Category: politics

News of US politics

Reading Around on February 16th through February 17th

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A few interesting links collected February 16th through February 17th:

  • Kotori Magazine – The Master of Low Expectations: 666 Reasons Sentient Citizens are Still Celebrating the Long Overdue Departure of George W. Bush – 666 Reasons Sentient Citizens are Still Celebrating the Long Overdue Departure of George W. Bush

  • Talking Points Memo | Study Harder – In the late 1930s, of course, Great Britain didn’t have a Labour government with a principled Tory minority. It had conservative Tory government with a Labour minority. And Churchill was on the outs with both, although on some fronts he was beginning to make common cause with some Labourites on his key issue, which was foreign policy. When Churchill eventually came to power it was in a national coalition government for the purposes of fighting the war. And when he eventually went to the voters as head of the Tory party toward the end of the war they got crushed by Labour in a landslide.

    I say all this as a big Churchill fan. But, I mean, not only is Eric Cantor no Winston Churchill, I’m not even sure he’s read a book about Winston Churchill.

Reading Around on February 15th

swanksalot1 Comment

Some additional reading February 15th from 09:57 to 21:10:

  • Having It Both Ways: Republicans Take Credit for ‘Pork’ – In Stimulus Bill They Opposed | Crooks and Liars – Rep. John Mica was gushing after the House of Representatives voted Friday to pass the big stimulus plan.

    “I applaud President Obama’s recognition that high-speed rail should be part of America’s future,” the Florida Republican beamed in a press release.

    Yet Mica had just joined every other GOP House member in voting against the $787.2 billion economic recovery plan.

  • Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.” – Facebook’s terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore.

    Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.

  • Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Michael Isikoff: Yoo Disbarment Proceedings Now Visible on the Horizon – Torture Report Could Be Trouble For Bush Lawyers: An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety among former Bush administration officials. H. Marshall Jarrett, chief of the department’s ethics watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), confirmed last year he was investigating whether the legal advice in crucial interrogation memos “was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys.” According to two knowledgeable sources who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, a draft of the report was submitted in the final weeks of the Bush administration. It sharply criticized the legal work of two former top officials—Jay Bybee and John Yoo—as well as that of Steven Bradbury, who was chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the time the report was submitted, the sources said.
  • Gutless Wonders: Specter Admits GOP’s Political Calculus On Stimulus Bill | Crooks and Liars – DCCC head Chris Van Hollen puts it into perspective (if only the media would actually frame it this way):

    “Americans will hold House Republicans accountable for just saying no to saving and creating three to four million jobs and the largest tax cut in American history.

    “House Republicans are fast becoming party of No-bama. Americans will hold Republicans accountable for being the party of no – no to President Obama’s economic recovery, no to children’s health care, and no to equal pay for women doing equal work.”

  • Talking Points Memo | The Big Disconnect – But there’s a very big problem with this strategy above and beyond the absurdity of the argument. “Congress” may be really unpopular. And the Democrats now control Congress. But politics is a zero sum game. At the end of the day, in almost every case, you’ve got to pick a Republican or a Democrat when you vote. And if you look at the numbers, congressional Democrats are pretty popular. And congressional Republicans are extremely unpopular. If you look at the number, the Dems are at about 50% or higher in most recent polls, while the GOP is down in the 30s.

    The city remains wired for the GOP. Not that it’s done them a great deal of good of late. But it remains a key part of understanding every part of what is happening today.

  • Google Jumps Into Organizing Smart Meter Energy Data « Earth2Tech – “Just as Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt hinted over the past few months, Google is moving from managing the world’s information to managing your personal energy data. On Monday night Google tells us it is developing an online tool called “PowerMeter” that will allow users to monitor their home energy consumption. For now Google is testing the web-based software with Google employees, but the search engine giant is looking to partner with utilities and smart energy device makers and will eventually roll out the tool to consumers.”
  • Energy Information – “Google PowerMeter, now in prototype, will receive information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and provide anyone who signs up access to her home electricity consumption right on her iGoogle homepage. The graph below shows how someone could use this information to figure out how much energy is used by different household activites.”

