Steve Benen on the White House's serious mistake

The President will be giving a speech this week detailing his plan for long-term deficit reduction. Here is Steve Benen's take (keep in mind when reading this that Bene, I think it's fair to say, has often been more charitable to the President's policy choices than have we):

Once Democrats commit to systematic debt reduction as policymakers' principal goal -- as opposed to, say, economic growth -- it sets the terms of the debate. The unyielding dynamic locks everyone into answering the same question: how do we tackle the deficit and the debt?

That's the question Republicans (and much of the media) want as the central focus, but there are more pertinent and important questions that should be prioritized, such as, "How about a jobs plan to reduce unemployment?" Or maybe, "How will taking money out of the economy and reducing public investment lead to more growth?"

What's more, it also sets baselines for a "compromise." If Obama presents a credible vision for long-term debt reduction this week, we'll have one pillar, which will serve as a counterweight to Paul Ryan's radical House budget plan presented a few days ago. But a moderate counterweight may not be wise -- if recent history is any guide, negotiations will produce a deal that's somewhere between them.

In this case, that'd be a disaster. Even half-way to Ryan's roadmap would destroy much of the modern American social compact, and prove devastating to the middle class.

Assuming that congressional Republicans are interested in a sincere, good-faith discussion about fiscal responsibility is folly. If this week's presidential speech simply presents a sensible answer to a dubious question, without regard for the larger political dynamic, the White House will be making a serious mistake.

What more is there to say. I want to see CBO's score for the budget deal, and their score for whatever the President proposes this week, specifically in terms of what impact they will have economic growth and jobs. The concern many have is that the President seems to have jumped on the deficit bandwagon of convenience, completely forgetting his number one job - to save the economy.

I'll say it again. The GOP would love nothing less than to gut the recovery heading into the presidential election of 2012. Why the President seems interested in helping them do this is a mystery. The man saved this country from a second Depression, and seems almost embarrassed to remind people of that fact. That's why we're all talking about how "bad" the deficit is, because POTUS seems downright afraid to explain to the American people that the deficit is better than the Great Depression, Part II. Read the rest of this post...

Tennessee Republicans turn back the clock on science

One Republican even mentioned the hassle of giving up Aqua Net aerosol hairspray which, in her mind, would actually have helped stop global warming. But of course, she doesn't really support climate change theories anyway and wants teachers to have the right to discuss alternative theories such as the Bible and probably whatever theories the Koch Brothers and Big Oil can produce. It's no wonder Sarah Palin is so well liked in GOP circles.

Critical thinking? Really?

The House voted 70-23 today for a bill backers say shields teachers from being disciplined if they discuss alternatives to evolution and global warming theories with students.

The debate ranged over the scientific method, “intellectual bullies,” hair spray and “Inherit the Wind,” a 1960 movie about the 1925 Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tenn.

Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, said the bill’s intent is to promote “critical thinking” in science classrooms.

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The one who primaries Obama will be the next Democratic president

During the Seventies, we had two ineffectual presidents unable to deal with the economic and other hard times that confronted them. Both were primaried and both went on to lose the general election. However, their parties had very different fates after those elections.

After Ronald Reagan lost to Gerald Ford, he did not stop campaigning and organizing. Not only did he go on to win the next time, but his 1976 campaign is basis of the Conservative Movement that has dominated American politics ever since. In retrospect, conservatives would surely say that the Regan Revolution and all that followed was worth it to suffer through four years of Carter. Additionally, what most people remember of Gerald Ford is Chevy Chase’s imitation, and no one brands his failures onto the Republican Party.

Even thirty years after Carter’s defeat, we can’t use the word Liberal because the Republicans succeeded in branding him a “Liberal.” Of course, Carter was a moderate at best and actually started the country on the road to de-regulation. But for anyone old enough, his feckless “malaise” is forever mixed up with the word “liberal” and the Democratic Brand.

The question with Obama is, can we afford not to primary him?

If Obama continues on his present course and does not show real strength and leadership, he will lose. In losing, his ineffectualness and lack of spine will become that of the Democratic Party and Progressives. The Left will be redefined in terms of Obama’s positions, as the Republicans try to roll back even those small accomplishments. And we will be out of power for another generation.

