A whopping 23 polls says people support higher taxes to reduce the deficit

Wow. And the numbers are consistently in the 60s, with a few 50s and 70s, average 65. Read the rest of this post...

None of Reid's picks for Super Committee particularly trusted by liberals

From Sam Stein at HuffPost:

The choices are not particularly trusted in liberal circles either, in part because of concerns that moneyed interests may come in to play when it comes time to negotiate. In FY 2009, for instance, companies in Murray's home state of Washington received $5.2 billion in defense contracts. Boeing Inc. is the fourth biggest contributor to Murray over the course of her career, according to data gathered by the Center for Responsive Politics.

More broadly, good government advocates were concerned that her post atop the DSCC, which comes with significant fundraising responsibilities, would influence her approach to the committee.

“Sen. Patty Murray may be a fine Senator, but putting Senate Democrats’ leading fundraiser in charge of a committee that will see a lobbying push like never before sends the wrong message to the American people,” said Nick Nyhart, president of Public Campaign, in a press release. “Instead of focusing solely on finding a balanced approach to deficit reduction, she will also be focused on raising money from the same interests hoping to influence the committee.”


Baucus, who was a major player in blocking President George W. Bush's efforts to privatize Social Security and was instrumental in crafting the Affordable Care Act, enjoys close ties to the financial sector. According to CRP data, he has received $5.2 million in campaign contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate industries since 2005.

In Kerry's home state of Massachusetts, meanwhile, the defense industry has tripled in size since 2000.

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Sirota: Obama isn't weak (he just isn't a liberal)

Standing up to Boehner
is illogical, Bones.

I don't know. Still feels like the old "11th dimensional chess" argument to me: He's smarter than us, you know, and working on so many levels at once, way over our heads, that mere mortals can't fathom his infinite plan.

My suspicion is rooted in the fact that, for someone so masterful a chess player, why does the President so often telegraph what he wants, and then cave on it?  Public option?  Stimulus (gave up on getting the amount he needed)?  No extension of Bush tax cuts?  Revenue enhancements must be in the debt ceiling bill (didn't get any)?

Yes, it's possible that this is all part of some brilliant deflection in which the President makes campaign promises he doesn't mean, and then makes negotiation demands he also doesn't mean, as a means of throwing everyone off as to what he truly wants. (If true, it's a dangerous tactic, as it ends up bringing your word into question.)

Or, it's possible that the simplest explanation is the truth.  The President doesn't like to fight, and has an overwhelming need to make peace at all costs.  So that at any one time, his left brain tells you what he wants, then his right brain takes over and starts handing out daisies.

Here's Sirota:

Obama is not a flaccid Jimmy Carter, as some of his critics insist. He is instead a Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- but a bizarro FDR. He has mustered the legislative strength of his New Deal predecessor -- but he has channeled that strength into propping up the very forces of "organized money" that FDR once challenged.

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Wash Post poll: People don't think govt can fix the economy

From the Washington Post:

According to a new Washington Post poll, barely one in four Americans has confidence that the federal government has the ability to fix economic problems, and most share Standard & Poor’s indictment of the country’s policy-making process.

The spreading lack of confidence is matched by an upsurge in dissatisfaction with the country’s political system and a widespread sense that S&P’s characterization of U.S. policy-making as increasingly “less stable, less effective and less predictable” is a fair one.

The results have sharp edges for both Republicans and Democrats, as record numbers say they’re interested in new congressional representation when the November 2012 elections roll around.

When it comes to economic issues, the erosion in public trust is deep: Just 26 percent now have even some faith the government can actually solve problems. Confidence is down 21 percentage points from October 2010, and less than half its 2002 levels.

I agree completely. But I know that government can work. But it takes two political parties. At this point, we only have one, the Republicans. The other is living up to its stereotype nicely. Read the rest of this post...

Obama admin has power to stop deportation of gay man who is the principal caregiver to his husband who has AIDS. Will they?

As Joe reported yesterday, the Obama administration is about to deport an Australian-born gay man, separating him from his American husband of seven years (they were legally married in Massachusetts).  The couple has been together 19 years, and the man being deported on August 25th is the sole caregiver to his husband, who has AIDS.

The Obama administration says that they have no choice but to deport the husband, because the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) won't let them let him stay.

But of course, that's not entirely true.

