More bad economic news from Europe and Japan

Reuters:

Dire economic data underlined the severity of recession in Europe on Tuesday, while Toyota Motor Corp said it would halt all production in Japan in response to plunging demand.

With the global downturn hitting automakers particularly hard, Toyota, the world's biggest, said it would shut all its factories in Japan for 11 days over February and March.

And as a further indication of how the crisis that began with bad housing loans in the U.S. has reached all parts of the world, a state-run Chinese magazine warned that rising social unrest would follow.

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Levi Johnston (Palin) quits the oil fields

Come on, would you rather have us write about John Travolta's somewhat odd handling of his son's death?

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Progressive candidate announces run for Rahm's House seat

From Tom Geoghegan, over at DailyKos:

I’m running for Congress in the Fifth District of Illinois.

As a Chicago lawyer for thirty years, I have fought for working people in the Fifth District and throughout the city. I have represented unions as well as people with no unions to protect them. In plant closings I have helped them recover health and pension benefits. I obtained health care for the uninsured. I've been pressing the State of Illinois to crack down on payday lenders.

In my life as a lawyer I have lived out a commitment to one cause above all – to bring economic security to working Americans, in our District, in our country. That’s the same commitment I will bring to Congress.

We’re deep in an economic crisis unlike any other we’ve known. It may last years. We need new and creative ways to protect working Americans, especially our older working people who have no real pensions to live on.

For years we’ve heard the doomsayers: "We can’t afford Social Security." "We can’t afford ‘single-payer’ national health." One thing we all learned from the $700 billion bail out: We’ve got the money to do all of this and more.

At the moment, the Federal Reserve is literally printing money, to give not billions but trillions to banks and financial firms. To the people of this District, the banks and others have gotten their money. Now it’s your turn. Here’s the bailout I will go to Congress to get...

Read the rest, over at Kos. Read the rest of this post...

I sure hope Xavier Bacerra is gay

An Obama transition team "insider" tells a Texas newspaper that Xavier Becerra being "Latino" is one of his qualifications for being the leading candidate to replace Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary nominee. (Politico, FYI, is saying that Becerra won't take the job.)

Whether Becerra wants the job or not, the issue at hand is the diversity, or lack thereof, of the Obama cabinet. Obama already has two Latino cabinet secretary nominees, but no openly gay ones (nor closeted ones, as far as I know). Hispanics/Latinos are 15% of the US population, gays are anywhere from 2% to 10% or more, depending on the survey. So I have no quibble with including Latinos in the Cabinet. I do have a problem with establishing a quota for 3 Latinos and zero for gay and lesbian Americans.

Before anyone starts saying that this is all so crass, and that Obama should pick the "best person" for the job - that horse has already left the barn. Obama isn't picking the best "person," per his own transition official. He's picking the best "Latino person," per his own staff's admission. If we're going to play the quota game - and I'm not opposed to finally having a presidential cabinet that looks like America - then let's play it fairly and have the Cabinet actually look like America. Obama has the chance to put his words about equality into action, is it that much to ask that we finally be given a place at the table? Read the rest of this post...

CNN's Sanjay Gupta approached for surgeon general's post

From CNN:

Chief CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been approached by the Obama administration about the U.S. surgeon general's post, according to sources inside the transition and at CNN.

The transition team is impressed with the combination of Gupta's past government experience, as a White House fellow and a special advisor to then-first lady Hillary Clinton, along with his medical career as a neurosurgeon and his communication skills, the transition source said.

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Feinstein says Senate should seat Burris

Just when I was feeling sorry for her...

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Coleman announces lawsuit over MN Senate election

Here we go again. And note the way Republicans handle such disputes, as opposed to Democrats. Democrats concede in the interest of the nation. Republican sue in an effort to steal the election. When we will ever learn. Read the rest of this post...

Jeb Bush isn't running for Senate in Florida

This is a pretty big development. Once Florida's Senator Mel Martinez announced he was retiring, it was the prevailing conventional wisdom that Jeb would jump in. I figured Martinez was retiring to open up the seat for Jeb. Even George and Jeb's father was on t.v. this past weekend touting Jeb as a Senator -- and even as president. But, today, Jeb said no:

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced that he won’t run for Senate in 2010. President Bush’s younger brother had been a rumored candidate for the seat to replace Republican Mel Martinez, who is retiring after one term in the Senate.

“While the opportunity to serve my state and country during these turbulent and dynamic times is compelling, now is not the right time to return to elected office,” Bush said in a statement.

Jeb probably does want to return to elected office -- as the president. But, it's going to take America and the world a long, long time to recover from this Bush presidency.

