Let’s get real. What person in their right mind would really want the United States to default? Of course, nobody, yet over the years many members of Congress have voted against raising the debt ceiling.
Barack Obama did it and now rejects his own action. It is always a symbolic gesture that both Democrats and Republicans use, and use irresponsibly.
Yet now we seem to have the Tea Party, and a larger group of Republicans, clamoring for some kind of show down at the OK Corral. Not a symbolic gesture to some but a real threat. Not smart.
For those who like to cite Ronald Reagan in his 100th year as a stalwart, antidebt, no-tax-hike, no nonsense conservative, they have the wrong guy. Aside from his major tax increases as governor of California and as president here is a little history on the debt ceiling.
In a letter to then-Majority Leader Howard Baker on November 16, 1983, President Reagan asked “for your help and support, and that of your colleagues, in the passage of an increase in the limit on the public debt.”
Reagan went on:
…the United states could be forced to default on its obligations for the first time in its history.
This country now possesses the strongest credit in the world. The full consequence of a default–or even the serious prospect of default–by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate….The risks, the costs, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation before the Congress adjourns.
The point is that Republicans should shelve using the debt ceiling vote as a means of negotiation. This is not a negotiable item. Should they take this right up until the 11th hour and refuse to fund the government, not only will Reagan’s admonitions come true but the Republicans will seal their fate as an irresponsible, minority party–a pariah for years to come.
Bad policy, bad politics.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, May 19, 2011
May 19, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Budget, Congress, Conservatives, Debt Ceiling, Democrats, Economic Recovery, Economy, GOP, Government, Government Shut Down, Ideologues, Ideology, Lawmakers, Politics, Republicans, Right Wing, Senate, Tax Increases, Taxes, Tea Party | Credit, Global Economy, Government Default, Public Debt, Ronald Reagan |
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People born on American soil are guaranteed automatic citizenship by a provision found in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This provision, often referred to as “birthright citizenship,” has recently come under intense attack by conservative politicians. Conservative lawmakers in state legislatures throughout the country have introduced bills aimed at blocking children born in the state to undocumented immigrants—as well as professional workers and other noncitizens with long-term visas—from claiming a right to citizenship. House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) has declared his intention to hold hearings on the subject.
Opportunistic politics helps explain the reasoning behind this attack on the citizenship clause of the Constitution. A broken national immigration system coupled with a slow economic recovery characterized by sluggish job growth creates an opening for certain politicians to create short-term electoral gains by demonizing immigrants. Nonetheless, numerous conservative scholars and politicians such as Linda Chavez and James Ho voice grave concerns about the political and policy ramifications of this trend.
A CAP report released this month from CAP Senior Fellow Sam Fulwood III and Director for Immigration Policy Marshall Fitz explains the cascading effect of unforeseen, unintended, and unwanted consequences a retreat on birthright citizenship would set in motion, among them:
- “Big Brother” in every hospital delivery room, a profoundly costly and intrusive process of checking and verifying documents for every baby born in the United States
- A new underclass of less-than-citizens who are marginalized from society and detract from our future economic competitiveness
- Women burdened with childbearing decisions depending on citizenship parentage, endangering the newly born and their mothers in our country
- An America that is suddenly and deeply anti-immigrant—contrary to our historical heritage and core national values and undermining our cherished democratic system, built by and for immigrants
Nevertheless, the matter is not dead in the eyes of some politicians. On January 25, 2011, Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and David Vitter (R-LA) introduced legislation to amend the Constitution and restrict citizenship to those newborns who can prove that one of their parents is a U.S. citizen, a legal immigrant, or an active member of the Armed Forces at the moment of the child’s birth.
The Center for American Progress and the American Constitution Society jointly hosted an event earlier this month featuring leading civil rights thinkers who discussed what our nation would look like should the birthright citizenship provision in the 14th Amendment be repealed, as well as its effect on all Americans.
“It’s important to look at the arguments that people are making to repeal the 14th Amendment,” said Fulwood at the event. “It goes to the core of what it means to be an American.”
Margaret Stock, a professor at the University of Alaska, noted that “The 14th Amendment [was the] crowning achievement of the Republican Party after the civil war. … it’s appalling Republicans have proposed this amendment.”
As President Barack Obama said in his speech in El Paso on May 10:
It doesn’t matter where you come from; it doesn’t matter what you look like; it doesn’t matter what faith you worship. What matters is that you believe in the ideals on which we were founded; that you believe that all of us are created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. All of us deserve our freedoms and our pursuit of happiness. In embracing America, you can become American. That is what makes this country great. That enriches all of us.
