Tag: TMC 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”.

John Nichols: After Deficit Panel Deadlock, Progressives Must Promote the Alternative to Austerity

National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform failed to produce a mandate for assaulting Social Security, undermining Medicare and Medicaid and generally balancing the budget on the backs of working Americans.

But that hasn’t stopped its co-chairmen from claiming a sort of victory for their plan to make Main Street pay for Wall Street’s failures.

Their goal is obvious. Commission co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles want to spin a win they did not achieve in order to foster the false impression that their ominously titled ” Moment of Truth” proposal is the only real alternative to fiscal ruin. That’s not the case. There are better proposals-such as the detailed to austerity outlined by commission member Jan Schakowsky. But this is a critical juncture, and progressives need to be conscious that an effort will be made to narrow the range of options and impose key elements of a bad plan that failed to gain required support.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: A Real Jaw Dropper at the Federal Reserve

At a Senate Budget Committee hearing in 2009, I asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to tell the American people the names of the financial institutions that received an unprecedented backdoor bailout from the Federal Reserve, how much they received, and the exact terms of this assistance. He refused. A year and a half later, as a result of an amendment that I was able to include in the Wall Street reform bill, we have begun to lift the veil of secrecy at the Fed, and the American people now have this information.

It is unfortunate that it took this long, and it is a shame that the biggest banks in America and Mr. Bernanke fought to keep this secret from the American public every step of the way. But, the details on this bailout are now on the Federal Reserve’s website, and this is a major victory for the American taxpayer and for transparency in government.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky: Why I Voted Against the Bowles-Simpson Deficit Reduction Plan

While I cannot support the Simpson-Bowles plan, I thank the co-chairmen for their dedication to our difficult task over the last eight months, and I agree with them that the work was constructive despite our inability to get fourteen votes.

I offered my own plan to achieve the goal outlined by the President to achieve primary budget balance by 2015 with one very different assumption. I believe that we can do it without further eroding the middle class in America.

It pays to remember that just 10 years ago we had a budget surplus and the debt was rapidly decreasing. During the Bush years, those surpluses disappeared and huge debt accumulated due to two unfunded wars, two unfunded tax cuts that mainly enriched the already wealthy, and a blind eye to the recklessness of Wall Street which caused 8 million Americans to lose their jobs and millions more to lose their savings, the value of their homes and the homes themselves.

While the MSM is panting over President Obama’s unannounced visit to Bahgram Air Base in Afghanistan, his now canceled teleconferenced meeting with Afghan President Karzai and his address to the troops, the other important news that is getting lost in the frenzy.

Judging from the headlines, the media would have us all believe that the President’s Debt Commission (Cat Food Commission) had approved its final report.

Politico has since changed its headline from “Divided deficit group approves proposal” to the more accurate “Debt panel falls short on votes”

Both CNN and the NYT are touting that the report has bipartisan approval. They would like us to believe that a commission packed with deficit hawks determined to reduce the deficit on the backs of the middle class and the elderly is a great plan because the multimillionaires on the committee embraced it.

Then there is the news about jobs growth, or rather the lack of it, and the increase in unemployment numbers. The poor and unemployed are likely to stay that way and their numbers will grow between now and 2012 if the Republicans and blue dog Democrats have their way.

The Senate hearings on the repeal of DADT extended into it’s second day with some “heroes”, like Sen. Tester making really good argument for repeal now and the villains, like homophobic Sen. McCain who wants to hear from everyone in the military this will affect over the “next year”. Amazingly the biggest “hero” today was Defense Secretary Gates who told GOP Senators that “polling troops on policy decisions is a dangerous affront to our nation’s unbroken history of civilian control over the military”:

GATES: I can’t think of a single precedent in America history of doing a referendum of the American Armed Forces on a policy issue. Are you going to ask them if they want 15-month tours? Are you going to ask them if they want to be part of the surge in Iraq? That’s not the way our civilian-led military has ever worked in our entire history . . . I think in effect doing a referendum of the members of the Armed Forces on a policy matter is a very dangerous path.

Meanwhile, CNN and MSNBC are salivating over a photo-op visit to Afghanistan while Fox News just keeps spewing its usual twisting of myths and facts while babbling about ventriloquists.

“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: Freezing Out Hope

Freezing Out HopeOn Monday, we got the answer: he announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking – successfully, it seems – to destroy him.

So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of.

About that pay freeze: the president likes to talk about “teachable moments.” Well, in this case he seems eager to teach Americans something false.

Glenn Greenwald: The Moral Standards of WikiLeaks Critics

Time‘s Joe Klein writes this about the WikiLeaks disclosures:

I am tremendously concernced [sic] about the puerile eruptions of Julian Assange. . . . If a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail because of a leaked cable, this entire, anarchic exercise in “freedom” stands as a human disaster. Assange is a criminal. He’s the one who should be in jail.