In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, a far-sighted scientist can see that the Galactic Empire is crumbling and is to be followed by a thirty-thousand-year-long dark age, but with the right steps, the darkness can be limited to only a thousand years. There is probably no saving an Obama Presidency that stubbornly refuses to save the country and itself. There may even be no way of preventing the Republicans from taking the White House. But conducted properly, a primary challenge now can result in victory: if not in 2012, then in 2016.

Frankly, a 2012 challenge has a better chance of winning than conventional wisdom gives it. The fight for a nomination is about the base and appealing to its parts. At this point, what part of the base has Obama not disappointed and angered? Challenging Obama may be like pushing on a partially opened door.

We saw in 2008 that organizing a primary campaign apart from the built-in support of the established party can create a national movement for change. A successful campaign has to recruit and organize supporters around the country, it must create its own message machine and rapid response team, and it must create donors and fundraise successfully in order to support all of these efforts. Modern technologies make this even easier than it was in the days of Reagan’s 1976 campaign. But, to really succeed, the movement cannot be discarded at the moment of the Inauguration (just ask the poor folks trapped in the tunnel with the Purple tickets).

Personal Note: I have worked in Democratic politics for 25 years and continue to make my living working with campaigns and organizations – because many of the views I feel I need to express would be considered subversive – I have to blog them anonymously. So I will be taking the pseudonym of Tom Wellington and will be also blogging at my own blog -- What is to be Done. Read the rest of this post...

The 2012 problem

I could have called this post "Kicking his base in the teeth" after Rachel Maddow's formulation. But let's leave it at this: The 2012 Problem.

How should a progressive think about Obama? Just in the last few news cycles, several items scream for attention.

First this, the budget cave, Paul Krugman's observation ("Celebrating Defeat", my emphasis):

Ezra Klein gets this right, I think; it’s one thing for Obama to decide that it was better to give in to Republican hostage-taking than draw a line in the sand; it’s another for him to celebrate the result. Yet that’s just what he did. ... It’s worth noting that this follows just a few months after another big concession, in which he gave in to Republican demands for tax cuts. The net effect of these two sets of concessions is, of course, a substantial increase in the deficit.

Cave Week 1 was the Lame Duck for the ages, in which Obama promised never to give in to the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich, then gave in. That blew a multi-trillion dollar hole in the long-term budget, which spending cuts are expected to fix.

Now we have Cave Week 2, Obama vs. the Teabags, in which the Teabags win big and Obama does a victory dance.

Next we find this, Obama vs. the Entitlements, a "major speech" on Wednesday, via Teagan Goddard (my emphasis again):

President Obama plans to deliver "a major speech" on Wednesday laying out an aggressive plan for deficit reduction -- including reform of entitlements, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Cave Week 3? "Reform" of Social Security by Obama will mean the death of the Democratic Party, and yet Obama wants it bad.

Add these recent items to any number of others. starting with the FISA cave long before his inauguration, and ending with what both Rachel Maddow and Glenn Greenwald noticed earlier this week — Obama's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military commission at Guantanamo, announced on the same day as he announced his re-election campaign.

It's a horrifying anti-progressive record, favoring everything we oppose.

It is now out in the open that progressives have a 2012 problem, and that problem is Barack Obama. Here's Maddow's disgust, well expressed:



"Kicking the base in the teeth." Here's Greenwald on the same subject; I won't quote it, but it's an excellent read and has a lot of people talking. Our own John Moyers expressed himself eloquently on this subject to great response.

The relationship between the Dems and Republicans is often described as a "hostage situation". Republicans threaten to kill the country with starvation if the Dems don't cave.

Progressives also have a "hostage situation". Obama threatens to kill the country with Republican rule if progressives don't cave (by voting for him).

What do progressives do? Joan Walsh will vote for him anyway. Sam Seder will vote for him anyway, if only because of the Supreme Court.

What will you do? Which burnt bridge is a bridge too far for you?

More importantly, what should progressives do as a group?

The choice is clear. Unless some primary challenger turns up, it's Obama or some Billionaire-financed Teabag-worshiping Republican.

