Department would like the Senate to pass the whole of the defense authorization bill during the lame duck, but would not say if that should include DADT repeal. “We clearly want our appropriations, we clearly want our authorizations, how they construct those, I’m not going to tell them how to do their business,” he added.
In the aftermath of the midterm elections, the administration has also not publicly lobbied the Senate to to pass the DADT resolution during the lame duck session, failing to list it as a priority.
The WonkLine: November 5, 2010
The WonkLine: November 5, 2010
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 9:30 a.m. roundup of the latest public policy news. 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.
Economy
President Obama “is acknowleding in the wake of this week’s election rout that he hasn’t been able to successfully promote his economic-rescue message to anxious Americans,” telling 60 Minutes that “leadership is not just legislation.”
The economy added 151,000 jobs in October — and private payrolls grew by 159,000 — but the unemployment rate held steady at 9.6 percent.
Bank of America yesterday “rebuffed claims by a lawyer for several big investors, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, that it should buy back troubled mortgages because the loans were made improperly.”
National Security
“At least 50 people were killed and 80 others were wounded Friday in a suicide attack that targeted anti-Taliban members at a mosque in northwestern Pakistan.”
“China and France issued a joint statement on Thursday during the ongoing visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to France, pledging to strengthen comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.”
“The European Union and the U.S. State Department have hailed the Croatian and Serbian presidents’ apologies for their peoples’ wartime crimes in a symbolic step to reconciliation 19 years after the war.”
Justice
Senate conservatives mounted an unprecedented campaign of obstruction against President Obama’s judges in the 111th Congress. Sadly, they are even more likely to hold the judiciary hostage during the 112th.
Explaining that his experience as a World War II veteran taught him to combat “invidious prejudice,” retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens spoke out against attacks on the planned Islamic community center in New York City.
Kentucky lost a big church/state separation case five years ago in the Supreme Court. But now that the Roberts Bloc is in charge, they’re pushing an identical case in front of the justices — and have every reason to expect a different outcome.
LGBT Equality
“This week’s wins by House and Senate Republicans are not slowing efforts to repeal the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ law and policy. The issue may in fact divide Republicans when lawmakers consider the issue once again during the upcoming lame-duck session.”
“Iowa’s rejection of three state supreme court justices who ruled in favor of same-sex marriage underscored the growing electoral vulnerability of state judges as more and more are targeted by special interest groups, legal scholars and jurists said Thursday.”
“Scientists are getting closer to figuring out why some people are able to keep HIV at bay without the aid of antiretroviral drugs.”
Immigration
Missouri and Kansas were among 13 states this week to submit a legal brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting an Arizona immigration law.
Florida’s new Governor-elect Rick Scott sounded “a little more equivocal” Thursday about whether he would make passing an Arizona-style immigration law a priority after making the issue a cornerstone of his primary campaign.
Though the Democratic Party was overwhelmingly rejected by whites, independents and seniors, Latinos and African Americans stayed with the party in large numbers.
Education
Education Secretary Arne Duncan “is hopeful that this week’s Republican election victories won’t derail his ambitious school reforms, which he argues are crucial to keeping up in an ever-smarter global economy.”
Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) said yesterday that “he wants to expand the number of charter schools and establish merit pay for teachers” in his state, but he has yet to persuade the state’s teachers union.
“Public schools teachers in California got some good news from the midterm elections: Their candidate won in the race for state Superintendent of Public Instruction,” the Answer Sheet notes.
Climate Change
Several analyses find Politico’s claim that “Democrats who voted for the controversial House climate bill were slaughtered at the ballot box” to be false, and Osha Gray Davidson recounts how GOP climate hawks trounced Tea Party challengers.
Hurricane Tomas, after devastating St. Lucia, is “packing winds of 80mph” as it threatens Haiti with killer flooding; Thai floods have hit 7 million people.
” The Arab world, one of the driest regions on the planet, will tip into severe water scarcity as early as 2015,” a report issued on Thursday predicts.