That’s quite a rigorous moral standard.  So let’s apply it elsewhere:

What about the most destructive “anarchic exercise in ‘freedom'” the planet has known for at least a generation:  the “human disaster” known as the attack on Iraq, which Klein supported?  That didn’t result in the imprisonment of “a single foreign national,” but rather the deaths of more than 100,000 innocent human beings, the displacement of millions more, and the destruction of a country of 26 million people.  Are those who supported that “anarchic exercise in ‘freedom'” — or at least those responsible for its execution — also “criminals who should be in jail”?

Eugene Robinson: Tax cut fight highlights Democrats’ missing convictions

Why did Republicans go to the trouble and expense of winning the midterm elections? It looks like they’re about to prove, once again, that you can get your way in Washington without a congressional majority – if you have a firm sense of purpose. Maybe the Democratic Party will find one someday.

Or maybe not. Sigh.

What has me exercised – okay, frothing – is the ongoing fight over the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, which are set to expire at the end of the year. By all rights, this shouldn’t be a fight at all. The Republican position is so ludicrous that it beggars belief.

Dan Froomkin: An Example Of How Civil Political Discourse Threatens Modern Conservatism

WASHINGTON — The conventional wisdom among this city’s elite is that if liberals and conservatives would only sit down and actually listen to each other, they would find common ground somewhere in the middle.

Actually, it’s a belief that goes beyond conventional wisdom — it is an object of faith, the central tenet of the inside-the-Beltway religion known as High Broderism.

And it is most devoutly held when it comes to the subject of the national deficit — as demonstrated by the recent orgiastic coverage of President Obama’s deficit-hawk-heavy fiscal commission.

One of the latest attempts to support this position comes courtesy of , a group heavily funded by billionaire deficit propagandist Pete Peterson’s eponymous foundation. The group, which sponsored an exercise in deliberative democracy earlier this year, was out with a press release Thursday declaring: “LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES FIND COMMON GROUND ABOUT HOW TO RESOLVE NATIONAL DEBT.”

The “Crushing Irony” of Interpol’s Red Notices and the tangles web that the Obama administration has woven to cover the Bush administration cabal of criminals and crimes, may soon come to a new reality.

Julian Assange is wanted by Sweden and a “red notice” issued by Interpol for his arrest. The Obama administration would love nothing more than to see Assange silenced. Now the Nigerian government is asking Interpol to issue a international warrant, a “red notice”, for the arrest of former US Vice President Richard Cheney for his alleged role in a bribe scandal in which Halliburton-owned company KBR gave $180 million to Nigerian officials between 1994 and 2004 in exchange for lucrative natural gas contracts.

This presents quite a dilemma for “restoring the rule of law” President Obama. There is no way that he will be able to save face in the international community if he supports Assange’s arrest and not Cheney’s. The other “sticky” problem for Obama and his DOJ is that there is an extradition treaty between the US and Nigeria. How much longer can Obama and his DOJ protect Cheney, or for that matter George W, Bush, from justice?

Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law professor and Constitutional law expert, gives his analysis of international legal problem for the Obama justice department.

The US has in the past deported ill, elderly, war criminals to other countries to face trial for their crimes. Just because Dick Cheney has a serious heart condition should not be a deterrent to his extradition to Nigeria to face these charges.  

“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”.

Bill Clinton: We need to save more lives – with less

We risk losing our momentum, unless we find new ways to fill gaps left by reductions in Aids funding caused by the economic crisis

On World Aids Day 10 years ago, as I was preparing to leave office, the world was only beginning to grasp the severity of the Aids crisis. Nearly 36 million men, women and children were living with the disease, but only about 200,000 were receiving the treatment they needed. Funding was nowhere near the levels needed to prevent the disease from reaching pandemic levels.

Over the last decade, we have seen dramatic progress in both treatment and funding. In 2008 alone, $15bn was invested to fight Aids in developing countries, up from $6bn just three years earlier, due in large part to the US Government’s PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) programme.

Josh Silver: FCC Chairman Announces Fake Net Neutrality Proposal

This morning, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that he will finally seek a vote on President Obama’s top tech issue, “Net Neutrality.” Except for one problem: according to the New York Times, it’s not even close to the real Net Neutrality that President Obama promised the American people.

The Times report, based on an advance copy of a speech the Chairman plans to give today, indicates that the proposed rule is riddled with loopholes, and falls far short of what’s necessary to prevent phone and cable companies from turning the Internet into cable TV: where they decide what moves fast, what moves slow, and whether they can price gouge you or not: a shiny jewel for companies like AT&T and Comcast who have met with the Chairman more than anyone else during the past month, and whose affection he seems to crave more than making good on President Obama’s promise.

