Daily Kos

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Dana Milbank:

The week’s dueling tours of Gates and Palin show the best and worst in American public life. Both call themselves Republicans, but he comes from the best tradition of service while she is a study in selfishness. He’s self-effacing; she’s self-aggrandizing. He harmonized American foreign policy; she put bullseyes on Democratic congressional districts and then howled about “blood libel.”

It says something about the infirmity of our politics that Gates can’t wait to go home while Palin is again being taken seriously as a prospective presidential candidate.

Paul Begala via chron.com:

“... Perry may be the perfect candidate for those Republicans who viewed George W. Bush as just a little too cerebral.”

Tom Jensen/PPP:

Obama's approval numbers in Iowa aren't that strong and it would certainly be premature to declare 17 months out from the election that he'll win the state again. But the numbers here are another reminder that the weak Republican field is his greatest ally as he moves toward reelection, and that the GOP will have to come up with a stronger candidate to have a serious chance of defeating Obama next year.

Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll:

[Karl ] Smith makes another excellent point about health care being an information and communication technology industry. However, right now, it is in the business interests of many involved in medicine to thwart information sharing and communication. If a company creates an electronic medical record, it usually doesn’t want it to talk to anyone else’s. An interoperable EMR system can mean lost customers; it opens the door to the possibility that providers might buy a competitor’s program. It’s much better for an EMR company if providers are forced to buy their laboratory system, their scheduling system, and their radiology system.

Yes, that means that all the doctor’s offices can’t interface with the system at the hospital, or the emergency department, or with each other, but too bad. That’s how the unregulated marketplace works. We all suffer for it.

Could we not use more regulation to provide incentives for physicians to practice according to guidelines informed by science? Could we not use more regulation to develop, fund and follow the results of comparative-effectiveness research? Could we not use more regulation to set standards for EMR systems so that information could flow more freely?

Karl Smith:

Restaurants and fast food continued to add workers though at a slower pace. Retail establishments lost workers. This gives us some clues to the nature of the slowdown. Consumer spending slowdowns show up here first. These are also key employment areas for those on the edge of the labor market. If Jane Doe is “looking for a job” she is probably looking at food service or retail.

Manufacturing lost 5,000 jobs after a few months of steady gains. These losses were concentrated in food processing and automobile and plane manufacturing.

Taken together, this confirms our suspicion that high gas prices are the culprit. Almost all of the slowdown in job creation came in sectors either directly impacted by month-to-month changes in consumer discretionary spending or in sectors related to transportation.

Falling gas prices should help, and at this point I am still expecting better months ahead.

Charles Blow:

This is the latest in a cavalcade of worrisome economic indicators — from double-dipping home prices to flagging consumer confidence — that illustrate just how fragile the recovery has been, just how inadequate and anemic the stimulus was and just how tenuous the government’s grip is on the reins.

It is against this backdrop that Republicans have decided to play chicken with the nation’s credit — insisting on spending cuts while steadfastly resisting tax increases.

This is part of the modern doctrine of a compassion-free conservatism that’s using the fog of the fiscal crisis to push a program of perverse wealth inequality as sound economic policy: The only way to jump-start the economy is to slash taxes on the wealthy and on companies; the only way to compensate for the deficits that those tax cuts exacerbate is to slash benefits to the poor and vulnerable. It would be comical if it weren’t so callous.

Greg Sargent:

Interesting: Dems are now demanding that Republicans take Medicare off the table and stop tying it to the debt ceiling talks, a possible sign that Dems have decided a firm line is a political winner.

At the Campaign for America's Future, Bob Borosage writes It Takes A Movement:

Bob Borosage

This is a classic "small d" democratic moment. The economy is in deep trouble—immediate and long term. Washington is oblivious, compromised by moneyed interests, knotted by ideological divides. It will take an angry and aroused citizens' movement to demand the debate worthy of a great nation in deep trouble.

