Democrats
mikethemadbiologist | August 18, 2010'Progressives' are getting all gooey over Obama's stern declaration that he will prevent Republicans from privatizing Social Security.
So why am I being so harsh towards Obama? Because this is a sucker play. Given Obama's track record on most issues so far, it's pretty obvious what will happen next:
1) Obama issues a stern declaration about 'protecting Social Security.' Of course, no one was seriously entertaining that idea on the legislative agenda. Until now. Up to this point, the debate (aka the 'Catfood Commission') has centered over future benefits (e.g., what is the age of…
mikethemadbiologist | August 10, 2010Apparently, the Obama Administration is very upset with the "professional left":
"I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs said. "I mean, it's crazy."
Actually, when it comes to the expansion of presidential power, Obama has been worse than Bush. After all, never claimed he had the right to assassinate U.S. citizens at will. Seriously, between that and Obama's muddling on gay rights, Obama is to constitutional scholar as Newt Gingrich is to historian (Or intellectual. Or decent human being).
Moving on:
The press secretary dismissed…
mikethemadbiologist | August 6, 2010Of course, some of us are already there. A long time reader has been saying ever since the first unveiling of the stimulus package that Larry Summers' poor advice was going to kill the Democrats--and be crappy policy. He's not the only frustrated one, as word is that Christine Romer, chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, is resigning.
Here's the crux of Summers' handiwork (italics mine):
Romer had run simulations of the effects of stimulus packages of varying sizes: six hundred billion dollars, eight hundred billion dollars, and $1.2 trillion. The best estimate for…
mikethemadbiologist | July 18, 2010I'm surprised that this revelation by Democratic Congressman David Obey hasn't received more attention. Basically, the House Democrats went to the wall for education and managed to get $10 billion to prevent teacher layoffs and an additional $5 billion for Pell Grants. To do so, they had to cut Obama's educational 'reform' program, Race to the Top, by about fifteen percent. This is the same so-called reform bill that screwed over Massachusetts' schools and that also weakened science education.
What was the Obama administration's response? According to Obey (italics mine):
The secretary…
mikethemadbiologist | July 12, 2010Like Digby, I had the same thought pop into my head when I read this LA Times story about the continued suppression of scientific findings in government agencies: this is the work of Bush-era 'burrowers'--conservative apparatchiks who refuse to carry out the mission of the agency. What I don't get is this bit (italics mine):
Officials at those agencies maintain that scientists are allowed and encouraged to speak out if they believe a policy is at odds with their findings.
The director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, John P. Holdren, said in a statement last month…
mikethemadbiologist | July 9, 2010Just like I don't think Peter Peterson is stupid enough to believe his anti-Social Security propaganda, President Obama can't actually believe this:
"Now, government can't create jobs, but it can help create the conditions for small businesses to grow and thrive and hire more workers," President Barack Obama said yesterday as he urged Congress to take up new jobs legislation at an event honoring Small Business Owners of the Year. "Government can't guarantee a company's success, but it can knock down the barriers that prevent small-business owners from getting loans or investing in the future…
mikethemadbiologist | June 28, 2010If you don't know who Pete Peterson is, let me help you (We like helping!):
...we can now return to the never-ending attempt by conservatives to gut Social Security. One of the key figures and bankrollers in that attempt is financier Peter Peterson. By key, I mean that he has spent around one billion dollars financing the Peterson Foundation, which advocates various 'fiscal responsibility' measures (i.e., making Granny eat cat food) and slashing Social Security benefits... But as always, one must follow the money, since Peterson's 'charity' seems rather self-interested--and not in the sense…
mikethemadbiologist | June 17, 2010President Obama has been arguing that if he had tried to regulate the oil industry before the BP disaster, it would have gone nowhere and Republicans would have pissed and moaned about oppressive regulations:
In an interview with POLITICO, the president said: "I think it's fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is…
mikethemadbiologist | June 13, 2010On the Democratic Internets, there seems to be considerable gnashing of teeth and wailing about the loss by Bill Halter to corporate Democrat Senator Blanche Lincoln in the Arkansas primary. I'm not particularly shook up by the outcome. First, Halter really wouldn't have been much better (although not rewarding Lincoln's bad behavior is worth doing). Second, it's good to see the mainstream Democratic constituencies begin to realize they're getting screwed by their own party--and do something about it.
Over at AmericaBlog, Gaius Publius has three good conclusions regarding the Arkansas…
mikethemadbiologist | June 8, 2010Finally, large, mainstream organizations that have traditionally supported Democrats are not rewarding bad behavior. From Arkansas, where incumbent corporate shill and supposed Democrat Blanche Lincoln is in a primary fight for her life. From The NY Times:
CONWAY, Ark. -- They have knocked on 170,000 doors, made 700,000 phone calls, sent 2.7 million pieces of mail and spent almost $6 million on television and radio advertising.
