Tag: Politics

Where is the money to finance the campaign ads coming from to influence Americans elections? The campaign finance system is broken and no one wants to fix it.

“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.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Christiane Amanpour goes on the trail to Connecticut this week with two Sunday exclusives — Senate candidates Republican Linda McMahon and Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf comes to “This Week” for an exclusive interview, shares his views on the growing crisis between the United States and a critical ally, and discusses his return to politics. Can the Islamic republic win the war against extremism? Can al Qaeda and the Taliban be defeated? Will Pakistan’s nuclear weapons be kept in safe hands?

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Joining Mr. Schieffer on Sunday will be David Axelrod, White House Senior Adviser and Ed Gillespie, Chairman of the Republican State Leadership Committee and Former Chair of the Republican National Committee

The Chris Matthews Show: This Sunday on Mr. Matthews’ round table forum Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Bob Woodward, The Washington Post Associate Editor, David Brooks, The New York Times Columnist and Helene Cooper, The New York Times

White House Correspondent. They will discuss these questions:

Is Obama’s National Security Team at war?

What’s the evidence Hillary Clinton might bump Joe Biden?

Are Voters Set to Elect Some Extremists to the Senate?

Meet the Press with David Gregory: David Gregory moderates the first showdown between the major party candidates vying for the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois: State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D) vs. Rep. Mark Kirk (R). Mr. Gregory will be joined by Joe Klein, a columnist for Time Magazine and Peggy Noonan, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, who will talk about the coming election and what voters greatest concerns

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: It’s an all-exclusive Sunday! As the midterm elections approach, we talk politics with two House leaders. First, we sit down with Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, and then Republican Chief Deputy Whip Kevin McCarthy of California joins us for his rebuttal. We then continue our discussion of the midterms by breaking down the numbers with pollsters Celinda Lake and Whit Ayres. Finally, we look at the landscape of current terror threats worldwide with the man who led the CIA under President George W. Bush, Retired General Michael Hayden.

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: This week on GPS: Fareed’s been saying for years that we need to talk to the Taliban. And now the Afghan government is in supposedly “secret” negotiations with them. Will this be the path to peace for Afghanistan? Fareed’s take: maybe, but don’t expect any miracles.

Then, Americans are gearing up to go the polls. The Tea Party is causing much tumult in the mid-term elections. But just what IS the Tea Party all about? And just what political tradition is it “steeped” in? A GPS panel of great historians and thinkers puts it in all context.

And if you think unemployment in the U.S. is bad then you won’t believe what is going on in South Africa. The World Cup was its coming out party but now that the party is over, will rampant unemployment and massive labor strikes cripple the country? And just who is to blame?

Next up, America’s “car czar”, Steven Rattner, with a behind the scenes look at the bailout of the automotive industry and the goings-on inside the White House. Were the car companies really worth saving at all?

And finally a last look at a politician topping the pop charts. You’ll be surprised to see who it is.

“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.

Eugene Robinson: Needed: Competition for Black Votes

This has been such an unpredictable political year that it’s hard to have confidence in any of the forecasts for November. How unpredictable? Well, I’d like to meet the pundit or prognosticator who imagined that a major-party candidate for the U.S. Senate would begin a campaign ad by declaring, “I’m not a witch.”

Christine O’Donnell’s sorcery problem aside, there’s one thing I can say with confidence about next month’s midterm election: African-Americans will vote overwhelmingly for Democratic Party candidates at every level. This is perfectly rational political behavior-but in many ways it’s a shame.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m firmly convinced that the progressive agenda championed by the Democrats is much better for African-Americans, and for the nation as a whole, than the conservative agenda favored by Republicans. But I also believe that in politics, as in business, competition is good. Monopolies inevitably take their customers for granted.

David Sirota: Follow Wyoming on Fracking Regs

To review: Wyoming is as politically red and pro-fossil-fuel a place as exists in America. Nicknamed the “Cowboy State” for its hostility to authority, the square swath of rangeland most recently made headlines when its tax department temporarily suspended levies at gun shows for fear of inciting an armed insurrection. The derrick-scarred home of oilman Dick Cheney, the state emits more carbon emissions per capita than any other, and is as close as our country gets to an industry-owned energy colony.

So, to put it mildly, Wyoming is not known for its activist government or its embrace of green policies.

But that changed last month when Wyoming officials enacted first-in-the-nation regulations forcing energy companies to disclose the compounds they use in a drilling technique called “fracking.”

From an ecological standpoint, fracking is inherently risky. Looking to pulverize gas-trapping subterranean rock, drillers inject poisonous solvents into the ground-and often right near groundwater supplies. That raises the prospect of toxins leaking into drinking water-a frightening possibility that prompted Wyoming’s regulatory move. Indeed, state officials acted after learning that various local water sources were contaminated by carcinogens linked to fracking.

