Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Alternative plans rising. Nearly anything better than Moron free money giveaway.
By Adrianne Kroepsch, CQ Staff
A small group of liberal House Democrats says its alternative proposal to bolster the teetering financial system is capable of generating support from House Republicans.
Maryland’s Elijah E. Cummings and Oregon’s Peter A. DeFazio unveiled an outline of the plan Tuesday, branding it the “low risk” alternative to the $700 billion package that failed Monday in the House (HR 3997).
The group said its plan would not put taxpayers’ money on the line — and therefore the proposal has the ears of conservative House Republicans Darrell Issa of California and Arizona’s John Shadegg .
The Democrats suggested that other GOP conservatives are considering the plan, which would tighten some securities-trading rules and boost the power of the federal government to insure bank deposits. The bailout portion would be funded by fees targeted at Wall Street itself — and not by a direct infusion from the Treasury.
“There are a lot of Republicans interested in dividing the question here,” said DeFazio. “If there is a no cost or low cost alternative available, we should take it.”
But DeFazio acknowledged that his group has no specific commitments from GOP members. The interested Republicans simply want to ensure that taxpayers don’t have cover the cost of any bailout plan, he said.
“What I’m proposing is something we can agree with Republicans on, which would use both market discretion and regulatory discipline at no cost to taxpayers. Once that is resolved, we diverge. Republicans want tax cuts while Democrats want to deal with the bad mortgages,” DeFazio said.
DeFazio also hedged on whether the plan could gain enough momentum to upstage the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, which is still serving the as the basis for negotiations.
Nor was he certain that leaders of the House would bring his plan to the bargaining table, though he said he had been informally asked to join talks scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. “It was far from an engraved invitation,” he said.
SEC, FDIC Changes
Under the alternate proposal, Wall Street would pay for its own bailout over time through a fee imposed on securities trading. Such an approach would essentially wipe out the underpinning of Paulson’s plan, which would be funded by taxpayers.
“I have very little confidence in Mr. Paulson,” DeFazio said.
A rough working draft of the proposal released Tuesday lists five major points. It would:
Group of Democrats Says Alternative Bailout Plan Could Interest GOP Members
• Require the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to suspend “mark to market” accounting principles, which some say have worsened the crisis and could undercut bailout efforts.
• Require the SEC to permanently restrict naked short sells, the practice of selling a stock short without first borrowing the shares or ensuring they can be borrowed.
• Require the SEC to restore “the up-tick rule” permanently. The agency approved a temporary block on short sales without an up-tick in the market on Sept. 19.
• Require the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to implement a certificate program that would allow the agency to cover banks’ short-term capital needs with promissory notes.
• Increase the FDIC insurance limit on deposits to $250,000 from $100,000. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made a similar proposal Tuesday.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur , D-Ohio, who was among those announcing the alternative plan, proposed an additional provision: the creation of an emergency financial crimes office within the Justice Department that would investigate any criminal acts that led to the current economic crisis.
Robert C. Scott , D-Va., Loyd Doggett, D-Texas, Rush D. Holt , D-N.J., Donna Edwards, D-Md., and Mazie K. Hirono , D-Hawaii, also voiced support for the proposal.
Holt voted for the legislation that failed Monday, but said more could be done to “get at the root of the problem.”
Original article posted here
Soros floats alternative bailout plan with Dems
By Alexander Bolton
The billionaire financier George Soros, a major Democratic financial backer, is floating his own rescue plan among Democratic lawmakers who are uncertain what to do in the wake of a surprise defeat of a proposed $700 billion rescue package proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
Soros has outlined his plan in an opinion editorial in the Financial Times and circulated a concept paper among decision-makers.
Specifically, the liberal philanthropist has proposed that government funds should be used to recapitalize the American banking system by purchasing equity in banks and investment firms.
Democratic Rep. Jim Moran (Va.) scheduled a meeting Tuesday afternoon with Robert Johnson, a former manager of the Soros Fund Management, to discuss the proposal.
Moran compared the proposal to Warren Buffet’s $5 billion investment in the investment firm Goldman Sachs Group in return for preferred stock and warrants to buy common stock at a discount.
Soros has also contacted Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) presidential campaign to share his views on the financial crisis and the best way to solve it.
Soros described the plan he outlined in his concept paper in an opinion editorial that appeared in the Financial Times early Wednesday morning, Greenwich Meridian Time.
“Instead of purchasing troubled assets, the bulk of the funds ought to be used to recapitalize the banking system,” Soros wrote.
“The Treasury secretary would rely on bank examiners rather than delegate implementation of [the Troubled Asset Relief Program] to Wall Street firms,” he wrote in reference to the plan first crafted by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. “The bank examiners would establish how much additional equity capital each bank needs in order to be properly capitalized according to existing capital requirements.”
“The recapitalized banks would be allowed to increase their leverage, so they would resume lending,” he wrote.
Soros has emerged as a harsh critic of the Treasury Department, especially of Paulson’s proposal for the government to buy $700 billion of distressed mortgage-backed securities to restore the flow of credit in the financial markets.
It is unclear whether his entry onto the debris-strewn field of the debate will help lawmakers reach agreement on an alternative proposal or further anger House Republicans, who blew up a compromise plan on the House floor Monday.
“The two main principles are to inject more cash into the securities market and shore up home mortgages,” said Moran, who has been briefed on the proposal. “He thinks it has to be more direct than the government buying up tranches. He doesn’t think the government should be buying up toxic stock.”