Health Care
“While the White House seems destined to spend the next two years fending off attacks on President Obama’s health care law, the administration of Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts will push forward with the next stage of health care overhaul: trying to contain the escalating costs of medical care.”
“Newly elected Republican governors are planning to blunt key parts of the federal health overhaul and join lawsuits against it, suggesting states could trump Congress as the hottest front in the fight over the law.”
Even with the House changing hands, “health insurers, drug companies and hospitals said they were planning as if the [health law] law will stick.”
What Are Lobbyists Telling Republicans About Health Reform?
What Are Lobbyists Telling Republicans About Health Reform?
Following Tuesday’s midterm elections, both parties have indicated that they wanted to re-visit the Affordable Care Act, but the skeptic in me doesn’t think that they’ll agree on anything beyond the 1099-reporting requirement and even that holds its own difficulties. Assuming of course, that repeal is a non-starter — The Hill’s Mike Lillis reported earlier today that Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) reiterated that the effort would go nowhere in the Senate — what other health initiatives will the new Congress consider?
Health care industry and employer lobbyists who, in anticipation of the midterm wave, have shifted their campaign contributions to Republicans this election cycle, may provide some clues to what lawmakers are hearing about the affects of reform and other health priorities. And so what follows is only a partial list of their concerns and demands:
PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY: The industry doesn’t expect Republicans to reopen the doughnut hole, but it does want Congress to “reauthorize the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, or PDUFA, which allows companies to pay fees to the Food and Drug Administration to accelerate product reviews.”
LARGE EMPLOYERS: “They don’t want to repeal it,” said Geoff Manville, principal in Mercer’s Washington Resource Group. “But large employers for their part want to amend the law and make changes, largely around provider payments and delivery-system reform.” Big employers “would like to see more aggressive pay-for-performance measures that aim to improve patients’ health results while reducing costs in the Medicare program, he said. “That’s the 800-pound gorilla that drives the entire health-care system.”
INSURERS: “The insurance industry is working to persuade the next Congress to roll back a roughly $70 billion tax on insurance companies that takes effect in 2014, saying it will disproportionately hit small businesses that insure their workers. It also wants lawmakers to allow insurers to widen the rating bands that dictate how much more insurers can charge older customers. Insurers also want to tackle the growth of health costs by enacting a new measure to give robust protections against medical malpractice lawsuits to doctors who follow certain “best practice” guidelines.”
HOSPITALS: The American Hospital Association formally came out “in support of Sen. Cornyn’s bill to repeal reform’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).” “America’s hospitals support the repeal of IPAB because its existence permanently removes Congress from the decision-making process and threatens the long-time, open and important dialogue between hospitals and their elected officials about the needs of local hospitals and how to provide the highest quality care to their patients and communities,” they wrote in a letter.
DOCTORS: “The American Medical Association (AMA) is warning of ‘a catastrophe’ if lawmakers don’t step in to block the 23 percent cut, which is scheduled to take effect Dec. 1, and another 6.5 percent cut that’s due a month later.”
Incoming Budget And Education Committee Chairmen May Be Eyeing Student Loan Cuts
Incoming Budget And Education Committee Chairmen May Be Eyeing Student Loan Cuts
Rep. John Kline (R-MN)
The Pledge’s architect, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) bristled when Bloomberg News’ Al Hunt made this point during an interview last week. “Are you willing to cut Pell Grants for middle-class college students by $4 million or $5 million [in 2011]?” Hunt asked. “Well, see, people go out and pick the special little places,” McCarthy replied.
McCarthy may be playing it coy, but according to Inside Higher Ed, incoming House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and potential House Education and Labor Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN) both have their eye on Pell reductions:
“Under a Republican Congress, Pell will certainly be revisited and reconsidered in a substantial way,” said Moran, of AASCU. Whether that means raising eligibility standards, cutting the maximum award level or drastically reshaping the Pell program remains to be seen. A senior Republican Senate staffer echoed that view. When it comes to finding ways to cut federal student aid spending, said the Republican Senate staffer, “if John Kline doesn’t fire the first volley, Paul Ryan in the budget committee is going to.”
