Tag: Politics

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Paul Krugman: The War on Warren

Last week, at a House hearing on financial institutions and consumer credit, Republicans lined up to grill and attack Elizabeth Warren, the law professor and bankruptcy expert who is in charge of setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Ostensibly, they believed that Ms. Warren had overstepped her legal authority by helping state attorneys general put together a proposed settlement with mortgage servicers, which are charged with a number of abuses.

But the accusations made no sense. Since when is it illegal for a federal official to talk with state officials, giving them the benefit of her expertise? Anyway, everyone knew that the real purpose of the attack on Ms. Warren was to ensure that neither she nor anyone with similar views ends up actually protecting consumers.

Pepe Escobar: The Club Med War

It would be really uplifting to imagine United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 on Thursday was voted just to support the beleaguered anti-Muammar Gaddafi movement with a no-fly zone, logistics, food, humanitarian aid and weapons. That would be the proof that the “international community” really “stands with the Libyan people in their quest for their universal human rights”, in the words of United States ambassador to the UN Susan Rice.

Yet maybe there’s more to doing the right (moral) thing. History may register that the real tipping point was this past Tuesday when, in an interview to German TV, the African king of kings made sure that Western corporations – unless they are German (because the country was against a no-fly zone) – can kiss goodbye to Libya’s energy bonanza. Gaddafi explicitly said, “We do not trust their firms, they have conspired against us … Our oil contracts are going to Russian, Chinese and Indian firms.” In other words: BRICS member countries.

John Nichols: Wars Should Be Debated and Declared by Congress, Not Merely Launched by Presidents

The grotesque extremes to which Muammar Gaddafi has gone to threaten the people of Libya – and to act on those threats – have left the self-proclaimed “king of kings” with few defenders in northern Africa, the Middle East or the international community.

Even among frequent critics of U.S. interventions abroad, there is disgust with Gaddafi, and with the palpable disdain he has expressed for the legitimate aspirations of his own people.

The circumstance is made easier by the fact that the bombing of Libya by U.S. and allied planes has been carried out under the auspices of the United Nations. And with his words and his initial reluctance with regard to taking military action, President Obama has seemed to avoid many of the excesses of his predecessors.

Yet, now the headline on CNN reads “Libya War.”

This war, like so many before it, has neither been debated nor declared by the Congress of the United States.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour:Ms. Amanpour’s guests will be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, French ambassador to the United Nations Gérard Araud and former Libyan ambassador to the United States Ali Suleiman Aujali who recently resigned from his post and renounced the Gadhafi regime. Also, Energy Secretary Steven Chu will discuss the very latest from the nuclear disaster at Fukushima nuclear reactor complex.

At the roundtable with George Will, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, former ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee Jane Harman and noted author Robin Wright of the U.S. Institute of Peace will debate the military intervention to stop Gadhafi.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer:The latest on the Libya crisis, and the disaster in Japan with guests Admiral Mike Mullen, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN).

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent, Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic Senior Editor, Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor and Norah O’Donnell, MSNBC Chief Washington Correspondent. They will discuss these questions:

Is President Obama failing to lead?

Could Republican “red hots” spoil the party?

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Again, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen along with Senate Armed Services Committee, Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) discussing Libya.

At the roundtable will be NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell, The New York Times’ Helene Cooper, The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, and The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel weighing in on Japan and Libya.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Making those rounds today, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, then, former CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon (Ret.) and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers (Ret.) and as a finally, Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman to discuss Libya.

Plus, an update on Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant and the future of nuclear energy in the United States with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and two nuclear experts.

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: Fareed will also be discussing the Japan crisis and the “atomic age”. Instead of Libya, he will also be examining Pakistan with “Pakistan’s best and bravest reporter,” Ahmed Rashid, to find out just how unstable this nuclear nation is becoming.  

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

David Sirota: Six Sadistic Proposals From State Government

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said that states are the “laboratories of democracy.” Oft repeated over time, the aphorism has helped impart legitimacy to the rough and tumble of state lawmaking. We’ve heard “laboratory” and we’ve imagined staid scientists in white coats rigorously testing forward-thinking theories of societal advancement.