    Oooh, I want one of these so-called smartmeters

  • MyDD :: The Beltway Games Don’t Really Matter – “Perhaps more than ever, there is a real divide between what the chattering class inside the Beltway is saying and what the people of this country are saying. We saw the beginnings of this during the campaign, when despite the fact that John McCain was deemed to be winning the news cycles — indeed, his campaign seemed to care more about winning “Hardball” than it did about reaching 270 electoral votes — Barack Obama nevertheless continued to lead in the polls, both nationwide and in the key states. Now we’re seeing it again, as the establishment media focuses on the less meaningful back and forth while at the same time overlooking the larger picture being grasped by the public — that is that President Obama is succeeding, in terms of both moving forward his policy agenda and bringing two-thirds of the country along with him in his effort.”

Obama Slips in the Shiv

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Greg Palast has a little fun:

curbs

Then came Obama’s money bomb. The House bill included $125 billion for schools (TRIPLING federal spending on education), expanding insurance coverage to the unemployed, making the most progressive change in the tax code in four decades by creating a $500 credit against social security payroll deductions, and so on.

It’s as if Obama dug up Ronald Reagan’s carcass and put a stake through The Gipper’s anti-government heart.  Aw-RIGHT!

About the only concession Obama threw to the right-wing trogs was to remove the subsidy for condoms, leaving hooker-happy GOP Senators, like David Vitter, to pay for their own protection. S’OK with me.

And here’s the proof that Bam is The Man: Not one single Republican congressman voted for the bill. And that means that Obama didn’t compromise, the way Clinton and Carter would have, to win the love of these condom-less jerks.

And we didn’t need’m. Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!

Now I understand Obama’s weird moves: dinner with those creepy conservative columnists, earnest meetings at the White House with the Republican leaders, a dramatic begging foray into Senate offices. Just as the Republicans say, it was all a fraud. Obama was pure Chicago, Boss Daley in a slim skin, putting his arms around his enemies, pretending to listen and care and compromise, then slowly, quietly, slipping in the knife. All while the media praises Obama’s “post-partisanship.” Heh heh heh.

[Click to continue reading Greg Palast » Obama is a two-faced liar. Aw-RIGHT! ]

Of course, it didn’t quite play out like that, but still, am amused by this description

Danny Davis Asked Feds to Prop Up National Bank of Commerce

Seth Anderson2 Comments

My Moony-loving Congressman, Danny Davis1, is in a wee bit of controversy himself.

Reserved Light

Two Illinois congressmen urged the Treasury in October to avoid taking any regulatory action against a struggling bank in their state, illustrating the aggressive efforts some politicians are taking to help hometown lenders during the bank crisis.

In a letter they sent, Democratic Reps. Danny K. Davis and Luis Gutierrez also asked government officials to provide financial aid to National Bank of Commerce, based in the Chicago suburb of Berkeley, Ill. (Read the letter.)

Democratic Reps. Danny Davis and Luis Gutierrez wrote Treasury in late October asking the government to help a struggling bank in their state and halt any regulatory action against the lender. Read the letter.

Regulators rebuffed the request, and the two-branch bank failed on Jan. 16.

Lawmakers often seek to help home-state interests, and there is nothing illegal about forwarding requests to regulators and other government officials. But legislators normally stop short of action that might appear to be interfering in the way regulators examine and supervise banks, a process that is supposed to be impartial.

[From Politicians Asked Feds to Prop Up Ailing Bank – WSJ.com] [non-WSJ subscribers use this link]

Too early too ascertain if this is a real scandal, or simply trumped up gossip the Rupert Murdoch version of the Wall Street Journal likes so much. We shall see.

Footnotes:
  1. see also an archived portion of an article from Rich Miller’s essential Capitol Fax Blog [↩]

The Guam Option

Seth Anderson10 Comments

I remember my grandfather, Joe Murphy, while still editor-at-large of the Pacific Daily News, oft telling the story of his failed attempts to sell an article about the Kurds being airlifted to Guam during the Clinton administration, and my grandfather’s disgust because no major media outlet was interested in the story. Maybe George Packer read it?