“There are a lot of people with ideas, I’m going to look at what they want,” said Moran, who added that he also scheduled a meeting with Robert Dugger, managing director of Tudor Investment Corporation, a fund connected with the billionaire trader Paul Tudor Jones.
Soros, who is widely regarded as a financial wizard, could jumpstart congressional negotiations in a new direction, especially now that some strategists believe the Paulson-based plan that failed Monday will be difficult to revive.
One banking industry lobbyist said it would be very difficult politically for Republicans who voted against the package Monday to change their minds and vote for it a few days later. More than two thirds of the House Republican conference voted against the plan, which failed by a vote of 228-205.
Michael Vachon, Soros’s spokesman, said: “There have been a lot of conversations going on about the Paulson plan and George has been very critical of it.”
Democrats are fond of Soros, who has emerged as one of the party’s biggest financial backers in recent years. He spent close to $24 million to defeat President Bush in the 2004 election.
For this reason Soros is a bogeyman among many Republicans. He clashed famously with former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert (Ill.).
During the 2004 election Hastert questioned the source of Soros’s wealth and suggested it could have links to the drug trade.
Soros has fiercely criticized Paulson’s proposal.
“Mr. Paulson’s proposal to purchase distressed mortgage-related securities poses a classic problem of asymmetric information,” Soros wrote in a Financial Times op-ed dated Sept. 24. “The securities are hard to value but the sellers know more about them than the buyer: in any auction process the Treasury would end up in the dregs.”
Soros would like the government to restore the flow of credit to the financial markets by purchasing equity in companies saddled with distressed assets, said Moran.
The international financier would also like the government to take direct action to shore up the ailing housing market.
“The scheme addresses only one half of the underlying problem -- the lack of credit availability. It does very little to enable house owners to meet their mortgage obligations and it does not address the foreclosure problem,” Soros wrote in Wednesday’s commentary .
“A revised emergency legislation could also provide more help to homeowners,” he wrote of a package based on his own proposals. “It could require the Treasury to provide cheap financing for mortgage securities whose terms have been renegotiated, based on Treasury’s cost of borrowing.”
He has also suggested prohibiting mortgage companies from charging fees on foreclosures. Many companies are quick to foreclose because they no longer own the loan itself, which has likely been turned into a security.
Instead, these companies make money by charging delinquent borrowers during the foreclosure process.
Soros’s plan could find favor among members of the Congressional Black Caucus, many of whom voted against the Paulson-based plan Monday.
Foreclosures of subprime mortgages, considered the root of the housing crisis, affects African-American homeowners disproportionately.
Robert Shapiro, chairman of Sonecon, an economic advisory firm, who served as Commerce Department undersecretary during the Clinton administration, raised questions about Soros’s proposal.
He said that if the government bought stock in troubled firms, a problem would arise regarding how Uncle Sam would be represented as a shareholder.
“How does the government vote the shares?” he asked. “It puts them in a potential conflict of interest. Regulatory interests may hurt the bottom line.”
Original article posted here.
Monday, September 29, 2008
A few brave Congresspeople stand up for atrocious and fraudulent looting of Americans
Rep. Kaptur: Normal legislative process has been shut down, high financial crimes committed, Republican Michael Burgess says “martial law” has been announced
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, September 29, 2008
Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur boldly slammed the bailout bill this past weekend as the work of criminal insiders who have shut down the normal legislative process to commit “high financial crimes” and defraud the American people, while Rep. Michael Burgess warns that “martial law” has been declared.
The two Congress members are part of a growing minority of representatives sounding the alarm about the dictatorial nature of the bailout bill, which is expected to be up for a vote in the House today, with most in Congress having not had the opportunity to even read the legislation.
The bill is expected to reach the Senate on Wednesday as a raft of outraged politicians cry foul about being strong-armed and accused of being unpatriotic for opposing the carte-blanche passage of a piece of legislation that fundamentally centralizes control of the financial infrastructure of the country into the hands of the government and the Federal Reserve.
“We are Constitutionally sworn to protect and defend this Republic against all enemies foreign and domestic. And my friends there are enemies,” Kaptur told the House floor.
“The people pushing this deal are the very ones who are responsible for the implosion on Wall Street. They were fraudulent then and they are fraudulent now.”
“My message to the American people don’t let Congress seal this deal. High financial crimes have been committed,” added the Democrat from Ohio.
“The normal legislative process has been shelved. Only a few insiders are doing the dealing, sounds like insider trading to me. These criminals have so much political power than can shut down the normal legislative process of the highest law making body of this land,” Kaptur concluded.
Elsewhere, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) said that the only information he had received about the bailout was what talking points to use on the American people and that he had been thrown out of meetings for not blindly supporting the bill.
Ominously, Burgess also comments, “Mr. Speaker I understand we are under Martial Law as declared by the speaker last night.”
Absent any proper hearings concerning the legislation, Burgess called for the legislation to at least be posted on the Internet for 24 hours so that the American people could “see what we have done in the dark of night.”
Watch the comments of Burgess followed by Kaptur.
Original article posted here.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
While weazl doesn't care about bedroom activities, it does seem that O'Bummer and Biden are playing hardball with Larry Sinclair
Blocked On Eve Of DNC
From Lawrence Sinclair
8-24-8
One day before the start of the Democratic National Convention, www.larrysinclair0926.com and www.larryinclairbarackobama.com have been suspended by Startlogic.