Amending the 14th Amendment to end birthright citizenship would create a very different America, one characterized by dual classes of residents born here—citizens and less-than-citizens.
By: Philippe Nassif, Center for American Progress, May 17, 2011
May 18, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Congress, Conservatives, Constitution, Democracy, Elections, Equal Rights, Freedom, GOP, Human Rights, Ideologues, Ideology, Immigrants, Immigration, Lawmakers, Politics, Populism, Republicans, Right Wing, State Legislatures, States, Women | 14th Amendment, Anti-Immigrant, Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship, Class System, James Ho, Linda Chavez, Non-Citizens, Politicians, Rep Lamar Smith, Sen David Vitter, Sen Rand Paul |
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Republican Gov. Scott Walker is steadily remaking the Wisconsin government, implementing conservative ideals and quietly consolidating power under the office of the governor. His actions range from the much-publicized move to strip collective bargaining rights from powerful public unions to the less-noticed efforts to add more political appointees at state agencies and take away responsibilities from Wisconsin’s democratically elected secretary of state.
Supporters have praised what Walker and his allies are doing as a long-overdue steps to cut spending and unnecessary bureaucracy. But critics fear a loss of public input and transparency in the way the state government operates.
“It’s a power grab,” said Doug La Follette, Wisconsin’s Democratic Secretary of State. “[Walker] wants to control everything.”
“It’s turning Wisconsin’s state government from a body that is charged with serving the needs of the people of Wisconsin, into making its first priority serving corporations — both inside and outside of Wisconsin,” added Scot Ross, executive director of the progressive group One Wisconsin Now. “This is the most massive turn toward privatization of public services in not only the history of the state of Wisconsin, but possibly across the country.”
Walker’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this report.
TURNING THE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES INTO A ‘CHARTER AGENCY’
The Walker administration is developing a proposal that would turn the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) into the state’s first “charter agency,” a designation that would make it a self-contained entity able to operate outside many of the bureaucratic guidelines other agencies must follow.
Most significantly, DNR would have wider latitude over the hiring, firing and merit pay of employees — issues that also played out in the collective bargaining controversy a few months ago.
“We would be freed up from a lot of the red tape that slows things down,” DNR spokesman Bob Manwell told the Wisconsin State Journal. “We would still be a state agency; we would just be operating under a different set of guidelines.”
But what worries some environmentalists is how the agency will now view its central goals. According to a draft Walker administration document with “talking points” about the plan, DNR will be committed to “increasing customer outreach and assistance” and reducing “permit times for major air and water permits.”
“It’s implying that the customer is those who are seeking permits, so DNR employees will be encouraged to pump out permits with more leniency,” explained Anne Sayers, program director of the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters. “And none of that is about protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink or the places where we hunt, fish and hike.”
“What really bothers me about it is, it sets up a pay-to-play mentality where they can reward DNR employees who are getting polluters sweetheart deals for their big contributors,” added Rep. Brett Hulsey (D-Madison), a member of the Natural Resources Committee.
Amber Gunn, the director of economic policy at Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Wash., has been one of the leading voices advocating charter agencies around the country. In 2007, she wrote that it’s a “revolutionary concept” intended to “unravel the bureaucratic red tape that plagues many state agencies and replace it with results-driven motivation that promotes flexibility and innovation.”
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Gunn said one of the reasons the charter agency model is being discussed more widely is that it’s a way to cut spending without directly slashing services.
Washington’s Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire has expressed support for exploring charter agencies. But according to Gunn, one of the reasons she wasn’t able to move forward with the change was the state’s strong collective bargaining laws, which have strict restrictions on contracting out for services.
“We would have to modify the collective bargaining agreements — at least in Washington — in order to oppose charter agencies. And no one wanted to touch that,” said Gunn.
The changes Walker and his GOP allies in the state legislature made to Wisconsin’s collective bargaining laws are currently on hold, while a court considers their legality.
Iowa has also experimented with charter agencies, but a 2011 report by the state auditor found that those agencies failed to deliver what they promised.
But what is most troubling to some Democratic legislators in Wisconsin is that this remaking of a government agency was originally going to be pushed through in an executive order — without any say by the legislature or any public hearings.
“If we’re playing our role as a separate branch of government correctly, we should — Democrats and Republicans alike — be questioning. How is it you can completely reform a state agency … without an act of the legislature?” asked Rep. Cory Mason (D-Racine), one of the lawmakers investigating the legality of such a move.