Kurds in Guam

[Kurds being processed at Anderson Air Force Base, Guam, 1996]

In the fall of 1996, the U.S. military evacuated more than six thousand Iraqis—Kurds and others who had worked with American agencies in the north, and whose lives were directly threatened by Saddam’s army—halfway across the world to Guam. There they were screened, processed for asylum, and assigned sponsors in an effort that involved more than a thousand American soldiers and civilians. Almost all of the evacuees ended up Stateside within seven months. Major General John Dallager, the Joint Task Force commander of Operation Pacific Haven, said, “Our success will undoubtedly be a role model for future humanitarian efforts.”

Undoubtedly. Major General Dallager didn’t count on the moral abdication of the Bush Administration in the face of a similar but much larger and more compelling humanitarian crisis. Recently, some conscience-stricken American officials have privately begun to ask why the model of Operation Pacific Haven can’t be emulated today. Flying Iraqis to Guam would solve every problem, real and invented, that the Administration claims is holding up resettlement: the inability of Homeland Security interviewers to meet with refugees in Syria; the near-impossibility of Iraqis getting into neighboring countries; the supposed security concerns that prevent the U.S. from screening Iraqis inside Iraq. With the Guam option, none of this would matter.

[From The Guam Option: Interesting Times: Online Only: The New Yorker]

Sinajana Guam 1945

[Sinajana, Guam in 1945 ]

Mr. Packer wants President-elect Obama to at least consider the Guam option for Iraqi refugees:

I know Iraqi refugees are somewhere around 87th on anyone’s agenda. I know I should be writing about Gaza or economic stimulus—another day. But today, let me call your attention away from those pressing matters to a new report, scheduled for release on Monday, by Natalie Ondiak and Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress (soon to be the Obama Administration’s Heritage or A.E.I.). It’s called “Operation Safe Haven Iraq 2009,” and it’s a detailed proposal for an airlift of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have worked with Americans there and whose lives are in danger, in perpetuum, as a result.

The report establishes the rationale for such an operation, familiar to readers of this blog (where the “Guam option” was first proposed over a year ago). It also lays out, in the careful manner of Washington think-tank papers, the steps that the new President would need to take, to wit:

1. Appoint a White House coordinator
2. Review current efforts
3. Finish background checks of qualified Iraqis
4. Begin a four-to-eight-week airlift, probably to Guam
5. Make sure all government agencies—State, Homeland Security, the military—work together
6. Resettle eligible Iraqis here after they’ve been “processed” outside the country

[From Obama’s Guam Option: Interesting Times: Online Only: The New Yorker]

Waking From a Bad Dream

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Dan Froomkin has a good overview of why the selection of Leon Panetta and Dawn Johnsen means that Obama is serious about changing America’s moral standing in the world, signaling that the US isn’t going to be torturing people. Obama’s administration is thus not going to be like the criminal thugs1 who are about to slink out of Washington.

It has been like a national nightmare: We are attacked by terrorists and our leaders respond not with courage and a call to our higher natures, but by spreading fear — and turning us into a regime of torturers. Rather than celebrate our Constitution and its enduring values, they use the levers of government to subvert it.

Now the nightmare appears to be almost over.

By choosing two vocal opponents of torture for two key positions — Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency — President-elect Barack Obama has indicated that he intends to make the cleanest possible break from Bush administration precedents, end torture and return to traditional interpretations of the Constitution.

[From Dan Froomkin – Waking From a Bad Dream – washingtonpost.com]

Read more

Footnotes:
  1. George Bush and his cronies, in other words [↩]

Barney’s Great Adventure

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“Frank Talk: The Wit and Wisdom of Barney Frank” (Peter Bollen)

Barney Frank has often amused me with his wit, but of course there is more to him than that.