As Joe explains in depth, quoting from a gay immigration lawyer who handles these kinds of cases, the administration has the legal authority to stop the deportation.  They're simply, so far, choosing not to.  It's reminiscent of how for two years we were told the administration was required by law to defend DOMA, only to find out they weren't required to at all, and they finally stopped defending it.

This is a similar case in which the administration is alleging powerlessness when they're not powerless at all. 

The President could be a hero here.  He could proactively solve this problem by simply taking some initiative.  It seems sometimes that far too often the administration is reticent to do anything that might rock the boat, whatever boat they're worried about that particular day.  Either the lawyers have scared them into inaction or they're afraid someone might get mad if they do the right thing.

The lawyers are always going to be worried about something.  That's their job.  And someone is always going to hate you.  That's politics. But a lot of us put our hearts and souls, and a lot of our own cash, into electing Barack Obama president and we'd like to feel like he's proactively trying to do good, rather than being forced into it against his will.  And a lot of time it feels like it's against his will, doesn't it?

The Obama people wonder why liberals are always so mad at them. It's because there isn't a great sense that you're looking out for our interests.  Wouldn't it be great if no one had ever heard of this case, but the administration had already warned the agencies to be on the lookout for gay civil rights problems that might arise, and to notify the White House when they do?  Imagine the White House having jumped on this issue and fixed it before it even hit the papers?  Imagine the goodwill that would have created, and more importantly, the lives that would have been spared from ruin.  Wouldn't it be neat if the White House had a reputation for sticking their necks out, and pushing the law to its limits, in order to make the world a better place?

That's not the reputation they have.  And it's because on far too many issues they miss the opportunity to do good before things go bad.  Now they have another chance to fix that.  Here's hoping they do before August 25.

PS The gay couple is supposed to be on Olbermann tonight.

Read the rest of this post...

Dow and Nasdaq both down over 4% again

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Administration conditionally approves off-shore drilling in AK even though Shell’s emergency response plan isn’t yet approved

LA Times editorial:

Shell Oil's proposal to drill three exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's North Slope received a conditional go-ahead last week from the Obama administration even though the Interior Department has not yet approved the company's plan for responding to a catastrophic oil spill. That plan fails to adequately address many of the harsh realities of drilling in Arctic seas. It's too early for any approval, conditional or otherwise.

Read the rest of this post...

Galbraith on Obama: For the rest of his life, the eyes of the old, the poor, the jobless, whose hopes he once raised, will follow him everywhere

This analysis of the current situation is strongly critical, to be sure, but also wonderfully well written. You can click to get the full point; it's along these lines (h/t reader MG1 via email):

The President is not a progressive – he is not what Americans still call a “liberal.” He is a willful player in an epic drama of faux-politics, an operative for the money power, whose job is to neutralize the left with fear and distraction and then to pivot rightward and deliver a conservative result ... a long-term lock-in of domestic spending cuts, and a path toward severe cuts in the core New Deal and Great Society insurance programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, of course, no tax increases at all.

This is Professor James Galbraith, so the details are well mustered. "What Barack Obama got from the debt deal was exactly what his sponsors have wanted" — and he explains in full. There's a lot in this essay, and it's worth a full read.

But I want to leave you with his exceptional ending.

I think it's under-estimated how much it matters to men like Obama that they get their families to the next level of society — how much it matters that they enter the aristocratic elite and bring their children with them.

Think of Bill Clinton — he comes from a back-water town, and through really hard work (and exceptional talent) gets his daughter into Sidwell Friends School, where the elite are prepared to be the elite. Next thing he knows, she marries well and works at a big-time hedge fund and venture capitalism shop. The family is secure; they'll be yachting with princes (so to speak) for a long time to come.

Obama's on that path, at least as far as the Sidwell Friends School part is concerned. And he certainly loves his family.

But will he be loved himself in his retirement? Certainly the black community will consider him a saint, for obvious (and good) reasons.

But liberals? Progressives? Anyone with half a mind who knows what an FDR-opportunity, in a world-historical JFK-moment, was thrown away? Will the youth who were shagged in 2008 ever vote again in such numbers, with such enthusiasm and (yes) hopefulness? What about the ex-middle class, fallen from grace without a (safety) net?

Here's Galbraith on Obama's post-presidential future:

[O]ur presidencies are short. The professors who joined Obama for his opening act have already gone home. The advisers who remain face dreary futures in think-tanks funded by the likes of Michael Milken, our premier financial ex-felon.

Maybe, if they are especially loyal to their true masters, then like the former budget director Peter Orszag they can go to work for a bank. This surely accounts in part for their present actions.