STRIPPING POWER FROM THE SECRETARY OF STATE
The Joint Finance Committee is expected to vote Thursday on a proposal to scale back the responsibilities of the Wisconsin Secretary of State, moving its notary public and trademark duties to the Department of Financial Institutions (DFI). The Department of Administration, which is part of the governor’s office, would take on other duties.
La Follette is adamantly opposed to the proposal, telling The Huffington Post that he was not consulted at all by the governor’s office about the changes and is lobbying committee members to vote against it.
“It’s a very dumb idea,” he said. “First of all, it won’t save money, which some people claim it would. Second of all, it will make Wisconsin difficult for people to do business. The governor’s slogan is, ‘Wisconsin is open for business,’ and I’m all in favor of that. … But in 46-47 states around the country, the Secretary of State has the responsibility for trademarks and notaries, and those are two of the functions he wants to move to this obscure agency called DFI. No other state has DFI.”
GIVING THE GOVERNOR POWER TO CHOOSE THE VETERANS AFFAIRS SECRETARY
Currently, one of the main duties of the seven veterans appointed by the governor to the Board of Veterans Affairs is to choose the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. But under a proposal being considered by the Assembly, that power would be transferred directly to the governor. The bill would also change the number and tenure of board members.
Walker has not directly taken a position on the legislation, however, he was critical of the board’s membership during his campaign.
Veterans groups are divided on the proposal. The American Legion has said allowing the governor to choose the secretary would politicize the agency, whereas the Veterans of Foreign Wars has said it would “elevate this important role to a cabinet level position equal to all other agency heads where it rightfully belongs.”
But what most upsets outgoing Veterans Affairs Board member David Boetcher, who was appointed by former Democratic governor Jim Doyle, is this provision in the proposal: “Under current law, all of the members must be veterans, and at least two of the members must be Vietnam War veterans. Under the bill, all of the board members must have served on active duty, but need not have served in any particular war or conflict.”
According to Boetcher, that would bar National Guard and Reserve members from serving.
“It’s like, I guess their military service just wasn’t good enough for the governor, so he’s blocking them out,” said Boetcher, who himself was enlisted in the Wisconsin National Guard. “It’s strange, because with a lot of the benefit programs, some of the major users are National Guard and Reserve members — especially like the GI Bill. … Either way, a lot of the people served by the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs are currently in the Guard and Reserve, but they’re going to be locked out of being on the board. Which I think is very unfortunate.”
Boetcher said there’s a possibility that the Assembly, which has been adding amendments to the bill, may change the language and allow National Guard and Reserve members to continuing serving on the board. The sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Kevin Petersen (R-Waupaca), did not return a request for comment.
CONSOLIDATING MEDICAID DECISIONS
Tucked into the budget repair bill Republicans initially proposed earlier this year was a provision granting the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) sweeping authority to make changes to the state’s Medicaid program — which covers one in five residents — with virtually no public scrutiny. According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the Walker administration can use “emergency” powers to allow DHS to restrict eligibility, raise premiums and change reimbursements — all moves traditionally controlled by the legislature.
Part of the reason that advocates were so alarmed at the legislation was that the man who heads DHS is Dennis Smith, someone who has advocated for states to leave the Medicaid program.
Jon Peacock, research director of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, equated it to if President Obama gave Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius total power to rewrite Medicare policy, even though it wouldn’t save any money in the current fiscal year.
“That’s what you have here,” said Peacock. “If President Obama proposed that, there would be rallies all over the country, and we would be marching out there arm in arm with Tea Party members, protesting against it.”
The legislation that was eventually signed into law eliminated the “emergency” powers but still gave the DHS administrator broad power to write regulations through the regular rule-making process.
By: Amanda Terkel, Huffington Post Politics, May 17, 2011
May 17, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, Consumers, Corporations, Democracy, Democrats, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Government, Governors, Ideologues, Ideology, Lawmakers, Medicaid, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Public Opinion, Regulations, Republicans, Right Wing, State Legislatures, States, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | Bureaucracy, Charter Agencies, Environment, Environmentalist, Public Services, Veterns Affairs, Wiscon Sec of State, Wisconsin Dept of Natural Resources, Wisconsin Government |
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It’s beginning to look like when Haley Barbour shuffled off into the Mississippi sunset, saying he just couldn’t commit to a 10-year presidential crusade, he left his draft campaign playbook sitting on a garbage can, and Newt Gingrich picked it up. Barbour, you’ll recall, was trying out a new approach to race in the Obama era: Jim Crow wasn’t “that bad,” the white-supremacist White Citizens Councils kept down the KKK, and nobody could make him denounce an effort by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to dedicate a license plate to KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, either. “I don’t go around denouncing people,” declared the man who denounced Democrat Ronnie Musgrove for efforts to remove the Confederate flag from Mississippi’s state flag. I said at the time that Barbour was trying out the notion that post-Obama, people — particularly white people leaning Republican — are ready for an approach that says let’s quit all this whining about racism, it wasn’t that bad, it’s time to get back to the business of cutting taxes for the rich and programs for the poor.