Of the four hundred and thirty-five members of the House of Representatives, Barney Frank is the only one whose public remarks have been collected in a book of quotations (“Frank Talk: The Wit and Wisdom of Barney Frank,” published in 2006). He is also the only congressman whose fight against the impeachment of President Bill Clinton has been the subject of a documentary, which was shown to acclaim at film festivals around the country (“Let’s Get Frank,” directed by Bart Everly). Frank is not the only member of Congress to have been the subject of a full-scale biography, but the account of his life, written by a former aide named Stuart E. Weisberg, to be published by the University of Massachusetts Press later this year, will likely rank among the more exhaustive and admiring books ever printed about a sitting member of the House, who is described as “arguably the most unique and fascinating, certainly the most entertaining political figure in Washington.”
The title of the book suggests the basis for the widespread interest: “Barney Frank: The Story of America’s Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman.” Now sixty-eight years old, Frank has represented Massachusetts’s Fourth Congressional District since 1981, and he remains best known for his decision, in 1987, to reveal that he is gay, becoming the first member of Congress to do so voluntarily

[From Profiles: Barney’s Great Adventure: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker]

Congressman Frank is at the center of Congressional attempts at fixing the current housing and financial crisis:

During the financial crisis this fall, Frank’s status as a gay trailblazer suddenly seemed remote and irrelevant. After the Democrats’ victory, he became chairman of the Committee on Financial Services, and Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, designated him the Democrats’ chief negotiator with the Bush Administration on legislation to address the crises in the banking and auto industries. “Through this all, the quarterback for us is Barney,” Pelosi told me. “He’s solution-oriented, respectful of different perspectives, and brilliant. And it’s brilliance that saves time, because he simplifies the complex for us. He is an enormously valuable intellectual resource for the Congress.”

For the first time in more than forty years of public life, Frank has real power, and he is wielding it in a characteristically idiosyncratic manner. He remains a national symbol of outré sexuality as well as a rare wit in generally humor-deficient Washington. But in Congress he is thought of no longer simply as a liberal of the old school (which he is) but also as a grind. His expertise is in one of the least glamorous subjects on the national agenda—housing, particularly rental housing for poor people—and he is using that knowledge to confront the nation’s economic crisis. “For Barney, the question has always been: What works? What can government do to see that people have the decent necessities of life?” his sister Ann Lewis, the longtime Democratic activist, says. “Now he’s right there. Barney’s been preparing for this moment for his entire life.”

Jeffrey Toobin’s article continues, filled with asides like:

Frank speaks incessantly about food. In “Let’s Get Frank,” he complains about the low-fat provisions given to Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee during the impeachment debate. Referring to Dick Gephardt, who was the Minority Leader at the time, Frank says, “They got all this jelly-doughnut shit in there, and I gotta eat this stuff. . . . Gephardt’s a sheygets—whaddaya expect from Gephardt?” Sheygets is Yiddish for a male Gentile, and thus one who cannot be trusted to provide acceptable snacks.

and incidents like:

At the hearing, Frank responded testily to Garrett. “The purpose of this hearing was to be forward-looking,” he began. “And I had hoped we could focus on that. But, after the gentleman from New Jersey’s comments in having decried partisanship, he then practiced it. It does seem to me to be important to set the record clearly before us.” Frank pointed out that when Garrett had attempted to tighten regulations on Fannie and Freddie, Republicans had controlled the House. “Had a Republican majority been in favor of passing that bill, they would have done it,” Frank said. “Now he has claimed that it was we Democrats—myself—who blocked things. The number of occasions on which either Newt Gingrich or Tom DeLay consulted me about the specifics of legislation are far fewer than the gentleman from New Jersey seems to think.

“I will acknowledge that during the twelve years of Republican rule I was unable to stop them from impeaching Bill Clinton,” Frank went on. “I was unable to stop them from interfering in Terri Schiavo’s husband’s affairs. I was unable to stop their irresponsible tax cuts, the war in Iraq, and a Patriot Act that did not include civil liberties.” In other words, Frank insisted, if the Republicans had wanted to try to prevent the mortgage crisis, they would have had plenty of opportunities to do so.