They all got theirs from government grants, programs or jobs and many of their family members receive benefits like Medicare and Social Security. Now, if elected these Republicans want to eliminate, cut and decimate all the very programs that gave them a start.

Michele Bachmann did vote to protect farm subsidies for wealthy recipients

Despite Joe Miller Calling Federal Aid Unconstitutional, His Wife Received Unemployment Benefits

Ron Johnson’s Latest Hypocrisy on Government Assistance: His Own Job Was Created by a Government Grant

Sharron Angle And Her Husband Receive Government Health Care.

Hypocrites that want to turn the US into a third world country with the rich and the poor and let the banks, financial industry and corporations run the show with little or no oversight.

“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.

Robert Reich: The Secret Big-Money Takeover of America

Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before — and they’re doing it behind closed doors.

Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multimillionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.

No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it’s all secret.

But you can safely assume its purpose is not to help America’s stranded middle class, working class, and poor. It’s to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street — already more powerful than since the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators.

Paul Krugman: The End of the Tunnel

The Erie Canal. Hoover Dam. The Interstate Highway System. Visionary public projects are part of the American tradition, and have been a major driver of our economic development.

And right now, by any rational calculation, would be an especially good time to improve the nation’s infrastructure. We have the need: our roads, our rail lines, our water and sewer systems are antiquated and increasingly inadequate. We have the resources: a million-and-a-half construction workers are sitting idle, and putting them to work would help the economy as a whole recover from its slump. And the price is right: with interest rates on federal debt at near-record lows, there has never been a better time to borrow for long-term investment.

But American politics these days is anything but rational. Republicans bitterly opposed even the modest infrastructure spending contained in the Obama stimulus plan. And, on Thursday, Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, canceled America’s most important current public works project, the long-planned and much-needed second rail tunnel under the Hudson River.

Mike Lux: Obama Comes Through on Foreclosure Issue: What’s Next?

When the notarization on foreclosures issue suddenly flared up over the last 24 hours, my heart sank. Just as regular homeowners were starting to get some legal traction to fight back against fraud and predatory lending by big banks, it seemed, some bank lobbyist had managed to sneak something through in the dead of night that would screw people over again. It was Washington at its worst: the bank lobbyists in control, and Congress asleep at the wheel.

But then, that most delightful and rare of Washington moments happened: the system worked. Consumer advocates started raising hell on the blogs and in traditional media, the White House started looking more closely at the issue, and literally within a matter of hours, Obama announced that he was not going to sign the bill. No long, painful, drawn out internal debate at 1600 Pennsylvania. No twisting round trying to split the middle on the issue. As soon as the issue was raised, the White House team focused on it, and made the right decision quickly. Elizabeth Warren, the new Assistant to the President and Treasury Secretary, weighed in. Pete Rouse, the new Chief of Staff, got engaged immediately. And the President made the right decision.

So what did we learn? First, that exposing sleazy dead-of-night deals cut by the special interests does sometimes work. And second, that having good people in key government roles really does matter. Obama might well have done the right thing without Warren and Rouse there, but it sure did happen quickly and easily with them around.

“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.

Glenn Greenwald Times Square bomber: Cause and effect in the War on Terror

Faisal Shahzad was sentenced by a federal judge to life in prison yesterday for his attempted bombing of Times Square, a crime for which he previously pleaded guilty.  Aside from proving yet again how uniquely effective our real judicial system is (as opposed to military commissions or lawless detention) in convicting and punishing Terrorists (see this NYT Editorial on that issue this morning), this episode sheds substantial light on what I wrote about on Monday:  namely, how our actions in the Muslim world — ostensibly undertaken to combat Terrorism — do more than anything else to spur Terrorism and ensure its permanent continuation. . . .

When he pleaded guilty in June, this is what he told the baffled and angry Judge about why he did what he did:

If the United States does not get out of Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries controlled by Muslims, he said, “we will be attacking U.S.,” adding that Americans “only care about their people, but they don’t care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die” . . . .

Our national foreign policy seems boiled down to this premise:  we must and will continue to bomb, invade and control Muslim countries until they stop wanting to attack and bomb us or, at least, are unable to continue to do so.  Obviously, though, if we continue to engage in that behavior, that day will never come, given that this behavior is precisely what fuels most of it.  Just ask them and they’ll be more than happy to explain it, as Faisal Shahzad has spent months attempting to do.