The Pell Grant program is already facing a shortfall that will result in 9 million students seeing their grants cut if Congress doesn’t work to address it. Further cuts would be make this problem even worse.
Cuts in Pell Grants would also start to undo one of the least publicized achievements of the 111th Congress: increasing the amount of money available for the Pell program by cutting out billions in senseless subsidies that were given to private bankers to originate federal loans. As a result of that move, $100 billion will be pumped into the economy due to the increased earnings of low-income students who now have access to higher education.
The U.S. is already on pace to be short millions of college-educated workers in the next few decades, as our educational attainment has stagnated. The U.S. has fallen to 12th in percentage of 25-34 year olds with a college degree. Canada is currently number one in terms of attainment, and “the U.S. would have to add 1 million college degrees per year through 2025, on top of the 2 million degrees already awarded annually” to catch up.
“The growing education deficit is no less a threat to our nation’s long-term well-being than the current fiscal crisis,” said Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board. But the GOP seems ready to take a hatchet to student loans, in the name of fiscal responsibility.
How Republicans Can Weaken The Health Care Bill By Challenging Its Regulations
How Republicans Can Weaken The Health Care Bill By Challenging Its Regulations
I’ve chronicled the GOP’s early hints of dismantling the Affordable Care Act by challenging the law’s regulations, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s reference to the tactic in today’s address solidifies this as a serious GOP repeal strategy, and as such it deserves some additional consideration.
As far as I can tell, Congressional oversight of rule-making began with the Congressional Review Act of 1996, which allows Congress to review and reject both past and present federal regulations. Before a rule can take effect as a final rule, the law stipulates that the Federal agency issuing the regulation must submit to each House of Congress and the Comptroller General a report containing a copy of the rule and a proposed effective date. The specific details of this strategy are below (courtesy of the Congressional Research Service) but the gist is that if both houses pass the disapproval resolution and the President does not veto it, the resolution becomes law, and the rule becomes “of no force and effect”:
For initial floor consideration, the Act provides an expedited procedure only in the Senate. (The House would likely consider the measure pursuant to a special rule.) The Senate may use the procedure for 60 days of session after the agency transmits the rule to Congress. In both houses, however, to qualify for expedited consideration, a disapproval resolution must be submitted within 60 days after Congress receives the rule, exclusive of recess periods. Pending action on a disapproval resolution, the rule may go into effect, unless it is a “major rule” on which the President or issuing agency does not waive a delay period of 60 calendar days.
If a disapproval resolution is enacted, the rule may not take effect and the agency may issue no substantially similar rule without subsequent statutory authorization. If a rule is disapproved after going into effect, it is “treated as though [it] had never taken effect.” If either house rejects a disapproval resolution, the rule may take effect at once. If the President vetoes the resolution, the rule may not take effect for 30 days of session thereafter, unless the House or Senate votes to sustain the veto. If a session of Congress adjourns sine die less than 60 days of session after receiving a rule, the full 60-day periods for action begin anew on the 15th day of session after the next session convenes.
Congress has only invoked this prerogative only once, in 2001 when President Bush signed into law “a repeal of Clinton administration regulations that set new workplace ergonomic rules to combat repetitive stress injuries.” Democrats considered using the technique to reverse President Bush’s environmental regulations once Obama came to power, but never did.
For Republicans, this too will be an uphill climb, but many Tea Party conservatives seem energized at the possibility of taking down unpopular regulations. As incoming Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) told CNN several days ago, “I think we should sunset all regulations unless they’re approved by Congress. That doesn’t mean we won’t have regulations, it just means that Congress should be approving the regulations and you shouldn’t have unelected bureaucrats making regulations.”
Midterms: Green Power Helps Colorado Buck the National Trend
Midterms: Green Power Helps Colorado Buck the National Trend
Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Colorado Republicans are going to need a bigger wave if they ever hope to wash away progressive gains and an entrenched commitment to clean energy in the Rocky Mountain state.