It’s certainly a reassuring picture-but there is a darker side of the metaphor. States are indeed laboratories. The problem is that today, those laboratories are increasingly run by mad scientists.

We’re not talking about the usual Dr. Frankensteins trying to bring alive new corporate giveaways through harebrained cuts to social services (though there are those, too). We’re talking about true legislative sadists looking to go medieval on America. Behold just six of the most telling examples.

Eric Boehlert: Note to NPR: Fight Back

Why Fox News Will Keep Bullying NPR Until They Stand Up and Push Back

In the wake of the James O’Keefe smear campaign against NPR, which arrived in the form of dishonestly edited undercover tapes (does O’Keefe know any other form?), public radio host Ira Glass expressed dismay that nobody was “fighting back” against the right-wing attacks. “I find it completely annoying, and I don’t understand it,” said Glass.

Instead of fighting back against the right-wing attacks led by Fox News, NPR hit the panic button last week. It prematurely condemned a colleague and got busy “rolling bodies out the back of the truck,” as the New York Times’ David Carr put it, referencing the public sacking of CEO Vivian Schiller and senior fundraiser Ron Schiller, who was featured in the O’Keefe tapes. Both were made sacrificial lambs for the O’Keefe stings; lambs that were sacrificed before the full truth about theunethical tapes were revealed.

Note to NPR: If you don’t stand up, the bullying is never going to stop.

Robert Naiman: The UN Security Council Has Not Authorized Regime Change in Libya

It’s a great thing that the Obama administration has resisted calls for unilateral US military action in Libya, and instead is working through the United Nations Security Council, as it is required to do by the United Nations Charter.

Now, the administration needs to follow through on this commitment to international law by ensuring that foreign military intervention remains within the four corners of what the UN Security Council has approved. If it does not, and instead Western powers take the view that we now have a blank check to do whatever we want, the certain consequence will be that it will be much more difficult to achieve Security Council action in a similar situation in the future, and those who complain that the Security Council is too cautious will have only themselves to blame.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Paul Krugman: The Forgotten Millions

More than three years after we entered the worst economic slump since the 1930s, a strange and disturbing thing has happened to our political discourse: Washington has lost interest in the unemployed.

Jobs do get mentioned now and then – and a few political figures, notably Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, are still trying to get some kind of action. But no jobs bills have been introduced in Congress, no job-creation plans have been advanced by the White House and all the policy focus seems to be on spending cuts.

So one-sixth of America’s workers – all those who can’t find any job or are stuck with part-time work when they want a full-time job – have, in effect, been abandoned.

Robert Reich: As the Global Economy Trembles, Our Nation’s Capital Fiddles

Why isn’t Washington responding?

The world’s third largest economy suffers a giant earthquake, tsunami, and radiation dangers. A civil war in Libya and tumult in the Middle East cause crude-oil prices to climb. Poor harvests around the world make food prices soar.

All this means higher prices. American consumers, still reeling from job losses and wage cuts, will be hit hard. (Wholesale food prices surged almost 4 percent in February, the largest upward spike in more than a quarter century.)

Even before these global shocks the U.S. recovery was fragile. Consumer confidence is at a five-month low. Housing prices continue to drop. More than 14 million Americans remain jobless, and the ratio of employed to our total population is at an almost unprecedented low.

Lisa Hajjar: Pvt Manning proves ‘slippery slope’

Treatment of the US soldier shows there is a fine line between torture of enemy combatants and American citizens.

Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking a massive trove of classified material to WikiLeaks, has been imprisoned since May 2010. The treatment to which he has been subjected, including protracted isolation, systematic humiliations and routinised sleep deprivation, got more extreme last week when the commander of the brig at Quantico, Virginia, imposed on him a regime of forced nakedness at night and during an inspection of his cell every morning until his clothing is returned.

These types of abusive tactics were authorised by the Bush administration for use on foreign detainees captured in the war on terror, on the theory that causing “debilitation, disorientation and dread” would produce “learned helplessness” and make them more susceptible and responsive to interrogators’ questioning.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Robert Sheer: No Nukes Is Good Nukes

When it comes to the safety of nuclear power plants, I am biased. And I’ll bet that if President Barack Obama had been with me on that trip to Chernobyl 24 years ago he wouldn’t be as sanguine about the future of nuclear power as he was Tuesday in an interview with a Pittsburgh television station: “Obviously, all energy sources have their downside. I mean, we saw that with the Gulf spill last summer.”