New york Times Editorial: Civil Justice, Military Injustice

Supporters of the tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who insist military justice, not the federal courts, is the best way to deal with terrorists, should pay close attention to Tuesday’s events in a United States District Court in Manhattan. Faisal Shahzad was sentenced to life imprisonment, five months and four days after he tried to blow up his car in Times Square.

When Mr. Shahzad was arrested, and later given a Miranda warning, the “tough on terrorists” crowd screamed about coddling and endangering the country’s security. They didn’t stop complaining, even after Mr. Shahzad cooperated with investigators and entered a guilty plea with a mandatory life sentence. All of this happened without the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York Police Department breaking laws or violating Constitutional protections.

This is the choice: Justice in long-established federal courts that Americans can be proud of and the rest of the world can respect. Or illegal detentions and unending, legally dubious military tribunals. It is an easy one.

(emphasis mine)

“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.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.): Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Now

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is a fundamental issue of civil rights and human dignity that deserves to be taken far more seriously.  Since 1993, more than 14,000 Americans have been relieved of their duties under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  That’s about 15 people dismissed every week, their jobs taken away, their service and their honor denigrated, not because of how they performed but because of who they are.

I can’t think of anything less American than asking young men and women to die for our freedoms, and then not extending them those very same

freedoms.  It’s incomprehensible to me that we would ask our troops to live with secrets and shame about the core of their very identities.  And how can

an institution as devoted to truth and honor as the U.S. military enshrine and embrace a doctrine that instructs people to lie?

I’m fully aware that being in the military involves a subjugation of self that is unique, that makes it different than just about any other job.  But that does

not justify “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  As former Army Captain Jonathan Hopkins wrote in the New York Times: “Other soldiers don’t get enough

time with their families; I’m prohibited from having a family.”

Any policy that forces brave Americans to choose between serving their country and having a family is just deplorable.  Enough is enough.  It’s time

to get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Amy Goodman: From Tuskegee to Guatemala Via Nuremberg

News broke last week that the U.S. government purposefully exposed hundreds of men in Guatemala to syphilis in ghoulish medical experiments conducted during the late 1940s. As soon as the story got out, President Barack Obama phoned President Alvaro Colom of Guatemala to apologize. Colom called the experiments “an incredible violation of human rights.” Colom also says his government is studying whether it can bring the case to an international court.

The revelations came about through research conducted by Wellesley College medical historian Susan Reverby on the notorious Tuskegee syphilis study. The two former U.S. government research projects, in Tuskegee, Ala., and Guatemala-equally noxious-are mirror images of each other. Both point to the extremes to which ethics can be disregarded in the pursuit of medical knowledge, and serve as essential reminders that medical research needs constant supervision and regulation. . . . .

Researchers are quick to point out that such practices are a thing of the past and have led to strict guidelines ensuring informed consent of subjects. Yet efforts are being made to loosen restrictions on medical experimentation in prisons. We need to ask what “informed consent” means inside a prison, or in a poor community when money is used as an incentive to “volunteer” for research. Medical research should only happen with humane standards, informed consent and independent oversight, if the lessons of Nuremberg, Tuskegee and, now, Guatemala are to have meaning.

Paul Krugman: If the Choice Is a CEO, Obama Should Say No

There has been a great deal of speculation in the media lately about whether President Barack Obama will, or should, decide to appoint a former chief executive officer to take over for Lawrence H. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council.

Mr. Summers announced in late September that he will be leaving at the end of the year.

Now, obviously, Mr. Obama should simply choose someone who can do a good job as his top economic adviser. Forget about image, or the message the appointment would supposedly send – there are about 600 people in the United States who care, and most of them are paid to care about these sorts of things.

Is having been a successful C.E.O. a good qualification for this job? The answer is no.

“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.

Robert Reich: Wall Street’s Global Race to the Bottom

Wonder what’s happening with bank reform? Watch your wallets.

Having created giant loopholes in the Dodd-Frank law recently passed by Congress (keeping “customized” derivatives underground, for example), fighting off attempts to cap the size of the biggest banks, and keeping capital requirements relatively modest, Wall Street is now busily whittling back the rest through regulations.

Squadrons of lawyers and lobbyists are now pressing the Treasury, Comptroller of the Currency, SEC, and the Fed to go even easier on the Street.

Their main argument is if regulations are too tight, the big banks will be less competitive internationally. Translated: They’ll move more of their business to London and Frankfurt, where regulations will be looser.

Eugene Robinson Midterm campaigns, brought to you by . . . ?

The Republican grab for Congress is being funded by a pack of wolves masquerading as a herd of sheep.

How sweet and innocent they seem, these mysterious organizations with names like Americans for Job Security. Who could argue with that? Who wants job insecurity?

