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Democrats find a sort of a spine

Monday, October 19, 2009

The Republicans and the Media, with Harry Reid giving a large assist, have just about talked everyone into believing that you need 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate. In fact, it only takes 51. You can look it up. That’s why the Constitution lets the Vice President break ties.

There are ways to break filibusters, one of which is to pass budget items through the reconciliation process, which can’t be filibustered. The Democrats have run scared at the thought of using that process to pass Health Care reform (President Snowe might be upset) but apparently they’re ready to use it to pass another piece of legislation that is not so desperately needed, but is more of a no-brainer.

Education has kind of taken a back seat to some of the other facets of the Obama agenda, but on one measure they have sought to make tangible progress – the utterly common-sense notion of ending the subsidization of the private student lending market, and using the savings of providing student loans directly to increase Pell Grants and other awards to make college more affordable. This would redirect $87 billion dollars over 10 years from the pockets of bankers to students. It’s about as simple and clear a position as you can take.

So naturally, it faces resistance from Republicans and ConservaDems who have private student loan operations in their states. Back in April, the Senate, preparing for this resistance, authored budget reconciliation rules to move this education measure forward with 50 votes instead of having to break a filibuster with 60. And now, Tom Harkin is planning on doing just that.

Isn’t it interesting that these types of businesses tend to gravitate toward small time states that have Senators with big time power? This is capitalism in the 21st century. The system as it stands now is nothing more nor less than a tax on all of us, the revenue from that tax being transferred to private parties who take no risk and are paid scores of times more than it would cost the government to do the same thing that they do. A tax, by the way, that Republicans seem to love. So long as our hard earned money is going to a large corporation, be it student loan companies or Halliburton, they don’t seem to mind government spending. But when it comes to any program that might actually benefit the non-upper classes, then it’s a top priority to keep your money in your pocket; even if your money, added to other’s money collectively, would make your life a lot better. In the Republicans book the sole function of taxes is to transfer money from the have-nots to the haves.

The use of the reconciliation process in this context should be non-controversial, since it is perfectly consistent with past practice, but expect to hear from Republicans and the media that this is unprecedented. Not that an unprecedented use of the process would be that bad. The Republicans and Democrats both have conclusively proven that the filibuster only works for the Republicans, so it only make sense for the Democrats to destroy it by parliamentary chicanery, if that’s what it takes.


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Pre-Primary Strategy

Sunday, October 18, 2009

I’ve mentioned before that I’m in a mailgroup (in which I lurk only), the subject of which is the Dodd re-election campaign. Lately there’s been a bit of debate about whether it was wise for the Connecticut Democrats to go after Linda McMahon for her rank hypocrisy (hey, she’s a new Republican and she’s trying to fit in) or keep all guns aimed at the alleged front runner, Rob Simmons.

There are reasonable arguments on both sides, but it seems to me that it makes good sense to try to stir up some fratricidal warfare over on the other side. It’s bound to happen sooner or later, given the rather large egos of the players involved, so it might as well happen sooner.

There’s another reason. Simmons may be the darling of the Republican establishment, but that may not get him much mileage, particularly given the huge amount of money that his opponents will be throwing at him. He may, in fact, be as inevitable as Hillary Clinton.

Now, to you or me, it may not appear that there is a Barack Obama in the pack that can take him down, but we don’t think like Republicans, particularly like the extreme Republicans that populate the tea party fringe, which is a significant force in what has become a rump party. Those folks are pretty stupid, but probably not stupid enough to be satisfied with a “moderate” Republican just because he wraps his pocket constitution in a teabag. There’s no saying who can win a five or four way primary in which the winner may get no more than 35% of the vote.

I don’t care what the polls say. Except for Caluguri, they each have a shot. It’s not at all clear, too, that McMahon would be preferable to Simmons as Dodd’s opponent. The country is filled with involuntarily retired politicians who got to run against their preferred opponent.

Yes, Simmons is a dirty campaigner, but aren’t they all? Yes, he has a moderate image, but McMahon, at least, can out moderate him any day of the week. I don’t know much about her, but she can’t possibly be as personally unappealing as he is, or come across as more insincere. I remain convinced that he won in 2000 because he was not Sam Gejdenson, who unfairly or not was perceived as having completely lost touch with the district. His ability to raise money is limited. Moreover, he has a record that can be exploited when the time comes. She is tabula rasa, except for her business “achievements”, in which, by the way, she has demonstrated a remarkable ability to appeal to the very lowest in our society, precisely the people she needs to reach to win the Republican nomination.