Four Fifty Nine at Cabrini Green

One tiny, tiny correction: parts of Cabrini Green are still standing, undemolished, and there are still people living there. The City of Chicago tore some of Cabrini-Green down, but not all.

“At first, when you talk about affordable housing and subsidized housing, people immediately ask, ‘What sort of public housing?’ ” Frank said. “ ‘Is it run by the city, like Cabrini-Green?’ ”—a notorious, now demolished project in Chicago

Profiles in Cowardice

Seth Anderson0 comment

Ray LaHood named as Obama’s Transportation Secretary. Really? Really?

Most of Gilchrest’s colleagues didn’t want any debate in the first place. “When the country is war-weary, when the violence is still playing on TV, I don’t know why we want to highlight all that,” said Ray LaHood of Illinois.

When there’s a festering problem, why provide a solution?

No, gay marriage, the estate tax, indecency fines and flag-burning take precedence. Congress today is a profile in cowardice, offering no hope for our troops, no answers for the American people and no future for Iraqis.

via Profiles in Cowardice.

Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) last night accepted an offer to become President-elect Barack Obama’s transportation secretary and the nomination will be made official in coming days, two senior Democratic officials said.

LaHood, 63, who is retiring after representing a rural downstate district in Congress since 1995, becomes the second Republican tapped for Obama’s Cabinet. In recent years, LaHood developed a close relationship with Obama and the man who will become his White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, becoming a key player on the House Appropriations Committee on behalf of the Illinois delegation. …

From his perch atop the Department of Transportation, LaHood will be a key player in the new administration’s public works projects designed to stimulate the struggling economy.

[From LaHood Accepts Transportation Secretary Job | 44 | washingtonpost.com]

Blagojevich a Sociopath

Seth Anderson0 comment

Since I’ve already quoted this line a couple of times already, and even sent it to my mom, I should set it down here, in my publicly available scrapbook1


[photo by Brian Kersey]

Anyway, Eric Zorn remembers a fairly recent article about our sociopathic gov in the Chicago Magazine:

In a profile of Blagojevich in last February’s Chicago Magazine, writer David Bernstein reported:

Privately, a few people who know the governor describe him as a “sociopath,” and they insist they’re not using hyperbole. State representative Joe Lyons, a fellow Democrat from Chicago, told reporters that Blagojevich was a “madman” and “insane.”

That struck me at the time, as over the top. Today it strikes me as brave and prescient.

If these allegations are true, Blagojevich is not just sleazy and venal, he’s also recklessly compulsive. But an allegedly recklessly compulsive sociopath cannot and does not act alone — his abetters and enablers included his major donors and his advisers. They, too, should be called to account.

[From `Staggering’ allegations, even by Illinois standards | Eric Zorn’s Change of Subject]

Footnotes:
  1. is that what a blog is? I still have yet to come up with a good explanation of what it is I am attempting here [↩]

Blago in Handcuffs, and All I Got Was This Lousy Newspaper

Seth Anderson0 comment

There does seem to be some sort of connection, in spirit, if not in wiretap goods, between Blagojevich and Zell. I’m not the only one to notice it:

Las Vegas Showgirls

But really, you know Blagojevich moved into an entirely different realm of awful when, as the Chicago Tribune reported in early November, his people called Tribune owner Sam Zell and demanded the firing of editorial board members in return for assistance in selling the Tribune-owned Chicago Cubs.

…

There was no possibility of jeopardizing Fitzgerald’s investigation, because this story didn’t need it; the wiretap wasn’t involved: Blagojevich called them! The Tribune could have and should have run the story of Blagojevich’s call to Tribune Tower in 200 point type. They should have printed it in Rod’s own blood. They would have brought down a sitting governor the same week that they were trumpeting the win of Obama. They would have pushed the Tribune’s brand into the stratosphere, at just the time that it needed it.