And the President too is a young man. Unlike say Lyndon B. Johnson or Jimmy Carter, when his term ends he won't be able simply to go home. He'll need a big house in a gated suburb, with high walls and rich friends. And a good income, too, from book deals and lecture fees. He may be thinking about that now. ... [But] it won't save him. For if and when he ventures out, for the rest of his life, the eyes of all those, whose hopes he once raised will follow him. The old, the poor, the jobless, the homeless: their eyes will follow him wherever he goes.

Amen, brother.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Matt Stoller on S&P;, and both parties’ attempt to cut Social Security and Medicare

Matt Stoller, in Politico yesterday is must-read:

Let’s note, at the start, that this downgrade was absurd. The credit rating of the United States is not in jeopardy. The U.S. government prints dollars — it can no more run out of dollars than a bowling alley can run out of strikes.

What’s really happening is an attempt by both parties to justify slashing Social Security and Medicare. Republicans have long wanted to roll back the New Deal. What is relatively new is that a Democratic president is now dead set on cutting these programs as well.

President Barack Obama, in his speech Monday about the downgrade, used the market turmoil as an excuse to do just that. After a debt ceiling deal in which the Democrats argued that defense spending cuts — not entitlement cuts — could close the long-term deficit, Obama said Monday that there’s “not much further” he can trim defense. Despite the fact that defense spending has gone up on his watch. Instead, Obama said, we need cuts in social spending, or, as he phrased it, “modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare.”

In effect, there seems to have been a merger of both parties into a single force advocating for the interests of bondholders and the cutting of Medicare and Social Security. It’s why both Republicans and Democrats are now blaming each other for the downgrade — as though the downgrade were to be taken seriously.

Read the rest of this post...

Liberals get feisty with congresswoman at townhall meeting

About time.  Every who can should be going to their local townhall meetings with their local members of Congress, and giving them an earful.  The time for being nice has passed.  You need to be mad as hell, and let them know it.  The Teabaggers, for all their warts, got one thing right.  There's nothing quite so effective as confronting a member of Congress with true in-your-face ire. Pioneer Press:

This time it was the liberals who were angry about what's happening in Washington.....

On Tuesday night, [Democratic House member Betty] McCollum's fellow Democrats packed a music recital hall at St. Catherine University to give the six-term congresswoman an earful about their disappointment with Obama and his economic and military policies.

The crowd of about 150 was largely friendly and civil, but they were passionate about their opposition to the conservative policies flowing from the Republican-controlled Congress and what they consider an all-too-conciliatory White House.

John from St. Paul wanted to know why Obama has moved to the right. "Whose side is he on?" he asked.

More of this needs to happen. Far too many Democratic members of Congress are enabling the President, rather than publicly challenging him. But they need to hear form us first, or they worry that it's bad politics standing up to the President. We need to let them know that it's bad politics not to. Read the rest of this post...

How S&P; made it more likely the GOP will hold the debt ceiling hostage again

Bear with me here.

1. GOP threatens to default on US debt as bargaining chip to force severe cuts in long-term federal budget.

2. After the Republicans start demanding massive cuts to the budget, S&P is suddenly concerned about the budget (which didn't magically grow any larger in the last few months than it was expected to last year, so why didn't S&P make these threats earlier?) and threatening to lower the US rating unless cuts on the order of $4 trillion are passed into law.

3. SEP downgrades the US' credit rating because it says not enough money was cut, but also, it claims, because of the uncertainty of the US budgeting and debt ceiling process, now that the Republicans are threatening to end the world as we know it for a new demand every single month.

But if S&P is truly worried about the uncertain US legislative process threatening America's ability and willingness to pay its debt, it would seem that S&P's downgrade just made things worse. Here's why:

If you're a Republican, here's what you just learned from the debt ceiling experience:

If I threaten to hold up the extension of the US debt ceiling, not only will I be able to force a Democratic president and Democrats in Congress to agree to massive cuts they would normally refuse (after all, they already admitted that it's a threat they're not willing to risk), but I'll be able to sweeten the extortion by enlisting the help of S&P.  S&P can't stand it when I threaten to hold the US debt hostage, and as a result, they'll threaten a downgrade if the cuts aren't big enough and/or if the ceiling isn't extended in time, putting overwhelming pressure on the Dems to cave to my demands.