Upon contacting of Startlogic, their reasons for the suspension of these web sites sounds insincere.
Startlogic claims that the sites have been suspended due to an unforeseen amount of traffice and strain on the server and that Startlogic cannot unsuspend the account nor can they allow me to access any of the files from the sites.
I find the statements by Startlogic to be complete BS.
So, folks, until I can figure out how to set up the site on a VPS private server, I guess the Obama/Biden camp have won for the day, anyway.
Thank You,
Larry Sinclair
http://Larrysinclair0926.com
http://Larrysinclair.org
http://Larrysinclairbarackobama.com
Friday, July 25, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
One party, two factions. Not a dime's bit of difference.
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
George W. Bush has been more sparing than most presidents in handing out pardons, but it is starting to seem that the conclusion of his term in office may be marked by a generous use of the pardon power to let members of his own administration off the hook. What's more, constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley believes that the Democrats will let him get away with it.
"The Democrats are trying very hard to show ... that they're not going to re-open these issues and that the Bush crimes will remain buried for all time," Turley told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Tuesday. "It would start a new administration on the same level that George Bush left it. And that's a very sad thing."
Turley was particularly concerned about a recent statement by law professor Cass Sunstein, an Obama adviser, that only "egregious" crimes by Bush officials should be prosecuted by an Obama administration.
"We've had eight years of moral relativism and the avoidance of legal process," stated Turley. "And to start a major campaign with the suggestion that we're going to distinguish between egregious and non-egregious crimes promises more of the same."
"Did we just see accountability go out the window for good?" Olbermann asked Turley.
"That would probably wrap it up," Turley replied.
"There are very few obligations that a president has to do under the Constitution, but one of them is not to violate the laws that he is supposed to enforce," explained Turley. "And what really concerns me about Cass Sunstein's statement is that I don't know what a non-egregious crime by a president or by an administration might be. I think that all crimes committed by the government, particularly the president, are egregious."
Turley further pointed to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's refusal to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president, saying, "I don't understand why some Democrats can't just simply accept a very straightforward proposition, that we'll prosecute any crimes committed by this administration, an Obama administration, a McCain administration. Because they're crimes. They're all egregious."
Sunstein's remarks followed a story in last week's New York Times, which reported that "several members of the conservative legal community in Washington said in interviews that they hoped Mr. Bush would issue such [pre-emptive] pardons. ... They said people who carried out the president’s orders should not be exposed even to the risk of an investigation and expensive legal bills."
Former Reagan Justice Department official Victoria Toensing -- recently best known for arguing that no crime was committed in the outing of former CIA officer Valerie Plame -- told the Times flatly, "The president should pre-empt any long-term investigations."
Turley noted that the Bush administration doesn't seem to care whether pre-emptive pardons would be an implicit admission of guilt. "I think this would be the ultimate and final show of contempt by this president for the rule of law," he concluded. "I think this president would find it very consistent to say, 'I can tell prople to commit crimes and then I can pardon them for it.' What is very troubling is that there appear to be Democrats on the other side who would welcome that."
This video is from MSNBC's News Live, broadcast July 22, 2008.
Original article posted here. |
Thursday, July 10, 2008
The disgrace is finished (as is the substance of the Constitution)
Congress votes to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, legalize warrantless eavesdropping
The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the NSA spying scandal, as the Senate approved a bill -- approved last week by the House -- to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate all pending lawsuits against them, and vest whole new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President. The vote in favor of the new FISA bill was 69-28. Barack Obama joined every Senate Republican (and every House Republican other than one) by voting in favor of it, while his now-vanquished primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, voted against it. John McCain wasn't present for any of the votes, but shared Obama's support for the bill. The bill will now be sent to an extremely happy George Bush, who already announced that he enthusiastically supports it, and he will sign it into law very shortly.
Prior to final approval, the Senate, in the morning, rejected three separate amendments which would have improved the bill but which, the White House threatened, would have prompted a veto. With those amendments defeated, the Senate then passed the same bill passed last week by the House, which means it is that bill, in unchanged form, that will be signed into law -- just as the Bush administration demanded.
The first amendment, from Sens. Dodd, Feingold and Leahy, would have stripped from the bill the provision immunizing the telecoms. That amendment failed by a vote of 32-66, with all Republicans and 17 Democrats against (the roll call vote is here). The next amendment was offered by Sen. Arlen Specter, which would have merely required a court to determine the constitutionality of the NSA spying program and grant telecom immunity only upon a finding of constitutionality. Specter's amendment failed, 37-61 (roll call vote is here). The third amendment to fail was one sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, merely requiring that the Senate wait until the Inspector General audits of the NSA program are complete before immunizing the telecoms. The Bingaman amendment failed by a vote of 42-56 (roll call vote here). Both Obama and Clinton voted for all three failed amendments.
The Senators then voted for "cloture" on the underlying FISA bill -- the procedure that allows the Senate to overcome any filibusters -- and it passed by a vote of 72-26. Obama voted along with all Republicans for cloture. Hillary Clinton voted with 25 other Democrats against cloture (strangely, Clinton originally voted AYE on cloture, and then changed her vote to NAY; I'm trying to find out what explains that).
With cloture approved, the bill itself then proceeded to pass by a vote of 69-28 (roll call vote here), thereby immunizing telecoms and legalizing warrantless eavesdropping. Again, while Obama voted with all Republicans to pass the bill, Sen. Clinton voted against it.