The dismal jobs numbers only punctuate the reality of an economy that isn't producing sufficient jobs. The crisis is both immediate and long-term. The so-called recovery hasn't begun to recover the jobs lost in the Great Recession. 25 million people are in need of full time work. Home values continue to fall. 25 percent of 17- to 25-year-old high school graduates not in college are out of work. Much of a generation is at risk.

The immediate is only an expression of more profound problems. The middle class was losing ground before the Great Recession. Good jobs are being shipped abroad. Wages aren't keeping up with the costs of basics. The broad middle class that made America exceptional is disappearing. The American dream seems ever more like a nostalgic memory. The nation continues to run unsustainable trade deficits, and must dig out of a mountain of debt—both public and private. For the first time, an increasing majority of Americans fear their kids won't fare as well as they have.
We need action to put people to work. But short term fixes aren't enough. Americans are looking for a serious strategy that will get us out of the mess we are in.

But inside the beltway, Washington is clueless. It's the only major city in the country where housing prices are going up. A flood of corporate lobby money insures that the tables are full at the high end restaurants. Entrenched corporate interests buy a lot more than lunches with their dough. They block vital reforms on health care, energy, trade, Wall Street. They feed off taxpayers, protecting their subsidies and tax dodges, avoiding taxes, while deficits rise and essential programs like nutrition for infants get cut. ...

And few seem ready to put out a strategy that necessarily will take on the interests that are strangling the dream. A national trade strategy that isn't controlled by multinationals. Affordable health care not catering to private insurance and drug companies. Fair taxes that shut down the tax havens, the dodges, the obscene subsidies that drain our resources. An investment strategy that generates vital public and private investment, not more Wall Street speculation, or CEO incentives for laying off workers and plundering their own companies.

It will take a popular uprising to get Washington even to begin to focus seriously on jobs and the economy.

• • • • •

At Daily Kos on this date in 2005:

The unmasking of Deep Throat is, rightly, big news. From a historical perspective, it represents the resolution of one of the bigger political mysteries in recent times.

From a media perspective, however, the show has been dazzling, as seemingly every living Watergate-era figure pours out of studio green rooms to celebrate their accomplishments. (Luckily, it's not like they had far to go to get there. You're talking about a class of people who own their own earpieces and microphones.) If I have to choose a winner, however, for the single biggest pantload yet dropped on us by the media -- and rest assured, I do have to chose a winner -- it clearly goes to the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan.

Some wounds don't fully heal because they're too deep and cut too close to the bone. The story that Deep Throat was Mark Felt has torn open old wounds. Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak and Chuck Colson--all at the top of their game 30 years ago, all very much in the game today--were passionate in their criticism, saying Mr. Felt has little to be proud of, was unprofessional, harmed his country. Ben Stein was blunt: Mr. Felt "broke the law, broke his oath, and broke his code of ethics."

And so on, for eight paragraphs. Noonan's effort is especially noteworthy for one feat: here's a column about Watergate, about the uncovering of Watergate, about the "heros" of Watergate, and there's one small, teensy-weensy but critically important word that is entirely missing from the column. And I do mean, entirely. Care to guess what it is?

Crime.

• • • • •

See High Impact Diaries here. See Top Comments here.

"...he who warned, uh, the...the British that they weren’t gonna be takin' away our arms...uh, by ringin' those bells and um...makin' sure as he's ridin' his horse through town...to send those warning shots and bells...that, uh, we were gonna be secure and...and we were gonna be free...and we were gonna be armed."

— Sarah Palin, June 2, 2011

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, Nineteen Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers what pants we wore that year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or jetski from the town to-night,
Ring a big bell in the belfry tower
Or maybe ring two, if you have the power.
And with your ale, don't get too wrecked."
His friend looked puzzled: "In what respect?"

Then Paul Revere, he took his gun
Because the British were trying to take all his fun
And rowed to the opposite shore to see
If the British had made it to Applebee's.
For Ron Paul Revere swore there to the hostess
That he would protect the salad bar mostest.