So it seems wise at this point to go after all of these folks when opportunities arise. Now is the time to challenge her on her “PG entertainment” claims; a year from now might be too late to start. We can only hope that the Connecticut Democrats will take aim at Schiff as well. He’s the guy who will appeal to the tea party idiots. It shouldn’t be hard to come up with an approach that would turn the average voter against him, while solidifying his support among the tin hats. Now he’s an opponent we would really like to have. Who was the last person to get elected while advocating the abolition of Social Security? That’s not an issue to bring up right now, but there’s plenty to chose from that would undermine his standing with the rational, while leaving the crazies unfazed. Who knows, in a four way primary with three relatively mainstream types, he just might be able to pull in enough votes to win.

Sidenote: Oliver Willis, who can sometimes be obtuse, missed the boat completely on this one. The Democrats aren’t attacking McMahon for the content of her “entertainment”; they are attacking her for lying about it. She chose to take the issue on preemptively by labeling her product “PG” and “family entertainment”. No doubt she figured that if she repeated that claim often enough the characterization would stick. It’s the hypocrisy, Oliver.


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Pictures from today’s Groton Shindig

Saturday, October 17, 2009

This was a busy day for me, too busy for thinking, so no serious writing. We here in Groton had a little fundraiser. An excellent turnout with lots of money raised and virtually no money spent. Maybe the theme was the big draw. Who can argue with wine and chocolate?

Some pictures follow, chosen rather arbitrarily since they came out the best.

Susan Bysiewicz came by, seen here with Board of Ed member Beverly Washington.

Town Clerk Barbara Tarbox and (relatively) newly minted Democrat John Scott, and various others (below)

I didn’t really have much time to take pictures, since as treasurer I have to collect the money, which flowed rather freely (for a Groton fundraiser).


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Friday Night Music

Friday, October 16, 2009

I have posted less frequently than usual this week. For this the world owes a debt of gratitude to The Office. I’ve spent a good chunk of my free time watching Season 3.

I noticed that a fellow named Creed Bratton was billed as a guest star at the end of each show. I had no idea who he was, or which character he played, so I went to the Google and discovered that he’s the guy who plays the felonious psychopath who does no discernible work (but then, which of them does).

But I found out something else. He was the lead guitarist for a group that sold a slew or records in the 60’s, the Grass Roots. According to one blurb I read on line, only nine bands from that era sold more records than them. They weren’t great, they weren’t bad, but they were eminently forgettable.

Well, here they are, singing Let’s Live for Today. As an added bonus, they’re introduced by Jimmy Durante. If you’re a fan of The Office, you’ll recognize Creed the minute he appears, or at least the minute he smiles.


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High Journalistic Standards

Friday, October 16, 2009

I’m a big fan of Talking Points Memo, so I was quite surprised to read about this in an email thread.

You may have heard that the Connecticut Democrats have gone after Linda McMahon, who constantly refers to her Wrestling company as a promoter of PG entertainment. And it is PG, if you consider necrophilia to be a family friendly subject.

Well, TPM covered the story, and the fact that the WWF immediately removed those particular videos from youtube, but the article ends with this non sequitur:

Also, a source points out that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), who McMahon hopes to defeat in 2010, has taken more than $922,000 from the TV and movie industry, according to OpenSecrets. The source wonders if Dodd condones violence and sex depicted on film.

I can understand that protecting sources has a place in journalism. But it hardly seems that it’s appropriate for a journalist to grant anonymity so a source can “wonder” if someone condones violence and sex in film. I always thought that a source was a person who provides factual material to a reporter, not opinion. What possible reason could there be to allow this “source” to go unnamed? It leaves me wondering whether this source is someone with a vested interest in getting McMahon elected, or at the very least in seeing Chris Dodd defeated.

This is the sort of thing we have come to expect from the Washington Post and the New York Times. I thought Josh Marshall (he didn’t write it, but it’s his site) aspired to higher standards.