Obama's vote in favor of cloture, in particular, cemented the complete betrayal of the commitment he made back in October when seeking the Democratic nomination. Back then, Obama's spokesman -- in response to demands for a clear statement of Obama's views on the spying controversy after he had previously given a vague and noncommittal statement -- issued this emphatic vow:
To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.But the bill today does include retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. Nonetheless, Obama voted for cloture on the bill -- the exact opposition of supporting a filibuster -- and then voted for the bill itself. A more complete abandonment of an unambiguous campaign promise is difficult of imagine. I wrote extensively about Obama's support for the FISA bill, and what it means, earlier today.
With their vote today, the Democratic-led Congress has covered-up years of deliberate surveillance crimes by the Bush administration and the telecom industry, and has dramatically advanced a full-scale attack on the rule of law in this country. As I noted earlier today, Law Professor and Fourth Amendment expert Jonathan Turley was on MSNBC's Countdown with Rachel Maddow last night and gave as succinct an explanation for what Democrats -- not the Bush administration, but Democrats -- have done today. Anyone with any lingering doubts about what is taking place today in our country should watch this:
What is most striking is that when the Congress was controlled by the GOP -- when the Senate was run by Bill Frist and the House by Denny Hastert -- the Bush administration attempted to have a bill passed very similar to the one that just passed today. But they were unable to do so. The administration had to wait until Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over Congress before being able to put a corrupt end to the scandal that began when, in December of 2005, the New York Times revealed that the President had been breaking the law for years by spying on Americans without the warrants required by law.
Yet again, the Democratic Congress ignored the views of their own supporters in order to comply with the orders and wishes of the Bush administration. It is therefore hardly a surprise that, yesterday, Rasmussen Reports revealed this rather humiliating finding:
Congressional Approval Falls to Single Digits for First Time EverThe Congress, with a powerful cast of bipartisan lobbyists and the establishment media class lined up behind telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping, looked poised to pass this bill back last December, but a large-scale protest was organized -- largely online -- by huge numbers of American who were opposed to warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity, and that protest disrupted that plan (the movement borne of opposition to this bill is only beginning today, not ending, here). Today, Sen. Chris Dodd, the leader of the opposition effort along with Russ Feingold, said this on the Senate floor:The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.
Lastly, I want to thank the thousands who joined with us in this fight around the country -- those who took to the blogs, gathered signatures for online petitions and created a movement behind this issue. Men and women, young and old, who stood up, spoke out and gave us the strength to carry on this fight. Not one of them had to be involved, but each choose to become involved for one reason and one reason alone: Because they love their country. They remind us that the "silent encroachments of those in power" Madison spoke of can, in fact, be heard, if only we listen.Today, the Democratic-led Senate ignored those protests, acted to protect the single most flagrant act of Bush lawbreaking of the last seven years, eviscerated the core Fourth Amendment prohibition of surveillance without warrants, gave an extraordinary and extraordinarily corrupt gift to an extremely powerful corporate lobby, and cemented the proposition that the rule of law does not apply to the Washington Establishment.
* * * * *
I was on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning debating the FISA bill with former Clinton National Security Advisor Nancy Soderberg (who favors the bill). Because of some technical difficulties, I wasn't on the show until roughly 7:30 in. That debate can be heard here. Tomorrow, at 10:00 a.m. EST, I'll be on NPR's On Point to discuss the Obama campaign and the FISA vote. That can be heard here.
UPDATE: The ACLU announced today that it will challenge this bill in court as soon as it is passed on the ground that its warrantless eavesdropping provisions violate the Fourth Amendment:
In advance of the president's signature, the ACLU announced its plan to challenge the new law in court.EFF, the other non-profit organization behind the telecom lawsuits, announced the same, emphasizing the unconstitutionality of the grant of immunity, likely on the ground that by resolving these pending lawsuits in favor of the telecoms, Congress as usurped the judicial function which the Constitution, in Article III, assigns to the courts, not to Congress or the President ("The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish")."This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans' international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment."
The effort to target those responsible for this travesty is here.
Original article posted here.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Fighting for the Constitution when Congress won't
Online activists from the right and the left announced an unprecedented campaign Tuesday to hold Democratic lawmakers accountable for caving in to the Bush administration on domestic spying.
Credit: Eggman
A group of high-profile progressive bloggers and libertarian Republicans are rolling out a new political action committee called Accountability Now to channel widespread anger over pending legislation that would legalize much of the president's warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans, and grant retroactive legal immunity to telephone companies that cooperated with the spying when it was still illegal.
Progressive author and lawyer Glenn Greenwald, who writes for Salon.com, and blogger Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, are spearheading the effort. They've hired the political media consultants behind a historic Ron Paul online fundraising drive to organize a similar "moneybomb," set to go off Aug. 8.
"That is the day Richard Nixon resigned, and the idea is that 35 years ago when you did this kind of stuff, you were forced out of office, and now congress drops everything to make your crimes legal," says Hamsher in an interview.
The campaign marks a milestone in the evolution of online grassroots organizing. The PAC is cherry-picking the tactics and tools that proved most successful in the presidential primary campaigns, and is using them to corral online support for the single issue of domestic spying. The PAC's money pay for advertisements in the districts of the House Democrats who voted for the spy bill -- potentially causing problems for those capitulating on the Bush wiretapping program.