And then his friend rang some bells—
I forget just how many, maybe like ten?
When I asked the man later he said "all of them."
And then Paul rode his horse down the freeway
Shooting his warning shots and telling people they were gonna be free and stuff
And everyone said "hell yeah!" and something that rhymed with that.

So the British that day did not take our arms,
We like to say because of his alarms.
And so we all were gonna be secure
And our automatic rifles still purr.
In truth though, no thanks to Paul Revere
Who paused in this alley, and is still sitting here,
For halfway through that historic bit
Paul Revere got fed up, and muttered "I quit."

You know that whole schtick from the Republicans about how anybody over 55 won't be affected at all by their draconian budget and Medicare elimination scheme? They're lying about that two. That's according to analysis by Tim Fernholz writing at the National Journal.

"The retirees are going to be taken care of; there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it," House Speaker John Boehner vowed in an interview with CBS last month. The plan's architect, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has said time and again that the changes wouldn't affect anybody getting close to retirement. "We propose to not change the benefits for people above the age of 55," Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, insisted last week.

There's only one problem with the strategy: It's not true.

The policies in the House GOP budget, if enacted, would begin affecting millions of seniors almost immediately by increasing their costs for prescription drugs and probably long-term care. Further, Medicare costs could rise over time if healthier seniors choose to abandon the traditional benefit program.

The proposal repeals the Affordable Care Act (except for the Medicare Advantage cuts, which Republicans continue to hammer Democrats for, even though they've now also voted for them twice). With that, Fernholz points out, goes the closing of the "donut hole," the prescription drug benefit gap. In repealing that, "the 3 million to 4 million seniors left in the doughnut hole each year would immediately face significant out-of-pocket costs."

In addition, there are a number of wellness programs in the ACA that will benefit seniors, including visits to physicians, cancer screenings, and smoking cessation programs. That goes away without the ACA. There's the additional possibility that when the voucher program kicked in in 2022, seniors in traditional Medicare would be able to switch to the voucher program, and it's possible that the younger and more healthy seniors could save out-of-pocket expenses by making the switch, leaving the traditional Medicare pool older, sicker, and more expensive. Which in turn would create higher costs per enrollee, and potentially higher premiums and/or limited provider reimbursements. That, in turn, would probably drive more providers out of the program.

But probably the largest and most frightening cut for seniors and their families is in long-term care, included in the Medicaid cuts the Republicans want.

Some 9 million seniors qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid benefits, and about two-thirds of all nursing-home residents are covered by Medicaid. The GOP budget proposes cutting some $744 billion from Medicaid over 10 years by turning the system into block grants that limit federal contributions and give states more choice in structuring benefits. No one knows exactly which Medicaid services states would choose to cut back, but senior citizens account for a disproportionate share of Medicaid outlays and would almost certainly bear some of the burden.

"We know that two-thirds of the dollars in Medicaid go to people who are disabled or over 65, so this is the big funder of long-term care in this country," said David Certner, AARP's legislative-policy director. "We also know this could have an impact on home- and community-based care, which is the kind of care individuals prefer the most [and] often the ones that will be cut first."

There's nothing in this proposal that's going to help the either current or future seniors, not to mention the disabled who are on Medicare and Medicaid. It's just bad policy all the way around.

Reposted from Daily Kos Elections by David Nir

Bills, bills, bills. At SSP, one of our regular features was a roundup of the monthly fundraising numbers posted by the six major party committees. We were a bit slow on the draw for the April numbers, but here they are:

On the whole, Democratic fundraising has been pretty solid, with a big edge in total receipts and cash-on-hand (thanks to a blockbuster month from the DNC). Of particular interest are the Senate numbers; at this point in the 2010 election cycle, the NRSC was debt-free and had $2.7 million in the bank (as opposed to their cash-minus-debt tally of $400K at the end of April), while the DSCC had $2.6 million on-hand but $4.6 million in debt. The NRCC, though, is in stronger shape than they were two years ago, when their debt dwarfed their cash-on-hand by over a million bucks. (The benefits of wielding the Speaker's gavel, most likely.)