But they didn’t. Faced with a defining moment in journalism–this was the kind of story that we would have taught in journalism schools for years–Sam Zell decided not to do the right thing. It’s not surprising–the guy is a waxed mustache away from tying a damsel in distress to a railroad track after all–but it’s still a shock.

When you walk into the lobby of the Tribune Tower, you’re dwarfed by the etched words of legends. They speak of the importance of journalism for a functioning democracy; of the imperative to speak truth to power. One, from Thomas Jefferson himself, reads “our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that can not be limited without being lost.”

That lobby is for sale now. Zell wants to turn the building into condos.

[From Daniel Sinker: My Governor Got Lead Away in Handcuffs, and All I Got Was This Lousy Newspaper]

So why did the Chicago Tribune hold off on the story?

think about this: You’re a newspaper. The governor of your state–a governor who has had the stink of corruption on him for years–has his people call you up and directly state that they’ll help you out if you fire members of your editorial board. It is a phone conversation that not only wipes its ass on the ethical lines it crosses, it also treats the First Amendment like it’s optional. And you don’t report it? Why?

There’s only one reason: Zell was entertaining the offer.

Bailing Out 100 Rich Investors in Chrysler

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Now that I think about it, why should taxpayers foot the bill for an investment gone bad? Cerberus Capital Management has plenty of profits in their other investments. Why should we support Dan Quayle and John Snow’s extravagant lifestyle? Digging a little deeper, Cerberus also owns 51% of GMAC – the financing arm of General Motors.

From Hoovers Online:

Named after the mythical three-headed dog that guards the gates of hell, Cerberus Capital Management has become a driving force among private equity firms. One of its more recent moves is the purchase of 80% of Chrysler from Daimler in 2007. Cerberus was also the lead investor of a group that acquired 51% of GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors. The company also owns bus manufacturer Blue Bird and car parts maker TA Delaware (formerly Tower Automotive). Other holdings include a 45%-stake in Japanese bank Aozora, real estate services firm LNR Property, and a 52%-stake in ACE Aviation Holdings, the parent company of Air Canada.

Cerberus has become heavily involved in the automobile industry because it believes that the sector has long been undervalued. In addition to its GMAC, Chrysler, and Tower Automotive holdings, the company now has an interest in CTA Acoustics (automobile insulation), Guilford Mills (automotive seating products), and Peguform Group (plastic auto interior and exterior parts).

A key to early success for the Cerberus-Chrysler deal may well be found in its new labor agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. While Chrysler has already announced plans to reduce its workforce by some 20,000 and to shutter at least one manufacturing facility, its biggest battle could still be to reduce labor and associated health-care costs.

Red Night of the Soul

Louise Story wrote:

Last year, Cerberus and about 100 co-investors bought 80.1 percent of Chrysler for $7.4 billion from the German carmaker Daimler. It also bought a controlling stake in GMAC, the finance arm of General Motors. Since then Chrysler has eliminated more than 30,000 jobs and struggled to keep itself afloat while its sales have plummeted. Cerberus is pressing to have Chrysler merge with G.M., but G.M. has said a tie-up is off the table. Chrysler is asking the government for $7 billion to get through the next few months.

Cerberus, named after the mythical three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades, has a fierce reputation on Wall Street. Many bankers and investors are reluctant to talk openly about the company, which is renowned, even feared, for its hard-nosed deal-making.

But Cerberus is also pursuing its interests aggressively in Washington, where some lawmakers have questioned why the government should assist the privately owned Chrysler. In addition to Mr. Snow, the firm’s chairman, Cerberus’s Washington hands include Dan Quayle, the former vice president, and Billy J. Cooper, who has worked as partner at the lobbying firm Patton Boggs.

The firm has also hired Arnold I. Havens, a former general counsel of the Treasury Department; John B. Breaux, a former senator from Louisiana; David Hobbs, former assistant to President Bush for legislative affairs; and Christopher A. Smith, former chief of staff in the Treasury. So far this year, Cerberus has spent nearly $2 million on lobbying, while Chrysler has spent $5 million, according to Senate records. Ford has spent more than $5 million and G.M. $10 million.

