Lee (HorsesAss):Younger people today are voting overwhelmingly for Democrats, so if you have an initiative that motivates more young people to vote, Democrats on the ballot will get a boost. But in California, where Proposition 19 will be voted on this fall, the picture may not be so clear. MORE...
The imminent passage of financial reform, just a couple months after the passage of comprehensive health care, should decisively end the narrative that President Obama represents a Jimmy Carter-style case of naïve hope crushed by the inability to master Washington.Howie P.S.: The poster image (above) represents the radical right critique of Obama.
Yet the mystery remains: Having moved swiftly toward achieving the very policy objectives he promised voters as a candidate, Obama is still widely perceived as flirting with a failed presidency.
Eric Alterman, in a column that drew wide notice, wrote in The Nation that most liberals think the president is a “big disappointment.” House Democrats are in near-insurrection after White House press secretary Robert Gibbs stated the obvious — that the party has a chance of losing the House under Obama’s watch. And independent voters have turned decisively against the man they helped elect 21 months ago — a trend unlikely to be reversed before November.
This is an odd reversal of expectations. When he came into office, the assumption even among some Democrats was that he was a dazzling politician and communicator who might prove too unseasoned at governance to win substantive achievements.
The reality is the opposite. You can argue over whether Obama’s achievements are good or bad on the merits. But especially after Thursday’s vote you can’t argue that Obama is not getting things done. To the contrary, he has, as promised, covered the uninsured, tightened regulations, started to wind down the war in Iraq and shifted focus and resources to Afghanistan, injected more competition into the education system and edged closer to a big energy bill.
The problem is that he and his West Wing turn out to be not especially good at politics, or communications — in other words, largely ineffective at the very things on which their campaign reputation was built. And the promises he made in two years of campaigning turn out to be much less appealing as actual policies. MORE...
Back in January, we asked you to submit ideas for sessions that you wanted to see at this year's Netroots Nation. After receiving more than 400 ideas, we wanted to share those that made the cut with you.Because they were developed and organized by you, our agenda truly reflects the issues that are most important to our community -- issues like financial reform, immigration and climate change, plus the 2010 elections, filibuster reform and so much more.
Click here to read about the panels we'll host at Netroots Nation 2010 in Las Vegas.
Netroots Nation isn’t just a typical conference -- it's a place to organize, build coalitions and ignite the change that will help us achieve our shared goals and values. Here's just a sampling of our agenda:
- The 2010 Elections: Channeling the Power of Jobs, Populism and the Angry Voter
- The Filibuster and Senate Reform
- Afghanistan: Where Do We Go From Here?
- Deepwater Disaster: Response and Recovery on the Gulf Coast
- How Immigration Reform Sustains a Progressive Majority
Click here to see the rest of our 70 panels. We're working finishing up confirmations for all speakers and assigning time slots and that information should be posted soon. MORE...
Dominic Holden (The Stranger):The Seattle City Council is about to give the state permission to dig the world's largest deep-bore tunnel under downtown Seattle. Here's what the city council doesn't want you to know before they vote. MORE...Howie P.S.: The Stranger steps back into Seattle city politics, big time. Note to readers: there is no question mark with this headline. H/t to Kata Martin. Meanwhile, the Seattle Times reports "Highway 99 tunnel foes may propose city referendum."
How fitting.
One of the world's greediest, careless, and most despised megacorporations has just today been revealed to be one of the top financial backers of Tim Eyman's latest scheme to wreck representative government in Washington State.
Yes, you read that correctly: BP, the company responsible for the biggest environmental disaster in American history, is now underwriting Tim Eyman.BP and Tim Eyman. Tim Eyman and BP. Now there's a foul pairing, if we ever saw one. Is BP's embrace of Tim Eyman ugly, stinky, or just plain disgusting?
(Answer: All three!)
The oil giant's North American subsidiary wrote a $50,000 check directly to Eyman's campaign committee on June 1st, 2010, matching the combined contributions given by Tesoro and ConocoPhillips the month before.