Sorry, Mr. President, but there is a dimension of fear properly associated with the word nuclear that is not matched by any oil spill.

Even 11 months after what has become known simply as “Chernobyl” I sensed a terror of the darkest unknown as I donned the requisite protective gear and checked Geiger counter readings before entering the surviving turbine room adjoining plant No. 4, where the explosion had occurred.  

John Nichols: Wisconsin Senators “Sell Out” to Corporate Interests as DC Crowds Pick Up the Chant: “Recall!”

Wisconsin Republican state Senators, fresh from passing draconian anti-labor and privatization legislation, jetted into Washington, D.C., Wednesday night to collect tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from the one constuency group that approves of what Governor Scott Walker and his GOP allies are doing: corporate lobbyists.

But if Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Joint Finance Committee co-chair Alberta Darling thought they could get away from the mounting campaign to remove Republican state senators and shift control of the chamber to the Democrats, creating a check and balance on Walker, they were mistaken.

Outside the offices of the BGR Group, “B” stands for Barbour, as in Mississippi Governor and potential GOP presidential candidate Haley, as many as 1,000 workers, students, union activists and allies filled the streets of downtown Washington. Many surged into the building where the senators met with lobbyists who paid as much a $5,000 to “host” the gathering to thank the Wisconsin Republicans.

They DC protesters chanted many of the same unions slogans that have been heard at mass protests in Wisconsin. And they picked up a political slogan as well: “Recall!”

Eartha Jane Melzer : Michigan’s ‘Emergency Manager Law’ Epitomizes State-Level ‘Shock Doctrine’

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to get Emergency Manager powers this week

Public workers in Michigan lost job security yesterday as the state House signed off on a bill that allows the governor to appoint people to take over financially troubled local governments and schools and cancel labor contracts.

Less than two months after Gov. Rick Snyder asked the Legislature to expand the state’s ability to intervene in communities facing budget problems, the Republican-controlled House and Senate have finalized a bill that gives unprecedented power to appointed Emergency Managers.

The Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act creates a range of triggers for state involvement in local communities and allows the governor to appoint managers to fire local elected officials, break labor agreements, suspend collective bargaining rights for five years, order millage elections, take over pension funds and even dissolve local governments.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Ladies’ Day. Gentlemen are below the fold

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Conservative Zealotry vs. Economic Reality

One thing about the current generation of conservatives: Getting mugged by reality hasn’t changed the way they look at the world. We’ve just come through a calamitous financial collapse – caused by reckless Wall Street gambling and toothless watchdogs – that triggered a Great Recession and doubled the U.S. national debt. The collapse is the greatest cause of large deficits, but conservatives act as if the deficits caused the collapse.

A recent stop in London revealed that this isn’t just a Tea Party phenomenon. There, the new Tory-dominated coalition led by David Cameron looks and sounds like a sprightlier offshoot of House Speaker John Boehner’s troops. Cameron has set out on a forced march for fiscal retrenchment, imposing deep and immediate spending cuts (and tax increases) to bring deficits down in Britain. This plan is sold with a jaunty recital of conservative gospel: The economy has begun to recover, and action on deficit reduction will boost the confidence of business and consumers. The resulting revival, it is argued, will generate more than enough private-sector jobs to make up for those lost in the public sector.

Amy Goodman: Warning to the World

A reporter, describing the devastation of one city in Japan, wrote: “It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts … as a warning to the world.” The reporter was Wilfred Burchett, writing from Hiroshima, Japan, on Sept. 5, 1945. Burchett was the first Western reporter to make it to Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped there. He reported on the strange illness that continued to kill people, even a full month after that first, dreadful use of nuclear weapons against humans. His words could well describe the scenes of annihilation in northeastern Japan today. Given the worsening catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, his grave warning to the world remains all too relevant.

Sharon Lerner: Republicans Push the Mississippi Model

If the proposed cuts to birth control get carries out, they could dramatically increase the birthrate.