It turns out, according to The Post, that an entity called Americans for Job Security has made nearly $7.5 million in “independent” campaign expenditures this year, with 88 percent going to support Republican candidates. Who’s putting up all that money? You’ll never know, because Americans for Job Security — which calls itself a “business association” — doesn’t have to disclose the source of its funding.

Likewise, the American Future Fund has spent $6.8 million on campaigns this year, with every penny of that money benefiting Republicans. The patriotically named group — and, really, who doesn’t want America to have a future? — is based in Iowa and has never before been a big player in the Great Game of campaign finance. Now, suddenly, it has a king’s ransom to throw around.

Round and round it goes, where this stops nobody knows.

Three killed in attack on Nato tankers which the Taliban claimed responsibility for because U.S. drone strikes increase on Pakistan border which happened because an increased risk of terrorist attacks in Europe, with Washington saying al Qaeda might target transport infrastructure. Terror strikes provoke drones attacks which provoke more terror attacks which provoke….Dizzy yet?

Glenn Greenwald sums it up nicely:

What a surprise: bombing Muslims more and more causes more and more Muslims to want to bomb the countries responsible.  That, of course, has long been the perverse “logic” driving the War on Terror.  The very idea that we’re going to reduce Terrorism by more intensively bombing more Muslim countries is one of the most patently absurd, self-contradicting premises that exists.  It’s exactly like announcing that the cure for lung cancer is to quadruple the number of cigarettes one smokes each day.  But that’s been the core premise (at least the stated one) of our foreign policy for the last decade:  we’re going to stop Terrorism by doing more and more of exactly the things that cause it (and see this very good Economist article  on the ease with which drones allow a nation’s leaders to pretend to its citizenry that they are not really at war — as we’re doing with Pakistan).

So where does this end Mr. President? Are you now going to send ground troops into Pakistan?

Up Date: From Glenn Greenwald:

…..a 2004 Task Force convened by Donald Rumsfeld said about the actual causes of Terrorism and, specifically, the effects on Terrorism from our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The whole Report is worth reviewing, but among the highlights:  (a) the “underlying sources of threats to America’s national security” are grounded in “negative attitudes” towards the U.S. in the Muslim world and “the conditions that create them”; (b) what most exacerbates anti-American sentiment, and therefore the threat of Terrorism, is “American direct intervention in the Muslim world” — through our “one sided support in favor of Israel”; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, “the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan”; and (c) “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies.”

“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.

Matt Taibbi: Tea & Crackers

How corporate interests and Republican insiders built the Tea Party monster

The world is changing all around the Tea Party. The country is becoming more black and more Hispanic by the day. The economy is becoming more and more complex, access to capital for ordinary individuals more and more remote, the ability to live simply and own a business without worrying about Chinese labor or the depreciating dollar vanished more or less for good. They want to pick up their ball and go home, but they can’t; thus, the difficulties and the rancor with those of us who are resigned to life on this planet.

Of course, the fact that we’re even sitting here two years after Bush talking about a GOP comeback is a profound testament to two things: One, the American voter’s unmatched ability to forget what happened to him 10 seconds ago, and two, the Republican Party’s incredible recuperative skill and bureaucratic ingenuity. This is a party that in 2008 was not just beaten but obliterated, with nearly every one of its recognizable leaders reduced to historical-footnote status and pinned with blame for some ghastly political catastrophe. There were literally no healthy bodies left on the bench, but the Republicans managed to get back in the game anyway by plucking an assortment of nativist freaks, village idiots and Internet Hitlers out of thin air and training them into a giant ball of incoherent resentment just in time for the 2010 midterms. They returned to prominence by outdoing Barack Obama at his own game: turning out masses of energized and disciplined supporters on the streets and overwhelming the ballot box with sheer enthusiasm.

The bad news is that the Tea Party’s political outrage is being appropriated, with thanks, by the Goldmans and the BPs of the world. The good news, if you want to look at it that way, is that those interests mostly have us by the balls anyway, no matter who wins on Election Day. That’s the reality; the rest of this is just noise. It’s just that it’s a lot of noise, and there’s no telling when it’s ever going to end.

New York Times Editorial: First Monday

The Supreme Court enjoys all but free rein in selecting which cases to review. From the end of one term in the summer until the start of the next, on the first Monday in October, the work of the court is to sift through thousands of petitions from parties that lost in one of the federal appeals courts or highest state courts and are eager for the justices to reverse their fate.

The kinds of petitioners favored say a lot about the court’s interests and biases. The Warren court, eager to champion individual rights, chose a large number of petitions from downtrodden people. The Rehnquist court, looking for opportunities to vindicate states’ rights, favored petitions from the states.