I won't express myself on the shoulds of the decision, not yet. Is it automatically worse if a Republican wins in 2012 and the Democratic Party goes up for grabs? I'm not prepared to say.

But I will express myself on the shoulds of the discussion — we have to be talking about this now, and well within earshot of Team Where Else You Gonna Go?

GP Read the rest of this post...

Wisconsin Republican "finds" more than 7500 more votes for Prosser

This is long, so I'm going to bottom-line it at the top — This may not be fraud, but if it is, and no one audits the Brookfield city votes against the recorded totals, the Republicans will get away with it.

As you've no doubt heard, the Waukesha Wisconsin County Clerk, Republican Kathy Nickolaus, reported Thursday night that she "forgot to save" when transferring voting data from a spreadsheet to her Microsoft Access database. As a result, the votes of an entire town of (mainly Republican) voters were not recorded. That database is kept on her personal computer, in her office, and nowhere else.

There are quite a few twists to this story, so I'll give it to you in two forms. The first is this excellent end-of-week report by Rachel Maddow, a follow-up to her earlier breaking-news reporting. The second is a set of print resources.

The video below is the follow-up segment; click the link for the earlier report to see Nickolaus, the county clerk in question, talk (at 2:10 in the segment) about the Access database and the "matter of the save".



So, a lot going on here. Rachel doesn't deal with the Access database, or the fact that in its delivered state, Access always saves each record you modify when you move to the next record. For more on that, click here.

Rachel also doesn't deal with the number of votes Nickolaus "found" — but there's a critical break point at which a narrow election triggers state funding for a recount, and a wider election requires candidate funding. I'm not sure of the exact vote differential needed to trigger state funding, but this Daily Kos diarist says the number is about 7400. Kathy Nickolaus' "discovery" gave her former boss, David Prosser, 7582 additional votes.

Here's a Think Progress report that details much of what Maddow discussed regarding Kathy Nickolaus' background:

Critics are saying there’s only two possible explanations for this bizarre development: foul play, or incompetence. In an awkward press conference last night, Nickolaus went with option B[.] ... The evidence shows that Nickolaus is a partisan GOP operative, but the evidence also reveals a long history of incompetence on her part.

Think Progress then dishes the history, much of which Maddow also explained. That history includes the fact that through much of the 1990s, Kathy Nickolaus worked for David Prosser when he was the Republican leader of the Wisconsin State Assembly and she was an employee of the Republican Caucus; it deals with the scandals that Rachel mentioned in the clip; and it adds this:

Nickolaus Was Audited After She Moved Official Data To Her Personal Computers: Her county’s Executive Committee ordered an audit of her office after they discovered that she “removed the election results collection and tallying system from the county computer network . . . and installed it on standalone personal computers in her office.

The Wisconsin State Journal put that last point this way (my emphasis):

[L]ast summer, the Waukesha County Board ordered an internal audit of her office, citing concerns Nickolaus was secretive and refusing to cooperate with the county's technical staff in a security review of the computerized election system.

Awfully suspicious, but still not prima facie evidence of scandal. This Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article is excellent on the subject of the investigation by state officials, also mentioned in the Maddow clip above (my emphasis):

State election officials combed through Waukesha County election results Friday but fended off calls for examining individual ballots as Justice David Prosser and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg remained locked in a contentious Supreme Court race.

Kevin Kennedy, director of the state Government Accountability Board, dispatched staff to Waukesha County to verify results after Thursday's "Brookfield bombshell" saw thousands of previously untabulated votes going to Prosser, pushing him ahead in the race.

Kennedy also questioned why Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus had waited more than a day to inform him and the public of the error.

There's great detail in this thorough article, but note the part about not examining individual ballots. The article later explains:

Kennedy said state officials would not be checking the ballots from Brookfield or the rest of the county before any possible recount. To do that would require the Accountability Board to go to court, and Kennedy said that he didn't believe that was warranted as of now.

Kevin Kennedy is the man that Rachel's interviewee, Mordecai Lee has confidence in. The decision not to audit the votes against the tally is a judgement call, and not without legal difficulties. Still, it would be nice to be sure, given that a possible 10-year reign of Movement Conservatives from the state's high court is at stake.