Those companies, meanwhile, each plowed in another $25,000. And just a week ago, on July 6th, Equilon sent Tim Eyman a $50,000 check. MORE...
Now, think about this: Harry Reid is saying Barack Obama needs to be tougher. Let that sink in.
It's especially ironic to me because I got kicked off Sen. Reid's blogger conference call list four or five years ago. Why? Well, I used some naughty language, something along the lines of "What the @*#$&! is wrong with you people?" What's so funny is, I was yelling at the senator for ... not standing up to the Republicans. He responded by telling me in a defensive tone that he got calls from constituents who wanted him to be "more bipartisan." MORE...
Two-time Academy Award-winning actor and director Sean Penn was honored by the Haitian government on Monday at a ceremony marking the six-month anniversary of the earthquake that killed 300,000 people and left more than 1.5 million homeless. Penn first came to Haiti after the earthquake struck to help with immediate relief efforts. He decided to stay to finish what he started. He co-founded the J/P Haitian Relief Organization and is managing a tent camp on the Petionville golf-course that now shelters some 55,000 people. On Sunday night, we went to visit Sean Penn’s camp. We walked in and asked to speak to him. We were ushered in to a large tent and ended up sitting down with the Hollywood star for more than an hour talking about Haiti, recovery efforts and the lack of them, his life and what inspired him to do what he is doing.[includes rush transcript-partial]
Ewen MacAskill (UKGuardian):John Ellis, a conservative political analyst, predicted she would be the de facto Republican frontrunner by December and that, by then, it may be too late for the party to do anything about it. Ellis wrote on his blogsite: "'She's too stupid' is what the Establishment GOP really thinks about Sarah Palin. 'Good-looking,' but a 'ditz'. This is unfertile ground, since Palin can turn the argument on a dime and say: 'They drive the country into bankruptcy, they underwrite Fannie and Freddie, they bail out Goldman Sachs, they fight wars they don't want to win, they say enforcing the immigration laws is silly and they call me stupid! I'll give you a choice: you can have their smarts or my stupidity, which one do you want?' A large number of GOP presidential primary voters will take Palin's "stupidity" in a heartbeat." MORE...
Eric Alterman and Neera Tanden debate Obama & Kabuki democracy.
Here in Toronto we are getting the predictable lectures about how burning cop cars and smashed Starbucks outlets distract attention from “legitimate” protestors and NGOs with “important messages.” It’s a nice theory, except for the fact that the non-violent protests were being completely ignored by the international press until stuff started burning.Howie P.S.: Democracy Now! (with audio, video) looks back at the Toronto G20 held June 26-27, 2010.
But they were taking place all over Toronto, timed with the G20 summit. This is a speech I delivered on Friday night, at a terrific event organized by the Council of Canadians. It is about why the G20 deserves to be derailed, interrupted and, ultimately, shut down.
* But let's cut through the B.S.: How much will action on energy and even unemployment matter if the economy remains in the tank, which looks more likely now that Dems are giving up on more stimulus spending?Howie P.S.: The Dems seem to believe there's no point in "playing" each game if you don't have a good chance of winning. Is politics like the World Cup or is it more like a long battle where there are benefits to be gained from "suiting up every day"? If you hate sports analogies, feel free to suggest your own.* And absent such action, why would Dems get enthusiastic about this fall, no matter how many times Robert Gibbs warns that there's "no doubt" that the GOP could take the House?
* While we're at it: Wouldn't voters like it if Dems continued pushing for big action on the economy, even if there's no chance of success, rather than throwing in the towel in advance, which accomplishes nothing?
Booman:If you have the stamina, you should read Eric Alterman's long opus on the state of progressive politics in this county. It's actually about the state of all politics in this country, but it seeks to explain why progressive policies cannot be enacted despite large Democratic majorities in Congress and a president that is (or has been) rhetorically committed to them.Howie P.S.: Earlier in this century I was invited to be a front-pager on Booman's site and posted there for short time.