As the Guttmacher Institute points out publicly funded planning services now

“prevent almost two million unintended pregnancies each year, which would result in 810,000 unintended pregnancies and 810,000 abortions. Without these services the unintended number of pregnancies and abortions among poor women in the United Stats would nearly double, and the number of unintended pregnancies in the nation as a whole would be nearly two thirds higher.”

But, as anyone who’s watched the Nature Channel can tell you, pregnancy is only the beginning of the story.

So what will happen to the thousands of new people who would result from the absence of publicly funded family planning services if the House gets its way?

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

New York Times Editorial: The Abuse of Private Manning

Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been imprisoned for nine months on charges of handing government files to WikiLeaks, has not even been tried let alone convicted. Yet the military has been treating him abusively, in a way that conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects. Inexplicably, it appears to have President Obama’s support to do so.

snip

Far more troubling is why President Obama, who has forcefully denounced prisoner abuse, is condoning this treatment. Last week, at a news conference, he said the Pentagon had assured him that the terms of the private’s confinement “are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards.” He said he could not go into details, but details are precisely what is needed to explain and correct an abuse that should never have begun.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Who’s Afraid of Elizabeth Warren?

The attacks on Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) just keep coming, fast and furious, facts be damned.

The CFPB will be “powerful, hard-nosed and unaccountable,” warns Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard.   The agency “will decide its own budget,” its “rulings can’t be vetoed,” and it “will be almost impossible to challenge” in court.

“Who in the world would consider it appropriate to have one person appointed to set the rules for the entire financial industry?” wonders Senator Bob Corker.

The Wall Street Journal describes Warren’s “ideological agenda that banks are the villains of the credit crisis while distributing cash to homeowners who will presumably be grateful on Election Day 2012.”

Jim Hightower: The Corporate-GOP Attack on America’s Middle Class

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s autocratic attempt to abrogate the democratic right of public employees to bargain with their governmental bosses is not wearing well with the public. Recent polls show that a mere one-third of Wisconsinites favor his blatantly political power play, and that if he had told voters in the last year’s election that he intended to do this, he would’ve lost.

After only one month in office, Walker’s approval rating has plummeted. He’s become a national poster boy for right-wing anti-union extremism–so out of step that even democracy fighters in Egypt are jeering him.

Yet, Walker is but one of a flock of far-right, corporate-crested Republican governors and Congress critters who’re waging an all-out class war on unionized workers. It’s a shameful effort to bust the wage structure and legal protections that support America’s already endangered middle class.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Daniel Ellsberg: This shameful abuse of Bradley Manning

The WikiLeaks suspect’s mistreatment amounts to torture. Either President Obama knows this or he should make it his business

President Obama tells us that he’s asked the Pentagon whether the conditions of confinement of Bradley Manning, the soldier charged with leaking state secrets, “are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are.”

If Obama believes that, he’ll believe anything. I would hope he would know better than to ask the perpetrators whether they’ve been behaving appropriately. I can just hear President Nixon saying to a press conference the same thing: “I was assured by the the White House Plumbers that their burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s doctor in Los Angeles was appropriate and met basic standards.”

E.J. Dionne, Jr.: The High Cost of a Broken Metaphor

“We’re broke.”

You can practically break a search engine if you start looking around the Internet for those words. They’re used repeatedly with reference to our local, state and federal governments, almost always to make a case for slashing programs-and, lately, to go after public-employee unions. The phrase is designed to create a sense of crisis that justifies rapid and radical actions before citizens have a chance to debate the consequences.

Just one problem: We’re not broke. Yes, nearly all levels of government face fiscal problems because of the economic downturn. But there is no crisis. There are many different paths open to fixing public budgets. And we will come up with wiser and more sustainable solutions if we approach fiscal problems calmly, realizing that we’re still a very rich country, and that the wealthiest among us are doing exceptionally well.

Paul Krugman: Another Inside Job

Count me among those who were glad to see the documentary “Inside Job” win an Oscar. The film reminded us that the financial crisis of 2008, whose aftereffects are still blighting the lives of millions of Americans, didn’t just happen – it was made possible by bad behavior on the part of bankers, regulators and, yes, economists.