"The fact is, we're all entering completely new territory here," writes Micah Sifry on the TechPresident blog in a post on other, similar efforts to rally support to influence Barack Obama's vote on the pending legislation this Wednesday in the Senate. "There have always been efforts to influence political candidates to take or change positions during a campaign (or afterward), but we've never before had a national campaign create an open platform for mobilizing supporters and then seen a salient chunk of those supporters openly use that platform to challenge the candidate on a policy position."
Key to the new effort are consultants Trevor Lyman and Rick Williams, whose successful online money-raising effort for Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Texas congressman, broke records last year. The pair masterminded a "moneybomb" drive called "This November 5th" that brought in an unprecedented $4.2 million in contributions in a single day. A repeat effort in December raised another $6 million for Paul.
Now the pair have built a web page for Accountability Now where opponents of the spy bill can commit in advance to donating money to the PAC. Similar to the Ron Paul drives, netizens can grab Accountability Now badges to place on their blogs, which link back to the fundraising pledge page.
The moneybomb is only one of several techniques, both online and off, that Hamsher's Firedoglake is experimenting with to make offending members of congress feel the anger of their constituents.
Blue America PAC, of which Firedoglake is a part, has already hired Advomatic and Advomatic Laboratories in New York City, to create a VOIP widget that lets voters call their senators ask them what their stance is on the spy legislation, and to urge them to vote for an amendment that would remove the telecom immunity provision.
So far, 1,600 calls have been made using the tool, which launched Wednesday, says Matt Browner Hamlin, Advomatic Laboratories' founder.
Blue America PAC also launched a robocall campaign in late June against House Majority Leader and Maryland Representative Steny Hoyer, who organized the vote for the legislation. And it's run television ads against Reps. John Barrow, D-Ga., and Chris Carney, D-Pa -- the so-called Blue Dog Democrats who pushed for the legislation.
Hamsher says the effort is aimed at Democrats, because that's the party in control of Congress. "They will have the power," she says. "From our perspective, Chris Carney, or a Republican, it doesn't make any difference -- they're both voting bad on a variety of issues. But Republicans have no power, and Chris Carney in the center will.
Using money it has already raised, the group ran a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post on Tuesday with bullet points explaining what's wrong with the pending legislation.
The Senate is expected to follow the House in approving the new spy legislation Wednesday.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Change from change didn't take long
By: Kenneth P. Vogel
Barack Obama has crafted an image as an unconventional candidate, a change agent and a post-partisan politician who represents a dramatic break from the status quo. But since securing the Democratic presidential nomination, when confronted with a series of thorny issues the Illinois senator has pursued a conspicuously conventional path, one that falls far short of his soaring rhetoric.
Faced with tough choices on fronts ranging from public financing and town hall meetings to warrantless surveillance and the Second Amendment, Obama passed up opportunities to take bold stands and make striking departures from customary politics. Instead, he has followed a familiar tack, straddling controversial issues and choosing politically advantageous routes that will ensure his campaign a cash edge and minimize damaging blowback on several highly sensitive issues.
Obama's embrace of political pragmatism came into sharp focus Thursday with the landmark Supreme Court ruling that overturned Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban and declared for the first time an individual right to possess a gun.
As an Illinois state legislator, Obama generally supported tighter restrictions on firearms and served on the board of a foundation that funded legal scholarship advancing the theory that the Second Amendment does not protect individual gun owners' rights, as well as 14 separate groups that ultimately signed an amicus brief supporting the D.C. ban.
Though he had tried to avoid taking a firm stand on either the ban or the case, an unnamed staffer last year told The Chicago Tribune that "Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional."
On Thursday, though, the Obama campaign distanced itself from that record, which would have considerable downside risk for a presidential candidate running on a 50-state landscape.
Obama's top spokesman, Bill Burton, said that the statement to the Chicago Tribune "was not worded as well as it could have been" and that Obama believes that generally the Constitution "doesn't prevent local and state governments from enacting their own gun laws."
After the high court ruling, Obama said in a statement he has "always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms, but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets through common-sense, effective safety measures."
The Court "has now endorsed that view," Obama asserted, citing a passage in Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion which begins: "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited."
Shortly before the court decision, Obama sought to sidestep another political landmine over controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation. His support for a government surveillance bill that offers retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies - a bill that he vowed last year to filibuster - angered liberal Internet activists who felt betrayed by what they saw as a politically expedient move designed to inoculate himself against GOP charges that he's weak on national security.
But Obama explained it to reporters Wednesday by pointing out that the bill has changed from when he made his filibuster pledge, saying the latest version allayed several concerns, including providing closer oversight of the government surveillance program. Yet it still effectively offers retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that aided the administration's warrantless wiretapping efforts, a key point Obama said he would oppose. He said Wednesday that he was satisfied with the requirement for an inspector general's review.
He is expected to vote for an amendment stripping out the immunity provision, but even if the effort fails, Obama likely would back the underlying bill.
"It is not all that I would want," Obama said in a statement last week. "But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence-collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay," he said.
The calculations that mark Obama's delicate approach toward the FISA bill and the Supreme Court gun ruling come on the heels of his decision last week to reverse a pledge he made last year to participate in the public financing system in the general election if his Republican opponent agreed to do the same-a move that made him the first modern presidential candidate to decline public financing in a general election.
McCain has agreed to participate in the system, which provides candidates $84 million in taxpayer cash, but limits their campaign spending to that amount. Obama, whose historic fundraising ability was unknown when he made the pledge, is expected to easily surpass that tally.
Though he did not frame it as such, Obama's reversal was widely viewed by campaign finance reformers and editorial boards as a strategic choice to put his likely huge campaign cash advantage over his commitment to government reform.