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Jibber your jabber

In the good old days, the corralers of congressional favor didn't have to operate from the lobby. They could just pass out $100 bills right on the floor of Congress. (See Credit Mobilier scandal.) We're a long way from that era. But those who would influence how taxpayer money is spent or what gets included in new legislation or what regulations are drawn up (and how they are enforced) have at their disposal far more polished tools than outright bribery to bend things their way. One of these is the revolving door.

Find a retired colonel, a former member of the Securities and Exchange Commission or an ex-Congressperson to put on the payroll and you're halfway home, with an insider track of influence. Of course, there are rules that must be followed since the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 and its reform in 1989. For instance, there is a "cooling-off" period of one year in which former senior government officials can't directly lobby current officials in executive departments. As if that makes a huge difference.

The revolving door spins several ways: government-to-industry, government-to-lobbying and industry-to-government. All of it produces a pro-business bias as colleagues with friendly connections and insider knowledge of "how things work" in everything from congressional committees to Pentagon weapons development teams provides for the special needs of corporate America.

Which is not to say all lobbying is corrupt or that every former government official who steps into a lucrative private-sector job with a company that does business with the government or seeks to affect government policy is personally crooked. But the effect of the revolving door is nevertheless quite frequently damaging to the common good. And its reach is immense. See, for instance, the Project on Government Oversight's recent report SEC Faces Ethic Challenges with Revolving Door.

Jonathan Easley has taken a look at a number of high-level officials who have left government service for well-remunerated "consulting" jobs at companies whose wish list they can help fulfill. For instance, there is Judd Gregg, formerly of the Senate Banking Committee,  who

doesn't have experience identifying growth in emerging markets or putting together complex financial models. But that didn’t keep him from landing a plum gig at the most talent-rich and fiercely competitive investment bank in the world. His life of public service now complete, the former three-term Republican senator from New Hampshire—who had briefly agreed to serve as President Obama's first commerce secretary before backing out—joined Goldman Sachs last week as an international advisor.

In his new role, Gregg will be responsible for such nebulous duties as "providing strategic advice to the firm and its clients, and assisting in business development initiatives across the global franchise."

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, whose firm was upbraided by a Senate committee only one month ago for perpetrating a massive fraud in the run-up to the financial crisis that some now believe warrants criminal charges, said of Gregg, "His experience and insight will contribute significantly to our firm and our continuing focus on supporting economic growth."

I'm sure Gregg will contribute significantly, and probably not so nebulously.

The 1989 law forbids him from lobbying Senators or Senate staffers. But it's not clear whether he could lobby former colleagues in the House of Representatives. As Evan Mackinder points out:

Gregg, who opposed President Barack Obama's Wall Street reform bill passed last year, has also taken heat from groups like POGO for joining up two new firms that also lobbied hard to weaken that legislation. ...

During Gregg's time in the Senate, the securities and investment industry was a major contributor to Gregg's campaign. People and political action committees associated with the industry donated more than $241,000 to his campaign committee and leadership PAC. Goldman Sachs was a frequent contributor to Gregg's campaign committee, offering up $13,000 from its PAC to the senator's re-election committee during his career.

Republicans and Democrats, it makes no difference. Colonels and generals join weapons-makers, SEC and FCC regulators join those they regulated, former members of the Senate Banking Committee like Evan Bayh join hedge funds. Of course, their right to work for whomever they wish must be protected. But who protects us from the lubrication they provide for the expenditure of taxpayer dollars and from the curtailing of government regulations? Current law certainly does not.

