Category: Democratic News

Greenspan Turns Left: Calls for Repeal of All the Bush Tax Cuts

Posted on by TL
Alan Greenspan

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has officially moved to the left of President Obama on taxes. And that’s something, coming from a self-described lifelong Republican libertarian.

From the New York Times:

It was not enough, it seems, for Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman and a self-described lifelong Republican libertarian, to call for stringent government regulation of giant banks, as he did a few months ago.

Now Mr. Greenspan is wading into the most fierce economic policy debate in Washington — what to do with the tax cuts adopted, in large part because of his implicit backing, under President George W. Bush — with a position not only contrary to Republican orthodoxy, but decidedly to the left of President Obama.

Rather than keeping tax rates steady for all but the wealthiest Americans, as the White House wants, Mr. Greenspan is calling for the complete repeal of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, brushing aside the arguments of Republicans and even a few Democrats that doing so could threaten the already shaky economic recovery.

“I’m in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money,” Mr. Greenspan, 84, said Friday in a telephone interview. “Our choices right now are not between good and better; they’re between bad and worse. The problem we now face is the most extraordinary financial crisis that I have ever seen or read about.”

Mr. Greenspan, who led the Fed for 18 years until he retired in 2006, warns that without drastic action to increase federal revenue and reduce the long-term growth in health care costs, bond investors could make a run on Treasury securities, driving up the nation’s borrowing costs and leading to another global economic crisis. This is not the first time Mr. Greenspan has urged fiscal restraint; he warned in 2008 that the country could not afford the tax cuts proposed by Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate. But his sweeping call for rescinding the Bush tax cuts, which he has articulated in a recent appearance on “Meet the Press” and an interview with The Financial Times, among other settings, has rankled former colleagues.

I never understood Trickle-Down Economics. Cutting government revenue never results in economic growth. Instead, the richest of the rich buy bigger yachts, and the national debt increases, often exponentially. Republicans never had the discipline to cut spending. Democrats fund projects that offend the G.O.P. and libertarians, but also balance budgets, repairing damage done by the G.O.P.

I’m with Harry Truman and Bill Clinton: "If you want to live like a Republican, VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS."

Sometimes, it’s that simple.

Thanks, Alan.

Al Gore Will Not Face Prosecution

Posted on by TL

Due to numerous inconstincies in the story of the unknown "red-haired masseuse," Al Gore will not be prosecuted:

Former Vice President Al Gore won’t be prosecuted over allegations by a masseuse that he groped and assaulted her in his Portland hotel room in 2006, the county prosecutor said Friday.

District Attorney Michael Schrunk said the case has numerous problems and isn’t appropriate for a criminal prosecution.

Among the difficulties that Schrunk cited: Although the red-haired masseuse said she was terrified of Gore, she also said she called him after their encounter and told him to "dream of redheaded women."

Schrunk also said the woman – Molly Hagerty – told the hotel she appreciated the business referrals it had given her, and didn’t mention any problems with Gore just two nights earlier.

Gore denied the charges, including under questioning July 22 by local detectives. His aides welcomed the news.

I’ll bet they welcomed the news.

No one is beyond temptation. But, come on. Al Gore? Really?

Al’s about as up front and honest as you can find.

Rod “The Mouth” Blagojevich Decides Again To Not Testify When It Matters Most: At Trial (With Video)

Posted on by TL

Governor Rod Blagojevich did not testify in his own defense when the Illinois Senate put him on trial and eventually threw him out of office. The man who never passed up a camera or microphone while in office decided to refrain from testifying before the Illinois Senate, and then showed up to speak before that same Illinois Senate just before they tossed him out.

Now, after his lawyers promised he would testify and would set the record straight, Blago has decided to snub the court once again.

Rod Blagojevich, now former governor, will not testify in his own defense.

Why? The best we can gather comes from the Chicago Tribune:

A defiant Rod Blagojevich defended his decision Wednesday not to take the witness stand at his corruption trial by declaring the government had not only failed to present a strong case against him, but actually proved his innocence.

But like many things the former governor has said over the years, the choice was more complicated.

While his lawyers publicly backed Blagojevich’s view that he didn’t need to respond to the government’s case, sources said the defense team was worried the former governor could be headed toward a beating on the stand that would only undermine his case and weaken his standing with the jury.

I’m going with the beating-on-the-stand-would-undermine-his-case explanation. This is my favorite:

The sources said the former governor had difficulty wrapping words around the concepts he wanted to use to defend himself.

After all this time, the former governor was at a loss for words? After showing up on The View?

I don’t think so.