They've been mostly receptive to Obama's forays on campaign finance issues, but many reformers dismissed his explanation for the shift: that his massive base of small online donors constitute a "parallel public financing," and that he needed to exit the program to defend himself from the independent spending of 527 groups.
Obama's decision to opt out of the public financing program followed his campaign's earlier derailment of another bold campaign proposal he had at one time supported: McCain's call for a series of town halls featuring the two candidates.
After declaring last month he would meet McCain "anywhere, anytime" to debate foreign policy-a risky proposition that had the potential to work to McCain's political advantage--Obama backtracked and would only offer one town hall and one extra debate in response to McCain's suggestion of 10.
In explaining the offer to the McCain campaign, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in a statement that Obama's offer "would have been the most of any Presidential campaign in the modern era - offering a broad range of formats - and representing a historic commitment to openness and transparency."
He charged McCain's campaign "would rather contrive a political issue than foster a genuine discussion about the future of our country."
Original article posted here.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
More bad news for Hill, but, nevermind, it won't stop her in the slightest
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Democratic Party lawyers have determined that no more than half the delegates from Florida and Michigan can be seated at the party’s August convention, dealing a blow to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s efforts to seat the full delegations from those states.
The rules committee of the Democratic National Committee meets on Saturday to determine whether to seat the delegates from these states, which were penalized for holding early primaries.
In asking that the full delegations from these states be seated, Mrs. Clinton hopes to narrow Senator Barack Obama’s delegate edge and make the case that by including the votes from these states, she will have more of the popular vote in the nominating contests, an assertion that has come under some dispute. But the party’s legal analysis, contained in a 38-page memo to the committee, says the committee can either seat only 50 percent of the delegates or seat them all but give them only half a vote, which amounts to the same thing.
Whatever the committee decides about the delegates may not be a big factor in Mrs. Clinton’s pursuit of the nomination. Even if she were awarded all the delegates in proportion to her popular vote in those states — her best-case scenario — she could not overtake Senator Obama’s delegate lead.
It is not entirely clear what the Obama campaign intends to ask for at the meeting but Mr. Obama has said he wants the delegates seated. His top aide, David Axelrod, has said that the campaign could go “half-way” on any compromise.
The important goal for the Clinton campaign is to include the popular votes from those two disputed states in its overall vote tally. The Clinton campaign is already doing this, but because Michigan and Florida have been stripped of their delegates, an air of illegitimacy hangs over their votes and her opponents do not recognize their popular vote.
If the rules committee seats even half the delegates from those states, that could confer some legitimacy on the Clinton’s inclusion of those votes in their overall tally, although a Clinton aide said that the campaign does not feel it needs the seating of the delegates to legitimize the popular vote. Those votes have been counted and certified by the secretaries of state in both states, the aide said, and the rules committee cannot alter that.
The rules committee’s meeting is important because it needs to address the decisions by Michigan and Florida to move up their primaries in violation of party rules. The committee stripped the states of their delegates as punishment for doing so. If it restores the delegates, even at half strength, it may send a message to other states that next time they can violate the calendar without serious consequences, in effect a license for chaos.
So the committee is in a box in trying to figure out how to respect the voters in Florida and Michigan, who were not responsible for this potential disenfranchisement, while still honoring voters in 48 other states where officials followed the rules.
Original article posted here.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Excellent discussion of why Democrats don't call Hillary's bullshit whines of sexism
This morning, on the Today Show, 1984's Vice Presidential candidate and Hillary Clinton campaign surrogate Geraldine Ferraro pulled the trigger and cynically played the unfortunate but inevitable "gender card" -- she called Barack Obama "sexist." In March 2008 she groused that "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." She offended so many of us who are gender- and color-blind in this election cycle that she was rightly called on the carpet for her inane comments and removed from Clinton's "official" campaign functions.
Her comments today are no less shocking. When queried if misogyny was to blame for Clinton's defeat after a historically close and contentious campaign, she implored viewers that "it wasn't so much they were referring to gender, it was the way they attacked her. What happened in this race is every time you raised the issue, you're accused of playing the gender card. Latent sexism has been around in this country for a long time, in this campaign it was patent."
Ms. Ferraro needs a good long look in the mirror -- sexism cuts both ways and Hillary's continued presence in this campaign is, in and of itself, a manipulation of the very concept of sexism.
People throughout the U.S. and abroad are scratching their collective heads wondering why Hillary is still "going all the way to Denver" when the delegate campaign mathematics ate her for lunch weeks ago.
For all her unfathomable tenacity against NO odds, she's been curiously dubbed by political talking heads as "The Terminator", the "Energizer Bunny" and compared to Glenn Close in the film Fatal Attraction. Those pundits owe apologies to Mr. Schwarzenegger, Ms. Close and the cute pink bunny. Why?
Because the elephant in the room is a simple concept -- the Clintons' flaunting of Obama's clear and decisive victory defines nothing short of unadulterated sexism. Before this unanticipated hot-button word makes you utter "what the f---?" and turn off your brain(s), hear me out. Hillary, we'll assume, has no Y chromosome. Then how could the Clintons be playing the "gender" card and be labeled as sexists?
I know that this may seem unfathomable to you, so you'll have to temporarily suspend the logic of "conventional wisdom." A woman working the "gender card?" Say it ain't so.