 

Red Cross Disaster Newsroom & Donation Site

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

A Message of Hope to Grads

[Remarks as delivered last week at a college or university whose name I've forgotten---it's the one with trees and I think a basketball court.]

Class of 2011,

As I look out across this sea of shining, idealistic faces, I see an armada of ships filled with cargoes of academic knowledge preparing to set sail on the tides of real-life experience, propelled ever forward by the winds of youth atop the waves of adventure, guided by the stars in the...the......

Okay. Now that I've put all your parents to sleep, listen up you little snotrags. Some of you are going to grow up and lead responsible lives and contribute good or even great things to this planet. I'm not interested in you right now. Go back to your texting.

No, I want to talk to the few of you who are inevitably going to turn out to be complete assholes. Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, future unscrupulous Wall Street bankers. I'm lookin' at you, profit-at-any-cost health insurance execs. I'm sneerin' at you, unhinged reality-challenged lying bastard future politicians. I'm hockin' loogies at you, serial hypocrites of tomorrow. Same goes for you, rapture forecasters, climate-change deniers, sleazy car dealers, deranged neighbors, Dick Cheneys, Bernie Madoffs, Glenn Becks, distracted drivers, animal abusers, spouse abusers, child abusers, handicapped-parking-space abusers and bus drivers who go roaring by my stop earlier than what is printed…on…the…damn…bus schedule!

I just want to stare right into your beady eyes…now, this moment, while I ever-so-briefly have your undivided attention…and say to your future selves: I pre-loathe you, for what you're about to do: embark on a mission to become a boil on the butt of civilization. And if that message isn't sinking in, you can pop open your iPhones and snap a pic of my double middle-finger salute as a lasting reminder of this precious moment we're having. Oh, that feels good.

The rest of you out there: you're okay. And fortunately there are enough of you to keep the jerks of your class in check. Barely enough…but just enough.

Okay, your parents are starting to wake up, so I'll conclude by saying: work hard, play harder, hump like bunnies and be…ahem...

…guided by the stars in the heavens and swept away on the currents of honesty, integrity, and fulfillment! May you have fair winds and following seas, mateys.

Thank you.

Your west coast-friendly edition of  Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Nate Silver adds a dose of reality to the simplistic claim that President Obama's reelection prospects are a direct function of the unemployment rate:

An article in today’s Times notes, for example, that “no American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.” The 7.2 percent figure refers to Ronald Reagan, who resoundingly won a second term when the unemployment rate was at that number in November 1984.

This type of data may be of limited utility for predictive purposes, however. Reagan won re-election by 18 points in 1984, suggesting that he had quite a bit of slack. An unemployment rate of 7.5 percent would presumably have been good enough to win him another term, as might have one of 8.0 percent, 8.5 percent or even higher.

It’s also not obvious that Roosevelt should be excluded from the calculus, particularly given that the economic crisis the country is working its way out of is the most severe since his administration. He won re-election in 1936 with an unemployment rate of 16.6 percent, and again in 1940 with a rate of 14.6 percent.

Nate dives into the numbers to flesh out his thesis, but the basic point is this: in the abstract, neither the unemployment rate nor changes in the unemployment rate are determinative factors in presidential elections. You also have to look at the context of the unemployment rate (and how it changes), so things like how voters perceive the unemployment rate are important factors.

To put it in more partisan (but nonetheless reality-based) terms, the fact that it was George W. Bush and the Republicans who wrecked the economy is a relevant fact. And the fact that Republicans haven't done a single thing for job creation since retaking control of the House is also a relevant fact. As will be the fact that whoever wins the Republican nomination will basically be running on a platform of more of the same stuff that got us into the mess in the first place.

Obviously, President Obama would be in better political shape if the economy were stronger and the unemployment rate lower, but the point here is the the people who are really hurt by high unemployment are the jobless and people looking for better work. President Obama will be fine, and even if unemployment doesn't drop below 7.2%, he still is a favorite to win reelection.

