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And Now For The Republican Freakout… by Steve Kornacki, salon.com | December 19, 2012
Yesterday began with President Obama’s base grappling with how to interpret the new concessions he’d offered House Speaker John Boehner in their fiscal cliff negotiations. There was – and is – serious question over the left’s willingness to abide the framework Obama proposed. But all of that may be moot because of what’s now playing out on the other side of the aisle. While it appeared that Obama had ceded considerable ground to the GOP, especially relative to the leverage he enjoys, the reaction from Republicans on Monday was jarringly negative. First came Boehner’s declaration that Obama’s terms were unacceptable and that he would begin pursuing “Plan B”. This wouldn't help resolve the standoff, since Senate Democrats say they’d never act on Boehner’s plan. There are also doubts about how much support Plan B has among House Republicans. Not that Republicans are any warmer to Plan A. read more »Capitulation Is Never Popular. Or Effective. by Markos Moulitsas, dailykos.com | December 19, 2012
If President Barack Obama has a flaw, it's his obviously overwhelming desire to appear reasonable and conciliatory and "work together" to find "compromise" and "get things done". Bipartisanly. With a sane, reasonable, conciliatory opposition, that approach would make sense. But after four years of getting slammed by Republicans eager to destroy his presidency, Obama still hasn't learned the lesson. He still thinks he's going to get rewarded for being the "adult in the room." Yeah, everything I've put inside scare quotes is a joke. A bad, painful joke. Capitulation is never a strength. A deal will obviously require concessions by the president, but you make those to FINISH the deal, not in the middle of negotiations, and not until after you've branded the opposition with the concessions they're demanding. read more »Obama's Offer on Fiscal Talks Is "Insanity" by Alex Seitz-Wald, alternet.org | December 19, 2012
President Obama and House Republicans appear to be closing in on a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, but liberals are not happy with it. Late last night, the White House offered a plan with two major concessions to Republicans. First, it would hike taxes on the wealthy, but only on income above $400,000, instead of the current $250,000 threshold. Second, and far more controversially, Obama offered to change the formula used to calculate Social Security benefits in a way that would cut outlays to seniors slightly while saving the program $225 billion over a decade. The reaction from liberals, who have been demanding all along that social safety net programs be off the table, was swift and fierce. read more »Michigan Republicans Deny Police Officers and Firefighters the Right to Work by Dean Baker, Huffington Post | December 18, 2012
That is what the headlines would say if anyone really believed that the anti-union laws passed last week in Michigan actually had anything to do with the rights of workers. When the legislature outlawed contracts requiring workers who benefit from union representation to pay for that representation, it explicitly exempted the police and firefighters' unions. If this law was actually about the "right to work," the Republican legislature and Governor Snyder were effectively denying the right to work to the state's police officers and firefighters. Of course this law has nothing to do with the right to work (RTW), as everyone involved knows; that is just the spin from the anti-labor coalition. This is why police unions and firefighters' unions were exempted. The Republicans were trying to buy off these workers with special favors, not singling them out for punishment. read more »Remember the Children by Robert B. Reich, robertreich.org | December 18, 2012
It seems as if every major interest has political clout – except children. They can’t vote. They don’t make major campaign donations. They can’t hire fleets of lobbyists. Yet they’re America’s future. Their parents and grandparents care, of course, as do many other private citizens. But we’re no match for the entrenched interests that dominate American politics. Whether it’s fighting for reasonable gun regulation, child health and safety overall, or good schools and family services – we can’t have a fair fight as long as special-interest money continues to poison our politics. read more »How Walmart Helped Make Newtown Shooter's AR-15 the Most Popular Assault Weapon in America by George Zornick, The Nation | December 18, 2012
When Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, December 14, inexplicably bent on ending as many lives as possible, he was carrying a Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle and several high-capacity magazines. Sadly, this isn’t the first time we’ve encountered an AR-15 in this context: only days earlier, it was the weapon of choice for a shooting at an Oregon mall that killed two people. Five months earlier, it was used by James Holmes in an attack that wounded fifty-eight people and killed twelve in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. And several years before that, a man and his teenage accomplice used a Bushmaster AR-15 to terrorize the Washington, DC, area with a series of random shootings. Although it is not yet clear where the Bushmaster AR-15 used by Lanza was purchased, the model is familiar to many Walmart shoppers. It’s on sale at about 1,700 Walmart stores nationwide. read more »Republicans Float Plan to Make Electoral College More Unfair by Jamelle Bouie, prospect.org | December 18, 2012
Since their across-the-board defeat in November, Republicans have talked a great game about reform and outreach, with presidential hopefuls Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, and Bobby Jindal leading the charge. But the actual actions of the GOP belie this stated commitment to change. According to National Journal, for example, Republicans are planning a big push to change how states distribute their electoral votes. Currently, most states have a winner-take-all arrangement—if you win the majority of votes, you take all of the electoral votes. For all but voters in deep red or dark blue states, this is unfair. Some reformers want to solve this problem with a national popular vote, others with nationwide proportional distribution of electoral votes. Republicans, by contrast, want to “reform” the system by adopting the worst of all worlds—winner-take-all for Republican states, proportional distribution for Democratic ones. read more »Gun Owners Can't Hurt Democrats by Jamelle Bouie, salon.com | December 17, 2012