Notwithstanding Bill's "racist" statements about Jesse Jackson after Obama won the South Carolina primary and their operatives' deliberate fanning of the Jeremiah Wright and "Muslim" rumor flames, there's a real reverse discriminatory narrative here that is plainly evident if you step back from the minutiae of the tiresome rhetoric and look at the whole "forest" for a moment.
Imagine if Super Tuesday had gone the way Mark Penn, Terry McAuliffe, Howard Wolfson, Patty Solis Doyle and the rest of Clinton's doomed advisors had assumed it would. Their "inevitable" candidate Hillary would have been coronated and she would have steamrolled herself into the Democratic Presidential nomination with a formidable, decades-old, well-branded, supremely-well-connected political machine and a massive bankroll to ensure that she was (like the Titanic) "unsinkable." Then she would have called on Democratic Party leaders to clear the decks for her and throw the other Democratic contenders overboard. All of them. White, black, male, female, gay, straight or transgender.
If the shoe was on the other foot, they Party leaders would no sooner tolerate an unelectable man (of any color) running around, dissing Hillary and messing with their perfectly-oiled campaign at this stage than Bill would have tolerated oatmeal for breakfast when offered a McDonald's Egg McMuffin®.
Obama is a young, brilliant, charismatic statesman with a moving personal narrative. a picture-perfect family, a stunningly effective campaign team whose strategists ran a brave, hard-fought campaign against spectacular odds and beat the most powerful Democratic political machine of the past two decades.
Obama is gutsy, articulate, elegant, unflappable and full of ideas and energy. Everything that the Clintons secretly believe is their personal bailiwick. He MUST, Clinton insiders say, be stopped at all costs, even if she takes herself and the Democratic Party down with her.
The Clintons' now plaintive cries of "it's not over by a long shot", "every state deserves a voice" and "we're doing this for the good of the party" are insulting. The Clintons do everything and anything for one purpose only -- to keep a Clinton in power.
And they are not going to let someone less seasoned take what is "rightfully theirs." He hasn't yet "paid his dues." It's "not his time." She did her time as an educated and ambitious woman at "the back of the bus." He should sit quietly in the rear and respect the nice lady up front.
Lest you think my sexism label is misapplied, let me suggest that this behavior is not just your typical Clintonian gall or bravado. Politics is too nasty a contact sport to tolerate such petulance, especially when the stakes are so high. It is a highly calculated gamble by Hillary that no one will call her on the reverse discrimination of her own overt sexism.
Do you really believe that, if the tables were turned, the Democratic elite and the Clintons would tolerate a man who is mathematically unelectable pulling out the Karl Rove playbook and playing the "gender" card? Or dismissing Hillary's ability to be "Commander in Chief on Day One?" Or brazenly suggesting that THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE (the ancient, mealy-mouthed, flip-flopping, newly-evangelical "maverick" John McBush) would be a better person to answer that ringing phone at 3 AM?
Quite simply and sadly, this tragic passion play is an exercise of deeply ingrained Democratic "wussiness" and sexism.
The Democrats are so afraid of fracturing the party more deeply than the destructive Mrs. Clinton has already done (quite deliberately and expertly, I might add) and alienating the women, minorities and Independents that the Party needs to win the general election that they have stood on the sidelines like scared schoolchildren who are afraid to tell the class bully that the game is over and that she lost.
If Hillary were a man -- for example, a terrific populist candidate like John Edwards -- she would have been long gone. Then why is this woman still on the stump with the blessings of her own political party, her supporters and the media pundits who are witnessing this train wreck in slow motion?
By their deliberate inertia, the Democratic elite are allowing Hillary to continue to smear the Party's democratically-elected candidate and to undermine his position in the general election. So Obama will lose and she can run again in 2012? So she can say "I told you so about the electability of a candidate of color?" So the Clintons' political "brand" is preserved and enshrined as a team of "gritty fighters" that they would like as their legacy? Maybe.
Or could it be that SHE'S playing the gender card and she knows that no one will touch her because of legitimate fears of being labeled (by the outspoken but out-of-touch Geraldine Ferraro and her minions) as "misogynist."
One thing is clear. This is not just about sour grapes. No one in the Democratic Party - especially in this unique political climate of inevitable change from disastrous Republican rule -- would tolerate this level of disrespect and peevishness from a loser if it were anyone other than a Clinton.
But the fact is that she IS being tolerated, even excused for this inexcusable behavior. And I need not point out the obvious in this historic election year except for the fact that it bespeaks the aforementioned "elephant in the room" -- that she's the first woman of any color to get this far and he's the first black man to have a clear shot at the Presidency.
The implied sexism of Hillary's continued presence in this campaign is self-evident. And she's working it for every last ounce of political capital. Her "run to Denver" implies that the people of the United States are not ready to throw a woman overboard or inaugurate a black man as President. But sexism - like racism -- is a word (or concept) that dare not speak its name. It's too dangerous. Too uncomfortable. Too politically incorrect. Except when it's the truth.
Where are the thoughtful, outspoken and outraged feminists of this country - including the disappointed crowd who ardently supported Hillary's brave campaign yet still love this country - to tell her that enough is enough. Why don't these women point out that Ferraro's playing of the "gender card" is as insulting to the electorate as it is to her highly qualified but short-on-delegates candidate? Why are they not incensed that we will not and cannot allow one person's ego to drag down the entire party down for one person's future political ambitions?
We all know that this psychodrama is precisely what Republican strategists' wet dreams are made of -- a never-ending, self-immolating Democratic campaign that will forever validate the notion that the Democrats will continue to be the champions of "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."