Victories by Democrats Michael Bennet in the U.S. Senate contest and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper in the governor’s race didn’t just buck the national GOP trend. They sent a strong signal to progressive candidates everywhere that support for the new energy economy and fighting global warming pollution are winning issues.
Though Democrats lost two House seats held by Rep. Betsy Markey and Rep. John Salazar, and narrowly lost control of the legislature’s lower house, by winning the top two statewide offices and keeping control of the state senate they demonstrated a resilience unusual in a dominant Republican year.
Bennet, appointed in 2009 to fill the Senate seat of Ken Salazar when he became Secretary of Interior, narrowly defeated Tea Party and Sarah Palin anointee Ken Buck, fighting off a huge tide of outside spending by successfully painting county prosecutor Ken Buck as far outside the Colorado mainstream.
A key moment came in late October when Buck appeared alongside the Senate’s climate change denier-in-chief, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and endorsed the Oklahoman’s view that global warming is a “hoax“:
Sen. Inhofe was the first person to stand up and say this global warming is the greatest hoax that has been perpetrated. The evidence just keeps supporting his view, and more and more people’s view, of what’s going on.
In a state that has become a national leader in supporting clean energy as an economic and environmental imperative — the legislature this year upped Colorado’s renewable energy standard to 30 percent by 2020 and voted to convert 900 megawatts of dirty coal-fired electric capacity to cleaner fuels – that kind of anti-science rhetoric doesn’t wash. And Bennet pounced, with his spokesman calling Buck’s “extreme stance” a “threat to Colorado’s economy” and national security.
Bennet profited by a superior get out the vote effort on election day and other Buck missteps and extreme positions — he compared homosexuality to alcoholism and held firm to outlandish views on reproductive rights. But Buck’s support for dirty energy and hostility to clean energy finance incentives, on top of a threat to slash funding for the federal Department of Energy, played a significant role.
Bennet, said Environment Colorado program director Pam Kiely, “defied national trends thanks in part to his support of creating clean energy jobs and protecting the environment…He championed a key issue for Colorado voters, building the new energy economy.”
Hickenlooper, a strong supporter of Denver’s climate action plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by ten percent by 2012, defeated reactionaries Tom Tancredo and Dan Maes. Hickenlooper will continue the progress on clean energy made by Gov. Bill Ritter, predicted Pete Maysmith, executive director of Colorado Conservation Voters:
Having a “green” chief executive in the governor’s seat for at least another four years means Colorado has the opportunity to continue to be a national leader in the new energy economy.
Further down the Colorado ballot, a narrow victory by one of the legislature’s biggest supporters of clean energy kept the state Senate in Democratic hands. State Sen. Gail Schwartz was a strong advocate for raising the state’s renewable energy standard and retiring dirty coal plants, and she prevailed even though her district went Republican in the race lost by John Salazar.
Schwartz and other clean energy candidates, both state and federal, benefited from what Maysmith described as a “massive” effort by Colorado Conservation Voters, the national League of Conservation Voters, and Environment Colorado. Those groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and knocked on tens of thousands of doors, an effort that replicated – on a smaller scale – the successful effort in California to defeat Prop. 23 that would have suspended the state’s greenhouse gas limits law.
Administration Doesn’t List DADT Repeal As A ‘Priority’ In Lame Duck Congress
Administration Doesn’t List DADT Repeal As A ‘Priority’ In Lame Duck Congress
For the second day in a row, President Obama and administration officials failed to commit to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the lame duck session of the Senate, which many advocates believe is the best chance for lifting the ban this year. Before the election, Obama had told AmericaBlog’s Joe Sudbay and other progressive bloggers that he had a strategy and would be personally involved in ending the ban once the Senate reconvenes later this month. During his press conference yesterday, Obama only said that the Senate would “potentially” take up the measure.
