Author Archive
Boehner: The clearing of the market
Posted by: | CommentsAll the government’s efforts to help distressed homeowners stay in their homes have done, says Rep. John Boehner, is “delay the clearing of the market.”
I love that euphemism, “the clearing of the market.” As in throwing families out into the street. It’s like how the Pentagon described the secret carpet bombing of Cambodian villages as “counterinsurgency strikes.” Or how the FBI (same time period) testified about an investigation and used “a male individual residing in the adjoining domicile” to mean the next door neighbor. It’s so cold and clinical, so devoid of human emotion.
Euphemisms reveal what is most important to you by hiding what is not. “Clearing the market” reveals that boosting real estate values clearly takes priority over helping families stay in their homes. That’s the bottom line.
Having It Both Ways
Posted by: | CommentsRepublicans want to fall in line, the saying goes, and Ann Coulter is falling in line now that Gov. Mitt Romney is back as Republican front runner. She even likes his healthcare plan: Three cheers for Romneycare — “a massive triumph for conservative free-market principles.” After paragraphs gushing about the individual mandate’s conservative roots in the Heritage Foundation, Coulter goes “tenther” calling the 2,000-page Affordable Care Act, not bad policy, exactly, just an illegal one: “If Obamacare were a one-page bill that did nothing but mandate that every American buy health insurance, it would still be unconstitutional…”
Of course, Heritage didn’t think so when in response to the Clinton health proposal, prominent Republicans in the congress included many of its ideas in a couple of health care bills, including the “Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993” (18 Republican cosponsors and a breezy 579-page read) and the “Consumer Choice Health Security Act of 1993” with multiple sponsors in the House. Or when Mitt Romney used the Heritage model in Massachusetts. Only when the Obama White House adopted Romney’s template did Heritage and Republicans balk, as Think Progress reminded them:
– Heritage On Romney’s Individual Mandate: “Not an unreasonable position, and one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” [Heritage, 1/28/06]
– Heritage On President Obama’s Individual Mandate: “Both unprecedented and unconstitutional.” [Heritage, 12/9/09]
– Heritage On Romney’s Insurance Exchange: An “innovative mechanism to promote real consumer choice.” [Heritage, 4/20/06]
– Heritage On President Obama’s Insurance Exchange: Creates a “de facto public option” by “grow[ing]” government control over healthcare.” [Heritage, 3/30/10]
– Heritage On Romney’s Medicaid Expansion: Reduced “the total cost to taxpayers” by taking people out of the “uncompensated care pool.” [Heritage, 1/28/06]
– Heritage On President Obama’s Medicaid Expansion: Expands a “broken entitlement program,” providing a “low-quality, poorly functioning program.” [Heritage, 3/30/10]
With Coulter singing his praises, once again it’s springtime for Mitt.
NC Race for Governor: Who’s In? Who’s Out?
Posted by: | CommentsGovernor Beverly Perdue will not be seeking a second term. So, among Democrats so far, who’s in and who’s out? As best I can figure (in no particular order)…
IN
Lt. Governor Walter Dalton
State Rep.Bill Faison
OUT
Congressman Heath Shuler (NC-11)
Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx
Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines
NC Attorney General Roy Cooper
NO WORD YET
Erskine Bowles (recently of the Bowlers-Simpson Commission)
Congressman Brad Miller (NC-13)
Former NC state treasurer Richard Moore
What did I miss?
Is Our Democratic Centrists Learning?
Posted by: | CommentsRemember when Minnesota’s Gov. Mark Dayton was branded “too liberal to win? That was then. This is now, from PPP:
January 27, 2012
Dayton sees strong approval in MinnesotaRaleigh, N.C. – Minnesota DFL Governor Mark Dayton holds a +19 job approval rating, with 53% of voters approving of his job performance as Governor and 34% disapproving. His support is fueled by near-unanimous approval among Democrats (85-5) and strong approval among Independents (51-33).
Also today from the Star Tribune, Dayton blasts GOP senators as ‘unfit to govern’ after they voted his appointee to the public utilities commission — a clean energy advocate:
Open political warfare erupted between Republicans in the Legislature and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton on Monday with the Senate’s decision to oust a top Dayton appointee from office.The Senate’s 37-29 party-line vote rejecting former state Sen. Ellen Anderson as chair of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) prompted a stern rebuke from Dayton, in which he reminded Senate Republicans of their “leadership scandals” and pronounced them “unfit to govern.”
[...]
A quietly furious Dayton said at a news conference after the vote that “a very good person, a very dedicated public servant and an excellent chair of the Public Utilities Commission was wrongly maligned and cruelly rejected today by Republican senators, who showed once again they are unfit to govern this state. You would think that after their leadership scandals, which caused them to replace all their leaders last month, they would behave themselves for at least a little while.”