I have a few quibbles with Alterman's recitation of the facts, but I want to praise his overall effort. My biggest criticism is that he fails to critique progressives. Everyone else comes in for harsh treatment, but progressives are given a pass. I think that is a mistake, but it's interesting to think about why progressives deserve criticism. It's largely because progressives are not familiar enough with the obstacles to progressive change that Alterman exhaustively lays out.
(SNIP)
If you thought electing Obama would guarantee that all of his promises would become law inside of two years, you are going to be disappointed. I'm not. I'm extremely happy with the president and nearly at my wit's end with pretty much everyone else in this country. No faction frustrates me more than my own, and I'm grateful for Alterman for starting this conversation. I just wish he'd shine a mirror on himself and our movement. We need to hear about our shortcomings, too. Our biggest shortcoming is not understanding what Alterman has written and what it means for how we should feel about this administration. As I've said, this present Congress is the most productive and progressive Congress since 1965-66 and this president is the most successful and progressive since LBJ, and too many of us are focused on our disappointments and not focused on the right-wing threat that lurks out there with all its institutional advantages, just waiting to destroy this country, for good. MORE...
David Axelrod appeared on This Week and acknowledged that the Administration has little chance of getting anything beyond an extension of unemployment benefits through Congress between now and the election. That extension would appear to have 60 votes whenever Robert Byrd’s replacement gets into the Senate. But that jobs bill that had all the tax extensions and infrastructure funding and summer job money? Forget it. Aid to state Medicaid programs? Isn’t going to happen. Extending the COBRA subsidy to keep the jobless covered? Nope. MORE...
Abby Phillip (Politico):Borosage says that over the past 18 months, progressives have learned the hard way that they need to be more independent of the White House to realize the change that they are seeking.Howie P.S.: H/t to Unjin Lee. Alterman ends his essay with a similar conclusion:
The remedy for the problems that progressives face, Borosage says, lies in the need to create an equal and opposite force that can rival the enthusiasm of the tea party movement.
“If there is a progressive movement that is demanding change, driving the debate, challenging conservative Democrats and Republicans and challenging the White House, you might see a bolder agenda,” he says. “But it’s equally possible that this reform moment … that we miss it and conservatives come back with the same ideas they had when they drove us off a cliff.”
“It was always naive to expect a president to start a movement,” says Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University history professor and co-editor of the liberal magazine, Dissent. “It’s a little bit like expecting a chief executive to start a union.” MORE...
Obama is taking the best deal on the table today, but hopes and expects that once he is re-elected in 2012—a pretty strong bet, I'd say—he will build on the foundations laid during his first term to bring on the fundamental "change" that is not possible in today's environment. This would be consistent with FDR's strategy during his second term and makes a kind of sense when one considers the nature of the opposition he faces today and the likelihood that it will discredit itself following a takeover of one or both houses in 2010. For that strategy to make sense, however, 2013 will have to provide a more pregnant sense of progressive possibility than 2009 did, and that will take a great deal of work by the rest of us.More back and forth on this topic this morning from Atrios and his legions of commenters.
To borrow from Hillel the Elder: "If not now, when? If not us, who?"
Norm Stamper: Alice Huffman's explanation of the California NAACP's endorsement of Proposition 19, the state initiative calling for the regulated legalization and taxation of marijuana, was well reasoned and smartly put. But she was promptly pounced upon, smeared by a collection of out-of-touch, fear-mongering detractors, including "more than 20 African American religious and community leaders" headed by one Bishop Ron Allen. Mr. Allen's statement was illogical, and insulting and condescending to the multitudes of African American civic leaders, including law enforcement officers and members of the clergy, who are working to end a drug war that has had devastating effects on communities of color.Howie P.S.: Norm Stamper moved to the San Juan Islands after serving as Seattle's Police Chief.Young black men have been hit particularly hard. As a new study by the Drug Policy Alliance points out, young blacks consume marijuana at rates lower than young whites. Yet in the 25 largest counties of California where blacks constitute 7 percent of the population, African American men are being arrested at double, triple, or even quadruple the rates for whites. This is not accidental.