Senator Obama's Democratic Presidential campaign victory is no "fairy tale." Mrs. Clinton's continued defense of her presence on the national electoral stage is.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
"Justices" just in time to disenfranchise those who would get rid of Billary
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter-identification law on Monday, declaring that a requirement to produce photo identification is not unconstitutional and that the state has a “valid interest” in improving election procedures as well as deterring fraud.
In a 6-to-3 ruling in one of the most awaited election-law cases in years, the court rejected arguments that Indiana’s law imposes unjustified burdens on people who are old, poor or members of minority groups and less likely to have driver’s licenses or other acceptable forms of identification. Because Indiana’s law is considered the strictest in the country, similar laws in the other 20 or so states that have photo-identification rules would appear to have a good chance of surviving scrutiny.
The ruling, coming just eight days before the Indiana primary and at the height of a presidential election campaign, upheld rulings by a Federal District Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which had thrown out challenges to the 2005 law.
Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced the judgment of the court and wrote an opinion in which Chief John G. Roberts Jr. and Anthony M. Kennedy joined, alluded to — and brushed aside — complaints that the law benefits Republicans and works against Democrats, whose ranks are more likely to include poor people or those in minority groups.
The justifications for the law “should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators,” Justice Stevens wrote.
Justice Stevens and the two court members who joined him found that the Democrats and civil rights groups who attacked the law, seeking a declaration that it was unconstitutional on its face, had failed to meet the heavy burden required for such a “facial challenge” to prevail.
Perhaps, they suggested, the outcome could be different in another voter-rights case, one in which a plaintiff could show that his or her rights had been violated. That was the approach suggested by the Bush administration, whose solicitor general, Paul D. Clement, urged the court to wait for a lawsuit brought by someone was actually barred by the statute from casting a ballot.
Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. concurred in the judgment of the court, but went further in rejecting the plaintiffs’ challenge. In an opinion by Justice Scalia, the three justices said, “The law should be upheld because its overall burden is minimal and justified.”
Indiana’s law allows voters who lack photo identification to cast a provisional ballot, then appear at their county courthouse within 10 days to show identification. Chief Justice Roberts, who grew up in Indiana, said during the argument of the case in January that such requirements are not onerous. The law also makes provisions for people in nursing homes.
Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer dissented. Justice Souter, in an opinion joined by Justice Ginsburg, said the Indiana law, which calls for a government-issued photo identification, like a driver’s license or passport, “threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting rights of tens of thousands of the state’s citizens.”
Some Democrats have complained that those who succeeded in passing the law and fought on its behalf were citing problems that did not exist, because prosecutions for impersonating a registered voter are exceedingly rare, or non-existent. The real motivation of those behind the law was to hamper Democrats, those foes of the law have argued.
“This decision is a body blow to what America stands for — equal access to the polls,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who leads the Democrats’ Senate election efforts. Other Democrats offered similar expressions of dismay. Ken Falk, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which brought the case, told The Associated Press that he was “extremely disappointed.”
But Brian C. Bosma, who was speaker of the Indiana House when the law was enacted and is now the House’s Republican leader, dismissed the Democrats’ complaints. “This is only a burden for those who want to vote more than once,” Mr. Bosma said in a telephone interview from Indianapolis. “It protects everyone.”
When the case was argued before the Supreme Court in January, there was considerable back-and-forth over how much of a burden the Indiana law could be in an age when an overwhelming majority of people old enough to vote also possess a driver’s license or other form of photo identification.
There was also discussion over how much voter fraud really exists, with some suggestions that the reason it has apparently never been prosecuted in Indiana is because those who commit fraud are good at it.
But, as Justice Stevens noted, there have been flagrant examples of voter fraud in American history. He cited the 1868 New York City elections, in which a local tough who worked for Tammany’s William (Boss) Tweed explained why he liked voters to have whiskers: “When you’ve voted ’em with their whiskers on, you take ’em to a barber and scrape off the chin fringe. Then you vote ’em again with the side lilacs and a mustache. Then to a barber again, off comes the sides and you vote ’em a third time with the mustache. If that ain’t enough and the box can stand a few more ballots, clean off the mustache and vote ’em plain face.”
In 2004, Justice Stevens noted in a footnote, the hotly contested gubernatorial election in Washington State produced an investigation that turned up 19 “ghost voters” and at least one confirmed instance of voter fraud. And while Justice Stevens did not mention the elections in the career of Lyndon B. Johnson, biographers of the late president have suggested that he won at least one election in Texas in the 1940’s through ballot box-stuffing — and lost at least one the same way.
On the other hand, there is no dispute that some voting laws enacted decades ago, especially in the South, were not intended to prevent fraud but rather to keep blacks from voting.
Indiana usually goes Republican in presidential elections. Republicans control the State Senate, while Democrats hold a narrow advantage in the State House. The governor, Mitch Daniels, is a Republican. When the 2005 law was passed, Republicans controlled both houses and were unanimously behind the law — while Democrats were unanimously opposed.
Lawyers who challenged the case cited the experience of one would-be Indiana voter, Valerie Williams, who was turned away from the polling place in November 2006 by officials who told her that a telephone bill, a Social Security letter with her address and an expired driver’s license were no longer sufficient.
“Of course, I threw a fit,” she said in a January interview with The New York Times, recalling how she cast a provisional ballot which was never counted. Ms. Williams, in her early 60’s, is black — and is a Republican.