This morning, Obama didn’t mention the policy at all. Speaking to reporters following his cabinet meeting, the President announced that he would invite Congressional leaders to the White House discuss “what we need to get done during the lame duck session” and only identified extending the Bush tax cuts for middle class Americans “a whole range of other economic issues,” and foreign policy concerns like ratifying the START treaty, as priorities. This afternoon, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had another opportunity to address the pressure the Senate to take-up the DADT policy, but he too refused:
QUESTION: You mentioned this morning, and the President mentioned this morning that taxes will be one of the major priorities during the lame-duck session. What other priorities would you list in the next couple of months?
GIBBS: The president listed this, and I think this is very important that is, ratifying the new reductions in our nuclear arsenal with Russia by approving the START treaty. [...]
I think there are some other pieces of legislation that are close that we didn’t finish at the end, things like child nutrition, which is obviously a huge priority for the First Lady and there’s no doubt we want to get our budget director confirmed. Our fiscal situation is something that this administration, the fiscal commission, and Congress will spend a lot of time on. It makes sense to have a budget director in order to do that.
Watch a compilation:
LGBT advocates are still calling on Reid to bring the National Defense Authorization Act — in which the DADT repeal amendment is housed — to the floor as soon as the Senate reconvenes later this month.
Yesterday, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), the incoming Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Republicans would not include “social agenda items” in future defense authorization measures. This is despite the fact that the 1993 ban was originally attached to just such a defense authorization bill.
Arizona Bans Affirmative Action, Oklahoma Makes English The ‘Official’ Language
Arizona Bans Affirmative Action, Oklahoma Makes English The ‘Official’ Language
In an interview with NPR on Election Day, Pamela Prah of Stateline.org expressed surprise that there were no immigration ballot measures this election season. Given the tenor of the debate, I too would’ve expected a series of anti-immigrant initiatives on several state ballots. However, there were at least two ballot initiatives that are still very much a manifestation of nativist sentiment. One, a proposal in Arizona banning affirmative action and another ballot initiative in Oklahoma which makes English the “official” language of the state. Though neither has a direct effect on immigration policy itself, the passage of both initiatives presents serious implications for the immigrant and Latino communities.
On Tuesday, Arizona approved Proposition 107 “banning the consideration of race, ethnicity or gender by units of state government, including public colleges and universities.” Prop. 107 was spearheaded by the American Civil Rights Committee (ACRC), a Sacramento, California political action committee connected to Ward Connerly that funneled thousands of dollars into Arizona this year. ACRC is described by one Asian political blogger as a group “whose members have spent the last two decades traveling from state to state trying to enact harmful, discriminatory laws under the guise of equality.” Unsurprisingly, state Sen. Russell Pearce (R-AZ), the lawmaker who introduced SB-1070 and was “chief promoter” of a separate bill banning ethnic studies, was one of the main figures pushing the anti-affirmative action ballot initiative. He was even featured in radio ads endorsing the measure.
Opponents included Jeffrey F. Milem, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Arizona, who argued that Prop. 107 arguments “are purposefully misleading” and that the initiative itself is “in direct conflict” with previous Supreme Court decisions. Joe Thomas, vice president of the Arizona Education Association, wrote that Prop. 107 “is an anti-equal-opportunity measure.”
Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, voters approved a ballot initiative — Question 751 — which declares English the “official language” of the state. Several states have passed similar legislation, though they tend to vary in their severity. For example, Virginia’s “official language” law stipulates that no state agency or local government shall be required nor prohibited from providing “official” documents in a language other than English. However, Question 751 goes a step further and “requires that official State actions be in English.” “Official state actions” are not defined. Rep. Randy Terrill (R) is one of the legislative members who authored the question’s language — the same lawmaker who told the Associated Press that he “may even take Arizona’s example further and include assets seizure provisions and harsher penalties” for undocumented immigrants. On Question 751, Terrill explains, “What was really the straw that broke the camel’s back was essentially a lawsuit that was prompted against the State of Oklahoma by an Iranian couple in Bartlesville who complained to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration because of our refusal to give them a drivers license test in Farsi.”