[From Chrysler’s Friends in High Places – NYTimes.com]

and I’m with Representatives Maxine Waters and Elijah E Cummings:

But some lawmakers have begun voicing concern that bailing out Chrysler would amount to bailing out Cerberus. On Friday, Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, pointed to Cerberus’s riches. “It seems to me that Cerberus is doing pretty well,” she said.

In an interview, Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, said he thought Cerberus should put more of its own money into Chrysler before asking for taxpayers’ help.

“I’m not saying they have to get all the money from Cerberus, but at least show a good faith effort,” Mr. Cummings said. “Chrysler should come back to Congress and say, ‘This is what we’ve asked Cerberus for, and this was their response.’ I think the public is due that.”

and especially because Cerberus opposed raising fuel efficiency standards:

“They are very, very well-connected,” said Harry Cendrowski, a consultant and co-author of the book “Private Equity: History, Governance and Operations.” Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee can attest to that. Last year, he was on vacation when his phone began ringing. It was Mr. Snow, and then Mr. Quayle, both calling on behalf of Cerberus. They wanted the senator to know that Cerberus opposed new fuel efficiency standards, Mr. Corker recalled. Days later, Mr. Feinberg visited Mr. Corker’s Washington office. Mr. Corker told Cerberus he was unmoved.

“I really did feel badly for these guys,” Mr. Corker, a Republican, said. But others point out that Chrysler landed on Cerberus’s lap practically free. The price it and its co-investors paid for their stake was roughly equal to the book value of Chrysler Financial. The car operation was just icing.

Mr. Snow and Mr. Feinberg declined to comment for this article. Cerberus does not have much of its own money riding on Chrysler and GMAC. The two investments amount to about 7 percent of its assets under management, and this past July Cerberus and its co-investors lent $2 billion to Chrysler. But its reputation is at stake, and it is eager to keep Chrysler and GMAC out of bankruptcy.

Talk about socialism! Republican style socialism, also known as public costs and private profit.

Why Clinton Lost

Seth Anderson0 comment

I read Howard Wolfson’s confession last Sunday, and burst out laughing. No wonder Clinton lost, Drudge is no longer relevant, if he ever was, but Wolfson and Penn et al, were still obsessed with Drudge’s nonsense.

Imperial Men's Wear

By the end of the campaign, I was seeing the Drudge siren in my sleep. As people in politics know all too well, Matt Drudge, the Internet provocateur who runs the Drudge Report Web site, posts a flashing siren whenever he wants to alert readers to major campaign news or rumors. The siren haunted my dreams and was always in the corner of my eye — except when it was in plain sight, on my computer screen, signifying success or, more often, terrible failure and impending doom. As soon as that siren started flashing, instant messages would pop up, just below the siren, one after another — each one beginning with “Seen Drudge?” until my entire computer screen was filled with instant-message boxes illuminated by the light of Drudge’s siren. It might have been beautiful if it hadn’t been so frightening.

HOWARD WOLFSON (communications director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign)

[From The Screens Issue – Moments That Mattered – NYTimes.com]

Clinton deserved to lose, in other words.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

swanksalot0 comment

More on the point of Clinton’s alleged baggage: after all the concern trolls1 in the media gnashing their collective teeth over Clinton and his conflicts of interest, turns out to be not worth concern.

Barack and Hillary wonder about Swank Franks

Whether Obama’s appointments make sense can only be judged when those he has chosen have an opportunity to perform — a caveat that applies to Clinton along with all the others, from Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff to Eric Holder as attorney general. But it should now be clear that the president-elect does not share the jaundiced view of the Clinton administration — or the Clintons — held so insistently by some of his own supporters.

For one thing, it should be plain that the exhaustive “vetting” process brought to bear on Bill and Hillary Clinton, and especially on his foundation and his business dealings, must have revealed nothing of grave concern to the Obama transition officials assigned to examine him. If it is true, as reported, that he will no longer accept certain speaking engagements that might pose an appearance of conflict with his wife’s position, that would be appropriate. It is equally likely, however, that the good work of his foundation will continue, since the Obama administration could scarcely wish to deprive a million or more impoverished people of the medicine and care that the former president has brought to them.