G.O.P. Myth #1: The Unemployed Don’t Want To Work

Posted on by TL

Who are the unemployed in America? Do they really not want to work, as the Republicans have been arguing?

Had a bit of a chat tonight with someone on Facebook who I haven’t seen since 1981, when we graduated high school in Pittsburgh. He still lives in Pittsburgh, went to college in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is someplace special, but it’s good to gain perspective.

I love Pittsburgh, but, for a number of reasons, I’m glad I moved years ago. Pittsburgh is still very, very segregated, racially and socio-economically. My former high school classmate is stuck in Supply-Side Voodoo Economics land, “Imagine how good our economy will be when everyone is out of work! Reduce government spending, cut taxes, encourage entrepreneurship. That’s how to create jobs. Unemployment checks…please!”

Reduce government spending — okay, but what government spending? Cut taxes? How will we pay for everything President George W. Bush spent, especially when we’re still paying for everything President Ronald Reagan spent?

Want to get to know the unemployed a bit? Read what they’re writing here, at Unemployed-Friends. Unemployed Friends is a busy, busy forum. These are real people out of work because Republicans trashed the economy. Pure and simple.

And they want to work.

The G.O.P. is wrong wrong wrong for the economy. Always have been. Always will be.

Juror’s Hear Patti Blagojevich’s Potty Mouth

Posted on by TL
Blago

Patti On Tape: "Tell Them To Hold Up That F***ing Cubs S***. F*** them."

I don’t have a picture of Patti Blagojevich. Never met her.

Met the former Gov. several times. This picture comes from one of those meetings, taken in Matteson’s Lincoln Mall so many lifetimes ago, it seems now.

Actually believed in him once.

Yes, I was had, as were the many who voted for him.

In spite of the huge numbers who voted for him in Chicago’s South Suburbs, Blago the Press Guy only visited our area a few times.

This week, the jury hearing the trial of His Hairness got to hear Mrs. Blago talk smack, now on the record.

From Chicago’s CBS:

While Bob Greenlee, a onetime deputy governor for Rod Blagojevich, was on the stand Thursday, prosecutors played a tape of a phone conversation Greenlee had with Rod and Patti Blagojevich.

In that conversation, the three of them are discussing Chicago Tribune articles and editorials that had been critical of the governor and the Tribune Company’s attempts to sell Wrigley Field to the state as part of a pending sale of the Chicago Cubs.

Patti is heard saying, "Tell them to hold up that f***ing Cubs s***. F*** them, f*** them. Why should you do anything for those a**holes? Sam Zell. What kind of bulls*** is that."

Later, Patti is heard complaining about the Tribune’s editorial board.
"Just fire ’em … What would … William Randolph Hearst do, say, oh, I can’t interfere with my editorial board? … They’re hurting (the Tribune Company’s) business," Patti Blagojevich says.

Greenlee adds, "They’ve lost all impartiality."

Later, Rod is heard talking about asking his chief of staff, John Harris, to approach Tribune owner Sam Zell and tell him to "fire those f***ers."

Throughout the call, Greenlee repeatedly warns Blagojevich to be careful about how to approach the Tribune about the negative editorials about the governor, telling him it would be a "sensitive" issue to even just imply the editorial board should be fired.

At one point, Blagojevich asks, "What’s so sensitive about it?"

On the stand, Greenlee testified that he knew "it’s wrong to try to fire people over an editorial opinion."

I have no idea where this trial is going. It’s hard to keep up. The press is focusing on the profanity, sometimes over substance, I think. I hope the jury is hearing the substance. In spite of all the allegations, and some of our personal feelings, His Hairness deserves a fair trial. If convicted, it should be solid.

Of course, he only has himself to blame for the sideshow.

Myths And Falsehoods About Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court Nomination

Posted on by TL

ENEWSPF is carrying a quite comprehensive article from Media Matters for America that addresses – heck, blows out of the water – every myth and falsehood that has been floated about Elena Kagan, including the following:

  • Myth: Kagan is "anti-military"
  • Myth: Kagan is "radical"
  • Myth: Kagan’s praise for an Israeli Supreme Court justice shows she’s a radical (NEW)
  • Myth: Kagan’s thesis shows she’s a socialist
  • Myth: Conservatives can credibly argue that Kagan’s personal and political views are relevant to confirmation process
  • Myth: "Kagan Standard" means Kagan must answer questions about issues that will come before the Supreme Court
  • Myth: Kagan’s Goldman Sachs role taints her nomination
  • Myth: Conservative opposition is based on the substance of Kagan’s nomination
  • Myth: Obama used "empathy" standard rather than fealty to law in choosing Kagan
  • Myth: Kagan is unqualified because she hasn’t been a judge (UPDATED)
  • Myth: Kagan has said judicial experience is an "apparent necessity"
  • Myth: Republicans would be justified in opposing Kagan because she lacks a judicial paper trail
  • Myth: Kagan is "Obama’s Harriet Miers"
  • Myth: Kagan’s record shows that she will rubber-stamp war-on-terror policies
  • Myth: Kagan’s 23-year-old statements about the Establishment Clause suggest she’s hostile to religion
  • Myth: Kagan’s recusal obligations would be "extraordinary"
  • Myth: Kagan "can become" too "emotionally involved on issues she deeply cares about"
  • Myth: Kagan not "fair-minded, impartial" and doesn’t have "proper temperament to be a judge"
  • Myth: Kagan is anti-free speech
  • Myth: Kagan supports banning books
  • Myth: Kagan wanted to "ban pamphlets" by individuals (NEW)
  • Myth: Kagan is anti-Second Amendment
  • Myth: Kagan compared the NRA to the Klan (NEW)
  • Myth: Kagan banned ROTC from campus
  • Myth: Kagan "cover[ed] up" plagiarism at Harvard Law
  • Myth: Kagan’s citation of Marshall’s statement that the original Constitution was "defective" is controversial
  • Myth: Kagan’s memos to Justice Thurgood Marshall prove she’s outside mainstream (NEW)
  • Myth: Kagan’s campaign donations are unusual
  • Myth: Kagan supported Saudi sponsors of terrorism
  • Myth: Kagan accepted a gift by Saudi prince that brought Shariah at Harvard (NEW)
  • Myth: Kagan acted improperly in Warner Creek case
  • Myth: As SG, Kagan indulged her own views rather than defending the law
  • Myth: Kagan is avoiding "traditional interviews" with the press
  • Myth: Kagan supports holding terror suspects "without due process" (NEW)
  • Myth: Kagan believes that foreign law trumps constitutional law (NEW)
  • Myth: Kagan wants to protect sex offenders in the Catholic Church (NEW)
  • Myth: Kagan supports cloning human beings (NEW)

Read the entire article here.

Memories of Republican Rule Will Help Dems in November

Posted on by TL

What’s worse than two more years of a Democratic majority in Congress?

A return to the disaster plan of the GOP.

From the Washington Post:

Architects of President Obama‘s 2008 victory are braced for potentially sizable Democratic losses in November’s midterm elections. But they say voters’ unease about a GOP takeover will help their party maintain congressional majorities.

"I think the prospect of a Republican takeover — while not likely, but plausible — will be very much part of the dynamic in October, and I think that will help us with turnout and some of this enthusiasm gap," said David Plouffe, who was Obama’s campaign manager two years ago and is helping to oversee Democratic efforts this fall. Still, he put all Democrats on notice, saying: "We’d better act as a party as if the House and the Senate and every major governor’s race is at stake and in danger, because they could be."

Plouffe and other Democratic strategists say Obama will play an important role in making the case that the Republican Party is one of obstruction and indifference. But they think the outcome in November will depend as much on the skill of candidates in mobilizing potential supporters who are now disinclined to vote.

The GOP, architects of the Great Recession. Republican leadership in Congress would double-dip us right back down.

Louisiana’s Bad Marriage to the Oil Industry

Posted on by TL

The state of Louisiana is in a bad marriage that can only end badly.

From The Nation:

No state in the union has been more firmly wedded to the oil and gas industry than Louisiana. No more zealous preachers of the clean oil gospel can be found than the state’s politicians, who were elected by oil money (at the high end of industry campaign funding) and have defended the industry from regulation (including wetland protections), reduced its royalties with tax breaks and "royalty holidays" (thereby depriving the US Treasury of some $53 billion in revenues from existing offshore leases) and beaten the drums for opening the Atlantic Coast and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development… because Louisiana’s experience showed oil and the environment to be so compatible. State brochures feature pelicans and oil platforms against the setting sun. The largest exhibit in New Orleans’s Audubon Aquarium of the Americas contains the base of an oil rig, around which swim contented fish, framed by the logos of Shell, Chevron and BP. We have improved on Eden.

The real story was always otherwise; it was just rarely told. Oil was first found in Louisiana a hundred years ago, and the finds swiftly moved south to the coastal zone. Oil companies appropriated the coastal parishes, most notoriously Plaquemines, ground zero for the BP slick; Texaco’s leases in Plaquemines were arranged by the parish district attorney, who conveniently reported only part of the proceeds to the parish police jury and kept the rest (a fact that is emerging only after his death, in a family feud). Local politicians in their pockets, Texaco et al. had one remaining problem: getting men and equipment to the drill sites and laying pipelines to carry off the gold. In the companies’ way were some 5 million acres of coastal marsh, one of the most biologically productive zones in North America.