Another way of saying it: unemployment is a problem for America, not the Democratic Party.

What's coming up on Sunday Kos ….

• Dante Atkins will lament the media's apparent memory hole regarding just about all things Republican.
• Meteor Blades will introduce the winners of scholarships to Netroots Nation from Democracy for America and America's Voice.
• Laurence Lewis will discuss the most important political issue humanity has ever faced.
• Hunter will look at the Republican war against the newest enemy of our freedoms: healthy children.
• Are Republicans bluffing about not raising the debt ceiling? Chris Bowers asks House Democrats to see what they think.
• Georgia Logothetis will outline do's and don'ts for politicians looking to get into the Twitter game.
• DemFromCT will look at the bipartisan consensus of a weak Republican field and the tea party's major contribution to expectations of a Republican loss.

Republicans may have passed a plan to end Medicare and replace it with vouchers for private insurance, but apparently they don't want their political opponents to be able to tell anybody about it:

The battle over whether it’s true that the Republican plan would “end Medicare” is about to play out in a critical way in New Hampshire.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which oversees House races for the GOP, has written a sharply-worded letter demanding that a New Hampshire TV station yank an ad making that claim. Whether the ad gets taken down could help set a precedent for whether other stations will air Dem TV ads making this argument, which is expected to be a central message for Dems in the 2012 elections.

You can watch the ad, which is being aired by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, at the top of this post, but the thing that has got Republicans all hot and bothered is the ad's assertion that the GOP voted to end Medicare. They say they want television stations to censor the ad because they don't believe their proposal would completely end Medicare...it would only end Medicare as we know it. (This is the same stupid argument Politifact made.)

According to the GOP's logic, if they had proposed eliminating the fire department and replaced it with a program giving you vouchers to purchase firefighting services from a private company, it would unfair to say they had proposed getting rid of the fire department. As if that weren't crazy enough, they want television broadcasters to censor anyone who disagrees with them.

You really couldn't picture a more perfect example of the GOP's hypocrisy on freedom of speech: the party that claims the U.S. Constitution gives corporations political rights also believes those very same corporations should censor grassroots political activists.

Reposted from Daily Kos Elections by David Nir Public Policy Polling (PDF) (5/27-30, Iowa voters, 4/15-17 (PDF) in parens, 1/7-9 (PDF) in brackets):

Barack Obama (D): 49 (45) [47]
Mitt Romney (R): 40 (41) [41]
Undecided: 12 (14) [12]

Barack Obama (D): 55 (53) [53]
Sarah Palin (R): 35 (36) [37]
Undecided: 9 (11) [10]

Barack Obama (D): 54 (50) [51]
Newt Gingrich (R): 33 (39) [38]
Undecided: 13 (11) [11]

Barack Obama (D): 49
Tim Pawlenty (R): 37
Undecided: 14

Barack Obama (D): 50
Herman Cain (R): 32
Undecided: 18
^{(MoE: ±2.6%)}

I've included the January numbers so that you can get a better sense of the trend here. The January and April polls were pretty similar, but PPP's newest shows a decided bounce. Obama's approvals moved from 41-50 to 49-45, but note that the D-R-I composition of the sample barely budged. Some more thoughts from Tom Jensen:

Iowa, along with North Carolina, is one of the swing states where it really hurts the GOP not to have Huckabee in the picture. He was easily the strongest potential nominee in the state, faring 2 points better than Romney against Obama when we polled it in January and 4 points better than Romney when we looked at it again in April. Romney now does the best of the Republicans in the state but he trails Obama by 9 points at 49-40, a margin almost identical to Obama's blowout victory in the state last time around.

I don't know that Huckabee would have been the GOP's savior nationwide, though, even if he did run reasonably well in Iowa. Tom notes that "the weak Republican field" is the president's "greatest ally," but right now, my biggest concern is the economy. As we saw last year, a lousy economy is more than capable of sweeping lousy candidates into office.

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