Democrats
mikethemadbiologist | April 4, 2009Jonathan Chait, in discussing the institutional problems that Obama faces in getting his agenda passed, describes Blue Dog Democratic Senator Ben Nelson's opposition to direct federal financing of student loans:
Recent years have shown beyond a doubt that the direct lending program works better. Every independent analysis--by the Congressional Budget Office, by the Office of Management and Budget under each of the last three presidents, and by the New America Foundation--has found that direct lending is cheaper. The guaranteed-loan program managed to cling to life through its congressional…
mikethemadbiologist | March 31, 2009There's been a lot of talk about the Newsweek article on economist Paul Krugman. But this part seems particularly relevant:
With dry humor, he once told a friend the story of attending an economic summit in Little Rock after Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992. As the friend recounted the story to NEWSWEEK, "Clinton asked Paul, 'Can we have a balanced budget and health-care reform?'--essentially, can we have it all? And Paul said, 'No, you have to be disciplined. You have to make choices.' Then Paul says to me (deadpan), 'That was the wrong answer.' Then Clinton turns to Laura Tyson…
mikethemadbiologist | March 30, 2009It's a trite saying to "follow the money", but, in the case of Senator Evan Bayh's (D-Goldman SachsIndiana) decision to oppose serious mortgage readjustments on foreclosed properties ("cramdowns"), it seems to fit. Here's the background on Bayh's opposition to cramdowns on foreclosures:
Senate debate on legislation that would allow bankruptcy judges to modify mortgage terms for troubled homeowners will be postponed until after the spring recess in April, according to a spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev...
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., initially was forced to pull the bill (HR…
mikethemadbiologist | March 29, 2009At this point, diversity in the Obama administration means you've never worked for Goldman Sachs. Meet the newest Obama nominee, Gary Gensler for head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (italics mine):
Gensler helped create this financial crisis when he was in the Treasury Department back in the Clinton era, when bipartisan cooperation with Wall Street lobbyists was all the rage. Sanders gets right to the point: "Mr. Gensler worked with Senator Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of AIG and has resulted in the…
mikethemadbiologist | March 26, 2009The reason the AIG bonuses are upsetting isn't the amount of the bonuses--although the bonuses are larger than the entire National Endowment for the Arts budget--it's the complete impotence of and cooptation of the government by the financial sector (yes, we need banks and a financial sector, but they are means, not ends). So I'm thrilled to read this about Treasury Secretary Geithner's chief of staff:
Obama noted that he was quickly developing policies to prevent future AIG-like catastrophes.... Noting that he and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) had each introduced legislation on this front in…
mikethemadbiologist | March 4, 2009...and you listen. If you're unaware of this, the confirmation of two good science appointees, Jane Lubchenco for NOAA Administrator and John Holdren for Science Advisor, are being obstructed by anonymous Senate holds (one isn't so anonymous and is by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ). ScienceBlogling Mike Dunford has all of the details--go contact some senators.
On a personal note, whatever little legitimacy scientists have was given to Democrats in 2008 (not to mention some money and time). It's time those ungrateful motherfuckers pay up (although be polite when you contact Senate offices).…
mikethemadbiologist | March 2, 2009One of the few saving graces of being a Democrat is that we're typically not anti-science. And then there's Democratic Senator Harkin (who is very good on other issues). Along with Republican Senator Bill Frist, Harkin was the driving force behind the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). However, Harkin doesn't like what NCCAM has found:
Sen. Tom Harkin, the proud father of the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, told a Senate hearing on Thursday that NCCAM had disappointed him by disproving too many alternative therapies.
"One of the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 15, 2009While I'm reasonably happy with the passed version of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, I'm still having deja vu all over again (to steal Yogi Berra's phrase) regarding Obama's attempt at bipartisanship. Virtually every Democrat, regardless if they were liberal or conservative, and a bunch of Democratic-leaning independents that I know, not to mention the entire Democratic-oriented blogosphere (which includes people who are definitely not liberals or leftists) realized what would happen with Obama's call for bipartisanship:
Democrats would negotiate away lots of things, even before the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 9, 2009These Twitter feeds, captured by Atrios and written by 'moderate' Democrat Claire McCaskill, make it so perfectly clear that many elected officials have no idea how things are funded:
"Proud we cut over 100 billion out of recov bill.Many Ds don't like it, but needed to be done.The silly stuff Rs keep talking about is OUT."
And then:
"Going to Museum of Am History today.Haven't been since it re-opened.Want to check it out.Also grocery store and later a movie date with Joe."
As Atrios notes:
Hopefully she enjoys the museum. Amusingly, she also voted for the Coburn amendment which forbids the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 9, 2009...so why did the Blue Dog Democrats and conservative Republicans cut it? According to the latest about the Recovery and Reinvestment Act (funny how everyone's forgetting about the reinvestment part), the Blue Dogs and 'moderate' Republicans cut in half the proposed funds to supplement state budgets. This defeats the whole purpose of a stimulus.