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Pelosi’s power move leaves House Republicans fuming

Joe is off dealing with a very nasty cold that has been going around, but he asked me to post about this. He says this is big. The article in the The Hill doesn't really explain what the rule changes do. Pelosi has a fact sheet that explains a lot more, though it's still confusing as hell (not that she could explain it any better, the House rules are very confusing to outsiders). In a nutshell, Pelosi is reforming the "motion to recommit" that Republicans in the House often use to kill popular bills at the last minute. Now they won't be able to kill the bill as easily, though they can amend it, which is what they supposedly wanted all along. Pelosi gets points for getting tough and reforming the House in a way to ensure better that it can gets thing done. This is a very good thing. Read the rest of this post...

Wyden confirms Obama transition briefed and consulted him, but not Feinstein, on Panetta pick

UPDATE: Biden says it was a "mistake" not telling Feinstein about the Panetta pick. But that really doesn't explain anything. Everyone in politics knows that you give a heads up to the chairs of the committees of jurisdiction, at least when they're members of your own party. There is a reason Wyden was consulted and DiFi wasn't. And it's not because the transition forgot that DiFi was the incoming chairwoman.

As I wrote earlier, it's irrelevant whether anyone gets a frisson of schadenfreude out of dissing DiFi. The only question that matters is whether Obama, and Panetta, gain or lose by, seemingly intentionally leaving Feinstein out of the loop. Read the rest of this post...

Senate turns Burris away

This is great. But it would be nice had they turned Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and every other crook away as well. At some point, Democrats need to show the same testicular fortitude in standing up against Republicans as they do fellow Democrats. More from the Washington Post:

Placing himself at the center of a nationally televised spectacle, Burris arrived at the Capitol in a steady rain with an entourage of aides and lawyers, followed by dozens of journalists, including some broadcasting the procession into the Capitol and up to the third floor on hand-held digital cameras and cell phones....

Burris was met at the Capitol entrance by Terry Gainer, the Senate sergeant at arms, who escorted him through the regular visitors' entrance and up to the third floor of the Capitol to Erickson's office -- in a regular elevator bank, not the one reserved for senators only.

When Burris was rejected, he marched out of the Capitol and across the street, with a media army in tow, where he held a press conference next to the Russell Senate Office Building.

Just go away. Read the rest of this post...

What about small business? What about the rest of us?

Another update about the $300bn tax cuts. Apparently, businesses that have shown a loss in the past five years will get a huge new benefit as part of the plan. This is likely part of an effort to woo the business community, and their Republican benefactors, into supporting the package. But the benefit would do nothing for small businesses, particularly sole proprietors who don't take "losses" even if they only make $10,000 a year (if you work for yourself as a consultant, even if you make $20,000 this year instead of $100,000, it might not technically be a "loss," so you'd get no benefit under this new provision).

(And, as an aside, larger businesses that don't post a loss - i.e., business that actually do their job and succeed - don't appear to benefit at all from this provision. It's a bit like the mortgage mess - if you actually pay your mortgage on time, and/or wisely didn't gamble on a mortgage bigger than you could afford, no one has plans to bail you out.)

At some point, these tax plans and stimulus packages have to start helping more people than just the working poor (for whom, apparently, an extra $19 a paycheck is going to save both them and the economy) and big business. A lot of people are in the middle, and are tired of constantly being left out by both Democrats and Republicans. One of our readers commented on this yesterday:

As an upper middle class wage earner let me say how overjoyed I was when people got their "stimulus" checks but I was told I made too much to get a check designed to be spent on "stuff" (does that make sense?). I'm so tired of people yelling about the "upper middle class" and "rich people" getting all the tax breaks, I pay almost a third of my income to various taxes, and if I'm the supposed beneficiary of the largess of politicians, someone is smoking the good stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with my taxes being used to help out people less fortunate than me, but stop making people in my income bracket out to be a bunch of bandits making out with all the money. I don't have the money to pay a super-duper tax attorney/accountant to find enough loopholes for me to benefit from the current tax law so I guess I get the honor and privilege of getting hosed on both sides.

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Feinstein and Rockefeller publicly disapprove of Obama CIA choice

This is important news, for a number of reasons.

First, a word about Difi, Rockefeller and Panetta.

1. Difi drives us nuts, and anyone who reads the blog knows it. She's the Dem we're always having to beat up in order to get her to do the right thing (though Max Baucus comes a close second). So, I readily acknowledge your, my, first impulse to be "who cares what Difi says?" The problem is that America cares. To us, Diane Feinstein is a pain in the butt. To my mother - aka Middle America - she's a smart person, who is an expert on the issue, who has a D after her name, and who thinks the guy may not be qualified. She also has power and can screw with Obama mightily, now and in the future. Our dislike for Difi is irrelevant to this equation.