Not bad for a liberal.
CSI: Wall Street
Posted by: | Comments
Several recent reports worth noting on the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group that President Obama announced in his State of the Union address. Rachel Maddow brought New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman onto her show [timestamp 4:40] to discuss the RMBS Working Group’s charge. Schneiderman and fellow AGs Kamala Harris (CA), Beau Biden (DE), Lisa Madigan (IL), Martha Coakley (MA), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) have bucked the Justice Department and fellow state AGs who worked to cut a deal on limiting bank investigations earlier this year. Schneiderman, et. al. weren’t about to hand out “Get Out of Jail Free” cards. This pressured the Obama Justice Department to get more serious about holding the banks accountable.
Read More→
Rabbit Punch
Posted by: | CommentsWow! That’s terrific bunny …
New York Times : A Mortgage Investigation
The moment Obama mentioned a panel to investigate banks, I thought: “I hear you. Now show me.” The panel is to include New York AG Eric Schneiderman, a thorn in the side to an administration that seems keen on sweeping the whole thing under the rug. A attempt at co-opting him? The Times thinks so.
There is good reason to be skeptical. To date, federal civil suits over mortgage wrongdoing have been narrowly focused and, at best, ended with settlements and fines that are a fraction of the profits made during the bubble. There have been no criminal prosecutions against major players. Justice Department officials say that it reflects the difficulty of proving fraud — and not a lack of prosecutorial zeal. That is hard to swallow, given the scale of the crisis and the evidence of wrongdoing from private litigation, academic research and other sources.
Fiscal Times :
After the Layoff: Congrats on Your New, Worse Job
The good news is the unemployment rate is slowly ticking down – from 9 percent in October 2011 to 8.5 percent in December. Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 200,000 in December, and hiring was up in retail, hospitality, professional services and health care.Yet, for the majority of U.S. workers, average wages have remained stagnant for decades, and median household income dipped during the recession, declining 6.4 percent between 2007 and 2010. According to a study released in December by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, just 7 percent of those who were let go during the recession have matched previous income. A little over half reported taking a pay cut – and of those, 29 percent took a reduction in salary by 30 percent or higher. To top off the bad news, 30 percent of the reemployed percent took a reduction in benefits.
Digby: Zombies are eating election officials brains
Not that this will stop the wingnuts from their crusade but it should. Turns out that the South Carolina zombies weren’t zombies after all.
What Digby said.
The SC Republican Primary: Eyes Wide Shut
Posted by: | CommentsPrimary voters just gave former Speaker Newt Gingrich the win in the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, “America’s most conservative state.” Reddest of the red. Buckle of the Bible Belt. CNN welcomed viewers to the Charleston debate this week with “Welcome to the South,” a place “where values matter.”
More there than anywhere else? What values mattered most to South Carolinians who gave Gingrich his win?
Not trust. Why should they trust Newt Gingrich? His three wives can’t.
Not “family values.” Gingrich is on his third marriage and committed adultery with his last two wives. In the soft-focused 1950s of conservative nostalgia, South Carolina Republicans would have dismissed Gingrich as a serial philanderer, and his third wife as a loose woman running for First Homewrecker. But not today. For the modern conservative, values compress to suit the flawed candidate most likely to win (with apologies to Cyril Northcote Parkinson).
“Nothing short of twisted”
Posted by: | CommentsAll things old are new again. Like red-baiting from the Red Scare period a half century ago. On the campaign trail in South Carolina, Gov. Mitt Romney got snappish with a questioner who asked what he — a member of the 1% — would do as president for the 99%. The Romney campaign thinks he did a good job responding this way:
Steve Benen at Washington Monthly disagrees. Romney’s vision, Benen believes, is a “Dickensian nightmare” for American workers:
The country deserves to have a meaningful, substantive debate about a generation of policies that have rewarded wealth while making conditions harder for working people. There are real issues that reflect real-world challenges facing Americans: rising income inequality, poverty, an unjust tax system, and wealth that’s increasingly concentrated at the top.
For Mitt Romney, those who even consider this a legitimate area of debate prefer, in his mind, communism.
This is nothing short of twisted.
No argument there. You’re either with the GOP or you’re with the commies.
This Chinese Life
Posted by: | CommentsA couple of weeks ago, “This American Life” aired a story titled “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” about life in the Chinese factory that makes the iPhone and other consumer electronics. Apparently, others took notice. “The Daily Show,” for example.
I wonder if the dormitories in the clip are the ones they show to the press?
