The Republican who knocked off Russ Feingold has found himself in a bit of trouble. He loaned himself $9,000.000.00 to run for the Senate. Then, after he won, the company he formerly ran paid him $10,000.000.00 in “deferred compensation”. The two numbers align up well, and suspicious minds might suspect that his corporation actually funded his campaign, and-wouldn’t you know it-suspicious minds are saying exactly that. Turns out that without a written compensation agreement signed before he ran for office he should be in a peck of trouble.
I’m no election law expert, but it seems to me there’s as much of a whiff of impropriety about this as there was about the tawdry John Edwards situation. Will this be another example of IOKYAR, or will the Justice Department sit up and take notice? Stay tuned, but don’t hold your breath.
I wrote a letter to the Editor at the Day last week. I never heard back from them and, what with one thing and another, forgot all about it. Then, there it was in this morning’s paper, promoted (I think it’s a promotion) to a guest commentary. Whatever, anytime I can call Joe Lieberman a bitter old man in print, I’ll grab at the chance.
Nice pictures from parade celebrating the gay marriage bill in New York.
I was interested in this story in the Globe, in which several folks from the state to the North gloat about the fact that they beat New York to the punch.
That’s all true, but I think Connecticut’s experience puts us above all the rest. Our gay marriage was mandated by our Supreme Court, as happened in Massachusetts, so it was not quite the triumph as the legislative victory in New York. On the other hand, our legislature passed enabling legislation without much fuss at all.
But I think our distinction lies in the public reaction, or to be more precise, the relative lack of any public reaction. It might be stretching it to say that there was nary a ripple, but the waters stayed exceedingly calm. Even the usual suspects (the Catholic Church, etc.) did not go into the hysterics so common elsewhere, and to the extent they did, they got no traction. We can be justly proud that our reaction was sort of a non-reaction. As a (at least I think) result, oddly enough, Connecticut seems to go missing as often as not when states that allow gay marriage are mentioned in the press.
As my wife pointed out, the choice is pretty much made for me this week, given Clarence Clemons’ recent death. I realize he’s a bit of a second banana in any Springsteen video, but I decided to go with this one because of the great extended solo, not to mention the superior video and audio.
It occurs to me that as time goes on the videos on this feature will be increasingly driven by the obituaries, which is a tad depressing. On the plus side it introduces a bit of randomness into things.
According to the CBO, if we simply do nothing to current law, meaning the Bush gift to the rich is terminated and doctor’s fees are limited as the law has supposedly required since 1996 or thereabouts, the deficit will disappear on its own. Even if we give the doctors a pass, the deficit is reduced dramatically. The only reason the deficit is an issue is because the Republicans harp about it, while the Democrats cower, and, of course, every Republican policy, when you dig into it, increase the deficit while further enriching the rich.
This is the sort of thing that makes you think that perhaps the fix is in; that Democrats are just there to play the role of foil to Republicans, but their ultimate objective is pretty much the same. We will, I predict, here next to nothing from the Democrats, not to mention the press, about the fact that all this deficit talk is empty posturing of the first order. To talk about the reality of the CBO report would require a Washington politician to go against the prevailing Beltway consensus, and very few of them have the guts to do that. Better to buy into a narrative so entrenched that it seeps into establishment press coverage without raising a Beltway eye and avoid the isolation and derision that is peculiarly reserved for those who tell the truth in Washington.
The fact that the rest of us are being driven into poverty, while our kids see their future prospects destroyed by eternal recession, is neither here nor there to these people. We are collateral damage at best.
TPM reports that the Democrats in Congress may be coming to the conclusion that the Republicans have no interest in fixing the economy. Excuse me, but if they’re just beginning to tumble to this now, then we have some seriously dim-witted people in the House and Senate. This has been official Republican policy, announced by party leader Rush Limbaugh himself, since the very first day of the Obama Administration. There is something almost surreal about this, and yet it seems to reflect the reality. On the one side you have a party that is completely dominated by, and populated (at least in Congress) by cynics that are perfectly willing to destroy the country and the economy in order to get and keep power. On the other side you have a party that appears to consist entirely of Charley Browns, who can’t believe, in the face of massive evidence to the contrary, that the next time John Boehner or Mitch McConnell won’t snatch the football. A work of fiction based on that premise would be considered too unrealistic to publish.
Of course, it’s always possible that the Democrats have known what the Republicans were doing all along, and played their roles in order to make it seem like there was an actual competitive political process out there and that it was not preordained that we would be handed over to our Galtian overlords. Some might argue that this account makes more sense. After all, the idea that the entire Democratic caucus is composed of very naïve and very stupid people seems farfetched. It doesn’t seem plausible that people with such characteristics could be successful enough politicians to get to the high offices that these folks occupy. And yet, there they are. We must accept that they are as easily deluded as the Penzance Pirates, or we must believe that they have no interest in stopping the Republicans. And that would be unduly cynical, wouldn’t it?
Must reading. A big time bond trader says the emphasis on short term deficit cutting is suidical.
Our learn-nothing leaders, both the Republicans who are trying to destroy the economy (anything to destroy the Kenyan Marxist) and the Democrats, who always seem to accept the Republican frame, have ignored guys like Krugman and Baker, who have been pretty much right about everything. They have preferred to listen to the people who got us into this mess, and who remain clueless about how to get us out. Maybe when a rich guy speaks, they’ll listen.
Steve Benen points out that the Republican’s obstruction of President Obama is unprecedented, particularly in the area of presidential appointments, as the Republicans have basically announced that in many instances, they will not allow a vote on any of Obama’s nominees, no matter who they might be.
This is truly outrageous. But we must not forget that it was entirely predictable; that the Senate Democrats had the procedural tools to do something about it at the beginning of the session; but that neither they nor Obama made any real push for rule changes, either substantively or rhetorically. The Republicans are fully aware that no matter what they do, the Democrats will not have the spine to oppose them.
Yet…, mark my words, should disaster strike in 2012 or in 2016 and the Republicans take over all three branches, they will effectively end the filibuster in a blink of an eye if it suits their purposes. Bizarrely, this is a party that controls only one house of Congress, yet it smells political blood despite the fact that it is busy openly conspiring to destroy a wildly popular middle class benefit. If they have majorities of one in both houses they will push through whatever they want, and no Democrat will be able to stop them.
I’ll have to admit that I didn’t make it all the way through the article in the Times to which this post refers. It’s yet another story about the ethical blindness of Clarence Thomas. The story concerns the largesse shown by right wing millionaire Harlan Crow to Thomas. My overall impression is that his friend is just paying him to be a good little judgie, and that you couldn’t prove a quid pro quo:
The two men met in the mid-1990s, a few years after Justice Thomas joined the court. Since then, Mr. Crow has done many favors for the justice and his wife, Virginia, helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group. They have also spent time together at gatherings of prominent Republicans and businesspeople at Mr. Crow’s Adirondacks estate and his camp in East Texas.
This won’t bring Thomas down, just as his more obvious problem with his financial disclosures will not bring him down. It’s always okay if you’re a Republican. But I do know this: Poor Frederick Douglass must want his bible back. Thomas must be a highly deluded man if he identifies with Douglass.