Well, Newt Gingrich seems to have wandered by the garbage can to pick up Barbour’s draft playbook, and it’s all unfolding as planned. He’s getting hit for calling President Obama “the food stamp president”; even David Gregory heard the racial imagery in the term, given the way Republicans have long loved to associate welfare programs with black people. Ronald Reagan famously railed against Cadillac-driving “welfare queens” and “strapping young bucks” buying “T-bone steaks” with food stamps; Barbour actually praised Head Start, because some of the kids in it “would be better off sitting up on a piano bench at a whorehouse than where they are now.” I called Gingrich’s remarks “coded racism” yesterday, and today right-wingers were up in arms, pointing out that most food stamp recipients are white. This is absolutely true of most welfare programs, which is why the GOP association of welfare with black people has always seemed, well, racist.
But let me be clear: I might not have paid attention to Gingrich’s “food stamp president” jibe had it not come along with a panorama of images designed to make clear Barack Obama is blackity black black. Praising right-wing Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Gingrich said he’ll make the U.S. more like Texas, while Obama only “knows how to get the whole country to resemble Detroit.” In the speech to Georgia Republicans where he tried out the “food stamp president” slur, Gingrich also told the bastion of the old Confederacy that 2012 would be the biggest election since 1860 — you know, when Abraham Lincoln got elected and the South began to secede over slavery, commencing the Civil War. He also suggested the U.S. might need to bring back some kind of voting test, banned under the Voting Rights Act. Last year, of course, Gingrich denounced Obama’s “Kenyan anti-colonialist behavior,” which made him “outside our comprehension” as Americans, spreading the lie that Obama inherited angry African anti-colonialism from his absent African father, though he was raised by his white mother and grandparents. Oh, and he headed the drive to label Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor “racist” when she was nominated in 2009.
So let’s review: Welfare slur? Check. Tie to a troubled, mainly black city? Check. Specious association with African anti-colonialism? Check. Dire reference to Lincoln and the start of the Civil War, while campaigning deep in the heart of Dixie? Check. Suggestion we need a voter test? Check. Oh, and for good measure, calling liberals concerned about racial injustice “racist”? Check. Awesome: They’ve hit pretty much every way the GOP has used to divide Americans by race in the last 200 years!
Great job, Newt. You’ve developed the perfect platform to run a spirited GOP campaign that attracts a cadre of aggrieved white people. You’ll never be president of the United States, but you’ll be the champion of the declining share of the country that still thrills to what we used to call dog-whistle politics: coded varieties of racism only understood by their intended audience. And all the efforts by Gingrich defenders to claim I’m the racist are just funny. One of Andrew Breitbart’s minions is leading the charge, and he lamented Monday morning on Twitter: “Would prefer to hammer Newt today over throwing Ryan under the bus, but @joanwalsh, @davidgregory, & @ebertchicago had to go & do this.” (Roger Ebert was kind enough to Tweet my Sunday Gingrich story.)
I’d advise the Breitbart gang to get back to hammering Gingrich over Paul Ryan’s politically suicidal budget plan; they should focus on the shard of people who want to debate whether Gingrich or Ryan is the leader who can lead their party off a cliff. Anyway, they’ve mistaken me for someone who cares what they have to say. Gingrich is doubling down on racial politics, and I’m going to continue to call it out when I see it.
Oh, and this is one in an occasional series of pieces on folks who will never be president, which began when Sarah Palin unraveled over the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. I didn’t get to Barbour or Mike Huckabee; they realized they would never be president all on their own. It seems silly to write the same piece on Donald Trump; it’s like saying “pigs will never fly.” But I’m sure there will be a few more to come.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, May 16, 2011
May 16, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Bigotry, Birthers, Conservatives, Democracy, GOP, Ideologues, Ideology, Newt Gingrich, Politics, Racism, Republicans, Right Wing, Taxes, Wealthy | Andrew Breitbart, Anti-Colonialism, Civil War, Confederacy, Detroit, Donald Trump, Ethnic Groups, Food Stamp President, Gov Haley Barbour, Gov Rick Perry, Jim Crow, KKK, Mike Huckabee, Poor, Rep Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Voter ID, Voting Rights, Welfare, White Citizens Council |
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Farewell Donald Trump. For a brief moment last month, his birther buffoonery powered him to the front of the Republican pack. What a difference a birth certificate, a death announcement, and serious treatment by the press make. Now The Donald has announced that as with his previous presidential flirtations he is not making this race. Suddenly he looks like one of the celebrity has-beens who gets fired on his television show—or worse, like a celebrity has-been who doesn’t actually get onto the show at all.