Now that the FCC’s proposed rulemaking has been officially announced, it will be deliberated and modified for the next three weeks, leading to a final vote on December 21st.

Nicholas D. Kristof: Haiti, Nearly a Year Later

Ultimately what Haiti most needs isn’t so much aid, but trade. Aid accounts for half of Haiti’s economy, and remittances for another quarter – and that’s a path to nowhere.

The United States has approved trade preferences that have already created 6,000 jobs in the garment sector in Haiti, and several big South Korean companies are now planning to open their own factories, creating perhaps another 130,000 jobs.

“Sweatshops,” Americans may be thinking. “Jobs,” Haitians are thinking, and nothing would be more transformative for the country.

Let’s send in doctors to save people from cholera. Let’s send in aid workers to build sustainable sanitation and water systems to help people help themselves. Let’s help educate Haitian children and improve the port so that it can become an exporter. But, above all, let’s send in business investors to create jobs.

$3.3 TRILLION went to purchase junk mortgage bonds from Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse, the two largest European banks, but there is no money to help out long term unemployed Americans. When you hear about how the banks have repaid the $750 million that was loaned to the large American banks and financial services, ask when that $3.3 TRILLION will be paid back to reduce the deficit and stimulate the American economy.

This is why Bernanke opposed the Federal Reserve Audit:

Fed Opens Books, Revealing European Megabanks Were Biggest Beneficiaries by Shahien Nasiripour at Huffington Post

NEW YORK — The Federal Reserve on Wednesday reluctantly opened the books on its monumental campaign to save the financial system in the midst of the recent crisis, revealing how it distributed some $3.3 trillion in relief.



The data revealed that the Fed’s aid was scattered much more widely than previously understood. Two European megabanks — Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse — were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed’s purchase of mortgage-backed securities. The Fed’s dollars also flowed to major American companies that are not financial players, including McDonald’s and Harley-Davidson, through unsecured short-term loans.

The measure, initiated in Jan. 2009 to stimulate the flow of credit and keep household borrowing costs low, led the nation’s central bank to purchase more than $1.1 trillion in mortgages packaged into the form of securities. The mortgage bonds are backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the twin mortgage giants now owned by taxpayers.

Deutsche Bank, a German lender, has sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities, Fed data through July shows. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.

The data had previously been secret. It was released Wednesday per the recently-enacted law overhauling the federal financial regulation. The Fed, ferociously backed by the Obama administration, fought lawmakers’ desire for full disclosure throughout the financial reform debate.

(emphasis mine)

Cenk Uygur reveals the key points of what has been revealed so far.

David Dayen @ FDL:

OFA Tries to Get Supporters to Write Letters to the Editor Praising a Federal Worker Pay Freeze

From Gaius Publius at AMERICAblog

Everybody in the city knows that the president has essentially agreed to accept a two- or three-year extension of tax cuts for all Americans, including the wealthiest.

It seems that this [working] group [with senators and Tim Geithner, etc.] is designed to come to the conclusion that they know they’re already supposed to come to and then give it back to the president.

The Republicans are going to make a big show of being reasonable by reluctantly giving up on their desire to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest into infinity. And they’re going to be the reasonable ones here, so they’re going to claim, by just agreeing to two or three years. And the president’s going to accept it.

And how do we know we are being sold out by this Republican in Democratic garb?  Just take a look who Obama has sent to negotiate the terms of surrender.

However, in one sign of action, Obama said he appointed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and budget director Jack Lew to work with congressional Republicans and Democrats to come up with a deal on taxes in the next couple of days.

If no agreement is reached before Congress breaks for the holidays, taxes on all Americans would increase, a new year shocker that would increase pressure on Washington to act.

Immediately following the meeting, congressional Republicans said the discussion with President Barack Obama was a positive one in which both sides agreed to spend more time working together and finding common ground on tax and other tough issues.

The majority of Americans are so screwed.

“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”.

Sen. Kristen Gillibrand: Time to Listen to Our Military and Repeal DADT

This is a historic week in our quest to strengthen our armed forces and secure equality for all Americans.

Today, the Pentagon has released its yearlong study of how to implement repeal of the corrosive “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. This report makes it unambiguously clear that the risk of repeal on military effectiveness is minimal, that any risks can be addressed by implementing the report’s recommendations, and that a clear majority of active duty servicemen and women have no problem with repeal. It should come as no surprise that the men and women who serve bravely in our military don’t care about the sexual orientation of their fellow servicemembers, they just want to serve their country proudly and believe others should be able to do the same.

Bob Herbert: Broken Beyond Repair

You can only hope that you will be as sharp and intellectually focused as former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens when you’re 90 years old.