The solution was soon to come: floating dredges, which would dig canals to the wellheads and more canals for the pipelines. These dredges have worked nonstop ever since. They have ripped through the wetlands of southern Louisiana like bulldozers, severing bayous, drowning adjacent marshes, draining others and introducing salt water from the Gulf of Mexico that sears the plant roots, at which point they disintegrate and the coastal marsh system, made up of billions of stems and roots of living things, falls apart like wet cardboard. There were alternative means of access, but industry rejected them. It could also have backfilled the canals when the job was done, but this too was rejected. The reasons were remarkably like BP’s: those approaches would take time, cost money.

The dredging was not occasional, or here or there. It was pandemic. The industry has laced 8,000 miles of canals and pipelines through the Louisiana wetlands, each one eroding laterally over time, less an assault at this point than a cancer. They are supported by larger navigation canals, requested by the industry and built by the ever-willing Army Corps of Engineers. One such canal, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, after killing off 39,000 acres of forest and wetlands between New Orleans and the gulf, ushered Hurricane Katrina right into the city. If you drive down any bayou road in southern Louisiana, you will see marsh grasses out the window. If you fly over them in a plane and look down, you see something that looks like northern New Jersey: water roads and open water through isolated patches of green. The next time you fly over, there will be even less green. We have been losing twenty-five square miles of coastal Louisiana every year, in major part to these canals, to serve the oil and gas industry, which has made tidy sums in the bargain. When I last looked, six oil and energy corporations were listed in the world’s top ten.

And there’s more. Consider this:

Louisiana, the state most vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise, leads the charge against EPA regulation of carbon dioxide (letters of opposition from no fewer than four state agencies and the governor, which must be a record) and the president’s climate change bill.

Now the oil comes home.

A Hole in the World: The BP Oil Hemorrhage

Posted on by TL

It’s not an oil spill. There is no mere spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

There is a hole in the world. The floor of the Gulf of Mexico is hemorrhaging oil, and no one has a clue how to stop it. When they finally do plug the hold, the damage will likely be with us for decades.

From The Nation:

How long will it take for an ecosystem this ravaged to be "restored and made whole," as Obama’s interior secretary pledged it would be? It’s not at all clear that such a thing is even possible, at least not in a time frame we can easily wrap our heads around. The Alaskan fisheries have yet to recover fully from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, and some species of fish never returned. Government scientists estimate that as much as a Valdez-worth of oil may be entering the Gulf Coast waters every four days. An even worse prognosis emerges from the 1991 Gulf War spill, when an estimated 11 million barrels of oil were dumped into the Persian Gulf—the largest spill ever. It’s not a perfect comparison, since so little cleanup was done, but according to a study conducted twelve years after the disaster in the Persian Gulf, nearly 90 percent of the impacted muddy salt marshes and mangroves were still profoundly damaged.

We do know this: far from being "made whole," the Gulf Coast, more than likely, will be diminished. Its rich waters and crowded skies will be less alive than they are today. The physical space many communities occupy on the map will also shrink, thanks to erosion. And the coast’s legendary culture will contract and wither. The fishing families up and down the coast do not just gather food, after all. They hold up an intricate network that includes family tradition, cuisine, music, art and endangered languages—much like the roots of grass holding up the land in the marsh. Without fishing, these unique cultures lose their root system, the very ground on which they stand. (BP, for its part, is well aware of the limits of recovery. The company’s "Gulf of Mexico Regional Oil Spill Response Plan" specifically instructs officials not to make "promises that property, ecology, or anything else will be restored to normal." Which is no doubt why its officials consistently favor folksy terms like "make it right.")

If Katrina pulled back the curtain on racism, the BP disaster pulls back the curtain on something far more hidden: how little control even the most ingenious among us have over the awesome, intricately interconnected natural forces with which we so casually meddle. BP cannot plug the hole in the Earth that it made. Obama cannot order brown pelicans not to go extinct (no matter whose ass he kicks). No amount of money—not BP’s recently pledged $20 billion, not $100 billion—can replace a culture that has lost its roots. And while our politicians and corporate leaders have yet to come to terms with these humbling truths, the people whose air, water and livelihoods have been contaminated are losing their illusions fast.

"Everything is dying," a woman said as the town hall meeting was coming to a close. "How can you honestly tell us that our gulf is resilient and will bounce back? Because not one of you up here has a hint as to what is going to happen to our gulf. You sit up here with a straight face and act like you know, when you don’t know."

"Everything is dying."