Trump peaked in mid-April when a survey from the Democratic group Public Policy Polling set him as the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, with 26 percent of the vote. Then reality intruded. The press went from treating him like a celebrity making silly noises about running to treating him like a genuine would-be candidate, checking out who he contributed to and fact-checking his weird claims. Then Obama’s long form birth certificate put an end to birtherism while Osama bin Laden’s violent end reminded us that there are monsters in the real world and that the presidency is for serious people, not reality TV blowhards.
Public Policy Polling’s survey last week had Trump at 8 percent, in a fifth place tie with Ron Paul.
But with Trump-mentum ended, where can we hope to find entertainment value in the GOP primary field? The answer is, where can’t you? Donald Trump, entertainer-turned-pol was never going to be the second coming of Ronald Reagan. But neither will the other maybes and might-want-tos.
Take Newt Gingrich, whose announcement video last week said we should “look reality in the face, [and] tell the truth.” The truth and the reality are that Gingrich is an abrasive bomb thrower who resigned his speakership after his colleagues, and most voters, had enough of him, not the profile swing voters usually latch onto. His disapproval rating when he left office was 70 percent and was still as high as 38 percent as recently as last summer. And Gingrich, a self-styled historian, is fighting history. Only once has a former speaker of the house made the transition to the White House. That, NBC’s Chuck Todd notes, was James Polk in 1844. And not since James Garfield in 1880 has a politician achieved the White House having only served in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Newt is not alone with this problem, of course. Sitting Rep. Michele Bachmann seems happy to conflate her fanatical Tea Party following with actual broad-based support. But again her lack of experience in winning even a statewide office in Minnesota makes one wonder whether she’s drinking tea or Kool-Aid. For sheer “what is he thinking” chutzpah, however, it’s hard to beat Rick Santorum, whose last act in American politics ended when the voters of his home state of Pennsylvania fired him from the U.S. Senate. I can think of one modern politician who won the White House after losing his last previous election, and Richard Nixon is not a figure whose mantel many GOPers lay claim to these days.
Sure Newt, Bachmann, and Santorum are members of the GOP presidential B Team, but is the A Team much more impressive? You could have made an argument for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, before he announced this weekend that he would not run. The best that can be said of Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, is that he is inoffensive (read: bland), while the worst that can be said of 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is that she’s . . . Sarah Palin.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels commented last week that “the chances [of his beating Obama] would actually be quite good.” Apparently channeling some Trump-ian bombast, he added that, “The quality and the number of people who have said they’d like to be associated is really quite awesome to me.” Also awesome is the idea of someone running as a gimlet-eyed spending hawk whose previous job before governor was as George W. Bush’s budget chief. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, “By themselves, in fact, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will account for almost half of the $20 trillion in debt that, under current policies, the nation will owe by 2019.”
Then there’s Mitt Romney, who Thursday made his highest profile attempt to explain why the healthcare law he passed while governor of Massachusetts, with an individual mandate, is good, but the national-level version of it, signed by Barack Obama, is bad. Romney’s dilemma: He can’t embrace the individual mandate because conservatives don’t like it any more at the state level than they do at the federal one. But he also can’t repudiate it lest he feed the political chameleon image that led the Democratic National Committee to tout “Mitt Romney, Version 5.0.”
The most damning illustration of the state of the GOP field may have come in a Politico report noting that virtually the only issue the contenders agree on is that “Sharia law is a continuing threat to the United States.”
One can’t help but look forward to the GOP nominee explaining that urgent threat in a general election debate while standing next to the president who got bin Laden.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, May 16, 2011
May 16, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Birthers, Conservatives, Democracy, Elections, Exploratory Presidential Committees, GOP, Ideologues, Ideology, Independents, Journalists, Media, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Politics, President Obama, Press, Pundits, Racism, Republicans, Right Wing, Swing Voters, Tea Party, Voters | Celebrities, GOP Presidential Campaign, Gov Mitch Daniels, Individual mandate, Mike Huckabee, OB:, Rep Michele Bachmann, Rep Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Sharia Law, Tim Pawlenty |
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