In a provocative essay in The New York Review of Books, the former justice, who once supported the death penalty, offers some welcome insight into why he now opposes this ultimate criminal sanction and believes it to be unconstitutional.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Among the wealthy, a new voice for fiscal sacrifice

President Obama’s discussion Tuesday with leaders of both parties about the expiring Bush tax cuts comes at a time when a growing chorus of progressives and other reasonable-minded Americans have been ramping up pressure on the White House to allow the cuts for millionaires to end – as intended – at the end of the year. Last week that chorus was joined by a group of unlikely, albeit welcome new singers: the millionaires themselves.

Paul Krugman: Ireland and the Euro: Is It Time to Part?

This is the way the euro ends. Not with a whimper, but with a bank run.

OK, I’m overstating the case – we are still a long way from Ireland’s exiting the euro. But in thinking about the ongoing Irish mess, I realized we are drifting closer to the kind of scenario I wrote about earlier this year during the Greek debt crisis.

I used to be a full believer in the economist Barry Eichengreen’s theory of euro irreversibility: no European nation can even discuss leaving the euro because the anticipated devaluation will lead people to move deposits to other euro-zone banks, leading to the mother of all bank runs. But I’ve been reconsidering this stance, because while the Eichengreen argument explains why nations should not plan on leaving the euro, what if the bank runs and financial crisis happen anyway? In that case, the marginal cost of a nation’s leaving the euro falls dramatically, and in fact, the decision may effectively be taken out of policy makers’ hands.

From Ed Henry, CNN

Washington (CNN) — President Barack Obama told GOP leaders behind closed doors Tuesday that he had failed to reach across party lines enough during his first two years in office, a senior administration official told CNN.

Between this sell out and having OFA asking workers to write letters supporting a Federal wage freeze, he may as well just give the GOP the key to the executive mansion and go back to Chicago.

h/t Atrios

“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 Pundit and Political “Poutrage” about the recent release of over 250,000 documents by Wikileaks, or as Keith Olbermann so aptly phrased it, “Wiki TMZ”, is below the fold.

John Kampfner: Wikileaks shows up our media for their docility at the feet of authority

Mr Assange is an unconventional figure, a man who lives in the shadows and enjoys doing so

You should never shout “fire” in a crowded theatre. Once you have accepted this old adage, you accept that there are limits to free expression. The important word in the first sentence is not “fire”, but “crowded”. A crowded theatre would lead to a stampede. Where there is a real and identifiable danger, restraint should be shown. Context is everything in the free-speech debate; risk to life is an undeniable caveat. Most other caveats are, however, mere ruses by the powerful to prevent information from reaching the public domain.

It is within these parameters that the furore over Wikileaks and its exposures should be seen. The latest document dump is larger than the Iraq files and potentially more embarrassing, with its State Department assessments of governments and statesmen – from Hamid Karzai to Silvio Berlusconi to Nicolas Sarkozy. Diplomats have launched a frantic round of damage limitation. Oh to have been a fly on the wall during the excruciating conversation between the US ambassador and Downing Street. The Americans are entitled to put their side of the story, to seek to assuage any inconvenience caused.

Robert Reich: National Fiscal Hypocrisy Week

Welcome to National Fiscal Hypocrisy Week.

Today (Monday), Congress takes up a measure delaying by one month a scheduled 23 percent cut in federal reimbursements to doctors. The cut will automatically go into effect unless Congress acts. But of course Congress will act. Doctors threaten to drop Medicare patients if their rates are cut. Congress has delayed scheduled Medicare cuts for years.

The best outcome would be an agreement to contain future health-care costs by allowing Medicare to use its bargaining power with drug companies and medical suppliers to reduce rates; by allowing Americans to buy drugs from Canada; by applying the antitrust laws to health insurers; and by giving the public an option to buy their health care from a government-run public option.

The likelihood of any of this happening over Republican and Democrats-in-name-only (DINO) objections is zero.

Pearl Korn: Deficit Commission Member Rep. Jan Schakowsky Offers a Better Plan

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), one of the 18 members of the Deficit Commission, has offered her own plan in response to the Commission’s proposals, which she has rejected. Rep. Schakowsky’s major concern is that the Commission’s recommendations to raise the age of enrollment in Social Security and cut Medicare benefits will take a serious toll on the middle class. Indeed, the two “deficit Hawks” chairing the Commission have shown their willingness to privatize Medicare and end Social Security, with an out-of-control Alan Simpson blustering, “Medicare is like a cow with 300 tits that keeps on giving” and casting Americans who receive support from government programs as worthless, undeserving, lazy people with his “lesser people” comment. Of course, Simpson should have been dumped then and there.