That is how badly labor unions, by their own count, want to defeat Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat they once supported. Even though Arkansas's labor force is one…
mikethemadbiologist | May 29, 2010Having spent most of Thursday travelling from San Diego to Boston, I had the distinct displeasure of watching cable news. First point: it still sucks. But the constant theme was that Obama is on the defensive about the BP oil rig blowout. Sure, it's stupid, although I think Obama was too ready to rely on BP's expertise (eveni f you don't believe that parts of the operation could be handled by the government, then bring in other oil companies for advice).
But a problem Obama faces is that, on issue after issue, he has fallen far short of what the rank-and-file wanted (and often what he ran…
mikethemadbiologist | May 13, 2010And demoralized too. Ian Welsh:
...for most of a year, everyone's energy was completely sucked into the never-ending health care debate, and many progressives regarded how it ended up as a demoralizing defeat, a defeat made worse by the fact that it was a betrayal from what many thought was "our own side".
There's a massive trust issue. Many readers have a hard time believing in candidates any more, especially after the way so many "progressive heroes" have repeatedly caved in the last year.
Betrayal has consequences. New candidates may not have betrayed anyone, but the people whose…
mikethemadbiologist | May 1, 2010
(from here)
Obama's kinder, gentler "Drill, baby, drill" is looking very short-sighted. We can only hope he has learned that when you use your party loyalists as foils and adopt a center-right compromise, so that you can claim to have boldly discarded the "the tired debates between right and left", that there is a potential pitfall: your party loyalists might actually be correct on the merits. Consider oil drilling (italics mine):
UPDATE via the Wonk Room: Repeating a GOP/Oil industry sounding talking point, earlier this month the President said:
It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs…
mikethemadbiologist | April 4, 2010...get drunk and hit you. Digby thinks that's the meaning of this poll by Gallup:
A new USA Today/Gallup poll out this morning shows that more Americans blame the Democrats more than any other group when it comes to the inciting the violence and vandalism that have spread across the country in the week since health care reform became law. Fifty percent said passing the bill was a "bad thing," while 47% said it was a good thing.*
When asked about the violence, 49% of the 1,009 adults surveyed over the weekend said the "Democratic tactics" are a "major reason" for the violent incidents. Forty-…
mikethemadbiologist | March 24, 2010One of the weird things (of many) about using the reconciliation process is that it can only be used once per session. So when the Democrats passed Romneycare, they also had to deal with getting student loan reform past conservative obstruction. From The Washington Post (italics mine):
The student aid initiative, which House Democrats attached to their final amendments to the health-care bill, would overhaul the student loan industry, eliminating a $60 billion program that supports private student loans with federal subsidies and replacing it with government lending to students. The House…
mikethemadbiologist | March 23, 2010...too bad MA Governor Deval Patrick, and for that matter, President Obama, don't. The recent educational regression reform plan in Massachusetts and the Obama Administration's educational proposals both seem to misunderstand what has made Massachusetts' educational system one of the best in the world (and that does far better than would be expected by demography):
1) Content-based standards that teachers can actually use.
2) Rigorous evaluation of whether those standards are being met.
3) A testing/evaluation regime that has been continuously refined and that is well understood, and that…
mikethemadbiologist | March 20, 2010Chris Bowers and Digby both comment on the failure of the Congressional progressives to exact demands on healthcare (and many other issues), as opposed to the conservative Democrats who really did drive the debate. Digby writes:
In the case of health care, as I wrote way back when, the congressional liberals were always going to be jammed at the end because the Medicaid expansion alone is something they desperately wanted for decades and couldn't ever get (which doesn't excuse why they negotiated with themselves the whole way along.) There was just no way that a progressive bloc strategy was…
mikethemadbiologist | March 17, 2010It's bad enough that the Texas Board of Education, through its new 'standards', will result in the mass mental disability of millions of American students. But the new federal standards could potential harm Massachusetts' educational system--and if it's working well (and it is)--then don't fix it. With friends like Arne Duncan and the Obama Administration, who needs enemies (or Republicans)? Ze'ev Furman and Sandra Stotsky:
The Obama administration plans to make states adopt proposed national academic standards as a condition for receipt of federal education grants. The problem is what the…
mikethemadbiologist | March 12, 2010I don't know what's worse: that Republican congressman Paul Ryan is viewed as intelligent, or that if the Democrats lose the House, he could be driving economic policy. Not surprisingly, Congressman Ryan has proposed a tax plan that would lower revenues overall (Republicans talk about lower deficits--in practice, they do the opposite); the plan slashes income taxes and institutes a value-added tax (VAT). What is remarkable is that, for 80% of the country, individual tax burdens would increase. You'll never guess which end of the income spectrum those eighty percent fall into:
Leaving…
mikethemadbiologist | February 28, 2010Or as I like to say--people have to like this crap. Two events over the last month, the reappointment of Bernanke to Fed Chairman and some Senate Democrats' new-found opposition to using reconciliation to pass healthcare reform with a public option, highlight one reason why Democrats lose elections: rather than focusing on outcomes, they focus on the process, on the 'atmospherics.' Consider the reappointment of Bernanke. It's pretty clear that he's more concerned with keeping inflation ludicrously low, which will fail to combat massive unemployment--which is one of his legally mandated…