Proponents of Question 751 claim that it promotes immigrant integration, however, most experts note that if that were really their goal they’d dedicate more resources to ESL programs. Pat Fennell with the Latino Comm. Development Agency argued, “Instead of passing that kind of legislation, we need to create windows of opportunity while people are learning English.” University of Tulsa professor and attorney, James C. Thomas believes it’s unconstitutional. “It violated the free speech clause. The Supreme Court of Oklahoma in 2002 has already ruled that English only is unconstitutional. Why does the legislature now come back in 2010 and resurrect this issue?” said Thomas.
The language of both ballot initiatives was very carefully crafted. Whether they pass legal muster remains to be seen. What is clear that they were pushed by many of the same actors who have been aggressively pursuing harsh immigration measures throughout the years. Ultimately, it seems likely that these ballot measures are part of a multi-pronged strategy to promote a broader pro-white, anti-minority, anti-multiculturalist right-wing agenda.
McConnell Makes And Breaks Promise To ‘Listen To The People Who Sent Us Here’ In The Same Speech
McConnell Makes And Breaks Promise To ‘Listen To The People Who Sent Us Here’ In The Same Speech
This morning, after laying out the Republican strategy for repealing the Affordable Care Act, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) argued that Republicans stood with the American people and urged the administration to follow suit. “The formula is simple, really: when the administration agrees with the American people, we will agree with the administration,” McConnell said in the speech titled “Listening To The People Who Sent Us Here.” “When it disagrees with the American people, we won’t”:
MCCONNELL: But whether or not the administration has a mid-course correction, Republicans have a plan for following through on the wishes of the American people. It starts with gratitude and a certain humility for the task we’ve been handed. It means sticking ever more closely to the conservative principles that got us here. It means learning the lessons of history. And, above all, it means listening to the people who sent us here. If we do all this, we will finish the job.
But McConnell has already broken “the formula” and his pledge to listen to Americans. Exit polls don’t suggest that a majority of Americans support repealing the health law and neither does regular polling. National exit polls reveal that neither party has a mandate on the issue, with 48 percent of Americans saying they want to repeal the law, and 47 percent saying it should be kept in place or expanded.
In most national opinion polls, support for repealing the law is a mile wide but an inch deep. For instance, a recent New York Times survey found that 41% of Americans thought Republicans should repeal the law, but that number dropped to 25% when the respondent was told that “repealing the law meant that insurance companies were no longer required to cover people with existing medical conditions.” Also, 46 percent of respondents also said that “the Democratic party is more likely to improve the health care system,” while just 28 percent thought Republicans were. An earlier poll similarly found that while 40 percent of respondents said they supported repealing the Affordable Care Act, “more than half changed their minds (leaving just 19 percent in favor of repeal) when pollsters mentioned that it’d mean letting insurance companies exclude people with pre-existing conditions.”
Indeed, as I’ve argued here, opposition for the law increased during the election cycle was because Americans were exposed to false advertising about the health law. “Opponents of the legislation, including independent groups, have spent $108 million since March to advertise against it” — “six times more than supporters have spent, including $5.1 million by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the new law.” That $108 million went to finance the false claims that individuals who don’t purchase coverage will go to jail, or sex offenders will have access to government subsidized Viagra and seniors will lose all their Medicare benefits.
During an appearance on MSNBC this morning, incoming Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey similarly dismissed the polls and suggested that Republicans should pursue the repeal strategy. But in his home state, a majority wanted to leave the plan alone or expand it.” Just 45 percent supported repeal.
Will Rick Scott Reject Florida’s Race To The Top Funding?
Will Rick Scott Reject Florida’s Race To The Top Funding?
Over the last year, eleven states and the District of Columbia won funding under the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, which awards competitive grants to states to implement education reforms that they design. In Tuesday’s election, nine of those eleven states held gubernatorial elections, and as the Quick and the Ed noted, “new Governors in the Race to the Top states will need to determine how, if at all, they will change their state’s implementation of their RTT application.”