MORE...
Let me preface this by saying whiteshoes at GS aren't always the smartest guys in the room- I've sat across the table from a few research analysts, PMs, and wholesalers of theirs and they can be a mixed bag. But on the whole, they are certainly canny enough to know what's good for their firm, and spiraling deflation is rough for even the best distressed asset investor. To see them in agreement with a self-proclaimed Liberal (not in the economic sense) neo-Keynesian like Paul Krugman is not something I would normally foresee without the risks of premature austerity being so grave. MORE...Howie P.S.: I wish I understood that last sentence, H/t to Chris in Paris.
"A Reasonable Man" (Christopher Beam-NY Times):Politically, it’s clear why the White House likes Brooks—he’s the persuadable opposition. “David represents to them the sensible Republican,” says Collins. “If David is convinced, they regard that as a real bi-partisan triumph.” But the special relationship is as much about style as politics. Temperamentally, Brooks and Obama could be twins. They address crises with an almost inhuman calm—an asset at times, but also a liability when the only proper response is emotional. On this, Brooks defends Obama. “You know, people fault President Obama for being passionless sometimes, for being a little too cold,” Brooks said on PBS NewsHour in May. “But when you have a week like this, where you’ve got the Greek situation, the oil spill, you’ve got Times Square, you’ve got floods in Nashville, I think they responded with reasonable speed, but basically with a level of calmness, which is in his nature … This is a good time to have a president like Obama, who’s just steady.” MORE...Howie P.S.: Here's the source for Taibbi's comment. As I read the Beam piece, I kept wondering exactly what Taibbi meant.
Scores of people were arrested in Oakland, California Thursday night in protests over the verdict in the Oscar Grant shooting. Grant was the unarmed 22-year-old African-American man who was shot dead by Johannes Mehserle, a white transit officer, on an Oakland train platform on New Year’s Day, 2009. A jury in Los Angeles convicted Merserle of involuntary manslaughter but he was acquitted on the more serious charges of second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter.Howie P.S.: "Oscar Grant, A Victim Of American Fear."
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It was Geithner who, as head of the New York Fed, presided over the $180 billion bailout of AIG, which, as revealed by the 500-page documented record of that travesty released last week by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, was a scam to pass taxpayer money to Goldman Sachs and the other large banks that had created the problem. And it was Summers who as President Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which guaranteed “legal certainty” for the toxic derivatives packages that Goldman and the others sold. At the time Summers assured Congress that “the parties to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies. …”Howie P.S.: I find that Robert Scheer is usually more accurate in his judgments than I would prefer. Eliot Spitzer has reached the same conclusion and shared his thoughts with Stephen Colbert, video (06:09). Glenn Greenwald agrees and wrote about it in April. 2009.
For such not-so-prescient but very convenient insight, Goldman Sachs rewarded Summers with $200,000 for two speeches he gave to its executives while he was an adviser to candidate Obama. Not surprisingly, the new financial regulations proposed by this administration and soon to be signed into law let Goldman and the others so much at fault off the hook.
There is enormous and justifiable populist outrage out there over the antics of a runaway Wall Street that is not being held accountable. Obama could tap into that outrage by taking his cues from a true populist, Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. One of only eight senators to vote against the Clinton-backed 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had done so much to protect the economy, Feingold voted against the Bush bailout too and is now breaking with Obama on his so-called financial reform:
“The bill does not eliminate the risk to our economy posed by ‘too big to fail’ financial firms, nor does it restore the proven safeguards established after the Great Depression, which separated Main Street banks from big Wall Street firms and are essential to preventing another economic meltdown. The recent financial crisis triggered the nation’s worst recession since the Great Depression. The bill should have included reforms to prevent another such crisis. Regrettably, it did not.”
The president’s record on the economy is even worse than his performance in Afghanistan, and a reversal of course is much in order. If he doesn’t get the message now, the voters will give it to him loud and clear come the November midterm elections. MORE...