UPDATE: From a press release from the Connecticut Democrats:

Hartford, CT – When asked why the WWE requested that YouTube remove three videos which had become a political issue for Linda McMahon today, company Vice President Robert Zimmerman said, “This is a continuing process that goes on. It is not related to the campaign. We constantly track illegal usage of our intellectual property. That is something that try to continuously go after.”

However, a quick search of “WWE” on YouTube’s site shows that there are more than 516,000 videos still active on the site.

“There are more than a half a million WWE videos on YouTube. WWE today asked that only three — the three that had become a political issue for Linda McMahon — be removed,” said Connecticut Democratic Party Communications Director Colleen Flanagan. “Clearly WWE, a publicly traded corporation, is acting as an agent of the McMahon campaign, presumably at the direction of Mr. or Mrs. McMahon. And that’s a violation of federal law.”

It’s good to see the Connecticut Democrats pushing on these stories.


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Defending rapists

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Republicans would vote against apple pie if Democrats were for it.

I got a few comments from my right wing friends when I criticized the Congressional action against Acorn. I’d sure like to hear from those same people now. Maybe they can enlighten us about why defending rape is okay.


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Simmons Unhinged

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

via Think Progress:


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Ted Mann puts a dent in Rell’s armor

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Fair’s fair. I’m a frequent critic of the New London Day, but there are times when the Day pulls through. Ted Mann’s series of articles (most recent here) about Jodi Rell’s misuse of state funds is a case in point. It’s been amusing to watch as the governor shifts her lines of defense after each is undercut in turn by emails that establish rather definitively that she has been using state funds, and state employees, to plot political strategy. Ted has done a great job in this series. It’s what the press is supposed to do, be its target Democrat or Republican.

On the merits, this is a case of exposing a truth that has been in plain sight for years. This administration has, from the very start, had one driving purpose behind everything it does: position itself for the next election, the long term state interest be damned. It’s not at all surprising that those damaging emails were out there. It’s only to be expected when you have hubris filled people using a form of communication in which almost everyone tends to write with less prudence than they do on the printed page. Something inside us refuses to believe that our emails will ever be read, even when, as in this case, the law requires their preservation and public disclosure. If Jodi had any sense, she would at least review these emails (if Ted can get them, so can she) before she tosses off another casual lie. Maybe she’s just gotten lazy after all the free rides she’s gotten from the Connecticut press.

The greater challenge, from a pure reportorial point of view, would be to unearth a series of emails in which Rell or her senior staff actually discuss policy from a non-political perspective. You know, where they actually try to puzzle out what is in the best interest of the state, rather than in Jodi Rell’s best interest. If that has ever happened, it has been carefully covered up.


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Preserving Governmental Secrecy

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

It was inevitable that Obama would disappoint on a number of fronts. Anyone running on a message of hope is inviting people to see what they want to see, rather than what’s there. Even where Obama told the truth about his intentions, as with the so far terrible policy in Afghanistan, lots of folks preferred to believe that he would do as they wanted.

Perhaps most disappointing has been Obama’s refusal to back away from the Bush Administration’s lawless legal positions on renditions, state secrets, etc. A reader sent me a link to this article, in which Glenn Greenwald ably sets out the rather sorry record of the Obama administration in this respect. Obama has even sided with Bush in trying to keep all those missing emails missing.

The truly sad thing is that this is an area in which a change of policy would not only have been the morally right thing to do, but a fairly easy thing to do. The “states secret” doctrine, for instance, was created to cover up governmental lies and deceit, and it has served only that purpose ever since. It’s not too much to say that you can rightly assume that there has been a governmental crime in every case in which it has been used. It has done more harm than good, by a long shot. Obama could have adroitly backed away from Bush’s excess, with only the usual suspects (e.g, Liz Cheney) sounding off about it.

If Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize has raised eyebrows in the left here in the U.S., it is because of precisely this sort of thing. Understandably, these are issues that people from other countries feel are of lesser importance. You can’t argue with their preference for Obama’s diplomatic style over Bush’s.

We can always hope that Obama will do as he implied he would: live up to the award that he’s received. He could easily start by reflecting on the fact that finishing the work Bush started is work unworthy of a Nobel Laureate.


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Musical Stairs

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

This is only tangentially political, more a lesson in applied psychology mixed with whimsy. Some Swedes discover a non coercive way to entice people to use the stairs rather than the escalator.

The Fun Theory. That could never make it here.


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