One of these new governors is Florida’s governor-elect Rick Scott (R). And as Education Week noted, Scott’s campaign platform seemed to imply that he’s open to turning down Race to the Top money entirely:
In Florida, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, who narrowly lost to Rick Scott, had voiced strong support for her state’s winning, $700 million plan, which calls for increased graduation rates and for school districts to develop merit pay plans, among other steps. By contrast, Mr. Scott, vowed to “refuse temporary funding from the federal government that creates permanent spending in Florida” in his economic plan.
Scott never directly said that he would turn down Race to the Top funding, but his stance does imply hostility to grants of the sort upon which Race to the Top is built. Another potential stick in the spokes of his state’s Race to the Top plan is governor-elect John Kasich (R-OH), whose predecessor’s policies, which Kasich sharply criticized, were a key part of that state’s successful application.
There is some flexibility in the Race to the Top program to tweak applications without foregoing the money, and as Rob Manwaring pointed out, “it will be up to [Education Secretary] Arne Duncan to determine how many changes are too many, and whether he will threaten pulling the funding if the adjustments deviate too much from the original plans.” But while Kasich seems willing to just change education policy on the margins, Scott seems to buying into the stance adopted by conservative darlings like Govs. Rick Perry (R-TX) and Bob McDonnell (R-VA).
Remember, both Perry and McDonnell fashioned anti-government stances out of their refusal to apply for Race to the Top funds, making blatantly false claims about the program and scaremongering about federal takeovers of education. If Scott were to emulate those two and actually forego the funding, Florida would lose out on up to $700 million that school districts in the state are planning to put towards teacher training and implementing data systems for tracking student achievement.
Neocon ECI Lies About Accusations Of Israeli ‘War Crimes’
Neocon ECI Lies About Accusations Of Israeli ‘War Crimes’
Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin passes along a press release from former Commentary blogger Noah Pollak, now the executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI):
Last night was a good night for the US-Israel relationship, with supporters of a strong alliance prevailing over a number of incumbents who had received financial and rhetorical support from anti-Israel [sic] groups. In Pennsylvania in particular, there was a close Senate race that resulted in the defeat of a candidate who had accused Israel of war crimes and helped raise money for an organization the FBI later called a front group for Hamas. ECI ran ads informing voters of that record, and no doubt many of those voters share our concerns. We are delighted with the result.
ECI is a Bill Kristol operation, so it’s unsurprising that they’ve thus far had a very loose relationship with the truth, but this statement from Pollak is simply a lie. Neither Joe Sestak, nor any member of Congress, has accused Israel of war crimes. What Sestak did, along with 53 of his colleagues, was sign a letter to President Obama in January 2010 advocating a loosening of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The letter acknowledged Israel’s serious security concerns, but suggested that those concerns “must be addressed without resulting in the de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.”
It’s worth pointing out here that, amid the international outcry over the Gaza flotilla incident, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to do precisely what Sestak and his colleagues asked, and loosen the blockade to allow in such dangerous and previously excluded materials like cumin and pasta. (I’ve contacted Pollak for an explanation, will update if/when he responds.)
Regardless, ECI and other right-wing groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition tried to make the “Gaza 54” a big issue, running millions of dollars of ads against those signers up for re-election. It was a huge failure — some 90% of the “Gaza 54″ signers seeking re-election won their races — but beating these incumbents was probably a secondary goal. The main one was to try and head off the growing progressive challenge from J Street, and attempt to enforce a very narrow, Likud-oriented definition of what constitutes “pro-Israel” by signaling that deep-pocketed right-wing groups are willing to spend millions of dollars and make all kinds of wild accusations against anyone who steps out of line. We’ll see how that goes.
A final point on the attacks on Sestak for being “anti-Israel” is that, even though he narrowly lost, he still carried over 70% of the Pennsylvania Jewish vote, and 49% of the vote overall. These numbers provide ECI and RJC with a few options: Either 70% of Pennsylvania’s Jewish community, and 49% of Pennsylvanians, are “anti-Israel,” or ECI and RJC are working with a ridiculous bad faith definition of “anti-Israel.” Or maybe people just aren’t keying their voting decisions on Israel at all.
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