It will be interesting to see whether those who have raised the darkest suspicions about the former president will accept the benign assessment conferred on him by Obama.

[From Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Get over it, Clinton haters | Salon ]

Yeah, don’t hold your breath.

Footnotes:
  1. a term referring to those who pretend to worry about an issue, but are actually arguing from the other side. Explained more fully here [↩]

When did experience become a flaw?

Seth Anderson0 comment

Lest we forget, the national media will be looking for any controversy to build their coverage of the new administration around. If there isn’t any drama, they will manufacture it.

Jamison Foser of Media Matters writes:

Midway through Bill Clinton’s first year as president, Time magazine reported that among the new president’s problems was “a staff that has almost no White House or executive experience,” pointing to then-political director Rahm Emanuel as a prime example.

Fast-forward 15 years: President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Emanuel to serve as his chief of staff. With years of high-level White House work under his belt, not to mention the connections and clout that come from having been one of the most powerful members of Congress, it would be quite a stretch to say that Emanuel lacks the experience to effectively serve Obama. So this time, some in the media have a different complaint. As CNN’s Anderson Cooper put it, Emanuel is “probably the ultimate Washington insider. … [T]he critics will say, well, look, if Obama is talking about change, why is he having a Washington insider?”

So: Emanuel was insufficiently experienced to serve as political director in 1993 — and now we’re to believe that he’s too experienced in Washington to serve as chief of staff? What gives? Was there a brief window in 2003 in which Emanuel’s level of experience was just right? Or is there something strange about the media’s assessment of President-elect Obama’s staffing decisions?

That Time assessment of Emanuel in 1993 was not unique. For 16 years, there has been near-universal agreement that the Clinton administration’s early struggles (real and perceived) were in large part due to a lack of White House and Washington experience on the part of Clinton’s staff.

[Continue reading Media Matters – Media Matters: When did experience become a flaw?]

Just like the public vetting of the Clintons, which turned out to be mostly based on allegations that there was dirty contributions to Bill Clinton, any little angle will be relentlessly hyped. Is it too soon to write off the corporate media?

Blue Dogs losing grip

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Kagro X at the Orange Overlord makes an interesting point:

Just prior to the vote on Joe Lieberman’s Homeland Security chairmanship, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza followed with a story that drew considerable notice for this quote:

Asked what it would mean if Lieberman kept his chairmanship, one Senate Democratic aide said bluntly: “The left has been foiled again. They can rant and rage but they still do not put the fear into folks to actually change their votes. Their influence would be in question.”

It was a calculated statement, of course, and one that’s as likely to have come from “one Senate Democratic aide” who works for Lieberman as anyone else. But what’s interesting here was the credence the theory seemed to have among Conventional Wisdom watchers.

And it’s plausible enough on its face, though I’d argue that the fact that a bunch of bloggers drove the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee to publicly announce its intention to hold a formal vote isn’t exactly something to sneeze at. We fought, we lost. It happens. But our fights never used to culminate in votes of the Senate Democratic Caucus before.

The story made me curious, though, about whether we’d see similar reaction in the traditional media about the results of the other marquee committee leadership contest of the new Congress, the Waxman-Dingell match-up for the chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee. There’s been no shortage of coverage of the issue itself. And, of course, everyone covered the results. But where are the stories claiming that the defeat of the conservative wing of the House Democratic Caucus and their Blue Dog ringleaders represents a “foiling” of the right? That the Blue Dogs “can rant and rage, but they still do not put the fear into folks to actually change their votes? That their influence is in question?

[From Daily Kos: Media reaction to Waxman-Dingell? ]

Vintage Ford Pick Up Truck

Maybe I don’t feel quite as upset at the Lieberman vote after all. Dingell was as much of an impediment to the liberal agenda as Lieberman.