This is not, as I said, prima facie evidence of wrong-doing. But it's also not evidence of not wrong-doing either. If there was fraud, they could have managed to keep it within statistical norms. In my mind, we should not presume either guilt or innocence.

So where do we stand? From the Journal Sentinel again:

[U]pdated but not yet final results compiled by the Journal Sentinel showed Prosser ahead by 6,744 votes out of nearly 1.5 million cast - a difficult margin to overcome in a recount but one that could still leave Kloppenburg with the possibility of a free recount under state law. Both campaigns acknowledged they were seeking advice from the top recount attorneys in the nation, but a campaign aide to Kloppenburg held off on saying whether she would seek the first statewide recount in two decades.

"We're going to let the process, the (official) canvass conclude and see where things are at that point," Kloppenburg's campaign manager Melissa Mulliken said.

The article explains why finding 7500 Prosser votes in Brookfield yields a 6744 vote lead. This is well below the 7400 vote differential noted above as allowing a state-financed recount, but a daunting number nonetheless.

On the recount front, Kloppenburg is being advised by the same attorney who handled Al Franken's recount, as well as Mark Dayton's in his race against Tom Emmer, both in Minnesota. Prosser's team includes Ben Ginsberg, one of the key attorneys in ... ready? ... the 2000 Florida recount.

As I said above: If this is fraud, and no one audits the Brookfield city votes against the recorded totals, the Republicans will get away with it.

If nothing else, auditing the vote would certainly save a ton of speculation about what "abnormal turnout" means in Brookfield.

(The link on the right is our ActBlue donation page to Recall the Republican 8. Please help out if you can. We're almost two-thirds there; and thanks.)

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Voters in Iceland reject debt repayment, again

It's hard to argue against their position that the bankers should not be bailed out by everyone else. We would all be better off if more people in more countries insisted in this. Al Jazeera:

Voters in Iceland have rejected--for the second time-- a plan to repay debts to Britain and the Netherlands from a bank crash, partial referendum results showed.

Johanna Sigurdardottir, Iceland's prime minister, said economic and political chaos could follow, after near-complete results were quoted on Sunday by RUV public radio.

"The worst option was chosen. The vote has split the nation in two," the premier told state television, saying it was fairly clear the "no" side had won.

Icelanders say citizens should not bail out irresponsible bankers who were blamed for the collapse of the Icesave bank and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars.

In the US, why should everyone else have to suffer harsh GOP cuts when they were not to blame for the economy? The Republican budget grew when they were in control of Washington and now they're asking the people who rescued the lifestyle of the bankers to pay up again. It's not fair yet not many people in Washington - Democrats and Republicans, alike - seem to understand or care about this. Voting for either only encourages their bad behavior. Read the rest of this post...

Police defuse massive bomb in Northern Ireland

A policeman was recently murdered and now this. The Guardian:

Dissident republicans who prepared a 500lb (227kg) van bomb risked causing an Omagh-style massacre, politicians in Northern Ireland have said.

Detectives believe the bomb, found at an underpass near the border on the main Belfast to Dublin road, may have been destined for a town centre attack.

29 people were killed and 220 were injured in a bomb attack in the centre of Omagh in August 1998.

While it is believed the presence of a police checkpoint forced the latest bombers to abandon the vehicle, hundreds of motorists drove past the device unaware of the danger after traffic cones and warning signs had been removed, and even driven over, by others on the road.

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The Doors - Light My Fire, live

The Paris Marathon is on today and it's probably going to be a bit warmer than most runners might like. Lots of sun and temperatures in the mid-70's.

We're now in the white asparagus season and it's on until sometime in June. I always love cooking and eating it while it's around. If I had more time I'd make a nice soup with the leftovers and peels but that won't happen this year. Maybe next year. Read the rest of this post...

New protests in Cairo leave two dead, many wounded

Is it unreasonable for the people of Egypt to see some progress on the investigations into corruption? BBC News:

Two people have been killed and at least 15 wounded during protests in Tahrir Square in the centre of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, doctors said.

The violence occurred overnight as the army tried to clear protesters calling for ex-President Hosni Mubarak to be tried and an end to military rule.

The injured suffered gunshot wounds but the army denies using live rounds.

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