2. Then there's Rockefeller. Totally worthless human being and an absolute joke as the outgoing Intelligence chair. But to America at large, he's the outgoing chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a Democrat. What he says matters to ma and pa in the sticks, even if the rest of us think he's a joke. And when he questions Obama's nominee in such a critical area, it matters to the public at large.

3. Panetta. Interesting choice. Opposed torture, not wedded to the national security special interests. I acknowledge all of that, and applaud it. But because he's an unusual choice, even an unconventional one, I'd argue that you need to handle this nomination very carefully, so as to avoid any possible hiccups (Democrats per se need to tread carefully in the area of national security because we've spent so many years letting Republicans pummel us with it).

Now for why I think this story matters. As Joe and I have written before, experienced politicians in Washington - like Feinstein and Rockefeller - don't go public with criticism of a fellow Democrat unless private avenues for expressing their concerns are exhausted, and proved fruitless. That means that Feinstein and Rockefeller likely have other, larger concerns, with the Obama transition, than what we're seeing here. I.e., the frustration was already there, and only just came to a head now.

Second, Feinstein is the incoming chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She wasn't notified of Obama's choice. That's rather unheard of. She has to oversee the CIA director's nomination hearing. You absolutely positively want her on board. You don't just spring the nomination on her in the press. Again, the fact that she's ticked off, going public, and expressing disapproval of the choice is a big big deal. As is Rockefeller's public criticism, as the outgoing chair of the Senate Intell Committtee and all the gravitas that entails.

But it's more than that. Feinstein's and Rockefeller's public criticism gives an opening to Republicans to try to defeat this nomination. You can debate the merits of whether Feinstein and Rockefeller are to blame for going public, or whether Obama is to blame for provoking them, but the public criticism of the nominee by the top two Senate Democratic experts on intelligence matters gives cover to any Republican, Democrat or Independent interested in defeating this nomination.

Adding to the problem, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who also sits on the Intell panel, says that he wasn't just notified of the pick, he was consulted on the choice. That's an even greater slight to Feinstein, since it's not as though the transition was giving no one a heads up.

Then there's the issue of Panetta's experience, which both Feinstein and Rockefeller express concerns about. Panetta is being asked to lead the CIA. Usually you pick someone to head an agency who is an expert in that field. Yes, it's often better in life to choose someone for a job who is smart, a quick learner, a good manager, and who can learn the details later. But for the heads of government agencies, you tend to choose someone with experience in that field. The choice of Panetta has already raised some eyebrows. That's all the more reason you make sure you have your ducks in a row, that you've "sold" Panetta to your most important friends, such as in the incoming chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, before making the choice final and then going public. The pick of Panetta is not a slam dunk, and shouldn't be treated as one.

Along those lines, this part of the Times story is evidence of the problem Obama faces with this choice:

Lee H. Hamilton, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, of which Mr. Panetta was a member, said Mr. Panetta’s good relationship with Mr. Obama could translate into influence within the broader intelligence community.

Mr. Hamilton said Mr. Panetta could make up for a lack of direct intelligence experience by picking a strong group of aides at the agency.

It's never good when even your defenders are saying publicly that your choice as CIA director doesn't have experience in intelligence matters.

Josh Marshall thinks that maybe Obama intentionally cut Feinstein out of this decision. But to what end? It's one thing to ignore people who are of no consequence (and even that can come back to haunt you), but quite another to take on the incoming chair of a major Senate committee - the very committee, like it or not, that you need in order to get your nominee confirmed. There's an old adage about taking on the king: If you're gonna shoot him, you better kill him. (Works for grizzly bears too.) Difi can screw mightily with Obama over this nomination, and for years to come as chair of a committee on an issue where Democrats are traditionally weak. Regardless of whether you or I like her, I just don't see the logic in ticking her off while not taking her out.

All of this strikes me as part of a larger pattern that weaves its way from the campaign through the transition. It's about "political autarky," as I've called it. It's the belief that you can, and should, do everything yourself - and that your traditional friends and allies are not only irrelevant, but should actively be shunned. I wrote this last month about the strategy:

Obama's people seem to have a predisposition towards going it alone. Given a choice between using someone else's wheel that's already out there, and reinventing one themselves, they tend to go for the latter. In real terms, this means that Obama's campaign decided early on not to embrace the Netroots. They would simply create their own blogs and online grassroots at BarackObama.com. And while this worked, famously, to a degree, there came a point in the campaign where the Obama team and the blogosphere both realized they needed to work together in order to win.