It’s hard to know what, exactly, the federal government can do to reduce the incidence of mass shootings. To a large degree, each shooting is sui generis—some shooters have been mentally ill, others haven’t. Some shooters have had concrete motivations, others, none at all. And while some shooters might have been stopped by tighter restrictions on guns and ammunition, others—like the shooter in Newtown—were able to rely on an existing and easy-to-access stockpile of weapons (in this case, his mother’s arsenal). With all of that said, Democrats shouldn’t be afraid of running with this issue. The common wisdom in the Democratic Party is that gun regulations—whether focused around control or safety—are an electoral loser; that they alienate the middle and working-class white men who are critical in Rust Belt and Midwestern states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin. read more »Gas On The Debt Limit Fire by Brian Beutler, talkingpointsmemo.com | December 17, 2012
Lest you conclude that progress in fiscal cliff negotiations is symptomatic of a weakened conservative appetite for taking the debt limit hostage, allow me to dissuade you. The truth is quite different. See, for starters, the Club for Growth’s reaction to John Boehner’s latest budget offer. The nub of it is pretty straightforward: They don’t want Boehner to raise the debt limit, even temporarily. They’re still pushing a 2011 redux. Even if deep down John Boehner wants to avoid another debt limit fight, or doesn’t think it’s winnable this time around, he’s so constrained by the right that he only felt able to offer Obama a year-long reprieve from that particular brinksmanship. Preventing it altogether will require the kind of willingness to shut down the right that Boehner’s never exhibited as speaker. read more »War At Home by Bob Herbert, prospect.org | December 17, 2012
Perhaps the most breathtakingly obscene aspect of American society is our absolute and utter refusal to deal with the murderous gun violence that lays its awful blanket of blood and sorrow across the families of thousands upon thousands of victims each and every year. On Friday, even the presumed safe harbor of an elementary school in suburban Newtown, Connecticut, was defiled when the school was invaded by a young man armed with military-style assault weapons. He would kill a total of 26 people, including 20 children, before taking his own life. How many times will we allow these atrocities to occur before we find the courage and the will to intervene? What is the point of having a self-governing society if we can’t—or won’t—protect kindergarten pupils from the flood-tide of killing set loose by a gun culture that has gone stark raving mad? read more »
The Latest
Rep. DeLauro: "No One's In Charge of Food Safety", Associated Press | February 24, 2009
The FDA bears the brunt of food safety oversight, a mission called into question in the wake of a massive recall of peanut products. But at least 15 government agencies have a hand in making sure food is safe under at least 30 different laws, some of which date back to the early 1900s. It's a convoluted system. read more »
Looted Iraq Museum Opens, The New York Times | February 24, 2009
Well over half the exhibition halls in Iraq’s National Museum are closed, darkened and in disrepair. And yet the museum, whose looting in 2003 became a symbol of the chaos that followed the American invasion, officially reopened. Thousands of works from its collection of antiquities and art — some of civilization’s earliest objects — remain lost. read more »
Guantanamo Report Draws Fire, The New York Times | February 24, 2009
The Pentagon official who inspected the Guantánamo Bay prison at the behest of President Obama and declared its conditions humane described himself Monday as a “fresh set of eyes” who had been given free rein to go about his work. But detainees’ lawyers and human rights groups ridiculed the 85-page report that the official, Adm. Patrick M. read more »
SEC Seeks Whistleblowers, time.com | February 24, 2009
From "Sir" Allen Stanford's $8 billion CD sticky wicket to Bernie Madoff's $50 billion decades-long lie, each new day brings another round of financial madness, and yet no one seems to be moving fast to find a cure. But the Securities and Exchange Commission's Inspector General, David Kotz, is all ears for one group: Wall Street's whistleblowers . read more »
Lawmakers Seek to Return Right to Sue Device Makers, The New York Times | February 20, 2009
At issue is a February 2008 court ruling that barred patients or their survivors from suing makers of complex medical devices — like the Medtronic product — if the Food and Drug Administration has approved their sale. Since that ruling judges nationwide, including the one in St. Paul, have cited it to dismiss cases against a wide range of manufacturers, including Medtronic. read more »
GOP Governors May Reject Stimulus Funds, USA Today | February 19, 2009
Although President Obama's stimulus package provides about $144 billion directly to state and local governments, a few Republican governors are suggesting they might reject some of the money. No state has yet refused any of the funding from the $787 billion stimulus package, which Obama signed into law on Tuesday. read more »
Former A.G. Held Up Torture Report, Newsweek | February 17, 2009
A Justice Department investigation into the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding was on the verge of completion last fall when then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey raised objections to the findings, according to an e-mail from a Justice official and two legal sources who have been briefed on the inquiry. The e-mail was disclosed by Democratic Sens. read more »
FDA Audit Urged, Reuters | February 17, 2009
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department should audit the Food and Drug Administration's oversight of state inspection contracts after the salmonella outbreak involving peanuts, a Democratic lawmaker said. The salmonella outbreak traced to the Peanut Corporation of America's plant in Blakely, Georgia, has forced one of the biggest food recalls in U.S. read more »
Texas Orders Peanut Recall , The Washington Post | February 13, 2009
Texas health officials ordered the recall of peanut products from a plant operated by the company at the center of a national salmonella outbreak, days after tests indicated the likely presence of the bacteria there. Peanut Corp. read more »
Much U.S. Valentine's Candy From Mexico , USA Today | February 13, 2009
Nothing says Valentine's Day in America like the chocolates, candy hearts or red jelly beans you'll be giving your sweetheart this year.Yet these days, the odds are pretty good that the candy comes from Mexico. From jellied hearts to chocolates, Mexico's candy exports to the United States have more than doubled since 2002 as cheaper labor and sugar draw U.S. candymakers south of the border. read more »