What the film didn’t point out, however, is that the crisis has spawned a whole new set of abuses, many of them illegal as well as immoral. And leading political figures are, at long last, showing some outrage. Unfortunately, this outrage is directed, not at banking abuses, but at those trying to hold banks accountable for these abuses.

The immediate flashpoint is a proposed settlement between state attorneys general and the mortgage servicing industry. That settlement is a “shakedown,” says Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. The money banks would be required to allot to mortgage modification would be “extorted,” declares The Wall Street Journal. And the bankers themselves warn that any action against them would place economic recovery at risk.

All of which goes to confirm that the rich are different from you and me: when they break the law, it’s the prosecutors who find themselves on trial.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Ms. Amanpour will be reporting live from Japan.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Chairman, Homeland Security Committee and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Homeland Security Committee.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent, David Ignatius, The Washington Post

Columnist, David Brooks, The New York Times Columnist and Kelly O’Donnell, NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent who will discuss these questions:

Can Any GOP Candidate Beat President Obama At His Own Game of Hope?

Will Republicans Successfully Cut Off Funds For PBS and NPR?

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Mike Todd, NBC’s White House correspondent will be hosting for Mr. Gregory this week. The guests will be Japan’s Ambassador to the US, Ichiro  Fujisaki to discuss the disaster in Japan, also, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniel and Sen Chuck Schumer, (D-NY).

At the roundtable the panel will be: Political reporter for The Washington Post, Dan Balz, and host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Michele Norris who will be joined by nuclear reactor expert, Michael Norris

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) will discuss the break down a budget battle that seems no closer to resolution than it did at the last deadline two weeks ago with up dates on the Japan disaster.

Fareed Zakaris:GPS: According to Fareed’s Tweets, there will be discussion about the situation in Libya with experts on the region

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Paul Krugman: Dumbing Deficits Down

Like anyone who writes regularly about what passes for economic and fiscal debate in American politics, I’ve developed a strong tolerance for nonsense. After all, if I got upset every time powerful people were illogical and/or dishonest, I’d spend every waking hour in a state of raging despair.

Yet there are still moments when I find myself saying, “They can’t really be that stupid,” or maybe, “They can’t really think the rest of us are that stupid.” And I had one of those moments reading about a recent conference on national health policy, which featured a bipartisan dialogue among Congressional staffers.

According to a column in Kaiser Health News, Republican staffers jeered at any and all proposals to use Medicare and Medicaid funds better. Spending money on prevention was no more than a “slush fund.” Research on innovation was “an oxymoron.” And there was no reason to pay for “so-called effectiveness research.”

Bob Herbert: The Master Key

The United States is not racked with the turmoil that is shaking the Arab world, or the tragic devastation that has hit Japan. We are not in a state of emergency. We’re in a moment when it is possible to look thoughtfully at the American landscape and take rational steps to ensure a better, more sustainable future.

But we’re not doing that. The big news out of Washington this week was Representative Peter King’s Muslim witch hunt. Policy makers at all levels of government are talking austerity – sometimes sensibly, but most often mindlessly. Creative ideas regarding energy, education, jobs and so forth have trouble even getting a hearing.

Robert Reich Emulating Clinton’s ‘Move to the Right’ Perilous for Obama

Why Obama Isn’t Fighting the Budget Battle

In the next week the action moves from Wisconsin to Washington, where the deadline looms for a possible government shutdown over the federal budget. President Obama has to take a more direct and personal role in that budget battle  – both for the economy’s sake and for the sake of his reelection. But will he? Don’t count on it.

Worried congressional Democrats say the President needs to use his bully pulpit to counter defections in Democatic ranks, such as the ten Democrats and one allied Independent who on Wednesday voted against a Senate leadership plan to cut $6.2 billion from the federal budget over the rest of fiscal year 2011. They want Obama to grab the initiative and push a plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies and for companies that move manufacturing facilities out of the country, and a proposal for a surtax on millionaires.

Most importantly, they’re worried the President’s absence from the debate will result in Republicans winning large budget cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year – large enough to imperil the fragile recovery.

But Obama won’t actively fight the budget battle if the current White House view of how he wins in 2012 continues to prevail.