At some point in politics, you need friends. Even people you don't particularly like. Team Obama has so far shown no reticence in wooing Republicans (Rick Warren and $300bn in tax cuts come to mind). At some point they're going to need to start wooing Democrats as well. Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Two weeks. Two weeks til the Bush/Cheney reign is over. Wow. Sometimes, it seemed like it would never end.

The new Congress convenes today. Expect some drama over Roland Burris. And, how long before Al Franken, who was elected by the voters, get to take his seat?

Never a dull moment... Read the rest of this post...

British government proposing "name and shame" equality list

Great idea but I think such a program in the US would interfere with the love-in Obama is having with the Republicans. I don't know, maybe he could pull it off if he let the GOP segregate the schools again in the south, because letting them have what they want is most important because they've been so right about everything. At least there's someone out there looking into progressive policies so the US can follow progress from afar, which is almost the same thing. Who really wants change from the failed policies and same old people that brought us to where we are anyway? Change and progress are overrated anyway.

Companies could be "named and shamed" in league tables revealing pay inequalities between male and female employees under government plans to tackle the gender pay gap, the Guardian can reveal.

The government's equalities office is drawing up an amendment to the equality bill that would force companies to publish figures in annual accounts showing the number of men and women in particular pay bands. The bill is due to be published early this year.

Business leaders reacted angrily to the proposal. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) complained that forcing companies to produce "meaningless statistics" would do little to tackle the underlying causes of inequality, while the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said the response was "over-prescriptive".

The minister in charge of the bill, Vera Baird, the solicitor general, is understood to be sympathetic to the scheme following criticism that the existing requirement for public sector bodies to report on gender pay inequalities did not go far enough to close the pay gap.

Men are paid 17.1% more than women for full-time work, according to government figures published in November. In part-time wages, the gender gap is 36.6%, according to the Office of National Statistics. Over a lifetime, that disparity means that women in full-time employment will be paid £369,000 less than their male counterparts, the EHRC estimated.

Separate research by Cranfield Business School showed the number of women holding executive directorships in FTSE 100 companies fell in 2007 to the lowest level for nine years. Only three of Britain's top companies have female chief executives.

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UK report: 25% of families will have no disposable income in 2009

The UK has been a credit-loving country for years and like the US, is going to have to learn how to survive with less easy credit. It's also interesting to see that the Tories in the UK are proposing tax incentives for savers as opposed to handouts for spending. This is the heart of the problem that we're facing in such economies where we need people to save and learn how to be frugal again but we also need them to spend to keep the economy afloat. Decades of bad policy won't be turned around overnight and maybe some of both plans needs to be examined on both sides of the pond.

A quarter of all British families will have no disposable income in 2009, dealing yet another blow to the beleaguered retail sector.

In November, a survey by Nielsen, the market research firm, and trade body the British Retail Consortium (BRC) found that 21 per cent of families had no spare cash left after essential living expenses. However, sector insiders expect this to grow to at least 25 per cent by the spring.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey last week showed that six in 10 people believe they will have less disposable income in 2009 than they had last year. Those in the lower socio-economic DE classifications were particularly gloomy, with nearly 70 per cent convinced they would have less money to spend on the high street.

Stephen Robertson, director-general at the BRC, said: "A fifth of all families had nothing left to spend [after core expenses] and I think that will get worse during 2009."

A leading retail figure predicted that the next Nielsen/BRC survey, due in May, will show at least 25 per cent of families lacking the cash needed for minor luxuries.

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This year's list of words that should be banned

From the Guardian:

Lake Superior State University in Michigan has unveiled its 34th annual list of words that should be banished from our vocabularies this year...

First Dude "Skateboard English is not the appropriate way to refer to the spouse of a high ranking public official," says one commentator on the university's website.

Maverick The word has been left so battered and bruised by the assaults perpetrated on it by John McCain and Sarah Palin that it might be a kindness to leave it in peace to recover for a while.

Staycation Banishment of this seems harsh. Staycation is a succinct, witty way of labelling the new trend for staying in your home country at holiday time, but it is suffering for enshrining both green and economic concerns, which as we have seen above, is a sure way to tick people off.

<3 A new text icon (we use the word in its technical sense), resembling a heart and meaning "love". As a contributor to the list explains, "Just say the word, instead of making me turn my head sideways and wonder what 'less than three' means."

Chris has used staycation on the blog, and I had no idea what it meant until I read his post, so I'm not sure that one's being overused, yet. Read the rest of this post...