Hardly a day goes by in any state where there aren't newspaper stories about state and local budget cuts. For the most part, these aren't scaling back future projects, but cuts in ongoing, existing projects, such as education. Yet the Blue Dogs…
mikethemadbiologist | February 7, 2009More like this please:
And part deux:
Much better. He is kinda new to the job, after all...
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2009Via Greg Sargent, we learn that Blue Dog Democrat Senator Ben Nelson is still a repulsive person.
Total Reductions: $80 billion
Eliminations:
Head Start, Education for the Disadvantaged, School improvement, Child Nutrition, Firefighters, Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard, Prisons, COPS Hiring, Violence Against Women, NASA, NSF, Western Area Power Administration, CDC, Food Stamps
*****************************
Reductions:
Public Transit $3.4 billion, School Construction $60 billion
Fucking unbelievable. Intelligent Designer knows that Democrats can be pretty screwed up, but,…
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2009'Blue dog' conservative Democratic Senator Nelson's list of proposed cuts from the National Recovery and Reinvestment Act was leaked to Huffington Post (the documents are available at TPM). I've never understood the Blue Dogs. While conservatives are full blown batshit loony (Tax cuts today! Tax cuts tomorrow! Tax cuts fo'evuh!), there is at least some kind of ideology there (albeit twisted). What motivates the Blue Dogs? Do they like the power of being spoilers? Does it make them feel good when they can be the ones to make the deal? Do they not realize that 'stimulus' means spending…
mikethemadbiologist | January 29, 2009Congress, under pressure from Republicans*, cuts $200 million to refurbish the National Mall:
On Tuesday evening the House Rules Committee stripped two provisions from the stimulus package: the family planning money that President Obama personally lobbied Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to remove yesterday, and the $200 million to refurbish the National Mall.
The move was made amidst a torrent of GOP criticism about wasteful or non-stimulative spending in the bill, including those two projects, as the president attemps to woo House GOPers.
The Rules Committee provisions -- "4) strikes funding…
mikethemadbiologist | January 26, 2009According to the text of HR1 (pdf), NSF will be getting an additional $2.5 billion as part of the 'stimulus'* package. From HR1 (pp. 54-55):
For an additional amount for ''Research and Related Activities'', $2,500,000,000: Provided, That $300,000,000 shall be available solely for the Major Research Instrumentation program and $200,000,000 shall be for activities authorized by title II of Public Law 100-570 for academic research facilities modernization: Provided, That for peer-reviewed grants made under this heading, the time limitation provided in section 1103(b) of this Act shall be 120…
mikethemadbiologist | January 20, 2009Later today, Obama will give his inaugural speech, and like most such speeches, it will be full of bipartisan platitudes. That's fine, if par for the course (although, for a counterexample, FDR's 1932 address serves as a clarion call without all of the Cumbaya crap). Nonetheless, Obama has one very important political task ahead of him: getting rank-and-file Democrats to trust Democratic party leaders.
Right now, I think most active Democrats, whether they be conservative, moderate, or liberal, do not trust Democrats to do the right thing by themselves. To me, this is a perfect reasonable…
mikethemadbiologist | January 11, 2009This is change I can believe in. Gerberding has been awful. Not only has morale dropped on her watch (something that I observed anecdotally, and is backed up by these reports), but she also didn't stand up for the science when that science was politically incorrect.
More from CNN:
Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will leave her post by noon on January 20, the day President-elect Barack Obama is to be sworn in to office.
In an e-mail to the staff at the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the CDC, outgoing HHS Secretary…
mikethemadbiologist | January 10, 2009Did I mention how idiotic it is for Democrats to be negotiating against themselves regarding the porntax stimulus? Josh Marshall thinks so too (italics mine):
It would be far better on many counts to bring in substantial Republican support for this bill. And I don't just mean that in the BS sense in which President Bush usually meant it, which was to say essentially, 'Of course we'd like you to vote for exactly what we want. More the merrier. But if you don't want to vote for our ideal bill, tough luck.' No, I think there's a real logic in not going the 51 votes model President Bush followed…
mikethemadbiologist | January 7, 2009Along with many of my fellow ScienceBloglings, I have doubts about Sanjay Gupta. As far as I can tell, Gupta has no experience managing an organization whatsoever.
For me, this is a serious problem. The Surgeon General isn't just a spokesman, he is also the head of the Public Health Service, a rather large organization that actually does important stuff. Contrast Gupta to Panetta, who has actually been a manager of different types of organizations, and the difference is a mile wide.
I'll leave aside my personal view that most people who make a living blabbing to a TV camera are seriously…
mikethemadbiologist | January 7, 2009I was thrilled to hear that Thomas Geoghehan is running for Rahm Emanuel's open Congress seat. It's an at-large election, so there's a good chance he could win. I've written about Geoghehan before, and his piece about Social Security is worth reading.
Why Geoghehan is running:
We're deep in an economic crisis unlike any other we've known. It may last years. We need new and creative ways to protect working Americans, especially our older working people who have no real pensions to live on.
For years we've heard the doomsayers: "We can't afford Social Security." "We can't afford 'single payer…