None of these cuts would have happened had the GOP not threatened to destroy the US credit rating.  So why not keep making the threats?  And in fact, S&P has already said they're not happy with the amount of the cuts so far, they've even downgraded the US' rating, so it's pretty clear that another GOP threat, when the issue ripens again in two years, will create yet another perfect storm of budget cuts.

What S&P did was akin to what the Obama administration did: They gave in to the demands of economic hostage-takers, making it all the more likely that the economy will be taken hostage every chance the Republicans get since the GOP now knows that hostage-taking works. Which means S&P is creating the very situation it's using, and may be forced to use again, to justify the downgrade. Welcome to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Which therefore brings up the question of why S&P did this? Did they really want the budget cut (when, oddly, they weren't threatening a downgrade until the GOP got involved a few months ago), or was S&P simply out for revenge? Read the rest of this post...

Stiglitz: "A long malaise now seems like the optimistic scenario"

Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz writing in the Financial Times:

When the recession began there were many wise words about having learnt the lessons of both the Great Depression and Japan’s long malaise. Now we know we didn’t learn a thing. Our stimulus was too weak, too short and not well designed. The banks weren’t forced to return to lending. Our leaders tried papering over the economy’s weaknesses – perhaps out of fear that if we were honest about them, already fragile confidence would erode. But that was a gamble we have now lost. Now the scale of the problem is apparent, a new confidence has emerged: confidence that matters will get worse, whatever action we take. A long malaise now seems like the optimistic scenario.

Read the rest of this post...

Fort Bragg approves atheism concert

They already held an evangelical Christian concert.  From AP:

A concert event organized by atheist, agnostic and other non-theist soldiers has been cleared by the Army to take place next spring at Fort Bragg, concert organizers and a spokesman for the post said Monday.

Organizers planned to hold the Rock Beyond Belief event this year, but they canceled after saying Bragg leadership was not providing the same support it gave to an evangelical Christian concert last fall.

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More on the Tim DeChristopher sentencing & what it means for the environmental movement

Here's an excellent interview with Dave Roberts of Grist.org, conducted by Sam Seder of the new Majority Report podcast.

It's about the harsh sentencing of environmental activist Tim DeChristopher for the crime of prank-bidding on government-auctioned oil-and-gas leases. (Our initial coverage of DeChristopher is here.)



A lot of food for thought here; Roberts has an excellent understanding of environmental issues and where they are headed.

By the way, if you enjoy the new Majority Report, it could really use some support (just in case you didn't know that).

GP Read the rest of this post...

Picnics in Paris are a nighttime affair (my photography)

I've written before about picnics in Paris.  They tend to happen at night, preferably along the Seine, sitting on the concrete quai or picnic tables set up for the annual Paris Plage event, where the city turns a couple of miles of frontage road along the main river into one big month-long beach party.

One of the nicest things about going anywhere in Paris in the summer is the journey getting there.  The city is just so damn pretty it hurts.  It truly makes you reassess your life, even a bit, knowing that this is the route these people walk every day to work, to meet friends, to go the doctor, etc.  Their mundane daily existence is our number one tourist destination.

I decided to shoot some pics today only with my iPhone and its Hipstamatic program.  A number of them didn't turn out, but I like how these did.  It's a neat program, and under the right circumstances can add an interesting effect to your photos.  I took all of these on my way to, and then back home from, tonight's picnic near the Pont Marie.

My all time favorite picnic spot, familiar to
anyone who's ever lived in Paris: the Quai de Bourbon.
(It's on the Ile St.-Louis, to the left as you cross the
bridge from Notre Dame.)

Parisians take full advantage of the Seine, and
the rare, of late, sunny day. Women will often
sun in this same location topless.

Nice view on my way to the picnic.

People playing pétanque "baci ball" on Paris Plage.

A lone guy enjoying a near full moon right next to our picnic spot.
The tourist boat, Bateau Mouche, has just passed.

Paris Plage (r) as I cross the Pont Louis-Philippe
 on my way home to the metro.

Notre Dame (l) from behind.

The required shot.

The Cité metro station.

And back home again at Vavin.

As for what I'm doing here, I come every August and house sit for my co-blogger and friend Chris and his wife Joelle, while they go on vacation. Someone needs to take care of the plants, and the cats who have grown to treat me as family, though there's always the chance they simply think they now own me.  I did my study abroad here, a scary long time ago, and still have no idea how my parents let a 19 year old kid with one semester of French under his belt go live in a place this far away, and this beautiful, for a year - but God bless them. Read the rest of this post...